Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

Today I'm going to talk about

something called the realization gap.

So in meditation, we can have

quite extraordinary and often

quite transformative experiences.

We might touch a deep sense of

wholeness, calm or even oneness.

We might have very important and precious

insights and realizations about the

nature of our mind or the nature of life.

We might see some of our habitual patterns

and really understand ourselves better.

But just because we have these

experiences in meditation, doesn't

always mean that life is suddenly

going to become easy and that we'll

never again, become angry or reactive

or afraid or fall into our bad habits.

It doesn't mean we won't make mistakes

or that we'll experience difficulties.

You know, they're still

all going to be there.

So this can sometimes

be kind of frustrating.

There's a feeling of there being a gap

between our realizations in meditation and

our ability to live those understandings.

And sometimes this can feel like a

bit of a messy and difficult process.

It's very common to get frustrated

with this gap between our

realizations and our everyday life.

And we might start to think of

meditation as one practice that we d.

And then there's the rest of

our life as a separate thing.

The truth is is that the real

mindfulness practice is our life.

It's taking what we learned on the

cushion in meditation and integrating

it into our daily lives as best we can.

It's seeing how much we can close that

realization gap and live our everyday

life with more awareness and kindness.

And yes, it's a bit tricky.

It really requires has a lot

of patience, persistence, and

self-compassion to live with awareness.

But this really is where

the rubber meets the road.

It's important to remember

go easy on yourself as the

realization gap is really normal.

It's one thing to know

something and another thing to

be able to embody it ongoing.

But just remember that integrating

mindfulness into your life is not so

much about getting difficulties in life.

It's about how we relate

to them when they arrive.

Can we respond to our challenges

with the same kind of calm and

clarity that we had in meditation?

Can we bring kindness and compassion

to situations that otherwise we

might've become reactive or angry?

Can we be patient and gentle

with ourselves along the

journey of all of this?

This is the invitation of mindful living.

And when not expecting life to just

magically become easy and escape all

the difficult stuff and magically

be transformed in a heartbeat.

But instead, simply knowing that

it's about bringing our own innate

wisdom and awareness to each and every

aspect of our life as best we can.

And then we try again.

As always, thank you for your practice

and your presence here with us.

And just inviting you now to begin

to settle in for today's meditation.