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Guided Meditation: Pausing to Check In

Hello everyone, welcome. Welcome to this meditation.

Meditation is ideally something which is a bit of a mystery, a bit of an unknown. It is unknown how any meditation will go. It is unknown what parts of ourselves will come into the forefront. It is unknown what we tap into. It is unknown because there is more going on when we meditate than our own efforts, and even our own purposes and intentions.

I came across a wonderful quote yesterday from James Baldwin: "I am what time, circumstances, and history have made me, but I am also much more." And this "much more"—we are much more than what we usually think we are. We are much more than our challenges.

Part of this "much more," this willingness to take in the fact that there's more going on here than we know, is to also appreciate or open up to trust that we can be aware. We can step out of our challenges enough that we can be clearly and calmly aware of our challenges.

There is a way in which we can bring a sense of agency, a sense of personal capacity and ability, and introduce it into whatever is happening, where otherwise we would be preoccupied, caught up, and swept away in it. We would be identified with it: "This is me. This is important." There is a way in remembering we are much more, and part of that "much more"—which opens the door to even more and more—is to pause and be aware. To step back and recognize what's happening. To make space for what is happening. In making space and making room for it, we are opening up. We are using agency to take a stand here: "Here I am. I am much more here than my concern, my preoccupation. What else is here? Let's make room for more."

And in this step, this movement towards awareness—to know, to step back, to pause in there—there is something beautiful, something wondrous. There might even be something you can start getting little hints of at first: of calm, of clarity, of non-entanglement.

To paraphrase James Baldwin: you are what time, circumstance, and history have made you, but you are also much more.

Taking a meditative posture, a posture that has lots of room for that of which you are "more."

And this movement towards making space, pausing, and opening up begins by consciously and intentionally assuming a posture of attention.

Gently closing your eyes, and as you do so, feel into your body. Feel the vitality that's there in your body.

Another place where we take some agency, some stepping away from business as usual, is in consciously and intentionally taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. It's a way of reminding ourselves that we can be consciously present. Present with a degree of agency: "Here I am, and I will be aware. I will be attentive."

Part of this taking agency, pausing, engaging consciously, is also to relax. As you exhale, relaxing the body.

Letting the breathing return to normal, and continuing on the exhale to relax the body consciously and intentionally. Not letting things be business as usual, but to feel a relaxed but clear intentionality. The choosing to be intentionally relaxing.

And then letting go of efforts to relax. Except to take a few moments to soften and relax your mind. If this assumption of agency is a strain or tense, relax and soften.

And with a relaxed, soft agency, consciously, intentionally, gently, become aware of the body breathing.

Taking a moment to pause, step back. How are you as a practitioner? How are you practicing meditation right now? Hardly at all because you're drifting in thoughts? Complacently? Engaged nicely and present?

How are you as you engage in this practice? Can you ask yourself the question "How?" gently, spaciously, non-judgmentally? It's an open question of curious discovery: "Oh, it's like this."

And then with the same open, relaxed spirit of discovery, begin again with your breathing, or whatever else you're aware of here in the present moment.

If you are caught up in your thoughts, there might be a kind of unconscious agency, an unintended agency in your mind to do so. Can you redirect that? Reclaim that, through calmly, gently, but clearly beginning again with the breathing. Where you appreciate a relaxed, gentle, but intentional being aware.

To gently take a pause, stepping back for an overview. How are you in the effort to meditate? To step back and pause where there's an opening, an opening to wider possibilities. Checking in: is there some way that you would like to now adjust your meditation so that you can be more present here and now? Where the way that you're present feels good. It's a nice way of accompanying yourself.

Then again, as we come to the end of this meditation, to pause, to step back. To check in with yourself: How are you?

How are you, taking into account you are always much more than what you think?

Can you ask that question? Can you consider that question as a way of being relaxed, open, and curious, where how you are with the question is more important than the answers you get? Asking how you are with an openness, a willingness, a curiosity, a kindness. Where you're willing to accompany yourself as you are, even with what's difficult.

And then to turn the gaze outward to the world with the same question. Not looking for an answer, not rushing to an answer, or settling on the first answer. How is the world? How is your world? Asking that question with an openness, a willingness to be present, and curiosity. Making space for lots of possibilities that would not be possible if you answered quickly. Your world is always much more than anything you think.

What is the way to be aware that's available to the "much more"? Can you accompany this world? Can you accompany others with this generosity of attention? With kindness? With making room and space where so much of the joys and suffering can be held with caring attention?

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Dharmette: Challenge Check-In (5 of 5) Agency Through Checking In

Thank you. Good morning, good day everyone.

This week I am talking about challenges. This is the general theme now, and it's going to be for a while. Challenges can be very challenging—that's what it means. It is difficulty which we're having trouble figuring out how to be with, or it's not clear what to do, or it can be overwhelming. There's a wide range of what can be called a challenge.

What I offered this week was what I call a "mindfulness check-in." It has a number of functions. One is to take a step away from business as usual with a challenge. If we're really caught in it, oppressed by it, really preoccupied, and we're focusing on some clear idea that "this is the problem," we can step away and not be caught in anything. We take a sacred pause to check in, and to have a different framework, a different perspective in which to look at our experience than the perspective we might have been using that provides the idea that "I have a challenge."

We can check in with how we are physically, and we might discover that we're tense, or that our posture is kind of out of balance. So we can relax the body, we can bring balance to our body. We could maybe go and exercise in order to get some nice things flowing in our body rather than feeling all congested.

