Finding & Appreciating Your Own Worthiness (With Music)

In this practice with subtle background piano music, we find an appreciation for our own worthiness, simply for being. We find our worth not in what we do or achieve, but in that we exist. Along the way, we practice 'being', appreciating how we lean into experiences we like and brace against those we may not like, meeting it all within open awareness and with an attitude of 'it is just like this'. Poetry by Jan Richardson, 'How the Light Comes'.

Transcript

Hi,

I am David.

In this practice we will sit together with the simple fact that we exist,

Appreciating that aspect of ourselves we so easily miss.

We so easily get caught up in the idea that our value is born from what we do and what we achieve,

But here,

Now,

Can we consider that our self-worth can simply come from merely being alive?

Can we feel worthiness in this world for just being?

Here we drop all the doing and appreciate the value of being.

Beginning we find a comfortable position that is relaxed and alert.

We sit together as we practice falling awake.

With each new breath we are invited to be present and awake in our lives,

To bring an ancient light to our experience.

What more do we need?

Keeping your eyes open or closed,

Whatever is natural.

Gently reflect what is your motivation,

Bringing to mind something that feels personal to you.

Possibly we practice to appreciate and value our own worth,

And in doing this we can appreciate the worth of the lives of others too.

Slowly,

Allowing a sense of deepening breath to emerge and bubble up from deeper within your body.

Awareness of inhalation,

Effortless exhalation,

Releasing more and more tension each time you breathe out.

As we experience each breath we shift more and more from effort to effortlessness,

Practicing with a delicate balance of grace and surrender.

We invite ourselves to gradually shift our experience from doing to being.

As we fall into each breath,

Notice too if there is a subtle desire to control.

In this moment we seek to change nothing.

In this moment we allow everything to change.

That insight in how we live our lives,

Does this reveal to you?

Noticing now how the body naturally settles and expands when you do this.

A subtle opening and unfurling,

A releasing,

Especially when you pay close attention to your surrendered exhale.

What wisdom is held here?

With each breath,

Let the doing impulse settle on its own.

Nothing to do here.

This moment is perfectly fine,

Just as it is.

It doesn't matter what is lost,

What is hidden,

What is forgotten,

What is in pain or peril.

Just simply appreciate this moment.

You are perfect as you are,

Worthy as you are,

Just as you are.

In this world just as it is.

Here with this practice we will first sit with this letting go of doing and appreciate our natural experience and worthiness that arises from just being.

When ready,

Simply reflect how we all share,

Animals too,

The same desire to be happy and free from hardship and suffering.

Accessing this quality of being,

On each out breath there is nothing but this present moment.

Nothing to be.

Nowhere to go.

Your true value in this world is to be here,

With this experience of being.

Allow yourself to appreciate this,

To recognise and marvel at the significance of this,

As you let yourself simply be.

Notice the urge to do,

To think,

To fix,

To resolve,

To plan.

Let these impulses simply shimmer and ripple through you without following them,

Without adding to their stories.

Balls of light reflected on an ocean.

Can we sense the desire to be content and the need to avoid pain and difficulty?

You might feel this right now in some way.

Discomfort in the body,

Some form of resistance,

Or an ease and a subtle wish for this experience to continue.

Explore how the desire to be free from suffering lays out here in this moment.

I am curious for you,

Where do you lean into your experience,

Or brace against it?

You might reflect for a little while how this desire appears in other areas of your life.

Even right here,

And the motivation to practice,

Carrying with it an unknown desire to be happy.

We don't always act wholesomely in life.

We don't always say and do the right things even when we intend to.

Can we acknowledge,

Even in these moments,

The deepest desire is for our own happiness,

Or to avoid suffering and peril?

Here,

Our task is simply to notice these impulses are always present and woven into experience.

Can you reflect too?

If there are other areas of your life you can see these desires.

Thinking over time you may have acted unskilfully,

Unwholesomely.

Maybe there is something specific you can recall,

Or something you regretted.

But can you see a deeper bedrock of motivation at the root of what you do?

To seek happiness or a positive outcome,

Or avoid a difficulty?

Returning to just being.

Just being.

Let go of reflection.

Let go of effort.

And be.

Once again appreciate who you are in this moment.

That you are.

Appreciate your simple breathing presence here on this spinning planet.

Letting go fully and relaxing on each exhale.

Eventually,

Inevitably,

Our mind will move away into destruction.

