Hello there,
This is Kate from yourcourageouslife.
Com.
And for today's meditation,
I am inviting you to meditate on who you are when you are your best self.
I am my best self when I am learning about,
Writing about,
Or teaching about the human experience.
I wrote down this sentence and felt it was the truest thing I've ever known.
I didn't say I was the best,
I said I was my best self.
My best self who is patient,
Kind,
Open to sitting with questions rather than rushing to strategize and figure them out,
Compassionate,
Curious,
Not needing absolutes.
My best self has little care for best as a comparison.
In this context,
Best is a personal,
Internal metric.
When you are your best self,
You can believe with full trust and faith that somehow,
Even without a map,
You're going to be okay.
So who are you when you are your best self?
What qualities have space to come forth with ease?
What parts of you light up bright and aren't afraid to shine?
What unlocks in your heart,
Makes you feel expansive with care for the tender experience of being human?
Who is that person?
And where are they right here and right now?
Are they with you?
Are they in the room?
Do you fully claim that best self?
My teacher told me when I felt lost to bring the focus back to myself and to this present moment.
And later I kept thinking,
How?
How?
And I kept sitting with how and somewhere in there I connected both with the part of me that was tender and vulnerable and felt so incapable,
And also with the part of me that had to stop the madness of turning away from myself,
Had to stop indulging the resistance.
Because the truth was,
I knew what to do.
The truth was,
I knew I know who I am.
The truth was,
I had the ability to pull myself out from that space.
Indulging resistance weakens the spirit.
We think we're being kind to ourselves when we cut corners or avoid or put off what we know we must do.
But when your survival is at stake,
It doesn't help to pretend that you can keep on keeping on as you were to ignore every sign that things are not aligned.
Jerry Colonna asks us to consider this question.
How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want?
This is a question to ask ourselves.
I am my best self when?
Finish the sentence over and over until the click of truth happens like a key turning neatly in a lock.
Whatever that best self is,
Create the conditions for it to be fully alive.
Do not be complicit in creating the conditions you do not want.
If you are your best self when you are around the delight of children,
Surround yourself with children or tap into the childlike delight within you.
If you are your best self when you write,
Pick up a pen.
If you are your best self when you are being of service,
Roll up your sleeves and find a way to serve.
There's no need for a proclamation or the purchase of a new website domain name.
There's no need to blow up your life.
Who you are when you are your best self is about the aspects of your being that get to come out and be fully expressed.
Not about a number to hit or an identity to take on a to do list to tackle.
It's not a decision to start doing something.
It's a decision to fully be someone.
Let your shoulders unfurl enough to trust that you will land on answers.
Don't be surprised if the answers come piecemeal or from unexpected places.
Don't be surprised if the answers change and what felt like the answer one day is just one of many and a truer answer unpeels its layer to reveal itself,
Then another layer,
Then another.
It's easy to become frustrated with the process,
And it's easier to get back to who you truly are.
If you know what your best self would do with frustration,
How your best self would rise to the occasion with patience,
With grit,
With compassion,
With allowing all aspects of your experience.
At the very start,
You have to at least allow your own knowing of who your best self is to rise to the forefront of your mind.
And then from there,
It's one tiny big choice again and again,
A hundred times in a day to come back to that place.
And you've got it in you.
And you always did.
And you always will.
