Even the most exalted states and most exceptional spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways.
If we cannot touch one another in the life we have been given with our hearts.
Jack Thornfield Hey there friend,
My name is Anthony and thank you for hitting play today and choosing to share a tiny piece of your journey with me.
For the longest time I would wonder,
How can I find more meaning in my life?
How can I find my purpose?
How can I be more fulfilled?
I recently came back from a retreat and I couldn't help but notice how pervasive these questions are.
It's part of the human condition to wonder,
How do we live a more meaningful life?
How do we add more fulfillment to our lives?
What really makes for a well lived life?
But meaning and fulfillment in life only can happen in the present moment and can only come out of our direct experience.
How we feel,
What we perceive,
Our senses,
What we are willing to understand and connect with and how consistently we are willing to do so.
Spiritual growth is ultimately about waking up,
Remembering,
Letting go,
Revealing and allowing what is already there to just be and emerge.
It's a rediscovery.
So in this meditation,
We will rediscover meaning,
Purpose and fulfillment by connecting with the basic essence of life itself,
By remembering what it's like to be a human,
By remembering how precious,
Improbable and incredible it is to simply be alive.
So I invite you to get comfortable right now and sit with me for a few minutes.
You can position yourself in whatever way feels natural to you right now,
In whatever way your body wants to express itself in this moment.
And if and when it feels right,
You can close your eyes.
You can breathe deeply a few times to slow yourself down and anchor yourself wherever you physically are right now,
And again,
However that means for you,
In whatever way.
And for this session,
I might be the first meditation teacher ever to tell you,
Don't do anything,
At least not intentionally,
Don't try to follow your breath,
Don't visualize your day,
Don't focus on anything,
Nothing.
Instead,
Just observe what it's like to be a human being without any judgment or analyzing it.
Your only intention is to pay attention,
To stay curious,
And perhaps learn something new from your experience about yourself as this living,
Breathing,
Animating entity that can think,
That can feel,
Has a beautiful mind,
A beautiful body,
That can move,
And remarkably enough,
Can observe itself through our pure,
Loving awareness.
So how acquainted can you become with this awareness,
With what it's like to be a human,
With the experience of just being alive?
And if you're facing resistance to this,
Or find yourself trying to force a certain type of experience,
Or think it's not working,
Take a breath,
And smile.
It is working.
It is impossible for it not to work,
Because you are here,
You're alive and ticking.
So if you are facing resistance,
Resistance is the experience,
And it is a part of being human.
It is just as much part of being alive as joy,
Peace,
Or any other experience.
You know how to do this.
You know how to just be alive.
Actually,
You don't have to do anything.
Simply rest in your beingness.
But if you do feel stuck,
Searching for an experience,
Or are distracted with thoughts that you can't do this,
Or about all the things you have to do after this,
Can you imagine you are encountering being a human for the very first time,
Right now,
In this moment?
Can you imagine that today,
In this moment,
Is your very first time truly experiencing being alive?
And if it is,
That's okay.
But how curious can you become by the life unfolding within you and all around you?
Put a light smile on your face,
Loosen the grip of seriousness,
And allow yourself to explore what's here.
I'll give you just a few minutes here to play with this.
Go have fun and explore.
As you keep resting into just being,
Here's something for you to consider.
We often wonder how to get more out of life,
How to make more out of our lives.
We often seek to be amazed by life,
Which is such a beautiful attitude to have,
To seek to be delighted,
To seek those awe-inspiring moments.
But what if it's all right in front of us?
What if we found that fascination in the otherwise mundane,
Obvious,
And what we take for granted?
For instance,
Have you ever wondered just how glorious this planet we inhabit is?
How amazing and unlikely human life actually is?
You are statistically the most unlikely thing.
Think about it.
Your father made 300 million sperm cells and only one got through,
And that's you.
What a blessing.
How incredible is it that you have eyes that can see,
A nose that can smell,
And ears that can hear,
All of which is happening at the same time your body is breathing by itself,
Digesting the food you ate from earlier,
And performing a ton of other processes you are completely unaware of?
How amazing is it that the sun comes up in the morning,
Or that the moon goes through cycles and we can watch that magic move through the sky every night?
This life is at our feet.
We just need to live each day,
And in each moment,
As much as possible,
Open and willing to be amazed by this gift of life right in front of us,
And within us.
Mary Oliver,
In her poem,
When Death Comes,
Writes,
When it's over,
I want to say,
All my life,
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms.
A bride married to amazement.
A bridegroom taking the world into my arms.
Wow.
Remembering what it's like to be a human,
Remembering how incredible it is to be alive,
It's an attitude and a way of being.
As Mary puts it,
Taking the world into your arms.
It's a willingness to be amazed by life itself and experiencing everything it entails.
It's an act of reverence for all we get to do with this life,
What we get to create,
And for the impermanent nature of everything.
After all,
We are only here for a short time,
So how much would the way you experience everything in your life shift if you just brought a little bit of this attitude with you?
How much more freer,
Relaxed,
And inspired would you become if you took the world into your arms,
If you experienced everything fully?
Imagine spending your entire life with that kind of wholeheartedness,
With that kind of interest and curiosity for everything in your direct experience,
Both inside and out.
So as you take one more gaze into this vast mystery of humanness,
As you absorb your own aliveness and connecting with this precious little life,
The only thing that matters in this moment and every other moment is noticing what is there.
What is there.
What is there.
