Speaker presents a humanistic-spiritual framework for cultivating inner strength through repeatable practices. Key practices described: gentle inquiry (asking supportive questions), meditation to develop witnessing/spaciousness, prayer or intention-setting to access desired qualities, and deliberately choosing short guiding/wisdom thoughts to replace self-sabotaging thoughts. The talk emphasizes compassionate self-awareness, tolerating confusion/vulnerability, and gradually adopting a primary identity as an inquirer/meditator/prayerful person.
So it's magical. And the way this magic becomes magic is we need to dedicate ourselves to practices. If we're not sure how to become stronger when we're feeling weak, we can ask ourselves that question, which can be called inquiry. And you ask over and over again, how am I going to develop strength? How am I going to develop strength if we're confused? After we congratulate ourselves for being confused, we say, how am I going to get clear here? And just asking that question in a kind way is so satisfying, you don't even need to get the answer right away, just hanging there with that question, the right question, the question that's there to support a sense of well being. And then we can develop a meditation practice. And the meditation practice allows a silence to develop. And when the silence develops, we have the possibility of slowing down. And an emotion is just an emotion. It's not clogged with 38,000 thoughts. And it gives us a chance to coexist with a witnessing intelligence. Because meditation slows our mind down and encourages us to be the witness of sounds or breath, body sensations, awareness of emotions, awareness of thoughts, awareness of silence. And so it creates a spaciousness that starts to become a central identity. We start to say, I am the spaciousness or I am this inquirer that can start to take over as identity if we develop the practice deep enough. And similarly with a prayer for developing the quality that you need. So if you're anxious and you need relaxation, you literally can have a prayer. And whether you believe in God and pray for God, for the strength to find that, or whether you're praying to your higher self or you're praying just to access that quality again. It's like you're a singer singing the right note. And it doesn't even matter so much whether you reach, because you know if you're in that prayer, if you're in that state of asking, you're on target. So there's this incredible encouragement to pray. Or sometimes it can be referred to as setting the intention to be more courageous. I want to be as courageous as possible. I want to be as trusting as possible. I want to be as kind as possible when I approach my partner to communicate. I want to respect their space when they need a lot of space. I want to pray for the wisdom to know how to connect with the person who's in front of me. So that setting an intention is another practice that helps create the magic of whatever state you're in. It coexists with any of these practices. And a Fourth practice that is also incredibly helpful is when you get clear about the very thought that is most wise to guide you in the state you're in. So if you're again feeling weak, the thought might be you aren't doing this on purpose. And have the courage to stay vulnerable and be as strong as you can at this moment and be satisfied. So it may be something like that. Or maybe if you're frightened and you know you need to develop courage because you're going to give a speech, be as courageous and as present as possible. So you're looking for the thoughts, and it's usually a short sentence or two that are going to be most supportive to guide you in the moment. And they are like your best friends. And you recognize as you develop these wisdom, guidance thoughts, the sabotaging thoughts that are critical of you, you need to tell them to get lost. You need to develop the clarity and that's the real strength. When you say get lost, you've been around sabotaging me for all these years, criticizing me for being anxious, criticizing me for being afraid, criticizing me for being confused, criticizing me for being too autonomous, criticizing me for needing to communicate too much. And I'm the one that wants to set the wisest place possible and surrender to wisdom, ask for wisdom to speak to me. And when wisdom comes through, I receive it. I'm going to replace the thoughts that are old and tired, that are either from our family background or from our culture, and we'll dedicate ourselves to those thoughts. And then if we have wiser thoughts, we'll keep it moving. So as a whole picture, we're starting from this unawareness that we're even unaware and even knowing that it helps us understand the world. It helps us understand where we are with ourselves in certain places, gives us the incentive to be aware of our unawareness, gives us the incentive to go all the way down, to accept, appreciate, be tender with whatever is arising and just not to fall prey to the criticism. And if we do fall prey to the criticism, not to criticize the criticism, but to say, hello, criticism. I know you're posing as wisdom, you're outdated. And yes, I'm going to have a fair fight with you. I'm going to tell you to get lost. And I know you're a warrior, so you're not going to just get lost, but I'm going to outlast you. Because my life and my well being is at stake. And all of us have the possibility of having our primary identity. Being an inquirer, a meditator, Somebody that's seeking their form of prayer and accessing wisdom.
