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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners

10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation

What is Meditation?

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Cory Muscara

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Why Silence Is Scary

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 wisdom of silence.

So there's a great quote by Pink

that says, "The quiet, it scares

me cause it screams the truth."

The quiet scares me cause

it screams the truth.

Really take that one in for a moment

and just notice how it lands for you.

Is there anything in that that resonates?

I know it certainly resonates for me and

resonated even more at a different point

in my life before I got into meditation.

I remember this feeling of if my,

if I let my mind get too still, or I

spent too much time just with myself,

I didn't know what would arise, but

there was this sense of something

uncomfortable being in that space.

It was almost scary to be with myself.

And I associated a sense of, of

quiet, of stillness, silence with

having to go into that territory.

And I think this tends to

be true for a lot of people.

And it's one of the reasons a lot

of people might avoid something like

a meditation practice, where we are

being still, we are being quiet we

are dropping into a certain kind of

silence that actually invites us to meet

the truth of what is here.

And that's one of the reasons why I say

we can find a certain kind of wisdom in

silence, because if there's something

that is happening beneath the surface

that we haven't been addressing, some

sort of truth that we've been denying,

some reality that feels hard to face or

something that we need to accept within

ourselves, well, when we do get still

and we do get quiet, if that is beneath

the surface, that is what we will hear.

That is what we will see.

Now this could be a potential reason to

never get quiet and just keep running.

But I think if you're listening to

this, chances are you have a sense of

what that pattern tends to lead to.

We just get more

disconnected from ourselves.

We get more internally fractured

and we have to just keep running

and running and running from

ourselves in order to stay afloat.

But, if again, you're listening to this

and you're engaged in these practices,

it means that you have some inkling

of curiosity to go inward, to see what

actually is here and to meet it with a,

we could say, courageous presence because

it does require courage to really meet

ourselves, honestly and truthfully.

So if you are noticing this in

your meditation practice, maybe a

fear of the quiet or fear of the

silence, know that it's normal.

And if it's coming up at certain points

in your practice, it could be because

there's something going on in your

life that is happening beneath the

surface that you're trying to avoid.

That's okay.

There's wisdom in the, in the avoidance.

It's a defense mechanism.

But eventually, it might be useful to, to

take some time, to really go into that,

to give yourself the space, to explore

it, to be with it, to relax into it and

see what is here that I've been avoiding.

As Pema Chodron says, "Fear is a natural

reaction to moving closer to the truth."

So if you're feeling that in the

silence, there's a chance you're

getting closer to something important.

Thank you for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.

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