Dear Friends,
At work, we have monthly lunch sessions where we get together and listen to a TED talk together, and then we have opportunities to discuss the topic and how it applies in our workplace.
On Wednesday, we listened to Brené Brown’s talk called The power of vulnerability (~20 minutes). I’ve listened to her talks several times. One of the things she said in this talk stuck out for me:
We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability. … The problem is … that you cannot selectively numb emotion. … You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. …. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness.
Jeanne has made a 15 minute Awareness of Breath meditation available on her website:
http://www.jeannecorrigal.com/guided-meditations.html
(*Spoiler alert* Don’t listen to the body scan one yet… we’ll do that next week!)
As you gently come back to your breath, again and again, you’re building your ability to concentrate, and that is a skill with many benefits.
In Real Happiness -The Power of Meditation: A 28-day Program, Sharon Salzberg describes this benefit of developing concentration:
Another healthy result of concentration: It brings wholeness when we feel scattered, because we allow ourselves to be aware of all of our feelings and thoughts, the pleasant and the painful ones. We don’t have to exhaust ourselves by running away from difficult or troubling thoughts, or by beating ourselves up for having them. And because we’ve begun to be kinder and more accepting of ourselves, we can be kinder and more accepting of others.
So I see Sharon’s described benefit of developing concentration is a way we can deal with vulnerability in life. And, in being more accepting of ourselves and others, we can discover what Brené describes as the power of vulnerability:
To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen … to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee … to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, … to say, “I’m just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive.” And the last, … is to believe that we’re enough. Because when we work from a place … that says, “I’m enough” … then we stop screaming and start listening, we’re kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we’re kinder and gentler to ourselves.
May you be gentle with your practice today.
With best wishes,
Andrea G