The Conditioned Mind | Meditation #1

*Dive deeper with the full Conversation Episode next!*  

Transformation rarely happens all at once. More often, it comes through small moments of awareness, practiced with patience and compassion, one step at a time.

In this meditation, we begin exploring the idea that our true nature is already whole. Throughout life, experiences, fears, and painful beliefs can create what the Sufi tradition describes as "a thousand veils" that cover the soul. These veils are the stories we have learned about ourselves—the conditioned thoughts that keep us disconnected from the peace, love, and wisdom that have always been within us.

This beginner-friendly guided meditation introduces a simple but powerful mindfulness practice of returning to the breath, observing thoughts without judgment, and gently bringing your attention back to the present moment. Amy also shares insights from psychology, Buddhist meditation teachers, and contemplative traditions that help us understand how compassion—not shame—is the path toward healing and lasting transformation.

Whether you are beginning a meditation practice or continuing one you've had for years, this session is an invitation to slow down, release self-judgment, and remember that healing doesn't require becoming someone new. It is the gentle process of uncovering who you have always been.

May you treat yourself with kindness.
May you find peace beneath the noise of the conditioned mind.
May you continue peeling back the veils that reveal your truest nature.

Sādhu. Sādhu. Sādhu.

If this meditation was meaningful to you, I'd love for you to subscribe and join me each week for Greater Peace Meditations every Monday and Greater Peace Conversations every Wednesday. Together we'll explore practical tools from psychology, mindfulness, and contemplative wisdom to cultivate resilience, self-compassion, inner wisdom, and greater peace—one small step at a time.

*Subscribe to the Greater Peace Podcast for new episodes every Monday and Wednesday.*

