Keeping in mind the six Insight Dialogue meditation instructions as separate elements provides a strong support for practice. This is especially true at the beginning, when we need the support of particular instructions to counter our abundance of interpersonal habits. It is also true whenever greater energy or clarity is called for.
The individual guidelines are also easier to bring into ordinary daily practice. For example, we can remind ourselves to Relax or to Trust Emergence at any time. When our minds are scattered, or our hearts agitated, a specific, clear focus can help us find the meditative moment. Pause can help us step out of the preoccupations of a frenzied mind, calling up the clarity of prior practice and transforming agitated energy into wakefulness. When emotional attachments arise, a reminder to Relax can help us calm the body and meet pain and grasping with acceptance and love. Some times are better than others for the spaciousness of Open—perhaps our distracted state would only become more diffuse. Trust Emergence may enable us to ride a wild wave of agitation as a fresh and adaptable foundation for clear awareness. Listen Deeply may open us beyond shrunken patterns of self-concern and receive the words—and the humanity—of family members, friends, and coworkers. As six individual instructions, the guidelines provide touch points or reminders for integrating practice into our daily living. When we use them, everyday life can become an opportunity for real insight. Insight Dialogue groups sometimes discuss these experiences as a part of their practice time.
Pause—call forth to slow down, to drop ignorance, to see more deeply, and to brighten the mind. Relax—call forth in the face of stress or challenging truths, and to bring ease to the body-mind. Open—call to move out of isolated practice, loops, and selfish patterns, to be out of contraction. Trust Emergence—call forth for energy, to end doubt, and to ride the moment. Listen Deeply—call into inquiry, receptivity, and to extend the heart. Speak the Truth—call forth to end stasis, to enhance generosity and courage, to bring meditative interaction.
. . .
A careful practice of these individual guidelines reveals they are also one in experience. The interoperation of these meditation instructions is suggested by the way they are grouped: Pause-Relax-Open can be considered as one guideline; Trust Emergence as another; and Listen Deeply—Speak the Truth as the third. We can think of them as six separate instructions, or as three groups, or as a single instruction or path.
Each approach emphasizes and supports different and important aspects of the practice. Seeing them as six separate guidelines encourages us to focus fully on each in turn, exploring their nuance and depth. Three instructions are easier to remember, however, and reveal the flow between Pause, Relax, and Open, the centrality of letting go in Trust Emergence, and the reciprocity of Listen Deeply–Speak the Truth. Taking all the guidelines as a single instruction reveals the all-at-onceness of meditation, the concurrence of qualities that is the hallmark of the mature heart–mind.
Pause is essentially accepting (Relax), spacious (Open), and given over to impermanence (Trust Emergence), from which reception and expression issue (Listen Deeply-Speak the Truth).
Relax yields easy mindfulness (Pause) and a wide or even unbounded (Open) awareness. Relax moves easily with changing experience (Trust Emergence), from which speech blossoms and is received (Listen Deeply-Speak the Truth).
Open invites the mind to be undistracted and alert (Pause), tranquil (Relax), and encompasses all emergence, including listening and speaking.
In Trust Emergence the mind is fully present (Pause), non-resistive (Relax), unhindered by fabricated boundaries and not clinging to self-concept (Open); the mind listens with the lightness, agility and curiosity of not-knowing, and speaks from the moment.
When we Listen Deeply we must be mindful and fully present (Pause), steady and profoundly receptive (Relax), permeable to receive the external as well as the internal (Open), and poised on the tip of the moment (Trust Emergence) where sound becomes hearing, hearing becomes listening, and contact occurs.
In order to Speak the Truth, we must awaken (Pause), rest with acceptance of what arises (Relax), listen internally and externally to know the truth of the moment (Listen Deeply), open our awareness to share with others (Open), and surrender to the truth that is emerging in the moment we would speak (Trust Emergence).
The guidelines can also be seen together in other groupings of two or three, each group revealing other aspects of practice. We have seen how Pause and Relax combine to yield clear, loving awareness. Combining the empathy possible with Listen Deeply and the moment-to-moment detachment of Trust Emergence, we can be fully yielded to another’s story and yet cognizant of its impermanent and insubstantial nature. When we combine Pause and Trust Emergence, our practice takes us to an edge where we are shocked into energy and aliveness—and opened up to humor, as our attention reveals the elements of awkwardness and absurdity in our everyday existence. Open with Trust Emergence together condition the essence of surrender; while Open–Trust Emergence–Speak the Truth is the essence of interpersonal courage. The combination Pause–Trust Emergence–Listen Deeply brings us face-to-face with the vibrating mystery of things; Relax–Listen Deeply engenders patience and receptivity; Relax–Open–Listen Deeply so fully de-centers us that we come to the brink of selflessness and emptiness. These combinations of the meditation instructions invite us to truly be with one another.
The guidelines can also be viewed as one; from this perspective, they disappear in the simple truth of being. This is the mature practice: fully interactive, relational, and mutually committed. There are no reminders, here, just presence with each other. We have taken care of mindfulness; now it takes care of us. And if there is a lapse in mindfulness, that’s just part of being human. We accept our humanity with humility and love, and open to the very next moment.
