Tara Brach - Guided Forgiveness Meditation

Episode Date: March 1, 2014

2014-02-26-Guided Forgiveness Meditation - a short cut from the end of the "A Forgiving Heart" talk

So we'll close with a forgiveness meditation. And as you close your eyes, so you're breathing in and just feeling a sense of the breath opening, like even in a cellular way, opening to receive, that you're kind of expanding, loosening, feeling the life and the energy in your body. And then with the out breath,

just resting and settling, and just sensing the space inside and around you, stillness, resting. Inhale and open, inflate, expand, yield, and exhale, just rest. Sensing the space within and around you, letting everything float. You can even sense it if you just take a certain part of your body, like your hands, just inhaling and feel the joints loosen and open, the hands soften, and exhale and just let the sensations float in awareness. And you can feel it in the heart.

If you inhale and just yield and open, just feeling the aliveness, the vulnerability that's there, on the in-breath. And on the out-breath, just letting be, letting this life float in something larger. We begin the forgiveness practice by sensing where you might have caused harm to another person. Just taking a moment,

because we all have places in our life where we have injured others with our words, our reactivity, our neglect, our anger. You can imagine and sense that person and the hurt that's there. Staying right here, breathing, and just letting yourself feel the realness of another's pain. You might mentally whisper the person's name and just say, I see and feel the pain I've caused you, and I ask your forgiveness. Please forgive me. Let yourself keep feeling that breath

and staying in contact with your own vulnerability, whether it's remorse, sorrow, and again whispering the person's name, I see and feel the pain I've caused you, and I ask your forgiveness, please forgive me, and turning the attention to yourself,

sensing if you're holding against yourself for hurting this person or for anything right now. Just scan and sense if there's something unforgiven in yourself. Just with the intention to forgive yourself. You might just put your hand on your heart and just offer some forgiven, forgiven, some words, it's okay. I like the words, forgiven, forgiven, because they're so simple. And even the intention to let go, to not hold against your own being,

not to push your own being out of your heart. Forgiven, forgiven. Then we widen our attention to sense where someone has caused injury to us that we feel a distance from, that we're holding resentment or blame towards, that we'd like to explore being more forgiving with. And again, not to pick someone where there's trauma, but it's just a relationship where you know that you've been locked in in some way to blame. where you felt hurt, irritated, anger, some obstacle. And take some moments to let yourself remember what this person does or has done that has caused the reaction in you, the armoring.

What is it really that is so bothersome, upsetting? What does it mean to you when a person acts like that? What does it tell you? There's something you're believing about how this person is relating to you. Is it that they don't see you or they're not respecting you, that they don't care about you? What's the worst thing about the way that they're behaving? What brings up the fear or the hurt? And as you inquire, bring your kindness to the place in you that gets upset.

Right first step, bring it right to your own upset heart. Whether it's the feeling of anger or the feeling of fear. perhaps shame, frustration, just in some way offer a gesture. And again, the hand on the heart can be sometimes the most powerful because you're directly with touch communicating, I'm here with you, that you're with yourself, that you're behind yourself. So you might, again, feel that touch and just offer care. And if you feel like you need some help with it,

imagine someone that you trust and love helping you to offer care as if they're just beaming it in and bathing you, the place in you that feels upset with a forgiving, loving, kind, caring energy. It's when you begin to feel that your own vulnerability and upset is held with kindness, that you can look out through clearer eyes and with a more open or soft heart at the other and see behind the mask. Can you see with the other the hurt or the fear or the pain or the suffering that might have that person behave in ways that are upsetting to you? As you reflect on the other person, you can sense your intention to include that person in your heart. Just let it be your intention. And if you can forgive, sometimes the language,

just whispering the person's name and saying, I see and feel the pain you've caused me, and I forgive you now, just mentally whispering that, or I see and feel the pain you've caused me, and it's my intention to forgive you. It's very powerful, offering forgiveness or your intention to forgive.

And then letting the sense of that other person kind of fade into the background. So we'll close right now, just to feel your own heart. And if there's any judgment about how you're doing the forgiving, see if you can very gently recognize it and let it go. Just to honor that this is a life process. Just to feel your intention to walk this path

and be very, very gentle as you go. We close with a short verse from Rumi. out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. And thank you.