Nondual Energy in the Central Channel
Okay. Welcome to Alembic. I’m Michael Taft. This is Deconstructing Yourself. I will be guiding a meditation for an hour, and if you want to, you can follow along, and if you don’t—do your own meditation. What’s the usual warning? If you’re not used to sitting cross-legged on the floor, but you want to do it because you want to not stand out or something. If you’re not used to doing that, it will cause you great pain. So you may wish to change to the chair while you still can, because it’s a thing to get used to, sitting like this.
And what I watch every week is people just going like this the entire meditation. And so give yourself a break now. We’ll do an hour-long guided meditation. Feel free to follow along, or just do whatever you would like. Then after that, I will talk for a while, and then we’ll bring the microphone around to see if you guys have things you want to share, stuff you have to say, questions or inquiries bubbling up. And then at the very very end we’ll do a last little kicker of meditation. Okay, so that’s the game that we play here on Thursday nights. Let’s get going.
We’re going to do a mixture of the usual beginning stuff here. First we’re going to stretch a little bit.
[guided movement]
And then from here we’re going to do some breath work. So if you’re real full, or you don’t want to do breath work, don’t do it. If, on the other hand you feel like doing that, and that’s a normal thing for you to do. Let’s begin. I’ll do it at my pace, but you do whatever pace you want, including not doing it. Okay. So, slow is like. [demonstrates bhastrika] Medium would be. [demonstrates] If you want to do it pretty fast. [demonstrates]
Okay. So, go. And we’re going to do like two minutes of that. I’ll do medium into the microphone. You don’t need to move your shoulders. Okay. Just rest for a minute. Notice lots of energy. Lots of energy coming up.
Now, what we want to do is regulate the energy. And so, if you know how to do alternate nostril breathing and you’re used to doing that and you like doing it, just go ahead. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take your hand, put it like this. So, two middle fingers are together, and then put in front of your face like this. Plug your right nostril with your thumb, assuming you’re using your right. Breathe in through the left nostril. Close the left nostril. Breathe out through the right nostril. Breathe in through the right nostril. Close the right nostril. Breathe out through the left. Breathe in through the left. Close the left, out through the right, in through the right, out through the left. So, keep your head straight. There’s a way when you’re holding your nose, you lean forward, but don’t do that. Keep your spine straight.
If you are used to doing this, you can hold your breath or whatever else you want to do. But the basic thing is just breathe in and breathe out alternating nostrils like that. If you’re not used to doing it, or you don’t like it, or it’s making you feel bad, don’t do it. Feel how all that energy we brought up with the breath now starts to balance and regulate and feel much more focused. So you may wish to focus at your third eye center between your eyebrows just a little bit.
Okay, we started with the left nostril in breath. Come around to the end of the left nostril out-breath, and just breathe normally through your nose. I walk around. I see a lot of people breathing through their mouth. Most people should probably breathe through their nose.
Tonight we’re going to do the seed syllable HREEM. And so we’re imagining that at the third eye center.
[chanting]
It would feel nice to do that for another 20 minutes or so, but let’s end that there, and simply rest in relaxed openness— to remain very still in a relaxed way. I invite you to set the thinking mind aside completely. Don’t need to engage with that type of thinking at all. We’re not trying to stop it or control it or do anything with it except not engaging with it. What’s left is just simple presence. Come into presence, spacious, open, relaxed, effortless. What I’d like you to do here, which is incredibly simple, is mainly just sitting in presence. And then, if you need a little bit of something to be with, just notice the breath wave rising and falling, coming and going. But we’re not really focusing on it. The stability comes from presence, is presence.
And of course, if you find yourself engaged in fantasy, sorting your music collection in your mind, or something. Just let go of that. It’s very simple. It’s easy. There’s nothing to do. Just keep coming back into the room, into the moment, outside of thought, right now.
One way of talking about it is, if we’re very involved in thought in a fixated way, it’s like being in a little mini-dream. So all I’m asking you to do is just wake up. Just be awake. Be awake. Each time you go into one of those dreams, just wake up. Just wake up. Simply be present. Spacious, relaxed, unfixated body. Are you awake right now? If not, just come back to presence. There’s no guilt, no shame, just come back, that’s all. Can you stay awake? Stay awake.
