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You might find it a little bit interesting to discover that a common misconception
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about mindfulness meditation is that we are somehow trying to remove
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or eliminate thoughts in the mind, this idea that we can somehow stop
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thoughts from happening and it can be.
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Quite a nice revelation to discover that, to get the benefits
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out of meditation practice, you actually don't have to do this.
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It's not required at all.
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And in some cases we can even use the mental talk or mental
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image as a type of focus object.
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And so today we're just going to take a little bit of a tour of the inner
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system and explore some of the things we might consider making up thought.
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Let's give that a try.
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So if you're in a seated position, go ahead and lengthen the spine.
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And you can relax your shoulders, your arms,
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the muscles around your face and your eyes.
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And let's begin by bringing the attention to the area we call mental talk space.
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And like the name implies, this is that area generally in your head,
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maybe between your ears, where you hear mental talk and mental dialogue.
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And so just bring your attention to that space and.
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See if you can detect anything or not, we're not generating
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any mental sound here.
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We're just observing what occurs naturally.
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If anything is occurring or observing if nothing is occurring.
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So just give that a try.
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It can be sort of interesting to experience the quieting of
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the mental talk just when we turn our attention towards it.
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And so if you're not detecting a lot of activity, that's perfectly normal.
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And if you do detect some mental talk, rather than engaging with it in some
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type of narrative or examination, Just explore the occurrence.
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Isn't it interesting that there even is a thing called mental talk and observe it.
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Like you might observe something in nature.
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Now letting go of that, let's bring the attention to the visual
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side of the inner experience.
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Call this mental screen or mental image space.
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And typically, this is the space where we see mental images
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often.
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This is the space behind, of, or just in front of the closed eyes
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and mental image.
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When.
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We look for it is often not very crisp or vivid, but rather fleeting shapeless.
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And just like mental talk.
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We're not trying to evoke an image here, so you don't have to
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effort or try and create anything.
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We're just observing if there is anything there in this particular moment.
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And if so,
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great, we can collect that as data.
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And if not also great mental image can often be represented as
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memory
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plan fantasy.
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Uh, And it might be interesting to look at thoughts occasionally to
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determine which part of it is mental image and which part is either mental
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talk or emotional sort of untangling it from being all tied together.
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Okay.
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Let's try turning the attention to the
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emotional body.
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Now, this is where we typically call things, feelings, things like.
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Joy curiosity,
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gratitude, interest, fear, agitation, impatience, uncertainty,
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any of the emotional types.
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And if you've never looked for this before, it might be kind of curious.
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Oftentimes placed to start looking for emotions in the
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bodies, around the chest area.
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It's kind of common for a lot of people to look for emotions there, but also
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the belly, the throat, the face really anywhere you might detect something.
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You'd call feeling emotional
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and if you detect anything great.
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And if it seems relatively inactive also great.
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You can appreciate the emotional piece in the moment.
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And of course in these exercises, anytime you find yourself pulled to an experience
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that is not the one you're intending to focus on, just gently pull yourself back.
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To your intended focus area
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by focusing this way, we're working the concentration muscle and
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developing that concentration skill
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by noticing the difference between.
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Something that is mental talk, mental image or emotional by detecting if
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we're engaged in something or not, we're practicing, developing sensory
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clarity and working that skill.
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And by allowing any of the experiences to.
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Happen to exist or to not exist the activity or the lack of activity in
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any of the sensory experiences and doing that in a nonjudgmental way.
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We're developing the equanimity and skill of balance.
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So well done there.
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And you can gently open your eyes and maybe carry some of this
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detection into the rest of your day.
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As you have a thought, you might.
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Say, oh, there's actually mental talk there and a little bit of
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mental image, and maybe there was a little flavor of mental emotion.
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You start to be able to untangle what we would call a thought into
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components and give the opportunity to investigate a little bit more skillfully.
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And thus be able to respond or react in a way that is also more skillful.