Letting Go, Doing Nothing

success that involved restarting everything so um sometimes you just gotta start from the very beginning i am michael taft your local cult leader and you are in my cult at this point so let's uh begin our meditation together um i'm gonna make some paper sounds here get stuff out of the way uh yay yes we're here sometimes it's just a little more fraught with challenges than others but at this point i think i have it under control he said crossing four sets of fingers um let's begin our meditation this evening by starting out with getting in our meditation posture so as usual i want you to sit with your knees if possible your knees below your hips uh if you're on a chair like i'm on a rolly chair you just sit way forward and the chair nuts so much that the chair squeezes like a like a lemon seed out from between your fingers your pure wind shoots out behind you but rather you just sit very balanced on the front so that your knees are down and you're just supporting your own back but notice because your knees are down your back just sits up nice and straight totally naturally totally without effort or if you have a meditation cushion that's the point of that cushion uh you can also lay on your back with your knees in the air so that your back is flat so those are the positions that we like to meditate in if possible you can even meditate standing up if you're really tired um so get in or if it feels good get in one of those positions or honestly any other position you feel like that you can stay in for an hour without moving and then uh i want you to just move around it till it feels really nice really settled really calm really stable and then what we're going to do is set our intentions so what that means is maybe set intention is not exactly the right way to say it remember intention recall our intention why are we meditating what is the goal overall for our meditation practice why do we do this at all so whatever that is for you just bring that up now remember why you do this and then next we're going to do a um resource gathering a visualization okay and part of why i have this hilarious cult leader t-shirt on um is because the visualization tonight we've never done this we're gonna sit like a rainbow okay so sometimes we sit like a mountain sometimes we sit like an ocean and so on tonight we're gonna sit like a rainbow so i want you to picture this beautiful rainbow and that's what this shirt is there for to help you remember what a rainbow looks like remember blue on the inside of the arc red on the outside of the arc and everything in between in between so you're visualizing this exquisitely gorgeous lovely shining rainbow okay and uh you're sitting as if you're a rainbow what does it mean to sit like a rainbow well a rainbow in this case metaphorically where it's beautiful so sit with a sense of beauty of having beauty it's um got all the different colors so it's not like all condensed down into white light it's the ex the full expression so it's sitting with a full expression we could say full expression of your already existing buddhahood or full expression of [Music] awake awareness full expression of the mind of awakening right so it's not only beautiful it's got this uh mood of just complete uh unimpeded delightful and uh celebratory expression right so sitting like a rainbow also it's um effortless right the rainbow just appears nobody paints it it's not some kind of effortful creation it's perfectly effortless so there's a sense of effortlessness and there's also remember last week where we did the the um mandala visualization up and down the central channel the rainbow contains all those mandala qualities as well right so you can really feel all the different qualities if you did the mandala practice then those are all present for you and then i could go on and on we could do a whole meditation just visualizing this rainbow because that would be really nice but the last one i'll say is that um maybe it's two more the the rainbow is just kind of hanging there in space it is um it has no weight so not only is it effortless but it's weightless there's this incredibly beautiful display having no mass right it's just i mean scientifically we could probably say the photons making up the rainbow have some kind of mass but we're thinking about it metaphorically it's just like this piece of artwork hanging in the sky with no weight at all it's feather light it's like utterly um like floating like soaring without any effort so we're sitting like that and then lastly the rainbow is a symbol of emptiness right because um emptiness doesn't mean things aren't there it's not a void it's not when we see a rainbow we see a black void of nothing we see the opposite we see this exquisite expression of all the colors and yet you can't touch it you can't go out and find it you can't you know it's both there and not there it's like kind of like a dream or a vision it's it has this empty quality of their and not theirness at the same time so i want you to whatever it means to you i won't go over all those qualities again but just think of the most beautiful and profound things about a rainbow and um and sit with that and just visualize this rainbow sit like a rainbow and we'll do that together for a few minutes here and then we'll move on from there good now to go a little deeper into this as we see the empty nature of the rainbow that allows us to tune into our own empty nature the fact that no matter in the same way that the rainbow is both there and not there it's filled with color and yet you can't really find it in the very same way even though you have thoughts and feelings and and an expression as a person if you look inside trying to find the source or the um