Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about how we can have more lightness and ease in our meditation practice and in our lives. So I think what I've observed over time is that one of the tricky things about the path of mindfulness is coming face to face with all the stuff we may not have wanted to look at inside of ourselves. And we come face to face with some things about the human condition and about our lives that can be hard to be with. So Jon Kabat Zinn often used to say, you know, meditation's not for the faint-hearted.

But sometimes I think what can happen is we start to take it all really seriously and a kind of heaviness can set in. And while it's true, on the one hand, that looking deeply within and understanding ourselves is a serious thing in the sense that our ability to be happy and live in harmony with the world and others really does depend on us having a healthy mind. But if we approach mindfulness too seriously, then it just becomes really challenging. It really pays to take a lighthearted approach to watching the mind. That's why a healthy sense of humor is a really good ally on the path of mindfulness.

Because if we can smile at ourselves, if we can smile at the mind, we can actually be a lot more honest with ourselves. We can relax a little bit more and not take things too personally. We can just kind of have this attitude of sitting back, watching the antics of the mind and not really getting too worried about it or caught up in it. I like to kind of almost view the mind as an innocent, but sometimes naughty child. It's kind of like, Oh, Mindie what are you getting up to in there today? Or, Oh, wow.

That was a good one, Mind. That was very creative. I mean, just kind of laughing at it. And by the way, I do actually have a pet name for my mind, I do call it Mindie, which is kind of daggy, but I do. But more than anything, it's just this kind of sense of smiling at the mind, you know? And the reality is, is that the more you practice meditation, the more you realize that your struggles are actually collective struggles.

It's not just you alone. The human mind is a pretty wild thing for all of us. We all think crazy thoughts sometimes. We all have very similar struggles with the mind. This is just part of the human condition.

And it really is so kooky some of the stuff the mind comes up with that you can't help, but laugh at it. So humor and warmth towards the mind really helps us get a bit of space and perspective. If we can have this light, easygoing relationship with the mind, then mindfulness becomes a lot more fun and nourishing. So my invitation for today. Bring a little warmth and humor into your mindfulness practice and see what effect that has on you and on your practice.

I think you'll find this practice of bringing in the warmth and humor really uplifting. So we can experiment with this now, in today's meditation. So I invite you to settle in for that .And as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.