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Lessons - What 6 Months of Silent Meditation Taught Me About Anxiety | Cory Muscara - Former Monk · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, discover why humans are wired to think about the future and how this
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  instinct can create both opportunity and anxiety. Learn how to distinguish ambitions driven by fear
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  from those rooted enjoy, explore practical ways to align decisions with presents rather than
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  pain and understand why mindfulness and awareness are key to building a life grounded in wholeness
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  instead of wounds.
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  I don't know if that's a correct assumption. You can tell me, do you feel like this is a
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  the stress of what's to come is a modern invention or our humans sort of genetically or historically
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  coded to always worry about what's to come and whenever we try and focus on the present we're
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  actually pushing back against the way that we were built.
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  Well, there's a very strong scientific argument, evolutionary argument that our orientation is
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  to focus more on the future. The psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman, he wrote a book called Homo
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  Perspectus, which is making the argument that at our core we are future thinking beings. Our
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  unique capacity is to imagine a future that hasn't yet happened and then organize resources to help
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  bring that future to reality. No other animals are aware of it, maybe this has changed in recent
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  years our understanding but have that same capacity to do that to imagine a future that doesn't
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  exist and then create it. So I would argue that at our core that is that is more a capacity
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  than to just be present. We can also talk about in a bit how they're not necessarily contradictory
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  because anything the future doesn't exist in the future and the past doesn't exist in the past.
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  They just exist. They're all arising from the present moment and so where so many people get
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  stuck with meditation and mindfulness is they think they shouldn't have these thoughts about
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  the future in the past and then they end up judging themselves for having those thoughts and
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  then judging themselves or judging themselves and they're just like I suck at meditation why
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  did I even try. So the big thing is like make space for all of that but when I as someone engaged
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  in this work, I have to have future thoughts all the time. I have a kid now and we had to like plan
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  for his future. We have to save money and I have a teaching business as well. So I'm planning things.
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  The question always for me is like is the thought about the future that's pulling me into the
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  future? Is it coming from a place of fear, anxiety, trying to get safety and control or is it
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  coming from a place in me that is more free and spacious and I'm often tracking like the decisions
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  that I make that inform especially big things that I do with my life, I really don't want them
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  to have the resonance of being a decision. I almost want them to have the resonance of being
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  a receiving as if I'm just like relaxing into myself and the deepest, most spacious place in
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  myself and then seeing like what arises from that place when I'm not acting out of fear,
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  anxiety and worry of like am I going to be okay? And many people think that when I do that,
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  like if I just meditate and I let go of everything related to the future in the past,
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  that I'm just going to devolve into a puddle of nothingness and not going to get anything done.
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  That's not true. There's energy that moves through you and even the most awakened and light in
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  state, that has to express itself through your body and through your mind. It just expresses
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  itself differently than the energy of what do I have to do to get safety, praise, love and connection.
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  And so the exploration of what it means to build a life from presence and even like from the resonance
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  of wholeness and happiness rather than emptiness, pain and desperation is really the exploration of
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  how do I rest in that most spacious, aware place in myself and then listen for what wants to come
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  through and then use the resource of me, my human capacity and agency to help us share that into
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  existence. So that's a way that we blend this work of presence and mindfulness with our capacity to
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  create a beautiful life. But we want to create that life on the foundation of the place in us that
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  is already whole rather than the place in us that feels empty. And if we do the ladder,
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  this is where you get people who build businesses to try to get a sense of worth and praise
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  because they have a wound that their dad didn't love them or their mom didn't love them unless
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  they work super hard. So they're constantly just playing out that pattern and then you build an
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  entire empire that's on the foundation of pain and not actually coming from the truth of you or
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  a place in you that really gives you joy. It's just helping to protect you from having to feel
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  the trigger of that discomfort and not of not feeling good enough. So, uh, yes, well the
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  the first response to the original question is like, no, I think our actual state is to be future
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  thinking. Are we more do we have more hooks to get caught in that future thinking now in a negative
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  way? Yes. The psychologist, Alberto, Alberto Valolo says we experience more stimulation in one
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  week than our ancestors experienced in their entire lives. We're just not too hard to think about
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  even just like in the context of what I'm looking at right now. I have a screen, I have a ring light,
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  here's towns in the background, like most things around me are artificially built versus like being
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  in the forest. So instead of having one line that you're contending with every couple of weeks,
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  like it's just constantly coming at you and there's so many things for the mind to get hooked on,
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  to get addicted to, um, and that I think creates a lot of noise that makes it difficult to parse.