reality of these thoughts and feelings you can't really find it you can't really touch it and so in the same way that the rainbow is both beautiful and alive and vibrant and real and at the same time empty our self our feeling of being a separate self is also vibrant and alive and and in a sense real and in another sense utterly empty so allow yourself to gaze upon that rainbow while and notice its emptiness the fact that it's like hanging in the sky like a dream a shining dream and yet you can't just like a dream you can't actually reach out and touch it in the same way you yourself are just hanging in the space of awareness thoughts and feelings passing in awareness and yet there's nothing to touch there's nothing to reach out and find so the emptiness of the rainbow reflects the emptiness in you the emptiness of being reflects the emptiness of the rainbow and this is very very pleasant very beautiful so sit with that for a few minutes good now from here because we are empty and the rainbow is empty just allow the rainbow to come inside you so that instead of being a human body breathing and and digesting and all the things that a human body does and instead of being thoughts and feelings or whatever we imagine ourselves to be we're simply a rainbow shining in the sky that's all there is is a rainbow shining in the sky it's violet indigo blue green yellow orange red all shining bright in an infinite vast empty sky picture that now feel that now be that now and really feel the beauty of the colors and the shining light the effortlessness of it absolutely effortless shining rainbow really notice the fact that it's weightless unfindable and empty and yet also there it's not nothing and it's shining with this tremendous joy and beauty okay good now from here we're gonna [Music] begin meditating on our breath and so there's enough contact with body sensation to just feel the breath but here's how i want you to breathe okay if you if you need to or you want to just breathe normally but if you can what i'd like you to do is actually breathe as gently and softly and barely there as possible so we're doing a really really really gentle breath now don't do it so gently that you you know feel like you're not getting enough oxygen like you're not getting enough air or whatever that's not the point i just want you to breathe as gently and shallowly as you can and have it still feel good okay so it's very very soft breath very barely moving at all okay again don't do it so much that you need to yawn or whatever make it work for you but within the parameters of comfort breathe tremendously tremendously gently and then just allow that wave of the breath to arise in the sky of the of awareness with the rainbow we can let the rainbow vision go now just allow the wave of the breath to be noticed in awareness rising and noticed in awareness falling so we're not pointing attention at the breath we're just letting the breath itself just arise without any effort and awareness and fall again without any effort in awareness good now continue with this remembering that when i say the sensations of the breath are just rising in awareness that that's effortless awareness is already aware of the feelings of the breath that's how you know they're there so there's nothing to do except allow the wave of the breath to be noticed effortlessly by awareness but when i say awareness i mean that vast sky-like mind the vast spacious awareness in which the sky in which the rainbow was appearing before so it's just this wave of breath sensation effortlessly arising in a vast sky of mind so let's continue okay now continuing to do that really gentle breath if that feels nice to you i want i want you to switch from noticing the breath wave rising and falling in awareness again effortlessly awareness just already knows artie can be aware of the breath wave i want you to do the same thing with all thoughts and emotions so but especially thoughts whether they're visual or verbal thoughts there's the sky of awareness and thinking is just a trickle of vapor moving through that sky of awareness it's like just a little little ripple in the air of the sky of awareness it's not disturbing the sky in any way and it's not something to really focus on we're not we don't we're not engaging with the content but we still are actually very aware of it so it's a little different than dropping the ball because we're not just completely disregarding it and just letting it be there we are actually um even though we're not sharply focusing on it we are giving it some attention noticing it as a focus object so it's still shown to with an object rather than on the breath just very lightly on thinking itself without getting involved in the thinking at all give that a shot and if that's too difficult come back to meditating on breathing notice that thoughts don't discur disturb the sky of awareness the vast sky of awareness in any way they're just like ripples on the ocean or just like currents of air in the sky it's not disturbed the sky is big enough and fast enough and still enough for those thoughts to move through it for air currents to move through it without it being disturbed in any way okay good now if you're used to meditating with your eyes open [Music] this is a good time to do that if you're not used to it but you want to try it out then now's the time to do that just have your eyes open [Music] but they're not really focused on anything you're not really looking with them they're just open and they're relaxed and not narrowly looking at anything they're just kind of relaxed and open they don't have to be out of focus and they don't have to be still sometimes if we leave our eyes still that the visual field will start to disappear uh based on