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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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Hi, welcome back to
your Daily Mindfulness.
In today's session, I'm going to
offer a simple reminder for how we
mindfully work with thoughts in our
meditation practice and in our life.
A story that comes to mind that
I like to preface this with is
from my time meditating in Burma.
It was a six and a half month
silent meditation retreat and all
day long, 14 to 18 hours a day,
our only job was just to meditate.
And I had a good sense of the
practice going into that retreat
and what I was supposed to do.
And I knew that meditation wasn't
about clearing the mind of thoughts.
But I think I still had this
subconscious association that a clear
mind was going to be a peaceful mind.
And the fewer thoughts I had
the better my practice would be.
I don't know where that came
from, but it seemed to be really
deeply ingrained in my practice.
And I remember three
months into that retreat.
I just had this period of time where
my mind was all over the place.
Just thinking about everything I
was going to do after the retreat,
all the good foods I wanted to eat.
All the, remember I'm really into golf.
So just having all these fantasies
of like wanting to play golf again.
It's just a very active mind and,
and it made me feel like, wow,
the practice isn't going well.
So I went and talked to my teacher.
And I, I told him, I said, listen, like
I've, I've been here for several months.
And now every time I sit down and I
meditate, I'm working really hard,
but my mind is all over the place.
I can't stop it from thinking.
And he sat back, he smiled and he
just said, very simply, Cory, your
job is not to stop your thoughts.
Your job is simply to know
when your mind is thinking.
And there was something in that
that just relaxed me tremendously.
It, it was something I knew,
but I needed that reminder.
There was still this sense of my
practice, that, that if a lot of
thoughts were there, something
must be wrong with my mind.
And that simple invitation of you
don't need to stop your thoughts.
Your job is simply to know
when your mind is thinking.
It was like, well, yeah, I could,
I could definitely do that.
Oh, there's a thought.
There's a thought.
And so I just want to offer that as
a reminder for you on your journey.
You may already know because we talk
about it a lot here at Mindfulness.com,
that the practice is not about clearing
your mind, getting to a blank mind.
But still we, we can use that reminder.
And when you notice thoughts come up
in your practice, what would it be like
just to make the very practice to know
that my mind is thinking right now.
That moment of knowing there's a thought,
there's an idea, there's a story,
that is the practice of mindfulness.
That is the awareness
that we're cultivating.
And the more we do that, the less
we're caught in our thoughts.
We're able to hold them and relate to
them rather than being sucked into them.
That's what we're developing.
It may be the case that the
mind slows down there will
be fewer thoughts over time.
For sure.
But the mind will continue to think,
and we want it to continue to think.
Our practice here is just to simply
know when the mind is thinking.
Hope this helps on your journey.
Thank you for your practice and let's
settle in for today's meditation.
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