Tara Brach - Freedom Beyond the Trance of Self

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

The gift of meditation is awakening to the vast, radiant ever-creative beingness that is beyond the confines of a constricting self-sense. This talk explores how awake awareness can directly meet the clench of selfing - the thoughts, emotional tensions and core self-sense. When this occurs there's a spontaneous releasing into the full love, wakefulness and aliveness of our being. 

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. Thank you for being here. I thought I'd begin with one of my favorite poems from the poet Tukharum. It's called Landlocked in Fur. I was meditating with my cat the other day, and all of a sudden she shouted, what happened? I knew exactly what she meant, but encouraged her to say more, feeling that if she got it all out on the table, she would sleep better that night. So I responded, tell me more, dear. And she's soulfully meowed. Well, I was mingled with the sky. I was comets whizzing here and there. I was suns in heat. Hell, I was galaxies. But now look, I'm landlocked in fur.

To this, I said, I know exactly what you mean. What to say about a conversation between mystics? One of the best descriptions of the spiritual path is remembering and forgetting. And the forgetting can be described as being landlocked in fur when we're cut off from realizing the fullness of who we are, our true nature, our loving awareness, that's really the source of all beings. And we know this in the particulars of our life in certain stretches, when it becomes really clear, we're obsessed in thinking or recoiled in fear or hurt or anger, are this chronic anxiety.

and we know we're shrunk in some way. We're living in a trance. We're in a small self that's landlocked. It's a confined world. So those are the moments of not remembering a larger belonging, not remembering our connection to each other and to the living world. Also, just not remembering presence. We're not here.

We're not remembering what matters to us. So when the trance of forgetting is full, when there's a lot of fear, a lot of separation, that's the grounds for violence when we violate ourselves and each other and the earth. The Buddha said that the deepest suffering is forgetting who we are, being caught in a self-centeredness. So when I talk about being landlocked, it's really that self-suffing, that self-suffing, that self-centeredness that cuts us off from our world. And we cherish the moments when that centering on self disappears.

We know that. It happens in moments of loving connection with others or when we're in the zone in some outdoor activity or sport. We lose that self-centeredness when we are immersed in creativity, when we're dancing, in orgasm, you know, in moments of awe, when we're serving others, you might pause here and just reflect for a moment. On a time when you felt happy or you felt grateful for something, our feeling of loving connection, are really peaceful,

just some time in the last days or weeks, when you felt those kind of pleasant states, one of them, and slowed down enough to really recall you know who you're with if you're with another person when there was that warmth, their friendliness or connecting, or where you were when you were seeing something beautiful or feeling some gratitude. So a happy moment. And as you sense into that, into being in that happy moment. Notice what your sense of self is. Perhaps you notice a little bit more of a,

that there's a spacious quality or an open quality, or the self is kind of indistinct or fluid. And you might take a full breath and then again, reflect. And this time, a time recently when you felt stuck and when you felt not okay, when things were not going well when you wanted life different. Just a highly stressed moment we'll do. And let yourself get in touch with it.

Mind yourself enough of the particulars that you're inside it a bit. And again, just ask yourself in those moments, who are you? What's your sense of self? And you might notice that maybe there's a sense of more contractedness or more solidness, more separateness. we can take a few breaths, let go, let go, let go. In the moments when we're feeling more happy and free, there is less of that solid self-sense, that self-centeredness.

So the title of this talk is freedom beyond the trance of self. And what we're going to be exploring is some direct pathways of waking up from that confining sense of self and self-centeredness. Pathways that help us relax into more of the fullness of our being, the fullness of loving and of liveliness, of awake awareness. And it'll be a bit different from many of our reflections in that we're going to be looking at teachings and practices that are most accessible when we're not caught in the grip of emotion,

when we're not overly stressed. And we'll be focusing on some of the deepest dimensions of spiritual freedom. So we begin with, and I find this so valuable, kind of more of the evolutionary view, which is that it is part of our evolutionary unfolding to go around identifying as a separate self, to be fixated on what this self wants and what this self fears. And rather than aspiring to awakening and freedom, we're kind of focused in a narrow way on the story of self. And of course there's an adaptive purpose to this, which is survival. You know, every single-celled creature on up has a sense of a self in here, in a world out there. You might imagine our ancestors,

