Enjoy Mukti Gray’s in-depth dialogue with Loch Kelly the creator of the mindful glimpses app in this podcast episode. During this interview, Mukti and Loch delve into diverse topics and share pointers for awakening, embodiment, as well as working with emotions and energy. The dialogue explores topics like challenges faced by highly sensitive individuals. They discuss practical approaches to accessing and living from the dynamic nature of awareness and its transformative power.
[52:37] The episode features Loch offering a guided glimpse practice called Back Through Your Senses. These mindful glimpses serve as invaluable tools for experiencing ways to access the awake consciousness that is already here within all of us.
You can now explore all of Loch Kelly’s practices and teachings on the new Mindful Glimpses app. This innovative meditation and wellness app offers daily micro-meditations, step-by-step programs, and simple-yet-advanced tools for awakening.
Mukti Gray Bio
After the Adyashanti retirement, Mukti Gray has assumed the role of head teacher at Open Gate Sangha, where she offers teachings focused on attunement to being and the heart of awareness. Rooted in meditation, self-inquiry, and body awareness, her methods nurture the realization and embodiment of conscious Spirit. Mukti delves into the paradoxes of spiritual growth, addressing the transcendent and immanent, human and divine aspects. With a background in Traditional Chinese Medicine, acupuncture, and Hatha Yoga, Mukti brings a unique perspective to her presentations. https://mukti.opengatesangha.org/
Loch Kelly Bio
Loch is the creator of the Mindful Glimpses app, award winning author, psychotherapist, and nondual meditation teacher known for his unique practical methods that support awakening as the next natural stage of human development. He was asked by Adyashanti to teach and share nondual embodiment in 2007. Backed by modern neuroscience and psychology, Loch introduces Effortless Mindfulness, an ancient form of nondual meditation that allows immediate access to our embodied awake nature which arises as calm, clarity, and compassion.
“Loch Kelly is one of the clearest expressions of authentic, awakened freedom and love that I know.” ~ Adyashanti
Connect with Loch:
Mobile App: https://lochkelly.org/mindful-glimpses
Website: https://lochkelly.org/
Donate: https://lochkelly.org/donate
Episode Transcript
Loch: Welcome to the Effortless Mindfulness Podcast. I’m Loch Kelly, and here I share talks and deep dialogues with leading experts in the field of meditation, psychology, and neuroscience. Together we’ll explore how everyday people, like you and me, can live an awakened life of clarity and compassion. You’ll also find micro meditations in every podcast episode.
If you want to try more of these, you can go to mindfulglimpses.com to download the new app to experience immediate benefits, because the love and peace we are all seeking is already here anywhere. Anytime. Enjoy. So welcome everyone. It’s my great pleasure today to be talking with my friend and colleague, Mukti.
Hi Mukti.
Mukti: Hello Loch. Hello everyone. It’s great to see all of you. And to be with all of you.
Loch: It’s a great pleasure to have a chance just to drop in and talk. Just came to mind that not only did we meet a number of years ago, but Adyashanti asked us to co-teach together. And so in some ways we met while we were teaching together at Sylmar during a week-long retreat.
Mukti: That’s right, Loch. I remember that. Adya had a health issue come up, if I remember correctly. And he had all these people signed up for this retreat and he didn’t want to disappoint and cancel. So we offered people the option of continuing to attend with you and I being the presenters, alternating presenters.
Loch: Yeah, so yeah, he had just asked I think you and I were the last two official teachers that he had asked to join the Open Gate Sangha. Now here you are taking over .
Mukti: Here I am, yeah stepping forward after Adya’s retirement.
Loch: Yeah, so maybe you want to say a little bit about where you are and how you’re feeling. And some of your own kind of heart’s desire of what it feels like you want to share with people as you start this new phase of your own teaching journey.
Mukti: Thank you, Loch. Yes. I operate in a very kinesthetic energetic way. And when Adya was saying that he was going to be retiring, I really stopped and felt into, what does that mean for the Sangha? What does it mean for my role? And I wear different caps, so I was thinking, is this the time that I retire?
Should I retire with Adya and might that be the best for him, or for the two of us, or for the organization? And without overthinking it, I just dropped my attention deep into stillness in my body, almost like dark depth that I feel in the core of myself. And I just, I dropped a question in there and it wasn’t necessarily very formed.
