Metta for the Difficult Person

Heart Practice of Metta (loving-kindness) for the difficult person. Recorded in a live environment.

Transcript

Okay,

So we're taking a deeper breath,

Yeah?

Reminding ourselves of our intention for being here.

We're taking a moment to arrive and to support the body in its process of settling and of calming.

Maybe put a hand on the heart.

Maybe feel the contact of the body and the feet on the ground.

Perhaps you're bringing a gentle smile to the corners of the lips.

For some of us,

When we uplift the mouth into a smile,

It uplifts the mind,

The heart.

And seeing if in moments,

As I'm laying out some suggestions,

Some instructions for this next muse,

In moments perhaps you can come back to this contact with body,

Whether it's the contact with the ground or maybe you keep your hand on your heart and just press it a little more and you start to get caught up in the words.

Good,

Kind practice.

Connection with body.

So,

Of course,

Today is the day we've all been waiting for.

The difficult person muse.

And every year,

A few of you or some of you come to this retreat just for today.

You've come here to transform somebody or something.

Of course,

It doesn't work that way.

We know that.

But it is nice to know that there's a group of almost a hundred people who care enough and are committed enough to give themselves to a whole retreat like this,

Including those we find difficult.

So we're expanding the circle of friendliness and well-wishing from ourselves in the center,

Those that inspire us or that we hold dear personally,

Those that are less personal,

The familiar stranger of yesterday,

And now choosing a muse for the difficult person category.

A few words on this.

If you remember nothing else that I say this morning,

Please remember this.

Less is more.

Okay.

Less is more.

We're far more interested in each of us being able to choose a muse that feels workable,

That doesn't lead to overwhelm,

Endless storytelling.

It doesn't have to be a dramatic experience in order to be a beautiful,

Helpful process with this muse.

So that very much flies in the face of some of our conditioning.

Less is more.

So of course we're continuing to build what we call the metamuscle.

And with this difficult person muse,

That applies.

That we choose somebody that maybe we ask ourselves when we think of someone,

Is this muse manageable?

Is this muse workable?

See what comes.

And we tend to talk about a scale of one to ten.

One being the difficulty is so low it's almost not discernible,

And ten being the most difficult one in your life ever.

And then of course some of us fall off the scale and we've got difficult levels of 12 or 15 or 37.

We're not going there today.

But it's important to acknowledge that sometimes that's true.

So I want to make two sets of suggestions because we have a range of experience in this retreat.

If it's your very first metta retreat,

I'm not talking about the ten insight meditation retreats that you sat,

Or maybe it's your very first retreat ever.

But if it's your first metta retreat,

I would suggest that on a scale of one to ten,

Maybe start with a four.

Or if things are really settled and there's a lot of juice,

Maybe a five on a scale of one to ten.

And don't try to figure it out like,

Are they a four or are they a six?

Is it workable?

Is it manageable?

I'll use that as a guide.

Now there are some of us here who have been sitting this retreat and other metta retreats for years.

And sometimes the question comes up,

I've sat four,

Six,

12 metta retreats.

Am I ever going to get to a higher level of difficulty?

Please trust in your own unfolding of your practice.

Maybe if you've sat many metta retreats,

You choose a muse that's a six or a seven.

Maybe if you've sat many metta retreats,

You choose a muse that's a six or a seven for your kind of muse you're going to work with all day.

And then maybe you take two minutes or five minutes at a certain point during the day and choose an eight or a nine.

But do it with a lot of container so it doesn't turn into ten minutes,

A half an hour,

Because less is more.

So that you can respect your experience level.

Now of course if you've sat many metta retreats and you're having one of those retreats where it's just,

There's a lot of difficulty,

A lot of emotions,

A lot of intensity,

Just choose a six or a seven or choose a five.

Because it's not about how hard.

It's not even about who.

It's about the metta.

Just like with perhaps the benefactor or the good friend,

Sometimes we'll choose a muse to be our difficult person,

Muse for today,

And then someone else or a couple of others will start waving wildly in the background saying,

What about me,

What about me?

And for me I've come to really almost like hold an image of that,

In this case,

Other difficult one and it's as if they're waving at the door saying,

What about me,

What about me?

And basically what I do is wave back internally,

Kind of an acknowledging nod internally to this other possible muse that I haven't chosen.

And then I come back to the muse I have chosen.

So I'm acknowledging I'm working with this muse in order to also be able to extend friendliness and warmth and goodwill towards you.

