This guided-meditation audio invites listeners to contact their heart and present emotional state with accepting awareness rather than trying to ‘improve’ themselves. It guides identification of habitual, challenging tones of voice (e.g., irritability, impatience, withdrawal) and recommends regularly telling trusted others—or a counselor/spiritual figure—about these tones as an act of humility, self-love, and trust. The practice aims to stabilize the heart, increase witnesses to one’s habitual non-loving tones, and create opportunities for caring responses and deeper acceptance.
So just let yourself start off by contacting your heart and your emotions and your state of being as you do that, just remember that you're wanting to convey, I want you to be just exactly as you are. Have the courage not to try to improve. Have the courage to just be exactly as you are. And the more you can be exactly as you are with your accepting awareness, the better chance you have to heal and the more you can get over this illusion that improvement is going to help, that trying to change your state is going to help, the quicker you're going to have a sense of well being. So just contact yourself right where you are and recognize the state of being where you're starting from. And remind yourself now that you've been looking at what your own state of being is, and you've also been looking at what, what your general tones of voice have been with people around you and that you've been identifying. These are my most common, challenging tones of voice that I go into in my life with the people that really matter. And now imagine yourself on a regular basis going to the people that you most trust and let them know. Visualize letting them know what the states of being are in your tone of voice. And you're letting them have the gift of your accepting awareness of what your tone of voice is that's least optimal. And by being that generous and that humble and that open, you're giving them the ability to give you a caring response. And it's an act of trust, it's an act of grace, it's an act of self love. Because your willingness to tell the significant others, your tones of voice that are most discordant, that are most challenging, that are most difficult because they're the least loving is the greatest source of love, the greatest source of trust. So imagine yourself doing this as much as possible with the people you most trust. So just really let yourself say, I want you to know that this is the way my tone of voice is, let's say more most irritable, most impatient, most righteous, most annoyed, most withdrawn. And I want you to know, because I want to ask for your help, I want to ask for your kindness. I want to let you know this isn't really how I want to be, how I really want to be is the opposite of this tone of voice. And I'm letting you know so I can give you the way I'm normally defensive and ask you to try to support my heart, ask you to try to assume my goodwill so that I can strengthen that part of me and just Imagine that this is something that you're doing as a part of your lifestyle. And if you can't imagine that there's anybody around you that you can do this with, just imagine yourself going to a counselor. And if you can't even imagine going to a counselor, imagine that there's some religious figure or some spiritual figure or some family member or some imaginary person that at least you can be honest with them, that you at least are externalizing this and admitting it as outwardly as possible. And so this externalizing your tone of voice and having the capacity to humble yourself is going to help stabilize your life. And nothing short of that is going to deepen your ability to accept yourself and to have a better chance of being accepted by those that you love. Because then what you're doing is instead of just having your own two eyes on it, you could have four eyes on it, or six eyes on it, or eight eyes on it. And the more witnesses you have of how you normally have a tone of voice that isn't loving, and the more you ask for help, the better chance you have of stabilizing your own heart, and the better chance you have of those that you love giving you love. So just see how much you're ready to dedicate yourself to this practice, how much you're ready to be generous enough and trusting enough to those that you most believe could support you, and just appreciate that you're even considering dedicating this to your life.
