Guided Meditation: Befriending Difficult Emotions, with Tara Brach

okay when I was in college a woman I was hiking with shared how she was becoming her own best friend and that set me spinning it set me thinking about how I was actually the furthest thing from that that I was my harshest critic and perpetually at war with myself or for overeating for how heavy I was for

failed relationships for being anxious depressed the list went on so of course rejecting myself created distance from others because when we're down on ourself we feel cut off from our world so consciously facing my own feelings of unworthiness what I've come to call the trance of unworthiness was the beginning of waking up

my Longing To Be Kinder to myself was the beginning of kindness and it led me to meditation practices that have brought me great healing and happiness a true sense of belonging to life both Western and Buddhist psychology focus on two elements in healing difficult emotions and that's whether we struggle with self-aversion or fear or

loneliness depression the first is that we bring the emotion into conscious awareness that we're seeing what's happening that we're feeling directly what's here and the second is that we relate with the quality of gentleness of care and together these elements create a relationship with our inner experience the really the ground of intimacy and

belonging to our inner life and to all of life there's a wonderful myth from the Buddhist tradition that illustrates how we can befriend emotions in this way and in this myth the shadow God Mara depicts our difficult emotions fear hatred greed doubt anger shame and in this myth the Buddha would be teaching

be teaching a crowd in a field somewhere and his loyal attendant Ananda would see Mara lurking around the outskirts of the Gathering and Ananda would get distressed and tell the Buddha oh no look Maura's here and the Buddha would calmly walk right up tomorrow and with a really gentle voice he'd say I see you Mara come let's