A guided meditation on working with difficult emotions by cultivating a friendly, compassionate inner voice. You ground in your body, notice what you're feeling and how you react to it, then practice offering yourself gentle guidance like you would a friend in pain. The practice frames this as a lifelong skill built through small, repeated acts of kindness toward yourself.
Guided meditation is for so many people, the best way to truly gain benefit in your response to personal challenges. As you invest in bringing your own experience to the guided meditations, you'll give yourself the best chance to 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.
Just start by listening to the sounds around you and let it vacillate between sounds that you can hear and just appreciating the silence in between the sounds. And if possible, let yourself enjoy that you're just resting in being present. And include an awareness of any body sensations that are going on which might lead you to move your body a little bit to be more comfortable. And start by asking the question, what is my most challenging emotion during this period of time or perhaps right in this moment? Let it be crisp, this identification. Ah, fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, impatience, whatever is yours is where you want to be and breathe into it, let it percolate in your body so you really not only have your awareness, but you can feel the sensation. So keep asking yourself, what is the feeling that is most difficult that you've faced in your life, especially the one that is closest to present time, time, or perhaps a time that you see that's coming or that's been with you as the most challenging over a recent period of time, and keep looking. And if it isn't clear or if there's more than one feeling or thought, then just allow it to be that way and keep your precious awareness on it. See if you can say, oh good, I can see both the challenging emotion and my reaction to it, which is likely to be either a self rejection or perhaps you might be withdrawing from it because the feeling is so difficult. So notice as you're there with your very most difficult feeling, what comes right after it. Is there an oh shit or an equivalent? Or can you start to develop the capacity to see, oh good, I can see it and that gives me a chance not to get distracted from it. By either withdrawing or judging, you're looking for the time where you're most out of control with pain, loss or something that's equivalent to grief. As you see this challenging emotion and you recognize you want to guide yourself with these wise friendly thoughts, that it might leave you right now feeling a little bit schizophrenic, a deep feeling that wants to take you over and yet you have these wise thoughts that are saying things like this is really difficult. I want to care for you. I'm going to ask you questions of how can I most care for you? I'm going to make suggestions to you. Be gentle with yourself. This would be difficult for anyone. Do you want to lie down? Do you need to put your hands on your heart? Do you need to breathe? Do you need to call someone for help? Do you need space? What would these wisest thoughts be to guide you how to best take care of yourself when you're immersed in feelings, and very likely you don't feel motivated to do anything else. But you find this place inside you that wants to care and leads you to these simple thoughts that can either be supporting you or asking you questions that will lead to support. And remember as you're here, you want these thoughts to be centered on the present or the near future. And you know these thoughts are supportive, they're wise, they're where you want to put your dominating attention. You don't want to allow yourself to be owned by the feeling. You need to find this place of wisdom that knows that it wants to care for you no matter what you feel. Take a moment. Does this make sense to you? That at your time of greatest suffering, which is now, you want to put your loyalty, you want to put your devotion into your wisest guiding thoughts? Plant a seed that you want to remember this for the real times in life. Throughout your life, you have the most difficult feelings. You want to plant a seed. I want to remember my wisest thoughts, my friendly mind. And remember that you won't be able to feel better right away. And that's usually the criteria of when you think it's working. But no, it's your single pointed devotion to friendly mind, to your wise thoughts that will be a source of you not reacting from the feeling, but reacting from a different part of your soul, of your depth. So keep coming back to your challenging emotion, feeling it in your body and seeing if thoughts want to take you into the future or want to criticize you or if you want to disassociate. But come back, come back and ask what is friendly? Mind telling me you may hear my voice is soft, but you will not be able to be soft because you'll be in the feeling, but you will be able to hear this voice if you call for us. What is possible in this moment? That would be the thoughts that would guide you to your own sanity, to your own balance, to a direction that will make the feelings least potent. And as you continue, recognize this is lifetime work to gain the confidence to be able to have this loyalty be to your depth wisdom friendly mind and not to your feeling spawning thoughts. Only you can do it, nobody can do it for you. It's the ultimate test of courage and human character to be your own guide when you're in this kind of hell. As you ask for a friendly mind, you'll see that you can receive. You need to find the sincerity of wanting to care for yourself even at this time. You need to find a different level inside you than the feeling.
In order.
To have a chance of moving toward healing. We can't fight a feeling of this magnitude with another feeling and we can't look for the feeling to be the solution. We are content with our wise mind taking over. Not taking over and eliminating the feeling, but taking over our attention. Friendly mind says I want to become as close to friendly mind as possible for my greatest time of need. I want to be a light unto myself when I'm in the greatest darkness.
