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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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Does religion and prayer overlap with mindfulness and meditation practice? Can you have your faith and still practice mindfulness?
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.
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