Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

matter what. You are who you already are. But who
you are is not your name, your age, your childhood,
your beliefs, your fears. They are part of it, but not the
whole.
So, when we speak about not trying so hard to be
"somebody" and instead just experience being,
directly, what it means is that you start from where
you find yourself and work here. Meditation is not
about trying to become a nobody, or a contemplative
zombie, incapable of living in the real world and
facing real problems. It's about seeing things as they
are, without the distortions of our own thought
processes. Part of that is perceiving that everything is
interconnected and that while our conventional sense
of "having" a self is helpful in many ways, it is not
absolutely real or solid or permanent. So, if you stop
trying to make yourself into more than you are out of
fear that you are less than you are, whoever you
really are will be a lot lighter and happier, and easier
to live with, too.
We might begin by taking things a little less
personally. When something happens, try to see it
without the self-orientation, just for fun. Maybe it just
happened. Maybe it's not aimed at you. Watch your
mind at such times. Is it getting into "I" this and "me"