Step 3 of The Practice of Living Awareness is flow.
If we sit and simply experience the breath, two qualities or characteristics become apparent: that the breath is constant and has a smooth texture. Both indicate non-interruption.
A modern life seems almost predicated upon interruption. Allow yourself to fully experience how many things and people, ambient as well as obvious, interrupt your moment or seek to. Meditation reminds us that we have choice in this regard. One can choose non-distraction or non-interruption for a period of time for efficacy or for peace, clarity, and quiet.
Meditation also requires constancy. To establish a practice requires the repetition of sitting and contemplation. To establish the benefits in one’s life of a meditation practice requires bringing the technique consistently off the cushion and into one’s life. Meditative attention is a willful non-distracted attention. It is an attention made possible because one has chosen clarity and peace over confusion and distraction.
Our first meditation in Step 3: flow offers some of these direct experiences.
Downloadable podcast: Non-interrupted, smooth – 3a