In response to James suggestion, and with his encouragement and advice …
On the first Sunday of each month, any of us who… whilst bodily separated … would like to come together as we are – like a flock of birds, settling into sitting practice… can meet for some sustained mediation practice together on-line.
If all goes well, this will continue on the first Sunday of every month.
We’ll be practising the Guru Yoga of the white ‘A’ followed by shamatha meditations… in five sessions:
9.45 -10.00 UK time …. Brief explanation/revision
Session 1 10 ~ 10.35
Session 2 10.55 ~ 11.40
Session 3 12.05 ~1.00
Session 4 2.00 ~ 2.45
Session 5 3.05 ~ 4.05
Starting each session with 3 mins of the Guru yoga, the sessions length increases (except for the sleepy after lunch shift!) throughout the day… until the final sit is for an hour.
Check at home at home to see how long three minutes is and get a sense of that…and how much of that time is open before fusion with arising thoughts, feelings and sensations occurs…
Relaxing back into openness maybe once or twice on the out-breath…but then, rather than getting into a struggle to stay open…
shifting to the light shamatha practice…or if that’s too subtle for the circumstances…being with the breath of the infinite flowing into the body… and releasing back into the infinite
The intention is to maintain the energetic connection of the group throughout the day if possible…but people are free to join and leave as they need…so people in different time zones are welcome to join in when they can…
Also if you’re new to this and the time seems too long …maybe just have a go…and see how it is…
You can always leave when you need and build up gradually… struggling isn’t helpful…but stretching might be …and relaxing into it, out of limiting thoughts certainly will be !
If you’d like to join us …just send me a message via ‘Contact Me’ on the home page…
If this work well then I’ll post an event for the 5th of October… so you can let me know in advance of that that if you’d like the joining details…
When I heard James say back in 2003 that many people didn’t know themselves very well…I was thinking of brain damage and also wondering about being ‘more myself’ what that might be!
‘You belong in awareness…’ Your mother is awareness….’
Oh…that sounds like a good mum…our actual mum… the one we’ve forgotten in
our shaky ego’s ungrounded efforts towards stabilising the unstabilisable and grasping at the vanishing.
In meditation we can begin to settle as we relax out of continuous involvement with arising thoughts feelings and sensations … towards being settled as presence with awareness as our abiding continuity… How we ‘take/make it to be’ seems less tasty… and more of ‘how it is’ – how we actually are, is revealed.
The previous post the Open door of Emptiness Ch.3 part (ii) is a gesture towards that exploration… (iii) and (iv) continue it…