Toward Consciousness: A Sitting

Find a quiet place where you will not be interrupted. Sit upright and comfortably. When you work at this at your own pace, give each part of this inner exercise the time and attention it needs to fully flower.

Relax into your body.
As your body becomes relaxed, sensation, which is the sensitive energy of body contact, comes to the foreground throughout your body. Shift your attention into the sensation in your whole body. With the intention to enable the sensation to grow stronger, hold your attention in the sensation in your whole body.
Your feelings primarily manifest in the general area of your chest, from the base of your throat down to your solar plexus, and across the whole chest. Allowing the sensation to continue throughout your body, shift your primary attention to the area of your chest. The feeling energy, which is the sensitive energy of emotions, is both the substance of our feelings and the substance that enables us to be in contact with our feelings. With the intention to strengthen the feeling energy in your chest area, hold your attention in the feeling energy there.
Allowing the sensation throughout your body and the feeling energy in your chest to continue, shift your primary attention to your head, where your thoughts and mental images arise. The sensitive energy for this can be called thought energy, or mind energy, or cognitive energy. This energy is the substance of our thoughts and mental images and is also the substance that enables us to be in contact with our thoughts and mental images, which is why it can be called thought energy. However, that same energy enables us to be aware of and in our mind even when there are no thoughts or mental images, which is why we call it the mind or cognitive energy. Though its content may range far and wide, mind energy is normally localized, just as sensation and feeling are. With the intention to strengthen the mind energy in your head, hold your attention in that energy in your head. Do not allow your attention to wander with any thought; just notice the thoughts come and go. If there are no thoughts or mental images, just hold your attention in your clear mind.
Open your attention to all three centers simultaneously, to the feeling energy in your chest, the sensation throughout your body, and the mind energy in your head. Hold that posture of attention, so that you yourself are fully present.
(Optional) We are surrounded by a sea of energies. If you are able to do so, reach out into the air with your attention and draw the energies from the air, these shimmering particles of energy. Draw them into your body, feelings, and mind. You can do this either by breathing the energies in or by drawing them directly through your skin. Either way, meet the energies with your presence in the three centers, to build up and stabilize the energy of the centers. After the energy in each of the centers is built up well, stop drawing energy from the air and stay fully present in all three centers.
Unlike sensitive energies which are localized, conscious energy has no boundaries. Let go of being in the content of your mind and emotions. Let go of being mesmerized by your associative thoughts and reactive emotions. Let go of being your personality (second fana). At the same time, allow yourself, your attention, to open wide, beyond the confines of your body, but including it. Enter the sea of consciousness, the conscious awareness that fills the space around you, the peace of pure awareness, prior to any material perceptions. Any time you focus your attention you are concentrating the conscious energy. Transcend your personality, those long-established patterns of thought and emotion, and focus on opening into and being in the vast and cognizant stillness of consciousness that surrounds and permeates you.
Be awake in the cognizant stillness of consciousness, pure awareness.
Let go of the exercise. Sit quietly, not trying to shape your experience, doing nothing, to let it all settle.

Provenance of the Sitting

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