This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Practicing via Felt Sense; Practice Skills (3 of 5) Practicing with Felt Sense. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Practicing via Felt Sense; Dharmette: Practice Skills (3 of 5) Practicing with Felt Sense - Ying Chen, 陈颖

The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 24, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Practicing via Felt Sense

We start with the sound of a bell for our meditation, pausing to let the sound of the bell fade away.

Pausing with a momentary mindfulness, being present. Aware, maybe being present with the sound, being present with the thoughts, being present with a global sense of a body sitting or lying down.

Pausing to allow an alchemical process to unfold naturally, arriving here and now. What is the felt sense of arriving for you? Just a feeling, just sensing. Words are not necessary. For me, there is a felt sense of slowing down, some energetic feel of energy settling downwards, or the body resting down and resting back. Arriving here and now.

Feeling and sensing is an innate capacity within the body, within this very being. We simply become available to allow this being to feel and to sense.

Being available has a particular felt sense to it. Maybe there is a kind of deeper relaxation and opening, a sense of openness in the heart space, in the body. Being available feels like this.

It's as if my nervous system can relax, my breath can flow more easily, and the sensations in the body have more room to dance their dance. The emotions and thoughts have a lot of space around them.

The felt sense of being available is unique to you at this moment. My words are just some pointers. Your own felt sense is a whole field; don't let my words limit the whole field of the felt sense.

From this field of availability, inviting, aligning. Aligning with our aspirations, our deepest intentions. Aligning with our heart's wish to be free. Noticing how aligning feels distinctly different from being available and arriving. Staying with a felt sense of aligning.

I often feel a slight straightening up of my spine as I align, a kind of inner uplift, a sense of dignity, a wholesome feeling. Aligning feels like this right now, here.

There may be a felt sense of grounding, or feeling grounded coming in. When we feel we're aligned with our deepest intentions, our hearts can be at ease, maybe feeling even slight happiness. Maybe a kind of trust, aligning with the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha¹. Aligning with the Noble Eightfold Path.

Stay with the felt sense. Our body knows, our heart knows. Sometimes right here, being aligned and available, there can be a sense of being collected, composed, and unified.

The felt sense of the body can come forth vividly. Sounds become clear, and silence is palpable.

From this aligned and available field, open to receive the felt sense in the body, our emotions, and the mind. You may choose to stay with the felt sense in the body, your felt sense in the breath, the flow of the breath, movements, vibrations, or simply staying with the aliveness that's right here.

Where I am, the sound of pouring rain is very full, vibrant. When we touch this alive, vibrant, receptive field, there can be a kind of tenderness; it's enlivening².

In these last moments of our meditation together, reconnect with the felt sense of being available and aligned. What does it feel like right now? For me, a wave of gratitude comes forth, knowing that we can always return to this ground of being available and aligned. [Applause]

Dharmette: Practice Skills (3 of 5) Practicing with Felt Sense

So wonderful to be with you all. It was really nice to sit in the pouring rain. I just noticed that it's starting to lighten up slightly where I am. Today, I brought yet another practice, a skill to share, and this is practicing with the felt sense.

You've heard me using this phrase repeatedly these last few days. When I first heard this phrase repeatedly on a retreat some years ago offered by the teacher Phillip Moffitt³, he would use this again and again. At some point, I thought to myself, "Wow, he really meant it." So you've been hearing me say this phrase again and again, and I'll say that I really mean it: practicing with the felt sense.

Why am I emphasizing this so much? This practicing with the felt sense is based on a recognition that I think many teachers or practitioners come to at some point: we often practice mindfulness and meditation from a very head-centered orientation. We lead our meditation from concepts, ideas, and beliefs that we have. We think we're supposed to be with the breath, and then we just manage and direct it somehow from a very conceptual framework. Sometimes we use the phrase that we tend to have a "control tower" approach in our meditation, and I resonated with that a lot.

