Everything You Need Is Right Here: A Meditation for the Exhausted

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast

***

Sometimes it may seem like no matter where you go in this modern world, people are exhausted.

Perhaps you’ve felt it. Maybe you've gone back to school to get a better job. Maybe you aren’t feeling fulfilled in a relationship and want to trade your partner out for another to see how you fair in the lottery. Maybe your mind is wandering from the present moment, fixating on an even better moment that might, you imagine, lie just around the corner.

Whatever the specifics, chances are that you’re exhausted in part because you’re reaching for that which you don’t have.

Of course, I'm not suggesting for a moment that it’s a bad thing to get further education and a better job. Or that it's inherently bad to leave a relationship that's not working anymore. Or even that it's bad to let your mind wander. These experiences are all just part of human life. They're what it means to be human.

But what I want to point out is that when we're stuck in this mode, when all we can do is seek better things that don’t yet exist, we tend to feel exhausted. If we're constantly in a posture of reaching, we can't let go, relax, and be with exactly what is right now.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Instead, you can practice taking up the attitude that everything you need is right here.

Take a moment and see what it does to your body when you internalize these words: "everything I need is right here."

In one sense, the practice of mindfulness is the practice of giving that thought more time each day.

Of course, that thought can itself be pitfall. You might pick up mindfulness because you hear it will help you relax more, and all of a sudden mindfulness becomes a new task — a new form of seeking. In that instance, mindfulness itself puts you back at square one, where you're in a posture of reaching.

So I want to invite you to really sit with the thought that wherever you are and whatever you're doing right now, absolutely nothing is missing.

When I teach this concept, people often ask, "If nothing is missing, why would I get out of bed in the morning? Why would I do anything at all if everything is right here?”

It’s a good question, and it’s important to note that the point isn’t to learn mindfulness and then become so passive that there's no need to ever leave our meditation cave for the rest of our lives. Rather, mindfulness is a practice that helps us replenish. It's a practice that helps us rejuvenate so that we become deeply present and then paradoxically become more vibrant in our actions.

Let’s see what this feels like in practice.

Whatever you're doing right now, come to stillness.

Starting with the experience of the physical body. Just notice in this moment how you feel. You can notice any pleasant sensations as well as any challenging sensations — any physical discomfort.

It's deeply instinctual to want to move away from discomfort, but what you can do here is just invite all of your experience to be present right now. Notice the comfort and discomfort in the body. And then notice that there's a part of you that’s even deeper than the body, a part of you that can just allow comfort and discomfort to exist as they are. Be present to this full experience.

And you can notice what emotions are present. Maybe pleasant emotions, maybe neutral emotions. Maybe you’re not feeling much of anything — an emotional idling. Or maybe you’re aware of challenging emotions, or negative emotions. Whatever the case, notice that you're able to just stay present to all of it.

If you're feeling really good, you don't need to grasp on to that good feeling. If you feel negative emotions at the moment, you don't have to drive those emotions away and go looking for a better experience. You can just rest in this moment exactly as it is.

And now notice what thoughts might be going through your mind. Maybe thoughts about things that have happened in the past. Maybe thoughts anticipating what needs to happen today or what you hope will happen in the future.

Rather than struggling with the thinking mind, rather than trying to stop thought, you can just allow thought to flow without diving into the stream yourself, without pursuing thought or elaborating on it.

You can just allow thoughts to flow as naturally as blood flows through the veins.

Notice that whatever the state of the physical body and whatever the state of the thinking mind, there's a part of you deeper than the physical body and deeper than the thinking mind. And this part of you is just aware.

For this moment, you don't have to struggle. You don't have to strive. You can simply rest in this moment that is full. Rest in this moment where absolutely nothing is missing. Everything you need is right here.

***

So, why would we want to experience this?

Again, because we live in a world where we are constantly driven to exhaustion.

We are constantly reaching for what comes next, to the point we forget that there's a moment right here. We forget there's a moment right now where we're already complete. And when we rest deeply in this sense of completion. When we really take on this posture and attitude of nothing is missing and everything you need is right here, something really amazing happens: we start to move in life.