some furry small little mammal in the sun on a rock, maybe doing Qigong or Yoga Nidra, and with this intention of awakening and opening to oneness with the universe and then this big woolly mammoth crunch, you know, steps on it. It's survival that we keep our focus on this self here, what it wants, what it fears. So, and it's a, it's a universal habit of the brain to sense that this self here, this centralized self, is in some way owning what's happening or controlling what's happening or perceiving what's happening, but it's very self. reference. And you can notice even, let's say, when meditating, that there's this persistence of thoughts about the future in the past and about the self. And it's part of what's called

the default network in the brain. And it's on purpose keeping us oriented to a story of self. So if you feel like, oh my gosh, I have such a busy mind, it's actually a survival. apparatus to keep us oriented and to keep us alive. And even when thoughts are quieted down, even in relatively quiet meditations, that self-centeredness is still there. It's more in the background, what I sometimes call the ghost self, where there's a sense of the one who's doing a meditation or who's guiding the meditation. meditation. It's that coaching voice in the background, the one who's witnessing the meditation or having an experience. I suspect many of you have noticed that. So while we have a really distinct

sense of self, cognitive scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists agree that that self-sense is an illusion, that the brain is creating models of reality. and the self is one of those models, and those models help us to predict and respond to changing circumstances. So it's a construction of the brain. Self is a construction of the brain that comes from different mental processes. It's a story that the brain tells itself. It stitches together experiences to create an illusion of a coherent, continuous identity. And you might be thinking, yeah, but I own that brain, and that's part of the brain constructing itself as an owner.

In other words, scientists say there is no stable, unchanging entity in there or in here. It's another mental construct. So, this has been the core teaching in, I know many of you're familiar, many Eastern religions. We know in Buddhism that that teaching is there, that there's no solid, continuous self, empty of self. And then in Hindu Advaita, Vedanta, it's that the ego or the individual self is an illusion. Taoism, no separate existence, everything's fluid and interconnected. Sufism.

Talk about dissolving the illusion of the self. into unity with the divine. And similarly, mystical Christianity, there's a whole pathway of dissolving and transcending the sense of self. It's a pathway of nurture with God. I like the way the Taoist poet Wei Wu-we puts it. He says, why are you unhappy? Because 99% of what you do is for yourself. And there isn't one. So this is our situation, and the point is this, that self-ing, this self-centeredness, it's not bad, it's not wrong, it's part of our evolution, it serves survival, and it's not the end point of our unfolding. that our consciousness has the inbuilt capacity for mindful and kind awareness. In other words, to be met up to the self-in process, to be able to recognize the selfing process but not be caught in it, to realize what we are beyond the story and felt sense

of a self. We have that capacity. And we develop it. There's a a yearning, an energy in us, an aspiration for freedom, this kind of inner wisdom in all of us that intuits that we're more, more than the stories and beliefs that keep us in a small self. So I say this because we're designed to keep evolving and awakening and they're suffering if we don't evolve past that exclusive identity with a separate self. It's kind of like the caterpillar that never breaks out of cocoon. We're in this confined trance of self-centeredness. And in terms of human evolution, it's a kind of developmental arrest

that we're in this self-intrance and we're not evolving past it. And the signs, we know the signs. we're caught in that smallness, there's a sense that something's missing in our life, that something's wrong, there's a dissatisfaction, a loneliness, there's an endless sense of stress, a joylessness. It's because on some level our system is registering a stuckness that we're meant to continue to wake up. And I think many of us touch it, that we're aware that there's a sense that we're living our day in certain routines that are really inside a limited reality, a cocoon of thinking and acting and behaving, and we sense there's something more.

And yet you might wonder, well, if humans are designed to have an ego self to navigate and survive, you know, how would I function without that sense of self to protect myself and to work and to earn money and relate to other people. How do you have a conversation, you know? So an important understanding as we're looking at this process of awakening is that when we talk about waking up beyond the self, we're not talking about obliterating the sense of self. It's a transcending and including as part of a larger reality. And if this may sound familiar, Ken Welber so eloquently describes the stages of consciousness. And this is, it's part of our evolving to be identified as a separate self-ego and also to transcend that, but still have access to that felt sense.

My friend Stephen Joseph puts it this way, he says, you can enjoy, you can, you can, you can, you employ the apparent reality of self and inhabit the vastness of truth. He says, when a cop pulls us over, we need to show a license, not simply point to the sky. So, not only can we function when we're inhabiting that larger reality, the gift is that the intelligence and love of the universe more easily flow through our words and actions. When there's a remembrance, when we're beyond that landlocked self, we're experientially and in reality connected to and belonging to the universe. So it comes through this particular form and as we relate to other beings, it shows up as caring. We have a growing courage and grace in meeting this changing life.

