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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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Hey, welcome back to
your Daily Mindfulness.
In today's session, I'm going to share
a quote about the power of attention.
The quote is by the great
American philosopher and
psychologist, William James.
And what he says is, "The faculty
of voluntarily bringing back a
wandering attention, over and
over again, is the very root of
judgment, character, and will.
An education which should
cultivate this faculty would be
the education par excellence."
The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a
wandering attention, over and over again.
Why does that sound so familiar?
Oh, I know.
It's exactly what we're
doing in meditation.
We give our mind something to focus
on, let's say the breath, the attention
wanders off, and then we bring it back.
It wanders off again, we bring it back.
It wanders again, we bring
it back, over and over.
But William James is making an interesting
argument here, which is that this capacity
of bringing back a wandering attention is
the root of judgment, character and will.
So let's examine that more closely.
The root of judgment, our ability to
assess, to discern this requires our
attention brought, be brought back to
the thing that we're trying to understand
so that we can see it more clearly to,
to bring a full concentration to it,
rather than just a loose awareness.
The closer we can bring our attention
to that thing, the more discerning
we can be about it, whether it's a
person, a problem or something within
ourselves that we're trying to understand
that requires a close attention.
But then he says, it's the root of
character, which we might understand
as how we show up in the world - our
ethics, morality, and integrity.
Well, that requires noticing when our less
skillful tendencies and impulses arise,
that causes us to react in ways that might
not be in alignment with our character.
Noticing when our attention gets
pulled to those things and then be
able to bring our attention back to
how we most want to be in the world.
And then lastly, he says,
this is the root of will.
So if we think of will as our capacity
to sustain effort and energy toward a
particular pursuit or goal, well, it's
very easy for our attention to wander
off when we start something like that,
even if we have the best of intentions.
Maybe you've noticed that.
So being able to notice when the mind
wanders off from that goal or pursuit
and redirect our attention back to it,
this becomes the foundation for will.
What I most love is that William
James went on to say that an education
which should cultivate this faculty
would be the education par excellence.
Said as if there is no
education that exists.
William James clearly didn't have
a subscription to Mindfulness.com.
In all seriousness, we, we now have
that education, it's meditation.
In fact, it's been around for thousands
of years and the more you practice,
the more you're training, this ability
to bring back a wandering attention.
But even outside of your meditation
practice, as you go about your day,
notice when your attention wanders
from what's most important to you
and see if you can practice bringing
it back to the point, right here.
As William James says, this is the
root of judgment, character and will.
And I think we can all agree
that those are important things.
So I'll talk to you about
this more in the meditation.
Thank you for your practice and take care.
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