Can you step into who you already are… not who you think you are?

The releasing of what we already have is the meditation work. Receiving and accepting who we really are is fundamental to meditation practice.Without compassion for one’s self, there can be no real awakening to the ‘work’ that needs to be done. The practice of meditation opens us up to the awareness of how are thoughts and feelings of ourselves are just that… thoughts and feelings. Their streaming regularity or irregularity will most always be present… moment to moment in our conscious awareness. Abiding and honoring one’s self begins with the awareness that a notion of one’s self is not necessarily the truth.

Consequently, why would one attach to something that wasn’t necessarily true or authentic especially regarding one’s own being? Furthermore, compassion, loving kindness for one’s family, friends, planet, etc. cannot be fully & genuinely realized without first authentically cultivating toward one’s self. The genesis of self-compassion stems from the heart, but its unfolding can only arise when the mind is in alignment with it.

In our practice, we come to awaken to listen to our hearts for they are the true seed to quieting and taming our restless and bewildered minds. Stepping into the present moment and sitting, there is kind of a loving element to this… like you’re already “ok” no matter what’s happening… and can we learn to live inside of that?

Take a few moments here and reflect on this wonderful poem by the revered West Indies poet, DerekWalcott.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

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