The practice of recollections brings a sense of immediacy, heightening attentiveness and focusing the mind. With each recollection ask, "How is the mind being affected?" The embodied response to this is a means for breaking old habits and releasing kamma.
Accessing the gift within takes a particular kind of attention that is light and sustained, like an open hand. This is the attention that ripens into mindfulness and deepens into samadhi; from this wisdom can arise.
The great heart's natural response to pain and suffering is compassion and equanimity, released by directly handling experience through embodiment. Without the natural ground of embodiment there is a tendency towards differentiation and forming abstractions about self and other that create separation.
