Meditation: Calm, Relationship with Self Series: Worthiness Length: 10 minutes Where: Office/Guest Room, Los Angeles How It Felt: Uplifting
Ok, this was a good one! Worthiness is a vulnerable and powerful topic. Oof. This one got me a little. This session was appropriately very heart-centric. A lot of focusing energy on the heart space, even putting our hands over our hearts at one point. I think reminders that we are worthy can cut deep into a lot of people, so this was a very comforting aspect of the meditation.
At one point, we repeated several times (silently…at least I did it silently!)
“May I know I am worthy of care.”
“May I know I am worthy of respect.”
“May I know I am worthy of love.”
Listen. I know these things. And it’s easy to say you know these things. But there is something really beautiful (and almost Good Will Hunting– like) about someone repeating this to you over and over, and repeating it to yourself. It’s like, deep down most of us have a little insecurity about our worthiness. Even if life is good, do we deserve to have so much if others have so little? When life is hard, we ask ourselves what it is about us that makes life so difficult. Where is our luck?
I’ve written a lot about my parents, the good and the bad, but I don’t think I’m alone when I say they did a bit of a number on my capacity to feel worthy. When you have young, distracted parents, parents who have issues that block their ability to properly take care of you, or parents who can even make you feel like a burden, it’s hard to override those messages into your adult life. These things sit with us.
I was parentified early. I struggle with letting people care for me, and have certainly developed a tendency to be overly independent. I don’t totally trust that people always want to do kind things for me. Even though, mentally, I know every human being is worthy of love, care, respect, kindness, etc, it’s easy to fall into old traps.
This is why self-love and self-care is so important. It reminds us that we are valuable, that our needs matter, and that we deserve to feel good, happy, peaceful, and content. It overrides any voices that still live in our heads that tell us we aren’t good enough.
For me, meditation very quickly became a permanent part of my self-care routine because of days like this. I was holding my heart, repeating these phrases to myself, and something deep inside released a bit. I felt tears slide down my face and I felt lighter. I don’t know what it was, exactly. I didn’t analyze it, I just stayed present. But there was something in there that needed to hear these words, something I wasn’t aware of, and that’s so powerful.
Plus, as a secondary benefit, I didn’t rage out last night when people were setting off fireworks nonstop from early evening until literally this morning. (Please do not get me started on fireworks. They are harmful, dangerous, cause so much suffering, affect pets and kill wild animals, hurt the environment, start fires like crazy, and fill up our emergency rooms every single year, not even discussing the deaths. I have no idea why they aren’t banned completely.) My husband pointed out I was naturally practicing equanimity in my calm response last night, watching my poor, terrified cat suffer, which is not a skill I had a year ago!
Meditation is changing me, and I am grateful!
My Year of Meditation 