The Depth of Mindfulness Practice

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'd like to talk about the deeper dimensions of mindfulness. So many of us come to mindfulness because we're perhaps curious about the benefits. We may want to, for instance, feel less stressed or anxious or improve our focus or our mood. And so we try it out and we begin the journey of mindfulness.

And I think what we find is that as we continue along the path, we start to discover that mindfulness can actually be a path of profound, personal transformation. We begin to see that the mindfulness part is really about waking up. It's about waking up from identification with the mind and waking up to the deeper dimensions of who we are. And to awaken, we need to slowly release the mental habits of greed, hatred, and delusion, and cease trying so hard to prove ourselves, learn to accept ourselves. We release more and more of our judgments about how we think we, others than life should be.

And we stop trying to control everything and begin to embrace reality as it is. Over time, we let go of our usual defenses, our masks, our personas, our agendas, and we learn to flow with the current of life. We learn to become one with it. And awakening is not always easy or comfortable. Sometimes it can feel a little scary to give up our old ways of being because they feel familiar or safe.

But it's only when we let go of our conditioning from the past that we can wake up to what's available to be discovered in the now. As we awaken, we begin to see things more clearly, experience life more fully, and we become more wise, compassionate and wholehearted people. Gradually we find more and more degrees of freedom and peace of mind. So as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And let's now settle in for today's meditation.