Okay, so there are many pathways that quiet the selfing. And I've named some already, I've alluded to some when we practice gratitude, the self-centeredness quiets. If we send other people loving kindness, caring, it quiets. When we concentrate the mind, we end up quieting that sense of self. When we practice the rain practice, when we practice mindfulness and self-compassion to emotions, the self-inquents. But today, what we're going to be exploring is meeting what is arising with awareness in ways that directly dissolve that experience of being landlocked in selfing, of being confined. And to start, a key way we stay in the trance of self is believing our thoughts.

Our thoughts keep recreating that model of the world that's centered on self. I saw years ago a magic show on prime time TV. And in the middle, and this was following swords going through sexy women and releasing 50 birds from seemingly empty hands. In the middle, a pair of sequined men come out, and they're very slick and fast-talking. And they said, we're going to teach you how to vanish, how to disappear into thin air.

Are you ready? They do all this hoopla. And they say, get very quiet. Don't think about the future. Don't think about the past. Don't think about anything. Vush! You've made yourself vanish.

And then there's someone chewing a thousand pieces of gum or something for the next trick. But, okay. So, as mentioned, we have this ongoing incessant stream of thoughts and stories and beliefs. and they keep the underlying sense of self-going. They block the larger truth of reality. The point is not to get rid of thoughts. If you're at war where you're thought, you'll be at war for the rest of your life.

The point is not to be lost inside them, not to lose sight of the larger reality. This is Swami Beyond Ananda. It is true. as we go through life thinking heavy thoughts, but particles tend to get caught between the ears, causing a condition called truth decay. Meditation is mental floss.

I think that's so great, causing a condition called truth decay. So if you imagine thoughts like clouds and that you're in an airplane and a lot of the time we're spending inside the clouds, We're just believing the thought. There's no larger reality than the thought. But if instead we fly through and we reenter sky, open space and sky, the thoughts can still be there.

We've transcended that exclusive being lost inside experience, but we're remembering something larger. So much of meditation and practice is that simple training to wake up, up from the thoughts, to meet them with a larger awareness, to wake up from the thoughts, from their exclusive binding hold on us. My friend Anam Thubten, who's a wonderful Buddhist teacher, he says this, can we see that there is a mental world we have created somewhere in our consciousness? It is a mind-created world that we've been living in forever. The world we must transcend is the world that the mind has constructed. So this morning, meditating and I was by the river and

a lot of active thoughts, worry thoughts, was my doing self, just putting forth thoughts about what next how to happen. And my intention was simply, okay, meet this with awareness. And so every time I'd noticed thoughts, I'd just sensed that they were part of the river, they were flowing by and then come back and feel my whole body, just feel that with awareness. It was just relaxing open. And then I get lost again and thoughts about how to happen or what I was worrying about. Notice it, okay, part of the river and just over and over again, letting thoughts be part of the the river just moving through. So gradually, there was a sense of resting in a larger space

of awareness, the sky of awareness, the river was moving through, and there was rocks and geese and my puppy was digging a hole. It was a transcend and include, not lost in the thoughts. And as that was happening, it was just clear that there was space between thoughts, that the light of awareness could shine through. And then there was a noticing that there was a witness that was doing the watching. There was the me witnessing watching all the thoughts. And then awareness says, okay, this two's an impression of self and I let that be part of the river. And the more that was noticed and just became part of the river, the more the what I was was just that spaciousness, that field of wakefulness that was including everything. But a key moment was sensing that there was

kind of a witness that was watching the thoughts and that that too was the thought. And it was in that moment of letting that be part of the river, that there was the true inhabiting of the larger field of wakefulness. I'm sharing a poem by Rumi that came to mind. Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought. Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear thinking. Live in silence. Flow down and down and always widening rings of being. Let's take a few moments together, a reflection that can serve us in awakening from the bind of thought. And I invite you to begin by just taking a few long, full breaths, and then let the breath be relaxed in its natural rhythm and let the intention be watching your mind, watching

thoughts, relaxed attentiveness, noticing thoughts as either images or sound bites or a combination. Receptive, relaxed, no need to get rid of anything. Simply noticing when a thought arises, letting it be part of something larger, like a flowing river, or letting it be like a cloud in the sky, sensing if it's possible to notice a space between thoughts, not trying to get rid of anything, simply awareness, meeting thoughts, letting them be part of the river that's flowing or the sky of awareness,

