Meditation to Nourish the Vulnerable Heart

So, what does caregiving look like in the presence of difficulties? I think it’s safe to say that we all care, but do we care about the right things? These are the words of Hafiz, a poet of antiquity: “My dear, is it true that your mind is sometimes like a ram running around the city, shouting so madly inside and outside about 10,000 things that don’t matter?”

I think we all have moments in our lives that awaken us to what is most important. I have one: when my son Valentine was about a month old, I had to rush him to the hospital. There we learned that he needed an urgent operation. It wasn’t even me who ran to that hospital with him—it was every parent who ever carried a sick child or infant. At times like these, it’s easy to forget that we’re actually learning something about the human condition.

So…what does it even mean to live with an “unprotected heart”? How to teach the heart to relax in order to learn about the phenomenon of being human? And how do we make it less about our personal pain and more connected to the pain and to all beings who share this condition with me? Because that’s when we can let the most caring part of us come forward.

However, it is not easy. We must attend to where we are stuck and bring compassion to that very place, to that very experience. To truly love means to give a part of yourself. In this way, the practice of compassion awakens all the barriers we put between ourselves and love.

Seeing where we are stuck or closed is important because there is no chance for freedom unless we can first recognize where we are stuck. And if we can’t tell the difference between an inept response and a skillful one, we’re bound to stay stuck in our unconscious patterns. Tara Brach puts it this way: “Every time you meet an old emotional pattern with presence, you awaken to the truth. There is less self-identification with the story and more ability to rest in the consciousness that is witnessing what is happening. You become more able to empathize with, remember, and trust your true home instead of cycling through old conditioning. You you are actually moving towards freedom”.

When we open ourselves to what is difficult, we also open ourselves to understanding. Last week we talked about the ability to stay with the sensations in the body rather than the mind’s story of what happened or is happening. We can usually handle the sensations. These are the stories that overwhelm us. It is a story we will always feel; that we have always felt this way; that whatever happens is the only thing that happens.

Through this practice, we can learn to direct our awareness in a very specific way – especially in relation to the heart’s relationship to pain. We may not be able to save the world, but we must find a way to respond, to preserve our experience of the world. Knowing in our hearts that we are not separate from this world is an important first step. Because when we allow ourselves to be touched, we encounter the courage of a vulnerable heart. And our desire to touch, to be moved, to dangle in this realm can bring some beauty to the hard things of life.

Meditation to Nourish the Vulnerable Heart

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Listen to the audio:

Read the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.

1. Find a comfortable position, directing your awareness inward. Let go of any demands you may feel at this moment; just let them fall away.

2. Check your heart and your stomach. When you do, let’s set the intention to meet whatever comes up with as much gentleness and acceptance as possible.

3. Think of someone you know. Let’s make it a person we see regularly, perhaps at the grocery store or in our neighborhood. What we do is extend the circle of concern to those we feel neutral about (so no big feelings either way). Picture them in your mind, knowing that they too have their own difficulties. They also know pain, struggle.

4. Now let’s give them the same care they wished for last week. I care about your difficulties. May you be held in sympathy. May your heart be at peace.

5. Think of all the different people you cross paths with on a regular basis. Offer them the same phrases that we offered ourselves: I care about your difficulties. May you be held in sympathy. May your heart be at peace.

6. As we complete this practice, notice if there are ways in which you judge yourself. Are you telling yourself you’re not doing it well enough, or are you waiting for something else to happen? No need to judge here. We are all simply setting intentions and attending to what arises.

Over the next week, allow yourself to see where compassion comes naturally, and where it might need a little help to flourish.

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