DSC Books: Seven Days: A Journey Into Awareness - Days One to Three

Day One continued (Section 10)

Question: (In Spanish) (About the breath. Very long question, somewhat agitated.)

Barbara: I’m not sure what you mean when you say you stop breathing. You stop being aware of your breath? I think I understand your question and I do want to allow us to get into the meditation. Will you sit down? Let me speak to it briefly and if I do not understand it fully, at the close you and I can talk more about it. Okay?

The breath rises and then sometimes we notice what’s called an aperture, a break in the breath, then it falls. Watch your breath rising, and then there’s a small space, and then falling, then another small space. Do you feel the gap between the inhale and the exhale, exhale and inhale? Sometimes when you move into a deep meditation the breath seems to slow. It seems to become very irregular. Actually, it’s just settling down, slowing down.

A different experience can be one of feeling like you can’t get enough breath, like you begin controlling the breath. None of these things are problems, they’re simply places to look. “This is what I’m experiencing right now. Can’t get a breath. Tension. Tension. What is it about?”

Often people who want control in their lives find that as they let go of controlling the breath and let it breathe itself, they’re very uncomfortable. This discomfort leads them back into the question, “What is afraid and needs to control and order?” Just the awareness that “something” is afraid and wants to stay in control can be a very important understanding. What if the breath is breathing itself? None of it’s a problem. Whatever your experience, it’s part of your practice. Just let it be there. Go deeper into it and let it be there. If there’s real discomfort, let attention touch the discomfort with real kindness, real mercy.

Everything in your experience is part of your practice. The questioner spoke of tension in his work, carrying the tension into his meditation. Not a problem. It’s a chance to look at “What is the tension about?” You’re not meditating to escape tension but to deeply understand the process of arising tension so it no longer is in control. Whatever comes into your practice, whatever you’re experiencing, like employees who don’t show up or not enough money coming in, is simply an invitation to look at, “Here is fear.”

We always have this basic choice, relating to the world from a place of love and openness or from a place of fear. Fear views what happens in our lives and says, “I’ve got to push back. I’ve got to fix this.” When we observe how we move into that confrontational place of fear that wants to push we start to see that we have a different choice.

A wonderful place to observe this is in meditation. If fear comes up, if the thought of something that’s uncomfortable for you comes up, it’s just part of your practice.

Okay. We’re going to sit for thirty minutes. Please get yourselves comfortable. I’m not going to talk during this practice period. I want you to go as deeply into the practice as you can. Whatever you experience is okay, restlessness, bliss, whatever is there. Please remember there is no bad or good meditator. If you look at your neighbor and he seems very settled and you’re feeling restless and mind says, “Why am I the only one who’s restless here?” just note it as “judging, judging,” and come back to your breath. You’re not trying to be motionless but to observe any movement, to be present. Let’s start.

(Thirty minute meditation.)

May all beings be happy. (Bell)
May all beings everywhere love and be loved. (Bell)
May all beings find perfect peace. (Bell)

Stretch slowly and bring awareness into your bodies. If you’re stretching, know you’re stretching. If it feels pleasant, know it feels pleasant. What I would like you to do is, silently, to stand up in place. Reach your arms up. Stand on tip toes. Stretch. Feel your body stretching. As you stretch up, breathe in; then bring your arms down and exhale. Arms up again and inhale. Arms down and exhale. Do it two or three more times. Be as present in your body as you can be.

Now, let us sit.

I want you to do two bits of homework tonight. One, mindfulness practice. I want you to pick something, something that you’re going to do anyhow, like taking a shower, brushing your teeth, even driving home now. Be as present as you can be while you do that. If mind wanders off into planning, simply note “planning, planning,” and come back. If you’re driving and you’re seeing, really see. If you’re taking a shower, really feel how the water feels on your body and feel how the towel feels as you dry yourself. Be there. Five minutes. Whatever it is that you’re doing, really be present with it.

Second, I want everyone to meditate twice, tonight before you go to bed and tomorrow morning when you get up. If five minutes each time is all you can do, do it for five minutes. If what you do is simply to sit on the side of your bed before you go to sleep with your feet on the floor and just sit there for five minutes, fine. Do that. If you feel moved to meditate for fifteen or twenty minutes, or even longer, wonderful. It needs not to be an “I should” kind of obligation but must come from a place of kindness and love for yourself. We all take care of our physical bodies. We need to learn to take care of our spiritual bodies as well. So, let this be a gift to yourself and not an obligation. Five minutes or more, tonight and tomorrow morning.

