So, hello everyone, and as we begin the meditation, I want to suggest that, especially when we're this week considering fear, that meditation is meant to be done in a location and time when it is safe. It's not always possible, of course, but ideally, here and now is a safe place, or safe enough, that you don't have to solve anything that you're afraid of. You don't have to fix it, you don't have to figure out how to deal with it, and that's true for almost anything. that meditation is a time when it's appropriate to not need to think about the rest of your life, about even big issues or small issues or what you're going to have for supper or anything at all.
And it doesn't mean you won't do those things. It doesn't mean you won't have fear or have concerns that are not here. But because...
you're clear when you sit down and you look around the place you're at that here and now nothing is needed. It's the opportunity to look upon what's happening in a new way. And that new way for some of us would be to not fix anything, not analyze it per se, not judge it.
but to also not to participate in it, to be able to meet our inner life in a new way. And the new way that I'd like to suggest today is maybe not so new for some of you, is to meet yourself, meet whatever's happening with a silent mind, with a quiet mind, a calm mind. Even if you can only manage it for half a second.
But the idea is to meet and encounter your experience in a very different way. And this quiet mind is not meant to be disrespectful, but rather respecting what's happening so you can hold it and be with it in a new way, in a different way. And what I like to, I like to refer to it sometimes as There are times in life when it's appropriate for us to be quiet because the situation has called upon us to support or to meet or to attend or to receive what's happening in that silence. Sometimes, you know, big turning points in life that way.
Young children putting a child to bed, a young, you know, a toddler to bed and or when they're napping and getting really quiet, going into a library, going to a funeral, going into a sacred space someplace and we allow ourselves to get quiet, going into a majestic place in nature and we allow ourselves to get quiet, to feel it and sense what's going on, to maybe sit and have tea and look at the full moon. So there's many things that allow us to become quiet. And so to become quiet, to meet whatever is happening with a quiet mind, maybe the silent mind, or maybe if the mind cannot become quiet and silent, become aware with that form of awareness, that attentiveness that is quiet. So if this makes sense, we'll start and we'll see that this ability to attend, to meet, to hold, to be present for things with a quiet mind or with quiet attention opens a door to a vast, wise, deep way of living our lives.
It's not It's superficial, it's not truncating experience. It actually allows something really profound to begin happening. So in this sitting, perhaps, maybe experiment, see where can you sit, how can you sit with whatever is happening with a quiet mind.
And maybe it's just for a moment. And then do it again. And I'll guide you a little bit here at the beginning.
So to take an upright posture, literally or metaphorically, and gently closing the eyes. And right off the bat, Taking a caring, respectful scan through your body to feel and sense what's happening for you and seeing if you can do that with a quiet mind, a silent mind. The kind of silence that maybe allows you to be more sensitive to what's here. Notice more the details. Scanning through your body, feeling what's here for you.
And within this body. Taking two or three deep breaths and relaxing as you exhale. Then letting the breathing return to normal. And as you exhale, let the mind become quiet.
Let go of your thoughts, especially near the end of the exhale. Let all the thinking mind become still and quiet, or feel the stillness and the quiet at the end. And then with that, whatever stillness...
calm, quiet you have. Feel what's happening for you on the inhale. Feel the sensations of your body, your emotions. Just feel it respectfully with as much of a quiet mind as you can. Thoughts might return.
On the next exhale, let go of your thoughts. And that's the rhythm. Here and now, nothing you need to think about.
On the exhale, on the inhale, feel more fully. As if you can listen deeply in that silence. To your breathing, to your body, your emotions, to your mind.
Let go and the next exhale. So there's a rhythm of letting go and feeling. Letting go and knowing. Gently. Repeatedly.
Letting the thinking mind become quiet on the exhale. And whatever you're supposed to feel on the inhale, operate as if that's the only time it needs, is that moment, those moments of inhaling. It doesn't need any more.
Just this, and then let go on the exhale. And if it's there again on the next inhale, that's okay. It's like a new time.
And with the repeated doing this, maybe you'll get into the rhythm of letting go, quieting, and then respectfully feeling and sensing. What's happening? Without thinking much about it, maybe staying close to the quiet and the calm.
