Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about why who you are is bigger than your thoughts. So let me share one of my favorite things I get to hear when working with students. You know, they start meditating and investigating the mind or a meditation practice, learning to watch the mind thinking. But one of the things that often comes up is this recognition that I can watch my thoughts without thinking about my thoughts.

And that tends to be interesting for folks, but it inevitably leads to the question of if I'm watching my thoughts it must mean that I'm not my thoughts. And if I'm not my thoughts, then who am I? And for some, this is a little bit more than they bargained for when they were coming to meditation as a form of stress reduction, feeling a little bit more peaceful. All of a sudden we're in this existential crisis, but it doesn't, I don't think it has to be that way or a crisis. I actually think it's a doorway into a totally new orientation toward our life and, and what a certain kind of wellbeing and freedom could look like. Because most of the time for, you could say this is an arbitrary number, but 99% of people, you know, caught in, in their thoughts, caught in their ideas, their beliefs, and where they're going, what they need to do.

And this becomes their life, identity. And you know, when the, when the story is good, then life is good. When the story is bad, then life is bad. But the particular opportunity we have here when we get to explore through mindfulness and meditation is what is it like to take a bigger perspective about who you are. And the very fact that there's a part of you that can watch your mind thinking.

There's a part of you that can watch this whole story that we take so seriously, well, that must mean that who you are is different or at the very least bigger than that story and those thoughts. So we'll go into our meditation practice in a moment. But as you go into it, and also as you navigate the rest of your day, notice when those thoughts really seem to take a grip over you and just take a moment to zoom out and notice that there's a part of you that can watch all of this happening. That part of you is more like the sky than it is the clouds. The clouds are the thoughts, the sky is this awareness that just knows what is happening, but it's vast, it's spacious and it's inherently grounded.

That's what we want to connect to more. And that's how we start to expand the sense of who we are to something bigger than just the momentary storyline moving through our mind. So hopefully this doesn't put you into an existential crisis and instead serves as a doorway into an understanding of who we are in a much bigger way. Thanks so much for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.