Sit,Walk,Work (SW^2)
Dharma Talk: Letters from Love: Cultivating Self-Communication and Grace in Transition
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Hi, welcome to the sit walk work podcast, a show about paying attention. I am your host Dominic. And in today's episode, we have a Dharma talk to open up the month of October for us. And so this month I have looked at the things and I've chosen the idea of transitioning. And so that's what this episode is about. It's a discussion to talk about the various kinds of transitions, how they impact our lives, how we can use and leverage this time to our advantage, both for our mental, our physical and our spiritual well-being. And so let's get into the topic today. So when I think of transitions, I look at them in a couple different categories. Like the first is the obvious category. We are transitioning now into the fall, autumn. And then this is one of those times seasonally that people tend to love, right? You see the changes in the trees as the leaves begin to change colors. And eventually they fall off the trees and we move from that fall autumn into early winter and late winter. And so this is also from a marketing standpoint. This is pumpkin spice season as they like to call it. We've in the last, let's say 10 years, it's been transitioned and marketed to us. This is the time, you know, to get your sweaters out and to celebrate your spooky things and to get nice and cozy. And yeah, that's fine. There's, there's room for that. There's an element of that in our life. But like if we get back to the real nature of what this season is about coming off of spring and coming off of summer and the energy, the various different energies that those seasons have presented us, we land here in fall. And in fall, we are beginning to harvest, to reap the harvest from what has grown through the summer months and to prepare that harvest to last us throughout the winter time. And we forget that's how nature works. The animals, the creatures around us are making those various strides to prepare for their winter, prepare for when things are not robust, to build them a bit of stockpile. So they have what they need. And we would do well to learn from great nature and apply some of these strategies to our personal nature and our personal life. See, one of the things you don't realize is that this is the time of year where you can start to look at transitions in your life. It's also a good time to take another look at what you need to clear out of and let go of in this time of your life, just like the trees, let go over their leaves so that they can bring in new growth in the spring and summer months. There's probably some areas of your life, my life, that could use some pruning. That you could let go of because it doesn't serve you any longer. And you can also look at what in your life deserves attention from a standpoint of transition. What needs to change? What is it that requires you to move forward towards a different or better version? I know for me personally, I am working on how I communicate with myself. This is important because communication we always hear is critical to relationships, especially interpersonal relationships. If you're married, you have a girlfriend, a partner, a spouse, whatever, right? Communication is often cited as one of the primary reasons relationships don't survive or just have challenges in general. Yeah, what is not often spoke of is how are you relating with yourself? Because that's a critical element. You can try really hard to be a great communicator with everyone around you. But it's my belief that if you fail to learn how to communicate well to yourself, you will fail everyone around you. You can't skip you. If you put all your energy into being a really good communicator in your relationship, but you can't communicate your own feelings to yourself, then you have no feelings that you can share with your partner because you won't know how to communicate them to you to your partner because they, you don't know how to work them out within yourself. And part of communication is knowing what you have to say. But you have to have done that work with yourself internally. So that when you open your mouth, the words that come out, truly reflect what you mean. But if the only thing you know how to do with yourself is to break your commitments, tall, harshly to yourself, shame yourself. To grade or demean or judge every little thing you say and do in a way that would embarrass you if other people heard it. Then it's going to be more difficult for you to communicate your needs because you're not going to fully understand them. Because you haven't been able to work that out within yourself. And there's a lot of different ways one can come to learn how to communicate better with yourself. Right. First off, using positive or kind words, it's probably a good start, right? Like it isn't and it's not healthy to talk to talk shitty to yourself. Because you know, you wouldn't talk shitty to somebody you cared about, right? Like you're not going to go out to your partner and your spouse and just say some wild, wild stuff. I mean, you might, but let's think about the long term implications of that decision, like it doesn't get you where you're trying to be. So you're probably going to take some care, you're