As Within So Without

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today we're going to explore how what's going on within us affects what goes on outside of us. You know, we're often not quite aware of just how intimately connected our inner world is with how we experience and participate in the world around us, but at the most simple level, when we practice being more kind patient and compassionate with ourselves, we're naturally more kind patient and compassionate with the people around us. So there's often an assumption that although we want to try to be kind to other people, that it doesn't really matter how we treat ourselves. It doesn't matter if we speak to ourselves harshly, put ourselves down or push our body and minds to their limits.

Now, although there's a potentially really lovely intention behind wanting to be kind to others. Of course, that's a lovely touch. There's often a misperception that we'll really be able to express qualities like compassion, love, and patience if we're unable to abide in them. If you think about it, it's a little bit of common sense. If we carry kindness and compassion in our hearts and minds, we're going to naturally express them through our speech and actions.

And if we're fighting a war within all the time, If we're relating to ourselves with criticism, frustration, hostility, eventually that state of being will also be expressed in our actions. Of course it does. It affects our mood, our work, our relationships, the way we treat our bodies and even the way we treat the planet. We might like to think that we can selectively draw on compassion and kindness and give it when we don't have it within. But if you think about it, these are really just their qualities, their energies, their ways of being, and true compassion doesn't differentiate between within and without, between self and other.

True kindness includes everything in its embrace. So as we sit in today's meditation, it's really important to cultivate this sense of kindness and patience and compassion towards ourselves and the mind. And as we learn to let go of being in battle with ourselves and train our minds to be kinder and more compassionate, we're doing so, not only as a gift for ourselves, but for every other person we'll know and meet in this life. In some sense, we're doing it for the whole world because more and more through our practice, we become a locus of sanity, peace and kindness in this frantic world. And on that note, thank you for your practice and for your presence here today.

And so just inviting you now to settle in for meditation and a practice to help us cultivate a more kind mind.