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Step 2, Observing the Mind

You've found a comfortable enough position to sit for 20-30 minutes and your hands are relaxed and in in your lap or laying against your legs. The temperature of the room is agreeable and there isn't a fan or air conditioner blowing on you, though they may be on in the room. There are very few distractions around you and you think you might be able to sit and observe the breath for a while.

Before we watch the breath we'll watch a little bit of everything going on. Close your eyes. Probably already can notice that your mind is racing with thoughts.

What are thoughts? Are they noises? Do you see them? Do you feel them? Or, do thoughts lead to feelings? Do feelings lead to thoughts? What is a thought? Maybe you see the thought in your mind. Is it a photograph? A moving picture - a video? What about sounds - are they visual or something else?

Already, just in the first couple minutes you're going to learn a lot about yourself. You'll see that your mind is on auto-pilot - it just GOES. For your entire awake life your mind has been moving - and churning. It is a never-ending source of entertainment. Your mind likes mind-candy. It loves the senses to be gathering experiences it can analyze. It loves to see things with the eyes, feel with the sensory nerves, taste, smell, hear things. If your mind doesn't have any mind candy being fed from the body and it's sense organs then it creates some from memory or it asks you questions.

You'll notice that the mind is teeming with thoughts with a few breaks between.

Can you focus at all on the breaks? Can you see or experience the breaks in thought that occur between two thoughts?

That very small break is your mind being still.

When the mind is still for a long time - seconds, and then minutes - incredible things happen. The mind is changed and blossoms into a mind that sees the truth about life. About the human experience. The mind is revitalized with energy and throws away the old misconceptions you've lived your life according to for years...

What do you notice besides thought? Can you feel your physical body? Can you feel where your arms are? Your fingers, legs, feet, toes? If they're tense - relax them. The first couple minutes of sitting are a period of progressively relaxing your body. It's naturally tense, as the mind is tense. The body doesn't realize yet that when you sit - it's the ultimate in relaxation. Soon you'll be over the pain of sitting in one spot and the body will really know it's time to relax when you sit like this.

You might want to run through your body from top to bottom - and focus on each body part - head, neck muscles, trapezium muscles, shoulders, biceps, triceps, forearms, wrists, hands, fingers - the whole way through your entire body. As you think of each part - focus on relaxing that part to the point of being ultimately relaxed - with no stress and tension. No discomfort. If you need to stretch a little bit - go ahead and move around and stretch a bit then go back to your sitting position. Run through each body part from head to toes and relax everything.

Don't forget your face! Recently I was sitting and I realized that my face was tense. I was so intent on focusing on the breath that my facial muscles were overly tense. Once I realized this and produced a little half smile it sent me into a deep state where the mind was still and I experienced some deeper levels of consciousness. Just that one tiny detail was holding me back. And that's how it goes with me... maybe you're different, but try to relax everything and see it's effect.

step 1, sitting    step 2, observing mind    step 3, observing body in mind    step 4, observing pain
step 5, observing thought    step 6, observing feelings    step 7, observing breath    step 8, mindfulness

KNOW YOURSELF through meditation.