Meditative Skill in Stillness

Stillness arises by allowing the functions of your mind to slow down by not adding anything to them. Like a fire that can only survive as long as it is being fed fuel, the fire of your mind can only burn fiercely when fuel is being added to it. 

     Through not adding to the activity of your mind, and gently softening any habitual 'going out' of your attention, it naturally settles down and become still. This process of softening 'all doing' challenges the habitual tendency of the mind to create through engaging with the six sensoury fields. When habitual going out of attention is relaxed, this challenges the last of the minds remaining defenses in a process that is experienced as disentanglement and that results in stillness.

For stillness meditation it is necessary to create a balanced posture that you can maintain for the period of time without moving. This will give you the stability needed to allow your body to relax  without fear of slumping forward.  It is helpful in the beginning to un-round your shoulders by  bringing them forward, raising them up, bringing them back and  then dropping them down again. Also tucking your chin under  slightly and extending the crown of your head towards the ceiling  helps with balance. Once you have taken a balanced posture for your meditation, the first thing you do is to allow your eyelids to  close slowly until they lightly touch.

In practicing for stillness we do not ignore any experience but rather acknowledge it and soften/relax the effort to participate in it. If there is any sound present become aware of it; allow the sound  to start to anchor your attention. Notice your attention drawn out towards the sound. Focus on its flow, its changing nature. Then gently start to soften/relax your effort to hear, allow awareness through soften to gradually return to its source.

Gently bring awareness to the experience of warmth & coolness  within your body as it sits. In a very general way, experience the  sensations of warmth & coolness, keeping them gently in mind. 

Within the experience of your posture start to include points of  touch: The touch of your hands resting within each other. The  touch of your body as it rests on the chair or floor and the touch of  your feet. Keeping these points of touch gently in mind. 

As your mind settles, open your awareness to take in your whole body: warmth, coolness and touch. Your whole body just sitting here. Start to become aware of the general experience of heaviness that arises as your body starts to relax. Giving up all effort it becomes heavier, so heavy. Allow the chair or floor to take the full weight of your body. Allow your body to relax into this support.

Your meditation object for stillness arises through methodical deep relaxation of your body. Once you have learnt to deeply abandon all effort within your body, to deeply relax, this deep relaxation is then used as a doorway to stillness. 

You take your posture as above and begin in this way:

Once awareness is relaxed into your body, you gently bring awareness to your forehead and allow the muscles in your forehead to relax. Aware of this relaxation, you allow it to fill your awareness. Feeling your forehead becoming heavier, smoothing out, so relaxed. You experience the sense of ease of this relaxation, you allow it to enter your mind.

As relaxation grows you allow it flow down from your forehead into your  eyelids and eyes. Feeling so relaxed. You gently relax your eyelids further, feeling them become heavy, so heavy. You open them slightly and relax this effort, allowing them to droop, to sink. Aware of this relaxation, you allow it to fill your awareness. Allow them to become so heavy it feels like  you’re falling asleep. You experience the sense of ease of this relaxation, you allow it to enter your mind.

Feel the relaxation flow down through your cheeks and into your  jaw. Allow your jaw to open slightly. Feel the relaxation coming to  the whole of your face, filling your face, becoming so relaxed.

Feel the relaxation flow down through your cheeks and into your  jaw. Allow your jaw to open slightly. Feel the relaxation coming to  the whole of your face, filling your face, becoming so relaxed.

Feel the relaxation flow down through your cheeks and into your  jaw. Allow your jaw to open slightly. Feel the relaxation coming to  the whole of your face, filling your face, becoming so relaxed.

The relaxation flows down your arms into your hands. Relax your  fingers. Allow your arms to hang loosely from your shoulders.

Relax your chest & belly. Feel the breathing flowing freely within  your body. The gentle flow of your breath. Allow your breathing  to become calm. To become so relaxed that you can barely feel it  moving at all. The sense of ease within your body deepens.

Slightly release your hips and allow the relaxation to flow down  your legs into your feet. You can use some gentle Softening  breaths until your whole body feels deeply relaxed; so heavy.