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  Like what are the thoughts that are actually going to that are future related that are coming from
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  a place of presence and rootedness and my inherent wholeness and which ones are just coming from my
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  mind attaching to things that it's scared of or, uh, or craving in my environment and I'm building
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  my life from there. My question really is when we look into the future and say we're ambitious and
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  we want to build a company, we want to be an entrepreneur, we want to, I don't know, think about
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  all the things that people get excited about. They want to, uh, be in better shape, they want to be
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  in a great relationship, they want to, uh, get a promotion at work. Is there a way to tell
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  if those things are being driven from a place of fear or true happiness and excitement?
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  Because that to me would be the, and maybe, maybe you have to do the work, maybe you have to look
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  inside and, and be more mindful and to meditate to truly know, but I think that people that are
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  bought into met, bought into meditation already and I say that meaning that some people don't do it,
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  just to be very kind to some people don't do it. Is there a signal they should look for when they
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  think about how they operate through their day that should be a, a sign, hey, I'm not doing this,
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  I'm not doing this trauma free. I'm doing this from a place of hurt or a wound or something that I
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  don't quite understand and that is a great signal for me to maybe look inside be, you know,
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  along with my thoughts a little bit more. Is there something that people can sort of tap into that
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  helps them understand why they're doing the things you're doing and if it's in a positive way
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  or a negative way? If that makes sense? Yeah, I'll give you a few things. The first is you can ask
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  yourself the question, what comes up for me when I think about not doing this? If it is a motivation
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  coming from a wound, you will probably notice a lot of fear arise in your system and it will be
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  loud and anxious and buzzing. It will almost have like a, the resonance of survival in it, like no,
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  you need to do this. That is typically what could be referred to as a protective part of you that
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  developed a belief, emotionality and behavior around who you need to be and what you need to do
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  in order to get certain needs met. And so when you confront that part with the question, well,
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  what if we just didn't do that? It will usually come online in a loud way and convince you why
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  you need to. And it will, it has very clever ways for doing that, but the thing you want to track
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  is does it bring a lot of noise? Is it really trying to convince me? Does it make me feel very scared
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  if I weren't to do this? That is one in general telltale way to know that this is coming from
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  something that is guarding a lot of pain. Another thing you can start to do just to get a sense of like
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  what is the resonance of things and motivations that arise from the place in me that is grounded,
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  happy, excited, inspired versus the place in me that's scared and control fearful. It's to just
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  track throughout the day the moments where you feel most grounded, most present, most connected,
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  and most loved. Maybe it's a walk in nature. Maybe it's when you're with your partner. Maybe it's
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  like a few moments like while you're in the bathroom at work and nobody needs anything from you
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  and you're just like you don't have the fear in your system that's coming online that's constantly
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  gripping and telling you what to do. When that subsides, you just pay attention to how does my
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  system orient in those moments? What do I think about? What do I desire? Where does my energy want to go?
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  And then throughout the day track, what are the moments when I'm most stressful where I feel the
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  most amount of fear? What is my system orient to in those moments? What does it think about? What
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  does it feel? What behaviors tend to come online as a pattern? And you'll start to see typically
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  that there's a difference there that in my most relaxed state, it's just like, oh, I feel more
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  possibility. Like I feel a draw to start that business. In my more fearful state, I feel like,
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  no, I really just have to stay in this job or like your patterns of control come online in a big
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  way and it feels very compelling and convincing. In the early stages of deciphering this, you're just
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  trying to sense that there is a difference there because most of it when we're living on autopilot,
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  it just feels like noise. The thought is a thought is a thought. There's not a thought coming from
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  wisdom. There's not a thought coming from fear. It's just noise in the system. A lot of different
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  emotions, sometimes they're happy, sometimes they're not in same with sensation in our body.
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  So this is a way that you can start to break down the category of like, oh, yeah, when my system
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  is relaxed, when I do feel good, this is what wants to come through. And when I'm helping people
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  try to figure this out or what it means to like build a life that is not only an extension
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  of your wholeness, but also allows you to live in a space that reinforces you being in that place.
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  Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you
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  never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links
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  in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.