It was just what’s calling, and I just felt this huge energy like rise up and move forward. And it felt like this movement of consciousness, this almost like a river of consciousness. Just like streaming forward, and I could just feel it pulling myself and the Sangha forward and carrying us forward. And I just thought, that’s it. I’m gonna keep the waters flowing in any way I can and just attend to that depth. In all the people who give themselves to their practice and think of Open Gate Sangha as a support, I just really felt wow, this is so clear. On a personal level I’ve always felt a little bit more comfortable supporting others.
And it’s interesting in leadership. When one is called forward, how you can still be doing that. You can still be a leader that’s really focused on supporting others to their own full blooming and deepening and coming upon new perspectives and openings and flowerings of all sorts. So I feel like it’s an interesting dance right now where I can really be myself in that natural impetus to help support others.
But I’m also wearing a leadership cap, both on the teaching side and on the administrative side of the organization. More of the administrative aspects are falling to me as well as of late. So lots of different caps and just really holding this idea that the world can sometimes be a bit of a bumpy, chaotic place. Yet it doesn’t need to be the focus.
There can be a focus on what is life giving, what is healthy, what is true, what is deeply resonant. I just feel like it’s a time of a lot of dynamic change and shifting in the world and in individuals. If I can be a part of that and Open Gate can be an active part of those waters and be a guiding light for people, that would be the best outcome possible.
Loch: Yes, I know that one of the things that you and I have in common is certainly, along with Adya, is the accessing of that awareness as primary dimension of consciousness. But unlike many who make that the be-all-end-all, the union of aliveness, and energy embodiment, and interconnection with others on just as many subtle levels so that there’s not an either or. But that there’s a unique coming together that can’t be done just by trying to be embodied or trying to be more aware or more mindful. There’s something in the discovery of being that then allows doing to flow from there.
I wonder if you might say something about your forms of inquiry and meditation related to the union of awareness and embodiment.
Mukti: It’s that sense of awareness that wakes up to itself. And then it feels, in my experience, that then that awareness that recognizes that it is not defined or boxed in by this finite self of our human nature that then takes up residence more and more in all our human capacities in our different centers. There’s different centers. There’s the body, there’s our behaviors, there’s our relating, as you said. And I think more and more that relating can become more conscious, more bright, more interconnected with this fabric of how spirit shines through the myriad of expressions of life, and human beings, and all other forms of life.
So it’s as though that which wakes up to itself as consciousness. Or we could say the, that sense of the eternal. It’s as though it starts to get to know itself more consciously through all these different expressions in relationship or in with ourselves, or with others, or through these different centers that we can perceive differently through. We perceive differently when we’re more heart-centered than in the head, for example. And it’s as though that essence of spirit is more consciously having this human experience.
Loch: Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah, as you say the shift of identity, that initial waking up from what we feel like we’re culturally and psychologically identified with and trained with. Trained into, through education and through each culture, to be me, to have a stronger ego function and ego identity.
And then that contemplative move, that meditative move to recognize, oh, that’s contents of consciousness. That’s a constellation of consciousness that I could operate from, but it’s not actually the primary dimension. And I think one of the things that you and I and Adya do is we’re willing to put words to what is beyond words.
So some traditions, from Vipassana to most of Zen are what’s called the via negativa, which is basically, all right, I’ll teach you how to sit, but I’m not going to tell you what you’re going to find. I’ll just ask you to ask yourself, who am I? But I’m not going to say what’s here.
Whereas I think just the language you’re using, that it’s very multi-dimensional. There’s not one language. We’re not from one tradition, but we’re saying, you could call it this, you could call it this. You call it this, but don’t miss it. Don’t miss it .
Mukti: I don’t care what you call it.
Loch: I don’t care what you call it. Yeah. But don’t just say, it’s nothing.
Mukti: Yeah.
Loch: It is nothing, but it’s no thing, but it’s aware, it’s awake. Those moves can be described. People don’t have to go step by step but…
Mukti: Yeah. And I think the trick is, too, to not get too attached to any particular perspective you land in.
To be fluid, because you’re making all these great points that describe different perspectives we can come to know or visit or move in and out of. And there can be that experience sometimes, right, where we’re completely identified with ourselves as the subject of our experience. It’s also very fixated on certain objects like this thought or this sensation feeling. But then there’s also that sense of when subject and object falls away, and then sometimes there’s more of a sense of, that returning.
