Morning Peace & Compassion Prayer

Without a doubt, my Morning Peace & Compassion Prayer is my most popular upload to Insight Timer with over 57k plays and a 4.7 average rating. I have had numerous requests for this to be made available in written form, as some people are interested in reading it aloud to their meditation and/or yoga students.

Here is the text. I’ve made a few very minor edits for grammar, accuracy, and elegancy. May it nourish and uplift you and anyone you happen to share it with.

Now and again I remember that today, that any day, could be my last day here on this Earth in this way.

This recognition does not come out of fear, but it does make the importance of certain things become clear.

So in honour of that one day, any day, last day, I hold close this prayer for this sacred and precious morning.

May I be tender and loving towards myself, embracing, forgiving, accepting all parts of who I am.

May I be compassionate towards others – even, perhaps especially, towards those I have difficulties with.

May I be curious and open, aware that there’s things that I do not know or cannot yet see.

And may I be patient, as Rilke says, towards all that is unresolved within my heart.

May I be both soft and strong, fluid in my approach to the life that spins around and through me.

May I remember that all things come and go – that life is in continual flow.

May I be grateful for all the blessings, large and small, that support, nourish, uplift me.

May I seek out that which is good, even where it co-exists with darkness.

And may I be with any darkness or heaviness that comes my way, holding it within the warmth and tenderness of my peaceful inner shore.

May I crack open, letting ancient walls around my heart fall away. Can I be without them for just this day?

And when I stray from these prayers, may I be patient, understanding, compassionate… loving myself all the same.

© Gillian Florence Sanger