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Guided Meditation

Hello everyone. Welcome. It feels particularly peaceful to be here this morning, biking down here in the dark, and somehow the pre-dawn quiet adds to a sense of being peaceful and settled.

And that is part of the theme for today: to become aware of the contrast between tension and peace. Tension is, I think of as a variety of things, but tension is something which tightens up. Things become tight, the muscles tighten up, and things are sometimes pulled in in a tight way. And peace, I think of as the opposite of that, of releasing, allowing things to spread out, to open up. Peace is different than calm, and at least for me, everyone will have their own reference points to these words and some people won't see a difference between the two. But I strongly associate calm with a settling down. It's almost as if calm has a little bit of weight, a settling like the mud in the pond settles from the pull of gravity. Whereas peace is the broad widespread of the clear water once the mud has settled. It has a sense of openness, becoming wide, becoming extended in some way.

So we'll sit here with this contrast, if it's available to you, and respect them both. Not to be at war with tension, but rather to hold it in awareness, to hold it in attention, not in tension. I kind of delight in the wordplay of the pronunciations of attention and in tension. We practice our attention not like a drill sergeant calling soldiers to tense up and be straight, but we call it attention to relieve the tension. To let it settle, release the tension so that we can now become aware of something which is peaceful and broad, open. A peace that can hold the tension. And this is where the art of practice really gets interesting, where we don't get rid of anything, but we know it in a context of peace.

So to begin with, taking an alert, not a tense posture, but a posture that has a certain kind of healthy, appropriate tautness in it. There is some energy that goes into the posture to hold ourselves in a way that there's an alertness. Even if you're laying in bed rather than sitting upright, there's a way of laying in bed so that we're not just maximizing comfort, but we're laying there in a way that's supportive for awareness. Maybe there's a kind of turning the shoulders in a little bit so that the shoulder blades can pull down the back a little bit. A lifting of the chest, maybe a lifting of the knees so that there's some effort there to hold the knees upright. In any case, to take the posture and to lower your gaze. Perhaps to let your gaze be calm and cool, and gently close the eyes.

And become aware of any tension that's in your body. Rather than trying to relax it, which we often do at the beginning of a sitting, hold it in whatever degree of peaceful awareness that you can. Know it without conflict, without agitation, without trying to do something with it. Allow it to be there in a peaceful attention.

And as you do that, maybe the sensations of breathing can find you. So you're not only aware of the tension, but you're also aware of the rhythmic sensations of the body breathing.

And maybe, just maybe, the breathing offers an invitation to the tension to relax. Almost as if we feel the tension, we can feel the tension itself wishes to relax.

So then settling into the body breathing. And if there's any tension associated with breathing, let that be. Let it be as part of what you know peacefully.

If there are tensions in your body, sometimes those tensions have a way of calling attention to themselves. If that's the case, let there be awareness of the tension, but from a place of being peaceful. A form of peaceful attention that is more like clear water than muddy water.

Whatever you're thinking, whatever you're feeling, whatever is happening for you, let it be happening in a peaceful awareness. Awareness that's like clear water, not muddy water. Even if there's mud in the water, know it with whatever clarity is present.

To help be peaceful with the presence of tension, you might breathe through the tension, breathe with it. And maybe the breathing can support releasing the attitudes and desires we have in relation to the tension.

And then as we come to the end of this sitting, to call on whatever sense you have of peaceful presence, peaceful awareness, peaceful dwelling in your body. Attention, awareness, consciousness that's more like clear water than muddy water or agitated water.

Awareness is like clear water in which the people that we know and see and think of are also held or felt to be inside or within that peaceful attention. Within the peace, the clarity that might spread beyond our body, out into the room, the lands, the world. And with a peaceful heart, to appreciate other people, to place value and importance on every living being, and to gaze upon living beings kindly, lovingly.

So the peace that we feel, the clear water in which we live, is a medium for our goodwill. May our goodwill spread through our peace to touch and benefit all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Conditioned Consciousness (2 of 5) Tension and Peace

So the shape, form, sense, image, or feeling we have for what consciousness might be—what the combined aggregate totality of awareness might be for us—is related to different attitudes, states of mind, and activities that we have. Two which have a big impact on it are tension on one hand and peacefulness on the other. These also exist on a spectrum and a range where it doesn't have to be all one or all another, but oftentimes one is present with the other.

The advantage of discovering that is that we could tap into the peacefulness in order to be present for the tension. If the tension predominates, we can break out of the enchantment, the allure, or the strong attachment to tension by remembering there's also peace here. Knowing it peacefully sets us free from it a little bit.

If there is a lot of peace, it's easy to kind of not notice any tension. It's actually helpful then, from that peaceful place, to see if you can find where the tension still remains. Because if there's a subtle, maybe a very slight tension that still remains, if that's held under this peaceful gaze of attention, then that also has a chance to dissolve and be released. So that peace can grow more and more. At some point, with the greater peace that we have, rather than focusing on the peace, sometimes it's helpful to notice in the cracks of it all, or somewhere in the subtle places, there's still tension, and kind of begin working those edges. And so the peace can spread and grow more and more.

