Meditation: The Reset Button for Life and a Portal to Higher Consciousness

Are you feeling the heaviness of the world on your shoulders? Picture a button you could press to reset, instantly bringing peace to your mind. That's the power of meditation. Join us this episode, as Dr. Douglas James Cottrell explores how meditation acts as that reset button, allowing us to take a breather from the incessant hustle and bustle of today's world. We dissect its ability to provide a serene recess for deeper contemplation and unveil how it can be your personal portal to the intangible Akashic field and higher dimensions.

Now imagine the ripple effect of a group of individuals meditating, the collective intention, the energy shift that reverberates. We delve into the transformative power of group meditation and the potential it holds to manifest positive changes on a community-wide scale. We unpack the impact of collective intention, the magic of sending out love and how it can alter the energy of entire communities. Dr. Douglas emphasizes the importance of developing a strong character, a pivotal factor that can lead to a life of lesser regrets.

How do you counter hate? With understanding, peace, and above all, love. This episode addresses the destructive nature of hate, and the liberating power love holds in overcoming it. We celebrate the freedom in embracing individuality, and how accepting who you are can be the key to inner peace and contentment. As we conclude our discussion, we differentiate between the monkey mind and the elephant mind, and how meditation can guide you away from the former. Join us for this deep dive into the intricate world of the mind, and the power meditation holds in navigating it.

Hosted by Douglas James Cottrell. Co-hosted by Les Hubert. Audio engineering by Douglas M Cottrell.

Transcript

Announcer: 0:00

Welcome to Wake Up with Dr Douglas James Cottrell, your source for helpful information, advice and tips to live your life in a mindful way in this increasingly chaotic world. For over four decades, Dr Douglas has been teaching people how to develop their intuition and live their lives in a conscious way. His news and views of the world tomorrow, today, are always informative and revealing. To learn more about Dr Douglas, be sure to visit his website, douglasjamescotrellcom, where you can download self-help exercises you can do right in the comfort of your own home. And now here's your host, dr Douglas James Cottrell.

Douglas James Cottrell: 0:42

Good morning. I'm your host, Douglas James Cottrell. I'm joined here with my good friend and co-host, Les Hubert, and today we come back with another podcast on the Wake Up. Les, what's the title for today's show?

Les Hubert: 0:56

Hi Doug. Today they have questions about meditation. We know that meditation has been with us for a long time, but they want to know what is the importance of meditation and why should we really practice it, even in these modern times.

Douglas James Cottrell: 1:09

Well, meditation is, of course, a normal function that we do all the time. Daydreaming is part of meditation. Contemplation, concentration on a problem, trying to work it out in your mind. Also, just listening to music that makes you a sense of pleasure or pleasing sensation that comes over you is a form of meditation. There are other more let's say, routine meditations, where people are candle gazing. They take a candle, they light it, they look at the flame and it puts them into an altered state of mind. Whatever that state of mind is, I'm just going to call it an altered state of mind or the alpha state of mind. There are, of course, other brain functions, or the brain shifts and goes into different cycles, but for today we'll just say an altered state of mind or thinking.

Douglas James Cottrell: 2:09

Now we understand we have a conscious mind and a personality that influences the mind, and the emotions are something that come up with memory. When you're thinking about something and you have a memory of it, you have an emotion that's attached. So attempting to get into a state of meditation is to go into a type of thinking without an emotion that's derogatory. In other words, you're looking for that one true positive emotion that we can summarize and call it love or loving, and as you're in that state of harmony and you're feeling or looking for a sense of love, all the let's say the, the negativity that's going on in your mind is sort of negated. You kind of move away from it. You kind of forget temporarily your life and the situations you're in, the circumstances, the woes, the pain, the concern, the stress. So in the early stages, of why meditation is important, less is that it stops your mind from random accessing emotions and thoughts and memories and worries, and it sort of quiets the mind, if you will. You're attempting to separate your intellectual personality, mind conscious mind, if you will and go into a deeper state of mind, you might say subconscious mind or you might call it super subconscious mind, which is the soul mind, and so you're ever reaching towards that soul, mind, consciousness, that part of you that knows all, it knows what to do, it knows how to guide you. It's kind of piggybacking in your life, letting you do all the things that you do as a person.

