Love. Listen.

Insight Timer | Sarah Blondin: Loving And Listening To Yourself

I am working with an ensoulment coach who has invited me into a practice of meditation. I have been resistant to the practice because of a lifetime of conditioning that has resulted in a sense of anxiety, fear, guilt, shame, frustration, blame, anger, helplessness, incapacity, intransigence, bewilderment, and confusion.

These are the internal voices that I tend to drown out with work, food, entertainment, learning, seeking knowledge and wisdom outside of myself, because of a sense that I am not enough, not worthy of love.

When I have tried to connect to the God I was told was there, the thoughts and questions were met with silence. This experience of disconnection, separation, isolation, and alienation became my identity. In my attempts to reach out to others to feel like I was not alone, I found people who operated at a surface level, maintaining a façade of perfection through the development of a persona, a resume, a CV, a brand, an identity, using things, experiences, and accomplishments as signifiers of success: fame, wealth, power. As social animals, we learn that approval, control, and safety/security are necessary to survive. We seek influence, capacity, and agency in this constant state of internalized stress, feeling as if these qualities are out of reach, that meaning, purpose and belonging are beyond our grasp. The fear of death is a constant reminder that our impermanence renders us insignificant. How can we make a difference in the grand scheme of things? How can we make a dent in the universe? Is this all there is? Survival? Kill or be killed? Peace achieved by the constant threat of violence and war?

What if the entire world could lay down their weapons? What if we could all find within ourselves what we have been searching for our entire lives. What if our hearts could speak to us in a calm, soothing voice, accompanied by music that evokes an emotional atmosphere of the warmth of an embrace, of sounds and vibrations that can melt the heart?

What if we could hear the voice say, “I love you. I am listening.” Could we learn to say these things from our own hearts and really understand these words to be a reflection of our true selves? We might be changed, transformed.

We might sense gravity pulling us toward the heart of the earth, reminding us in the tender voice of a mother that she has been here the whole time, holding us in this embrace, enveloping us with the breath of life, nurturing our bodies with the energy of the sun and the nourishment that grows out of the soil.

That gravity pulls us into our own hearts, reminding us that love has been here the whole time. Our bodies are a microcosm of the Earth, of the universe, indivisible from the love that was the seed of its origin, that is the background radiation of life. We just needed a moment to listen to that voice, and feel that embrace, and sense the vibrations in this present awareness, the stillness at the heart of the swirling, spiraling motion of reality.

I am one. We are one.