In this session we'll be working with thoughts,
Intrusive thoughts,
Anxiety-provoking thoughts,
The kind of thoughts that keep you up at night,
Worrying.
It could be about your own value as a person,
Could be judgments about yourself or others,
Your opinions and beliefs about what you should be doing or what others should be doing,
How things should be going.
So we'll combine two ways of working with the mind.
We're going to sit with an open heart and allow the feelings and sensations to come and the thoughts to come.
And we'll consider the possibility that our thoughts are unreliable,
That our opinions are something we should take very lightly.
We could investigate the truth of them is one way to work with them,
Questioning their validity.
In other words,
If we feel we are somehow lacking,
We could say that's just a thought.
Another point of view is that we are not lacking,
So we could replace it.
But in this case,
What we'll do is we'll just keep a lightness to the thought and acknowledge it.
And then we're going to turn to how it's manifesting in the body.
So the feeling of panic or anxiety that we have when things aren't lining up for us.
So sitting or reclined,
Relaxed,
Taking some full breaths,
Becoming present,
With your experience this moment.
You could take some fuller,
Deeper breaths,
Breathing in,
Holding and then exhaling fully.
And then resting the attention on the body,
Breathing.
Pulsing,
Tingling,
Quality of the body,
The aliveness of the body,
The gentle rhythm of the breath.
Noticing thoughts,
What thoughts are coming.
Many of our thoughts are familiar,
Repeating.
Some of them planted a long time ago when we were children,
When we were younger.
And they come up again and again.
Thoughts along the lines of,
There's something wrong with me,
Or it's not okay.
I'm not okay.
I'm not good enough.
See if you can notice how thoughts like these are held or felt in the body,
The chest or belly,
The shoulders,
The face.
A sense of panic or anxiousness.
A sense that we have to do something or change something or fix something.
So noticing that urgency.
Is it a desire to get away from the unpleasant thought,
The fearful or anxious feeling?
It's just a thought.
So we can come back to just the breath in the body,
Opening to an underlying stillness,
Spaciousness.
So if the thoughts and the associated energies in the body are a kind of turbulence,
We're resting beneath that and allowing the turbulence to be.
So we're not changing the thought or changing the feeling.
We're making room for it,
Deflating its urgency and the looming quality of an intrusive thought,
That largeness of it.
Let it be and make space around it.
It diminishes itself.
So whenever we're able to rest in a sense of stillness or peace,
Resting there and as thoughts arise,
As the thought comes back or maybe a different thought arises,
We notice it,
We notice the associated energies.
We let it pass through.
Okay.
We attend to the fear,
The nervous energy,
Letting it be and making room for it.
The natural stillness of the heart,
The mind,
Awareness reveals itself.
And then on that basis we can affirm ourselves.
I am enough.
I am safe.
I am whole.
I am loved and loving.
We extend this ease outward to others.
Continuing to sit and enjoy the spaciousness,
Your natural open heart for as long as you'd like.
