Coming to My Senses

Am I feeling frustrated or mentally exhausted? Am I angry or upset? Is the storm of worries, anxiety, or anticipation of something, or reliving an experience or memory from the past gathering and getting bigger? Do I feel tangled in a situation? Is it some kind of a mental block or build-up from the past bearing two heavy on me while trying to break away from a limiting pattern? It can trap me in a cocoon of my mind. It can put me in the jail of my thoughts.

Do I need a break?

Take a deep breath and do a big sigh of relief, exhaling from the mouth. The next breath will fill the space in the tummy. Feel it going in through nostrils in the nose, flowing in and expanding the abdomen. Hold it for a second, and then let it go, feeling the tummy going in and breath flowing out over nostrils. Let it out completely, slowly. Wait for a couple of seconds before the next breath.

Take three breaths, observing each as if I am breathing into my body.

Feel the sensations in the body. Is it something in the feet, chest, hands, neck, back, heart, or ringing in the ears from tinnitus? Is it vibrations, or throbbing, or pulsating, or twitching? Observe it, allow it, let it be. Let it all float and pass through as if I am a big open sky, and the body sensations are a bubble or a cloud passing through without a trace or impact.

Observe the thoughts and feelings without judging them, or resisting them, or fighting with them. Let them pass through like a bubble or cloud in the sky as well. Being a witness opens up and expands the lake of spacious awareness, allowing emotions to dissolve and disappear as if a droplet of pigment dissolving in a vast lake.

Come to the senses. See the reality streaming straight through the feelings, and experience the world directly and immediately through the clear light of experience. Feel it. Witness it. Embrace it.

I am an integral part of the collective creativity of the universe. I am part of the universal consciousness that has evolved since the beginning of time. I am one miraculous manifestation of billions of years of unfolding; I am a torch carried and nurtured by countless others, making the flame brighter and more vital. I pass it on to others in the journey. My purpose is the purpose of the universe. When I put faith in myself, I am tapping into and allowing the universal intelligence to show me the light. I let the smile and positive vibrations from inside emerge and permeate all that I do; it puts me in harmony with all. It infuses my physical world with the abundance and meaning from inside.

Coming to my senses with three deep breaths connects me to that creative genius, even if only for a few moments. It opens me up to space where I can make a conscious choice between the stimulus of my external circumstances and my response to it.

Excerpts from Pema Chodorn

One of the most effective means for working with that moment when we see the gathering storm of our habitual tendencies is the practice of pausing or creating a gap. We can stop and take three conscious breaths, and the world has a chance to open up to us in that gap. We can allow space into our state of mind.

For all of us, the experience of our entanglement differs from one day to the other. Nevertheless, if you connect with your surroundings’ blessings—the stillness, the magic, and the power—may be that feeling can stay with you, and you can go into your day with it. Whatever it is you are doing, the magic, the sacredness, the expansiveness, the stillness stays with you. When you are in touch with that larger environment, it can cut through your cocoon mentality.

Pause practice can transform each day of your life. It creates an open doorway to the sacredness of the place in which you find yourself. The vastness, stillness, and magic of the surroundings will dawn upon you if you let your mind relax and drop for just a few breaths the storyline you are working so hard to maintain. If you pause just long enough, you can reconnect with exactly where you are, with the immediacy of your experience.