I listen to a 30 year monk on a podcast talk about how meditation is actually just holding your pain compassionately.
Ok, wait!
So I’ve heard a number of things that meditation is supposed to be:
calming to the nervous system
quieting the incessant mind
making your mind blank
finding peace within yourself
But never have I heard the practice of meditation be taught as moment to moment compassion with oneself. He went on saying (paraphrasing here), what is meditation if not the physical exercise of the mind that sits down to find silence and wakes up lost in ones own thoughts, only to have to walk yourself back to the silence once again. The practice is a training for the mind. A realization that all of us… every single one of us, has absolutely no control over our thoughts and if we can slow it down & become aware of that, the more we can get back to the peace of silence, within us, faster. No matter what is going on outside of us.
This version of meditation is more of a holding presence & space for the loudest & most pained parts of you.
Hearing this I could feel my ears perk up. You can imagine Luna (my crazy pup) when she hears the slightest possibility of someone entering her territory… aka the sidewalk that falls anywhere in her vista. This was me hearing the words, “meditation is just having compassion for your thoughts”.
Ok, wait!
What you’re saying is compassion???
Compassion I can do. I’m actually quite good at it. However, it’s never crossed my own mind to be compassionate with my own destructive thoughts, my depressed ones, & certainly not my anxious or critical ones.
I am on a beach with no one else around. I can feel the blanket beneath me & hear the waves in the distance. I feel safe enough to close my eyes and breath. So I invite myself to feel. Now, here comes the rain…
I watch as this emotion materializes on the blanket, in front of me, in my minds eye. “Hello”, I say to it, almost curiously. “What would you like me to know to know today?” And then I just sit back & listen.
Sadness appears. She looks me in the eyes and says, “Can I touch you & show you?” I give my consent. She takes her hand & presses it into my gut. She presses firmly. It feels a little shocking. I can instantly feel the waters welling.
I pause and ask, “Why are you feeling sad?” She only shakes her head in disapproval & I know it is her reminder that I’m only here to listen, as I promised. I am not here to question or attempt to guide or make sense of. She is the guide here. I close my eyes again & she pushes in once more.
A tear falls from my left eye.
I suddenly sense a million reasons flood me & I just watch as they float on by, validating each one with my mere presence.
While pressing, still, on my lower abdomen, she reaches with her other hand and pushes in just above that. She slides her finger tips up my stomach, in between my breasts, & ends at the top of my throat. The pressure feels so heavy. Like her hands are a paperweight, with bullet point precision, finding the spaces in me that hold her. Every part of my wants to gulp down & push back but instead I sit, back straight, & continue to allow her to be. To show me.
The longer I allow this to rush over me and through me, the more I can start to see her beauty. It’s almost unexplainable but I’m going to try and describe it for you.
It feels like that moment of daybreak I speak about so often. Just moments before the sun fully rises, the air changes colors. If you’ve never been outside for this, try to do it just once so you can understand what I mean about it being the air that changes color, not the sky. In that moment, you know the sky is about to go from dark to light faster than is even capturable by the human mind or camera. A desire to hold onto that pink air, knowing you can’t cage magick, even in photos & then it’s gone.
This is the only way I can describe sadness’s beauty. It’s a beautiful pain, one I wish I could carry within me somehow.
She removes her hands & I open my eyes that are now drenched in pink air sadness. I look her in the eye and she looks back before nodding her head down to bow and say, “I AM SORRY. PLEASE FORGIVE ME. THANK YOU. I LOVE YOU.”
And I repeat it back to her,
I AM SORRY
PLEASE FORGIVE ME
THANK YOU
I LOVE YOU
Ho’oponopono family.
I hope you too can sit in meditation with the heavier parts of yourself today too. Just sit & listen & allow. Find the compassion you are able to give to others, within yourself, for yourself & all the heaviest parts.