SoulSmith Meditations

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This one is a little counter culture, and I’m getting straight to the point. So brace yourself…

Cherishing ourselves is actually the cause of all our anger and frustration. 

Now let me be clear: I’m not talking about eliminating the need for self care - there’s a reason they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first - but I am inviting us to take a deeper look at how and why we feel the way we do when something doesn’t go our way.

If you contemplate this one carefully it is clear; for example, when someone is walking slowly in front of us down the stairs - we get agitated. Then the swirl begins… we blame the other person for their “self-centered behavior” (don’t they realize you’re in a hurry? They’re holding up traffic! This is New York City!). 

Take a step back. What’s actually happening here? 

Are they the careless one? Or is our mind creating agitation that stems from thinking our need to be quick is more important than the other person’s needs? If we were able to hold a peaceful mind in that moment and instead take the opportunity to practice patience or, even better, joyfully help them down the stairs and be of service to the broader community - how much happier could we feel?

When you consider every major conflict in the world, the same pattern is there. This worldview is more important than that worldview, and little differences quickly become huge differences, and violence follows.

Alternatively, cherishing others more than yourself is a pathway to lasting happiness. According to Buddhist Master Langri Tangpa we do this in stages

STAGE 1 

First we equalize ourselves with others

STAGE 2

Then we explore cherishing others more than ourselves

The latter usually raises red flags for most people . But what about my own needs? Will I just be a doormat? And so forth… 

In Western culture we have habituated self-centered thinking our whole lives, so be gentle with yourself - this will take some time and effort to shift. Which is why we begin doing this in meditation. You can create a safe space for yourself to practice making more choices for the benefit of all. Its trial and error - a lifelong exercise of training your mind to recognize, reduce and eventually abandon acting from your self-cherishing mind. 

Oh, and the short answer is: no you don’t become a doormat. Your capacity to serve and love others, and in turn yourself, only expands. But it requires practice.

This meditation gives you an opportunity to try cherishing others. It  explores equalising self with others and then, using someone dear to us as a platform, we expand our mind to cherish all beings.

I hope you like it.

Much love, fellow souls

Side notes!

Over the Labor Day long weekend I took a beautiful three-day meditation retreat on this very topic at Kadampa Meditation Centre New York. A stunning temple in the catskills a couple of hours out of the city. 

For me, this is an example of self care for the sake of cherishing others. I enjoyed the retreat and time away to reset, and have been able to bring my own learnings back to share and embody. 

Kadampa have many centers around the world, including a center in Chelsea, and several other local branches for those in NYC, full of programs and talks on Buddhist philosophy you can explore here. 

Deeper teachings on this topic are in the book New Eight Steps to Happiness by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso which you can find in the SoulSmith recommended reading list

Tonglen is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist meditation that was kept secret for a long time. It is a beautiful practice, with many benefits, and I’m happy to share it with you.

Tonglen is also called the meditation of taking and giving. Len is the action of taking on the suffering of others; and tong is sending out love and wisdom.

In this practice we do a traditional warm up of the mind, known as the preliminaries. Then begin tonglen by imagining using our breath to take on others’ suffering. Initially for our future self, and slowly working towards other loved ones, difficult people, and eventually all beings.

Through the power of compassion, we transform that energy into love and wisdom and give it back out to whoever we are working with.

Does it hurt? No, this meditation is a visualization and we don’t literally take on the suffering of others. And paradoxically, my experience of the meditation is actually extremely beautiful. Feeling like I am directly spreading love into many dear people in my life that I currently see as in some level of suffering.

Why would I want to take on others’ pain? The simple answer is because there are so many upsides!

One of my spiritual guides, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso outlines four main benefits in his wonderful book The New Eight Steps to Happiness (featured in the SoulSmith recommended reading list):

* They are powerful methods to purify the potential negative results of non-virtuous actions

* To accumulate a great collection of merit

* To ripen our potential to benefit all living beings

* To purify our mind

This meditation helped me during a difficult time in my life. I saw these benefits first hand after practicing tonglen every morning for 2+ months. One by one, I meditated on all my loved ones, and then slowly more difficult people in my life. Separateness slowly drifted towards love. By the end of these two months, I felt lighter, clearer, and more loving, with substantially fewer triggering people in my life.

Its much easier to cherish and love someone if you have been sitting with them in meditation and secretly giving them everything that you know would make them happy.

I strongly encourage you to practice this meditation every day for a month or more as an act of self-love, and for the sake of all those around you.

Community Announcements ✨

* SoulSmith guided meditations are now live on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Search “SoulSmith meditations” to follow.

* This newsletter, and many other spiritual publications are now listed in Maia Duerr ‘s very helpful DharmaStack

* Kadampa Meditation Center have a fantastic retreat coming up on labor day weekend. I will be going — let me know if you will be there!

* Upcoming Meditation Teacher Trainings I recommend:

* My teacher davidji combines wisdom and meditation into an awesome container. He has an upcoming teacher training starting July 28

* Three Jewels is a NYC-based studio led by Hector Marcel. They have a 200hr meditation teacher training starting in October

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This is a yummy practice of self-love that is valuable for everyone, but I often recommend it for people who need a little reminder of their own magic.

Without mindfulness, many of us buy the (made up) stories that our negative inner dialogue tell us. We come to believe we’re ‘not good enough’, ‘should have done more’, ‘can’t do anything right', or whatever your particular flavor of inner nasty is. Next minute,  we have forgotten to appreciate all the ways we are wonderful, trying our best, and being kind to one another.

