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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners

10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation

What is Meditation?

Mindful LivingSleep
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Cory Muscara

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The Intimacy of Not Knowing

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Hi, welcome back to

your Daily Mindfulness.

In today's session, we're going to

talk about the intimacy of not knowing.

So I want to share a

short Zen story with you.

The monk, Thiong was

going on a pilgrimage.

Master Deshon asked, where are you going?

Thiong said, on a pilgrimage.

Deshon asked, why?

Thiong said, I don't know.

Deshon said, not knowing is most intimate.

So on a practical level.

I'm not sure how this

might apply to our life.

We tend to need a sense of where we're

going and what we're doing, especially

for maybe something like a pilgrimage.

But the lesson I like here, and what I

take from this, is that those moments

in our life where we don't know what

is going to come next, where maybe we

feel confused and lost, is often when

were making most intimate contact with

the truth and aliveness of our life.

We're outside of the story

for how things should unfold.

We don't know how the story is

going to unfold and we don't have

an idea of it in our heads anymore.

We're here in the aliveness of this

moment, which often comes with fear.

You know, if you're experiencing

this right now, I'm sure you know

what that feels like, a sense

of what is going to happen next?

I'm confused.

I feel lost.

But there can also be

this excitement there.

This aliveness of really feeling

the fullness of this moment and the

uncertainty of what is going to come next.

And if we can allow ourselves to surrender

to that, well, there's a different

kind of contact we can make with our

life that we don't get when we're just

playing out the script of how things

should go and things unfolding in the

way that we wanted them to and the

story we've been telling ourselves for

years about how things should happen.

All of that can have its purpose and

serve, and a certain time and place.

But there's a certain aliveness

we only access when we don't

know what's going to happen next.

And the truth is, in each

moment, we really don't know.

So my invitation to you today is to

explore that dropping into the intimacy

of not knowing and see if it can spark

a sense of aliveness in your life.

Thank you for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.

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