Grounding in Meditation

Hello, my name is Michelle, and welcome to Episode 9 on Grounding in Silent Meditation Practice.

So let's start with a three-minute meditation to begin to arrive more fully in our present moment experience.

So you're invited to find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed. And take your seat to become more aware of the physical ground of your being.

Becoming aware of your breathing, and allowing your attention to naturally calm itself and settle without any contrived force or pressure.

So let's sit now for a few minutes in stillness and silence, and tuning in to our embodied experience.

Back in the present moment.
More aware of our sense perceptions.
Internally and externally.
More spacious.
More empty.

So as I've taught throughout this podcast. Meditation teachings point us away from ego identification and not being limited to a separate individual body.

But along with the, this theory of no self, there can be a disconnect from one's lived embodied experience in the present moment.

So, let me be clear and express it about one of the paradoxes in meditation theory.

That one's true nature is not this physical body, and yet at the same time, there is no separation.

So nothing is separate from anything else. Including the mind not being separate from the body. So the paradox is that in no self, there is everything.

And first of all, there is the body. To meditate is to be fully present in the body. With awareness.

In meditation, we experience a felt sense of presence first, before we can become free of the notion, the belief, the delusion that I am just this separate body.

Because if I get stuck in the delusion of a separate body, I prevent the flow of the life force.

And if I'm just the separate body, then I'm separate from the elements and energies that create and sustain life.

In basic understanding of meditation.

Across the various different schools of Buddhism, there are two main things that are necessary for meditation to occur.

In the Sanskrit language, these two things are referred to as Shamatha and Vipassana. Shamatha is the ground of being.

And Vipassana is the light of being. Or I could say, Shemata is stopping, and Vipassana is awakening.

So in Meditation, Shamatha enables us to become calm, centered and grounded, and still.

So that we may stop.