It can just, sometimes it can, for me, feel like a camera moving. Sometimes I’m really zoomed in on a certain thought or processes and I’m much more fixated on it. And sometimes there’s a lot more space. And I feel like I’m panned back and much more like I’m in the realm of subject, versus the realm of objects. Then sometimes all of that falls away and then another perspective returns again. And it’s a dance back and forth and…
Loch: Right. Yeah, beautiful. I think it’s that, that okayness on a number of levels, on the subtlest level of awareness that it can’t be hurt. Like who I am can’t be hurt. Like there’s arrows through the sky or whatever weather happens is going to happen and it can’t hurt the sky. But then the, when the mixing or the awareness moves to presence or to the not knowing leads to the embodiment.
Then there’s like a deep okayness or safety or a feeling like you’ve gone below all the shame-based feelings. I’m not worthy. There’s something wrong with me. Underneath this, I must be bad. There’s some And you go deeper, deeper into kind of that gut awakening and you find this, no, there’s innocence.
There’s true innocence, or forgiveness, or essential well-being that is sweet. So it’s not just neutral a lot of initial awakenings. It’s almost like awakening from, positive, negative, positive, negative, like “ahh” and then you get the nice clear sky freedom.
Mukti: Yeah. Yeah. And so I remember for myself, there was a time when, I came out of a very deep meditation. There’s this innocent curiosity that was just looking out at the world. And it happened to be on a walk in nature and something, it was almost like. I can’t even say that it was almost. It was something beyond just my personal thinking mind that was just completely riveted and curious.
What is this world that I’m looking at? It wasn’t even so much being asked from what we might call the small me. Like what is it that I am as an individual I’m looking at? It was more like what had come forward in the meditation, the sense of the gaze of the eternal. That it’s as though it rouses from its sleep in the depths. And it’s looking and it’s engaging the day just like in its wakefulness.
It’s looking out like, wow, what is this world? And it just innocently is getting to know that through its gaze. And all of a sudden it starts to dawn [sigh], I’m looking at myself. The eternal formless is looking at itself expressing as form. But I think it can be helpful for people to really contemplate or at least be very curious of what is this perspective of awareness that is looking through my eyes. Or that perhaps is looking through my heart. And how does its perceiving what it’s looking at and how does it know that and you’re describing how it knows it very intimately. And it elicits that connection with life.
Loch: Yeah. It’s that mental knowing or thought-based knowing and then the not-knowing, which is a very important transition. It’s what I call it, the not-knowing that knows.
So basically that’s direct perception from the eternal that’s infinite, that’s intimate, that is looking from the not, not me, but it’s intelligent. It has an intelligence that can use your body and thoughts. It’s made of it. It feels like a wave of the ocean. I’m remembering, coming back, having done long retreats in Sri Lanka and India, Nepal, and then continuing to have found some of this beauty of freedom from initial awakenings.
Living in New York City is where I started to do these short glimpse practices. I would still do longer sittings and weekend and longer retreats. But in the middle of the day, if I sat and then I lost it or got caught up. I would say, okay, let’s return. Let’s return while I’m walking on the street. Let’s return while I got triggered by somebody cutting in line. It’s oh, and just like it was the first arrow of, and then don’t be, don’t be like that.
Then aware of both of those parts of me from where. And what’s the relationship to those other attitudes or minds or conditioning that arose. Just starting to have these little intentional awakenings is what started to allow this sense of, there’s really not two, and it. But there’s an unfolding in them in all of our lifetimes.
So it’s certainly just to let people know from the beginning there’s not just one way to do it. It’s not so you may have an immediate initial awakening. It’s not done and you’re not it’s not supposed to be. That there’s this kind of detoxing or unfolding that happens that is, part of the beautiful journey. And that’s why we need fellow travelers and peers and Sangha and teachers to help each other, toward this next stage of development.
Mukti: Yeah. How would you describe in those moments when you’re walking through New York City and you’d feel lost, lost in your thoughts, for example, how would you describe the counterpoint? It may be like the being-found feeling or, the not lost feeling? How would you describe that?
Loch: Yeah, that’s what made me share that as what you were describing. Which is almost like that eternal looking out of the eyes of my heart and seeing all this craziness in New York. It’s oh, that’s me. It’s oh, that’s not other. There’s not a threat. I can walk down the street and feel like I’m dancing through this sea of people and everyone would just move out of the way. It’s that learning and that’s where it becomes individual is, what are those– what I say sometimes, just learn to return. So you have to know what return feels like.