and sensing if there's space between, thoughts, what's it like? Noticing if there is a sense of witnessing, being the witness, that ghost self, the one who's watching thoughts and letting that too be part of the river that's flowing or this sky, a cloud in the sky. These are the words of Sringer Sargadatta. you watch your mind you discover yourself as the watcher when you stand motionless only watching you discover yourself as the light behind the watcher that source that light alone is go back to that source and abide there and thoughts are met with awareness simply watching not trying to make anything different. They lose their solidity. They no longer obscure the larger reality. Similarly,

when emotions come up, when we sense even that fundamental clinging to a sense of self, when it's met with the light and the warmth of awareness, there's a relaxing, there's a revealing of the fullness of our being. But here's the challenge. We have a deep habit of of wanting life, the emotions are selfing to be different. And we try to control. We have this doing self that is an action and continues to be an action throughout. As we continue to go deeper on the spiritual path, it becomes more subtle, but it's there, this doing self. And I started with landlocked in fur, the cat intuited something larger. But there's some ego there with that negativity bias that something's wrong. So the ego wants to get rid of itself. The ego doesn't like

itself. From its view, the small self is getting in the way of freedom. One of my favorite prayers, dear God, so far today I've done all right. I haven't been greedy, self-absorbed, bad-tempered, self-indulgent. But in a few minutes, God, I'm going to get out of bed. And from then on, I'm going to need a lot of help. So this is the predicament that our ego feels flawed. We're on this path that we're wanting to wake up and be free and the doing self then wants to get rid of the ego. But it can't. The aversion to ego actually solidifies ego. It doesn't work to try to get rid of thoughts, it doesn't work to try to resist emotions, it doesn't work to try to diminish self-in. The best example from the Buddhist mythology, Ananda was the Buddha's cousin and his most

devoted disciple. And so after the Buddha's death, there's this great counsel of enlightened beings was bringing together all the enlightened beings, the Arahats, as they were called. And he wasn't entitled to attend because even though he had practiced diligently for years, he wasn't yet enlightened. Okay, so the evening of the council meeting and he is determined to practice vigorously all night and he's not going to stop until he attains his goal, which is really of getting rid of the self and experiencing enlightenment. But all he succeeds in doing, of course, is getting exhausted and discouraged. There's no progress in spite of his efforts. So towards dawn, some awareness in him saw that, and with some tenderness, he just let go of his striving, his efforts. And in that

state where he lost all greed to attain something, all fear of nov attaining it, he rested back, his head on the pillow, and was freed. He became enlightened. He realized the awareness. The awareness, the love beyond any sense of self. So what freedom? It was not his striving. It was not striving to get rid of his ego and to wake up. It was, because that's more of self. That's more selfing. It was that heart wisdom of letting go and letting be, that non-doing awareness. And that is the essence of true meditation. It's a non-doing awareness. It's a non-doing awareness. And we have to keep in mind that Ananda for many years did very skillful practices with some doing, concentration practices, mindfulness, loving kindness, his mind was well trained, and

that served. It's just that at some point the striving, any sense of doing has to be released in order for there to be true freedom. The image I like of awareness is as a sunlit sky, and awareness illuminates what's here. That's the light part of it, illuminates the striving, and the sun warms. There's the warmth, the loving, that softens the striving, the contraction, that heart wisdom that Ananda had of letting go. So these are the two wings of awareness.

the light that illuminates the love that dissolves. And one of my most memorable experiences of struggling against selfing, I want to share with you because I saw so clearly both these wings of awareness and how much they served. So this is the setup, and I wrote about this in my book True Refuge, about special person. And this was the part of me that I started seeing more and more was getting caught up and feeling superior,

like, oh, well, she knows things to tell other people, or feeling of importance or entitlement. Like, in some way, special treatment, I'm so busy, you know, like her knees come first. Okay, so this is about 20 years ago, and this growing aware, of self-importance, this ego clench. This is my landlocked experience. And with that, so much aversion and embarrassment, you know, it's like to my own seeing it, you know, it was

like embarrassing to be caught in it, which added to the clenching. So I was landlocked. And I remember one morning I was meditating and I was struck by how in the recent, days I'd been really impatient and bossy with those around me. And it was a busy time and I was feeling the importance of me first. I mean, the day before my computer was kind of flaking out on me and I just expected Jonathan to drop everything because I have so much to get done and, you know, you probably get the feeling. So I'm sitting there going, oh my gosh, special person is, you know, completely blossoming forth and felt just so much aversion towards myself. So this is ego versus ego here. And I was trying all the strategies I knew to in some way get rid of special person. You know,

