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Guided Meditation: Respecting Oneself

So good morning everyone, or good day, and happy to be here with you. And I'm also happy to be here with myself. The appreciation of our ability to be present for ourselves is a wonderful appreciation, to value that, and to feel like we are worthy, we are valuable, we are worthy of attention.

And for people interested in being compassionate, we have a lot more compassion, or the compassion is fuller, or maybe even cleaner, if the agent of compassion—namely each of us—holds ourselves or sees ourselves with a certain value and worthiness and dignity. If we kind of inhabit ourselves fully, or appreciate ourselves as a simplicity of being a human being—maybe not necessarily for our accomplishments or all kinds of worldly values, but just a deep appreciation of our value as a human being. If we have that kind of respect for ourselves, then when we bring compassion to someone else, we bring that along, and it conveys more value. The compassion conveys more value; there's a fuller compassion. The person who's offering compassion then is more present. The person is there. The person is not apologizing for themselves, or not hiding themselves, not doing things half-heartedly because they don't think that they're important enough to do something. It's easier to be a wholehearted fullness of presence, which brings more presence into the compassion, brings a lot of different wonderful things into the compassion. So this idea of respecting ourselves, respecting this human being that we have the role of inhabiting, living with for this lifetime.

So to begin our meditation with care and respect for this human being that you are, being careful with the posture you take. Spend some time moving around a little bit, wiggling, swaying, looking, until you find the posture that seems aligned and balanced and feels right for you to inhabit, to live in the embodied posture.

Gently closing your eyes, and perhaps with care and respect for yourself, take a few long, slow, deep breaths. We feel our body more fully when we breathe in deeply. And as we feel our body, feel it with respect.

Exhale with care and respect.

And letting your breathing return to normal. And as a form of respect and care, as a way of becoming more whole, as you exhale continue to relax the face, the eyes. Relax the shoulders. Relax the belly.

Letting the breathing return to normal. And one of the meanings I like for respect is to look again. If we respect something, it's worthy of a second look, further connection. And as you're present for yourself breathing, each moment of awareness, each thing that you're aware of is worthy of a second look, a deeper look.

To respect each breath is not just to be aware of an inhale once, but each inhale almost as if you're giving yourself a second look, a deeper connection. A second look, a deeper connection to exhaling.

If the mind begins thinking, to have respect for oneself is to not only know that you're thinking, but to give it a second look. Having an even further mindfulness of the phenomena of thinking, almost as if you respect it without participating in it. Just seeing it more deeply, the phenomena of thinking. And then respectfully allowing the thinking to fade away like a thought bubble floating away.

And begin again with your breathing.

Might your mindfulness become a little fuller, or more available^[1] in a stronger way, if the mindfulness is supported by respect for yourself? Even if you don't feel you deserve respect, offer the respect anyway as you might for any other person, if there was an occasion to support them in times of great need.

And then to bring this meditation to an end, to consider how a certain self-respect might translate or make possible greater respect for others. And with our respect for others, respecting others, to care for them, for their welfare and happiness, to care for their dignity and autonomy. To care for their success in life, for their deep spiritual fulfillment.

And to wish them well. May others be happy. May others be safe. May others be peaceful. May others be free.

And with respect to them, respecting them, may we in our own way, small or large, contribute to that possibility.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Appreciation (3 of 5) Respect

So for this week, discussing the different aspects of appreciation. I think appreciation can be a food for people. I think people benefit tremendously from being appreciated, and I would say that a lot of people are not appreciated enough. Something smiles inside, something lifts and delights when there's appreciation. And if there goes a long time without appreciation, especially if we're doing something for others, something begins to sink, something feels a little bit off and not quite right. We live in a world where there's a mutual give and take, a mutual kind of reference point we use for being with each other.

And we might have tremendous generosity and offer things to others, but if not even appreciation or gratitude comes back, then at some point the feeling of generosity begins to become less and less. But if there's simple appreciation, people understand what we're doing and value it, then it could be a smile and happy to do it, and maybe easy to do it. So appreciation is a really important ingredient.

And appreciation has these different elements to it, and today I'd like to suggest that an important element is respect. And respect is—as many of you know, I love the Latin root of the word—which means to look again. And when we respect something, we're willing to take a respectful look again. We value something enough, we're not afraid of it enough to look again, where that can happen. But we respect it, we value it enough that, yeah, this is something we want to be connected to, or to see, or to understand.

