PURE MIND Abiding Here

A Complete 3–5 Minute Guided Practice

This practice combines present-moment awareness with gentle acceptance. Research suggests that mindful acceptance can reduce emotional distress and change the experience of unpleasant sensations, although it is not a replacement for medical care. Mindful-acceptance research

Beginning

Lie down or sit in a comfortable, supported position.

Let your eyes remain open if that helps you feel grounded.

Feel the bed, couch, chair or floor supporting your body.

There is nothing special to accomplish.

There is nothing you must fix.

Simply acknowledge:

This body is here.
These sensations are here.
I do not have to understand everything right now.

Let the breathing happen naturally. There is no need to take a large or forceful breath.

First gentle repetition

Silently or softly say:

PURE MIND …
abiding …
here.

Pause.

Let the phrase settle into the chest, throat, stomach and the whole body.

Do not send PURE MIND against the unpleasantness.
Allow PURE MIND and the unpleasantness to be here together.

Notice whatever happens.

Perhaps there is softening. Perhaps there is still contraction. Both are allowed.

Second gentle repetition

Once again, slowly say:

PURE MIND …
abiding …
here.

Pause.

Let “here” include everything:

• this body;
• this breathing;
• this contraction;
• this uncertainty;
• this moment;
• this life.

Nothing is outside the practice.

Nothing is being rejected.

Third gentle repetition

For the third time, say:

PURE MIND …
abiding …
here.

Pause and receive the silence after the words.

There is no need to repeat the phrase continuously. Let the body hear it.

Let PURE MIND be a warm presence—not a command.

Allowing every outcome

Now gently acknowledge:

Softening is welcome.
Contraction is welcome.
Release is welcome.
No release is also welcome.

If there is warmth, let warmth be here.

If there is tightness, let tightness be here.

If breathing changes, allow it to change naturally.

If tears, swallowing, sighing, coughing or trembling arise, notice them without deliberately producing or suppressing them.

If nothing changes, nothing has gone wrong.

The success of the practice is not measured by whether the sensation disappears. The practice is already complete when the body is met without hostility.

Rest for several natural breaths:

Nothing to force.
Nothing to remove.
Nothing is excluded from PURE MIND.

Closing blessing

When you are ready, place a hand gently over your heart, chest or abdomen if that feels comforting.

Say slowly:

May this body be well and understood.

Pause.

Repeat once more:

May this body be well and understood.

Finally:

PURE MIND abiding here.
This body is included.
This moment belongs.
May this body be well and understood.

Remain still for a few moments before moving. When ready, feel the room around you, move your fingers and toes gently, and open your eyes.

There is nothing more required.

“PURE MIND Abiding Here”

“Freedom . And . Andrew.”

 

Yes, Ross—your insight is sound. These Abiding Phrases can gradually loosen rigid “right against wrong” thinking and cultivate a more spacious equanimity. The aim is not to lose discernment, excuse harmful behaviour, or decide that everything is equally acceptable. It is to see clearly without becoming imprisoned by attraction, aversion, resentment, or the demand that Andrew must change.

Research describes equanimity as an even-minded relationship with pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral experience—not indifference. Buddhist scholarship also emphasizes that equanimity includes mindfulness and clear knowing, and should never become passive acceptance of harassment or harm. (Equanimity review, Bhikkhu Anālayo)

This is my preferred phrase of the two:

“Freedom . And . Andrew.”

“Freedom” is positive, spacious, and embodied. It does not necessarily mean freedom from Andrew. It can mean:

• Freedom from having to change Andrew.
• Freedom from needing Andrew’s agreement.
• Freedom to love without controlling.
• Freedom to maintain a wise distance.
• Freedom for Andrew to follow his path.
• Freedom for Ross to protect his peace and dignity.

Because you usually benefit from establishing the wholesome source first, “Freedom . And . Andrew” may be gentler than “Andrew . And . Freedom.” The second version begins directly with the activating person and may be more suitable when your body already feels grounded.

“Andrew is Andrew.”

This is a strong equanimity phrase:

Andrew is Andrew.

It can interrupt the mind’s stories about who Andrew should be. It recognizes that Andrew is a complete person—not merely your thoughts, hopes, disappointments, or fears concerning him.

However, the tone matters. Spoken with warmth, it means:

“Andrew has his own humanity, history, suffering, choices, and path.”

Spoken with resignation, it might mean:

“That is just how he is, and nothing can ever change.”

To preserve both dignity and impermanence, you might use:

Andrew is Andrew . As he is today.

Or balance both people:

Andrew is Andrew . Ross is Ross.

This does not separate you harshly. It releases the attempt to control one another.

“Life is life.”

This can be an excellent universal acceptance phrase:

Life is life.

