Mindfulness.com
Meditation
See All Meditation

Browse

Top articles

How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners

10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation

What is Meditation?

Mindful LivingSleep
CommunityFor Work

Already have an account?

Sign in

00:00

00:00

Befriending Your Internal World

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, I want to talk about befriending all the parts of you. In my experience as a teacher and as a practitioner who has spent thousands of hours paying careful attention to my internal experience through meditation, I still can't find an example of a time when it's actually beneficial to create an oppositional relationship to one's experience, including the parts of you that you might feel are destructive or problematic. In fact, those are often the parts that need the most love, compassion and care in order to not be destructive and problematic. This doesn't mean you give those parts free reign to act how that, however they wish to act.

We all know how that can be problematic. But it does mean we take the time to learn about and understand the positive intention of these parts, fear, anger, and create an internal space where all of our parts can collaborate as a team to respond most appropriately to what's arising in this moment. I want to acknowledge that it can be true that suppression of these seemingly problematic and destructive parts, like the part that might say I'm a failure, or I shouldn't even try, or I hate this person. I need to yell at them. This can be useful, perhaps as an in the moment strategy for reducing the negative impact of these parts on yourself and others around you, but it also seems to be the case that you can manage these parts in a similar, if not more effective and often more effective way in the moment through compassion and internal conversation.

And meeting these parts with a loving attitude of, oh, you know, what's coming up for you right now. Is there a different way that we can respond? What are you trying to accomplish with this? And when we do this, it doesn't come with the longterm consequences of suppression of our internal experience and all this internal opposition that we end up feeling when we're trying to fight our experience, which often leads us to do a lot of projection onto other people, leads to spontaneous outbursts of destructive energy and it leads to this feeling of being internally fractured, that there's parts of me that are okay to experience and other parts that are not okay that I have to push aside. That's not the experience of wholeness. And when we're talking about mindfulness and meditation and also internal freedom, we're talking about creating a space where the fullness of you can exist within awareness so that we're not creating this external tension. Again, it doesn't mean that all those parts have to come through in every moment.

It just means that we're developing a friendship with those parts, talking with them honestly and compassionately, and seeing how they can be used effectively in moments where they are needed and how they might be able to take a back seat when they're not needed. That can be done with kindness, with love rather than fear and hatred. So hope you can continue to integrate that into your practice and especially in your day to day relationship with yourself. It's very important in my opinion. Thank you for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.

Cory Muscara

4.7

Befriending Your Internal World

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Duration

Your default time is based on your progress and is changed automatically as you practice.

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, I want to talk about befriending all the parts of you. In my experience as a teacher and as a practitioner who has spent thousands of hours paying careful attention to my internal experience through meditation, I still can't find an example of a time when it's actually beneficial to create an oppositional relationship to one's experience, including the parts of you that you might feel are destructive or problematic. In fact, those are often the parts that need the most love, compassion and care in order to not be destructive and problematic. This doesn't mean you give those parts free reign to act how that, however they wish to act.

We all know how that can be problematic. But it does mean we take the time to learn about and understand the positive intention of these parts, fear, anger, and create an internal space where all of our parts can collaborate as a team to respond most appropriately to what's arising in this moment. I want to acknowledge that it can be true that suppression of these seemingly problematic and destructive parts, like the part that might say I'm a failure, or I shouldn't even try, or I hate this person. I need to yell at them. This can be useful, perhaps as an in the moment strategy for reducing the negative impact of these parts on yourself and others around you, but it also seems to be the case that you can manage these parts in a similar, if not more effective and often more effective way in the moment through compassion and internal conversation.

And meeting these parts with a loving attitude of, oh, you know, what's coming up for you right now. Is there a different way that we can respond? What are you trying to accomplish with this? And when we do this, it doesn't come with the longterm consequences of suppression of our internal experience and all this internal opposition that we end up feeling when we're trying to fight our experience, which often leads us to do a lot of projection onto other people, leads to spontaneous outbursts of destructive energy and it leads to this feeling of being internally fractured, that there's parts of me that are okay to experience and other parts that are not okay that I have to push aside. That's not the experience of wholeness. And when we're talking about mindfulness and meditation and also internal freedom, we're talking about creating a space where the fullness of you can exist within awareness so that we're not creating this external tension. Again, it doesn't mean that all those parts have to come through in every moment.

It just means that we're developing a friendship with those parts, talking with them honestly and compassionately, and seeing how they can be used effectively in moments where they are needed and how they might be able to take a back seat when they're not needed. That can be done with kindness, with love rather than fear and hatred. So hope you can continue to integrate that into your practice and especially in your day to day relationship with yourself. It's very important in my opinion. Thank you for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.

Cory Muscara

4.7

Duration

Play in-app

Scan the following QR code with your camera app to open it on our mobile app

Get Unlimited Access

Start your mindfulness journey today.

A Mindfulness Plus+ subscription gives you unlimited access to a world of premium mindfulness content.

  • Over 1,800 meditations, sleep, calm music, naturescapes and more
  • Daily mindfulness video meditations 365 days a year
  • 100s of courses and tools to help manage anxiety, sleep and stress

Mindfulness

Bring balance into your everyday life.

We believe in a world where everybody has access to the life-changing skills of mindfulness.

  • 2,000+ Guided Meditations
  • Daily Coaching
  • Sleep Content
  • Mindful Exercises
  • Mindful Radio
  • 10+ Courses from world-class teachers

Added to your cart!

Checkout

Claim your free access

Create a mindfulness account and we’ll unlock this premium session in your account forever.

or continue with
By continuing, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Do you already have an account?