Capacity to meet what’s here – emotions, sensations, images, thoughts – in an intentional and conscious way generally grows with familiarity and experience.
More specifically, it’s enhanced through a living insight into the nature of illusion and the nature of reality.
It’s enhanced through recognizing what’s here as innocent love, and meeting it with love.
It’s enhanced through training a stable attention, for instance by bringing attention – gently, wordlessly – to the sensations at the nostrils from the breath.
It’s supported by noticing that opening for what’s here is already here, before any intention to open to it or meet it intentionally.
It’s supported through body centered activities such as yoga, tai chi, chi gong and Breema. It’s supported through a good diet and drinking plenty of water. It’s supported by physical activity and being in reasonably good physical shape. It’s supported through being in nature.
It’s supported when someone else is here as a friend, a witness, a facilitator, preferably someone who themselves are able to rest in (as) what’s here. It’s supported when two or more are gathered in this shared intention. It’s supported through gentle, friendly touch.
And it may be temporarily weakened or even apparently lost, for instance through a dark night of the soul (as I know very well), and also when strong wounds, hurts, fears and beliefs surface for the first or first few times – until they are met in a more conscious way.