Embodying compassionate awareness

We’re actually going to start by persuading ourselves to be fully on board with the meditation practice. Since a lot of what we need in meditation is just to actually be authentically engaged and be on board with what we’re doing, if that’s there, everything else is kind of easy—easier, much easier. So as you begin to tune into your experience, as you do so, just contemplate your reason for practicing this morning. It might be different from your reason for practicing yesterday or the day before or whenever you last meditated. Why are you here doing this? Why does it matter to you? It must matter to you in some way—plenty of other things you could be doing. Whatever this reason is—wanting to find some space to be kinder to yourself, wanting to understand more about your inner life or the nature of experience—whatever it is, just stay with that for a moment and sort of make it feel seen and heard. Let your whole body just witness this desire, this motivation. And whatever our reason is this morning, whatever we can tap into by way of desire and motivation to practice, we can recognize that whatever our intention is, presence and honesty are necessary foundations. So with this attitude—that we really want to be wholeheartedly present, to actually be here—we can begin to introduce this intention to our experience of the body, introduce awareness to the body. And as always, we want the body of experience—the body that we actually feel—not the body that is a kind of objectified idea, but the subjective body of right now. We can include the breath in this awareness of our bodies, feeling the breath as this current movement, pulsation—not simply the movement of air, but something that is felt everywhere in one way or another. We can notice what the quality is of this movement today—whether it’s tight, uncomfortable, jagged, smooth, long. Just allowing the outermost layers of thinking and cognition, tension, to fade a little bit into the background as we bring this experience of breathing, this experience of the body breathing, into the foreground. We can connect our intention to be present—our wish to really show up for life—to the way that we receive the breath, the way that awareness receives the breath. Not dragging the breath around, not forcing it to be in a particular shape, but almost like we’re sitting the breath down and really hearing its story, honoring it and respecting it. The breath might tell us the story of ease and relaxation, a settled body. It may tell us a story of tension, agitation. Just listen. And if we listen carefully enough, the breath will let us know about our emotional state. The breath will carry whatever emotions are present—however nameable or vague, however strong or subtle. We can just spend a moment tuning into this aspect of the breath—the way that the movement of breathing is flavored by whatever our emotional atmosphere is. As we receive the breath, tinged with and tinted by whatever the mood, the emotion, the mind-state happens to be, we can just re-emphasize this quality of really listening deeply, allowing, and welcoming. This attitude of deeply listening, welcoming, and allowing—this is already most of the way towards what we might call self-compassion. We can just lean into the texture of kindness in this way of paying attention, the way that it can hold and soothe. The way that this quality of deep listening implies within it a kind of wishing well, a respect, a kindness, and a compassion. So in the very way that we receive the breath, moment to moment, there’s this care. And now we’re going to begin to look for some experience in the body that is most pleasant—something that’s happening in our experience that we can enjoy. It might be that after attending to the breath in this way, the breath has become mildly pleasant or kind of neutrally spacious. It might be that we can find some kind of well-being—some part of the body where not much happens, like the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, the knees, the ears. It might be that we can somehow enjoy the feeling of clothes—they can be persuaded to feel pleasant. We’re just going to practice bringing this same kind of awareness—this deep listening, genuine interest, kindness, and care—to something that’s already kind of pleasant. What is it to deeply listen to the soles of your feet—the sense of subtle vibration and space there? The palms of your hands—the sense of warmth? So we just find a place in our embodied experience, a region that feels okay or can be made to feel a little bit nice. And we offer it this real respect, humility. “I don’t know what this experience is—something I normally wouldn’t pay a second’s attention to.” We might find, if we look closely, that our immediate experience is teeming with unexplored worlds—even in something as familiar as the breath. The deeper we listen, the more honestly we connect and engage with the experience, the more it can open out into something more spacious, more subtle—maybe surprising. If you do notice more of a sense of space, a sense of greater presence in whatever region of the body you’re meeting with this kind of awareness, just include that and appreciate that. The palms of the hands or the soles of your feet might start feeling very, very large, very strange. That’s really fine—just noticing how bringing this kind of awareness, this honest engagement, this kindness to some relatively pleasant experience has shifted or changed that experience—maybe in a small way, maybe in quite a big way. It’s a really important thing to see in action—the kind of awareness we pay, we give, affects the kind of experience that unfolds. Now, we’re going to take this same awareness and apply it to something that’s slightly uncomfortable—finding some tension in the body or some kind of unpleasant sense in the whole body, some agitation or difficult emotion, anything that’s just a little bit challenging. Probably not something that’s completely overwhelming. And just reassert this intention to really know this experience, to hear its story. Again, it’s something that you wouldn’t normally look at twice—just some slightly annoying experience. Offer it your wholehearted attention—welcoming, allowing, letting it take up space, seeing how this experience responds to being offered respect, kindness—like we’re coming into relationship with something that was previously ignored. And then for the last few minutes, you can either stay with holding this more challenging experience with this kind awareness, you can go back to the pleasant thing, or you can rest with a sense of the whole body—the whole breathing body. Allow your true wish to be present, to know your experience on a more intimate level. Allow that to open, create space, to reveal more—more depth, more subtlety. Just carry on like that for the last little period of this practice. And then, just as at the start we tuned in to our reason for practice, we can just tune back into that and any sense of gratitude for ourselves—for actually enacting that reason, bringing it to life, bringing it into embodied reality.