Okay, so now we've talked about where and when to meditate, and how to sit in meditation. And I'm hoping by now you look, tried out some of the meditations, particularly the meditations on the body. And you will notice that is a natural part of meditation. When you try to bring your own mind to the object of meditation, in this case, the body, you'll find that naturally, your mind starts to wander and get distracted by other thoughts. Maybe you hear something in the distance, in your mind things. What's bad when you think about a wonder what's coming up after the meditation, what am I going to have for lunch, that sort of thing.

And so this is the area of distraction. And this is a central part of meditation. I mean, meditation at the end of the day, is the Battle of trying to stay undistracted or bringing your mind back. From those distracting thoughts back to the meditation object, and over and over again, as a beginner meditator, we're going to be bringing our mind back from the distraction to the meditation object and trying to get the mind to stay on the body or later on the breath. So let's talk about distraction. Now our mind is a very, very powerful tool or a very powerful part of our psyche.

We think millions of thoughts every hour, we can think of very, very complex things. And so what happens is when we give it a really boring subject, like okay, now meditate on the legs. The mind gets bored very quickly, and it wants to move to something a little bit more exciting, preferably something with an emotional buzz to it. So we'll think about our boyfriend or girlfriend or something like that, and we'll get emotional about it. And then that emotional will lock us into that thought pattern. Now, in order to combat this distraction, one of the key things is, we need to create a meditation object that is not as boring as just the legs alone, especially for a beginner meditator who has a highly destructive mind.

And the way we do this is to try to make the meditation a little bit more interesting. So rather than concentrate on just one object, like the body as a whole, we're going to try to give the mind more things to do. So that's why the seven points of the body is really good because we say right legs, back, hands, arms, head, jaw, eyes, that sort of thing. Now in addition to that, we can also give the each part of the I symbol, a reminder of why we should be what else we should be thinking of when we think of the legs. Like for example, in the meditation that I've got recorded. Below, you'll see with meditation with symbols, I say that the cross legs should remind us of a foundation or a steadiness or a promise to stay in meditation posture.

Now what this does is it does two things to help our meditation practice. Number one, it allows it gives it more interest, so the mind is more likely to stay on the object. The second thing is that as we think about the quality of steadiness or perseverance, you cannot think about that quality without that quality, manifesting in the mind. So even as we think about the steadiness of the legs and qualities of the promises, Studying meditation, it allows our mind to actually come to a more steady state, and you get a little bit more perseverance. And likewise, if we move on to the back and think about the flexibility of the bat, for example, it brings that flex of that quality of flexibility to the mind. So this is the next step in our evolution is to take the meditation object and give it more complexity so that the mind sits there and additionally start to bring qualities to the mind that will help us stay in a better meditation practice.

So below, as I mentioned, there's a meditation on the body with symbols, and this will help combat distraction. So try that now before you go on to The next lesson