This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Embodied Presence; Attitudes (2 of 5) From Fear to Being Present. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Embodied Presence; Dharmette: Attitudes (2 of 5) From Fear to Being Present - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 21, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Embodied Presence

Hello from Redwood City, and welcome. It's a wonderful thing to be with you all, and it's a wonderful thing to come here, sit in this seat that I have meditated in for so many years, and to assume my meditation position.

I want to emphasize for you, for this coming meditation, that one of the pervasive emotions in many people's lives—sometimes quite evidently, and sometimes in the background—is fear and anxiety. Sometimes the opposite of fear is courage. But I would like to offer another kind of antidote or alternative to fear, a healthy one, and that is to offer our full presence to what is happening.

We might not know what to do, we might not know what to say, and maybe we don't even courageously deal with the fear, face the fear, or overcome the fear. But we offer whatever the situation is our clear, present attention. We don't necessarily have courage, but we don't cower. We don't necessarily distract ourselves, but we attract ourselves to the present moment. We stand here, we sit, and we're present with a certain intentionality that is perhaps an alternative to fear. Especially fear that's an attitude—chronic fear that has almost been conditioned into us by life circumstances, that's not really necessary to have all the time.

We somehow transform the attitude of fear into an attitude of mindful presence. For that, it helps to assume a posture that offers some stability, strength, and clarity—that we are really here and present. It's kind of like standing our ground or taking our place.

If you're meditating lying down, one way the posture might help with this (if the body allows for it) is with the soles of your feet on the bed or the floor, bringing your knees up towards your chest. Have your elbows to your side on the bed or floor, and have your arms at a 90-degree angle so your fingers are pointing directly to the ceiling, parallel to each other. There is intentionality and clarity: "Here I am with the feet, with the hands. I'm really here, I'm present." There's an intentionality in both of those that is comparable to the intentionality if you're sitting cross-legged.

If sitting, sit well-balanced on the floor on your cushion, and sit upright, with a little bit of openness of the chest. If you're sitting in a chair or on a couch, see if you can adjust yourself so that you are offering greater presence in your posture. Just like if you sit up straight and come forward on the couch when you are going to really listen to someone and show that you're attentive to what they're saying; you sit up and maybe you come forward. So, assume a posture of presence and attention, more than you normally would in meditation if the focus is simply relaxing.

Take some care. One way to do this if you are leaning back into a chair or the couch—if your hands aren't already this way—is to put your hands on your thighs, either with palms down or palms up, whichever gives you the greatest sense of strength and presence, a feeling of, "Here I am."

Then, lower your gaze and, if it's comfortable, gently close your eyes.

Take a few long, slow, deep breaths, emphasizing the inhale more than the exhale. On the inhale, we're taking our place here. We're filling the immediate space of our body with our breath, with our attention, with this physical feeling of clarity: "Here I am in this body, in this place." On the exhale, relax into here, but emphasize the strength, the clarity, and the fullness of filling your lungs with oxygen, and a slightly greater sense of substantiality or fullness of the body in breathing out and breathing in.

Then, let your breathing return to normal and take a few moments to feel whatever stability, strength, or clarity of presence you can feel through your body.

With that as a support, become aware of how the body experiences breathing. On the exhale, relax the thinking mind. Soften the energy of thinking. Try not living in your thoughts, by feeling and recognizing what is beyond the edges of your thoughts. Certainly, your thoughts don't fill the universe. Beyond the edges of the thinking are the sensations and feelings of the body being here.

Usually, we do some body relaxation at the beginning of a sitting. Instead, feel your body as it is. Feel any tension at all, without being troubled by it, letting all the sensations of the body coalesce or support a clarity that here you are. Here you take your place fully, unapologetically.

If there is fear, maybe find a place within—maybe a small little point of stability—where there is no fear. Allow the fear to be in the background, with the stability of presence in the foreground.

On the exhale, relaxing your thinking mind. On the inhale, assuming your place here fully with some strength, with some clarity, with some sense of really belonging to this place at this time. You're allowed to use your full body to inhabit this location as you breathe in, filling yourself with attention and presence.

With gentleness, enter into this moment more fully through your body. Perhaps with the posture a little more straight and upright, or the hands in a slightly more intentional position. Or with the inhale feeling more rooted here in this place, this body. Steadying yourself in the body here and now as an alternative to being afraid, anxious, or apprehensive. Live in such a way that fear recedes to the edges of our being. It's still there, but it doesn't interfere. It doesn't color this place of stability and presence.

Gently but clearly offer a real presence to this moment, this time, here in this body. A presence that is a little bit like a snake that's growing bigger and sloughs off its skin. A presence which is strong, firm, and gentle, where something grows so that something else falls off or recedes. Maybe fear recedes and falls off.

As we come to the end of this sitting, take a few moments to imagine or visualize what it would be like for you to be in a place or situation that normally involves a bit of anxiety. But rather than giving into the anxiety, you establish yourself. Stand or sit with presence and stability, really showing up—at least for yourself—here and now in the middle of an anxious situation.

Perhaps when we're not in our anxiety, but rather in our presence and attention, it's easier to have goodwill and to wish well for others. So we end this sitting with a well-wishing for all the people we might encounter today.

May they be happy, safe, peaceful, and free. May they thrive. May good things happen to them. May they be safe enough that their fear abates. And when we are with them, may we be a safe person for them, maybe through our presence.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free of suffering.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Attitudes (2 of 5) From Fear to Being Present

Hello, and welcome to this second talk on the topic of attitudes. As I'm spending this week on this topic, I'm pairing up an attitude which is not very helpful for us with an attitude which is. By attitude here, I'm focused not so much on the attitude of the moment—a particular circumstance where we might have an attitude we don't like, or we're impatient or frustrated with something while we're present for that particular activity—but rather something that's more pervasive in our life. Today, the topic is fear.

