Watching, allowing and welcoming resistance

So to begin, we can just notice the parts of us that are ready and willing to meditate, that are ready and willing to be present for our experience. Somewhere in us there is a real desire to be present, to meet our experience, to know it. And also to notice the parts of you that don’t really want to meditate right now — either because there’s something more important to do, something that feels more pressing than sitting in silence and resting into awareness, or because we just don’t want to feel. Think of resistance broadly in these two ways: we’re either pulled away from the practice to do something else, or we’re sort of pushed away because we don’t want to feel what’s happening. Even if what’s happening is not particularly intense or unpleasant, often still there are parts of us that don’t want to feel. So just acknowledging this within you. And as best as you can, just noticing these two — the willingness and the resistance — and then just letting go of that particular inquiry for now and bringing yourself into your body. You can think of it as soaking the body with awareness. You can think of it as just noticing that awareness already holds the body, and just allowing more and more of the body to become conscious — more and more regions of the body — really filling every square millimetre with presence. Meeting sensation in all parts of the body, and also opening to more and more layers or aspects or senses of the body: the more obvious physical sensations where your body’s touching something, the subtler sensations that just go on all the time, the temperatures in the body in different places, and the regions of tension and space, and the felt sense of the texture of the body-space itself — the fabric of the experience of the body. We’ll just spend a couple more minutes resting in the body like this, maybe including the breath as a centre for awareness. And as we continue to settle into the body, really establishing an intention of kindness, or friendliness, or goodwill — or whatever word for you best describes this kind of buoyancy and warmth. And it can help to tune back into this part of us that’s really willing to be present, that wants to be here to meet our experience, to welcome our life. We can just stay with that sense, that intention, let it grow, let it be felt in the body. Then opening to your whole body — including your emotional body — the movement of your emotional life showing up in your body. And finding something that isn’t totally comfortable: some discomfort in the body, some pain, some agitation, emotional disturbance, something that feels a little difficult to feel. It could be quite subtle — it doesn’t have to be a big thing. We usually have a few things to choose from; we normally do. And we’re going to bring a really deep sensitivity and attunement to this experience, so we’re really going to listen to this experience wholeheartedly, whatever it might be. Just take a moment to come into this relationship with whatever this sensation or emotion is. You might not even have a word for the experience itself. It could be anything — as long as you can feel it and come into relationship with it. And again, notice that there’s a part of you that wants to be here for this experience, and then there’s some resistance as well. The resistance can feel like a kind of barrier between us and the experience — either a solid barrier or like a barrier of fog, or something else. Or it can feel like something that’s pulling us away from the experience, trying to pull us elsewhere. And always, there’s some tension in the body associated with resistance. So find that tension. It might be in the head, it might be in the belly, the chest, the shoulders. It might be where this experience is located, if this experience does have a location. With this reluctance to feel this thing comes tension. So we find the tension, and we establish this relationship of deep listening in relationship to the tension as well — so we include it. We welcome and allow the discomfort. And, very importantly, we identify the resistance in the body as tension, and we welcome and allow this too. We’ll notice, as we’re bringing this quality of deep listening to the tension and the resistance, that there are other levels of resistance — other layers. So we’re resistant to feeling the resistance. And this too will show up as tension in the body. So we include this too. Welcoming, allowing. We don’t have to relax any of this tension. This is an important point. The welcoming and the allowing is itself the antidote to resistance. If we just relax the physical body but the resistance stays unmet, unnoticed, not listened to — then it will be just a matter of time before the tension creeps back in. If we can feel this resistance as an unwillingness to be present, and as tension in the body, and hold this all with gentleness and compassion — then it might just soften on its own terms. We can let go of looking for this discomfort anywhere in the body and just relax into a wide awareness. And keep an eye out for this sense of I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to feel this, there’s somewhere else I’d rather be. And wherever and whenever you notice this present, find it in the body. Find the tension, the contraction, the energetic sense of it in your body — and with open arms, welcome it and allow it in. Otherwise we’re just layering resistance on top of resistance. Welcome I don’t want to be here. Welcome I don’t want to feel this. Welcome tension. If we can get used to what this feels like — to find resistance, to find it in the body, to soften and welcome it — then we may notice how it creates more space, more harmony, more peace. And it’s important to spend some quality time with this — with the fruits of the practice — as well as continuing our rooting out of resistance at ever more subtle levels. So if a feeling of peace or harmony or spaciousness arises, you can dwell there for a while, for as long as feels good. And then, if you feel called to, opening out to find these pockets of resistance — these little I don’t want to be heres. So we feel the body — the whole body — in all its many aspects. We notice the voices, the parts that don’t want to be here. We feel the resistance. We find this somatically. We find how this shows up in the body as tension. And we wholeheartedly welcome and allow all of this. And when harmony or peace or spaciousness arises as a result, we include that, and we rest there. We’ll carry on like this for the last couple of minutes in silence.