Reconciliation is the path to making peace with yourself and the world. Truly, to live and to die with a heart free of resentment, grudges, and ill will would be a crowning accomplishment in life. By practicing reconciliation meditation, you open the door to this possibility. This is a three-faceted practice. The first aspect is to direct reconciliation toward yourself, making peace with all of the ways in which you’ve felt deficient or inadequate. These feelings often accompany anxiety, with the sense of If only I weren’t so anxious. This can make it especially difficult to be at home and at peace with yourself. Reconciliation practice can build a bridge to truly experiencing that you’re enough just as you are. The second aspect is reconciliation toward those you’ve hurt. The third is reconciliation toward those who have hurt you. To be clear, this is a meditation practice, and all of the work of reconciliation is done within yourself. While the practice may eventually lead to outreach to others to make amends for ways in which you’ve hurt them, that’s a separate choice and not part of this practice. And, of course, although you always have the power to forgive those who have hurt you, you have no control over whether others will seek reconciliation with you. However, you can work within yourself, using this threefold practice, to open a hardened and anxious heart, affording yourself some of the deepest healing and freedom possible. By choosing to tune in to how you perceive yourself and your interpersonal interactions, you’re breaking free from fixed ideas of who you are and what you can be.
Meditation Exercise: Reconciliation
Read through the entire script first to familiarize yourself with the practice, then do the practice, referring back to the text as needed and pausing briefly after each paragraph. Set aside about twenty minutes for the practice. You can do it in a seated position, standing, or even lying down. Choose a position in which you can be comfortable and alert. This article has been adapted from A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook for Anxiety by Bob Stahl PhD, Florence Meleo-Meyer MS, MA, and Lynn Koerbel MPH.
