Practice Presence Meditation!

There is certainly no shortage of books regarding the practice of meditation—unfortunately, the language and explanations in these books can be difficult to decipher. Why waste time translating your meditation book into relatable language when you could be, I don’t know, meditating? Check out Presence Meditation: The Practice of Life Awareness, by Jens-Erik Risom, a step-by-step guide to achieving self-awareness through the art of meditation. Risom gently, yet directly, guides readers through all the steps necessary for effective meditation with objective goals and simple exercises. In the following excerpt, Risom describes the four introductions to meditation: rootedness, attention to breathing, fullness of feeling, and witness awareness. Enjoy!

Rootedness
Presence meditation happens in the body. So the first adjustment is about body awareness and relaxation. The task is to weave awareness into your physical being. This gives a rootedness in the physical, in the experience of being anchored in the body. It also provides a sense of variation in the body’s experience, and a greater sensitivity to physicality while you sit.

On this planet there is a constant pull on your body, which is continually subject to the basic condition of gravity. You can use gravity to become more aware of the state of your body.

EXERCISE: Make tiny movements with the back to find a reasonably erect position of the spine. Then try to allow the pull of gravity; don’t fight it. Something else is holding you upright, a reflex that works best if you are sitting on your sit bones with an erect (but not stiff) spine. This sitting position will counter the pull of gravity. The effect is a calm settling or sinking feeling as you relax into gravity and release some of the more superficial, perhaps lifestyle-related, tensions.

A regular physical discipline, particularly in relaxing yet energetic modalities like qigong, bioenergetics, and the like, is also important for meditation practice. Sexuality can also be an excellent way to get more physical circulation and awareness.

Attention to Breathing
In Peace Is Every Step, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “All human beings should have access to a ‘breathing space’—a room for breathing, a place where you have the space and the quiet to feel your breathing.”

In many traditions, breathing has been used as a pathway to the spiritual. The word “respiration” comes from the Latin root spiritus, which means spirit. As we breathe, we literally re-spirit ourselves. Western traditions have used the breath in prayer practices, too. It is a natural focus point, a basic rhythm in the body that is with us from when we are born until we die.

The ability to stay focused is an indication of the meditative presence. Distractions can easily draw our attention away from the breath, so the practice of maintaining focus on it is asimple yet powerful way to develop our underdeveloped muscle of concentration. The benefits of doing so extend beyond the realm of meditation; one effect of paying attention to breathing is an increased focus and persistence in other activities.

EXERCISE: Follow your natural breathing rhythm, letting the awareness rest in the in- and out-breath. If you lose attention and find your practice is distracted, simply notice the distraction and immediately return to the breath. The moment you discover that you are lost in a stream of thought is a golden moment; a greater awareness emerges, like the sun suddenly breaking through clouds.

Fullness of Feeling
To ensure that your meditation doesn’t get too mental or dry it is important to make space for deeper feeling states, not as a performance but as a way of attending to a natural quality of your being.

EXERCISE: Tap into a feeling of friendliness toward yourself and other people. You may find all kinds of other feelings arising as well, but there is friendliness too. If it intensifies to become compassion or love, that’s fine, but that is not some¬thing you have to achieve.

Another way to cultivate a fullness of feeling is to open to feeling of appreciation for yourself and others. Appreciating others in particular is beneficial to your physical and emotional heart and helps to create a fruitful meditative environment.

Witness Awareness
This practice is easy to describe in words: don’t say yes and don’t say no to the shifting contents of consciousness. Don’t grasp at them, but let them arise, be, and dissolve as they wish. Allow the phenomena to be there. This is a very nonviolent, friendly, and neutral attitude toward the mind. You don’t need to change anything.

So, meditation is an acceptance of things exactly as they are. This means finding inside yourself an authentic acceptance of whatever you are sitting in and with.

The attitude of the witness is very specific: no matter what arises in the mind, let go of it. Everything is allowed to be there; simply let go of your attachment to what arises, of the grasping or rejection of it.
You can always observe the nature of things as they are; the ability to witness is not dependent on being in any particular state of mind. You may find that witnessing creates space and a great feeling of freedom. In this state of passionate neutrality, a deep empathy without attachment or rejection, you are not so dependent on things being a certain way.

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