Episode Transcript
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Amy (00:10):
Welcome to the Conscious
Classroom podcast, where we're
exploring tools and perspectivesthat support educators and
anyone who works with teens tocreate more conscious,
supportive and enrichinglearning environments.
I'm your host, amy Edelstein,and I'll be sharing
transformative insights andeasy-to-implement classroom
supports that are all drawn frommindful awareness and systems
(00:32):
thinking.
The themes we'll discuss aredesigned to improve your own joy
and fulfillment in your workand increase your impact on the
world we share.
Let's get on with this nextepisode.
Share let's get on with thisnext episode.
Hello and welcome to theConscious Classroom.
My name is Amy Edelstein.
Today, I want to talk aboutcontentment in times of stress.
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I want to talk about what itmeans to be able to be content
in the midst of very challengingtimes, and I want to talk about
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some habits that we can develop, as well as how to relate to
our meditation practice in a waythat brings a type of
contentment that's much deeperthan that which comes and goes,
much deeper than anything we canhave and get and strive to
insert into our lives in orderto feel more content.
Now, oftentimes, when we seekfor contentment, we look outside
to create the perfect place,and I can understand that.
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I have several places in theworld where I go, where I
experience a level ofrestoration and rejuvenation,
where the land itself is sovibrant and vital and filled
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with a living sense of beingthat I can't but help but let go
and find myself waking to theexperience of profundity, moving
through my day with a sense ofdelight and lightness of being
and coming to the end of the dayfeeling just extraordinarily
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blessed by the richness of lifeand the grace and the
unbelievable good fortune tojust experience that sense of a
living world, a living universe,and being non-separate from
that living universe.
So I encourage everyone to findthose places where you go and
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experience that sense ofrestoration and rejuvenation in
a very simple life, simple wayof being.
Or create that space in yourown environment, in your home.
Clean out that storage room andpaint it a color that brings to
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mind sacredness, and create alittle room that is only for
contemplation, only forrestoration of the self, only
for the evolution of the soul.
So sacred spaces are veryimportant, and particularly when
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we live in environments or intimes, like we do, where there
just is so much friction.
At the same time, what I want totalk about today is
experiencing with such a depth,that level of wholeness and
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simplicity of being, that thereis a background, a backdrop of
contentment, even in times ofstress, when we allow ourselves
to immerse in our meditationpractice and give ourselves the
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luxury and the time to reallylet go of thought, really let go
of anything unresolved, let goof petty frustrations or more
serious grievances.
Let go of heartache, pettyfrustrations or more serious
grievances.
Let go of heartache.
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Let go of hurts, not to saythat there might not be times
and modalities where those hurtsneed to be tended to.
Not every injury is going toheal of its own accord.
If we break a bone, it's farbetter to go and get it set
properly so when it heals we'llbe in good shape.
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The same is true for our innerworld.
At the same time, allow yourselfto really go deep in your own
meditation practice.
Whether you have a short periodof time or months to dedicate
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to retreat, really let yourself.
Let go.
Let go of the surface ofthought, let go of unresolved
angst and need, let go so thatyou experience, in a way that
you truly know, that there's asubstrate, groundwater in the
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deepest recesses of yourselfthat is pure and vibrant and
whole and light filled withlight filled with goodness.
The more you let yourself restat that level of being, the more
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accessible it becomes to you inthe middle of really
challenging times.
Allow yourself to step backfrom everything you know you
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need to tend to in your life, aswell as all the aspirations and
plans and dreams that maybe youdon't need to tend to at this
moment, and give yourself to thepractice of resting in complete
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contentment and doing nothing,because there's nothing that's
needed to be done at that levelof wholeness of self.
And while sometimes a singleglimpse is enough to truly
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transform our lives, a singleparting of the clouds, so that
we see that the sun was alwaysthere in all of its brilliance,
it was never obscured.
It could never be obscured.
It was only us who thought thatveil of clouds meant something
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about the light itself, and thatlight is our nature, is our
essence.