Improvement itself is not the problem. Striving for all the things we care about most in our lives is not the problem itself. The problem is the forgetting.

When we remember we are complete, we paradoxically start to reach the things we care about most. Not from a place of lack. Not from a place where we feel like something’s missing and we just need to work harder and won't be ok until we have it.

Rather than moving from a place of scarcity, trying to get more and trying to bring more in, we start with a quality of deep fulfillment.

You could say we start from a place of abundance and from that place where everything is complete and everything we need is here, we move to the next moment where everything we need is already here again.

And in that way we let go of exhaustion.

***

Transcribed by Seth McConkie, edited by Jon Ogden

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Mindfulness Is the Awareness that You Are: An Introduction to the Basics

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast

***

Mindfulness is the buzz of the world right now. Business leaders, educators, scientists — everyone’s talking about mindfulness. People are even saying mindfulness will create revolution in human health.

So, what is all this hype about?

I want to address that question, but first I want to share how I came into the practice.

It started when I was 18 years old. I was an insomniac. I'd just moved out of my parent’s home to start my freshman year of college. I got to my apartment, unpacked my bags, sat on the floor, and realized that my life was a total mess.

I felt emotional turbulence. I wasn't able to sleep through the night. It was a really stressful time for me. I didn't know how to be on my own.

One day I somehow absorbed this word out of the ether: mindfulness.

I started asking people about it. I'd never known a meditator, and I'd never sat with any group formally to practice meditation, but something in me was yearning to learn mindfulness. I just had an intuition that it could help me.

So I learned the basics: how to hold the posture, how to follow my breath, how to observe my thoughts, etc. It was challenging, but I kept doing it because I had a sense that the practice was really going to help.

Then, around the six month mark, I felt my whole life change. It changed in a very subtle but profound way. I had gone from being an anxious, destabilized teenager to feeling like I was really rooted in my self. I had a certain centered awareness that I'd never felt before, that I didn't even know was possible, and I knew that it was the result of practicing mindfulness for a few months. In a very concrete way I could feel that my breathing had changed. It had gone from this kind of nervous, anxious, chest breathing, to dropping down deep in to my belly — every breath calming me more than the last.

Mindfulness changed the course of my life. I've been doing it daily for nearly twenty years, and it’s a joy of mine to share the basics with people so that they can start their own journey with it.

If you stick with the practice, your transformation will look very different from mine, but I can promise you that it will be incredibly rewarding. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it, which brings me to the next point.

When we talk about mindfulness, it can sometimes sound like a really exotic technique that gurus know how to do and you don't. Perhaps you’re already hearing those gurus saying, “We're on the in and you're on the out!”

I want to debunk that notion immediately because what I love about mindfulness is that mindfulness is who you are. What I mean is that when you pay attention, like I invite you to do right now, what you'll notice is that you're aware. You're just simply aware. You're not trying to be aware. In fact, you can't try to be aware. You're just aware. And there’s something really profound that happens when we just notice the fact that we're aware. Everything shifts.

I'll give you an example. If you watch a newborn infant, you realize there’s something wondrous about the simple act of looking around. It's an amazing experience.

That’s the way it is with all our senses. It doesn't matter if you're hearing a dump truck or if you're hearing Niagara Falls. Human hearing is an incredible experience.

Infants know this intuitively. You could say that they're enraptured by the sensorial experience of being a human. Unfortunately, what happens over time is that as we become used to the many sensory experiences available to us, they lose their charm.

You could say that a mindfulness practice is the practice of remembering. It's remembering just how amazing it is to be awake, to be in a human body, to be in this very moment.

That's the essence of it. There are techniques we can learn. We can rev up our mindfulness and raise our baseline of mindful awareness, but at the very heart of the practice, at the very heart of the experience, you're already mindful. You’re already aware. You’re already perfectly present. In this sense, to practice mindfulness is to celebrate what's already here.

Let’s go ahead and try it. As you read the following words, see if you can treat the experience as mindfulness practice.

Start by bringing awareness to the physical body.

