The problem that many people have with daily life is the way that we can hold on to past memories of negative people in our lives,
The way we have been treated,
The way that we treat others.
We can hold on to and we can not forgive,
We don't forget and we can be critical,
Angry,
Frustrated and this all gets locked up inside the body and is really not very useful for our overall sense of well-being and mental health.
And there are not many things that really help us to deal with these things in real life.
You know you can't just go to the gym and sweat it out,
We can't eat a particular food,
We can't drink it away and this is a problem with addictions and cravings.
You know we try to mask,
We try to hide,
We try to quench our thirst or satisfy our hunger and our need to avoid a lot of this pain.
And one of the very few ways that we can rescue ourselves from this situation is the subject and the meditation practices of loving kindness.
The ability to in a meditation space hold the people that we may have particular negative reactions towards,
To hold them in this space and to teach our minds how to react when we wish these people well,
We wish them free from suffering,
We wish them free from danger,
We wish that they ultimately can live with their own sense of ease in their lives.
And at first glance for many people this is something that we just can't do,
It's something that we just can't face.
You know you think of your your worst enemy,
Your arch nemesis and imagine in front of you saying some kind thoughts,
Some kind words,
Wishing them well and it will probably trigger some adverse reactions within you.
You know there's no way I'm going to do that,
It can be quite threatening,
Why would I want to do that?
Well put quite simply it's one of the only ways to release yourself from the bind of these negative thoughts.
You're teaching the mind in a visualisation sense to gradually wish these people well and over time it helps to loosen your negative reactions to these people and opens your heart to other possibilities,
It helps you to respond more instead of react.
And remember you're doing all this in the safe space of your own mind and eventually when you come to see these people in real life your mind will have already changed,
It will already have created different neural networks and you will be automatically dealing thinking with these people differently and you can have a whole new approach.
So it can loosen up your own personal thinking patterns which can give you a sense of freedom,
A sense of calm,
A sense of control for some over these strong negative sensations.
And so you can also ask yourself you know who's got the problem here when we think about the problem people in our lives?
It's usually us because we hold the grudges,
We hold on to the negativity,
It's up to us to kind of get rid of it and it's not going to happen easily by tracking these people down and having open honest conversations with them.
That in itself is quite threatening and possibly not safe to do so.
So by practicing in the safety of your own mind,
In the safety of your own meditation space is a wonderful way to start to loosen the grips of some of this negative thinking.
So we start with wishing people that we know and that we love,
We wish them well and this trains the mind on the process of the meditation.
So we're wishing people that we know,
We're wishing pets,
Loved ones,
Family that we trust,
We feel safe with,
We're wishing them well and so we become fluent in the art of the process.
And eventually we're bringing in people that we find difficult,
Our enemies,
People that we've fallen out with,
We can bring them into our meditations to be curious,
To be open,
To be kind,
To loosen their emotional charge on our internal well-being,
On our internal way of processing things.
It's almost as if loving kindness has our own best interests at heart and that says we have to reach out emotionally and the bravest thing to do,
The wisest thing to do is to be loving,
Kind and open in the safety of our meditation space towards these people.
