Focus Out with Fascination ~Stephanie Nash

So.

Times ago, I focused.

I think This is why did I focused on flow?

So what I had everybody do was tune into the moving changing nature of everything with except.

And it can be removing changing nature of anything visual, which could be we watched leaves moving and just tuned into the movement as opposed to that belief that's a branch.

And there might be different frequencies of movement. The branch might move like this. While the leaves move like this.

We just tune into that movement with the movement be a visual massage. I talked about how doing this driving around LA can be wonderful. There's traffic People right there's movement happening and you can just allow that it doesn't keep you if you don't start driving into walls. You still present, but it can create a kind of an acceptance in a massage in the visual field. You can do it with sound sounds are just moving and coming and going and expanding and contracting and you know there can be.

Just different movement of sounds you can and that seeing and hearing out in the outside world, saying hearing in you can apply that movement of sound and they come and go to the talk in your head about this sound coming and going and getting louder and softer and it's just movement. You can do it closing your eyes with the images and we see we tend to. I have a blank place where we rust visually. You just close your eyes and it might be just patches of lightness and darkness and for a lot of People it's like a lava lamp.

Come at the blob here and it comes in. But you can just watch that movement of it and let that be a visual massage or images come in for most People. It's not like high. There's a square picture frame. It's usually a vague, hazy subtle thing. Or maybe part of an image comes and goes out or something remind you or something and you can just and just like that movement of them and just coming in and out being visual massage and in the body. You can work with sensations, moving around breath is an ultimate movement to come in and go out and.

There's how many different kinds of breath meditation. I personally have taught 1012 different ways of looking at the Brad Pitt, one way. I did was just noticing the movement. The expanding and contracting. Maybe the movement of air coming through the nose. Maybe emotions coming in and out of sound happens and who.

You know where it's happening. I feel little movement of delight in my body or a dog barks. and I feel. Oh, maybe a little tension and release there or something so that we just turned into the movement nature and everybody thought Oh that's cool. That's fun. It makes this software and I feel like I've really meditate you know.

Then the next week. I went OK. Now we're not. We're going to look at stillness really good space and rest I tuned everyone into.

The same visual thing when you close your eyes instead of focusing on movement. Even though movements there, you're not watching movement, it's a place to park.

We even worked with just a sense of space around you a space around things.

To allow things to happen inside a bigger space. The real thing, that was an eye opener for a lot of People was auditory listening to silence even though sound is present.

So we open out to the world of sound and there might be sound. Their sound there. But what if we listen to direction. There is no sound. Up tuning into that space and then maybe even listening to the silence beyond sound Ah.

Huge space very expansive focus and everybody follow we've really meditated now.

That's different than how we get so we had one week of flow and then one week of rust in space.

So today, I thought let's celebrate solidity and this is also, if you got emails. I ended up putting it is the theme. You've heard of the power of now, right. Let's be present well. There's a way to tune in to see and you'll notice everything I do is visual auditory cymatic.

Are we have five senses plus our thought process our five senses plus our thought process or?

What tell us who we are when where why how we feel about it? What we want to do? What happened and whether that was good or bad in with all our judgments are and.

All are.

Suffering comes in and dies.

Licenses plus I process and.

You could take thoughts and feelings but the feelings will be in the body and you can divide all of that into 3 'cause I like 3.

Trinity there's all sorts of wonderful things about 3:00 my meditation teacher. Shinzen young came up with this so, so it's his brilliance is.

His ingredients I cook with and send always appreciation and gratitude to teachers. Always always always, I come from teachers and thank you. But he divides it all into visual auditory semantics your entire sensory experience your thoughts.

Visual I see images. I hear internal talk so there's visual auditory to thoughts emotions are in the body and there might be a thought component, but that's visual so see here feel the other see out the world. We see into our mind we hear out the sounds. We here in to the talk feel out and Feelin Feelin will be emotions.

