"There is no healing without heartwork, intimately tending to the wounds we've been avoiding for so long. In this powerful and beautiful book, Radhule Weininger will help you find the courage, pathways, and clarity needed to embrace this life with love." — Tara Brach, Ph.D., author of Radical Acceptance
In the meditation on self-compassion, you learn to cultivate a sense of tenderness for your own suffering, which is an essential step in including others and the world in your care. With the help of carefully guided meditations, you will discover how to offer a deep sense of understanding and warmth to yourself in ways that are relevant to your particular challenges.
The Buddha called compassion "tenderness of heart." With compassion, your heart and mind can gradually soften. You will begin a process of healing by first offering the quality of tenderness to yourself. Once you have learned how to make friends with yourself, you are better able to widen your compassion to others.
Psychologist John Welwood wrote, "You can't have compassion unless you're first willing to feel what you feel." When you allow even your uncomfortable and messy emotions into your awareness, you become open and vulnerable in a gentle way. It can be helpful to be truly humbled by the reality of your feelings. By leaning into the felt sense of your emotions, you enter the present moment. When you are truly present with yourself, transformation can happen.
Allowing yourself to become aware of the feeling tone of what is difficult gives you the opportunity to become grounded in the humanity all of us share. Rather than difficult or messy emotions being problems, they are the grist for the mill of your inner work. Within that so-called messiness, you have the opportunity to become truly compassionate toward yourself, others, and the world.
Often you may not be aware that you have succumbed to the habit of self-criticism. Your parents and grandparents may have had a harsh pattern of relating, and you may be equally accustomed to harshness when it comes to speaking to yourself. Also, you may have been told that self-criticism is a way to control yourself. You may be afraid that you will become reckless and irresponsible without the whip of self-deprecation.
However, self-chastisement is not a good tool for keeping yourself in check. Having a critical attitude word yourself can make you frustrate, depressed, anxious, guilty, and ashamed. When you criticize, undercut, or condemn yourself, much of your vitality — which you urgently need to heal and engage with the world — is thwarted.
When you practice self-compassion, you are willing to be present with all that you are, in your body, in this moment, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. Instead of fighting life (and yourself), you learn to notice it and allow it to pass through in its own time. Being gentle with yourself allows you to witness what is happening with caring eyes rather than habitually contracting from judgment or reacting out of fear. Now your energy has a chance to replenish.
The Loving-Kindness and Self-Compassion practices described in this chapter can be seen as two sides of the same coin. With Loving-Kindness, you wish yourself (and then others) well, whereas with the Self-Compassion Practice, you feel your (and then another's) suffering. His Holiness the Dalai Lama tells us, "Compassion and love can be defined as the positive thoughts and feelings that give rise to such essential things in life as hope, courage, determination and inner strength. Compassion is the wish for another being to be free from suffering, love is wanting others to have happiness."
I sometimes imagine the Loving-Kindness and Self-Compassion practices as two arms that hold you. One arm supports you from below, while the other arms protects and blesses you from above. Loving kindness says,
May you be well.
Compassion says,
May I offer you caring when you are in pain.
You need both to heal.
— Radhule Weininger
Excerpted from Heartwork: The Path of Self-Compassion
9 Practices for Opening the Heart
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