Nowness

Transcript

[0:02] This is a meditation on Nowness.

[0:21] Let's begin taking our seat. In the midst of our world. Arranging our body geometry. Our legs. Our feet. Our hips beneath us. Allowing ourselves to come to an uplifted seat. Our spine. Erect. As we can. Uplifted in our world. Also, with a relaxation. Just sitting. With nothing to hide. And nothing to prove. Our neck. Straight. With our chin a little tucked. Allowing our breath to flow freely. Our tongue could be behind our teeth on the roof of our mouth. Our eyes could be open with a soft gaze. A few feet in front of us. Or they could be closed. And as we begin to sit, we could check in with our motivation for practice. Why and who we are practicing for.

[2:44] And we could check in with our body. This feeling. How it is right now in this moment. And welcoming. And including all of this experience. Including. Any discomfort. Any pain. Any joy. Any bliss. Everything is included. In the same way, we can check in with our mind. How is it in this moment? Does it feel tight? Or open and loose? And again, welcoming. Whatever the experience is. Everything is included. And we can begin with just a one-breath meditation. Just be with our breath for one breath. Breathing in. And breathing out. Staying with our breath. We could do another one-breath meditation.

[4:48] And we can allow our awareness to rest on the experience of our body breathing.

[5:22] Letting go of any need to control our breath. And just being with it. Breathing in and breathing out. And we could expand our awareness that there are so many amazing, magical processes unfolding right here, right now, in our body. Our heart beating. Blood flowing throughout our chest, our legs, our feet. Our lungs filling with air. Gases exchanging with our bloodstream. Right now. Our hair is growing. Our skin cells. Our living, our dying. Our exchanging fluids and gas and energy with the environment around us. Our energy. Electricity running throughout our body, right now. And now. Letting go of all need to control any of this. It's just happening right now. We don't need to know anything about it. To appreciate it. How magical and amazing all these processes are taking place. What a much bigger self we are than we think.

[9:15] How deeply a part of this world we are. All this interchange and exchange that is happening right now with the fluid environment around us. And what if we stayed in this place of not knowing? Not needing to know? But curious. And appreciative. We can actively choose how to be, what to be in this now space. There really is no future. No past. Everything that we experience is always now. But our minds are often not with it. We are planning. We are reviewing. We are ruminating. These are not bad things. They are useful as tools. But not as a way of living.

[11:15] As we sit here in now-ness. And then we recognize that we have been off somewhere. Somewhere future. Somewhere past. Somewhere invented. We can, in that moment of recognition, we can touch into that experience from outside it. Ah, yes, that was planning mind. Oh, that was reviewing mind. Oh, that was logical figuring out mind. And just become familiar. And then let it be. Let it fade. As you stay in now-space. In this now-space, you are always ready. There is no preparing to be ready. Preparing to prepare to prepare to be ready. We often mortgage our now against a future that never arrives. When we're kids, we want to be older. We want to be in school. Then we want to be in college. Then we plan that when we get a job and money, it will be amazing. Then we plan that when we have kids, it will be amazing. Then we think when they leave the house, that'll be great. In our job, we think when we get the next job, it'll be great. And then, oh, well, when we retire, it will be great. Be here now. Realize that time is an illusion. It's a tool that we can use once we stop letting it run our lives. What if we switched from using our calendars running us to just being a tool that we can use? Switch deep within us our allegiance. Switch it from psychological time, this illusory view of time that we spend so much time embedded within. Switch our allegiance from that to now space. The irony is that when we do this, the abundance of time becomes infinite. Days stretch and feel like weeks. We stay awake and present right in this now space.

[15:12] Staying completely with the breath as we breathe in and breathe out. And feel the infinite space that stretches all around us in this nowness.