Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about behavioral blind spots. So I think one of the things that many of us find difficult when it comes to living with awareness is seeing and understanding the areas where we are stuck in our own patterns, our own areas of neuroses, weakness, or bad habit. And because we don't like to identify or accept certain parts of ourselves, they often become these blind spots to us. They become marginalized parts of ourselves, things that we don't see clearly about ourselves, even though other people can often see them quite clearly.

So identifying these blind spots actually offers us some of our richest insights and our greatest opportunities for growth and awakening. Now we all have these blind spots with some particular patterns of ours being larger for us than they are for others. So just like in a car, knowing your blind spot is really important and you have to make that little bit of extra effort to ensure that we see them and then we know what we're doing. And this is because just like when you're driving a car, if you don't check your blind spot, you can get into all kinds of trouble. Now, one of the simplest ways to identify your own blind spots is to notice what you strongly dislike in others, what triggers you, what you react to, because what we resist in others is often what we're resisting seeing in ourselves.

In the words of Eckhart Tolle, anything you resent and react strongly to another, it's probably in you. So if we take the time to really get curious about this and notice these things, to reflect on how we might be resisting certain parts of ourselves, then every situation is another opportunity to understand ourselves better and become more integrated, present and compassionate. So in meditation, we're training in understanding the mind and understanding our true nature more fully. But sometimes we just don't see everything. Sometimes it's only when we're going about our day that we have these opportunities to kind of, you know, have the grittiness of life rub up against us and reveal our tender spots, the parts of ourselves that we've not yet been able to accept.

So this is the invitation to practice today and ongoing. If there's a really strong feeling of resistance or dislike towards a person or a certain behavior, just become curious about what it might be able to show you or teach you. There's very likely to be something there that you can learn about the way you feel about that part of yourself. Especially if it's a repeating pattern, something you regularly react to interest. And just, you know, knowing that the more we can be willing to look honestly and gently at ourselves and acknowledge and accept all the parts of ourselves, the more whole, fulfilled and connected we tend to feel.

And the more consciously and compassionately we can live our lives. So as always thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And now let's settle in for today's meditation.