This guided imagery meditation, with soft ocean waves and gentle narration, takes you on a morning walk along a secluded beach. Soon you meet a dear old friend, loved one, or significant figure in your life who's come to assist you. Their unconditional love toward you helps you open your own heart, explore anything you've held against yourself, and release it.

As you sit watching the waves, your own inner child appears on your lap, ready now to receive the kind of healing and reassurance only you can provide. Then you're given the opportunity to project your new feeling of love and forgiveness toward yourself at a future moment in time when you'd normally be vulnerable to being hard on yourself.

Max Highstein says: One of the hardest things to do when it comes to personal growth is learn not to give ourselves such a hard time. The pattern of being hard on ourselves is established early in childhood and gets embedded so deep it becomes difficult for us to even recognize when it's operating. Unconscious patterns like this set up a negative dynamic that can deplete our energy and even lead to depression or psychosomatic illness. At some point we need to find a way to let go of self-judgment, so we can be truly happy.

When we feel someone else's love and appreciation for us, and know they think we're really okay, it becomes possible for us to soften inside and make ourselves okay. So, I wrote this meditation about a meeting with a dear friend. I also included the inner child for a similar reason. Although we might tend to be hard on ourselves, it's much easier to love and nurture a vulnerable, small child. That child exists within each of us, waiting to be loved.