(This blogpost is a special adaptation I’ve made for you based on some of the written materials in a Meditation Experience that I’ll be releasing later this year. It’s called Lovingkindness 2.0.)
More about LK 2.0 later, but for now I’ll say these things…
It’s a heart-centered journey…
And it’s my very first totally digital course!!
I created it for a few of the more dedicated practitioners involved in a corporate program I’ve been running for years that was covered in the Huffington Post. They had requested a way to deepen their practice… so LK 2.0 was born.
We’re currently in the second week.
The experience has already inspired me to make a version for you, my subscribers– as well as my worldwide community.
The themes are:
- keys/unlocking
- The Hero’s Journey
- The Mirroring Between Self & Others
Here’s a sneak peak from the section on keys, doors and our Inner Junkyard…
“…Let’s look at something we all know how to do, but don’t always skillfully do:
‘Open Up and Reach Out’.
Sometimes we easily, wholeheartedly open up— to those we love and care about, or those we want to love and care about us, or those we want to love and care about despite complications and difficulties doing so.
Sometimes we’re not as genuinely open as we think we are.
Other times, we aren’t open but would like to be.
Sometimes we consciously choose not to open.
So, try an experiment over the next day or so.
Check in on the actual nature of your opening to others.
Go beyond your assumptions of how open you are and how genuine your openness actually is.
Go beyond being polite and wanting to be seen as “nice” to others.
Ironically, the more our heart opens, the more boundaries we need to protect our heart.
(We all know what it’s like to be truly open and trusting to someone who we later learned trampled on our trust out of not knowing how to meet it with respect.)
In the hyper-connected, fast paced information age we live in,
there are so many relationships to maintain,
through so many channels of communication,
with so much information to react to,
that it simply becomes easier to lock our truest feelings away for safe keeping…
and to fashion our external behavior with the likenesses of openness and trust.
This would all be kinda okay were we not creatures who thrive on genuine interconnectivity with others.
Funny how our need for interconnectivity is what leads us to create this hyper-connected world.
On the one hand, we want to have so many doors open to the world. On the other, we aren’t quite skillful enough to monitor who and what enters all those open doors.
So we stay hyper-connected, but lock a lot of ourselves away. Usually, the most vulnerable parts of ourselves get locked away. Naturally, right? Makes total sense.
The vulnerable stuff: the places we’ve been hurt, the parts of ourselves we don’t understand, shame, guilt, fear, but also some of the most beautiful parts of ourselves, the parts of ourselves the world really needs, like our generosity, kindness, innocence, wisdom, insight and joy.
What we all know but perhaps don’t entirely face is the truth that we can’t really hide from danger, adversity and struggle. The Boogeyman finds us anyway.
The good news is that self-protection is healthy, but a lot of the feelings we lock away actually have their own set of keys. Much of this locked away stuff holds the keys to our dreams and wellbeing.
Here’s how…
Imagine this place where you lock away your most vulnerable parts as an actual location in yourself. What does it look like?
Over the course of your life, beginning with your earliest days, some of the most difficult emotional stuff you encountered (fears, things that made you sad, things you were too young to understand) got locked away in this location very few people know about.
Maybe even you don’t know so much about this place anymore, because the longer you stay away, the harder it is to return, unlock the door and sort through all that stuff.
This is your stockpile of all the rejected and abandoned life experience. Your “Inner Junkyard”, so to speak, and it’s a sacred place.
(If the expression “Inner Junkyard” doesn’t resonate with you or feels too harsh, find another one that feels more appropriate, such as “Inner Rubbish Pile”, “The Forgotten Zone” or any expression your intuition provides.)
Once, during a 10 day silent retreat, I had a dream wherein I actually saw and walked through my Inner Junkyard for the first time.
After a few days of silent retreat, our dreams tend to become more direct and realistic.
Sometimes all symbolism falls away and truths are revealed in a very straightforward manner, almost like an “inner announcement”.
Or, symbolism remains, but becomes very clear and easy to interpret. This latter case was my experience of dreaming about my Inner Junkyard.
In the dream, my Inner Junkyard took the form of an abandoned, dilapidated high-rise building, like you might see on the news after a city was bombed.
Walls blown out, interiors exposed, wires hanging from the ceiling, dust, debris, and lots of doors, with hallways and staircases leading to them. I know this building was me, I was in it, but also had the felt bodily sense that it was in me.
I moved through the destruction more with astonishment and curiosity than fear or dread. The fact that I had found my way there felt like an opportunity.
I felt the loss, as well as plenty of “shock and awe” but what lead me through the wreckage was a sense of dominion over the space (it was MINE after all) and an assuredness that I could somehow navigate this space.
I wanted to sort through the rubble and had a clear inner knowing that I had the tools to let go of what I needed to let go of and repair what needed repairing.
I felt inspired by this new project…
So…..certain things in our Inner Junkyard aren’t really worth our time and energy. Those things really do need to be recycled or sent to the landfill.
However, a lot of valuable stuff gets thrown away as well. Inside the stockpile of unwanted experiences are keys (insights, answers, truths) to various issues that currently seem challenging or even impossible to face, much less “unlock”.
That’s right! A lot of the problems (habits we think we can’t break; mistakes we continue to repeat) aren’t any more permanent or solid than a locked door is.
We can’t pass through these doors only because we have thrown away the keys and dread going to look for them in a place we’ve written off as a Wasteland.
In fact, our Inner Junkyard is a sacred place that asks for our Love and holds the keys to our freedom and dreams…”
Thanks for reading!
Lovingkindness 2.0 will be a virtual experience with guided audio meditations, personal explorations and 1-on-1 conversations between me and participants.
An experience that nurtures the Hero in us all, cultivating courage, sharpening intuition, inspiring leadership, boosting self-confidence and opening one’s connection to others.
