Making Friends

When we meditate, we're making friends. We're making friends with our own mind, with our collective neurosis, which in turn allows us to make better friends with those around us. So this was the way it was described to me when I was learning to meditate. There's an idea that was really kind of helpful, this idea of making friends with our own mind. At first, when we sit down, you know, it's not always easy to be at ease, to be at peace with our own mind. Our own mind can sometimes be very difficult or very challenging. It's a bit like having a difficult guest come to stay, perhaps. But there's nowhere we can really sort of go. We can't escape our own mind. So the only way is to find a way of working with the mind, and the best way of doing that is to come to a place of understanding, and yeah, this idea of sort of almost friendliness towards those challenging thoughts and feelings. And when we do that, there's a recognition or an acknowledgement that this is something going on in everybody's mind. Although we might be unique in some ways, mind is mind, and everybody has these same or similar kind of challenges. So in making friends with those more difficult, challenging aspects of our own mind, when those arise in the minds of people around us, we're not necessarily so shocked by it. We're not necessarily so resistant to it. Instead, we're a bit more understanding of it, a bit more empathetic of it, and more willing to spend time with that person. So just taking a moment or two to settle the body, making sure you're sat comfortably, that you're not gonna be disturbed. We'll begin with the eyes open. Aware of the space around you. And some big, deep breaths, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. And with the next out breath, closing the eyes, and just feeling the weight the body, the weight of gravity pressing down. Noticing how the weight falls, if it falls evenly, and noticing where else you feel those points of contact. And as you begin to notice any sounds, rather than resisting the sounds, allowing them to come and go, just beginning to notice all the different sounds around you. And having taken a moment just to settle the body, just starting to notice how the body feels right now, if there's a sense of heaviness or lightness in the body, any sense of stillness, restlessness. And then as you begin at the top of the body, top of the head, just scanning down, noticing any particular sensations, just building up a picture of how the body feels. And if you haven't done already, to notice the breath, in a very general way to begin with, just noticing maybe you feel it more in the chest, the stomach, diaphragm. Not breathing in any special way, but just noticing where...