Welcome to today's guided meditation practice.
I invite you to take your meditation seat,
To remove any distractions for the next 10 minutes or so,
And to gently close your eyes down if that feels safe to do so.
If not,
Take a gentle downward gaze.
As you sit in preparation for meditation,
Take a few moments and a few breaths to just arrive in the body,
Noticing the state of the body in this present moment,
And listening out for any cues of adjustment that it may need.
Perhaps there is a calling to lengthen the spine and to sit up a little straighter.
Maybe it feels good to tuck the chin in towards the chest and elongate the back of the neck.
Perhaps your shoulders would like to be rolled back and down,
Just to release some tension sitting on the top of your shoulders.
Whatever the body is asking of you,
Take a few moments now to just adjust,
To lengthen,
And to find a seated pose that feels both comfortable as well as open.
Let's take a few moments to connect to our breath,
Simply observing the nature of the inhale and the exhale as the air flows in and out of the lung.
Start to deepen the breath slightly,
Elongating the length of the inhale,
Breathing nice and slowly,
And exhaling nice and slowly to match the length of the inhale.
Just observe the way it feels to breathe,
From the gentle rise and fall of the chest and the belly.
Today's guided meditation practice is focused on the topic of self-forgiveness.
When we cannot forgive ourselves,
When we hold on to grudges and criticisms and self-judgment,
We fail to honor our humanness.
And yet so many of us do this in a bid or an attempt to not make the same mistake twice,
To not put ourselves in situations where we may feel embarrassed or ashamed or left out.
But making mistakes and slipping up along the way is a part of what it means to be human,
And it's also what it means in order for us to grow and to evolve.
If we do not make mistakes,
We have nothing to learn from.
The invitation here is to notice in your body or notice in your mind,
In your thoughts,
If you hold self-judgment,
If you hold self-criticism,
If you berate yourself,
If you hold self-judgment,
If you hold self-criticism,
If you hold self-judgment,
If you hold self-criticism,
If you berate or belittle yourself for something you did or did not do in the past,
If you repeat a story or a memory and then shame yourself for your actions at the time.
As you observe this part of you,
Try to do so without judgment but rather just with the acknowledgement that it exists.
Acknowledging that there is a part of you that criticizes and judges harshly and that is unwilling to forgive.
What does that feel like in your body?
Perhaps you notice a tightness or a tension,
Maybe even a blockage or a lump somewhere in your body.
Perhaps you notice the feeling of shame,
Embarrassments that resides within you when there is the part of you that judges and criticizes,
The part of you that wants to run away and hide and that feels scared to ever show up again.
Notice the impact that your inner critic or your inner self has on you.
Your inner judge has on this part of you that made a mistake.
Observe these parts in action and ask yourself,
How does this serve me?
How does it serve me to not forgive?
How does it help me or hinder me?
If my best friend or loved one made a similar mistake,
Would I treat them in the same way?
Would I berate them or criticize them or remind them often of their mistakes or alternatively,
Would I tell them that it's normal,
That all humans make mistakes sometimes,
That we all fumble through life and that it's more so about how we pick ourselves up and how we learn which matters the most?
What would it mean to me and how would it feel in my body to forgive myself for what I did not know then?
What would it feel like for me to acknowledge the fact that my past self was not equipped with the tools and the knowledge that my current self is?
Can I accept that my future self will need to forgive my current self too because I am human,
Because it is normal to fumble,
To make mistakes.
Can I acknowledge that all of us are perfectly imperfect in this way?
Bring your attention back to the part of you that criticizes and that judges and ask her if she can or he can let it go.
Can this part of you lean more into compassion and compassion?
Rather than criticism,
Can they tell the shamed part of you that it's okay?
I forgive you and I understand the consequences and the events that led up to that situation where the mistake or the event happened.
I acknowledge your humanness.
And together let's learn and grow and heal from the mistakes that we've made.
Notice in your body what happens when you offer these words to self.
Can you take a big inhale and a long exhale of forgiveness?
Take a big inhale and on the exhale say to yourself,
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for judging you.
I'm sorry for criticizing you and I'm sorry for shaming you.
I will endeavor to try my best to recognize our humanness when we fumble and fall and to learn together from our mistakes as we move through our lives together.
Bring your hands to your heart in honor of your internal love and compassion and take a final breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.
It's okay to be human.
Your meditation practice is now complete.
Take as long as you need to to stay with the feeling of forgiveness,
To stay with the feeling of release and relief in the body and to simply just be in your meditation practice.
Thank you for practicing with me.
