And I can say that the most common Message I get from new students,
when, you know, I say, Well, how was the meditation? ...
is, Well, my thought was, my mind was really busy. You know, I think a lot.
[LAUGH] You know? And I usually want to say, You and all of us.
Because our minds secrete thoughts, Like our bodies secrete enzymes.
It's just what minds do - they think. It's part of survival,
it's supposed to happen. It ensures survival, it ensures flourishing. So
we're not trying to stop thoughts and we're not trying to control thoughts.
What we are intending is cultivating a wise relationship with thoughts.
I sometimes imagine like an airplane, you know, when it goes through a cloud how,
in the middle of the cloud is like all the whole world is cloud and
just seems like that's the universe. But then when it gets out of the cloud,
the cloud's in the field, but you just sense the vastness of what is.
When we're inside a thought and we forget ourselves, we forget its forgetfulness.
We forget the fullness of awareness. The whole world is shaped by that cloud. So
how can we be aware of thinking?
The classic line is that thinking is a very good servant and a very,
very poor master. It's a good servant because we know it.
If we're traveling, we need a map, we need GPS. Guidance is really, really helpful.
If we want to build a building, we have to visualize it and see what it's going to
look like. If we want to heal a disease, we have to sense the causation and
drug interactions, and what's an integrated approach that's--we have to
think about things. I definitely think a lot before I give these talks.
And then part of me goes, Okay, anything that really matters about this talk is
not going to come through thinking – and then I try to stop thinking.
[LAUGH] It's like I have to have an experience, then try to put it into words.
That's a--I didn't mean to go there. But [LAUGH] we have to,
part of the spiritual path is the wise use of thought.
In other words, we contemplate the Metta meditation, the love and
kindness meditation. It's a reflection on where goodness is.
Compassion is a reflection on where vulnerability is. We use our minds to help
turn us towards the light, but the thoughts aren't the thing itself.
When thoughts are the master... it's because we're caught in obsessing.
We're lost in them, they're driven by fear. They show up as judgment,
and it's a prison. It's like you can sense that your body and
mind is living in something smaller than the truth of who you are.
Thinking then becomes, when it's a master, a prison. I remember some years ago,
working with a student and he was very caught in self-judging thoughts.
And he said that he reminded himself of this tiger,
this regal white tiger that he had visited in the Washington DC National Zoo.
The tiger's name was Mohini. And
Mohini was put in this cage that was like about a 12 by 12 cage with iron bars and
a cement floor. And for years Mohini would just go back and forth, pacing,
pacing. You've seen how it happens in these tigers in cages in a zoo.
And eventually, what happened was the biologists and
staff worked together to create this amazing natural habitat for
her. Several acres had hills and a pond and, you know, a variety of vegetation.
So it was with a lot of excitement and anticipation that the staff brought
Mohini to her new home, but it was too late. Because when the tiger was released,
she immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound, and
just began pacing the same kind of pacing, 12 feet by 12 feet, back and
forth. And she did that for the rest of her life,
wearing bare this stretch of grass. So perhaps,
the biggest tragedy that we kind of sense in our lives is that freedom is possible.
When we sense this possibility of Loving without holding back and
of really resting in a radiance, an awareness that's very open.
We sense the possibility of presence in the moments, and
we watch each day how we re-contract and play out old patterns.
So the tragedy feeling is, it's possible, but...
we get so habituated. So the key to unlocking the door,
you know, the key to opening us out of that prison is to
begin to bring a mindful attention to the patterns. So
we're not just living in them and playing them out over and
over. So mindfulness of thoughts means being aware of them, not being identified.
And it enables us to realize, and this is the big thing, that thoughts are thoughts,
they're not reality. And the biggest breakthrough, truly,
the biggest breakthrough I see happening at retreats--and it just goes deeper and
deeper--is this recognition: I don't have to believe my thoughts.
I am not my thoughts. In other words, that self that my thoughts is telling me about
is not me. It's the same thing, really. Different expressions of it.
