Guided Meditation: Focusing on Acceptance & Choices

This is the recording of the guided meditation practice I led on 5/17/2020. In this practice, we focus on managing our intellect. Human mind has four parts - emotional mind, rational mind (intellect) , memory & ego. Concentration (focus) meditation is for the emotional (indecisive) mind which is usually the topic of meditation - but in this we go beyond that to manage our intellect. We end with the serenity prayer by Reinhold Neibur, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer Here are the instructions of the text I used [not exactly the same text in the guided meditation]: Today, we will seed our mind / the intellect, with one idea – about acceptance & choices. Visualize your entire body. Take a minute to go through the journey from birth till now. You did not have a choice when you were born. - Your place /country of birth; - Your parents - Your siblings - Your other family members - Your sex – male or female - Color of your eyes or your hair….. - The first few years of your life, So many things were pre-determined. Accept them. It is a choiceless situation. Acceptance means – not ignoring or hiding or being overly proud or feeling inferior. It means just saying to yourself – It is a choiceless situation. It is what it is; good or bad; positive or negative. Fast forward to today. Your present. Your Now! - You cannot change what has happened from birth till your present. - It has become a choiceless situation now. - Apply the same principle of acceptance – accept your past. - True, you could have made a few choices differently in the past – but that cannot be changed now. So, better to accept. Any bodily pain, disease that you may be experiencing in your present – it could be a combination of choiceless situations or wrong choices made. It is the effect of a past cause. If we can change some aspects of our body, we MUST do it. If we can’t change few other aspects about it, then it becomes a choiceless situation in the present. Just accept it. Expand your awareness to your mind NOW. - Your past thoughts created this present future for you. - Accept your present. It is a gift from the past. Fast forward and think of your future for a second. Say 10 years or 20 years from now. - What can you do for your future? Is it a choiceless situation or can we do something about it? - Recognize that you have choice now, to determine your future. Appreciate that you have choices only in the present. - Present does not mean this very second. It means the ‘immediate future’. - Recognize that the choices you make now will determine your future. - Recognize that you have the free-will & exercise three broad choices in any situation: o Do o Don’t do o Do it in a specific way Remember: 1. Accept the past; Accept choiceless circumstances 2. Acting in the present creates the future. 3. Delving on the past does not change the future. It is only in the present that we have choices. Ask the higher intelligence for: The serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference – what can be changed & what cannot be.