And if anything troubles you or is difficult, We're activated in this gentle way of practicing, letting the thinking mind become quiet on the exhale and feeling with the body what's here. Let what troubles you, the feelings, the sensations, the experience, the direct experience, Help it feel safe. Let yourself be safe.
A safe place for what is actually happening in you. The emotions, the sensations. Quiet the mind so you can more feel what's happening, letting it feel safe. It's okay for it to be there during this inhale. Hmm.
And then as we come to the end of the sitting, to now on the exhale, let go into the world. As you inhale, take this world in. its joys and its sufferings, challenges and its wonderfulness.
Take it all in and then on the exhale, let the breath, the exhale, be your kindness. Your care, your gentleness, take in the world and breathe out kindness, care, love, compassion, may it be. That as our awareness, our attention spreads out into the world, that we're able to meet it with our goodwill. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe.
May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings... Be free. So my internet here at IMC started being a little bit not working during the end of that sitting. But I think that this all worked on YouTube anyway.
So it seems to be working again now. So I see all the greetings and thank you. So I'm assuming that it all worked fine for you.
And I'll start in a minute again. So, what I said at the beginning of the meditation is quite important, or quite useful, say it that way. That meditation is a time to experience our life, ourselves, in a new way, in a different way than is usual in everyday life.
And so in everyday life, kind of the maybe generic version of it is we're doing things, thinking about things, taking care of things, fixing things, avoiding things, concerned about things. And many of that stuff is purposeful, is sometimes thinking about the future, thinking about the past, trying to change something. In meditation, the idea is to have a very different way of respecting our life as it's being lived.
It's not to deny anything, but in a sense to be present for it in a new way, and maybe a radically new way. And so, as we learn this new way of being present for experience, we have available to us all kinds of new possibilities. new possibilities of understanding, of wisdom, of investigation, of questioning our life in new ways, and new ways of allowing much deeper processes within us to heal us, to unfold us, to grow us in new ways.
So the new way is an ancient way. I think it can be represented by this idea of meeting our experience with a quiet mind, maybe a silent mind. Meeting our experience to be present for it in a full way with a quietness of a clean window. A dirty window you maybe can't even see out, but when the window has been cleaned then the window itself is silent.
But the window enables us to really then see clearly what's outside the window. So as the awareness becomes quieter, it also becomes clearer and we can see more fully what's here. So in relationship to fear, to really be able to find a wise way and a creative way to be with fear, fear and find our way through fear. This kind of new way of seeing is really useful and important.
So when we sit to meditate, ideally, we're sitting in a place where here and now is safe. So we don't, we're not, the building is not burning down. People are not attacking us. Nothing's going to happen within reason now sitting here.
It's relatively safe. And the reason to have that clarity about the safety of here and now, it might not be safe if you leave your place where you're sitting. It might not be safe in an hour what you're going to do.
But in where you're sitting, you become clear, this is safe right now, here and now. The advantage of that is then you can notice that if there is fear, it's not about here and now. And so in a sense, it doesn't have to be figured out. Rather, we want to meet it. Fear is something that we want to respect with our mindfulness, something we want to be present for, not avoid, not fix, not try to attack.
but to it's a very worthy focus of mindfulness for living a deeper life a fuller life and so we want to be able to turn our attention and when fear is salient fear is the main is a strong experience or important enough to learn to bring the attention mindfulness to feel the fear and it might be that you're sitting in a safe place but for 30 minutes, you're doing mindfulness of fear. And it might be time very well spent. Many people don't really stop and look at fear. The bumper sticker now would be, I break for fear.
I stop for fear. Really stop and take a good look at it. What is this here? And the principle that I think is very powerful, or the practice we're very powerful with trying to do with fear, is when we're able to stop and really feel our fear, feel it in an embodied way, that we're trying to help our fear feel safe.
So there might be a real cause for the fear, it might be a real fear out in the world, in half an hour there might be something happening that's dangerous. But here and now in this safe place that we're in, how can we help the fear feel safe? How can we allow it to be there?
