Finding Peace In Crisis: A Meditation And Talk

This guided meditation and short talk were taken out of a longer live class David recently taught in response to the protests for racial equality in the United States and around the world. It focuses on taking whatever is bothering you the most, releasing stuck energy around it, and finding the deep underlying values and peace that come with growing through it.

Transcript

So as you close your eyes and take a few deep breaths,

Rest your shoulders.

Ease into your body.

I want you to just gently,

It's like you almost land into your body.

So today we're finding peace in crisis.

As we close our eyes,

You might notice that there is some kind of conflict in us,

Inner conflict,

Some kind of resistance.

And it could take many,

Many forms.

Resistance can take the form of anger.

It could take the form of depression.

It could take the form of frustration,

Of doubt,

Of uncertainty,

Of confusion,

Of apathy,

Of despondency,

Oh,

Of blame.

Resistance loves to take the form of blame.

It loves to take the form of judgment.

So as we step into meditation,

Just notice one form that the resistance in you,

The conflict in you is taking.

Just one form.

And I don't want you to intellectually choose it.

I want you to allow it to arise in your mind's eye.

So have your awareness behind your eyes,

In the center of your head.

And almost like on the screen of your mind's eye,

It just arises.

Just get a sense of it.

Maybe you see an image.

Yeah.

There's a chance that it's something happening in the world or it's something happening in your personal life.

Let's make this a little bit more interesting.

So kind of on the side of the screen of your mind's eye,

I want you to just create an honesty gauge,

Like a speedometer from zero to 100.

Call it a self-honesty gauge.

So you can take the temperature of how honest you're being with yourself during meditation.

You could start by just seeing where it is.

How honest am I being with myself as I sit here?

Am I really willing to look at whatever it is that's causing conflict in me?

And by the way,

This is about 80% of the game here.

If you could just be honest,

You're 80% of the way there.

So what's that one thing that's been arising and causing resistance in you?

And then can you look at it a little bit more clearly?

So maybe it's like a vague feeling or an old story,

Like a looping set of thoughts that you've experienced many times before.

Can you clarify it?

Just take a moment and clarify it.

Maybe you put it into an image in front of you and you kind of wipe it down,

Wipe any dust off of it,

Any confusion.

What is it really?

If it was to be distilled into one image,

One sentence,

One thought.

And look at it with honesty.

Check that honesty gauge.

What is it that's really disturbing your soul here that wants your attention?

And I want you to notice that it's not punishment.

Maybe you can also recognize if there's any blame.

Recognize if there's any judgment towards yourself or somebody else.

Maybe you can allow some of those energies to drain off here and just be honest with it.

And as crazy as this sounds,

Even though this is something that manifested at a certain point in time in your life,

Perhaps you were born to deal with it.

Maybe it was inevitable.

Maybe there would be no purpose for you on this planet without this.

And it's very possible if you feel irritation,

Your mind will want to wander or your body will want to move.

But still anyway.

So what's the underlying energy behind this one image or feeling or idea?

Maybe you'll be surprised when it starts to reveal itself.

And then when you get a sense of what it is,

You know,

Varying degrees of clarity,

That's okay,

That happens.

Don't have to be a hundred percent.

When you get a sense of what it is,

Can you just sit with it for a moment and own it?

Really own it.

And as you look at it,

I want you to find what your underlying value is here.

So is there a value of freedom,

Of love,

Of connection,

Of compassion,

Of creativity,

Of self-worth?

What is it that you value so much that you're not getting or that you lost or you don't understand?

What is it that you value so much that because there's not something complete around it,

It's creating a disturbance in you?

Or if it's been perpetual and hitting a fever pitch of energy,

Maybe it's even creating a crisis.

And then see if you can lightly smile at it and not judge it for not being perfect.

If you judge it for what it is,

It'll hide from you.

Let the realization start to arise.

You might find you have an unfulfilled need or desire,

Something around your purpose.

As we start to live up to our potential,

As we start to become honest with what we really need and want and who we are,

That's when we actually find inner peace.

If we stuff what we're really here to do and what we need down into our unconscious and put a mask on and conform to the world in an unauthentic way,

We'll never find inner peace.

Sometimes the mask is,

I am a peaceful,

Loving person.

You have to be honest,

Maybe sometimes you're not.

What would you prefer?

Real validation from the world or living deeply in the truth of your own being?

Like I said,

As we were about to start this meditation,

Our answers come out of energy,

Just like a fruit that grows off of a tree.

So that tree needs roots to stay grounded.

It needs bark to protect itself.

It needs sunlight and water.

What is it that you need to grow into who you are so that your life can bear fruit?

When we're under nurtured and under nourished,

We can't reach our potential and bear fruit.

We have nothing to share because we're depleted.

