Welcome to day four of Finding Belonging Through Self-Acceptance,
A challenge here on Insight Timer designed to help you find your place in the world.
Let's jump into today's session.
Hello and welcome to Find Belonging Through Self-Acceptance,
A seven-day challenge here on Insight Timer designed to help you find your place in the world by cultivating a deeper sense of self-acceptance and self-love.
My name is Tara Brock and in today's session I'll be talking about befriending difficult emotions using the RAIN meditation.
When I was in college a woman I was hiking with shared how she was becoming her own best friend and that set me spinning.
It set me thinking about how I was actually the furthest thing from that,
That I was my harshest critic and perpetually at war with myself for overeating,
For how heavy I was,
For failed relationships,
For being anxious,
Depressed – the list went on.
So of course rejecting myself created distance from others because when we're down on ourself we feel cut off from our world.
So consciously facing my own feelings of unworthiness – what I've come to call the trance of unworthiness – was the beginning of waking up.
My longing to be kinder to myself was the beginning of kindness.
And it led me to meditation practices that have brought me great healing and happiness,
A true sense of belonging to life.
Both Western and Buddhist psychology focus on two elements in healing difficult emotions.
And that's whether we struggle with self-aversion or fear or loneliness,
Depression.
The first is that we bring the emotion into conscious awareness that we're seeing what's happening,
That we're feeling directly what's here.
And the second is that we relate with the quality of gentleness,
Of care.
And together these elements create a relationship with our inner experience – they are really the ground of intimacy and belonging to our inner life and to all of life.
There is a wonderful myth from the Buddhist tradition that illustrates how we can befriend emotions in this way.
And in this myth the shadow god Mara depicts our difficult emotions – fear,
Hatred,
Greed,
Doubt,
Anger,
Shame.
And in this myth the Buddha would be teaching,
Be teaching a crowd in a field somewhere and his loyal attendant Ananda would see Mara lurking around the outskirts of the gathering.
And Ananda would get distressed and tell the Buddha,
Oh no,
Look,
Mara is here.
And the Buddha would calmly walk right up to Mara and with a really gentle voice he'd say,
I see you Mara,
Come,
Let's have tea.
So these are the two elements in befriending emotions.
I see you Mara which is recognizing what's going on,
It's a mindful awareness,
You know,
This emotion is here,
It's the weather of the moment,
Okay,
It's cold,
It's cloudy,
It's stormy – that's the first element.
The second is let's have tea.
And that's the willingness to be with and get to know and bring care to whatever is arising.
Many of you are familiar with the adage,
What you resist persists.
It's not only that,
It's also that what we resist when we resist difficult emotions,
That same resistance cuts us off from love,
From joy,
From true belonging to life.
So having tea with Mara is radical acceptance and the gift is genuine openness and connection.
The waves of emotion are free to pass through as they naturally will and we remember the truth of who we are,
That we are the ocean that includes all the waves but we are not possessed or identified by the waves.
And I've seen this in my own life from getting caught in the waves of unworthiness to sensing the goodness of the whole of the ocean,
Belonging to the ocean,
To other humans and to non-human animals in this living world,
Having room for the passing waves.
So let's explore together these two qualities of befriending emotions – mindfulness,
I see you Mara,
And compassion,
Come,
Let's have tea.
We're going to be doing this with the RAIN meditation.
It's the acronym.
RAIN is Recognize,
Allow,
Investigate,
Nurture.
And these four steps arouse the qualities of mindfulness and compassion.
So begin by inviting yourself into presence.
And you might come into stillness and take a few full breaths as you let the attention turn inward.
Nice long deep breaths.
And with the out-breath sense a relaxing outward,
A letting go.
As your breath resumes in its natural rhythm you might scan your body and just ask yourself what wants to let go right now.
And even more let there be a natural relaxing and releasing.
Now scanning your life bring to mind a situation that brings up reactivity,
Some difficult emotion,
Maybe anger or fear,
Self-judgment,
Distress.
Not trauma – that won't serve you in a short meditation – but something that just brings up emotional pain in some way and it might be to do with a relationship,
Something at work,
Your finances,
An unhealthy habit.
Let yourself bring to mind a particular experience recently where that emotion was triggered and take some moments to enter into the experience reminding yourself of the scene that you're in,
Visualizing it.