Douglas James Cottrell: 4:08

But as you're meditating you're attempting to get back to that still quiet place in your mind. And that place we can call it a special place, we can call it, well, anything you like, but the point is it's a place of, I would say, solitude, protection, comfort. It's a state that allows you to relax and sort of take a recess out from your daily concerns, and then, of course, after meditation, you get to refresh yourself. With this meditation, you get to have a new look at all the situations and circumstances that are going on. So why should it be practiced in a daily basis? Because the clutter of the daily experiences basically puts your mind off the path and when it's not in a state of harmony or peace, it's in that random access mode. It's, let's say, subject to all the negativity that's around you today, whether it's listening to some newscasts on TV, or listening to some information on the internet, or listening to people who are your friends and neighbors, who are complaining, or perhaps you're in the room or mill, or perhaps life's treating you a little difficultly and you're feeling inundated with all the negativity around you.

Douglas James Cottrell: 5:34

Meditation is the place to take a recess from daily life and by getting into a deeper state of meditation, into that contemplation on something you can only think of one thing at a time. So when you meditate, you can only meditate on one thing at a time. Meditation will allow you to access information from the great beyond, that is to say from the Akashic field or the Akashic records or the higher dimensions, and that is where you might find a solution to your problem, that is where it may help you make the correct decision and that is the area where wisdom and intelligence exist. So meditation can be broken down into taking a recess from your daily routine to feel loving and comfortable, a sort of refreshing moment. It can be further deepened and taking a point of basically brainwashing, mindwashing all the bugaboos and difficulties, worries that are in your mind, and allowing you to reset and come back to a state of peace.

Douglas James Cottrell: 6:41

It allows you also to contemplate and investigate and come up with answers or directions or advice to situations that you have going on in your life. For instance, you can meditate on whether you should buy a certain property, whether it would be good or not, and you might get a sensation of wonderful things happening. Or you might get a sensation or pictorial display that this is going to be a house full of the money pit, all kinds of problems, and so your meditation is to say don't go there. You can also use this to problem solve and invent things, find solutions for certain circumstances, and also to guide you for health things.

Douglas James Cottrell: 7:23

What diet should I have? Should I be a vegetarian, a vegan, or should I be a meat eater? Because everybody has a physical need that's different from everybody else. Your heritage, your DNA, all that that makes up you. It can be contemplated upon to find out what is the best diet for you, if I can go that way. So meditation is a vehicle to sort of lean on the shoulder of a higher sort of intelligence, an availability of information and wisdom that can come to you only in a state of relaxing your body, breathing properly, allowing your mind to shift gears and get into an altered state of consciousness, and then to be patient enough to wait for an answer to manifest. That's what mindfulness and the law of attraction and all those motivational terms are about that this state of mind allows you to attract and answer a solution, a direction or guidance to something that's going on in your daily life.

Les Hubert: 8:26

So all this thing about mindfulness these days, everybody is that what they're mentioning Is meditation. Is that what they're actually talking about? Mindfulness is meditation.

Douglas James Cottrell: 8:37

Not in the way I interpret it. Mindfulness means being able to keep your mind focused on a certain issue, a problem, a concern, a task, something that it's your duty, and your duty alone to finish. In other words, if you don't do anything, nothing happens. A responsibility is where you call up somebody and you say Mr Accountant, lawyer, advisor, here, take care of this for me. But when it comes to you, then you have to be sort of mind focused on the issue, and mindfulness can be expanded into keeping on track, staying on the path.

Douglas James Cottrell: 9:19

Don't procrastinate, don't be sidetracked, don't be dissuaded. Keep your mind focused on whatever it is you're focusing on to do or complete or finish a task. So mindfulness is sort of a concentration on a single saying, direction or place and what we do. Our conscious mind is random access. It's distracted all the time, and so you have to come up with little rules to OK, if I can do this whatever in 30 seconds, then I'll stop what I was thinking about and I'll do this and I'll come back. However, mindfulness is focused on something, concentrating on it, staying on the path and staying in the direction you've chosen to go. Rather than mindfulness being a state of meditation, it's more of a function.