And so it doesn't have the sense that it's wrong or it's bad, or we're trying to run away from it, or trying to attack it and fix it, like we're doing the practice in order to get rid of it. If you're doing the practice to get rid of it, if you kind of anthropomorphize your fear a little bit, The fear is not going to be happy. It's not going to be comfortable.
It's not going to feel like it has a place. It's going to feel unwanted. It's going to feel unrespected. And so the idea to help the fear feel safe means to allow it to be there as if it now has time, time in the sun of awareness, as if someone's never lived in the sun. It's always been in the dark.
and they're finally able to come out in the sun, then it's like, oh, now let me take it in, let me receive it. So the sun of awareness, as if the fear has never been seen, really, really not gotten to know. The task is to get to know the fear, to recognize it, to see it, help the fear feel seen, help the fear feel like it's being known. Just like maybe for you if you're really anxious one day or really afraid, a friend might come sit next to you and say, I see that you're really afraid. I'll sit here with you.
Would you like a companion? I'll just, you know, clear the friend is not fixing you or judging you for being afraid, but they recognize it and they're going to sit and be a safe person for you. They'll just be there with you and can accompany you.
And having that company makes a world of difference. So this new way is to accompany the fear, to be with it for a while. And what this does is it allows the fear room to do what it needs to do, to unfold, to relax. Something begins to shift and change when we give that kind of permission for the fear to be there. And to give that kind of permission for the fear to be there and be known, to be accompanied, it does help if we have a quieter mind.
Not to be completely silent, but a quieter mind that's not ruminating and repeating stories and judging and criticizing and all kinds of things, the extra things the mind is doing. The thinking mind is just almost like saying, there, there, I'm here with you. I see you.
I'll be your companion. Here, now, let me feel you. Or the thinking mind is very gently saying, Where do I feel this in my body?
Where does the fear live? Because one of the ways to help the fear feel safe and really be seen is to recognize where it's being most activated in the body. Is it in the belly?
Is it in the chest? In the hands? You know, in the jaw?
Where might it be? And then bring a careful, loving attention to that area. And the image that I like to use for that is cupping the hands together and holding something for underneath.
Just holding, so holding the fear. So sometimes I'll imagine my mindfulness, my awareness is like this two hands that are coming together underneath wherever the fear is located in the body and holding it, being with it, as if it has allowed to be there forever. And so this is a radical different way of being with fear.
then most people know. If in doing that, we start to panic, it gets very uncomfortable, the fear, then it's not a useful thing to do. And then maybe we need to do something to settle the fear, to quiet the fear, maybe stop meditating and do something else.
But if you're able to do that, to come and sit and be with the fear, this allows us now to, as I said, allows the fear to process itself. which is often wiser than us processing it. More often than not, the thinking mind is reactivating the fear and perpetuating the fear.
So for the mind to be quiet allows the fear to process itself. And then it also then begins helping us to do deeper mindfulness into the ecology of fear, the different elements of it that are important to also pay attention to. besides just the direct experience of the fear.
And that'll be the topic for the next couple of days. And I'm hoping that this will also give you kind of a new angle, a new perspective in which to look at fear. Because the old perspectives often keep us trapped, keep us caught in fear. And fear, anxiety, can follow someone along for decades.
And so to learn a new way, can be phenomenally useful. So you might try over this next day, if you have some anxiety or fear, pay attention, look for it. If it's easy to find, great, then you're on track. If it's not easy to recognize, then maybe you have to be extra sensitive to see if you recognize where it might appear. And then see if the situation allows for it.
Just stop and pause for a while, maybe sit down and close your eyes, and see if you can spend some time helping the fear feel safe. You have to find where it is in the body, you have to bring attention to it carefully, and then maybe almost like you're breathing through the fear with the fear as a way of accompanying it and helping it feel safe. Almost like the breathing with it is kind of like, it's okay now, you're safe now, you're safe here with me.
And then see what happens to it with this kind of helping the fear feel safe practice. So, thank you. And now with that as a foundation, I look forward to what we'll be doing the next couple of days. Thank you.