This deep relaxation of your whole body will become your  meditation object for your mind to access Stillness. Allow the chair  or the floor to take the full weight of your body. Give up all effort  within your body. Feel the effortlessness of it all, the effortlessness  of not having to do anything. Feel this deep sense of ease fill every  cell within your whole body. Allow the sense of ease to grow.

Bring full awareness to the deep relaxation and ease within your  body and allow them to start to fill your mind. Abandon all mental  effort at this stage; just allow. The deep relaxation and ease starts  to fill your mind. Allow it to sink in. Feel your mind sinking  deeper down, deeper as the sense of ease, of effortlessness fills it. 

At this stage allow your mind to drift, to float around. Allow  thoughts to come and go. You will drift in and out of thoughts.  Gradually the thoughts will change from directed thinking with a  subject, to random, floaty thoughts without meaning. Allow  yourself to bounce in and out of this mental activity.

Start to become aware of the mental relaxation and ease arising within your mind. Allow this sense of ease to fill your mind until it becomes the experience of the awareness itself. You can use a few gentle softening breaths as learnt earlier to relax any effort that arises within your mind; to soften any desire to do. 

Your task at this stage is to not add anything to the processes of your mind, no longer feeding the fire; just allowing the fire to burn itself out.  Allowing the processes of your mind to cease and stillness to arise.

• How Long to Meditate: 30 min, 1-2 times daily, until you are able to take the deep relaxation of your body through using softening breaths. 
• Hindrances to Meditation: Not enough preparation in earlier softening into skills.
• Meditation Progression: The ability to relax all parts of your body by using slow diaphragmatic breathing as a doorway.
• Meditation Skill Maturity: When there is a natural arising of stillness whenever you soften, in formal meditation and daily life.

In this meditation you use your softening skills developed in the previous mindfulness training to bring about mindful non-participation in order to enter stillness. Stillness arises when all participation within the processes of the mind are abandoned. The result of skillful softening as refined in the previous training, is always the arising of stillness. 

The development of stillness is based on a process of systematic abandoning of effort, first physical then mental. This process of abandonment directly challenges the habitual defensive processes of mind. Once your mind learns the pathway to stillness it will naturally enter it when you soften into mindful non-participation. 

Even though the depth of stillness that arises after softening is sometimes brief, the impact through creating gaps within the conditioned patterns within the mind is great and part of the process of mindful deconditioning. This cultivates into the ability to be aware of awareness itself. 

Meditation is practiced in a seated position.

The four stages of abandoning

1. Ground your awareness within the experience of your body as it sits.
2. Take five slow diaphragm breathes to re-engage diaphragm and settle the mind.
3. Gradually abandon effort by relaxing your forehead, eyelids, cheeks and jaw.
4. Align awareness with each out-breath, abandon through your body to access stillness.

Bring awareness to the experience of your whole body as it sits. Place your palms below your belly button and re-engage your diaphragm with five gentle breaths in order turn off the stress response and settle your mind. 

Next bring awareness to your face and gradually relax through it, part by part. Use slow softening breaths through your nose to help you relax. Focus on relaxing your eyelids by allowing them to droop and gently opening and closing them a few times. Your focus is on giving up all effort.

When your whole face is relaxed, and your mind quietens down then align your awareness with the natural flow of breath within your body. Every time your body deflates with the out-breath abandon all effort. Allow the heaviness to arise within your body and your mind to mentally sink into stillness. 

Once in stillness allow your mind to drift and settle by itself, avoid any doing as this will stir up the mind. The only thing you may do at this stage is relaxing with a slow breath out through your nose whenever your attention is drawn back out to engage with the world. Sit back and enjoy the process as your mind returns to its simplest form, pure awareness.

     Observe effect on your mind with while using the individual softening techniques in particular be curious as to what it means to abandon into mindful non-participation through the four softening doors. Develop of the process of the mind transitioning into stillness through abandoning all effort and be curious in regard to the natural arises of stillness within the mind through not adding any energy / doing to it. 

