Who Are You Meditation

By Wil Darcangelo

Spiritual Coordinator at First Parish Church of Fitchburg, MA

I’m very excited to share a meditation I experienced yesterday. It so resonated with some of my core beliefs that I asked Wil if I could share it. With the grace he seems to wear so comfortably, he allowed me to share it here. I’m sorry that I cannot replicate the delivery with silence and chimes in all the right places, but the essence of the message is in Wil’s words. May you hear them deeply in that part of you that ‘doesn’t appear on an x-ray.’

Who Are You?

Let’s take a deep, cleansing breath…

As we proceed, breathe a little bit more deeply that you usually do. Be conscious about it. Close your eyes. Drink the air into your bodies as you deeply breathe…

This morning I will give you a thought, and then we will spend a few quiet minutes alone with it. Protect this time you have chosen for yourself. Outside thoughts will creep in. Bid them hail and farewell. And then return to this thought… ​

(chime)

We are all familiar with the advice of ​do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But there is a hidden challenge in the thought. Can you guess what it might be?

It is this: If we should treat others as we would like be treated, we must decide how we would like to be treated first.

We have to decide how worthy we are to be treated well. We have to notice the resistant voices from our past telling us we are not worthy of desiring happiness, or capable of achieving it.

Notice every gut feeling you have that disagrees with your complete and total worthiness. Those feelings are not real. They are lies told by other people who could not see their own worthiness, and therefore not yours either. Pray for them. Because you ​are worthy. And since you could not learn it from them, perhaps they can learn it from you.

Alongside the discussion of our worthiness, we have to decide not only what we want, but who we are.

To help make others happy, we have to know what makes ​us happy. This is a much bigger exploration than you might think.

It involves unpacking aspects about ourselves that we may not have realized needed unpacking. But that will be later. Things unpack themselves as we are ready to look at them so long as we continue in our desire to know ourselves.

For now, simply begin by saying to yourself, ​I would know you better.

Thank you for self-awareness.

(chime)…

(chime).

Namaste

Thank you for taking good care of you. (And thank you, Wil Darcangelo!)