I found this brilliant exercise on helping you tap into your intuitive wisdom of your wise self, when faced with a difficult person or decision, by Linda Graham. Linda has more than two decades of integrative study, practice and teaching of transformational psychotherapies, vipassana meditation, life coaching, and facilitating groups and workshops in compassionate, conscious connection.
This exercise can be practiced to listen to the deep, intuitive wisdom of our wiser self for guidance about conflict within ourselves, and for guidance in conflict with others as well.
Exercise: Listening to the Intuitive Wisdom of the Wiser Self
- Find a time and place to sit quietly without interruption. Settle into a comfortable position, take a few deep breaths, and relax into a state of mindful presence. Let any thoughts or concerns fade into the background. Then bring to your awareness a sense of your wiser self, the part of you that embodies your essential wisdom and goodness.
- Bring to mind someone you are currently having difficulties with: a neighbor who turns up the television too late at night; a coworker who misses important deadlines; a sister-in-law who dominates every discussion at the dinner table. Imagine that you can introduce this person to your wiser self and then stand to the side as you overhear the conversation between them.
- Listen to how your wiser self handles the conversation with the difficult person: what it says, how it handles the energy of the difficult person. You are overhearing your own inner wisdom being patient and skillful with the difficult person.
- When the conversation between your wiser self and the difficult person is complete, notice how the difficulty is resolved. Notice what you overhead, what you learned what advice you are taking in from your wiser self.
- Let the difficult person fade from the scene. Imagine that your wiser self turns to you, offers you a word or phrase of advice, and offers you one symbolic gift you can hold in your hand to remember this conversation by.
- You may choose to write down your reflections for future reference.
Read more about Linda Graham
