Let's take a few moments to find a comfortable seated position.
See if you can sit a little bit straighter.
If you drop the shoulders a bit.
Imagine if there were a string pulling up top of your head,
Lengthening your upper neck and spine.
See if you can arrive immediately.
Tap into the feelings of your fingers.
Notice,
Tap into the sounds that you hear.
Tap into your visual field.
Do you see some of the red light through your eyelid?
Can you hear people talking in the distance or cars driving in the distance?
Whatever you might hear in the background of my recording,
And whatever you hear in the background of wherever you are,
Let those just be additional colors to the painting of your current state of consciousness.
Let those make the space in which you're exploring more vivid.
There are many meditation practices that focus on observing your mind as it is,
Without putting any effort into tampering with its contents.
This type of meditation,
However,
Will be to explore specific types of consciousness.
See if we can generate specific types of content.
For the exercise,
Try and identify something that you're a little bit insecure about.
Try not to choose something where there is a heavy charge,
Something that you might still be really working your way through.
Try and pick something that you feel like you have a bit more distance with,
Maybe something you felt more as a child than you do now.
See if you can tap into what it felt like when the insecurity was triggered.
See if you can regenerate the physiological reaction in your body.
Observe the heartbeat to see if it starts slowing down or speeding up.
Observe tensions in the back,
Knots in the stomach,
Sweat on the fingers.
It might sound masochistic,
But let's see if we can lean in to the discomfort that we remember feeling all too vividly and perhaps still feel today to some degree.
What does it feel like to be insecure?
What does it feel like to be inferior to who you wish you were?
And as you notice the changes in your body,
Changes in your thought patterns,
See if you can create a little bit of space.
See if you can think of the person feeling those things in their body as a different person.
See if you can imagine that that was your best friend or your spouse,
Or maybe one of your parents,
Your children.
Did you deserve to feel those things?
Would your loved one have deserved to feel those things?
Did you choose to feel those things?
Did your loved one choose to feel those things?
What would you say to them if they came to your door crying,
Broken,
Lost?
What would you feel if they looked at you in the eyes and told you that they were an inferior version of who they'd like to be,
An inferior version of who they wish they were?
How would you respond to that?
What message do you wish you'd be able to communicate?
Imagine letting them cry as you hold space.
You're not fixing anything for them.
You're just helping create a container that can hold what's already being experienced.
You're validating that the experience is real.
You're offering boundless compassion.
You begin to heal.
The word heal is a special one.
We can use it to mean that we ourselves begin to heal,
But we can also use it as an active verb to do onto another.
I can be a healer.
I can help my loved ones heal.
I can be the container that enables them to heal.
Now this next exercise might be a bit more challenging,
But let's just repeat it,
But now with ourselves as the protagonist.
What are you insecure about right now?
Where do you feel like you're falling the most short?
Where are you failing where you shouldn't be?
Where are you letting yourself and others down the most?
There never is a time where we don't feel like we're failing in some way.
We never get to experience freedom from that feeling.
That feeling is part of who we are as humans.
An unquenchable thirst to be better than we were,
To be further along than we were.
Are you choosing to feel those things?
Do you deserve to feel those things?
Can you respond to yourself as if you were the friend,
Child,
Parent of the being experiencing that insecurity?
Would you think the same thoughts about them that they're thinking about themselves?
Would you validate their inferiority?
Would you support that view of reality?
What does it feel like to take a step back from it all?
What does it feel like to give yourself a hug?
Give yourself a shoulder to cry on?
Give yourself a space to hold what's already there.
Now as a final practice,
Let's explore the charge we feel about that insecurity.
Let's bring it back to the surface.
Where is it sitting in the body?
How does it feel in the body?
Has it changed since the beginning of the practice?
Can you bear it?
Notice your ability to hold what we're too afraid to hold.
The fear of our inability to hold our painful emotions is a lot worse than the painful emotion itself.
This is always a practice you can do to explore how you respond to yourself,
To justify giving yourself the respect,
Love,
And space that you effortlessly give to your loved ones.
This helps you see how easy that practice could be.
Thank you so much for sharing your practice with me.
Have a wonderful day.