Les Hubert: 10:11

So the like Kasey once said that mind is the builder, and yet we hear about, you know, people going with their feelings, that it's important to listen to your feelings. Is mind the way to go and then the feelings corroborate it or endorse it, or is that we go to the feelings first and then we go to the mind?

Douglas James Cottrell: 10:29

Well, that's an interesting perspective. Mind is the builder. Mind is what you think about all the time, and it's the mind means to be your own person. Often we go down a certain direction and somebody will pop up and say don't do that, go do this. They'll throw you the curve, as I like to call it, and you will follow the advice just because they said it was such authority or assurance or confidence, only to find out later they were wrong and in fact they were just making it up and in fact they were telling you what to do but they wouldn't do it themselves. So when your mind is the builder is to be your own person, it's to say thank you very much for your advice. I think I'll do it my way.

Douglas James Cottrell: 11:23

It's better to make your own mistakes than to let somebody else make mistakes for you, because you know what you have to pay either way. If you pay when you make a mistake or if somebody else makes a mistake, you still pay. So the best is to say thank you, but keep on track, keep your, be your own mind, and mind is to build. There is that what goes on in your mind all the time is what is building you as a character as a person, and a development of your soul, consciousness, and to find that way to that greater consciousness. To people who are more aware, things are obvious. To people who are not more aware it's not so obvious, and so you have to spend time thinking about it, contemplating, thinking, experimenting. You have to do plus, you have to know, and by experience and knowledge you end up with wisdom. So if you make a mistake, you're not going to do that a second time.

Douglas James Cottrell: 12:19

But the mind is to build everything. That who you are is in your mind when you're 80, you remember things that happens to you when you're 18 as if they were yesterday. You have regrets and if you regret something, you made a mistake, you have to learn how to forgive yourself. If you are going to do something, you should think about it and say this is forever. Let's, let's not make a mistake, let's be true to our spouse, let's be honest with our business friends, let's be fair with our friends and let's not try to embellish, cheat take or to acquire more than our fair share. Be fair with everybody and that sense of character, building that sense of honesty, that sense of justice and doing right.

Douglas James Cottrell: 13:10

That is in the mind, the steps to take to build a strong mind so that you're not worrying, you're not hiding, you haven't cheated, you haven't lied and you haven't. You don't live in fear all the time. To come to that point of a strong character that takes a lot of effort and the sooner you start that effort, the better that effort goes. Then no regrets in your later life. Easier life gets because you know what the right thing to do, you know how to behave with people, you know how to deal with people, and that is that, in essence. What we're all about is learning how to deal with each other.

Douglas James Cottrell: 13:47

So mind is the builder, is talks about an understanding and a wisdom Right Wisdom in your life. Younger the better, okay. And if you could learn by other people's mistakes, if you could listen to your elders that is to say, people had maybe more life than you or maybe they've had the same experience and you listen to them then you won't make the same mistakes they did to gain the knowledge that they did. You can benefit by their knowledge and their understanding. That's a huge benefit.

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Les Hubert: 15:35

You were a good friend of George Carlin the comedian and I saw a recent video. He was interviewed some time ago and he said you know, he said he loves, he had a love of people, of love of humanity, but he said when they got into groups he didn't find them attractive anymore because he said they gave up the power and the beauty of the individual. And yet you hear stories of group meditations where people would go into cities of high crime and they'll have this group meditation and they actually statistically proven that they could bring the rate of crime down. So my question is and according to the people that have posted this question as well is why is it that we have such power with group meditation? What makes it so much powerful when we combine our efforts?

