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Guided Meditation: Listening to our Depths

Hello everyone, welcome.

Maybe you've had the occasion to make an effort to listen to some faint sound. Maybe there's a bird in a tree, and you're trying to understand what bird that is or where that bird song is coming from. Or perhaps—I recently was hiking in the mountains nearby here, and we knew that we were getting close to our destination when we could hear the river. So I would listen for that faintest little hint of the sound of the river to know that I was getting close.

With this kind of way of listening, the mind becomes quieter. Things become quiet and still in the mind so that there's no static, allowing us to hear that very faint sound. In the same way, in meditation, there comes a time where we're not straining to pay attention, but it's helpful to understand that we're letting the mind become quiet so that we can hear, perceive, or feel something really deep inside of us. It is something that, when there's a lot of static, thinking, concerns, and preoccupation, gets drowned out. It gets covered over, and somehow we don't get to see it.

One of the things to listen for in meditation is some of the deeper messages, voices, thoughts, or attitudes that underlie everything. If we go deep enough down, we'll find some of the foundational attitudes and beliefs that permeate everything else above the foundation—things that we don't even know are there. Some of those are not helpful for us as we live our lives.

When I was a relatively new meditator, I discovered that underneath it all, as I meditated, was this belief that if it was happening to me, it was not the real thing. That's about the extent of how logical it was. No matter what I was experiencing in meditation, it was not really what you were supposed to be experiencing. It wasn't the right thing. There was something else that was the right thing, but I didn't have any contact with it. That kind of attitude was carried into everything that I did, in meditation and in my life as well. So I could never do things adequately or have the right experience. I was always wrong in some way.

That was eye-opening to see. The seeing of it was the beginning of healing from it, and then being able to listen even deeper to a voice, attitude, or belief that didn't carry that along.

So allow yourself to become really quiet at some point during this meditation, and see if you can listen for the thoughts that are there when there's nothing else. They might be unhelpful for you, they might be very helpful for you, they might be nice thoughts. But seeing them, whether they're helpful or not, has equal value for the purposes of mindfulness. There's nothing wrong with discovering you have unhelpful thoughts; it's actually the doorway to freedom. It's not just to celebrate that you have great thoughts—though those too are the doorway to freedom—but to listen to what is really there.

Sometimes it begins not with a belief or idea you can pinpoint, but it's more of an emotion or a feeling that's underneath it all. At this deep level, there might be this intimate connection between a deep emotion and a belief at the same time. For some people, the entryway is to listen to the deeper emotion, and eventually, you can see what the belief is that goes along with it. Sometimes it's the other way: you recognize the deep belief, and then you can feel how it carries with it a mood and emotion that is there as a background influence on your life.

Guided Meditation

I'll direct this a little bit. To begin, as usual, it's nice to have a kind of ritual beginning where it's more or less the same what we do each time. The familiarity allows your system and your life to feel like it's entering into familiar territory and settle more quickly.

Assume the meditation posture, and then gently close your eyes.

With your eyes closed, gently settle on yourself. Gently enter into your inner bodily experience from the inside out. Feel if there are some ways you want to adjust your posture now so you're more comfortable and more alert.

Take a few longer inhales, and longer exhales in which you relax and settle in more.

Then let your breathing return to normal. On the exhales, relax the different parts of your body. Or if they don't relax, soften them. Soften around them.

Begin centering yourself on your breathing. You might try, not to breathe deeply, but ever so slightly, gently, lovingly, breathe in a little bit fuller. Just a teeny bit more than you would otherwise. A little bit more intentionally. Exhale as if you're relaxing, or as if you're saying "ah" on the exhale.

The intention of the exhale might be a little greater allowing of the exhale, and maybe a little bit more allowing of the inhale. As you exhale, relax in the thinking mind. Let the thinking become quieter. Maybe a little slower.

Maybe imagine that every time you exhale, the exhale is carrying you a little bit deeper into yourself. Every time you exhale, you want to listen or attend to that. For what is deepening, attend, feel, and sense the places deep inside that the exhale is taking you.

With the exhales, let the thinking mind become quieter so that you can better listen, better sense what is deep inside of you underneath all your usual thoughts, your daily concerns, your ongoing concerns. Listen and feel the beliefs that are there. The attitudes that are there. The feelings that are there, maybe deep inside.

Don't expect that you'll necessarily hear or listen to anything. What's valuable is letting yourself become quiet. Listening to become quieter on the exhale, and sensing deeper. If nothing shows itself, it's okay. It might actually be quite good to just feel the quiet that's there.

If it makes sense to keep doing this, continue on the exhale to let go. Relax into the deeper places within, as if the exhale is holding your hand, carrying you deeper underneath the usual concerns. To a place in your body that's underneath it all.

I'll ask a question, and see what responds inside of you. Maybe before you think about an answer, just feel whatever responds spontaneously or close to that. It might not be in words. It might just be a feeling or a body sensation, or a place inside that your attention goes.

Relaxing with the exhale. Letting things be quite quiet near the end of the exhale for a moment.

In that deepest place that you can contact within, the question is: If it could speak, what would it say?

Then bring your attention to the inhale, and feel the way that the body expands as you inhale. Maybe the body lifts a little bit. Let that inhale carry some of your strength, some of your confidence, so that it spreads through your body.

Having the expansion of the inhale move through with any care, love, goodwill, or compassion that's within you. Spread it through the body, through your heart, through your mind.

On that inhale, let whatever degree of confidence, strength, love, and goodwill grow, spread, and expand, maybe beyond the edges of your body. As if you can reach out and touch the whole world with kindness. Just a gentle touch at the top of the inhale.

