I recently spent a day today at the New York Open Center, facilitating a workshop on “Living with Intention.” During one of the guided meditations, I asked the participants to notice the stillness that’s always there in the background of awareness. They focused their attention on the stillness – the spacious awareness – that exists within and behind every thought, feeling, physical sensation, action, and urge. I invited them to spend some time focusing on the stillness, noticing that it is an open state of awareness characterized by a quality of being infinitely spacious. Next, I asked them to notice whatever thoughts, feelings, or sensations were moving along in the foreground of awareness, and to hang out there for a moment. Then, I asked them to take some time to shift slowly back and forth, from the stillness in the background of awareness to the foreground of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and urges they noticed, resting their awareness for a little bit in each space – background and foreground.

As we talked about the experience afterward, one participant mentioned that the process reminded her of watching a movie where the director focuses the viewer’s attention on the background by putting the foreground into soft focus. She mentioned that when the foreground of her thoughts, feelings, and sensations came into soft focus, it was easier to rest here awareness in the background stillness. We all liked the idea and I asked her if I could use it to share with others, as I immediately felt the impact of imagining the foreground of awareness as softening, almost becoming blurry.

And so, I invite you to experiment with the shifts from foreground to background. The important thing about this experiment is that there’s nothing else for you to do. The fundamental wisdom of your body-mind being knows exactly how to respond to the gentle shift of awareness, back and forth, from foreground to background. All you need to do is allow yourself to rest in each place for a little while, go back and forth a few times, and then notice what happens spontaneously.

The nice thing to know is that the background is stillness is always there, no matter what’s happening, no matter where you may be. The great gift is that, when you practice shifting to the background of stillness during times when you’re relatively calm and comfortable, you’ll be more able to shift into the stillness when you become activated by distress or fear. In this way, you have one more tool for helping yourself recenter during times of difficulty. (Also, it just feels really good to “lean into” the stillness and hang out there – even when things are going well.)

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