Ep. 293: Sitting on 7-14-26
Jul 15, 2026 · 1 hr 3 min · 12 segments
- Speakers
- BernieHost
- Top entities
- Ezra Bayda×3God×4DDT×2Lyme diseaseBuddhism×9
Jul 15, 2026 · 1 hr 3 min · 12 segments
And so, um, and I think I'll just boil that down to one word, which is awareness.
We are practicing awareness.
We're practicing a particular kind of awareness on the cushion, which we can then bring to our lives as a whole.
Right.
Um, in some ways, awareness is as simple as it sounds.
It means just being aware, right? And yet, for sort of various complicated reasons, we make it more complicated than, than it needs to be, I think almost inevitably so.
When someone tells someone, "Just be aware of your experience," it's actually really not that easy to do unless you've gotten some practice at it.
Um, there are many ways in which something simple like awareness can go awry, you know, and become an attempt to control the mind or manage one's experience.
Or being aware of the breath can turn very easily, as many people know, into subtle ways of manipulating the breath, you know.
And so that's why a lot of people experience sort of a tightening up of the breath, a stiffening of the breath when they bring awareness to their breath.
Um, so it's not as easy to do as it sounds, and yet in a very real way, it is very simple.
It is simply just being aware.
Um, and I think it's a capacity that all humans have.
Um, and I think when we get in touch with the practice of awareness, it's almost like we, uh ...
It's, it's, it's often accompanied by this feeling of, "Why, why was I making it so complicated?" You know, "Oh, this is so, this is so obvious.
Just, I'm just letting things be." You know.
Um, and so it's not like, "Oh, I never could have imagined this.
This is so special and so different." You know.
It's often like, "Oh yeah.
How did I lose touch with this?" You know.
And it often feels like a homecoming.
I think one of the reasons why I'm drawn to practice and so many people are drawn to practice, in the broadest sense, not just this practice, but spir-spiritual practice of different kinds, is because I think we are hungry for homecoming.
I think we intuit that we have spent so much of our lives playing out stories, investing in stories, protecting stories, activities, identities that in some ways are not who we really are, um, that be- are, are distant from who we really are.
And yet, um, it's not easy to find your way back home once you become so invested in a particular kind of storyline.
Like, what is it that you actually really want? What is it that you actually really think? What is it that you actually really feel? When you become alienated from your true nature, who you really are for long enough, and in this world, there are so many ways that happens, it's so easy for that to happen, then it can be hard to find your way back so that you actually can feel, "This is what I really want in this moment.
And so, um, and I think I'll just boil that down to one word, which is awareness.
We are practicing awareness.
We're practicing a particular kind of awareness on the cushion, which we can then bring to our lives as a whole.
Right.
Um, in some ways, awareness is as simple as it sounds.
It means just being aware, right? And yet, for sort of various complicated reasons, we make it more complicated than, than it needs to be, I think almost inevitably so.
When someone tells someone, "Just be aware of your experience," it's actually really not that easy to do unless you've gotten some practice at it.
Um, there are many ways in which something simple like awareness can go awry, you know, and become an attempt to control the mind or manage one's experience.
Or being aware of the breath can turn very easily, as many people know, into subtle ways of manipulating the breath, you know.
And so that's why a lot of people experience sort of a tightening up of the breath, a stiffening of the breath when they bring awareness to their breath.
Um, so it's not as easy to do as it sounds, and yet in a very real way, it is very simple.
It is simply just being aware.
Um, and I think it's a capacity that all humans have.
Um, and I think when we get in touch with the practice of awareness, it's almost like we, uh ...
It's, it's, it's often accompanied by this feeling of, "Why, why was I making it so complicated?" You know, "Oh, this is so, this is so obvious.
Just, I'm just letting things be." You know.
Um, and so it's not like, "Oh, I never could have imagined this.
This is so special and so different." You know.
It's often like, "Oh yeah.
How did I lose touch with this?" You know.
And it often feels like a homecoming.
I think one of the reasons why I'm drawn to practice and so many people are drawn to practice, in the broadest sense, not just this practice, but spir-spiritual practice of different kinds, is because I think we are hungry for homecoming.
I think we intuit that we have spent so much of our lives playing out stories, investing in stories, protecting stories, activities, identities that in some ways are not who we really are, um, that be- are, are distant from who we really are.
And yet, um, it's not easy to find your way back home once you become so invested in a particular kind of storyline.
Like, what is it that you actually really want? What is it that you actually really think? What is it that you actually really feel? When you become alienated from your true nature, who you really are for long enough, and in this world, there are so many ways that happens, it's so easy for that to happen, then it can be hard to find your way back so that you actually can feel, "This is what I really want in this moment.
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