Audio `Version - Guided Meditation

Written Transcript of the guided meditation

Let's allow ourselves to genuinely just be here. I'm going to release any sort of expectation I might have, and just fall in love with right now.

I can open the eyes of my heart, and connect with the reality of this moment, realizing that I am right here, right now.

This will be a guided meditation, but with the intention of taking a journey into consciousness and seeing what's happening. We'll look at the mechanism of perception within consciousness, and how it shapes the world we experience.

Connect with the Breathe

In preparation for this journey inward, let's just connect with the breath, realize its presence. We can observe the breath, inhaling and then exhaling, in and out it flows. Just in our willingness to be present, our willingness to focus on the breath, can you recognize how things become much more quieter?

Just notice that before we enter into the space of meditation. Maybe there's a lot of noise going on in the mind, a lot of thoughts going this way and that way, wondering about this and that. Let's just recognize that as we are still and connect with this moment, things naturally become more quiet.

We can recognize that there's no demand that says, "We have to think about this, or have to think about that." There's an openness here, an emptiness.

In that emptiness we can think about this, and we can think about that, but there's no demand.

We're going to just breathe for a little bit, and allow ourselves to connect with that openness. You can breathe in the emptiness and exhale the noise.

Container of Emptiness

I invite you to recognize this container of emptiness, and you can associate that container with consciousness. It's like there is an empty... awake-ness within you, that allows for all manner of experience.

It's like in this moment right now, there's a blank landscape that allows you to think about anything, and those thoughts are infinite in nature, such as a blank canvas that allows for you to paint anything you might imagine.

Do you notice that even though there is that emptiness, there's something there that is awake in that emptiness? Maybe we can even say that the emptiness is awake.

Just feel into that for a moment, the emptiness of your own consciousness that's holding space for all things.

It's like, as I sit here, I can hear the ticking of a clock, and I can see how that ticking is happening inside the emptiness. If it wasn't for the emptiness, there could be no ticking of the clock.

Do you notice how whatever sound there might be, that's happening within your consciousness?

Maybe if you sit with your eyes closed, you can recognize how that consciousness doesn't end at the boundary of your skin, so much to say that the body is inside that consciousness.

In fact, you can't even find the boundary of the consciousness... where does the emptiness end?

I invite you to recognize that whatever arises within this consciousness, it comes and goes. It's the consciousness that remains, the awake-ness that remains, but everything else rises and falls.

I sit here inside, I can hear the ticking clock, but when I go outside, the sound of the clock will be gone, but yet the emptiness I take with me.

Perception & Your Painting

Now, let's recognize that within this consciousness there's something that we'll call perception, a way of seeing. In the same way that if you're staring at a blank canvas, and you have a paintbrush and some colors, you might look at a sunset and then paint a picture of the sunset.

The picture you paint, in a way shows how you perceive the sunset.

Your perception is your painting.

Granted, as you paint a picture of the sunset, your painting is not the sunset, it's just a way of perceiving the sunset. The painting simply shows you how you see it, but the painting doesn't say anything about the sunset.

The painting shows you how you perceive.

Now, curiously, how you perceive the sunset, creates your experience with the sunset.

How I perceive the sound of the ticking clock, creates my experience of the ticking clock. I could perceive it as an interruption, I could perceive it as a helper in being present. I can perceive it as a friend, or I can perceive it as an enemy.

Yet, no matter how I perceive it, it's not that. How I perceive it creates my reality, it creates what I experience.

This is so fundamentally important, and we are simply not taught this. The ticking clock doesn't have power over my reality. The ticking clock cannot give me a perception, it cannot make me paint a particular picture.

I just invite you to recognize this that in whatever environment you find yourself in, whether there are sounds, smells, or sensations... I invite you to recognize that all of those things can't make you perceive anything.

They cannot make you happy, they cannot make you sad, they cannot make you anxious, they cannot make you excited. All of that is in response to how you perceive; it’s in response to your painting.

You Are Powerful, Not Powerless

Now, in a very playful and gentle way, I just invite you to see how much you have been taught the complete opposite, in a way that says, "You are powerless," in a way that says...

"Something out there has power over you, something out there makes you happy, something out there makes you sad, something out there makes you afraid, something out there makes you excited, something out there can save you, something out there... has power over you."

This is what we're taught. This is the great confusion, the great misunderstanding. It is a confusion that says you are a victim of the world around you.

The opportunity right now is to simply see that it's not true, and to rest in that truth. I'm not suggesting that you do anything with it, I'm just inviting you to see it.

Do you notice how... if you don't recognize your own inherent power, the depth of what you really are, you become afraid, and look to claim power on the outside.

To illustrate this with the example of the ticking clock, if I perceive it as an enemy, and I think it's really that, then I will look to destroy the clock. That can come in the form of judgment, condemnation, some sort of withholding of freedom that says, "You are not allowed to be what you are, you must be what I want you to be."

In this, in the confusion of what I am that sees myself as separate from what I experience, I look to have power over that which I think I am experiencing; that something or someone on the outside.

I want control, I want power over the outside, so that I can control the inside. Even though it doesn't really work that way, it can look like it works that way, it can seem like it works that way, but it's not really true.

Look Beyond the Confusion

I just really invite you to see this inside of yourself, no judgment, just to see that part that is confused and wants power over the outside, that wants other people to not be what they are, that thinks that other people should do this or should do that so that you can be at peace, the confusion that thinks that other people can make you have a perception.

So, in this effort to have power over the outside, you must take power from that thing, or that someone, you must convince them to give up their power.

My friends, if you can see this in yourself, I invite you to see that this is the game the whole world is playing. Those who want power, seek to take it from others. So, yes, in a way, those who want power will seek to take it from you.

But I'm inviting you to see that it's impossible, nobody can take your power, you must give it up. So, what will happen, there will be an attempt to manipulate you out of your power, of your sovereignty.

But I guess, in a way of encouragement, very, very gently, we have been convinced that there is a world that exists that doesn't really exist. The intent of that world, that we are told that exists, is to manipulate you into giving up your power.

It's not wrong, and it's not bad per se, it's just what happens. In the same way, you can look at your own misunderstanding of what you are, and try and take power from others, it sprung from an innocent misunderstanding of what you are. In the way that you can see that it might happen on a small scale within yourself, it can happen on a very big scale as well.

It's not said to scare you in any way, it's to invite you to look inward and see what you really are. See the world that is real, see what you really are, not who other people tell you you are. See what you really are, not what the mind says you are.

Understandably, you might recognize a vast contrast, and that vast contrast is similar to the contrast between what is really happening right now, and what the mind says is happening.

The mind creates a world that is totally imagined, and yet there is a reality to right now, where there is a profound peace, wellness and love.

I simply invite you to see this, and to rest in it.

Thanks for hanging out with me.