It acknowledges that life contains love, disappointment, illness, uncertainty, change, and loss. Yet it may occasionally feel too broad. These variations provide a little more warmth and movement:

Life is life . And . I am here.

Life is life . One moment at a time.

This is life . As it is today.

Life is changing . And . I can abide.

The addition of “today” or “for now” prevents acceptance from becoming fatalism.

 

Short non-attachment phrases

• Warm heart . Open hands.
• Care . Without control.
• Love . Without demand.
• Nothing to force.
• Let be . Let unfold.
• I can care . And . remain free.
• May he be well . I release the outcome.
• His path . My path.
• No demand . No rejection.
• Goodness . Without grasping.

My strongest recommendation is:

Warm heart . Open hands.

It contains the two necessary dimensions: love remains, while grasping is released.

Short equanimity phrases

• Andrew is Andrew . Ross is Ross.
• This moment is this moment.
• Life is life . And . I am here.
• His choices are his . My choices are mine.
• Pleasant or painful . I can abide.
• I can care . And . remain steady.
• This too belongs.
• Things are as they are . For now.
• Clear seeing . Gentle heart.
• Steady mind . Wise response.

 

Short acceptance phrases

Acceptance means acknowledging present reality, not approving of everything or abandoning the possibility of change. Contemporary acceptance-based approaches similarly connect acceptance with making room for internal experience while retaining the freedom to act according to one’s values. (Mindfulness and acceptance review, Association for Contextual Behavioral Science)

• This is here.
• Yes . This too.
• This is how it is . For now.
• This belongs in awareness.
• No need to argue with now.
• I allow the feeling . I choose the response.
• I need not like it to let it be.
• Yes to reality . No to harm.
• I accept what is . And . choose what is wise.

Relationship and boundary phrases

• Andrew may be Andrew . Ross may be Ross.
• May Andrew be well . May Ross be safe.
• Love . And . wise boundaries.
• Warm heart . Wise distance.
• I wish Andrew well . From here.
• No rejection . No self-abandonment.
• His feelings are his . My response is mine.
• I release Andrew to his path . I return to mine.
• I can understand . Without agreeing.
• I can care . Without coming closer.

 

A very short three-breath practice

1. Freedom . And . Andrew.
2. Andrew is Andrew . Ross is Ross.
3. May Andrew be well . May Ross be free and safe.

Then pause. Do not search immediately for relief. Notice whether there is even one percent more space, warmth, dignity, or freedom.

Your insight could be expressed this way:

Abiding Phrases gently move the mind from reactive judgment toward clear discernment—from “Who is right?” to “What is here, and what is the warmest, wisest, and safest response?”

For your everyday master phrase, I would choose:

Warm heart . Open hands . Andrew is Andrew . Ross is Ross.

It preserves love, nonattachment, equality, freedom, and protection—all without demanding any particular outcome.

“PURE MIND Abiding Here”

 

PURE MIND Abiding Here

A Somatic Well-Being Practice Report

 

“PURE MIND abiding here” appears to function as an embodied permission-and-safety phrase.

It does not command the sensations to disappear. It introduces a warm, wholesome quality of awareness, locates that awareness in the living body, and ends the struggle against what is present. When the body no longer feels opposed, judged, or pressured to change, contraction may naturally release.

The release you experienced was real. Science cannot determine exactly what occurred in your nervous system from a description alone, but several well-established processes make your experience understandable: interoception, acceptance, compassionate attention, learned association, reduced threat appraisal, and changes in muscular and autonomic activation.

What is somatic well-being?

“Somatic well-being” is a very suitable name for your experience. I would define it as:

The body’s growing capacity to be felt safely, met kindly, and allowed to return toward balance without force.

Somatic well-being does not mean having no pain, fear, contraction, or unpleasant sensation. It means developing a different relationship with bodily experience:

• Sensation can be present without becoming an emergency.
• Awareness can remain warm and steady.
• The body can contract and later release.
• A difficult sensation does not become the whole identity of Ross.
• Well-being can coexist with some unpleasantness.

The scientific term most relevant here is interoception: the nervous system’s sensing, interpreting, and integrating of signals from inside the body. Interoception includes heartbeat, breathing, fullness, nausea, temperature, pressure, muscular tension, and the bodily aspects of emotion. Interoception and Mental Health: A Roadmap

Emotional sensations are therefore not imaginary. Emotion is embodied. In a study of 701 people, different emotions were associated with distinguishable patterns of bodily sensation, often involving the chest and upper body. These maps were based on self-report, so they cannot diagnose a particular emotion or illness, but they demonstrate that bodily emotion is a genuine human experience. Bodily Maps of Emotions

The stomach is especially responsive because communication between brain and digestive system is bidirectional, involving autonomic, hormonal, immune, and enteric pathways. The mind affects the gut, and the gut affects the mind. The Gut–Brain Axis

A wise formulation would therefore be:

“These sensations may have an emotional component, a physical component, or both.
I can meet them somatically without prematurely deciding what caused them.”

