All Of Life Is Meditation

In this podcast, Mary helps you explore what meditation is and what it means to you. She encourages you to trust your own process and perceptions. Most importantly, listening to this podcast episode can help you find meditation in all of life. For those who already listen to Mary's meditations, it is an opportunity to deepen your practice and develop greater insight.

Transcript

Instead of leading a new guided meditation,

I'll be talking a little bit about meditation and about our podcast.

Actually,

I've thought about doing an episode like this for quite some time,

But I had some hesitations.

Sometimes I feel like the less said about meditation,

The better.

Our concepts can get in the way of having a fresh,

Innocent experience.

If we sit to meditate and we think,

Oh,

Okay,

Here I am now,

I'm a meditator,

And this is what a meditator does,

And this is what meditation looks like,

And this is how it's supposed to be,

They can set up expectations and goals that get in the way.

Our meditations are all about trust in the process,

Trust in yourself and trust in life,

So there isn't really a right or wrong meditation.

It's all about your own exploration.

It's all about the truths that you discover in yourself.

It's how you learn to use your attention and how to shift into different ways of being and perceiving.

I find that when I lead guided meditations with a group,

I'm always amazed at what people get out of the meditations.

Their experience may be completely different than what I'm thinking of as I'm leading the guided meditation.

In fact,

I'm really not thinking of anything,

Because when I lead the guided meditation,

I'm actually literally meditating with you.

I'm having my own experience.

I sit down,

Close my eyes,

Go within,

And see what grows out of my own inner experience.

Of course,

Some of my knowledge about meditation comes into play,

But there's something that happens that has nothing to do with anything I've ever learned before.

And true meditation,

Authentic meditation,

Has nothing to do with any of our ideas or anything that went before.

Anything that did happen in the past,

Anything that was developed in some sort of meditation tradition,

Can be discovered right now,

Right here in your own awareness.

So really,

Our meditations aren't related to any one particular tradition.

And they're not even related to my ideas about what meditation is.

I can't emphasize enough that Meditation Oasis is all about your experience,

About what you feel meditation is.

So despite my hesitations about talking about meditation,

Here I am doing it.

And sometimes it can be helpful to reflect on the experience.

It can be helpful to hear about other people's experiences.

So I'm sitting here looking out the window,

And I'm seeing a fountain.

And the water in the fountain kind of shoots up into the air and cascades down,

And the pattern of it just keeps changing.

And I realized as I was watching it that I was starting to fall into a meditation.

Meditation always has to do with putting our attention on something in particular.

Or it can also have to do with simply allowing the attention to relax,

Being aware of how we're focused all the time on something,

And then allowing the attention to relax,

So that there isn't any particular focus,

And we're detached.

We kind of detach from what's going on,

And it allows for a very deep and profound rest.

But we can also have meditations,

As we do on the podcast,

That have a particular focus.

And when we have our attention on that focus,

It creates a particular effect.

The best way to know what that effect is,

Is to try it for yourself.

When I first started teaching meditation,

I had learned a very specific practice.

There was a whole background to it.

There was a very clear explanation of what meditation is,

A very clear technique.

There was an interpretation of experiences that happened,

And there was even a description of what was going to happen on the path ahead as a person continued to meditate.

It was all very neat and clean and in a box,

And it felt very reassuring.

And I did that practice for years,

And I taught that practice for years,

And actually got a lot out of it.

But then I started to see that meditation could be so much more.

I began to search and find other ways that I could use my attention,

That I could become aware of my own inner landscape,

And have different kinds of effects than were produced by that particular meditation.

Doing this podcast has been an amazing experience.

In doing the podcast,

I've had to come up with new ideas of themes,

And sometimes I've had requests from people for themes.

So it's been an enormous exploration of the possibilities of meditation.

And as time goes by,

My concept of meditation broadens more and more,

And I see that all of life is meditation.

All of life can be about meditation.

In any moment,

We can shift our attention.

We can shift the way we're experiencing things,

The way we're perceiving things.

Sometimes it's just walking outside and seeing a sunrise,

Or hearing a bird,

Or seeing a flower,

And everything shifts.

So meditation happens all the time,

And we can learn to move with that.

We can learn to experience life in a whole different way.

And my attention just keeps going back to that fountain.

You know,

Meditation sometimes can be contemplation.

You could be looking at the fountain,

And you could be thinking about the shapes and forms in the fountain,

And what that means,

And what it means about life,

And how things work.

