Guided Meditation: Three Homes of Awareness in the Body

Hello, my name is Scott Kalin. Welcome to the form of emptiness. Today we'll be drinking a few different teas and we'll be talking about the 13 patterns that make up the theory of 1 and 2. We're just starting to get used to the format of meditating, doing guided meditations, recordings, doing talks, all kind of with a video camera.

And so we'll probably be doing this format where I'm making tea. And talking at the same time, I find it is relatively enjoyable and relaxing kind of way to do it. And yeah, so we're doing that. If you enjoy tea, you're welcome to have tea while I have tea.

And if not, no worries, there's no pressure. Okay, so we're trying, haven't tried this tea yet, it's called Shan Lin Chi Charcoal Roasted Bayou Ouvant 2006. So it's aged, which is, I don't think I've ever had a, this type of tea before, so give me a minute. What I'm doing is I'm channeling, basically entering into a flow state and the metaphor I like is from Native American tradition where they talk about opening yourself up and allowing yourself to be a hollow bone for Wonka Tonka to speak through.

And so I think that's an accurate description for me of what it's like to speak from my own transmission, live my calling, live from my own transmission, and kind of spontaneously move and speak from truth and intuition. My experience on the path of spiritual awakening and spiritual evolution is that it feels as if there's this process that goes on where God or whatever you believe is kind of scouring out the inside of your body. And at times of, you kind of feel if you've had a lot of shifts or releases, like the inside of your skin, if you ever felt like that, feels like it's been scratched or scoured.

To me it feels like that's kind of what's happening in this. We go into contraction, we come out of contraction, we go into contraction, we come out of contraction. Every time we go into contraction, we can come out of contraction. Part of us heals, part of us remembers what we truly are.

And that is literally destabilizing and deconstructing all of the knots and densities within our body. If we were thinking of the liquid armature, my three-dimensional model, how the model has that wooden spiraling armature with circles and like a funnel kind of shape, that's what it looks like after you've let go or dissolved all the densities and knots and contracted spots. And so a knot fully healed or a midhealed version of the liquid armature, which I plan in the future, would have knobs and bumps and knots representing the places where consciousness has yet to penetrate and our blind spots or our unresolved losses or traumas.

So, it tastes quite good. So, the more that we fully embrace our humanness and let the light of conscious awareness infuse the knots and contractions and stuck places in our body, in our energetic body, in our human body, in our physical body, it's all kind of different facets of the same thing. But the more that we allow our conscious awareness and unconditional self-love and our intention for freedom and truth and authenticity to penetrate those knots and those stuck points, and then we go through that process of expansion contraction, expansion contraction.

What's happening is we're grieving the loss and that expansion and contraction is like we're a sponge or a wet rag and we're just ringing, the universe is ringing us out. You know, all the densities and beliefs and unnecessary attachments are just getting rung out of us. And then eventually, all of that kind of dissolves and then returns to the source of our being into our Lord Dantian. Like the Lord Dantian, imagine as like if you had a huge block of stone in your abdomen and you put a bowl into the stone and that's like your Lord Dantian.

And then we're just filling that Lord Dantian with all of the healed, digested or all those stuck energies that have been reclaimed. That's us reclaiming our power, that's reclaiming our own wholeness, that's taking accountability for our own energy and our own life. So once those knots and that liquid armature has been cleared out of all the stuck parts and what's left is more kind of our authentic self, I call it, which is kind of the humanness that stays. Then the ability to channel, the ability to get out of the way, so to speak, for spirit to move through you or speak through you, amplifies and becomes more powerful, more easy and also more authentic or more accurate.

Which is quite important when it comes to channeling because I first would say that I began to have the experience of channeling. Some people talk about channeling like channeling another being or from a different dimension or something like that. I'm not saying that those people are inaccurate but that's not my experience. I have had experiences where I felt like I've kind of connected with past Buddhist teachers like Shunri, Suzuki or Nisigar Datta or Bodhidharma or different famous teachers.

I felt like I've connected with them before but that's kind of an aside. But for me channeling is more just what happens when spirit kind of moves through me as Scott. And I think everybody has a different experience of that. But when it first started happening, actually was having tea.

