This is a practice on converting pain to love.
This is a great practice for developing compassion and equanimity.
It is also a great practice for healing a sense of emptiness,
Self-hatred,
Or insufficiency.
If you've been wounded or otherwise are in pain,
This is a very healing practice.
I suggest you always start this practice with your own pain.
You may need to focus on your own pain for many days,
Or weeks,
Or even months.
As you strengthen your experience of love and care for yourself,
You will be able to then breathe in and dissolve the pain of others,
Sending your loving energy out into the world.
What happens as a result of this practice is that you will begin to feel more loving toward yourself and others as you go about your day.
This practice develops a generosity of heart.
You will find yourself breathing out love to everyone you interact with.
You will begin to radiate out kindness.
Others will sense and appreciate this.
With time,
You will trigger,
With this and the other practices in my meditation section,
A virtuous resonance of loving and being loved.
So let's begin the practice.
To begin,
Get present with your presence practice.
As you do this,
Let go and relax.
Let go of tension.
Take a few deep,
Slow breaths.
Anchor your awareness in the breath or some other anchor.
Let the mind settle as much as it will.
Breathe out and let go of tension or agitation as much as you can.
Now close your eyes if you wish.
Once you are feeling present and as centered as possible,
Imagine your sources of love,
Your benefactors,
Filling your heart with a radiant glowing ball of love.
If you haven't done the benefactor meditation before,
Please refer to the benefactor meditation.
You might want to do that meditation first before doing this converting pain to love meditation.
Tap into the loving sources that work best for you.
Loving people in your life,
Loving beings that you know of,
Ideal,
Divine loving parents,
God or other divine beings,
Or even just a loving universal energy.
Whatever works best for you.
As you take in the flow of love,
Sense this radiant glowing ball of love growing in your heart.
Sense the force of love coming into you and filling your heart to the brim with radiant glowing love energy.
Now sense any pain in your heart or elsewhere in your body.
You can also bring to mind circumstances that trigger upset,
Fear,
Hurt,
Grief,
Sadness,
Loneliness,
Anxiety,
Anger,
Boredom,
Restlessness,
Or any other painful feeling.
Now breathe in this pain directly into your radiating ball of love in your heart.
Imagine the pain almost like a dark,
Smoky,
Black smoke.
Imagine it being converted into loving white bright loving energy in your heart.
Breathe out this loving energy toward yourself into the center of your pain.
Imagine your love sources behind you radiating love into your glowing radiating heart from behind.
Breathe in the pain,
Convert it in your loving radiating heart,
And breathe out love.
If the pain feels too much,
Just focus on the out breath of love.
Release love from your radiating heart,
Fueled by your love sources,
Into the vastness of awareness.
When you feel ready,
You can then bring to mind someone else who is also suffering.
Maybe one person you care about who is having a hard time.
Sense what it is like for them.
Let yourself fully experience their pain as much as you can.
Breathe in their pain,
And let it be converted in your glowing heart,
And breathe out love to them.
At the end of this practice,
Sense the pain of all those who suffer.
Breathe in their pain,
And breathe out love.
As you finish,
Make an intention to continue to tap into your glowing heart and to keep it radiating.
Make an intention to breathe in both your pain and the pain of everyone you encounter today,
And to convert it to loving energy.
Make an intention to live with love on every breath.
In bringing this practice into your daily life,
It is helpful to practice attending to the essential goodness and vulnerability in everyone.
Look closely.
See if you can discern the conditioning of others that causes them suffering.
Attend to their vulnerability and to the divine spirit that shines through.
Sense both your and their sacredness.
As you encounter pain,
Breathe this pain into your radiating heart and breathe out love.
I'm indebted to Carolyn Aldo-Aliodo,
Or Lama Polden Droma,
And others who have taught me this practice.
I do recommend Lama Polden's book.
It's called Love on Every Breath.
It describes this practice from a Buddhist perspective.
It's really quite good.
I really recommend it.
This is a great practice where you combine essentially three practices to heal your heart-mind system.
You're combining your presence practice,
Your benefactor practice,
And then this practice,
Which in Tibet I think is called tonglen,
This converting pain to love practice.
This one,
Two,
Three practice really,
Really helps to rewire our heart-mind system to develop a loving heart.
It's a way of creating sort of a loving crucible or way of metabolizing our own hurt and pain and helping us to bear that pain and to metabolize it.
I recommend doing this practice really every day,
Even if it's just for five,
Ten,
Fifteen minutes every day.
With time,
With practice,
With repetition,
The more you do it,
The more you repeat it,
The more it will lead to a healing of your heart-mind system and a healing of the love wound.
It's a great practice.
I really encourage you to do this practice.
