Speaker 1: 0:54

When I'm in the meditation I have this feeling and I've asked a few people about it before where it's like this and it's like I literally pretty much start to see like kaleidoscopes and stuff with kaleidoscopes and stuff, and then I feel like I'm like, and then often I feel like I'm, then I'm gone and then I'm like coming back and I don't know if I've been sleeping or not what do you have?

Speaker 2: 1:26

to say about that yes, so did you all hear that great? When we're so, did you all hear that Great? When we're operating in our normal waking state of consciousness, we're quite used to the sound of our own voice and the visual plane being occupied by images of things we've either experienced or things we want to experience or don't want to experience. But they're primarily to do with the way in which we relate to the gross surface of reality. And then, when we start meditating, we notice that our attention changes, the quality of our attention changes and the quality of our thinking changes. And the way that our thinking changes is it moves from being linear, sequentially elaborated with imagery that is identifiable with this gross physical reality, and it starts to become less linear, less conceptual, more abstract and almost dreamlike in some layers. And as we move through layers, the subtler the mind becomes, it becomes more orderly. This is a rule of thumb the subtler our mind becomes, the more orderly it becomes. Why? Because we're moving from the gross level of our awareness to the source of thought, and at the source of thinking is the profound intelligence that gives rise to all form and phenomenology in the physical universe. As we move closer to the source of our own intelligence. That is that universal intelligence closer to the source of our own intelligence. That is that universal intelligence. We are closer to it, radiating coherence, and coherence structures orderliness in our consciousness. It starts to unify what would otherwise, on more gross levels of awareness, appear to be separate or disparate, or even conflicting. Appear to be separate or disparate, or even conflicting, conflicting things start to appear as a part of one whole cohesive system of experience. This is why sometimes we can meditate, feeling a bit worried before we start meditating and at the end of it we come out and we're like I can't even remember what I was worried about. I feel great. Why? Because you've just unified your experience.

Speaker 2: 4:04

Anxiety, fear, the tendency to need to control is generally driven by the fear of the unknown tendencies structured in otherness. Let me say that again, the tendency to experience fear or anxiety and the need to control is structured in the experience of the unknown behavior of otherness, being something that appears to not be me, another person, circumstance, that which is unpredictable. When we have no sense of connection to reality, of connection to reality, where we feel like we're operating in a silo of our own consciousness, in an echo chamber of our own worries, we energetically become shut down, the energy centers, which we refer to as chakras, become closed, compromised, and our capacity to detect our environment that gives us information about what's happening. It's compromised. Result of being closed off is uncertainty, which promotes fear, anxiety and confusion, and what we're seeking to do is to create that openness and coherence. So I'm coming back to your question in a second. When we de-excite our mind, we start to open. Everything starts to open. That's where that sense of ah after a meditation comes from. It's because all the chakras are opening, we're letting go of fear and we're just allowing life to pass through us, and it's easeful, it's effortless and it's coherent. And in our meditation experience, as we become more adept, what we start to notice is the layers of coherence structuring itself visually, and sometimes we can perceive them as a web of colorful geometry or some beautiful flowing pattern that has some symmetry or makes sense. It feels like it's expressive of something deep in our soul. This is a very common experience reported and what it's reflective of is transitioning from being externally referenced and sensing the nature of reality from an external standpoint to detecting the nature of reality from an internal standpoint. So what that is is you simply detecting the nature of things, not just the nature of yourself, but everything, and so it's wonderful.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Now, having said that, we don't want to get caught up in it. While we're practicing meditation, we don't want to get off the bus and smell the pretty flowers. We wait until we've opened our eyes to get off the bus and smell the pretty flowers. We wait until we've opened our eyes to get off the bus and smell the pretty flowers. But while we're meditating, we just allow the journey to continue. And it may be a beautiful valley that we pass through on the journey in our 20 minutes of meditation and we move into other areas and other spaces and other layers of experience, and we welcome all of those experiences with equanimity, with equal value. We don't place any extra special value on any one particular kind of experience while we're meditating, to ensure that we're not getting caught up in any one particular thing.

Speaker 2: 8:51

Because, essentially, why we're meditating? We're training our awareness, our consciousness, to be able to behold reality fluidly. We are training our consciousness to be fluid. There we go Because in that fluid state, we're not rigid, we're not trying to control, we're not being strategic and forceful, we're open. We're not trying to control, we're not being strategic and forceful. We're open, we're curious, we're allowing reality to inform us of what's happening and we're also allowing ourselves to be open to respond with that beautiful intelligence and we're meeting life in a far more elegant, non-forceful way. We don't deplete ourselves of unnecessary energy. Non-forceful way, we don't deplete ourselves of unnecessary energy as in we don't expel or utilize unnecessary energy and we allow ourself to remain subtle so that we can detect subtlety.

Speaker 2: 9:59

The elevation of human consciousness is understood through the increase of subtlety of awareness. That is to say, we are increasing our capacity to contain complexity. With the subtlety of awareness, I am able to be aware of all of you here and then, if I allow myself, I can get a sense of what each of you are experiencing and feeling by the expressions on your face, your body language, but also some subtle feeling body language but also some subtle feeling. And then I can sense it all as one cohesive experience. And if I had my glasses on, I could probably do it with you on the screen as well, but you're too far away. But we can get a sense and, as I'm saying that you're all doing that, you're scanning the room and you're getting a sense.

Speaker 2: 11:09

This is subtlety of consciousness and in this subtlety is layers and layers of very important information about what's going on, which gives us power to be able to bring ourselves most effectively into any particular moment with a heightened sense of sensitivity, compassion, and truly be useful. When are we of greatest use to each other? When we're present, when we're listening to each other, when we're generous in that attention, where we're able to momentarily suspend our own needs to meet the needs of others. And if everybody's doing that, there's a generosity of spirit that animates the coming together and we feel safe enough to move deeper. Without that safeness, we're not inclined to want to move deeper, because all of us carry things that don't feel comfortable, that bury themselves deeper in our nervous system, carry things that don't feel comfortable that bury themselves deeper in our nervous system, and so the coming together in subtlety facilitates healing, recovery, recuperation, even if it's only from the stressful day that we just had.

Speaker 2: 12:39

That's great. Come home stressed and have a beautiful, warm, compassionate, attentive consciousness, shower us how was your day, tell us, and to really really be present and let that process of unwinding happen, be heard, rather than be met with a demand meet my needs. Then it's just a battle of needs and a whole lot of dissatisfaction. So what we're cultivating is greater fulfillment in our interactions, through cultivating subtlety and not ignoring it. Once we are aware of it and as meditators there's a lot more subtlety present than we often give ourselves permission to lean into. That's why I love going on a big subtlety rant. It's just wonderful to be reminded.