Douglas James Cottrell: 16:19

People are gathered in accord, they have the same mind, their mindfulness in a group, their focus in a group, and when a group of minds come together, they have power as much as we have telepathy and we have mental skills and abilities. When we come together and we're all in the same frame of mind, that's multiply. So when you're in an individual state of mind and you're focused and you're sort of an ambassador or a beacon of love that is felt and that can be projected. So when you have a group of minds in the same accord, with the same purpose, the same focus, for instance, to look at a city that is in a state of disarray, where there are people who are committing crimes, this is a disjointed, random, sort of like a beehive of negativity. So the love that we would send to these people from a group remember everybody in that beehive of negativity is an individual. They're committing crimes, fraud, violence, but these are all individual situations, like bubblebees and a hive. So, as we as a group send love, let's envision that love as a cloud and we send it to a certain location, chicago for instance and we just keep sending love. Well, those people who are caught up in the negativity, the negative mind, if you will, the violent mind. We can influence them because inside of everyone is some good. Bad guys hang out with each other, but they have a party, they have respect for each other, they have affection for one another within their group or gang. So that part of them, that is human nature or the soul, when we reach out to them and we send them this cloud of love, they don't know where it's coming from. But that kind of mind is easily influenced because it's of a lower vibration. The people who are sending the love, that higher state of, let's say, humanity, that's of a higher vibration. And a higher vibration always influences a lower vibration, it negates it, if you will.

Douglas James Cottrell: 19:05

So think of it as the love being sent towards these people, these violent people, these people who are in pain, these people who are causing pain, and envisioned like a cloud of smoke at a beehive. When the beekeeper comes over and he puffs smoke at the beehive, what happens? All the bees sort of go to sleep, their activity goes way down, they become docile. Well, think of it in that way, that as a meditating group of superior minds, people by that I mean who are practiced and experienced at sending love to a distance to a specific cause, to calm the minds and hearts of those who are in pain or those that are committing crimes and negativity and violence and causing pain themselves. And for that moment they become docile, they become happy, they become less painful to themselves. And what do they do? Well, they decide not to rob somebody, or they decide not to hit somebody, or they decide not to do some violent thing because they're not in pain anymore.

Douglas James Cottrell: 20:23

So in that crude example, it's kind of a way of understanding that there is a way of projecting love, the same as we can project negativity as well. Hate can be projected towards a group of people and you know what happens when hate is projected. Well then violence and even death occurs. So, to a varying degrees of that hate or negativity being projected towards someone, that is a function of your mind, your spiritual emotions, if I can call it that. Understanding that when you pass away, you kind of get away. You leave all the negative emotions back here in the world and you take with you the amount of love that you've earned. And in the heavens above only love exists, as the only emotion is taken forward. The rest are left behind.

Douglas James Cottrell: 21:19

So, but understanding, it is kind of like a spiritual affection or love that you're able to telepathically or metaphysically or somehow through spiritual healing, laying on a fence, so to speak, telepathy, whatever the gift is, you're projecting it on a group of people that are in pain, and so they respond and their violence, the violence reports, the crime level drops automatically because people aren't so apt to wake up in the morning and say I'm going to hurt somebody, I'm going to go shoot the dog next door because it was barking, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to. Instead, they wake up in the morning and say, wow, I feel terrific. You know, I think I'll go down and play a little basketball down at the court, or I think I'll go for a run, or I think I'll have a good day at work. Or, you know, I won't drive my, my delivery truck so aggressively, I'll give people a break. You know like, go ahead, don't? You know? I will cut you off, go ahead. And so that simple, basic interaction between ourselves can be influenced by a group of people independently interjecting into that group that sense of peace, calmness, love that is innate. It is within us all. Only at that moment in time it's being appealed to so the people don't do violence as much as violent activity as much as they did, and the crime rates go down, the violent rates go down, the assaults go down, the murder rate goes down. But again it can be the other way around.

Douglas James Cottrell: 22:55

When you have people hating, well then hate is likewise strengths for to one another. Love and hate are not opposites, you know. They're two distinct things. So it's not a matter of saying either love or the opposite of love is hate. No, no, no. They are two different things. They are two different emotions. Love is constructive, it's creative and it's inside of all of us and when we express it, we feel love and loving ourselves. To hate the same thing when we all of us have hated ourselves. But those who are wise and who are especially more aware and are seeking a spiritual path, they learn to reject hate, overcome it and not be triggered into negativity which leads to hate. Instead, they are allowed to allowing themselves to balance or seek peace. And, of course, the people who give in to hate end up hating whatever they're hating, doing negativity. You know, painful things to other people, but also themselves. Hate is a cancerous thing. It gobbles you up from within. Oh.

