Radiantly Awake Space of Love
Meditation
Before we sit still, what does it feel like? what kind of movement does it want to make? As usual, don’t stop, keep going, and what I want you to do is gradually just come down to moving your spine all the way—head to tail. All the way up to your head, the whole spine moving, and then, gradually just make those motions smaller and smaller and smaller, until you can’t tell if you’re moving your spine or not. And once you can’t tell, then just rest there. Maybe you’re still moving and maybe you’re not, but that feels very different than locking yourself in place.
Notice how there is a way that it’s not clear whether it’s still moving or not. As long as the movement is tremendously small, is it ever the case that your body can actually be motionless? I don’t think so. You’re going to be adjusting your spine a little bit, you’re going to be breathing, of course, and that moves things around. Lots of little changes in the body. But, for the most part, in terms of big motions, on purpose moving your hands, or anything like that, we’re not doing it.
You’re going to relax, and let go of any fidgeting as much as you can. We’re not doing that in a tight, rigid way, but rather a really relaxed way, where we just let go of tension to the point of so much looseness and relaxation in the muscles that it would take a lot of effort to tighten them up enough to move. And since we’re not making that effort, they just stay relaxed and motionless, like wet rags. So it’s a very pleasant, relaxed, open stillness. Just feel into that relaxed, open, stillness in the body, in the face, in the eyes, in the hands. And just let that stillness seep out into all areas of the body so that there’s a real sense of relaxed open ease. Notice how as we tune into that sense of relative stillness in the body that’s available for the wandering part of the thinking mind to settle in with. It begins to jump around less or less intensely and starts to just smooth out a little bit, be a little more relaxed and open in the thinking.
And, just for a moment, look directly in your experience ask yourself: What’s having this experience? Do not answer that question with an idea or a thought or a concept—even if you know for sure it’s the right answer, that’s the wrong answer. Just look, feel: What’s even having this experience? If you really look, what you’ll find is just awake presence. Within that awake presence, there are thoughts, there are feelings, there’s the sense of a world—all of that, but all of that is not what’s having the experience. There’s just awake presence, in which the experience is arising, wide open, relaxed, crystal clear, absolutely pure awake presence. Outside of any thinking, outside of any ideas of who I am, or what I do, or what I’m about, or any of that. Totally, utterly, outside of that is simply presence, openness, awakeness, clarity. It may be the case that lots of thoughts are happening, verbal thoughts, visual thoughts, all kinds of thoughts. But to the extent you can manage it, do not engage with any of those thoughts at all. Just let them roll on by, and just rest in this open, awake, simple, presence.
To begin with, it can really help to simply notice the physical sensation of breathing. You don’t have to track it, or count it, or tear it apart, with your intense concentration or something—just in the simplest possible way, just feel the breathing from outside the thinking mind. Feel the breathing from this space of presence. Let’s do that together for a little while here. If, at any point, you find yourself back being involved with thinking—ooh, that’s an interesting thought—just relax, open, let go. Remember, we’re not trying to stop thinking, or control thinking, or suppress thinking, or change thinking, we’re just letting it run in the background, and not engaging at all. It’s not a problem at all, just don’t engage. For now, just sit in open presence and awakeness, feeling the breath. We’re not breathing in any special way, we’re just feeling the breath.
Once you’re not engaged in thought, you might notice that it is incredibly pleasant to simply sit outside the mind in open, clear, wakefulness. Breathing feels good, it’s an underrated joyous activity. The good part of this, which is also the bad part of this, is that, if you’re not all lost in thought, you have to experience what you’re actually feeling. The breathing feels good, but maybe there’s physical pain, maybe there’s a big emotional difficulty. Usually, we deal with those by thinking ourselves into distraction from them, and here you’re just not allowing yourself to be caught up in thoughts, so there’s no distraction. In the long run, that’s a really good thing, that leads us much, much deeper into our own presence, our own being. But, at first it’s uncomfortable.
We’re not used to sitting with how we’re actually feeling, unengaged with thought, wide
open, simple presence, feeling the breath. We’re not really concentrating on the breath, so feeling everything else, too. Feeling your whole body. We’ve had people faint in here before, or have to run to the restroom, so if, for any reason, you need to get up and leave, you’re welcome to do that. Just do it in a way that you don’t disturb everyone. Now, without trying to manipulate your breath in any way, notice the end of the out-breath, and just at the end of the out-breath, just let your mind fall apart.
