The Growth & Healing Potential Of Meditation

Recorded live from my Introduction to Meditation course in Denver, CO, this clearly lays out the transformation power of a meditation practice. In it, I explain how meditation not only creates more peace, acceptance, and compassion in our lives, but also equips us with the ACTIVE capacity to CHOSE new pathways, and to take empowered action in our lives!

Transcript

So today I want to talk about the incredibly versatile potential of meditation, I'm gonna say practices, Plural, Because it's not, There's not one type of meditation. There are a bajillion different techniques and tools and we're throwing a bunch of them at you and helping you figure out an awesome toolbox to run your experiment with and get out of it what you need to get out of it. These practices, In my opinion, Can open the doorways to any type of growth, Any type of healing that you want in your life. Last week in defining meditation and mindfulness we talked about these these integral qualities of intention. So it's this purposefulness that I'm sitting here with an aspiration to meditate, You know. If there's not this dialed-in sense of like I want to do something with this time and space, This intention behind our attention, Our mind just runs the show. So there's this purpose, There is this presence, Like really it's about being here in the present moment and experiencing life. Awareness is here in this moment. And then perhaps most importantly is this energy of non-judgment. So there's this quality of attention that is, You could call it passive, But I think it's more receptive, That lends to so much of our healing by bringing in an energy of acceptance, By bringing an energy of compassion. More generally it is love, It is spacious. Integrally intertwined with the energy of mindfulness, The type of attention that we are cultivating is not laser-focused, Forcing, Like most of us have been conditioned to use our attention in a very productivity-based society. You think about when you are trying to focus on something, What is the quality of that focus inclined to feel like? You know, There can be this kind of tension that we are conditioned to bring into the way that we focus on things. And the energy of mindfulness is training our attention to be able to focus, To be able to concentrate, To be able to receive the experiences of life through the senses, But in this really gentle way. This loving, Compassionate energy that is receptive and accepting. And that in and of itself, I think it's fair to say we all want and need more of in our life. But that for me has been, I mean, Everything. I like to say that self-compassion is the secret sauce because in my book, In this culture, The way that we treat ourselves is very judgmental, Is very critical, Is very forceful. And this quality of accepting attention and learning to be able to attend to our body, Our breath, Our thoughts with care and kindness, Then equates to us being able to attend to anything with care and kindness. Whether that's our work, Our play, Our loved ones. As we practice that within ourselves, We then can apply it everywhere. And how we do one thing is how we do everything. So this super, Super simple, You know, Act of noticing sensations arise and fall and pass in the body with acceptance and without judgment then cultivates this ability to do that in all of the units of our life. It's transformative. In addition to that, There is an active component of meditation. The famed psychotherapist and holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, Wrote, And this is a pretty popular quote, So maybe you've heard this before, Between stimulus and response, There is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. Between stimulus and response, There is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. So while a huge part of the healing capacity of this practice is just in this learning to qualitatively attend to life with more love and care and acceptance and compassion and to just soften, There's also this incredibly empowering active component that affords us the power of discernment, The power of choice, The power of creativity that we can then use to guide the creation of the life that we want to live, The creation of the relationships that we want to live, The creation of the internal experience that we want to experience. And it comes down exactly to what we were just talking about in this simple little moment where we notice that our attention has drifted away from where we intend to focus our attention. And a lot of people in, You know, The early stages of meditation, One of the big myths and the big deterrence is that like, Oh, I'm not doing it wrong. And then what do we do? We start beating ourselves up. I suck. I can't meditate. I don't know how to do this. You know, I am thinking again. I'm supposed to pay attention to the breath. I'm not doing it. When we cultivate this awareness, When we cultivate this loving, Compassionate attention, We create space to then see those mechanisms, See those patterns. And that's all they are. They're just patterns of mind, Patterns of our conditioning. When we can see them more clearly and we've created enough space, We then have the opportunity to choose differently. And that simple little moment, Which you will do over and over again, In your meditation practice to just notice, Oh, I've lost track of the breath. Or I've lost track of my mantra. Or I've lost track of, You know, The feeling of my feet on the ground. Whatever your anchor is, Whatever you're intending to attend to, In that moment where you notice that and you choose to shift your attention back, You are building this muscle of personal power. You are building this muscle of being able to choose the path of your personal development, The path of your growth, The path of your healing, The path of whatever it is that you want to create in your life. Whatever your goals are, Whatever your aspirations are. It's in that simple little moment that then you can then choose to shift your attention back. It's in that moment that then all we want to