This is a meditation for cultivating your sense of your innate goodness.
This is a powerful practice for healing the love wound that sense that we are unlovable.
It is essential that we live life with a sense of our innate goodness in order to love ourselves and others fully and authentically.
So to begin,
Please come to sit in a comfortable,
Alert,
Relaxed way.
Take some moments to relax any areas of obvious tension in your body.
Now,
Deepen your presence as you rest with the movement of the breath or with other sensations in your body as your primary anchor.
For most of us,
That will be the breath.
As the mind continues to think,
Gently and firmly return the attention back to your primary anchor over and over again.
Now,
Let yourself picture in your mind someone you care about,
Someone who is easy to love.
Bring the image and sense of this person close in so you can visualize how they look at you when they're being affectionate.
If you can,
Imagine a sparkle in their eyes as they are being happy or excited since their aliveness.
Notice the qualities of this person that you most deeply appreciate.
What is their way of showing you love?
Is it their brightness,
Their playfulness?
As you sense these expressions of their innate goodness,
Imagine sharing your appreciation of what you see with them and how they would feel in receiving this expression of your love and appreciation of them.
Now,
Imagine that they're gazing back at you,
Seeing the qualities of goodness that they most love about you.
What are they seeing?
Note what qualities of your original innate goodness that you most appreciate.
Perhaps it's your honesty.
It might be your love of the natural world.
Maybe your humor,
Your generosity,
Your kindness.
If it's difficult to find qualities you appreciate in yourself,
You might picture your happiest moments as a child and sense your original innocence back then.
Just as the eyes of a trusted dear one can see your goodness,
Put your hand on your heart and hold your best self with deep appreciation and love.
Now,
Picture a few other loved ones one at a time and tune into their goodness.
You might have tuned into qualities you appreciate in their current selves.
Or if the person brings up more complex feelings,
Imagine him or her as a child,
Happy and at ease.
With each person,
Be a mirror of goodness.
Imagine sharing your appreciation of their goodness with them and how they would feel in receiving this expression of your love and appreciation.
Now,
Imagine moving mindfully through your day with the intent to pause and see and honor the secret goodness of all those you meet.
To move through the world like this is a way of living love.
It's one of the greatest gifts we can offer to one another.
Now,
For the final part of this meditation,
Let's return to the core central practice of mindfulness and kind attention.
Sensing your breath or body sensations in the foreground,
Allowing any feelings or thoughts to be received with loving awareness.
As you end this meditation and get up to go on throughout your day,
See if you can maintain a sense of this innate original goodness,
What I call goodness beyond good and bad,
A goodness which is a sacredness at the core of you and of all other living beings.
Beyond our conditioning,
Beyond our fear,
Our pain,
Our trauma,
Beyond all of the relative good and bad,
See if you can move with a sense of your innate absolute goodness and the innate absolute goodness of everyone else.
