July 21, 2025 • 19 mins
When we talk about meditation, very often we say things like "awareness" or "consciousness" and we can very easily brush past what any of those things mean or feel like. This meditation hopes to help the meditator become more familiar with our true self, the part of us deep down inside that is just witnessing and observing our thoughts and feelings through out our day through active listening.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome to Mindful Meditations with Calm the bleep Down once again.
I'm your host, Michael Beckameier, and today we're going to
listen to the awareness. Let's get started once again. We
have a mindfulness quote so we can head into our
meditation with some intent and perspective. And today our quote
(00:38):
comes from Jean cabat Zen and it reads, mindfulness is
paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non
judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment to moment. I
like this quote because it is specifically about being the
(01:03):
witness or the observer of our thoughts or what's going
on around us, or how we feel in any given moment.
So many of us get sucked into moments of you know,
you know, anxiety or depression or sadness or rage or outbursts,
(01:24):
and we very easily get swept away by the moment.
And if you've ever talked to somebody who was, you know,
lost their temper and they and they don't even know
how to describe it. They just say, I just was
seeing red, I just lost it, and I just started
(01:45):
saying things that I didn't mean or feel, or I
just said whatever came to their mind in that moment
somebody decides to break up with them or you're fired,
and you just start spouting these like outrageous things, and
later you start to realize, I don't man, I was
just you know, fed up or frustrated or tired or
hungry or whatever, and we get very easily swept away.
(02:12):
Mindfulness is about recognizing that stuff as we're feeling it,
so that we don't say or do or react to
things that make us feel things, so that we're not
being so that you've ever heard the phrase wag the dog,
so that we're not the dog being wagged by the tail.
(02:32):
We're the dog we wag the tail, if that makes sense.
So that's what we're going to meditate on. But we're
going to do something a little bit different. So if
you are listening to this meditation with headphones, I would
advise that today's meditation might be easier or better or
(02:52):
more effective if you take your headphones off, because we're
going to listen to our surroundings a little bit while
we're meditating, and it's hard to do that with headphones on.
So first of all, I want you to get comfortable.
You can either sit down or lie down. We talk
so much about awareness and consciousness and being the witness
(03:15):
in meditation, but don't we just Sometimes I even catch
myself just saying that, and I say, yeah, you're the witness.
It may or may not make sense, it has I'm
still trying to figure out what this stuff means. So
for me, when I talk about being the witness, or
when I think about being the witness, it means there's
(03:35):
that part of me deep down inside that recognizes what
I'm thinking or feeling or going through and is just
seeing it the most pure, true version of myself, way
way way way down, deep beneath all the layers. And
it takes practice to get some distance from the thoughts
(04:01):
you are thinking or the feelings you are feeling and
just saying, oh, those are literally clouds just flying by,
or that's just moving traffic buzzing by my by me
while I'm sitting here trying to observe it. But sometimes
when the traffic's really heavy and really fast, there's cars
speeding by, you get swept into that moment. When I'm
(04:25):
talking about being the witness or the observer, I'm talking
about finding a way to pull out from that buzzing traffic.
That's here's maybe standing on a curb and you're so
close to it. That is when I'm talking about being
the witness. I'm talking about somehow finding a way to
pull away, so the traffic is still there, but you're
(04:49):
so far away from it. You've put so much distance
between you and that thing that now you can observe
it with some perspective. Maybe if you think a bird's
eye view, the way you look down on things from
high above and it just seems so quiet and peaceful
and slow and serene. But you're standing right next to it.
(05:09):
It's buzzing traffic, it's dangerous. You can't step out into it.