This meditation is an antidote for that salty state of mind. It has two parts; giving love, and receiving love. First we give love to ourselves as a child, which can be easier than working with the current version of us. Then we get to receive unconditional love from our highest, most ideal future self.

I find it an incredibly cathartic meditation and hope you do too! This is one you can come back to whenever you feel the call for self-love. And if you are in a tough moment, it is a good one to work with each morning for a couple weeks to boost your inner immune system.

With love 💜

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Please enjoy this meditation on being here now.

The meditation has 3 main parts. First we settle and enjoy some subtle breath work. Then to a body scan focused on relaxing, opening and cultivating awareness. And finally to open the mind to sit in total awareness of being, and explore drifting between awareness of body and total awareness of mind.

This is a recent favorite of mine, inspired by meditations I love from Tara Brach, davidji, and Ram Dass that also help cultivate internal awareness.

I designed this meditation for our recent community call focused on shifting impatience towards acceptance and joyful effort.

A key quote from that talk was:

Impatience is an argument with reality - Rick Rubin

This was a powerful idea for me. When we are tense, or grasping with what is being experienced right in front of us, we are wrestling with reality.

It invites us to consider, can we wholeheartedly accept being here, now?

A takeaway exercise for outside meditation is:

* This week can you notice when you are feeling impatient?

* And ask yourself if you can fully accept where you are in that moment to try and shift some of those tender moments into more open ones.

Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won’t. All we can do is do our best and keep practicing…

I hope you enjoy this meditation. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Good luck!

SoulSmith is a reader-supported publication. Just like public radio, all content is available to anyone who wants it. If it resonates for you, please consider supporting in whatever way feels good; become a paid subscriber, share it to others, or comment and engage with the work.

Like many skills, meditation becomes easier and more fulfilling with practice. And one of the easiest ways to do this is habituating it into your routine. 

This meditation I have recorded is designed to be a nice entry point for those of you new to meditating, or trying to rebuild your practice, or going through a life transition or difficult moment. It’s suitable for all levels.

My teacher davidji insists on making meditation as natural as brushing your teeth and has a great one-liner to help.

“RPM = Rise. Pee. Meditate.”

Basically habituate getting your first meditation of the day done first thing.

On a scientific level, studies have reported the first 30 mins of the day, and in particular the first few minutes after you wake up, are prime for being able to slip into alpha brain wave states, most conducive to deep meditation.

Then on a practical level, getting to the cushion before we open our phones and get drunk on dopamine - intoxicated by all the notifications, emails, texts, news and social media scrolling is incredibly helpful.

Here’s what I’m proposing: make a commitment this week, to rise, pee, then meditate as part of your morning routine and see how it feels. Comment on this post if you’re up for the challenge, and come back to let me know how you did at the end of the week.

When you feel ready, explore other meditations on this site or DM me some details about what you’re working on and I can suggest specific recordings for you. 

Good luck!

SoulSmith is a reader-supported publication. Just like public radio, I intend for all content to be available to anyone who wants it. If any of this resonated for you, please consider supporting in whatever way feels good for you; become a paid subscriber, share it to others, or comment and engage with the work. 

I think about Metta meditation like a gateway drug into falling in love with your heart. 

Metta means ‘loving kindness’, and in this meditation the object is the feeling of pure love in your heart. Using your breath you expand that feeling as wide as your heart will allow (hint: much, much further than you think)

It gets gooey and cozy and feels really, really good. One of the reasons why Metta is a favorite mediation practice of mine.

This version is inspired by my teacher davidji. As I was working to awaken my own heart this is the meditation I kept coming to over and over again. In the process I built more trust and confidence that there is no limit to love, and my heart really can expand to include everyone.

If love towards self and others is something you want to work on, I recommend doing this meditation every morning for several weeks until the loving feeling starts to arise spontaneously outside meditation.

Enjoy! Much love 💜

P.S. This meditation and a conversation on love was the topic of our recent bi-weekly community call. If you’d like to be added to the invite, send me an email or DM, and keep an eye on the chat section in the Substack app where I will be sharing the invite before each call.

Ho’oponopono is a really beautiful family healing ritual originating from Hawaii. Sharing my gratitude to the Hawaiian healers who created this practice, and for my teacher davidji who first introduced me to this as a meditation that I am sharing with you below

The translation, as I understand it, for Ho’oponopono is to “make right, right again”. Or correction. It is traditionally shared in extended family settings, led by a family elder, so I think about it like a deep family reset to clear the air, reconnect and make things right again.

The first time I did this meditation (and still when I practice it now, honestly) I end up experiencing major catharsis and crying often - which is not my usual meditative vibe! 

I wondered if perhaps this is because I am a Maori man, and feel deeply connected as an indigenous Pacific Islander. Or because of various family wounds still lingering inside me. I do know for sure that the more I do this, I have come to think it is the practice itself. It is deceptively simple, and really gets to the heart of emotions I don’t often abide in. I hope you love it too.

The practice itself cultivates repentance, forgiveness, gratitude and love. And this is done by repeating the following mantra in different contexts:

“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”

In the meditation we will bring to mind past selves and family ancestors so please be gentle with yourself in the process if that is sensitive for you, and reply to me if you need support integrating. The goal is to shift from judgement toward love and gratitude for all those before you who did their best and helped you be here today, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.

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If you are going through a tough time with your family, I recommend coming back to this meditation regularly until more of those relationships feel they have shifted. If things are good, I like to come back every 2-4 weeks as maintenance. It works great in the morning, but also as a second sit, late afternoon, to wash off the funk from the day.

As always, questions and thoughts in the comments. I encourage sharing of any realizations or things that come up for you that might help other meditators in our community.