---
ai_generation_date: '2026-08-14'
ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview
audiodharma:
  talks:
    - date: '2021-01-13'
      mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/12735/20210113-Nikki_Mirghafori-IMC-happy_hour_love_for_our_younger_selves.mp3
      speakers:
        - speaker_name: Nikki Mirghafori
          speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/229
      talk_start_time_seconds: 0
      title: 'Happy Hour: Love for Our Younger Selves'
      url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12735
      video_unavailable: false
location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: uk44wwBZy80
  imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04'
  title: 'Happy Hour: Love for Our Younger Selves'
  upload_date: null
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk44wwBZy80
---

# Happy Hour: Love for Our Younger Selves - [Nikki Mirghafori](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/229)

_This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._

## [Happy Hour: Love for Our Younger Selves](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12735)

Hello, dear siblings on this planet Earth, wherever you're joining in this moment, whatever time zone, whatever continent, it's lovely to be with you. It gives me great joy that we gather together in this way to practice. I'm already happy just seeing your faces.

For today's practice, I'll just set the frame again. We've been going through metta[^1] and the categories systematically, and we've been spending some time with the dear being, whether it's the benefactor or a dear friend, and with the self. You can't spend enough time doing metta for self. So today, let's continue to cultivate kindness, care, and appreciation for this being who is us, this beloved who is us. This is the one we usually forsake for another, that we usually drive with a whip so hard in order to do and accomplish in the world, letting our bodies, our minds, and our hearts not thrive as much as they would if we actually treated ourselves with more kindness.

We turn today to cultivating. Again, it's a cultivation practice: we plant seeds one seed at a time, trusting that the seeds will burgeon and grow when they're needed. Just to say, if you do the practice and it feels dry—if it feels like you're saying the phrases, trying to hold yourself in kindness, and nothing is really happening—there isn't a sense of cosmic love for yourself and you think, "Oh, what a waste of a perfectly good thirty minutes of my time," take heart! Take heart. This is a cultivation practice, and we don't always know how it's impacting us and how it's affecting us.

I've seen that both for myself and for many students I've worked with over the years: things start to shift and thaw in ways that you can't even imagine possible, in moments you least expect. A story I like to share briefly is from a student who considered themselves to be a kind of difficult person, or felt that they didn't have a lot of loving-kindness. They practiced diligently. They just did the practice. In one practice meeting, they came to me really surprised, like, "Wow, this really works!" They explained that a difficult thing happened, and usually, in their normal words, "being a jerk," they would have reacted poorly. "Whereas in this case," they said, "I was just like, 'Oh, this person is having a hard time.' There was just gentleness. It rolled off of me. There was kindness, there was ease that came up."

Wherever you are in the terrain, planting these seeds makes a difference for you, how you treat yourself, and how you show up in the world for others. Trust that it works, not in the ways that your conscious mind can grasp and say, "Yes, I got it. Yes, tick, success." It doesn't work like that. It's an offering. You keep offering this cultivation, these good wishes, inclining your mind towards kindness and goodwill, one breath at a time. As if you're at the altar making an offering with respect, with sincerity, without expectation but with complete sincerity of your heart, you keep offering. You keep offering your heart to yourself in this case, trusting that transformation will happen. Whatever needs to happen will happen to support you, and for you to show up for others in the world.

## Guided Meditation

With that as the preamble, I would love to invite all of us into our meditation posture. Whatever it needs to be in this moment. Usually, I like to lift myself on my chair and sit down again and land. You may need to move and shift, or maybe even lie down if this is what your body needs. It's perfectly fine to practice lying down.

First and foremost, arriving, landing, coming back to this body. Turning our gaze inward, our attention inward, inviting the body to land, to arrive fully in this moment. To connect with the earth. Your feet on the ground, on the floor, connected to the earth. The floor of your home in lieu of the earth. Your legs, your sit bones, your bottom connected to the cushion. The stand and the cushion as the stand-in for Mother Earth. Feeling rooted, grounded, connected to your place on this earth.

Feeling your body. Feeling the sensations of the body. Sensations of the hands, the hands touching each other, touching your lap. The hardness, the softness. The heaviness, the lightness. The roughness and the smoothness of the hands.

Let the felt sense of the sensations of the hands be felt now throughout the body. The whole body. The heaviness of the whole body, the lightness of the whole body. The sense of the whole body sitting.

The face, the head. Sensations in your mouth, the tongue touching the roof of the mouth, the lips touching each other. The entire body. The bones, the hardness of the body. The softness, the flesh. This body has bones and flesh and skin sitting on earth, connected to the earth. Earth sitting on earth. Having a sense of the entire body, the solidity, cohesiveness of this body. Earth sitting on earth.

And feeling the breath received by the whole body. The air element, the breath received by the whole body. Feeling the movement of the breath. Still feeling the solidity of the whole body, earth on earth, and the breath expanding, contracting.

If thoughts arise, as they will, it's okay. Seeing them with clarity, noticing what's arising, and smilingly—just as you let go of the out-breath—bowing and letting go of the thought in this moment. _Thank you, but not now. Please come back later. Right now I'm giving myself wholeheartedly, taking refuge in the simplicity of sitting and being breathed._ Just this. Earth on earth, being breathed. Simple, and yet profound. Letting your heart be soothed and calmed with each breath as we keep settling.

Now, if you wish, I'd like to invite you to bring to mind a younger version of yourself. Maybe there is a photograph you have of yourself at a younger age which is vivid for you. Vividly bringing this snapshot of yourself at this age to mind.

And as you bring this