Notice that if I prompt you to notice the physical body, your awareness just goes right there. It's not effortful. You're just suddenly aware of the physical body.

And you can just notice the flow of sensation in this moment. If you're sitting down, you can notice what it feels like to be sitting. If you're standing, you can notice the sensation of standing.

What I want you to notice, especially here, is that it doesn't take any special effort or special training to simply notice that you're already aware. In this case, you can just notice that you're aware of body sensation and let that body sensation flow and enjoy.

In this moment, notice hearing. Notice any sound in the environment. If there’s not sound, you can simply attend to the silence, the absence of sound. Again, just notice how effortlessly you're aware of sound, aware of hearing. You don't need any special training to do this. You simply turn your attention one degree, and suddenly you notice all the sound in the world.

At this point, I invite you to notice seeing. Take a moment away from this text and notice your surrounding. Notice the different shapes, the different colors in your visual field, the volume of space, and so on. Maybe you're sitting in a small room. Maybe you're outdoors beneath the wide open sky. Whatever the case, you can just notice the experience of seeing all of this. Notice that it doesn't take any special training. Just bring awareness to seeing and you're aware of seeing. Seeing is happening.

Now give yourself a nice full breath, letting go and softening even more. Notice that all of these different qualities of awareness are happening all at once: feeling, hearing, seeing, all just different experiences within the experience of awareness, of being aware.

At the heart of experience you're always already aware.

***

There are many mindfulness teachers in the world right now — many extremely talented and knowledgeable mindfulness teachers. They have their own definitions on what mindfulness is, but I want to offer you my own very simple definition, which hopefully you just had a chance to experience:

Mindfulness is the awareness that you are.

In this sense mindfulness is the practice of just remembering that we're already aware. It's being aware that we're aware. When we get buried in daily tasks, when we're stressed about where we need to get to next, we forget this joyous and simple feeling of being that comes through our own awareness. By contrast, when we take a moment or pause, when we shift attention one degree, when we pay attention to how we're paying attention, these are all mindful moves.

As we make these mindful moves more and more they become habit, and this habit changes our experience. It changes the course of our lives.

Remember this incredible thing that you already are. You might have simply forgotten.

***

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Guided Meditation: A Tour of Body, Mind, and Spirit

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast.

Listen to this episode here.

***

Take a moment to settle in, letting the intelligence of the body organize itself into a posture that allows you to be awake, alert, but also soft and relaxed.

And you can just breathe, letting the breath soften you, especially on the out-breath. You can just notice the way the body tends to relax and let go. The muscles tend to soften.

I'd invite you in this practice to not try and feel a certain way as you practice, not try and get somewhere with this meditation so much as just open up to what’s already here — what's actually so. Just notice the body. Notice the shape, the posture, of the physical body. Notice sensation, the feel of the floor or the pressure of the seat against your bottom or maybe your back. Notice where you make contact with the ground.

Also notice where sensation is the brightest, the most felt — maybe through the organs, the belly, the heart, the throat, or the face. Just notice. And you can notice where sensation is quieter, more dim, or difficult to detect. However the body is feeling in this moment — blissful, relaxed, happy, or maybe tense, challenged, uncomfortable, or all the above and more — notice that the body is just happening. Sensation is just flowing like a mighty river. Or a quiet river, as the case may be. And just as you can never step into the same river twice, the body never repeats the same sensation. It's a continuous flow — always new, always renewing.

Notice thoughts in the mind, thoughts floating through awareness. What does it feel like to have a thought? What images come up? What internal sound and chatter occur? Notice the shape, the contour, and the movement of the thinking mind in this moment. And again you can just allow thought to flow. Just like you wouldn't hold the breath indefinitely, you don't need to try and not think. Rather you can just allow thoughts to flow through awareness as naturally as blood flows through the veins.

If you get pulled into a thought, you can just notice that awareness collapses into a thought and allow awareness to open back up into spaciousness, into the vast field of awareness that is, that you are. And just notice awareness in this moment. Not awareness of something — awareness of the body, awareness of the mind — but awareness that you're aware. You're having an experience and if you weren't aware, there would be no experience at all. Forget what you're experiencing and notice that you're experiencing.

