Hey,
This is Will with Men Talking Mindfulness.
We're going to drop in and do another mindfulness moment.
I'm going to keep going down a little bit of the Eckhart Tolle rabbit hole.
With this from his book,
I'm going to read a quote and then we're going to do a meditation because of the quote.
This is in his book,
The Power of Now.
If you haven't read it,
I highly,
Highly suggest it.
I believe this is the book.
I must have read this back in 2003 or 2004 or something like that,
2005.
And that's when I started to pick up the meditation practice.
I think it's because of this book.
This is in chapter 10.
This is the final chapter of the book I'm going to read from.
And the title of this chapter is The Meaning of Surrender.
If you haven't checked out the mindfulness moment on Stillness Speaks,
That's also from Eckhart Tolle.
And in that chapter,
I think it's chapter 6 I read from in that book,
From Accepting and Surrendering.
So he is really so much about surrender and we'll get into that when we're going to follow up with a meditation.
So listen up.
Here's a quote from the book.
Nobody chooses dysfunction,
Conflict,
Pain.
Nobody chooses insanity.
They happen because there is not enough space,
There's not enough presence in you to dissolve the past,
Not enough light to dispel the darkness.
You are not fully here.
You have not quite woken up yet.
In the meantime,
The conditioned mind is running your life.
Similarly,
If you are one of the many people who have issues with their parents,
If you still harbor resentment about something they did or didn't do,
Then you still believe that they had a choice,
That they could have acted differently.
This always looks as if people had a choice,
But that is an illusion.
As long as your mind with its conditioned patterns runs your life,
As long as you are your mind,
What choice do you have?
None.
You are not even there.
The mind-identified state is severely dysfunctional.
It is a form of insanity.
Almost everyone is suffering from this illness in varying degrees.
The moment you realize this,
There can be no more resentment.
How can you resent someone's illness?
The only appropriate response is compassion.
Okay,
So let's take a moment and meditate.
Even if you're driving or you're out somewhere and you want to just keep going,
Just do the best you can.
With this meditation,
It's going to be just simple,
Straightforward,
Just doesn't take a lot of fancy things or tricks or tools to get into what he's talking about.
Like he also says in this book,
It's never not now to get to this here and moment,
This moment here and now.
So if you're going to sit traditionally,
Sit traditionally.
If you're sitting at your desk at work or somewhere else,
I invite you to ground yourself with your feet on the floor,
Maybe take off your shoes,
Maybe ground your hands on your thighs or maybe interlace them at the table in front of you if that's what's up.
Just start with keeping the eyes open nice and easy.
Let's just take a few breaths.
Exhale out to begin,
Feel that sensation of breath leaving your body,
Take a big giant inhale,
And exhale out the back of the throat.
Use this exhalation as a tool to help relieve stress,
Anxiety,
And those things,
Stress and anxiety,
Really get into the here and the now.
Inhale again,
Out,
And a bigger breath if you can,
Inhale,
Keep going,
Inhale,
Exhale out.
Okay,
Let's do a couple more like that with the eyes open,
Inhale,
Inhale,
Keep going,
Exhale.
Good,
Big breath in,
4,
3,
2,
1,
Out through the mouth,
Let it go,
2 more,
Inhale,
4,
3,
2,
1,
Out,
Easy,
Let it go,
Get one more time,
In,
4,
3,
2,
1,
Out,
Exhale,
Close the eyes,
Come back to a normal quality of breath as you breathe gently in and out through your nose and just notice how you're feeling right now in this moment,
Not identifying with your mind,
But being with your body.
Just notice how you're feeling.
It's okay if you're overwhelmed or stressed or joyful or happy or confused,
Just be with what's there.
Just keep trying to find our breath as it flows in and out of our body.
And flow,
You know,
It's a movement,
Right?
It's a verb of movement,
Is that right?
Flow,
Yeah,
It's flowing,
Right?
So it's active,
It's in our body,
We can experience it,
It's not a construct in the mind,
We can feel the inhale,
That feeling of a balloon in your body,
We can feel the exit and the relaxation and the emptiness of the body and the balloon as we exhale.
And that's real,
That's here,
That's now.
You can just start to accept that that's how simple things are sometimes.
You can just surrender to that simplicity.
Just feeling and spilling the breath,
Doing the best we can to focus on just that simple sensation of the breath in the body.
And try to just deepen the breath if you like.
So drop the breath down on your belly if you wanna maybe help bring the breath down there if it's not deep in down by your navel or belly button and maybe bring a hand on that area.
Try to fill into your hand and drop the breath deep.
And as we try to focus on the present moment,
Be our pure potential out,
Pure potentiality,
The awareness that we are and draw focus away from the mind and into this moment.
I promise you the mind already has a lot to say about it.
Keep breathing.
Let the mind kind of flow by just like traffic on a highway or sailboats in the ocean.
Your mind will bring up your to-do list,
Bring up something for the past and draw you into the future because that's all it knows.
It only knows two things,
The future or the past.
It's never not now.
That's why the breath can be such a powerful tool to help you get now,
Be present and surrendering and accepting two of the virtues,
Two of the qualities that we need to practice to get into our awareness,
To get to know our pure potentiality.
One thing that I hear a lot of early practitioners of meditation stumble with is they're trying to empty their mind.
It's never going to happen.
Just like the heart pumps blood,
The lungs are breathing,
The mind is an organ that thinks.
It's just doing what it's doing.
We don't have to allow it to take control and dictate our experience and our feelings and our actions.
That's what Descartes is talking about when he calls it a dysfunction,
An illness.
So if I keep finding that breath,
If you need to take a bigger breath just to wake up more and feel the sensations in the body and let it go.
Instead of trying to bat the mind away and it's seductive thinking and images and experiences it wants to pull you into,
Just note that's thinking and come back to your breath and your body.
Feeling might arise,
Just note that's feeling and then come back to your breath kindly,
Gently.
Accept and surrender that this is also a practice.
When we get better anything is through practice.
Just keep it simple,
Keep coming back to the physical sensation of the breath in your body.
I'm not trying to describe those experiences or write a paragraph about it,
Just note my body is lifting when I inhale,
My body falls when I exhale and use that sensation as the anchor for our meditation,
Just keep coming back right there.
This is boring,
That's a mental construct,
That's how devious the mind is and how it will do anything,
It will tell you anything to get you back to pull you into control,
To pull you into its control.
Just note that's just another thought,
Maybe anxiety or stress starts to rise like well that's a feeling,
Come back and maybe take a bigger breath and really begin to calm yourself down with those deeper breaths that's going to naturally shift us into a state of calm,
Cool and connected in the parasympathetic nervous system.
So we can use the breath in order to manipulate our body to let go of the mind and to become more aware of the mind to let go of it,
Just surrender,
Melt into the here and now.
Bring your hands over your heart and just take a moment of gratitude,
Thanking yourself for showing up and putting in this work,
Practicing and the more you practice the more present you'll become,
The less insane you'll be and the more you'll ground yourself into this moment into the here and now and I suggest if this is really resonating with you,
Do this every day for the next three weeks,
Month and then see how it starts to change you,
Share it with a friend because I'm sure they can stop the insanity as well or they want to.
So thank you very much for listening,
Thank you for being part of all this and being part of Men Talking Mindfulness on our Mindfulness Moment.
Catch you soon.
This is Will.
Over and out.
