Self-Compassion Meditation For Chronic Illness

This meditation was created by request, with care for those living with chronic illness. Whether your condition is common or rare, chronic illness often brings unique challenges—feelings of isolation, grief, or being misunderstood, as well as unexpected moments of gratitude.

In this session, you’ll be gently guided through several stages: shifting perspectives (including a contemplation of our finitude), entering a space for mourning, and opening a dialogue with your body and mind. Drawing on the wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, we’ll also explore how to loosen identification with the body and invite acceptance.

May this practice support you in meeting your experience with compassion, presence, and gratitude.

image: fadi-xd
music: Vishal Bhojane

Transcript

A very warm welcome to this meditation for those of you with a chronic illness or a chronic condition,

A chronic affliction.

I'll take you through a few steps,

A few practices or contemplations.

And just as kind of the beginning,

Let's settle into a pleasant posture.

So maybe you're walking,

Then kind of find a pace where you're able to be mindful of your body's movements.

Maybe you're laying down,

Then get extra comfortable.

And just also when you're sitting,

Just take a moment to prop yourself up or lay yourself down with a bit more intentionality.

And you want to go for that sweet spot of not completely falling asleep,

But also not being like a soldier and tensing all your muscles.

You want to have a kind of a focused relaxation and make it work for you,

Make it pleasant.

So anything I will suggest is exactly that,

Is a suggestion.

You don't have to do everything I say or ask.

So check with yourself if you're happy to go along with my guidance.

And with that said,

I want to invite you to take a long,

Deep,

Full inhalation through your nose in and then sigh out.

You can let out air through your mouth,

Maybe make a little sound.

And do that a few times and notice that you can relax more when you exhale like that.

Maybe you can already notice how pleasant it is to breathe.

So when you're dealing with a chronic illness,

You're dealing with a kind of limitation of your life.

Maybe your body is affected or your mind or both.

And that,

If you look at it clearly,

That kind of points at the finitude of our life.

In this case,

Wherever you are,

You are limited.

And of course we are all limited eventually,

You know,

As Jim Morrison of The Doors said,

No one here gets out alive.

All of our bodies will get sick and perish and die.

That's just how life is.

And when you have a chronic illness,

You'll probably have a bit of a closer intimation of the presence of the end,

More than people without a chronic illness.

And this is not meant to be kind of morbid,

But it's reality,

Right?

You live in that reality.

And I'm wondering if you can hold both of those perspectives,

That you are not actually different in essence at all.

We're all on this boat,

As my teacher said,

We're all on this boat going out into the ocean and we know it will sink.

Everybody's on the same boat in that regard.

So you're not exiled from humanity in that way at all.

We are in this together.

And you are in a different situation with a chronical illness.

And of course that brings with it,

On the one hand,

I guess your own peer group,

But also I imagine there can be some loneliness and frustration and depression and anger and maybe even resentment or shame.

So,

Can you hold both of those to know that you are not different,

We are together,

And you do have a unique situation.

Both of those are true.

And I want to invite you as kind of the first actual practice of this meditation session to mourn.

And mourning is a way to be with reality or to come towards reality by feeling into the sense of lack or missing or grief that we can experience when we are mourning the loss of something.

So in whatever your personal case is,

You know,

Maybe you don't have the use of your legs or maybe you can't exercise or maybe you cannot see or maybe your brain gets tired after 10 minutes of interacting with other human beings,

Whatever it might be.

If you are able to mourn that loss or that missing,

You will deeply increase your self connection.

And so how to do that is to allow yourself to empathically grieve for those things that you miss.

And this is not to wallow in self-pity,

But to allow those parts in us,

That parts that hold sadness,

Loss,

Fear,

Despair,

All of it,

To allow those to be felt,

To be,

To breathe and to be accepted.

So I want to invite you for a moment to let anything that wants to be seen or heard or felt or understood inside of you,

To allow that to be felt,

Heard,

Seen,

To allow it to speak to you in whatever way it will.

So you can even kind of ask yourself the question or you can direct your body or your illness directly and you can just invite anything to come up.

Maybe images will come or thoughts or memories,

Emotions or sensations.

So if you just take a moment right now,

Try to be in your body as much as possible and just allow anything to come up,

Allow any mourning to come.

And it might be that instead of maybe sadness or grief,

What you might encounter is anger or resentment or resistance of any kind.

And then I want you to simply allow that to be there.

That is the first gate.

The first entry point into contact with yourself might not be the deep thing that wants to come out,

It might be a reaction to that thing.

And whatever you're finding,

I want to invite you to speak directly to that.

So whether it is resistance or maybe even annoyance or some random memory,

Whatever it is,

Whatever it is,

I want to invite you to speak directly to that.

Again,

Maybe it's an image,

A thought,

A memory,

An emotion,

A sensation,

A presence.

And just,

You can speak directly to that part.

And you can say in your inner voice or maybe softly spoken as you wish,

In your own way,

In your own words,

You can address it directly and say,

Hey,

I hear you,

I feel you,

I see you,

I thank you for letting yourself be known,

You are welcome,

I am with you.

So take a moment and make that dialogue happen and see what happens when you do that.

Sorry,

Good,

Thank you.

And then I want to invite you to gently let go of that practice.

Maybe you want to take a longer inhalation and a longer exhalation.

And I want to invite you to another kind of little chapter of this meditation.

