Beyond Silence: Meditation as Joyful Transformation

Embark on an intimate exploration of meditation's transformative journey with us, where deepening awareness and presence reveal a life beyond competition. As your guide, I share the subtle beginnings of overcoming inertia and the pivotal role of breath as a conduit for focus. Meditation, as we uncover, is not just about sitting in silence; it's about the blossoming of joy, compassion, and love within us. By embracing the 'antidote' of mindfulness, we find ourselves in the sanctuary of 'practiced ease,' where the once arduous task turns into a source of profound joy and a wellspring for emotional and spiritual growth.

In the fabric of our daily existence, meditation weaves a new narrative, one where our interactions with the world are not just altered, but enriched. I delve into how this age-old practice reorients our perspective, allowing the mundane to sparkle with new intention. By adopting a meditative mindset, the ripple effects touch every corner of our lives, from the minute to the monumental. As we conclude this session, I leave you with a tantalizing glimpse of future episodes, promising to arm you with effective meditation techniques that promise to elevate your practice and life to newfound heights. Stay tuned for an adventure into mindfulness that transcends the cushion and becomes your constant companion.

Inspired by the work of Sean Fargo. Music: Master Minded: 'Opening Up'.

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:23

I welcome to today's podcast. I'd like to talk today about different stages of meditation, different stages of meditative practice. I stepped through some common stages or phases that people go through, and the key idea here is to realize that meditation is really not competitive. What you're really doing is embarking on something where there is no final goal to have to attain, and it's really a process of paying attention, being aware. That said, you know it's really important to have milestones to look for as we move from a beginning meditator to a more seasoned meditator, more practice meditator. So, as mindfulness practitioners, we're often asked to be in the present, the present, and there's, you know, a certain amount of paradox involved with that. We're asked to be in the present, but yet this impacts the future. We're asked to balance acceptance of where we are and yet we're looking ahead to where we'd like to be. So, understanding the classic four stages of meditation can be an inspiration to us to continue in our practice, because one thing you don't want to do in meditation is give up. That's not something you want to do In the early stages of meditation.

Speaker 2: 2:08

In your mindfulness practice, the biggest hurdle is really laziness. It's just sitting on your cushion and sitting, a timer and taking, you know, some time for yourself, and then nothing happens or you don't really make much effort. That said, it's really important to pat yourself on the back with the fact that you just sat down on the cushion. That's a really good first step. So, with that good first step and with that pat on the back, you can, you know, start to think about maybe taking the next step and moving your meditation to the next level. So laziness is often disguised as really busyness, distractedness. There's always something else to do, so you know you might have something come up during the day and you get distracted and you're too busy to meditate and really what you're doing is you're really just being lazy. So and I don't mean that in a derogatory way, I mean it in a compassionate- way.

Speaker 2: 3:19

I've certainly been there. So you want to try to overcome your laziness and you want to try to remember why you are meditating and recall the benefits you receive from meditation. And the better you get at meditation, the more likely you are to do it, which is another paradox, really, in a way. Another issue that comes up with meditation is forgetting the instructions. So you'll finally get over the laziness and sit down on the cushion and then you forget what to do, you can't stay focused and it's hard to meditate, it's hard to remember the purpose of meditation. So when you get to that point, it's really best to remember the simplicity of meditation, or that meditation can be extremely simple. It doesn't really have to take much To really consider the meditation. And we can start with the breath. So mindfulness practice, if we go back to our initial teachings, our initial podcasts one of the initial podcasts, not the initial podcast on meditation what is it about? Mindfulness of the breath? And you can simply meditate on the breath for a few minutes, observing the in breath and the out breath gently and just noticing everything about the breath. So you can put your attention on the breath and do that for a few minutes. That's a successful meditation. That's great, you have actually remembered the instructions, and mindfulness does tend to be rather straightforward and simple in its instructions, which is good. But within the simplicity, there are nuances and so as you go on, as you move forward, you can start to think about or move into or look at the potential for experiencing the nuances of meditation, and this will happen over time. But initially, to sit down on the cushion step one, overcome your laziness and just meditate on the breath, these are all wonderful things.

Speaker 2: 5:40

The third thing that happens that really trips up meditators is the failure to apply what we would call the antidote, and the antidote would be really to notice that we've become distracted. Noticing really is the antidote. When you notice, when you're aware, when you notice things, then you can turn yourself in another direction. That's the key part of being mindful as we've discussed about another podcast is really just being aware and being aware that you have a choice, being aware that you have a choice to move in a different direction. You don't have to stay with a distraction, you don't have to stay with a negative thought or you can work with it, you can observe it, you can watch it, and I advise you to go back to the original practices and take a look at them Mindfulness of the breath, of the thoughts, of the emotions and so on. So you can work with those initial techniques that were laid out in the podcast and they're quite effective, they are the antidote, really, and we'll take you to the fourth stage, really, or at least another stage. Let's assume that there aren't just four stages, but there could be more stages but I'll call this practice ease Practiced ease.

Speaker 2: 7:18

And what is meant by practice ease is that, with a little bit of effort, we reach a state where everything is, in a way, just perfect. And we practice meditation often, and when we do, we don't feel distracted, we feel focused, we feel like we've accomplished our task, we feel like we've remembered the instructions, and that meditation begins to feel joyful. And when meditation begins to feel joyful, it becomes a refuge that we can go back to. Now there are different aspects of meditation. You might say beyond joy, and this gets into more esoteric aspects of meditation. But if you spent your entire life focusing on the breath and calming the mind, quieting the mind, getting beyond distractions and coming to a place of joy, coming to a place of compassion, coming to a place of love, these are all signs that your meditation is going well, that you're really achieving what you need to do with your meditation, at least in my mind as your quasi meditation coach. Here I'm advising you that if you move into the heart and if you start feeling positivity in the heart, relative variety of emotions, of joy, of bliss, of compassion, of love, these are all positive signs that you're making progress. Or you might say you've reached the goal in a way. But, as we discussed, part of what reaching the goal is is to realize there really is no goal to reach and there's no place to go. You're just really noticing what's right in front of you, and that that's really the idea. And by noticing what's right in front of you you move from a space of Accomplishment which is not a bad place to be. I'm not and nothing against having you know, hopes and dreams and wanting to accomplish Things.

Speaker 2: 9:30

The meditation is a little bit different. You're not really trying to accomplish ever anything really. But it is this quietness, this stillness, this place of meditation, of Peace, of tranquility, of joy, of compassion, of love. If you can reach that place, it will enliven the rest of your activities. You don't have to think about having it and enliven the rest of your daily activities or your ambitions or your goals or whatever.

Speaker 2: 9:57

You don't have to think of it that way, you don't have to. You know. Will it to be that way, it will be that way. It's just if you just practice and and sort of take a little bit of time to look at the world from a different way, from a meditative way, you'll notice that it will have an impact on your daily life in terms of what happens there. So I'll leave it at that. I think that's a little bit of an overview that will could be useful, hopefully will be useful to you regarding meditation and what we'll get back a little bit later In another podcast and I'll I'll step through some, some considerations we can have regarding meditation as well. So that anyway, for the time being. We'll wrap it up and thanks a lot, talk to you, talk to you again soon, bye, bye. You.