Two doors: A Morning Meditation

Self-love, unconditional positive regard, telling my inner child that she is enough and she does not have to carry the weight of the world on her back by trying to make sure everyone is happy -- an exhausting and endless effort.

Self-punishment, deflecting care and support and admiration like some kind of invisible iron dome, nothing penetrating but the piercing of astronomical expectations that will never be met because they are unmeetable.

Which will I choose? This week, today, in this moment?

It's up to me alone.

No therapist, no coach, no bodyworker, no medium, no card reader can guide me more than my own consciousness and intention.

Cultivating this awareness, cradling this focus, takes renewed commitment. It is a practice.

I tell an old story that I am bad at practicing. I quit things. I start strong then drift away. I abandon.

But there is another truth, the one I too easily disregard, which is that I also come back. Again and again, I return.

The forgetting is the tide going out.

The remembering is the tide coming in.

And so I choose the first door. The door of deep love for myself, where I get to feel proud of my accomplishments, where humility replaces self-diminishment, where knowing that I am absolutely enough allows me to shift my focus away from self to the world outside, the world outside that is bursting with beauty and heaving with need.

I remember that I am mountain and sky, old and new, loved and loving.

I remember that I am breath.

I remember that I am bone.

I remember that I am ocean.

I remember that I am home.