welcome to waking up this is sam harris i want to take a few minutes to explain why one would want to meditate and why it makes sense to use an app like waking up as a support for one's practice first your mind is the basis of everything you experience in life and of every contribution you can make to the lives of others so given this fact it makes sense to train it you already know what it's like to have an untrained mind we all do it's what allows us to be less than happy even when things are about as good as they can get even when everything is fine many of us are still consumed by stress we spend most of our time thinking about all the things we need to do or want to do or wish we hadn't done and we spend very little time truly content and focused in the present and because of this we often fail to really connect with the people around us even the people we love most in this world understand in your own mind directly through the practice of meditation is the best way i know of to correct for this we spend our lives seeking to become happy and yet the truth is we can only ever be happy in the present i'm not saying there aren't things worth doing in this world of course you should want to live a productive satisfying life it's good to be physically fit and healthy and creative and educated and to have meaningful relationships there is surely a difference between having a life filled with love and opportunity and a life that's just one long emergency but the deeper truth is that very few of us are able to truly come to rest in the present moment and experience the peace and fulfillment that is available there even in the best possible circumstances the luckiest people in the world still live on a treadmill they reached their goals only to find that each was a kind of mirage even the luckiest people discover that getting what you want out of life isn't quite enough and conversely it's also true that one can be happy even in an emergency it's simply a fact about the human mind that genuine well-being is available even in times of intense stress and meditation paying closer attention to the nature of your own mind is the most direct way to discover that now some people seem to think that using an app for meditation is a cop-out or a crutch perhaps it would be better to sit in silence day after day and just see what happens now it is possible to make progress in meditation just by sitting in silence there are surely some prodigies out there who can just close their eyes and pay attention and without any guidance recapitulate all the progress made by even the most advanced meditators in history but honestly that's probably not you and it certainly wasn't me and the truth is meditation is like any other human endeavor where there's an enormous difference between having good information and bad information or no information and this remains true for the longest time i mean just think about it even professional athletes have coaches and trainers how is that even possible how could the greatest basketball players and golfers and mixed martial arts fighters still benefit from more information about their sport and more analysis of what it is they're doing moment by moment well even experts can continually refine their practice whatever your prior experience of meditation might be the difference between laboring under false assumptions and having those assumptions exposed and reconsidered can be immense and i know this from direct experience while waking up offers a standard approach to the practice of mindfulness certainly in the beginning i'm also teaching things that i didn't understand even after i'd spent a cumulative year on silent retreat my goal in creating this app is to build the resource that i wish i'd had when i began practicing meditation over 30 years ago because even though i had unusually good access to teachers i actually got instruction from some of the best meditation masters then living i also feel that i wasted a lot of time and effort in my practice and experienced much more frustration and confusion than was necessary part of this had to do with the fact that is generally entangled with eastern religion and there's a fair amount to sort out there with respect to what's justifiable to believe and part of it had to do with seemingly very subtle distinctions in how the practice of mindfulness is taught so in waking up i'm creating the tool that if i could go back in time i'd want to give to my 20 year old self and say here this is what you need to know and while i've written a book on the topic too also called waking up there's simply no question that this app is a much better way of communicating these ideas as you know an app can be continually updated and expanded but it's not just that audio is a much better medium for guiding people to experience specific insights i actually feel like i've been waiting for decades to create the waking up app i just didn't realize it because the technology didn't exist and to be clear i'm still a work in progress myself there are things that i'm still trying to figure out about how to integrate the wisdom of meditation into this increasingly complex world of ours and in various places in the app you'll hear me struggling to do that particularly in dialogue with other teachers so i've built waking up for myself too and i am in a very real sense practicing along with you now in order to make progress in meditation it's essential to understand the theory behind the practice theory and practice are like two wings of a bird here so you'll see that each is given its own section in the app on the practice side you'll begin with the introductory course and your first session already appears in the center of the home screen once you finish the introductory course you'll see a daily meditation appear on the home screen and this will automatically change each day there are several additional meditation tracks on the app too and they can all be found through the practice tab at the bottom of the screen the second area of waking up is called theory and is focused on an ever-growing series of short talks which we've called lessons there's also an expanding series of conversations i'm having with a wide range of teachers and scholars and you'll find sessions in which i and others answer frequently asked questions you can listen to the theory sections in any order that you like and i encourage you to begin doing this early on as you work your way through the introductory course we're continually developing waking up and adding new features but the basic structure will remain quite simple theory and practice and to be clear the goal of meditation is not to become a great meditator the goal ultimately is for there to be no difference between the clarity and freedom you experience in periods of formal meditation and the clarity and freedom you experience in your life in your relationships at work when stuck in traffic even when receiving a scary diagnosis from your doctor there is no boundary between life and practice and the waking up app shouldn't give you a sense that such a boundary exists if the app works for you it will become a kind of wise companion which you can use daily or even only occasionally to help you deepen your understanding of your own mind it will become a tool to help you live a more examined life and if it works for you you'll find that it has enormous implications for everything you do in life so i encourage you to just start with the introductory course and feel free to go at your own pace and needless to say you can always go back and repeat sessions as many times as you want and please realize there's a world of difference between practicing even only occasionally and not practicing at all once again welcome to waking up and i want to thank you in advance for the effort you put in here i think you'll find that it's worth it