Sitting meditation is essentially the experience of sitting – anywhere and anytime - as meditation. This involves 4 simple steps:
1. Sitting with your eyes open, but not looking at anything.
2. Sustaining awareness of your sensed body surface as a whole.
3. Feeling your body surface as ‘all eye’ – enabling you to sense the entire space within and all around your body.
4. Letting all that you are aware of within your body in the form of sensations or feelings and all that comes to mind in the form of thoughts and images dissipate into the space around your body.
The most fundamental Practice of Awareness is the practice of sustaining continuous ‘whole-body awareness’ throughout the day. The foundation of this whole-body awareness is awareness of one’s felt body surface as a whole. For without awareness of our surface we can feel neither the inner space of awareness it bounds and surrounds nor the awareness that is the outer space surrounding it – these being the two distinct but inseparable aspects of the ‘awareness space’ that make up our ‘awareness body’ or ‘soul body’. Surface awareness is thus the key to experiencing ‘whole-body’ awareness as ‘soul-body’ awareness. Sustaining this whole-body/soul-body awareness through spatial body awareness can only be achieved through constant mindfulness and regular recall of the following twelve questions – all of which have to do and affect how much space one feels one has - both for oneself and for others.
1. How much of my body surface am I feeling right now?
2. How much inner awareness space can I feel within this felt surface boundary?
3. Where do I feel my awareness concentrated in this inner awareness space?
4. Where do I feel my awareness centred in this inner-bodily awareness space?
5. How far down does my inner awareness space extend from the inner space of my head through that of my chest to my lower abdomen?
6. How expansive or contracted, crowded or empty, muddied or clear, do I feel the inner awareness space of my head, chest and abdomen?
7. To what extent do I feel the inner awareness space of head, chest and abdomen as a singular inner space of awareness?
8. To what extent can I lower my centre of awareness from a point in my head to points in the inner region of my heart, diaphragm, belly and lower abdomen?
9. To what extent can I sense the entire space around my body surface?
10. How far can I feel my awareness extending into this space?
11. To what extent can I feel the entire space around me as an unbounded space of awareness enveloping and embracing both my own body and every other body in it?
12. How permeable or impermeable do I feel the surface boundary between my inner and outer awareness spaces - to what extent can I feel my surface boundary as either a porous in-breathing membrane or as a sealed self-containing boundary?