Easy like a summer afternoon

Send yourself through your imagination to a beautiful peaceful outdoor setting, with the dome of the transparent blue sky. Thoughts, like butterflies, pass by, fluttering this way and that, without disturbing your sense of openness A practice for perspective, calm, and mental clarity.

Why this helps? Practicing open awareness creates mental space and lessens the grip of stressful thoughts.

Transcript

Welcome And Practice Framing

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Inner Strength Meditations for a little calm and care. We got you. In this open awareness practice, we'll start to explore a different way of paying attention to what we're noticing and to just the quality of noticing itself.

Entering The Safe Outdoor Place

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Bring to mind your favorite outdoor place, a place where you feel completely safe, where it's beautiful and calm. It might be a place that you visited that you remember from when you were a little child. It might be a place you want to visit or somewhere in your imagination. And imagine yourself there, sitting under a tree. It's the middle of the day. It's the perfect temperature. Not too hot, not too cool.

Near Detail: Branches And Leaves

SPEAKER_00 1:21

And as you're sitting under the tree, look up above you and notice the branches that are near to you. Their texture, their shape, their leaves or buds or flowers. Notice their outline, their silhouette against the midday sky.

Mid Distance: Butterfly And Birds

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Now, as you're looking above you, maybe a butterfly passes across your awareness. Notice its colors. Notice the shape of the design on its wings. Notice its path as it bumps and skips along with the backdrop of the sky behind it. Now further in the distance, you may see some birds. You just notice their silhouette, their wings pumping as they cross the sky.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Now, even further in the distance, maybe you see a bird. Maybe you see a plane. Notice the trail it leaves across the sky.

Far Distance: Plane And Clouds

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Now, even further in the distance, notice the clouds. Big fluffy white clouds. Notice their shapes and edges. Notice how they seem to breathe as the wind moves them across the sky. They're so far away, they seem small.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

But in reality, they're huge.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Just allow yourself to be easy. As you're looking up at the sky.

Shift From Clouds To Sky Itself

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And now shift your attention ever so gently from the clouds to the sky.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Let the clouds vanish.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Clearing so that what you see is that beautiful, translucent blue. So clear it's almost white. And notice how the sky stretches infinitely back and back and back. And how it extends in all directions.

Resting In Spacious Awareness

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Notice how the space of the sky is always there. Large enough to hold even the biggest objects, the biggest stars, the galaxies, the planets. Or whether it's sunny, the vast stretch of the sky is always there. And just rest your attention on the open expanse of the sky.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Allowing yourself to explore that sense of space, of endlessness, of openness. And just be still, be easy.

Returning To The Room And Reflection

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Now, when you're ready, begin to shift your attention back. If your eyes have been closed, you can open them, noticing the familiar objects in the room around you, stretching your fingers, stretching your toes, feeling the chair, holding your weight. Before you get up, move on to your next activity. Just notice how your mind feels, how your thoughts are, how your body feels, whether your mood has changed. Be curious. Just be open without trying to find any right answer.

Closing And Encouragement

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Now take a nice inhalation and a slightly longer exhalation.

SPEAKER_01 7:47

And we can finish our practice. Thanks so much for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

You're building inner strength and outer stability. Pretty awesome.