Meditation is probably the most difficult thing that you'll ever attempt. When people start to meditate, the thought comes in, oh, I won't be able to do this because I think too much. And then you start to talk about your mundane things inside your head. Like I wonder who's calling or texting me. Now I've had my phone off for three seconds. The phrase that I really like is, the rain isn't personal, but we take it personally.

Right? And when you're on the highway, George Carlin famously said, there are two types of drivers, there are lunatics and idiots. The lunatics are the people behind you who want to go faster, and the idiots are people in front of you who are going too slow. If I had a machine that could look into the brains of the 50 or 75 people, when I teach this class, you would find that out of the infinite number of ideas that people can have, our lives are fairly constrained. I mean, we have 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts every day. And the statistics I heard were that 90 to 95% of them are the same as yesterday.

So I'm going to show you throughout this video that most of our thoughts are redundant and negative. There's a beautiful phrase that you've probably heard, and it goes like this. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got. Einstein said it a little bit more eloquently when he said that the level of consciousness that created the problem will be unable to fix. My favorite way of saying it is by Marshall McLuhan, who said, I don't know who discovered water, but I doubt it was a fish. We all live in a paradigm we see the world through our own particular perspective.

And one of the most interesting things from quantum physics is a theoretical experiment called Schrodinger is cat Which basically proves that your way of seeing things influences the way they actually are in the world. An easier way of saying that is the glass is either half empty or half full. What we're trying to do in this video is get some insight into how our minds operate. We're going to look at our thoughts, feelings and actions, the things that comprise our way of being in the world. And we're going to look at them as tools that we learned as children to get our needs met. And the phrase that I like when I talk about this is adults are just children with better excuses.

So we develop these tools to survive our childhood, right? And what I like to do if I teach this class is have everybody stand up and give themselves a big round of applause. Congratulations. You can congratulate yourself because you survived your childhood. And I know that you survived your childhood because You're here, right? The problem is, is that the tools that we developed to survive our childhoods might be hindering us from showing up authentically in our relationships today.

So we're going to get some insights into the ways that we are prejudiced, or the ways that we're reactive or anything that might be skewing our perception of what's going on. The way I like to think of it is that the brain is the hardware and the mind is the software. And I also sometimes make the joke. The mind is a terrible thing to taste, which is exactly what you probably experienced with when we tried that two minute meditation. Let's get some insight into how our minds were built. The first thing I'd like to do is look at three characteristics of our mind that make meditation so challenging.

And the first reason that meditation is so challenging is Because one of the characteristics of the mind is that you cannot tell it what not to think. Please sit up as you did before, and we'll just create the posture to start meditating. Shoulders over the hips. The spine is a rack, the chin is level. Gravity gently pulls flesh off the cheekbones, the forehead is relaxed and we close the eyes. For the next three minutes, whatever you do, don't imagine a white elephant.

Okay, well, you don't need three minutes. The way the mind negates things is to put them in and take them out. So if I tell you not to think of a white elephant, the only way your mind is able to do that is to put it in and then take it out. This is why all psychotherapists would be out of business if we could tell people what not to think. And anybody could walk up to you and say, don't think about that terrible car accident you were in, or don't think about the time that you fell off the tree and broke your arm, right? Secondly, there are literally an infinite number of things that you are incapable of imagining.

And what vidkun Stein said is that we use placeholders to hold places for them. So if I tell you to imagine infinity, what you might do is close your eyes. And then maybe you'll think of the solar system or just the sky, but you can't imagine infinity. There are literally infinite things that you don't know that you don't know. The second reason that meditation is so challenging is because we get our sense of self our personal identity through our faults. Descartes' This Cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am is one of the underlying tenets of Western civilization.

So we're kind of addicted to that hamster wheel on the head that tells us who we are. I am IRA I am tall I am sitting I am this I am that. I'd like you to try on this concept and see how this feels to think about language, creating reality. If you can't say it, if you can't put it into words, then it doesn't exist. Just think about that for a moment. And then think about the way we language, ourselves and our action.

What I was taught was that in Sanskrit, all the original words were verbs. So it wasn't, I'm doing something it's this action is being done right. But in English, we do the exact opposite the that am in our sentences. Sounds like an equation. So Like, I am permanently a doctor, I am angry. I am a father, the English language reifies it makes things solid.

We're constantly creating personal identity through our thoughts. In our culture, we think about ourselves, therefore we exist, but really, the essence of life is prana is is our air, the energy? I mean, actually, it would be much more precise to say I breathe, therefore I am. And I think therefore I am. The second reason that meditation is so difficult is because we get our personal identity through our thoughts, and actually, we're all kind of addicted to who we are. The third reason that meditation is extremely difficult is because our minds have a negativity bias.

Most of the thoughts as I said before are redundant. And I'm going to show you now that I'm sorry to say most of them are negative. The reason that most of our thoughts are negative, I believe, is because in our culture, we raised children the same way we tame pets. I know that's a little strong, but just think about it for a second. Most of our interaction with adults for the first 18 years of our lives are some form of behavior modification. Unfortunately, a lot of times, we do this through negative language, and we're telling them what not to do.

Don't stick your tongue in the socket. Don't jab your sister with a fork, don't run out into traffic, right. And when people come into my office as a psychotherapist, and they have this thing called negative self talk, right? Not good enough. Oh, yeah, I made vice president of the company, but I'll only be happy when I'm president. That not good enough feeling.

I always ask them. Where did you get that negative self talk? Were you born with that because For me, it's the languaging that makes us productive members of society by telling us what not to do. That comes back 3540 years later as low self esteem, negative self talk or again what Melanie Klein called not good enough. But there's a fourth problem to the mind has a mind of its own. We're all on autopilot most of the time.

And what we need to do is learn to cultivate non reactivities take ourselves off of that autopilot, and learn how to show up authentically in the present moment. The brain is the hardware, the mind is the software. And these ancient tools of meditation and yoga were developed to reboot the harddrive so that we can start fresh and get some insight into whatever bugs are corrupting our operating systems, but telling someone to relate Least their thoughts or dis identify with that hamster wheel to take themselves off of autopilot is like telling someone to sneeze or sleep. Right? again. You cannot tell the mind what not to think.

And there's no on or off switch. What we have to do in order to get you to just release or dis identify for two or three seconds is we have to trick the mind into releasing the thinking apparatus. f Scott Fitzgerald said the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. So I can't tell you what not to think. And I can't tell you to flip this off switch and shut off your mind. What we're going to do is think of this meditation the same way we see that rabbit duck image, the mind can't hold the rabbit and the duck at the same time.

You can get it to flicker very fast. But if I tell you don't see the duck, don't see the duck don't see the duck. Your mind's gonna see the duck. So what I can do is just gently guide your attention towards something else. And what we're going to do in this first meditation is gently guide your attention. Back to your breath.

Gently guide your attention to long, deep fluid inhalations and gently guide your attention to long deep fluid exhalations. So please create the physical frame, shoulders directly over your hips, the chin level, gravity gently tugs the flesh off the cheek bones, relax any tension from the forehead. Your hands can be either down softly on your knees or facing up. Close the eyes and for the next few minutes we're going to guide our attention to those long deep fluid inhalations guide them to those long deep fluid exhalations long the fluid inhalations long exhalation and if you need words to correspond with what we're doing, you can use the Buddha's instructions Which are breathing in. I know that I'm breathing in and breathing out. I know that I'm breathing out.

Breathing in. I know that I'm breathing in and breathing out. I know that I'm breathing out. Continue on focusing on your breath the next three minutes Got our attention back into the room