Mary

Bellingham

Heather C

Melissa Acosta

Ontario, Canada

LeeAnn McCoy

Maura

Cambria, CA, USA

Amy C

Reese Clark

Santa Rosa, CA, USA

Victoria Schiffer

Beth Elder

Melissa Kay Allen

Vancouver, WA, USA

Clare O

Minneapolis, MN, USA

Gemma Hemsley

Heathcote NSW, Australia

Erinn

denver

Steve Miller

Nate Ember

Portland, OR, USA

Amber Alyn

Virginia, USA

Bev Peña

Emily Beauchamp

Baie-Saint-Paul, QC, Canada

B StJ

Embrace the full spectrum of your human experience, including the darkness, and learn to love and support yourself through all your emotions.

Recovery & Healing

Spirituality

Healing

Loving-Kindness (Metta)

Consciousness

Visualization

English

"Practicing Gentle Kindness Toward Ourself" This meditation offers an invitation to explore the ebbs and flows of human experience with tenderness and acceptance. As you navigate the natural fluctuations between trust and distrust, you'll be guided to meet each arising state with gentleness. Allow this practice to help you cultivate a deepening well of self-compassion - the capacity to honor all the elements that make you gloriously, imperfectly human. Discover the transformative gifts that blossom when we greet ourselves with kind understanding.

Alchemy Of The Heart: Harmonize Your Inner Landscape

This week on Live Awake, I know. I know the dark calls to you sometimes, but you turn your face from the light. I know you walk down roads you know you shouldn't. Walk into places your heart is gently urging you not to. I know you see your habits and long to change them. I know you are tired of your worn-out ways of being. Tired of reliving patterns and choosing painful choices. I know you feel hollow at times, like life is escaping you. Dancing in front of you, but out of your reach somehow. I know it hurts to live in the disconnect between what you are currently experiencing and what you know exists outside of you, beautifully without effort. I know how much it hurts to live there, in the divide between what you feel you are and what you wish you could be. I know you have tasted the sun on your skin, and inhaled with complete trust. And that you too at times, find it hard to move without knowing what's next. That at times life feels paralyzing. I know you work so hard to control the outcome of your life, that you forget to breathe sometimes. That you live in the shallow end, that you forget to go deep, breathe deep, that you forget to meet yourself in the quiet and breathe yourself full again, that you forget there is a well of abundance and trust within you, that you forget to go there for fear of losing control. I know there are places within yourself that you do not love, the parts you try to wrestle away. I know they are there within you and that they steal away your joy. I know you visit them from time to time hoping they have somehow disappeared. I know you travel between internal peace and trust and terror and fear. I know you long to live more in bliss, where you know you are intended to live. I know you can feel it vibrating in your cells when you arrive there in the grace of bliss, that this, this is where you belong. Or when you arrive there, you are so alive it's as if everything around you is telling you yes, you are home. But I know too that shadows come and pull at your feet, that they come sometimes while you are asleep and drag you down into the familiar landscape of fear and doubt. I know you journey there too from time to time, wondering if the light will ever return, or you fear you'll never outgrow this dance between the two worlds. I know you can see how much you have grown, that you are learning to taste heaven, that you swear sometimes you could grow wings, that you believe life is in your favor, that you are rising above your dark shadows, that you are becoming free. I know you live there in the tear between these two worlds, between the dark and the light, between trust and distrust, between love and hatred, between acceptance and resistance, between control and faith, between sun-soaked mornings and dark forests. You are human, my dear one, my dearest love, you are human. You are allowed to be in both ways, you are allowed. You are not wrong, you are not damaged, you are not failing because you still get lost in dark rivers. You are human. Be gentle when doubt comes, when fear chokes, when control debilitates, when loneliness blinds you. Spend special care to love yourself in these dark corridors of your being. Spend special care to bring love to your own self, to take gentle care of your vulnerability when you are here. When you arrive in the dark, know you are being offered the chance to grow your own internal garden of love. That the dark offers you the chance to love all of the places you never dare, all of the places that challenge you, all of the places you curse. That the dark offers a restoration of love to your entire being, no matter what land you stand in. When you are down, you deserve more love, not less. Where we deprive ourselves of love is where we need it most. When the dark comes, tell it what it longs so deeply to hear. That you are loved. That you are loved in all of your shadow and loved in all of your light. That you are loved in all of your various stages. Moments of fear or sadness cannot be cured or defeated. They can only be transformed by learning to love and support yourself when they arrive. It will come again and again, giving you the opportunity to cultivate your own inner garden of love. And with time and practice, it will release. It will visit less. It will come not for days, but instead only moments. It will remind you from time to time to love yourself more. The dark, it serves you. You are learning to restore the love you lost, the love you forgot you were comprised of. When the light comes, as it always does, even if only found for a moment on the crest of a wave, on a southern breeze, on a bead of dew, know that it is sending you its own unique message of love. Confirming that you, without any effort on your part, are being blessed. You are being showered. That the universe is a kind and loving one. That even in the great darkness that visits you, you are being taught how to love. And close your eyes now. Feel the rise and fall of your chest. Feel the darkness behind your lids. See here in this place lives also great light. They are part of one another. They hold the same message. They have the same intention. Place your hand on your heart. And whisper I love you. Give yourself permission to be in all the places you are. Without judgment or criticism or frustration. And let the process of life unfold as it is. Change nothing about it. Except for the amount of love you shower yourself with. Except for the amount of love you give to yourself. In both times of great joy and great unrest.