The Container of Loving Awareness

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'm going to talk about creating a container with which to hold emotions, impulses, and thoughts. So one of the things that can be really challenging in our mindfulness practice is when difficult emotions arise. Whether it's fear, irritation, anger, sadness, or shame, our instinct is usually to struggle with or try to avoid those feelings. So it can be really hard to be with these kinds of emotions, no matter whether you've been practicing for a long time or a little time.

But the reality is that running from or repressing our emotions just tends to prolong them and they tighten their grip on us. So how do we handle these challenging feelings when they arise? One way is to have a sense of creating a container within ourselves with which we can hold and make space for our emotions so they can arise and move through us in healthy ways. So if you think about awareness as the container that can allow all emotions to arise and pass through it, we can rely on this steady, compassionate place to help us handle whatever comes up. You know, this container of awareness offers everything that arises with acceptance, kindness, and warmth. So when difficult emotions arise, you can hold them tenderly in awareness, having the same attitude towards the emotion that you would have towards a loved one who was hurting.

You wouldn't run away from your loved one, or try to force them to stop feeling bad. You'd simply give them your love and compassion. Right? See if you can meet and hold difficult emotions in the same way. Allowing them to arise ,and when they do, embracing them in this container of loving awareness. See if you can let go of any judgements about them, any resistance towards them and just let them arise, stay or pass away in their time.

When we learn to honor, allow and give space for all of our emotions, we find that we can be with and work with anything, no matter how hard or scary it feels. This container of loving awareness, therefore, gives us an enormous amount of inner strength as we learn to face and hold anything, the hard stuff, the scary stuff, the parts of us that hurt. We learn to face it all with openness, compassion and wisdom. So today I'm going to guide you through a meditation so that you can practice this for yourself. But also today, if anything arises that feels difficult, just doing your best to give it space and hold it in a container of loving awareness.

As always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And now let's settle in for today's meditation.