But respect carries much more. Respect carries the idea that the person we're with has value, has worth, is granting someone a certain degree of dignity. And many people in our society don't feel valued, they feel marginalized, they feel relegated to the edges and maybe overlooked. To have no one overlooked, to have everyone worthy of being seen again, being seen clearly, and appreciated, and valued. It may be even more than valued, to be delighted in and to be grateful for. Even if people don't do anything for us, the gratitude can simply be we're grateful to be delighted in another human being, we're grateful for the chance to be connected or to see.

And all these ideas might seem like we don't have time for it, it might seem a little bit superficial or, there's important things to do, so we can't stop and look again and grant people dignity and value. But the source I'd like to propose, the source of respecting others, is to respect oneself. And to respect oneself is to value oneself. And value yourself not because of what we're going to accomplish, and so we have to do a lot, but value something here that's present. Value ourselves in this present moment manifestation.

And this is very important because the future self may not exist at all. We don't know how long we're going to be alive. The future self might be very different than who you are today. Any future self ideas you have are just a prediction, a fantasy, an imagination. It might be a reasonable prediction, but we don't know. The past has receded into memory, receded into maybe the residue of past experience in us, but the past itself is just a kind of virtual reality of sorts. And memory of the past is not always accurate; it frequently is inaccurate, and sometimes it gets more accurate over time when a certain selection process and a certain kind of storytelling begins to shift and change.

And so the present moment is something very different than the past, and the future very different than fantasy. It's the only place where our lived experience can be, the only place that our lived humanity can manifest and be. This is a very important time and place to really experience life because everything else in life is not quite life; it's kind of virtual, or something to pass in the future, but here. And so to respect what's here, to value these moments of consciousness, to value the heart beating, and this chance to experience and be in this life. And to value our well-being, and to respect our autonomy, and our dignity, and our efforts to try to make our way through this difficult life.

So to respect ourselves is maybe not always easy, but the more we have the self-respect, then the more respecting others carries value and it carries strength in it. If we diminish our value and kind of half-heartedly, or on the sly, or on the side, offer respect to others, offer generosity to others, it could be wonderful but it's not received maybe as fully as it would be if a person shows up completely there. And there's a fullness because we respect ourselves. There's a fullness of embodiment: here I am, and this person here, all of this person here, is present for you for a few moments with respect, with care, with appreciation. And that carries a lot more strength, maybe power, more value for the person that we offer respect to, we offer appreciation.

And so having respect for oneself doesn't have to be an overly self-focused phenomenon. It's an important phenomenon, an important way of being that allows us to convey care and respect and love for others in a greater way. It's almost as if you want to love others, if you want to care for others, begin by respecting yourself, and with that comes a tremendous amount of healthy care for others.

A lack of respect for others can simply also be not because we disrespect ourselves, but because we don't think we have time to take care of ourselves. We don't have time to eat and sleep and exercise and maybe meditate, so that the best of us has a chance to come and meet other people. So respect is an important element of appreciation. And this is certainly the minimum, that is to really see that it's appropriate to bring our attention to really see and understand who's there.

But it also involves seeing people as valuable, as important. Some people might say precious, some people might say that others are treasures. So not just a lover, not just a family member do we offer our wonderful love and appreciation and delight, but we can do it in an appropriate way even for strangers and for people who are difficult in our lives. Sometimes offering respect to people who are difficult, finding ways to appreciate them, finding ways to respect them, is the ingredient for how to overcome some of the conflicts we can be in.

So respect as a foundation is one of the foundational elements for being able to offer compassion in a full and effective way. If we offer compassion without respect, then we're in trouble. I think people can feel that, and maybe then the compassion sometimes might not even be accepted because the people don't feel somehow that they're recognized in any important way.

So for some of us, maybe the concept of respect as an ongoing orientation might not be familiar, might not be something we do. But at least for this day, maybe you can do a look again^[2]. Maybe you can carry with you the notion of respect and to see how that lives in you. Do you have respect for yourself? Do you have respect for others? If you were going to respect the people you're with, what form would it take, if that's appropriate for you? How do you embody respect? How does the movement of respect move through you in your own way? Because for different people, maybe different things would be considered respect. So for you, what's a clean, healthy form of respect for self, for others? And what happens when you begin embodying that in your relationship to other people?

And I use the word embodiment intentionally as a kind of wholeheartedness, a whole-bodiness, a wholeness. Really bringing ourselves into it in a more full way than maybe usual. So it's intentional and purposeful, and really has this kind of center stage for how we go about.

So thank you, and I value very much that you're listening to this and maybe practicing with these things, and I have a chance to teach them. Thank you, and I look forward to continuing tomorrow.