Meditation as a Laboratory

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, we're going to explore the value of thinking about meditation as a laboratory. So what do I mean by that? Well, a laboratory for a scientist is a place for curiosity, exploring, experimenting, even play. And this is really a great way to think about the attitude we want to bring into our meditation practice. We want to bring those attitudes of curiosity, flexibility, and openness to learning and discovery.

There really are no mistakes in meditation. There's really only the process of learning and discovering and trying things out, and then seeing what the results are, seeing how all of this relates to our lives as a whole, and can inform how we live. So often when we're meditating, you know, we have these expectations of how we think our practice is supposed to be or how we are supposed to handle things, or else maybe we feel like we're failing and we're not doing things right. We might become judgemental and critical of ourselves. But we really can't control what happens in our meditation.

Our mind has a mind of its own, you could say. And so each meditation is just going to unfold in its own unique way. There'll be times when unexpected obstacles and challenges arise. There'll be times when things just don't go the way that we thought that they were going to go. And, you know, times when we try things in our practice and they don't have the outcome or effect that we thought they would.

You know, all of that is just a really natural part of the process. Although we cannot control what happens in our meditation or how quickly we grow in awareness, we cannot control when we will have deep insights, when we're going to be able to totally let go of certain thought patterns and all of that, but what you can control is we can control the attitude and approach which we bring to each meditation. So if we can think of our meditation as a laboratory, a place where we're really open to new experiences, then we can bring those attitudes of playful curiosity, flexibility and enthusiasm into each practice. And of course we can keep refining our approach of finding out whether we need, for instance, a little more compassion here, a little more focus there, a little more letting go here. And in this way, every meditation offers the possibility of becoming a new adventure, a new opportunity for discovery and learning.

So I invite you to bring this attitude into your meditation today. And of course, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And now let's settle in for today's meditation.