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This week I am very excited to introduce you to my husband Britt Griscom. He will be spearheading the Monday Meditations for Mindfulness session. Take a deep breath and dive in! In the ordinary man when a thought occurs the ego takes delivery of it as ‘my thought’ and gets involved… In the enlightened Sage, when a thought arises, witnessing happens and involvement with the thought does not take place. – Ramana Maharshi One of the main causes of suffering for us is that we identify with our thoughts. Each thought hypnotizes us and persuades us that it is the only possible thought, when the truth is that it is just one possible thought among many that we could have. Our identification with our thoughts pulls us into one tunnel after another, and we live at the mercy of these thoughts. This is true of all the objects of our awareness, including sensations, emotions, desires, and memories. To be free, we need to recognize that the tunnel we find ourselves in is actually inside of us. The exercise below is adapted from Roberto Assagioli’s Disidentification Exercise. The purpose of this exercise is to extract us from whatever tunnel we find ourselves in, and to position us in the meta-tunnel that includes all of the other tunnels. Let’s begin. As you go through your day, notice the sensations in your body. As you become aware of each one, ask yourself, “Am I inside of this sensation, or is it inside of me?” The sensation is inside of you, right? You don’t need to identify with it. It is just a small part of you. You are much larger than any sensation. Notice your emotions. As you become aware of each one, ask yourself, “Am I inside of this sensation, or is it inside of me?” The emotion is inside of you, right? You don’t need to identify with it. It is just a small part of you. You are much larger than any emotion. Notice your desires. As you become aware of each one, ask yourself, “Am I inside of this desire, or is it inside of me?” The desire is inside of you, right? You don’t need to identify with it. It is just a small part of you. You are much larger than any desire. Notice your memories. As you become aware of each one, ask yourself, “Am I inside of this memory, or is it inside of me?” The memory is inside of you, right? You don’t need to identify with it. It is just a small part of you. You are much larger than any memory. Notice your thoughts. As you become aware of each one, ask yourself, “Am I inside of this thought, or is it inside of me?” The thought is inside of you, right? You don’t need to identify with it. It is just a small part of you. You are much larger than any thought. If you are larger than any sensation, emotion, desire, memory, or thought, what are you? You are the field of awareness in which they arise. You do not need to identify with any of them. They are inside of you; you are not inside of them. They are part of you; you are not part of them. Each of them is a tunnel, and you are the meta-tunnel that includes all of them. As you go through your day, you’ll still get pulled in to one tunnel or another, but with practice you’ll be able to extract yourself more and more quickly, and you’ll spend more and more time in the pure light of Being. |