So what we'll do is explore some key skillful means that
help us to become more mindful of thinking. So
we can realize what we are beyond thoughts. And the first is just a very
simple, just to get us kind of deepening our attention to thinking. Again,
I'd like to invite you to close your eyes and let your attention go within.
Take a few breaths, let yourself Feel collected. Come right here.
Just to imagine that you're like a cat by a mouse hole. And you're
going to be counting whatever mice kind of peek out or run out.
You're counting thoughts. And that in the next very short while,
your only job is to notice the thoughts that come and just number them.
So just feel yourself and your body, feel your breath, whatever helps you to know
you're here. And know your intention is to count your thoughts. Okay. Please begin.
Okay.
Opening your eyes... Come on back.
So let me check with you. How many of you had under 10?
Okay. There's under 10 people here... [LAUGH] How about 10 to 20?
The 10 to 20 zone? 20 to 30?
30 to 40? Over 40?
Over 100? [LAUGH] So just to take a Moment and sense, as you were being
that cat by the mouse hole, what the thoughts actually were?
And how many of you had thoughts that came kind of audio,
like word, words or sound bites. Can I see by hands? I'm just curious.
Okay. How many of, more had kind of images, maybe a background message or
something, but more imagery? Yeah. How many were still shots?
Movie? How many had kind of like a movie? Okay. So some of you noticed that
it could be more in motion kind of like a movie. Sometimes, they're body-based.
You might have noticed that you had a thought, but it was some impression.
But you could really kind of feel the sense of it in your body. And
some you might have noticed that you had kind of sneaky thoughts like, Oh,
it's getting quieter. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] Or, Oh,
just the naming of a number is a thought, right? Anybody get caught in that loop?
[LAUGH]Uh-huh. And
sometimes, they're emotionally tangly, like, I'm really not doing this right.
I really don't, you know, or some reaction to it and
then you start sensing that the thought comes with a lot of energy. So
the deal is that thoughts are representations of reality.
They come as, you know, usually images, sound bites,
some combination of it. The most important recognition, and
this is the phrase that I like the best, is that thoughts are real, but
they're not true. And by that, I mean, they're representations of reality.
They really are happening, but they're not the reality itself.
In other words, if you saw a photo of a tree or you had a thought of a tree,
it wouldn't be the actual living tree that you know with its leaves budding, and
turning colors, and falling off, and swaying in the breeze or
still, or the smell of blossoms, or the feeling of the bark. It's not that.
Right? It's a representation. John Audubon said,
If there's a difference between the bird and
what the guidebook says, believe the bird. [LAUGH] You know? [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] And
some of you know that for many years, I had a favorite t-shirt and
it said: Meditation, it's not what you think. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] So
when our minds are very busy, when we're in that incessant dialog,
we tend to conflate thoughts with reality. In other words,
they're not in our mind representations, they're not a map...
They are it. We're believing what's going on in our mind. So,
most styles of meditation begin by saying, Let's get quiet a little, not get
rid of thoughts, but let's do something to collect the attention like the breath.
Like scanning through the body, so that they're not taking over quite so much, so
we can begin to be mindful of the fact that they're even happening. Okay.
So we quiet a little. But then, the next instructions deepen, and this is,
these are instructions for getting mindful of the thoughts themselves. And
the first and major support that
many people find helpful in mindfulness of thinking is to
do a little bit of mental notation or naming. And
you don't have to do a lot, it doesn't have to be like every single thought,
you're naming it. But you'll find that in the moment of naming a thought,
it really loosens the identification with it. Clearly, it's a thought,
not the reality itself. So, you might name the type of thought. Okay.
This is a worry thought. This is a planning thought. This is a remembering.
Okay. You might say, This is a judging thought, or I'm rehearsing again.
A lot of us do a lot of rehearsing, or
I'm figuring out, you know, figuring Out thoughts. Sometimes, so
we're just going to name them. Sometimes fantasizing, daydreaming. But then,
if you'd like, for some of us we have our Top Ten hits, and we know what they are.