May our attention that spreads out into the world carry with it our care for the welfare and happiness of others. May our attention and awareness of others carry with it a wish for everyone's happiness.

May everyone be happy. May everyone be safe. May everyone be peaceful. May everyone be free.

Reflections on Thinking and Emotions

We are talking about this relationship between thinking and emotions, and emotions and thinking, this week. Thinking has many layers within us. Some of the more surface layers are called discursive thinking—thinking that involves having a conversation, telling a story, or imagining some scenario. Sometimes it's almost like watching TV.

This can have a powerful effect on our emotional life. Because humans are storytellers, stories have a big impact. We have an ability to imagine stories as if they're real, and we feel them in our emotional life. So we want to be careful with the stories we tell and the discursive mind.

But thinking can get quieter, and it doesn't have to be discursive thinking or a story we tell. There might be some repeated attitude or judgment we carry with us. That judgment might be one that undermines us, or one that inspires and buoys us up. As the mind gets quieter and quieter, it doesn't mean that we stop thinking, but the thinking becomes more subtle. It becomes more foundational, underlying everything else.

Part of the advantage of getting calm and subtle in meditation is that we can start hearing, seeing, or recognizing the deeper currents of belief, thoughts, and attitudes that are in us. They are often overlaid by discursive thinking or judgmental thinking. That deeper layer is valuable to see. Sometimes we don't even know that it's there casting its influence on everything else. It's like the root from which everything else grows, or the root which spreads food into everything else in the plant. That food might not be healthy, or it might be healthy. Seeing this deeper attitude allows us to start recognizing what is going on.

To give you some examples of some simple, deeper attitudes and beliefs that might be there: sometimes when people get really quiet and still in meditation, just tracking the breathing, you can see that certain attitudes could appear for some people at a particular point in the cycle of breathing. Sometimes people see, "Oh, I don't want to exhale, because I don't want to lose something. I want to hold on. I have to be safe by holding on." The end of the exhale is a common place where people get afraid because there's a feeling of a loss of control. Everything is going away, and I might disappear, die, or not exist at the end of the exhale. Or sometimes, I've known people who have an attitude as they breathe in of not wanting to breathe in. It's like, "Leave me alone, that's too much work." The world is imposing itself on me, and so there's a very subtle resistance.

These are symbolic. We discover in relationship to breathing a relationship that plays itself out in the rest of our life. Because it's so subtle and so quiet, we might discover that there are very quick, foundational emotions that are there, and those emotions give birth to a way of thinking, to discursive thoughts.

As I said earlier in the meditation, one of the beliefs I had in my early years of practice was that if something was happening to me, it was not the real thing. It wasn't necessarily logical to have that belief. I never thought about it, I didn't even know I had that belief, but there it was when I got quiet. Deep down inside, it was a policy that I had towards everything. So I could never do things right, or I never felt satisfied, content, or at home anywhere, because it was always the wrong thing.

You might think then that we have to cultivate the opposite. That you have to think everything you're experiencing is the right thing and the real thing. Or, for example, if you've discovered deep inside that you feel you are somehow bad, you might think the solution is that you now have to cultivate thoughts that you're good.

There is a trap in recognizing a deep belief and thinking the solution is to have the opposite belief, the positive version of it. If you have a belief that you're wrong or bad, and then you have to find a way to believe that you're right and good, that's a headache. That's work. How do you do that really? It becomes a strain and an expectation that we live by as a challenge.

The alternative is to recognize some of the deeper beliefs and difficult emotions we have, and not set up the idea that we now have to experience the opposite. It is powerful and enough just to stop thinking, "I'm wrong," just to stop thinking, "I'm bad." Rather than thinking you have to become a good person, you just stop believing you're bad. Instead of thinking that because you're afraid you now have to develop bravery and courage, it's really enough just to learn how to settle, quiet down, and let go of the fear. You don't have to replace it with something else.

If you replace it with something else, you tend to be in a pendulum that can swing too easily between extremes. Also, the attempt to go into the positive—while sometimes wonderful and nice to do—often carries with it even deeper attitudes around self: "Me, myself, and mine." Like, "I am the agent, and only then will people really love me." There's a deeper belief about what it takes to be loved or cared for.

As we go deeper and deeper in the practice, what we learn is that it's powerful and wonderful simply to stop these beliefs that we have and not replace them. In the depths of who we are, maybe we'll discover that there's a kind of peace, a stillness, a spaciousness, or a calm that has no opposite. There's a kind of joy and happiness that has no opposite. Then we're not swinging so much back and forth. It comes without a belief. It doesn't have to have a self connected to it, or some idea of who we are, what we have to accomplish, and what we have to do in order to be a successful person. We're allowed just to be at home in ourselves. We don't have to prove ourselves, defend ourselves, or force any particular experience to be "the experience" we have to have. We're allowed just to be ourselves.

Sometimes there is the idea that when you are yourself, the Dharma^[1] is the Dharma. You just allow yourself to live in that deep place where we are not living in the opposites that we swing by. It's just this deeper place that has no opposite.

This idea that there is a deeper voice, belief, attitude, or mood that underlies it all—you might want to let today be a quieter day and see if there's something there for you. You have to be very careful with this, and very tender and compassionate. If it feels like this is too much for you, or if the information you uncover is something you need to digest, work with, and get support for, by all means, do that. Don't stay right up against it all the time.

But you might also see if this can be a day of this deeper, quieter listening. You might have a busy day, but maybe in little corners of the day, you can sit quietly and tap into what's deep inside. If what's deep inside could speak, what would it say? Sometimes that reveals something that won't get revealed if we're just generally feeling or tending to it.

Maybe you'll discover too, that in the depths of who you are, that's where your wisdom resides.

Thank you, and we'll continue again tomorrow.