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi guys, I'm Amy Lindstrom, and this is Greater Peace Meditations. Now, just to make sure that you are aware of how things are gonna go, we're gonna do Greater Peace Meditations on Monday, where I'm gonna introduce a little topic on something that we're gonna kind of be working on throughout the week. And then on Wednesday, we have Greater Peace Conversations where Ryan and I, my husband Ryan and I will kind of deep dive on the topic. I will teach him or uh share with him some of the stuff that I'm learning on the topic. He'll ask questions. He is not a mental health therapist, but he's a very logical person, and I think he asks really great questions and has incredible insights. So I think that will be super helpful and beneficial to go a little bit deeper on the topic. Every once in a while, we'll also throw in an interview with somebody, maybe who has more information that we can learn from, or somebody with experience that would be beneficial. We'll just let this evolve as it's going. But on Friday, we are going to do maybe a Facebook Live. We'll put all of the links and everything in the description so that you can get an access to that. I think it will be Thursday or Friday. We'll give you a heads up. If you want to follow along on Finding Greater Peace on Instagram, Amy Lindstrom on Facebook, and we'll put all of the links where you can get access to those things if you have any questions. So one of the reasons why I wanted to format it like this is because as a therapist, one of the things that I notice is like in a session, we can have a great deal of like transformation, an aha moment, something that just clicks, right? But if it does not be like get put into practice, then nothing changes. And sometimes it's just being given a little bit more time to sit with the content and the material. And so I was thinking by just introducing it on Monday, doing a meditation, because honestly, nothing is more effective than meditation and learning how to do that will have more impact on mental wellness than anything else I can teach you. Then on Wednesday, we deep dive into it so you learn a little bit more after it's kind of been on your mind. And then it becomes the practice for the week that we are all doing together in our own ways because we all live different lives, face different challenges. And so I'm hoping that across the board it is more meaningful and more personalized to each one of us. Also, learning a new concept. Our brains don't like to learn something new, especially when it challenges something that we already think about the world. And so by introducing it on Monday, it gives you the ability to just kind of think deeper on it and work through it a little bit, and then um come on uh Wednesday and we'll discuss more information and uh just see what sticks, what is helpful for you, and and whatever isn't, you can let it go for now. If you want to come back and revisit it, that's the beauty of a podcast. So um I know that for me, there have been books that I've read. Um, one of my favorites is Universal Christ by uh Richard Rohr, but when I very first started reading it, it was like something in me was very resistant or just couldn't settle down with it. And then when I went back and read it later after I had learned more, I ended up reading that book two times in a row. And it was so transformative to me. So sometimes it's just we need the little seed planted, and then maybe we need time, or maybe it's a different time of our lives when it will be beneficial. So there's that. Then I would say the other thing that inspires this a lot is um there was a quote, Tik Not Han was interviewed by Oprah on the Super Soul Sunday podcast that she did. And um it is one of maybe the most impactful little things that I have heard, and it kind of changed my perspective on things. So she was doing this interview with him, and as we can all imagine, there's a lot of production staff running around, there's a lot of chaos, getting everything ready, Oprah's coming, all this stuff. And sometimes people can be super nervous and all of that. But she said that as she opened the door and walked into the room, she could actually feel the calm coming off of him. And she asked him, uh, are you always this calm? And TikNothan, who is a Buddhist monk, um, said, It is my practice. Now, Tik Nathan, if you've ever seen anything from him or read anything from him, it would have been easy in our perspective to say, yeah, I am. I'm always this calm. Except what he was teaching, just in that simple phrase, was there's a lot of chaos. He's noticed it, there's a lot going on in the moment. But he has decided in that moment to use the chaos to practice being calm in that situation. So to me, that kind of a lot of times now I will think, you know, like stillness will sit in my mind or silence or different things like that. And then I will think that all the time. It's like, this is my practice for today. Um, and especially going into difficult situations. If you're in a stressful situation, if you have a lot of stress at work, if you have little kids at home, you may one day wake up and go, today, my practice is patience, my practice is calm, anything like that. So I'm hoping that by introducing the topic on Monday, then discussing it deeper on Wednesday, then answering any questions or having any discussion that you want on uh be like Friday will be something that is very beneficial to create a lot of little stepping stones that over time will change. Life comes at us. Sometimes we see all the things that we want to do better all at once, and it's overwhelming. So these podcasts or each week is meant to be just the tiniest bite-size, little something to think about. Because I know from my own life experience that it's just been, it's like I can't look at one single moment that changed everything for me. But I can look back and see, oh, I remember when I listened to this one podcast, or I remember this book uh just changed my viewpoint about so many things. Just little teeny adjustments along the path that has brought me toward more wholeness. And of course, I think wholeness is our life's work, right? And so um let's get into the topic for this week because I think that that is it just goes so well with little by little our life's work, right? So the um topic for this week, or I would say maybe even just there's a quote that I want to share with you or an idea I want to share with you. So this comes from um like a Sufi belief. So the Sufis are the mystical spiritual side of Islam. They very much believe in the love of the divine and learning how to connect to and experience it in their lives. Like mystics are people who um seek uh experience with the divine and so much more. These are very, very um uh, I don't know, stripped-down definitions of something. So it they are not entirely all of that, but as an introduction, that's a good way to understand um uh maybe, you know, like the 50,000-foot view of um Sufism or the ideas behind it. So with Sufism, um, or the with one of the beliefs or the um the quotes that I love so much from it is the soul is covered by a thousand veils. So in the first podcast, in the first meditation, I had talked about how our worth and value is absolute, right? So it's like you think about a little child who is being raised in a healthy home, they are loved and supported. There is just kind of this confidence. So I'm thinking of like my little niece, who is just hilarious in how much she just is like fully embraces life. And it is so beautiful and wonderful. And it's like in a lot of ways, depending on our lived situation, right? We start out like that. Insecurities are learned, and we call that the conditioned mind. So our um uh limbic system, our old brain, like the brain that is the one that we were born with, is is uh always trying to like help keep us safe, right? And so it perceives things as threats or is constantly scanning the environment for things that are risky or a threat. But that is something that happens as the brain develops and it starts to create ideas about ourselves because our brain is very egocentric as we're growing, meaning that it sees us as the root of the problem. It can map and like our brain will map and track like the behaviors of other people around us, and when they're negative, then it's like uh to say it in an easy way, it's like, well, I have control if I'm the problem. We don't have the ability when we're young to say, oh, my mom's impatient today, because she just must really be having a hard day, so it's okay. Like we develop that over time, but we do not have that when we're younger. If our mom is impatient, it's because, oh my gosh, I'm not good enough, or something like that. And so I would see those things as being the veils. These, um, in psychology we call it the negative cognitions. So these ideas that we get about who we are in this world and how we relate to the world, that become almost the veils that cover up and layer and bury the soul and our truest nature and our highest value. And so, in my experience, and