Meditation isn't just for chilling out. It is a powerful tool that trains our minds to be present, focused, aware, peaceful and joyful. It's not about the time we spend sitting down with our eyes closed in meditation. It's about how that time improves the rest of our lives.
Gaining insights into ourselves and our own mind is one of the greatest ways meditation can improve our lives. The more we observe the nature and quality of our thoughts, the greater wisdom we develop about ourselves and our place in the universe. Using meditation properly can help us gain understanding that can be used to transform our lives.
In this episode, I explain how to use meditation to not just gain insights, but to even find creative solutions to any problem we may be facing. It is in the deep state of meditation that our thinking can be its clearest, and where our conscious mind can communicate with our subconscious in order to incorporate our insights so that they become lasting change and positive transformations.
Please enjoy other episodes where Todd shares meditation techniques, tips and spiritual lessons from around the world for peaceful and stress-free living. Remember to subscribe to stay up-to-date.
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Welcome to the Eastwesticism podcast where our host, Todd PErelmuter shares the lessons he's learned spending eight years living with gurus, monks, lamas, and shamans across 35 countries and five continents join in the journey as he brings the best scientifically proven methods for living your best life from the east and the west, straight to you. The path to peace, love, health, and happiness starts here.
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Hello, and welcome. Today we're going to talk about how to gain insights about yourself through meditation. And meditation isn't just about feelings in and relaxing, although it does those things incredibly well.
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Meditation is about increasing our wisdom. And how do we do that all scientific knowledge is acquired first by observation, we look under a microscope and observe, we look through a telescope, we create all these tools for measurement and observation. And then over time, we see patterns arise. And so observation leads to understanding knowledge and wisdom.
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So while although when we meditate, we're trying to focus on our mantra or on our breath,
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thoughts will constantly come up because the mind is going to do what the mind is going to do.
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Unless we're super expert, long time meditators or we've reached enlightenment, our mind is, is going to behave like a monkey mind, which is grasping from thought to thought, swinging from topic to topic, finding anything it can latch on to and obsess over, essentially.
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And when that happens, that's normal. That's wonderful. That is part of meditation. And that is the opportunity we give ourselves without distraction, to look at our thoughts. We rarely do this. Usually, we're always doing something in our waking life. And we almost never tune out everything external, close our eyes, and really pay attention to what's going on inside.
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This is the scientific knowledge, this is the wisdom that we gain of ourselves, we become masters
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at understanding ourselves. And that is what they mean when they say Know thyself, in eastern spiritualities.
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Most of our thinking is unconscious, we're not aware of it. And we didn't think that thought deliberately, consciously. And with intention. It's that monkey mind, it just pops into our head, whatever it can think of, because that's what it does. It thinks it's a thinking machine. And the more we observe, how it thinks, what it thinks about how it obsesses, how its repetitive, negative, and mostly, does not serve us in any meaningful or beneficial way.
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We frequently by just observing bring consciousness to our thoughts, and then our thoughts become a little more calm, and a little more intentional. And over time, that just increases. But when we sit and just observe our mind, and this can be over weeks, you know, months of meditating and and insights will keep coming up. And you'll be amazed at how you didn't notice that this is how your mind works. And this is how you've behaved because of these unconscious patterns.
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When we sit in meditation, it's not just our thoughts we observe, you know, we're able to really reflect on all of our behaviors, all of our thoughts, this is the time for that deep understanding that I would argue that insights are very difficult to come by the true meaningful, transformative insights, that aha moment when we say, I don't need to do that anymore. You know, I'm doing this because of this past trauma or this past experience. And I can let that go. I can I can break this unconscious,
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habitual thinking or behavior, and we can truly transform these insights are aware that happens because we understand not only what we're doing that we don't want to keep doing,
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but we understand why we keep doing what we don't want to be doing.
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And that is the real wisdom that arises, where we can stop being out of tune with what we have set for our intentions.
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So that's the real secret to Insight is to just observe whatever comes into your mind, don't resist it. Because then we're not watching how our mind actually works. We're watching how we
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want our mind to work, but not the truth of how it works. So you have to welcome whatever comes and understand that
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your subconscious is bringing to the consciousness, what it needs to show, in order for that healing to begin, whether it's, you know, you keep thinking of a fight you had with someone, or you just keep thinking of
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what whatever is worrying you. And so by focusing on that, you know, you can realize, okay, this is causing me stress, I don't need to think about this in this negative way I can allow this to be, and I can do these simple steps in order to reach the goals that I'm seeking.
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There is a beautiful Buddhist meditation practice, where they will go from either mantra or breath meditation, whichever meditation you do, and then they will create little breaks from that meditation, where they will just be blank mind, and allow whatever comes to come. And so they switch from either focusing on their breath or their mantra, to just focusing on their mind. So it's, it's just sitting still with your eyes closed, and just observing with equanimity, and an a peace, whatever is coming to your mind, no matter how stressful or upsetting, just allowing whatever comes to come with no goal or effort in mind. But allowing this time to reflect, and to analyze, and to most importantly, create a space for solutions to appear. Because before any solution
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can present itself in any aspect of our lives, first needs to come an understanding of the problem. And so by alternating between deep meditation, and deep reflection,
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when we are reflecting our thoughts, and our intentions, have a greater clarity, because we're, we're in a deep state of peace. And we have a greater wisdom. Because we're so relaxed, and we just, were not converting our experience, to a one word at a time, train of thought, in our mind, we're not reducing complexity, and depth and nuance into words and labels. And so a much greater wisdom can arise within us. And it is a beautiful and wonderful process. And meditation gives us that spaciousness in our lives and in our mind, for this greater understanding, and through that, we can really achieve incredible insights not just in our personal lives, but in our professional lives, and our relationships. And we will be amazed at how much we've learned about ourselves in life as we look at it through this deep understanding. So I hope that answers your question, and I look forward to hearing how that goes for you. Thank you so much for listening, peace and love.
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