Understand that practice is not about pretending to be calm, but about fully feeling and using every aspect of your human experience, including difficult emotions and powerful urges, as a path towards freedom.
Cultivate compassion by meeting your difficulties with open-heartedness and without judgment, allowing compassion to naturally arise as an intrinsic aspect of your heart.
Lift the shame around wanting and difficult experiences by recognizing that you are making a conscious choice to be present in human life, which makes difficulties more acceptable and life more engaging.
Cultivate self-compassion and self-love by simply making room for and being okay with whatever you are feeling at any given time.
Allow yourself to be with uncomfortable feelings, as this practice can lead to self-compassion, self-love, and the release of limiting beliefs about your ability to handle emotions.
Give yourself permission to deeply feel and make space for your desires, as listening to them can guide you towards a sense of freedom and reveal their wholesome root.
Before acting on a desire (e.g., eating a cupcake), pause to feel what’s truly going on, identify any uncomfortable feelings you might be avoiding, and challenge the belief that you can’t handle those feelings.
By allowing yourself to fully experience wanting without shame, you create more internal space, which enables you to truly listen to what you deeply desire and make conscious choices.
Instead of shaming desires, use the vibrant energy and excitement of wanting to mindfully direct yourself towards what you truly and deeply desire, beyond surface-level cravings.
Through desire meditation, you can clarify that surface-level wants often mask deeper needs (e.g., not wanting to feel lonely), revealing that acting on the surface want might lead to more suffering.
For strong desires, place attention on a grounding anchor (feet, breath) while letting the desire and imagination run wild, creating space for the energy to move and reveal deeper wants, without getting lost in fantasy.
Apply the grounded exploration technique to anger, allowing it to course through your body and imagining its full expression, to create space for it and understand its messages about fairness and what you deserve.
If you have sufficient meditation practice to remain present, allow anger to be expressed outwardly and physically in private, such as smashing pillows or screaming, to let the energy course through your body and prevent it from getting stuck.
Challenge cultural norms by consciously relaxing your belly and allowing your body to take up its natural space, affirming your inherent right to exist as you are.
By allowing your body to be as it is and taking up space, you can open yourself to deeper, intuitive forms of wanting, as all experience and wanting are felt within the body.
Don’t pretend not to feel nervous or to have everything together; instead, be open and honest about your true feelings as an embodiment of humility and part of your practice.
View nervousness as your body preparing to act, which can actually enhance performance rather than hinder it.
Allow your meditation practice to be guided from within, extending beyond traditional sitting and walking meditations, to explore what feels right for you personally.
Engage with your sexuality as a practice, recognizing its immense power and potential as an unexplored field of experience that can be integrated into your path towards freedom.
Start meditating for a short duration, like 7-8 minutes a day, as even this brief practice can lead to profound experiences within a few weeks.
Before deeply exploring desires without shame, cultivate a certain level of mental steadiness and ability to be present, as this practice is not recommended for beginners without that foundation.
When engaging with desire, focus on being present with the wanting without judgment or the pressure to control subsequent actions, which helps to dismantle shame and fosters deeper understanding.
Approach your personal practice with humility, acknowledging that you are figuring things out for yourself rather than claiming expertise, and recognizing that your methods may not be universally applicable.