Have you ever noticed that at the start of practice,
Or really all through practice,
Your mind might stay busy,
Or you might feel bored,
Or restless,
Or just frustrated with the ongoing stream of thinking.
Insights asks that we try to present a few different things we like teaching at the start of practice.
And I think one of the most foundational is this shift in relating to practice itself.
The trait we're trying to develop,
The relationship we're trying to develop with practice is more developing awareness and a sense of patience.
Whatever is going to happen for the next few minutes,
I'm capable of just sitting here and instead of my typical habits,
My typical routines of when I'm bored doing this or when I'm hungry doing that or when I'm angry doing something else.
Unless something is completely urgent,
We're giving ourselves permission to just sit for a few minutes.
To develop the capacity with a sense of care and curiosity,
Explore what happens to be going on,
And to cultivate this very powerful sense of patience,
This ability to live with and notice whatever is happening without our sense of autopilot and ruts and habits and just reactivity.
And that I think allows us also just to stick with practice more regularly because there's no doing it well,
There's no doing it poorly.
It's simply about putting the effort in and seeing if over time our capacity to relate to whatever is going on changes,
Our ability to see our experience with a sense of clarity and compassion grows.
And that's the shift we're looking for at the start of practice.
And it's very powerful.
And letting go of our preconceived notions of a still mind or a perfectly still body or the myth of calm all the time,
Letting go of all that is what allows us to stay with practice itself.
So reframe it as a long-term plan to develop a sense of awareness,
Care,
And patience.
And it's so much easier to stick with practice itself.
