Meditation For Growth (Letting Go Of Perfection)

Join Levitate founder and teacher Ryan Nell for a guided mindfulness meditation about growth, letting go of the need for perfection, inspired by the Japanese zen philosophy of Kintsugi. Take this time and clear your thoughts.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Levitate.

I'm Ryan Nell,

The founder of Levitate and I'd like to spend a little bit of time today talking about expansion.

And we'll do a short guided meditation.

So if you thumb your way through almost any self-help book at some point you'll come across the words I am enough or you are enough.

And while the sentiment is beautiful and we absolutely don't tell ourselves that often enough,

Enough sounds like a little bit of a limit,

A static point.

But we know that life is about growth.

In fact whether we like it or not we're changing this very moment in visible and invisible ways,

Conscious and unconscious.

And as we expand in one direction we contract in another.

The point isn't to use mindfulness to attain a sort of zen-like stasis.

It's rather to work out how to be in the world,

How to on one hand be growing and looking forwards,

On the other having an eye to the past,

Our minds go there whether we want them to or not.

And finding some kind of balance somewhere in the middle between expansion and contraction,

Between pushing out new shoots and doing a bit of pruning,

Pruning away the deadwood.

So I want to invite you to start to see growth as a fundamental part of who you are and to just start to entertain the idea that like the Japanese concept of kintsugi that you might take a broken vessel and stick it back together,

Decorate the cracks,

The fault lines with golden lacquer,

Not to cover up the cracks but to celebrate them.

We want to start to allow for the idea that perhaps we are beautiful exactly because of our cracks,

That our flaws are what make us human,

That our imperfections are perhaps what make us perfect in a sense.

So I'd like to invite you to close your eyes and we'll take a couple of deep breaths together,

In through the nose and out through your mouth and again in and back out again.

Starting to allow your body to relax,

Your mind to settle,

Allowing for the fact that while we might be seeking perfection,

We might be searching for the wrong thing.

We don't have perfect control over our thoughts or over our bodies or over experiences that come our way and we want to let go of the idea that we need to,

That our lives need to be perfect and instead start to work on the radical idea of self acceptance,

Not just loving yourself in spite of the flaws but loving yourself your whole self,

Including and because of the flaws.

The late great Leonard Cohen sings in one of his songs,

There's a crack in everything,

That's how the light gets in.

What do you call your cracks or your fault lines?

What are the parts of you that you put so much energy into denying and suppressing?

And can you perhaps start to see them in a different way as an essential part of the picture,

Of what makes you beautiful,

What makes you human?

I want you to imagine that you're walking barefoot along a pebbly beach.

The beach stretches as far as the eye can see.

To the left of you is the ocean and the waves are lapping at the stones at the beach.

To the right of you is a forest,

Just creeping down to the edge of the beach.

And as you walk,

You can feel the pebbles beneath your feet rolling and shifting.

It feels good.

You can hear that pleasing crunch and ring of stones shifting against each other and against your feet.

What we'll tend to find in our lives,

In our pursuit of perfection,

Is that we'll get hung up on one story or another,

The story of who you are,

The story of who you think you're not,

The story of your strengths against the story of your weaknesses,

Successes,

Your disappointments.

Like the things that we hoard,

Perhaps longer than they're useful,

We pick up experiences and the stories we tell ourselves about them,

Like pebbles on the beach.

Some of them we pick up in our hands and turn over,

Examine for quite some time.

The longer we only have eyes for that one pebble,

The lesser aware we are of the beach and all the other stones on it,

And the landscape of which the beach just makes up a part.

Which stone have you been turning over in your fingers for too long?

Ask yourself,

What have I been holding onto too tightly?

It might help to think of the last time you felt frustrated or less than,

Upset or angry.

And to just allow yourself briefly to feel those emotions.

How do you feel in the moment?

How do you feel about it now?

Where can you feel it in your body?

Is it in your neck,

Your shoulders,

Your throat,

Your chest?

And is it hot,

Cool,

Heavy,

Or painful in one way or another?

