Caring for Our Feelings of Insecurity, Episode 132

Awareness that heals episode 132.

A very warm welcome to season three of awareness that heals where we have progressed to be able to focus on one challenging emotion at a time. This will allow you to choose a specific emotion that you’ve had challenges with, and each one will have a progressive series of guided meditations that will allow you to go deeper and deeper into self-compassion. For me, it’s truly inspiring because each emotion has unique nuances for both self-care and responding to your environment at the same time, this is subtle and a rare skill as all too often we don’t stay aware of how we can care for ourselves as we are. I hope that you’ll not only find it helpful, but also give you deep resources that you can internalize when the emotion is most emerging.

(01:07)
So I thank you again for joining us at Awareness That Heals where we’re doing our very best to deal with our emotional states and be able to support ourselves. And today we’re going to be really looking at insecurity and doing six progressive meditations. And I really want to encourage you to do the six meditations one at a time because they are progressive and I’ve done my best to simplify each one so that it will be easier to understand the final one that will incorporate all six. One of the themes that you’ll see, but it’s important for you to understand ahead of time, is that insecurity inside us can be something that we view as something really undesirable. And actually insecurity really means that you care about something a lot or you wouldn’t bother to be insecure about it. And so if you realize that that emotion is a signal to you that, oh, this is really important, this person’s important, or this thing that I’m insecure about is really important, and so I want to learn to care for it.

(02:24)
That’s a very crucial part of the understanding. And if you can at least get to a feeling of harmlessness that my insecurity is at least harmless and not judge it, that’s a big halfway point. And then as you’ll see, as we progress through the meditations, we’re going to be looking to both honor care for tolerate, accept the insecurity, and also learn from it as to how we can develop trust and self-confidence. Our capacity to actually appreciate our insecurity, not only to tolerate and accept it, but to appreciate it is something that is a gift that I’m really hoping you’ll give yourself because the insecurity as you look closely, will actually lead you to be passionate about whatever it is that you’re insecure about. So we’re going to start off here with a guided meditation. So I encourage you to get into a quiet place where you’re not going to be disturbed.

(03:42)
So let yourself begin with just noticing where is your awareness? Your awareness could be about thoughts in your mind. You might be focused on listening to me and reacting to me. There may be emotions, there may be body sensations. You might be seeing things in your environment, but just naturally see where your awareness is, because it’s so common that we don’t even notice that our awareness is somewhere. Now, see if you get that, because that’s a very important part of the starting point. Where is your awareness? And if you can see that, then you see that awareness is a very, very crucial part of our life because we usually think that what we’re aware of is the thing itself, and we forget that we’re the one that’s directing the projecting screen like a movie. We’re actually turning on the movie. We think the movie’s already on.

(04:51)
So we’re now going to shift to something very subtle, and that is being aware of awareness itself. Now, what that means is your awareness, and I’m asking you right now to focus on your awareness not being involved in the outer world or even in the inner world, but be aware that you are awareness itself, looking at awareness. So it’s like there’s two mirrors looking at each other. And you have the capacity not to be filled with thoughts or feelings, but to just simply see that your awareness, being aware of awareness itself, no space, no pictures, just awareness, being aware of itself. Now, this is a very advanced principle, and the more you can get this, the more you can see. You have the capacity to guide your awareness itself if you’ve slowed down enough and see if this makes sense to you. See if you can visualize being quiet enough. See if you can sense being quiet enough where you’re aware of awareness and there aren’t thoughts and feelings to go along with it. Now, if you can’t get there and you’re thinking about, gee, I don’t feel good, then that’s fine. Be aware that the farthest you can get is, I don’t feel good, but I’m aware of not feeling good, and now I can direct my awareness toward my insecurity.

(06:39)
So let yourself focus on your insecurity and how does it play out in your life. So take a few seconds and just look at when I’m insecure, do I usually bury it? Do I usually get defensive if it’s particularly charged and something triggers it? Or can I, and do I just stay aware of the insecurity and recognize it as a friend or as a foe? And as you look at that, just see the part of you that wants to just see the awareness of the insecurity as being important to be neutral. Because when it turns into being judgmental, then the insecurity starts to take on a negative value in our life. Like, oh damn, I’m insecure again. Or I don’t want anybody to see this, so I’m going to bury this. Versus this is a dignified part of me and it reveals that I care about somebody or something.

(07:55)
Never underestimate the value of being aware of your insecurity, because it’s the starting point of being able to mature, be able to find the place where you care about something and it is a red flag. I want to pay attention to this because then I have a chance to be more secure, more confident, more self trusting. And we have a tendency to see insecurity as if it’s a fixed feeling that we have no ability to work with, but we do. So in this first meditation, we’re just simply being aware of our insecurity as you are right now. Look at your insecurity, how it plays out again and see, am I able to say insecurity? I see just in a neutral kind of tone. Don’t even have to be friendly right away. We just stably look at it. You may think, oh, big deal. But I promise you, in years of being with people all around me and in my own life, if we don’t see our insecurity from a neutral place, it can contaminate our whole life and our whole love life. Whereas if we can see it neutrally, we have the ability to create intimacy and self-trust and confidence. Thanks so much.