| Meditations - Metta Bhavana Loving-Kindness
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Before you start, think of three people you are going to use in the second, third, and fourth stages, so you do not spend the whole time picking and choosing people. Also remember to find a time when you will not be interrupted, and a quiet comfortable place to sit. Read through the practice a couple of times. You don't have to stick to it word for word - just try to get a good sense of it, or have a friend read it out loud.
Begin by taking the time you need to settle into your meditation posture. When you are comfortable, allow your eyes to close. As you close them try to let your face relax. Have a sense of not needing an expression on the face to set against the world or against your own experience - so that there is a feeling of the face being soft and open. If it still feels hard, introduce the ghost of a smile, which will encourage the facial muscles to relax. Try to allow your eyes to become still. You can think of them as soft and round, just resting.
Then take your attention down to your contact with the floor. Have a sense of the ground underneath you, supporting you. Try to let go of the weight of your body, giving it to the ground to support. Begin slowly to experience your body from the ground up.
Imagine your awareness filling your body, perhaps like a warm soft light - penetrating gently into your bones and muscles, relaxing the body as it moves upwards ... taking in the feet and the legs ... up into the pelvic area ... and into the lower back.
Be aware how your body responds to your directed attention, making that attention warm. The practice of loving-kindness begins by addressing ourselves with an attitude of loving-kindness. Take the time you need to contact your physical experience. Do not force your awareness into areas of the body that feel resistant to it, but be aware of that resistance, allowing the surrounding areas to soften and relax.
Draw your attention through your back, across your shoulders, and down your arms into your hands. For a few moments focus your attention on your hands. Check that they are relaxed and that your arms feel comfortable. Bring your attention back up your arms into your neck and up to the base of your skull.
Feel the muscles of your neck release and soften, and have a sense of your head being balanced rather than held. Become aware of the back of your head and then the top of your head. Feel the shape of your skull and allow the scalp to soften. Now return to your face, letting the whole of your face relax a little more ... the brow, the cheeks, the mouth, the jaw.
Feel the air against the skin of your face and become aware of your breath entering and leaving the body, finding space inside your body. Allow the breath to be easy and natural. Become aware of your body responding to the breath. Have a sense of your body being alive with the breath.
See if you can feel the movement of your body as the breath comes and goes. Find the movement low down in your belly, allowing the breath to soften the belly from the inside; then in your chest, feeling the whole of the rib-cage gently expanding to accommodate your breath, both at the front and the sides and the back.
Keeping an overall sense of stillness in your body, experience the soft rhythm set up by the breath. As you breathe in, have a sense of your chest opening, your shoulders relaxing. As you breathe out, let go into the breath, expelling any tension that you feel.
Slowly use the breath to help you begin to gather your awareness in your chest, inside your body where you imagine your heart to be. Imagine the breath is creating a connection between your head and your heart. Imagine the in-breath taking awareness down into the area of your heart and the out-breath allowing the feelings of your heart up into awareness.
Just spend a few minutes experiencing the breath as connecting up the head and the heart. Allow the breath to create a sense of spaciousness around your heart area. Allow yourself to experience what you feel, allow your heart to express itself into the space your breath is creating.
Then begin to imagine that the breath is carrying down into your heart a sense of well-wishing towards yourself. This may be a few simple words: 'May I care for myself," or just your name spoken in your mind with warmth, or it may just be a sense of kindness. Keep it simple, just the intention of well-wishing directed down into your heart, into your body.
Give the words or intention time to settle, Don't rush or push yourself. Give yourself all the time in the world. 'May I be well, may I be happy.' Allow the heart to respond in its own time. Slowly experience your heart space filling with this simple idea. Continue in this way for a few minutes.
Now bring to mind a good friend. Invoke them, or evoke them, in whatever way works for you: with an image of their face, or by remembering their voice, or by remembering the last time you met. Bring them into your awareness.
Experience the warmth in your heart naturally turning towards them. 'May they be happy - may their life be how they would like it to be.' Take your time - not forcing out a feeling, just working with a clear intention to wish them well.
Allow time to experience any response you might have to this intention. Enjoy any positive feelings or thoughts that this intention generates towards your friend. Renew this intention whenever it feels it has been lost, and just keep the friend in mind.
Keep the practice simple: on the one hand maintain a sense of your friend, on the other develop a simple intention of well-wishing, of loving-kindness, together with an overall awareness of yourself. Continue this for a few minutes.
Allowing your friend to fade away from your attention, bring to mind the neutral person-who like yourself and your friend also wishes to be happy. Try to maintain the same kind intention, the same well-wishing as before, and simply extend it to include this person.
Keep your sense of them as bright and clear as you can, coming back to them if you find your mind moving away. Very gently, look beyond the limited view you have of this person. For once, don't just dismiss them from your mind once you have labeled them. If you like, use your imagination to evoke the individual richness and significance of their life.
May they be well, may they be happy. Don't force anything. Just allow whatever positive feelings you have to reach out to this person. Be sensitive to what is there, rather than trying to create some big feeling. Continue this for a few minutes.
Allowing the neutral person to fade out, bring to mind an enemy. Keep the face relaxed and open. Notice if the body has reacted to the introduction of this person. If you feel yourself tensing in your shoulders or your belly, take a few slightly deeper breaths, and soften your body.
Notice what your mind is doing. Has it got an old story it wants to replay about this person? Try to catch it before it goes off in this way; bring it back to the present and the intention to wish this person well.
Imagine this person well and happy, imagine them relaxed and joyful. See the other side of this person -from the side you find difficult. Try wishing this person well. Say their name and wish them well: 'May they be happy, may they be well.'
Give yourself time to see what that feels like to you. Allow yourself to feel what is happening in your heart; feel your resistance - or feel that you are letting go of old destructive patterns. Imagine what it would be like to let this person be, to wish them well in their life, to lay aside the negative feelings you keep hold of. May they be well. Continue this for a few minutes.
Now bring to mind all four people you have thought of in the meditation: the difficult person, the neutral person, the friend, and yourself. Imagine all of you together, imagine a feeling of connectedness between you. All of you recognizing one another's desire to be happy and wishing one another well.
Look for a positive response to all four that is the same, that is equal -the same deep response of solidarity with another human being. Now you can begin gently to extend this feeling of well-wishing outwards.
Allow your awareness to move outwards, an feel the connection… Slowly take in the street, the locality, the district, and so on ... just moving outwards. oneness has a natural tendency to expand.
Wish all beings well as they are encountered in your imagination. You can think of all kinds of people, from all kinds of cultures. Try to imagine the tenor of their lives, and identify particularly the aspects we all have in common in some form or another. Again, you may want to listen to their voices in your imagination rather than rely on visual imagination.
Think not only of people you may naturally feel sympathetic towards, but also of the kinds of people towards whom you feel less sympathetic. Include bad people as well as good, criminals as well as victims, people you disapprove of as well as people who are OK May all beings whatsoever be well, may all beings be happy, may all beings be free from suffering, and may all beings make progress. Continue in this way for a few minutes.
Now slowly bring the awareness back to yourself. Think: just as I wish all beings well, so too may I be well, may I too be free from suffering and may I make progress. Finally, come back to your body sitting on the floor, back to the breath coming and going, back to a sense of the room around you. Then slowly bring the practice to a close. Sit for a minute or two with how you are now feeling.
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