Within The Process - A Teaching To Cultivate Compassion And Awe

This teaching introduces and affirms the idea that our thoughts do not define us, and that we are in the process of growing and blossoming in all moments. By offering ourselves compassion, our inner-teacher-soul-guide can create a nurturing environment for the mind-body to relax, and gain present moment awareness. The palette of human thought and emotion is rich, and within the darker hues, there is an opportunity to sense and tune in to an inner light which is always there.

Transcript

Today on Within Us,

A short insight.

My friend,

Penina Taylor,

Who is a Jewish educator and inspirational speaker,

Asked me to come present some meditations at her upcoming seminar.

She and I spoke together over video and I walked her listeners through a short meditation to understand thoughts and our ability to notice our thoughts without necessarily being within those thoughts.

So I'm going to share that meditation with you here in this insight.

And before we begin,

I want to take an opportunity to define a few terms because this is a meditation for a Jewish audience.

There are a few words introduced in the Hebrew language that really require some explanation to understand not only what the word means but what the word represents and what its concept is.

There is an idea that when we expand our vocabulary and we learn new words,

Even from other cultures and other languages,

We're actually rewiring our brain's ability to conceptualize an idea.

And in doing so,

We can even alter our emotional states and the way in which we relate to the world outside of us.

So I'm going to give you two of those words before we begin and then I'll share the teaching with you and then I'll go ahead and wrap up at the end.

You can listen to the teaching,

By the way,

As a teaching or as a practice.

I'm letting you know in advance the sound quality is a little bit fuzzy but you can definitely hear what I'm saying and you can definitely get the ideas.

These are meditations that you can also take with you in terms of imagery and you can incorporate them into your silent practice.

So the first word that I use is HaShem and Ha in Hebrew means the,

Shem means name.

So the word altogether means the name.

HaShem is used to refer to that which has created us and that which is sustaining us.

We look at the natural world as a system of rules.

We look at what's around us through a lens of science oftentimes and we see that there are the laws of gravity and the laws of physics and we have biology and we have chemistry and we have a system through which we make sense of and understand this natural world.

But the truth is if we're honest with ourselves at any moment those laws could change because if they were created they can be recreated or reworked or upgraded or innovated and this world was created by something.

Now I don't like to use the G word,

The word God.

I believe in God.

I believe in a creator.

My belief in God is not in a person or a being,

An entity.

It's formless and because it's a formless being that has brought existence into being,

Formlessness has brought form into being.

It's difficult within the human mind and ability to conceive that we could even conceptualize of what this is.

So moving away from this concrete understanding of what God is I like to substitute the words the infinite,

The infinite in itself the word infinity paints a picture for us of what we can't understand.

We can't understand infinity.

So the word Hashem very similarly means the name because if we were to assign a name to that which is without limit we would be limiting the limitless.

So simply by saying the name we're saying we're not naming this thing because we do not want to apply a limitation unto it.

So that's the first word.

The second word I introduce is Rechamim.

I also use the word Chemla.

Both of those words are derivations of the English word compassion,

Compassion or mercy.

The word Rechamim is compassion.

It has within it the root Rechem.

Rechem is a womb.

It's the place inside of a mother where a baby grows.

It's this all encompassing place.

In the Hebrew language there are no chances.

Nothing happens by chance meaning if we have a word like Rechamim,

Compassion and Rechem,

Womb there's a connection between those two words and how we understand them.

So the concept that I introduce within this meditation is that we are surrounded in all moments by the Rechamim,

The compassion of Hashem,

Of this greater being and we are within the womb,

The Rechem of this greater being really.

It's this all encompassing way of looking at life and all that goes on around us that it's not happening to us.

It's happening for us.

We are within the womb and in a certain way the waiting room of eternity.

We are eternal souls and here we are in this physical world and we need a lot of love and a lot of support and a lot of compassion because we are taking care of a mind body.

We are taking care of a complicated entity,

This human body,

This human being that we are as souls inside of and that being enables us to shine our light and the light of the infinite into this world and it also requires some maintenance and some love and some care and some compassion.

So I hope that this meditation and this teaching and practice brings you compassion and I bless you on your journey.

If we can begin to re-conceptualize our own personal darkness it's not happening to us,

It's happening for us and when we can look into the darkness and when we can connect with our deepest selves that that darkness gives us an opportunity to do,

We can close our eyes and when we close our eyes we have a taste of darkness and because our sense of vision is temporarily taken away our consciousness is a little bit more heightened.

So I'm going to invite you to close your eyes with us for a moment and acknowledge the darkness and acknowledge whatever it is that you're seeing with your eyes,

Maybe it's speckles of light and settle in this moment and feel your own body,

Feel where your body is making contact with your chair,

Kind of relax starting with your the top of your head and any points you might have tension you could just let them go and you can feel the sensation of breath entering into your nose.

Now just as Hachem breathed life into the very first soul,

The great soul of which we were apart,

We can breathe in the spirit of the infinite one and the spirit that is within us connecting with breath just feeling breath coming in and out of our nose down the back behind the palate and into the lungs and give yourself a moment to take a deep breath it's going to change your body chemistry right now and it's going to allow you to settle and as you're settling you might notice thoughts coming into your mind and thoughts going out and some of them could be exciting some of them could be negative they could be experienced as negative as positive they could be excitement happiness pride fear longing and whatever they are they're part of a greater picture called being human being human and we can acknowledge the thoughts as though they are the trees and flowers around us on our path and that our path and the light that is in front of us is our breath so as we notice the trees and flowers which are our thoughts we can just notice them and return return to the light that is in front of us and as we return we breathe in the blue sky the coolness and we calm down to acknowledge that all of these thoughts and all of these sensations are a part of our experience as humans we all have them we all go through them and when we can acknowledge that a thought is a thought it's just like a tree or a flower that's there along the path it's not something that i created we can detach from that and return to the path continue walking forward toward the lights and raise our consciousness to connect with the deeper element of who it is that we truly are the power the potential and the force that has been instilled in each and every one of us by something that is so great so great so loving and yet so compassionate that we can tell it everything we can share with it everything and we can be ourselves in our wholeness and truly that's what compassion is that you hashem have returned my soul to me the hemla in compassion we can live as we return to our breath we do chuvah we return we acknowledge the path that we're on the trees and the flowers the birds chirping whatever noise is going on around us and we return we do chuvah to the deeper dimension of this moment here and now this is compassion rachamim is compassion rechem is the place where a baby grows inside of its mother it is all encompassed it is surrounded by love so that we know on our path as we walk toward the light and we return and we focus on our breath and we focus on that light and acknowledge the birds and the trees and the flowers and whatever thoughts our pot could possibly pop up along the way we are within the racham we are within the home the womb of a loving infinite eternal creator that is sustaining us in all moments so continue to take a few more breaths in through your nose allowing the spirit to fill you up and reassure you that you have everything you need inside you all of the time go ahead and take one more breath and you can slowly kind of stretch out your fingers and uh and come back to here and now to panina and myself and i hope you enjoyed that i hope that it was able to connect to you a little bit more in this moment with with a deeper dimension it would be hard on ourselves sometimes and i think when we remind ourselves that we are within the racham we are within the womb and the place of growth in this universe we can slow down a little bit and realize we're in process offer ourselves some love that inner teacher that soul offering love to the mind and body that is so in process and has really so much to deal with here in this physical world i bless you in your process and thank you so much for joining me you

Reviews

I discovered you and your teachings in a time where each word is sprinkling my parched heart with holy water 🙏🏽

"We are within the womb." I liked the ideas in this meditation. Really helpful!