If you’re already resting in presence outside the mind, you won’t really notice anything different there, but if you tend to get caught up in the thoughts, at the end of the out-breath, that very last moment of the out-breath, just let the mind dissolve. That’s a very gentle release, it’s not a pushing, or destruction, or some kind of smashing. It’s simply the end of each out-breath, just letting everything go, just coming into wide awake presence, if you’re not there the whole time already.
At the end of each out-breath, just let go. If you’re already staying, let go in between, then just let go even more deeply. Anything that feels stuck, anything that feels constricted, any place you’re hanging on, any place you’re velcroed, just let it go without any struggle. With no fight at all, just let go. Let go of personality, let go of self and world, let go of the room, just let go.
Without engaging the mind at all, look for what knows the breath. What is aware of the breath? Find what is aware of the breath. Just look. It’s not a puzzle to figure out, it’s just something to look for. What knows this moment?
Very good, now, if that’s working for you, keep just sitting within open presence, not engaging with thought, feeling the breath. You don’t have to ask the question anymore, just go back to just feeling the breath in simple presence, unengaged with thought. If that’s quite easy for you, then move to the next phase. This time we’re going to watch the arising of each thought, from the very very very first moment it arises. So we’re not engaging with it. In a way, we don’t care about the content at all, we’re just noticing the arising of a thought. Almost as if you’re watching bubbles coming up from the bottom of the aquarium. Just notice that first moment of the bubble coming up, and then just let it go—meaning, it can do whatever it wants. You’re not engaging, but just notice it arises, notice when it arises. Sitting as simple, wide awake, wide open space, tremendously clear, tremendously bright, effortless, simply watching the arising of thought without engaging with it at all.
If that’s too hard, if you find yourself continuously engaging, then go back and just feel the breath. Work the field that’s productive, wherever it’s actually feeling good, go there. If it feels like it’s working, so to speak.
Thoughts streams tend to come in surges or waves but don’t try to predict it or get involved with it, just let them. Notice when they arise and they’ll flow past, and you don’t engage at all. Remembering not to suppress, or control, or try to shape, just notice. In a way, welcoming every thought, saying yes to all the thought that’s arising, but not engaging with any of it. Isn’t it interesting, that you can remain in presence, have a whole experience, that doesn’t involve being involved in thought at all. It’s really easy to kind of end up believing that we are our thoughts.
But, here, you are being outside of thought, and, without thinking about it, but just looking, you can ask yourself, What’s even thinking right now? Don’t go to thought to answer it, just look. What do you find? What do you find doing the thinking? You can’t find anything doing the thinking. It’s just happening, so the idea that you, somehow, are your thoughts, or you own your thoughts, or are responsible for them—it’s just nonsense. They’re just happening. You are what knows the thought. So, ask yourself, and, again, remember, don’t go to thought to answer it. What knows the thought? What knows the breathing? What knows this experience right now? And then, feel into it. Find it. It won’t be a thought, and it won’t even be a body sensation. What knows the thought and knows the body sensation? Feel your way into what knows, letting go of any picture of what knows, any concept of what knows, any memory of what you think knows. Just come into the knowing itself, right now. It’s a kind of wide open, wide awake, presence. It’s not tranced out, it’s not in some kind of special state. It might be, but it doesn’t have to be. It it’s just simply present.
If you feel into that knowingness, it’s got a kind of radiance, it’s energized, and the radiance is loving and joyous. Even if, in the normal way of talking about our experience, we feel really really crappy, really shitty, this presence, this radiant presence, feels a kind of joy and love. Outside of thoughts, and even, paradoxically, outside of emotion, it feels joy and love, it’s radiant, it’s pure, it’s wide awake. Notice that as the breath rises and falls, this radiant wakefulness remains constant, as all the thoughts come and go in burble by and burble by, this radiant wakefulness remains constant. As the experience around us continues to unfold, this radiant, joyous, loving, presence is simply present. Allow that to simply rest in itself. It doesn’t need to do anything, it doesn’t need things to be any different. It says yes to all experience, utterly outside the mind.
