The Way of Effortless Mindfulness, page 11
7.Then feel a natural pause at the top of the in-breath. Be aware of awareness-energy from all around and within the pause before the out-breath.
8.Then feel the point of contact with your skin as your breath goes out and label it “two.”
9.Feel the pause before the next in-breath and rest in the unity of embodied awareness-energy.
10.Your breath is happening by itself, and awareness-energy is aware by itself without creating a point of view. Continue to focus effortlessly as you label each following breath, in and out, with a number up to thirty.
11.Shift into the view from the intelligence of the all-pervasive awareness-energy as thoughts, sensations, and emotions arise as awareness-energy. Simply allow them to appear and go nowhere even as they change. Notice any tendency to become drawn in by pleasant content or to contract against unpleasant feelings. Feel your unity with all things, boundless, timeless, and dynamically energetic, while effortlessly focusing on your simple breath.
GLIMPSEPanoramic Awareness
There is a Tibetan Buddhist practice called “sky-gazing.” You physically go to a place with a wide-open vista, and you become interested in looking at the open space. The exercise moves from being vision based to being awareness based. First you notice the open space in front of you, then within you, and then behind you. This gives you an experience of awareness of awareness.
In this effortless mindfulness glimpse, you will move awareness in a full circle, starting at the front of your body, moving to the sides and then behind you so that you feel a 360-degree panoramic awareness. Then you become aware from awareness-energy back to your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and body.
1.Sit comfortably with your eyes open and look directly in front of you. Allow your eyes to look into space rather than focusing on one particular thing.
2.Without raising your chin, bring your gaze slightly upward, as if you are on a beach, looking at the open sky.
3.Without moving your eyes or head, begin to open local awareness outward to both sides so that your peripheral vision expands slowly and gently.
4.As your peripheral vision widens, allow awareness to continue to open gently around toward the sides of your head.
5.Now allow local awareness to unhook from seeing to become aware of the space at the sides of your head through which sound is coming and going.
6.Continue to open local awareness to the felt sense of space behind your body where sound is moving.
7.Feel the sense of spacious awareness all around.
8.Notice how your view is open in a panoramic way.
9.Open local awareness beyond thought and sensations until it mingles with spacious awake awareness that’s already awake by itself. Let awake awareness rest as itself.
10.Inquire: Am I aware of spacious awareness, or is spacious awareness aware of itself, by itself?
11.Notice how spacious awake awareness is timeless, contentless, silent, and boundless.
12.As you begin to be aware from the panoramic field of awareness-energy, notice how you are subtly interconnected with sound, light, and movement.
13.Feel the ocean of awareness-energy arising outside and within your body as a wave. Feel the balance of being aware equally outside and within your body.
14.Remain undistracted, without effort.
15.Breathe in and allow a smile to come to your face and then feel spacious and pervasive awareness-energy seamlessly all around and within.
16.Notice how your ears are receiving sound without effort.
17.Notice, in the same way as sound comes to your ears, that light reflects off things and comes to your eyes. Let your vision relax and experience seeing as receiving.
18.Remain undistracted as you feel the awareness-energy equally outside and within and the ability to effortlessly focus on your breath as it arises and passes, moment to moment, in the timeless here and now of seamless awareness-energy.
PRACTICES FOR THE FOURTH FOUNDATION OF EFFORTLESS MINDFULNESS
Awake Awareness-Energy Embodied
In the fourth foundation, we arrive at the Ground of Being. When people first move from all-pervasive awareness-energy to the Ground of Being, which is awareness-energy embodied, I ask them, “How does it feel?” Many people say, “It feels grounded.” When I ask them, “What is the ground made of?” they look puzzled at first, but then, after a moment, say, “Awareness,” “Emptiness,” “Nothing,” “Everything,” “Connection,” or “Flow.” They go on to describe having a profound feeling of safety, effortlessness, and knowing that all is well, using phrases like, “Nothing can threaten who I am” and “Everything is okay.” This is the source and resource of effortless mindfulness.
People’s first association with the word ground is generally of something physical and solid. Although the ground of your being is not physically solid like the earth under your feet, it is supportive, foundational, and safe. Unlike what you may have imagined your foundation to be, the Ground of Being is made of awareness, safety, interconnectedness, well-being, and flow. The Ground of Being is the meeting place between the boundless ground of awake awareness and your human body and personality. Boundless ground plus human equals human being. Asked about this experience while immersed in it, one of my students reported, “I feel profound well-being, an innocence, and a sense that all is well.”
