1. Recall one interior movement – a powerful emotion, a persistent inner voice, a compelling impulse to behave in some way – that has been a frequent companion in your life recently or one that you have found difficult to be with.
2. Take a few minutes and personify this interior movement, perhaps imagining it as a child or some creature that embodies the feelings of this movement. You can do this in your imagination, draw it, or find a picture on the internet.
3. Spend some time paying attention to this personified emotion. Extend it a nonjudgmental and open presence of care that genuinely seeks to understand its experience. (Note: If you are not feeling open, nonjudgmental, and curious toward the child or creature and the interior movement it embodies, then another interior movement has slipped in – so notice that movement then invite it to relax until you genuinely feel open and curious toward the personified emotion.) Invite the interior movement to embody its experience by asking, What gender would it be? How old would that creature be? What would it look like as it experiences this emotion (its facial expression, its bodily posture, its attire, and so forth)? What is this creature feeling and experiencing within the situation that activates it?
4. Just as you might with a child experiencing this interior movement, cultivate an understanding of the cry within the personified movement. Invite it to surface the deeper suffering underneath it through whichever of the FLAG questions reveals its pain:
- What is your deepest fear underneath the movement?
- What is your deepest longing underlying it?
- What aching wound do you carry that remains sensitive?
- What gift that you are trying to give me feels stifled or discouraged?
5. After you have finished this interview, invite the personified interior movement to summarize what it has shared with you through filling in the following:
Whenever I (the personified interior movement) get activated during the day, I need you to hear and understand _____________. In short, I long for _____________.
6. After you have finished this interview, think of a physical object that represents or symbolizes this persistent interior movement. Make sure the object is something you can carry with you for a few days (for example a coin, stone, button, bead, cross, acorn, ring, paper clip, or eraser).
7. If it feels right to you, conclude your reflection by inviting any sacred reality you know – the Buddha, Allah, God, Jesus, the loving energy of the universe, a healing image, a beloved ancestor – to be with the personified interior movement in whatever way feels healing and life-giving.
— Frank Rogers Jr. in Practicing Compassion