Donald Rothberg: Guided Meditation: Exploring Some Further Ways We Construct Experience

(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) We start with basic instructions in developing (1) concentration and stability, and (2) mindfulness, and then practice developing these two qualities. With mindfulness practice, we notice the main patterns of thoughts, emotions, and bodily experience. In the second half of the session, we work with being aware of the feeling-tone (linked with the Second Foundation of Mindfulness), noticing moderate (or somewhat greater) pleasant or unpleasant feeling-tones, and what occurs after we notice them. We also attend for a short period of two minutes to the moment-to-moment feeling tones of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and then go back to basic mindfulness practice for the last part of the session.