This is a YouTube video titled "Heartfelt Inquiry Brings a Meaningful Response" created in December 2023. The content is a guided meditation or reflective talk focused on emotional self-awareness, self-compassion, and the practice of asking supportive, healing questions to foster personal growth and well-being. It is a monologue without multiple speakers and does not involve Robert J. Strock.
Foreign 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. So let yourself start off by just noticing what state are you in right now? Are you relaxed? Are you tense? Are you irritable? Are you peaceful? Just see if you can sensitize yourself to ask, how's my heart doing? And whatever you see, ask the question with gentleness and let your inner eyes that are looking at your emotional state be as kind and gentle as possible. And notice if there's any body sensations that go along with how you feel and move around to be as comfortable as possible. And finally, let yourself breathe in a way that's most rhythmic to you, that supports you being relaxed and at peace. And then ask, what is my most difficult emotion? And be as clear as possible. Identify one challenging emotion that's central for you right now. And recognize that by paying attention to what's challenging, you're fostering healing, not the challenge. This is not a masochistic exercise. This is a way of finding the deepest healing using the clues that your own emotional body gives you because it shows you what isn't being satisfied so you have a chance to care for yourself in that area. So we're focusing on asking questions that will be strictly for guidance and direction. And that's not just any kind of questions. We're talking about questions from your heart that are aimed at looking for benefit and healing. This questioning is another part of your heart. It's a capacity that your heart and brain, being united, has. And we're not talking about the kind of questions that are veiled judgments like what's wrong with you? Why are you doing that? Again? No, we're talking about the kind of questions that have your best interest in mind. But just imagine as you're staying aware of your challenging feeling that you have another side of you that questions you in the most supportive way possible. It's continuously questioning in a way that you can have a best chance to improve your quality of life. One kind of questioning is unwittingly aimed at judging you, and the other kind of questioning is for your benefit. We're reinforcing only questions that are going to be for your best interest and that that could be another definition of you. I am the one that wants to ask questions that are for my benefit. Why would I want to do anything else? Why wouldn't that be a great way for me to live? Because not only am I caring, but I'm bringing the curiosity of my intelligence to be able to discover new things and new avenues, new ways to care for myself. So see if you can find some questions that you would ask related to your challenging or difficult feeling. So just pause into that because experiencing a challenging feeling and asking a question that could help you is one of the ways we could see your life as being endless growth, endless waking up, endless improvement of the quality of your life. An alliance inside you that you very likely have never fostered. Distinguish between the kinds of questions that support and the kinds that don't. Can you see, for example, the kinds of questions you've asked yourself in the past where they weren't supportive, they bummed you out, they kept you frozen, they made you feel worse than where you were. And now let in that you see that as and you see that does not create benefit for me. And I want to for the rest of my life make this pivot toward questions that are going to serve my well being and the well being of those that are dear to me. You might ask yourself what attitudes do I want to develop? Do I want to be more gentle? Do I want to be stronger? Do I want to set clear boundaries? Do I want to be more self compassionate? Just asking those questions, if you really do it from your heart, is soothing. Just ask yourself right now how much are you able to feel a little bit encouraged, a little bit soothed, a little bit more optimistic that you have this capacity and you could use it. Can you see that this is actually an evolutionary step in your psychological or spiritual, your humane development? But these are questions that are going to deepen your self compassion, which will automatically deepen your capacity to share compassion with others. So let yourself give whatever kind of encouraging reminder that you can to remember, and I'll say it again, to remember, at these times of significant difficulty, you get to ask questions. It's not that you should ask questions like it's a slap in the hand, it's an arising straight from your heart where you get to care for yourself by asking these questions. And that will open your heart and open your intelligence and open your curiosity. So see if you can appreciate your own best efforts, highlighting best efforts, not being perfect, but that I want to expand my capacity to ask questions that are going to give me a better chance of being my best self. And I want to summon up the honesty and the awareness, the humility, the courage and the resiliency to be able to ask these kinds of questions. You might say something like, I appreciate that I'm opening my heart doing everything that I can see to do with these questions. These questions are my friend. In fact, they emulate the very best qualities of a best friend. What more could be assisting you in your life to find peace, to find purpose, to find meaning and self compassion?
