A guided meditation prompting listeners to ground in sensory listening, bring mindful awareness to moments of frustration, and compassionately inquire into underlying needs. The narrator guides a sequence: notice internal/external listening, recall a recent frustration, observe and give space to it, ask how to care for oneself (tone, words, actions), experiment with containment or release, and close with a prayer/intention to remember this caring stance in future difficult moments.
So let yourself start by just being very sensitive to your ears and to your capacity to listen. Recognizing that if you hear silence, that that is beautiful. If you hear a car, if you hear music, you hear people walking nearby, just be content to be you're listening. Recognizing that it's one of the forms of intelligence, of observation, of sensitivity. Listening can also be listening to your mind, listening to your thoughts. Ah, I'm thinking about this. Or listening to your feelings. Ah, my listening is inwardly tuning in to my feelings. Appreciate that this sense of listening is both an internal and external capacity that's invaluable. So as you move from this listening and really carrying the listening on, let yourself go into when you were last frustrated. When you've been frustrated through the years. Maybe it's your original family, maybe it's a current relationship, maybe it's something in relationship to yourself, maybe it's that long phone call. But let yourself have not only permission but encouragement to be frustrated, to realize if you can nakedly allow the frustration, you're increasing the chances of being able to discover the need that lies underneath it and also gives you the best chance of it accompanying the need with the tone that will give you the best chance of fulfilling your need. And as a byproduct, if your need is fulfilled, there's an excellent chance it's going to take care of the needs of the other or others around you. So as you allow the frustration, recognize that there's always another part of you that's capable of just being aware of the frustration. And it may seem to you like that's the same thing, but it isn't. So your awareness of the frustration allows you to be freer, freer from being fixated in the frustration. Your capacity to observe it is a step toward liberation. In fact, see that your awareness can be bigger than your frustration. It has that capacity. You have that capacity. I am aware of my frustration and I'm just giving it a lot of space in silence around it. It's like you can see the frustration as being an island and you're the ocean, the air around the island. I see you, I'm allowing you, and I'm giving you time to breathe. And then once you're really allowing it to be, you're asking the question and remembering your wish to care for yourself. How do I best take care of you while I see that you're frustrated? Just keep pausing there. Because this isn't just a quick fix or flick or fleeting thought. This is a profound contemplation of how do I best take care of you with my wisdom or my needs and the tone, inwardly and outwardly, and allowing these to coexist, you're actually expanding who you are. Because rather than the awareness being just fleeting, it's a pause, there's no hurry. And then as you see and experience the frustration as it is, a natural question arises. How, in this unique situation, I'm facing all the nuances, how do I take care of you? And when you have the remembrance, when you have the caring to ask yourself, what are your needs? What's the inner and outer tone that I need to cultivate? There's a different kind of aliveness that occurs. There's a kinship with yourself. There's a befriending, just sense. Now, as you look at your experiences of frustration, look and see if you can be this inquiry, if you can be this looking for and finding your need and allowing it to have the space and the time to find each other. And then see, okay, now that I know what I need, how do I implement it? It's not enough just to know what's my tone going to be? What are the exact words? Does it require actions? Does it require a certain attitude to coexist with the frustration, or in some cases, really to overtake the frustration? Sometimes the frustration can be put into a bedroom in the house and you can say, I know you're there, but I'm closing the door right now. I'm living in the living room and I'm going to energize my need to be treated kindly. Or I'm going to internally unclench my body because I realize there's nothing I can do on the outside. Or maybe, just maybe, I get the joke. I get the joke that my mind is just fixated on this one thing that I can't control. Many times the frustration is really funny because you realize I'm frustrated about something that I have zero chance of controlling. And when you stay with that look and see if you can, you might smile, maybe not laugh, but you might just smile. So there's an ongoing honoring, again, see if you can do it. Ongoing honoring of the frustration itself, which is a big thing, rather than reacting to it. And there's a remembering that of course I want to try to care for myself because the alternative is. Is rather bleak. And this alternative is just endlessly hopeful. It's very likely more than you've ever imagined. Your resiliency, your ability to identify what you need, what kind of inner and outer tone is going to be helpful. And yes, you can do it right at the dreaded time. And I say that with a smile because I see how many times I have been in the experience of what might be called a dreaded time. And when I get the joke, it can release. So, as we finish this meditation, stay with your experiences of frustration and accepting it, at least tolerating it, giving it space to breathe and remembering. And can you plant a seed? Can you say a prayer? May I please remember that I'm interested in caring for myself at these times when my frustration takes over, I want to recognize my wisdom and my heart. Whether I use it or not is there. You can remember that this is the way I want to live my life more and more. I want to be that keen observer and that one that knows and is practicing caring for myself, especially when I'm having challenging feelings. Let yourself be open to a prayer to remember at the critical times when you're most hypnotized by a feeling. You're that lonely island in the feeling. And you forget that you're really the ocean or the sky and you're identified with something small and you don't remember. There's something big that's there that can support you. So be in that prayer to remember. And then let the memory activate your greatest capacities to take care of what you need.
