Tone of Voice as a Source of Healing | Guided Meditation #104

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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 suffering to 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 being aware of how you feel right now. Would you say that you feel up or down, or medium relaxed or tense? Whatever you're feeling, let yourself have a voice right now. Please hear the tone, it's okay that you're there. And recognize that the tendency that you have is to always want to be in a great place or a good place, and that the way to support yourself is to embrace where you are. You don't have to improve. Just let yourself say it's okay exactly where you are. And if you see any resistance to this, notice the resistance, say high resistance. I'm going to go deeper and allow myself to be exactly where I am. And notice how easy or difficult it is for you to say to yourself, it's okay to be exactly where I am. And as you're settling into yourself, ask how would you like to shift your tone from irritation, impatience, intolerance, agitation, and move it more toward being friendly, considerate, kind. And you may need to address when you're doing that, what it is that you need. In fact, most of the time you very likely will. So if you're impatient because someone's just talking over you and, and they're not giving you space to even be part of the conversation, you have a need to be able to speak. So you may say something like, could you let me just say something because I have something I really want to say. And if someone is just spaced out and they're not paying attention, they're looking out the window, you may need to say with some kindness as much as possible, you know what I'm saying is really important to me. Could, could we have some eye contact? So it's a combination of shifting your tone of voice and taking care of your needs with what it is you're saying, just pause for a few seconds and see if you can be aware. This isn't giving up on yourself because oftentimes when we're impatient or intolerant, we think, ah, they really deserve it because they're, they're, they're so gone or they're so self centered or they're so critical and we don't see that we're in a reaction that's going to compound the original source of suffering that you had because of what you were experiencing. But if we are aware of our own tone of voice and we don't get caught in just judging them, then we have a chance to go inside ourselves and ask, okay, I know you're feeling intolerant or impatient, annoyed, you want to get out of here, but what is it that you need? And what kind of tone would give you the best chance of actually receiving what you need? And even if you aren't able to actually implement it the first 10 times, you know that each one of those 10 times are like practicing a sport or practicing anything. Because this is not easy, especially when you're impatient, intolerant. So many people would say to themselves, ah, this person's been such a. That I, that I don't want to, I don't want to change my feeling. They deserve it. And not see that you yourself, when you're reacting that way, are not in a state of well being. You're in a state of intolerance, impatience, aggravation. And even though you might deceive yourself that you're in the right place, if you look closely, it doesn't feel good. You're almost invariably unaware of your need. So this shift of tone of voice is a combination of recognizing that the reason why you're feeling the way you are is because you had a need for that was not responded to. And you want to find both the need and the tone of voice that's going to take care of you and also give the best chance of taking care of the relationship as well. It's helpful sometimes, and I would suggest you tune in or use your most intuitive hearing and imagine that you're hearing your own tone of voice on a tape recorder. And that allows it to be really lucid, like you're listening to music and you are really able to hear the intonations. And if you look at it separately, you aren't as likely to get caught up in, well, they deserve it, so I'm just giving them what they deserve. But instead you see yourself as, and I don't mean this in an esoteric way, you see yourself as a creator. No matter where you are in a interaction with a person, your response can be highlighted and you can see, I want to get off this track of mutual aggravation or somebody being passive and someone being aggressive. I want to try to find the place inside me like I'm listening to a tape recorder and have it convey what I need and have it have a tone that sounds musical. Imagining on a tape recorder you're really looking for something that's musical and the music might be tender, or it might be like the Rolling Stones and be strong. But whatever it is, you're looking for the tone that is going to serve the need of the moment. And you're looking for the specific need that's going to help you feel comfortable with using that tone. It's such an important area that many of us, most of us, even when we take, take this first stage of I want to be aware of my need and I want to convey it in a way that's loving or caring or strong or tender, that the original impatience or intolerance will sneak in. It's a sneaky little sucker. You need to be extra aware that even though you might flip, think you cleaned it up, that the normal tendency is to still express the impatience or intolerance with the need. That's not going to work out very well. So right now visualize yourself when you have been or you are intolerant or impatient and see the need and see if you can hear it like a tape recorder as having a harmonic in some way of having a musical sound that is going to optimize the chance of receptivity on the other end. Let yourself realize that this truly is an evolutionary step that you can choose to take. And the stakes are monumental because it's going to give you a chance to actually be peaceful when you are more war like and you're breaking unquestionably generations patterns to just be that way. So it's not something that you're going to learn right now. And again, keep going to your impatience, your intolerance, and see if you can discover that need and you can convey it in a way you want to and the way that has your heart and see that this is something that needs to be practiced over and over again. But the payoff of your heart being more engaged and your negativity being contained and transmuted like nuclear power plant being created instead of a nuclear bomb. See if you can appreciate as we wind this down, that you have this desire, this longing to discover your needs and convey it with a tone that dignifies your life. I truly wish this for all of us.