It's like we know that we keep recycling, and it might be that your Top Ten,
one of your Top Ten is to do with work, or to do with a struggle with a colleague, or
is to do with a romance or an infatuation that you're having, or to do with dieting.
Or to do with how you appear. Or to do with redecorating or remodeling or
we--we have our Top Ten. Right? So, it's not to get rid of them,
but to know they're happening, that you might say, Okay, you know,
thoughts about sickness. I remember when I was struggling with sickness.
I was constantly trying to figure out what was wrong with me and what would make me
better. So I'd just call it, you know, sick person thinking. You know, just like,
Okay, I'm a sick person trying to figure out my sickness. It helped.
Gives a little bit of space, and then there's a little bit of choice,
which is the whole deal. So the first step is a little bit of this naming.
It's basically recognizing thinking Is happening right now. And
it's a very friendly, soft, non-judging recognition.
If you recognize thinking and you carry with that a really big judgment,
like this is a sign of bad meditatorship or
something like that, you know? [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] If, in other words,
if you start getting on your own case, all you've done is add another thought,
a judging thought. That's really fear based and
just keeps on fueling reactivity. So, part of the power of mindfulness
is to recognize with really no judgment, just recognize, okay, thinking.
Some of you might remember this wonderful poem by Kaveri Patel.
She writes this, she says, There's a monkey in my mind, swinging on a trapeze,
reaching back to the past, or leaning into the future, never standing still.
Sometimes, I want to kill that monkey... Shoot it square between the eyes,
so I won't have to think anymore, or feel the pain of worry. But
today I thanked her, and she jumped down straight into my lap,
trapeze still swinging as we sat still.
Do you have a sense of the attitude? Because this is what's key.
As we cultivate mindfulness of our thoughts, one part of the attitude
is be friendly. Just be friendly, just happening. Be curious. Okay. Thinking, and
this is another virtual reality I'm creating. Be good humored. There,
I mean, they're really wacky. There's a saying that the mind has no shame.
[LAUGH] You know, it goes anywhere, does everything. So
that's the first part--is this kind of knowing it's happening, naming it.
And the second part, you might call it letting go.
I think of it more as, if you're clutched onto a thought, as relaxing the grip and
just reopening back into our senses. When we're thinking,
we've left our senses. Check it out. When you come back from a thought,
you'll notice that while you were thinking, you weren't in touch with your
body. You weren't hearing the sounds that are actually happening right here.
You weren't feeling whatever mood is going on, you were in a virtual reality.
So we relax the clutch onto the thought, the contraction,
and listen again, and feel in our body again.
Let the senses be your home base. Come back, come back, come back. And
then, and here's a really, really valuable piece...
Notice the difference between any thought and this mysterious,
ever-changing aliveness that's right here.
This presence that's here. Just notice the difference.
When you come back from a thought, sometimes coming back will be really
unpleasant. You'll be having a thought about something's that's really agitating.
And when you kind of let go of the content of thought and come into your body,
you're going to have to actually directly contact the vulnerability and agitation.
So the point isn't that, when you let go of thoughts and come back into presence,
it's all like crystal rainbows of light, you know, and fun and pleasure it's,
it's just whatever was going on. But it's the reality of the moment.
It's the one place where we can begin to discover compassion, and
in the space between the thoughts,
that's the one place where wisdom can really begin to arise.
For more infomation >> Tú y Yo - Duration: 55:11. 
For more infomation >> Entérate todo lo que sucedió en los Premios Grammy 2017 | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 3:50. 
For more infomation >> Colgate Optic White® High Impact White™ para Dientes Más Blancos Rápidamente - Duration: 0:16. 
For more infomation >> ¡Juan Gabriel nunca dejó desamparados a sus hijos! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 4:11. 
For more infomation >> Horóscopo de hoy, 13 de febrero de 2017, por el astrólogo Mario Vannucci | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 3:30. 
For more infomation >> Vento Superbia & Kyddiekafka - Backstreet Girl (Videoclip) - Duration: 3:35. 
For more infomation >> ¿Por qué deportaron a Guadalupe García de Rayos? | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 5:44. 
