A variation on the traditional practice. Here we send trust, acceptance, and love, first to ourselves and then outward.
Listen to the Meditation
About This Practice
This version names what it is offering rather than leaving it general, and the three it names are not arbitrary.
Trust is what fear is missing. Wherever there is fear, trust is absent, and building trust does more to reduce fear than confronting the fear directly ever will. Trust that you can handle what you feel, that you have the ability to deal with what comes, and that you can learn whatever you still need to learn.
Acceptance is what stops the pushing and pulling. So much of our distress comes from fighting what is already happening. Accepting it does not mean approving of it. It means stopping the argument with reality so your energy can go somewhere useful.
With those two in place, love has somewhere to sit. It is difficult to feel warmth toward yourself while you are frightened of your own experience and at war with your circumstances.
Two of the three themes underneath every difficult emotion are trust and acceptance, so working on them directly is worth more than it might appear. This supports Compassion.
Micro Practice: Three Breaths
When you feel closed off, take three breaths.
- Breathe and settle on the breath itself.
- Breathe and open a little trust and acceptance toward yourself.
- Breathe and offer the same to the people around you.