Today, we are going to be talking about how mindfulness might be incorporated into your particular faith, religion, spirituality. More to say about that soon. But first, let's settle in with the bells. Here they are. So one of our listeners asked any tips on how to incorporate Christianity with mindfulness meditation.

I feel like it's a great opportunity to get connected with God, if you believe in that sort of thing, but I'm not sure how to go about it. Thanks. Great question. And I first want to acknowledge that there may be listeners of all different faiths on this podcast, different religions, different spiritualities. So I'm going to try and make this as accessible, relatable, and applicable to as many listeners as possible with the understanding that I am not an expert in any particular religion.

So because of that, I am going to default to a short story that I think illustrates this intersection well between mindfulness and however one conceptualizes their God. So Dan Rather, a CBS anchor once asked Mother Teresa, "What do you say to God in your prayers?" Mother Teresa responded, "I don't say anything. I just listen." So Dan asked, "Well, what does God say?" And she responded. "He doesn't say anything. He just listens." She went on to say, "if you don't understand, I don't know how to explain it to you.

I don't know how you conceptualize prayer and your own life, but I think we can all agree there's something precious and powerful and deeply meaningful in how Mother Teresa practices prayer. And I'm going to use her perspective to draw parallels with mindfulness meditation. I've often said that mindfulness meditation is just the process of deep listening. And not the kind of listening that we do with the ears, but the kind of listening we do with our whole being. When we show up on the cushion or the mat or the chair, and do our practice and then set the intention and our attention to the present moment, even if we're just focusing on the breath, we are dropping into our most fundamental humanness, reducing the interface between who we perceive to be ourselves and what we perceive to be our experience.

Subsequently making more contact with our life and merging with our true nature. When we're caught in the story of our lives, of who we are, what we are, why we're the greatest thing since sliced rye bread, where we're going, what we need to get, who we're trying to become, all of that, we build and play out a story. It's a persona that we're decorating and taking into the world and trying to recreate and build and make better and defend. In the practice of mindfulness meditation, we sort of just let all of that go. We don't have to make it disappear, but we acknowledge it when he comes up and then drop in a little bit more deeply.

That dropping in could be focusing on the breath or just feeling what it's like to be alive. And that feeling, that tuning in, that dropping in is a form of deep listening to yourself, to your experience, to your fundamental humanness. Now, I don't know where God is. And I think this will, again, depend on how you conceptualize God in your life. But if God is everywhere, within us, throughout us connecting us to all beings, then it's impossible not to experience God when we drop in, in that way.

When we step out of the story of who we're trying to become, why we're separate, why we're better, why we're worse and just connect to what makes us human, well, if that's what God created, then that's what we get to connect to. That's who we get to connect to. So I'm a strong believer that you can engage in your mindfulness meditation practice. Again, even if it's as simple as just focusing on the breath and bring the perspective, take the lens that you're seeing God in your experience as you drop in. And that, that is a beautiful form of prayer and connecting to your faith.

Now let's say you don't buy that. Let's say you have a different idea of prayer and what it means to connect with God. Great. That connection still requires a degree of presence, focus and not being swept away by your thoughts. So if you wanted to do your mindfulness meditation practice to train those capacities and then transition that into prayer, where you set your intention on your God, your faith, a particular phrase, well, now you're better resourced to do that.

So the very practical elements of it, of what is required to pray well, if we could even put it that way, I think we can see those parallels also with mindfulness meditation. So here's my task to you today. Engage in your practice like Mother Teresa. Even if you're of a different faith or of no faith at all, what would it be like to drop into your experience and just listen? Not need to get any response and to trust that whatever you're listening to is also listening back. I hope this helps us see how, if you have a faith, you can incorporate it into your mindfulness practice.

And if you don't have a faith, maybe there's more of it happening in your mindfulness practice than you realize. Great being with you today. Take care.