Pause and Relax establish the traditional meditative framework of mindfulness and tranquility. In Pause, we step out of habit and meet the moment afresh. We awaken out of identification with reaction. We become aware of the body, emotions, and thoughts—without clinging. In Relax, we meet our immediate experience with acceptance, receptivity, and kindness.
Now we come to the third interpersonal meditation instruction: Open. With Open, awareness extends to everything around us. Pause and Relax could be instructions for internal individual meditation, but Open invites us to extend this accepting mindfulness beyond the boundaries of our skin to encompass the external world. This extension opens the door to mutuality, and is the basis for interpersonal meditation.
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When we extend awareness beyond the skin-encapsulated self, our meditation grows to include other people and our surroundings. We meet other people with the same mindfulness and calm acceptance with which we are learning to meet our internal experience. If we are meditating in dialogue with one other person, we meet this person with wakeful acceptance. If we are meditating with a room full of people, the awareness opens wide to receive the whole. With mindfulness of both the internal and external, we are aware of the ever-changing relational moment.
We can begin to explore Open by becoming aware of the body sitting, just as it is. With a focused inward awareness, we find some place where attention is drawn because of a sensation, perhaps the touch of the body upon the chair or cushion, or a point of discomfort in the hip or knees. By bringing full awareness to that area or point, mindfulness becomes stabilized there. Now, right at that point, we meet this sensation with acceptance. This awareness is very precise, but very kind. We then begin to expand that kindly awareness to the rest of the body, until the entire body is saturated with receptive mindfulness.
Now we simply do not stop there. In Open, we allow awareness to extend beyond the body. We may first notice the expansive quality of the wider sense of hearing. If our eyes were closed, we might open them and notice that the entire room is in our field of awareness. We may notice that the person (or people) in front of us are also in our field of awareness. We are simply and fully present with others. The same kindly, accepting, mindful awareness that was touched by internal phenomena of the body-mind is now touched by the other. In Open, awareness encompasses the external as well as the internal. It is wider, more spacious.
While some traditional meditation practices encourage a wide open awareness, most do not include awareness of the specific humans we are with—they do not open the door to encounter in co-meditation. In Insight Dialogue, we open this door.
With non-clinging, the mind learns to move freely between internal and external experience. This pliable mind state is important to all meditation practice, but it is especially important in Insight Dialogue. When someone speaks, awareness may open outward in hearing. Emotions or ideas may momentarily pull us into identification and reaction. Aware of our reactivity, we can Pause, stabilizing awareness in the body. Opening again—perhaps as our partner is still speaking—awareness may now include both our body and the other’s voice. In the silence that follows, awareness may turn inward, noticing delicate reverberations of thought. As we practice, we become able to move more easily between internal and external awareness. These inner and outer shifts can be known by mindfulness without grasping and identification. Pleasant or unpleasant, we remain aware—not caught up, but aware.
When something touches awareness, the fundamental experience is one of contact and of consciousness arising from this contact. It makes no difference whether the awareness is of an internal thought or of something external, such as hearing another speak. It is still “me” experiencing this. But right at the point of contact, in the moment of contact, this subject/object relationship vanishes. It is no longer experienced as “me knowing.” The once rigid boundaries of self and other soften; both are known simply as experience.
The open mind is receptive and non-clinging. As self-concern quietly drifts away, opening becomes more complete. In fullness of opening there is no boundary between the internal and external. There is nowhere to go; there is only awareness. The only boundary was the sense of self, which we find is an illusion.
