for yourself

for what will hopefully be a nice inward journey.

So just start off sitting upright

feet planted on the ground

if you're ideally on some type of a firm chair

and start to soften your gaze.

If your eyes are still open, gently close them.

I like to leave my hands on my lap, palms up to the sky

but whatever feels comfortable for you

and then with your eyes closed,

gently become a little bit more aware of your breaths.

Make them a little bit deeper and a little bit slower.

At your own time, breathe in.

Breathe out.

Just a little bit deeper and a little bit slower.

So the whole idea behind meditation

is trying to ease all the chatter that exists in our brains,

trying to still our thoughts

and so as we do that and every meditation

I'm going to try to introduce some frameworks,

ways of thinking about your mind

but as you try to quiet the mind,

it will inevitably get distracted.

It might get distracted by some noise in the room

or some noise outside or more likely,

it'll get distracted by thoughts

that are just surfacing into your consciousness

and if that happens, don't let it make you anxious.

A lot of folks when they meditate,

they worry that they're doing it wrong

and then if they get distracted,

it actually makes things worse.

They say I'm never going to be able

to do this meditation thing.

The important thing is to approach the meditation

with a spirit of fun, a spirit of curiosity,

have a sense of humor about it.

We are all literally human and we do very human things

and so when you find your mind wandering a bit,

just laugh it off and say, oh, there you go, mind.

Just come back to the stillness.

Not a big deal, don't beat up on yourself over it

and as part of that as we go through this meditation,

as much as possible,

try to keep a little bit of a smile on your face.

Your eyes are closed but you can still smile a little bit

or at least smile with your mind.

Reminds you that this should be fun, this is relaxing.

So with that said, let's keep breathing in, breathing out

a little bit deeper, a little bit slower

and the framework that I'm going to introduce

for how you can still your mind is one that I use a lot

which is imagining all the thoughts in your subconscious

as the ocean and the surface of the ocean is the interface

between your subconscious and your consciousness

and most of us have a pretty choppy surface.

There's a lot of thoughts that are jumping up and down

out of our subconscious

and sometimes we're drowning in those thoughts

and one way to think about it is we can elevate ourselves.

We can elevate ourselves above the surface of that water

and when you start to elevate yourself,

you're not suppressing the thoughts

but you're just looking down on them.

You see that they're still there,

the surface is still choppy, there's still waves

but as you rise and you look down on it,

you realize that you are not those thoughts,

you are not the surface of the water.

So whether the thing that's bothering you

is an assignment you have to do

or some interpersonal relations

or just something in your life

not working out the way that you would like it to,

remind yourself that that is not you.

You are not defined by the outcome of that situation.

Those are just waves on that ocean

and the more that you surface above them

and you look at them and analyze them,

you realize that they have no control over you

and once that happens, things start to slow down.

The surface of that water begins to get calmer

and calmer and calmer

and there you are floating above that surface.

Just pure awareness

and you realize that you're a lot more

than you thought you were.

You aren't just your physical body.

You aren't just those thoughts

that you see as waves on the surface of that ocean.

You aren't even just that identity

that you associate yourself with,

your name, your position in the world, your status,

what people think of you, your relations.

Those are aspects of you but they aren't you.

You are something much bigger than all of them.

You are the space in which they occur, in which they happen

but they aren't you

and now let's just try to sit in that pure awareness

for the next minute or so and once again,

if your thoughts wander, not a big deal.

That's just the choppiness on the surface of that water

and you need to elevate yourself back to that pure awareness

and if the quiet bothers you, don't worry,

I will be back in about a minute.

All right, so that was a relatively short amount of time

for you to be on your own and as you'll see

as we do more and more advanced meditations,

give yourself more and more time

and over time, you won't need me talking.

In fact, that will probably annoy you.

You'll just be able to sit down and still your mind

and realize that you are not your thoughts

and these things that are bothering you,

they're only going to bother you

as much as you let them bother you.

In the whole scheme of things, in all of time and space,

none of them are really what should define you

or are anywhere near as important

as we sometimes make them out to be.

I'll see you in the next meditation.