I'm Natalie Speakman.
And this video is called mindlessness.
The practice of pure being.
Most of us spend our lives thinking,
Doing,
Planning,
Interpreting,
And trying to make something happen.
Even when we meditate,
We may approach it as one more thing to accomplish.
We may meditate because we want to feel better,
Become calmer,
Receive guidance,
Heal something.
Or achieve a particular spiritual state.
But there's another way.
Understand meditation.
Meditation can be a practice of simply being.
Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi said,
As long as you're practicing meditation for the sake of something,
That is not true practice.
This does not mean meditation can't help us.
It means that when we sit down to meditation,
We can temporarily release the demand that the experience produce a particular result.
We stop trying to get somewhere.
We stop trying to become someone different.
We allow ourselves to be here exactly as we are.
The more we stop thinking and doing,
The more we begin to experience what I call our beingness.
Which is the simple experience of existing,
Before we add our personal stories,
Personality,
Judgments,
Needs,
Fears,
And interpretations.
When we're deeply in touch with our beingness,
The usual sense of separation can begin to soften.
We may feel less like an isolated individual struggling against life and more connected with everything that exists.
You may understand this connection as God,
Higher power,
The universe,
Pure consciousness,
Love.
Or being itself.
For me,
Allowing ourselves to be is one way of entering into union with that greater presence.
The silence I'm describing is not merely the absence of sound.
It's the spaciousness that becomes available.
When the constant mental commentary begins to settle.
Ordinarily.
The mind is continuously naming,
Evaluating,
Anticipating,
Remembering,
And trying to protect us.
This mental activity is especially strong when we've lived with shame,
Fear,
Hypervigilance,
Or guardedness.
The mind may constantly scan for danger,
Rejection,
Criticism,
Or evidence something's wrong.
Meditation helps us discover there's a larger space beneath all of the activity.
And within this space,
Thoughts may still arise.
But we don't have to follow them.
Feelings may arise.
But we don't have to define ourselves by them.
Sensations may arise,
But we don't have to immediately react to them.
We learn to observe what's happening without becoming completely identified with it.
This is one meaning of mindlessness.
Mindlessness does not mean being unconscious,
Careless,
Or unaware.
It means becoming temporarily free from the mental content that usually fills our awareness.
The mind becomes focused on no thing.
No thingness is not deadness or disconnection.
It's the open space beneath all the individual things we normally perceive.
There are human beings,
Animal beings,
And even tree beings.
Each is a distinct expression of being.
When the mind releases its attachment to separate objects and identities,
It can begin to sense the deeper ground from which all forms arise.
In moving towards nothingness,
We're not just moving away from life.
We're moving toward the ground of everything.
This kind of silence takes practice.
It can be compared to water slowly dripping onto a rock.
One drop may seem to make no difference,
But over time,
The shape of the rock changes.
In the same way,
Every time you return from thought to awareness,
Something begins to soften.
You don't need to force your mind.
To become blank.
You don't need to fight your thoughts.
You simply notice where your awareness has gone and then gently return.
I've created an audio meditation called Creating the Silence,
A mindlessness meditation.
To help you experience this practice directly.
The purpose is not to have a perfect meditation or force your mind to become blind.
It's to practice releasing the need to control the experience and to discover the silence beneath your thoughts.
As Jacqueline Small said,
There's nothing that has to be done.
There's only someone to be.
To find the audio meditation,
Go to my Insight Timer teacher profile.
And look for Creating the Silence,
A mindlessness meditation in my meditation library.
As you enter the practice,
Remember there's nothing you must achieve.
For this time,
Simply allow yourself to be.
Namaste.