This energy may have been depleting you,

Ruminating in your unconscious,

Almost like going through a washing machine over and over in your emotional body or playing out again and again on the screen of your mind.

Just draining your energy.

Put an end to that by facing it.

Make a commitment that you're not going to just let it drain your energy anymore.

You're going to be radically honest with it.

You're going to see what it is that you truly need and heal it.

And you heal it by facing it.

And then can you make a commitment to yourself here?

Okay,

This is what I am ready to shift and understand.

And I'm really going to face this and work through it because my life has value.

My life has equal value to everybody else's life.

That includes a Buddha or a Christ or anybody else.

And not just like equal in value in the sense that we all deserve food or security.

That's fine.

But I mean equal in the sense that we all deserve to be able to live to our potential as a spiritual being in a physical body.

Notice you have no less potential than anybody else.

And as you live to that potential,

You're going to raise the people up around you.

That's naturally going to happen.

But you have to start with this first.

You want to be an angel and you have to face your demons and realize that they were never really demons in the first place.

They were your friends.

They're here to teach you what they really need is your love.

I want you to recognize what your next step is here.

What's the realization that's starting to bear fruit?

And can you have the courage to face it and own it?

The really radical thing here is that nobody else can live up to your potential for you.

Just like nobody else can eat food for you.

This is an incredible form of responsibility,

Of spiritual responsibility.

Sure there's worldly responsibilities.

Paying your bills and going to work and all of that.

But how about your spiritual responsibility to live up to your true,

True potential?

So walk through that door of whatever this conflict has been.

Really own it.

Find out what it is that you need.

Shift that energy.

And notice the byproduct of that is an inner peace that comes from understanding who you are.

You're not forcing your peace.

It just unfolds.

Just like the fragrance,

The beautiful smell that comes off of a flower when it blooms.

There's nothing you have to do.

And if you do it this way,

And if everybody does,

And then we go and protest,

It'll be the most beautifully smelling protest ever.

Great work.

I want you to take a nice big deep breath in and a nice soft sigh out.

Have some gratitude for yourself for coming to sit and meditate and for whatever conflict has been arising in you because it's here to help you grow.

Have gratitude for all of it rather than judgment and blame and resistance.

And see how that shifts the way you see the world.

You can let go of whatever you've been looking at and whenever you're ready,

You can slowly open your eyes and stretch.

Good job,

Everyone.

So when it comes to the current conflict,

Especially in the United States with protests and inequality,

What is the value that a lot of people who are protesting are looking for?

What's the underlying value?

Perhaps one of them obviously is equality,

Respect,

Being seen,

Being understood,

Being respected,

Having security,

Feeling secure,

Right?

And looking at it from the other perspective,

What are the values of police,

Of government?

Stability,

Security,

Right?

I take comedy classes and my teacher was having us practice first person,

Second person,

Third person as we were writing.

Really cool way to look at things,

Respect.

And he said,

You know,

A narcissist is somebody that is incapable of seeing things from somebody else's perspective.

Everything is from their perspective.

They're incapable of stepping into somebody else's shoes.

I thought that was a fascinating,

Pretty accurate description.

The more we can look at things from everybody else's perspective,

The more compassion we start to have for why they have their perspective.

And honestly,

I'm less interested in what somebody believes and what their opinions are and why they believe their beliefs.

Why do you believe what you believe?

Why do you see the world the way you see it?

When I got my degree in philosophy,

I would be obsessed with thinking about that.

Why do Christian people see the world that way?

Why do atheistic people see the world that way?

Why do liberal people see the world this way?

Why do conservative people see the world that way?

I didn't care what they believed.

I was obsessed with understanding why they believed it.

You know,

Sometimes it's from programming as a child,

The way you're brought up.

Maybe somebody has a very traumatic life experience.

They have pain inside of them.

Maybe they've traveled the world and they've seen the light in certain ways.

You know,

There's so many reasons why we see the world the way we see it.

Maybe some of it even is deeply seeded in our genetics.

Maybe we see the world from fear or we see the world from resistance or we see the world from love and compassion.

And so when everyone's always fighting,

I'm always more interested in looking at why do you all believe what you believe?

Where does that deep belief come from?

And if we can get down to the core of that belief that you have,

We're going to find an underlying value that you actually probably share with the people that you're arguing and fighting with.

I think everybody wants both security and respect and equality.

I've had phone calls from friends saying,

I hate when people hurt police officers and break storefronts.

And I've gotten calls saying,

It's not fair at all the injustice.

And I say,

Yes,

Two things can be true at the same time.

But what you focus on is an expression of what your values are,

Not of the truth.

I don't know if there's just one ultimate objective truth.

Everybody thinks that they have the ultimate objective truth,

Don't they?

