It’s tough to acknowledge our distress and admit our vulnerability. Instead, it’s so much easier to allow ourselves to fall into whatever story we have been telling ourselves on repeat than to stay with our experience. The way you speak to yourself matters. What are the messages you've been sending to yourself?
Take responsibility for the way you are talking to yourself. The way you speak to yourself matters.
We don’t have to indulge in our story any more.
Do not give your thoughts a free pass.
According to ancient Buddhist teachings, our true nature is whole and complete. We arrive to this life with an inherent basic goodness. Our true nature doesn’t exist in the suffering inside the stories we tell ourselves. Instead, it can be rediscovered if we can only question the way we speak to ourselves.
Most new to meditation believe we are “supposed to” learn how to silence that internal dialog.
We are more apt to treat our emotions as obstacles than in cultivating an open, accepting and even inquisitive attitude toward our inner lives.
But that’s not it.
Treating our emotions as a problem to overcome only serves to keep us stuck.
Any of our emotions, including troubling ones, are valuable objects of meditation just as much as physical sensations are.
Show up for yourself. Show up to yourself.
Instead of turning your back on your emotions and trying to quelch them, look for your feelings, bring them out and make them the object of your inquiry in meditation.
Become willing to separate the emotion from the story we build around them.
Catch yourself in your self-flagellating internal dialog and instead, practice speaking more gently to yourself in the face of your most intense suffering. Not just in meditation, but in real life, in the middle of the night when you lay awake wondering what’s wrong with you. The way you speak to yourself matters.
We must show up to ourselves before we can unpack our internal dialog and question its veracity. If you'd like to start showing up for yourself, consider joining us at Satsang House each Sunday for a time of community and meditation. We would love to have you!
Showing up for yourself exists in the silence.
