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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, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.
Today, I'm going to talk about how we
can start to work more skillfully with
some of the more dark or disturbing
thoughts that come up in meditation.
And of course, this is really useful
because how we work with these
thoughts in meditation is also how
we can work with them in life too.
And meditation after all, really is like
a mental training ground, a practice
ground for the rest of our lives.
So when we've been meditating and
observing the mind for awhile, we
really begin to see how the mind
is really abundant in content.
It has lots of different kinds of thoughts
and images and impulses and emotions
coming and going in our experience.
Now, some kinds of thoughts, we probably
feel really comfortable with, you know.
We see them as an okay part of our
psyche, an okay part of ourselves.
Thoughts about pleasant, things,
pleasant emotions, for example.
You know, we might like and accept
them, even encourage them sometimes.
Sometimes we indulge in them.
Other thoughts, though, can make
us feel really uncomfortable.
We might be really shocked by the types
of thoughts arising in the mind and
think that there's something wrong with
us for having these kinds of thoughts.
But you know, as I often say,
what your crazy mind is doing, our
crazy minds are all doing as well.
So we might be surprised by
how, for instance, critical,
aggressive, judgemental,
insecure the mind is sometimes.
These thoughts might stir up emotions
like fear, anger, guilt, or shame,
that feeling of unworthiness.
And, you know, we may not want
to think of these thoughts as
part of us, part of our psyche.
So we resist them, we reject them,
or maybe we start to struggle with
them, or perhaps we even start to
beat ourselves up for being a bad
person or having bad thoughts.
But of course, as long as we're judging
ourselves, when we're experiencing
disturbing thoughts, we're simply actually
creating another layer of thinking on top
of the thoughts that are already there.
So we're getting caught up in
those disturbing thoughts, then
we're adding more storylines in the
mind, more noise and disturbance.
The reality is that, unpleasant
as it is, we do all have these
kinds of thoughts sometimes.
They're just part of the normal
conditioning of the human mind.
But just like it's normal for the
sky to sometimes have very dark
clouds passing through it, it doesn't
define the clarity, the expansiveness
and the stillness of the sky.
So your dark thoughts don't
touch, affect or define your
deeper nature as awareness itself.
So instead of judging yourself,
struggling with these kinds of
thoughts in any way, just see if you
can let go of all of that, let go of
everything that arises in the mind.
And just knowing that from the
perspective of mindfulness,
a thought, is just a thought.
It doesn't matter what
kind of thought it is.
Our task is simply to rest in our
sky-like awareness and witness
whatever arises in the mind.
So we let go of any idea of
how we think the mind should be
or how we think we should be.
And we simply witness things as they are.
In this way, we learn to become gradually
more and more non-reactive, resilient
and grounded in presence andinner peace.
So we're going to explore this
some more in today's meditation.
So I invite you to settle in now for that.
And as always, thank you for your
practice and your presence here with us.
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