Welcome to day seven.
You've made it.
We've come a long way,
Just a week.
You're well on your way to a daily meditation practice,
And you've learned some profound insights that will lead to greater openness,
Awareness,
And possibility as you move forward with your practice.
Since we've covered a lot of ground,
Let's review what we've done together.
Our basic tool for meditation is the breath.
This is invaluable and,
While subtle,
Has the potential on its own to change your life.
Breathing deeply into your belly relaxes your nervous system and pulls you deeper into the feeling of peace and safety.
When you focus your senses on your breath,
You learn to concentrate your awareness away from thought and deeply into the body.
Your world moves from feeling dangerous to feeling safe.
It's from a place of safety that you can let go of stress and open to possibility.
This simple tool can be used in daily life to calm you in a challenging situation,
Reduce anxiety,
Ease physical pain,
And even put you to sleep at night.
We talked about how the mind works,
How we are constantly enthralled with our thinking.
Meditation is thought to quiet the mind,
Though we discover later that it's not about quieting,
But about learning to focus away from the chatter to something like our breath.
I introduced the idea of awareness,
The aspect of you that is simply aware of your thoughts.
This is the part of you that is being nourished and brought forward through meditation.
If there are thoughts and there's something aware of our thoughts,
Then who are we?
This is a question to ask for some time to come.
Who am I?
Your thoughts make up the story of you,
What I call the small you.
The ego protects the small you and will do everything in its power to keep your story strong and successful.
So ego is constantly sending you threats to your story so that you will take action and avert disaster.
But if you've ever noticed,
Disaster never comes.
The big you is what emerges as we rest in awareness.
As we pull away from thought,
The restrictions of our story and daily threats to it recede,
If only for a moment,
And the possibility of something new emerges.
It is the doorway to greater knowing of who we are,
What life is about,
And how we can better align our inner desires with our outer character,
Our work,
Our life.
Meditation,
Which should be so simple,
Sitting and doing nothing,
Is very challenging because the ego is not ready to give up control.
This is why the thoughts get louder and more difficult to let alone as you begin to meditate.
This is where patience,
Perseverance,
And discipline come in to save the day.
Finally,
Embedded in the story of you is the root of all suffering,
Which is wanting things to be different than they are.
We do this automatically,
Unconsciously.
We do this constantly.
When we practice radical acceptance,
The unconditional agreement that reality is the way that it is in this moment,
Everything I just reviewed comes into focus.
When we accept everything,
There's nothing to fight,
Nothing to rush around for,
Nothing at all to do.
This allows us to sit in meditation and let go.
All that stuff that we let go will be waiting for us when we emerge.
But we can acknowledge that it's there and accept that it's there,
And then allow our nervous systems to relax so that we can connect with our deepest wisdom and guidance.
This is all you need to end your suffering.
When we let go of ourselves,
We paradoxically become more ourselves.
We're calmer,
More accepting,
Clearer,
More decisive.
We embrace compassion for ourselves and others,
And we become more creative in solving problems and how we live our lives.
When there's nothing to defend,
We can let go of all the energy we use in each moment to just hold it all together.
This is a tremendous force.
Let's meditate on that.
Sitting comfortably,
Legs crossed,
Feet on the floor.
Taking a deep breath into our bellies.
Remembering the breath as an important tool,
Not only in meditation,
But in everyday life to relax and release and reset our nervous systems.
Breath into the belly.
Remembering to put all of your attention on the breath.
Hearing the breath.
Feeling the breath.
Imagining a breath coming into your body.
Oxygen moving through your bloodstream and enlivening every part of you.
Taking a deep breath in and out.
Whenever you notice yourself,
Grabbing a thought,
Following a thought,
Gently bringing yourself back to your breath.
The thoughts will always be there and will always be drawn towards them.
In meditation,
We go back again and again to our breath.
It's only natural to be intrigued and interested by the thoughts that are running through your mind.
But it's up to you to choose where to place your attention.
Deep breath in and out.
The thoughts in your mind are telling you a story about your life,
About yourself,
And mostly about what's wrong with your life and yourself.
In this moment,
There's nothing wrong.
Deep breath in.
In this moment,
We can embrace the bigger and deeper aspect of ourselves that is here without a problem,
Without a meeting to catch,
Without something to solve.
We can rest in that deeper awareness where all the possibilities of our lives emerge from.
As we let go of the story,
Even just for a moment,
A new story can emerge.
Perhaps a more true story can emerge.
And we remember that all of our suffering comes from wanting things to be different than they are in this moment.
And so we take a breath and we radically,
Unconditionally accept the moment that we're in as it is.
I thank you for meditating with me.
Congratulations on finishing seven days.
I encourage you to do the series again and again.
And today,
Take an extra five minutes and breathe.
Thank you.
