Opening Your Heart Towards Yourself & Others - 20 Minute Daily Insight

In this meditation, you will be cultivating love kindness, care, and ease towards yourself and others. By opening our hearts and tending to what we might need, we are able to better help loved ones and the greater universe around us.

Transcript

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,

Subsides 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 into 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 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,

Connecting with them,

Breathing with them.

Perhaps recollecting what we like about them,

Their 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 allowing the image,

The feeling for the friend to fade and let's just check in on ourselves again,

Checking in on the body that we're still giving all the way to the body up to gravity.

We're not tensing,

We're not straining and we're allowing the whole body to be breathed.

If there's any discomfort arising,

We can move if we want to,

Softening the body,

Softening the mind and then settling again.

Breathing,

Breathing,

Breathing,

Breathing,

Breathing,

Breathing,

Breathing,

Breathing,

Breathing,

And now opening our awareness to include a neutral person.

And by that I mean somebody that we don't have a particular connection with,

We neither like them nor dislike them,

But somebody that we know by sight.

So it could be somebody in the shops,

Somebody near where we live,

Somebody that we see but we haven't yet particularly formed an opinion about them.

And if we're honest,

We probably relate to them more as an object than as a fellow human being.

So I like to think of this person as being a representative for most people.

There's something like seven billion people on the planet and most people we don't take the time to connect with.

They're just objects.

So by bringing this person to mind,

We're practicing how to care more deeply about everybody.

So inviting them into our awareness,

It could be as an image,

A feeling,

And settling into this person's presence and allowing them to settle into our presence.

And let's spend a few moments really kind of waking up to their humanity.

Who are they?

What might it be like to be them?

Their life is just as rich and complex to them as ours is to us.

They'll have hopes and dreams,

Fears,

They'll have difficult experience they tend to contract against,

Push away hard in,

Tighten,

And then suffer all the more,

Just like we do.

And when good things happen,

They'll tend to cling onto them,

Want them to last,

Tighten,

Just like we do.

Underneath all that,

They'll have a longing to be well,

Or as well as they can be,

To be happy or as happy as they can be,

To be at peace,

To be fulfilled,

Just like us.

So allowing our awareness,

Our connectedness to drop beneath difference and to rest in commonality.

Let's breathe with this person.

A breath of well-wishing,

A breath of kindliness.

So we're sitting here,

Resting and breathing together,

Two human beings,

So deeply,

Deeply alike,

Connecting.

Now allow the image or the sense of this person to gently fade.

Resting down in the body,

Just checking that we're not tensing,

We're not straining,

And if we are,

Just releasing back down into gravity,

Feeling breath in the whole body,

We can move a little bit if we want to.

What's going to help us be here,

Present,

At ease,

Connected,

Engaged?

Taking some deeper breaths again,

If you want to,

Just to soften,

To arrive,

Be present.

And when we're ready,

We can again raise our gaze,

Metaphorically again,

Just open our awareness a bit again.

And this time we're going to invite in somebody that we find difficult,

Or maybe we think they find us difficult,

But somebody where there's some kind of tension,

Some kind of disconnect,

Dislike.

And I always find it interesting to work with people where it's more irritation,

So it's not hatred.

But who are the people that we niggle at,

Or we feel that they're niggling at us?

That can be a very interesting area to work on.

So allowing this person into our awareness as an image,

A feeling,

Sense of their presence.

And instead of automatically rehearsing what we don't like about this person,

Hardening against them,

Just practicing,

Opening,

Resting with this human being.

Resting with what we share rather than what we don't like about them or our disconnect.

They too are breathing in and out.

They too will have things in life that are difficult,

That they tend to push away,

To harden against,

To contract against.

And they too will tend to grab onto the good things,

To tighten,

To cling.

And these two responses of pushing away and clinging lead to a contracted,

Tight state,

Maybe that's what causes them to be difficult,

Who knows?

And they too,

Just like us,

Will long to be free of these states,

Long to be at peace,

Long to be connected easily with others.

So let's spend a few moments breathing with this person,

Dropping beneath difference and resting in commonality.

And remember we don't have to like this person.

It's more that we're dropping beneath our tendencies to categorize people,

To label them,

To judge them.

And we're practicing resting very deeply inside the common human experience.

And we're opening our awareness to include this person with some kind of kindliness,

Goodwill,

No matter how fleeting or how light.

And let's breathe together for a few moments,

This kindly,

Connected breath.

And now allowing our awareness to broaden,

To open and to expand.

So we stay centered and grounded,

But it's as if the circumference of our awareness broadens and opens and includes all four people,

Oneself,

The friend,

The neutral person and the person we find difficult.

And let's breathe together this kindly breath and see if we can let go of preference,

Liking the person that's our friend and disliking the person we find difficult,

Being a bit uninterested in the neutral person.

Let's just see if we can be equally connected on the basis of all that we share,

These four breathing,

Living human beings.

None of us likes to suffer and we all long to be at peace,

To be connected,

To be fulfilled in very,

Very similar ways.

So let's breathe together.

And now allowing our awareness to expand on and on and on to include all life everywhere.

Seven billion human beings,

All the creatures,

All breathing.

None of us likes to suffer and we all long to be happy,

To be fulfilled.

Let's breathe together with all this life,

A kindly breath,

A breath of goodwill,

A breath of interest and care.

Feeling alive,

Feeling connected.

We don't need to force anything,

Simply resting,

Breathing,

Opening,

Connecting.

And now very gently bringing the foreground of our awareness back inside the weight of the body,

Resting where it's sitting,

Where it's lying,

Feeling into the points of contact,

Breathing in the body,

Allowing awareness of all of life to fade into the background of awareness,

To stay present,

But getting a sense of the weight of the body,

The presence of the body.

Breathing.

And when we're ready in our own time,

We can begin to move,

Moving gently and seeing if we can take this quality of awareness with us as we re-engage with the activities of the day.

Seeing if we can have this quality of openness and connectedness and care towards all the people that we encounter.

Being curious about what we share rather than all the ways that we're different.

So we're moving from isolation to connection,

Isolation to connection again and again and again.

And I wish you all the best for your day.

Reviews

I feel deeply peaceful and present. Thank you 🙏❤️

Connected breathing with all. Thank you.

This was the first time I really connected with a loving kindness meditation. Thank you

🙏🏻🕊

Very helpful to open to connection from isolation for me.
Thank you

Absolutely gorgeous, this is by far my most favourite loving kindness meditation, so natural, so gentle and yet so powerful. I just love the sound of your voice as well Vidyamala. Thank you for this offering 😊🙏

er

Lovely metta guidance - bookmarked, as I can see it becoming a favourite . Thank you for this kind offering 🙏🏻

An excellent practice to begin your day from!

I felt centred and calm when I came to the end of the meditation. Thank you 🙏

Your meditations are so helpful to me. I'm in the process of reading You are Not Your Pain for the 3rd time. Thank you so much for all that you do to help others🤗