This page contains the meditation practices, the summaries of discussion and readings from the study day held on the 29th November at the Palace Hotel. The theme of the day was “Finding Peace in our Lives” and the programme was divided into 3 parts: –
- Basic practices (mindful movement, sitting practice and a body scan) – without which our meditation practice would have no foundation and to which we should always return when things seem difficult.
- Opening the mind – understanding how the mind processes data – the Attentional Filter mechanism – can help us to realise that in order to find peace there is a need to open our minds to possibilities other than our immediate reality. There are 3 meditation practices on this page that can help us allow the mind to come to rest and be more open.
- Exploring our basic nature – the suggestion is that peace resides within all of us and is in fact part of our basic nature. To feel this sense of peace and calmness all we need to do is to allow the mind to rest so that it can arise spontaneously.
BASIC PRACTICES – mindful movement, sitting practice and body scan – a 61minute recording containing all 3 practices performed at the beginning of the day as we progressed from movement to sitting and finished with a body scan. The recording is divided approximately into a 20min movement session, a 20min sitting practice and a 20min bodyscan.
OPENING THE MIND.
Talk on Attentional Filtering (just over 9minutes) – an introduction to the meditations that follow.
Practice 1 – Opening the mind meditation practice (30mins) – settling in awareness, opening the senses and resting in the sense of open awareness.
Summary of opening the mind (4mins) that includes a reading from Thich Nhat Hahn’s book “Being Peace”.
Practice 2 – Meditation on time (25mins) – releasing the intellect and going back through time to experience life through a child’s eyes. Adopting a childlike openness, curiosity and interest in our experience.
THE ESSENCE OF BEING HUMAN – PEACE IS ALREADY WITHIN US.
Discussion on the nature of time (14mins) to illustrate how our minds can become trapped in concepts and how important it can be to let go of conceptual thought and allow the peace that is within us to arise.
Practice 3 – Resting in ground awareness (30mins) – opening awareness to the 5 external senses and to the 6th sense of knowing the mind, observing the processes of the mind and the sense of self and coming to rest beyond these.
Practice 4 – Going beyond the felt sense of good and bad (30mins) – observing the processes of judgement and progressing deeper into our minds to feel the underlying sense of peace.
Practice 5 – The flower garden (20mins) – using visualisation to contact our inner sense of peace and generate a feeling of security.
