How To Find Your Own Feelings | Understand Your Feelings

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 change long standing patterns from 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 listen to the sounds, and when there aren't any, just see if you can enjoy the silence. And wherever your attention goes, just be with your attention. So if you're thinking, be aware, ah, I'm thinking. And you start to recognize that you are actually the observer, that you can pay attention to what you're feeling, you can pay attention to the sounds, body sensations. You can really let yourself relax into a certain kind of peace. And ask yourself the question, what feeling do you least like? And it might be something like being anxious or angry, impatient, empty, lonely, guilty, helpless, insecure. There are so many feelings, but the important thing is you're fighting yours and you're just staying aware of it. Because you know if you stay with your own feeling, you have the best chance of actually moving in a direction that's going to serve you. And then recognize this. Not liking the feeling inevitably leads to feelings like shame or guilt, repulsion, withdrawal. And these rejecting feelings are much harder to see. As you pick out your one feeling, just look to see if you might be going, ugh, can't stand that feeling. And the key thing is that you're valuing your awareness of seeing because you recognize that when you don't like yourself and you can see it, you have a chance of not only changing your thoughts, but in many cases redirecting yourself from rejecting yourself toward what the original challenging feeling is, which allows you to discover what you really need to deal with the challenge itself. So you're allowing both your challenging feeling and seeing if you can track your own reaction toward it, which may be just a thought, or it may be a feeling, and it can be quite subtle. Take your time. Instead of resisting the feeling at all, treat it like gold. Breathe into it. Feel the challenging feeling as much as possible. Recognizing. The more you're able to feel it and stay aware of it, the more clues and cues you'll have to guide you to to what you might most need. So if you're afraid, you're going to want to move toward courage or safety by being aware of how you can get sidetracked in Self rejection and learn to see it and then simply, gently say, self rejection. I'm not going to let you own me. I see you. I'm not going to have an attitude against you. I'm just going to let you know I'm going to return to my challenging feeling. And you might say something like, self rejection. Guess what? You're not particularly helpful. Might even smile. I can tolerate you. That's all I need to do. And now I'm getting back to my challenging feeling. So again, staying with the example of anxiety, you recognize if you ignore your anxiety, it's just gonna stay there and may even grow as you ignore it and put it into solitary confinement. Whereas if you are able to use this precious observer to say anxiety, I'm with you, and I have a desire to do what I can to support you. You're looking also for this desire to care for yourself. And it's always unique to you because your challenging feeling is utterly yours. And you're getting into a state of awareness where you're honoring where it is. You're doing your best to find a place inside you that knows, of course I want to care for myself. And then you're starting to ask a question. How can I possibly best care for myself? The one that is leading you to this question is your witness, observer. And it is the part of you that can see yourself clearly. And if you look at it closely, you might even see it so deeply that you recognize the observer is your greatest resource. And in a sense, it's more you than anything. Your capacity to observe allows you to see your challenges. It allows you to look for the part of you that wants to care. Just pause as you continue looking and realize, this is a track I want to be on because I want to know what's going on. Difficult for me. Of course I want to care. And that's going to require me not only discovering what I need, but going for what I need. So if you're in fear, you're going to be finding this part that wants to care. If you go, oh, no, not fear again, and. And you're just outwardly rejecting it. You can say, okay, I can tolerate that. I'm starting to reject it, but I'm going back to my fear. I don't want to ignore my fear because then I'll just stay there. So you ask yourself, what is it that I need? And you recognize its courage and safety. And while we're doing this, we're just attempting to identify the direction you want to guide yourself when you're in any kind of challenging emotion. So keep returning to the feeling again and again. That's challenging. And see if you can come close to treasuring it. Not that you love it, but you treasure the awareness of the observer. This acceptance of the challenging feeling and this urge to find the place that wants to care for you. Is utilizing the observer in a way that you want this to be this way the rest of your life? Is it clear to you why you would want to be able to be this resourceful? It's incredibly helpful to realize that the best diagnostic question for discovering self rejection is just asking yourself, do you like yourself when you feel blank? And the blank is your challenging feeling? Who likes it when you feel fear? Who likes it when you feel irritated or annoyed? But there's a reason why we're asking an absurd question. And it's because unwittingly and unconsciously, we so frequently don't like it. And then we get caught in not liking rather than tolerating. And if we tolerate it allows us to go back to the original source of our suffering. Can you see clearly now how you can guide yourself and not be owned by by the challenging feeling? If you keep your observer on the experience of it, it's giving you encouragement and permission to feel it. And also the challenging emotion. And that results in a tolerance and moving back to the challenging feeling. And that challenging feeling, whether it's anxiety or fear or anger or frustration, you're looking for, well, what would be the need that would best help me? And really more accurately, what would be the needs that would most help me? What would the thoughts be that would care for me while I'm feeling afraid instead of yuck? We might be saying something like, it's universal. We're human. Everybody feels fear. There's nothing at all wrong with feeling afraid. It's how we respond. Again, from this precious observer, as you look closely, you will find places where you say, I can't stand being or feeling this way. And then a key is tolerance. I can tolerate you. I'm going back, I'm going to deal with the original challenging feeling. If you're in a state of intolerance and you feel it, first of all, that awareness recognized requires a certain amount of courage and humility. Then you look again for that place that wants to care, and that's going to lead you to the possibility of asking a question. How can I move toward tolerance, kindness, maybe even tenderness? But you can't move in these directions if you don't stay aware of the challenging feelings. Because they're the source of motivation to inspire you to fulfill your caring instinct. So whatever your feeling is, and again, keep staying with your feeling. Can you hear a voice that's saying, I want to care for myself? You can use your own words, but the meaning needs to be, I'm suffering and I want to try my best to find the direction to lessen my suffering, to be more soothed or to be more strengthened. You might find your friendly mind saying, hang in there. When you can't feel capable of being motivated to care or find tolerance. And then you'll have to put your attention or you'll want to put your attention on, oh, come on. I want to find a place inside me that would rather care for myself than hate on myself. Hopefully, as you're even hearing this, a little smile goes on your face as you see the absurdity of having a challenging feeling and not caring and then realizing, oh, I can see it now. This is an evolutionary step when you can just simply start seeing the challenging feeling. Finding a place that wants to care, just that movement is a way to make a pivot in your whole life where it's hardest for you. When we're used to either being absorbed or exiting and getting out of there as fast as we can. So give yourself a reminder. I want to be aware of my challenging feelings. I want to find the place inside me that cares and I want to ask the question that is going to move me toward well being or healing. And when the self rejection comes in, I want to speak to it and say, I can tolerate you, but you're not the center. The center right now is my original challenging feeling. And as you stay with this meditation now and after, see if you can appreciate this great work and dedication that you're giving to yourself and to your life and seeing it as a part of the work of that is so valuable for your lifetime and realizing that when you take great care of yourself, you're really taking care of the world around you as well.