Loving Kindness Toward Yourself

After bringing awareness to the body, we shift to a Tibetan meditation on taking the suffering of ourselves at a different time and offering compassion instead.

Transcript

So let's settle into our cushion,

Our posture,

Our body in the sense that it's also a grounding force for our meditation.

So you feel the contact between the base of the body and the cushion,

Feel the support of the cushion,

Feel ourselves just relaxing and being held,

Supported by the cushion that's supported by the ground,

And ultimately we're aligned with the very center of the earth itself.

So if you like sticking with our equanimity theme,

You can have that sense of really being supported by the earth,

Having that broad,

Expansive,

Equanimous base of support.

So that's what's beneath us,

Holding us up.

Then we feel the spine rising up long and straight and tall,

Feel the pull of the crown of the head pulling the spine up straight,

And then we relax,

We let the spine's natural alignment support us.

And just feel into our own experience in this moment,

Where the tension is in our body,

Sensations of heat or cold,

How our mind feels,

We're just checking in.

And then we go down from the crown of the head,

Just inviting our scalp to relax,

Inviting the muscles around the eyes to relax,

Inviting the muscles of the jaw to relax,

Inviting the throat to relax,

And the neck,

Inviting the shoulders to relax,

Inviting the chest and the upper back to relax,

Inviting the abdomen and the lower back to relax,

Inviting our hands to relax,

Inviting our legs to relax,

Inviting our feet to relax,

Just feeling into our entire body,

Feeling ourselves upright and alert,

But resting.

If you like,

You can feel that the crown of your head is open to the apex of space,

So our mind can relax,

Can be vast and expansive.

No thoughts can disturb our minds,

Just as no clouds floating through the sky disturb the sky.

Before we really start the meditation,

If you like,

You can just reflect on your motivation for doing this session,

Whatever it might be,

It's totally fun.

Now we take our three deep cleansing breaths,

Bringing in supportive energy,

Breathing out stale energy.

As our breath returns to its natural rhythm,

We allow the mind to settle into that sensation of breathing,

Either at the nostrils or at the center of the abdomen.

We use that bare sensation of breath to connect us with the present moment.

If you think about it,

With every breath we're breathing in,

The molecules that are lungs are going to get to our blood,

Our blood is going to circulate through the entire body,

And then with every out breath we're getting rid of all the byproducts of respiration.

Every cell in your body is actually receiving and giving the substances it needs to continue to live with every single breath.

We can think of the breath as happening in the lungs,

We can think of the energy of the breath as going down into the center of the abdomen,

And we can actually also think of the molecular components of the breath traveling throughout the body to every cell.

So with every in breath and out breath you have your choice of different objects or different almost visualizations,

Ways of relating to the breath.

The The breath naturally flows in and out.

Thoughts naturally arise in our minds.

Sounds naturally make contact with our ears.

There's nothing in any of this to fight against or to hang on to.

If you like you can use labeling.

Touch,

Sound,

Sight,

Or talk.

But if you find that your mind is naturally just settling right into your experience,

Then you might not even need to label.

Just allow the mind to settle into the breath and when other,

You could say sense experiences or thoughts pull it away,

You try to be aware of that.

And then once those are no longer distracting,

Just settle back into the breath.

It's aboutner watch your face,

Adapt to the environment and take actions.

Hopefully now your mind is more settled,

Or able to rest on one object.

So we switch our main focus of attention from the physical sensation of breath to our own internal visual sensation.

We feel in the space in front of us this earlier or later version of ourselves at a difficult time.

If you can,

Really try to picture yourself as you were,

Or as you think you will be,

In as much detail as possible.

Facial expression,

Hair,

The clothes you're wearing,

Your body language,

Everything.

You might just have some impression of what the difficulty that you faced was.

You might have some impression of internally what your challenges were at that time,

Or will be at that time.

So you can really see yourself.

So now we shift our attention back into our own body.

We let that person stay in front of us for a while.

With each in-breath we start pulling in our own present moment,

Negativity,

Self-doubt,

Pain,

Illness.

Anything we'd like to be rid of,

Anything that feels no longer applicable,

No longer useful,

We just bring that in with each in-breath to our heart's end.

This is a time when you can feel even the most painful or shameful emotions.

You can feel shame,

Fear,

Anger.

No one will ever know.

We just gather it in,

We acknowledge it,

We bring it to our heart center.

Our heart center might be feeling kind of gross by now.

You can imagine these negative energies,

Negative emotions,

Or habit patterns in the form of tar,

Dark smoke,

Squiggly lines like hair,

Insects.

Whatever captures the feeling tone of that negativity,

Just visualize that coming to rest in your heart center.

As that happens,

All the rest of your body,

Of your mind,

Of your emotional self,

All of that is actually freed of this negativity.

It's all coming to rest at the heart center.

Just take a couple of last breaths and pull in any little bits of negativity that might have been left out.

Now we have all this yucky gunk at our heart center.