What we're going to do today is practicing that. So
one of the ways I like to practice becoming aware,
(05:31):
or becoming aware of my awareness is to listen. So
when I'm meditating, like I said, almost like it, pull
my headphones out if I'm listening to music or something,
or maybe meditate in silence on this particular practice, and
I use my ears kind of like if you start
(05:53):
to think about when you're looking at something, and you're
looking straight at something, you're very focused on it, the
periphery begins to fall off, your peripheral vision is not
as whatever. But if you start thinking about not just
looking directly at something but taking an entire view in,
(06:14):
you have like a almost you have like a one
hundred and eighty degree view because you're allowing your peripheral
vision to also come into you. Listening is really the
same way. So if you're listening very closely to something
I'm saying, or something someone is saying, or to a
song that might be all you're hearing, you're zoomed in
(06:35):
on that sound. But when we're meditating, or when you're
actively listening, which is what I call it active listening,
you can open up your peripheral listening and you can
start to just like have things come to you. And
for me, it's always been a really good reset. A
(06:55):
really good example of what it's like to just observe
is to actively listen. If you're sitting or lying down
and you're sitting in what seems to be a silent
room up until the point when you get settled. Once
you start to settle and close your eyes and start meditating,
follow your breath a little bit, and then you start
(07:16):
to listen to the room, you realize you can hear
the air conditioner. Event, you can hear something creaking, maybe
a water is dripping in your bathroom, you know, on
the in the next room. Or you start to hear
birds chirping outside, Do you hear traffic flying by you, maybe
hear a plane flying overhead, and just actively listening to
(07:36):
those things. Letting those things come into you is a
good way to practice being the observer, because that plane
thirty thousand feet above that's flying over your house or
wherever you are at that time, doesn't have any effect
on you. You're just saying, oh, that's a plane. You
hear the birds chirping outside, or a traffic or are
(07:57):
a car zoomed by our house? Those those things have
no effect on you. You're just observing, oh that's a car,
there's a bird chirping, and you're letting all of that
stuff just come into you and you're actively listening from
all around you. It's good practice. It has been for me,
(08:19):
at least to feel what it's like to just observe,
because the concept of saying I am the witness, I
am the observer, it's really easy to say, but sometimes
it's hard to picture in your head what we mean
when we say that. So for me, practice some active
listening where I'm just listening to what's everything that's around me,
(08:42):
and I'm letting it come in and go out. I'm
just saying, oh, plain bird. And very quickly, it's not easy,
but very quickly from practicing this, you start to lose
track of time. You don't realize how long you've been
sitting there. You don't think about your name, you don't
think about what happened five minutes before you sat down
(09:02):
to meditate. You're thinking about what's happening right now. In fact,
you're not thinking. You're just soaking it in. It's coming
out you and you're like bird, plane, car, creaking wood
two rooms away, and you're just soaking it in. You're
observing the thing. And it's good practice to feel what
that feels like when you're just observing, for me at least,
(09:26):
So we're gonna try this today. So get yourself settled,
sit down or lie down, and we'll begin just with
a few breaths. So take a long, slow, deep breath
(09:47):
in hand out. It helps to start with how you
feel in your body, So pay attention to the breath
coming in, the breath going out, maybe you're a little
frustrated or anxious, or hungry or tired from the day,
(10:11):
and this is your time to wind down from that.
So you're bringing the breath in and bringing the breath out,
and with each exhale, you're allowing yourself to become more
and more relaxed, and you're paying attention to the sensations
(10:31):
in your body. So, based on what we were saying before,
you're zoomed in on your body. You're paying attention to
that feeling in your left foot. Breathe into that feeling
in your left foot and breathe out of it and
relax deeper. Start to feel yourself become heavier and heavier
(10:51):
with each inhale and exhale, heavier with relaxation, sinking into
that chair or mattress. Just do a quick scan of
your body from head to toe, real quick and consciously
(11:15):
relax all the areas in your body that are carrying
any tension or stress or maybe agitation or pain. Maybe
get a soreness, crick in your neck or something. Actively
relax those areas and feel yourself become more and more relaxed.
(11:52):
Now I want you to expand your awareness from your
body to the room in. Open your ears and let
the sounds of the room and your surroundings come into you.
(12:18):
Just observe them, witness them as they happen. You'll notice
that sounds are not constant a lot of the time.
They come in and they go. They come in and
they go, and we're just watching them come in and go.
