Hello and welcome to The Daily Insight.
My name is Vidya Malabarj and today's meditation focuses on cultivating love and kindness,
Care and ease towards oneself and towards others.
So to begin with,
Let's arrive.
Let's begin to settle down into the body and giving the whole weight of the body up to gravity.
Perhaps taking a few deep breaths and on each out breath,
Coming to rest a little bit more in this moment in this body and giving the whole weight of the body up to gravity,
Feeling into the points of contact between the body and the chair if we're sitting,
The bed if we're lying.
Letting go of all the rushing about and settling,
Breathing,
Feeling into all the movements and sensations of breathing in the whole body.
Feeling the way the whole belly swells a little bit on the in breath and subsides a little bit on the out breath.
Feeling the way the sides of the body expand on the in breath,
Subside on the out breath and allowing the whole back of the body to be breathed.
Sense of the back broadening on the in breath,
Subsiding on the out breath.
The chest expanding on the in breath,
Subsiding.
So seeing if we can feel into the whole torso,
Expanding all directions on the in breath,
Subsiding on the out breath.
So the whole volume of the body opening on the in breath and subsiding.
Allowing the breath to breathe itself.
Seeing if we can let go of interfering with breathing.
Allowing the whole body to be breathed.
And now seeing if we can imbue this breathing with an attitude of kindliness towards all of our experience.
So it's as if the whole body is being massaged by warmth,
By care,
By kindliness with each in breath and with each out breath.
It's a little bit like a summer's breeze being warmed by the warmth of the sun.
The air becomes warmer.
Likewise allowing breathing in the body to be warmed by the warmth of goodwill towards ourselves.
Seeing if we can care for ourselves the way we would naturally care for a loved one.
We're alive.
We're breathing.
We're human.
We deserve care.
We deserve goodwill.
And now staying centered and staying grounded.
Expanding our awareness to invite in a friend to our imaginative field.
Somebody for whom there's a natural sense of liking,
Of goodwill,
Of ease,
Of connectedness.
And we can invite them in in whatever way works for us.
It might be an image,
A feeling,
A sense of them.
And just allowing ourselves to rest in their presence and for them to rest in our presence,
In our imagination.
Just taking them in for a moment,
Interacting with them,
Breathing with them.
Perhaps recollecting what we like about them,
The qualities.
Just enjoying that for a few moments.
And now seeing if we can,
If you like,
Drop beneath the differences between us.
Our views,
Our opinions about this person,
Our preferences about this person.
Seeing if we can drop beneath that to rest in a sense of all that we share.
How deeply alike we are deep down,
Ourselves and our friend.
We both breathe in broadly similar ways.
We're embodied.
The whole body is moving with each in-breath,
Each out-breath.
We'll both have hard times at one time or another.
And we'll both tend to resist and push away anything that's difficult,
To contract against it,
To harden.
And that just makes things even harder.
And when something nice comes along,
We'll both tend to grab onto it,
To want more of it.
And this in turn also causes a contraction,
A tightening and makes life harder.
And deep down we'll both have a very similar longing to be free of this hard,
Tight,
Contracted experience.
And we'll both have a longing to be happy,
To be well,
Or as well as we can be,
To be at peace,
To live a life of meaning.
So let's spend a couple of moments just resting deeply in the presence of our friend and connecting with these deep,
Common drives that we have.
So rather than focusing on difference,
Which is our normal mode,
We focus on commonality and we rest in that commonality and we feel connected.
And we breathe a breath of goodwill towards ourselves and towards our friend.
And now broadening our awareness,
Staying centered and staying grounded,
But allow the circumference of our awareness to become vast and boundless.
And to include everyone in this world.
We're all breathing in the same way.
We've all got bodies in the same way.
We all struggle in similar ways.
The details are different,
But the broad process is the same for all of us.
We all long for ease,
Goodwill,
Happiness.
So as we breathe in and out,
Imagining that we're breathing in and out with all of humanity,
And all of humanity is being bathed in this attitude,
This experience of goodwill,
Of ease and of the in-breath with the out-breath.
And continuing this meditation if you want to,
Otherwise gently bringing it to a close,
But seeing if we can continue to experience our breathing as kindly,
As infused with goodwill towards ourselves and other people as we re-engage with the activities of our day.
