Meditation For Tending To The Roots Of Loneliness

Meditation for tending to the roots of loneliness.

Thank you so much for being here now,

For showing up to this meditation on tending to the roots of loneliness.

Loneliness cuts deep,

It's a deep wound we all carry.

It's that place inside of us that sometimes can feel unsupported,

Misunderstood,

Excluded or even abandoned.

So just take a moment now to acknowledge that there is a wounded part of you that has felt the pain of loneliness at different times in your life.

The pain of loneliness is real.

We tend to avoid tuning into this place because it is so painful sometimes.

Instead we reach for superficial solutions including surface relationships that can lack meaningful connection.

The trouble is these can only ever give us a temporary hit of false belonging,

A brief high that soon leaves us feeling empty and socially malnourished.

So whenever you feel a pang of loneliness,

Remember it does not mean that there's something wrong with you.

The feeling of loneliness is guiding you back into connection.

The Sufi poet Hafez says,

Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly,

Let it cut more deep,

Let it ferment and season you as few human or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft,

My voice so tender,

My need of God absolutely clear.

So let's begin this meditation by setting an intention.

My suggestion for an intention is that we commit to tending to these roots of loneliness in ourselves so that we can bring more compassion and more healing,

Not just for ourselves and the wounded and excluded parts of us,

But also so that we can bring healing to other people in the world.

So I invite you now just to close your eyes for a moment and allow your attention to settle.

Wherever all those threads of attention have been pulled today,

Just allow these threads to settle gently back into the center of your being and it can help just to notice the quality of energy in your mind right now.

Just notice if your mind feels busy or quiet or somewhere in between and whatever you notice,

Just see if you can allow that energy simply to be as it is.

See what happens if you can let go of the part of you that sometimes wants to fix or change or control things and then you can let your attention drop into your body.

Just get a general sense of how your body feels in this moment.

Does your body feel relaxed or does it feel tense or somewhere in between?

And again whatever you're noticing in your body right now,

There's no right or wrong.

All you need to do is just allow this energy that you're experiencing just to be as it is.

And now you can let your attention drop a bit deeper into your body,

Connecting to the sense of your legs on the chair or whatever you're sitting on or if your feet are touching the ground,

Just notice that sensation of your feet connected to the ground,

To the earth.

Notice what it feels like to be grounded,

To be rooted.

Notice what it feels like just to let yourself be held for a moment.

And then in your own time you can let the attention slowly move back up through your body until it settles in the center of your chest or your heart center.

And as it settles in this place in your chest,

I invite you to just bring your right hand and place it over your heart space.

And as you touch your heart space with your right hand,

Perhaps you can feel a sense of your heart just gently opening up.

Maybe you can feel a sense of warmth or compassion arising from this heart space.

Some people find it helpful to imagine that there's a gentle fire in the center of your heart that flickers and gives off an energy of warmth and compassion.

You might notice that this warm,

Tender,

Loving energy gently spreads from the center of your chest around your body,

Creating a sense of a nurturing hug or some kind of a safe blanket that really can hold each and every part of you,

Even those parts that might feel really difficult to hold.

And from this place of feeling held,

I invite you to see if you can connect with a memory of a time when you might have felt alone or excluded,

Disconnected somehow.

It doesn't need to be a crystal-clear memory,

It could be a memory from recent times or a memory from childhood.

Just trust that whatever shows up for you in this moment is exactly what you need to see and to feel.

Now see if you can locate that feeling of loneliness somewhere in your body.

See if you can get a sense of the shape,

The color and the feeling of that loneliness.

It can help to imagine that you're approaching a frightened or lonely child,

How might you approach them?

And if you have found a place in your body with this sense of loneliness,

Just take your hand now and place it on that part of your body with tender loving care.

Just imagine that you're saying to this sense of loneliness that it's okay for it to be there,

It's really okay for it to be there.

Just notice what happens when you give permission for that feeling of loneliness to be there.

In this moment you are offering a sense of belonging to this part of you.

And now I'd like you to just bring to mind another memory,

This time see if you can think of a time when you were in a situation where perhaps you felt you had to put on some kind of a mask,

Where you felt you had to pretend to be something that wasn't really who you are.

You pretended to be a false self and that you did that perhaps just to avoid feeling alone or excluded.

See if you can bring that memory to mind now.

Again it could be a memory from yesterday or a memory from childhood.

We've all had times when we had to exclude parts of ourselves just to avoid being excluded from a connection,

From a relationship or from a group.

Just notice what happens in your body when you connect to this memory of a time where you had to really strain to be something other than who you really were.

Whatever feelings are there just let those feelings be there.

Again see if you can get a sense of the shape and the colour,

The sensation behind that loneliness.

If you can find it somewhere in your body again just put a hand gently and lovingly on that place in your body and let that feeling of loneliness know that it's okay for it to be there.

Now I'd like to invite you to bring in an older memory,

A deeper memory.

This time I invite you to allow in any kind of memory or felt sense of your first experience of separation,

The moment that you were born.

Just trust whatever comes up,

Don't try to force it.

Just be open to what you experience.

See if you can connect in some way that feels okay for you to that first emergence from the warmth and the protection of our mother's womb out into this cold,

Bright and scary world.

And this was your first experience of separation.

See if you can in this moment connect to that fragile,

Tender little baby that you once were,

That somehow you still carry inside of you.

Again,

See if you can connect to that feeling of separation or loneliness somewhere in your body and just allow it to be there exactly as it is.

If it helps,

You can put your hand on that part of your body with love and tenderness.

Again,

You're creating a sense of belonging for all these parts of you that in all these different ways have felt scared or terrified of being alone.

All of these parts are so welcome here.

Now for the last part of this meditation,

I want you to invite in the part of you that really yearns for connection,

That is so desperate for belonging,

For community.

Again,

See if you can connect to that sense of that tender and vulnerable longing to belong.

See if you can notice it anywhere in your body and just let that part of you,

Let that feeling know that it's really okay for it to be there.

If it helps,

You can even imagine that your own longing for belonging is connected right now in this moment to eight billion other hearts in this planet who all have that same longing as you.

See if you can let the hardened edges of yourself gently dissolve in this moment so that you can feel how deeply connected and together we all are,

That we all have this deep longing for belonging.

And then we can bring this meditation to an end by sending in whatever way feels right to us,

Some kind of compassion,

Kindness or understanding to all of those eight billion other hearts in this planet and to all those lonely and excluded parts of other people.

See if you can imagine sending out your deepest kindness and compassion to all of these people in the world who might be feeling in some way lonely or isolated in this moment.

And then you can bring your attention back to the lower half of your body,

Noticing again the feeling of your feet on the floor or your legs on the chair.

You can start to wiggle your fingers and toes as you slowly but gently bring your attention back into this present moment.

Have a little stretch if you like and in your own time you can gently open your eyes.