What Meditation Really Is, And How To Bring It Into Your Life (Personal Development Wisdom Snippets) | #625

[Agi Keramidas]
Welcome to Personal Development Mastery Podcast and this is another snippet of wisdom where I select my favorite, most insightful moments from previous episodes. Let's dive right in.

[Bob Martin]
The basic instruction, I suppose, in meditation, what we call is Vipassana or Tibetan insight meditation. I think that would be the best word to use. Insight meditation is what I teach.

It's not a mantra and it's not transcendental and you don't go somewhere. Let me suggest it this way. Have you ever been listening to somebody and all of a sudden, you're not listening to them anymore because you're thinking about whether you left the stove on and then all of a sudden, your brain kind of says to you, hey, Adji, you're not listening to the guy.

All of a sudden, you go, oh, I'm not listening. Then you get a flood of judgments and think, how am I going to get him to say it again without letting him know, blah, blah, blah. Then you go back and you listen to him again.

Well, that's what meditation is. That's exactly what meditation is, except for the fact that you do it intentionally instead of letting it just happen. Therefore, you notice what's going on more.

The instructions form the intention to put your attention, say, on your breath or a candle. Then in three seconds, your mind's going to wander. It's going to go off someplace.

That's because evolutionarily, when we lived in the jungle, we were always scanning for danger. We are constructed for our minds to wander and scan. That's how we evolved.

That's the animal that we are. It's completely normal. When people say, oh, I can't sit still because my mind goes, well, yeah, that's what happens.

Then at some point, your mind goes, hey, you said that it was your intention to pay attention to the candle. You go, oh, you wake up. That waking up is the moment of mindfulness.

It's not paying attention to the candle. It's waking up when your mind wandered. Then you remind yourself, then you have the flood of judgments.

Now you get to observe your judgments. After you do this several times, you get bored of them and they go away on their own without forcing them to go away. Then you begin again.

Every time you begin again, you're forming a neural pathway in your brain that says, I can do this. I'm capable. I can begin again.

I can fail and I can begin again. That helps us develop a tolerance for discomfort, which gives us the ability to risk more and learn more and grow more. As we go through this process, so it's not about quieting the mind.

It's not about calming the mind or having white noise. It's about beginning again, failing and beginning again, failing and beginning again, failing and beginning again. We do it in this safe place where nothing's at risk, but it gives us the ability to train ourselves to go into the real world and fail and begin again, and try and experiment and have ideas, notice.

We develop all these skills.

[Agi Keramidas]
I think a great benefit of being able to have this moment of mindfulness, as you called it, waking up from the internal dialogue. I think once you experience that over and over again, then you can utilize it or bring that awareness. At some point when you are not on your cushion meditating, when something happens in life and you, rather than reacting immediately out of the conditioning, as you were saying, to waking up for a moment to be present in the moment, I think it's so useful.

[Bob Martin]
So useful. Like you say, if the only thing that meditation was good for was sitting on a cushion, it wouldn't be worth it. It wouldn't be worth the time and the effort.

You got to bring it into your life. We've all experienced, I believe, we've all experienced being in a conversation. Even as we're speaking and saying one thing, there's a part of our brain that's evaluating.

It's saying, oh, this isn't going well, or I can't wait till I get to the punchline, or oh, I think I forgot the punchline. There's this part of our brain that's commenting on us even though while we're speaking. Now, when that just happens of its own accord, it just happens, it's not very helpful.

But when we pay attention to that other voice, the commenting voice, when we pay attention to it, what we find is that from that place in our mind, there's a certain stability. It's not thrown by emotions as much. So going back to the river metaphor, so there's a stream of consciousness and there are leaves and logs, those are our thoughts.

It's like we're holding on to a log floating down the river. Then we go into the white water or then we go for a waterfall and all of life is affecting us. Of course, we're emotional about it.

But that other part, the part that comments, as we begin to become more familiar with that and intentionally pay attention to it, we begin to reconnect with it. Depending on your perspective, if you're a psychologist, you might call it your intuitive mind or your authentic self. If you're spiritual, you might call it your soul.

But whatever it is, when we pay attention to it and we reconnect to it, we find that we can watch ourselves on the log in the river from that place of being the observer. As the observer, there's a certain stability of mind and a certain peacefulness of mind. Even as I'm getting angry, even as I'm feeling grief, even as I'm feeling joy, I am still observing it from another place at the same time.

From that place, that's when people talk about peace and tranquility. It's not that I have removed myself from the ups and downs of life. It's just that I've found another place where at the same time I can be more stable.

And so to give you an example, just the other day, I was in the grocery store and I was in a big rush. I had to get to class. So I was in a big rush and I had a couple of things.

And you're looking at the different cashier lines and trying to find the shortest one. And I see a lady, she's got two or like five or six items in a basket. And I said, she's going to be quick.

So she goes up. And as soon as she gets to the cashier, and I'm behind her, I'm in a rush. And she opens up a three ring binder with a bunch of coupons.

I go, oh no, oh no. So you have a choice. You can either sit there and grumble and be upset or pay attention to my breathing.

Just go back and be the observer and watch myself getting anxious and watching myself being antsy. So the antsiness just becomes something I'm watching and that's where I'm coming from. So that's how you take it into your everyday life.

And you notice what you're doing and you notice when you say something that didn't work very well, so maybe the next time you'll say it different or maybe the next time or the next time. It's all good.

[Agi Keramidas]
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