Remember one of the first times that happened I was drinking tea in a tea shop where I learned about Chinese tea, Dober tea in Madison, Wisconsin. But I would not, at that point, gotten to a biting awakening. I was not fully scoured out or digested so to speak but I was able to still get out of the way for something to speak through me. But in hindsight now looking back at those experiences, not that they weren't authentic or true, which they were, but there is a tendency especially at the beginning of channeling and when we haven't fully become grounded in our lower Dhan Chien and the grounded being.

When we haven't fully awakened our mind, our heart and our gut levels, then there's a subtle sense of ego or self or attachment to self that is not completely affecting the experience of channeling. And so it can make the channeling less authentic or affect the intensity or stuff like that. So yeah, so for the meditation today, this is kind of why I was saying this is I can't ever quite know what I'm going to say when I begin to speak from kind of a flow state, but I can kind of direct it a little bit sometimes. So we'll see, maybe not.

But my sense of it is that we'll try to kind of talk about the three levels of awareness in the body. So specifically, if you're looking at the liquid armature, it's in the liquid armature. But the level of mind and then the level of heart and then the level of gut. And so basically what I recommend is in that in the liquid armature model, there's three crystals.

Those crystals each represent the enlightened or fully awakened source in that level. So a fully awakened mind is represented by the fenekite crystal. A fully awakened heart is represented by the emerald crystal and a fully awakened gut is represented by the paparadasha sapphire crystal. And so where those crystals are in the armature is where I recommend that you meditate.

So when you do concentration practice or when you learn to establish spots in your body that feel at home, that you feel safe when your awareness is in those spots, then I recommend you do it in those three spots. Right. So the three spots are where the neck meets the head back here. Right.

A little bit inside, right past the bone, but in right there, that spot. And then behind the heart in two inches down and in front of the spine. And then where the lower dantian is, the lower dantian is two inches below the belly button. And then back towards the spine.

So behind the lower dantian. At least that's where I experience it. And then in front of the spine. So those are the three spots.

So for the exercise, we will try to do a guided about that. Okay, so get yourself situated to do the meditation. I usually recommend it shouldn't be too long of a meditation, probably about 10 to 15 minutes. But I recommend that when you're doing a meditation, you either sit in a comfortable chair on the floor, you have your butt on the chair, your back straight.

You want to have your spine relatively straight if you can. One way to think about it is you want to be both solid, like your bones to be solid and your muscles to relax. Okay, so. Okay, so kind of get yourself situated.

I'm just gonna drink some of this tea and then we'll get started. Okay, I will ring the bells three times and I will begin the exercise. Okay, try to turn off any distractions, any of your phones or anything that may distract you for the next 10 minutes. Sit in a relatively comfortable position, whether in a chair on the floor, back straight, or on the chair.

Begin by just noticing your breathing before you try to change or control your breathing. Just notice your breathing. Notice how your chest rises on the in-breath and falls on the out-breath. Notice how your nostrils flare on the in-breath and on the out-breath.

Notice how your belly expands on the in-breath and contracts on the out-breath. Just notice, we imagine that our body is divided into three regions, so from our shoulders up to our head, from our shoulders down to our bottom of our rib cage and from our rib cage down to the bottom of our torso. First let's just be aware of the space from our shoulders up to our head. What is it like?

Just the quality of the space. What is the texture like? Is it dense? Is it light?

Does it have a temperature? Are there any pain or tension or contractions? If you notice any tension or pain, just practice saying yes to it and then kind of slightly pulling away from it, just very subtle. You're just subtly moving towards it and then subtly moving away from it, not trying to control anything.

Important part of meditation is attempting to not have any expectation or trying to do anything. The minute we try to do something or have a strong attachment or expectation, we tend to get the equal and opposite reaction. Good. So now let's try to find that point that I described earlier, so right where your top of your neck hits the bottom of your head, you can kind of follow the two back to those spots and then a little inside.

And then try to just focus, have a small sphere of your awareness or your focus around that spot. Just focusing on that spot while you breathe. Good. Keep focusing.

Imagine that your little person right on that spot as if it's a little cave and your back is up against the bones in your skull and the front of the cave is opening to your head and there's a little fire in front of you or a candle and you're just looking at that fire, focusing on the fire, feeling the space of the cave around you right there. And then once you begin to feel calm or somewhat grounded in the spot, like your attention is settled there, then very slowly bring your head up and open your awareness to the whole person in front of you and above you within the skull.

