Happy Mind: Meditations from the Ancient World to Modernity

An Emotional Reset: I Am Confident (45 min)

11.07.2018 - By Zebediah RicePlay

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We can claim an air of self confidence whenever we choose, and that is what this meditation is about. The truth is, however, that sustainable self confidence only arises when we realize that we actually have no control over anything and that there is a benevolent force that does have this control. Everything that happens is an expression of what the ancient masters might call the Divine Will, or as might be expressed today, what we could call the Physical Laws of Nature. We can't argue with what is. What has happened or is happening just is. You can stick a supernatural being in there as the prime mover or just call it physics or whatever but there is little basis to argue that any one of us individually as a human or even all of us collectively as a species can actually control what happens in every detail. I tell my arm to move, yes, and it moves, but the chain of causation that led to me having that thought and that ability I had nothing to do with and it is infinitely complex and goes back in time indefinitely. And modern neuroscience is producing more and more evidence supporting the claim that our actions emerge prior to us even being conscious of our intentions. So we don't control it. Our freedom of choice in the actions of bodies in the world of form is an illusion. A useful illusion for maximizing the propagation of our genes. Fine. But wait, there's more! There is this recipe for navigating through this life of ours, of adapting the electrical and chemical activity of the brain to create a sense of happiness and abundance and peace. We can short-circuit the more typical pattern of endless dissatisfaction. THAT is where we DO have control, where we CAN exercise our free will. We can choose to follow this recipe or we can choose to ignore it. Meditations like this one will help you along the path to realizing this true self-confidence; a self-confidence that is rooted in the notion that the Universe controls the Universe but you get to choose how you react to it and what emotions and thoughts you have in response.

This is a 45 minute version of the I Am Confident guided meditation Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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