We Were Made For These Times: 10 Lessons In Moving Through Change, Loss & Disruption

One of the things that can make navigating times of transition and challenge even more difficult is when we resist what is happening or think there’s something wrong with our life, or with us, when the road gets bumpy. But transition and challenges are a part of life. In this session, we look at the inevitability of pain and how not to add suffering on top of this. The meditation we’ll practice supports us in letting go of resistance, and opening to acceptance and peace with what is.

How can we manage times of overwhelm and crisis, when it feels like we can’t find any space inside? In this session, we’ll learn powerful practices of staying rooted and grounded in the midst of life’s storms. We will discover how to return to the reality, and safety, of the present moment through intentional, focused belly breathing, and also through walking mindfully, learning to stay connected to the earth in full awareness.

Using a powerful teaching from Buddhist Psychology on how our minds work, in this session we do a deep dive into the how to really be with and soothe strong emotions, which can be so painful and disruptive in times of change. We learn, and practice in the meditation, how we can access mindfulness to help us recognize whatever painful emotion is arising, accept it, and then embrace it like a loving adult would hold a crying baby. As we do this, our emotion settles down and we are able to look deeply into to understand it at its root in the deeper layers of our mind. This leads us to insight and gradual transformation of habit patterns that keep us stuck in reactivity, fear and anger.

Many of us may get lulled into believing what we have now will always be here. This is a central cause of our suffering. We want that which has the nature to change to stay the same. In this session, we will pay attention to the ways impermanence, a key characteristic of our existence, operates moment-to-moment in daily life, as well as in times of bigger upheaval and turmoil. Facing the truth of impermanence frees us up to live more fully and stop being controlled by unconscious fears. We will practice a profound meditation offered by the Buddha on the Five Remembrances, and allow the insight of impermanence to wake us up, help us feel more alive, and deeply touch the preciousness of life.

Each of us must go through the “10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows,” the ups and downs that any life brings. In this session, we learn about the 8 worldly winds: pleasure and pain; gain and loss; praise and blame; and fame and disrepute, and how they are like spokes in a wheel that is constantly turning. But in the center of the wheel is a hole, which is our true nature of emptiness, of not-self, another key characteristic of existence. Not-self helps us see that we are not a separate self, but in fact, we contain everything. We are empty of an independent self and part of something much vaster. When we touch our nature of interdependence, we experience that which does not get blown about, which is not conditioned by fortune and misfortune. And this leads us to touch the freedom of non-fear.

What is it that can help us come back to balance when we are pulled and pushed this way and that by the disruptions and upheavals of our life? In this session we will learn about 'upeska,' translated as equanimity and inclusiveness, a capacity we can cultivate that helps us to see the bigger picture and look with patience and understanding. We can grow our equanimity through staying open to learn, relaxing, and letting go of whatever we are clinging to. The guided visualization will help us to offer space to ourselves and our difficulty so that we can come to greater peace with it, and will teach us powerful statements on equanimity that we can apply anytime in our daily life.

We may believe that in order to be happy and at peace our suffering has to disappear completely. In this session, we’ll learn how we can nurture and strengthen the good in us so that we can draw on it in difficult times. Gratitude is enormously transformative in moments of hardship and a huge booster of resilience and strength. We’ll learn effective ways to develop it in daily life, including with the children in our lives, and even in the midst of heartbreak. This is an orientation towards life in which we live the present moment in such a way that we create a beautiful past.

In this final session, we will gather our courage and confidence to meet whatever difficulties and transitions we are facing. We already have all that we need to meet this moment. Our mindfulness practice is has prepared us in each mindful step and every conscious breath to engage with life just as it is. We’ll harness the power of guided visualization to see ourselves moving through our challenges or times of transition until we have reached the other side. We’ll practice to embody now how we will look and feel when the storm has settled, and we are confident and at peace. We’ll deepen our intention through a closing compassion practice for ourselves and all others who may also be experiencing hardship, that we all may rest in our true home.