The loving kindness meditation.
The intention of this meditation is to cultivate our natural capacity for kindness and compassion.
It is about building a resource within ourselves from which we can better take care of ourselves and others and find the resilience to deal with difficulties when they arise.
So for this meditation it is important to adopt a very comfortable position.
Meditation can be done sitting or lying down and closing over the eyes and allowing any unnecessary tension to flow out of the body out of the head,
The shoulders,
The back out of the legs and out of the feet out of the arms and hands and as best you can allowing the face to be soft and the chest and the belly and spending some time bringing attention to the in-breath and the out-breath and now with the body settled inviting you to bring to mind some of the people in your life who wish you well and as you visualize each of these people,
Imagining them joining a circle around you a circle of well-wishers perhaps family members friends neighbours maybe people you work with or people who nourish you in some way maybe people you admire though you may not know them well people who inspire you whose words you've read and they add to your life or your nourishment so visualizing each person and imagining them joining this circle of well-wishers around you you may want to include people who've helped you and people you've helped and from this position surrounded by well-wishers seeing if you can wish yourself well so mentally repeating the following phrases and just allowing them to drop into your awareness May I be peaceful May I accept myself with kindness and compassion May I be happy May I be peaceful May I accept myself with kindness and compassion May I be happy and now allowing the circle of well-wishers to leave your imagination and bringing to mind somebody whom you love someone who when you think of them you almost automatically smile and you can let that smile appear as you imagine gazing into their eyes and repeating the phrases May you be peaceful May you accept yourself with kindness and compassion May you be happy May you be peaceful May you accept yourself with kindness and compassion May you be happy and now allowing this person that you love to leave your imagination and now bringing to mind someone whom you don't know very well but you see from time to time maybe on the street or in a shop that you frequent someone that you know to see and recognising that this person also wants to be happy mentally repeating the phrases to this person May you be peaceful May you accept yourself with kindness and compassion and may you be happy May you be peaceful May you accept yourself with kindness and compassion and may you be happy and now allowing this person whom you know to see to leave your imagination and bringing to mind a person whom you have a difficult relationship with not the person who's hurt you most in your life but somebody whom you have some difficulty with and seeing if you can wish this person well and if that's too difficult it can be helpful perhaps to imagine this person as a small child and to wish that child well so repeating the phrases May you be peaceful May you accept yourself with kindness and compassion and may you be happy May you be peaceful May you accept yourself with kindness and compassion and may you be happy and now allowing this person to leave your imagination and now imagining extending your well wishes out to everyone around you to people in the neighbourhood and to people in the country and further out to all beings recognising that we all suffer and we would all like to have a life of more ease and happiness and including ourselves repeating the following phrases May we be peaceful May we accept ourselves with kindness and compassion May we be happy May we be peaceful May we accept ourselves with kindness and compassion and may we be happy and now coming towards the end of this meditation gathering your attention and bringing it back to the sensations of breathing in the body and to the sense of your body sitting or lying here and the points of contact between the body and the chair or floor and in your own time allowing the body to move again perhaps stretching opening over the eyes and moving back into the next moments of your day
