Take a few minutes and rest in the awareness of your body and surroundings—every breath you take in and breathe out, and how you express yourself in the moment. Settling in helps you observe both the physical world and subtle world; you become aware of the sensations, events, and moods around you before you begin to let go.

Once you’re aware of your body, you need to let go of your thoughts, moods, and feelings. You can do this by recognizing them as secretions of the thinking mind, mental events, and occurrences.

Just let sensations come and go, sounds come and go, or events come and go. Not attending to some and leaving others or preferring some to others. Just meditate in the present itself, breath by breath, moment by moment as you lie there or sit there.

When you observe carefully when meditating, you’ll be able to see things as patterns that come and go. So, whenever your mind wanders, don’t try to avoid these thoughts or cling to them, they will fade, but when you get caught up in their content, that’s when you get distracted.

The more you practice meditating with observation, you’ll notice that these thoughts come and go. They’re just thoughts. Do you notice that when you’re not meditating, you’ll not be aware of your thoughts, but when you’re meditating, you can be easily distracted by these thoughts? This is because meditation, at its core, is focused on observations.