To put that even more clearly, the mind is simply one of the many things present within it. Feel that radiant presence as the radiant presence from the radiant presence within radiant presence. Letting all need to struggle just fall away. Letting all striving, and grasping, and neediness, just drop away like heavy boulders, just falling off. Let all stories of any kind just fall away, and allow the loving aspect of this radiant present to be in the foreground, radiant presence to be in the foreground. Doesn’t have to be love for anything or anyone in particular, it’s just part of the radiance. It’s very, very, very, connected. It cares, it’s kind, it’s soft, it’s gentle, it understands. Just feel that part of the radiant presence most clearly from within the radiant presence.
Be the great I Am that you already are. Letting go of everything else, and just feeling that radiant, loving, caring, kindness quality. Letting go of any involvement with thought, coming back to simple openness, radiant presence, profound kindness. For many people, it can seem as if the radiance is centered in the heart. But, really, if you relax, and just come from experience, without engaging thought, you’ll notice the radiance is everywhere—it’s the field. The field is radiant, the room is radiant, everyone’s radiant, space is radiant, it’s effulgent with love and kindness, and even a kind of Joy. It’s the joy of openness.
Notice there’s nothing to do to generate that, or somehow build it up. You just relax, and it’s there. Don’t get caught up in thought, and it’s there. You may also notice the vertiginous void that’s also there, but you might not. Notice every part of experience, in all directions, is radiant, openness, radiant presence. Notice that intimacy of all experience. Nothing is really separate, outside of stories, outside of concepts, outside of thoughts. Without doing anything at all, there’s radiant presence happening all the time. With all the time, allow the radiant presence again to notice its own joy, its own love, which is already there, already present. Maybe very quiet, maybe quite strong—doesn’t matter, just notice it’s already there. It’s only the machinations of the mind that make it seem not there.
Now, again, look from this radiant presence, not from the mind, look from the radiant presence itself, which is wide awake—it’s wide awakeness. Allow that wide awakeness to see itself. What is it? Look. Look deeply. What are you? What are you, really? What have you always been, really? What knows this moment? Wake up to this moment, and stay there. Notice that the breath is not separate from the radiant presence. Notice that even the thoughts aren’t separate from the radiant presence. With your eyes open, notice the room is not separate from the radiant presence. No part of experience is separate from this always already primordially pure, wide awake, wide open, loving, presence. Nothing is not it.
Dharma Talk
Now, just never re-engage thought, and you’re all set. Raise your hand if you feel like you could sit at least for a few seconds at a time outside of thought in simple presence, even if it was just a couple seconds. Okay, almost everybody. It’s not that hard at all, for at least a little while. So, when I say, now, just do that forever—don’t re-engage the thought—I’m serious, that’s all you got to do, just don’t re-engage the thinking. It doesn’t mean stop thinking, you let the thinking do your work, and stuff like that. It’ll do it all of its own accord. It always has been doing it of its own accord, so you just let it do its thing.
Because of the way we’re taught, and the way we’re socialized, and maybe something really deep even in our biology, we will tend to come back again and again to being involved in the thought, and even more, being identified—like, “that is me.” And the same with the feelings, the emotions I’m having about those thoughts, that’s me, too. In fact, we kind of define ourselves, without necessarily being conscious of it, as these complexes of thought and feeling. That’s what’s going on for me, these types of thoughts, these kinds of feelings, that’s it.
But, you just saw, you can sit there outside of those thoughts and feelings, and you’re probably still feeling stuff, but you don’t have to identify with it, and you’re still perfectly present. In fact, you’re maybe even more obviously present. So, if you do that, even a little bit, the inescapable conclusion is that you’re not your thoughts and feelings. They’re happening, just like the weather’s happening, like a stampede of wild horses in the desert is happening. Lots of stuff is happening, it’s beautiful, it’s powerful, it’s exquisite in all these ways, but it’s not necessarily yours. To put it another way, if the thoughts and feelings are yours, then the moon is you, the stampeding wild horses are you, the lakes and rivers are you. It’s one or the other.
