Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Accepting the Unpleasant | Bonus Meditation with Joseph Goldstein

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

Accepting the unpleasant: easier said than done. Joseph demonstrates how to overcome reactivity and build the skill of acceptance. 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. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Accepting the Unpleasant,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=296ad59c-5122-4d9f-b6fd-de245aa50ac0. 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. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, it's Friday, time for a bonus meditation. On the show this week, we've talked a lot about difficult subjects such as aging, illness, and dying.

So today, we are bringing you a meditation design to help you to be okay with the world and your body as it is, even when things feel difficult. The meditation comes from my good friend and teacher, Joseph Goldstein, Joseph is one of the co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society in Barry, Massachusetts, and one of the founding teachers on the 10% happier app. I'm very pleased to bring this meditation to you. Just one quick item of business before we do so. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you've probably heard me talk about our companion meditation app, which is also called 10% happier. The app is a place you can

go to practice, what we talk about here on the podcast, and you can do so with meditations that are led by some of our most popular podcast guests. It's sort of like science, class, and college. The podcast is the lecture and the app is the lab. So whether you're interested in treating yourself with a little bit more compassion, having hard conversations without hurting your relationships, or pausing and taking a breath instead of snapping at your children, you can learn about the skills here

and then practice them over there in the app. But just like that college lab section, motivating yourself to actually put in the practice time is hard. Those few milliseconds between closing the podcast app and firing up the meditation app are rife with possibilities for distraction, a new email, a breaking news alert, the temptation to doom scroll on Twitter, whatever. It can all derail you pretty quickly. That's why this show, the 10% happier podcast, is now available inside our companion app

so that you can toggle seamlessly between listening and practicing, learning and doing. So now when you subscribe to the app, you'll be able to transition very easily to meditation right after listening to the podcast. Not to mention, you'll receive access to our many courses, which contain a whole lot of video, our sleep meditations, and the podcast episodes are ad-free. And good news as promised, the ad-free podcast is available now both on iOS and Android.

So to get started, download the 10% happier app, wherever you get your apps, and then tap on the podcast tab at the bottom of your screen. Okay, here we go now with Joseph Goldstein. One of the most challenging aspects of meditation practice is learning how to open to and accept and be with unpleasant experiences. They may be unpleasant bodily sensations. They may be what we call a flick-to-view motion,

those emotions that are unpleasant, that are causing suffering. In mind from this practice, we want to acknowledge and open to each of these experiences. A very helpful mantra that I've used in this respect is it's okay, it's okay to feel this. The sensation may be unpleasant, the sensation may be painful, and it's okay to feel it. We expand our capacity to be with unpleasant sensation with greater equanimity, with greater openness, with less reactivity. As you begin the sitting, sit comfortably in a dignified posture with the back straight,

but not stiff. Letting the eyes close gently. Settle into your body. Feeling the body in the sitting posture. And simply sit and know your sitting. At different times, you may hear different sounds. There may be loud sounds, there may be soft sounds, there may be pleasant, there may be unpleasant. Simply rest in the openness and be aware of how all sounds appear and disappear. And when they're no longer predominant, return again to the simple instruction, sit and know you're sitting. When thoughts arise in the mind, as soon as you become aware that you are thinking, make a soft mental note of thinking.

The idea in meditation is not to stop thinking, but rather to be aware when we are thinking, to see it as simply another object of mindfulness. Noticing all the mind seems to be carried away by trains of thought. times when the mind seems to be carried away by trains of thought. I would have a point you become aware that you've been lost for an extended period of time, in that moment of becoming aware. Simply ignore with that and begin again. Reconnect with your body breathing and continue with your practice. And when you're ready, you can open your eyes and reconnect again with the world around you. This concludes our meditation.

Thank you, Joseph. We'll be right back here on Monday with a fresh episode, a really good one. Michael Pollan is on talking about the connection between meditation and plant medicine. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts.

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