The mind feeds on its moods and its objects, so you’ve got to find something good for it to feed on. We have the choice.
There are all kinds of things you could focus on right now. It’s up to you to choose the right place to focus, the right place to feed.
So look around in the body.
Where is a comfortable place?
At what spot can you watch the breath clearly and comfortably?
Try to stay in touch with that place and stay in touch with that sense of comfort as well. After watching it for a while, you’ll find that certain ways of breathing give rise to a feeling tone that feels good, feels healing. Try to maintain that feeling tone.
This may require adjusting the breath now and then, because the needs of the body, as the mind begins to settle down, begin to change.
The breath can grow more and more still, more and more refined. The less your mind jumps around thinking about this, that, and the other thing, the less oxygen you need.
So, allow the rhythm of the breath to change as is necessary.
The important thing is learning to ride that feeling tone, the way you’d ride a wave with a surfboard:
getting a sense of when to lean a little to the left, a little to the right, steer here, steer there, to maintain your sense of balance.
As for whatever other issues may come up, remember that you’re choosing to feed right here. You don’t have to feed on anything else.
There may be a little voice in your mind saying,
“Look at that! Watch this! You’ve got to worry about that, worry about this.”
Just keep reminding yourself,
“No, not right now.”
Your current priority is to develop a good, strong foundation so that you can feel secure in the present moment so that no matter what happens, you’ve got a place where you’re safe.
As you feed here more and more often, you find that the mind gets stronger.
When it gains a sense of nourishment and inner comfort, you can spread that sense of comfort around the body so that it gets more encompassing.
If there are parts of the body you can’t spread it to, that’s okay:
You don’t have to focus there yet. Focus on the areas where you can spread that sense of comfort, where it can seep through easily.
Allow yourself to be bathed by it, surrounded by it, so that the mind has more and more good food to feed on.
As it gets stronger, it can begin to look at the other areas that are more problematic, because now it don’t have to feed on them...