Now, ask yourself, who is having this experience? And look. Don’t answer the question of your mind or intellect or any kind of thought process of any kind. It’s not that kind of question. It’s the kind of question where I say, “Hey, can you see that bird over there?” And you just look—there’s no intellectual anything required. You just look, so who or what is even having this experience? Look.
Sometimes this is metaphorically called turning the light around—you don’t need to literally turn it around. I used to try to do that—that doesn’t really work. But try to look at what’s having the experience. When you do that, when you do that carefully, you won’t be able to find anything; you just find space. So do it again, who or what is even having this experience? There’s an experience—it’s not nothing. Nothing doesn’t have an experience. There’s an experience happening, but you can’t find what’s having it, so it’s not exactly a thing, either. Look. Who or what is experiencing right now? If you look carefully, you’ll just find awake space. The space itself is awake.
From this place of awake space, uninvolved in thought, breathe in and feel the energy coming into the belly, and making the belly quite energized on the in-breath. And then, on the out-breath, instead of going out the front of your head, the breath goes out the top of your head, about a foot up, and becomes pure awakeness. So breathe into the belly, energizing the belly, energizing and relaxing at the same time. Warm, radiant. And then, we breathe out the top of the head, above the head, it’s like a bright sun of total awakeness. Feel that powerful, radiant, warm, energy in the belly. And then it becomes luminous, bright, clear awakenness, awakening mind. It has a light above the head. You can just feel that, or if you’re good at visualizing, you can do that, too. If you want to, begin with breathing in through the belly, and you can just use the seed syllable OM there, breathing in OM, and then, as you breathe out, up the central channel into this light of awakening above the head, use the seed syllable Hreem.
Let’s do this together for a while. Really feel it. Remember, we’re not doing this as clunky meat bodies. We’re doing this as awake space. Now, on an in-breath, down into the belly region. Feel it through your whole body. Energizing your whole body, filling it with relaxation and warmth in this very energized, uplifting way.
And then on the out-breath a Hreem above the head. It’s like a star or a sun. It’s radiant with the light of consciousness. It’s radiant with the light of awakeness. It just beams out in all directions. Pours down into your entire being, waking up every part of your being—it’s literally awake, all awake.
To the best of your ability, just let go of any thought of any kind. Just stick with the practice. On the in-breath, feel the energy coming down down down into the belly, charging up the whole body. Your hands—you might feel your hands very energized, and you might feel energized also. And on the out-breath, Hreem rushes up into the sun of awake awareness, the sun of awakened wisdom, shining bright, showering down into your being, and also beaming in all directions, the light of awakeness.
Good. Now let that in-breath move up into the heart, and let the radiant sun move down into the heart, so they both come together in the heart. One big energy in the heart. The in-breath goes into the heart, and the out-breath goes out of the heart. If you want to, you can use the seed syllable Tum. So the heart is just radiating, and also taking in kindness, caring, warmth, courage, joy, peace, courage, kindness, joy, peace, and taking it in as well.
And then just drop all that, and ask yourself the question again, who’s even having this experience? Look, look. All you can find is awake, nondual space. Let’s simply rest in natural presence here. Just easy, open, natural presence. Just easy, open, natural presence—it’s not a technique. You’re just sitting there in presence, uninvolved with thought. Just relaxed, uninvolved with thought.
Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake. Don’t go into the dream. Just sitting in natural presence.
The whole structure of pretending to be this or that can just fall apart, fall away, like a heavy burden that we just drop. And there’s just awake space of wisdom, of love. Awake to the vast groundlessness of it all. Awake to the exquisite, continuously unfolding, appearance. Awake.
Again, ask yourself who’s having this experience right now. Look, try to find the experiencer. Notice you can’t find one, there’s just space. Sure, there’s experience, there’s thought, there’s sensation, breathing, emotions – all kinds of stuff. But none of that is the experiencer. It’s just awake space having experience.