going to think about the word choice and think about the tonality. And if you don't, you should, because that's part of the communication process, is speaking to others in a way that they will actually hear and digest what you're saying. And that goes the same for you. You have to be able to hear yourself. Sometimes it's hard to hear yourself over the noise. And I think one of the things that you don't hear often enough is that meditation is a tool that can be used to improve the way you communicate with yourself. Your meditation practice introduces you. Number one, listening, that's, it's, that's the first skill you who learn in meditation is how to be a good listener. How to listen to everything that's happening around you, to all of the sensory information that's being pulled in in the moment. To listen to the inner voice and a critic that's doing what it does, that's passing the story, that's commenting on your experience. And as you come to learn that that voice that you hear isn't necessarily reflective of who you are, then you can start to get some space from that voice, rather than being enmeshed with it and being intertwined with it and thinking it is actually you. Now the second skill that you loan after being able to sit with yourself and getting used to what's going on inside of you is, how do I interact with myself? Meditation is a training ground for self compassion. For the improving the word choice, I mentioned a moment ago that you use. For releasing the shame when you make a mistake and allowing you to have grace it becomes a place that you learn to let the armor of judgment soften. And lastly, it invites kindness, kindness and self talk, kindness is distributed throughout yourself, compassion for yourself, but also sending that energy out to others, sharing it with them. These are all things that your practice can start to teach you. And recently, I learned something additional that you can take away from the practice that will help to improve the communication that you have with yourself and hopefully the communication you have with others because that's what we're doing this for. Yeah, selfishly, I do this for myself, right? Like I choose me first when I sat down to meditate and over the years that has obviously evolved because now not only do I share my practice with students, I share it with all of you who happened to tune into this podcast and listen. So it isn't any longer a self motivated thing, but that's how it started, right? It started for me and I suggest for you, it should start for you too that way. And you can be and you can use the motivation of others to spur your cause. But you should look to serve yourself first, feel your own cup up and then let it run over to everyone around you. So this new tool that I've recently added to my practice and to be honest has immediately changed the dialogue I have with myself. And so I was listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast because it's one of my favorite podcasts and I've listened to it since its inception. And so I will always listen to it and it is it's almost every episode I get at least one nugget out of it that has vastly improved my life. And so his recent episode with Elizabeth Gilbert, which I'll tag in the show notes for anybody who wants to go and listen to it, it's a phenomenal episode. But in that episode, she talks about something that she offers on her sub-stack, which I'll also link to in the show notes is something she calls letters from love. And this idea of letters from love as she has branded it and called it is a remake, a remix of something that comes out of the AA playbook called two-way prayer. And look, I know words like prayer and God are often used in our culture. The way they used to be, because they can be very loaded words for people. Because we've all got a different spiritual journey. And often it is in a clean one, right? It's been tainted with dogma and shame and being let down and a million other negative connotations. But the fact remains, you are still a spiritual being and in a lot, at some point in your life, you need to figure out what spirit looks like for you. If you want to have a whole and complete life, it's not a part of you that you can carve out, that you can stick on the shelf and forget about, like it deserves your attention. And when you decide to give it your attention, you deserve to do that in a way that is most healthy for you. But I am going to use those terms in today's episode because they are relevant to the topic at hand. You can feel free to plug in any language that makes you feel more comfortable. But I'm not going to pretend that this is something that doesn't exist and you don't need to tend to. So that being said, this idea of two-way prayer or letters from love is a simple but amazing concept to me. And look, it's been around longer than I have, like I said, this idea of two-way prayers actually comes to us from Alcoholics Anonymous is where it's a real general origin comes from. And it was part of the original curriculum that that group used along the way, like it got dropped from the curriculum. But there are people, and I'll link to some of the websites and things out there that talk about the process and really break it down. They decided to keep this idea alive and I'm really glad that they did. So what are we talking about here? First off, it starts with some type of getting still, getting quiet. Now, because this is a podcast about paying attention and part of paying attention is being able to sit with stillness, having moments of meditation. Like that is perfectly relevant to what we do here. And so step one, get quiet. For me, that means just do my regular meditation routine that I do every morning. 