And hopefully it’s as deep as what we’re talking about, but it could be just, more spacious and not identified. Maybe that’s your definition of returning or that’s one of the flavors of returning. But then how, once you recognize, oh, I’m identified, I’m attached, I’m in a contracted state, or part of me. And there’s an alternative that still can be in the mind. Now, what do you do? Who does what? For me, it’s actually that the awareness unhooks or opens or drops within, and it’s not me, the meditator or even attention or effort. It’s like a letting go, or dropping, or surrendering, but what surrenders is the awake consciousness to itself.
And that feeling of what that is, that I’m not doing it, but there’s some access to that which has its ability to move and open and play, which is that paradox, yeah? Does that make sense to you?
Mukti: Oh, it makes so much sense, and I’m remembering, even though it’s been, gosh, how many years ago that we co-taught at Sylmar together?
Yeah. I’m thinking like, gosh, I don’t even know. Like fifteen to twenty, I don’t even remember. But, as you’re talking, Loch, I’m remembering more that you have this fantastic way of presenting these pointing out instructions. And what’s neat about the two of us together, I believe, is that as I feel that in you, I’m also feeling another layer.
Like if I were to follow this retreat talk that you just gave a moment ago, it’s an interesting thing to realize that there’s that, almost like that, like in healthcare, it would be preventative medicine. And then there’s also knowing the patterns and knowing what the medicine of the moment would be, according to those wonderful pointing out instructions you gave.
Loch: Yeah, beautiful. That’s been my interest though, is the off-the-cushion a little bit, because so many people like you and Adya do such good on-the-cushion and many other meditation. So what do you do during the day? What does that feel like? How do you relate? And how do you don’t just go to a kind of mindful witness, but actually learn to return to the awake embodied open-hearted consciousness that can respond rather than react?
And then, you take the action. Then you may lose it a minute later, or an hour later, or three hours later, and then learn to return again. So until it starts showing up by itself.
Mukti: It’s a great re-patterning, too. Because we really are conditioned beings, I think some people think the goal is to get beyond conditioning. But we’re all conditioned to stop at the red light and to fit into these patterns that are agreed upon in society of anything from traffic rules to how to engage societally.
But I think that if knowing that there are these patterns that tend to help the harmony of relating, it’s fantastic as you’re doing to be conscious about what those patterns are and to see, are they ones that create more suffering or division? Or are they ones that can be informed by a greater sense of interconnected flow and heart, heartful connection? And so if we’re gonna be pattern beings, why not choose the more healthful pattern and be engaging that as you’re talking about, continually affirming what really is resonant.
Loch: I was studying with Buddhists and then I would go to, at that time, there were a lot of these satsang teachers. I went to one who became a friend, Pamela Wilson, who you may know.
Mukti: Oh yeah, yeah.
Loch: So Pamela, she and I were talking. We clearly had the same experience. But the way I was putting it wasn’t matching. And then all of a sudden she came to me one day and she said, “Loch, there’s somebody who speaks just like you. Here it is.”
And she gave me Impact of Awakening, which was Adya’s first book. And I was like, wait a minute, this guy is, he’s been listening to whatever I’m saying. We’re speaking the same language, that’s great. And literally saying things like in a way that like, what? No, this is–
I literally just went on the website and said whatever. I’m just going to meet him. And then flew out to whatever the next event was which wasn’t even a weekend thing in California from New York. And I found a way to go up and say hey. It was just like “oh, cool, there are others.”
That was the beginning of a great friendship and colleagueship. And to find somebody like Adya, who really was so dedicated to the truth and willing to show up in the midst of his own pain for the sake of others. And, not that he was doing it to be a saint, but just because there was pain. But it happened to be his life and he was giving such clear, simple talks that came out in full paragraphs. That was always the wild thing.
I’m like, wow, you know I’m sitting here with you in the same, but when I start to speak. One of his students said when he heard me too, “He speaks in full paragraphs. You speak in iambic pentameter. You’re like over here and then you circle around, you come back.”
I know that you, during retreats, integrate Qigong or find it helpful for people as part of your teaching style.
Mukti: Gosh, there’s so much I could say about Qigong but let me just see if I can be brief. In the Qigong system, there’s this real sense that the world is more holographic. And often people will be more identified with our local form.
But Qigong really helps us to attune to the myriad of forms. Specifically in Qigong through the elements, sensing the earth. Or sensing the feeling and the organic movements of water. Or sensing that dynamic, fiery energy. For example, sensing what it’s like to stand like a tree, like these kind of things.
