Self-Acceptance Through Authenticity

In this session, we will learn what really stands between us and our best possible life. We will begin to explore the aspects of mind that we identify, prevent us from our own acceptance and authenticity. In gentle guided meditation we will make make a clear heart based agreement with ourselves to keep meeting and returning to ourselves with love, and, we will commit to moving repeatedly in kind awareness, as much as is needed. Let us begin to end the war against ourselves.

In this session, you will learn to access your body’s innate wisdom, and your own natural awareness. Building on from our investigation into the nature of object consciousness, through a simple awareness gathering practice, we will begin to explore how you can learn to see your own conditioned life habits and patterns. In doing so, discover that having an honest awareness of these patterns, is the key to allowing yourself a little space to begin meeting the life that shines within you.

In this session, we will take the first step into moving from general awareness to heart awareness, and coming to understand how to meet our underlying emotions. Emotions, in many ways, control us, so we will look at how you can begin to allow them to be what they are, and move on to processing them, understanding what they may be trying to tell us and, healing. As you move from the reactive mind, to simply resting at the place of your physical heart, you can start to meet your emotional centres with greater integrity, acceptance, and love. This is the real beginning of the path home to yourself.

We can often be caught by unconscious patterns, playing out under the surface of our minds. In this session, we learn that trying to ignore or push past these thoughts, can mean we lose much of our beautiful life. Trying to use the mind to change the unconscious, simply does not work, but we can begin to learn to say hello in a kind way. When we embrace our thoughts with kindness and care, we discover how we can open the doors to a new diplomacy and relationship with our unconscious mind. We can then embrace our emotions, a place where so much of our energy, freedom and joy, is held.

In this session, we will discuss the need to love and care for the wonderful vehicle that is our body. Moving into body awareness, we discover that all of our expression comes through the body. We will continue our practice of gently meeting our body with natural kind awareness, building on our sense of self acceptance and love. We will conclude this session by exploring a number of ways, that we can meet our bodies with greater kindness in our everyday life.

In this session we will learn about the three dimensions of the heart, how the physical heart leads to the emotional heart, and how the emotional heart leads into a place of peace, wholeness, personal intimacy, love and courage. We learn that these qualities are not something we need to create but, are blossoming within us. These first five sessions begin to give us a solid ground with which to start meeting and enjoying our lives, and amazingly, not once will we have been tough with ourselves, or forced ourselves to do anything that didn't serve our true purpose. As we renew our commitment to keep on returning to this positive state of mind, we are able to better work through challenging or stressful situations.

It is a common tendency for us to worry about our quirks, feeling like we might not belong, or that we are somehow different and need to hide away the very things that give us our spark and our step. In this session, we will celebrate our quirks, the wonderful things that make us us who we are. You will need a journal and a pen for this session for a short writing session, where you will celebrate yourself and your expressions of life. We will consider what small, realistic step you can make today to allow your joy in. In the words of my mother, we will learn how we must ‘keep a little something for ourselves,’ to keep a twinkle in our eyes.

In this session, we will look at the ancient practice of self-inquiry, one that has been used by the great teachers across the last millennia. This practice is used to help people experience real freedom in their lives. This is a very simple practice that, when done at the level of total awareness, can create so much space for us to really understand who we are and to feel real intimacy with our spirit and outer lives. You will enter new areas of self discovery and trust within yourself, allowing authenticity to shine through in your daily life and actions.

In this session, you will learn that you no longer need the mask you may have worn at certain times of insecurity or lack of esteem. You can begin to live from the still, yet dynamic, centre of your life in complete unison of mind, body, heart, and spirit. The movement towards authenticity, and the commitment that you make to yourself, to practice each day in awareness, will allow you to start feeling the solid ground under your feet. We will also deepen our practice of feeling the authentic ‘I Am’ within us so we can meet ourselves, other people, and life, with a greater meaning and wholeness.

In this final session, we will further explore how we can move in our daily lives, with real self-acceptance, proactivity, and meaning. This will come from a place of a very real sense of awareness and presence, developed from our very core. We will also gently review the key aspects of what we have covered in the previous nine sessions, and look towards how we move forward from here, with greater love for ourselves. This practice is based in the here and now, and will lead us into our daily lives with authenticity, strength, and grace, as the road rises to meet your (grounded) feet.