Hey, welcome to the final day of our seven day meditation challenge. It's been such a joy to walk you through this journey. And over the last six days, we've really gotten to explore a lot of different practices related to your own well-being, navigating stress, difficult thoughts and all just the, the general agitation and chaos that can come with being a human being. There's been a lot of emphasis on you. And sometimes that can feel self-oriented, as if like, you know, what about other people? What about other beings? And we take the perspective that in order to be a positive force in the, in the world, you need to also be a positive force for yourself.

In order to show up fully for other people, you need to be showing up fully for yourself. You need to know how to work with your own thoughts, your emotions, your sensations. Otherwise you'll, you'll get depleted. And so in case there was any sense that, you know, this feels a little selfish, know that, that self care as Parker Palmer said is never selfish. It's good stewardship of the only gift we have, this gift we were put on earth to offer others.

And any time you take care of yourself, you do it not just for yourself, but for the many others whose lives you aim to serve. But with that said, once we start to fill ourselves up, it's as if the cup organically starts overflowing and, and we want to give more and we have the capacity to give more. And so today we're going to talk specifically about what it's like to move toward other people, and specifically their, their pain and their suffering, holding space for that so that we can be a more empowered source in the world. And we'll explore this through a practice called tonglen. It's a Tibetan meditation practice that often translates as sending and taking.

What it involves is breathing in. While you're breathing in, you imagine that you're taking in the pain and the suffering of another person. So you're breathing it in. And then when it's inside, you imagine that you're transforming it into something nourishing, positive, empowering. And on the exhale, you imagine sending this out to the person.

Now it doesn't need to just be a person. It could be a being, an animal a population of people or the planet. But the idea is you're moving toward suffering. You're taking it in. You're saying, I can hold this.

I choose to hold this. And then you imagine transforming it so that you can offer something out more purposeful. Now, is there anything happening on a metaphysical level? Meaning, like are we actually impacting this other person's suffering by imagining that we're breathing it in and sending something out? I don't know. People would debate different things on this. But what I can say for sure is that when I do this practice, and when I know others who do this practice, what, what everyone seems to say is that there's something really empowering about choosing to move toward another person's pain, choosing to show up for it, to hold it, and then offer something back out.

And I find after doing that session, that I'm a better force for other people's pain in the world in my day-to-day life. I feel more empowered to, to hold the suffering, to stay present to the suffering that, that is there, to stay present to the fullness of the human condition. And we could say that the world's condition, which has a lot of joy, but it also has a lot of sorrow. And how can we build ourselves up in such a way that we can, we can hold the whole thing? Cause that's what mindfulness is all about. And that's what living a full life is really all about.

And so this practice starts to develop that container in a significant way, and we're going to go through it in the meditation practice. But I just wanted to give you a preview of what that's like and what it might be like to take that orientation in your life. To lean into suffering, uh, even when it feels uncomfortable, to manage your own boundaries for sure, but to say, I'm going to go toward this and hold it with this person and then try to offer something out more positive, more, that's more empowering. This can happen as a visualization reflection as well do in the meditation, or it can happen more tangibly as you go throughout your day. So let's just take one more deep breath together before we close.

All right. So breathing in through the nose. And out through the mouth. Great. It's been such a joy to spend these seven days with you.

Um, we've explored a lot of different topics. And Melli and I had, uh, there was a lot of excitement and a lot of fun putting this together, this experience. Um and we, we hope that it doesn't end here. If you're not yet in the Mindfulness.com app, we really encourage you to explore it because if you've been enjoying these videos and these meditations, you can get that everyday, basically forever. Cause that's the main thing we offer@mindfulness.com, a daily video, and a daily meditation, just like you've gotten to experience here.

So it doesn't need to end. And there's also a library with all these other courses and meditations and sleep meditations for you to go deeper. But if this is the end and our time, you know, finishes here during these seven days, we really wish you well. And we hope that there's something here, hopefully more than a handful of things, that you can bring into your life to, to positively impact your present and your future. It's been such a joy to be with you.

And as always, we'll transition this video and settle in for our meditation. Talk to you soon and take care.