Cultivate Understanding Through Meditation Today

Headspace Studio. Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Tuesday morning. As you look around, as you think around, the people, family, friends in your life, how many of them are like-minded and how many have really sort of different views, opinions, beliefs to you? Is there anyone within that circle who has opinions or beliefs that are so radically different from you that you kind of find it almost impossible to understand how they think the way that they do? There's an old phrase in meditation, which is, "If we can't learn to listen to our own thoughts, then how can we ever learn to listen to the thoughts of others?" And I feel like right now, there's just not a lot of space for listening to other people's thoughts. It's as though we have decided, we've made up our mind, we know which camper in whatever that applies to in the world, and we are gonna stick to it no matter what. And we are gonna outwardly reject whatever anyone else says. When we sit to meditate, there is a process. We're essentially training in witnessing the thought without any bias. So, thoughts arise. We're not chasing after them, we're not engaging with them, we're not creating a story around them. We're not using those thoughts to either reinforce our opinions or to reinforce our beliefs in any way. There is simply an acceptance of the coming and going of thought, the stream of consciousness of the thinking mind. We are simply witnessing it. And in doing that, we start to see the thoughts more clearly, we start to hear the thoughts more clearly. Sometimes it makes sense. It seems to make sense to the rational mind. At other times, it sounds like complete gibberish, complete madness. But it doesn't matter. That's only really sort of retrospectively when we look back at it. In that moment, there is no judgment, there is no bias. When you consider that training and how that might play out in the world when you are listening or having a conversation with someone who has such radically different views to you, the ability to be able to hear without bias, without prejudice, without judgment can really change, certainly the way the conversation unfolds but it can also change the way in which you relate and connect with that other person. So, fundamentally believe it is possible to connect at a human level even when our thoughts, opinions, and beliefs don't necessarily match up. And I've spent time living in so many different countries, so many different cultures with so many different beliefs and backgrounds and everything else. And always there is a point of commonality. And it's the point beyond the thinking mind. If we can get to a point where we are comfortable with someone else having different thoughts, as long as those thoughts are not harmful to that individual, to ourselves, to anybody else, and as long...