Skip to main content

Guided Meditation | Mind Like The Sky Thoughts Like The Clouds

 

In Mind Like The Sky Thoughts Like The Clouds guided sitting meditation practice, we start by settling into our posture and setting our intention and motivation for the practice.  Then we will go to the stage of settling the mind so as to settle the gross distraction present in the mind.  After we go to the grounding phase, where we will ground the mind within the body as this helps the mind keep present. Remember, the mind can be lost in the past, or the future, or just daydreaming in the present, but the body is always here, and there is one of the greatest allies in our practice. After grounding, we move into the stage of resting in our embodied presence, mind resting in the body resting on the ground unconditionally supported by the ground.  So resting in our embodied presence and then connecting with the sense of the mind being the sky and the thoughts being clouds passing through the sky.  Inevitably our mind will wander away into thinking carried away by a thought. When we notice this gently bring our mind back to watching the thoughts passing through the sky.  So in this practice, we are connecting with the unbounded nature of the mind and how when we do not interfere with thoughts and do not engage with thoughts, we notice their impermanence and that thoughts are self-arising, self displaying and self-liberating.

If you would like to know more about meditation, you can also visit https://claytonmicallef.com/blog


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sound and Stillness In Our Practice

 We could say that we are immersed in a world of sounds. If you pay attention, almost every minute of your waking life is filled with some form of sound: most prominently the ambient sounds in our natural environment, including music and radio, conversations and messages, and the cacophony of thoughts in your own head. Considering all of this, we have to ask ourselves: How frequently do you get genuine moments of silence in our everyday life? If we reflect, it seems that we have the inclination for filling moments of silence or stillness with noise and distraction and all other activities in between. What is the reason for this? Why do we have this inclination towards filling up moments of silence with some type of activity?   Because it seems that silence makes us feel uneasy, and since silence makes us feel uncomfortable, we will automatically try to fill it up. Why? In moments of silence or stillness, we return to ourselves, which is not always an easy thing to do to ...

Discovering the patterns of your mind

When you meditate, sitting quietly, trying to focus, on your meditation anchor you start to notice what takes you away from your point of focus. Generally, this is a thought of some kind or another. Meditation practice is not intended to stop you from thinking but its purpose is to help you discover what and how you are thinking .

Accepting Feelings Fully

Feelings of worthlessness, humiliation, and self-criticism that you may have had at various times in your life and that may even resurface during meditation sessions are manifestations of deep wounds. Children who are neglected or abused by their parents may unintentionally develop the idea that they are terrible or worthless. This can happen as a direct result of being told that, but it can also happen for less obvious reasons. Children are completely reliant on their parents for existence, so the thought that there is something really wrong with their caretakers and that they are injuring them is too frightening for them. As a result, children place responsibility on themselves—someone must be to blame, and it can't be their parents; therefore, it must be them. When self-blame initially surfaced, it was an understandable and adaptive attempt to cope and keep sane. Understanding this and reminding yourself of it with compassion whenever such sentiments occur might help them gra...