Take the most comfortable position, and settle yourself down into it. Place your hands naturally. Bring your shoulders down, unclench your jaw, and find your breath.
Close your eyes.
Pause a moment to reflect on how much you have accomplished on this journey before we even start. Be aware of how much more stable you have become through practice, how much more easily you can now rest your mind, how much less adversarial distractions seem, more like passing weather than an enemy, how the intervals between thoughts have begun to increase, and how a stillness has always been present.
We will start with the old, familiar focus meditation, but this time out of this deeper, more stable place you have constructed. Allow the breath to be your anchor, your sweet point of rest.
Breathe in... and out. Perceive its own beat, and do not attempt to tune it. You are not chasing the breath. You are just resting with it.
As soon as you lose track, which you will, observe where you have lost it. An emotion, an itch, a sound, a thought. Then, without judgment, come back to the breath.
This you have done already, but today, come with a different purpose.
When you breathe, feel something small, yet great:
Suppose it were a camera:
Notice this relationship: where to focus the lens is your choice. The mind is the instrument. The breath is what you are studying.
And when something comes to mind, or some feeling tingles in your body, you know that also. They were not called by you, but there they are... within the same field of consciousness.
See how this awareness is unshakable. It's there when you are concentrated or distracted, composed or fidgety, serene or frenzied. It doesn't take sides; it simply notices.
Stay here ten minutes, breathing evenly, bringing your focus back, your mind observing the whole process.
Now continue to breathe without effort, and let your consciousness enlarge, like the lens of a camera drawing back.
First layer, physical sensations:
Second layer, inner sensations:
Third layer, mental activity:
You are a spectator in a silent cinema, just watching what plays on the stage. No actor is permanent. All positions are temporary.
Should a label emerge, “hearing,” “thinking,” “feeling,” use it sparingly, and revert to watching. When you are steady enough, leave even the labels aside and rest in naked observance.
Stay here ten minutes, watching the play of senses, ideas and sentiments, without going on stage.
Now we enlarge the observation. Follow carefully: all that comes to consciousness has three phases: appearing, lingering awhile, and disappearing.
And see how they are allied: a sound can be a cue for a thought. A thought can evoke a feeling. That feeling may cause the chest muscles to contract.
You may glimpse the chain:
It is not a series of pools, but a river. One moment summons the next. Nothing stands alone. Nothing stays.
Rest here ten minutes, just observing the surging and subsiding, cause and effect, the interrelation of all experiences, flowing together.
Breathe deeply and slowly. Let the air fill you, and release.
When you are ready, open your eyes, and carry that consciousness with you into the next moment.
This practice is one of seventeen in the book.
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