Make room for what is

This meditation guides you to rest in a wide, spacious awareness where thoughts, sounds, and sensations come and go. You’ll practice noticing the space behind experience rather than the content itself. A grounding practice for clarity and calm.

Why this helps? Open awareness supports clarity by helping you notice thoughts without reacting.

Transcript

What Is Open Awareness

Night Sky Visualization Setup

Posture And Settling The Body

From Sounds To Breath

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Open awareness. This exercise is called open awareness. For this meditation, you're going to use your incredible creative imagination and your mind's ability to visualize objects to help you cultivate calm and spaciousness of mind. This practice will help you get some space from your thoughts and develop a sense of ease, acceptance, and objectivity as you watch thoughts pass through the vast sky of awareness. I'll be asking you to imagine a beautiful, safe place outdoors in the summertime, as you lie on your back, perhaps in the grass, looking up at the night sky. The velvety night sky will represent your awareness, and the stars or meteors will represent your thoughts. Let's practice. Begin by settling into your meditation posture, closing your eyes if that feels comfortable, if not allowing your eyes to rest on the floor in front of you, so you can pay attention to your own inner experience. Connecting with your posture, straightening your spine, and relaxing your shoulders, resting your hands on your thighs or allowing them to be folded in your lap. Sitting in a calm, relaxed, and balanced way. You can take a few moments here to allow any areas of tension you may be holding in your body to relax. Now allowing your focus of attention to move or to shift to hearing, starting to notice the sounds that are happening around you. You might hear the sound of noises outside your room. You might also hear the sound of my voice, or the sound of your own breathing. Noticing the spaces between sounds, the moments where there's relative quiet, and now shifting our attention to the body breathing, noticing your breath wherever it's easiest for you.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Following your breath from the beginning of the in breath to the end of the outbreath.

Noticing Space Between Experiences

Entering The Night Sky Imagery

Shifting From Stars To Space

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Noticing the space between the in breath and the outbreath. We're mindfully paying attention to what's inside. Sometimes you may notice a lot of thoughts crowded inside your head. It's like the night sky crowded with stars. With open awareness, we're learning how to pay attention to the space between the things we are noticing, the silence or space between the sounds, thoughts, or sensations, instead of getting distracted by them. This helps you cultivate ease and clarity of mind. And when we have ease, we give ourselves time to think. When we have clarity, we can make healthy choices. Let's engage in a visualization to help cultivate open awareness some more. Imagine being outside on a warm summer night in a beautiful, safe place. You may be lying on your back, staring into the deep, vast sky, and you're looking at the many, many stars up in this sky. Notice all the pinpricks of light, the stars, satellites, planes. You may even see a shooting star. Stay with this visualization for some time and have fun. Be playful. Imagine with as much detail as you like the depth and beauty of this vast night sky, noticing the brightness and darkness, knowing that you're safe, and noticing what it feels like to be watching the night sky. Now shift your attention from the stars and all the little pinpricks to the vast dark sky holding the stars.

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The space between or behind the stars.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Infinitely large and spacious, extending in all directions is this vast sky.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

So pay attention to the space.

Resting In Awareness

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Thoughts are like the stars, and the space is like your awareness. Pay attention to the space right now. To your own awareness and not the thoughts that come and go. Another way to think about awareness is your own sense of knowing. So each time you notice you're paying attention to the stars, to your thoughts, simply shift your attention back to the space, to the night sky, to the part of you that's aware. Rest like this for some moments, and when you hear a sound, feel a sensation, or notice a thought pulls you away, pay attention to that part of you that's aware. Pay attention to the vast spaciousness of the night sky.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Notice what it feels like to bring your attention to the open awareness. Notice how you feel, how your body feels when you pay attention in this way.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Continue on like this. And when you hear the bell, you can gently open your eyes.