Episode 85 - Meditation practice & discipline

they ask me a little bit, if I could, they share a little bit more about it and if I could give some of my advice or outlook on what have been the keys to having that kind of discipline and practice and as well, what have I seen based on that? So I want to share that for me. It's been a journey. I didn't grow up with meditation practice. It's something that when I was a teenager resonated with me and I started practicing a few different styles.

One of the main ones that have stuck with me has been Tibetan meditation, Tibet budded meditation. There have been some other styles that I've used through the years. Lots of chanting mantras. Lots of meditations using the breath meditations, using awareness of the body of awareness of feelings, different meditations that involve going in and meditations that involve going out meditations using my mind meditations using everyday experiences, meditations through movement meditation.

Through connecting with other energies or beings. And one of the first things that I wanted to to share about that is in my own journey and my own understanding meditation is all about. Connection and the life that we have nowadays in this modern world, especially in the Western civilizations, everything is really fast. And meditation gives us a lot of times the possibility to slow down, to stop and to be able to. Connect to be present.

When I started my practice, of course it wasn't as it is now. When I started my practice, I didn't do it every single day. That came much later. But it's been really interesting now. It's been almost 10 years that I have done every single day. The fact that I've been able to see how my practice of meditation actually has lend itself to my entire day.

And one of the keys that I realized is that yes, meditation is a practice and it can take many different forms and shapes, many different techniques coming from different traditions and everything. The most important thing for me. Has been an understanding of how to stay in that state, in that state. That for me, I, I call it state of meditation, state of awareness of connection. There's a depth there that I experience, and that is what mostly I maintain during the day.

It doesn't change that much during the day. It's quite similar. My, my state, when I'm doing my sitting meditation, as when I'm eating, working, recording episode, like now when I'm having conversations with people, when I'm interviewing someone. That state doesn't change that much. That has been one of the most amazing things that I've seen through my practice, that the consistency and the discipline. Has made it so that it grew and grew and grew.

And yes, I did things consciously with my awareness in everyday life to bring more of that awareness, but also by itself, it started to become like that. That doesn't mean that I maintain it all the time. That doesn't mean that there are things that don't push my buttons. That doesn't mean that a lot of things, I am nowhere. Perfect. I am nowhere, anywhere near being enlightened or anything. I am just a person living this life, doing what.

Now, and each moment I believe is the best that I can do for my full potential development for connecting to the depth of my being and to, by doing that, to bring my gifts and my light and my love into the world and to be able to help. Or enable the changes and the growth that happen both for civilization and for all human beings and all Senti beings in general, as well for the betterment. And, um, what some might say an evolution or growth, or however we want to connect with that.

That not only for me, but for the collective, I believe that we are in what some, we might call Ascension. I believe that I am part of that. I believe that you and everyone is part of that. Some are doing it consciously. Some are doing it unconsciously and developing this practice for me has brought more awareness into all of that. I have noticed how my experience shifted through the years. What. I am able to experience now.

It's very different than how I experienced life before I had developed all of this practices and this level of awareness. I, I compare it as the amount of experiencing of my life that I had in one year. Is the amount of experiencing that I have now in one day, it is as if the day has expanded and my ability to experience it expanded so I can experience more. And what I experienced more and really is the depth of beauty. The depth of feeling the level of connection by being present.

I was living the same amount of time in the past yet. What shifted this, my perspective, my awareness, how I'm living my life, everything was able to slow down. Sometimes I share with some people, I feel like life shifted gears and wanting to slow motion. So when I'm able to live like that, I'm able to notice much because when things are quote unquote, moving slowly, I can notice more.

So the ability to change my perception of time and experiencing is one of the main gifts that I have received from my practice. Meditation practice or being present or connecting deeper has been what allowed me to connect with my inner being with my inner voice, with my intuition, with my feelings. It's what allows me to do what I do and to be on this path that I am. And to be able to share it.

Meditation has given me the ability to catch myself when I'm being Al when I'm doing something that is out of alignment, based on my own alignment, my beliefs, my values. One of the key things that I found was really interesting at the beginning was that I was noticing through my practices and not only meditation practices, other practices as well, how there were some big shifts at the, but then everything started to be much more subtle.

There's still lots to unlearn, lots, to heal, lots to develop and, and to remember, and all of that now is very subtle work. It's not changes what some might call an awakening. It's not like an aha moment. It used to be like that. Now it's more subtle. Now it's more, even there is through my own practice and a lot of the Buddhist philosophy of the middle way. I notice how I'm much more balanced in the way that I respond to life. I used to be much more up and down than what I am now.

