A short guided meditation that leads listeners to scan their emotional state and notice how their tone of voice shows up in relationships. It emphasizes accepting awareness (nonjudgmental noticing), courage to face unhelpful tones (irritation, withdrawal, superiority, shame), and offering a future-oriented positive suggestion to continue this accepting awareness for healing.
So just let yourself check in by having an awareness of your heart and ask, what state am I starting in? Am I feeling more up or down? Am I feeling more energized or more flat? Am I feeling sad or happy? Am I in an accepting state or am I feeling more rejecting? And just be in contact with yourself for a few moments and have the courage to really be just as you are, with no need to change or improve whatsoever. And then allow yourself to become aware of of your tone of voice as it's expressed in the key relationships in your life where it's not optimal, where it's not loving, where it's not peaceful. And just let yourself scan and have the courage to notice where you might just be a little bit leaky with irritation or withdrawal annoyance. And just keep looking for where your tone of voice might be expressing itself in a way that isn't the way you really would like it to be. Maybe you're timid, maybe you're intimidated, maybe you feel like a victim, maybe you feel inadequate, maybe you feel insecure, maybe you feel superior, maybe you feel wronged, maybe you feel entitled with a certain kind of tension. But have the courage to have an accepting awareness of where your tone of voice expresses itself in a way that isn't optimal. Recognizing that this acceptance of your tone of voice is so healing and it requires so much courage to just see it and to go, oh, I see this tone of voice. I can see it on the outside. This is the way I leak. This is the way I express my state without usually being aware of it in ways that actually create suffering. And by staying aware of it and by accepting it, I give myself such a chance of adding this healing dimension to my life. So see if you can have the courage to just keep scanning and recognize this as something you want to do forever, that you want to have this accepting awareness. Because if you can afford to see yourself, you can be present in the future. Whereas if you have to reject yourself, just see that you won't be able to notice it in the future. So encourage yourself, implore yourself, may I have the courage to bring this accepting awareness when I have these tones of voice that just leak out and that you have the integrity, the awareness, the honesty, the courage to see these tones of voice. And that the mixture of your accepting awareness with your tones of voice that haven't served you in the past is a miraculous, miraculous moment. It's just such a healing. And that that instinct to feel ashamed or judgmental, see that too, see the futility of that get that that part of you that rejects it also needs to be accepted and see the joke that it just doesn't serve you. And so that it's also very helpful to have an accepting awareness of you judging yourself for the way you express your tone of voice. So see if you can have the courage, give yourself a positive suggestion for the future. May I have the courage to see my tone of voice when it's not the optimal one, and may I accept it? May I really have the courage, the wisdom, the heart, the integrity to see my tone of voice and have an accepting awareness.
