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What If You Already Know How To Meditate · Reading Your Own Life with Swami Larry

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to season two of Reading Your Own Life with Swami Larry.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: This season is Meditate Right for Your Personality Type.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Episode one is What if you already know how to meditate?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Give you a little story.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was six years old, and my best friend was a dog named Fluffy.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Behind our house, there was a little bit of a small patch of woods, and through those woods ran a stream.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that was our spot.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: My dog, Fluffy, and I would sit beside it for long stretches of time watching the water move over the rocks.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Birds would land nearby, seemingly almost unaware of us.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Squirrels would move through the trees, rabbits and deer would move past us.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: We just sat and watched.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a word for any of that at the time.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was just six.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: My first formal meditation training wouldn't happen until I was 15.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: But looking back, I believe it's clear that I had already started.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if this is your first season with me, here's the short version of who's talking.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: I went through the seminary at the Temple of Korea Yoga in Chicago, and I was ordained in 2016.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I've been teaching since that fall.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Korea yoga isn't a religion, it's a science of the mind.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the part that kept me.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: The tradition I trained in carries a lot of knowledge that has remained esoteric for a long time, mostly because of the language surrounding it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: So my work is to bring it to the table and say it plainly for the life you're actually living today.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's the whole job.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: The show is called Reading Your Own Life.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the title is the whole thing.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Most of us were taught that our lives have to be explained to us, that meaning is something that is held by somebody with more training or more letters after their name.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe that.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: People are more capable of reading their own lives than they have been led to believe.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Each season is built around one of my books.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Same idea, different part of your life.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a principle I keep coming back to.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll hear me say it in every season.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do not bypass.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: First acknowledge, then transform.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: When people find out what I do, the most common thing they say to me isn't a question.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a confession.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've tried meditation and I can't do it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: My mind won't stop.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I get bored.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: I fall asleep.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm too busy.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not spiritual enough.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: The details, they do change, but the conclusion is always the same.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Something is wrong with me.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe that.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: I've never believed that.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what I think is actually going on.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: We were handed a picture of what meditation is supposed to look like.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sit still, close your eyes, empty your mind.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: When we try it, and our minds don't empty, because minds don't empty, we are convinced that we have failed.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: But we haven't failed at meditation.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: We have failed at someone else's version of it.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And those are not the same thing.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: When I was sitting by that stream, I wasn't following anyone's instructions.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody told me to sit still.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody told me to clear my mind.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was watching water, birds, and my dog.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was paying attention to something in a way that came naturally to me, and that's really the whole secret.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone has their own version of that stream.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: For some people, it's a garden.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: For some, it's a kitchen, or a long run, or dog asleep on their lap.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: You've probably already been there.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: You just didn't call it meditation.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Picture a child with a coloring book.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: The crayons are scattered everywhere.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: The tongue is sticking out a little.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: The way it does when a child is concentrating.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: The child is gone.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Not gone from the room, but gone from everything.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: You could say their name twice before they even hear you.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody taught them to do that.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: There were no instructions because none were needed.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: The absorption was already there.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: It came with the child.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the part that matters most.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: You weren't doing it to get anything.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: The coloring wasn't for a grade.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: The clouds weren't on a to-do list.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: There was no goal, no outcome, no finish line.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: The attention was the whole event.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: You were doing it because it simply felt like enough.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's the difference I want to put in front of you.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because it explains almost everything about why meditation feels so hard later in life.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's the difference between attention and achievement.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: A child pays attention for its own sake.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: An adult pays attention to accomplish something.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Attention became a tool for getting things done.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And slowly we forget it had ever been anything else.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Notice what happens when a mind trained for achievement sits down to meditate.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: It wants to know if it's doing it right.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Am I calm yet?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Was that a thought?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't supposed to have thoughts.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm failing at this.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: We took the one activity that has no finish line and turned it into a performance.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then we graded ourselves and we failed ourselves.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not because we can't meditate, because we're trying to achieve something the six-year-old never tried to achieve.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I have to tell you about a friend of mine.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: She she had told me for years that she couldn't meditate.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: She wouldn't even try.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: She used to say she couldn't understand how I could just sit there and do nothing.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then one day we were talking, and I asked her about the things she enjoyed.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: She told me that every morning she goes out back and fills her birdbaths.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And while she's out there, she gives a pot of plants on the patio of spring.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Wow, that sounds really peaceful.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I said, What do you think about when you're doing that?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And she just looked at me.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then she said, I don't know.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'm thinking about anything.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, There you are.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're in a meditative state.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: She looked at me almost like she couldn't believe what I was saying.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we both had a really good laugh.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I wasn't kidding.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Every morning, this woman who couldn't meditate stood in her backyard with a hose, completely present, mind at ease, attention resting on the water, birds, and plant.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: No technique, no cushion, no app.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: She'd been practicing for years.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: She's just never called it that.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it never counted.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the real problem.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not that people can't meditate, it's that they don't recognize it when they're doing it.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: The picture in their head is so specific that everything real gets disqualified.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: The birdbaths don't count.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: The garden doesn't count.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: The morning walk, the fishing, the long drive, none of it counts because none of it looks like the picture.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to take that picture away from you for just a moment.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: The state we're talking about was never about the posture.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was never about the eyes.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was about attention resting on something without a goal.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: The child had it with a crayon.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: My friend has it with a guard nose.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: You have it too.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Meditation is not about becoming someone new.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's about remembering a way of being that most of us knew long before we ever heard the word meditation.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: When people finally find their way into a practice that fits them, they rarely describe it as learning something new.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: They describe it as recognition.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's this.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know this.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: So before we go any further, I want to ask you the same question that I asked my friend.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the parts of your life where time disappears, where you finish and realize you weren't thinking about anything.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's something you do every day and have never once called it meditation.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: What is that for you?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's no need to rush the answer.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: It may come to you tomorrow or the next day.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: But when a moment comes to mind, the garden, the workbench, the early morning coffee, before the house wakes up, pay attention to it.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Notice what your mind is doing while you're there.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or better yet, notice what your mind was doing after the fact.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: You'll realize that your mind wasn't doing anything at all.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's not preparation for meditation.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is meditation.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you've been doing it all along.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us for the first episode of season two.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: And our next episode in season two will be Why Are You So Sure You Can't Meditate?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, I'm Swami Larry.