Awakened Heart {Part 3 of 3}
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I take the weekends off; I completely unplug. No social media, no email, no news. Usually that allows me to refuel for the week ahead and to be able to engage wholeheartedly. However, this Monday as I opened my laptop, I opened it to discover that my own city, Atlanta, GA, was the home of another unjust murder of a black man by police. Rayshard Brooks.
This class is offered here to hold space for all of it. For grief, for anger, for fear, for world-weariness, for heart-weariness. Meditation alone will not fix this moment. It can’t. I can’t. We can hold space for each other and for the possibility of comfort within this moment.
I believe one of the greatest gifts of a mindfulness meditation practice is the way it allows us to trust our discomfort.
Our discomfort is wise. It is asking us to pay attention to something important. Anger. Sadness. Grief. Guilt. Shame. All of these difficult feelings are wise. And yet, the realities of most of our upbringing is that we learn to respond to this discomfort unwisely. We respond to discomfort with knee-jerk reactions.
Our meditation practice teaches us how to be comfortable with discomfort. Or perhaps a better way to say it might be, how to be patient within discomfort.
The very nature of our thoughts has created a problem for us. When we experience discomfort our brain is designed to immediately encourage a response to fix the problem. Feeling fear? Get safe. Feeling hungry? Find food.
Culture has taught us that we should be happy and comfortable all the time, and if we aren’t, we are doing something wrong.
Together, these two thought processes leave us with this lesson: if we are uncomfortable, WE MUST FIX IT IMMEDIATELY.
And the quickest way to do that? Fight or Flight.
What’s important here is that fight or flight can inspire BOTH wise and unwise action. Our work is to tap into wise action.
So often yoga & meditation teachers use the phrase “do your work” – meaning when a lesson or insight shows up in your life, work with it.
It sounds action-oriented but really it is “allowing” oriented. Allow this lesson to be here. To show itself to you. Be curious. Be kind to yourself as you learn to stay another moment.
It is within this liminal space that we are able to hear wise action calling our name. Join me for today’s episode of The Mindful Minute and let’s do our work together.
Thank you to today’s sponsor, Manta Sleep {mantasleep.com}. Manta sleep believes quality sleep is the foundation for everything good that happens in life, and they make the world’s most comfortable sleep mask to help us get that better sleep. Mindful Minute listeners save 10% on all orders with code ‘Mindful10’.
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