you know the retina cells getting the retinal cells getting tired so feel free to blink and move your eyes and all that but they're just it's just relaxed it's just easy gaze and then what we're doing as a meditation now and i want you to listen to this instruction carefully because i mean it we're gonna do nothing at all okay you're not focusing but you're also not not focusing you're not doing anything at all you're not following thoughts you're not trying to stay with something you're not even actually meditating okay you're letting go even of the idea of meditating you're still in your posture you're still sitting still but you're letting go of everything unless letting go becomes a doing in which case we let go of letting go and just sit so that's what i want you to do now if you notice that you're getting real caught up in stuff just let go of it or if you want to just be caught up in it until you're done but what we're really doing is letting go completely we're not doing anything and so when you're caught up in thought that's kind of a doing so we just the usual thing is to just let go of it and let go of everything again even the idea that you're meditating even the idea that you're supposed to change something at all that's why i say in a way you don't have to change anything just sit there just sit there and allow yourself to let go totally effortless totally without doing simply being what if there's nothing to change at all nothing to do nothing to dry everything is already perfect everything is already complete everything is already fulfilled and there's absolutely nothing to do wide awake just resting naturally as vast spacious awareness without any effort without any doing of any kind without even the idea of meditating or a meditator not even anybody doing anything just natural resting as open awareness now if again if this is too difficult or chaotic feel free to go back and simply meditate on the breath wave arising and passing an awareness otherwise let's continue foreign good now into this vast space visualize again the rainbow shining effortlessly beautifully radiantly with all its various colors see that very very clearly now just radiantly shining with beauty and joy and diversity with these effortless weightless unfindable liquid colors radiant shining [Music] and then let them just fly out colors just fly they dissolve or like break up and fly in all directions to everywhere every person in the world every being in the world every being in the entire universe gets touched by this rainbow light and feels that joy and feels that beauty feels that radiance and feels that uh variation the diversity and then just let that go and be just completely empty again for just another moment okay very good let's let go of the meditation there and just allow yourself to open up a little bit physically relax a little more move and stretch in whatever way feels really really good maybe you wiggle your fingers and toes or just kind of allow your spine to wiggle in a way that feels really delicious or whatever have a drink of water have a drink of tea or whatever it is you use to wet your whistle at the end of a good sit okay so um i want to talk a little bit about awareness itself and sometimes people talk about awareness like it's a kind of a thing that they are going to look at so and i might even use language like that sometimes because that's just how our language is structured and in fact all languages are structured this way some some academic stuff from the 1920s and 30s about other languages that supposedly don't do that actually turn out to that turns out to be incorrect one way they didn't really understand the languages very well so um we always uh our language always makes it sound like one thing over here is looking at another thing over there and so we can often see it can often sound like the idea is oh i'm over here and i'm going to look at awareness over there and an awareness is a thing some kind of special thing i'm going to see okay and that's not what's going on with awareness because in order to see anything in order to be aware of it of anything you've got to be aware right and so there's a funny circular thing going on like the person over here who thinks he's looking at the awareness over there is in fact that looking itself is awareness so if you think you're you're over here looking at awareness over there then my question is who's looking and of course that lead that's kind of an inquiry question right that like we did last the other week we get into inquiry because if you try to look at who's looking you'll notice that it's awareness itself looking add awareness and so you have this paradox of the like it seems like maybe awareness is split into an awareness over here is looking at awareness over there and you realize all of that is not necessary or we could say all of that is nonsense there's nothing over here looking at anything over there at all awareness is already effortlessly aware awareness has no location so it can't be over here looking at something over there or to put it in another way to say it has no location is the same thing as saying it's located everywhere so but it has no positionality so it's not looking one way or another that's just um a way we talk and it's also a way that we're used to kind of encountering our own visual experience when we think about positioning our head and our eyes and all that but that position of the head in the eyes or that position of the ears unless all of that is different than awareness itself awareness itself has no position it has no direction it's never the case that i'm over here and looking at that special thing called awareness over there awareness is just aware of itself right and if we wanted to