Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about how we can embrace our shadow side with kindness and compassion. So there's actually an old parable about this. And the story goes that when the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree and meditated on the night that he was to become enlightened, the god Mara slung arrows at him all night long. Now Mara is essentially the god of our shadow self.

And so his arrows were all of the unconscious thoughts, emotions and impulses of the Buddha. These included lust, jealousy, fear, shame, rage, and self doubt. And with each arrow that was slung towards him, the Buddha brought awareness and compassion to it. And when received by this compassionate awareness, each arrow dissolved and fell to the ground. Even after enlightenment, Mara, the god the other monks called the Evil One, continued to show up and visit the Buddha from time to time.

Sometimes when the Buddha was teaching, Mara would sneak around the back of the crowd. And although the monks would start to get really nervous or try to get rid of Mara, the Buddha's response to Mara's presence always remained the same. Warm, compassionate, kind. He would always say, hello, Mara. I see you.

Then he would invite Mara to tea as his honored guest. So he offered Mara a nice, comfortable seat. The Buddha would sit down beside him, fill two cups with tea and sit with Mara. And Mara would stay for a while and then he would leave. But throughout the whole visit, the Buddha remained undisturbed and content.

So when Mara visits us in the form of fear, self-loathing, troubling thoughts, difficult feelings or impulses, we too can meet those impulses, those thoughts, those feelings in the same way. In that spirit of, I see you Mara. In other words, we can meet what we might call our shadow material with awareness, acceptance, and compassion. We can recognize our hurts and fears and hold what we're seeing in the warm embrace of kindness. So often we react to our shadow by pushing it away, trying to escape it, or often by pretending there is no darkness inside of us, but that pretending only makes it more deeply entrenched.

Mindfulness is really about learning to see, befriend and accept all of ourselves, even at the most subtle levels. And when we befriend ourselves, we bring what was in the shadow into the light of awareness. Then we're not taken over by our shadow and we can work with it more skillfully. As the old saying goes, the seeing is freeing. So today's invitation.

Rather than resisting or denying the difficult or shadowy parts of yourself, see if you can gently meet them with awareness and compassion. We're going to explore this theme a little bit more in today's meditation. So I invite you to begin to settle in for that. And as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.