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Les Hubert: 25:24

So in the spring to mind the fact that we are, we areour minds are very powerful and we really have to come to groups of the fact that we are responsible for what we think.

Douglas James Cottrell: 25:34

Oh, absolutely. And the sooner you become aware of that the better. I mean we're taught all of our lives to sink as an individual, so to speak, not realizing that in reality we're forming clubs and groups and lodges. I mean we come together naturally. We have the tennis club, we have the hunt club kind of thing, the yacht club, you know the team club and things like that. So we come together for short periods of time in our life with different organizations or clubs, from, you know, boy Scouts and Girl Scouts to, you know, even up to the military. You know, everybody reminisces about the days they ran the service and they wish they were still in the service. But when they were in the service, going through the time in the service, they were. I can't wait to get out of this, that's military. But when they, when they think back, there was a lot of camaraderie and brotherly love and sisterly love and, you know, respect and everything was organized. So discipline is a good thing to have.

Douglas James Cottrell: 26:45

But the point, the point being, is that as we are taught to be individuals, we're separated and when we're excluded from things we're scared. We're always trying to keep up, we're trying to compromise and become part of a group and fit in, so to speak. And as you get older, you learn not to do that. You learn it's okay to be yourself, it's okay to be alone, it's okay to think the way you think, it's okay to be grumpy and say, no, I don't want those bananas, I want these, these bananas. Don't try to sell me what I don't want. So as you get older, you get back into your own mind. You become who you are and you know what you like and what you don't like. You know whom you like and who you don't like and as you become sort of a frame of mind where you're social, you can socialize with people and you don't have to worry about the closure of wearing how wealthy you are or not, what kind of car you have. You just show up and there you are, in your Canadian tuxedo. That's a pair of jeans and a jean jacket, by the way, and you're having fun. Everybody else is wearing a sports jacket, but you just show up the way you feel and to have that confidence and to be who you are not concerned with what other people think about you. Of course you have to be mindful, respectful and social and all those good things prudent if you will, but you are confident in yourself.

Douglas James Cottrell: 28:21

That takes a lifetime to come to and it takes a lifetime of overcoming all the things that you've been taught, shown, given or expected of you by other people To come to that point, to be your own person, to have your own expectations of yourself, to approve of yourself the way you see fit, not the way others do. And if you can do that then you'll have peace and you won't need approval, you won't need to people please, you won't need to fit in, you'll just be who you are. Of course, you'll have a sense of justice, you'll have a sense of righteousness, you'll know what is right for you and you'll know what you want to do, what you don't want to do, and at the back half of your life you'll have it made. You'll be able to do the so-called lifetime retirement things, which really is. You should be doing these things all the way along. You should be enjoying your life and doing what you expect. But when you try to keep up to the Joneses, when you try to be pious and righteous and you know what's right and everybody else is wrong, and your church group believes a certain way and other church groups or religions believe another way and they're not right and yours is right. That, of course, is a stumbling block to being who you really are, and that is all inclusionary. Everybody is the same from a certain perspective.

Douglas James Cottrell: 29:52

The trouble is that we are individuals. You know like we're little drops trying to get back into the ocean, and we know the only way back to the ocean is like through the system. You have to come down to the rain cloud, hit the ground real hard smack, go through the weeds and the roots and find some sort of underground stream and then from the stream to the creek or the creek to the river and the river to the ocean, and then you make it. You're in the ocean. But are you a little drop in the ocean? No, you're part of the ocean now.