So through Qigong, the practice can really help your consciousness sense what all of these organic patterns of nature are and these expressions of the elements. You become more and more sensitive to them and how you might first experience them externally. But that they also live those very same energetics live within you internally. So the more there’s that kind of connection and consciousness of these elements and of these organic movements, the more they inform your local person, your consciousness. It seems to me that really helps further a sense of oneness for people.
Also it helps [with] the falling away of identification with, I’m at point A and everything else is at point B. Or, I’m what I know to be inside and that’s apart from what’s outside, and it really starts to shift that. And, like in Christianity, they might say, speak of the God within, or the God that is everywhere.
Qigong practices are really helping our consciousness sense both, that sense of these very palpable expressions of life that can thrive within and without. And to attune to the health of those and the harmony of those and how they interrelate. So it’s all very much not mental, even though I’m putting it in more of a conceptual way.
It’s simply through the movements and the imagery or the attunement, the intention even almost a little imagination. Let me stand as though I’m a tree. And it can be through this experiential exploration of Qigong that there’s a greater awareness of, and consciousness of, life as it presents within and without.
Loch: Yeah, beautiful. Yeah. I love Qigong as well. And so having the very physical dimension, because there’s movement. Then it goes into, as you say, the kind of the elements of the physical fire, water, air. And then it goes into this energy. So it’s like looking at three, three different layers.
In Tibetan Buddhism, they talk about three kayas or three realms. They call them Dharmakaya – pure awareness, and then Sambhogakaya is the energy level realm. And then Nirmanakaya is the earth, or the ordinary consciousness, that can be awake as well.
So it’s bringing that middle layer rather than just having pure awareness and your body. As you say, when you say that holographic, I can feel it. As soon as you said holographic, I was like, “oh yeah.”
Mukti: Yeah. They have this beautiful image in Qigong you may know well, where they talk about the human person, actually just our whole person. A spirit as well, but how we as individuals can bridge heaven and earth. And in Qigong, the heavens are associated with the sky and the earth with the physical earth, but also, the way that they meet on the horizon of the heart, they say in Qigong.
Loch: Yes.
Mukti: So that’s really what you’re passionate about these days, it feels like. That meeting of our human nature and our nature as awareness as it dynamically expresses and comes together through the heart.
Loch: Yeah, through that heart mind, or that universal heart. And I know in Qigong they have pure awareness is called wuji, or wu-chi, right?
So they do have it, although they rarely will point to it, although it’s assumed.
Mukti: Yeah. But what’s great is when the wuji is doing the Qigong, then you really got it going. Yeah.
Loch: Yeah. That’s the beauty of letting– doing a meditation and then going into movement and just inviting people, whether you’re doing Wagong, which is spontaneous Qigong. Just say, just do Wagong.
So just don’t intentionally with your mind move your body. Let your body just stretch inner and outer by itself. And just let it find its own way of releasing and strengthening and balancing. And all of a sudden people will, the Wu-chi will do the dance.
Mukti: Yeah. It’ll take up residence in the body consciousness and the body knows what to do.
Loch: Yeah, and that’s such a great integration. Now, something related which is interesting because of the energy realm and the emotional realm. So I know this is something you deal with. Certainly dealing with highly sensitive people. Often people who take on the emotional energy of people, right?
I’ll ask people, like, how many people here, if you walk into a room, know if somebody’s upset? And then, you just find them immediately, they go me. And they often can have more mental types come into meditation who are like, I’m stuck in my head. But this is a group that often are caretakers and codependents and they just take on–
So they’re trying to be subtle energy, but they’re– I just wonder if you have some experience or some pointers. Sometimes when they find the awareness, they can almost let, they can feel it, but it almost goes through them. Or goes into the earth or feels like it– they’re not blocking the energy that they naturally are perceiving.
So anything you would say about that, working or helping those kind of people?
Mukti: You just gave a bunch of pointers right there. Sometimes a person will meditate on a certain thing, like the earth. And that gravitas of the earth and the earth is known to almost like compost things. So some people do just feel that energy and they’ll direct it down into the earth. The earth will make use of it but it could be other things. Like it could be meditating on brightness and like shining that brightness that almost like detonates and burns up that heaviness as it comes into one’s aura. Or it could be stillness.
Because that has such a strong vibration that it literally can be like a field around a person. And then when that more dense energy, it usually has some sort of draw like down or contracted or something. But when it feels that like pristine stillness, it harmonizes with it. So there is that kind of filling up because I think a lot of those people are very porous.
