Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
It's so easy to get caught in our heads.
And one of the most important things that we can learn
is how very quickly to center ourselves.
So here's one way that you can practice.
The nature of consciousness in the present moment
is very different than what we learn in school.
In school, we focus, and we narrow.
But consciousness in the present moment,
when you're in deep meditation, when you're surfing,
when you're skiing, is an extraordinary sense
of the vividness of all your perceptions and expansiveness.
So all you have to do is shift from time
to time to your breathing.
Focus, for example, on the sensation of the air
moving through your nostrils.
It's a very easy sensation to find.
You can have your eyes open.
You can have your eyes closed.
Bring that sensation into real vividness.
If you have to close your eyes in order
to concentrate on it for a moment or two
for a few breaths, close your eyes.
But in daily life, we want to be able to be centered in
and have our eyes open.
So with your eyes open, sensing the breath
moving through your nose, aware of the light around you,
the sounds around you, all your perceptions vivid,
simultaneously imagine that your mind is limitless like space.
In fact, the notion of the universe
conveys a sense of spatial vastness.
But the mind itself is the vastness
in which the concept of the universe is present.
So let yourself get spacious.
Feel your body and yet keep the sensation of your breath
truly vivid, very precise.
Become aware of the space around you.
Realize it's now everywhere in the universe right
in this moment.
It's always now, the mind, in that sense, limitless.
And there's the very vivid perception of your breath,
of the light, the colors, the sounds,
sensations in your body.
And now, five breaths.
Focused and spacious.
Precise awareness of your whole body,
of your breathing and the sense that mind in the largest sense
is limitless.
So if it were a scientist, you'd focus on what you're studying.
But you wouldn't lose the sense of a holistic system,
everything connected to everything else perspective,
which is what is lost.
So just become aware of five breaths.
Any time you find yourself agitated,
hurrying, starting to get caught in the motions,
come back to the present moment.
Five focused breaths with a spacious mind,
precise awareness of your breathing,
your senses all attuned to anything and everything
and the sense-- wow.
The mind extends limitlessly.
Five more breaths.
Most people aren't going to stop to meditate for half an hour
or 20 minutes or 40 minutes or an hour in the morning.
But if you do this practice, 5 breaths,
allowing yourself to become so precisely
focused and vast open at the same time, that will cause
your arousal level, the stimulation of your thoughts,
the emotions they generate will come down just a little bit.
And if 20 minutes later you do five more breaths,
it'll come down again a little bit.
And if through the day five breaths takes what, 20 seconds?
So through the day if you did this 20 times,
you would be spending five, six, seven minutes at most.
And it will really help you center.
So take hold of this practice and make it yours.