In the Presence of Sadness,
A guided meditation by Tara Herrick-Brown.
Original music composed by Kristen Williams.
I'm beginning this morning with a feeling of sadness in my heart.
I'm sitting in the awareness of this feeling,
Examining the qualities,
The heaviness,
The queasiness.
That feeling of uncertainty that comes from anxiety.
And I sit in this awareness,
Fully supported by my chair,
The top of my head reaching towards the sky.
Aligned,
Present.
I breathe.
I just watch my soft breath.
I feel the gentle rise and fall of my chest.
I settle back into my heart,
Into that queasiness,
Into that restriction.
You have to start here sometimes.
And we need to feel into that.
As I go deeper,
The sadness rises into my throat.
The corners of my mouth turn down.
And I just feel it.
I'm present with it.
Where the sadness is coming from is not clear in my mind.
But I just sit with it and watch it,
Feel it.
We can't always be in a place of bliss.
We're human,
We experience a range of emotions.
And today,
I experience sadness.
If I were sitting upon a seesaw right now,
Even in my sadness,
I'm sitting in lotus at the fulcrum.
I'm not on one end of the seesaw,
Telling myself it's bad to be sad.
I'm just sitting and watching it in the middle on a balanced seesaw.
That doesn't change my downturned lips.
It doesn't change the heaviness or the queasiness.
That's simply what I'm experiencing.
And I give myself a lot of pause,
A lot of quiet.
Experiencing this feeling.
An image comes,
Like there's a coat of armor surrounding me.
Like a metal casing.
I feel restricted and I feel limited.
And that awareness brings more sadness to my throat.
Did I put on the armor?
Did others demand I wear it?
It doesn't really matter.
I'm simply aware of this experience of armor.
And I breathe with what this feels like.
This armor.
And I continue to sit in the stillness of the experience.
I continue to sit cross-legged on that seesaw.
In the middle.
In balance and neutrality.
As I watch.
As I feel.
The heaviness in my chest persists.
On the downturned lips.
And the emotion arises.
It's all still here.
And as I acknowledge it,
More sadness arises.
And I feel it.
There's no story running through my head.
There's no blame.
There's so much going on in our world today.
And it's sometimes our tendency to numb it.
But we limit ourselves when we numb ourselves.
The ride on this seesaw will only go as high as you'll allow yourself to go low.
By simply paying attention to the armor.
And to the emotion.
Offers it the greatest possibility to transform.
Without trying.
Without telling it it's wrong for being here.
In fact,
Quite the opposite.
If we can find a place of love and appreciation.
For the armor entering our awareness.
We can only change the things we're aware of.
Before I sat down this morning.
I was unaware.
That I was even wearing armor.
But by this simple acknowledgement.
I became aware of a sadness.
The heart is an interesting place.
We spend so much time avoiding.
Rejecting.
Protecting.
Pushing away,
Blocking out.
We feel so scared.
I invite you into that awareness right now.
Into the feeling showing up for you.
My teacher says.
That so often.
We withhold our love from others.
But all we want is to be loved unconditionally.
So we need to begin loving unconditionally.
When we feel that someone owes us something.
We sit and we wait with crossed arms at the injustice.
And arrogance.
The arrogance that says I will not love you until.
We have to watch that.
We have to watch our own withholding.
When we feel a lack.
We need to love more.
Even through the sadness.
The sadness is not a call for you to hold up.
To withdraw.
To enter a place of self pity.
That's not what the sadness is telling you.
The sadness is simply telling you that there's a sadness present.
But you are not your sadness.
And knowing that allows you to sit in lotus.
At the fulcrum.
At that still point.
Knowing that you are not this emotion.
Makes it less personal.
Simply watching.
Simply breathing.
Simply witnessing.
Your emotions.
Your sensations.
And finding a presence with them.
What does that armor feel like now?
To me it feels softer.
Less rigid.
The quality doesn't feel metal anymore.
It doesn't even feel solid.
I'm still aware of a coating if you will.
A sheath.
A layer.
A barrier.
But it transforms.
Just on its own with awareness.
With breath.
With patience.
And the sadness is still present.
Although it feels lighter.
The corners of my mouth are somewhat neutral.
The queasiness and the heaviness is lifted.
And I feel almost as though I could lay back in the arms of support.
The arms of Mother Earth.
The arms of my Divine.
And with that my heart opens.
My chest opens.
My heart peers towards the sky.
And there's a lightness.
But even in that,
I remain in lotus in the middle at the fulcrum.
We have to remember to be mindful of our attachments to positive and negative,
To good and bad and right and wrong.
It doesn't mean that we don't get to experience joy and sadness.
But the point is to not get swept up in them.
To not vie for them or cling to them.
But to experience them.
Experience what your chest and your heart and your throat and your lips are doing right now.
Perhaps your experience was different than mine.
But that's perfect.
My words are not here to dictate your experience.
They're here to gently guide you.
Your experience is more important than my words.
Trust where your heart is taking you.
Trust what your truth is showing you.
I invite you to return to this meditation when your awareness is showing you that that coat of armor is present.
There are times outside of this moment that I find it important to process.
There are so many tools for processing and figuring out and getting to the root of the why.
But that is not this moment.
This moment is watching it,
Experiencing it,
Accepting it.
May this meditation offer you support in your experience.
In your experience of less than happy moments.
May it meet you when you feel the heaviness.
And may you hear it's okay.
I experience it too.
You're not alone.
Many blessings to you on your journey.
Namaste.
Namaste.
Namaste.
