Resting in Being

In this meditation we are not forcing anything and especially not trying to counter or fix the different worked up states we can get into during the day.

Instead, it’s something more simple: just recognizing what is real and true, just our simple being, our presence.

Why is that “real and true”? Well real and true here means always so, not coming and going, always here. The worked up state, and the ideas and thoughts and stories that are connected to it, are coming and going. They might be “real” in one sense of the word because inside a certain circumstance or story they are somewhat valid (or not! Sometimes we are wrong!). But even then, they are not absolutely true– someone else would see it differently, and you might too, at another time. There is nothing lasting or stable about all that.

And we all do know what it feels like to come out of the unreal and into the real, how it feels to “be ourselves” again. So there is a feeling or intuition of real and true in this movement.

But we are not trying to make it all go away or even trying to counter the worked up state with the simple presence. It’s simply learning, if you will, it’s simple recognition.

Use every day life as an opportunity to check in and confirm your simple sense of presence and recognize what that’s like. It only takes a couple seconds.

Do it often! Little meditations often is better than one long prolonged meditation (that’s the spirit of it here).

TIPS:

1. Don’t think or fuss too much about questions like “is this it?” “is this the real?” Everyone knows what it’s like to come back into ourselves. Whatever sense you have, that’s what you want to recognize! That’s your Living Meditation.

2. Formal Meditations here in the Forest like “Simply Being” and “Dwelling in Presence” can help clarify what is meant here.

3. But keep the eye on the ball– it’s about recognizing, like… “oh, yeah, it’s like that. I am.” It’s not a big project to change things but a recognition of what is here, close.

Of course, some relief might result and you may want to keep it up and extend it in time, and that’s fine. Or, some interest and fascination arises so also wanting to continue. And that’s fine too.

But just keep the frame of Living Meditation here as primarily no strings like that attached– just recognition is all that is required.

5. And of course because it’s every day life, there may be thoughts that arise, even more than in sitting meditation, about how being all worked up is not working out, how it should really be changed, how you would like to live differently etc. etc. That’s normal and natural and again, as with all the Living Meditations with this awakening being twist, we allow that to be there because that’s what’s there in the story side of life too, and we’re happy to be doing something that helps, but as we actually do it in these small moments it’s not primarily about that, it’s about recognition of what’s true.