Big Sky Mind

I’ve mentioned before a practice called Big Sky Mind, given to me by the former minister of the First Unitarian Church, the late Rev. Thomas Ahlburn.

This practice encourages us to open to the spaciousness of awareness, expanding the boundaries of our perceived physical body and relaxing the grip on thoughts, feelings, and sensations. The ability to rest in the spaciousness of the natural mind can be accessed at any time of the day, not just during formal meditation practice. Whenever we are feeling tense, stressed, or distracted by recurring thought patterns, we can stop for a moment, take a breath, and let go of whatever we are holding, just relaxing into the natural openness of the mind that is always present.

In his book, Awakening Through Love, John Makransky describes the practice:

Sense the openness of awareness, infinite and without center, in which all phenomena self-arise and self-dissolve, beyond clinging, beyond thinking, beyond reference points – boundless openness and cognizance, all-pervasive like the sky. Let this vast expanse of fundamental awareness sense all that appears in its own radiant expression, like the sky sensing its own rainbows. Rest as that sky-like nature of mind – all phenomena permitted to self-arise and self-release within the infinite expanse of openness aware.

He adds:

Thoughts are like the radiant expression of our mind’s clear, quiescent, and infinitely spacious nature. They arise from that nature and dissolve into it. Our job is not to struggle with them or try to stop them, but merely to allow them the freedom to self-dissolve into their own radiant, empty ground, like ocean waves dissolving back into their own wateriness.

You can practice “off the cushion” by engaging the memory of this experience from your sitting practice and relaxing into the spaciousness that is always present in our awareness. This can be a short practice, repeated many times a day. Eventually, you become so familiar with the open nature of the mind, that you begin to notice the spacious aspect of your experience without effort, as if you always knew it was present.