We are going to have some question and answer time and then we’re going to end with a guided meditation on loving kindness. May I hear your questions?

Question: What about concentration meditation like repetition of a word? Does Aaron teach this? Do you do it?

Barbara: Deepening concentration is always helpful. Mantra meditation is basically a concentration practice, however, it has its limitations. It takes us to a very blissful place and then we let go of the mantra, we come out of the meditation and we’re right back in the daily world. There’s not as direct a transformation in it. So, yes, it’s a useful support practice. It also can open the heart, as a kind of devotional practice. Aaron does not teach it as a basic practice, nor do I. It’s a support, helping one learn deeper concentration. You can get addicted to the kind of blissful states that mantra meditation leads to. They’re wonderful, blissful states, but they’re an escape from the world.

Question: Barbara, how long do you meditate each day?

Barbara: I hesitate to use myself as an example. This is my life. Friends of mine tease me because they go to church or something on Sunday morning, while I go out and take a long walk because I’ve been doing formal spiritual practice of one sort or another all week and this is my break. Personally, I meditate about three hours a day. I get up very early in the morning at 4:30 or 5:00. I get very little sleep. When I move into deep levels of meditation, it’s very restful. I’m not asleep at all, but it’s very restful and is more supportive for me than the additional hours of sleep. But this is something that comes gradually. Then I meditate at night before going to bed.

I suggest to people an ideal of two sittings a day, finding times that work for them. If you’re a night person, trying to get up early in the morning and meditate for a long time isn’t going to work. And vice versa, if you’re a morning person, you’re going to find it very hard to meditate late at night. The best times depend on what your schedule is like. If you have small children and you’re home during the day, and the children are taking a nap or are at school and you have free time, then meditation during the day is ideal. Sometimes people like to meditate when they come home from work. Many people find it works to set their alarm five or ten minutes early for a few days, and then five or ten minutes early again, and again, until you’re getting up half an hour or forty-five minutes early. But, it’s a gradual process. You’re not just suddenly asking yourself to lose an hour of sleep.

Or you can turn off the television, or put aside the newspaper and meditate for a while at night. Ideally, you would have one longer sitting-half an hour, up to forty-five minutes-and one shorter sitting-at least ten or fifteen minutes, but longer is fine.

Question: I used to meditate ten to fifteen minutes, but something happens now. I was uncomfortable in the chair and everything was uncomfortable. People were moving, there were noises, I was sleepy.

Barbara: We were meditating after a big lunch. That’s a difficult period, when people are generally sleepy. But, also, as plainly as I can put it, life is messy. We’re never going to get it right. We sit and it’s too hard, it’s too soft, it’s too cold, it’s too hot. We’re never going to get it right! This is just exactly what we need to bring into our practice. On one level you’re finding it hard to meditate, but the hard meditations are sometimes the most useful ones. Those are the ones we learn most from, because we learn about that part in us that wants to be comfortable and is always pushing and pulling, trying to get it just right. And there’s a certain kind of surrender that happens, where we just relax into what is and find the peacefulness there. That’s real peace; it doesn’t depend on conditions being “right.”

Question: Well, I try to do that, to relax and meditate, but then I feel angry.

Barbara: That’s fine. If there’s anger, then feel the anger, whatever is there. It’s just good to find out what’s there. That’s a big step. Anger isn’t bad, it’s just energy. Be there and feel it.

Question: (Inaudible)

Barbara: How about Aaron’s life? Aaron tells us he has lived thousands of lifetimes. He says we all have lived thousands of lifetimes. Christmas Stories tells a little bit about some of his lives. Mostly, he doesn’t give a lot of information about his lives, except his very final human lifetime in the sixteenth century when he says he was a meditation master in Thailand. He talks about how, in that lifetime, he thought he was very free, that he really had reached a state of enlightenment, and then something happened that was very painful for him and he saw how much attachment, how much anger he still had and that he was still trying to get rid of his anger. And so he went off into the jungle and meditated in much the manner he’s teaching us. He saw how he had been trying to control his thoughts and emotions, judging them. He came to a place of real equanimity with them and was able to move beyond attachment, beyond fixation on keeping or getting rid of. This way he really did find final freedom. And so he says much of what he teaches comes from what he learned in that lifetime. Though it comes from all of his lifetimes, it especially comes from that lifetime. Other questions?