Given a long enough timeline, you can do anything. The work must happen on the inside, which means you must slow down. That is what all this inner work is aimed at doing: giving you control over your internal experience. Meditation, then, is not just an end in itself (trying to rid yourself of thoughts). It is a practice that is fundamental to redeeming everything that has come from outside you and has become your inner experience. Once you learn that you can slow down and pay attention to this thought and let go of that one, you have what it takes to start reshaping your inner world, and not just being subject to the automatic impulses that are inevitably there, and feel like they control how you feel, what you think and what you do.

You are trying to move from those automatic impulses to more of what you want. The move is likely to practice forgiving, being kind to yourself or someone else, or just trying to resist being subject to inner or outer compulsion. The practice is to be soft toward those automatic impulses, and slowly and carefully rehearse something different. You must start with what is there and slowly form it into what you want. Over time, you will be able to shape yourself into something different. You are clay. Just remember to be gentle.

It is helpful to have someone else doing this with you, like a coach or another calming presence that will help you accept exactly what you are at this moment, and support you as you become what you want to be. That relationship also helps you “get things out” and look at them. As long as they remain internal, they are likely to continue to be subject to the nervous system impulses and muscle memory movements that are coupled with the nervous system. Those responses are not unchangeable. You just never slow down long enough to change them.

When you hear yourself say out loud “you are forgiven,” for example, it starts to change your heart and your whole being. Once you have done it once, practice it a thousand times, internally and out loud. You are trying to get your whole experience to line up – your senses, your feelings, and your body movements, not just your thoughts. You are not just trying to practice forgiveness; you are trying to become it.

The lining up of your experience is getting into the flow and the experience everyone is looking for (and seeking to simulate through the use of substances). All of the tools merely help form the portal into a holistic experience in which you can be and become who you want to be. They get us into the right headspace and create the conditions we need to change. It also helps to have some idea the feeling you’re looking for: slowing down the nervous system and being aware and present to the internal experience. It is your nervous system that mediates and controls these automatic responses that comprise your subjective experience. Those feel hard-wired, but they are more malleable than you think.

The time is coming when you will need non-violent responses. In order to truly be non-violent, you must be present, and you must have some control of your automatic responses, even your nervous system. Your nervous system can be re-formed till you are not just employing non-violent practices, but you have become non-violence. Your automatic response will be love. That is the only true response.