Stay with the uncanny unfathomable groundless groundlessness of the moment. The groundlessness of the moment.
Stay awake. Stay present.
Can you just drop everything? Just drop everything. Drop even the dropping, and all you’ll find is awake space, in which the whole experience of the world is arising. From that awake space, let’s let the energy forth as a seed syllable, this time Hum.
[chanting]
Okay, good. Let’s end that there, for now.
So, a couple times during that meditation, I was asking you to look at who’s having the experience. And if you’re not used to doing that kind of inquiry, it might be kind of weird because you’re just like—me. I’m having the experience. And you know that’s completely reasonable. I am or this body is or something like that. But notice, that’s not actually doing what I asked. That’s just thinking of an answer. I keep saying you’ve got to actually look, because answering it from your mind is not what we’re doing. I could say, hey, there’s a picture of a key hidden in this whole drawing, this whole massive drawing, find it. And if you try to do it from your mind, you could, well, just go, well, it’s in there. I know it’s in there. It’s in there. Doesn’t really help, right? That’s just an answer from your mind.
You have to look in the picture until you find it, and you’re like—there it is, there’s the key. It’s a different kind of activity than just going, well, you could just say, it’s me, or it’s my body, or you could say, I know that I’m a brain, and the brain is doing this, and experience is coming in through the senses and the brain is interpreting you know you could go down all kinds of stuff like that. But none of that is what they’re asking you to do. It’s just to look, and when I say look, I don’t mean with your eyes, just find it, find what’s experiencing. If you didn’t understand those instructions, that’s completely totally fine. It just happens that way, but eventually you look instead of thinking about it, you look.
And when you first really look, or feel, or try to find it, typically what you’ll do is—do it right now. Find who’s having the experience. Don’t use your memory or your planning or your fantasy or any idea about it. Just try to find it right now. What’s having the experience?
Again, if you’re not used to doing this, what you’ll then do is feel sort of maybe like the back of your eyes or something inside your eye sockets or behind your eyes or something. For most people, it’s like—that’s it. That’s what’s experiencing, right? Anybody noticing that some kind of feeling in their head? Some kind of physical sensation? Raise your hand if that’s the main thing that’s going on. Okay. Of course, there’s feelings behind your eyes, right? Of course, there’s body sensations. But is that what’s having the experience?
Notice that sensation. There’s the sensation behind my eyes. What’s noticing it? Because something’s noticing those sensations. It’s not that they’re not there. But that’s not an experiencer, that’s just some body sensation in your head. So, look again. Well, there’s my emotional state—cool, that’s beautiful to tune into. What’s noticing that? Feel, try to find what’s noticing it. There’s my family history and my personal history, and where I’m from, and the things I like and dislike, and the clothes I wear, and the attitude I have, and my political affiliations and what I think is right and wrong—all that. Okay. Is that an experiencer? What knows all that? Look, look. Keep doing it. I’m serious, this is instruction. Look, find it. Find it. The more you look, you realize that you can’t find it. All of those answers don’t hold up. What’s experiencing this? What’s experiencing this right now?
Maybe you’re annoyed. What is he talking about? Okay. What’s aware? And it’s a weird thing, like I was saying, it’s a really weird thing because the more you look, the more you will genuinely not be able to actually find it. And that’s important. It’s really important to not just go, “Oh, I know I can’t find it.” Because then you’re just back in your head. You have to experience not finding it—and not just once, but hundreds of times, and thousands of times, and tens of thousands of times not finding it. And then it’s like I said, it’s weird because you can’t find anything. Does that mean that you don’t exist, that nothing’s there? That you’re just some kind of burnt hole in some nihilistic paper?
Well, there’s an experience happening. The lights are on, and there’s something awake, right? There’s an experience. Raise your hand if you’re not having any experience right now. Right.
So, it’s not nothing either. And so this is the paradox, right? It’s nothing that you’re used to. It’s nothing that you’re used to thinking of yourself as. Not a body, not a mind. It’s not thinking. It’s not feeling. It’s not meat. It’s not neurons. It’s not a particular soul. It’s not a particular this or that. Can you notice that? That if you try to make it a particular thing, you’re just making it up, and then focusing on that. Can you notice that—that it’s groundless? It’s just wide open. It’s just totally open. And then there’s all this totally fascinating miracle of body sensations and thoughts, the emotions, all the world happening within all that.