Awake awareness-energy is embodied not just as your body but as an interconnection with every body and every thing. The Ground of Being is experienced not only inside your body but also all around. The new feeling is not that “awareness is in my body” but that your body is arising from awareness. There is a deep restfulness as well as a new motivation to engage in life from a natural flow state.
There is a new sense of nonconceptual knowing that has qualities of non-fear, non-shame, non-worry, non-blame, and non-projection. Our intelligence is no longer caught in an either/or bind. It is an intuitive intelligence. From the Ground of Being, there is a sense of boundlessness, and yet you have more ability to set healthy boundaries.
Until awake awareness is embodied, the small self will activate the nervous system to continue, to no avail, to seek safety for itself. Being is the essential “okay-ness” that is already here. When the nervous system and instincts are connected to this essential “okay-ness,” there is a huge sense of relief, deep rest, and well-being from which all thoughts and actions begin to spring. After making a connection with the Ground of Being, one student reported, “I have had anxiety dreams all my life. These ranged from not being prepared for a test to the impending death of members of my family or myself. When I shifted into the Ground of Being for the first time, I stopped having anxiety dreams that night, and now I haven’t had one for the last year and a half.” When trying to manage their busy, modern lives from small self and small mind, people often experience free-floating anxiety throughout the day. The solution to this is moving to the Ground of Being, which we could call “free-floating well-being.” Here is a longer description of the Ground of Being that a student sent to me:
When I experience the Ground of Being: I am at peace with life and accept everything as it is. I don’t feel like anything needs to change. I already feel comfortable and safe, as if I am held by something larger than myself. I feel my “place in the order of things.” I am interconnected and present, without having to “do” anything to earn it, keep it that way, or make sure things are okay. I have that feeling of “nowhere to go and nothing to do,” even though I am still fully capable of going anywhere and doing anything—in other words, I am able to move through my everyday life fully connected from the Ground of Being.
People who learn this foundation of awake awareness-energy embodied are astounded that they can immediately shift into this Ground of Being level of awareness-energy while doing everyday activities in a stress-free flow—with their eyes open. The Ground of Being is the ultimate well-being that is here no matter what difficulties occur in our daily lives, though it can sometimes be in the background.
In this fourth foundation, we become aware that we are both infinite and finite. It feels like the ocean of awareness-energy is arising as the wave of a new sense of “me.” It’s also important to note another paradox about awareness-energy: in the fourth foundation there is simultaneously a sense of energy and flow (movement) and of stability (stillness). The stillness is now also present because of the Ground of Being—the stable fullness, the ground that is everywhere, that you can relax into and feel safe in, that you can feel in your body. But what about the energy? Many people begin to feel a subtle sense of bliss arising both within their body and as if the world is alive and sparkling. This is the movement, feminine, dancing aliveness that is called “shakti” in India and “emptiness-bliss” in Tibetan Buddhism. This is a real and natural quality of this foundation’s unfolding that is different from blissful pleasure that comes and goes.
You may remember that we explored the “flow state” in chapter 1. It is in this fourth foundation of awareness-energy embodied that you feel both the ground and the flow state, or that feeling of “being in the zone.” This is the other paradox of the fourth foundation: a new kind of stillness and flow. In this flow state, you’re effortlessly moving around, doing activities in which time slows down; your concept of self is interconnected with everything around you; and you’re embodied and operating from a nonconceptual intelligence that knows just what to do.
GLIMPSEAwake Awareness-Energy Embodied
Experiencing the ground of awareness-energy simultaneously within and around your body can decrease the self-referencing mind-wandering associated with the default-mode network. This type of mind-wandering ceases when the two networks of the inward and the outward focus become synchronized, and we become more present and in our body.
In this practice, we are shifting from a detached witnessing self to embodied awake awareness. Try this mindful glimpse a number of times until you get the feel of the equal balance of awareness outside and within as a continuous field. Once you get this for about three minutes, it seems to break the default mode habit, and most people experience a stable, undistracted flow.
1.Unhook local awareness from thought and have it shift to hearing from one ear.
2.Notice the effect of awareness focused on a small area and simply hearing.
3.Just as the local awareness can focus on a small area, experience local awareness opening to the space outside your body where sound is coming and going.
4.Instead of focusing on what is moving through the space, allow local awareness to become interested in space.
5.Notice the shift from awareness of space to noticing that space is aware. Pause and allow this tuning in to spacious awake awareness to happen clearly.
6.Allow awareness to be aware of itself as a contentless, formless, timeless field of awake awareness. Allow your sense of awake awareness to be boundless.
7.Feel the discovery that you have let go of small self and are now located in this boundless awake awareness. When you turn to be aware from awake awareness, notice that the field of awareness-energy is already connected to everything all around and within your body as an ocean of awareness that is arising as waves of aliveness and sensation.