create and can create in our lives is made possible for us. If you want to have a really deep, Beautiful relationship and you're stuck in patterns of fighting and reactivity, And I know this from personal experience because I'm still working on this. I'm healing these these patterns of reactivity that I learned from my childhood trauma that my brain turns on when it gets the stimulus from the outside environment. It then wants to run a pattern. And in order for me or for any of us to have a beautiful, Deep, Healthy, Loving, Powerful relationship, It's this practice that developed our ability to choose in those moments something differently than what our conditioning has chosen for us up until now. Because our conditioning, We start to get aware of it, We start to get more in tune with it, We start to realize it's actually not really got my best interests in mind. A lot of the time it's self-destructive and self-sabotaging, Steals my peace. It doesn't have to be that way. And it's in these little moments that you create new pathways. You create literally new neural pathways. Instead of this deeply grooved, Reactive pathway that as soon as it gets a stimulus in the environment, It just goes down this pathway, You just start thinking a million thoughts or you blow up or they fuck you or the person who cut you off. You start to create enough space to choose something different that actually supports what I think we all want more of in our life, Which is peace, Joy, Love, Ease, Creativity, Authenticity, Whatever you want. If you are riddled with self-doubt that gets in your way, This pattern of self-doubt that gets in your way from putting yourself out there, Taking action, And creating the awesome things that you want to create in your life, You need this personal power. You need this mindfulness, This accepting, Loving energy to recognize, Wow, I'm noticing this pattern of self-doubt again. And in that space to say, You know what, I'm actually going to choose something different. I'm going to choose a self-empowered thought or I'm going to choose to move away from this. At least I'm going to choose not to feed this. That's the pathway to building whatever life you want to build to, You know, Bringing your goals into reality. All this boils down to this little moment where you notice, Oh, I'm thinking again. I'm just going to come back to my breath. And so it's a simple, Simple thing that is so empowering. And I'll leave you with this idea of a dialectic, Which is another word for a paradox, You know, Where seemingly two opposing forces have to actually exist in balance. And there is this paradox between acceptance and change. So the receptive, Compassionate, Non-judgmental awareness that we cultivate through meditation is this energy of acceptance. And this change is the power to choose in the space a different response rather than a reaction. And we need them in balance because too much acceptance, Which often too much acceptance comes without compassion. It tends to come with a lot of self-criticism. But too much acceptance is stagnancy. It's, Oh, I'm just going to let myself wither. It tends to be wallowing. It tends to be feeling stuck in the muck and not feeling capable of any positive change. Too much change energy, And I think a lot of us are really instilled with this and this like really, Again, Forceful rat race, Productivity first culture that we're raised in. Too much change energy is never enough. Always got to be more highly self-critical. And that's painful too. We need these in balance. And the beautiful comprehensive nature of this practice is it can give us the keys to cultivate both sides of the teeter-totter, Which is always in a teeter-totter rebalancing act, Like we're always kind of making little adjustments. But we can cultivate this energy of compassion, Attention, And balance it out with a desire for and a belief that positive change is possible. And so when we create a foundation of acceptance and love for our inner experience, For the for the world of thoughts, The full human emotional palette for our daily human experience, And start to notice without repressing or suppressing or judging, We then create enough space for us to decide and actually feel like we have a say in how we want to cultivate our mind and our brain and our relationship to life moving forward. And again, We need a balance of the two. So I encourage you as you're working through this course and you're practicing these practices, You know, Starting to get in touch with, Hey, What do I need a little bit, What are my priorities? You know, Because all of these practices, You can't do all of them at once. You know, There's a certain balance of figuring out like, You know what, I need a little bit of just like beating with my thoughts right now. Or I need a little bit more of a kind of active energy to really ignite that change, That active aspect of my thing. Starting to get in tune with, Hey, Where do I need to balance? How, Which of these techniques and practices and tools that are being introduced to me are going to support me right now in my life? And it will always change. The experiment is always evolving. And you know, Of the 20 different little things that you pull out of this course right now, Maybe four of them you need right now. And maybe it'll be a different four a year from now when you're going through different circumstances in your life. So starting to play with this idea of bringing this non-judgmental quality of attention to your practice. And then also acknowledging the value of these little moments where you get to practice your capacity to choose for yourself. And know that, You know, As I want to instill in you that these simple little things apply to everything in life. They can be applied to everything. So when you're waking up in the morning and you're like, I don't know if I'm going to do it. I better go. And we're, It's like, You know, The opportunity here lies in the recognition of the transformation and power of this. And we hope that this is super clear as to how this brings value to anything that we do in our life.