Why We Meditate

Why do we meditate? What's the value of meditation today, for your real life? In my experience, it's to discover and enjoy our deepest nature. It's like coming home to your true Self. In this meditation, I will lovingly guide you drop your layers of worry doubt and judgement and discover your true self.

Transcript

Good morning,

Everyone.

Always good to be here with you.

I wanted to talk this morning about a kind of part two of why we meditate.

Because I think I know that we need to understand why we're doing something and it has to bring us value for us to continue to do it over time.

So if we ask,

Well,

I know I'm supposed to meditate,

But I don't do it every morning.

It's because you haven't gotten the payoff yet.

You don't exactly know what you're doing or what you're connecting to.

And so it's not bringing you value.

As humans,

We do what brings us value.

And so I want to go a little deeper into what you can experience,

What you're connecting to,

And where is the value here for you in your daily life,

Not somewhere in the future,

In your next life,

But today.

In my counseling practice,

Most of the time,

I would say 99.

9% of the time,

I'm counseling people into an experience of self-love,

Which means that they don't have it.

And I have found over the years that we are in a perpetual state of denying who we are and trying to be something other.

And that can never feel comfortable.

We're always striving to be something other than our nature.

And it's just never going to happen.

I'll tell you that right now.

It's never going to happen.

It creates a life of suffering because you are who you are on the deepest level.

So when people come to me and say,

I'm trying,

I'm working on it,

I ask them from the deepest part of my heart to stop and instead to listen deeply and align with who you really are because essentially you're in a middle place.

I'm not accepting who I am.

I'm trying to be something I'm not.

And I'm in this middle place of discomfort.

I can never be the something I'm not.

And I'm not happy with what I am presently.

In meditation,

In the practice,

The daily practice of meditation,

We don't do it to quiet the mind,

But quieting the mind happens.

The reason we're doing it is to be able to listen to the voice of something very deep inside of us,

Our true nature.

When we can hear it,

When we can feel it,

We recognize it is the best version of who we are.

And we don't want to be anything else than that.

It is our deepest beauty.

It is where we feel completely comfortable and at home.

That's why they say when you meditate well,

It feels like you're coming home.

Coming home to yourself,

To your own nature.

And then we can live through that place boldly without apology and line up every little thing we do behind that nature so that every encounter,

Every experience,

Every person that we meet,

Meets that person.

Not a confusion of who we are,

Who we want to be,

Or a nervousness or anxiety.

A direct connection to your deepest,

Most beautiful self.

This is why we meditate.

This is why I get on the mat every day and listen deeply so that I can present that person to the world,

To my family,

To my students,

To myself.

And so I can't think of a better reason to sit for 30 minutes.

But to.

.

.

So pick a place in your area that you can just focus your gaze.

It's nice if the thing you're looking at is alive.

It's just a little more enticing,

But it could be anything at all.

I'm looking at a lamp myself right now.

Because it is a focal point to bring all those scattered versions of yourself,

All those fragmented pieces into one energy.

Just imagine that all the lost energy being focused into one place.

Of course,

That's going to be powerful.

So let's do that with open eyes now.

We start with the looking.

Of course,

The questioning.

Did I pick the right thing?

Am I doing it correctly?

All the things the mind does to doubt its job.

That's why we connect to the heart.

The heart never doubts.

It only loves.

And so slowly,

As you stay focused,

You stop looking because you begin to see.

And there's a curiosity that starts to form.

So you notice something you haven't seen before.

And there's a curiosity in that.

I haven't seen that before.

Wow.

What haven't I seen?

And then in that moment of presence,

In that moment of connection,

This object starts to reveal itself to you.

You might notice a color you haven't seen before,

A shape or textures.

Textures often reveal themselves to me.

Color of the mind gets more quiet.

And now we are in a communication or exchange with this object.

We are in a sacred moment with this object.

You can slowly close your eyes.

Although you're still aware of this object in front of you,

You don't have to see it.

You can still feel it.

That develops a different kind of sensitivity.

So you begin to breathe into your own vessel,

Feeling the top of your inhale and the brightness there.

And the bottom of the exhale where it's deep,

Quiet,

Experiencing the beauty in either space.

And recognizing that both of those things exist in you.

