To No-Thing and Back
This episode of Awareness at Play is available on Apple Podcasts.
Today we’ll do a meditation that takes us, incrementally, into subtler realms of experience. We’ll pay attention to our current experience with more refined attention, and when we’re deconstructed ourselves, so to speak, I’ll lead us gradually back into the land of time and space.
Some of the terms I’ll use, such as Shakti and Goddess, are used in some tantric traditions. I’ll include a reference in the notes about where you can learn more about this. If these terms don’t resonate with you, substitute something more comfortable for you, like energy or prana or God.
Close your eyes.
Before deliberately relaxing, experience yourself just as you are right now, sitting down after engaging with your life.
Your nervous system might still be a bit active and in need of time to settle. Your muscles might need time to disengage after moving around. Your mind might still carry flavors of recent experience, coloring your perception like a taste lingering in your mouth after eating something.
Let’s savor these aftereffects of moving through life and notice all the ways they are reverberating now. We are simply noticing and taking them in with our awareness.
This is no less sacred or advanced than any lofty, esoteric meditation practice. We are gifting awareness to what we’ll call our everyday state.
Now let’s settle into the present activity of sitting in quiet stillness.
Deepen your breath, making sure you breathe into your lower lungs. Allow the breath to find a smooth, even, quiet rhythm. Notice how attending to a relaxed breath transitions you into a slightly different experience.
Relish this experience. Perhaps it continues to change as each breath relaxes you a little more. Notice each new movement of experience as it arises.
Keeping the breath relaxed, notice the sounds you hear and the sensations you feel in your body. You may move back and forth between the two at first, but see whether you can become aware of hearing and feeling at the same time.
If you allow your attention to become lighter and broader, the sounds and bodily sensations may begin to meld into a lightly held symphony—an arrangement of sensations. Don’t try too hard. Simply relax into whatever degree of noticing is available to you.
This is awareness moving through the senses. Notice how hearing and feeling add another flavor and depth to your engagement with experience. Continue to relish and appreciate it.
Now let go of any striving to pay attention, if striving is present. Keep whatever sense of relaxation and presence is naturally here, but allow any subtle pressure to get this right to fall away.
We are resting in presence, not making it happen. The breath and the senses are resting places, not tasks to complete.
Enjoy this experience of resting in presence without an agenda and without trying.
If you notice resistance of any kind—thoughts drifting, tension in the body, restlessness, or anything that doesn’t feel entirely relaxed—experience it as fully as you can.
Allow resistance to be a natural arising that comes and goes. Honor it as another manifestation of the divine. There is no need to make it disappear. Let it be exactly as it is. It may subside on its own, or it may remain for a while. Either way, it too belongs within awareness.
As we stop resisting resistance, a quieter enjoyment of experience may begin to reveal itself.
In the tantric tradition, the fundamental nature of awareness is said to be blissful—not necessarily blissful as a dramatic emotion, but as an underlying peace, contentment, fullness, or simple delight in being.
As we settle into awareness, surrender to it, and rest there, we may begin to recognize this subtle fullness.
Even though there may still be a light awareness of the body through breath and sensation, we can now loosen the idea that awareness is contained inside the body.
Without denying the body or its boundaries, allow the sense of being a separate entity to soften.
We are integral to the unified field of creation. We are continuous with our environment and with all the other objects and subjects arising within this greater field. At the deepest level, the divisions between us are not absolute.
Savor this oneness—this connectedness, this intimacy with all of creation.
Not only are we one with creation; we are the context in which creation appears. The same garden-variety awareness with which we began our sitting today is the awareness within which every experience arises.
We are that awareness.
We are Being itself, free from time and space.
We are free—empty, but full.
We are velvety, sacred darkness.
We are Pure Consciousness.
From this subtle, magnificent emptiness, we’re going to begin reconnecting with our other ways of being aware.
From the infinite potential of this sacred darkness comes the spark of creation. Feel the vibrant, pulsating life force underlying all manifested things, including you.
Feel her breathing life into all things, including you.
Breathe a little more deeply as you recognize this scintillating pulsation.
With manifestation come time and space, and our body-minds arise as evolving expressions within this astonishing creation.
Notice your sense of “I am” becoming localized here and now. You feel yourself present in a particular time and place.
Savor this fascinating way of experiencing Being.
Within time and space, we are each a localized point of awareness within the whole. Our body-minds are among the countless sense organs of the divine.
Our senses are the Great Source, feeling, hearing, and seeing from this particular angle. Let’s appreciate ourselves as the divine, sensing this amazing world.
Listen to the world.
Feel yourself within it.
Our bodies are ever-expanding and contracting, intelligent manifestations of the Great I Am. Feel your breath as a conduit of energy and life force—nourishing, calming, energizing, and sustaining this brilliant anatomy we call home.
Our minds are not one thing, but a mysterious flow of thought, memory, imagination, interpretation, discernment, and intuition. Through these capacities, we orient ourselves and navigate life.
Shaped by experience, the mind faithfully repeats what it has learned, creating much of the lens through which we see the world. Our awareness of the mind—and our kindness toward it—allow us to see it more clearly. With awareness, it can become more flexible, discerning, and wise.
Let us offer a moment of deep compassion and gratitude for this astonishing capacity, down to its smallest thought.
Begin to move a little, and when you’re ready, open your eyes.
Take in this vivid, visceral experience—of life on Earth as a human—as though it were a brand-new and incredible miracle—which, of course, it is.
Going forward, treat this existence you’re living as an offering to the Divine. Whatever you experience, recognize it as the God—taking in her own creation in this particular way, at this particular time.
Just as we noticed at the beginning of this meditation, even when your nervous system is fried or your thoughts are all over the place, this too is Sacred.
This too is consciousness giving rise to another fascinating movement.
Take a deep breath.
Wake yourself up a little.