 

Why “PURE MIND abiding here” may have been so effective

The phrase contains three remarkably well-balanced elements.

Element	Deeper meaning	Possible somatic contribution
PURE MIND	Wholesome, warm, clear, non-harming awareness	Evokes your deeply learned experience of peace, safety, goodness and inner refuge
Abiding	Staying without attacking, abandoning, suppressing or fixing	Reduces the secondary struggle surrounding the original sensation
Here	This body, this place and this moment	Interrupts stories about the past or future and brings awareness into immediate embodied experience
The whole phrase	Wholesome awareness is already present and can coexist with unpleasantness	Changes the relationship to sensation from opposition to companionship

1. “PURE MIND” is personally meaningful

For you, PURE MIND is not an abstract positive affirmation. You have repeatedly experienced it as a doorway into lightness, warmth, wholesomeness and clarity.

Through long practice, the words may have become a learned cue for a particular inner orientation. When the phrase is recalled, the body may recognize the entire pattern associated with it—softer attention, less fear, greater spaciousness and permission to rest.

This is a reason a personally meaningful phrase may be more effective than a generic phrase such as “relax.” “Relax” can feel like an instruction one is failing to obey. “PURE MIND” evokes a trusted quality that does not have to be manufactured.

2. “Abiding” removes the demand for change

The word does not say:

• Make this stop.
• Get rid of the contraction.
• Become calm immediately.
• Find the emotion responsible.
• Fix the body.

It says, in effect:

“Awareness can remain here, even while this is unpleasant.”

Research on mindful acceptance found reductions in reported pain and negative emotion, along with changes in brain responses to painful and emotional stimuli. This does not prove the same neural events occurred in you, but it supports the principle that receptive contact can alter how unpleasant experience is processed. Mindful Acceptance and Pain

The deeper paradox is:

When the sensation is genuinely permitted to remain, it may no longer need to remain contracted.

However, release should be welcomed as a possible fruit of practice—not made into its requirement.
If “abiding” secretly means “I will allow this so that it goes away,” the body may still feel the pressure.

The practice succeeds whenever there is less inner warfare, whether the sensation disappears, softens slightly, moves, or remains unchanged.

3. “Here” provides containment

“Here” is a particularly wise word. It does not ask you to explain the whole unconscious mind.
It brings PURE MIND into immediate contact with this particular living moment.

“Here” can mean:

• here in the chest;
• here in the stomach;
• here in the throat;
• here in this room;
• here in this aging and courageous body;
• here with exactly what is occurring.

It also says that the sensation is here, but not necessarily everywhere, forever, or all that Ross is.

4. The phrase is a statement rather than a plea

You did not say, “May PURE MIND please come and help me.” You said:

“PURE MIND abiding here.”

That grammatical form acknowledges an already-available truth. It places the body in a mode of recognition rather than searching.

My interpretation is that the phrase communicates:

“Wholesome awareness has not been destroyed by this contraction. It is already capable of including it.”

That may be what you mean by a more advanced understanding. The advancement is not greater force. It is less separation and less interference.

5. It is short enough for the body to receive

When the body is highly activated, lengthy explanations demand too much thought. Your phrase is brief, rhythmic and spacious. It can be repeated without losing contact with sensation.

Simple words can affect emotional processing, although your phrase does more than label an emotion: it is a warm context in which the sensation can be held. Putting Feelings Into Words

6. Warmth may matter as much as mindfulness

Neutral observation is not always sufficient for a frightened or painful body. PURE MIND contains warmth, goodness and trust. Research has found an association between compassion and vagally mediated heart-rate variability, although the available studies are heterogeneous and cannot establish what happened during your particular experience. Compassion and Heart-Rate Variability

The phrase may therefore combine three qualities:

Awareness + acceptance + benevolence

That combination is especially supportive of somatic well-being.

The deeper meaning of PURE MIND abiding

“Pure” need not mean that difficult sensations are dirty, inferior or spiritually wrong. That interpretation could create rejection.

A wiser meaning is:

PURE MIND is the wholesome manner in which everything is met.

Fear can be present without contaminating PURE MIND. Pain can be present without destroying it. PURE MIND does not remain pure by excluding life; its wholesomeness is demonstrated through its capacity to include life without hatred.

