Infinite Bliss Ep. 2 – Mindfulness

A glimpse into your Mind, Body and Spirit

In this episode of the Infinite Bliss Podcast, we take a brief look at Mindfulness using a clever visual tool. Maybe you’ve never thought about mindfulness this way, but it might just be enough to give you a glimpse into the connection between your mind, body and spirit (YOU).

Mat also introduces his own mindfulness practice of making bead bracelets. These are going to become a giveaway for listeners who send in questions that are used on the show. If you want to submit a question, click here to go to the submission form.

There’s a big spoiler in this episode – if a tree falls in the woods, if there’s nobody there to hear it, will it make a sound. Well you’ll just have to listen to the episode to find out.

Thanks for listening my friends.

Mat Robinson ~ The Gregarious Hermit

Use the embedded player above or click here to play this episode directly on Spotify

Transcript

You’re listening to the Infinite Bliss Podcast. I’m your host, Mat Robinson, the gregarious hermit, join me each week as I take you on a journey of inner exploration to uncover the subtle connections between mind, body and spirit. I want to teach you how to regain control of your mind so you can let go of the drama in your life and experience Deep inner peace and infinite bliss.

Hi, everybody. Welcome and thank you so much for joining me.

I hope you are having a wonderful holiday and of course, a happy New Year.

That first episode was quite a doozy, right? What an epic roller coaster ride of ups and downs, highs and lows. Confidence, arrogance, all the way down to the depths of despair and depression, only to rise back up and experience the ultimate high of infinite bliss.

I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely needed to take a nap after that episode.

But don’t worry, I’m not gonna do that to you two episodes in a row, especially because the holidays are quite a stressful time for a lot of people. So I don’t want to add to that burden.

So this one’s gonna be fairly low key. Enlightenment meets easy listening.

The Big Reveal

In fact, I just want to use this time to give you a very high level overview of mindfulness. And it’s actually a way for me to try out something new and introduce a couple of things that are going to be part of the show going forward.

And the first thing that I want to introduce to you is this thing over here.

If you’re watching the video version of the podcast, and you were being mindful and paying attention, then you probably already spotted this thing poking into the corner of the shot. For the audio only listeners, this is a very simple diagram and will be pretty easy to follow along. So don’t worry about trying to load up the video while you’re driving. Be mindful and make sure you keep your eyes on the road.

So sparing no expense I broke out all my craft supplies and hot glue and created this wonderful infographic for you. You’re welcome, Happy Holidays. And you’re going to be seeing a lot of this because I think it helps explain many of the concepts we’re going to be covering.

I’m a very visual person and I like to see things to understand them.

This is something that you’re very familiar with. I mean, we’re all taught this when we’re very young, that a human being is made up of three parts

the mind, body and spirit.

Most yoga studios and holistic healing centers advocate for creating healthy minds, bodies and spirits. And in fact, the YMCA slogan is Creating healthy minds, bodies and spirits. So it’s something that we’re all familiar with. We all kind of understand it conceptually, but I feel like the spirit is so vague that it’s easy to overlook it and forget about it. Or people equate it with religion and stop listening or tune out. It just doesn’t seem like it’s a part of our everyday experience.

The Body

We have a body which is pretty obvious. It’s this fleshy thing that we have right here. You can poke it and prod it. I can go to the gym and I can work out and I can exercise it. I can feel things. It’s a tangible, visceral experience. And by extension I can use my senses to experience things beyond my body. Using my eyes, I can see a tree in the distance. And, spoiler alert, using my ears, I can hear that very same tree falling in the woods, but only if I’m there to hear it.

Sorry, a little philosophical hermit humor there.

So we can change the label of body to physical.

Basically, anything that is of a physical nature, then that’s the domain of the body. So that’s one layer of our human experience.

The Mind

Then we have this thing over here, the mind, and that’s a little bit more vague, right? It’s more of a virtual thing.

I can’t see it. I can’t touch it or taste it, a doctor can’t dissect it or remove it from your body and show you.

It’s just this sort of very abstract thing. But it’s that voice in your head. It’s the tool that you can use to plan your next vacation. You can use it to figure out what you’re going to cook for dinner. You can use it to invent things, design things and visualize the future. And the perfect use of your mind, you can daydream about that Porsche you’ve always wanted. And it’s just this incredible tool we have, but it also creates all the drama in our life.

And so I’m going to change the label of that as well. And we’re just going to call that mental.

Not in the rude kind of way. Like, Oh my God, you’re so mental. But just in a way that it’s basically all the abstract things that you can’t touch and that you don’t have to get up off the couch to achieve.