Douglas James Cottrell: 30:29

And so as you begin to see that you're much more than what you normally are or what you think you are, and as time goes by in life, you will have at least three good times in life. There'll be three times where you'll be given money, a fortune or an opportunity at least. Then there'll be challenges in your life. Once every 10 years there's a major challenge that shows up in your life and that can be debilitating and it can stop you right in your tracks, or it allows you to experience the hardship, the difficulty, and to find a way around it, to overcome it, but certainly not to stop you. And, at certain times in your life, not to run away from things, to stand up for what's right, stand up to the strong when they're in the wrong, make concessions for the weak. But as you do those things, you begin to see the oh. Look at this, oh, my life is like a classroom. I'm learning and I'm learning and I'm learning. And so when you do that, as you go through life, you're always looking forward, never looking backward.

Douglas James Cottrell: 31:40

Unfortunately, some people do, and it stops them in their tracks and so, whatever that circumstance, difficulty or hardship that occurred, they are stuck in that moment for the rest of their lives.

Douglas James Cottrell: 31:53

So depression and self condemnation and even self destruction set in from a test that a person has failed to meet. Now they're going to be, of course, difficult tests. God plays for keep, so to speak. But the test has come to you and you say okay, it's here. How am I going to handle it? Who could I get to help me? God's with me, and we should come to that understanding and we more than likely will that there is a invisible force, being, mind, heart that watches over us.

Douglas James Cottrell: 32:31

So when we get into difficulties, we can call upon that intelligence, that loving Father in heaven above, so to speak, that spiritual being or guide that's there to help us. And even those who have passed on before us you are parents and grandparents. They're all there sitting in the bleachers cheering us on. They want us to succeed. And so, if we start to look at it from that perspective, we're not alone anymore, but we're the ones that have to carry out the actions. We're the ones that have to do something and not sit there, vegetating, worrying, fearing and waiting for somebody else to come along. That's wisdom and unfortunately that's a really hard lesson to learn, but we do learn it.

Les Hubert: 33:19

Hmm, and wrapping this up, Doug, you mentioned, you know, people. They get stuck in the past, it says. I've read somewhere that they said they don't. If you live in the past You'll be depressed, and if you live in the future you'll be anxious. So does meditation kind of bring us into the present moment?

Douglas James Cottrell: 33:36

Well, meditation, again, is a state of mind. Earlier you asked the difference between mind is the builder, and People should go with their feelings. There are feelings. That's called clear sentience. It can also be a premonition, it can also be a telepathic informational channel, if you will, and so your feelings can be a Guiding light. Your feelings can Warn you of something, not specifically, but it will tell you what's right or not. It's not right.

Douglas James Cottrell: 34:10

So when you feel enthusiastic about something, you're on the right track, and so your enthusiasm is the needle that points you in the right direction. And looking to that kind of a feeling, or Feeling comfortable, feeling warm, those are all, and we call them indicators that things are okay and that you're doing the right thing. So meditation might show you the end of the trip, the conclusion of the journey and, as you See, the end. Well, that can give you hope to Go through the difficult time that you can't see your way through the forest for the trees, kind of thing. And your emotions, they kind of give you an indication like, yes, you're on the right track. So, like a blind man going through a city street, your emotions are like the cane, they help you along the way, they let you feel your way forward, even though you can't see how you're. You know I should say not how, but If you can't see yourself going along the path.

Douglas James Cottrell: 35:17

But you know, the conclusion when you get, there is going to be what you've seen in meditation. So meditation allows you to see the end of the trip, the solution to your problem, the outcome to your trial or difficulty, and that allows you to proceed as you are or To make a choice or change direction to get some help or do something else to avoid the Negative conclusion. And then, of course, when you get that, you'll get your enthusiasm back and you know yes, okay, I'm on track now so meditation is an indicator of the future event.

Douglas James Cottrell: 35:57

You can perceive the future. That's called clairvoyance. You'll get a glimpse of it, or a snapshot, and that will give you hope, the same as your dreams. When you have a dream about something, it will guide you along and it will show you who's with you, who's against you, which way to go, or it will show you the outcome to a circle sense. But then you have to do something about it, for procrastination is not allowed. Okay so, but we do it. And then, at the end of the day, you work with your meditation, which is is a go-to time of Taking a few moments out. No, I'm gonna add here that you don't need to meditate for hours on end.

