Hey,
It's Doug here.
Thanks so much for joining me on this meditation.
Now this is a simple enough meditation,
But it's pretty profound.
Today's session is all about thoughts.
So let's get into a comfortable seat and we'll discuss a little bit further what we'll do from there,
And the themes that come up with it.
So,
From your comfortable seat,
Whether that's on a cushion,
A stool,
A sofa,
A chair,
Or the floor,
Get yourself into an upright position.
We really want to be alert.
So let's show this in our posture first.
Each inhale let that spine grow taller and longer,
Crown of the head reaching to the sky,
And keeping that elevation use that exhale to relax into this position.
Setting yourself.
Each inhale we think tall,
Each exhale we relax.
Roll the shoulders back with that open heart.
Bring your hands into your lap or wherever you like to have them.
Breathing in and out through your nostrils.
I want you simply to focus on your experience of sitting and breathing.
Now quite often we will give you all sorts of things to think about while you're doing this,
But I'm going to leave that to you today.
That is part of the practice.
I want you just to focus on your experience.
And by that I just mean what are the things you are feeling right now.
As you focus on breathing and sitting,
You start to connect with the present moment.
You start to curate this reality.
And the reality is you are sitting and you are breathing.
So you choose with an open awareness what specifics to focus on,
But as long as you're thinking about your experience of sitting and breathing,
You're doing a great job.
And quite often that's all meditation is,
Finding a point for us to focus our attention on.
Now quite often this is easier said than done.
After not too long,
The mind starts to generate these thoughts,
Thoughts about the future,
Thoughts about the past,
Thoughts about what could be,
Plans,
Fantasies.
You know what?
That's okay.
These two can be part of your experience.
Them being generated is part of your experience.
Just as you focused on sitting and breathing,
You can now focus on thinking.
Now here's the caveat.
We don't want to get lost in the thought.
You can think about it like this.
Thoughts are very sticky things.
If we're not careful,
We get stuck to them and we go on a journey from one thought to another as it pulls us into the future or the past and away from the present.
Now that may seem confusing,
But let me explain.
Imagine looking up at the sky.
It's a beautiful sunny day.
As you're looking in your field of view,
A cloud emerges from left and moves along over the sun,
Makes it cloudy for a moment,
And then moves on to the right and out of your field of view.
Now as you went through that,
That cloud came into existence and out of existence.
You didn't deny that it existed.
You simply saw that it existed and let it go.
However,
If instead of staring up at the sky,
You moved at the same pace as the cloud,
Forever remaining in its shadow,
You may conclude that it's a particularly gloomy day.
You would fail to see the beautiful sun shining behind it because you've gone along with the cloud.
In this analogy,
The sky is your present moment,
The sun is all the good that comes in the present moment,
And the clouds are the thoughts that come into your mind.
Now to reiterate,
There's nothing wrong with those thoughts.
But what we don't want is to go along with them.
We don't want to go along with them as they take us away from our present experience,
As we miss all the beauty that exists right here and right now.
These thoughts are transient beings.
We should treat them as such,
See them,
Acknowledge them,
And let them go.
We start to realize the power of these thoughts to take us into the future or the past or into fantasies.
It's only granted to the thoughts by the fact that we hang on to them,
That we jump on for the ride.
We can counteract that journey by focusing on our present moment,
By choosing to stay still.
Those two things are mutually exclusive.
Our present moment and our ruminating thoughts,
Our planning thoughts,
Our future thoughts.
So if we can just train our mind on the present moment,
We can thwart the ability for these thoughts to take us places we don't want to go.
We can choose where we want to live.
Now you may say your experience of sitting and breathing is a particularly mundane one.
I'm not going to dispute that.
But here's the point.
If you can sit and you can breathe and find contentment and even pleasure in that,
What do the rest of your experiences in the day hold for you?
If you can extract joy in this moment just sitting and breathing,
If you can practice the art of staying with this experience even when it's not the most exciting,
How well are you poised for all the great experiences that your day has for you,
For your life?
This is our practice.
Realizing that contentment and joy can be found literally anywhere,
Even when we're just sitting and just breathing.
So for the next few moments,
Any time a thought does come up,
Can you acknowledge it?
And very gently let yourself come back to your present experience.
Great job.
Now when you're ready,
You can open your eyes as you invite new experiences into your life,
Knowing that you can choose to stay with that experience in the here and now or use those thoughts as tools instead of distractions.
You see,
Those thoughts can help us plan.
They can help us remember.
But we don't want them on autopilot.
We want agency over where we put our mind.
Well done for practicing today.
I look forward to seeing you again.