• How Long to Meditate: 30 min, 1-2 times daily, until you are able to take the deep relaxation of your body so that its fills every cell of your body.
• Hindrances to Meditation: Fear of giving up all control, the arising of defense mechanisms of the mind based on this fear due to relaxing your body. this will be experienced as restlessness and a building aversion towards stillness meditation.
• Meditation Progression: The ability to relax all parts of your body without any fear resistance of your mind. The ability to access the joy, sense of ease of this deep body relaxation.
• Meditation Skill Maturity: The ability to relax all parts of your body and feel the relaxation in each part, the ease of it. A ceasing of fear-based control and defense mechanisms based on relaxing of the body.

In this meditation you gradually develop the simple skill of abandoning effort in different parts of your body to bring about deep relaxation. This is a beautiful practice of sitting still and allowing your body to relax part by part by giving up effort that is held within the muscles. As you relax you tune into the sense of ease that is associated with physical relaxation and allow it to fill every cell of your body as an expression of bodily presence.  This process challenges and gradually removes habitual defensive armours produced by your mind by deconstructing the minds habitual bracing for danger that expresses within the body as tension. Through repetition your mind will gradually allow the relaxation to access deeper levels of defenselessness until all defensive armour is removed and safety is experienced within the stillness of your body itself.

Meditation is practiced in a seated position 

Six Stages of Abandoning:

1. Ground your awareness within the experience of your body as it sits.
2. Gradually abandon effort by relaxing your forehead, eyelids, cheeks and jaw.
3. Gradually abandon effort by relaxing your shoulders, chest, upper back, arms.
4. Gradually abandon effort by relaxing your hips, legs and feet.
5. Experience the sense of ease within your body and allow it to fill your mind.
6. Relax all effort within your mind to engage with any experience or to do anything.

It is important to learn to feel the relaxation rather then thinking it. This means transitioning from the thought "I am relaxed" to the actual feeling of relaxation itself. It is the 'feeling of it' that takes stillness to deeper levels. In the same way you created a feedback loop by taking piti-sukha as a meditation object from which to enter first jhana, you create a feedback loop based on abandoning, sense of ease, easiness, letting go and allow the feeling of this to grow and fill first your body and then mind.

Practice daily by bringing your awareness to:

• The experience of your whole body as it sits. 
• Next bring awareness to your face and gradually relax through it, part by part. Use slow softening breaths through your nose to help you relax. 
• Focus on relaxing your eyelids by allowing them to droop and gently opening and closing them a few times. Your focus is on giving up all effort. 
• Allow this relaxation to flow down into your cheeks and jaw. Experience the heaviness within your face.
• When your whole face is relaxed allow the relaxation to flow down through your neck into your shoulders, chest and upper back. 
• Then down into your arms, hips, legs and feet. Allow the chair or the floor to take the whole weight of your body, give up all effort within your body. 
• Start to be aware of the heaviness of your body, the sense of ease that comes from not doing anything at all. Take this sense of ease as your meditation object and allow it to fill every cell of your body.

Observe effect on your mind with while relaxing different parts of your face and body. In particular be curious as to what it means to abandon into mindful non-participation. Investigate the process of the mind transitioning into stillness through abandoning all effort and be curious in regard to the natural arises of stillness within the mind through not adding any energy / doing to it.  

• How Long to Meditate: 45 min, 1-2 times daily, until you are able to take the deep relaxation of your body as a meditation object and allow it to enter your mind as a complete abandoning of all doing.
• Hindrances to Meditation: Fear of giving up all control, the arising of defense mechanisms of the mind based on this fear. Will be experienced as agitation/on edge during the meditation and in daily life.
• Meditation Progression: Increasing speed in which you can abandoning within the body and mind. A ceasing of fear-based control and defense mechanisms based on this. the ability to access joy, the deep sense of ease of this deep relaxation of the mind.
• Meditation Skill Maturity: Ability to enter long periods of stillness during formal meditation, and a deep feeling of tranquility that persists throughout the day, even in the face of normally uncomfortable experiences.   