And that is,

I want to invite you into the perspective of looking at your body and seeing it with a lot of compassion,

But not exactly as that is who you are,

But rather can you look at your body as your vessel,

Your temporary,

Borrowed vessel,

Your strategy,

If you will,

To have a human life on this planet.

You are not your body.

You kind of are it,

But you're not it.

And that is the perspective that I want to kind of remind you of or awaken in you.

And if you notice any skepticism about that idea itself,

That's totally fine.

That skepticism is welcome.

All I ask is that you simply listen to a few quotes by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

And just allow them to sink in you.

If they're true,

They're true for you.

And if they're not true,

Then they won't affect you anyway.

So try to listen as openly as possible to this.

There is no such thing as a person.

There are only restrictions and limitations.

The sum total of these defines the person.

You think you know yourself when you know what you are,

But you never know who you are.

The person merely appears to be.

Like the space within the pot appears to have the shape and volume and smell of the pot.

See that you are not what you believe yourself to be.

Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable.

You are not.

Refuse to think of yourself in terms of this or that.

All you need is already within you.

Only you must approach yourself with reverence and love.

Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors.

Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself.

And I plead with you,

All I plead with you is this,

Make love of yourself perfect.

Deny yourself nothing.

Glue yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them.

You are beyond.

As you watch your mind,

You discover yourself as the watcher.

When you stand motionless,

Only watching,

You discover yourself as the light behind the watcher.

The source of light is dark.

Unknown is the source of knowledge.

That source alone is.

Go back to that source and abide there.

Before all beginnings and after all endings,

I am.

What you are,

You already are.

Everything is local and temporary,

Except you.

Don't forget what you are.

Ultimately,

I am beyond being and non-being.

Find him or her who was present at your birth and will witness your death.

Stop imagining that you were born,

Have parents,

Or a body that will die,

And so on.

You were never born,

Nor will you ever die.

I am itself is God.

The seeking itself is God.

In seeking,

You discover that you are neither the body nor mind,

And the love of the self in you is for the self in all.

The two are one.

The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me,

Apparently two,

Really one,

Seek unity,

And that is love.

The moment you know your real being,

You are afraid of nothing.

Death gives freedom and power.

To be free in the world,

You must die to the world.

Then the universe is your own.

It becomes your body,

An expression,

And a tool.

The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

So I hope that those quotes from Shri Nisargadatta Maharaj,

The great Indian sage of the last century,

Brings you some inspiration that you are not,

And you are not limited to your body,

And that includes the illness that is besetting your body.

I hope that by letting those words reverberate,

You can identify,

Or let's say disidentify from your body and your illness,

And identify rather with whatever is experiencing your body and its illness.

And with that,

Can come great compassion for the suffering of the body and the suffering of the mind,

Because you are neither.

You are what is experiencing the body and the mind.

And notice that this is not to say that you are not allowed to mourn,

As we did earlier.

The body,

The mind,

Need to mourn.

Need to grieve in order to be in presence with itself.

It is simply pointing to a deeper layer of experience,

Where you are actually neither body nor mind.

You are what is experiencing both.

And now,

As a last invitation of this practice,

I wonder if you can connect to gratitude.

Whatever the limitations of the body and the mind,

Here you are,

Right now.

Can you listen so deeply to whatever is present,

That you become still?

Completely still.

And when you do,

Can you feel the love in your heart?

The love that is your heart.

So for the last moments of this meditation,

I simply want to invite you to look for gratitude.

However small it may be,

However tiny,

Microscopic,

Or however large.

What would you be willing to be grateful for right now,

Without denying anything?

What are you willing to be grateful for right now,

And can you feel into that gratitude?

So I'll give you some moments with that,

And the bell will signify the end of this practice.

Reviews

This wisdom could not possibly have arrived at a more ideal time. At least, that is what I may tell myself for the time being. And these times? are beyond trying, incidentally.

The body has been suffering for days now the most wretched and brutal of all Covid attacks ever experienced…unrelenting discomfort and recurring widespread pain, with a double-eye infection starting yesterday so severe that most of the body’s vision was lost.

This already-addled, much degraded mind was then briefed today that another body—belonging to my closest, dearest, most supportive friend of 36 years—was suddenly, tragically found dead. By his little girl.

I’m not sure how the forces of all-that-is brought this teaching to my willing ears and still-cracked-open-a-bit heart tonight. For now, this mind can simply leave that ineffable development to the realm of mostly unknowable mysteries, as it attends to other pressing and requisite things.

Just to hear, and to begin to acknowledge, that ‘I’ am not the beleaguered body, and that ‘I-am’ is not the overwhelmed mind, but that which experiences both of those suffering things, is likely the most important and illuminating message that the soul could hope to receive in profoundly darkened days.
Thank you, teacher;
Your lesson today lands squarely and mightily.
🙏🏼

Thank you for this Hans, I'm very grateful for your responsiveness to my request 🙏

Thank you for welcoming grief and mourning (different, as you say, to indulging self pity). Thank you for permission for all emotions. Thank you for recognising the limitations on one's life... and the reminder that from a spiritual perspective, we are more than this life and its limitations.

Also thank you for minimal background music. As I have 2 forms of neuro-diversity (autism and ADHD) which create difficulty for me with auditory processing, meaning that music makes it hard for me to understand the words.

However Hans, there seems to be a small glitch in the recording, because in the first 2 or 3 minutes, it sounds like it switches to quite a different recording - just for a minute or less - with much louder music. It sounds like 2 different tracks might have somehow got mixed up briefly? 🤔

Thank you again so much for your work.