Hi, welcome back to

your Daily Mindfulness.

In today's session we're going

to talk about meditation in

relationship to stress and suffering.

Now you've been engaging in

meditation for some time now, and

I imagine you have a more nuanced

appreciation and understanding for

the practice than the average person.

But still there can sometimes be a

feeling that meditation is a way to,

I don't know, tolerate suffering.

It's a way to just get through life.

And I know a lot of people

that haven't engaged in the

practice often, often think that.

It's just like, okay, just breathe through

it, try and tolerate it, grit our teeth.

And you might already have this

understanding, but I really want to

emphasize it again, which is that

meditation is, it's not about learning

to tolerate suffering or stress.

It's about learning to connect to the

part of you that is expansive enough

to hold the full human experience.

And that's a very different thing.

As you've engaged in your meditation

practice, I'm sure you've seen

that there's this capacity to, to

watch your thoughts from a place of

stillness, groundedness and ease.

Those thoughts that usually torment

us, that create constriction, that

trigger our emotions of stress,

anxiety, fear, self-doubt, despair.

When we can watch those and hold

those, we're connecting more to that

part of us that is expansive, not

constricted, but, but large, that can

see everything that's happening and

can actually be grounded within it.

Our awareness of fear is not fearful.

Our awareness of pain is not in pain.

Our awareness of boredom is not bored.

And so there's, there's some

dimension of us that is large enough

to hold the full human experience.

And the more we connect with that, the

more you could even say, we identify

with that, the less suffering that

is created through the things, moving

through our awareness, like thoughts,

like emotions, like sensations.

We'll still feel and experience

all of that, but who we are will

be perceived and felt as bigger.

And so in the same way, if you take

a teaspoon of dirt and put it in

a cup of water, the water will get

really dirty, but you take that

same teaspoon and you put it in a

lake, it will hardly have an impact.

What we're connecting to is the lake

of our minds, the klake of our being.

So I hope you can keep that in

mind in your meditation practice.

And fortunately, we'll have

some time to apply it now.

So thanks for your practice and let's

settle in for today's meditation.