So sometimes one single glimpseis enough, and sometimes the
repeated habit of letting go ofunresolved issues, letting go of
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the mind, letting go offrustration, letting go of doubt
, letting go of need, letting goof self-criticism, letting go
of doubt, letting go of need,letting go of self-criticism,
letting go of fear, letting goof self-hatred and allowing
ourselves to rest in therecesses of our heart, heart and
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we find extraordinary beauty,grace, divinity, life force,
energy, or chi or prana, orwhatever you want to call it.
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There seems to be a term forthis life essence in so many
different languages andtraditions.
You can also call it love, thatquality of love that is without
object.
It's not the love where I lovethat or I love so-and-so, and
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that can be a transient being orenvironment or sunset that
comes and goes.
We discover in the innermostrecesses of our heart, when we
let go of that constantnegativity and fear, we discover
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an essence of love that becomesendlessly fascinating.
It's like a tractor beam thatdraws us into it.
It's like a tractor beam thatpulls us close and allowing
ourselves.
It's like a tractor beam thatpulls us close and allowing
ourselves to go there over andover again.
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We really experience andrealize that there's a
wellspring of positivity thatcan support us through anything.
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I was reflecting on this.
A dear old friend was asking meabout doubtlessness.
And Is there something that Iknow to be true, that I cannot
doubt, and on one level, thelevel of my constructed self
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that's set in time and history.
Of course, we can never knowwhat the future is going to
bring.
We can never know if somethingwe felt certain about today may
be upended in the future, orsome emotional certainty we felt
may get washed away in thetidal wave, challenge or
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suffering or global concerns.
So we don't really know.
At the same time, this touchpoint that I've been speaking
about is something that I'veexperienced provide enormous
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steadiness in the midst of themost challenging times, the
times filled with most personaldoubt and self-doubt.
I was going to tell you a storyright now and it just kept not
coming out of my mouth.
So I thought maybe what wereally need right now is to do
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some guided practice together,as I always say, because you
never know where somebody mightbe listening to a podcast.
If you're driving, keep yourfocus on the road ahead and be
alert and save the meditationfor when you're not in a moving
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vehicle, and save the meditationfor when you're not in a moving
vehicle, and maybe I'll tellyou this story later about why
that is such a caution for me.
Let your eyes close and allowyourself to sit back and sink
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into yourself.
Allow the weight, the anchor,the steadiness of your true
heart to settle you like ananchor dropped at sea allows the
ship to stay in place.
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Imagine that that anchor ofyour heart grounds you, extends
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to the center of the earth,where you're held with the love
of billions of years ofevolution, where you're held
connected to the heart of themanifest world, steady, embraced
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, treasured and welcomed.
Allow any tension to melt fromyour face.
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Allow the tension to dissolvefrom your jaws, your eyes, your
ears and neck and shoulders.
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Allow the pressures of the mindto be ironed out as the heart
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pulls everything smooth,releasing the kinks and the
wrinkles of day-to-day livingand the inevitable frictions and
conflicts of the world.
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Let your attention, your vision,turn inward.
Let your attention, your vision, turn inward towards the core
of your heart that you can't seeand yet you feel its presence.
You feel it as something thatis you, as if you were the
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flavor of the most fragrant teaentering and pervading the warm
water.
You can't separate thefragrance from the water.
The fragrance is in the water,the water is in the fragrance is
in the water, the water is inthe fragrance.
And feel that embrace of yourheart in the same way that your
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heart embraces you and you arethat embrace.
Allow yourself to dissolve intothis experience, letting the
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mind settle.
Letting the mind settle, lettingfeelings of awe, joy, happiness
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, wonder, grace, grace, sanctity, grace, care, nobility and love
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Flow into your experience andout of your experience.
Allow a smile to come over yourface, an inner smile or an
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outer smile.
Take a deep breath in and adeep breath out.
