Another Seat At The Table: On Self Compassion

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

What if progress isn’t the point? What if your soul doesn’t move in a straight line, but in spirals and stillness?

In this poetic reflection, Alexander Blue Feather reads from The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller and Rumi’s The Guest House, exploring the sacred art of self-compassion. You'll hear about grief, letting go of the “muscular agenda” of self-improvement, and why setting a place at the inner table—for sorrow, disappointment, and loss—is an act of courage. Includes a laughter offering from Harvey Rose and a preview of upcoming fall offerings: grief-wise circles, a weekend silent retreat, and a 21-day guided meditation.

Stay tuned for a guided loving-kindness meditation in the next episode.

SUMMARY

In this contemplative episode of Viral Mindfulness: The Podcast, Alexander Bluefeather speaks to the tired, overextended part of us that’s been conditioned to chase improvement and constant progress. Using a powerful quote from Francis Weller and the poem “The Guest House” by Rumi, Alexander invites listeners to lay down the “muscular agenda” of self-improvement and instead practice befriending their life exactly as it is.

With reflections on grief—both personal and collective—he gently encourages us to make space for what shows up at the door of our soul: sorrow, failure, memories, or disappointment. Summer becomes the metaphorical season to rest, receive, and resist the pressure to optimize. The episode ends with a preview of upcoming offerings, including a loving-kindness meditation and a grief-focused Wise Circle in the fall.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Let Go of the Muscular Agenda
   Constant self-improvement can become a form of spiritual violence. Francis Weller encourages us to trade performance for presence—kindness over control.

2. Befriend Your Life as It Is
   The path forward isn't always upward or linear. Befriending life means welcoming all of it: grief, joy, fatigue, disappointment.

3. Grief Is More Than Death
   Grief includes lost opportunities, unmet dreams, broken relationships, and creative failures. These also deserve space at the inner table.

4. Self-Compassion as a Revolution
   In a world obsessed with scaling and striving, sitting still and tending inward can be a radical act of love and rebellion.

5. The Guest House Practice
   Inspired by Rumi’s poem, create a ritual of welcoming whatever shows up emotionally—light a candle, set a place, and say, “Welcome.”

6. Progress Is Not Linear
   Soul movement is not from point A to B. It may spiral, regress, pause, or sink. Stillness is often the invitation.

7. Laughter as Medicine
   A clip of Harvey Rose’s laughter reminds us to meet dark thoughts and visitors not with fear, but with laughter and hospitality.

8. Upcoming Offerings
   Alexander previews fall programs including a seasonal Wise Circle on grief, a 21-day guided meditation journey, and a silent weekend retreat.

TRANSCRIPT

I want to speak to that part of you that's tired. Oh, so tired and weary. That part that's been trying so hard to be good, to be better, to do better, to keep moving forward even when your soul is quietly saying, please not like this. There's a quote I wanna share with you from Francis Weller. It cracked something open in me.

It speaks about releasing our muscular agendas, our muscular agendas of self improvement, about learning to befriend our life and not dominating it. It's such a beautiful surrender when we befriend, and that's what this episode is, a befriend. An invitation and soft turning inward, a setting of the table. Summer's coming. I set a table for us and for those outcast parts of you.

This is not about giving up. It's not about giving over. It's not about making changes or deciding where you're headed. This is quiet wisdom that's asking you not to perform. So I'm gonna read to you, and I'm gonna break the words apart.

I'll offer a few invitations, not assignments, not shoulds. And then in the next episode, immediately following this one, I will lead you in a loving kindness meditation rooted in this same soil. But today, now, just sit down. I've set a place. Let's say welcome.

Let us begin. Welcome to Viral Mindfulness, the podcast. It's me, your host, Alexander Bluefeather. Save the date. Save the date.

August 15 through October 10. My autumn piano recital, seasonal wise circles. We're gonna focus on grief, a twenty one day guided meditation adventure, and the Art of Silence, a weekend silent retreat. Save the date details and enrollment opening soon. As some of you know, I've been reading Frances Weller's incredible book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow.

And exciting enough, I've for years wanted to do a grief group and to specifically offer support in a group setting for grief. So coming soon this fall, I will be offering my expanded wise circle with more than six seats available. The the structure of the circle will change some, but we will meet for about seven weeks and go through the book together and have a grief group. It's gonna be awesome. So I have so much content content.