we'll go deeper in this on um Wednesday, but in my experience, in like my personal experience, it has been the healing of those things, the peeling back those things in love and compassion and healing that has been the most life-changing thing. I learn more compassion for myself, more compassion for other people. Because if I have all of these veils and I have all of these layers, so does everybody else. So if somebody is being mean or somebody is um being unjust or whatever it is, it's like, well, we are naturally, I think, at our deepest level, our truest nature, peaceful and kind and loving. And so when we are not living in that way, we are likely blended with our conditioned mind that tells us that things around are a threat. Um, and we can go way deeper on that. But I just want you to think about it in that way. That a lot of the negative ideas that we've been given or that we feel about ourselves came in moments of high distress and concern and worry, usually when we are very young. So when you think of it in that way, and you think of your small self uh kind of facing the world, maybe even right now there's an idea of something that came into your mind that you went through that was hard or stressful that you can remember from childhood that was overwhelming. And if you had the opportunity to go back and sit with that little version of yourself, what would you say to them? The negative self-talk that we have for ourselves now, would we say that to that child? Or would we be loving and compassionate? Would we correct the false thinking? Would we correct the view with our now more developed brain and the ability that we have to be more compassionate and more loving? And I think to me, that is grace. Uh, it's just knowing that at every moment of our lives, even when we can be harmful, or even when we can do things that aren't exactly who we want to be. I believe that as we look back in any given moment, we are doing the best that we can. And our now selves may look back and go, you know, oh, I should have made a different decision, yes, but we can't make a different decision based on the information we gained from moving in that direction, right? So when we made the decision, we thought we were making the best decision, even if it is in panic and reaction and we're just trying to be safe. Um, so and we lack consciousness. Um, and by consciousness I mean just awareness, right? Um uh as our frontal lobe develops as we get older, we can think about the way we're thinking about things. We're aware of what we are aware of, but we don't have that younger, and we don't have that even, you know, a lot of times into like teenage years. And we'll talk more about um those developmental stages over time to just help you understand those things. But what I really want to sit with is the the soul is covered by a thousand veils. And that is true for everyone. All of us have a brain that works in this way, that makes sense of the world around us by uh challenges that we face. And when we're younger, that conditioned mind sometimes leads to thoughts we have about ourselves in the world, insecurities that we may develop, ways that we want to hide, ways that we need to change ourselves, ways that we reject ourselves, ways that we reject the world around us. But there is real healing that comes through using compassion and a different perspective and releasing the need to be perfect and focusing more on just our truest nature is goodness. We just need some healing, and that is peeling back those veils one by one and uh coming to more wholeness, right? So um let's go ahead and do um a meditation. So with the meditation, uh this one, we are going to do 15 minutes. Uh we're just going to sit and breathe, and we're just going to focus on um our breath. Remember last time um I reminded you that it's sometimes it's like meditation really is about like um for me in a lot of ways, it's like learning that you are not the thinking brain. You are the one observing and listening to those thoughts. And in doing that, we start to learn that we are capable of choosing which thoughts we want to react to and which ones or respond to and which ones we do not. And so um as you're sitting and you're breathing, you're just focusing on this is my in-breath, this is my out breath. Or as a John Nate, my teacher, teaches, um, slow breath, or this is a short breath. This is a short short breath out. Long breath in, long breath out. And there's many other different um skills that you can use to really just draw all the attention to breathing. As your brain starts to wander, as it will, that's okay, that's part of the process, it's expected. So when your mind starts to wander, now we're gonna bring in what a John Vilisek, my other teacher, taught, where he said, your mind is like a wild animal, right? And we want to train this wild animal to stay with us. Of course, it's gonna wander off. So once you notice that it's wandered and you're thinking about, oh, I've got to make sure I got this and this and this done. Or for me, the big one when I started meditating is it's like my brain is like, okay, how long has this been? I need to, I need to get some stuff done and whatever else. So it's like if you can do this right now and you have 15 minutes, then just let your mind know every time that thought comes up is just a thought, it's okay. You already know you're committed to the 15 minutes here, and there's nothing else that needs your attention here. So that's okay. If you're not in a position where you can give the 15 minutes, just pause and come back to it when you can. Um, then you are gonna imagine once, as soon as you are aware that your thoughts have wandered away, now you're in a place where you're back to aware and back to present. Imagine bringing your wild animal back, whatever that wild animal is, bringing them back. Like I said, I see myself like give them a treat and a little pet. I want them to stay with me, and it's okay that they wander off sometimes. So bring them back, and then I just visualize now my deep breath in and deep breath out, or a breath out, and then it's gonna wander again, and that's okay. So it's just that process, but it's meant to be deeply relaxing. It's okay if you feel like you're not good at it. When you start to feel I'm not good at this, you can change the negative connotation to yet, or um this is a struggle, or if you get overwhelmed by it, then just reminding yourself gently, of course it is. This, I haven't done this before, so it's gonna be difficult. There's different things that we try to learn that in the beginning are very difficult, and then we figure that out, right? I mean, think about learning how to drive a car and how nerve-wracking that is. And then at some point in our lives, we can drive a car going 70 miles per hour in the opposite direction of another car with only a painted line dividing us, and we're not even aware that we're doing it. We're having a conversation, listen to music, thinking about other things, right? So it's like it becomes automatic. And we'll talk more about that, but just think about that that it's it's okay that it's a struggle, and uh that this is something that we will learn and get better at in time. So let's go ahead and start for 15 minutes. Toward the end, I'm going to uh just lead you in a little meditation to end it. I'm gonna do like a little guided part. Um I also want to tell you because it's 15 minutes, which is sometimes a little bit longer, you can sit, sit in a chair, anything like that. If you need to adjust because your feet fall asleep, because your hip hurts, or anything like that. One of the things that um Bhante Panyakara, who is the leader of the Walk for Peace, when we meditated with him through the night, one of the things that he taught us is that when you're sitting for a long period of time and all of a sudden your back hurts or your hip hurts, and you become very aware of that pain or that uh the struggle in the remaining there and remaining focused. Then he said, and like I'll give for an example, like my middle back used to hurt really bad sitting in this position for a long period of time. And so what he would say is take all of your attention to that and go, pain, pain, pain. You're acknowledging it, sending the signal to the brain that you are aware. But then after the third time saying pain. Deep breath in, deep breath out. If you need to adjust at that point, that's okay. Just do it mindfully. It isn't, it's just being aware that you are moving. If you need to switch your legs, if you need to switch sitting positions, that's okay. Just do it mindfully. So hopefully that is helpful. We'll definitely be getting it better and better as we go along. So let's go ahead and start this meditation. So just sit in whatever position you feel most comfortable in. You can put your hands in your lap, you can put them out on your knee, you can sit in lotus pose, you can sit wherever. Let's just just wherever you're most comfortable right now. And then just close your eyes, take a deep breath in.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

