20 min audio. There is some orienting context below on the difference between mindfulness and contemplative work, and what The Given refers to in that context. Practice first, or read first, practitioner's choice.
To put it reductively, mindfulness meditation is the practice of noticing what is arising with less agenda and attachment. Think of it like going out into nature with nowhere to be and nothing to find, simply open to what appears. Squirrel and eagle, fern and oak, all equal in preference. Contemplative work is different. It is more like going into that same nature to forage mushrooms or watch birds, where you point your attention in a specific direction, narrow your focus, and become more available to, and more informed about, what you are looking for. Said simply: mindfulness is attention without agenda. Contemplative is attention with one.
Prayer, gratitude, forgiveness, compassion, loving-kindness, visualization, and many other practices fall into the contemplative realm. In each, the mind is being trained to attend to something, sustain focus with less distraction, and build the neurology to access that state more readily.
The saying "we become the gods we worship" means we become whatever we give our attention to, for better and for worse. The tendencies our mind develops shape our reality. The virtues we give ourselves to shape our relationships. There is a certain point in life where one becomes disinterested in letting life happen to them, and starts becoming interested in happening to their life. Contemplative work serves that.
Building a mind that can withstand some rigor and still flow spontaneously with life is interesting. Building an emotional and intelligent body that can contain the full spectrum of a flexible mind is interesting.
The audio today blends open awareness meditation with contemplative practice, and you will hear me cue The Given.
In contemplative contexts, The Given refers to reality as it already is before the mind gets its fingerprints all over it. Prior to where judgment, preference, interpretation, or resistance meets a situation, there is simply what is, in its fleeting and raw format. Just data, before it becomes colored by story, meaning, and reaction.
We are relentless narrators. We tie the past and future together with threads of causation, and very rarely allow a moment to exist free and clear of itself. That said, complete objectivity is neither fully possible nor particularly interesting. Life belongs to the stories we tell about it, and how those stories shape us gives us the feeling of being a creative character in a wildly unpredictable one. But moving toward even a touch more objectivity can buy the small moment of space we need between reactivity and action, between choices rooted in the past and choices that open something new.
At its most basic, The Given is this: you (or how you readily identify) did not create your own existence. It was given…it is a gift, if you let it land. Each new moment keeps arriving, bringing life, generous and unprompted. How we receive it depends almost entirely on what we call it. Things are what we name them, and how we name them determines our relationship to them.
To date, this is the most challenging practice for me personally to sustain To call anything that arises, especially the hardest things, the gift or the given, changes how you receive it, treat it, and show up for it.
Suffering arises largely from resisting or trying to replace the given with a preferred version of reality. Much of meditation & contemplative practice is learning to:
See the given clearly, not your story about it.
Rest or at least stay in your body in the given, rather than perpetually fleeing into past or future.
Trust the given, rather than treating existence as fundamentally wrong.
The invitation in the first part of this meditation is simple: let what is arising just arise. See what happens when it can move through you like a river through a riverbed, with less interpretation, less identity, less need to label it before you have even felt it.
The second part moves into more contemplative work. Choose something you already know. Something you believe, at least partially, about yourself or reality. Then, for a finite and successful amount of time, live from it. See what happens in your system when what you know to be true is not an idea you visit but a premise you inhabit.
I have noticed that most of us do not need more information. Insight, teachings, frameworks, and practices have been handed out quite generously by life. And yet we keep reaching for the next one, as if the thing that will finally make it make sense is just ahead. We come by it honestly. There is a sweetness to wanting to know more, given how much there is to know and how little we do.
And still, I am interested in what happens when we take what we already know, genuinely, the things we have discerned and questioned and returned to, and we actually practice seeing from it. Thinking from it. Feeling from it. Living as if it is true.
My next 7-series online program starts in May. Higher Power: Introducing and Deepening into Contemplative Work - details and dates here.
Members Library is open here. Currently, 15+ hours of somatic work and teachings are available there, and it will be updated regularly.
Thank you for the attention it took to get this far ;)
love, ab