I have so much material that has become a part of my own grieving process this year with the passing of my father in February. And so I wanna read you something about compassion. As I've been reading and studying so much of of the solution or the practice or the the suggestions for dealing with sorrow and grief. And it's not just when someone dies, it's so much to grieve about, You know, things that you had to let go of, opportunities that never came to fruition, relationships that end, but those people are still alive, Disappointments, work disappointments, creative disappointments, and failures. So I've seen so many beautiful morsels of teaching, and I'm like, oh, this is so good for anybody, not just people who are grieving, but people who are stressed or overwhelmed or discouraged or doubting or in a place of fear.

So this is from Francis Weller's book, and we're gonna go through the paragraph. And so here it is. Put on your listening hats. Okay? And I will read the paragraph of this beautiful quote.

Giving up our muscular agenda of self improvement is an act of kindness. It says that by befriending our life, we deepen our capacity to welcome what is, what comes, whoever arrives at the interior door of our soul's house. We don't often get to decide who or what shows up at the quote unquote guest house, as Rumi says, but we can cultivate an atmosphere of curiosity and receptivity. Self compassion gradually becomes one of the basic elements of maturation. We slowly relinquish the harsh program of ridding ourselves of our outcast brothers, sisters, niblings, for the sake of fitting in.

And, yes, I did add the word nibbling for a gender expansive option. We simply set another place at the table for those visitors. So I'll pause here, and I wanna break down a few of these ideas. And this whole guest house roomie, I will read that poem to you in just a minute. We live in a world of muscular agendas, muscular technology, muscular productivity.

And so much of our work and how much we make and scaling self improvement, it's crazy. So an act of kindness or self compassion may be a solution to the modern dilemmas. So many people talk about this lonely isolation place being a huge island of despair for humans, maybe kindness is a solution to this, self kindness, a revolution. And so it it asks us to befriend our life as it is, not where we wanna be or how much more we need or where we think we should be, but our life as it is right now today. And we deepen our capacity to welcome what is and what comes and whoever arrives, because a lot of guests are going to visit the interior door of your soul's house, so to speak.

And you don't get to choose. I didn't get to choose when my father passed away. I don't necessarily want to be grieving at this season in my life. And there are so many debilitating diseases that come into your life, your your close ones, your friends, your family. There are tragedies with finances, and business, and work.

There are tragedies right now across this country and across the world with regards to our leadership. The different qualities of governments, whether they fall into democracies or are authoritative, moving towards authoritarianism. So many others, not just those. So it's always coming back to this place of, do you have a seat at the table for those difficult visitors to to sit down? And I think that's really a beautiful metaphor that we not only make a seat at the table for the humans around us who are different, but we make a seat at the table for the emotional characters and narratives and life experiences that show up.

Because you don't have to make room at your table for, you know, so an increase in your salary. Like, you are full on you don't need to make room at the table for a new car or for, things going your way in the joyful euphoria, beautiful. It's the difficult parts, you know, sitting with the painful parts, sitting with the prickly parts. So here are a couple other ideas inside of this, this, language. So Weller calls out the muscular agenda of self improvement saying that, you know, try harder, fix faster, be better, make more, do more.

He suggests that the real kindness begins when we stop trying to optimize ourselves, and we start befriending our life. So maybe one of your practice invitations on this is to pause the hustle, to sit with your humanness and others as well. Maybe that's what you're gonna do this summer. The equinox is coming, summer solstice. Just kidding.

It's not an equinox. It's solstice. And maybe you choose for ninety days to not work on improving. Or maybe you start small with one day a week. What if on Saturdays, Sundays, I try not to improve?

I don't do my meditations or my daily routine, my morning ritual to be better. I don't journal to solve. Maybe you just sit. Maybe you just write and enjoy the process. Maybe under the avocado tree, next to the ocean or the river, maybe in your messy room, you let the practice be the witnessing.

Right now, I'm heading on a road trip, and it's really wonderful. I do these enough, not as often as I would like. And it's summery feeling, and the weather's warm, and there will be lakes and rivers and trails and trees and mountains and friends, and it will be so beautiful. And there's so much as I'm packing. I'm like, don't bring all this stuff to do or figure out.

Just bring a book. Bring your paints, a small little collection of paints for your plein air setup, and enjoy your time. Walk and bike and talk and enjoy nature and the sun and the wind. So the other idea with this paragraph, the cultivating the guest house, learning to befriend whatever shows up, whomever. You know, we don't get to choose what emotions or memories or moods show up for us.