I know for myself, probably one of the first major breakthroughs of my meditation was coming to the awareness that I was really shoehorning my breath into the way that I thought it was supposed to be, using my mind and my head. I was doing it so much from this control tower that I was literally suffocating myself. It was not until I recognized that this was happening that all of a sudden something happened. I realized, "Oh, this doesn't work. I have to let loose of this control tower approach, of practicing from this conceptual framework." So that opened a whole new gradual training, a gradual learning to let loose of this orientation of practicing.

I think I am not particularly unique; many people have come to the recognition that this is a deeply rooted tendency in us. Phillip, in one of his books, spoke about the effect and importance of practicing with a felt sense. I want to read a little portion here:

"Learning to access the felt sense of the larger dimensionality of body and mind, such that you're able to disengage from deep-seated habits of viewing yourself and the world strictly in concepts. You may not even realize how much of your inner experience, even in meditation, is based on conceptualizing, such that your thinking mind is acting as a filter between your perceived and your actual experience."

This is a really deeply rooted force and tendency. We human beings learned this mode of operating from a very young age, so it's not a mistake that somehow we're operating in this way even when we come to meditation. And yet, there is a cost when we live strictly in the world of concepts and ideas. We want to recognize that thinking, logic, and conceptualization are one aspect of being human, but there is also a broader dimension of being human that is not boxed up only by concepts and ideas.

When we're strictly living through our ideas and beliefs, we can be at odds with our actual experience. Concepts and ideas can last for a long time, but the actual experiences of what those concepts are pointing to may be changing very rapidly. For example, the idea that "I am an angry person." That's an idea. It can last for a long time, maybe sometimes a lifetime, and we identify by that. But in reality, that's not even possible. We can't be angry all the time; our system is not functioning like that. But we can lock ourselves up in the boxes of these ideas, and that's a form of imprisonment. It's dukkha⁴, the opposite of freedom.

Learning to practice with this felt sense is a wonderful approach to unwind this kind of conditioning, where we view or relate to the world through conceptual frameworks. We're cultivating practicing with a felt sense, and that allows us to gradually come into harmony with the reality of our experiences, or in the Dharma phrase, "come into harmony with the way things are," rather than trying to shoehorn reality into the boxes of our ideas.

How do we do that in our guided meditation? In the way we're already doing it: we can become available to what's here. There is a deep trust in this inner capacity of being human that can feel our way and sense our way, and this is a primal capacity in us. Even right now, for example, as we sit here listening to the words, if you just pause and take a moment to feel and sense what's here, what's happening. For me, I immediately know there is a felt sense, even though I may not necessarily have words for it. I may not be able to describe it right away, but it doesn't trump the reality of feeling something and sensing something. Sometimes, a clear recognition can come forth as I'm staying with the felt sense.

From the perspective of our practice, it's totally okay and valid for us to just feel and sense without the necessity of immediately trying to describe what is happening. As the recognition comes forth, let it be. Sometimes the recognition can come forth with images, sometimes words, sometimes visuals; that's all valid. This form of recognition is a natural emergence, a bubbling up from the depth of our being, from the reality of our experience, instead of a top-down imposing of something onto our experience. You can see the difference here.

As we practice this way, what can happen is we're dropping out of directing our meditation. We're letting the way things are be what they are. As we drop below our abstract thinking mind, things can get rather simple and direct. We're less caught up by the stories of our experience. A lot of wanting mind and not-wanting mind tends to come from the conceptual stories that we have. So it's actually more conducive for us to get collected, unified, and composed. Another way of saying that is it's conducive to samadhi⁵, or a wealth of inner beauty like delight, happiness, and easeful tranquility.

As we stay in this territory, what can also happen is our knowing, our awareness, can become more clear because we're less jammed up by rapid thinking or storytelling. As we stay in this felt sense, things become more and more clear. We can allow a more intuitive kind of knowing to surface, to bubble up. In this way, the felt sense is also conducive to insights and intuitive knowing.

My invitation for the rest of the day, if you wish, is to explore feeling and sensing the way that you're going about your life. Do so without necessarily conceptualizing and cognizing it as a problem. We're simply recognizing that we're opening to a broader perspective of being human and allowing all of those dimensions to come alive.

May you open to all the different dimensions of being human. Thank you for your attention. May our practice benefit ourselves and benefit the whole world.