And as you rest as awareness, as you're aware of awareness, it makes no difference what you're experiencing. There's no longer such thing as a good meditation and a bad meditation, even a good day and a bad day, because you are awareness. You are the open and free field through which experience comes and goes, comes and goes. But you — awareness — don't come and go. You, this wakefulness, this intelligence — you have always been and always are. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to understand it. You can be it. Just aware.

And in this moment the body rises in awareness. Thoughts arise in awareness. The entire world arises in awareness, and you are all these things, all at once, simultaneously. Body, mind, spirit, integrated. Breathe in through all of you. Breathe in through all of your bodies, feel the stretch in awareness, feel your own vastness. And know that this is always available.

Freedom in Chains: A Practice of Open Awareness

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast.

***

In his book Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl reflects on what enabled him to not just survive, but to thrive during the Holocaust. 

There’s a quote from the book that for me incapsulates something beautiful about what we're working with in a mindfulness practice and in a human life. Frankl writes, "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

Here's a person writing from the extreme of the extremes — a witness to some of the most atrocious acts ever committed in the history of human civilization. And yet he talks about his ultimate power to not respond to outward situations, which we don't often have ultimate control of, and instead move to a kind of inner freedom where we choose our response. 

If we pay close attention, we notice that our days are full of moments where we feel oppressed or we don't feel free. Or perhaps we feel extremely limited, burdened, and oppressed in really significant ways. From a conventional standpoint, what we tend to do in those situations is get really moody and mad at everything and everyone around us. We want things to change. And sometimes we get our way, and sometimes we don’t. Often we don't. In extreme situations, we might come upon incredible hardships that last for days, weeks, months, years, even decades.

So it's not the conditions of our lives where we find actual freedom. And I think that this is where a mindfulness practice is so relevant to all of us. 

I'm talking about the movement at the deepest level of our being that desires to be free. Can you feel that? Can you feel that stirring in you, that deep desire to be free? And yet the paradox is that we're always born into conditions. Having a human body is a condition that limits us in many ways. Depending on the culture we grew up in — the political, economic, and social environment we grew up in — we were denied certain freedoms and gifted with other freedoms. So certain conditions work in our favor, they're positive, they’re supportive. Other conditions, such as Viktor Frankl’s, are at the extreme opposite end of oppression and limitation. And yet there's something in us, there's an awareness, there's a suchness and a beingness beyond all conditions, that knows freedom right now. 

At the deepest level we're already free.

Of course, I'm absolutely not asking you to take anything I say just based on my words. The invitation is for you to investigate this directly and see if you're able to access this quality of freedom that goes beyond all conditions. 

It's an amazing paradox and a poignant contradiction that Viktor Frankl, chained and tortured during the Holocaust, learned to access his deepest freedom in the very conditions that we would suppose are the antithesis of freedom. 

Let’s take a look at this experience at a personal level

*start practice* 

Take a moment to settle in. Find a comfortable posture. Feel the shape of the body, the posture of the body. Notice the impact that has on your experience in this moment, on your awareness. And just breathe. Let the breath move through you like a wave. Notice all of the rich sensation associated with breathing.

Take another moment to just soften, to let go of whatever you've been carrying with you from the days work, from the night full of dreams, to just empty out. To soften. To unwind. 

Feel the spaciousness of your awareness. Notice that it's no effort to be aware. You're aware of sensations in the body, emotions, thoughts in the mind. You're aware of sounds, activity in the world, and it's no effort to you; you are this awareness, this intelligence. Notice any conditions in this moment that feel limiting, that feel troubling in any way. Perhaps pain in the body, challenging sensations, emotions. Maybe the mind is busy and you'd like it to calm down. Or if in this moment, the body, the mind, are relatively at peace, relatively blissful, you might open up your awareness to relationships that are challenging, work life. Just the demand to earn money to provide for yourself and maybe others. And if everything is amazing on this front and effortless, you can open up your awareness to the challenges of the world.

