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Hi, I'm Steven Webb and welcome to a meditation that just softens some of our suffering.
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So just as we settle in, it doesn't really matter how you're sitting or how you're doing this meditation.
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It's just important to stay alert and aware.
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And we allow our body to settle in just by giving it permission to relax.
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Allow the face to relax. Allow
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your shoulders to relax.
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And just become aware of your breath.
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Allow your breath to be natural.
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You don't have to do anything with your body. Your body knows how to breathe and your body knows how
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to relax. Most
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of the time the body's staying on alert so it's just ready.
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We don't have to be ready for anything.
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Everything is fine just as it is for this moment.
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And just invite your whole body to relax.
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And I like what the Buddha says about suffering and pain and how he distinguishes the differences.
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So
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pain is like arrows that are shot at us. Whether it's life or whether we do them to ourselves or
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whatever it is, one things for certain, life will cause pain.
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I think it's quite unavoidable.
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But the second arrow is different. Life
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doesn't very often follow up with the second arrow. That's what we do when we We go, why me? And
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This
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should not be happening to me. How long is this going to continue?
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And when we start debating it in our heads, whether we deserve it or
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whether life should have done it to us or whether we've already had enough suffering, that's when we start
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doing it to ourselves.
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And then eventually we're just beating ourselves up over it.
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So what we're going to do is just bring to mind a moment that life felt a bit unfair when
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we were hurt recently and
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just observe it fully.
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Where is it to in the body?
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How did it feel?
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Was it attention? Was it a heaviness
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And just rest your awareness there
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with just a bit of curiosity. And
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recognise that this pain is the first arrow.
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And recognise that when
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you bring your attention to it, how much it wants to move to your head and become a story.
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It wants to make sense of it. That's what the mind does. It wants to make sense of it. How
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did it happen? Why did it happen? Can I not let it happen again?
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And what we might notice that when we add this story to it,
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we're not in control of the first arrow is very often. But we're very much in control of the second
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arrow and the third. And
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we're definitely in control of the fifth and sixth. It's
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if someone says something to you in the street that isn't very nice will
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cut you up in the car.
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And later that day you're phoning everybody and telling everybody, well your body is reliving that pain.
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Sometimes we have to for, to
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do a report or something to make sense of it. But when we continue to do that, we continue to
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suffer.
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The body reacts every time.
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It's okay for the body to react.
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Especially to the first, maybe even the second arrow.
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It's not okay to keep doing it week in and week out.
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Because we become the heroes of our own story. No matter how many arrows are thrown at us, we're battling
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through and we're doing okay. Not
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realising we're the ones causing them.
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So if we settle back into our breath now.
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Breathing in calm. Breathing out relax
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And just recognise a time when
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someone says something not very nice to you.
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And you took it away and you kept repeating it.
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And recognise that...
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Every time you repeated it, it just made things worse. We
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build up on it We make it a story.
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And very often those stories are not even true.
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And this meditation is not to fix all the arrows, not to get rid of them is to recognise in
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future when
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We do get hurt and it is painful
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that we step in and recognise that we may be doing the next 10, 20, 30 arrows to ourselves.
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Ah,
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I did that one. And you smile and just move on.
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It's a wonderful bit of wisdom and courage just to be able to smile and laugh
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because that's what we need sometimes in our suffering. We need a bit of humour.
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We need a bit of self-reflection and recognise that
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We sometimes do it to ourselves as well.
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In a moment, I'm going to come back from five and we're going to bring our awareness back to the
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room but I want you to take something back with you.
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We cannot do this in one simple go.
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Life will keep throwing arrows.
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Some will land and some will be more painful than others. But
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we don't have to keep adding to them.
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So yeah,
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It's a nice little wisdom to have in our back pocket when we're suffering. To
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soften that suffering just a little bit.
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So bring your awareness to your breath.
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Five. Just bring your awareness to the room.
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Four. Just gently move your arms and move your fingers and toes. Wiggle them maybe. Three.
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Gently open your eyes. Two. Take a deeper breath. And one. Just smile that
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How many times that we've thrown our own arrows? And
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we're a pretty good shot. That's one thing we can say about our own arrows. They tend to land every
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single time. And life's arrows don't always land, but ours do.
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Thank you for sitting with me today and thank you for reducing your suffering a little. Remember all these
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meditations are brought to you completely free with no adverts whatsoever either on Apple or Spotify
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or any platform you prefer to listen to them. I
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also have another podcast Stillness in the Storms where I do a little more talking and less meditation but it
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helps you through difficult times. There's a link in the show notes or just head over to
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StevenWebb.uk. It's got all my links there and a way that you can support this podcast to keep it
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free. Take care and here's to a little less suffering in your life.