Celebrate the moment you notice.

Appreciate that you notice.

Sense gratitude for having a mind that knows moving away into avenues of destruction does not serve you.

Reflect once more on the wholesome desire to be happy and free from suffering.

Notice these core desires that motivate you,

That inform what you do and say.

You can think of what you are doing right now,

Meditating,

Or think of something else and how at the root of this experience is the desire to be happy or free from peril.

Reflecting too on the experience of the previous minutes and hours in this day that you have carried with you into this practice.

What interactions have you had?

How have you spent your time this day?

I am curious if you can specifically acknowledge the thinking and feeling woven into this day.

Can you sense your desire to move towards happiness and away from suffering in these situations?

What about the next minutes that turn into hours that will eventually form the day yet to be for you?

What is going to happen?

What experiences are in front of you?

Who will you see?

What will you be doing?

How will the desire to be happy and free from suffering become threaded through these moments?

Whenever the mind moves away,

Gently pivot back to the reflection or even try letting go of the reflection if that feels right and simply rest the mind with whatever is here and open.

Whenever you need,

Just rest back and openly explore the feelings and senses within your body right now.

Notice with a sense of openness and acceptance to what is here,

No right or wrong,

Just aware of whatever is here for you now.

Happiness or difficulty?

Feel the composure of simply saying to yourself,

It is like this.

There is so much doing in our lives that we think defines our worth.

Yet in the midst of it all,

We can sit.

See if you can appreciate simply being here now.

Each breath a reminder of change.

Each breath an invitation to fall deeper into your body.

With each breath we fall open to experience the world around us.

With each breath,

Can we take it all in with appreciation?

Continue with your own experience of this practice.

Simply being present or sensing your innate worthiness for existing.

Or feeling how our moments are threaded like pearls,

Held together with a desire to be happy or to avoid pain.

Trust your intuition in this practice and remember to,

From time to time pause,

Rest back and allow your experience to fall open with awareness to what is here in your experience.

Many times your mind will move away.

When you notice that,

Appreciate and acknowledge with gratitude your mind knows being here now is important to you.

And just pick up wherever you were before.

It is really helpful occasionally to let go and let the mind rest.

Drop any doing.

No concentration or focus.

Just let the mind be.

These moments of rest and practice we give to ourselves allows the mind to absorb and recognise the subtlety of our unfolding experience.

Work with any part of this practice or even a different relationship within your life.

Be patient.

Be slow.

There are no right or wrong experiences.

We are just exploring our experience.

Allow your eyes to open if they have been closed.

If you wish bring one hand or both in front of your heart.

Feeling the tender radiance of warmth from your hands flowing out and into your chest.

Appreciate who you are and what you have right now.

Celebrating who we are,

Not what we do or accomplish helps us see ourselves and others differently.

Noticing the little things.

Noticing the good.

Even here you have taken this period of time in your life to do something meaningful.

Try not to miss the collateral beauty held within the seemingly most mundane of moments.

The simple smile from another.

The warmth of sunshine on your skin.

These subtle unseen acts of kindness that flow out effortlessly for many.

The purr of your cat.

The love of your dog.

A hand held.

The kind word that shines out.

The patience carried in silence.

The recognition freely given from another through the eye in the flash of a moment as you pass on the street.

Use the skill of awareness to notice.

Notice.

And notice more.

And more.

We are worthy for no other reason than that we exist.

That is enough.

Before this practice finishes with you,

Allow the following words written by Jan Richardson in How the Light Comes to move through you and fall deeper within you.

I cannot tell you how the light comes.

What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining.

That it travels across astonishing expanse to reach us.

That it loves searching out what is hidden.

What is lost.

What is forgotten or in peril or in pain.

That it has a fondness for the body.

For finding its way towards flesh.

For tracing the edges of form.

For shining forth through the eye.

The hand.

The heart.

I cannot tell you how the light comes.

That it does.

That it will.

That it works its way into the deepest dark that unfolds you.

Though it may seem long ages incoming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee.

And so may we this day turn ourselves toward it.

May we lift our faces to let it find us.

May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes.

May we open and open more and open still to the blessed light that comes.

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Reviews

This is a luscious meditation with great messages for the heart done at a great pace. Highly recommend

Thanks so much for this meditation and all others. 🙏🏻 They are all very helpful. The music ones especially work better for me.