The huddled masses of immigrants who are driven from war-torn, famine-stricken countries. Climate change disturbing environments, ecosystems, communities. Political strife, division, the threat of war. All of these conditions, they're in the air, and if we look closely we feel it in our bodies. These conditions that challenge us, that would seem to limit our joy, limit our freedom. Whatever conditions are particularly challenging to you in the moment, you can pick the one that, if you could wave a magic wand and make it disappear, you would. But rather than making it disappear you actually open up your awareness even more, become even more present and just feel the presence of this condition in your life. The way it colors you, the way it pushes on you, the way it impinges. And rather than pushing back, rather than resisting, rather than trying to change it, perhaps you can allow awareness to simply more fully receive it. Not that you're giving up action, not that you don't allow conditions to inform you and evoke the appropriate response, but to just fully be present to this condition, this limitation, this challenge. 

And recognize that when you don't tell a story about it, when you don't jump to a meaning about it, when you just dwell in the immediacy of your experience in this moment — the immediate experience of having a body, being in sensation, being aware, being alive, being intelligent — notice what this does. Allow this condition to fully inform you to become completely present, so present that you become one with it. This condition is your life, it is you. It's part of what makes you you. 

And when you let this condition be fully present you're actually free not to react. Not to react in a desperate way that tries to make this go away as quickly as possible, but act in a way that's intelligent, that's responsive, that's appropriate, skillful, whatever that is. Whatever that is to you. But first you can taste the freedom in open awareness.

*bell to conclude*

I'll invite you to stay with this practice. You'll notice when you pay attention, countless times throughout the day where we notice this vague sense of dissatisfaction, of oppression, horns blaring in traffic, a long, slow moving line at the grocery story, a vaguely boring or uncomfortable interaction with a friend, a colleague, a neighbor. In these moments when you're most inclined to react and change circumstances immediately, see if you can first escape into circumstance. Finding your freedom in the chains of conditions. Going beyond conditions all together, into freedom beyond any condition. 

Judge More, Lest Ye Be Judgmental: A Fresh Perspective on Mindfulness

By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast.

***

My experience is that most definitions of mindfulness include something about not being judgmental. I wholeheartedly agree with this definition — with a caveat.

The truth is that when we really look closely at our experience what we find inevitably is that we're extremely judgmental. We find that the mind is constantly evaluating the environment, analyzing, assessing, and judging. Do I like this, or do I not like it? Is it interesting, or is it not interesting? Is this situation dangerous, or is it safe?  There's no end to the judgments.

What I've found after years of practice is that we can potentially run into a pretty significant mindfulness pitfall that goes something like this: We notice when we sit still and really observe our own minds that we're incredibly judgmental, but we suppose that mindfulness is all about not being judgmental. So we do our best to mask our judgment. We start to speak in really soft tones. We talk about how mindfulness is all about being in the present moment and being really happy. 

But in reality, sometimes we're really pissed off. Sometimes we're really stirred up; sometimes the waters are really muddy. So we practice in life, and we get activated. And because we have this notion that we're not supposed to be judgmental, we have a tendency to try to suppress judgment and at worst, when we really fall into this pitfall, we start to don a spiritual mask and talk about mindfulness as though it's a practice of being soft-spoken and not being angry ever, ever, ever. 

We run into a big problem because we start to suppress the very activity of the body-mind, and the body-mind doesn't like to be suppressed, repressed, depressed, or any kind of pressed. It likes to flow, it likes to really move. 

When our mindfulness practice is vibrant and expansive, we're able to occupy a greater and greater spectrum of human experience, ranging the whole spectrum of human emotion, human expression, and human thinking. But we can't get there if we have this limiting notion that we're not supposed to judge.

The point is that there's a paradox here where if we want to be less judgmental in the mindful sense, we have to actually judge more — which is to say we have to notice how judgmental we are and be really honest about that fact. 

To do this, there's a critical piece of awareness that we need to develop. Namely, we need to start recognizing that our thoughts — our judgements — are not ultimately who we are at the deepest level. When we identify with the thinking mind, we're very much disturbed by the judgments that arise because it makes us feel like a judgmental person. 