think about it each of the sense gates only function because of awareness so even if i feel like my body is over here and my eyes are pointing over there and i'm looking at the beautiful after sunset clouds which are out there right now it's getting a little a few months past the uh winter solstice right so it's a little lighter out at this time and i can see these after sun clouds so i'm over here and my eyes are looking over there all of that the feeling of being a body over here the the whole perspective will take of eyes over here that are looking in a certain way at clouds that are over there all of that perspective stuff and positionality stuff all of that is something i'm aware of and so again all of that is just a rising in awareness and awareness is located in all those places and centered in none of them awareness has no center no edge and no middle it's just all awareness itself so you know the idea sure my eyes are located somewhere and they're looking at a thing over there but awareness is in both locations and everywhere in between and is actually underlying that whole process and so each of the sense gates might have a kind of positionality might have a kind of seeming dualism but the minute we come from awareness and understand that the after sunset clouds over there and the feeling of eyes over here perceiving those all of those are rising in the same awareness that dualism collapses right there's there's still difference there's still the feeling in one part of awareness and the clouds and the other part of awareness and all that so difference is not annihilated we don't want to make it into the gray goo scenario the oatmeal scenario where everything is just one thing and there's no difference because of course there's difference there's the feeling of being a body there's the colors of being after sunset clouds right so different there's a rainbow instead of a void the difference is not and each color of the rainbow is different than the other colors so difference is not annihilated and at the same time everything is joined in the in awareness itself and of course i don't want you to make awareness itself into some kind of object awareness is not an object right it's um empty like everything else remembering that empty doesn't mean it's not there of course awareness is there you're having an experience of it right now you are awareness itself and one way of looking at it and yet that's oh that's empty too don't make that into an object don't make that into the thing into a thing don't make that into the new deity to worship don't make that into the new you know object of desire that you're trying to get anyone who's trying to get awareness does not understand what the they're doing because you you know awareness is at the basis of everything right the fact that you even know that you want something is because you're aware of wanting so there is no special awareness to right it's not an object and neither are you every time you catch yourself thinking of yourself as an object look carefully look who's having the experience right now of thinking they're an object and you're looking right at the core of that feeling of being you is this nebulous uh awareness experience of shifting and moving body sensations shifting and moving emotions moving and shifting thoughts of various kinds and it's all kind of there but kind of not there it's very nebulous it's very undefined there's a pattern to it and yet it's not a completely defined pattern and so it's empty right the the feeling of being a self a separate ego is made up of thoughts and feelings and needs you to think those thoughts and feelings are solid and real in order to come forward as this reified object well guess what reified objects get hurt reified objects suffer reunified objects really have a difficult time [Music] and it's not required that we think of ourselves as a reified object right let go of the hypothesization that you know the making it real that you habitually do and instead see that at the core of whatever we can call it the core of your being or deep down in your soul or looking right at the seeming center of your own experience like a lot of and again it's not coming from a positionality awareness has no positionality so just be aware of whatever feels like the center of whatever's going on like the most infamous intimate spot in the deepest secret place in your heart notice that that's just gnostic space it's knowing space it's empty and yet shiningly blazingly aware and stuff is happening there's thoughts and feelings but that's not they're all just kind of ripples in awareness so it's very important to get this idea of how we're seeing this right this is all about the view this kind of manual meditation is all about the view meaning all about drishti and sanskrit i love that word drishti meaning the view we could say it's a whole understanding of um where we're coming from or a whole understand of understanding of who we are or who we think we are or where we think we're coming from as long as you think you're positioned in a body and you're coming out your eyes or whatever you're going to have one kind of experience and it's going to probably be fraught with suffering but if you allow that to show its own emptiness the fact that it's nebulous flowing just experience and your view is awareness located nowhere is just aware and it's not a thing either you're gonna have a that's a different viewpoint it's a different point of view almost can't even call it a point of view but we'll call it a drishti in sanskrit of view and that's much less fraud there's much less suffering in that view so it's very worth um checking out and also notice that that's you know that's available just without any effort at