When we turn our attention again to this version of ourselves in front of us,

We see them,

We kind of feel into what they're suffering.

When we make this heartfelt wish,

I wish I could alleviate them of their suffering,

Myself at this previous time,

At this later time,

I wish they could be free.

I wish I could free them from this suffering.

I'm going to free them from this suffering right now by just pulling it out of them.

With each in-breath,

We now begin to pull that darkness from the other person toward ourselves.

Again,

It might take the form of tar or dark smoke,

Dark lines,

Whatever feels right.

With each breath,

We're pulling it out from them.

If you'd like,

You can pull it out from their heart center.

You could imagine them breathing it out in the form of smoke.

We take it toward ourselves with this intention,

I'm going to free them from this.

When it crosses this space between us,

With an in-breath,

We breathe it into the nostrils.

When it comes down to the heart center,

And as soon as that other version of us,

As soon as their negativity touches our negativity at our own heart center,

The two just dissolve into light.

This is the real alchemy of Dunglun.

Somehow our self are wallowing in our own issues.

It just is completely eliminated when we begin to care about someone else's issues as though they're our own.

So with each in-breath,

We're pulling over this darkness from this other person.

We're taking it into ourselves.

With each breath,

Pulls in their negativity,

Their fear or anger or uncertainty,

Goes down to our heart center and just destroys our own sense of self-grasping.

Burning away all that negativity and transforming it into radiant white light.

So while we focus on pulling that negativity out from them,

Really feeling it,

What was it like to have that experience?

What emotions did you feel?

So you can feel and acknowledge,

Then bring that into us and have it be completely dissolved into light.

As we do that in the corner of our mind,

We might notice this other version of ourselves having some relief,

Being healed of whatever it was that was troubling them.

And at the same time,

All of our own gunk,

Whatever we would like to be rid of,

All of that is just being dissolved into light.

Once everything at our heart center has been dissolved,

Then we have a radiant orb of white light,

This healing light.

And it sends out rays throughout our entire body and any remaining negativity in us is just dissolved by this white light.

And now with each in-breath,

It's as though we were feeding a very strong but gentle fire in our heart center,

This orb of light.

Now we take a few breaths to pull the last of the negativity from this other version of ourselves.

Give it into our own heart center,

Dissolve it.

And now we form the intention,

I wish I could offer this healing energy,

This positivity from my heart center to this other version of myself.

With a real wish for them to be well,

Now on the out-breath,

We begin to send this positivity from our heart center to their heart center.

If you'd like,

You can send it as a beam of light from heart to heart.

If you'd like,

You can breathe it out through your nostrils and they breathe it in.

However you'd like to do that,

You begin to send some of this infinite supply of positive energy from your heart center to them.

Feel that their heart center is lighting up,

Beginning to glow with this radiant energy.

We continue to breathe out and support that radiance in them.

And pretty soon it's so strong it doesn't need our support but we keep offering,

Keep sending the light to them.

We might feel that their face has a different expression,

Their posture may be different,

Their clothes might even look different as they fill up with this energy of compassion,

Of love,

Of healing,

Of joy.

And as we see them transform,

We rejoice,

We feel genuinely happy in their well-being.

And now they're completely suffused with light,

We're completely suffused with light.

We're two beings of light sitting facing each other full of joy.

We allow this image to dissolve,

We bring our attention back to our own heart center,

And we stay with that sense of joy,

That joy in someone else's well-being.

Now we even let go of that sense of joy and we rest in a state of equanimity,

Open and accepting to our experiences as they arise.

If the joy continues,

We allow that,

We're engaged with it,

And if the joy subsides,

We also allow that.

We engage with whatever comes after the joy.

Now we drop any sense of trying to generate any state of mind,

Trying to do this or not that,

And we simply sit and allow the mind to be.

Before we end the meditation,

If you'd like,

You can just check in with yourself again,

Feel into your body,

Into any tense spots,

Feel for heat and cold,

All the bodily sensations.

Feel also into your mind,

How is your mind.

If you would like to make an aspiration for bringing any positivity that you might have encountered in this meditation into the rest of your life,

This would be a good time for doing that.

And when you feel ready,

You can end the meditation.

Reviews

A lovely and generous practice

Thank you very much! :)

Bueatiful. Namesta

Deeply connected and healing

This was so invigorating and meaningful to my current status as a father trying to help my suicidal son.

I'll be practicing this as often as necessary to keep the heart fire burning.

We would all benefit from more self-healing exercises. Thanks.

I found this one to be very healing. Thank you!

I want sure about this one, mainly because of her voice on the word cushion, but I quickly fell off and went into deep meditation. Thank you for this!

I was totally out to this. Not asleep just not always aware. I hope this is a good thing?

Very relaxing
Mind scattered

That was one of the best and intense ones I've done so far.

This was excellent! Stick with it, starts a little slow, but so worth the wait! :)

That was lovely, thank you so much 😊🙏🏼