These are tough times.
Learning to apprentice ourselves to our own wisdom is good medicine.
Here I introduce you or remind you of the 900+ year old practice of Tonglen.
It is a practice that is most often identified with Tibetan Buddhism but it carries no religious connotations. It is a practice of the heart: an embodied non-dual practice.
In this version of Tonglen, I initiate the practice with guiding you to work with an inner part of yourself that you find challenging.
Maybe these days you struggle with empathetic distress. Maybe you feel the grief of these times or the overwhelm. Perhaps you have more personal challenges. This is traditionally how Tonglen is taught: we begin with ourselves, our starting premise is self compassion.
The practice gently unfolds from there, allowing you to loosen some of the inner burdens that you carry. You can do a little bit of practice at a time or all of it.
It’s up to you.
You can expand upon this practice as you are inspired. You can do Tonglen for your animal friends, the plants, and the earth itself.
The key to this practice is to recognize the heart as an alchemical vessel where our relationship to our challenges is transformed. As we deepen into this kind of practice we realize we are apprentices of our own, ever-present wisdom.