Welcome,
Friends,
To a forgiveness meditation.
I invite you to find a comfortable seat,
Find a comfortable position for your body,
And allow yourself to settle in,
Starting by taking a few slow,
Deep breaths.
Let your body and mind soften into this moment,
Where you're breathing gently into the areas around your heart,
Letting yourself perhaps feel the barriers that you have formed to protect yourself,
To keep yourself safe and warm.
These emotions we oftentimes carry with us because we have not forgiven.
We hold on to things as protection.
And so the invitation today is for you to relax your grip,
First and foremost by relaxing your body.
During this meditation,
You will hear crashing waves,
And I encourage you to listen to those waves with your whole being.
Keep your breath strong and steady.
And I encourage you to ask yourself,
What do you think of when you hear the word forgiveness?
You can ask yourself,
Am I open to healing?
Is it supportive for me to heal,
To forgive?
Am I ready to put down these chains of the past of which I have no control?
Am I willing to surrender?
Let the answer come without judgment,
With a kind and gentle awareness.
And perhaps you're not ready to forgive,
And that's okay too.
Just notice this part of you kindly.
And perhaps at least for this meditation,
You can practice the idea of forgiveness,
This concept of letting go of the past and realigning into the present.
On your inhales,
You can lengthen your spine.
And on the exhales,
You can soften,
Allowing yourself to melt,
Feeling yourself held up and held down by gravity at the same time.
And during this forgiveness meditation,
I encourage you to stay in what we call in psychology,
The window of tolerance.
This window of tolerance is making sure that we can stay present in our bodies.
And we perhaps don't go into anything too traumatic.
Anything that makes us leave our bodies through disassociation.
We want to practice staying right inside that window where we can feel our heart speeding,
Where we can tune into the noises and the sounds and the waves.
So we can feel our toes and our fingertips.
If ever something gets too challenging,
Know that the breath is always there to support us.
We can always wiggle our fingers and open our eyes to bring us right back.
Breathing softly.
I'm going to start with forgiveness of others.
As humans,
There are ways in which we can be harmed and hurt by other people.
We may have felt abandoned or perhaps we abandoned them and this has caused us suffering.
Out of this anger and confusion,
I encourage you to bring to mind people who have hurt and are suffering.
Notice the sensations that live in our bodies when we bring up painful moments.
These sensations really do have a vibration.
And this here is an opportunity to listen deeply,
To feel fully.
Sometimes the body can speak in illness,
In mental loops of the past,
In nightmares and also in joys and synchronicities and dreams.
So in this formal meditation practice,
We are learning to be present with all that is here.
Letting your breath breathe itself.
Notice if there's a tendency to fidget or move away from discomfort.
And it's okay to move as long as we move with complete mindfulness,
Meaning we can feel every part of ourselves that moves.
Or we choose to stay still,
To stay steady with all that comes up no matter what.
There's no need to react even as we bring up those who we feel have hurt us,
Belonged us in our lives.
I encourage you to watch as the observer,
As these waves of emotion move through you.
As you breathe into your body,
Notice perhaps your heartbeat and see if it feels right for you to say something like,
I ask for forgiveness.
I ask for forgiveness of others.
I wish to soften my heart.
If these walls do not have a place anymore,
I invite them to come down so I may be present with my body and breath right here.
Now we will move into forgiveness of ourselves.
There have been many ways where we have hurt and harmed ourselves,
Where we have betrayed and abandoned ourselves with thoughts,
Words,
Deeds,
Knowingly or unknowingly.
As you breathe and listen to the crashing waves,
I encourage you to feel your own precious body in this life right now.
If you feel open to it,
Perhaps you let yourself see the ways in which you have harmed yourself.
Picture these times while staying in that window of tolerance.
Seeing the emotions you have carried from these times and sense if there's a part of you that can release these burdens.
This is simply practice.
Practice being with difficult emotions and saying yes to them,
Actually inviting them in.
And when we invite them in,
They move,
They shift like waves in the ocean.
Sometimes they get bigger and more intense and other times as the wave comes to completion,
It gets smaller and softer.
We welcome all of it.
Everything here.
There are ways in which in our lives when we can soften and see ourselves,
Forgive ourselves,
Then everything else can release and relax.
For this is the only moment that there is this breath.
I invite you to take a few more slow,
Deep breaths.
And I thank you so much for this practice.
And forgiveness cannot be forced.
Basically the practice of forgiveness,
Letting these words and images work gradually in their own way and in time.
Perhaps you'll make forgiveness meditation a regular part of your life,
Of letting go of the past and opening your heart into each new moment with wise and loving kindness.
This practice of forgiveness has a true capacity to heal our world.
I wish you have some views of what Im crying about.
Thank you.
