Stuff To Take
This is a chapter from my book ‘Powers of 9’ talking about different meditation techniques.
The Buddha claimed that anapana was the only form of ‘concentration’ meditation practise (placing our attention on a single object), that could take the meditator directly to the awakened state of mind.
Mindfullness of breathing is an observation of something that is happining in this very moment, not an image or a visualization. It is a link that connects the interior experience with the world all about us. The breath is a key part of the symbiotic connection that links these two spaces.
This recording is my own version of classic Therevadan anapana practise. The location of attention is generally, either on the abdomen or the triangular area as mentioned in the audio, and shown in the picture (right).
In this version I include body scans to let go of tensions during the practise, however as the mind becomes more and more concentrated, the body scans can become less and less frequent, and eventually the focus can rest entirely upon the breath. Enjoy! 🙂
You can now read my short article on ‘right concentration’ here.
In this guided meditation I take you through the basic fundamentals of a ‘4 Dimensional’ practise. In this practise, we move from the more narrow focus of the breath, working towards an integration of awareness over the full spectrum of phenomena that we can experience in any one moment.
The basis is to become aware of the breath, then from this point, we try to open up, or expand our awareness, as we include awareness of the physical body, the emotional body, and the mind or mental streams of thought. Finally we expand our awareness to include the sensory doors realm, ‘perched at the sense doors’, as the fourth dimension.
I take you through cycles, moving attention around the body and around the chakras. There are times in practise, if you work consistently with the model, when flows of energy will arise naturally. If this is not the case when you listen to the meditation, the invitation is to move the attention around the key areas described in the audio, experiencing whatever sensations, what-so-ever there is to be experienced, in that moment, just as it is.
Thanks for listening! 🙂
Some of the things I don’t say during the guided meditation, but would have liked to say;
When connecting to feelings, these can be felt, most easily, in the belly area, but also the solar plexus and heart areas. When connecting to ‘feelings’, let the attention be drawn to these areas. Thoughts are the same impermanent quality as corporeal sensations and emotional feelings, when we notice we are distracted by mental ‘contents’, we can either just notice them as our awareness expands back out to ‘incorporate’ the wider experience. Sometimes the mental traits are too strong, so often in meditation we just guide ourselves back to more ‘concrete’ sensations like the body, breath or feelings, but when possible we can also simply observe the thoughts ‘within the wider context’ of all that is present moment to moment.
At the end i start to guide the attention around the loop of third eye, crown chakra, bindu chakra, down the spine, and then up through the heart and finally back to the third eye. This is a loop of awareness we can experience, but for this, ‘to loop’, circulate freely, we need the energies at the heart to soften and open. Then the ‘feedback loop’ is initiated, feelings at the third eye become stronger and so on throughout the cycle. As the heart opens ‘our presence’ becomes more stable, alive, awake!