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Foreign [Music] [Laughter] [Applause] So the invitation is to actually rest in Awareness It's not the object of attention that You've just assigned yourself like the Breath sensation someplace in the body That's the primary Uh concern here The primary concern is the attending Itself not the object of attention Foreign Foreign Thank you Is it possible to actually rest in Awareness With no agenda Not trying to go anywhere Not trying to achieve any particular Kind of healing or state We're noticing if that's part of your Agenda that you do have some kind of Aspiration to have this work in Quotation marks or to have some special Feeling And the whole point of wisdom is to Recognize that the feeling that you're Having is unbelievably special whatever It is even your mind wandering is Unbelievably special So awareness of Mind wandering is still Awareness
Awareness is the same awareness as the Awareness of the breath Sensations So can you take up residency in the Awareness itself And simply inhabit it as A domain of being Moment by Moment by Moment by Timeless Moment And Breath by Breath by breath as we sit Here Foreign So can your awareness tell you in this Moment how it is in the body Right In This Moment Foreign And how is it in the Heart Right In This Moment And then how is it in the Mind Right In This Moment Do you need things to be different from How they actually are right in this Moment or can you actually put out the Welcome mat for whatever it is that Arises in the field of your awareness And just have to be like weather Patterns unfolding in the sky None of which is really personal or of Major concern unless we make it personal And generate Kind of narratives Katie was dissecting Generating of stories And can we simply be aware of that when We're creating
Narratives that we then actually Even believe Or can we simply Challenge ourselves to Recognize and The The Narrative says they unfold and Not take them personally not be caught By them just be the knowing of Any kind of thought stream that arises Any kind of liking or disliking or Judging or impatience or any kind of Thoughts or emotions that may move Through the mind like again like weather Patterns That we don't have to be caught by but Will inevitably be caught by If we start to believe them instead of Identifying them as Events in the field of awareness just Like breath sensation or sound Can you be at home right here in this Moment Things exactly as they are In the body in the mind in the room In your room And be the knowing And the not knowing That your awareness already is and Actually always has been Foreign And by the way that knowing and not Knowing As I was suggesting has many different Names and
One of them Goes under the name of wakefulness a Moment of wakefulness A moment of silence a moment of Stillness Right here Always available If we are willing to in some sense Get out of our own way or Even investigator in choir What our own way might possibly be Especially when we give up A strong attachment to the personal Pronouns so it has to be my way Rather than a way Of being a way of seeing a way of Being in relationship to Whatever is unfolding inwardly or Outwardly Silent wakefulness Underneath my voice underneath the Guidance Always here Always available And not an ideal that needs to be strive For But in some sense the default mode Of Who we actually are when We do inquire about Getting out of our own way And taking your seat is an invitation to You Engage if you will in or resonate with
Just that And maybe reflecting if The possibility that actually taking Your seat in this way Informal meditation practice but even More throughout life in terms of Dropping into the present moment and Befriending it in the ways that we've Been Just exploring right now Is a is it Incredibly radical Act One that most people virtually never Engage in Except Perhaps by accident A few times here and there And that what it is actually is a Radical Act of sanity To stop and drop in on oneself And open to the timeless Dimension of now And the boundless dimension of here Knowing where our feet are Not conceptually but feeling Knowing Foreign Knowing where How the pelvis is sitting How the spine is rising out of the Pelvis How the arms are hanging off the rib Cage and shoulders Now the head is elevating self-elevating
Through the neck and Spine A radical act not just of Sanity but a Radical Act of love Just entertaining that or investigating That Has a possibility right now that it's Not about trying to get someplace better Or have some special feeling but Actually recognize The beauty of This moment Embodied In the form of You Especially when you Give yourself permission to Let the narratives just float around There without having to Latch onto them as me Or mine Or true Foreign Where your mind is what's on your mind Foreign And investigating whether it's possible To Be that knowing and rest in awareness Without even having to return to the Breath or to let go of the thought or Anything like that but to Simply let Awareness Define the space And uh
Where we can take up residency permanent Residency So no place to go nothing to do nothing To attain Just this Moment just this breath just this Sitting here Just this Being Human just this Radical commitment to wakefulness Embodied In the form of You whoever You are Warts pimples and everything let me Throw in So that it's not about being other than As you are but One hundred percent Who You Are Inwardly outwardly Foreign Moments of the sitting or minutes of This sitting seeing if you can let go in Your own mind of everything that's come Before Let go of time altogether And just be here with this In-breath As if it Was the very first thin breath In South breath very first outbreak Outside of time all together Completely at home Here
And fully awake Fully in touch Fully attentive As if you're very life dependent on it Which of course it does In more ways than You think And in more ways than Any of us could possibly think Because they're such profound limits to Thought when we Get caught in it No matter how smart we are In fact the smarter we are perhaps the More dangerous is So just this Moment just this breath just this thing Here Just this being human For now Now if your eyes have been Closed up to this point let me invite You to Simply open your eyes without Deviating the slightest bit from the Attending So that we're simply like expanding The domain of experience to include the Visual field right in front of us And seeing if you can be fully in touch With the body Allowing awareness to suffuse and Permeate the body Just as the breath does And again that you're here without any
Ulterior motive the no Um Gaining idea no Agenda other than to be awake Not trying to attain some special Something Is no special mindful state But any condition that we might find Ourselves in could be Mindful If we embrace it in awareness As some people like to emphasize with With kindness with the degree of Compassion including self-compassion So that there's nothing kind of Rigid about this It's A Love Affair With the only moment any of us ever have And it doesn't stop when the eyes open Or when we get up from our chair that's When the real practice starts So then life itself becomes the Meditation practice and every Moment of it an opportunity for us to be In wise if you will relationship with What's unfolding In here out there Apparently out there is Katie said to use the word apparently So we make these binary distinctions These dualisms and then we sort of Go to our Graves with them constantly And we have An opportunity for Liberation really
Right under our noses right in Folded into every moment And so this practice this cultivation of Mindfulness there's been so much talk About mindfulness during the course of The conference Um Maybe it's worth saying a few things About it uh One of which is that in most Asian Languages the word for mind and the word For heart is the same word so If you're not hearing heartfulness when You're using the word mindfulness you're Not really Understanding the full dimensionality of It and then it could it's it's Corrupting in that kind of way because You're turning it into a thought You're turning it into a thing whereas It's actually a way of being Uh Or awareness itself And while we get plenty of training and Thinking and you can see what the Consequences of that have been We get virtually no training in Accessing this other dimension of our Being that's at least obviously on face Of it more powerful than thinking Because you can take any thought holding Awareness and you've got Multi-dimensional face facing which to See it as what it is as opposed to be
Caught in it And that's something you don't need Katie for You don't need workshops or worksheets For They're incredibly powerful to do it in That way but sometimes you need it in no Time You need to remind yourself and re-body Yourself in no time or real time they Say sometimes And then live It With no artifice no Striving no no The Buddhists would say fabrication or Contrivance and Katie said manufacturing You know we're always manufacturing Something