But just like your body, you can also exercise your mind. You can read a book, you can sit down and do math problems, you could do crossword puzzles, play strategy games, anything like that.

Things that require you to do a little bit of thinking. So we’ll just categorize all of those things as mental activities.

The Spirit – YOU

And then finally, we have this thing up here, Spirit. And I actually don’t like that label so much. I’m going to change that in a little bit for you.

So we have a tangible experience of the body and we can hear our mind talking to us. So those two seem pretty obvious, but the spirit just sits there in silence, patiently observing the world. But this is what you are. This is you, the observer. This is your connection to everything in the universe.

You’re viewing and experiencing the physical world using this thing over here (body) and you’re learning from your past and visualizing the future using this tool over here (your mind).

But this is what you are. This is you. The Spirit.

Spirit is simply the thing that is aware that it has a body and aware that it has a mind. But just like the mind, you can’t dissect it and a doctor can’t show you a scan of where it is in your body. It’s just so vague and so abstract.

And unlike the mind and body, you can’t really exercise it either.

So I feel like it’s out of sight, out of mind and so we forget about it. And we become so absorbed in the body and so absorbed in what the mind is telling us, that we really lose the concept of this – spirit.

Human Being

But again, I don’t like that title Spirit, because I feel like most people equate it with religion or faith, and I think that turns a lot of people off. But from a mental health perspective, the concepts that I’m sharing with you work, whether you’re a Buddhist, a Christian, a Muslim, or any other faith. Even if you’re an atheist, a non-believer.

If you consider yourself to be a human being, then it just works.

And by reinforcing or adopting this as a strategy, you effectively remove all of the drama and the struggles from your life, because now you can sit back here and just watch your life unfold almost like you’re watching a movie or like you’re watching something happen to somebody else. It fundamentally changes how you experience the world.

In future episodes, I’ll show you how you can experience this all for yourself, so you don’t have to just take my word for it, you’ll be able to live it.

So I said, I’m going to change that label spirit and I’m going to take that away and I’m going to replace it with YOU.
Forget Spirit, think YOU.

Your Limited Awareness

And there’s this thing that I have dangling down underneath here, looks a little bit like an arrow or a pointer. That’s your awareness. So you are the thing that is aware that you have a body and you’re also aware that you have a mind. Now, I’m asking you to trust me here, but the only thing that you have control in this whole system is this little arrow here. Your awareness. That’s literally the only thing that you can control.

Now, your awareness is really quite limited. It’s almost like a spotlight that only illuminates a tiny, tiny region. So, for example, and you can do this while you’re listening, or pause it after I explain it and try it for yourself.

If you focus on the sensations at the tip of your nose, you lose all awareness of your big toe. And if you move your awareness down to your big toe, you lose awareness of what’s going on at the tip of your nose.

Similarly, if you’re focusing on the thoughts in your head, the physical world almost glosses over and you lose awareness of it. That’s why you can drive through an intersection without realizing what color the traffic light was. You were so absorbed in the thoughts in your head that you lost awareness of the physical world. And because your awareness is so tiny, that’s where your mind comes in.

Your Mind to the Rescue – Or Maybe NOT

So while you’re actively using your senses, you body to, let’s say, you’re staring at the details of a tiny flower, you’re like really absorbed in that thing and you’re looking at how beautiful it is. Your mind is monitoring all of your other senses in the background, looking for danger, and if it spots some trouble, then it will alert you. And so when your mind wants to grab your attention with something, it triggers a little shot of adrenaline to snap you out of your floral studies.

So let’s say you’re staring at that little tiny flower, and then all of a sudden there’s a branch snapping behind you. Your mind will send you that alert so you can spin around and figure out whether it’s a bear coming up to attack you or if it’s just a squirrel hopping around in the leaves, and then you can go back to staring at the little tiny flower.

But the problem, though, is that in our modern society, our mind grabs our attention for all the wrong reasons. We’re not really afraid of the things that our ancestors were afraid of, which were much more physical in nature. But now we’ve become afraid of other people’s minds. What are other people thinking about me? And again, we’ll get into this in much more detail in a future episode, but just realize that your mind fears other people and it fears what other people are thinking about you.

So when you’re walking down the street, if you see somebody walking towards you and let’s say that they look like they’re a big guy, with big muscles, then that’s obviously their natural advantage.

Now, your mind doesn’t fear getting beaten up by the guy, but your mind fears what he might be thinking about you. If your mind feels like he’s thinking that you’re a wimp or thinking that you need to go to the gym, then it will actually try to find something that makes you superior or at least justifies why you don’t go to the gym.

