Episode 3-Why I Keep Practicing

Jeff explores where the work really is in our practice and why he continues to engage in it daily.....it's not something that can be worked on for awhile and that can be internalized without the need to do the work daily. It's about continuing to practice letting go of the need to believe everything that we are thinking and feeling about the present, past, and future as there are ongoing challenges that can occur and that can “trip us up” every day. He talks more in-depth about how mindfulness practice can help us to stand outside of ourselves when we take our feelings seriously, to catch ourselves in the act of believing what we are thinking or feeling, and to begin to learn to more effectively question these things. He introduces the starting point of inquiry practice, which is the question, "is this really true.....is what I am thinking or feeling really true?' He speaks about how one of his teachers used the phrase, "all is well' and how it helped him to "wake up" when he got lost in the trance of fear and other negative emotions. Hearing and repeating this phrase helps him more deeply understand that much of the suffering that we are subjected to actually originates within our own minds and how easily it is to be distracted by our own self-inflicted pain to the point that we actually can't see that all is really well at all.