Hello and welcome back to practicing human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Muscarra.

In today's episode, we're going to talk about the paradox of meditation.

More to come on this in a moment.

First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells.

Okay. a moment. First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells. I'd like to read you a quote by Pema Chodrin.

She says, when we meditate, we often think that somehow we're going to improve, which is a subtle aggression against who we really are. We can still be

timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. Meditation practice isn't about trying

to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already.

The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are.

That's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.

This quote kind of reminds me of the poem I shared by Bob Sharples a while back,

where he talked about the subtle aggression of self-improvement.

And so here, Pema is talking about something similar, this idea of trying to improve.

We often think that in the practice, we sit down trying to become some better version of

ourselves and then how this is a subtle aggression against who we really are.

And I know I've talked about this throughout this podcast many times,

but it's something that I think we need to hear multiple

times and in many different ways because it's the biggest hang up for us in practice in whatever

form our practice takes you might not even have a formal meditation practice but maybe

listen to the podcast

or lots of meditation podcasts without ever actually meditating. But maybe you do it in your own way

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