This time of year, having a positive attitude is a struggle for me: it feels like it’s been cold and grey forever, and January’s always a lean month. “Bleak” is the word that best describes my usual inner and outer reality.
photo: wiki images, Erixsen's photostream
So this morning, teary for no apparent reason, I decided to meditate in order to be productive for the rest of the day.
Here are the thoughts that came to me, and I feel they’re worth sharing:
- Honour all feelings
- Find the love at the root of them
- Relate from that place of love
Whenever we feel hurt, even during times like these when we can be overly sensitive, it’s usually because some part of ourselves doesn’t feel honoured. It wouldn’t hurt if there wasn’t something sacred – something based on love – that feels bruised. When we find that place and relate from it, it cleans up our communications. It keeps us from being spiteful or seeking revenge, and puts us in touch with what’s true.
Honouring our feelings sets them free, and adds an element of respect to a situation. It gets us unstuck.
From there, we can find where we hurt, what that sensitive place is, and then examine our assumptions. And that’s where we find that wounded place of love.
When we frame our situation in that place, suddenly it’s kind, honest and respectful, and things begin to look a little different. We see our parts in the situation, and regain our sense of power and influence.
Anyways, I feel better now, and hope this experience I’ve shared can help you if you’re feeling this way too.
I don’t consider myself a spiritual person — let me cut to the chase: I’m an atheist and think the world would be a much healthier place if people just gave up the ghost, so to speak, on the putative “higher power” — but I find daily meditation necessary for smoothing off the unnecessary and unhelpful extremes of emotion. I think clarity comes with that, as you suggest. Years ago I was talking to a physician friend who said that the only approach that she had found to effectively treat PTSD was cardio and meditation. That was precisely the conclusion I had reached in my own rambling, often stumbling way.
Thanks for the post, Diana!
Hi, Mark.
Ya, meditation sure helps through these late winter days – interesting that it works well for PTSD, although that makes a lot of sense.
Also interesting that you’re an atheist. I was too until my early 20s, when I became an agnostic which I am to this day. I believe there’s a spiritual realm, but have no idea what it is and am unwilling to waste time trying to figure it out or argue about it. But I tune into it in my own way, and respect what anyone else does as long as they don’t try to convince me of their rightness.
That post was from such an inner place, I was a little surprised to have gotten a comment. Thanks. Daily meditation is the goal – just have to build it into my routine.