The Program

*Audio Only* We think we live from our own free will, but most of us live in our lives according to a program. The Program is typically invisible to us and informs and influences everything in our lives. So if we can’t see it, how do we know we living by it? The talk is followed by a 20-minute guided meditation.

Poem: Forget About Enlightenment by John Welwood

Transcript

Welcome to Mindfulness Meditation.

I'm Michelle.

Just curious,

By a show of hands,

Who of you know who Dr.

Joe Dispenza is?

Yeah.

Okay.

Great.

So I listened to a podcast he was on not long ago and then I watched his,

I don't know if we call it a documentary.

Anyway,

He had this show,

If you will,

On Gaia TV,

Basically about how the brain works.

And what he said in the podcast that really struck me,

That I feel like was the best explanation for what meditation actually is and what we learn in meditation and mindfulness meditation in particular.

And he said that when we sit in meditation and we choose to stay seated when our body wants to move,

When our mind is like,

I can't do it,

When we want to get up and give up,

He says,

When we stay anyway,

We are exerting a will that is greater than the program.

And even just saying that,

I just got chills.

I was like,

That's the best way.

Because usually people think meditation is emptying your mind of thoughts,

Which anybody who's tried to do that knows it's impossible.

It's not impossible,

But unless you're a monk and you're really practicing emptying your mind,

But for us regular people,

Stopping the thoughts,

Well,

I mean,

Your brain is designed to think that's what it's supposed to do.

So a lot of people either don't start meditation because they think that's what it is.

They think they can't sit still,

Or they give up on it because through the experience that they've had,

They're like,

Oh,

I can't do this.

I'm just not capable.

I can't make myself stop thinking.

I'm,

You know,

I'm restless on the cushion and all of this.

So to reframe it in this way that we are exerting a will that is greater than our programming is really,

Really helpful because we're reminded that we're really building our own power to make choices about what we do,

Regardless of how we feel.

And so really that's what the program is.

The program is not like we were,

You know,

Brainwashed into being a certain way,

Though,

There is a certain aspect to it,

Right?

Of that.

The program is really our automatic action,

Really automatic reactions,

How we habitually walk through our day,

Maybe in some kind of like,

A trance,

You know,

Like Tara Brock calls it the trance,

Right,

Where we're just like,

Just going not really thinking we're just,

You know,

We get up,

We brush our teeth,

Get ready for work,

We,

You know,

Maybe we eat,

Maybe we go get coffee,

And then we go to work.

And we're just going through these patterns all the time,

Without really stopping for a second and being like,

Wait a minute,

Am I really choosing this?

It makes me think of like,

Venus flytrap,

Or,

You know,

A roly poly,

Or I don't know,

Some people call them doodle bugs,

Because it depends on when you grow up.

They automatically react to a stimulus,

Right?

Like there's,

There's an actual physical trigger that,

You know,

The Venus flytrap closes,

Like something lands in it,

Bam,

I got it.

Or with a doodle bug,

Like some sense of needing to protect itself,

Armadillos do this too,

Right?

And we also do it.

And it's not so obvious,

A lot of times,

That we're that that's what we're doing,

That we're reacting to some kind of stimulus.

Because we're,

You know,

We think that everything in our life we have chosen,

We think that we have made choices in everything that we have done,

Everything that we have become.

But we haven't,

We really start to think about it.

Why did you choose the path in life that you chose?

Part of it is because you were placed with certain parents in certain situations with whatever that may or may not have afforded you as far as opportunities go.

And that led you to make certain choices based on that.

Maybe if you grew up without much,

All you could think about is how I'm going to be able to have money when I grow up,

So I don't have to suffer like I did in poverty when I was growing up.

Is that a choice?

Kind of a choice,

Kind of not a choice.

Because if you had grown up in different circumstances,

Would you have made the same choice?

Maybe not.

I came to a point right around the time I turned 40 where I kind of had this huge epiphany like,

Oh my god,

I have not made a choice in my whole life.

All of these big things that I chose were not choices,

They were reactions.

Not to say they were all bad,

But it was kind of an epiphany.

Oh my god,

I have never made a choice about what I wanted in my life.

So that led me to start thinking,

What do I really want?

Well,

I really didn't know because I didn't have any experience.

I didn't have the skill to say this is what I want and this is what I want to choose.

So I just kind of blew everything up and we decided to sell everything we own and travel around the world for 18 months.

I mean,

Total life shift.

See what happens then.

And it did lead to me coming to some realizations about myself and making true choices.

But up to that point,

It was sort of like I was following a script.

We're all handed a script to some degree.

So as we're on the cushion and we're feeling restless,

We're noticing,

Oh my god,

I've been lost in this freaking situation in my head that happened this week.

I don't even know how long,

Has it been 20 minutes I've been in this?

I don't know.

We can make a choice,

One,

About how we're going to react to that.

If I notice I've been lost,

Am I going to berate myself because I've not been focused on being present in my body?

Well,

I can notice that that's my tendency and that's important because maybe you didn't notice that about yourself before.

