Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 468: Meditating on a Mystery | Bonus Meditation with JoAnna Hardy

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

What and who are you? In this advanced exploration, you are invited to contemplate what is and isn’t definable about your identity.About JoAnna Hardy:JoAnna Hardy is an insight meditation (Vipassanā) practitioner and teacher. She is also on the faculty at the University of Southern California, a meditation trainer at Apple Fitness+, a founding member of the Meditation Coalition, a teacher's council member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and a visiting retreat teacher at Insight Meditation Society. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for ”Exploring Identity,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=a40fbc27-1341-496e-978a-3e462fce5bc0.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it even mean to live a good life? Is it about happiness, purpose, love, health, or wealth? What really matters in the pursuit of a life well lived? These are the questions award-winning author, founder, and interviewer Jonathan Fields asks his guests on the Top Ranked Good Life Project podcast. Every week, Jonathan sits down with world renowned thinkers and doers, people like Glenn and Doyle, Adam Grant,

Young Pueblo, Jonathan Height, and hundreds more. Start listening right now. Look for the Good Life project on your favorite podcast app. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Happy Friday gang, bonus meditation time. One of the coolest things about meditation, in my opinion, is that it allows you, in a very down to earth way, to probe one of the central mysteries of the universe, the mystery

of consciousness. That may sound a little grandiose, the mystery of consciousness, but it's really pretty simple. You know that you're awake and aware right now that you're hearing the sound of my voice, that your other senses are operating, but can you find the source of that knowing? Can you find some little homunculus of you behind your eyes or between your ears? You can't. You know that you're knowing, but you don't know where the knowing is coming from, and that is the mystery.

And we're going to explore that mystery a little bit further in today's meditation with the great Joanna Hardy. Joanna is an insight meditation practitioner and teacher and also on the faculty at the University of Southern California. She's a meditation trainer at Apple Fitness Plus, a founding member of the Meditation Coalition, a teachers council member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and a visiting retreat teacher at Insight Meditation Society. Long way of saying, she knows what she's doing. So, over now to Joanna. Hi, this is Joanna. This is a meditation reflecting on personal identity.

What am I? What is here in this bodily form? And what is undefinable about me and my existence? Let's get started. First settling into your body, feeling the weight of your bottom on the chair or cushion, the pressure of your feet on the floor, your hands placed in your lap or on your legs, fully landing in this form that we call the body. Once you have settled a bit here, check into the experience of where you are in the room, with you in it. At this point you can close your eyes, allowing the breath to be easy and natural, sitting comfortably yet with attention. the experience of being in your internal body, sensing your breath, whatever your stomach

might feel like, recognizing that your heart is beating, your blood is flowing, your organs are all doing what they need to do to keep this body alive. So again, paying attention to the internal bodily experience. Recognizing that there may be thoughts arising in your mind creating pictures or internal sound. This is not personal. It's what this body does. It's what the mind does. Just sitting here on the knowing of your internal experience. This is the internal experience of the mind. Yn yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw And now we'll shift to sensing your external body, so maybe feeling the temperature of the air on your skin. Any sounds that might be coming in from the outside, feeling whatever it is you're sitting Maybe even the sensations with your body. I will now sit in both of these experiences, recognizing how the outside world is constantly affecting and defining our inner experiences and our inner experiences are affecting how we see the outside world.

These two colliding experiences create each moment. As a reflection using the same internal and external references, how do you see yourself and your identity from the inside? How do you think the world sees you? And how do these two experiences of internal and external identity colliding affect your life. You're allowing yourself to sit with both the internal, the external, and exploring this on your own. Always breathing and sensing your body being in the room and the space that you're sitting in. This meditation is a deep and ever-changing practice. Certain aspects of our identity may feel constant and others are impermanent and changing. Now, open your eyes, connecting to the room that you are sitting in, looking around, perhaps even looking at your own body.

I hope that this has been an inspirational practice, one that you will try again many times. Goodbye and see you again soon. Thanks to Joanna Hardy, and we'll see you right back here on Monday with a brand new episode very much related to what you just practiced. We're gonna talk to a neuroscientist who's been probing the mystery of consciousness. His name is Anil Seth. That's coming up on Monday. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

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