Tension is part and parcel of life. It comes and goes. If it comes and goes, it's fine. The issue is when we hold on to the tension. It's not just simply that we're driving and someone suddenly pulls into our lane in front of us, and we tense up in order to quickly brake the car or back up or do something to be safe. That kind of tension is completely biologically important. But when the driving is safe again, to be able to let it all go—it's when we don't let go, when we hold on to it, that it becomes a problem.

There are many causes for being tense, but to hold on to the tension so that the tension becomes chronic and tight, there are fewer reasons. It has a lot to do with what goes on in our minds: there can be strong desire for something, strong aversion to something, and, what I'd like to emphasize today, there can be fear.

Fear is one very powerful condition for becoming tense. Some people have chronic tension that goes on for a lifetime because of some fear that was inflicted upon them—an experience where they remained afraid in some part of their psyche. That tension always is there, bracing ourselves against life or something.

When there is tension, especially the tension of fear, our sense of consciousness tends to be shriveled and contracted. Tension pulls in and makes things tight. Yesterday's discussion about agitation tends to fragment the consciousness, making it all rough and jagged. But tension tends to shrink it, and sometimes the world shrinks to a very particular concern that we have—maybe the particular thing we're afraid of, upset with, or that we want. That shrinking of our attention to that one concern, if you open up and look at the sense of the mind that's aware that way, it just feels like it's tight and narrow.

When the mind is not preoccupied, caught, or holding on to anything, that's when awareness can become broad and spacious. It becomes peaceful. A peaceful awareness is one that has been released. Because attention that localizes it in one place has been released, it can feel as if awareness or consciousness now begins to spread out. It gets released and opened up.

The difference between calm and peace—at least for me, and it's going to be different for everyone; for some people the two are synonyms—is that calm for me is a settling. Things relax and settle. It's almost like the weight of calm helps you to settle into the pull of gravity, whereas peace comes from release, and things open up, become wide, and spread. Or to use a slightly different idea: calm is the settling of the mud in water, and peace is the clarity that's left in that water.

To be swimming underwater and have clarity, to have that sense so you can see far, is quite lovely. I've swum in water where you couldn't see for more than a foot in front of you, and it's a very different feeling. When I was a kid, I liked to go to places where there were waves and the water was relatively clear. There were waves coming into the rocky shore, and I'd love to dive underwater maybe about five or six feet, hold my breath, turn around on my back, and look up at the waves and the turmoil above. I felt so peaceful then below because everything was so quiet down there. The contrast was so wonderful.

What's fascinating about fear—and humbling, upsetting, irritating, but also hopefully beneficial—is that fear is its own danger. If fear is a fear of danger, fear itself is a danger when it's chronic. When it conditions us to see the world the way it's not, to see danger at every corner and every location, always looking out for what the problems and dangers are. That becomes a fixation, a fixated view, and we live only from that danger. Everything becomes something that's dangerous. In a way, it does, because fear is its own danger, and so it's self-fulfilling. If it's chronic, yes, we're in trouble because of the tension, the contraction, and the lens that we see through: the lens of fear.

So if fear is related to tension, fearlessness is related to peace. Peace is not just some kind of bland state, but it's a powerful, wonderful place through which we can be fearless and have nothing to fear. Of course, if a car pulls in front of us on the freeway, having some fear is appropriate and helps us become safe. So it isn't like we want to get rid of all fear, but there's a way to discover the value of peacefulness and fearlessness that protects us, because now we become safe from ourselves.

Fear is a danger to ourselves, and fearlessness is how we become safe from ourselves, where we're not going to cause harm to ourselves. We're not going to contract and hold tension, which can cause all kinds of chronic physical, mental, and emotional problems for people.

Having something like meditation, or maybe even exercise and other things that we do that allow us to relax deeply, calm deeply, and start experiencing states of peace where tensions begin to dissolve, we're not living in tension. We have an experience of being safe for ourselves. The heart of fearlessness is to have that kind of safety: you become safe for yourself.

And that absence of fear changes the nature of consciousness, of how we feel we're aware. It's so easy to be aware with such a strong filter of fear and tension that it seems like that's the nature of consciousness, the truth. But more powerfully, consciousness or attention that is colored by fear sees fear in the world. We don't become an objective, clear seer of what's actually out there because everything becomes dangerous, seen through that framework of fear.

If everything is seen through the framework of fearlessness—a fearlessness where we're safe for ourselves—then we're in a much better place to track the inner wisdom, the inner clarity, the perceptions, the hunches, and the reactions we need to be in touch with in order to be wise about what's out there. Of course there are dangers out there, some more subtle than others, but there's probably less danger out in the world than you can ever imagine.

So if you have the fearless wisdom to ascertain, really know, and connect deep inside yourself with all the different sources of intelligence that operate, then you can tune into the difference between what is really a danger and what is projected danger that is not really there. That projected danger often is self-fulfilling; it sometimes creates the very problem that we're trying to avoid.

So for the next 24 hours if you like, you might study how the range from tension to peace is for you. When you're tense, where's the peace? When you're peaceful, where's the tension? And may that clarity in the range of who you are and how you are help you to be less caught and stuck in the tension, but more fluid and more in touch with the peace that's in our hearts. So thank you.