all if you just sit and relax and allow yourself to open you'll notice that view arising quite naturally quite effortlessly quite spontaneously and that there's a kind of beauty in that and a kind of nobility in that and a kind of peace and clarity in that that is much deeper than you may have imagined and yet it's not some kind of special state it's not some kind of altered state it's not some kind of thing the object of desire that you're trying to get it's always already there good so if you have questions please uh put those in the chat window right now or if you're watching this asynchronously you can put it in the comment fields so please ask me some questions and i will do my best to answer them now and if not i see there's very few questions coming through this week um if not let's just sit together and continue to um drop in so to speak to this fast spacious awakeness this fast gnostic boundlessness when i say gnostic right it means knowing it means it's aware the nearest metaphor to awareness is space but space is different than awareness because space is not awake it's not aware so awareness is like space except it's like knowing space space that knows space that nose so we could call that gnostic space sounds kind of cool checking out what are you doing michael well i'm checking out my gnostic space hanging out i'm hanging out in gnostic space so i'll just be quiet here while you guys come up with uh some q a questions and again if you don't have any that's cool too maybe that means you know your mind's settled so much the meditation that it's just not coming up with things to ask and that's great uh colin has a question which is during the meditation when we did nothing there was a felt sense of this moment being enough how does that felt sense of this moment being enough relate to awareness in a way it's a little bit of a circular answer because i would just say well that's what awareness feels like you know um when when we're just resting in awareness as i said there's no sense of anything being incomplete or imperfect or undone so there's nothing to do and everything's already perfect and everything's already complete now what's weird and this is fascinating is eventually we can learn to do this while we're walking around and going to the bank and talking to people and in other words wow there's stuff to do but that doesn't mean we have to feel like something's wrong or something's not enough right we when we're resting in awareness itself which you know is a deeper sense of our own beingness right again it's not an identity in the sense of some kind of solid object but it's certainly a deeper sense of our own ground of being things just feel like they're enough they feel like they're already complete which is another way of saying the same thing they feel like they're already perfect which is another way of saying the same thing so this is one of the wonderful things the wonderful thing about awareness is awareness is a wonderful thing um it feels like it's enough and and as we tune into that you know you find that you can rest in that much more completely right that felt sense of things being enough is really something that is restful there's a lot of equanimity in it right so that's great chris says when living life in a very busy life it can seem like we're not aware of the present but you're saying that we are aware through these moments is that correct well are are you i mean if you're not aware that means there's no experience that's like being dead so so again it's not some special awareness it's just awareness so if you're living a very busy life and you're able to like talk to people and see colors and and eat food and know that that's happening that's awareness right so awareness is at the bottom of so to speak the stack of every experience you can't have an experience without it so of course you're aware through all those moments and it's funny even when you're asleep and dreaming you're aware of a dream so awareness is there and this is the really interesting one when you're in deep sleep without dreams there's still a low level of awareness happening because if somebody like calls your name you wake up so how did you know they were calling your name some part of you was aware enough to be listening so awareness is always there and that i think is really fascinating so yes um it's not a complicated idea you are always aware through every moment of life thanks for the question chris kevin what is a question you enjoy being an asked and how would you answer it well it's not that one [Laughter] just kidding i like the rainbow in your question thanks kevin um i enjoy being asked any sincere question about meditation this is my um my son cult but my vow so to speak the thing i love to do is to guide people in meditation guide people in you know a deeper sense of contact with being enough with their own spacious being which is wide awake all the time right that makes me feel really really good so i love teaching meditation i love teaching this and any questions about that you know is part of that so i feel really excellent answering those kind of questions ben or benjar says what a relief to meditate without being a meditator yeah or to not meditate without being a meditator it's a big relief chris has a second thing also side note when is your next death meditation that's death sangha it's going to be in a couple months i don't do it that often right now because i want to you know especially over zoom just want to keep it kind of a special once in a while thing uh when we move into the olympic space in berkeley we're already moved in there but i mean when the is open and we're doing live meditations there we might do it a little more often not promising but maybe