We're just noticing the space now and ideally we'd like to have something like 80% of our attention in that spot and then 20% is reaching out to the field of awareness. You can imagine that you're like a lighthouse and you're a light shining from that spot and you're like, "Oh, good." Now once again, this is very brief, so let's try to connect with the space in the head and try to describe it. Does it feel light or dense? Is it open or closed?

Does it have a color? To me it feels very vast and spacious, almost like the sky above a grassy plain. It's very clear, very free of any sort of resistance or density. Good.

Now bringing your awareness back to that point where our neck meets the base of our head. Then just imagining we're going to move to the other point that I described. The other point is two inches is all the way at the back of your body behind your heart and then two inches down. So you go two inches down from the heart and then straight back to the right in front of the spine or either way works.

But before we do that, we're going to start in that spot in our head and then imagine that you are right in that spot that you're falling out of the spot down through your body as if you're jumping backwards into a bed. So you're falling down right in front of the spine, down until you get to two inches below the heart and then you stop there. And if you're having trouble finding it, you can put your hands over that spot in the front and the back if that helps to kind of find where that is. And then right there we'll do the same thing, just kind of focusing your awareness in a small sphere in that spot.

And then imagining once again that you're in a little cave and your back is up against your spine and there's a little fire in front of you and you're just tending to that fire, making sure the fire stays lit. That you're having a relationship with the fire. And then opening our awareness to the field, once again keeping 70, 80% of our awareness and our attention into that spot and then the other 20 to 30% into the field of our awareness. Being aware of the space, feeling what the energy feels like on this level of awareness, being curious, opening yourself up to it, having a relationship or a dialogue with it.

To me it feels more dense, more heavy, almost liquidy like a water or a thickness to it. There's a subtle warmth to it, almost like a subtle caringness or love to it. And... Is it definitely distinct or different from the space in the head?

Good, now bring your awareness back to that spot in front of our spine, two inches below the heart and the same thing, we're going to fall backwards out of that spot like we're falling into a big bed, falling backwards down, right in front of the spine, down, down, down into the lower abdomen, so pass the belly button and a couple inches below the belly button right in front of the spine, that spot. And same thing, we're going to gather our awareness, gather our attention, gather the energy, focusing our awareness like a small sphere in that spot.

Like you said, imagining that this is a little cave and your back is up against your spine, that's the wall of the cave and then you have a little fire in front of you and your whole job is just to tend to that fire, make sure it doesn't go out, maybe you have to add some sticks to it sometimes, you got to block the wind or you need to blow on it, but you're having this active relationship with cultivating that inner fire right in that spot. Kind of fully engrossed in that experience. Okay, and then same thing, we're going to open our awareness out from that spot into the field of our abdomen, keeping 80, 70% of our awareness on the spot and then just projecting the sphere outwards of our awareness into the abdomen, becoming aware of whatever is going on in the abdomen, noticing any densities or contractions or pain or difficulties there.

And then becoming aware of the field, what is the energy like in the lower abdomen, the abdomen area, and curious about it, wanting to get to know it, wanting to become familiar with it. To me, it feels more dark, harder to see or feel or sense, it feels heavier, almost like the inside of a mountain or the bottom of a very deep ocean or still pool. There is movement to it, but not as much movement as there is on the heart level, there is a groundedness to it. I wouldn't say it's warm in the way that the heart center is loving, but there is definitely a sense of stability and a fullness to it, and also there's a sense of emptiness.

There's a kind of more of an eternalness, I would call it, very grounded. Good, and then just to wrap it up, we'll say a few statements out loud. I dedicate myself to the ground of being. I dedicate myself to the ground of being.

I dedicate myself to the ground of being. I dedicate myself to the heart of awakening. I dedicate myself to the heart of awakening. I dedicate myself to the heart of awakening.

I dedicate myself to the light of mind. I dedicate myself to the light of mind. I dedicate myself to the light of mind. And I'll ring the bell three times, that will end the exercise.

Okay, well, thank you for joining me. And please take a look at the next video, which will be the 13 patterns of the theory of 1 and 2.