One of the advantages, and maybe sometimes the challenges, of doing mindfulness practice and meditation—especially going on retreat where we practice bringing attention all day—is that because we're really being mindful, we start seeing how often we get caught. Then we see the patterns of what our mind is thinking or our emotions are feeling. Not a few people discover that there's a pervasive level of fear or anxiety through their life, much more than they realized. It's kind of in the background, underneath all the other concerns we have.

Sometimes, in being pervasive, it casts its influence on the way we think, the way we behave, and even the way we physically look at the world. We can be looking at the world through the eyes of anxiety, fear, or apprehension.

There is a lot of wisdom in bringing attention and care, maybe even love, to our fear. One of the things I like to teach is that one of the roles of mindfulness—of really being present for anxiety—is to help our anxiety feel safe so we don't spin out even more. We touch into our fear, but we allow our fear to be there so that it can begin to relax. I think of fear as always secondary, unless there's some imminent danger in the moment. I consider a lot of chronic anxiety to be secondary to something deeper that needs us, that needs attention. The classic avenue to it in mindfulness meditation is to learn how to be present for fear and anxiety so that it can begin to relax and reveal what's deeper.

For today, I would like to suggest another alternative to an attitude of anxiety, apprehension, or fear that we might be carrying with us pervasively through much of the day or all the time. That is a clear sense of being present, and doing that in an embodied, physical way. Even if we don't feel confident, strong, or stable in our presence, we can take on a physical posture that says, "Here I am, I'm present."

That doesn't mean we have to go towards the thing we're afraid of. We don't have to resolve it. We can even take a few steps back. Or, if there's a social situation where we feel anxious, we don't have to be in the middle of it; we could maybe be standing on the edges of the group. But we do not give into the fear. We do not continue to let apprehension condition us and have an influence on us. Rather, we recognize that it's there and then offer our presence to the situation. We offer a clear sense that we are taking our place here and now. If we're standing, we're standing our ground. If we're sitting, we're taking our place, like this is almost our throne, sitting upright and dignified.

We're not resolving the fear, but we're not acting from the fear. We're not addressing the things we're afraid of directly. We're just not cowering, shrinking, or being preoccupied by the fear. We offer that we are here and we are present.

One version of this is something that I was motivated to learn when I noticed how much fear I had: to be counterphobic. I couldn't do that initially, but at some point, I had the confidence and the ability to turn towards the things I was afraid of and take a step towards them, sometimes literally so. That made a world of difference for me. It meant not allowing the fear or apprehension to dictate my posture, my voice, or my behavior, but to somehow break through it. This idea of taking our place—maybe standing upright and strong, or sitting upright and really present—is a way of not denying that there's apprehension and fear, but not letting it unduly influence us. It doesn't affect the choices we make about our posture, what we say, how we look, or what we look at. We don't look down and avoid, or act excessively shy. We really take our place here and offer our presence.

I'm offering this suggestion not as a way of resolving the issue. For example, coming into Thanksgiving, for many of us in the United States, there might be social situations and family gatherings that bring us anxiety. The goal is not to resolve those situations, but also not to cower. We don't go forward, we don't go backwards, but we take our place: "Here I am definitively. I don't know what to do, but I do know how to be present. I don't know what to say, but I do know how to be quiet in a way where I feel like I'm really taking my place. I'm here. I count. I have value." Other people might not treat you differently because of it, but it might make a world of difference to have that as a practice, rather than the implicit or unintentional practice of practicing fear and practicing anxiety.

When fear and anxiety have become an attitude, it means that we've spent too much time thinking about it, being conditioned by the chronic way of thinking that there's danger, fear, and problems. There certainly are problems in this world of ours, and I don't want to deny the realness of some of the things we're anxious about. But it's not necessary to always be anxious when the danger is not imminent. Because if we are, it's conditioning us, adding to and strengthening this pervasive attitude. There is a loop: feeling an attitude of fear influences us to have thoughts about fear and concern, and that creates more fear. Sometimes it spirals out to a panic attack. But we can somehow break that loop gently by not always giving into the fear, but by taking our place, standing up, and being really present.

This is different from just being mindful of situations. Sometimes when we are relying only on mindfulness, we don't see how much our attention is unintentionally or even subconsciously being shaped or influenced by the fear itself. We can break the cycles of fear, or break the mold of it that we're stuck in, by sitting up clear, strong, and present, having a sense of steadiness and stability that maybe is not very strong, but is there as an alternative to only letting the attitude of fear have the upper hand.

I'm not suggesting that this is easy in many circumstances, but there might be some circumstances where you can practice this and switch the attitude from fear to being present in an embodied way. Then see what happens next. Maybe it's easier for you. Maybe you do feel like you're breaking out of a certain kind of prison of always being surrounded by or caught up in apprehension, fear, and anxiety.

I'm not offering this as a final solution that's going to make everything go better or easier, but it is a different attitude that we can step into that can begin to make a difference. It can also change our relationship to fear, so that when we do bring mindfulness to fear—a mindfulness that respects fear and holds it gently—we have a greater capacity to do that because we bring that sense of stable presence to the fear. When we're fully present for it, we don't get pulled into it or unduly influenced by it.

So, if you find yourself with fear, especially minor fears or minor anxieties, use this exercise. We want to be careful when there are strong fears and strong tendencies towards anxiety; what I'm saying might not be appropriate. But practice with the small ones and see what difference it makes. See what happens to the anxiety and fear when you offer this alternative embodied presence, being really here and present.

Thank you very much. I'm hoping that this focus on attitude today will be a particularly interesting topic of mindfulness on this holiday weekend, where our life is a little bit different than how it usually is, and maybe has different kinds of challenges than our ordinary life. So thank you very much.