This is a loving-kindness meditation.
Loving-kindness is the practice of planting seeds of goodwill,
Of kindness,
Of care for ourselves and for others.
During this practice,
You may not feel loving or kind,
And that's completely fine and totally normal.
What we're doing in this practice is sending out wishes of kindness.
First to ourselves,
And then to people in our lives and in the world.
Even if we don't feel particularly kind,
Just going through the motions of this practice strengthens our mind's capacity for compassion,
For generosity,
And for kindness.
So we'll begin with ourselves.
Compassion and self-kindness is challenging in many cultures around the world.
We begin with ourselves because until we can show kindness to ourselves,
It's hard to be truly kind to anyone else.
So directing your attention inward,
Bringing yourself to mind if you will.
It might be useful to put a hand on your heart,
Or even to imagine looking at yourself in the mirror or speaking to an earlier version of yourself,
Maybe a younger version of yourself.
As you repeat these phrases,
May I be safe and protected.
May I be truly happy and deeply peaceful.
May I live with ease.
May I be healthy and strong.
May I love and accept myself just as I am.
We'll repeat those phrases to ourselves one more time.
May I be safe and protected from harm.
May I be truly happy and deeply peaceful.
May I live with ease.
May I be healthy and strong,
Even if we don't feel healthy and strong today,
We can wish this for ourselves.
May I love and accept myself just as I am.
And now we'll bring to mind someone who has been good to us,
Someone who is easy to love,
Perhaps someone who has taken good care of us or provided us with an opportunity,
Or someone who has been generous with their time and attention.
So bringing this person to mind,
See if you can envision them sitting right across from you now,
Looking into your eyes as you send them these very same wishes.
May you be safe and protected from harm.
May you be truly happy and deeply peaceful.
May you live with ease.
This is my wish for you.
May you be healthy and strong.
And may you love and accept yourself just as you are.
We can now bid this person farewell and bring to mind someone who is pretty neutral in your mind,
Someone that doesn't have a lot of story attached to them.
Maybe you don't even know their name,
Maybe you can just picture their face.
Are they a bus driver or a train conductor?
Are they a neighbor?
Or someone you see in your office building?
Some person without any friction in your life.
And we can wish them the same loving kindness.
Imagine this person sitting across from you.
May you be safe and protected from harm.
May you be truly happy and deeply peaceful.
May you live with ease.
May you be healthy and strong.
May you love and accept yourself just as you are.
You don't need to know people intimately in order to care for them or to wish them well.
And now bidding this person adieu,
We can see if we can bring to mind someone who is more difficult for us,
More of a challenge.
Maybe someone who we've had some irritation or frustration with in the past few days.
Maybe someone we have a hard time connecting to.
You might not want to start with the most difficult person in your life.
But choose someone who's not necessarily easy for you to love right now.
Imagine them sitting across from you.
You might imagine them being a little bit confused as to why they're here.
None of us ever think we're anyone else's difficult person.
But we can send them the same wishes.
May you also be safe and protected from harm.
May you be truly happy and deeply peaceful.
Wouldn't that be wonderful?
May you live with ease.
May you be healthy and strong.
May you love yourself and accept yourself just as you are.
What would that be like?
What would shift between us if that was possible for you?
That is what I wish for you.
Now letting this more difficult person go.
You might expand the circle of your loving kindness to the people in the room with you or in the building.
You might be able to extend these wishes to everyone in your city or even everyone in the world.
Just don't forget to include yourself.
May we all be safe and protected from harm.
May we all be truly happy and deeply peaceful.
What would the world look like?
May we all live with ease.
May we be healthy and strong.
And may we all love and accept ourselves just as we are.
Thank you for your loving kindness practice.