Can you notice, as you sit in simple presence, that the room is part of that simple presence—it’s not somehow separate. And that every conscious being in this room is part of that simple presence, they are not really separate on that level. You can just directly notice it, so it’s not like some kind of thing you have to believe in, just notice it. But as soon as you start to make that move of, like, okay I can sit in simple presence for a minute, but now I’ve got to come back because I’ve got to deal with stuff, I’ve got to not forget my keys, and I’ve got to do my job, and not look like an idiot, not be a space kid up stumbling into walls, and saying that wild horses in the desert are me. People don’t like that if you talk that way, better not talk that way.
But, as I said, you’ll notice that that just takes care of itself. All the thoughts have been thinking on their own this whole time—they’ll just keep thinking and doing stuff. What’s the most powerful way to be creative—you’re going to come up with a big idea, you’ve got to solve a big problem—everyone knows the best way to do it is to just forget about it, and let the thing solve itself. It will—one morning you wake up, and there it is—the answer is there. It’s just solved. It doesn’t mean things aren’t effortful, when you have to clean the closet. It’s really painful—I’ve got to clean, but that all just does itself. The radiant wakefulness just is there, unperturbed by any of that, and, in fact, the opposite—it’s not just neutral, it loves, it’s joyous. Again, it’s not normal joy—it’s not, “oh, I’m so happy cleaning the closet!” It’s almost like the joy of being is there, even in something that’s very unpleasant, there’s still joy of being.
What’s interesting is that we just keep distracting ourselves from that over and over, by grabbing onto thinking. Like I was going on and on about last week, most of the grabbing into thinking is just because we don’t want to feel some difficult feelings. There’s no judgment there, I mean anybody pulls their hand away from a hot stove, so, of course, we don’t want to feel that stuff at first, but, eventually, you realize you’ve got to feel. It’s there to be felt. All the feelings you’ve ever distracted away from are still stored waiting for you to feel them. They never actually just go away. You’re just kicking the can down the road.
Notice how beautiful it can be to think beautiful thoughts. There’s nothing wrong with thinking, it’s awesome. Some of the most exquisite human experiences are just pure thinking, so it’s not that it’s forbidden, it’s just—don’t take that on as work, or as identity, or as who or what you are. It’s simply another beautiful experience, like watching the northern lights, or an eclipse, it’s just happening. Nothing wrong with that, and it’s not that we’re some kind of special radiant awakeness that’s separate from feelings, and separate from thoughts, and separate from the world, and separate from our smelly bodies, and from the difficulties of earth. All of those things—the thoughts, the feelings, the bodies, all the difficulties, all the mountains, and rivers, and forests, but also toxic wastes, and horror and death—are all the radiant expression of that awakeness. It’s not separate at all. It is all that stuff. In the same way, you think that your awakeness is a thing that your body does, but your body is a thing that the awakeness does.
Q&A
So, I can babble on like this for a long time. I feel really good right now, so I’ll shut up at least a little bit, and let you guys ask some questions, or, you don’t have to ask questions, just talk to me. Reuben has perfected the art of bringing the microphone around. Remember that this microphone is broadcasting live to the Internet, so if you don’t want your comments to be permanently part of the Wayback machine, or whatever, then don’t make them.
Questioner 1: Hi. Tonight what you’re talking about seems like it’s going into
Sam Harris territory a little bit.
Michael: I’m not saying anything political. [Laughter]
Questioner 1: I know that, the other side of Sam, that we’re not necessarily driving
the car.
Michael: Yeah, but you could drive a car easily like this.
Questioner 1: But I’m talking about the sense in which maybe we’re kind of watching a movie. I don’t disagree with this, but it seems like you’re saying this thing is going to happen, and you can watch it, and you can be sad when the sad part comes up, and you can be happy when the happy part comes up, and just take it all in. There’s going to be both, but maybe we’re not–I don’t want to use the term but the FW thing. Does that come into this?
Michael: Say something until I have something to answer, just keep talking. Who are you is the question.
Questioner 1: That’s me. I’m the question.