15, 20 minutes, I sit. And typically for me, it's guided. I use the waking up app from Sam Harris. I love that app. It's a wonderful companion to everything I do. It teaches me as much as it does, gives me a place to actually perform my practice. And so I'll sit down and I'll listen to my normal meditation. After I'm done with my meditation, I take my journal. You can get a notebook. It's recommended that you get a notebook or journal specifically to perform your two-way prayers and to do them for at least 30 days. Give yourself a chance to build a habit. So after you've sat for however long it takes for a bit of thing, for a bit of stillness to show up, to get a little quiet inside. Could take a few minutes, could take longer than a few. It just kind of depends. But after that, get your pen and get your notebook out. And then you drop a question in and you listen. The question that you ask yourself is, "Dear love, what would you have me know today?" Dear love, what would you have me know today? Now, this variation of the question comes from Elizabeth Gilbert and her letters from love. And you listen to the first thing that you hear. And then you write it down and you continue to listen and write it down. And it's going to sound interesting because I don't know how long to tell you to write for. You write until the window closes, until you no longer feel you need to. And I don't necessarily have a answer right or wrong about when that is. It's just something that tends to happen on its own. And once you're done writing out everything, you've emptied out. You've said what you needed to say on the page. You immediately go back and read it. And the goal is to hang on to the parts of what you read that are true, that feel the truest. If it doesn't feel really true to you, obviously you can disregard it and let it go. But you might be amazed at what you see on the page. At least I know I have. The kindness, the compassion, the gentleness, the sheer amount of just empathy and encouragement that I've written out for myself, for the words that I've given to myself, has utterly amazed me. Because I don't talk to myself that way ever, never ever, not on a regular basis. And yet in this practice, I am introduced to a way that gives me a chance to do exactly that. It gives me a chance to talk to myself in a way that I normally wouldn't. And I appreciate this vehicle for doing that. And so when you're done, you read it, you keep the words. And if there's something in there that's asking you to take action, you try to do it with. And see if it makes sense to you. And I think using a tool like letters, letters from love or two-way prayer, however you want to call it. Using a tool like that to open yourself up to even a softer side of you now. And this kind of comes up in the episode that Elizabeth Gilbert had with Tim Ferris on his podcast. Like, you know, the question was, well, how do I know this is God talking to me? Like, what if it's just myself talking to me? Like, why would that be a bad thing? Maybe it's the kindest version of yourself you've ever heard. Because I know, I know the negative that's in there, the drives and pushes you. And so even if you don't believe it's from God or you think it's just coming from another part of your subconscious, like, so what? What's wrong with being kind to yourself? Like, why is that such a bad thing? I don't think it is. And I think that anything that can help you to build that skill into a tangible, relatable framework that you can utilize to be a little softer with yourself will improve. Not only you, but I am certain it will improve everyone around you. And so that's my call to action for you for the next month. Harvest a bit of kindness for yourself. Start to stockpile someone else kinder gentler words because you're going to need them. And the winter months are coming. It's going to be cold, dark and lonely. And you're going to have to have a place to refuge some stores to work from, to remind yourself of your kindness and your gentleness and your lovingness and your beauty and all of the best parts of you. And this is a way to start to build that for yourself. So I hope that and that you find some beauty in this time of transition. And I encourage you for the rest of the month to give letters from the love of try. It's just pin paper and sitting down and being quiet every day before you start. Any other part of your day. And then if it works, great, let me know. If it doesn't work, great, let it go. But until I see you on the mat or I drop into your ears, I hope that you are well. Thank you for listening to today's episode. I invite you to check out my sub stack where we are building a community of like-minded individuals to discuss all topics related to the idea of paying attention. I hope to see you there, but until then with meta may you be well. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]