That's why you believe what you believe.

I know what's the most true.

That's why I believe it.

Duh.

Which means I'm more right than all of you because I believe what I believe.

Yeah,

Not everyone wants equality.

That is true.

That is a practical reality.

But I would say that the vast,

Vast majority of people want equality.

They just see things differently based on their upbringing or their life experience.

And notice the energy of conflict and fighting and resistance when you even say that in the people that you're thinking about.

And when somebody is in an energy of wanting to cause harm to somebody else and to fight with them and to take their belief and put it on somebody else,

No matter who they are,

Forcing their belief onto somebody else,

That is an act of some kind of violence.

You know,

It could be just a slight violence,

Wanting somebody to believe what you believe.

And so we want to have compassion for people because if they're harming somebody else,

It's because they're in some kind of deep pain,

Whether they're aware of it or not.

That doesn't mean we let them hurt us,

But we have to have compassion and realize that they're probably coming from some deep kind of wound.

And if we're in a lot of resistance to a very specific kind of wound in another person,

That means there's some kind of pain inside of us that most likely needs to be reconciled.

Right?

So one person's kind of wound maybe really irritates you,

But another person's doesn't at all.

So is it objective that that person's wound is worse than the other person's?

No,

It's subjective based on what irritates you.

And we always have to take that into account.

And if we can reconcile those things inside of ourselves,

Then there's a whole other level of equality that comes to fruition,

Which is we see everybody from a much more neutral accepting understanding place,

And we stop valuing who they are based on how much pain they're in.

And that's a much harder thing to achieve because it's not like a policy we could change.

It's something energetic we have to shift inside of ourselves.

And so real quick,

When the conflict is in ourselves,

How do we find those values?

And that's what this meditation really was,

Is find the conflict inside of yourself.

As you start to resolve it,

Really look deeply at what is the underlying value?

So if something is bothering you and you want it reconciled,

There's an underlying value underneath it.

What is it?

Is it love?

Is it healing?

Is it justice?

Is it compassion?

Find out what that value is,

Get intimate with that energy,

And start to express it into the world.

It's right there.

It's right underneath what's bothering you.

Yeah.

Great job,

Everyone.

Thank you so much for sitting with me as always.

Really appreciate you coming and hanging,

All of you who are here live on a Sunday.

Lovely,

Lovely to see you all.

Reviews

Loved it!

I always appreciate your perspective 🙏

Excellent visualization.

Interesting, thanks David. Will sit with this again. And very interesting the description for a narcissist. Especially after a conversation yesterday.I had a tough day yesterday. There’s a few things going on all around me + the 7 year anniversary of a memory of why I meditate. So a bit of a struggle going on at present and something that is best forgotten obviously and not talked about as it is too much. However I should rejoice in my survival. And I do. I just lost a lot of confidence on the way and friends too as a result. However I believe we all struggle at times and some more than others. However there is something I am missing and it’s becoming increasingly obvious. I think this meditation will help to discover the root or roots. Onwards and upwards. 🙏🏼❤️

Excellent practice. I will listen to this again to try to absorb more of the lesson here. The depths of the inner conflict are elusive. Thank you for your work. ❤️

The meditation was great. I didn't like hearing about contemporary problems from a specific part of the world, but that monologue was thankfully saved for when the meditation had concluded. Also, I can appreciate how it was related to the theme of the meditation, even though I would have preferred its absence.

Thank you, David. Riding the roller coaster 🎢 of life and working with the energy. This meditation is really good at refocusing and supporting me through a “dip on the rails.”

This man is very thoughtful and brings me great calm.

This was so good. I had a massive breakthrough at the end of this talk. Thank you so much for sharing your deep wisdom with us David !

Hey David...I’ve been following you for awhile as you know and looking for a path. My fear is that I’m a narcissist..no kidding..so trying to get through that. On the other side is the state of love

Thank you David!

Thank you 🙏 Well guided, well received, sending gratitude and all that is good, may peace be with you 🙏☮️

Loved the perspective this offered. Very much helped me see what I was actually feeling and got to the underlying causes so I could deal with the root issue. Thank you!!

Very helpful, especially in gaining perspective for the turbulent times we live in now and for finding our core values. Thank you!

I liked Davids fresh unique approach, visual words, gentle but straight to the point- honesty. Found this very useful, encouraging and friendly, thank you

amazing. absolutely spot on. thank you so very much. Namaste.

My oh my oh my 🙏🙏🙏

Different than I imagined based on the title but a deep dive within ourselves to take inventory. You are growing right along with us. We are in this together 🙏🏽

What a wonderful and meaningful space you have provided 🙏❤️💥

Beautifully and sensitively led. Thank you David. Love and blessings 💙x