RAIN Meditation

RAIN is a powerful form of meditative self-inquiry. The RAIN meditation typically uses emotional challenges as a starting point to discover subconscious knots that keep us stuck. This meditation guides you through the stages of RAIN in a manner designed to gradually cultivate deeper and deeper subconscious awareness. Note that this version of RAIN has unique emphases compared to versions offered by other teachers.

Transcript

So I'll invite you to begin by bringing to mind some challenging situation in your life.

Now on a scale of one to ten,

With ten being the most challenging,

For the purposes of our practice here in this session,

It's probably wisest to pick something between a three and a seven on the activation level,

If you can.

Obviously if you can't find something within that range and you have to work with something that's even stronger,

That's okay.

Just know that the more challenging it is,

The more time you'll need to spend in allowing,

And there'll be less capacity for investigation during the short time that we have now.

This could be a situation that has happened in the past where you feel remorse about it or challenge around it,

Could be something that's alive for you right now.

It might be something in the future that maybe you're nervous about.

Maybe it's a habit that you have a hard time changing.

Once you have some situation in mind,

I'll invite you to see it as clearly as you can in your mind's eye.

If it's an ongoing situation,

Picking a representative moment and then noticing where you are,

Seeing the environment as clearly as you can.

If you can't see experience,

Then just having a felt sense of what it's like to be there.

You might notice who else or what else is there.

What's being said or done.

You might have a sense of the arc of the story.

There's a before.

There's everything that's led up to this moment.

And there's an after.

Everything you're concerned about in the future.

And as you hold this sense of this entire story,

Taking a few moments just to sense into the reactivity that's here.

Noticing tension or other sensations in the body.

Noticing any emotion of fear or hurt or anger in some flavor.

Noticing the mind state.

And that's really the R of RAIN.

That's how we know that there's something to be looked at here.

And now imagining that you have a workbench in your mind and you can take this entire story and place it down on the workbench.

It's going to remain as a reference,

But the primary attention will be placed elsewhere.

Now we'll begin to move into the allowing phase.

So I'll invite you to move your attention out of your mind and into your body.

You might,

For instance,

Notice sensation of emotion in your body.

In particular,

You might notice sensations in the core of your torso,

The belly or the solar plexus or the chest or the throat.

There might be tightness or tingling or heat or pressure or some other form of sensation.

To whatever degree you might notice sensation of emotion in the body,

You might imagine you can direct your breathing through that sensation.

As we talked about yesterday,

This whole sense that you might imagine the sensations being like the curtain in a window and as you breathe out the curtain blows out,

As you breathe in the curtain blows in.

The sensations might even show up in the mind,

Not as thought but as a kind of tightness,

So you might even imagine breathing through the mind.

Now it's possible you might not notice any sensation of emotion in the body.

That is not an uncommon situation,

So if that's the case for you,

You just might simply imagine directing your breath through the whole front of your torso,

Back and forth.

The invitation here is that as we breathe through the sensations of emotion,

That the sense of reactivity starts to calm down a little bit.

Now there's a caveat here.

This practice of breathing through sensations of emotion,

Inviting and softening,

Can be very useful for emotions such as fear,

Hurt or sadness,

And low-level anger like irritation or frustration.

But if there is a kind of righteous anger,

That anger does not want to be calmed down,

Rather it wants to express.

And so if that's what's showing up for you,

Then rather than breathing through the sensations of emotion,

I'll invite you to let the righteous anger take the form of an image.

Just whatever your inner guidance brings up,

Doesn't have to be the perfect image,

Whatever shows up.

And then in your own mind,

Letting that image express in whatever way it wants to,

Giving it full rein,

Trusting that no one will be hurt.

Let it express and express and express until at some point it'll run out of steam.

And when that occurs,

Then rejoining us in whatever part of the meditation group so that you can see behind the anchor.

Now for those of you who are breathing through sensations of emotion,

You might also check if there's any muscular armoring,

Tightness in the neck and shoulders,

Jaw,

Chest,

Hands,

Maybe even the legs.

There's a sense that I'm protecting myself from something.

But if you realize in this moment right now,

Sitting where you are,

There's nothing that's really threatening you.