So maybe you’re wearing better clothes than him. You’ll notice your mind say something like, Why would you wear that? That looks ridiculous. Or you might even hear something like, “I bet I can run faster than you”

And there’s no need for those comments at all. They serve no purpose.

But your mind is afraid and has the need to feel superior. It’s always looking for your advantage on your behalf. But whenever your mind perceives that threat, this needle goes away from the physical world and boom. Listening to that story in your head.

Mindfulness to the Rescue

Now, a lot of people get stuck here and they kind of remain trapped in this area, listening to their mind and thinking about things rather than doing them.

And that’s a big problem for a lot of people. But there’s actually a simple tool that we have that allows us to remain focused on the body, and that is mindfulness.

Now, we hear a lot about mindfulness these days and I think a lot of people get the basic concept, but not the full picture. So with the power of our wonderful infographic, I’m going to show you visually.

What we’re trying to do is remain so focused on the physical aspects of what we’re doing that we don’t notice our mind talking so much.

So your mind is still going to try to distract you, and so you will go click and start looking at what your mind just said. But your job when you’re practicing mindfulness is to just say, That’s okay, and just go right back to looking at the physical aspects of what you’re doing.

And the more often you can do that, and the quicker you can go right back to being in the physical realm, over time, your mind will actually start to calm down because essentially you’re retraining your mind to not get triggered by trivial things. It stops trying to alert you over things that are not important. You know, if you notice that you go around criticizing a lot, again, your mind just looking for its superiority, what makes you better than that other person, then over time you’ll stop criticizing people as much and you’ll be able to remain fully in the present moment, in the physical world.

You’ll spend less time struggling with the past and a lot less time worrying about the future. You’ll be over here, in the present, enjoying how exquisite your Starbucks tastes, how the paper cup feels in your hand, how it makes a slight sound when you press it to your lips. You’ll feel the door handle as you open it, but you won’t feel the need to complain about the guy in front of you who didn’t hold the door for you, or comment on the state of his shoes, just because you’re wearing the latest kicks.

And that is the essence of mindfulness.

We’re gonna revisit this in much more detail, because mindfulness goes way beyond just that basic concept. But for now, that’s all I want to cover. Again, I just want to keep today a little bit light and to introduce you to this thing which we’re going to use to help us meditate and explain all kinds of things that I think are a little tricky sometimes to understand conceptually.

If you’re on a spiritual journey yourself or if you’re looking for a little more peace and happiness, this diagram will really help us and we’re going to add a lot more things to it over time. I must be the only person on the planet that teaches meditation with powerpoint and infographics, but, you know, I’m an engineer and conceptually, I think this is really helpful.

So, again, mindfulness is literally just, whenever you notice your awareness goes towards your mind and a thought in your head, that you just bring it right back to the body and the physical world. And over time your mind will become more silent.

Alright. So that’s a very high level overview of mindfulness and a brief introduction to my diagram. But there was an ulterior motive for me sharing this information with you today.

Being Intentional

I did say earlier that I wanted to introduce you to a couple of things. If you’ve seen any of my videos in the past, then you’ve no doubt caught glimpses of these little bead bracelets that I wear with a bright colored tassel on them.

I don’t just wear them to look cool, because….., well….., I’ve never been accused of being cool. But these actually serve a dual purpose for me. They’re a part of my own daily mindfulness practice, which we’ll get to in a minute, and they also help me keep focused on the things that I want to do that day.

I call them intention bracelets. So when I wake up in the morning, I put my bracelet on and as I’m putting it on there, I set the intention for the day.

So let’s say I want to practice unconditional love. So every time I see somebody walking towards me, I want to feel pure love towards them, almost like I’m walking towards an old friend I haven’t seen in a while, I want to feel that same warm and fuzzy, excited feeling.

But that’s actually quite difficult to do. Remember what I said before, that your mind is very wary of other people. So your natural inclination is to not do that. But that’s my intention for the day. I want to feel pure love towards everybody that I meet that day.

Now, as I go throughout my day, I’m going to bump this on things. I’m going to catch it on things. It’s going to make noises. I’m gonna hear it rustling. I’m going to feel it rubbing against my clothes and I’m going to feel it pressing on my skin. And every time I put my hands up, that bright little tassel is going to catch the corner of my eye and grab my attention.

And so it’s my little reminder that, oh, yeah, that’s right. I’m supposed to be practicing unconditional love today.

And so throughout the day, I’ll just get these constant little reminders of what I’m supposed to be doing, and it just helps keep me on track and it’s more likely to happen. Now, you can actually use these things for even silly stuff. Like, I must remember to go to the gym today and, you know, even little reminders like I’ve got to go to the store later. But from a spiritual journey perspective, some of this stuff, you have to remain focused quite ferociously in order to stay on track and learn that skill. So something like this can really help keep your momentum going in the right direction.