Then we're doing subjective versus object subjective would be emotional sensations. I felt fear in my chest. I you know when you want to cry. Sometimes, when you try to choke it down. The Tongkonan gets engaged here and we've even got terms like cat got my town. I got a lump in my throat. I was all choked up. You know when it gets hurt eerie feeling behind the eyes or a wave of love of warmth. We might feel chest or you get embarrassed that might be a flush you feel up in your face and usually it's the front part of the torso, maybe into the face. But some People get anger down the back of their neck.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. We've got that phrase broke my heart right. We have all sorts of ways in which emotions play in the body and we don't we might see my harder. I couldn't stomach that or you know what will point to parts of the body. But it's usually kind of it their vague. It's kind of another dimension of feeling in the body. We can't say that was this organ. It kind of spreads and takes a certain area of the body and it's a kind of sensation just like.

Earlier today in the meditation, I had you tune into a particular flavor sensation.

The flavor or flavors of letting gum release.

Your other sensation you could still feel your butt on the cushion. But we were tuning into letting go while in the same way Feelin or certain sensations that are emotional in nature.

And if you're not sure.

Stated but if you think they are you think.

Every time I go damn it.

Why did he do that might feel this clinch in here will call that emotional in nature and so you start to get to know where anger happens in your body where fear anger fear sadness shame. Those are the Big 4 People suffer and kill themselves. Everything something that I'm so.

And then we have good ones. Lovejoy peace gratitude and they tend to be subtler, the louder ones tended.

Hey, I'm here, but just like restful that we tune into that's a subtle thing. That's available at any given moment but no, I'm not turning into that I'm turning into.

That guy cut me off the talk right so you can is a choice learn to tune into these subtle. It's like tuning in. A fainter radio station, but after a while. It's not so subtle the more you tune into it. The bigger it gets. You know that way. You literally develop new neural pathways in the brain. I grew up in the Woods. So I talk about taking a path in the Woods and I didn't like taking the regular trail. I'd always like to take a different trail that to me was funny is to try to get lost. I thought that was.

So exciting that I don't know where I am 'cause I grew up in a small town where everyone knew you since you were born and just anything unknown was thrilling and and I do a new path and then pretty soon. I take that new path every day and that's my path and all the animals would take that path and pretty soon. The old one grows over right and then pretty soon. That's the main path well now. I gotta try another one, but I enough talked with neurologists an brain, researchers and at Harvard.

Even the guys you studied my brain when I was there and they say what I describe as those paths in the Woods. I'm telling People that's a way to create new passing may have told me that is exactly what happens in your brain.

That every time you have that thought and this happens up the brain goes there's a pathway so the next time that happen are that next time that thought happens. There's a higher probability. You're going to have that same response because it knows that path not because that was the best one, not 'cause that's the one that feels good.

And then we have a tendency to associate familiar with what we like and those are 2 different things.

And I learned that real big educ when we worked with battered Housewives, who would rather get hit, then go to something they didn't know.

And they even sometimes let their children get hit, rather than go to something they didn't know because there was a life or death fear of leaving.

It isn't rational.

It has to do with us associating familiar with good.

So, in that way. Today I'm going to be having you so today. I'm going to have you tune into something you? Do all the time see hear feel out?

Fight you see all the time here, you hear sounds all the time feeling the body. Oh, I didn't do feel out in the body. Selim were emotions feel out as every other sensation.

Every objective sensation that is not emotional.

But on the cushion is feel out feel your tongue in your mouth that's feel out its objective there's no.

Drama there's no emotion in it, the breath.

That's one of the reasons we use breath meditation.

For some People, 30% of People when you say focus on your birthday attempt to control it. They can't not and so it's an unpleasant experience for them.

But People who teach breath meditation don't always factor that that can be an issue. But feel your hands. You can feel your feet on the floor clothes on your skin temperature, humidity, and air on your skin. There's lots of touch sensations that are not emotional in nature that would be feel out so today to be here now.

Our dramas tend to be aware seeing here and feeling great thoughts and feelings up.

I remember that.

This happened, and I play it over and over again. We replay our traumas. We traumatize our self over right.