And when you think of a sponge that’s more waterlogged, it can’t really take much more in. So if a person’s charged up with light or stillness, or that gravitas that you’re describing of earth, those things can be really helpful. But also, I would just recommend just looking really closely at any identity the person may have.
Like if they might even at some level they don’t even realize, believe that it’s their job to make that other person feel better or to shift that energy. They may even have at some young age made this sort of unintentional agreement. Or just worked it out the best they could in their body to almost be like a clearing house.
And they don’t need to be a clearing house for that energy. I also think Qigong can be really helpful for those people because, any like standard Qigong set has the clearing-releasing exercises at the beginning. Then the harmonizing exercises followed by the tonifying, like the recharging, filling up exercises. And then the storing of that robust replete energy.
So that can be helpful. But also the Qigong can teach a person because in the postures of Qigong, you really have to occupy yourself energetically and meet the world around you. And so there is that sense of occupancy can help because a lot of people are really sensitive. It’s like all incoming, but they don’t have a lot of outgoing energy.
But in Qigong, there’s that opening the awareness to both to receiving what’s nourishing, but also releasing what’s not. And also something in the middle, which is this, even like in a standing meditation, if you occupy the posture, there’s a way that you touch into the world just as much as it’s touching into you.
And then just in that sweet spot of standing meditation, I like the hug tree pose one where your arms are like this. Then when you just reach that perfect balance of focus and openness in the mind and connection and receptivity in the heart and rootedness but expansiveness in the belly. And then on the surface of the body you’re meeting that you’re meeting life, but you’re also letting it touch you and support you.
So it’s like you’re meeting it and like your energy’s going out, like intimately connecting. But also you’re letting it surround you and touch you and hold [or] support you from all sides. Once you get all those things in balance, it’s just very intuitive. And it’s as much as just holding that intention and just letting those opposites coalesce.
Then there’s a really profound standing meditation, where you can do it sitting or walking or however you want but there is that nice blend of occupancy and not just vacancy. Yeah. So those things can be helpful.
Loch: Beautiful. Yeah. And I know they also do the animal poses so there can be like tiger, so you get your fierce compassion, right?
Mukti: There you go. Yeah.
Loch: Yeah. And get that energy of occupying in a way that is a healthy use of the fire.
Mukti: Yeah. It’s good rectifying energy. Yeah. It’s not just like the harmonizing that space does where it takes it all in, which is also, if a person could just feel like, in a very spacious consciousness, sometimes that works it all out too.
But what we’re talking about is a little different, right? It’s more dynamic and it meets the situation that feels off and it can rectify it. Yeah.
Loch: And as you say, to be curious about the psychological dimension of why somebody has unconsciously or has taken on that role or that protective part of taking care of somebody’s energy, or of having to monitor the room for safety. A younger part that can be once that’s recognized and can be met and loved and brought into the team then the person can occupy a more awake embodied consciousness as who they are.
Mukti: Yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna put this in my words. When you were talking about awareness expressing through the Hara. Yes. That it’s not so much about like the meditator’s attention going into the Hara. And I think that’s a really fantastic point because a lot of people are defaulting back to that sense of themselves as the one kind of steering, steering everything.
I think it is really helpful to not only in Qigong, like we were talking about. But in meditation, once a person does get a sense of their nature as awareness, that it’s important to get that sense that it’s the awareness that is expressing through the act of meditation. That it’s not so much about the one we identify with, trying to direct all the attention. But attention can also be an anchor for awareness.
If people experience awareness more above the shoulders or more in the sky, or that witnessing a position that can give way to this more sky-like awareness. If a person has access to that, what’s it like for that awareness to be anchored into the body, or into these centers?
And it’s not even just inside, you can feel that spaciousness all the way down the front of your body, the sides, the back, and not just have it be this bubble up above the shoulders. But it can sometimes be helpful for the attention to just be this nice anchor. It’s almost like it’s communicating to awareness: You’re welcome here. You’re welcome in the Hara.
And it’s just enough of the meditator just to provide that intention. But it’s also more focused on how does awareness perceive through the heart? How does it know itself in the Hara? And so I thought you were making a fantastic point that I just thought would be great to– I’m highlighting it in case people missed it.
Loch: Yeah. No, I think that it’s so great to hear [that] we’re talking about the same thing. And we’re walking around the diamond. And talking about it. So my language for it exactly for that inquiry [is] like wait a minute, it’s not the meditator. So how does this more spacious awareness also focus? And it’s oh, I know. It’s not attention.