If your eyes have been closed,if your eyes have been closed,
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allow your gaze to return toyour surroundings, finding one
single object or shape thatfills you with delight.
Let yourself connect with thelittle beauty in your
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surroundings.
Each little grace of a halfcircle or a bright color carries
with it the seed of the immensejoy you allowed yourself to
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settle into.
Take a deep breath in.
Take a deep breath in and, witha smile on your face, exhale.
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Take another breath in feelingthe shift from the depths of
letting go to engagement withthe world as we return to the
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thinking and feeling orientationto life.
Notice how different thatexperience is right now and
allow yourself to move into thisnext moment, from this altered
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place, this place of integration, this place of wholeness, this
place of joy and contentment,and freedom from the need for
anything else outside us tocomplete us.
Freedom from the need to be ordiscover anything else, freedom
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that's immediate and filled withsuch gentleness and care For
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life itself.
Now that you've discovered andexperienced a taste of that
contentment, where we didn'tremove any of the issues and
where I didn't even tell you astory to inspire you and uplift
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your mood, to inspire you anduplift your mood, we simply
shifted our lens of attentionfrom the surface layer of
conflict to that quality of loveand energy and light and
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goodness that runs through thegroundwater of existence.
And when we shift our attention, that moves into the foreground
of our awareness and floods ourbeing, it's almost like a
cellular level where we feelthat flood of joy and happiness
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that's so excited and delightedthat our cells can hardly
contain the energy.
Just like you can think thatsometimes atoms or electrons get
so excited they can hardlycontain their energy and they
burst out of their customarypath and merge and bond and form
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new compounds.
So we can get into the habit ofappreciation, we can develop the
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habit of returning tocontentment by shifting our gaze
, whether it's in our meditationor it's in the moment of
walking down the hallway orgetting on a phone call or
turning back to our work project, where we're about to complain
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either aloud or to ourselves,where we're about to look at
fragmentation, disappointment,being let down, where we're
about to look at what needs tobe corrected, what is out of
place, and we can shift ourattention to wholeness.
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We can shift our attention towholeness, we can shift our
attention to appreciation, wecan shift our attention towards
what is blessed and as we dothat, we develop a different
habit, a different habit towardsourselves, a different habit
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towards life, a different habittowards those around us and
whether things need fixing andneed correcting and need
uplifting.
All of that is true, is true.
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But we can respond to thefragmentation in the world from
a perspective of ultimatewholeness, non-separation,
profound interconnectedness,closeness, intimacy, freedom
from boundaries.
Freedom from boundaries anddeveloping that habit, supported
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by these periods where we turnour attention consciously
towards that wholeness, willallow us to be steady in life.
In life, it will continue tostrengthen that anchor that
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holds us steady in the hurricaneon the surface of our
experience.
So I encourage you to reallyspend time of our experience.
So I encourage you to reallyspend time exploring this level
of yourself and I encourage youto take seriously your glimpses
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of this profound wholeness andembrace of the earth, the way
the earth embraces all ofcreation, from the beginning of
the first attraction of thefirst atom, the first proton
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that met its first neutron andformed into being and held, and
from that first forming ourwhole universe, solar system,
planets, stars, creatures allformed from that embrace and all
formed from that embrace andwe're formed from that embrace.
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We're not separate from thatembrace and that embrace is both
us and continues to hold us.
And from this vantage point wesee that we were never alone.
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We were never separate fromeverything else that is and that
can give us great support inthe midst of a world that has so
much turbulence.
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Thank you for sharing thiscontemplation with me.
Continue to explore contentmentin times of stress, share with
me what you are discovering andhow it's changing your own life
and the lives of those aroundyou, and let's keep doing
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everything we can to blow on thesparks of being and bring more
light and energy and experienceof that connectedness into the
surface of the world.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to theConscious Classroom.
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I'm your host, amy Edelstein.
Please check out the show noteson innerstrengthfoundationnet
for links and more informationand if you enjoyed this podcast,
please share it with a friendand pass the love on.
See you next time.