Where is a safe place to go? Well, we can go to our happy flow place we did that we go to our happy rest place. Everybody wants to go to a happy place we can actually ground ourselves and the truth and the reality.

Of allowing all of our attention.

So can too.

Penetrate explore.

What we're seeing?

Now see here feel.

We do it all the time, but what we tend to do is.

See in here in general, we tend to let it all, be one thing.

We don't tend to separate out see from here.

It's just all this stuff happening and we tend to be drawn to and arising pleasant or unpleasant.

A loud sound.

And map the only time we separate here from C would be like music.

Art and seeing New York let the arch feeling but then we'll have an emotional sensation to the art or something else but we're not separating necessarily deliberately separating the sea out from it.

In fact, the internal talk, maybe going wild while we're seeing here and what does it mean to be right? But just focus in on the sea?

Just focusing on the here.

Just focusing on the field.

Now.

When you do this, especially with see out here out feel out, it doesn't mean.

That if I'm just focusing on the CI have stopped feeling and I have no ability to you.

Or sounds of all stuffed.

Doesn't mean that at all means? I am selectively attending I have so much real estate in my consciousness and I am filling it choosing meditation. I'm choosing to fill my awareness with the rest in my body.

Choosing to fill my awareness with the visual experience.

So it's a choice to do it and at first, it may seem.

Effortful.

Well, normally ideas.

Seeing here and field, you're making me. Just go there. Just go there and just go there or you might say I have trouble concentrating. I want to develop my concentration.

Well my answer to that this is my yellow brick. Rd is fascination. I guided I think the week before last week. I think I did a 45 minute meditation on flow. I think last week was probably very fun. But I had a 45 minute meditation every morning that was 45 minutes.

20 minutes I said, OK, because you that. That means you were in a state of high concentration. What's that mean it means you? Were there and you weren't wandering off somewhere.

You were there.

Why were you there?

Well, I happen to think it's fascinating so I share that fascination. It's like the fascination and I always say like a 4 year old with a lady bug. You know were for that. In fact, you cannot take a 3 or 4 year old an waka cross if this room were grass and a grass yard. You couldn't go from there to here in 5 minutes with a 3 or 4 yo because there just be too many interesting things to see.

That is so cool like that Lady that he does not want its wings on my goodness and I work with people in chronic and acute pain you can look at your pain that way. You can look at your emotions. Oh my God. I have terror here OK? Where do you feel it?

Where are the boundaries is a movement? Is it the same in the middle or on the outside. No one's ever asked. Anybody's classic on over you actually you know never to move right when you start exploring it is friggin fascinating and guess what the sufferings gone.

You're watching the pain that usually assumes we start watching it stuff that often it turns into an enerji. It often presents its flow nature and pretty soon. This suffering is gone, but fascination this childlike fascination to explore with Curiosity with kind of an openness that to me.

Isn't?

Where we're going that's the yellow brick Rd to getting here?

And so People who say I can't concentrate that fascination creates concentration. 'cause everybody who did that 45 minutes wasn't able to sit at home with 45 minutes without their attention wandering they were fascinating. They were interested. It rivets your attention. When you're doing something you really like you go in an hours go by, and you're not aware of it right.

You like it so I say get fascinated you can practice getting fascinated that 45 minute meditation. Some People went Oh my goodness.

I had no idea there was this anyone fair and then this or or last week with the rest. The whole notion of tuning into silence even though sound was there was like wow to People and then we went there and then so we filled 145 minute meditation with all these things to explore in another just with flow.

And then another 35 minute meditation food just places to Reston Park in space.

Every single moment of all those meditations is available in every.

Every Friggin Moon of your sensory experience is freaking fascinating. There's so much to soak into you just gotta shift to that 4 year old and when I'm trying to supply is saying.

It's like saying Have you ever wiggled your ear or little to no one ever tried it.

No one ever said Have you ever done that it wasn't till my meditation teacher said. Well, what if you just look at that. But if you separate this, it didn't occur to me to separate.

I thought my emotions were part of the experience and I thought, what I thought was the truth.

