Recovery Dharma Meditations ❖ Ang Thomas Tran (any pronouns)

Do you have 10 minutes? Every day, I'm amazed at the power of what meditation can do. In this meditation, let's reduce suffering, in yourself & others dear to you, with calm breathing and warm-hearted generosity. With a gentle, grounding voice, you'll be guided through a simple meditation that uses inner child healing.

"Do you repress: Anger, Pain, Sadness?" Are you using addictive consumption to stuff your feelings? Aversion leads to deeper suffering—not just for ourselves, but for the ones we love, too. Here's a calm, trauma-sensitive, gently guided meditation. It uses self-compassion & mindfulness to help with acceptance of difficult emotions. If you can sit *with* the emotion, you won't have to act out. "You have already survived many strong emotions," Thích Nhất Hạnh once said. I know you got this.

Equanimity: "mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation." This, for me, is the ultimate of the 4 Brahmaviharas (AKA the Heart Practices.) This means that even under heavy stress and unkind words, we can still be as cool as a cucumber with Equanimity practice.

In this *powerful* meditation: You'll see the 5-year-old child within you and offer compassion. You'll see others as their 5-year-old selves and offer them compassion. It's surprisingly easy to have compassion when we think of how blameless we each were as kids. Yet as adults, we continue to carry the shame of the wounds of our childhood traumas—none of which was our fault. To be free of suffering, we offer each child a compassion mantra: "I see you. I feel you. I care about your pain."

Can a complete stranger's joy increase your own? Perhaps we can expand even deeper. Let's see how deep is our heart practice today. I'll do the lifting, if you'd like to be gently guided in this meditation.

"We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness," wrote Thích Ñhất Hạnh. The everyday practice of Metta (AKA lovingkindness or friendliness) helps us achieve inner peace by sending metta to all beings. We even send Metta to those we may find stressful—we know from experience that when we feel safe and loved, we respond from our heartspace and we don't react so stressfully. Let's together practice taking down the illusive walls of separateness. Because when we offer Metta to others, we are in a very real sense also offering it to ourselves.

"How do I forgive harm?" Thich Nhat Hanh states: "All of us are unskillful at times." This simple wisdom is embodied in this meditation, to unblock the protective layers around our hearts and open a natural flow of offering/asking forgiveness. This eases amends and restoration of peace. "When I recall that I've caused harm due to my own pain, fear, and misunderstanding, it becomes easier to forgive others... but most importantly I can finally be OK with forgiving myself." - Ang Thomas Tran