Part 2: The Noble Heart Meditation

After listening to Part 1: The Noble Heart, join me for Part 2, a meditation on the same theme of awakening our hearts to self and to others. Some find it easier to begin with noticing good qualities in others as an avenue for seeing the good qualities in themselves; others may approach it from seeing and allowing their own good qualities to bubble to the surface, then seeing more clearly how to appreciate some of those same qualities in others. There is no right way. We start where we are and work from there, with a willing and open heart.

Transcript

Hi, This is a part two. If you have listened to my talk on the Noble Heart and this is the meditation that goes along with it, You certainly don't need to listen to that first. This can just be a moment to slow down, Have a few minutes of meditating on this topic, Of kind of tapping into our awakened heart, The heart of bodhicitta, Compassion. So I'm going to go ahead and ring the bell and this is our invitation to just notice our body and set up for a few minutes of meditation here. So I'll ring the bell now. So allowing the gong to again be our invitation to just slow down, To arrive in the space that we're in, To begin to notice our bodies, To feel your feet on the floor, Grounded. Just notice where you are in this particular moment. How is your body feeling? Especially noticing your forehead, Your face, See if it's kind of scrunched up, If you're holding any tension in your temples, If there's a tightness behind your eyes. Maybe taking a deep breath and seeing if you can relax some of those muscles, Noticing your throat, If there's a tightness around your throat muscles. Maybe you've talked a lot today, Maybe you need to say something you haven't said, Maybe you can't quite relax your throat but you're aware of what your throat is doing right now, The muscles around your throat. And then into your chest, Noticing your heart, The area around your heart, Which all day long goes from kind of feeling safe to unsafe, Safe to unsafe. So just noticing where it is right now. I would imagine there's some level of safety because you're here listening to this talk, Willing to be open to a meditation right now. So a tiger might not be chasing you in this exact moment. So allow that to be this moment of safety. And yet, Underlying in the background, There could be some unsafety. So you're just noticing those energies around your heart, Allowing it to be there, Whatever it is you find. And then down into your gut, Noticing what your gut is holding right now. And again, That could be tension, That could be stuff related to food, Drink, Bathroom habits, That could also be, You know, A basic sense of some anxiety. Or it might feel good, It actually might feel like things are doing well in your gut, That you're listening to your gut, You're paying attention. So again, We're not trying to manipulate anything in our bodies, We're just noticing what's there. And then we're inviting space and a breath. Filling our lungs up with oxygen, Allowing for the full extent of however you can breathe right now. A pause at the top, A longer exhale, And then there's this little pause before you naturally inhale again. And then for a moment here, We're going to focus on noticing something that you love about another person. I would like to start there. Anyone in your life who you admire, Or even just a characteristic you admire about somebody sometimes. Just stop for a moment and see what is it about this person that you admire? Is it how they make a meal? Is it how they clean something? How they fix something? How they always seem to take care of business? Is it more a person's, Maybe a gentle way they walk into a room and they smile at you or they acknowledge everyone? Maybe it's how they hug with actual warmth and connection, Not just phoning it in. Is there a light in their eyes when they look at you, Like there's actually somebody home and they care about what you have to say and you know that just from how they look at you? Do you appreciate how somebody can garden or arrange flowers? There's somebody I love who is an expert at arranging flowers and she puts together the most beautiful arrangements and she puts them up every Sunday in our shrine room. Never asking for credit. You wouldn't even know she was there and yet her flowers are there on the shrine. Beautiful. They've moved me to tears, Her flower arranging. And I know she's put this dedication and hours of practice into her own meditation and using flower arranging as her service. And it touches all of us whether we're aware of it or not. I so appreciate that about her. Is it someone's sense of humor, Lightheartedness, Playfulness, Youthfulness? Does somebody bring an energy of vitality into a room where they can just be silly with other people, Make everything more fun, More interesting, More alive? Those people are few and far between but there are those people who just walk into a room and light it up and somehow can hold everyone's energy and play with the people who are more out loud and kind of draw out the people who are quieter. I