Transform Your Struggles With Compassion

(gas hisses) (button clicks) (gentle music) Headspace Studio. (calm gentle music) (paper fluttering) Hi, my name is Dora. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Monday. So if you didn't know already, I'm one of the newest Headspace meditation teachers which has truly been a dream come true. Like imagine, a requirement for my job is just to meditate and be present. Another aspect of the job and something I do for my own personal practice is to continue to learn and expand my knowledge bank. So recently, I've been educating myself more on the Eastern philosophies of meditation and came across a book called "Feeding Your Demons." It explores an ancient Tibetan practice called Chod, which is a meditation process for resolving inner conflict by offering ourselves the very things that we resist, our demons. When we don't, this is where things like self-sabotage, doubt, fear and a lot of our self-destructive behaviors and thoughts are birthed from. So in this Tibetan practice, demons aren't big, scary black creatures with fangs. The book describes them as anything that hinders us from our liberation. So they aren't necessarily things that live outside of us, for the most part, they live in our mind, coexisting with our thoughts and emotions. And it made me think about, eventually we'll have to stop running before we turn into the very things that we're running from. One of the ways we'll know if we're running away from our demons is by looking at the things that we criticize or try to control in others or in our environment. Oftentimes, we judge the things that others embody that we repress in ourselves. So for example, maybe you're an introvert, you're more on the quiet side, and you have a friend that's the life of the party, something that you've always wanted to be but just didn't know how. So every time you're around this friend there's a bit of resistance or judgment that arises when they're just being themselves. That energy, that sense of annoyance is a demon and most times we resist that. Maybe we judge that person for being obnoxious or overbearing when all along, this is something that we desire for ourselves. (bright music) (paper fluttering) So as I was reading this book, I couldn't help but remember how growing up, my mom was such a stickler for a clean kitchen. Cleanliness was close to godliness, as she would say. I can remember one instance of where she had texted me that she was on her way home and you would think that meant that she was just letting me know her whereabouts. But what it really meant was that by the time I get home, the kitchen and the house better be spotless. And I can just remember the sheer panic and fear running through my body. And I know it may seem like such a small thing, like cleaning the kitchen, but at that time coming home to a messy kitchen was a...