Welcome back.
Today,
We'll meditate for five minutes.
So,
Make yourself comfortable,
Close your eyes,
And just arrive here,
Right here,
Right now,
In this new moment,
This moment that you have never experienced before.
But here it is.
So,
Just notice what it's like to be you in this moment,
What it's like to breathe in this moment,
Just discovering you've never been here before,
And here you are.
So,
Just take your time and check it out.
What's here?
And as you do that,
You'll probably notice that your thoughts begin to wander away from this moment,
Perhaps to the past,
Thinking about something that happened,
Something you said,
Maybe some judgment of yourself,
Regret or embarrassment,
And that's okay.
Or maybe your thoughts go to the future,
Your to-do list,
Your plans for later today,
And that's okay too.
Just notice,
Just observe your mind doing that.
And there it goes again,
Off to the past,
Or the future,
Or the what-if.
But what all of those things have in common is they are not the present moment.
They are not right here,
Right now.
So,
This is your task in meditation.
This is what it's all about.
Noticing,
Whenever your mind does that,
Whenever it gets away from the present moment,
Right here,
Right now.
And when that happens,
You didn't do anything wrong.
You didn't fail.
It doesn't mean you're bad at meditating,
Because that is exactly what meditation is.
The mind gets distracted,
And you gently guide it back to the present moment.
That is exactly what the practice of meditation means,
To come back to the present,
Again and again.
So,
You can go back to observing your breath,
Counting them if you like,
Or you could just name in,
Out,
In,
Out.
It doesn't really matter,
Whatever works for you.
But the main thing for today is just noticing when your mind goes away.
And it's going to be hard sometimes.
You'll find yourself completely wrapped up in the memory,
Or in the decision about what task to prioritize next on your to-do list.
You'll get so wrapped up in it that you'll forget for a moment that you're meditating.
And that's okay.
The trick is just to notice as soon as you can that you've gone away.
Maybe it'll be a few seconds,
Maybe it'll be a few minutes before you realize.
When you do,
Just gently come back to the breath.
Again,
With gentleness,
Because you didn't do anything wrong.
Just imagine that the spotlight was on you,
On your breath,
And then it was very slowly moving away from you,
Down some path.
And as soon as you notice the light down the path,
Your task is to gently guide that light back to focus again on your breath,
Again and again.
And that's it.
Thank you for showing up.