So now you know that.

Okay,

I start to really get down on myself.

Okay,

I noticed that and that's okay.

I don't need to get down on myself about it.

But what am I going to do with that?

Okay,

Well,

I'm going to come back into my body.

I'm going to make the choice to not be lost in the thoughts and I'm going to choose to come back to my body and be in the present moment and just see what's happening within my body.

So we move from this real analytical sort of above the water where our heads are,

Kind of place of being,

Actually a place of doing,

Right?

We move down under the water,

I like to say,

Into the body,

Into this space of being where we aren't trying to figure things out,

Where we're not trying to think about what we have to do.

We're letting our minds rest in that way and choosing where we're going to be in that moment when we're in the cushion.

And I like to tell everybody all the time,

When I first started meditating,

I couldn't meditate for five minutes and I would give up on it.

And that was a habit I had developed in my whole life.

When things got hard,

I would give up.

Things get hard,

I would give up.

I didn't have the resilience to be with that difficulty and push through it.

Now I meditate for an hour,

Hour and a half a day.

But the most important piece of that is not that I am able to meditate for that long.

The most important piece is that I recognize even now,

Even to this day,

When maybe 20 minutes have gone by in that hour sitting and I want to get up and I see it and I'm like,

Oh,

Okay,

Look,

That's my programming.

The programming that tells me this is boring.

This is uncomfortable.

I have other things I want to do.

I don't want to face how I'm feeling.

That's the programming.

So let me just notice that that's happening.

And it's okay that it's happening.

But let me choose to stay.

Let me choose to be in my body and feel that feeling.

What happens,

Happens.

What comes up,

Comes up.

Choosing.

This is how we really learn through meditation to make choice,

To really use free will.

Because we all have it.

I should say,

We all have the ability to have it.

But we don't actually usually operate from free will.

We operate from how we were raised,

The beliefs that were instilled in us,

What we were taught we can be and can't be,

What's acceptable,

What's not acceptable.

And that's just from what our family instilled in us.

Then layer on top of that societal expectations.

We all,

If we grow up in the same society,

We all sort of have very similar societal layerings on top of our familial layerings.

So how do we start to get below that and get back to who we really are?

It's hard because we think that how we're acting is a choice.

And sometimes it is.

Sometimes it's part choice.

A lot of times it's trance.

It's the programming.

So as we're on the cushion and we start to recognize our habits,

They come up.

We allow ourselves to be with them,

To welcome them,

To listen to them.

And then we choose,

Okay.

And this process that unfolds on the cushion is a process that we can take with us into daily life.

And that's where it's really beneficial.

So it's not just about how can I sit on the cushion for 20 minutes a day and feel great.

I always like to say,

If you feel great on the cushion for 20 minutes every day,

And then you go out into your life and you're a miserable person,

Then what's the point?

You felt great.

Good for you.

What about the world?

What about the world that you inhabit and the things that you put out there?

So that begins to translate in our everyday lives.

For example,

Maybe we're in a conflict with our partner or someone in our family,

Somebody close to us.

And our habit is to just maybe dig in and just keep fighting,

Just to fight.

Like there's no reason.

It's not to come to a resolution,

But we just want to keep fighting.

We never notice that about ourselves.

Well,

Then we notice it in the moment and we can pause and say,

Oh,

Okay.

I'm getting caught in that habit that I always do.

So let me just pause for a minute and listen and watch what happens in my body.

Watch what my compulsion is,

What I want to do automatically.

And I can choose to not do that.

Now,

Sometimes when we first start doing it,

We're going to choose to do it anyway,

Because the release of that feels good because that's what we're used to doing.

It can feel really uncomfortable to sit in that and just,

It feels wrong.

It feels like we're on,

We're on it being attacked.

We're on the defense,

But we choose to sit in it anyway and pause and just see what happens.

What happens if I choose a different way of being,

A different way of acting or reacting in this situation,

Responding?

And it can be really life-changing.

It can have huge,

Major transformation and effect on our relationships,

On,

You know,

If we're in the middle of a career and we're just not very happy and we don't know why we're not happy,

We have exactly what we always wanted,

Then maybe we allow ourselves to just pause and say,

Then maybe we allow ourselves to just pause and say,

Okay,

Hold on.

I don't feel good about this.

Let me just not feel good about it.

Because we have to recognize first those feelings in our body before we can go anywhere with them.

And a lot of,

Especially if it's something that we're,

That's not habitual to us in some way,

Like our habit is just to keep climbing the ladder.

Our habit is just to keep accomplishing,

Keep accomplishing,

Keep accomplishing.

We've accomplished something.

I don't know.

I don't feel that fulfilled.

Let me accomplish something else.

Okay.

Got that.

That didn't feel so good.

Let me accomplish something else.

Why are we on this wheel,

Like this hamster wheel of accomplishment?

When maybe what we need is to pause and feel that discomfort of the accomplishment didn't make me fulfilled.

And just feel it and feel it and feel it and feel it until it talks to us.

