Hey friend,
Welcome back to the Meditation School Podcast.
In this episode,
Let's talk about sadness and dealing with sadness.
Maybe you're experiencing grief or loneliness.
You feel despondent or an apathy.
There may be a dread or maybe it's gone as far as depression.
So depression sometimes comes along when sadness is sustained for too long and we don't shift out of it.
And then we start to feel depressed,
Like we're never going to come out of it.
We start to lose hope.
So if it's kind of a short acute sadness or a long-term deep one you've been dealing with,
Either way,
Let's work on it together and see what happens.
And I want to distinguish two kinds of sadness in terms of one being personal.
So something has happened in our personal lives.
We've lost somebody or we feel lonely or we look at the way the world is and it makes us upset.
Someone's criticized us.
We lost our job.
Whatever it happens to be,
There's a reason behind the sadness.
That's the one kind.
There's a reason behind our personal sadness.
And then there's this existential sadness.
Sometimes when I look up at the stars in awe,
You climb a mountain or you just sit still.
And for no reason at all there's like this existential like,
Huh,
Am I alone?
Is this it?
What is life?
What's the point?
Everyone passes away.
You know,
There's just this like existential,
Huh?
So you may have experienced that or you may experience it and not even understand what it is.
So what do we do with this sadness?
And do we have to do anything about it?
Or can we just curl up on our couch and with a warm blanket and watch Netflix and feel bad for ourselves?
So the first cousin of sadness can be self-pity.
I don't feel good.
So I'll just eat.
I'll just drink or smoke weed or whatever it is and watch binge TV because I deserve it because I don't feel good.
We want to snap out of that.
And we want to approach the sadness in a real way.
There's a reality here.
You're sad.
We don't want to sugarcoat it or push it away or override it or medicate ourselves unnecessarily.
Medication could be useful in certain scenarios if it's too extreme.
But for the most part,
In this arena with me,
We're working on it organically.
I always tell my students,
Find it,
Feel it,
Face it,
And heal it.
So if you are experiencing it,
You've already found it.
You have to allow yourself to feel the sadness without trying to change it,
Fix it,
Heal it,
Or figure it out.
I'll say that again.
You have to allow yourself to feel the sadness without trying to heal it,
Change it,
Fix it,
Or figure it out.
Just allow it to be.
There's a very intuitive resistance that we have to feelings that don't make us feel good.
We want them to go away.
David,
Make it go away.
You're making it worse.
You're making me aware of it.
It's making me anxious.
Anxiety may be something you have to overcome.
Sit with it.
If there's a radiation of anxiety around the sadness,
It's just a form of resistance to pain.
So can you be with and sit and feel pain and be okay with it?
Who said pain is a bad thing?
Who said sadness is a bad thing?
Sadness makes us deeper.
It enriches who we are.
It helps us recognize the value of life.
If I've lost somebody I love and I'm sad about it and I'm in grief,
That's helping me realize how much that love was meaningful,
How meaningful that person was to me.
That's a great reflection of what my values are,
Of what I care about,
Of what matters.
That's a good thing.
If you're sad,
Allow it to be there.
Allow yourself to feel it.
And if you could sit with it long enough and allow the emotion to process,
Which is what it needs,
Then maybe there'll be a transformation.
Perhaps an answer arises.
Maybe the sadness falls away on its own at its own time.
And I always tell my students there are no wells infinitely deep.
The sadness may feel like it'll go on forever,
But it has a bottom.
You may just not have reached it.
It may not be time yet,
But there always is.
No emotion,
No feeling lasts forever.
They come in waves and they go in waves,
Just like waves crashing on the ocean and then receding back to the ocean.
So let the wave of sadness come through and pass,
Invite it in.
Let yourself feel it.
Let the resistance pass and be with it.
So we find it and we feel it and we face it.
Where did it come from?
Why is it here?
Can I allow myself to accept it and feel it and be here?
Truly face it.
Maybe some of your sadness is coming from you resisting life and ignoring problems and not having conversations you need to have and not facing your fears.
You may need to recognize that and face all of those things or one of them and then allow that to shift.
And then maybe the sadness passes away.
And that's when the healing happens.
We face it and we heal it.
The healing happens when we face the sadness with compassion and awareness.
Compassion and awareness,
Two sides of the same coin.
That's when we transform the sadness,
When we allow it to be there,
When we're present with it,
With the feeling.
We don't try to change it or fix it or heal it or solve it.
We allow ourselves to be with it,
Allow it to process,
And then we come out the other side healed.
It may take one session of meditation,
It may take a thousand,
It may take working with a healer,
A teacher,
A guide,
A coach,
A therapist,
All of the above.
I always tell my students you need a boardroom,
You need a whole team of people to support you,
And you need to be support for others.
That's how life works.
Are you asking everyone to support you and not supporting them or vice versa?
You need to balance that equation and see sadness as a great gift.
It's a great gift of life from the universe.
And the more you can deepen into your sadness and accept it,
The more you're going to be able to be happy.
The two sides of the same coin,
They're on a spectrum,
Right?
And the more you can deepen into sadness,
The more you can deepen into happiness.
Allow yourself to do that and see what happens.
And even if you're in a real deep rut right now,
Deep,
Deep layer of sadness,
I want you to know that you will come out of it.
Be diligent,
Be present,
Get the support that you need,
Meditate on a regular basis,
And learn to almost enjoy and accept the sadness as a message from life and see what happens.
I love you.
So does the universe,
Whether you know it or not,
And you're going to be okay.
Only the end of the world is the end of the world.
Everything else is just a step on our life path.
You're doing amazing.
If you feel like you're on the edge,
Come back.
There's so much to live for.
You got this.
And I will see you on the other side where we'll be laughing and joy.
I wish you all the very best and be well.
Thank you.
