Bringing Heart and Wisdom to Your Insecurity, ATH Episode 137

Awareness That Heals, Episode 137.

A very warm welcome to Season 3 of Awareness That Heals, where we have progressed to be able to focus on one challenging emotion at a time. This will allow you to choose a specific emotion that you've had challenges with, and each one will have a progressive series of guided meditations that will allow you to go deeper and deeper into self-compassion. For me, it's truly inspiring because each emotion has unique nuances for both self-care and responding to your environment at the same time. This is subtle and a rare skill, as all too often we don't stay aware of how we can care for ourselves as we are. I hope that you'll not only find it helpful but also give you deep resources that you can internalize when the emotion is most emerging.

A very warm welcome back to Part 6 and the conclusion of our series on caring for insecurity. And I really hope at this point having listened to the 5 episodes, that you get a very strong feeling of how much empowerment you can potentially have by just being aware of your insecurity and learning how to care for the insecurity itself. And of course, it's on you to really apply it to your unique insecurity. So I hope as we go into this 6th and final meditation and add one more tool, that at every moment you're really focusing on what is my insecurity and how can I apply this to it in my unique situation? Because everyone is unique. You are unique. So starting off with the guided meditation. Let yourself be ready and make sure that your cell phone is turned off and there are no other distractions that could disturb you from your silence. So go to where your awareness naturally goes. Don't interfere. But be aware that my attention, my awareness is going to a sound or thoughts in my mind or emotions that are unresolved or things I have to do later. And just track with your awareness. You're seeing, ah, not only are these thoughts happening or these feelings happening, your awareness is seeing it. Now, we're not trying to be fanatic here, and it's not a contest of how much can your awareness see where you are. It's an ongoing aspiration that the more you can see that your awareness is noticing what's happening, the more you can guide your own life and be empowered to direct your thoughts, to direct your responses so that you can live the life that you most want to live. So staying with that theme, look at your awareness itself and do your best to be aware of your awareness without content. So what that means is you're metaphorically in a place where there's no visualization at all of anything. In fact, you're not even aware of your name. You're not even aware of thoughts. You're just like two mirrors in outer space with no stars being aware of itself. And awareness is just in a frequency looking at itself with no content. Now, this may be just an aspiration, and even if you can't get there ever, that aspiration will allow you to come closer to being aware of your awareness itself, and that will guide you to be a partner in everything you think and do and feel. And give you a choice point. Is this where I want to direct my awareness? So the import of being aware of your awareness, or even close to that, is something that is one of the greatest guides that you can have in life. So steer your awareness to your unique place of insecurity and pause for a few seconds. And see, is that right now? Are you aware of insecurity at all in any way right now? It could be insecurity about the weather not being good because you have an event planned outside. It could be insecure because you're not where you want to be in your business life. It could be insecure because your partner, you're not sure Do they really love me or do they love someone else? Wherever yours is, just stay zeroed in there and especially hear the chatter that goes on after you feel the insecurity or perhaps the invisibility where it just disappears. Because the tendency for most of us is either to fight with the insecurity or to flee from the insecurity. And what we're talking about is being aware of the insecurity so that you can have a caring response and guide your awareness to care for yourself. Because as I ask you right now, would you rather care for your insecurity or would you rather not care for your insecurity? It's a stupid question That's a brilliant question. So ask yourself that now and recognize, of course I want to care for my insecurity. And let it develop to where I want to be more and more tolerant and accepting and welcoming when I see it. Like a red flag. Oh, I see it. And let it be like a Pavlovian response where your insecurity triggers Of course I want to care. Of course I want to move toward being more accepting and tolerant. And then you want to guide yourself to ask questions. How can I best care for myself when I feel insecure? And then you're going to see your patterns. First of all, maybe not even to barely notice it, and you're going to be more aware. Or you may be going off the charts in judging yourself or criticizing yourself. Damn, I feel that stupid feeling again. I can't stand it. It's destroying my love. You come back and you say, I want to care for myself. How can I support myself? You want to ask yourself these questions reliably. You want to intervene. You are the interventionist that's going to come in and ask questions. How do I care for myself concretely with this insecurity? Now you know how to not care for yourself, but how to care for yourself is something that requires a long pause. Now you need to recognize this is a lifelong practice for almost all of us, and so it's very important that you have endless patience, because you're not going to just get it in a meditation. You can start to get the tools and you can really enhance your practice by recognizing, asking this question of how do I care for myself and developing the awareness and then adding the extra tool of what needs would most help me while I feel insecure. What attitudes, for example? Is it going to be helpful if I'm patient? Is it going to be helpful while I'm gentle and tender? Is it going to be helpful when I'm strong and trusting myself? Of course it is. So you're going to bring those qualities to yourself. And then in this final phase, you're going to ask yourself one more question. What parts of my heart and what parts of my wisdom guidance do I want to bring to myself when I'm in my unique insecurity? So again, return directly to where you're most insecure and ask yourself this question: What wisdom and heart would tell you right now, while you feel insecure, and you just dwell there. It's a sacred partnership where your heart and your wisdom is beckoning you to pay attention to the question and just brainstorm, heartstorm. Where would my heart and my wisdom take me? Now, at first it would say, be sure not to go hear the pattern that you have to criticize yourself or to criticize another or to withdraw. But then it would say, engage with your environment sensitively because you can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can be insecure, feel insecure, and still respond intelligently, sensitively, with caring and You can support yourself while you're doing this, maybe even congratulate yourself on caring for your insecurity and then responding to your environment with heart and wisdom. So remember, plant a seed. You want to always ask for your heart and wisdom to speak to you when you feel insecure. And when you remember this, you're on a path to move to greater trust, self-trust, caring, and confidence. And I wish this for you and for all of us on this planet that needs more and more of this so that all of us have a better chance to thrive and survive. Thank you very much.

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