Casual Morning Sits

Sitting Quietly As Ourselves

At its root, “sitting quietly” is simply true nature resting as itself in a state of deep intimacy and connection.

It is less an “activity that I am doing” and more of a sense of receptivity toward anything that is arising or could ever arise. It is allowing the body-mind to become the instrument of listening that it is intrinsically designed to be.

Underneath all the compulsion and the avoidance, there is such a deep appetite for this holistic listening!

This appetite is distinct from conditioned impulses. It is what the body and energy system actually want to do when they are not being run by unprocessed energy, emotion and mental content.

And therein lies the rub.

Systems that are run by unprocessed energy, emotion and mental content resist grounding, connection, compassionate contact and sustained, unhurried attention.

If we observe this unprocessed state, we will find that we have a fundamentally polarized relationship to it. On the one hand, we are totally sick of it. On the other hand, we are basically addicted to it and scared to see what life would be like without it.

So, although sitting quietly is designed to be the simplest thing in the world, it can evoke a surprisingly complicated set of reactions, defenses, rationalizations, avoidances, and justifications. In other words, the entirety of our egoic wounding comes to visit us as we contemplate our relationship to basically doing nothing.

How do we recommend working with this?

By understanding that entry point to silent sitting is working consciously with energetic thresholds. What does this mean?

The first thing we want to see about conditioned defense mechanisms is that they are by nature not connected. Whether they are vigilant (activated) or collapsed (frozen), their entire structure and world-view resists direct, felt-sense contact.

Defense mechanisms can only survive in their current form if they remain compartmentalized from the Self and the rest of the system.

Conversely, felt-sense, energetic contact from true nature is actually the only thing in the system that can bring conditioned patterns to rest.

True nature is the parent! It is the movement of love itself! It is the only force capable of giving the various facets of the ego new energetic information so that they can be updated and brought into present time.

Silent sitting is a kind of container where this healing contact can occur in a gentle, gradual and unforced way over the course of many years.

Waves & Thresholds

This healing contact has a distinct, observable pattern. What does it feel like?

It feels like a wave.

• At the beginning of the wave, you observe the arising of energy (what wants to be processed).

• At end of the wave, you experience the dissolution of energy (the return of a pattern to its source).

• At the top of that wave, you experience a threshold. A threshold is simply the full expression of the unprocessed energy that has been suppressed by the conditioned self and its activities.

The direct experience of the threshold is what has been avoided. It has been avoided because a threshold is the act of allowing more energy and therefore more feeling and more aliveness into the system, and this is precisely what the ego structure is defending against.

When we put it like that, you can see why the process causes so many dilemmas for the various parts of the personality. The personality does not fundamentally understand energy or the healing process because it is not supposed to be in charge of them. At the same time, and particularly in the beginning, the personality is used to being in charge of everything.

Quiet sitting is a laboratory where the personality slowly hands over the reigns of the healing process to true nature. This is essentially a trial and error process where we get a front row seat to the many (and often subtle) ways we interfere with the natural intelligence of true nature.

For instance, we might have some high-intensity part that sends our system over-threshold through excessive “pushing” and intensity and an imbalanced relationship to “catharsis and breakthrough”. Or we might have parts that are invested in never letting energy open up and flow enough to even approach threshold, leaving us in either a narrowed, stale control state or a disassociated, flat, and “bored” analgesic state.

As we continue, over and over and over, to surrender our inner process over to the intrinsic intelligence of presence, we become more and more skillful at distilling what a natural threshold is.

• True nature knows how to give the body-mind just enough energy to work with.

• It brings us right to the edge of the cliff, but not over it.

• It asks us to discern the difference between intensity - which is the feeling of recovering/retrieving our own life-force - and overwhelm - which is often a manager part adding in some form of control (“figuring out”, “techniquing”, etc.) to an energetic process that is fundamentally beyond its purview.

Quiet sitting is not “boot camp.” It is not penance. It is not “no pain, no gain.” It is this gentle, loving but intense stage for the resolution of all “leftovers” (karma) and the updating of the body-mind system into a kind of “throne” for the spontaneous expression of true nature and its unique gifts.

Somebody once asked Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi about nondual realization and silent sitting. “If someone has realization, why would they continue to practice?” (This is actually a very old question.) His response was: “if they really understood just sitting (shikantaza), why would they stop?”

Ultimately, true nature likes to sit still in appreciation of all that is. True nature (source) “processes” the body-mind system like it does any natural, complex system. At various points in the 24-hour cycle, the impulse simply arises to pause all outward activity (the outward flow of the life-force). A “practitioner” is someone who simply recognizes and follows this impulse.

Over longer cycles of time, bigger psychospiritual shifts may arise that need to be shepherded, which may result in us doing very little outwardly for extended periods of time. This is called retreat.

We invite you to “cooperate” with this natural, regenerative impulse in whatever form it is showing itself in you. Doing it alone is great. Doing it together with us or other groups is also great.

Schedule & FORMAT

Sits are Tuesdays - Saturdays

The “zoom room” is open from 6:00am - 7:30pm PT.

You may come for any part of that time that works for your schedule. The sits are simply about offering a supportive field of silence reinforced by group intention and momentum.

For a long time, Megan was hosting these every morning and offering brief teachings. She is currently taking a break to be alone in the mornings. She may change her mind and take the reigns again. We’ll see.

No requirements around attendance. This is free but please do register and we’ll send you a Zoom link.

Supporting Resources

If you are new to silent sitting practice and the views/attitudes and methods that support it, Strong Knowing is the place where we lay out this material sequentially.