Listening

Here is a great exercise in listening. It works best if you try it in three steps. Read the directions for the first step, and then close your eyes.


Step One:

Bring all of your attention to the experience of listening. What is the first sound that you became aware of?

There is a label by which we identify this sound - traffic, refrigerator, people talking, birds... But what's really happening? What is your actual experience of this sound? The actual physical sensations?

Immerse yourself fully in this experience called "a sound." Then, as if you are increasing magnification with a zoom lens, listen more closely to that sound. As if you could travel inside the sound, let it become your whole world. Take your time. Explore every sensation.

Step Two:

This time, rather than focusing on one sound, listen to all the sounds in your environment.

Some are louder - more in the foreground. Some are softer - in the background and harder to discern. Sounds come at you from all different directions - in front, behind, maybe even above or below. How many different sounds can you hear?

And now, rather than hearing individual sounds, hear all of these sounds at once. Imagine you are listening to an orchestra, and each of these sounds is one of the instruments. Listen to all the sounds in your environment as if they fit together beautifully into a piece of music. Sit back and enjoy the performance.

Step Three:

Choose one sound to focus on again.

Where are you hearing this sound? Does it seem like the sound is out there? But where does the experience of listening actually take place? Out there? In your ear? In your brain?

Imagine some event out there causing air molecules to vibrate. Imagine sound waves traveling toward your body ... entering your ear ... becoming mechanical vibrations in bones ... becoming neuro-electrical impulses ... triggering associations in your brain. Imaging all this going on, creating the miracle we call sound.

~Discovering Spirit in Sound

Peace Be Still

Several months ago, I was working with a friend, doing some exercises of playing with and manipulating energy, I received a message from my guides. It was: "Peace be still." The next day, the following meditation showed up in my inbox. I'm sharing it here, as it occurs to me that stillness is the first step to connection, and it is connection (with energy, matter, spirit, other people, nature, etc) that my morning meditation was all about.

Description:
Striving after stillness does nothing but create confusion. Stillness cannot be achieved: it is already the case. To see the lie of striving after stillness is to fall into deep silence. There is nothing more to do, hence the stillness. What can you do? There is really nothing to be done. Doing is not going to help. Only being is going to transform you, not doing.

When and Where:
Sit and just be. Or stand and just be. For a few moments allow the inner stillness to be there. IT IS THERE - JUST ALLOW IT. If the mind is too busy, or emotions are in turmoil, then try one of the expressive techniques, for example laughter, gibberish, dancing, dynamic. These techniques help you to release tensions and then just be, suffused with stillness.

Benefits:
In your utter helplessness, in your surrender you find the inner silence and stillness. This is the silence that transforms, not the silence that you try and impose on yourself. That is not real silence, it is created silence. And how can your doing go deeper than your being. When you have utterly failed, when you have seen your ultimate failure and you have seen that there is no possibility and no hope for you to succeed, what will you do in that silence? You will just be there. All has stopped. The mind no more spins any thoughts. And that silence is being.

From:
Pragito Dove
Discover Meditation Training Inc.
http://www.pragito.com/

Morning Meditation - This is what matters

Met an old guy today. He was really cute, cute in the way that people are when they are really old and still sharp in the mind, but not taking themselves too seriously any more.

Anyway, he motioned for me to sit next to him. He put his arm around me, and we sat companionably quite, watching the leaves on the cottonwood tree, listening to them dance in the wind.

He said, "This is what matters. Do it more often."

And I thought about how I tend to rush through my day. Yes, I take time to meditate, and yes, I say "hello" to the sun - I even do spend more time outside enjoying the outside. But even when I'm doing all that, it's like my mind is racing. I'm thinking about this and planning that and going to do this and say that. It's no wonder that I keep pulling up that boy who is not too happily waiting for the snake racer's return.

I'm not really settled and still ever. I don't allow myself to feel comforted and loved very often either. Interesting!

~what's this?