Close your eyes now.
Whatever part of you touches the earth,
Let it sink.
Whether it is the feeling of your feet sprouting roots,
Your pelvis nesting deeper,
Drop down and down.
Whether you are conscious of it or not,
The earth is always supporting you.
Begin to throw off a veil of disassociation.
This meditation is for the parts of you that doubt,
Doubt your voice,
Your right to be here.
You.
Peel back those layers now.
Where does this experience of doubt live in your body?
Mary Oliver says that attention is the beginning of devotion.
So attend.
Does this doubt live in your chest?
Wanting to cave in at the idea of being seen?
Does it hang out behind your forehead?
A litany of self disparaging words.
Does this doubt coat your tongue,
Causing you to stumble over your words,
Shrinking?
Doubt can feel like it warms into your very being,
Whittling away at your desires and vitality until you are chipped and small.
Can you extend curiosity to this experience of doubt?
If you are ready,
Ask,
Where do you come from?
And what job do you do for me?
Ask and listen.
If your hands aren't there already,
I invite you to cup your heart.
I found this paradox in my life of wanting to be seen and wanting to retreat.
Knowing all too well this crushing weight of doubt.
Is it any wonder that we might feel like this?
Blow into your hands or rub them together briskly,
Creating warmth.
Place a hand on your heart and the other on another part of you that craves this warmth.
Ask and listen,
Coaxing these tender parts of you.
I find that I often battle with myself,
But I'm learning to temper my force and instead tend to be the most powerful.
How old were you when you first learned to doubt yourself?
If and when familiar stories come up,
Acknowledge.
And if you are able to return to the feeling of doubt in your body,
Or if that's too much,
Settling back into the earth,
Feeling the heaviness of your body resting.
This doubt might shift in your body,
Or maybe distraction will come in.
No forcing,
Just tending to the present moment.
With enough practice,
Attention and devotion,
You will begin to have a taste of your own formless beauty.
The being that breathes deep.
The part of you that can never be harmed,
But can go into hiding.
Sometimes our hearts might respond and thrum with an endless longing.
When we start to ask and listen.
You might experience a ripple of goosebumps throughout your body or tears prickling in your eyes.
And sometimes there's only the familiar cloak of numbness,
Which itself is a feeling.
Mereness is a powerful protector,
A flag planted in the sand that tells you of your exquisite sensitivity.
Instead of forcing an outcome,
Just tend.
A good gardener is patient.
They understand the mysteries of the earth and know not to pit their will against the seasons of life.
So welcome the doubt,
The resistance,
The restlessness.
Say hello to your bruised and holy heart.
Hello to the hum of nature.
Hello to the remembering of wholeness and the inevitable forgetting.
The life that breathes through all of us.
Invite anything you no longer need to drop back into their score,
Knowing that we are part of the cycle of taking and releasing with each incredible breath.
Your doubt marks long buried treasures.
Notice where it lives in your body.
It's not easy to unearth this.
So trust.
Let any knowings from this practice be dipped in grace and swaddled in softness.
