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Self-love is so important! But at the same time it is so difficult! You can hardly promise yourself to start loving yourself on Monday, because this is not a decision to quit smoking or go on a diet. But you can, in specially created conditions, be a little in a state of love for yourself and try to remember how it is … We will try the meditative exercise "Chalice of Love", which helps to plunge into the state of value and uniqueness of one's own existence. For this we will work with the image of the cup - the oldest symbol of the spiritual in man.
For the workshop, you will need: wax crayons or pressed charcoal, 2 - 3 white sheets of A2 size (Whatman is best suited).
SETTING
To achieve the state of love for yourself, you need to tune in. Think back to your last happy experience. Recover it in your memory in detail. Immerse yourself in it, enjoy the details, feel the echo of that joy in your heart - happiness has not gone anywhere, it lives in you!
BOWL OF LOVE
Remaining immersed in pleasant memories, take a crayon and, with your eyes closed, start drawing a bowl on a sheet of paper, without lifting the crayon from the paper. The line starts from the upper left point, then goes down smoothly, rises to the upper right point and returns back to the upper left point. So, without tearing off the chalk, you continue to draw the symbol of the bowl with your eyes closed until you feel that your hand itself moves from left to right and from right to left. It is very important to completely relax, remove extraneous thoughts from your head and focus on the tip of the crayon. Your hand can make twenty, thirty, a hundred movements until it seems to you that it is drawing itself. When the feeling of complete independence of the hand is achieved, put aside the chalk and slowly, keeping the state of absorption, open your eyes. Look at your cup - what is it? What associations do you have when you look at it? Reflect on what the resulting image says about you, your inner content.
Marina: “My bowl has thick walls. It is clear, dense, strong. I like it: it is important for me that there are strong boundaries, protection. My cup of love is a golden mean with a thick crust."
Victoria: “My cup of love is solid, wide, big. I really like its depth. I am an open person. And now, looking at my cup, I understand that I am a deep person, with a serious inner content."
Julia: “I was surprised by the size of my bowl. On the right side, it turned out to be such a wide part, as if the contents were pouring out of it. This is about me: taking care of my family and loved ones is important for me, I try to give my relatives the good that is in me. And the more I give, the more I have. If something pours out of this bowl, then even more comes into it."
BOWL WITH PEARL
You can perform this step immediately after the previous one or after a break. In the second case, you will need to tune in to work again.
Place a blank sheet of paper in front of you. Close your eyes. Place the chalk at the top left point and slowly, smoothly draw a line representing the side of the bowl. When you reach the bottom, draw a loop, bending the line up and to the left. Without lifting your hands, bring the line to the upper right point and return from right to left, repeating the loop in the center. Draw a bowl with a pearl in the same way as you drew a simple bowl. Try to become completely immersed in this process and observe your experiences. Let the hand draw itself - your cup can turn out to be any, the main thing is the process, not the result. When you feel ready to finish, slowly stop and open your eyes.
Look at your bowl and the pearl resting at its bottom. What are they?
Victoria: “Interesting sensations, very pleasant. When I was drawing, I really wanted to swing to the right, to leave more space there. What a pity that everything ended so quickly … I really liked it."
Julia: “I wanted to grow my pearl. At first it was small, but with each new time I gradually increased it. It was an absolutely extraordinary appeal to myself. I would like to return this feeling, to experience it more often. Usually, as if there was no time, but today I stopped and felt what it was like to be a pearl in a bowl. I would like to know and develop myself”.
Marina: “I wanted to grow a few pearls, I left a lot of space in my bowl. My pearl is my position: I am expecting a child. I feel very good - calm, safe."
The bowl and the pearl in the bowl is a meditation that helps to touch one's own value, uniqueness, and significance. Do not try to understand how this happens - the process itself is important, not its result.
PROFESSIONAL SECRETS
Working with the symbols of the bowl and the pearl in the bowl is part of a serious immersion in a huge layer of meanings. These exercises "belong" to the existential trend in psychotherapy, which deals with the basic problems of human existence - responsibility, death, freedom and the search for meaning. One way or another, every person all his life faces these problems … or does everything not to face them. I want to thank Tatyana Markovna Buyakas, who spoke to us, students, about freedom, the meaning and responsibility of being oneself, and also taught us how to draw a bowl and a pearl in a bowl. These simple meditations help to touch the meaning of existence right now, without postponing this process until later, in retirement …
