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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners

10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation

What is Meditation?

Mindful LivingSleep
CommunityFor Work

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Cory Muscara

4.9

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Being and Doing

In this session, we’ll explore how to bring the wisdom of this series into your day-to-day life so that your work in the world does not continue to deplete you. Choose meditation duration:

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to the final

day of our Un-challenge.

It's been such a joy to do this with you.

And in today's session, my hope

is to create a bridge between some

of what we've been exploring in

the realm of being, acceptance,

allowing, to the realm of doing and

having to participate in the world.

We've already touched on that in different

ways here, but, you know, the big

theme of this un-challenge has been the

un-challenge, permission to be human,

permission to be you, permission to rest,

permission to drop into that place of

stillness within you and allow yourself

to unwind and not have to constantly put

things in the category of good or bad

or right or wrong, or judge yourself.

And it can sometimes come across

like, "Oh yeah, I guess I should

just let go of everything."

And a lot of times when people get

into the work of mindfulness and

meditation, there is this presumption

that it means I should just be detached

from everything and not really have

preferences, not be judging, just allow

everything to happen as it's happening.

There's some wisdom in that,

but it's quite incomplete.

Because the reality is, is you're

still a human being, interacting

with other human beings and the

planet and the world around you.

And you're going to

have your own patterns.

You're going to have your own preferences.

And even the depth of your enlightenment

and wakefulness and awareness has

to express itself through you.

And that means you're going to

be doing things in the world.

So what is this relationship between

the being quality that we've been

exploring and the doing quality that

is equally important in the world?

Well, if I can summarize it

in one statement, I think we

could say its commitment to

process, detachment from outcome.

Commitment to process,

detachment from outcome.

What does it mean to be

committed to the process?

It means that you are taking

responsibility for how you show up

in each moment, recognizing that

you do have influence over your

relationship to what is arising.

Your own thoughts, your emotions, your

sensations, your boundaries, what you

allow, what you might push back on,

conversations that need to be had with

other people, values that you feel and

how you're acting those out in the world.

These are within your

scope of responsibility.

They are things that

you have influence over.

They are part of the process.

And this work of connecting to

ourselves in the way that we've been

doing allows us to be more committed

to the process because we've deepened

our capacity to listen for what is

arising as most true for us, rather

than just running patterns of thought

and emotion and reactivity, where we

go through life on automatic pilot.

It's coupled though, with this

detachment from outcome, which is

just the recognition that all we can

do is show up in a certain way and

what happens from there is not really

our business, in the sense of it's

outside of our scope of responsibility.

We can't actually

control what will unfold.

Nobody can.

And so when we take that perspective,

it really allows us to treat each

moment as precious and feel our own

inner empowerment to show up the best

we can, to listen as deeply as possible

to what is arising right now, how

am I feeling in relationship to it,

what feels true for me as a response.

And then to surrender to that.

And then to let go of what happens from

there, because we know it is the most

we were capable of doing in that moment.

If we had more resources, if we were able

to see things more clearly, we would.

But that's part of the development

of being a human being.

We accumulate more of that as we go.

All we have in each moment is our

capacity to listen to our experience,

to listen to how we are relating to

what is coming in and choosing the

best response in relationship to that.

What unfolds from there is, in

many ways, not our business.

So as you continue to take what

we've learned here, and this

process of unwinding, reconnecting

to yourself, listening to what is

most true in your being, I really

encourage you to trust that as enough.

And then what unfolds from

there will unfold from there.

Your responsibility, your scope of

responsibility is to listen and surrender

to what feels most true in this moment.

And then take in feedback, right?

We're always listening to feedback

that comes from decisions that we make

and things that we do in the world.

We hear what other people

have to say about that.

We integrate it into our worldview.

Okay, that makes sense, or

that doesn't make sense.

And then we try again in this moment, and

then this moment, and then this moment.

This is a commitment to process

the detachment from outcome.

And in my experience, this is how we

plant those worlds of being and doing.

And it allows us to move through our life

with much more ease, fluidity, trust,

surrender, because we're not holding

the consequences of this moment for

the next month or a year or 10 years.

We just know that we can't influence that.

That's just the mind's

neuroticism getting caught up.

And what does this mean?

If anyone knew that, they

would be making a lot of money.

So can we commit to listening

and trust that's enough?

That is my invitation to you.

We'll explore more of this in today's

meditation, but since this is the

last time I'll see you here on video,

I just want to say thank you again.

It's been a joy to walk

you through this series.

If you like this and you want to

continue this work, we have videos

just like this, about three minutes

long, in the Mindfulness.com app.

Every single day, you could get

a new video and a new meditation

corresponding with that to

continue what we've done here.

And it would be great to continue

to work with you in that way.

So thank you for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.

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