For more infomation >> Siempre Niños | Dance Zone Ballet bailó al ritmo de los 80s | Entretenimiento - Duration: 2:03. 
For more infomation >> Esta es la Recomendación Astral para el 13 de febrero | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 0:54. 
For more infomation >> Crece la angustia entre los hispanos por las redadas | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 0:40. 
For more infomation >> ¡Lucha contra el tiempo para evitar una tragedia! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 1:02. 
For more infomation >> Las Noticias de la mañana, lunes 13 de enero de 2017 | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 7:00. 
For more infomation >> Recetas de cocina: Galletitas para los Enamorados | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 4:59. 
For more infomation >> ¡La gran represa de Oroville amenaza con desbordarse! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 2:18. 
For more infomation >> Javier El Chicharito Hernández enamorado de Camila Sodi | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 1:25. 
For more infomation >> ¡Marc Anthony se divorció un día antes de San Valentín! | Un Nuevo Día | Telemundo - Duration: 6:15. 
For more infomation >> Artist Zayn Malik Live
For more infomation >> KEKEC - Film za djecu (Sa Prevodom) (1951) - Duration: 1:27:49. 
For more infomation >> Présentation du Gala des DSI 2017 - Par Robert Eusèbe - Duration: 1:03. 
For more infomation >> Présentation du Gala des DSI 2017 - Par Robert Eusèbe - Duration: 1:09. 
For more infomation >> Présentation du Gala DSI 2017 - Par Jacky Galicher - Duration: 0:49. 
For more infomation >> facebook soziale plugins wordpress blog facebook seite - Duration: 4:11. 
For more infomation >> ►Anushka নায়িকা অণুষ্কা শর্মা জীবন বৃত্তান্ত Biography of Bollywood Actress Update - Duration: 2:46. 
For more infomation >> RC主播MINI咪妮 不公平❤106.02.13 - Duration: 3:55. 
For more infomation >> Mail & Thank you ✉️️✉️️ - Duration: 9:09. 
For more infomation >> Hyundai i30 1.4i Dynamic 68897 KM ! SUPER STAAT !!! - Duration: 1:15. 
For more infomation >> Hyundai Tucson 2.0I DYNAMIC /Airco/Cruise/Trekh/16inch/NAP/Garantie - Duration: 1:09. 
For more infomation >> BMW 3 Serie 316 I Exe Clima&Cruise,Pdc,Sportinterieur - Duration: 1:21. 
For more infomation >> Chrysler Voyager 2.4I SE 7-persoons Airco Cruise control Nieuwe APK Inruil mogelijk - Duration: 1:41. 
For more infomation >> Hyundai ix35 1.6I GDI PRO Navi+BT+Camera ECC-Airco Cr.Control KeylessEntry 17''LMV 5jr.Garantie - Duration: 1:07. 
For more infomation >> 2011 Boston Celtics @ New York Knicks - MSG (Part 2) - Duration: 1:00:41. 
For more infomation >> EESTI NAISED VÕI BRITISH WOMEN? Q&A (Vlogiminutid Raidiga Ep. 13) - Duration: 11:42. 
For more infomation >> Cartão-postal - Duration: 1:17. 
For more infomation >> Injustice 2 - Trailer de Gameplay - Revelação do Monstro do Pântano - LEGENDADO PT-BR - Duration: 1:35. 
For more infomation >> Odcinek 18: Droga na Krasnojarsk - Marian na świecie: Rosja-Mongolia-Kazachstan - Duration: 22:05. 
For more infomation >> Cataratas: Edith se livrou da catarata e dos colírios! - Duration: 5:46. 
For more infomation >> Faculty of needlework - Welcome to the channel! - Duration: 1:51. 
For more infomation >> История Библейского обмана. Евангелие от Иуды, Иисуса Христа. The gospel of Judasс - Duration: 36:21. 
For more infomation >> MINUTE - The idea - Listen, do you have a minute? -Escucha, ¿Tienes un minuto? - Duration: 1:01. 
No comments:
Post a Comment