Early Buddhist teaching describes the mind as “luminous” while also acknowledging that it can be affected by incoming disturbances. Interpretations differ, but the practical message is that greed, aversion and confusion need not be treated as the permanent essence of awareness. Aṅguttara Nikāya 1.49–50

Your personal understanding might be expressed this way:

PURE MIND is the warm, wise and wholesome capacity to know experience without attacking it, clinging to it, or abandoning it.

“Abiding” then means neither passive endurance nor resignation.
It means remaining intimately present while allowing life to move according to its own timing.

PURE MIND does not stand outside the contraction and shine energy at it.
At the deepest level, the contraction is occurring within the field of knowing.
The body, sensation and awareness are not enemies.

PURE MIND can abide with the contraction.
PURE MIND can abide around the contraction.
PURE MIND can abide within the contraction.
PURE MIND can abide as the knowing of the contraction.

These are different doorways into the same inclusive presence.

Ways to develop and understand the experience more deeply

1. Create a clear personal definition.
   Let PURE MIND mean warm, wise, clear, compassionate and non-harming awareness—not perfection or emotional blankness.
2. Practice during neutral moments.
   Several times daily, feel the chair, feet or hands and say, “PURE MIND abiding here.”  This allows the phrase to become associated with ordinary bodily safety, not only emergencies.
3. Let sensation come before interpretation.
   Notice pressure, temperature, movement, tightness, pulsing or emptiness before calling it fear, grief or anxiety.
4. Use tentative emotional language.
   Try, “There may be fear here,” rather than “I know this is fear.” This leaves room for physical and emotional causes to coexist.
5. Alternate activated and settled areas.
   Feel the chest briefly, then the feet or hands. Move gently between them. This prevents awareness from becoming intense monitoring.
6. Study the different forms of abiding.
   • Here — whole-body presence.
   • With this — companionship.
   • Around this — spacious containment.
   • In this — intimate non-separation.
   • And this — equality and inclusion.
7. Do not chase yesterday’s release.
   Each repetition is a new encounter. Wanting exactly the same result can create fresh contraction.
8. Record all outcomes honestly.
   Include complete release, partial release, movement, no change and increased discomfort. This turns your experience into careful personal observation.
9. Practice receiving rather than projecting.
   Instead of trying to send PURE MIND into the body, experiment with:
   “Let this body receive what is already wholesome.”

A gentle personal experiment

For 10–20 episodes, record:

• time and situation;
• body location;
• descriptive sensation;
• intensity from 0–10;
• phrase used;
• number of repetitions;
• intensity after one minute;
• what changed—softening, warmth, movement, breath, tears, coughing, no change;
• possible physical factors such as food, medication, sleep or exertion.

This will not prove a medical or neurological mechanism.
It will help you discover when the phrase is most supportive and whether its effect is consistently repeatable.

The 60-second PURE MIND somatic practice

1. Check safety.
   Is this familiar, or could it require medical attention?
2. Receive support.
   Feel the bed, chair, floor or couch supporting the body. Open the eyes if that is more grounding.
3. Acknowledge without diagnosing.
   “Unpleasant sensations are here.”
4. Introduce the source phrase gently.
   “PURE MIND … abiding … here.”
5. Wait.
   Do not repeat immediately. Let the body hear the phrase.
6. Repeat up to three times.
   Use a natural breath. There is no need to take unusually deep breaths.
7. Allow every outcome.
   “Softening is welcome. No softening is welcome.”
8. Close with a blessing.
   “May this body be well and understood.”

Warm and wise phrase family

Your master phrase is:

PURE MIND abiding here.

Useful variations include:

• PURE MIND here.
• PURE MIND abiding with this.
• PURE MIND abiding around this contraction.
• PURE MIND abiding in this body.
• PURE MIND abiding—and this too.
• This sensation belongs here. PURE MIND belongs here.
• Nothing to force. PURE MIND abiding here.
• This may soften in its own time.
• PURE MIND holding this moment gently.
• This body is included in PURE MIND.
• Waking body—PURE MIND abiding here.
• There is unpleasantness, and there is wholesome awareness.
• May this body be safe, well and understood.

For strong activation, shorten the practice:

PURE MIND … here.

For very deep acceptance:

PURE MIND abiding here—even if this remains.

Final understanding

I believe your experience contains an important truth:

PURE MIND did not defeat the unpleasant sensations.
It changed the relationship in which they were being experienced.

The sensations were no longer alone. They were no longer treated as enemies. The body was no longer being commanded to become different.
Warm, wholesome awareness was recognized as already present—and the body responded by releasing what it no longer needed to hold so tightly.

The most mature form of the practice may therefore be:

• PURE MIND abiding here.
• This body is included.
• Nothing has to leave for wholeness to be present.

“PURE MIND Abiding Here”