So this is both the groundlessness and the appearance, and this is the shocking thing that we try really hard to avoid noticing, because your sense of self does not like noticing that it’s a fantasy construction. But I encourage you to notice it, and notice it again and again and again, because what’s there instead is everything. What’s there instead is the awakeness, is the groundless ground, in all its immensity power and love. It’s so big that the sock puppet you imagine yourself to be can just drown in it. It’ll be okay. It’s a fantasy anyway, it won’t get hurt.
So when I say wake up, I mean wake up to that. It’s right there. It’s not hard to see all these things that you think you are. They’ll still be there. They don’t get destroyed. They don’t dissolve. They don’t catch on fire. I’m not asking you to be a no-self or something. It’s just, notice that you’re not a sock puppet. At least most of you aren’t. [laughter]
Okay. With that cheery note, let’s switch gears a little bit. If you have stuff you’d like to talk about, a report you’d like to give about your experience, maybe there’s some kind of inquiry bubbling up, raise your hand, and I will do my best to respond to whatever you say. The two warnings as always—we’re live to the internet, so there’s that, and the other thing is, please be mindful of your speech. Okay.
Who would like to manifest enough of a puppet to talk?
Q: I’ve been out of my normal practice, and one thing I experienced during that session was a lot of physical pain that was nonspecific in different parts of my body. I know that’s not uncommon, but unfortunate. I’m curious how you think about pain during sits—if it means anything, or how you think about that experience.
MT: How old are you? 36. Okay. Imagine being a lot older than that. You think about pain the entire time. That’s what awaits you. You know, it’s easy. It’s easy to think about pain, and that’s just the way it is. So you can just open to that. That’s one of the experiences that’s arising. And we don’t fixate on stuff. Now, of course, I’m not trying to say, for example, if you notice acute abdominal pain, you know, you might have appendicitis, go to the doctor, right? But I’m just talking about any kind of normal aches and pains of life. There it is. There’s discomfort arising in your body. To the best of your ability, you know, do the things you do all day, work out, take care of your body, move, roll around on the floor, get up and get down, all that kind of stuff. But beyond assuming all that’s been done and you’re sitting there, it’s just like, wow, my body really hurts.
This is what meditation is made for, man. That’s what it’s good at. It’s like, okay, well, we’re gonna sit with that, and not make a thing out of it, and not make a reactor to it, but just let part of the awake space have pain. So there’s a lot of equanimity involved. And again, one of the main things meditation is designed for is, what about the pain of a horrible situation you can’t change? What about something you care about so much that your emotions are dying and you can’t do anything about it?
What about if you’re actually filled with cancer and you’re in agony and you can’t do anything about it, no matter how much they give you. What about what’s happening in the world—and you’d like to change it, and you can’t really do very much. What about we’re all going to die, right? That’s what it’s here to work with, because there’s all kinds of that.
This is the point—that we are immense, can we can work with that, and actually, instead of having it crush you, or overwhelm you, or make you despondent or nihilistic, when we open up to it in a certain way, we can become quite energized. So we do everything we can possibly do to alleviate it, and then do not ignore the remainder. Do everything you can do to alleviate it, sit with whatever is left over.
Q: Hi, thanks for the sit.
MT: Thanks for sitting.
Q: I’m just wondering, do you have a basic heuristic for how to decide how to practice?
MT: Yeah, what’s working?
Q: I’m probably just struggling for a long time trying. So I don’t feel like the best position to know. Sometimes I have some opening, but overall a lot of distraction, getting lost, a lot of resistance.
MT: What do you love? What do you love?
Q: What do you mean—as far as techniques?
