Small Group Facilitation Outline: Day 4

Posture (0.5 min)

Balance letting go with reaching uprightedness. Finding the sweet spot of these two qualities at the heart

Sitting as your best self (0.5 min)

Sitting as your best self, your extraordinary self, bringing all your best qualities to this moment. 

Connecting to the sangha circle (1 min)

Allowing ourselves to come into the circle of practice. Allowing our hearts to open and embrace our community.

Loving Awareness (1 min) 

Allowing the attentional system to relax out of the head and into the heart

Letting the attentional system settle into the warmth of the heart center

The heart like a sun.  Loving awareness.

Coming into relationship with the Ground (2 min)

Directing loving awareness to the stability of the ground beneath you. Allowing your heart to come into relationship with Earth. 

Allowing yourself to feel the reciprocating resonance of the Earth. Allowing coherence with the stable Earth.

Continuously releasing into the ground

Trusting the ground’s stability (2 min)

As we are continuously aligning with gravity and releasing into the stability of the ground and encouraging our hearts to cohere with the earth now noticing the trustworthiness  and safety of Earth, the trustworthiness of the stable ground of Being.

Resting into the stability beneath….. recognizing the quality of safety that arises from the stability…... .continuously releasing into the safe stability of Earth.

Allowing the quality of safety to saturate the body.

Attunement from the Mother (1 min)

Sitting on the floor of a subtle ocean.  The warm ocean of the Mother. Sensing how this intelligence is unconditioning attuning itself to your bodymind……Receiving the soothing  feeling of safety as the bodymind is cohered by unconditional intelligence. The nervous system cohering itself to the loving receptivity of the Mother. 

Attuning to Self (1 min)

Now with loving awareness taking the responsibility yourself, feeling deeper and deeper, more and more intimate with the  field of your experience.

Attuning to Interconnected Field (1 min)

Feeling into the field of your experience.  Cohering intimately with the subtle reactivity, recognize that the depth of your personal experience is interconnected with all of humanity. Attuning to the interconnected field of humanity through your own personal experience. 

Brightening the Metacognition of Loving Awareness and Catching Thoughts with Metacognitive Monitoring (1 min)

 Allowing the heart to receive all sounds, 360’, As  wide open loving awareness waiting brightly for any thought to arise. 

cutting the thoughts immediately. Interrupting the elaborating thought with the loving sword of metacognition.

Thoughts dissolving upon recognition, evaporating into the clear brightness of loving awareness.

Bright awake attuned trusting loving awareness

Stage 3 - (3 min)

Slowly increasing the intensity of your embodied desire to stay with this process. 

Feeling the desire in your whole body.

If your attempt to increase desire lessens your attunement, you may need to ease up instead.

Tuning the fire just right so your loving attention stays close to the dynamic unfolding of attunement……. 

Feeling deeper and deeper, more and more intimate with the attunement feeling field of your experience by increasing the fire of interest, the fire of your protective curiosity.

By intensifying your interest the attention will stay closer and more intimate with the feeling field ………leaving thought and distraction behind.

Stage 4 - (3 minutes)

To help the interest of your attention to stay closer and to deepen the calming, we are going to shift our loving attention to the movement of the breath around the heart..

Noticing the area of the heart field in the chest. 

Bringing all your embodied desire to stay continuously and completely with the whole movement of the breath. Sensing into your experience and staying closer and closer. 

Now maintain the strength of your embodied desire to stay every moment right here with the whole movement of the heart’s breath. 

Fully curious and embodying the desire to stay with every direction of the whole heart  breath.

Feeling the pleasure of being deeply intimate with experience.

To deepen your curiosity even more. Sensing the very moment the movement of the whole breath begins, the duration of the breath expanding in every direction, staying close, intimate with the field of experience noticing the movement of fullest expansion of the breath, then sensing the very moment the breath’s release begins, the duration of the breath, to the very end.

By tending more intimately with whole bodied desire to stay with the full movement of the breath, through every moment the mind moves closer shifting from continuous to complete staying.

Stage 5 - (10 min) 

To shift the meditation to the subtle level of mind we need to be deeply interested with full attention and  with a bright awareness with no subtle dullness.

Allowing the movement of the whole breath to stay in the background, shift your loving awareness to being curious about the giving and receiving of the breath at the nostrils.

As you are intimately receiving the breath at the nostrils deepen your staying by noticing every detail about the movement of receiving along the roof of the nostril. There is a whole world of sensation to stay intimate and close with along the roof (5 breaths)

As you are intimately receiving the breath at the nostrils deepen your staying by noticing every detail about the movement of receiving along the floor of the nostril. There is a whole  world of sensation to stay intimate and close with along the floor (5 breaths)

As you are intimately receiving the breath at the nostrils deepen your staying by noticing every detail about the movement of receiving along the inside wall of the nostril. There is a whole world of sensation to stay intimate and close with along the inside wall (5 breaths)

As you are intimately receiving the breath at the nostrils, deepen your staying by noticing every detail about the movement of receiving along the outside  wall of the nostril. There is a whole world of sensation to stay intimate and close with along the outside wall (5 breaths).

Now staying so very intimately, so very closely with every dimension of the giving and receiving at the nostrils. Roof, floor, inside and outside wall…. The wholeness of the breath giving and receiving. 

Completely admiring everything about the breath. a whole world of quality and movement in every giving and receiving. The full intimacy of loving awareness staying completely. 

Staying intimate and close to the breath 

Taking the emphasis away from just the breath, noticing in the background the brightness of the awareness that is staying with the breath. Recognize the unbounded bright silence of loving awareness in the foreground of your experience and the movement of breath within that silent brightness

Awareness…lucid and bright knowing the movements of the breath.

Awareness…still and non-reactive knowing the movements of the breath.

Sharpen awareness so it's bright and lucid. Lucid awareness knowing every moment of the breath. 

Maintaining the emphasis on clearing any dullness by recognizing the brightness of your awareness….. Letting the brightness of your awareness fuse to the loving attention of the breath……Simultaneously recognizing the brightly awake open field of awareness  and the intimate giving and receiving of the breath in every moment. 

Simultaneously the recognition of the bright open awake field of loving awareness, and the intimate staying with the giving and receiving. Appreciating in your experience that you can stay interested and curious in the breath, and recognize the brightness.

Now bringing the full brightness and clarity of loving awareness to fully illuminate every dimension of the whole heart breath, every dimension in every moment. Staying so close and so awake that all the momentariness, all the energy that is the breath reveals itself.  

Staying so close that the energy that makes up your experience of the breath reveals itself. 

Stage 6 - (13 min) 

so very closely and intimately with every dimension of the giving and receiving. Then brightening your metacognition

Sharpen awareness so it's bright and lucid. Lucid awareness knowing every moment of the breath. 

Letting the brightness of your awareness fuse to the loving attention of the breath……Simultaneously recognizing the brightly awake open field of awareness  and the intimate giving and receiving of the breath in every moment.  Maintaining  bright lucid awareness allows yourself to relax the intensity……Easing up….. Letting go….stay awake to all the energy of the giving and receiving at the nostrils…..Easing up allowing the meditation to flow by itself. 

(1 minute here)

If you  are staying at the subtle level then experimenting with very gently easing up on the intensity to discover an automaticity of flow.

At the subtle level of mind your attention will stay closer by easing up on the effort.

Fine tuning your staying by easing up

Maintaining  bright lucid awareness allows yourself to relax the intensity……Easing up….. Letting go….stay awake to all the energy of the heart’s breath…..Easing up allowing the meditation to flow by itself.