So this is a guided meditation on how we can keep the faith in times that feel like failure is all around us.
It will begin with a spoken section and finish up with a period of seated meditation.
How can we find faith in failure?
It's a funny concept.
There are times in our life when we will dream,
We will dare,
We will dive in.
And then we will dive bomb down,
Maybe sinking,
Sobbing,
Shaking it off,
And we have to start all over.
Bless our deluded minds in thinking that reality should do what we want.
Perpetual growth is a lie,
Economically,
Energetically,
And emotionally.
All things will rise and fall and life naturally has its own circles and cycles.
Failure will take us straight to the heart,
To the here and now,
To feeling the feelings that are around us.
It's a humbling thing.
It's a thing that we get to hold ourselves and each other in.
It's a time of getting present to our shared humanness.
Failure will force us to stop and to sigh,
To let reality really settle into us,
To surrender to it and to find the softness that can come when we sink into what is.
There is so much that we can't control.
Cancer,
Dementia,
Homelessness,
Social cuts,
Disease,
Death,
Social inequalities.
There is so much that it seems we can't solve in these times.
Then there's all the personal and professional plans that went slightly off-centre,
Not the way that we wanted them to.
The opportunities that we should have got,
The way that things should have worked out but didn't.
We will get to wrestle with reality.
We will get to realise that we are not the boss of life and that these wild cards will win their way into our reality.
And for sure,
There's all the semantic stuff.
We can always reframe it,
Call it by another name,
A valiant effort.
Daring to dream,
The beauty of braving,
Being bold,
Showing up,
Of winning some and losing some.
All of these are valid and true.
And yet at times we will still need to deal with our feelings about what is happening.
Maybe it's like the Eskimos and their hundred types of snow.
And we need more nuances for this feeling.
To distinguish the things in life that can feel like a failure,
All of which are just part of the many hues of human existence.
Maybe we need different words for when someone makes a decision that we can't do anything about.
In contrast to the felt sense of futile and fragile inevitability that many months of tending to someone with terminal illness will likely lead us to.
There are so many nuances in between.
In the end,
Perhaps the words count for nothing at all.
We get to recognise our need to build resilience,
To find a good way forwards from here,
To find a good way through,
Ideally with some good grace about the whole situation.
We can acknowledge that new things can come in when we shapeshift our sense of self.
We get to re-evaluate and get excited about new things that we couldn't see in our plan for how it should have gone.
We will get to know that risk is intimately related to our willingness to really go for it.
And that in this perfectly imperfect universe,
We won't always get what we want.
And yet we can still stand up,
Shake ourselves down and keep going.
Keep growing in good ways towards whatever it was that we wanted.
Yes,
Sometimes it's sensible that we should pause before starting over.
Less of this perpetual striving onwards and more of some deep listening to what wants to happen next,
To get crystal clear on our motivation behind things.
In these times we can relax,
We can rethink,
We can simplify,
Strip things down,
Getting clear to what matters most in life.
We get to be with a miraculous mystery of it all.
There's the paradox that perhaps when we don't get what we want,
We get to go back to starting over in our own way.
We can't be seduced by external definitions of what success should look like.
We get to re-examine our own integrity to find out what matters most in our own lives.
We will get to develop trust in life's deeply peculiar process.
So come into this moment,
Dear one.
Feel where you are sitting or standing.
Feel the earth underneath you and whatever part of your body is touching the earth.
Place one hand on your belly and one hand on your heart.
Come into contact with the sensations of the breath coming into and leaving the body,
Body being breathed.
Sense into your heart.
Sense into all the feelings that may be arising in these difficult moments of life,
These tender moments.
It can be a lot to dare to feel life fully and yet feeling it is healing it.
Take some deep breaths.
Come into the somatic sensations of the body,
The physical felt sense of here and now.
Move away from your story of how it should have gone,
The frustration,
The fear.
And come into the sensations of how it is.
There is great daring in taking these moments to be with reality,
To feel our feelings fully.
You are doing so well by staying with this,
By letting life touch us,
By acknowledging however brave we are on whatever steps we take.
Sometimes we cannot control the outcome.
Keep softening into your body.
We'll sit and feel into this place for a few moments quietly.
And take some deepening breaths and send yourself some kindness.
A sense of warmth towards yourself,
Of wishing yourself well.
Acknowledging you have always done your best,
Even if you didn't act in the way that you wanted to,
Even if life did not go the way that you wanted it to.
Send kindness towards yourself.
We deserve more love when we are suffering,
Not less.
Taking time to tend to our hearts.
And do not just send this love as an action to do.
See if you can receive it in this body.
Oh,
Here I am.
I have done my best.
I am wishing myself well.
I am good enough.
These feelings will pass.
Life is constant change.
I will not always feel this way.
And in the meantime,
I will tend to myself.
I will forgive myself.
I will hold my heart tenderly through these moments.
In meditation,
We can cultivate kindness for ourselves as a habit.
In cultivating kindness for ourselves,
It will spill out into others eventually.
So take these moments to thank yourself for your willingness to be here today,
Listening to this meditation,
Touching in and taking the time to be present with yourself.
And when you are ready,
If your eyes have been closed,
You can gently open them.
Start to look at the room around you.
Have a stretch,
Have a yawn,
Move your body.
And see if as you go back to your regular day-to-day tasks,
You can keep the sense of self-kindness and self-forgiveness with you to keep tending yourself through these difficult times.
I thank you for your practice here today,
And I wish you well with whatever you are moving through.