I just don't happen to be the muse today,

Sorry.

Let's say there's another muse,

Especially let's say there's somebody more difficult in your life that you're not choosing for today,

But they're there and they keep coming to visit.

Another suggestion might be if that happens for you to take a piece of paper and write down their name and maybe a particular intention or wish for that relationship and put it on the back metta altar place of practice so that they're here but they're back there.

You can walk by and visit,

Put a hand on the heart,

Just kind of acknowledge the truth of that relationship for a moment and then keep walking.

So we're being very specific to choose one,

But nothing's really left out.

So then there's some of our supports,

Somatic support.

For some of us,

The phrases that we extend,

The same wishes that we've been extending to ourselves,

Benefactor,

Good friend,

Familiar stranger,

Are also for the difficult use.

And for some of us,

We really feel these wishes,

These blessings in our bodies.

So the blessings themselves,

If you feel them in the body,

That could be a support because,

Yes,

A little difficulty here,

Right?

But the blessings themselves can be a resource.

So may you be happy,

Then fill in the happiness in your own body.

If you use the internal image as a support,

Calling up an image of them,

For some people,

Putting the image,

The internal image,

A little bit further away can be helpful,

Right?

Maybe your benefactor,

The internal image,

Was very,

Very close.

Maybe a difficult person a few more paces away.

There was one woman I worked with who had been sitting in metta retreats forever,

And she took on a higher level of difficulty because she had trained for many years.

It turns out it was a little higher difficulty than she thought it was going to be,

And she had to put them in L.

A.

The internal image of them was in Los Angeles,

Or you know,

Wherever is far away to Seattle,

Out in the Pacific.

You know,

It's not about L.

A.

That was far enough away.

If you find you have to put the image that far away,

You probably want to choose something a little simpler because we're building the metta muscle for more and more degrees of complexity and difficulty.

Individuals,

Groups,

Systems,

That we can practice that way the rest of our lives.

You can also play with a little bit of pendulation,

Right?

I mentioned this last night.

Maybe you send some phrases to the difficult person you use,

And then you send some wishes to yourself,

And then them,

And then you.

Just helpful.

We're going to move through all the categories in one sitting as we've been doing.

Maybe you spend more time with the muses that feel easier and juicier and less time with this difficult person you use.

Because it's not about how long.

It's about opening to the possibility of friendliness and warmth and benevolence with the difficult.

I'm sure that some of you aren't hearing a word that I say because you're busy frantically trying to figure out who you're going to choose,

Which is fine,

Totally normal.

On the range,

If we're choosing a four to five,

I think maybe there's levels of irritation before we get like in a complete snit,

Really upset reactivity moving up the ladder through the roof.

Maybe we work in an irritation range with someone that is really enough that there's some traction there but not so much that we're moving way,

Way up the ladder of reactivity.

If you've been doing this retreat longer,

Maybe it's an ongoing difficult relationship that isn't your hardest,

But it's there.

Now,

So lower on the scale might be people that we're less intimately close with.

Different possibilities.

But then sometimes we choose someone that we think is a four and we're moving along,

Sending the wishes,

And they spike to a nine.

How did that happen?

We need tools.

Here are a few tools.

We recognize that it's just spiked.

Out of the recognition,

We have choice.

We can take a deeper breath so the body remembers there's enough air to breathe with this experience of spiking,

Intensity,

And reactivity.

We can bring the attention down just for a moment and feel grounding,

Feel the feet,

Feel the support of the earth and gravity.

These are forces greater than our small contracted sense of self.

Maybe we need to spend some time offering ourselves compassion or metta,

Understanding that we're doing it to be able to return to the news after we've settled down from the spike.

If it so happens that you choose somebody and you think that they're hard,

Then it turns out that by the end of the morning,

Just warm and friendly,

The problem has dispersed.

We need to take some more time with that one,

Savor the experience of actually being able to transform reactivity into metta.

It's fine to choose somebody else maybe later in the day if that happens to you,

But take that time to really bookmark in your very being transformation.

That's important.

So I'm thinking for the guided practice today to bring in a relatively simple technique that I know speaks to some people,

Not all people.

Use it if it feels helpful and don't use it if it doesn't feel helpful.

But it's kind of a way of having an internal image or an internal somatic experience of what I call a metta mandala or a sacred circle of well-wishing.

And it has the benefit of keeping some of the other muses available as resources and allies and supports for when we call in the difficult person muse.

So if it's helpful,

Use it.

