Dear Friends,

For a long time, I felt like there was a problem with me. While so many people seemed happily coupled, I found myself in "situationship" after "situationship," dating unavailable men, longing for something real, and yet incapable of finding it. Plenty of available guys liked me, but I was never interested in them, even though I really tried to be. I related to the Buddhist concept of a hungry ghost -- a being with a huge, extended belly, desperately hungry, and a teeny tiny throat through which no food could fit. Nothing could touch my bottomless hunger and thirst. I felt stuck in this realm for years.

One day, at the end of a meditation retreat at my Zen center, I approached the teacher. I could barely get the words out to express how I felt because the pain and shame crowded around my throat and chest and came pouring out of my eyes in waves of tears.

"I feel empty inside," I shared, between sobs, "like if you cut me open, you would see a hole at the center. A lack of worth, at the very core."

"I understand," replied my teacher, Teah Strozer, with lots of compassion in her eyes.

She didn't say anything after that - Zen teachers are a little infuriating that way. But as I resumed my practice on that retreat, I realized something. Even though it felt so real and tactile, there really wasn't any empty hole inside of me - I had watched enough Gray's Anatomy to know that much. My inner emptiness and lack was just an idea - like any other idea - deeply lodged in my body, but without any truth or foundation in real life. All my seeking of unavailable men was an attempt to undo the inner lack, or fix the inner problem with me - or at least temporarily fill it up with external love - but it never worked because the lack was a fiction in the first place.

When I really started to see this, I treated the feeling of inner lack or worthlessness differently. I swaddled it with love. I cared for it. I asked it what it wanted or needed. Eventually, it completely went away - not through derision or exile, but by loving it (and me) so deeply that its fabricated nature just had no legs to stand on, and it dissolved.

Perhaps you have experienced this Hungry Ghost type of wanting - the desperate grabbing at things to try and fill a deeply held belief of badness or lack at your core - with no lasting success or satisfaction?

And maybe you've also experienced a different type of wanting - one born from delight, beauty, and joy in the world - that longs to be connected to those delicious things?

I'm leading a FREE workshop tonight (March 18, 5:30pm PT, 8:30pm ET) with the funny and brilliant Tara Schuster where we will explore these topics and journal and meditate our way through them. Sign up now and join the party!

Hope to see you there!

Love,

Yael

PS: Planning your summer? Check out the opportunities below!

Retreats!

There is nothing quite like a meditation retreat to jump-start (or deepen) your practice, re-set your life, and reconnect you to what really matters. I am co-teaching on a bunch this summer - hope to see you there!

Yael Shy is the CEO and Founder of Sefira Wellness with over two decades of supporting others in uncovering their inherent worth and capacity for deep joy through mindfulness. She is the author of the award-winning book What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond (Parallax, 2017) and teaches at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. You can find her on Instagram at @yaelshy1. 2299 Summer St. #1249, Stamford, CT 06905 ​Unsubscribe · Preferences​