I thought that voice in their head was me.

I thought that was mine aeration of my life. The idea that the voice in my head wasn't me, I was just like.

That's not who's driving the car, it's what's on the radio.

An I can.

Turn it down or turn it off or change the channel or if the novice stuck. I can just treat it as background sound like the water or traffic or birds.

Never occur to me, so I was lucky to get a teacher to say, Hey look.

Hey some other way, she contain into that.

That kind of makes life better doesn't it?

This all this richness and the question I get night. This was just on the YouTube video I put up. I had to free watch myself done, but some People go.

Doesn't take away the beauty?

You know you're looking at these ingredients.

You know you listen that.

Call beauty.

Take it away.

No.

All those ingredients are available can ever given moment do you see the richness and depth. It's there, you start to realize that? What we've been looking at as a cartoon.

Versus what's real?

Which really there is so much more interesting and fulfilling than what we've been accepting as?

Well, of course, that's what I think and that's what's there and what's there is which should be there.

Or it could be there when I'm afraid is there right.

So you know, I know one T choices. You know your thoughts aren't real right just kinda like that as we go.

What are you trying to say but today we're going to work with so if you're tangled up and thoughts and feelings. We have a lot of ways to go. You can watch him flow. You can find a place to her breasts or?

And this is kind of what some Zen practices. You can tune in to the grounded reality of the present moment of see here feel.

And this.

I have a lot of clients here psychologists and psychiatrists.

Psychology field there's lots of isms and ists in there and.

We've communicated back and forth a lot about using mindfulness practice and stuff with patients and and I've met him this in here before. But there was the person was trying to get a woman to tune into her body in a recipe.

And this woman had been sexually traumatized and abused and so just going in the body at all was just danger danger will Robinson can't go in the body. She just doesn't have.

She just hasn't developed a skill yet to work with there was so much there so.

We said what if we went out to sound.

So she went out and worked with sound and insight didn't even do the body at all, and develop this equanimity with it and men develop them. I from skills there that then when we could come back to the body, she'd already had those muscles.

There's mindfulness muscles developed of clarity and equanimity and focus so that when she came to the body. She didn't get.

You know if if stuff came up, she had skills for saying Uh This Is This this is this.

And I can I can see and work with the skillfully too, then rewire the brain so that were not re traumatizing every time? Does that make sense and sound is here now, So what we here at this moment is happening in this moment and we don't really have a drama about it. It's not related to our personal issues. So if at any moment you're going. Oh my God. This is going on her. I can't keep doing this that's coming in his internal talk that's hearing in.

Wherever your distraction is you can use your distraction to take you more deeply into your meditation.

How?

So if I'm hearing in I can slide out on the auditory axis here and every time I go my God.

Person is rude OK here out in this out.

Like you can think of it as some People want Oh. It's like an antidote and I go, Yeah, but it's really you're already hearing.

You just sliding out and anchoring in the truth of this sounds.

Rather than the one you're making up.

Great and so when we hear sound sometimes we get images.

And there's a visual component or thinking process that were usually less aware because we walk around their eyes open.

But we all get image with her eyes open and if you haven't done this with me before I will demonstrate it so everyone. Look up here to the front of the room and see this lovely scarf, and really see all G she needs to iron that and see the texture of the wooden the light and really, really see it now. Look up in this direction and visualize your car, the inside of your car.

OK can you see the inside occur you see how your folks is kind of went back to see the car and this is softer now come forward and really see the texture here.

See that difference.

We do that thousands of times a day were not aware of it. We're going back and seeing every time you get a fat. I'm going to the grocery store, you're going to see a grocery store.

He said that you can see his face. You wanna go back and forth like that all day long so today. We're going to be working with that see this, if you find yourself going back 'cause. We're going to have eyes open at one point if you find yourself going into?

Thing.

Ground in this and really go up look for texture that's the fascination.

Look for text every time you look try to see something different you didn't see before.

Like the kid with the Lady book for walking across the grass that makes sense.

Cool.

Is her ability?