Douglas James Cottrell: 36:41

No, 20 minutes is long enough 20 minutes to an hour would be suitable and during that time you can relax your body. The cells in your body will regenerate, they will heal themselves. Because you're blessing your body or relaxing your body, all the stresses of negativity is is somewhat Flowing out of the body or it's being released, or at least you're not concentrating on those things, so you're not hurting yourself with your mind. Your mind is very powerful and then, as you learn how to relax the mind either listening to pleasant music or candle gazing or Are doing pleasant visualization in your mind there's a good thing to remember is that meditation is not emptying your mind and seeing black. That's not it.

Douglas James Cottrell: 37:32

Meditation is a form of thinking. It sees pictures, it shows you things. So, attempting to quiet your mind down, putting your body through great discomfort and sitting in an odd positions or or somewhat, or trying to overcome pain in your body by sitting in a, in a pose, it is difficult. That's not what meditation is. That's self-control People are attempting to overcome. Self-control is not made or overcome. Difficulty is not meditation. Oh, however, looking at the situation, where you want to go and what you want to do while you're in, meditation is to feel a pleasant sensation. So by feeling pleasant, you're going to put pleasant thoughts and feelings in front of you. Your mind is going to go to pleasant images, trying to keep your mind focused on something, let's say the outcome of a certain event in your life, for what you should do about it. That's the task. There's the so-called monkey mind. Which sort of is that part of you that jumps all over the place?

Les Hubert: 38:41

Yeah, that's the monkey.

Douglas James Cottrell: 38:45

You're all over the place with your thinking and you're trying to get your thoughts down to a single thing, like, let's say, you're looking at a beautiful scene, that you were Somewhere in Europe and you were, you saw a mountain pass or a waterfall, and so you want to think about that as a visualization of something that's meaningful to you and that and you can focus on that. That's controlling the mind and that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to control the mind and you move away from the monkey mind, which is like all over the place, and then you be able to, you're able to focus and concentrate on that so that in real life, when you're in your conscious state, you can do the same thing. You don't let your mind run all over the place, and when you can concentrate and keep your mind focused, that's called, if you will, the elephant mind. It's slow and steady, assured, and it's not afraid of anything. It's on a slow and steady path.

Douglas James Cottrell: 39:43

So that's the, that's the I guess you could say that's the primary focus of meditation is to keep your mind away from the monkey, random excess mind. It's all over the place, triggered by anything and everything, so that the end of the day, when you come home, you're, you're just mentally worn out because your mind's been all over with stimulation all day long and you now have the ability to concentrate, keep your mind focused on a certain thing, a task, a job, a function, your responsibilities or duty, and you don't feel Scattered, you feel your mind is together. You might be weary from the day's efforts, but you're not mentally exhausted. And so that's one of the very first lessons to learn about meditation Is how to keep away from the monkey mind and get to that mind. It is, as you will, mind is to build, or mine is the way on that track when it's straight, moving forward slowly and steadily and it's not distracted, it's not harmed, if you will, it's not I guess the word is not it's not going in in big circles to nowhere, but slow and steady, you know, is the way the elephant mind most, and you have control in that elephant mind. You just keep concentrating and you keep taking your steps.

Douglas James Cottrell: 41:08

So in the end, that's basically In our, in our talk today. It's basically what meditation is all about dealing with the emotions, dealing with the different aspects Of what meditation is or isn't and, as you pointed out, mind is to build or mind is the way. If you can be a solid mind, a who you are in your mind, self-assured, confident, knowing that whatever comes your way, you're going to be able to handle it, whatever life befalls you, that you can go through it, then you will be have a strong mind and you will be a human being that's enjoying life as it ought to be.

Les Hubert: 41:53

Well, thanks, Doug. I'm sure a lot of people are going to get great benefit from this podcast and we'll see you all again pretty soon.

Douglas James Cottrell: 41:59

We hope to see them soon. Less Remember the journey doesn't end here. It continues with your efforts. My friend, I'm your host, Douglas James Cottrell, with my good friend, Les Hubert, here on the Wake Up.

Announcer: 42:12

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