You continue to develop the simple skill of allowing the deep relaxation that arises through not doing. This is a beautiful practice of sitting still and allowing your body to relax part by part starting from your forehead, moving down through your body to your feet. You then mentally feel the sense of ease with the deep physical relaxation allowing it to enter your mind.  

This process will challenge and gradually remove defensive armours produced by your mind. Through repetition your mind will gradually allow the relaxation to access deeper levels of defenselessness until all defensive armour is removed and safety is experienced within the stillness of the mind itself. It also creates a basis for continuity and establishing of mindfulness with daily life. 

Meditation is practiced in a seated position.  

Eight stages of abandoning:

1. Ground your awareness within the experience of your body as it sits.
2.  Gradually abandon effort by relaxing your forehead, eyelids, cheeks and jaw.
3.  Gradually abandon effort by relaxing your shoulders, chest, upper back and arms.
4. Gradually abandon effort by relaxing your hips, legs and feet.
5. Experience the sense of ease within your body and allow it to fill your mind.
6. Abandon any effort ‘to do’ within your mind with gentle softening. 
7. Allow your mind to drift, to float, to think – avoid adding to it through softening.

The feeling of the deep relaxation of your body is the 'please object' that is used during this stage of stillness as the meditation of object. It is the 'feeling of it' that takes stillness to deeper levels. In the same way you created a feedback loop by taking piti-sukha as a meditation object from which to enter first jhana, you create a feedback loop based on abandoning, sense of ease, easiness, letting go and allow the feeling of this to grow and fill first your body and then mind. 

Once you experience deep relaxation within your body, you bring awareness to the 'feeling of it', the sukha vedana aspect, and allow it to enter and engulf awareness by abandoning all 'doing'. The mind will then take this object of effortlessness, the pleasure of ease and this will grow in a similar (but more tranquil) way as first jhana. this will develop a very particular type of unification: nirvikalpa samadhi (objectless unification), which will develop into a very deep state of relaxed bliss.

Practice daily for 1 week by bringing your awareness to:

• The experience of your whole body as it sits. 
• Next bring awareness to your face and gradually relax through it part by part. Use slow softening breaths through your nose to help you relax. 
• Focus on relaxing your eyelids by allowing them to droop and gently opening and closing them a few times. Your focus is on giving up all effort. 
• Allow this relaxation to flow down into your cheeks and jaw. Experience the heaviness within your face.  
• When your whole face is relaxed allow the relaxation to flow down through your neck into your shoulders, chest and upper back. 
• Then down into your arms, hips, legs and feet. 
• Allow the chair or the floor to take the whole weight of your body, give up all effort within your body. 
• Start to be aware of the heaviness of your body, the sense of ease that comes from not doing anything at all. 
• Take this sense of ease, effortlessness, not doing as your meditation object by bringing awareness to it, relaxing all doing, and allowing it to fill your mind.  
• At this stage you do not need to do anything at all, just allow your mind to sink, for mental processes to slow down and stop. Allow the heaviness to arise within your body and your mind to mentally sink into stillness. 
• Once in stillness allow your mind to drift and settle by itself, avoid any doing as this will stir up the mind. The only thing you may do at this stage is relaxing with a slow breath out through your nose whenever your attention is drawn back out to engage with the world. 
• Sit back and enjoy the process as your mind returns to its simplest form, pure awareness. 

Observe effect on your mind with while relaxing different parts of your face and body. In particular be curious as to what it means to abandon into mindful non-participation. Investigate the process of the mind transitioning into stillness through abandoning all effort and be curious in regard to the natural arises of stillness within the mind through not adding any energy / doing to it. 

• How Long to Meditate: 60 min, 1-2 times daily, until experiencing deep stillness through disentangling awareness from habitual sensoury input is natural to you.
• Hindrances to Meditation: Fear of giving up all control and aversion to meditation due to identifying with unpleasant feeling that is creating due to deconstruction the minds habitual defenses and withdrawals from addiction to experiencing the six sense fields.
• Meditation Progression: Increasing speed in which you can abandoning within the body and mind. A lowering of resistances throughout the day and a dropping away of the perception of time.
• Meditation Skill Maturity: Ability to enter long periods of stillness during formal meditation, and a complete tranquility that persists throughout the day, even in the face of normally uncomfortable experiences.

