Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radiohead Space and welcome to the start of the week.

Very often I get asked the question, how do I analyze or how do I work out whether

I'm progressing in my practice of mindfulness, in my practice of meditation and it's always

a difficult question to answer and it's even if you don't do any meditation, even if

you don't practice mindfulness, this is still sort of very relevant because it's how

do we get a sense of whether we are being more present in our life.

And I always come back to the same story that my teacher chaired with me so when I went

off to become a monk, I definitely went with the idea that enlightenment for one of a

better word was something that I didn't have, that it existed somewhere else outside

of my mind as it existed at that time and perhaps even that it existed in another place

that I needed to go somewhere else to find it and get it and I thought that when I went

there that all of my negative thoughts were going to disappear.

I thought that all of my difficult and challenging emotions would disappear.

I don't know really what I was thinking, I just thought that I would experience a mind

that was always peaceful and always calm and in my mind that was what enlightenment was.

And of course when I went there I discovered that well actually in sitting you witnessed

the mind definitely sometimes it's calm but sometimes it's busy, sometimes the emotions

feel very pleasant but sometimes they're very unpleasant as well and I remember having

this discussion with my teacher and he said look rather than thinking of a place of eternal

happiness and a place of enlightenment rather, thinking of that as something that's going

to happen to you in the future, instead think about enlightenment more as being present

in this moment.

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