We check in with the feeling tones^[1], the sense of which things are pleasant and unpleasant. Generally, when we feel challenged, there's something that feels unpleasant that's sometimes generated from how we're preoccupied, how we're afraid or angry or upset. And it's a generous thing to feel our contribution, how that's sitting in us. As we feel it, it allows something to make space, to dissolve, or to open up and become clearer. It also gives us a chance to realize there's much more. There's also pleasure here. There are also some good feelings, and we realize we've been preoccupied or fixated on the unpleasant, or we see the world through the unpleasant. Since there's more here, what happens if we include what feels right and good?

Then there's the mind state—the emotion, the attitude by which we're operating. And to see it as just that: "Oh, that's an attitude, that's an emotion, that's a mind state that I have, a mood. I'm with it; I'm not it. I don't have to see through it. I don't have to have those lenses on. There's another way."

And then the mental processes. Am I involved in processes that are keeping me tight, contracted, and grasping? Or am I touching into a practice, for example, or mind states or ways of being that clearly recognize the challenge but are freeing in the midst of it?

Asking yourselves this check-in has a number of functions. One of them is that some of the challenges we have are really big, and some of the ways we can be with a challenge, even a small one sometimes, is not productive. We might do a check-in and see, "Oh, I need to do something here. I need to somehow break the trance, break out of this funk. I need to clear out so I can start fresh." Doing something that refreshes us or resets us—it could be a wide range of things. Different people have different things that they want to do. But this idea of having agency to shift how we are, to put ourselves in a more productive, useful way, is invaluable.

To be stuck in the challenge is what often happens, and when we're stuck in it we tend to ruminate and repeat the same thing, which just strengthens it and makes it worse. So doing something as simple as going for a walk, or having a cup of a hot drink. Taking a nap for ten minutes, meditating for ten minutes. Taking a shower, listening to music, calling up a friend and having a human conversation with someone. Or going someplace in society where you can kind of lose your preoccupation and it's just nice to be there. Maybe you volunteer at an animal shelter and you spend some time with the kittens, and that pulls you out of your caughtness with whatever it is.

By doing the check-in, we find out, "Oh, I'm really caught." For example, if you can't do the check-in because you're so caught up, that's a clear indication that an intervention is needed. Not an intervention where you escape forever, but maybe sometimes you escape for a little while so you can come back refreshed in a good way.

The other thing the check-in does is it provides a lot of information about how you are, so that you can then figure out, "Okay, knowing this about me, I have a better sense of what I can do." Both of those—doing an intervention for yourself and doing something different, or understanding what's happening with you so you can be with yourself or adjust yourself in a good way—involve agency.

In our Buddhist scene, there's a lot of emphasis on "don't control." You shouldn't be controlling your meditation. This has some truth to it, but we also don't want to dismiss agency. Sometimes we dismiss agency because we have this strong emphasis on not-self^[2], and agency is where the self operates. But agency can exist without this kind of self that we get caught in. We want to begin feeling and engaging our capacity to choose, to use that agency with what we do.

What happens with extreme challenges is that we tend to freeze, we can be overwhelmed, and we don't use our capacity for agency. So even just going away, escaping the challenge for a while, is an act of agency. To check in with yourself is using agency. So we slowly start discovering how to use agency in a way that is useful, where we don't pile on self and self-identity and "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts," such as "I'm supposed to be able to manage here."

We use agency in almost the same way we use attention. We learn to do that in a soft way, in a gentle way, in a kind way. We learn an agency that we enjoy doing. This is what I want to suggest: it's invaluable to discover in challenges some way, some pleasure, some goodness, some rightness, something that feels right and good. If you can do that in how you accompany the challenge, how you show up for it and are attentive to it, you have confidence in your agency. Not necessarily that you know what to do, but confidence that you can always have agency. The agency to do the mindfulness check-in. The agency to pause and not do anything and just look at the situation. The agency to ask for help. The agency to tell yourself, "Wow, I don't know what to do here. This is overwhelming."

To do that in a clear, conscious way is almost a way not to be burdened by it, but to say, "Wow, I'm overwhelmed." You start discovering how this sense of doing can be freeing, can be relaxing, and can give you a different place from which to act. Because sometimes when we're engaging in a challenge and we're coming from a place of being a victim, or feeling inadequate, or feeling confused, or feeling angry, or feeling just scattered, that will often make the challenge harder. But if we can recognize we are that way by doing the check-in, we are beginning to find agency. We're beginning to find another way that feels good.

Anyway, this mindful check-in has a lot of functions, and there are probably many more than I've said, and you're probably discovering them. Take some time to experiment with this simple checklist: body, feeling tones, mind states, and then these processes of the mind—how the mind is behaving, the operating principles. Is it behaving in a way that is deleterious or beneficial? That's getting you caught, or that helps you to have more space and freedom?

So, thank you for all this.

Now, for next week, I'm off at the IRC^[3], the retreat center, teaching a retreat, so I won't be here. I believe Matthew Brensilver will be teaching. Then I'll be back for one week, and then I'll be away for a while. But my plan is for the next months, as I'm here, that I'll continue this series on challenges. Even though there's a big gap, the idea is that we're slowly building, laying the foundation here.

In that regard, I'd encourage you to look for manageable challenges, maybe even really minor challenges that you have, and start bringing some of this exploration of the challenge, or being with a challenge, that we've been laying out for these last few weeks. You're going to be creating your own foundation yourself for what we do as we go along, so one day you can have a new, wise capacity to be with some of the major challenges that you have.

So thank you very, very much. I will look forward to coming back in a week or ten days. I'm sure you'll enjoy next week's teachings as well. There's a way in which whatever Buddhist teacher is teaching, either directly or indirectly, it is about how to be with challenges.

Thank you.