I was trying the mindful noticing of what was going on, the self-enclench. I was trying forgiveness. I was trying to quiet my mind. But special person was still there. And then there would be more aversion, you know, more wanting to get rid of. And so as I was sitting there meditating, I had this despairing feeling about just how persistent this ego is, persistent in its way of being. And then a wise voice that just said, stop struggling, just stop. And there's some softening with that. but then a voice in my head said, yeah, but it's still here, the ego is still here. And then the voice again, sweetheart, just let it be.

And something rang true. It became like this tender prayer, just let it all be there. So in a sense I was bowing my head, I was surrendering. I was letting reality be as it was. And reality included this ego clench of a sense of being a special person. and the struggles against it stopped and everything just dropped away. You know, words, ideas, a sense of a trap self. There's just quietness.

And then there was this voice, well look what I did. I surrendered and oops, she's back, you know. But I was on to it, it was there and I could see it and it just kind of smiled and then let go again. Real surrendering. Just let it all go. And there was such a purity to that quietness and that presence. It was home. And there was just a resting in that, being that. Since then, it's really been a central part of practice that when there's a noticing of ego and there's a noticing of the aversion to ego, some part of me just bows.

There's a surrendering presence. And I can't will surrender. That's just more ego if I say, okay, surrender. But I can meet what's going on with awareness. I can meet seeing the ego, seeing the aversion of the awareness. It's a clench. you know, what I'm seeing is a clench. Ego is always some contraction or a clench.

And to feel the heart's willingness, can't well surrender, but there's a willingness to let go. It's kind of a prayerfulness. So I want to pause here and again explore together how when there's some of that ego battle, when the heart's armored with some judgment, when there's self-judgment, that armoring can begin to dissolve when it's met with the light and the warmth of awareness of a surrendering presence.

And so I'd like to invite you again if you're in a place to do this to come into stillness. We're just doing a light experiment with these practices. You can spend more time when you have it on your own. come into stillness and again feel the breath. Let the breath help to collect your attention and scan your life to sense a place where you're down on yourself in some way, where you're critical, judgmental, want yourself to be different. And take a moment to feel that clench of selfing of, I want life different, I want to be different. And sense the possibility of meeting that self in that more contracted space. It's the self that feels it's a bad self in some

way, is to meet that with the light of awareness and to meet with the warmth of awareness, the sunlit sky, the warmth, and if it helps to put your hand on your heart, to connect with that more, just feel that there's awake awareness, warm, warm, caring, awake, awareness, and let it bathe you. I love the teaching that love is always loving you. Let it bathe you, let go into it so that the caring, the warmth, the tenderness of awareness can really saturate, dissolve, release in a natural way. Love is always loving you.

You are that loving awareness. In the Radiant Sutras, there is a place. in the heart where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there? Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart. Give yourself to it with total abandonment. Quiet ecstasy is there and a steady regal sense of resting in a perfect spot. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here. I am at home here. Your eyes are closed. You might open them. So, through our reflections, we're looking at a process of awakening where we meet the

clench, that landlocked self, the clench of thoughts or of armoring around the heart with the warmth and light of awareness, a non-doing presence. So this far we've been looking at this process of awakening of transcending and including self by meeting the clench of thoughts, meeting the clench of armoring around the heart with the warmth and light of awareness, a non-doing presence. And this last part, we're going to explore awakening beyond selfing, by directly meeting that clench of self-identity with awareness. And Connie Rae Andreas, her books, her teachings, have really shaped my practice in this domain, and so I want to honor her because some of what we'll explore is adapted directly from her work. So when I say, meet the clench of

self-identity with awareness, you might wonder, but I'm not aware of that clenching of self-identity. And it's true. Most of the time, we're taking ourselves to be a small self, but that's unconscious. Let's say anger arises. We'll focus on the angry stories and the feelings, but not so much on the felt sense of a self that's feeling the anger, the self that something bad has happened to. As I mentioned with meditating, we're often not aware of that ghost self in the background, the sense of being the self that's guiding the meditation, having experiences. Nonetheless, the core perception, I am a self, creates attention that cuts us off from larger reality. It's powerful and freeing to include that core

sense of self in the light and more of awareness. So you might think of the core clench of self-identity like a clenching fist and that you forget is clenching. So you might try it right now. Just I'll do it too with you. Just put your arms aside and clench your fist and as if you're forgetting, you might do a few other things right now, like look around and remind yourself of what you had for breakfast, tap your foot, listen to sounds. The clenching is still going on. It actually is draining. It's tiring. It feels like life is hard, but we're not aware of the self-clench.

