Hi, welcome to Day Three of the seven day meditation challenge on Coming Home to Yourself. I hope you enjoyed the session yesterday with Melli on staying connected to your purpose. And I hope it helped you find a way to feel inspired by what you do in the world, rather than feeling forced into it. In today's session, we're going to explore what it means to be alone, but not be lonely. You know, we are we're social creatures, so it's a very normal thing to feel almost an aching for connection with other people, uh, and, and feeling lonely is often a sign of not getting certain social needs met.

And especially during the times of the pandemic, uh, this can be a common experience for a lot of us, not being able to connect with people in the way we're used to, and really just feeling the ache in our heart for that. And so I first just want to normalize that experience. And I want to say that it's possible to be alone, but not lonely. And one of the reasons we sometimes avoid being alone is because we haven't actually made peace with our own company. And this is a big journey for all of us, because at the end of the day, we have to go through this life alone because we're the only ones who can experience what we're experiencing.

We'd have great support, great friends, great family, but we have to experience our thoughts. We have to experience our emotions, good and bad. We have to experience the sensations or the pains in our body. We have to transition from this life. And so a huge practice and one that is inherent to the mindfulness and the meditation journey is learning how to befriend yourself, make peace with your own company.

And now let's just explore what that's like right now. If you close your eyes, just see what it's like to be with yourself. What is your relationship to yourself? Is there a coziness? Or is there some resistance? Um, what would it be like to say something to yourself that is kind and reassuring? Such as, I'm here for you. We've got this. Or, you're doing great.

So you can open your eyes. You know, that was just a simple practice, but it's often those simple moments of connecting with ourselves and seeing how am I relating to myself right now, uh, that can really go a long way. You know, are we running from ourselves? Are we resisting feeling something? Are we angry with ourselves for some reason? And what would it be like in, in just a single moment to establish a little bit more of a friendship with who we are. This friendship becomes the foundation for finding joy and peace and goodness with our own company. It becomes a foundation of being able to be alone, but not feel lonely, because we have our greatest companion, ourself.

Or at least that's one of the promises of these practices. So we'll explore this more in, in our meditation in a moment. But as you go about your day today, just continue to notice what is my relationship to myself, to stillness. And instead of immediately trying to run from yourself or run from being alone, see if you can relax into your own company and talk to yourself as you would a good friend. I think you'll be surprised what this can do over time in terms of your relationship to yourself and the sense of ease you feel in your being.

Thank you for your practice and let's settle in for today's meditation.