Manufacturing My Own Mindfulness

So as part of my own mindfulness practice, I actually make these things myself. And I just sit there on the couch at night and I just thread the beads on there and I’m paying full attention to all of the physical sensations that go into making those.

As I hold the beads and thread them on the string and, you know, tie the tassel on. I’m paying attention to all the tactile sensations and sounds. Really trying to stay present. And when a thought does enter my head, I just go right back to what I’m doing without following the thought.

Making these things requires a lot of dexterity working with the fiddly beads, but I can literally step back into my spirit, YOU, and watch my body doing that pretty complicated task that requires quite a lot of skill and dexterity.

Catching a Glimpse of the Real YOU

And so by practicing mindfulness so intently like that, I can actually step back and become the observer and just watch this body doing its thing. I’m not really in control. I’m just watching what’s happening.

Again, that’s a topic for a future episode. But the reason why I’m bringing this up now is that, I have so many of these things and I need to start getting rid of them. Otherwise my wife’s going to divorce me just because I’m filling up the house with these things. They’re everywhere.

The Giveaway

So what I want to start doing is making them a little give-away from the show and I want to give them to people that ask me a question that, maybe I feature an episode around, or if I just mention it during the episode, then I’ll send you one of those bead bracelets in whatever color you want.

And that will be my little thank you for supporting the show and helping me. And hopefully it helps you on your journey too. You’ll be able to look at that thing and set your intention for the day. And hopefully it just reinforces what it is that you’re wanting to do.

And how do you ask me a question I hear you all asking. Well you can go to my website, The Gregarious Hermit com forward slash podcast, and there’s a little form on that page that you can go and fill out. And the magic internet beings will deliver it to my hermit cave over here.

Let me know if there’s a topic you’d like me to talk about or any specific questions you have. And if I feature a question, then I’ll send you one of these bracelets. And as an added bonus, as I thread each bead on the string, I feel pure love towards them. So if you want to feel like there’s some extra special magical powers imbued in there, then it is genuinely made with love and there will be the intention of love in there and hopefully that passes through to you too.

But otherwise there’s nothing mystical or special about them. They’re just little wooden beads threaded on a little piece of elastic.

Wrapping it Up

All right, So that’s all I wanted to talk about today. Again, we’ll just do a quick summary. Help me bring my wonderful little chart back over.

So YOU, the thing up here [spirit]. The only thing that you can control is your awareness and what you decide to to look at. You choose what it is that you want to focus on.

Now, we should be focusing on our body and the present, but our minds have become so strong that we tend to spend a lot of time over here looking at the mind. The mind likes to dwell on the past and dig up old problems, and it also likes to look at the future for a solution to those problems. But that also means that you are very often daydreaming of a better future and that makes you unhappy with what you have now.

Instead, you can go right back to the physical world where none of that drama exists, and instead what you might find is that you become aware of this wonderful peace inside and a natural joy that is always there. But we tend not to notice it because again, our mind is doing this and constantly grabbing our attention. It’s always complaining about things and thinking I should have a Porsche, I should have a bigger house, I deserve a pay rise instead of being over here, which is peace and contentment, and enjoying what you do have rather than thinking about what you’d rather be doing or where you’d rather be.

And there’s a lot more power behind this. And maybe one day I’ll be able to teach you how to do this and point your awareness completely outside of your being. And that’s a special moment when that happens.

We’ll get much deeper in future episodes where I’ll be able to use this diagram to show you how you can actually see the separation between YOU and your mind, and YOU and your body. And you’ll actually observe your mind and your body operating autonomously without any input from you.

And that’s when the magic of your existence really starts to reveal itself. But let’s not rush ahead. Let’s come right back to just being in your body, being present and being in the now and feeling that wonderful, infinite bliss.

Thank You – Don’t Miss the Next Episode About Unconditional Love

All right. So that’s all I’ve got for you this week. If you enjoyed this episode, then you definitely don’t want to miss the next one. It’s something I’m really passionate about, unconditional love, it’s my favorite subject because it’s a simple tool that has the power to transform your life quite dramatically and in a really short space of time. And on top of that, it’s really easy to learn. So be sure to like and subscribe because I don’t want you to miss it.

And also don’t forget to visit my website, The gregarious Hermit dot com forward-slash podcast. I’d love to hear from you and I’d love to know how I can help you on your own journey.

So I hope you had a wonderful holiday. Don’t forget love everything and love everybody. That’s the easiest way to experience infinite bliss.

Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you on the next episode. Bye

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