Using Inquiry to Awaken Wisdom | Awareness That Heals Chapter 5 Meditation #3

So start off by breathing in a way that you recognize that your quality of life and your life is dependent on your breathing. And therefore, of course, the part of you that's most aware and sensitive to yourself. Recognize right now that you want to find a rhythm that is going to support you to be as peaceful and relaxed as possible. So pause and just take some in breaths and especially on the out breath, let it be a. Ah. You can even make sounds if there are sounds to be made. Groans or releases or relief. And as you've settled into your body, let yourself identify the challenging emotion that's most affected you throughout your life. Or perhaps it's something that's occurring in present time. And as you drop in to accept this feeling that you're going through, ask yourself, what is your wisdom? What is your sensibility? What is your intelligence? Telling you would be the best way for you to think about this and to respond to this. So the first one almost inevitably is going to be challenging feeling. I accept you. I'm going to give you a chance to breathe without adding anything on to you. And I want to care for you right now. And I want to ask myself, how can I best care for you? And you pause. And if you don't know, recognize that means it's even more important to give it attention. Not knowing is an invitation to go deep. It's not not knowing, period. I don't know. And then I'm going to space out. Let yourself relate, recognize a lot of the time you're not going to know. And then the next supportive thoughts would be good. You're going deep. Stay focused on how can I care for you? And recognize that when this is asked more and more from your heart or from a tone that cares for you, that it really allows whatever challenging feeling you're having to feel like it's in a safe neighborhood, to feel like it's okay to be exactly as it is. Which then makes it a lot easier to ask the question and to warm yourself up to being warmed up to care for yourself. One of the hardest things is to remember that this is important and when you have these feelings that it's not the end, it's the beginning. It the beginning of a process where you get to care for yourself. If you both remember and you can find that place inside you that just intuitively knows, of course I'd rather care for myself rather than belittle myself or ignore what's happening. Sometimes it might be just a silence that occurs. You feel where you are. Let's just say you feel insecure or you feel angry or you feel inadequate, and then you ask the question and you just don't have any answers at all. You're just completely in silence. It's helpful at the end of the silence to say, good on me. I just allowed myself to be quiet with the question. And that is another sign of taking yourself in the direction of your heart. This may seem crazy or even schizophrenic. How can I feel this worst feeling that I've dreaded my whole life and care for myself? I can't be two people at once. Recognize that, yes, right now, you can be two parts of yourself at once. You can feel your most difficult feelings, the ones that you probably like the least, and still find this resourceful resiliency that cares for you. Just pause for a second and just give yourself a suggestion. Do you want to say to yourself, remember this. Can you see that you don't want your challenging feelings to be monopolizing your inner world and that you want to integrate it with the wisest and most compassionate side of yourself? Recognize that this is completely universal. All of us in the world have challenging feelings. And what's needed is to add this intention, this wish, this desire to really care for yourself. And when you're in that duality, you're in a really grounded effort to be authentic and to see what's possible, to move in a direction that's going to help you discover what it is that you need and then how you can support that need. It can come to a point where the reverse of how it's been can be so. And by that I mean that instead of your feelings dominating your life, this wish to care for yourself becomes the center of your life. Now pause for a few moments and feel into, oh, I'm tired of not caring for myself. I want this to be the center of my life. So no matter what arises, this is a place that I would like to be more and more of who I am. And if I remember and I dedicate myself to this, it's entirely realistic. But I can't just go through the motions. This is not. Remember as you're dropping into where you are and caring for yourself. This is not an intellectual exercise. This is an existential experience of you being you and adding these caring, inquiring questions and guidances because it makes the most sense to you. One of the important features that you need to watch for, look for it now, is it's not about being abstract. Like, I know you're a good person when you're in the middle of fear, that's not going to be very helpful. You want it to be as specific as possible, relating exactly to your challenging feeling. So if it is fear, it's going to be courage and safety or something like that that you're looking at. If you're in anger, it's going to be looking for some way of having it be peaceful or more relaxed, more tolerant, rather than acting out. As you're here, see if you can sense any appreciation or gratitude for you doing this work, being real and going beyond just your feeling, to really dig deep, to find the part of you that not only wants to care, that is caring, just sense with where you are with your challenge. Can you sense some kind of a exchange between those two places? So remember again and again that your capacity is to both accept, deeply accept your emotional state. That's most challenging. And you can see that there's the possibility that truly for the rest of your life you can catch that feeling and realize, this is the time when I need my best self. This is the time when I need my intelligence. This is the. This is the time when I need my wisdom. This is the time when I really want to bring my heart as much as possible. And if I can only start off with a little bit, appreciate that. And if you can't appreciate it yet, then just let yourself see exactly where you are. But you know, you have this deep knowing that you want to increase your capacity whenever you're challenged to care for yourself, to ask the questions that would lead to that very specifically and that you can see this is going to allow you to develop greater intimacy with yourself, with others, and have a greater peace in your heart.