Hello Sam here, welcome to Radio Headspace and to Wednesday.

Today marks the end of our segment on the eightfold path, those eight Buddhist teachings

that are designed to help us reduce unnecessary suffering.

It's been so great to share these teachings with you and I hope they've helped you look

at decisions and habits and just ways to approach life with a little more intentionality.

This last episode is all about skillful understanding.

And this is an interesting one because it acknowledges the understanding that goes beyond

what we can decipher from books.

It's also about what we know at our core.

Skillful understanding distinguishes between two different types of understanding.

We have the intellectual understanding where we know facts and can recite lists and

then a deeper level of understanding that comes from living the knowledge and embodying

it.

And this reminds me of a moment in my life when I experienced the leap from intellectual

understanding to having a lived experience and knowing on a deeper level.

Before this particular light bulb moment, I had an intellectual understanding of the importance

of taking care of and being responsible for my emotions, but I really didn't embody

it yet.

I knew it wasn't helpful to demand or expect loved ones to soothe me when I was sad or

upset, but I still felt jilted when they didn't or couldn't and it caused a lot of anxiety

for me.

And it wasn't any one occasion that brought this on.

...