This meditation is designed to help you find more peace and ease with and within yourself based on a type of therapy known as internal family systems or IFS.
IFS,
Like Buddhism,
Says that there's nothing wrong with us and that happiness is to be found in non-judgmental compassionate awareness of all of the parts that make us who we are,
Especially those parts of ourselves we'd rather reject,
Parts that cause us shame,
Guilt,
Distress.
This doesn't mean that we let those parts control us.
As we say in IFS,
All parts are welcome on the bus,
They're just not allowed to drive.
But neither do we try to shove them out of sight.
Our rejected parts seem to have a way of continuing to come back to bang on our doors even harder the next time.
And so this meditation will use an ancient practice called metta to help us make peace with all of our parts.
Just as in traditional metta meditation,
We will start by offering our loving kindness to ourselves.
But then,
Rather than offering this compassion to our beloved,
A neutral person,
And then a difficult person,
We will be offering our loving,
Accepting awareness to parts of ourselves that we love,
Are neutral to,
And finally,
Find difficult to accept.
So let's begin by sitting in a comfortable position.
Allow your eyes to close.
Take a few deep,
Long breaths.
Breathing through the nose and exhaling through the mouth.
Feeling the shoulders relax down.
Sensing the chair or the couch or the cushion supporting you.
Try to really feel that connection to the ground while you allow your body to settle.
For a few moments,
Just feel yourself breathing without trying to control anything.
Sensing your breath wherever it's the strongest,
Maybe at the base of your nostrils,
In the throat,
In the belly.
And then let's invite forward a part of ourselves that we love,
Or like,
Or at least doesn't cause us noticeable discomfort.
Maybe your creativity,
Your kindness toward animals,
Or your enthusiasm for action movies.
You might think about your sources of happiness or comfort,
Your sense of humor,
Or your appreciation for someone else's humor.
How you love being cozy in bed during a thunderstorm.
It can be anything that you just appreciate that you can appreciate.
Allow this aspect to come into view.
Feel where it lives in or around your body.
See if you're getting an image,
A word,
Or any other sense of this part.
And then we offer this part our best wishes for it.
It can be any series of wishes that seem right to you.
May you be happy.
May you be peaceful.
May you feel welcome and at ease.
Again,
You can use any phrase that is pleasing to you.
You silently repeat these phrases in your mind while continuing to focus on this part that you love.
May you be happy.
May you be peaceful.
May you feel welcome and at ease.
This may feel awkward at first.
So just remember that all we're doing is cultivating the intention to live peacefully with all of our inner parts.
And if no part that you like or love or don't mind presents itself today,
Don't worry.
You can offer these wishes to yourself.
May I be happy.
May I be peaceful.
May I feel welcome and at ease.
The part may not be available today,
But it may be available another time.
Just keep the focus for another moment longer on this part and on your phrases.
May you be happy.
May you be peaceful.
May you feel welcome and at ease.
Now let this part step back out of conscious awareness and invite a neutral part to come forward.
This could be a part of yourself that you neither like or dislike.
And it may be a bit difficult at first to find any such part.
We're taught that any aspect of ourselves must be either good or bad.
We often don't see neutral parts because we are taught that neutrality is unimportant and not deserving of our awareness.
Just be patient and wait.
Perhaps we neither like or dislike our ability to follow directions or our handwriting or the fact that we're not interested in sports.
Neither good nor bad,
Just is.
When such a part presents itself,
Just notice,
Do you have an image,
A word,
A sense of it in or around your body?
And then you offer it the same phrases as we did before.
May you be happy.
May you be peaceful.
May you feel welcome and at ease.
And again,
If nothing is coming up for you,
If no neutral part presents itself,
You can just continue to always be happy.
And if you feel that you're happy,
You can just continue to be happy.
And again,
If nothing is coming up for you,
If no neutral part presents itself,
You can just continue to offer these wishes to yourself.
May I be happy.
May I be peaceful.
May I feel welcome and at ease.
Now letting go of the neutral part and allowing to come forward a part that makes you uncomfortable.
A slight uneasiness will suffice.
You don't have to find the part that you have the most difficulty loving and appreciating.
For most of us,
Finding a part that we don't like of ourselves won't be too hard.
That's our cultural conditioning.
Maybe it's your impatience with a difficult person in your life or the part that worries about how you might appear to others.
And again,
If experiencing this part causes you too much emotional distress,
Go back to offering loving kindness to yourself or an easier part.
Sensing this uncomfortable part in or around your body.
Realizing any image or words that arise.
And offering this part to your loving kindness.
May you be happy.
May you be peaceful.
May you feel welcome and at ease.
All of our parts,
Whether we are aware of it or not,
Want us to be happy,
Productive,
To feel loved,
To feel special.
They want us to avoid pain.
At one point in our lives,
Usually when we were little and quite vulnerable,
Our parts were effective in preventing pain,
Hurt,
Sadness.
We could sometimes feel better if we avoided conflict with someone we cared about.
Now that we're adults,
However,
Avoiding all conflicts doesn't always work out so well for us.
It's okay to have a conflict-avoidant part,
Though.
You came by it honestly.
It's there for a reason.
So we say to our conflict-avoidant part,
Or whatever difficult part you're working with today,
May you be happy.
May you be peaceful.
May you feel welcome and at ease.
May you be peaceful.
And then finally,
Letting the difficult part fade away and sensing your whole being,
Your vibrating sensing perceiving being,
Your oneness and offering yourself as a whole,
Your compassionate praises,
May I be happy.
May I be peaceful.
May I feel welcome and at ease.
A bell will signal the end of this meditation.
