Transcript:
[00:00:00] And we'll do the final stage of settling the speech in its natural state.  
[00:00:07] So this is where, because we've spent a decent amount of time now just settling the body,  
[00:00:13] I think we'll just bypass that. We'll start at settling the speech, stage one,  
[00:00:19] and just the tactile sensations in the abdomen.  
[00:00:22] And then we'll move into the tactile sensations around the apertures of the nose,  
[00:00:27] which is the gateway of the breath.  
[00:00:30] And we'll stay there for the session.  
[00:00:34] Now remember, if you want to downshift, that's fragmented and you can't really relate to it,  
[00:00:40] which is a likelihood, because this is actually very subtle.  
[00:00:45] You actually need the ability to be still and to concentrate,  
[00:00:50] to apprehend such a subtle sensation consistently to be able to stay there.  
[00:00:56] So if that's too hard, it's too difficult, it's too fragmented,  
[00:01:01] downshift, go back to the abdomen.  
[00:01:05] Just go back to settling the speech, stage one.  
[00:01:08] If that's fragmented, you can't find any ground there,  
[00:01:12] downshift again to settling the body.  
[00:01:16] And just play with it a little bit and see where it works for you.  
[00:01:21] Okay, does that make sense? Okay.  
[00:01:26] So maybe we'll do a 20-minute session.  
[00:01:53] Okay.  
[00:02:53] So we can begin by just briefly scanning the body,  
[00:02:57] any overt tension or stress present.  
[00:03:05] Breathe in relaxation. Breathe out the tension and stress.  
[00:03:35] Okay.  
[00:04:04] And briefly check the quality of your mind.  
[00:04:08] Is it exciting, racing?  
[00:04:12] Is it relaxed and sleepy, drowsy?  
[00:04:18] Wherever you find your mind to be, breathe in the appropriate remedy.  
[00:04:48] Okay.  
[00:05:11] Now, mind and body balanced, we'll commence with the first stage,  
[00:05:17] settling the speech in its natural state.  
[00:05:22] Let your attention and your awareness rest on the tactile sensations  
[00:05:27] of the abdomen as you respire.  
[00:05:35] Remember to breathe naturally as you do when you sleep.  
[00:05:40] Do not control your breathing.  
[00:06:10] Okay.  
[00:08:44] If you've become distracted in thinking, feeling, having opinions, beliefs, judgments, perceptions,  
[00:08:51] memories, listening, seeing, recognize that you've become distracted.  
[00:09:00] Return your attention to the tactile sensations in the abdomen as you breathe.  
[00:09:09] If you choose to, you can count the breath.  
[00:09:39] Okay.  
[00:11:42] If you choose, you can now upshift to the final stage of settling the speech.  
[00:11:51] Let your attention and awareness abide in and rest on the tactile sensations  
[00:11:58] around your nostrils as you breathe.  
[00:22:46] Okay.  
[00:23:02] What was that experience like?  
[00:23:17] Kind of freakish.  
[00:23:18] I feel like I'm watching, there's part of me that's watching my brain multitask.  
[00:23:23] There's all these weird, there's like a David Lynch movie going on.  
[00:23:28] There's like a narrator that's talking about the whole thing and then there's like very,  
[00:23:33] very subterranean tape that's old tape that's playing.  
[00:23:37] That's creepy.  
[00:23:39] Yeah.  
[00:23:40] Yeah, I can be a little disoriented.  
[00:23:42] A little bit scary.  
[00:23:44] Like you cultivate that observing awareness.  
[00:23:47] And like the big question that usually starts to arise, the reason it got kind of  
[00:23:54] creepy for me was because I started to see very clearly that my thoughts and emotions were not an  
[00:24:01] inherent part of me.  
[00:24:03] Whatever me is, right?  
[00:24:05] Like I could drop thoughts and emotions at will.  
[00:24:09] I could grasp them.  
[00:24:11] I could drop them.  
[00:24:12] Okay.  
[00:24:13] So obviously they weren't an inherent part of my awareness.  
[00:24:17] They were things that existed within my awareness that I had control over.  
[00:24:22] Should I want that?  
[00:24:24] And like the heart is an inherent part of the body.  