And so inviting that armor to stand down to whatever degree it will naturally do.

As you invite the armoring to stand down,

You'll notice that there's more room in the body for breath.

You might also bring yourself some kindness,

Some compassion for whatever you're experiencing.

One way to do that is with a gesture.

Again,

You might place that open hand over the chest,

Let the warmth of that hand sink in.

You might put both hands over your chest or one over your chest and one over your belly.

You might imagine the hands of a dear friend resting on your shoulders.

The purpose here of course is to bring the level of activation down.

So if you find that one of these gestures helps to bring the level of activation down and gauge,

It doesn't simply let it go.

It also might be helpful to offer yourself some phrases,

Kindness and compassion.

I'm going to offer a few for you to try on.

Again,

If they're helpful,

If they bring the activation level down,

Use them.

If they don't,

Let them go.

The first is to remind yourself,

I'm only human.

I'm doing the best I can.

You might remind yourself that I'm learning.

There's no manual for how to do life.

I learn by experiences.

In each experience I learn more.

I'm growing.

You might remind yourself,

Many other people experience the same thing.

I'm not alone.

And to the degree this might make sense,

And therefore whatever is happening isn't inherently personal.

Or you might tell yourself,

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry this is happening,

And I love you.

So hopefully by now,

With whatever situation you're working with,

The activation level is somewhere down around a three.

If it's not,

If it's still pretty high,

Five,

Six or more,

I'll invite you to just simply stay with these practices of allowing.

You can ignore everything else I'm going to say in the meditation.

What's most important is that you be with your experience,

And that you bring great kindness to whatever's happening for you.

Breathing through sensations of emotion,

Softening the armory,

Holding yourself with compassion.

But if the activation level is somewhere around a three or so,

Then we'll move into the investigation phase.

We'll begin by just simply asking the question,

What is it that I'm feeling?

What's the predominant emotion?

Seeing if you can name that as specifically as you can.

Typically it's one of four emotions,

Fear,

Sadness,

Anger,

Or well-being.

And some flavor of one of those emotions,

Maybe a combination.

What am I feeling?

We don't judge the emotion,

We simply let it be there.

And then checking to see if there's a subliminal emotion,

An underlying emotion.

One that maybe we don't let ourselves acknowledge quite so much.

Often behind anger,

For instance,

We really pay attention,

We'll notice fear.

Often behind fear,

We really pay attention,

We'll find hurt or sadness.

Sometimes behind hurt or sadness is anger.

So checking to see is there anything else here underlying the primary or obvious emotion?

And if there is,

I'll invite you to imagine that you can direct your breathing through the sensations of this underlying emotion.

Not to soften it,

But rather to bring it more alive so that it becomes part of the investigation.

Now I'll invite you to contemplate this question,

What am I grasping for?

Now this can take different forms.

I might be grasping for something in the outside world to be a certain way for me to be okay.

Or I might be grasping for a state of being like security or control or feeling loved.

Or I might be grasping for an identity.

I'm a good parent,

I'm a hard worker,

I'm a kind person,

Something like that.

Taking a few moments and just contemplating,

Letting arise what is it that I'm grasping for in this experience?

When you notice whatever you might be grasping for,

Sense that you can really grasp tightly.

Notice what that's like,

How does that feel in the body when you really try to make things be a certain way?

Just getting a feel for that.

And then sensing for yourself,

How much can I let go of the grip and still feel reasonably safe?

To whatever degree we can let go of holding on to things being just so,

There's more freedom in the mind and the body.

And yet,

If we let go too much,

Too fast,

We find ourselves scared and we contract back again.

So we're looking for the sweet spot,

We're looking for the place where I let go as much as I can and maybe I feel a little anxious,

But nothing I can't handle.

And when I can sense letting go that much,

Resting there,

Savoring any extra space in the mind and body and breathing through the sensations of whatever anxiety might be here so that we get used to what it's like to be in this space,

In this place,

With this degree of freedom.

And as we get used to this amount of letting go of grasping,

Asking yourself,

What would I have to tolerate in my life in order to stay with this degree of freedom?

What would I have to let be okay?

And now we'll move a little deeper into the experience.