It is at this level that stillness meditation becomes the process of indrya samvara in regards to calming of the habitual 'going out' of awareness towards the six sense fields in order to develop nirvikalpa samadhi. The expression of pure nirvikalpa samadhi is awareness completely disentangled from the six sense fields. 

The process is simple: you observe and relax engagement, through a process of subtle softening, any habitual 'going out' of attention. Your mind now developed inclines towards the unconditioned, it turns away from sankharas (mental constructions) and through a process of disenchantment and subtle abandoning takes awareness itself as the final object of attention (nirvikalpa samadhi). 

This creates the conditions for you to enter the final stages of MIDL where you develop insight into the anatta nature of the six sense fields, and  the anatta nature of awareness itself before disentangling habitual entangling of awareness with itself.

Meditation is practiced in a seated position.

Eleven stages of abandoning: 

1. Ground your awareness within the experience of your body as it sits. 
2. Gradually abandon effort by relaxing your forehead, eyelids, cheeks and jaw.
3. Gradually abandon effort by relaxing your shoulders, chest, upper back and arms.
4. Gradually abandon effort by relaxing your hips, legs and feet. 
5. Experience the sense of ease within your body and allow it to fill your mind. 
6. Abandon any effort ‘to do’ within your mind with gentle softening. 
7. Allow your mind to drift, to float, to think – avoid adding to it through softening.
8.  Allow the mind to gradually come to rest within stillness.
9. Bring awareness to the area just above and between your eyes.
10. Gently soften any doing that you experience within there, gently disentangling awareness from experiencing anything, including itself. 
11. Abandon any doing, including the effort to abandon or be aware.

Your path at this stage is a path of accessing the pleasure inherent in the experience of ease, giving up, letting go, abandoning all doing, of not having to experience. Bathe in, bask in, fill every cell of your body and mind with this pleasure. 

This analogy from the suttas in regards to equanimity is a good description:

"They sit, permeating the body with a pure, bright awareness. Just as if a man were sitting covered from head to foot with a white cloth so that there would be no part of his body to which the white cloth did not extend; even so, the meditator sits, permeating their body with a pure, bright awareness. There is nothing of thier entire body unpervaded by pure, bright awareness."

Practice daily by bringing your awareness to: 

• The experience of your whole body as it sits.
• Next bring awareness to your face and gradually relax through it part by part. Use slow softening breaths through your nose to help you relax. 
• Focus on relaxing your eyelids by allowing them to droop and gently opening and closing them a few times. Your focus is on giving up all effort. 
• Allow this relaxation to flow down into your cheeks and jaw.
• Experience the heaviness within your face. When your whole face is relaxed allow the relaxation to flow down through your neck into your shoulders, chest and upper back. 
• Then down into your arms, hips, legs and feet. 
• Allow the chair or the floor to take the whole weight of your body, give up all effort within your body. 
• Start to be aware of the heaviness of your body, the sense of ease that comes from not doing anything at all. Take this sense of ease as your meditation object and allow it to fill your mind.  
• At this stage you do not need to do anything at all, just allow your mind to sink, for mental processes to slow down and stop. Allow the heaviness to arise within your body and your mind to mentally sink into stillness. Once in stillness allow your mind to drift and settle by itself, avoid any doing as this will stir up the mind.

The only thing you may do at this stage is relaxing with a slow breath out through your nose whenever your attention is drawn back out to engage with the world. Sit back and enjoy the process as your mind returns to its simplest form, pure awareness.  Bring awareness to the area just above and between your eyes. Gently soften any doing that you experience within there, gently disentangling awareness from experiencing anything within your six senses, including awareness of awareness. Abandon any doing, including the effort to abandon or be aware and allow awareness to fold back into itself.  Investigation: Investigate what it means to abandon the effort to abandon. Be curious about what it means to relax the effort of being aware of being aware. 

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