(12:38):
We're just listening, actively listening to our surroundings. Practice this
for a few moments. For me, when I'm doing this practice,
(13:13):
I notice my mind wandering a lot more than normal.
So it does require some mindfulness practice to recognize when
your mind has wondered and bring it back to just
actively listening to your surroundings. It will happen. It will
(13:38):
be frustrating, but try to just push past and push
through and get back to tapping into your pure conscious awareness,
the part deep down inside of you that is just
there to witness an experience and to be aware of things. Now,
(14:37):
picture your awareness expanding even more to the rooms outside
of the room you're in. And if you're sitting or
laying down by a window, picture your awareness spreading outside.
What do you hear? What's there? There a breeze, they're
(15:02):
a bird, dog barking, someone else chattering from the next
house or apartment or building. Sometimes it helps me to
imagine myself sort of floating over to those areas so
(15:24):
I can get a closer listen to those things. Maybe
you imagine yourself floating into the next corner of the room,
outside of your room. What's happening there, all the while
(15:53):
just soaking it in like a sponge. It's all coming
to you and you're just observing. You're just witnessing. You
are no one, no thing, in no place and no time.
You are just here observing. It's time to bring your
(17:17):
awareness back into your own body. So whatever visualization works
for you, maybe zoom back into yourself, Float back into yourself,
come back to your breath. The best way to do
this is to reattach yourself to your breathing. Take a long, slow,
(17:40):
deep breath in and out. Feel that exhale leave your body.
Feel this next inhale into your body and out. As
(18:16):
you go through the rest of your day, your week,
just know that you can always return to that pure consciousness,
that pure awareness. Just by closing your eyes and actively
listening to your surroundings, you can feel what it feels
(18:36):
like to be the witness, the observer just by listening,
and when you're ready, you can open your eyes and
go about your day, not mistake. That's it for this
(19:12):
time on Calm to bleep down. If you like this meditation,
please feel free to send us an email, post a comment,
hit us up on Instagram or TikTok, where we're posting
a lot these days. We'd love to hear from you.
Once again, I'm Michael Beckamaia reminding you to please calm
the bleep down. We'll see you again soon. Thank you
for meditating with us. Be well, have fun, and no
(19:36):
mistake
Welcome to Mindful Meditations with Calm the bleep Down once again.
I'm your host, Michael Beckameier, and today we're going to
listen to the awareness. Let's get started once again. We
have a mindfulness quote so we can head into our
meditation with some intent and perspective. And today our quote
(00:38):
comes from Jean cabat Zen and it reads, mindfulness is
paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non
judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment to moment. I
like this quote because it is specifically about being the
(01:03):
witness or the observer of our thoughts or what's going
on around us, or how we feel in any given moment.
So many of us get sucked into moments of you know,
you know, anxiety or depression or sadness or rage or outbursts,
(01:24):
and we very easily get swept away by the moment.
And if you've ever talked to somebody who was, you know,
lost their temper and they and they don't even know
how to describe it. They just say, I just was
seeing red, I just lost it, and I just started
(01:45):
saying things that I didn't mean or feel, or I
just said whatever came to their mind in that moment
somebody decides to break up with them or you're fired,
and you just start spouting these like outrageous things, and
later you start to realize, I don't man, I was
just you know, fed up or frustrated or tired or
hungry or whatever, and we get very easily swept away.
(02:12):
Mindfulness is about recognizing that stuff as we're feeling it,
so that we don't say or do or react to
things that make us feel things, so that we're not
being so that you've ever heard the phrase wag the dog,
so that we're not the dog being wagged by the tail.
(02:32):
We're the dog we wag the tail, if that makes sense.
So that's what we're going to meditate on. But we're
going to do something a little bit different. So if
you are listening to this meditation with headphones, I would
advise that today's meditation might be easier or better or
(02:52):
more effective if you take your headphones off, because we're
going to listen to our surroundings a little bit while
we're meditating, and it's hard to do that with headphones on.
So first of all, I want you to get comfortable.
