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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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Hi, welcome back to
your Daily Mindfulness.
In today's session, we're going
to talk about the subtle nuance
of understanding impermanence.
So a lot of us hear this word
impermanence in the meditation space,
and even in personal development spaces.
It's something that we also
know intuitively in our life or
something that we, we see, we
sense that things are impermanent.
Thoughts come and go.
We see relationships changing.
We might see the landscape
around us shifting.
And we may even have a felt sense
of ourselves growing, growing older
and shifting, our body changing.
And so on some level impermanence
is very much in our awareness, but
a lot of it tends to be cognitive.
And what I often see for people is
almost like a bullying themselves
into the liberation of impermanence.
It's like, come on, you shouldn't
be attached to this thing.
All things are impermanent.
You know this.
As a way to force yourself
into acceptance of something.
But the true liberation that comes
from impermanence doesn't come
from understanding it conceptually.
It doesn't come from thinking
about things being impermanent.
It comes from direct contact with
impermanence that we can access through
contemplative practice like meditation.
All of us can understand it on a
conceptual level, but still be caught in
the suffering that attachment creates.
But when we pay really careful
attention to our life, as we do
in meditation, we start to see
impermanence in a non-cognitive way.
Think about it in your own
meditation practice, where you're
paying attention to the breath.
So you feel the breath.
Inhale, exhale, and then it passes.
Then there's another breath.
Inhale, exhale, it passes.
And then another one.
Inhale, exhale and it passes.
Now maybe the first time you
meditate for five minutes, not
much will come out of that.
You might feel a little bit more grounded.
But you do that over and over and over,
over the course of days, weeks, months,
and even years, eventually you develop
this intuitive sense that, Oh yeah.
There's a breath and then it passes.
And another one and it passes.
The same with thoughts.
We can take thoughts very seriously
when we first experience them.
They feel like they're going
to be there for a while.
They feel really personal.
But then we watch them.
Oh, there's a thought.
And it passes.
There's a thought and it passes.
And we're not thinking that, Oh,
the thought is passing right now.
We're seeing it clearly.
We're making direct contact
with our experience, and
that's the key nuance here.
That understanding of
impermanence doesn't come from our
conceptual understanding of it.
It comes from witnessing it directly.
And a meditation practice brings our
attention to the experience in such
a way that it illuminates that truth.
Once we see that clearly, then
the mind naturally lets go.
It no longer clings to things
because it knows that, you know,
all things are coming and going.
And are we going to eradicate
attachment entirely?
No, we're still going to feel a deep sense
of love and commitment to the people we
care about and the things we care about.
But we'll also feel more of an ease and
a spaciousness around those things that
allows us to appreciate them while they're
there and not be as tormented when they
change, which as always, they will.
So I hope this gives you something to
think about as you think about, well,
as you feel into impermanence and start
to understand it on a deeper level.
And it will continue to show up in your
meditation practice, which we'll do soon.
Thank you for your practice and let's
settle in for today's meditation.
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