Hi, welcome back to

your Daily Mindfulness.

In today's session, we're going to talk

about releasing patterns of conditioning.

Now the interesting thing about

mindfulness practice is that it tends

to have a transformative quality

to our patterns and habits without

us even intending for it to do so.

There's something about bringing

more awareness to our experiences as

they're already happening that tends

to have a transformative quality.

We start to learn more why we're doing

what we're doing, all the twists and

turns that we take on our life path.

And instead of going through that

on automatic pilot, we see, Oh, when

this thought arises, it triggers this

emotion, which triggers this action.

And in those ways we get much

more granular in seeing the,

the causal mechanisms for why

we do what we do in the world.

But also there's something to

bring in more awareness to our

experience that allows old patterns

to actually complete themselves.

And we can look at that through

the lens of, let's say an emotion.

So all emotions have as their

nature to be like a sine wave.

They arise and then they pass away.

And in fact, the research shows that

most emotions only last about 90 seconds,

which is kind of crazy to hear when

you hear it for the first time, because

it's like, well, all the emotions

I have do not last only 90 seconds.

They last for a long time.

And the reason for that is because,

typically when they arise, they

peak, especially a difficult emotion.

And then we get in the way of it with

thoughts of, I shouldn't be having

this experience, when's this going

to pass, or I need to suppress this.

And that actually prevents the

emotion from continuing its course

and coming to a full completion

where we come back to baseline.

Instead it gets stuck in the

background of our awareness

and continues to be reinforced.

So there are a lot of patterns of

conditioning within us that are sort of

lingering there from many years ago and

just continue to work in the background,

continuing to create habits, patterns,

things that we repeatedly do in the world.

However, when we bring more awareness,

we're deepening our sense of presence.

And it's allowing those experiences to

actually be felt fully and then released.

We're no longer suppressing the

completion of those experiences,

which can be true for thoughts.

It can be true for emotions and

it can even be true for pains that

arise in the body, that we might

try to deny, push away or not allow

ourselves to experience fully.

There are endless experiences that I've

had in my meditation practice, that

when I bring full presence to them,

it might intensify for a period of

time, but then it actually transitions.

So the key thing I want you to remember

and take away from this daily mindfulness

is that when something is in the

background, it's being reinforced.

But when it's in the

foreground it's being released.

The good news is we're already

doing this with our mindfulness

practice, and we'll continue to

deepen this with our meditation.

Thank you for your practice and let's

settle in for today's meditation.