Pure Embodied Awareness

Guided nondual meditation by Michael Taft at the San Francisco Dharma Collective.
Meditation lasts 1 hour, followed by dharma talk and questions.
3:02 -- begin relaxation and deep belly breathing
18:37 -- allow awareness to the notice place in the head where it seems to be centered
27:57 -- allow awareness to notice the throat area
37:58 -- allow awareness to drop into the heart region
48:22 -- allow awareness to drop into the belly
57:58 -- "awareness just notices whatever awareness notices...but notice too that whatever is noticed is itself simply made of awareness"
1:03:47 -- dharma talk and q&a
When we allow awareness to simply and directly notice body sensations-without the tension or effort of egoic manipulation-we come into a kind of pure embodied awareness.
We also notice that all sensations in the body-just like all sensations of any kind-are essentially empty. Noticing this emptiness at these sensitive points in the body helps to remove fusion and identification with the sense of self.
This technique of moving the apparent center of awareness around the body is a powerful technique. In reality, there is no center of awareness anywhere in particular, rather it is everywhere. That is, every point in awareness is equally aware. We can use that in meditations like "dropping the ball" to simply rest in even awareness everywhere. Or, like in this meditation, we can allow an apparent center to appear anywhere. Again, this powerfully undermines the sense of awareness being located only in the head.
Learn more about nonduality here: deconstructing...
Please consider contributing to Michael's Patreon to keep videos like this coming: / michaeltaft

[@jameshetfield5894]

You help me so much on this path, man. A thank you seems impotent. 😊 I know you don’t have a mountain of spare time, but I would really love to watch videos of you just talking about non-duality and your thoughts and history concerning it. Your podcast interviews are always interesting, but it would also be fun to just hear you talk for an hour to us. Meditation mutant monologue, baby.

[@MichaelTaft108]

Thanks, James. Thank yous are very welcome!!!

[@sirlordcomic]

Like a very long glimpse practice. Thanks Michael.

[@TintomaraAriadne]

I think I may have learned how to rather reliably access that open awareness now, and awareness being aware of itself, instead of just stumbling over it now and then. I tune into the space/presence in which the sound of silence appears (I hear it all the time so I don’t need to imagine anything). That invokes that specific feeling or recognition that has always felt so incredibly familiar and simple and yet so impossible to place. It also opens up my respiratory tracts instantly. Sometimes there is a crunching sound and touch sensation somewhere inside my head. Sometimes it is just a gentle pop as the perspective shifts. Today when I did it out in a park, I found that it made depth vision go away temporarily. Everything was equally near.
Amazing how everything is still how it is, and at the same time so much easier to bear, so untangled and... I don’t know... pure? Innocent?

[@PedroAmorim83]

Linda Polly Ester can you elaborate more?

[@TintomaraAriadne]

Pedro Amorim I’ll try but I’m not sure I can. It has to do with a space where nothing is yet born, and the playful joy that dances something into being at every given moment. Always newborn, always unknowing, always joyful about suddenly existing. And like a small baby is amazed at the responses it gets from the world, so is awareness. Something like that.

[@chrisharris331]

3:02 -- begin relaxation and deep belly breathing
18:37 -- allow awareness to the notice place in the head where it seems to be centered
27:57 -- allow awareness to notice the throat area
37:58 -- allow awareness to drop into the heart region
48:22 -- allow awareness to drop into the belly
57:58 -- "awareness just notices whatever awareness notices...but notice too that whatever is noticed is itself simply made of awareness"
1:03:47 -- dharma talk and q&a

[@MichaelTaft108]

Thanks, Chris! I put it into the video description.

[@TintomaraAriadne]

This reminds me a bit of a warrior seed syllables practice as taught by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche. This gives me additional clues as to how that practice works, I believe.

[@TintomaraAriadne]

I like this a lot.

[@leeh4722]

And they say Americans can’t do sarcasm 😊