Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Guided Meditation: 'Dictators of the Mind'

Episode Date: June 13, 2016

Want to give meditation a try? Here's a great place to start. When left unchecked, our thoughts exert enormous influence over our lives. But when we become aware of them, we realize that they are little more than nothing. This is a guided meditation from the 10% Happier: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics app, featuring Joseph Goldstein. Joseph is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society. He is also Dan's teacher (which means he knows firsthand how crappy a meditator Dan is). Joseph is one of a handful of western teachers who brought mindfulness meditation to the west 40 years ago. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things. And maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey, we're back with another guided meditation for you from my man Joseph Goldstein, whose my meditation teacher has been for a while now and is really just a phenomenal guy and a great teacher.

One of, we've talked about this before, but one of, if not the biggest problem that people report when they try to meditate is they're just flooded with thoughts, many of them very annoying. And people feel they can't do this thing, this meditation thing, because they can't shut off their thoughts. But you don't have to shut off your thoughts. You just need to have a different relationship to them, to not take them so seriously. And in this meditation, you'll hear Joseph talk about the fact that thoughts are kind of dictators of the mind. Here you go.

Today we're going to explore the arising of thoughts and images in the mind. What's interesting to note about the arising of these thoughts and images is that when we are unaware of them, they have great power in our lives. We get lost in the thought, we get lost in the image, they carry us off on some inner journey, and very often we're acting on them, unknowingly. Thoughts are like little dictators in the mind. Go here, go there, do this, do that. So unnoticed thoughts have this great power, both in our meditation and in our lives. And yet when we become mindful of thoughts, we realize that in and of themselves, they have no power at all.

When we understand thoughts or images in this way, it gives us great power, a great ability to discern which thoughts we want to act on, which thoughts we simply will let go of. In this practice, the effort is not to stop thinking, but simply to become aware of the thoughts and images as they appear. We'll begin this meditation by again sitting in an upright posture, gently closing the eyes, relax the eyes, soften them, relaxing the jaw and the shoulders, softening the belly, settling into the awareness of the body and the body posture, and to know that we're sitting. You can gradually become aware of the sensations of your body breathing. Notice where in the body you feel the breath. Is it at the nose, is it the movement of the chest or the abdomen? Become mindful of the sensations of your body breathing in, the sensations of your body breathing out.

In, out. In, out. Become aware of different sensations in the body as they become predominant and call your attention away from the breath. these bodily sensations. You will quickly become aware of many thoughts arising in the mind. This is a natural occurrence. This is not a mistake in practice. It's what happens in everyone's practice. Thoughts will arise and they can become the object of meditation.

As soon as you become aware that you're thinking, you can make a soft mental note, acknowledging it, thinking, thinking. And notice what happens to the thought in the moment of awareness, in the moment of noting it. Does the thought continue? Does it disappear? Notice how often the mind will get lost in a thought for some time when we may not pick it up right in the beginning. When we hop on the trains of association and I'll carry it along for some time. Here we see the great power of thought when we are lost in them. And then notice the freedom of mind in that moment that we become aware that we are thinking. It's like waking up from being in a dream. Mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae, mithrae We can actually delight in that moment of awareness of remembering rather than judge

ourselves for having been lost. And in that moment, we recollect the breath and simply begin again. At first we may become aware of thoughts after they're already over, and we remember that we've been thinking. Sometimes we become aware of thoughts in the middle, and sometimes when the mind is very clear, we can be aware of the thought just as it's arising. At whatever point you become aware of thinking, simply make the soft mental note to soft acknowledgement, thinking, thinking, or more specifically planning, judging, commenting. Before returning to the body, returning to the feeling of the

breath. And when you're ready, you can slowly open your eyes and reconnect with the world around you. As we become aware of thoughts and various images arising in the mind during our meditation, we'll see that this level of mindfulness has great implications for how we're living our lives in the world. Because often, we're not only lost in these thoughts or daydreaming, but we're very often acting these thoughts out in our daily activities. With awareness, we have the space of choice. So as you go through the day, see if you can be aware of the different thoughts or images

which may be arising in the mind, offering you the possibility of making wiser choices about which ones to act on, which ones to cultivate, which ones to let go of. Our thanks to Joseph for that guided meditation. And if you like the way he teaches, you can check out the 10% happier app where Joseph guides a lot of the meditations. In fact, the first seven days are free. You'll learn a lot from Joseph directly through guided meditations and also through brief little videos where I ask him, I hector him with all the questions that I suspect you

might have. And if he sign up, you'll get a coach, but live human being that you can hit with your questions at any point. So thanks again for listening. We'll be back with more great guests and more guided meditations right here on the podcast. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early

and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground

up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind well-known companies like Headspace, Manduke Yoga Mats, Soul Cycle, and Kodopaxi, as well as entrepreneurs working to solve some of the biggest problems of our time, like developing technology that pulls energy from the ground to heat in cool homes, or even figuring out how to make drinking water from air and sunlight. Together they discuss their entire journey from day one, and all the skills they had to learn along the way, like confronting big challenges, and how to lead through uncertainty.

So, if you want to get inspired and learn how to think like an entrepreneur, check out how I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondery app. and at free on the Amazon or Wondery app.