love those kind of people. I'm thinking of another person who volunteers her time to hold babies at the hospital, Preemies, Who might have had kind of drug-addicted moms or some kind of very difficult birth. And she just spends hours a week sitting in a rocking chair holding these babies, Giving them the love and nurturing that they need in those very early hours and days. And she does it with her whole heart. So just run through a couple characteristics of people that you love, That you admire. Maybe they hike, Maybe they rock climb. It could be something that actually influences your life or something you just know from afar that they do, That you maybe wish you could do that. So we're just breathing that in for a minute, These beautiful qualities about other people. There's this quote of always loved, More beautiful than a rose is the soul who beholds it, By Sonny Brooke. More beautiful than the rose is the soul who beholds it. So I just want to think about that for a minute. Those qualities that we see in other people, How are we able to admire those qualities, Notice them, Appreciate them? Could it be that we also possess some element of that same quality? Now I am not about to rock climb, But I can appreciate a friend of mine who is an avid rock climber and his grace in getting up a mountain, His dedication to consistently go out there and find the boulders and do these death-defying motions. I kind of have no interest in doing that, But he inspires me. He inspires me to be in nature. He inspires me to recycle. Everything about this man inspires me to want to do more of the quality of things I see in him, But I don't need to do it in his way. I do it in my way. So for a moment now, Can you just appreciate this quality in yourself that you can appreciate these qualities in other people? Can you appreciate your own noticing, Your own capacity to see goodness in others, Their warmth, Their skill? And if you ever tell them that you appreciate this about them, Bonus points. If you've ever noticed how someone else feels and lights up when you tell them what you notice about them that is so good, How does that make them feel? And then how does it make you feel? And then if we could bring this back around to you, You might want to start with what others have complimented you on. If you could bring to mind something that somebody has said about you, Maybe they've told you directly, Sometimes it's even better if you kind of hear it third-party, That someone appreciates something about you. It could be something you've done, Some skill you have, Some way you show up. And how did that make you feel? Maybe it's something you just think is baseline, Oh everyone does this, This is just common sense, Or this is just good manners. No, Not everyone does this. It might be good manners, But that does not mean everyone does this. Can we for a moment allow these qualities to be your own basic goodness, Your preferences, The way you show up in the world, The effort and hours you might have put into a particular thing, A practice, Something you're good at, Or just something you love. And perhaps you have no idea the influence it has on other people, But for a moment can you allow that maybe you do have an impact on other people. Can we just take a few breaths here for our own innate wisdom, Our own innate health, Our own innate qualities, Our own basic goodness. Just breathing in, Breathing out, And again this does not have to be task-oriented. We are not looking to be worthy people because we produce something that has to have a good impact on another person. We often do though. For these few moments I'm hoping it can just be a basic worthiness that we're human beings, That we're alive, That we're willing to sit and slow down and meditate on these concepts to allow for this energy exchange. We're always exchanging with each other and for these few moments you're exchanging energy with yourself or maybe with your higher self, Allowing the goodness of who you are and what you do. Again just being in touch with your noble heart, Your good heart, Your compassionate heart, And oftentimes that compassion needs to start with yourself. It does, It has to start with yourself. Again you cannot pour from an empty cup and if you find that difficult to start with yourself, We start with other people. Start with what you love about others and that might be your avenue in to compassion for yourself because look as who is paying attention to the beauty in these other people. There must be some beauty in you that can recognize it. Beauty recognizes beauty. So just another breath or two here. Expressing gratitude for yourself, Your willingness to sit still for a little while, To honor your own goodness, Honor the goodness of the people around you, Seeing if this feels right to you, If this feels good to you, If this is a supplement to your life. And I'll go ahead and ring the gong. Just listen till the end. A couple more deep breaths out. Thank you very much for taking this time to just be with yourself, Exchange energy with me, Tapping into our own goodness, Our own noble heart. Thank you.