Shabbat meditation guide by Jackie Glaser for Olami's Share Shabbat

[Music] so this applies no matter whether you're keeping all of Shabbat summer Shabbat or Nanak so that you can still Zone in set a time aside on Shabbat on Saturday for this type of exercise and you will have a deeper clarity I'll be curious to see whether you feel that whether you feel that you get a different access a different clarity on Shabbat so so what we're going to do is before Shabbat before your Friday night sunset I want you to write down a hundred things you're grateful for now these 100 things are little it could be the littlest thing right so it's not just like I'm grateful for my body it's like I'm grateful for my eyes and sight and imagining what your life would be like without that sight I mean I'm grateful for my ears imagine what my life would be like I forbid if I couldn't hear right and then I imagine if I couldn't taste all the beautiful taste you can go through your body who'd knock off like 30 30 2013 just for your body right and then you can go through different relationships and you could go through your physical property and what you have and then you could go through right so the more specific you get and the more detailed the more it's easy to generate a large list but I want you to write a hundred things you're grateful for just spend five minutes writing those hundred things and that they're the things that you're going to do on Shabbat in the meditation so on on Shabbat when you have your list of 100 I want you to take a few deep breaths and I want you to spend a couple minutes let's say two minutes have a clock near you like a watch or a clock on the wall and just spend two minutes calming yourself down and centering taking focusing on your breath if that helps if you don't want to focus on breath you could focus on a word like Shalom which means peace right wholeness and you just focus on the breath or on the word and then at some point when your mind wanders often to like what am i doing later today right I want you to just gently bring your mind back to the breath or your focus focal point it could be the word it could be the breath whatever it is mind wanders off just gently bring it back and I want you to do that at say for three minutes for three minutes and after that that the whole point of that is just to calm yourself and center yourself right quiet yourself down it's a very typical method of quietening yourself down some people call it type of transcendental meditation where you just focus on a mantra or you focus on a focal point have a focal point when your mind wanders off just gently notice it's wandered off and bring it back and that training of the mind back to the focal point is very calming and quietens us down that's step one step two is have your list out with you and then start to talk aloud to a divine source and higher power about what you're grateful for right to say thank you mean when we say thank you we have to say thank you to someone or something right you don't just say thank you to the air you're saying thank you to the source that gave you whatever it is you're given right whether when someone gives you a present you thank the person and you should also be thanking God because God sent them as a messenger to us so here on Shabbat it's really about building our relationships with ourselves and with others when we eat with them and we hang out with them quality time with family and with a higher power it's a very deep opportunity to build that relationship with a higher power because we can feel the connection so much more so on this day we're practicing saying thank you to a higher power divine source god for the things that we've been given and just just go through the things and just allow yourself to not just rattle them off from your head but to actually feel it from your heart and imagine what your life would be like without the thing you're saying thank you for right that's a really really important thing and after you finished doing the the list just letting yourself be quiet full hopefully by then you'll be filled filled with gratitude and appreciation and we know that that is what is the is like the set point of happiness right there's a book called thanks if you want to look it up but it's essentially saying that each of us have a set point of happiness that we hover at and then spikes happen throughout our lives they did a lot of research on this spike salmon someone wins the lottery so they measure people's setpoint of happiness and then after they won the lottery it obviously went up and then six months later they were back to exactly that same setpoint of happiness and they found that the only thing that increases that setpoint internally of happiness is gratitude right so if we want to truly be joyful despite what's going on around us the world could be falling apart like you're out kind of is and we want to experience more happiness if we focus on what we're grateful for it will increase our happiness right that's what that's what all the studies are finding that's what positive psychology is based on it all comes out of Judaism 101 right the foundation of a Jew is to thank and to be grateful so after the hundred thank-yous and it's focusing I want you grateful for just allowing a few minutes for your own personal prayers asking for help with anything requests again you don't have to be completely convinced that you you know believe and you're so clear that you're speaking to a higher power just it's all an experiment treat it like an experiment and see what happens right why not it's free no one needs to know about it it's in the privacy of your own home right just experiment because really at the end of the day there's no bigger concept that will be more profoundly life-changing than if there is a divine source that's involved in your personal life and is running the show right and if you can have a personal relationship with that divine source I'm not sure anyone would not want to like why wouldn't you want to right there the source of everything God's the source of everything so with that I look forward to hearing about it after Shabbat and and taking it from there have a shabbat shalom and wish a new peace gratitude and love blessing [Music]