Michael: I could say, good, we’re done. There’s the doing stuff in the world, which is going to keep doing, which can include like, let’s go stop a genocide. Stuff like that. Let’s do that. Awake space does that too, it doesn’t just sit there and go, cool! genocide away, mother fuckers. No, of course, it does stuff, and it’s still just radiant awakeness. The idea that it equals passivity is a mistake.
Questioner 1: I don’t quite mean that. But the peace that we’re on is not the driver.
Michael: It’s continuously unfolding of its own accord and any idea that this—the small person—is the one doing anything is hilarious.
Questioner 1: Fascinating.
Michael: If I appeared to make an ontology there, I didn’t, I’m just talking about experience.
Questioner 1: Thanks.
Michael: Steadfastly, did not make an ontology.
Questioner 2: Hi, that was a great sit.
Michael: Thank you.
Questioner 2: Something that came up, I was thinking like thoughts seem to be kind of like Tinder, where a like Tinder, where it’s like there’s times where I’m really looking at the details and the pictures and all that, but then if I bring it back to presence, I keep swiping, and if I keep swiping and coming back. I don’t know, there was something there, I don’t know.
Michael: So, surely this is the most noble, gracious, metaphor for awake awareness or thoughts I’ve ever heard.
Questioner 2: That’s what it feels like. I think that’s probably why they designed it that way. My question is, I do this meditation with you every Thursday, how can it feel this way–outside of just with me, because it just hit different.
Michael: Well, you just did it, just keep doing that. I’m not trying to be flippant. Step outside all that engagement with thought, and notice the presence, and then just keep feeling the presence. That just brings you right in, and if it’s kind of too hard to jump start on your own, then there’s plenty of guided meditations and stuff either on my stuff or on various other platforms that kind of give you the jump start. The more you do it, the more clear it will be. So, instead of being like a thing you have to jump-start, you just notice—oh yeah—it’s more like you just recognize, I picked up all the junk again. Just drop the junk, just drop it, that’s all you got to do. But you kind of got to be a little OCD about it.
Questioner 2: Yeah, I definitely use your meditations to jump-start this on training wheels. I appreciate that encouragement.
Michael: You have everything you need for that.
Questioner 2: Thanks.
Michael: So glad you came up. Again, you don’t have to have a question, just whatever you want to share.
Questioner 3: Hello, this is my first time with y’all.
Michael: Welcome.
Questioner 3: Thank you. There was a metaphor when you were asking the question that came up in me, that awakened presence seems to be a car driving but without any electricity. The car is moving, and experience is happening, and we are either the car itself, or in the car.
Michael: Okay. If we’re going to use that metaphor, then you are the sky, and the ground, and the road, and the car, and everything else—all of what’s happening.
Questioner 3: But, is there a quality of presence where unengaged with the thoughts, it’s like there’s a turning on like in this metaphor, too, maybe like the sky is not lighted in some way, or there seems to be an engagement with presence that’s a turning on and illuminating the thoughts themselves.
Michael: That is the presence, the illumination is the presence. There’s no turning on—it’s always on. All that’s happening when it seems like it’s not is that you’ve got your VR goggles on, and you’re looking at something else. Even that looking at something else is the awakeness. So, again, just drop it for a minute, and notice it’s already wide awake. We didn’t do anything to wake it up. All you did was not be involved in the dream. But even the thing that knows the dream is the awakeness, so it’s always just this slight letting go, this tiny letting go.
Questioner 3: Yeah, there was one more thing that I wanted to ask about. In my sit, there’s these two experiences…
Michael: There were two wolves…
Questioner 3: There were two wolves, and one of them was this sense of expansion outward. That state of feeling all things, like the room, the people, sky, self. And the other one was this deep internal experience of just like this thing. Is it all present?
Michael: Just notice that nothing is expanding outward. It’s already knowing all that, and nothing is kind of going deep within. It already knows all that, and that the deepest part within and the furthest part of the expansion already know each other. There’s no distance between them. All that idea of distance, and inside and outside—all that is just framework, concepts. The knowing is the same in both places—it’s not even two places. The knowing is the same.
Questioner 3: Hmm. Thank you.
Michael: Okay, last question, last comment, last thing.
Questioner 4: How many thoughts do you have per day?
Michael: As many as anybody else, just not paying attention to them.
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