There’s three kinds of awareness. One is attention that has to come from the mind or from the meditator. Then there’s mindful awareness, which can look at contents. Then there’s awake awareness or spacious awareness. And when spacious awareness focuses, it uses local awake awareness. It’s still made, it’s made of the field. It no longer needs to use attention, which is another type of awareness. It literally is both outside and within simultaneously. So you can feel your hara or your breath from within and from around simultaneously.
And just having that, for me, my style is let’s find a word or a term for it, which doesn’t have to be. But, if you’re using local awareness that’s made of awake awareness, so it has a, isn’t coming from thought, it isn’t coming from the meditator, but it is able to focus.
And it can not only focus from within. It’s like when you look at an object in the room. It’s almost like you’re touching it, because the field, it’s arising in your mind.
Mukti: Yeah, so this is great because I can feel that your hookup is just a little bit different than mine, which is fantastic. And I could go to your hookup, but mine’s a little bit different.
It’s just it’s instead of “Oh, I could just touch it out there.” I feel like, “Oh, it’s appearing inside my body.” It’s like a mirror.
Loch: No, it’s in your mind. And, I’m saying that–
Mukti: No, I’m not talking about the big body. I’m saying I actually feel it mirrored inside the local body.
Loch: Yeah. But is it also aware from outside as well?
Mukti: Yeah. The awareness is all pervading, inside and outside. And the physical thing, let’s say the bird singing, it might feel like it’s at a distance on what we call the outside. But the song will be vibrating through my local body as though the bird’s inside me.
Loch: I see. I see.
Mukti: So it’s funny that way.
Loch: Yeah, because mine feels like my body is within me. So my body is–
Mukti: Yeah. So within the big body.
Loch: Yeah. So the perception if I were to ask the bird, I would say, where’s the hearer? And then the hearing, there’s no hearer. There’s just hearing. And the bird is in the field, which, vibrates here, but it also vibrates here, and it vibrates–
Mukti: in all three. Okay, I think we’re saying the same thing.
Loch: Yeah. It’s fun though, right?
Mukti: It is fun.
Loch: Yeah, because it’s not on the map of most philosophies, of most, even most meditative practices until the end. And even the psychologies in the west, very few, this first discovery of essentially who we are, that is becoming. I think that is why we’re so passionate about continuing to spend the time to say, “The water’s great. Come on in.”
Because it’s such a radical difference, and it seems initially to many people oh, that’s it? Like awareness? Yeah, but is there fear or worry or? Is there shame in this? Is there tiredness or attachment or hatred? No. What’s the relationship to your body?
Oh, it feels good. I feel what if it’s in pain? Oh, that’s fine. I’m with it. It’s like a child that I’m caring for. And so it doesn’t have this fireworks thing that a lot of people are looking for.
Mukti: I think they’re also still a little bit looking at awareness.
Loch: Yes.
Mukti: That’s their mind’s trying to size it up. At the beginning, but the more they relax into it and abide as that, then it starts to cook.
Loch: Yes. So that’s the thing is that moving to be aware of, which is in Tibetan Buddhism. They divide it into recognition, which is aware of, and then realization is resting as. And then familiarization, and abiding, and then expression.
Mukti: So beautiful.
Loch: So that, those kind of little pointers that can happen in a few minutes or unfold over many years.
Mukti: Beautiful how all these different traditions have come before us.
Loch: Yes. And how we’re really trying to honor them, I feel. Yet honor the people who are, who grow up in a different culture and don’t want to take on the entire ancient religious trappings that made sense back then. That so what’s essential, what’s most human, what’s most common, what matches different learning styles and people, what are the obstacles so that, we can meet people where they are.
Mukti: Yeah, I really hope that this is valuable to folks and it’s been fun.
Loch: Yes, this is very valuable. I’m sure it’ll be very valuable to people because people enjoy having people who really care about what they’re sharing, and being interested in talking about it so that we’re in an inviting way.
Mukti: Yeah. Yeah. And you never know, like just giving different words. And as I almost had this feeling a few minutes ago, like you were talking about. All these different traditions and being very multilingual, but I think that sometimes a person listening will just hear something put in a slightly different way. Or they’ll catch a nuance and it can be this thing that opens into something much bigger.
Loch: Yes. Wonderful to see you and thank you so much for joining me and those who are listening and look forward to seeing you in person hopefully sometime soon.
