Hi,
Hello,
And welcome to this introduction to loving kindness,
Which is one of the many other practices that we can incorporate into our mindfulness and into our meditation practice.
Loving kindness in particular is really a representation of one of the four pathways of the heart from the Buddhist perspective.
And so we practice it here really under the theme of cultivating kindness,
Which is a theme throughout all of mindfulness practice.
And we're going to combine that a bit with kindness of course to the self as well as kindness to others.
It's often easiest for us to think about being kind to other people,
But we need to also consider being kind to self and how this all plays into the entire scope of mindfulness and reducing our stress and increasing our calm in the world and really our balance,
Our equanimity,
Which is also one of the other heart practices.
So it's not only important that you pay attention to the present moment,
Which we've been talking about,
But as well as we've been talking about how we pay attention to it.
So loving kindness and compassion come together.
And this has everything to do with how we relate to moments.
Can we relate to moments from a place of kindness and understanding and balance?
And this is why this is one of the most important practices that we can incorporate.
As well as loving kindness practice and compassion practices really allow us to change that default or work with that default mechanism of the mind which can tend to focus on how everything's not as we would like it.
And there's lots of research in science to support this as a practice,
Some of what you've read about in the book.
But we know that if we practice loving kindness and compassion practices that we have a sense,
A chance,
A better chance of having greater sense of well-being and possibly happier over time.
So the intention is to be better friends with ourselves,
Better have better understanding with ourselves and of course to others.
And recognizing at the root loving kindness practice is recognizing that we all as humans want to be free of our own suffering.
We want to be free of separation from ourselves and from others.
We want a sense of instead feeling connected and this practice can help us choose how we respond over time.
So very nice practice.
There are some barriers that you should be aware of.
Loving kindness meditation or practices of all the practices are the ones that people make up that they should have some certain feeling that comes along with it as well as it can feel a bit contrived.
And my great teacher Sharon Salzberg says that you know kindness is an overlooked force.
It's something that comes to us naturally and we can invite it.
And instead of thinking that something magical will happen to us in the moment as we're practicing,
Instead just knowing that it's the practice itself that actually will work regardless of what we're feeling.
In other words you may be practicing the loving kindness meditation which involves,
Which we'll get into,
Involves saying certain phrases over and repeating them to get a sense of feeling you're more connected to yourself or to others and you may not be feeling more connected to yourself and to others.
And oftentimes that this gets part of the reason that we don't quote feel it is that it becomes a mind practice instead of connecting us as well to the body.
So we want to let go of any sort of attachment that we should be feeling any one thing or sensing any one thing in ourselves and instead be focused on the practice.
So we're gonna stick with that as we do our practice.
A few other things I want to say about compassion is really in self compassion of course is in loving kindness is being kind to ourselves,
Recognizing our common humanity that we're all in this together and then being mindful of what's happening in the moment.
And even when we might be practicing our loving kindness practice we may have moments of our heart not feeling so open.
We may have we may be committed to doing the practice and have a moment of feeling like oh I really am not experiencing feeling happy towards this person or wanting to wish them well in this moment and that's okay.
The most important thing is that we recognize what's occurring in the moment.
Remember that practicing mindfully doesn't mean we ignore what's occurring and letting go of any attachment to have the sort of warm and fuzzy feeling that you might desire.
We can be in touch with desire in that moment and so we just want to practice simply and do the practice.
That's the most important part is to do the practice and then let arise what arises and give it a good good effort not too much effort just the right amount of effort and see what happens.
I'll be sharing phrases with you during the meditation some of those may be a phrase that just may you be safe and protected may be free from harm.
I'll encourage you over time to come up with your own phrases if that feels best to you there's no attachment to the phrases that I'll be using when I guide you through the meditation so feel free to always come up with your own and find the words that resonate the most with you.
Again there's no there's no magic necessarily as long as it's something that that resonates with you that will be that will be wonderful and I think you'll enjoy the practice as well.
So lastly the phrases that we use are not necessarily positive affirmations they're just simply phrases that we can utilize to allow us to come in contact with this idea of kindness.
So when we say things to and I think the biggest biggest point that I want to make here is that we're not trying to change anything so if we say something about may I be healthy we really are just having that as a wish and we can connect with it in that way and we don't have to try to change our own experience in the moment as I mentioned and so we can just simply have it as an intention and a possibility and I think that's different than trying to convince ourselves to have something be different than it is which is a very important point.
So this is the introduction to loving kindness and compassion practices and I will meet you in the meditation.