But with time and with trust, what we recognize is that as these judgmental thoughts come up there's a part of us that's deeper than the thinking mind itself. We might call this the witness. We might call it awareness itself, or spirit, or intelligence — there are lots of words for it. But when we recognize that we're not just the judgmental thoughts but we're actually this awareness that is aware of all the experience coming up in the space moment to moment, we can actually just allow the activity of our body, mind, personality, to happen. To flow.

What's more, when we get into this flow-state — when we're not judging the judgement or berating ourselves for not being more mindful — but instead just letting the activity and the experience of life come up and inform us fully without denying it, without suppressing it, without sugarcoating it, then experience can fully inform us and allow us to show up in a more appropriate, fluid, compassionate way. 

We want to be less judgmental. And with the best of intentions we notice how judgmental we are when we actually sit still and start practicing mindfulness. And at worst we start pretending like we're not judgmental, and wearing a spiritual mask and convincing people how mindful and spiritual we actually are. And that practice creates a lot of tension and wreaks a lot of havoc on us over time. 

What we're going to work with here is just being more judgmental. Or better said: we’re going to practice being as judgmental as we actually are. And rather than suppressing, rather than fighting, rather than pretending and telling a story about how things are, we're just going to attempt to appreciate things as they are, make a little more space for the judgements. Not struggle with the struggle so much and see where that leaves us.  

*Begin Practice*

Take a moment to settle in, trusting your body to organize in a way that allows you to deeply relax, but also be alert and present. Allow the face to relax, unwrinkling the forehead, softening around the eyes, behind the eyes. Letting the jaw drop slightly. Relaxing the back of the neck. Letting the breath drop deeply into the belly. Letting the breath flow through you like a wave. Good. Keep breathing. Just trusting the rhythm of your body to soften, to settle. Not trying to settle, just letting nature settle you. Letting life meditate you.

And notice in this very moment how you're feeling. Notice how you feel in the body, how you feel in the mind. Notice any judgement you have around it. Positive, negative, neutral. Maybe you sense that this practice is going amazingly well, in which case you can notice that judgement. Maybe you're frustrated with yourself because you're not settling in quickly enough, deeply enough. Why isn't todays meditation as good as yesterdays? Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a meditator. Notice if you have any judgements like that. And whatever the case may be, I want to invite you to radically include the judgement in this experience in this moment. Include the judgements without buying in to them. Without believing them, absolutely. Without identifying with them.

Open up your awareness to your entire life and notice what judgements you have around your life. Maybe the judgement that you're very successful. That you're a good person, that you're doing well - I can't believe I've accomplished this much at this young age - or whatever it is. Or on the other end of the spectrum: I thought I would be much more successful at this late age in life. I thought I would know better who I am, what life actually means, what it's all about. Just notice what judgements come up. And you can let these judgements come up in awareness as naturally as the rains fall. As the winds blow. See if you can allow these judgements to just ebb and flow like the tide. Not reifying them, not buying into their meaning absolutely, but just letting them come and go as something deeper. Deeper than the physical body, deeper than the thinking mind, deeper than the personality remains present. Aware. Awake.

Notice judgements you have towards another person in your life. Positive judgements: this person is absolutely amazing. I admire them, I hope to become more like them in time. Or negative judgements: how does that person live with herself? How does she get away with the things she does? How does he lie, cheat, and steal? Whatever it is, notice. Notice judgements coming up and, again, just be open to these judgements coming up not as a final truth on the matter on who this other person is, but judgements as a product of your own mind. These judgements are you. They're yourself.  They're coming up in your experience. They're nobody else's. See if you can just let them come up, let them inform you, and let them go. Staying open to just this moment. Open mind, open heart, open will to be led. As surely as the heart beats, the lungs breath, muscles expand and contract, the mind secretes thoughts; the mind churns out judgement. And you don't have to stop judging any more than your heart needs to stop beating. But you don't have to invest in the judgement, you don't have to identify with it, you don't have to believe it. it can rise and pass like the coming and going of the breath. And as you allow thoughts to come and go, judgements to come and go, you judge maybe more than you're used to, and become infinitely less judgmental in the process.

***

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