Hello, my name is Thomas Mconki. You are listening to another episode of Mindfulness Plus.

Thanks for downloading us today. So I am pleased to share a story with you today,

a story of redemption. I have a friend who recently moved to Texas. She's working on a Senate

campaign there for which political party I will not reveal. But she's also a listener

to Mindfulness Plus and she got in touch with me this week and she said that she has been meditating

with her staff there in Texas because they're working really long hours and they're burned out and nothing like a little

meditation to recharge your batteries. So she was asking me if I had any written materials or

audio recordings on a particular topic and I will read a line from this email to clue you into the topic she was curious about.

She writes,

I'd really like to center our meditations here at the office for the Senate campaign

on the idea of approaching the quote opposition humanely and with love.

Ah, I just need to read that again because it's like a balm to my soul at this political moment in the United States. I'd really like to center our meditations on the

idea of approaching the, quote, opposition humanely and with love. So my friend, she asked if I had any

meditations, materials on this, and I said, you know, I might, I might not, but let's do a dedicated episode,

Mindfulness Plus on this topic, how we can approach the so-called other humanely and with love.

So first, Tamara, my soul sings that you would ask this question and just give me an opportunity to reflect on it a little bit.

And I'll also say that from the perspective of meditation practice, from the perspective of the wisdom traditions, this is very central to the whole undertaking and concern of waking up, growing up, and being of loving

service in the world. So I'll tell you what we're going to do. I'm going to refer to a couple of

classic texts that speak to this uniquely in both the Christian and the Buddhist tradition just to evoke a bit of a mood.

And then we're going to do some meditation.

That's the plan.

And, you know, my invitation in this episode is for you to just consider who the other is, who the opposition is in your life.

...