You can either sit down or lie down. We talk
so much about awareness and consciousness and being the witness
(03:15):
in meditation, but don't we just Sometimes I even catch
myself just saying that, and I say, yeah, you're the witness.
It may or may not make sense, it has I'm
still trying to figure out what this stuff means. So
for me, when I talk about being the witness, or
when I think about being the witness, it means there's
(03:35):
that part of me deep down inside that recognizes what
I'm thinking or feeling or going through and is just
seeing it the most pure, true version of myself, way
way way way down, deep beneath all the layers. And
it takes practice to get some distance from the thoughts
(04:01):
you are thinking or the feelings you are feeling and
just saying, oh, those are literally clouds just flying by,
or that's just moving traffic buzzing by my by me
while I'm sitting here trying to observe it. But sometimes
when the traffic's really heavy and really fast, there's cars
speeding by, you get swept into that moment. When I'm
(04:25):
talking about being the witness or the observer, I'm talking
about finding a way to pull out from that buzzing traffic.
That's here's maybe standing on a curb and you're so
close to it. That is when I'm talking about being
the witness. I'm talking about somehow finding a way to
pull away, so the traffic is still there, but you're
(04:49):
so far away from it. You've put so much distance
between you and that thing that now you can observe
it with some perspective. Maybe if you think a bird's
eye view, the way you look down on things from
high above and it just seems so quiet and peaceful
and slow and serene. But you're standing right next to it.
(05:09):
It's buzzing traffic, it's dangerous. You can't step out into it.
What we're going to do today is practicing that. So
one of the ways I like to practice becoming aware,
(05:31):
or becoming aware of my awareness is to listen. So
when I'm meditating, like I said, almost like it, pull
my headphones out if I'm listening to music or something,
or maybe meditate in silence on this particular practice, and
I use my ears kind of like if you start
(05:53):
to think about when you're looking at something, and you're
looking straight at something, you're very focused on it, the
periphery begins to fall off, your peripheral vision is not
as whatever. But if you start thinking about not just
looking directly at something but taking an entire view in,
(06:14):
you have like a almost you have like a one
hundred and eighty degree view because you're allowing your peripheral
vision to also come into you. Listening is really the
same way. So if you're listening very closely to something
I'm saying, or something someone is saying, or to a
song that might be all you're hearing, you're zoomed in
(06:35):
on that sound. But when we're meditating, or when you're
actively listening, which is what I call it active listening,
you can open up your peripheral listening and you can
start to just like have things come to you. And
for me, it's always been a really good reset. A
(06:55):
really good example of what it's like to just observe
is to actively listen. If you're sitting or lying down
and you're sitting in what seems to be a silent
room up until the point when you get settled. Once
you start to settle and close your eyes and start meditating,
follow your breath a little bit, and then you start
(07:16):
to listen to the room, you realize you can hear
the air conditioner. Event, you can hear something creaking, maybe
a water is dripping in your bathroom, you know, on
the in the next room. Or you start to hear
birds chirping outside, Do you hear traffic flying by you, maybe
hear a plane flying overhead, and just actively listening to
(07:36):
those things. Letting those things come into you is a
good way to practice being the observer, because that plane
thirty thousand feet above that's flying over your house or
wherever you are at that time, doesn't have any effect
on you. You're just saying, oh, that's a plane. You
hear the birds chirping outside, or a traffic or are
(07:57):
a car zoomed by our house? Those those things have
no effect on you. You're just observing, oh that's a car,
there's a bird chirping, and you're letting all of that
stuff just come into you and you're actively listening from
all around you. It's good practice. It has been for me,
(08:19):
at least to feel what it's like to just observe,
because the concept of saying I am the witness, I
am the observer, it's really easy to say, but sometimes
it's hard to picture in your head what we mean
when we say that. So for me, practice some active
listening where I'm just listening to what's everything that's around me,
(08:42):
and I'm letting it come in and go out. I'm
just saying, oh, plain bird. And very quickly, it's not easy,
but very quickly from practicing this, you start to lose
track of time. You don't realize how long you've been
sitting there. You don't think about your name, you don't
think about what happened five minutes before you sat down
(09:02):
to meditate. You're thinking about what's happening right now. In fact,
you're not thinking. You're just soaking it in. It's coming
out you and you're like bird, plane, car, creaking wood
two rooms away, and you're just soaking it in. You're
observing the thing. And it's good practice to feel what
that feels like when you're just observing, for me at least,
(09:26):
So we're gonna try this today. So get yourself settled,
sit down or lie down, and we'll begin just with
a few breaths. So take a long, slow, deep breath
(09:47):
in hand out. It helps to start with how you
feel in your body, So pay attention to the breath
coming in, the breath going out, maybe you're a little
frustrated or anxious, or hungry or tired from the day,
(10:11):
and this is your time to wind down from that.
