You don’t have to be good at this. You just have to sit down.

Meditation is attention training. You sit, you breathe, you notice where your mind has gone, and you come back. Done often enough, that small repeated act changes your relationship to your own thoughts — you stop being carried off by every passing reaction, and you start to see the machinery for what it is.

Calm sometimes shows up. The deeper aim is the capacity to be present to your life as it is actually happening, including the parts you would rather skip past. That capacity is what lets you hear anything quiet, in yourself or anyone else.

The video above is Rabbi Ben leading a sit for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. It’s a good way to see what this is actually like before you show up.