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Deeper
and Deeper
Delivered by
Bruce Arnold, October 23, 2005
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC
Today we will do a guided meditation. It is designed so that even those who have never meditated before can experience something of what meditation offers. It can take years of trial and error experience to start experiencing a meditative state of awareness, yet we are all capable of it, and this is designed to induce it. For those who are practiced meditators, you will find yourselves attaining your usual meditative state of consciousness with great ease. Let’s begin.
Close your eyes. Rest your hands, palm down, on your thighs; right hand, right thigh, left hand, left thigh. You’ve been sitting for a while already. Notice how your body accumulates tensions from sitting still. Each of you will feel them in different places. Notice where the tensions are: legs, back, neck, chest, feet.
Keeping your eyes closed, slowly lean forward, gently reaching out with your hands to touch the back of the chair in front of you. Feel how this relieves the strain in some areas, while inducing new tensions in others. Feel how this changes as the seconds pass by.
With your hands remaining on the back of the chair, and keeping your eyes closed if you can, slowly stand up.
Observe these new tensions, where they are, what they feel like.
Let your body move a little. Keep one or both of your hands on the back of the chair if it helps to keep your balance. Create the movements that will remove the tensions. There is no need to do what you habitually do to stretch, but it's OK to do something you've done before.
Feel the changes in your body, in the tensions, as this movement occurs. Let your mind encounter those movements by being absorbed in them, so that each movement is acknowledged consciously by being aware of the accompanying sensations. Watch how delicious those sensations are.
Keep your eyes closed. Sit back down with your back straight, and just barely touching the back of your chair, if you can do this without undue discomfort. Pay attention to what is happening as you hold this position.
Do not divide your attention by trying to make something happen besides what is already happening. Note any tendency of the mind to make something else happen, based solely on ideas of what should be rather than awareness of what is.
So you are illuminating the inner split, being aware of how the mind ignores what is happening in preference to what it imagines might happen or ought to happen, thereby introducing conflict and self-doubt.
Notice how the mind has a tendency to drift, how it will become absorbed in different mental activities: physical sensations, thoughts, memories, plans, daydreams, emotions.
Gently draw your mind into the sensations of your body - hips, back, itches, twitches, comfort, discomfort, and so forth. Release any mentally induced fears of what might emerge. Relax into the position and the sensations.
Move side to side and feel those sensations. Keep the mind focused and engaged on sensation.
Relax, keeping your eyes closed. Bending your elbows, raise your hands in front of you to shoulder level and hold them there. Feel that holding, and the sensations that emerge.
Now allow your hands to float back into your lap and re-settle your body comfortably in chair, moving meditatively, slowly, as in Tai Chi. Note the new sensations that emerge as your body relaxes into this new comfort. All you are doing is to pay attention to what is really happening with your body, while removing the effort to make something else happen with your mind.
Observe the feelings of calmness that emerge. Notice again how your mind drifts, letting go of one activity and becoming absorbed in the next. Be aware, from this relaxed center, that there is a part of you that just watches.
Some call this the witness. It doesn't think, it doesn't feel, it doesn't guide, it doesn't follow, it doesn't jugde or evaluate. No matter what else you do, it is the part of you that observes what is happening. It is pure consciousness.
Notice that there is a space between one thought and the next, where there is no mental activity at all. This may be very brief, so brief it is hardly noticeable at all, but it is there. The more peaceful, the more calm you become, the longer these spaces are, and the more noticeable they become. Savor them, whether shorter or longer.
You have not solved any problems you had before, you simply dropped them by becoming quiet. And when you come out of it, you can take a fresh look at things from that place of freshness, clarity, and peace.
You may now slowly open your eyes and gently rub your face.
See how a simple technique like this brings such a feeling of peace and clarity. Problems will be solved by this clarity, not by any thinking process.
Einstein said that no problem can be solved at the level on which it was created. So many of our problems begin on the level of mind and emotion. Only by relaxing below those levels, to this state of meditative absorption, can the solutions emerge from our primordial knowing, what the Buddhists call prajna.
There are other states, even deeper than this, which allow other levels of knowing to emerge. We will address some of those levels another time. Allow yourself, if you wish, to practice this meditation, to become more familiar with it, and to build on it. If you would like a recording of today's meditation to practice with, let me know and we can arrange this.
We will now have some time for comments or sharing your experience.
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