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 Miscara. And in today's episode, we're going to talk about

the difference between sitting with your experience and sitting on your experience. More to come on that in a moment. First, let's settle in together with the sound of the bells. Yes. So in yesterday's episode, I shared a quote by Robert Augustus Masters from his book

Spiritual Bypassing.

Well, this is a book I am slowly working through and making lots of notes,

and there's another quote I'd like to share of his. On page 75, he says,

plenty of meditators work at sitting with their unwholesome states, including anger,

not realizing that they may not be so much sitting with these states as

they are sitting on them. And you know when you read something and it just makes you go,

this was one of those experiences, it just puts so succinctly something that I've seen in my own practice and I've seen

for many other people. And it's very common in meditation where we think we're sitting with

and being present to the fullness of our experience. But in reality, we're using the practice to sit on our experience,

to suffocate it and repress it. And so just notice how that lands for you, whether you have a

meditation practice or you're just someone trying to be more present in your life. Do you feel like your practice opens you up to

and allows you to be with more aspects of your experience,

really embracing and befriending,

especially what we might term the unwholesome states

or what we perceive to be unwholesome states,

the painful emotions, the difficult

experiences that could arise. Or is your practice of presence and mindfulness more to compartmentalize

those things, focus more on the good, and direct your attention in such a way that you're just simply

better at not seeing the things that you don't want to see, that you don't like.

...