A guided meditation that teaches you to sit with difficult emotions like fear or grief, then locate an inner caring presence that offers self-compassion and practical help. Practice holding both the feeling and the kindness at once, during meditation and in daily life, to move toward healing.
You guided meditation is for so many people, the best way to truly gain benefit in your response to personal challenges. As you invest and bring your own experience to the guided meditations, you'll give yourself the best chance to change long standing patterns from suffering toward a state of well being, peace and healing. It's important to put yourself in a comfortable body position in a private space where you're not disturbed. Turn off your phone and be ready to really be alert and let yourself notice your rhythm of breathing. Just Am I breathing shallow? Am I breathing deeply? Am I enjoying breathing? Let yourself start being focused. By just looking at the rhythm of breathing, you can actually find a rhythm of breathing, which I'm suggesting you do right now, that's relaxed for you, that's comfortable, just gently letting it flow in a way that feels most natural to you. Spend a few seconds just listening to the sounds around you. And while you're doing that, ask yourself, what is my most challenging emotion that I'm facing during this time of my life, or perhaps in the moment or today? Can you identify what the emotion is that brings the most challenge for you in life? Recognize it and let it be followed with ah, I'm glad I can see the nature of my suffering. See if you can let yourself appreciate you're taking this time to to be aware and noticing what's happening in your heart. Keep remembering. This is about you following my words, but not getting absorbed in my words. The key is you getting absorbed in your feeling to be able to feel it enough to have it be stable. It could be sadness, frustration, grief, fear, anxiety. But whatever is yours, let yourself stay there and keep your awareness steady and realize that at this safe place, the more you feel it, the better chance that it will catalyze you to stay aware of it. So no matter what your feeling is, I'm going to be using fear as an example. But stay with your feeling. And so you might say, fear, fear, fear. Stay with wherever you are. And as that stabilizes, ask yourself the question, can I find a place inside me where I want to care for myself? At the same time, I'm going to say it again. Can I find a place inside that wants to care for myself right where I am? Are you able to be in touch with a part of you that wants to care for yourself while you feel this most challenging feeling? Normally, challenging feelings run the day. Look at yourself and see how that's the case. Normally, if you feel afraid, thoughts of fear come right after it. Let yourself do as much as you can to to say I don't want to let these emotional thoughts run the whole show. If I remember to ask the question, can I feel the caring and start to generate, oh, I'm sorry you have to go through this. This is difficult. I really want to guide you to take care of yourself while you're in this challenging feeling. So just notice that when you're not in the meditation, it's a big deal. When you're in a challenging feeling, it's so important to practice while you're not in the heat of it because it's easier to have a simultaneity of the challenging feeling and this deep, yearning, longing desire to care for yourself and find out what that means to you uniquely in whatever situation you're in. And while you're aware of your desire to help yourself, you're asking for guidance. How can I help myself? How can I support myself? What thoughts will be helpful? Might be something like, I'm sorry you have to go through this. It might be telling you to rest or to call the doctor or a therapist or a friend. But the point is, you can have a friend inside you that cares for you while you're going through it. This is a evolutionary step where all of us can develop self compassion, self love, and it will be spread to those that are close to us. It likely will just start with new thoughts that are not coming from the feeling. The feeling is a very powerful primal instinct. So you need to be content and not believe that just because you have the new thoughts coming that they're going to overwhelm the feeling right away. That's the easiest way to lose this meditation. Be content to have one level of deep feeling and then the guidance. The more you follow this guidance, the better chance you have to find peace and strength and gentleness, or whatever is most needed. So leave this meditation with a wish to carry it on outside of this time period and especially be a seed of a reminder when you're having this challenging feeling in your life. Sa.