So you're bringing the breath in and bringing the breath out,
and with each exhale, you're allowing yourself to become more
and more relaxed, and you're paying attention to the sensations
(10:31):
in your body. So, based on what we were saying before,
you're zoomed in on your body. You're paying attention to
that feeling in your left foot. Breathe into that feeling
in your left foot and breathe out of it and
relax deeper. Start to feel yourself become heavier and heavier
(10:51):
with each inhale and exhale, heavier with relaxation, sinking into
that chair or mattress. Just do a quick scan of
your body from head to toe, real quick and consciously
(11:15):
relax all the areas in your body that are carrying
any tension or stress or maybe agitation or pain. Maybe
get a soreness, crick in your neck or something. Actively
relax those areas and feel yourself become more and more relaxed.
(11:52):
Now I want you to expand your awareness from your
body to the room in. Open your ears and let
the sounds of the room and your surroundings come into you.
(12:18):
Just observe them, witness them as they happen. You'll notice
that sounds are not constant a lot of the time.
They come in and they go. They come in and
they go, and we're just watching them come in and go.
(12:38):
We're just listening, actively listening to our surroundings. Practice this
for a few moments. For me, when I'm doing this practice,
(13:13):
I notice my mind wandering a lot more than normal.
So it does require some mindfulness practice to recognize when
your mind has wondered and bring it back to just
actively listening to your surroundings. It will happen. It will
(13:38):
be frustrating, but try to just push past and push
through and get back to tapping into your pure conscious awareness,
the part deep down inside of you that is just
there to witness an experience and to be aware of things. Now,
(14:37):
picture your awareness expanding even more to the rooms outside
of the room you're in. And if you're sitting or
laying down by a window, picture your awareness spreading outside.
What do you hear? What's there? There a breeze, they're
(15:02):
a bird, dog barking, someone else chattering from the next
house or apartment or building. Sometimes it helps me to
imagine myself sort of floating over to those areas so
(15:24):
I can get a closer listen to those things. Maybe
you imagine yourself floating into the next corner of the room,
outside of your room. What's happening there, all the while
(15:53):
just soaking it in like a sponge. It's all coming
to you and you're just observing. You're just witnessing. You
are no one, no thing, in no place and no time.
You are just here observing. It's time to bring your
(17:17):
awareness back into your own body. So whatever visualization works
for you, maybe zoom back into yourself, Float back into yourself,
come back to your breath. The best way to do
this is to reattach yourself to your breathing. Take a long, slow,
(17:40):
deep breath in and out. Feel that exhale leave your body.
Feel this next inhale into your body and out. As
(18:16):
you go through the rest of your day, your week,
just know that you can always return to that pure consciousness,
that pure awareness. Just by closing your eyes and actively
listening to your surroundings, you can feel what it feels
(18:36):
like to be the witness, the observer just by listening,
and when you're ready, you can open your eyes and
go about your day, not mistake. That's it for this
(19:12):
time on Calm to bleep down. If you like this meditation,
please feel free to send us an email, post a comment,
hit us up on Instagram or TikTok, where we're posting
a lot these days. We'd love to hear from you.
Once again, I'm Michael Beckamaia reminding you to please calm
the bleep down. We'll see you again soon. Thank you
for meditating with us. Be well, have fun, and no
(19:36):
mistake
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