And I know it sounds a little crazy,

Right?

Like something's talking to us,

But it's sort of like your intuition will begin to talk to you.

It will begin to reveal to you why it is that accomplishment after accomplishment after accomplishment doesn't make me fulfilled or why when I get into those arguments with my partner,

I don't really want to solve the problem.

I just want to keep fighting.

Why?

So our intuition will tell us at some point,

But we have to be able to leave the space for it to come up.

And we do that in silence.

And we do that by pausing when we're feeling that discomfort,

When we're feeling the habit that wants to propel us.

And you will begin to notice that that feeling actually feels out of control.

Whatever the feeling is that comes up that makes it difficult for us to sit in,

We will come to understand that this actually doesn't feel like control.

Maybe that's why I always react habitually,

Because that feels like control.

But maybe it really isn't.

So these are the lessons that can come from mindfulness meditation on the cushion that we can take with us into our everyday lives and that can really begin to reveal to us and can be very transformative in our lives,

Can get us back to who we really are truly meant to be in this life,

Who our relationships are supposed to be with.

It can be very nurturing,

But it can also be very painful.

It can take a very long time.

So I don't want to make it sound like just sit and feel it the first time and it'll solve everything.

It's not gonna work like that.

So let's go ahead and move into a sit.

And I invite you now to come into whatever posture feels right for you today.

Feel supportive where you are in a dignified posture,

Feeling worthy of taking the space that you have to take up today,

Where you're upright and alert,

But also at ease without added tension or strain.

We'll begin by taking in three deep inhales and exhales at your own pace,

Allowing the belly to fully expand on the inhale and fully contract on the exhale.

And then after your third exhale,

Allowing the breath to move naturally without controlling it or forcing,

Letting it be as deep or as shallow as it will be,

As fast or as slow as it will be.

Noticing how your body and breath naturally dance together,

How the ribs naturally expand and contract,

Maybe how your shoulders naturally move just a little bit up and down with each breath.

Maybe you notice the temperature of the air as it moves through your throat without trying too hard to notice.

Maybe you notice the breath as it enters and exits the nose.

All of these points along the path of breath are valid places that you can anchor your presence in,

Anchor the awareness,

Keep you grounded in the body and in this present moment.

And then as you exhale,

Anchor the awareness and keep you grounded in the body and in this present moment.

I invite you to choose one of these places along the path of the breath.

Now allow your awareness to settle,

Noticing the sensations in that particular place.

The temperature,

The movement,

The physical container,

Whatever it may be.

The anchor is individual to each person.

And the first choice you make in meditation to allow yourself to be present.

If you find that you just can't settle on any part of the path of the breath,

That's okay.

Choose a different sensation within the body to be your anchor.

It could be the feeling of the floor beneath your feet,

The feeling of your seat on the cushion,

Feeling of your clothes on your skin,

Your hands in your lap,

Whatever is prominent.

Allow the sensations of this particular place in the body to be the location you rest your awareness.

You may find from time to time that the awareness leaves the anchor and drifts off perhaps into thoughts,

Perhaps into thoughts,

Situations,

Some kind of story.

When that happens,

That's okay.

The brain just wants to think.

Just acknowledge that you've left.

Allow whatever it is that holds you away to be there without denying it,

Without pushing it away.

Gently,

Without judgment,

Guide the awareness back into the body,

Back into the anchor of your choice.

Allow the awareness to include any noticing of tension in the body,

Any place you may be holding without realizing it.

The shoulders,

The neck,

And the jaw are common places that we hold tension and calmness in.

If you notice that you're tensing in these areas or any others,

Just allow that to gently let go just a little bit.

Settling back into the awareness and the anchor.

As you continue to sit,

You may become aware of other sensations in the body.

If that happens,

Just allow those sensations to be present.

If you notice that you're not aware of other sensations in the body,

And if that happens,

Just allow those sensations to be present with the sensations of the anchor,

Allowing your awareness to hold both.

Without going into a story,

Without analyzing,

Just being with it.

Just noticing the experience of now,

Without judging,

Without escaping,

Just allowing now to be now.

Noticing the quality of your presence,

The quality,

The awareness,

And the posture of the body.

Just allowing,

Being present.

As we come into the final moments of this meditation,

I invite you,

If it feels right for you,

I invite you,

If it feels right for you,

To place your hand on your chest over your heart.

Sensing the support of your body and the tenderness in this gesture toward yourself.

I invite you to offer yourself gratitude.

Gratitude for making time in your day to just be.

Clearing any of the to-dos,

Obligations,

Shoulds.

Just making space to be present with yourself and listen.

I'll close out this meditation with this poem by John Wellwood called Forget About Enlightenment.

Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind singing in your veins.

Feel the love,

The longing,

And the fear in your bones.

Open your heart to who you are right now.

Not who you would like to be.

Not the saint you are striving to become.

But the being right here before you,

Inside you,

Around you.

All of you is holy.

You're already more or less than whatever you can know.

When you're ready,

You're welcome to open your eyes,

Come back into the room.