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What Kind of Mind Do You Actually Have? · Reading Your Own Life with Swami Larry

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Reading Your Own Life with Swami Larry.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: We are in season two from Meditate Right for your personality type.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Episode five is what kind of mind do you actually have?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you and I could sit down together, a couple of chairs, a couple of cups of coffee, no clipboard insight, I wouldn't start by teaching you anything.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'd start by asking you questions.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's how it always worked in the old teaching relationships.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Before a teacher prescribes a practice, they get curious about the person.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: How does this particular mind move?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: What does this particular body need?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Where does this particular life have room?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: You and I don't need to get the two chairs, but we can do the next best thing.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ask you the questions I would ask if we were sitting across from each other.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing here needs to be graded or added up at the end.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'd actually ask you not to keep score because the moment this becomes to feel like a test, you'll start performing.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And performing is the exact habit you've been setting down since the beginning.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, watch for something else.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: In one of these questions, a description is going to land a little close to home.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: You'll laugh or you'll wince, or you might even feel briefly like I've been reading your mail.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: That feeling of being recognized is worth more than any score a quiz could give you because it's pointing to how your mind actually operates.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: When it happens, take a note.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: The wince is the compass.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the first question: Where does your energy come from?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: So let me paint two Friday evenings.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the first one, the week is finally over.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what you've been craving since when to say is for everyone to go away.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not because you don't love them, but because you're full.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the only thing that empties you back out is quiet and your own company.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: A cancel plan may feel like a gift.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And on the second Friday evening, the quiet might be the actual problem.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: You've been cooped up all week, and an empty evening at home doesn't sound restful at all.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds suffocating, like the walls are closing in.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: What refills you is contact.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: People, conversation, and energy.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: You will leave a good dinner with friends more energized than when you arrive.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And most people know immediately which Friday might be theirs.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if the second one is yours, I want to tell you something before we go further.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Your need for people, emotion is not a disqualification for meditation.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: It never was.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: A door built for somebody else's temperament was never your only way in.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the second question.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: What does your mind do when you let it off the leash?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: When your mind has nothing it's supposed to be doing, say in the shower, on a drive, waiting in line, what does it actually do?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, some minds go to work.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: They take things apart.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: They want to know how the thing works, why the plan failed, what the pattern is, what is going on.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Give this mind an idle moment, and it will find a problem to solve, and it enjoys solving the problem.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: If that's yours, you've probably already been told your thinking is the obstacle to meditation, that you're too in your head for this, and you're not.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: Your mind doesn't need to be shut off.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: It just needs a worthy job.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Some minds don't take things apart, they make things up.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let this mind off the leash, and it will wander into scenes, images, old conversations that never happened, and stories that don't even exist.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: It usually finds traditional instructions stifling.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because focus on the breath and nothing else.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ask that mind to abandon its greatest gift right there at the door.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: If that's you, your imagination isn't the enemy of presence.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's just another doorway into it, some mind's loop.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the one I want to be careful with.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because from the inside, it can look like thinking, but it isn't quite.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: The analytical mind examines a problem and moves.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: The looping mind circles it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: The same worry, same conversation, same regret.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Going around the track again and again, picking up speed and dropping off nothing.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: If your mind replays and rehearses, if you lie awake re-arguing something from years ago, I want you to hear the most important sentence here.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing wrong with you.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And this is far more common than you think.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And now the third question.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: The body settles gladly.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's you, you can count yourself lucky.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: But for many people, more than the meditation world has ever wanted to admit, stillness is not the rest, it's containment.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: You sit down, and within 90 seconds, your body is it it's already negotiating with you.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: The leg wants to bounce.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if that's your body, please stop treating it as a discipline problem.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Some nervous systems simply settle through motion, not the absence of it.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: A moving body with gathered attention is meditating.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Your body isn't refusing the practice.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's telling you which practice is yours.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And here's one more.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: What is your relationship with the clock?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: When I told you there's no score in this chapter, did some part of you feel a little disappointed?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Some of us run on achievement the way engines run on fuel.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Goals, lists, metrics, progress.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Rest has to be earned.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And even then it comes with a tinge of guilt.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: If that's you, you've probably already had two thoughts about meditation.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: That you don't have time for it, and that if you're going to do it, you want to do it well.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: I say this with real warmth because I admire that.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So what recognized you?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: If it was one clear voice, your path is simple.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're like most people, two or three of these examples nod right back to you.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're an introvert whose mind loops, an analytical thinker with a caregiver's life, a sensitive person running on a demanding clock.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a complication.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's a portrait.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's more useful than a single label.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find that almost nobody is one pure type.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not a flaw in you or in these questions at all.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm more than one pure type myself.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: But each answer gives you pieces, and the pieces to complete.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: A practice built for one part of you and an insight built for another will fit together because they were all built on the same foundation.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Attention, resting, returning.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Done in the way your actual mind will accept.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And one more suggestion.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Come back to these questions every now and then, because people change.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: A caregiver's system ends.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: The mind that loops at 40 may settle at 60.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the body that's at easily may one day ask to walk.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: When your life changes shape, the conversation changes answers.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the door that fits you next may be the one you walked right past today.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: So for now, just notice what nodded back.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that recognition is where your practice lies.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Join me next time for episode six.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do when your mind won't stop?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, I'm Swami Larry.