There's a brightness and a curiosity and a quiet depth.

Can you follow the breath as it moves from one point to the other?

And this is where we begin to cross the bridge from the chattering mind into the steady self.

At any point,

The mind might pull you back,

Bring you into a more enticing thought about this or that.

But here we choose to be in this experience.

We politely and lovingly ask the mind to step aside just for now.

Awareness of the breath helps to steady the mind.

The awareness and pause at either end of the breath is a moment of presence.

That next exhalation,

Go ahead and root down into the moment,

Into your seat,

Into the earth,

Feeling all of your energy once again come into one place,

Which is the vessel of your body and the earth beneath you.

Can you feel how that quiets you,

How that offers you a sensation of contentment and perhaps also makes you aware of how uneasy you were just a moment ago when the energy was scattered?

Or the awareness that you can move your energy or even that you are energy?

So we root into the earth finding our grounding cord,

Imagining it pulling into the earth like a big old oak tree,

How steady you feel.

And like the roots of the tree,

We are going to take up the nourishment into the space of our belly,

Our creative center.

But all that lives there right now is possibility,

The energy of potential.

So try not to give it a name or a focus.

Just let it well up with the energy of the day.

Sit in that feeling,

Genuinely sit in that feeling.

Anything is possible for you today,

Anything at all.

The only thing that is going to limit that energy today is what you believe.

What you believe is possible and equally what you believe is not possible.

That's all that ever limits us.

Think about all those emotions that state that you are in perspective of belief systems.

As you start to feel very alive and vital with the energy given to you,

The gift that we get every day to live and breathe and create,

That should be enough.

And our gratitude is just that.

We're going to pull that energy up into that third space I was talking about earlier.

I want you to sit here for an extra moment or two this morning and knowing that what you offer is sacred,

Is a gift to yourself in the world.

There is never a need to apologize or make an excuse for who you are and what you offer.

Just having that conversation with yourself will give you the courage to recognize who you are and what you offer.

It will allow you to listen to that voice I mentioned earlier.

You might feel a quickening in your energy as this voice gets a little excited that it's finally time to be itself.

Notice,

Can you notice that you've stopped listening to the mind and listening to something else right now.

It's a different kind of listening.

Listening that comes through stillness and silence.

And it is not just poetry,

It is truth.

You give of yourself without the entanglements of the mind.

And you give of yourself that level of purity.

It's a healing for both you and whomever you're encountering.

And so your heart opens as a result.

See if you can feel into the space of your heart.

There's no doing.

We're in a constant state of becoming aware.

You don't have to open your heart.

You just have to become aware of your heart and it will open.

You notice the small conversations that are happening inside of you right now.

What little messages are you giving to yourself in this moment?

Finding your way now into the seat of the Buddha,

The third eye where you can let everything go.

Any of the remaining stickiness of your thoughts or your ego,

Just let it dissolve.

Take that comfortable seat right in the center of your brain.

Feel that energy shift as things open,

As you become more aware of things.

Let it just feel you.

Looking up toward your crown.

Maybe you can feel a pulse or an energy or light.

Moving into the body as you become really clear you're not this body because you're very connected to spirit right now.

The body is just a form we live in.

We are the totality of our awareness.

However clear or muddled that might be.

This is a nice time to completely let go and allow that healing to happen,

That change in frequency.

There's nothing you need to do but simply be.

Everything that is going to be produced by spirit has already been produced and our life is simply waking up,

Becoming aware,

Allowing it to unfold before our very eyes.

This is a nice time to completely let go and allow that healing to unfold before our very eyes.

You can let your breath slowly begin to deepen,

Noticing that shift that you created not by trying but by allowing.

There's an energy inside you now,

Your morning blessing.

You can go ahead and name that and that's what you might want to share with the group as you deepen your breath and begin to open your eyes.

We share that blessing for many reasons.

One because we get to process it when we put it out in the world.

Two we get to process it when we offer it to someone else,

The group.

That allows us to understand that we are it if we can offer it.

We have it.

We no longer need to search.

Reviews

Finally! A simple and deep explanation and meditation lead using a normal way of speaking! I loved it. Thank you Paula 💓 I don’t have to open my heart, I have to be in my heart ♥️ Brilliant! 🙏🏻