Making Space For Rejection

Rejection can sometimes pierce us, take our breath away, have power over our sense of worth. But it doesn't have to. We can make space for feeling rejected, and then make space to call back our own love, tap into our capacity and give love back to ourselves, and remember that our worth is not dependent on another's acceptance of us. Today, we remember to have our own backs.

Transcript

Rejection.

The feeling of a harsh wintery gust of wind upon your cheeks.

Piercing as you open the door to leave home.

Blowing you back a few steps.

You had every intention of greeting the day with your motivation and readiness.

Your commitment.

Your openness.

Yet you find yourself taken aback,

Uncertain,

Confused,

Disappointed,

Needing to reorient to the day but wishing you didn't have to.

We are left wanting.

It feels personal.

The experience of rejection can be like this too.

Feeling rejected after you've put in a bid for connection with someone can feel like your heart has been met with the wintry ice.

An intensely vulnerable move of yours.

A risk you felt inspired to take by showing someone with your eyes and your heart that you care without knowing how they'll receive you.

Maybe you shared yourself in ways that exposed your raw beating and ready for love heart.

Maybe you acted in ways that revealed your immense interest,

Curiosity,

Wanting.

You didn't try to hide or contain your desires or visions of what could be.

But when your intentions landed on the other,

They unexpectedly fell flat.

Where you saw potential,

They saw barriers and discord.

Rejection can feel like unworthiness when we've given someone else the power to decide if our love is acceptable.

Sometimes we forget that love is about what we carry within us.

Our own capacity.

Not about who decides to accept it.

Have you sat inside your own capacity to love?

Have you loved yourself with it?

Sometimes rejection also feels like a loss of power.

Were we wrong to see potential?

Is something wrong with us?

Then there's a different kind of thorn.

Sometimes we only look for love where we want it.

Becoming blind to all the forms and sources of love that are meant for us.

Sometimes those available sources,

They don't feel like enough.

Today we are going to make space for the moment of experiencing rejection.

So that we have a chance to reorient ourselves.

Make space for our own love.

Today we are going to take back our power.

I invite you to close your eyes if they aren't already.

We'll first ground ourselves through our breath.

Notice the cool air as it goes in through your nose,

Down into the back of your throat and into your lungs.

Reaching every crevice inside before you exhale.

Follow the warm air out the same way it came.

At the bottom of the exhale,

Notice the stillness,

The silence,

The pause before you take your next inhale.

Notice your chest,

Shoulders and belly as they lift and expand with your inhales.

And come back home to you with every breath you let go of through your exhale.

If you feel moved to sigh on your exhale,

Invite yourself to do so.

For these next few moments follow these sensations of breathing throughout your body.

Now we are going to bring to mind rejection.

Whatever experience of rejection you've been trying to work through,

Whether it was recent or in some time in the past,

I want you to imagine you're sitting across from a deep blue river that's trickling steadily downstream.

You're bare feet in the warm sand with the tops of your toes lightly gracing the cool water.

Still noticing your breath,

Gaze out at the river,

At the green grass with wild flowers on the other side,

And notice the big leafy trees surrounding you.

Call attention to the sound of the trickling water,

The feeling of warmth on the soles of your feet,

The light breeze on your face,

The warm sun shining on your skin.

In between our exercises today,

Return to these images and sensations of your landscape and your breathing to remain centered and present.

I invite you to hold out your hands in front of you,

Putting them together in the shape of a cup and facing the sky.

Imagine placing the memory and feeling of rejection into your hands,

Giving it a safe place to be and for you to be curious about it.

Give the feeling of being rejected some sort of visual representation like a shape,

A color,

A symbol,

Or size.

Also assign it a weight.

How heavy does it feel today?

Continue to imagine this feeling in your hands,

Any memory that pops up on your mind related to this feeling.

Continue adding those to your symbol in your hands,

Watching it absorb those memories.

If any feeling or sense of resistance,

Any negative feelings come up as you are noticing rejection,

Add them to your hands,

Allow your symbol to absorb it.

