Meditation and Pause Points II
Yesterday, I shared with you some excerpts from Sally Kempton's latest newsletter on "Pause Points," these fleeting opportunities that meditation affords us to experience Samadhi. Please scroll down and review yesterday's entry before reading this one for greater clarity...
Where are the Pause Points
"There's a potential Samadhi present in the moment just after waking, when you first come to consciousness, yet haven't yet identified who and where you are. You're awake, but there are no thoughts. The day hasn't rushed in yet. You haven't collected your customary identity markers. You're just - present.
There's a Samadhi lurking in the moment of adjustment when your gaze moves from focusing on something close by, to focusing on the horizon. If you would let yourself attend to the process of moving your gaze, you'd find that moment of open spaciousness in between the close object and the distant one.
There's the powerful opening into spaciousness between one thought and another, the space where a thought dissolves back into the mind, before another thought arises. And in that space, if you can notice and stay there for a second or two, you'll catch the pure vibrating energy of pure Awareness, right in the midst of your thinking.
And of course, there's the most intimate and accessible of all these fleeting Samadhis - the space at the end of the inbreath and at the end of the outbreath. You find it in meditation by following the inbreath to its end point, then holding the breath for just a second or two - and focusing on the emptiness that appears for just a moment.
These last two Pause Points are formal meditation practices - in fact, famous ones. But once you start training yourself to notice, you'll find that all sorts of unexpected Pause Points show up spontaneously through the day, in moments when the last thing you'd expect is stillness..."
For the conclusion, stay tuned tomorrow!
Visit Sally Kempton at her website, and browse through her wonderful articles:
www.sallykempton.com
Where are the Pause Points
"There's a potential Samadhi present in the moment just after waking, when you first come to consciousness, yet haven't yet identified who and where you are. You're awake, but there are no thoughts. The day hasn't rushed in yet. You haven't collected your customary identity markers. You're just - present.
There's a Samadhi lurking in the moment of adjustment when your gaze moves from focusing on something close by, to focusing on the horizon. If you would let yourself attend to the process of moving your gaze, you'd find that moment of open spaciousness in between the close object and the distant one.
There's the powerful opening into spaciousness between one thought and another, the space where a thought dissolves back into the mind, before another thought arises. And in that space, if you can notice and stay there for a second or two, you'll catch the pure vibrating energy of pure Awareness, right in the midst of your thinking.
And of course, there's the most intimate and accessible of all these fleeting Samadhis - the space at the end of the inbreath and at the end of the outbreath. You find it in meditation by following the inbreath to its end point, then holding the breath for just a second or two - and focusing on the emptiness that appears for just a moment.
These last two Pause Points are formal meditation practices - in fact, famous ones. But once you start training yourself to notice, you'll find that all sorts of unexpected Pause Points show up spontaneously through the day, in moments when the last thing you'd expect is stillness..."
For the conclusion, stay tuned tomorrow!
Visit Sally Kempton at her website, and browse through her wonderful articles:
www.sallykempton.com
Comments
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Love and blessings,
Olga