If there was another person involved seeing that person's face and hearing the words they spoke.
And as you enter that situation just sense what the worst part of it is for you,
What are you most afraid of or upset by.
And it's in these moments of reactivity that we begin with RAIN,
With the R which is recognize what's happening.
So sense what feeling is most predominant.
Is it fear?
Is it anger?
Hurt?
To recognize you might mentally name it with a silent whisper or you can whisper out loud.
Once you've recognized you move to allow the A of RAIN,
Allowing it to just be there and it can help to sense just like waves in an ocean that this belongs.
And you might even say,
This belongs.
Or yes.
Or let be.
Allowing life to be just as it is.
And in this way you're able to encounter Mara,
The difficult emotion,
And say,
I see you,
Mara.
You're allowing Mara to be there,
Recognizing and letting be.
You begin to have tea with Mara with the I of RAIN which is investigate just as we would with a friend,
We investigate by finding out more what is this like.
And you bring a natural interest,
Curiosity – this is a super power in your life – to investigating the emotion.
And it helps to sense what's the worst part about this,
What am I afraid of,
Upset about.
And as you investigate you might ask yourself,
What am I believing when this is going on?
What am I believing is going to go wrong?
What am I believing about myself or about another?
And it helps you get closer into the experience.
And with whatever you're believing you might sense when you're believing this what's the feeling in the body.
The most important part in having tea with Mara and investigating is to feel the experience directly in your body.
Where is it?
Feel your throat,
Your chest,
Your belly.
It helps you to get in touch with your body.
If you sense the feeling being expressed in your face,
Make the facial expression of the feeling and even let your body's posture take on the shape and the positioning of the feeling.
And then go right to where you feel it most inside.
And you might put your hand gently on your heart as you do this.
It's a way of keeping your attention in your body.
It's a gentle way to keep intimate with what's going on inside you.
And you might continue to investigate by asking the most vulnerable part in you right now,
The very core of that feeling,
How do you want me to be with you?
What do you most need?
Does this part want understanding,
Acceptance,
Company,
Compassion,
Love,
Forgiveness?
After investigating we move to nurture which is really bringing the care to these feelings.
And you might let yourself attend from your most awake and wise heart and sense what this vulnerable place in you most needs,
How it wants you to be with it,
What kind of comfort or kindness it needs.
And you might again feel the hand on the heart and make that touch very tender and offer some message of care from your high self,
Your most awake and wise heart.
It might be simply,
You're okay.
You're enough.
Or maybe trust yourself,
Trust your goodness.
Or maybe the message is I'm here and I'm not leaving.
Or if it's fear,
Thank you for trying to protect me.
I'm okay right now.
Offering care as you would to a dear friend.
And if it's hard to sense you're offering it to yourself you might imagine and call on the presence of someone you know that loves you.
It could be a person who's alive or not alive.
It could be a deity or spiritual figure,
Your dog,
Part of the natural world,
Some formless loving energy.
Just imagine and feel that washing through you,
Bringing that care through the hand into the most vulnerable part of you in these last few moments.
You might sense you're the holder and the helper,
That you're that wise loving energy that's offering care inward and you're also feeling how the vulnerable part of you can be held,
Can receive that loving.
So it's washing through your entire being after these steps of reading.
We take some moments now to simply rest,
Rest in a more spacious and kind awareness,
Allowing whatever is here to move through,
To come and go,
Resting in the awareness that's what you are,
Your deepest natural being,
That this awareness,
This tender presence is more the truth of who you are than any story about yourself,
Resting as the ocean including all the waves.
So we close with a few reflections.
And the first is that you might sense the quality of presence that's emerged and simply notice is there more space,
More kindness,
More openness,
Simply sensing the shift from when you started as perhaps the fearful self or the angry self to the quality of presence that's here now and notice what's changed.
You might consider how you can practice RAIN in your daily life when you feel difficult emotions arising.
Can you imagine something challenging is being experienced?
Can you pause perhaps for a light RAIN,
A short RAIN,
Or after a difficult situation move through the steps?
Or perhaps when you are anticipating something difficult,
Practicing ahead of time to reconnect with this kind of resourcefulness,
This more spacious and kind awareness?
And finally please share in the discussion forum something you learned during this practice session that you want to remember.
Thank you,
Friends,
For your attention and participation.