Disappointment is okay.

Confusion,

Doubt,

Insecurity,

Feeling unseen or misunderstood.

Everything that comes through your mind and into your hands is okay.

Notice that you are observing these things as they come to your attention,

Cross your awareness,

And as you make space for them to come into the palm of your hands.

Imagine that with the next inhale,

These feelings,

The symbol,

They are all taking a breath with you,

Receiving the internal breeze desperately needed.

And then all together you exhale,

Noticing the release within you.

If any resistance or difficulty sitting with comes up,

Add those feelings to the palm of your hands too.

And if you need to,

You can temporarily focus on the sensations of your own breath and then return to the feeling of rejection when you're ready.

For the next few moments,

Imagine breathing with this sense of rejection you're sitting with.

Now I invite you to imagine that you're gazing upward at the shimmering top of the river flowing in front of you.

You notice these big maple leaves flowing downstream.

One comes right up to the riverbank where you're sitting.

You reach out and gently pour all that's in your hands onto this sturdy brown leaf.

The leaf floats away from your side and takes everything you've been carrying inside you and floats it down the river slowly.

And you observe it moving further away.

Notice that you have those strong intense memories and feelings and thoughts but that you are the observer of them.

Notice the distance with no need to force it.

You look down at your empty hands.

It's time now to make space for your own power and compassion.

I invite you to think of someone you love with all your heart.

Imagine them doing the things that make you smile and laugh and feel softened.

Imagine your warm heart loving them.

Put that whole sense of love into your hands.

Feel how big and deep that love is.

Notice its vibrancy,

Its energetic waves that bring comfort and fulfillment to your whole being.

Give it a symbol,

A weight,

Shape and color if it feels right for you.

Now with your hands full of this love,

Gently bring your hands to your chest and place them over your heart.

Imagine saying to yourself,

This was a difficult experience for me.

I know I'm not alone in this kind of pain.

Look at my capacity to love.

Look at my ability to give and to nourish.

I can feel my own warmth.

I can feel my own love as I fully give it back to me.

I can create this at any time and give it to why I see fit.

Imagine the warmth from your hands go through your skin,

Coursing through the spaciousness in your body,

Deep into your bones.

Mmm.

I'll say them slowly,

Repeating the words to yourself again.

Hands on your heart.

This was a difficult experience for me.

I know I'm not alone in this kind of pain.

Look at my capacity to love.

Look at my ability to give and to nourish.

I can feel my own warmth.

I can feel my own love as I fully give it back to me.

I can create this at any time and give it to who I see fit.

Now as you imagine the energy of compassion coursing through you,

Once again bring to mind the experience of rejection you had.

Imagine who or what you experienced rejecting you and invite the compassionate energy in you to call back the love that you sent out.

Call it back to you,

To your center.

Unplug the threads that tied you to them.

Call it back to the space in you that teems with potential.

The energy is returning home.

Experience your love returning home.

For the next few moments,

Allow yourself to sit with the energetic field inside you that has the capacity to love.

It has the capacity for everything that is you.

This is the seat of your power and your capabilities.

You can choose to operate from this place,

Giving or not giving,

Calling back your energy.

Imagine breathing with your centered energy.

Imagine breathing together with it while the music plays in the background for the next little while before the meditation ends.

The Watch Destination You can stay here as long as you can.

You can stay here as long as you need.

I hope that you can carry this with you throughout today and the rest of your days.

Know that you can always return here.

Know that you can always call back your energy,

Your love.

And know that you can nurture you and have your own back,

Even in the face of rejection or anything else that comes your way.

May you be kind to yourself.

Reviews

This is such beautiful meditation. I found the different stages of it incredibly helpful and the beautiful conclusion is helping me deal with the painful and shameful feelings. Thank you for the deep gentleness in this practice, just what I needed.

Edit: I keep coming back to this meditation to guide me from the feelings of pain and fear back to kindness and care. Thank you so much for creating this.