Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - A Great Way to Get Out of Your Head | Bonus Meditation with Joseph Goldstein

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Caring about others' well being actually enhances our own. Practice and see how this beautiful quality begins to transform your experience. About Joseph Goldstein: Joseph is one of the most respected meditation teachers in the world -- a key architect of the rise of mindfulness in our modern society -- with a sense of humor to boot. In the 1970's, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) alongside Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Since its founding, thousands of people from around the world have come to IMS to learn mindfulness from leaders in the field. Joseph has been a teacher there since its founding and continues as the resident guiding teacher. Many Ten Percent Happier users have written in over the past few months to tell us how vital their meditation practice has been to helping them cope with this dumpster fire of a year. If you know someone who could use a bit more balance, send them a gift subscription to the Ten Percent Happier app! We're offering gift subscriptions at a discount through the end of this month. Take advantage of the discount by visiting www.tenpercent.com/gift 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. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad.

Where did memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, time for a Friday bonus and this is a guided meditation from the inimitable Joseph Goldstein, one of the founding meditation teachers on the 10% happier

app. And in this meditation, he's going to give us a sort of counterintuitive way to get out of our own heads. And it centers around a simple but provocative question you might ask yourself from time to time, which is, how can I help? Here's Joseph. Hello, this is Joseph. Nice to be with you. Compassion arises from a willingness to come close to suffering. And in response to the suffering we encounter, the compassionate heart asks the question, how can I help? In this meditation, we will use compassionate phrases to cultivate the feeling of compassion toward another.

Let's explore this sum together. Take a comfortable sitting posture, settle into the awareness of the body, sit and know you're sitting. You can begin to feel the sensations of the body breathing, centering the attention, the awareness at the heart center, that area in the center of the chest, as if you're breathing in and out from this heart center. Breathing in, know you're breathing in, breathing out, know you're breathing out. Let the heart and mind relax into the either personally or perhaps someone from the news, somebody who's experiencing some kind of suffering in their lives, maybe that they're experiencing some physical distress, or some mental suffering. Bring an image of this person to mind in some way open to and connecting with the suffering phrase of compassionate wish.

May you be free of suffering. May you be free of suffering. As best you can hold the image or the sense of that person in mind. Aware of the suffering that they are experiencing, and connecting with your own inner motivation to help in whatever way you can. Slowly repeating the phrase of compassionate response, may you be free of suffering. May you be fulfilled. It may be that as you're expressing this wish, may you be free of suffering, holding the person who's experiencing difficulties in their lives in your mind and your heart. It may be that your own mind will begin to wander, Get lost in thoughts of past or future. As soon as you become aware that the mind is lost in thought, simply come back to feeling the body, feel the body sitting.

Begin to feel the sensations of the body breathing very gently at the heart center. And reconnect with the phrase expressing or compassionate feeling. May you be free of suffering. May you be free of suffering. 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 Become aware of the feeling in your heart, the motivation. The genuinely wishes that this person be free of suffering. Thank you. As you repeat this simple phrase, holding the image of the sense of the person in your mind, in your heart, connect with the meaning of the words. Connect with the motivation behind the words. May you be free of suffering. May you be at ease. May you be free of physical pain. May you be free of mental distress.

May you be free of suffering. May you be at ease. When you're ready, you can open your eyes and take in your surroundings. During the meditation, you may have felt a lot of compassion at times, or perhaps very little compassion as you were repeating the phrases. We start wherever we are and develop it from that point. And even if you feel as if the compassion for another is not yet very strong, as someone engaged in this practice said, at the very least, I've developed compassion for myself, for not having enough compassion.

And so we settle into this practice of compassion, letting it grow naturally in its own way, as this beautiful quality begins to transform our life and our experience. Thank you, and I look forward to practicing with you again. Big thank you to Joseph as always, and if you want to get more meditations from Joseph, check out the 10% Happier app. If you want to get more meditations from Joseph, check out the 10% happier app. By the way, many 10% happier users have written in over the past few months to tell us

how vital their meditation practice has been to helping them cope with this terrible, terrible year. If you know somebody who could use a little bit more balance, you can send them a gift subscription to the 10% happier app we're offering gift subscriptions at a discount.

Through the end of this month, take advantage of that discount by visiting 10% dot com slash gift. That is 10% one word all spelled out dot com slash gift. That does it for today. We'll see you here on Monday with a fresh episode. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

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