MT: I just mean, what do you love? Because that’ll be easy to find some focus on. Sometimes I tell this, so if you’ve heard this before, I have a couple of sisters who are older than me, brothers older, and I have some sisters. I remember one of them was in junior high, and I hung out with her all the time. We were buddies, and I was a lot littler than her; we’d just hang out. And one day she had her school notebook open, with a purple pen, and was just writing this guy’s name over and over and over and over and like page after page of writing this guy’s name. And I’m like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And she’s like, I’m just so into this dude, I can’t stop thinking about him.
So it’s easy to focus on stuff we love, which is why devotional practice of any kind is so immensely powerful. There’s a bunch of other reasons it’s powerful, but one of them is, it’s easy to focus on something you’re into.
So, one thing I would say is, what are you into? You know, you don’t have to say it out loud to the internet for the whole of time if you don’t want to, but just know that I really like this. And it doesn’t have to be like, oh, I’m so in love with it, but just that you love it enough to be with it.
So in other words, what’s in what’s in your heart? So instead of thinking about which technique to use, we can be like, okay, where’s the juice?
Q: How would you use that? I don’t know. I’m really surprised by your answer. Like this is a very different direction.
MT: You would use it to focus on because you’re talking about mind wandering, and so then if you focus on that, your mind will wander a lot less. And then, when I say, okay, set aside your thinking, it’s a lot easier if it’s already kind of way more stable.
Q: So like if I was your sister, you’d be like, yeah, focus on this guy—just really focus on this guy.
MT: Probably not. I probably want something a little more elevated, you know, because it helps. So, in other words, like, okay, focus on love. That feeling of love. Maybe at first you prime it by thinking about the guy, but then there’s just love with love in your heart and just feel love. Doesn’t have to be gigantic, just enough to feel it and focus on it and then you start then it’s like, oh yeah, that’s why if we’re in one of these traditions, they don’t start out like, look at what’s having this experience. They start out with, get down and worship for a while because you love Shiva, you know, and then it’s like, okay, now I can sit here a little bit or like green Tara, she’s so green. I just love green and you know, yeah. And now I’m here, you know, and I can bring some openness and some vulnerability and some flow, right? There’s juice there. Okay.
Q: Okay. Thanks. It’s fresh.
MT: You think I’m joking. The greenness is awesome. Green Tara is exquisite. What else?
Q: Hi, Michael.
MT: Hi.
Q: Today’s meditation felt very short—like 10 minutes, and it’s already the end. It felt really powerful in a way that, when I was breathing in with calm, like what you were describing, and I don’t know if it’s in my imagination, but I saw like a mandala blossoming on this lovely lady’s back, and when I was exhaling it, was just like, whoa, that was really flowy and beautiful. I feel like I came in with a lot of baggage from daily life, such as caring for people, work, and everything. And then being able to follow your guide, and going into a familiar space of that spacious openness—it almost feels like something was lifted, and it felt very familiar, but it also kind of waited a little bit. It’s like a glimpse of something really beautiful and airy and also connected.
MT: And that’s what’s really in there when you’re not all wrapped up in all the various distractions.
Q: Yeah. And I just started to think about, oh, when people say, or when I say, go really deep within, what is that sitting deep within? And I just had a realization, I guess I’d like to share that it wasn’t really that deep. It’s there, but the depth is of how many things are actually wrapping us around with all these emotions, thoughts and if you can just shed, and let them go detach then you can see that it’s there. You just go sometimes you still go back and forth because of your distraction presence or whatsoever. But it really felt very—it’s still not like permanent familiarity, like it is a place that I know—but it still takes time and work to actually settle to be able to get there whenever I want to.
MT: So that’s right. Thanks for sharing that and all I’ll say is that, you’re right, but that’s our habit is like zinging around just on the surface, just like bouncing from wave to wave to wave to wave. We just bounce between waves with our attention. But all you have to do is let go of the bouncing with your attention, and just immediately sink into the actual water. And there it is. It’s not far away at all. It’s not even any distance at all. It’s right there—totally, totally.
Thanks for sharing that. Okay. Thank you.
So, we’ll just do five minutes of silent sitting.
Okay, everybody. Thanks for coming out to join me and meditate tonight. You have to be a special kind of crazy to do a thing like this. So, welcome to the club. And we’ll be here again next week. Great to see you all. Come on back.
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