You can relax it if you haven't already. So to the degree of having that clench of self-centeredness, it's fatiguing, it's stressful. Now here's the thing. Just the way an ice cube knows how to melt naturally, if you place an ice cube in a larger body of water, it melts, or in a sunlit environment, the clench of selfing knows how to relax in the light of awareness. But again, come back to that clenched fist. Okay? What happens when awareness wakes up in and around the hand?

So clenching your fist, what happens when awareness wakes up in and around the hand? Just go ahead and feel and sense awake awareness in your hand. Muscles naturally know to let go. You don't have to try. It's without effort. They relax on their own. This is how transformation happens. And I find it's so powerful once we get a sense of this. The self isn't doing something. Awareness is what frees. The self is not doing anything. The self can't get rid of the self. Awareness is doing it. Relaxing happens in the meeting of awareness with the clench. We're going to do a closing reflection in a moment that really explores the power of this. But I want to just back up and say before you close,

if you're drawn to these practices, as I said earlier, these are the practices for when you're a bit quieter, you're not caught in a lot of stress. And you really want to explore waking up beyond the clench of self, meeting the landlocked self with that light and love of awareness. These practices serve a really profound quality of freedom and homecoming. Srinar Sargadatta says, love tells me I'm everything. Wisdom tells me I'm nothing. Between the two, my life flows. The great gift of being able to sense the clench of self-centeredness and wake up beyond it, the great gift is this capacity of move through this world with clarity and with an open-heartedness that really helps to bring freedom and healing to others as well.

So now for our final reflection, which is meeting the clench of selfing with awareness. Many people ask me, well, how do I find awareness? We're talking about meeting the clench with awareness. How do we find awareness? So we're going to begin our final reflection with just that. And I invite you, you can do this with your eyes closed, you can probably are lowering your gaze will help. And then here's the first part, which is try not to be aware.

Just try not to be aware for these first few moments. Still try not to be aware. And for most, you'll notice pretty spontaneously that awareness is here. You can sense the qualities of it. There's a knowing moment to moment of what's happening. So there's a wakefulness, a knowing. Now just pay attention to the awareness that's here for a few more moments. What are the qualities?

Can you sense the openness that there's a lot of space, edgeless space? Awareness is wakeful, knowing. It's open and there's a tenderness, a responsiveness, to the life that's here as we continue to pay attention. Now continuing to explore, notice where you feel sensations, the arms, the hands, the chest, and notice how awareness is in your body. If somebody grabs you suddenly, they grab your hand, you'll notice it automatically. You don't have to go looking for awareness.

So sense how awareness fills the hands, fills the body, Everything you feel is known by awareness. Sense that. Awareness filling your whole body, through your whole body. And it's the same thing with the space around you. Sense sounds from any direction. There's no boundary to your experience. Awareness fills space.

Knowing sound. The space inside the body, the space around you. It's a continuous field of awareness. Take a moment to relax in and as the awareness. That's the fullness of what you are. And now scanning, scanning through your body, let there be an effortless sense of what wants attention, what calls you,

something that may be either unpleasant or uncomfortable, maybe a tension, place of tension, emotion, whatever stands out a bit. Just notice the location in your body. Doesn't have to be strong, but just something that calls your attention. Find its location in your body. Sense the size. Make this shape.

The quality of the sensation is familiar. And now since I'm aware of the sensation, and find the eye, the self that is aware. And if you're not sure where it is, just guess. Imagine maybe in the head or in the heart area or behind you is kind of maybe amorphously behind. But sense the eye that's aware of sensation, the self that's aware,

is sensing its location, the shape, the sensation that goes with that self. And see what happens when you invite the sensation of eye to open and relax in and as awareness. Invited to open and relax in and as that whole field of awareness, of light, of love. You might sense it as dissolving into the field of awareness, or you might sense the light and love.

love of awareness bathing it, relaxing, dissolving in and has the full field of awareness. It is the truth, the wholeness of what you are. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing I belong here. I am at home here. As you ready, me a few full breaths. Thank you, friends. Thank you for. for being on the adventure, being open, exploring the deeper dimensions of heart and spirit. Blessings.