So we'll take a moment here in the beginning,

To take a little bit of a blend of metta mindfulness,

Experiencing gratitude that the breath is still breathing us.

And noticing how the breath moves in and out through the space of heart,

The upper chest,

The back body,

The shoulder blades.

And it might bring a warm,

Open,

Friendly attention to whatever sensations or moods are present just now.

In terms of the metta mandala,

We sit in the center,

Our precious selves.

So maybe you put a hand back on the heart or recalling in a simple way a time when there was some ease or safety,

Happiness in your life.

And beginning to extend the wishes,

The blessings,

Showering them on ourselves.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And now we'll call in the muse of our benefactor.

And then calling them to the foreground of mind.

It's as if we're calling them into this hall.

The internal image of them or how we feel somatically if they came and sat down before us.

And perhaps taking a moment to feel their well-wishing towards us.

And completing the circle with extending these same wishes for them.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And now thanking our benefactor for being the muse for our metta.

The metta mandala begins to turn.

So now the internal image or the somatic felt sense of the benefactor is sitting down at our right side.

And facing the foreground of awareness for another muse to arrive.

This one is our good friend.

Same good friend we've been using.

As if they're coming in the hall here.

The internal image of them.

And the somatic felt sense of how it feel they came and sat down before us.

And these same wishes and blessings for them.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And now the metta mandala begins to turn again.

So now the internal image,

The somatic felt sense of our benefactor is behind us.

See or sense them there.

They have our back.

Good friend moves to sit on our right side.

Leaving space in the foreground of awareness for another muse to arrive.

This one,

The familiar stranger,

Who's probably a lot more familiar by now than they were when we started.

Here they are.

Image,

Felt sense of them.

Extending the same wishes for them.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And now the metta mandala turns once again.

So now the benefactor is at our left side.

Good friend muse is behind us.

They have our back.

Familiar stranger is now at our right side.

And that leaves space in the foreground of awareness for another muse to arrive.

Of course this is our difficult person muse.

So we're choosing somebody that feels workable,

Manageable.

And here they are arriving.

So we can put the internal image of them in an appropriate distance away.

How we feel somatically when we're around them.

Being sure to have dual attention with grounding in our feet as we do that.

A simple reflection.

There's difficulty with this one.

That's why we chose them as our difficult person muse.

They did not come out of the womb with a sign on their forehead that said,

I am a difficult person.

We're having difficulty with them.

Or with one of their behaviors.

Could we offer the generosity of these same blessings,

These same wishes for this one here?

Okay.

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We can perhaps take a moment to thank this person for being the muse for our maturing metta.

We can take a moment to experience sitting in the center of what I call the inner circle of the metta mandala.

So the benefactor still at our left.

Good friend has our back.

Familiar stranger on the right.

We leave the difficult person in front of us where we can see them.

It's a good place for them.

Just taking a moment to sit in the center.

Acknowledging that we work with these muses so that we can expand to the outer circle of the metta mandala,

Which includes all and excludes none.

We're moving in that direction.

Acknowledging that each of these muses live in us.

At times we are our own benefactor,

Our own good friend.

There are parts of ourselves that sometimes feel like a familiar stranger.

We can be our own best difficult person for sure.

And so with that acknowledgement of our interdependence,

The metta mandala begins to disperse.

We might allow the metta mandala to dissolve into the heart or if you prefer to dissolve into that space.

And we take a moment to notice how the breath is still available moving in and out of this space of heart.

We can bring an open,

Warm,

Friendly attention to whatever sensations or moods are the echo of this practice.

And now we are going to take a moment to notice how the breath is still available moving in and out of this space of heart.

We can now take an open breath and release our protection to the heart liner of this folk style awareness.

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Reviews

Well delivered metta practice that has nutrition to foster loving kindness the world so desperately needs. Blessings, for taking time to deliver your profound wisdom!

this Metta series has been a wonderful space to develop my practice

Meta mandala image and practice was very helpful.

I needed this today after dealing with a loved but very difficult person. His difficulty comes from within him and sometimes the best way I can help is to send Metta. Thank you.

This was amazingly beautiful and very helpful. Thank you. I will return to this again to aid my practice.

Very helpful. Tank you!

Helpful guidance about incorporating the difficult person into our metta practice. Includes about 18 minute introduction with instructions/recommendations about who to choose, how to support this part of the practice, etc. during the meditation, includes the benefactor, good friend, stranger, and then welcomes in the difficult person.