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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.
And today, I'm going to talk
about the distinction between
thoughts and awareness.
So most of us tend to spend a huge
amount of our time immersed in thought.
We plan.
We play back memories.
We figure out problems.
Ruminate, fixate, worry, self reflect,
compare, contemplate, and daydream.
Now, although thinking can
often be really useful.
The problem is that we can
become so lost in our thoughts
that we become fused with them.
Now that the term for this in
psychology is cognitive fusion.
It's where there's really no space
between you and your thoughts.
So when we're fused with our thoughts, we
tend to take them very, very seriously.
We start to believe every
thought that arises in the mind.
We obey our thoughts.
We react very emotionally to them.
And we identify with them, meaning
that it feels like we are our faults.
But when we diffuse from our thoughts,
we take a step back from our thoughts
and we're able to observe them without
being totally wrapped up in them,
without allowing them to define us.
This is cognitive diffusion.
And this is a lot of what
mindfulness teaches us to do.
So in cognitive diffusion, we
untangled from thinking and we
discover a deep sense of self.
We discover that we're not our thoughts.
We are the still, unshakable
awareness that's always there
just beneath the thoughts.
So many teachers use the metaphor of
the sky to illustrate the difference
between thoughts and awareness.
So the experience of thoughts is
a little bit like the experience
of clouds passing through the sky.
Your awareness is like the sky
itself, this still, unchanging,
ever present space of consciousness.
And so resting as the sky, you can
observe the clouds passing through
without being so affected by them.
This is mindful awareness.
So when we learn to observe our
thoughts in this way, our relationship
to them completely transforms.
So we don't buy into them as much anymore.
We don't feel like we have to obey them.
We only follow them if
they're useful or helpful.
Otherwise we simply see them as
mental events moving through the mind,
like clouds move through the sky.
They're not reality.
They're not the truth.
They're just thoughts.
So they don't really pull us in
any more the way they used to.
So instead of being constantly
hijacked by our worries or stresses,
we can observe calmly, oh wow.
There's some thoughts arising about
what might happen in the future.
And we can make a choice not to buy
into that thought pattern if it's
not useful, if we think it's just
going to cause us to feel anxious.
And instead of descending into the
tirades of self-criticism that lead to
low self esteem or depression, again,
we can simply notice, oh okay, there's
inner critic thoughts arising today.
We can kind of smile at them.
And just get on with our
day without believing them.
So it's really this realization that
you are not your thoughts that gives
you a lot of freedom and peace of mind.
It's this realization that
deepens more and more with every
single practice of mindfulness.
So with this in mind, let's start to
settle in here for today's practice.
And as always, thank you for your
practice and your presence here.
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