8.Looking with awareness, inquire: Where am I aware from?
9.Feel the unified field that is awareness-energy both outside and within simultaneously.
10.Feel the seamless unity of awareness-energy that has no outside or inside.
11.Without going up to thought, down to sleep, or back into a daydream, stay with the knowing from the field of awareness-energy that is naturally inclusive and undistracted. Feel the movement of sound and breath both outside and inside. Feel that awareness-energy is equally aware seamlessly outside and inside, without having to alternate.
12.Marinate in this effortless mindfulness.
GLIMPSEThe Now
The most classical form of Self-inquiry is to ask, “Who am I?” Adyashanti’s teachings help us realize awake awareness as source by asking, “What am I?” Most of the glimpses that I have been presenting have focused on shifting out of the small self and the meditative point of view by asking, “Where am I?” When we transition back from boundless, timeless awake awareness to awake awareness-energy embodied, we begin to feel that the Now is both timeless and able to function with conventional clock time. If we want to learn to be in the Now, we can ask, “When am I?”
Here we can begin to experience the Now with one of the most famous Mahamudra instructions, based on the teachings of the first-century Indian Tantric practitioner and spiritual adept Tilopa, called “Six Points of Tilopa” or “Six Ways of Resting the Mind in Its Natural Condition.” It advises:
Don’t recall.
Let go of the past.
Don’t anticipate.
Let go of what may come in the future.
Don’t think.
Let go of what is happening in the present.
Don’t examine.
Don’t particularize or analyze.
Don’t control.
Don’t try to make anything happen.
Rest.
Relax naturally, right Now.2
The Now is the timeless time of awake awareness that includes the three times of past, present, and future. We can learn not to collapse into identifying with one particular time or state of mind. We can familiarize ourselves with the view from the Now, which experiences everything all at once. Here is a modern version of this to help you experience being in the Now.
1.Right now, let local awareness unhook from thought and drop below your neck.
2.Feel the thoughts that come and go, the tick-tock of each moment appearing and disappearing.
3.Open to the now that doesn’t get stuck in any present moment. Feel from timeless, spacious awareness that includes past, present, and future.
4.Be aware as each new present moment arrives and passes.
5.Notice that being fully here and now—from awake awareness—there is no problem with being aware of the past, present, or future.
6.Inquire: What’s here now?
Don’t go up to refer to thought.
Don’t go down to fall asleep.
Don’t go back to refer to the past.
Don’t go even one moment forward to anticipate the future.
Don’t cling to the passing present moments.
Don’t look out to the world to create a subject-object relationship.
Don’t fall into daydreaming.
7.Feel the magnetic pull forward to the future, the pull back to the past, and the pull to try to hold on to the present.
8.Rest your awareness equally inside and outside. Open to the Now and notice the timeless, continuous field of awareness-energy in which all of these present moments of experience are appearing and disappearing.
9.Let go, relax, and be in the all-at-once-ness of the Now.
10.Without going to thought, what’s here now when there is no problem to solve?
GLIMPSEEmotions as Awareness-Energy
When you start this exercise, bring your awareness within your body and find any emotion that is there now. You can do this exercise with any emotion, pleasant or unpleasant, but when you do this for the first time, please try it with an unpleasant emotion. If you don’t have an unpleasant emotion available, choose the unpleasant emotion that you encounter most often in your life. If necessary, you can go to a memory or a recent situation in your life to bring up an unpleasant emotion. By practicing this, you will learn that you can feel sad without being sad, anger without being angry, and more.
1.Find an emotion—fear, anger, or jealousy, for instance—and begin by feeling it fully. (I’ll use sadness as an example in the following steps; you can substitute whatever emotion you choose.)
2.Silently say to yourself, “I am sad.”
3.Fully experience what it is like to say and feel “I am sad.” Stay with this experience until you feel it completely.
4.Now, instead of saying, “I am sad,” take a breath and say, “I feel sadness.”
5.Notice the shift from “I am” to “I feel.” Experience this shift and the new feeling of being. From here, feel your relationship to the sadness as a feeling.
6.Shift again by saying, “I am aware of feeling sadness.”
7.Experience awareness of feeling sadness fully. Shift into an observing awareness. Notice the different emotional quality that comes from this.
8.Shift again, and silently say “Sadness is welcome.”
9.Starting from awareness, experience what welcoming the feeling is like.
10.Feel the awareness-energy embody and embrace the feeling. Notice the different emotional quality that comes from welcoming. Sense the support that welcoming brings.