We'll invite you to ask yourself,

What is it that I'm believing that keeps me stuck in situations like this one?

What is it that gets me caught again and again?

What beliefs am I holding?

Now,

It may be beliefs about the outside world.

Chances are most fundamentally it's beliefs about yourself.

Typically some belief that I'm not safe or I'm not worthy.

Taking a few moments now to just allow the variety of beliefs that might be here to rise up into your consciousness.

And now choosing one.

One of these beliefs that seems the most potent.

And first,

Noticing what it's like when you really believe it.

When I really believe this belief,

How does this show up in my body?

How does this show up in my mind?

How does this show up in my behavior?

What's the effect of really believing this belief?

And then contrasting that with what would I be like if I didn't have this belief?

If this belief were magically gone or altered somehow,

What would my experience be then in body,

In mind,

In behavior?

What would be different?

And then beginning to check and see are there any cracks in this belief?

Anything in my experience that tells me that this belief may not be quite so true as I've been making it out to be.

Now sometimes it's obvious.

Sometimes we just know,

Of course,

This belief isn't really true.

I've just been holding it for a long time.

Sometimes our beliefs seem really true.

It becomes important to remember in those moments that we have something called a confirmation bias,

Which says that if we already believe something,

Then we look into the world and all we see are things that confirm the belief.

It becomes important then to look at the cracks.

Anything in our experience that maybe says this might not be quite so true and focus there for a while because as we focus,

Those cracks start to grow and we start to see a little bit outside of the belief.

We start to see more of reality than just through the filter of this belief.

One way we can begin to locate cracks in the belief is to trace back how old this belief is.

Most of our negative core beliefs trace back really far.

Most of our negative core beliefs were downloaded into us like programming when we were really young,

Before we had any virus protection by people who didn't know any better.

They were fumbling around just like the rest of us.

They acted like they knew better,

But they didn't.

That makes these beliefs really familiar,

But it doesn't make them true.

Sometimes simply by noticing that I can have a witness of my belief begins to loosen it,

Begins to loosen the hold that it has.

We may need to come back again and again to really look at these beliefs more fully before they'll fully start to fall apart or be replaced,

But knowing that the simple fact that I can witness the belief begins to start to loosen it up.

And now we'll scaffold down a little bit further.

I'll invite you to consider what's the worst part of this whole experience.

When it gets right down to it,

What's the worst part?

What's the part that hurts the most or brings the most fear?

And as soon as you become aware of the worst part,

Whatever that happens to be,

Bring your attention once again out of the mind and into the body,

Finding the sensations of the worst part and bringing it deep tenderness or care.

Once again,

You might offer yourself a gesture of care for that worst part.

As you hold yourself in deep kindness and nurturance for what's the worst part of your experience,

You might start to notice a couple of things occurring.

The first is very often when I hold myself in this way,

The sensations of the hurt or the fear don't stay the same.

They shift,

They change,

They become something else.

We also might notice that the muscular armoring that we had early on in the experience was there to protect myself from feeling this,

This worst part.

But here I am.

I'm feeling it.

The armoring isn't needed anymore.

You may find that that armoring has calmed down all on its own.

You also might notice that the experience that you were so afraid of isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.

I can tolerate it.

I can be with it.

It's okay.

And from this place,

We have access to a deeper wisdom,

A deeper guidance.

That guidance knows what's needed here.

What does this place of woundedness or fear,

What does it need?

What is it you can offer yourself?

I'm taking a few minutes now just to listen to that inner guidance.

It'll take the next five minutes or so,

And I'll invite you to engage in one of several ways.

One possibility is that there's deeper inquiry,

Investigation that your inner guidance is telling you you might engage in.

Maybe there's working with imagery or memory or something else.

And for some of you,

It may simply be resting here,

Touching this place that's the hardest to be with,

Holding it with kindness,

Offering it wisdom,

And bringing yourself great nurturing.

We'll be in silence now for the next five minutes or so.

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Reviews

Powerful

💚What a wonderful in depth RAIN meditation. Thank you. 🙏

The most tender all encompassing RAIN meditation i have practiced.

Thank you for this designer abd restorative RAIN

This is a beautifully curated practice that one can come home to over and over again.