Mukti: That would be lovely, and my best to everybody.
Mindful Glimpse: Back to Your Senses and Back Through Your Senses
Loch: Welcome. This glimpse is called Back to Your Senses and Back Through Your Senses.
We’re going to begin by noticing that the current constellation of consciousness is awareness identified with thinking, creating, “I think, therefore I am” experience somewhere in our head looking out of our eyes.
What we’ll do is ask your already awake awareness, which is identified and attached to thinking, to move to join with seeing and let go of thinking, to join with hearing and let go of the other senses.
Then open to join with space and spacious awareness, and then discover that spacious awareness and aliveness are not two. That there’s a simultaneous mind, a same taste of awareness dancing into aliveness form and our senses, so that we’re both embodied and interconnected, interdependent with all that arises in this feeling of ordinary, extraordinary, embodied interbeing, interconnected consciousness.
And then we’ll discover that from here we’ve dropped from head mind to heart mind and we’re able to feel wisdom and love as two wings of our way of being. So let’s begin.
The first thing to say is that, in Buddhism, thinking is considered the sixth sense. So we identify with thinking. By having awareness arise as thought, which refers to thought, which creates this thinker, then what we’ll do now is we’ll notice what does it feel like when you are aware that you’re understanding these words.
Where are you aware from? And then speaking directly to this awake awareness, asking this awareness to simply unhook from the sense of thinking and drop yo be aware of seeing. Not aware of it, but drop and blend so that there’s awareness and seeing. Just seeing.
Hearing is receiving and seeing is receiving.
What’s it like when there’s seeing with no seer?
Not focusing on what you see, or who’s seeing. Just seeing.
So feel how thinking goes in the background, and seeing is primary.
And now, just as we’ve unhooked from being identified with thinking and we’ve joined with seeing as the primary sense, simply allow awareness to let go of seeing and join with hearing, just hearing.
Let thinking and seeing go into the background.
And let hearing be primary.
Notice that shift that was done by awareness, and how it changes your primary consciousness.
Just hearing, not focused on what you’re hearing, but curious, where is the hearer? And finding no location of the hearer, hearing without a hearer.
And just as awareness is identified with hearing, which is both inside and out, at this small location of hearing, which is primary, allow awareness now to unhook from hearing in this small area and open to the space in the room. So like a bubble of awareness, discovering this already awake field of awareness, be aware of awareness mingling with space, and being aware of space, from space.
Not looking from your head, but unhooking and resting as this awake space, this open mind, and open heart. Contentless. Invisible. Alert. Spacious. Timeless. Here. Now.
And then being aware of this awareness, resting as this awareness, begin to be aware from this awareness, and feel that first vibration or sensation, not as if it’s moving through the awareness, but just be curious about that first arising of dancing awareness into vibration, and sound and feel awareness and aliveness are not two.
So again, you can feel it as if awareness and vibration are the same taste.
Feeling that ground of being like a flow of the ocean of awareness arising as this wave of your body and equal rights to all senses beyond, all appearing to what or whom. Where are you aware from when you’re everywhere, nowhere, and here?
Seamlessly, equally, inside and out, interconnected, interdependent with all that arises, dropped from head to heart mind so that you can allow this sense of safety and okayness.
Sense of well being, perhaps bliss or love, non-fear, non-worry, and non-shame to allow a natural loving kindness to arise, a natural compassion, equanimity, and joy.
So feel that as a natural dimension of who we are just now. Equally inside and out. And then welcome in any emotions, parts of you, thoughts and feelings remaining as this loving presence that is able to welcome all, befriend every part, and is not separate from whatever arises like an ocean in a wave.
So allow yourself to settle in and notice. What’s here, now, when there’s no problem to solve? What’s this that’s aware, that includes and arises as everything, in the sense of interbeing.
Settle in, rest, and notice that you can respond, move your hand if you needed to. And from this heart mind, notice what it’s like if your phone number arises and then dissolves without associating.
Just alert and awake, peace of mind.
All senses on, equal rights to all senses. Come back to your senses. And through your senses to this awake consciousness, this open hearted awareness that you’ve always been, that’s already here, and from which you can now move, walk, talk, create, and relate.
So enjoy.
Thanks for listening. This podcast is offered freely, and if you’ve enjoyed this, please download the free trial of our new app at mindfulglimpses.com. There, we offer daily micro-meditations and in-depth programs to support your awakening.