Short breath in short breath out. Long breath in. Long breath out. Short breath in. Short breath out. Long breath. Focus on the breath.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

If your mind has wandered, just gently bring it back, take a deep inhale.

SPEAKER_02 25:59

And go back to breathing.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

Take your focus toward that area. Say tension, tension, tension, and breathe. Or pain, pain, pain.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

If your feet are starting to fall asleep, if you notice any tingling, take your awareness to it gently.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

See if you can release it and come back, or make any adjustments that you need with compassion for that area.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

And then just come back to your breath.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Just do so mindfully.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Just being aware of your moving, being present in the thought of the movement, and then bring your mind back to your breathing.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

You can put your attention on that sound and say sound, sound, sound, and then deep breath in, deep breath out. Just allowing those outside sounds or external stimuli become a part of your practice of coming back to the breath.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

Keeping your eyes closed and relaxed.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Today is the day to commit to transformation through compassion and acceptance of every version of yourself. Gentle with your past self that made decisions different from what you might choose now. The wisdom you gained through the experiences, consequences of their choice, trust that your past self was doing the best that they could and what they knew and how they felt. The need to use shame has progressed. Shame is a prison that keeps you stuck. Passion is freedom. It is the only way forward. Job in this life is to continue to evolve. Use life experiences to learn and grow. Job is not to become anything. We already are all that we need to be. Closer to our true nature, which is love and peace and compassion for ourselves and others.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

Give yourself a lot of love and compassion.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

When you are ready, you can open your eyes and return to this space.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

I hope that this has been helpful for you. And I hope that you will return to it. It is a simple practice to do. We're already breathing, just be aware that we're breathing out of stoplight instead of reaching for our phone. Be consciously aware that we are breathing. And someone is talking to us. Be aware of ourselves listening, breathing. Present with this person. Gain more awareness. We come more toward wholeness and peace. So I look forward to on Wednesday, deeper into all of this with you, exploring many different uh parts of why uh our brains think the way that we do, and why maybe we do the things that we do, and finding ways that we can choose a different path. If you ever find that you're in a situation where you're overwhelmed, but you blow up or you yell at your kids or you yell at your spouse or you keep reacting in some way or you close down or avoid, then this is uh this is the beginning of the end of those behaviors and being able to make a change. So I hope that this is helpful for you. I wish you all well. I hope you are happy and peaceful. And I will see you on Wednesday.