The Happiness of Presence

Hi, and welcome to your daily mindfulness. My name is Cory Muscara, and I'll be guiding you through this seven day series. Each day, I'll share a short video in meditation with the new theme, designed to help you cultivate more happiness and wellbeing in your life. It will take less than 15 minutes a day, but if you stick with it, you'll gradually start to notice your quality of life improving. I'm excited to begin this series with you.

So let's get started. In today's session, we're going to discuss the happiness of presence. To begin this discussion, I want us to try something. I brought these bells with me. You know, sometimes we can look at these bells and think, "all right, it looks a little mystical", but the main reason I bring them is because they make a very pleasant ringing sound.

What I'm going to do is ring the bells, and all you need to do is bring your full focus and presence to the sound of the bell all the way until that moment, when it dissolves back into silence. Okay. If you'd like to close your eyes, you're welcome to, and we'll begin now. Great job. So, I'm curious what that was like for you.

When I do this exercise in workshops or on retreats, many people say they feel a little more calm, settled, and even peaceful. And I think that has a lot to do with our attention stabilizing more into the present moment. So often, our attention isn't actually here, we're caught up in ideas about the future, thoughts about the past, or even judgments about the present moment. But when we bring our full attention to the sound of the bell..... Much of that mental chatter that we're often consumed by, starts to fall to the wayside.

And there's a natural piece that arises. So, what does this mean? Does it mean that we have to carry bells with us wherever we go in order to calm our minds? No. As pleasant as these bells are, the peace we experience has less to do with the sound and more to do with the quality of awareness and presence we're bringing to the sound of the bell. What would it be like to bring that quality of presence into your day to day life? During a conversation with your child, while walking in nature, or even while eating a good meal. You might even be able to start to sense what that's like right now, when you drop in and bring that quality of attention and presence to this moment.

When we step out of the story of our minds and more intimately into the 'here and now' we get to experience a different kind of richness in our lives. So in today's meditation, we're going to continue practicing, stabilizing our attention in the present moment so that we can experience a more natural joy and peace. I'm excited for this first meditation together. I'll see you there.