Take a deep breath in with me to the count of 1,

2,

3,

4 and hold it for 4,

3,

2,

1 and breathe out for 4,

3,

2,

1.

For a bonus round you could hold it for a couple of beats.

Before breathing normally.

Notice if you feel any differently.

If you are still feeling the emotion I asked you to call to mind a moment ago.

Or if you are calmer,

More present.

We are practicing a pattern interrupt,

Interrupting the pattern that we are stuck in.

The same story of frustration or anger,

Disappointment.

And enabling ourselves to start to create a new story,

Create a new path.

Simply by bringing our attention to the present moment.

That thing,

That weight,

That stone you have been carrying around with you,

Has been weighing on your arm for some time.

Perhaps you hadn't even noticed it was there.

But now we are just going to put it down beside you on the beach.

And open our eyes once more to the wider landscape around us.

The stones,

The waves,

The forest.

We spoke about expansion earlier on.

Perhaps it can't happen without contraction,

Without letting something go.

You might notice that your hand is empty,

Free and able to pick up another stone.

One that perhaps pleases you more.

A new story.

Something you'd like a little more of in your life.

Whether it's peace or balance or joy or clarity or compassion or love.

Let's pick it up.

Examine the feeling.

The feeling of growing in a new direction.

Growing towards more of what we want.

Whilst being aware that though we might fling some undesirable stones into the sea and carefully place other intentions in a pile or a can.

We can't have one without the other.

Eventually the tides might bring some of those stones back and deposit them on the beach in the same way that the wind may re-sculpt the towers we build of stones we'd rather have.

Life is about balance.

Life is about accepting.

We can't have one without the other.

There weren't the happiest when we realised we're not just one stone or another.

We're not our thoughts.

We're not our physical sensations.

We're not even the experiences we have.

We are the space that it's all taking place in.

You're not limited to your points of consciousness just behind your forehead.

Rather everything around you is appearing in your consciousness.

Including your forehead,

Your body,

Sensations,

Anything your senses are picking up on.

You want to start to see them as stones on the beach.

We are the sky and everything it contains.

The ocean,

The forest,

The beach,

The air.

You can stop thinking of yourself as just a mind being carried around by a body and start thinking of yourself as something more expansive,

Something far bigger.

Then you'll start to grow your sense of self,

Your sense of wonder,

Your sense of connection.

Clarity and self acceptance come from realising that we're a collection of strengths,

Weaknesses,

Things we love about ourselves,

Things we don't.

But each one of them is an essential part of who we are.

And like I said earlier,

Self acceptance isn't about painting over the cracks,

It's about celebrating them.

Let's spend a few moments just connecting with our breath.

Noticing the subtle rise of the air,

Like waves lapping ashore.

Noticing a tiny gap between the inhale and the exhale,

Just where the air changes direction.

Noticing that you couldn't say how long that gap lasts for.

It's just a point of stillness between the expansion and contraction of your breath.

You can think of yourself as space between your breaths,

The stillness between your thoughts,

Your actions,

The consciousness in which all this activity takes place,

Or something larger,

The sky and everything beneath it.

In this way we start to understand that we don't need to control our thoughts or our breathing,

Or even the environment we happen to be sitting in.

But instead,

We want to realise that they are all just occurrences or waves within this still and peaceful space in which we exist.

The point isn't to block them out,

It's to accept them.

To accept that growth requires contraction.

To accept that an inhale is followed by an exhale.

To accept that life needs death,

The same way that light wouldn't have any meaning without darkness to put it against.

Or you might just think of yourself as a wanderer along a beach,

Picking up thoughts,

Sensations and stories and examining them,

Noticing their shape and smoothness and colour,

But then putting them down and coming back to the larger landscape.

Start to deepen your breathing,

To notice the weight of your body on the seat,

Any physical sensations you might be feeling,

Any thoughts,

Any emotions.

To remember somewhere between the future and the past is the present and it's the only place you'll ever be.

Take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth.

And again,

This time exhaling with a sigh and letting go of any residual physical tension you might be feeling as you start to blink open your eyes.

I'm wishing you a beautiful day wherever you are and I hope to see you here again soon.

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