[00:24:28] You can't just remove it from the body and have the body work, right?  
[00:24:32] So my thoughts and emotions are not like that with my mind.  
[00:24:35] I can't grasp them and release them.  
[00:24:38] And so that brought up a really scary question for me because if I'm not what I think and feel,  
[00:24:44] then what am I?  
[00:24:47] And I don't know the answer to that.  
[00:24:51] And that was a little weird.  
[00:24:55] Especially because I go around thinking on what I think and feel all the time.  
[00:25:00] Like 99.9% of the time.  
[00:25:02] It's kind of all caught up in and identified with all that stuff.  
[00:25:06] I was going to ask where it comes from.  
[00:25:09] I think it's probably a similar question.  
[00:25:12] Where do thoughts and emotions come from?  
[00:25:15] If it's not you and they just come up and arise, why do they get involved?  
[00:25:22] Yeah.  
[00:25:23] Like Buddha talked about, this is Buddhist cosmology.  
[00:25:26] So like Virgo, Virgo, Virgo.  
[00:25:29] Why do they get involved?  
[00:25:31] Yeah.  
[00:25:32] Like Buddha talked about, this is Buddhist cosmology.  
[00:25:35] So we're like verging into Abhidharma, cosmology.  
[00:25:39] So it's making more spiritual or religious points even if you want to think about that.  
[00:25:45] But Buddha's explanation for that was, he talked about 12 links of dependent origination.  
[00:25:51] And he said like there are six realms of existence, basic realms.  
[00:25:56] This, what we're in right now, he said, is the desire realm.  
[00:26:00] It is the form realm then, the realm of craving.  
[00:26:04] Where you're just kind of programmed to seek outside of yourself all things that are good and bad.  
[00:26:10] And so you create suffering along those basic lines.  
[00:26:14] And like if you're in a human form, your mind is just going to be kind of wired to create thoughts and emotions and judgments and opinions and beliefs,  
[00:26:25] and fantasies and to project all of your internal experiences onto the things around you,  
[00:26:31] and to like see yourself as independent and separate from.  
[00:26:35] And so you're going to be in competition and always like not getting enough,  
[00:26:39] and like all of that stuff.  
[00:26:41] So he said it was just like a natural part of being human.  
[00:26:44] So it's like a biological structure of the brain to just have thoughts.  
[00:26:51] Yeah, our neurology is wired to have thoughts and emotions.  
[00:26:55] But the consciousness that's being filtered through the neurology, however, is not.  
[00:27:02] So the consciousness that's like underneath the mind in the human form is something different.  
[00:27:09] The thing that's doing the watching.  
[00:27:11] Yeah.  
[00:27:12] The thing from which all of the thoughts and emotions arise.  
[00:27:17] The thing that's like the support of that.  
[00:27:20] Underneath that.  
[00:27:22] He said that was different.  
[00:27:24] His description of that was pristine.  
[00:27:27] Luminescent.  
[00:27:29] Still, like a mountain.  
[00:27:32] Very relaxed.  
[00:27:34] Blissful.  
[00:27:37] He liked that consciousness.  
[00:27:39] And that, of course, from the Buddha's perspective, that is what travels from lifetime to lifetime.  
[00:27:46] But to the extent that you don't know you're that,  
[00:27:49] you just like take form again and again and again in these various ways.  
[00:27:54] And you just continue to replicate suffering.  
[00:27:57] Because maybe William James was right.  
[00:27:59] Belief and attention are the same fact.  
[00:28:02] Maybe we create with our minds.  
[00:28:05] So that even our states of mindlessness create realities.  
[00:28:11] Maybe it's like that.  
[00:28:15] I mean, I don't know.  
[00:28:21] Those questions are well beyond the purview of clinical psychology.  
[00:28:25] My own skills as a meditator are feeble.  
[00:28:29] I can't apprehend them sometimes.  
[00:28:32] I don't know.  
[00:28:34] From my position currently, these are suppositions that Buddha had that I can't confirm or deny one way or the other at this point.  
[00:28:42] Anything else?  
[00:28:45] Ready for a break?  
[00:28:48] Okay.  
[00:28:49] So let's take ten minutes and come on back and finish up.