Of course, we have a choice sometimes when they're there, how we engage with them, but we're talking about the initial arrival. A lot of times, you do not get to choose. And so we can prepare our table. We can welcome welcome these visitors with curiosity and receptivity. So, I'm gonna read to you Rumi's poem, the guest house.

Oh, and maybe one thing you could do that might be fun for this sort of, practice. You could light a candle and imagine that you're actually putting a place one more chair at the inner table, your inner table towards, let's say for me. I'm consistently right now doing this with grief. I want to be done with it. I don't want to talk about it anymore.

And I'm not letting this grief overwhelm me and exasperating and falling into a complex or to a neurosis. I'm simply challenging the status quo, the conditioning that is here in my life, my country, this world, Western United States, The United States, we do not have rich abundant rituals for grieving those who die. So I'm continually lighting that candle and imagining a place at the inner table where there's room. Yes, my grief, my sorrow, my sadness, my loss. You're welcome here.

And it's not just about my dad. It's a continued conversation of some of the losses over the last years and couple decades of my life, including other friendships and people who have died and moved into the invisible world. Are you ready for Rumi's poem? All right. So this is Rumi's poem and it says this being is called the guest house.

This being human is a guest house Every morning, a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. I know it's not entertain, but that's a fun drag word to say. Welcome and entertain them all. Even if they're a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, Still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing And invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes. Because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. That's gorgeous.

And you know, it reminds me of Harvey's laugh. I recorded this audio when I was with her several weeks ago and she was swinging on a zipline from the patio to the back that goes from the patio to this tree in the backyard and her papa was like playing in the pathway of her swinging and it was very cute and funny. So, in honor of laughing, meeting dark thought and shame and malice at the door, laughing and inviting them in, maybe we borrow Harvey Rose's laugh. So, here's that audio for you to enjoy and to anchor this laughter as a means of laughing this way when the dark thoughts and the shame and the sorrow when they arrive. Welcome.

I invite you in. Now lift your legs. Papa, do that again. Papa, do that again. Papa, do that again.

So my dear soul sibling, do that and do it again and again. Laugh and invite your difficult emotions in. Okay. Are you ready for the paragraph from Francis Waller? Here it is.

So remember I said, it doesn't mean that you're not gonna make changes or that you're not going to improve. And he says, this is not to say that we do not seek change in our lives. At a recent gathering, a man came up to Francis Weller and said, I noticed that you don't talk about progress in your work. I said, Francis Weller, no, I don't see the soul moving in a linear way from point a to point b. Sometimes the soul moves downward or sideways.

Sometimes it regresses and at other times it holds still and doesn't move. Progress is one of our culture's most cherished fictions, but it can do great harm when applied to the life of the soul. As soon as we are not moving forward or progressing, we feel something is wrong and that we are failing so we redouble our efforts. What self compassion offers us is the space and the breath to listen and to take notice of how our soul is moving in this moment, what our soul is asking us to pay attention to at this time. Isn't that gorgeous?

So we can go down even another layer of the things of the soul and your spirit. So however those words reflect and expand into other definitions for you, it's your path and your choice. But know that maybe it's not so a from point a to point b. Those metaphors are so gorgeous about stop chasing linear progress. Know that the soul moves differently.

Perhaps progress as a straight line is a myth or climbing the ladder. The soul moves in spirals, curves, edges, regressions in stillness. And our culture is really great at demanding upward motion, but the soul often asks us to pause. I really love the, the phrases in this last paragraph that often with things of the soul, when we feel like we're failing, we redouble our efforts. And maybe what we really need to give ourselves is space, spaciousness, and breath to listen and to take notice how our soul is moving.

This is a reason why I'm so excited about my road trip, where I'll be exploring life on the road all the way up to Glacier National Park to meet my dear friend and to hike together. Jude is his name. And there's so much spaciousness right now for me to offer my grief and my sorrow and all of the feelings and memories about my father. And it's really beautiful to be alone on the road for the half, the leg of the trip, to be in relationship with the road, with nature, and mountains, and trees. So what can you do right away to adopt some of this beautiful language from Frances Weller about self compassion and about sinking into your soul and the movement of it in a new, more expanded cadence and rhythm.

The next episode that follows here is a meditation that's inspired from Francis Weller's words. He offers a loving kindness meditation that I thought was so beautiful. And so I'm gonna offer that to you as a guided meditation makes it happen here on the podcast. And so thanks for joining me today. It's been nice to be with you in this attitude and spaciousness, and I'll see you on the next track for a guided meditation.

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