Embracing Impermanence

(cursor clicks) (bright music) Headspace Studios. (light music) (birds chirping) Hello and welcome back to Radio Headspace. I'm so glad you're here. Now, if there's one thing that meditation has opened my eyes to, it's that life is filled with impermanence. In every single moment, things are changing and shifting. And oftentimes when I'm struggling, it's because I'm resistant to this change. I was reading a quote from Andy, you know, our Andy, the other day, and it spoke to this idea that meditation invites us to be aware of the coming and going of moments and how we usually only notice the arrival of an emotion, but rarely notice it's going. And as you know, they come and go all of the time. When we're able to be aware of this constant flow of thoughts, emotions, moments, and experiences we're able to connect to a greater sense of ease in our lives because we know nothing lasts forever. But here's the thing. The mind has this way of making things feel very solid, fixed, and permanent, whether it's the thoughts that we experience or even our identities. Yet when we sit and meditate, we realize that everything is in flux, just flowing from one moment to the next. As we notice a thought coming, it's important to notice the going of a thought as well. This helps us realize that nothing stays the same and things aren't as solid as they may seem. Then we can liberate ourselves from this idea that the human experience or identity is binary because we know that there's nothing to hold onto. Everything is just coming and going, and much of our own suffering comes from the resistance, this natural flow of things. I remember in my first MBSR class that I taught, I had just introduced a group to walking meditation and one of the home practices was to incorporate mindful walking into their daily routine. There was a student who had shared that this was going to be impossible for her because she was a New Yorker and New Yorkers don't walk slowly or mindfully. They walk fast because they have places to go. If you're listening and you live in New York, I'm sure you can relate. But what was interesting was by the end of the eight-week program, she started to realize how the attachment to being a New Yorker was hindering her from bringing mindfulness into her everyday life. This holds true for so many different aspects of our lives. We can sometimes confuse a state for a trait, as if sadness is all we are, or anger is all we are, or being a fast walker is all we are, when in actuality, with a little bit of mindfulness, we see that this state we're experiencing is always in flow and flux, moving from one moment to the next. When we can be an observer, take a step back, and just witness the moment as it passes, we...