The first way in which we're going to start opening your beautiful heart is by addressing what closes it and what keeps it closed,
Which is a dog piling of shame.
Shame is self-inflicted and has typically served a beneficial purpose.
Historically,
We have shamed others to keep out members of the tribe that have behaved in a way that endangers our survival.
Nowadays,
Shame can come from eating 20 Snickers bars.
Even with no one else around,
Shame comes to just infuse our mind with a barrage of beliefs and thoughts that lead us to feeling shameful about ourselves.
Before your mind goes to thinking about how shameful it is that you might have done that or that you might have done something similar,
Stay with me.
Move through those feelings of shame and just breathe.
Let that be your own.
Feel your heart becoming as light as a feather as you inhale and as you exhale.
And when you inhale,
You're inhaling the nutritious energy of feeling alive and feeling complete and feeling accepted.
And when you're exhaling,
You're releasing and you're letting go of beliefs that make you feel not good enough and feelings of rejection and feelings of embarrassment.
Take a big inhale and draw out an even longer exhale.
You deserve it.
We are hardwired to eat food that is dense and fatty and keeps us alive.
So,
Don't get too embarrassed about eating what you love and don't feel too guilty about your pleasures.
We are also hardwired to stay with the group and keep up with the group,
Whatever that means.
If you're a millennial,
You're going to want to do what other people in your age range do and say what they say and perhaps even think what they think.
Same goes for other generations.
Same goes for your family or your friend group or your church or your workplace.
As much as you may want to sink into grief about this realization,
Our brains are also involved in the miraculous way as well where we can access so many emotions and understand and build empathy in a socially acceptable way that the emotion of shame can be turned around on a dime.
So take in whatever shame,
Whatever guilt is building up in your memory from the past and just sigh it out.
Make it audible.
Again,
You deserve it.
As you keep breathing,
So does your programming continue to change,
Your neurons rewiring,
Refiring and just continue to bathe in this stillness within and without.
There is nothing to do right now except relax.
This is a time for you.
Sometimes when I think of what power my shame holds,
I think of a very tiny plastic thumbtack.
One of those tags that you put in a map,
Say,
Like a paper version of a map and a thumbtack is what you can put in a map on the wall to show where you've been or to show where you want to go.
And so imagine a tiny red thumbtack just there in a wall and this is a thought.
This represents a thought.
Now a thought is completely innocent,
Just like this thumbtack.
When we feel shame from the thought,
We feel guilt and unhappy,
Unpleasant emotions.
It can be like a big sturdy mallet,
Like a large hammer,
Blunt on one side,
Wooden for the stick and it can be the effect of a mallet hitting this tiny little red thumbtack with a thumbtack.
So much so that you're not only hitting the thumbtack with this mallet,
You're hitting everything around it and you're almost breaking the foundation of the wall.
That's the power of shame.
That's the power of how powerful your shame can be in that it not only hurts yourself,
It hurts anyone who's around you at the time and anyone who's impacted.
So I want you to imagine something else.
Wipe that away.
Here are the decks.
I want you to imagine that instead of a thumbtack,
I want you to imagine that this metal and plastic thumbtack has been transformed into this beautiful,
Illustrious golden key.
Almost like a skeleton key or a master key,
A beautiful ornate shining bright golden key.
And what this key represents is also a thought.
The thought as the key.
Instead of a mallet,
What is coming into contact with the key is a cage.
The cage is this gray metal electric fence barbed wire cage looking spiky and dangerous to the touch.
But there's a lock on this cage and the key,
Wouldn't you know it,
Fits right for this lock.
And as you take this thought,
This key,
And you bring it into contact with this cage's lock,
The shame.
You actually click open the lock and you open the cage and inside of the cage is this beautiful heart.
And as the cage opens more and more to reveal more and more of this heart,
The heart is red and it's glowing brighter and brighter as the cage opens fully and then dissolves.
And what you've got is an unlocked heart.
And it's open and it's free.
At this point,
Please stretch.
Flex open your eyes and come out of meditation.
Thank you for meditating with us today on day one of Opening Your Heart.
