Hi, welcome to the final day of this seven day series on Coming Home to Yourself. I hope you enjoyed the session yesterday with Melli on challenging the status quo, and I really hope it, it helped you let go of this need to please others, and to follow a certain kind of truth within you. Today, we're going to be exploring what it might mean to feel into our common humanity. You know, as, as I mentioned in, I believe it was Class Three or Session Three that we did, we're, we're social creatures. And so we, we have this deep need to feel a sense of belonging and connection with others.

But it can also be really complicated and we can get really caught in ways that we're different from other people or things we don't like about other people, frustrations. And these can be the dominant, uh, the dominant experience within us in relationship to the outside world, especially those that we might disagree with. However, there is still so much more that connects us than disconnects us. And sometimes we have to really reflect on what those commonalities are to feel more of a sense of empathy and connection rather than, uh, a sense of othering or disconnection. So I'd like to walk you through a quick reflection to feel into that.

If you'd like to close your eyes, you're welcome to. And just bring to mind another person. It could be someone you're close to, but could also be someone that you're feeling some difficulty toward, some judgment toward. And just holding the felt sense of this person's presence in your mind, and perhaps even a visual image of this person in your mind. And as you look at them and sense them, just acknowledging that this person, just like you, is trying to be happy.

This person, just like you, doesn't want to be in pain. This person, just like you, has had difficulties in their life and may have had a difficult childhood. And this person, just like you, wants to feel a sense of belonging and connection, even if they don't always know how to get it. And just feel into what it's like to hold this person's presence through the lens of feeling their shared humanity. Recognizing that they are another human, just like you, who's complex, who is trying to get it right, who on the deepest level, they're, they're doing their best with the resources they have available to them.

And when you're ready, you can open your eyes. So as you go about your day today, see if, as you're looking at other people, either virtually or in person, you can just take a moment to stop and feel into the common humanity there. Recognize that this person has a wildly complex life and a long past and history. And even though you're just seeing one moment of their life, like a snapshot, there was a long movie that has proceeded it, with goodness and with pain. And that might help you feel more of a sense of connection to this person and then subsequently communities and the world at large.

We'll explore some more of this in our meditation today. But this brings us to the end of our challenge. Before we close, let's just take one more moment to take a deep breath together. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

Thanks for being here with us, uh, for joining Melli and me on the seven day journey. We truly hope it's been nourishing for you and that you've gleaned some insights, some new things to think about and practice in your day. And we also hope the journey doesn't end here. There are, you could continue getting daily videos and meditations within the mindfulness.com app. And so we'd love to see this as the beginning of it, the journey.

Um, but if not, yeah, that's okay too. And we just hope that you continue to nurture these seeds within you, uh, and perhaps plant some new ones that really, um, illuminate the goodness of, of what it means to be human and help nourishes the goodness of, of you and your life and what you get to bring to this world. So as always, it's been a privilege. Thank you for your practice. It's for more people than just yourself and it's for our world at large.

We're not done yet, so we'll settle into our meditation. But until we talk again, I wish you the best and take care.