June 2013 Audio Meditation

Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague that revolved around the subject of cultivating an internal sense of safety. We talked about how external safety isn’t a sure thing and, in these uncertain times, doesn’t ring true as a possibility for many people. 

My deepest sense, as we talked, was that the only place I could find a reliable sense of safety, and it’s a relative thing, is inside my own embodied core presence. This is because embodied presence is something we carry within us all the time, even when we’re unaware of it. 

I’ve talked many times about the dynamic of “foreground/background”. Depending on what we experience in any given moment, feelings of activation, distress, overwhelm, and/or shutdown may have moved into the foreground of our awareness. When this happens, our internal steadiness and embodied core presence slide into the background and we no longer experience these qualities of our inherent being.

Sitting in Central Park, in the presence of the majestic and beautiful trees that surround me, my awareness again drifts to our current world condition, to the immense suffering in Afghanistan and in so many other places around the world, including all those who are suffering here in the United States. One of my primary practices is to check in with myself many times a day to notice what qualities/frequencies I’m emanating and radiating not only into myself but also into the world around me. And, importantly, whatever radiates from me—from any and all of us—immediately becomes part of the human collective consciousness that we all share.

For most of us, we don’t pay much conscious attention to the quality of collective consciousness that affects us in every moment and we may not fully realize how powerfully we are affected by it. It’s this lack of recognition that prompts me often to say something about it because whatever we may be feeling personally, the frequencies with which we resonate in any given moment is amplified, magnified by that same feeling and the frequencies it represents that exist in our collective.

For this week’s practice in conscious living, I invite you, as I have so many times, to pay particular attention to where you resonate during this time of so much suffering. And, below is a practice to play with to support your offering to the collective qualities of consciousness that offer support rather than feed activation.

As I begin this week’s practice, I’m watching a video of yesterday’s memorial celebration for the beloved Vietnamese teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, in Plum Village, France. For those of you who may not have encountered Thay or his teachings, he was a Buddhist monk who brought important and accessible mindfulness teachings to the West, was also advocate for peace and a supporter of Martin Luther King, Jr., who nominated Thay for a Nobel Peace Prize.

As I listen to the chanting of the people of Plum Village, I am reminded of the importance of accessing practices that allow us to access states of being that touch not only into the presence of the Sacred all around us, but also into those internal states that bring us into a deep inner quiet and settled ease. What I’d like to offer for this week’s practice is an adapted version of a very simple and direct meditation that Thay offered to us early in his teachings. It has stayed with me over the years as one of the most direct and effective ways to settle and find a sense of inner presence. As I weave his teaching into the following practice, I apologize for whatever changes I’ve made in this practice that may inadvertently not accurately reflect Thay’s intention, words or teaching.