It can be a kind of a contemplation,

A journey,

A philosophizing,

An exploration of meaning.

Or you can just keep your awareness on the fountain.

It's kind of like the candle flame meditation.

There's an ancient meditation where you just gaze at the flame of a candle,

And every time your attention wanders,

You bring it back to that.

So it's a focus of meditation.

Just as right now,

I can make this fountain a focus of meditation,

I can forget about meanings and just allow it to be an experience without any meaning.

And then when you let go of a meaning,

The awareness can sink even more,

Can start to sink deeply,

And a very restful state can come about.

So there are lots of different ways of using the attention,

And it can happen right in the middle of your day.

In fact,

It can be really useful to allow your attention to shift in the middle of your work or the middle of your studies,

To shift your attention to your breath,

Notice your breath for a while,

And that can create a whole different way of being.

It's inspiring to hear about all the different experiences that people have and all the different ways that they use the meditations.

One thing I think that all the experiences have in common is relaxation.

A byproduct of meditation is becoming deeply relaxed,

And there's nothing like being deeply relaxed.

I wrote a blog post on relaxation as the ultimate spiritual experience,

Because I feel that a huge ingredient of spirituality is trust,

And to be able to relax requires trust.

This whole podcast,

All of our meditations,

Are about trust.

Trust in yourself,

Trust in life,

Trust in what's naturally unfolding,

In your experiences,

In your emotions,

In everything about your life.

But I'm not so interested in talking about what I feel these meditations are about.

I'm much more interested in hearing from you and what you experience these meditations to be about,

What your inner journey is about.

If I hear from you that you enjoy this kind of episode,

Then we'll probably continue to add one from time to time.

It won't be instead of the guided meditations,

But would be in addition to them.

So let us know if you'd like more episodes like this,

And let us know if there's anything in particular you'd like to hear about.

So I'm going to wrap this up now,

And wish you,

As always,

A peaceful mind and an open mind.

Reviews

Mary, your words and your voice have relaxed me for years. I was so grateful when I first stumbled upon a meditation of yours on Insight Timer.

This talk on meditation is lovely. I frequently experience a wonderful, uplifting shift in mood and outlook during my daily walk in the woods, just as you spoke about in this talk. I love the idea of seeing that as all of life being meditation. Thank you!

A really lovely talk Mary. I loved how you simplified the concept of meditation and we can do this at any time by focusing our attention. Thank you for your beautiful meditations

Thank you for sharing. I enjoy the peace and freedom from meditations. They help ground me and sleep better. 🙏

Wow! That was the best interpretation and understanding of meditation. Well said and as always, love your delivery Mary

What a little gem, such a humble piece of wisdom, thank you 🙏

Wonderful, I really enjoyed it, especially that meditation is the allowing of the experience, beautiful, and I love too, the grace and gentility in how the mindful guided reflection was offered, thank you 🙏💕🙇‍♂️

I thank you for this refreshing way of 👀 looking at meditation

I enjoyed this talk very much and would love to heae more of this kind. I listened to it while in the bathtub and it was a kind of meditation in itself.

Thank you for your explanation. I’m a logical, left brain person. So this talk satisfied my left brain and that frees up my right brain to creatively explore during a meditation

So good. I love how transparent Mary is about her process, her thinking. Thanks!

Great reminders, find this reinforcing of my felt knowing of meditation...thank you! Mary

Love Mary’s voice and insights. Would welcome her thoughts on how a longtime meditator can stay motivated to meditate.

lovely to hear Mary's thoughts on meditation. I would enjoy hearing more from her!

Thank you, its always nice to see things from another prospective and what you described helped me understand how to be present alot better. 🙂

My meditation practice really supports me on this journey along with the many challenges I encounter daily. Without disassociating from them but having the mind body spirit connections to deal. Grateful for you putting to words how I often think and feel🧘🏻‍♂️

🙏❤️ different way to embrace meditation

I’ve been having some similar thoughts; and hearing someone else say these things solidifies and helps me trust myself more. Thank you Mary

Beautiful talk. I love you!

In my buay day, stoping for a second to look at a flower, a small child walking happily going to school, etc...I always believed that these moments of pause were healing moments. Now with you, I totally agree, these were a glimpse of meditations. Yes, please continue as we are searching deep healings for us and for the himan beings at this time of uncertainty

Yes please, Mary. Please do additional talks like this. It very much helps.