colin um who asked the question about the felt sense of the moment being enough says thank you it's so strange and convincing slash frustrating how the mind feels a sensation tells a story and that this moment isn't enough well that's what minds do right we um evolved to say how could i make this moment better oh i could clean this up or i could have some more food or i could get rid of that or there's always a way that everything could be better and yet that exact part of our mind is also the part that keeps us from ever actually resting in our own beingness and so sometimes we just want to let go of all that which doesn't mean it goes away you just stop engaging with it and reflect allow awareness to just reflect itself like a mirror reflecting itself right okay so let's switch gears now and i'll do all my um advertisements my links and advertisements first and foremost thanks for coming to join me for this guided meditation tonight and what i'd like you to do is if you're not already subscribed to the channel please subscribe to the channel and click the little bell icon which means you'll get notified when there's a new live meditation starting right so please subscribe to the channel and then you know make sure you're getting the notifications so you always know when i'm starting one of these and i usually send it out about a half an hour in advance which gives you time to you know get ready so please subscribe to the channel remember it's free these all and on the channel there's like 120 or 130 of these hour-long guided meditations that are completely free right so this channel is available to you for free and that's like i said that's my son culpa that's my wish that's my bow that's what i want to offer to the world is hundreds of hours of free guided meditation right and and some q a if you'd like to help me do this if you want to contribute then please donate to help me do you know the youtube channel and to do my website deconstructingyourself.com that website has a lot of articles on it and a lot of other material if you contribute it also helps me put out the podcast which again just like the website just like the youtube channel that's all free and so um if you go to deconstructingyourself.com donate you can donate to help me do this uh if you like these youtube meditations there's a discord server that has a lot of channels on there there's over a thousand people in there sharing about meditation if you've been on the discord channel and you know want to get more out of it we're we're asking anyone who feels comfortable being a mod a moderator on the discord server or at least a couple channels of the discord server that'd be great we need some moderators to help i want i want the discord community to be a little more structured it's been very freeform so far but i think we want to make it a little more structured so we need some moderators so if you want to do that [Music] that's available there's a note in one of the channels about doing that so please sign up it's on the volunteers channel of the discord server um and if you took the vas skymind course or any one of the vast skyline courses probably today you got an email that there's a skymind2 has come out so we'll start we'll start doing that in a little under under a month so early april so a reminder if you've done the vast sky mine course already best guy mine level 2 is there for you and but and one of these months will also bring out a new round of ask i mind level one so i've got all these classes for you those are not free classes the other thing is um just briefly katie and eric and i founded a meditation and yoga and movement and science and culture center in berkeley called the alembic and the olympic is a non-profit center and so if you want to help by contributing to the alembic that's a non-profit um contribution you can make to that so katie will be putting a link in the chat window about how to contribute to the alembic so that's a whole other thing and if you are in the bay area or thinking about visiting the bay area know that in approximately a month early april we'll be opening our doors and doing live meditation there assuming that various viruses various uh kovid type illnesses allow us to do that it looks like you know we'll be able to all sit together in a room in about a month in the bay area so if you live here that's right on 7th street in berkeley right next to berkeley bowl west and if you don't live here um go to berkeley alembic is it berkeley alembic.org katie [Music] um let me see it's berkeley oh i'm back i can't believe i'm forgetting this anyway i think it's berkeley olympic.org yeah.org and find the address and and come find us okay we'd love to see you say hey i i saw you on youtube i've been following your stuff on youtube and uh come come meditate with us so speaking of meditating let's just spend one minute together now doing whatever meditation you want i'm gonna just like visualize being a rainbow radiating out all these different colors to the universe we'll just do that for a minute or so let's go okay let's end that there um thanks for joining me tonight i again i'm michael taft your local plastic fantastic cult leader and uh i hope to see you uh soon either next week on the youtube channel or uh in the on the discord server or in bas skymind or at the alembic or somewhere else thanks for joining me tonight and i'll see you soon all right everybody bye bye

Channel: Michael Taft

Views: 2,212

Keywords: meditation, mindfulness, vipassana, relaxation, buddhism, dharma, nondual, mahayana, vajrayana, zen, dzogchen, awareness, guided meditation, visualization, tantra, effortless

Id: BZ1WcFH6v0A

Length: 87min 57sec (5277 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2022