There's nothing wrong with ups and downs. I still experience ups and downs. I just don't experience the peaks so much high or low. And I am able to notice much more to catch myself much more to maintain myself in the place that I want to be and choose much more consciously how to be one of the keys as well. That has been this discipline. And this consistency has been. Making a conscious choice of how I want to spend my time.

I noticed at the very beginning, when I started my meditation practice, how that brought a different state of being a different level of awareness, different level of feeling and connection with myself and with others. So then at one point I asked myself if by doing this, I get that. Or I open myself up to that level of experience in life. Why would I choose not to do that? Because what I noticed was I had one day, let's say, 24 hours minus whatever one is sleeping.

That one can still use the sleeping time as practice, but that's not for this episode. I was living my life. I watch TV. I still watch TV sometimes not to be really. I watch some things. Online movies, TV shows, documentaries. I used to do different things for work. Hanging out with friends and different things that I used to do and then realized, oh, I do have 20 minutes at least every single day that I can put for connecting deeper for creating that experience in my life.

And I noticed at the beginning, when I wasn't. When I didn't make that commitment to myself that I wasn't doing it every single day. Mm. I wasn't hard on myself. I wasn't judging myself. It's not something that I was trying to do yet. I could notice the difference the days that I didn't do my practice versus the days that I did do my practice. And then at some point when I maintain my practice, I also realized I don't really need to do it.

Yet. I always give one thing that my teacher said, one of my teachers said to me, and that was that we practice only on the days, especially the beginning, only on the days where everything is in the middle, because when everything is going badly or. we don't want to, we don't have the energy. There's no way that we're going to practice. And when everything is going, right, everything is flowing. We feel like we don't need to because everything is going well.

So why would I put time into my practice? And the thing that my teacher said is neither of those last. Each one, but most of the time we are in one of those until we learn much more how to bring ourselves to that middle and we practice as much as possible in the middle. And when we have discipline, we practice in the good times. So then we can deal much more easily with the bad times or the negative times. We don't even get there that much.

And as well, for those that believe in this, my teachers to say, this is a practice for the process of dying and for our death, I particularly. Love the practices that involve death and dying. It's a really touchy subject. We might even do another episode on this, but the more that we can prepare ourselves for those times, then the easier and perhaps more beautiful those times will be. So the practice.

Can be a preparation for different things or can just be something that we do for ourselves in the movement, because we want to find more balance. We want to be connected. We want to potentially quiet in the boys is in our hand. We want to create a container where there's nothing. Else happening where we can connect perhaps within, instead of all the time, connecting out and relying on external things. So my invitation is find the way that you connect and keep doing that set.

A goal or set a timeframe for yourself. My recommendation is to use any meditation style that works for you five minutes a day, every single day, if you can. Do it tied to something else that could be, as soon as you wake up the first five minutes you meditate or before having lunch five minutes, you meditate or. Before you're going to go to sleep five minutes, you meditate, do it, tied to something else, hook it to another one of your daily experiences.

So it makes it easier for you to be able to keep that going and not being attached to any results. It's more about how you want to live your life. Once again, there's many different styles and for me, it's about playing and experimenting with them. Sometimes I use someone else's me guided meditation practice. Some days I didn't use anything.

And it's just me, as I said, I use a lot of different ones and it's really important not to judge ourselves, anytime that we want to have discipline and we want to do something. If one day we didn't do it, we have it the next day. It's not about chatting. It's about learning and inquiry doing that inquiry work questioning. Why didn't I do it? Not for chatting just for the scene. Was there a reason that I could see.

What are the conditions that made it so, so that I might look at it for the future and see like, oh, when those conditions arise, I don't do it. And I want to do it. Therefore, I need to look at that when we use our life experience, it's easier without judging the judging doesn't really help us. So looking into that. I'm going to continue. I don't have a specific goal or a specific amount of days that I'm going to do this for, this is something that I'm choosing every single day.

Some days, 20 minutes, some days, one hour, some days, five hours doesn't matter. It depends on what I have that day and what I'm choosing to do, and I'm going to continue doing it because it works for me. So I invite you to find what works for you and to do that. And if the word meditation it's in the way, because that connects to something that is not aligned with your worldview, forget about meditation. Do 20 minutes or five minutes of deep connection, five minutes of slowing down.

However you want to call it. And do it for enough time that then you can see what did it brings. What did it bring for you? What are the benefits perhaps? How does your life change? I would love to know for everyone that meditates, um, for the ones that might give it a try, let us know. How is it going? What are the doubts that you have? What are the learnings? What are the things that you're seeing in your life that, that practice brings? Thank you for listening.

And we'll see you in the next episode. Bye. What