Love Is Acceptance

As part of the four immeasurables human qualities, loving-kindness brings that warm feeling of happiness and sensations of self-acceptance. Love your self so that you can love others. Be well. Be happy. Be safe.

Transcript

Hello, Welcome to this meditation session. We are doing a series of meditations on the four immeasurables, Which is the four qualities that according to Buddha every human being has. And sometimes it just needs to be developed. Today's meditation is on loving kindness. It's about developing that loving feeling towards yourself and towards others. It is my understanding that the love we are talking about is not the romantic love that we are used to. The romantic love towards the loved one or the romantic love towards somebody we have a relationship with or the bodily love or the God love or all the loves that are being coined. The love we are talking about is the love of a human being towards another human being. Understanding that we equally suffer, We equally pursue happiness. We want to be happy in this world, In this life. We all do. The exercise of this meditation brings up that loving feeling towards yourself first. You cannot love somebody else if you don't love yourself. The love I recognize in this practice is, To put it mildly and simply, It's about accepting yourself by who you are. It's about accepting yourself with your qualities and your not so qualities according to yourself or somebody else that might have suggested to you. The thing is that we are so impacted by external models and frameworks of beauty or behavior or so many things that are not ours are being imposed on us that there is a lot of frustration we have to deal with. There is a whole lot of energy towards keeping up with the exterior world, Expectations towards us. The cultivation of self-love is so important. Makes that whole energy going towards something that's totally dispensable and bringing back towards us, Making us feel good about ourselves so that we can connect with somebody else in a way that we understand because with being there we understand what that person is going through. Send your love towards them. Send your love towards them. Send your wishes towards them. If you've ever been to one of my classes you know that, And I've said it before in one of my loving kindness classes before, It's not about sending a ray of light towards the other person and suddenly that other person becomes happy. It's not about that. There's no meditation. It's about you. My goal is to help you be a better person. Meditation is about you finding happiness and finding that emotional balance that we all need in this life. By loving somebody else, By sending loving kindness towards somebody else, You are being altruistic about your feelings. You're being altruistic about your wishes. You don't want anything in return and that makes life a lot easier. So we have, Let me see here, 25 minutes. Oh, There you go. Yeah, 24 and a half minutes. I will ring the bell to start and we'll ring the bell to finish and let's go through this. All right. Okay. Start by finding yourself in a comfortable position. You can be seated on a chair or on the floor in a cushion or laying down. If you're taking one of my classes, You will know that I only care about you feeling comfortable. And if you fall asleep, I will wake you up. So find yourself a comfortable position, Legs crossed, Or if you're sitting in a chair, Make sure your feet is flat on the ground. You can feel the ground beneath you. Hands on knees, Or if you're laying down, Hands on the sides of your body facing up. Take a deep inhalation. As you inhale, You notice the upward movement of your body. Straighten your back, Open your chest. Giving to yourself a dignified posture for this practice and all meditation practices. As you exhale through your mouth, You notice the downward movement. Your muscles are relaxing. It is as if you are arriving here and now. Another deep inhalation. Take this time to adjust yourself. In a soft and gentle exhalation, Noticing how the muscles on your face, Your shoulders, Your chest, Your belly, They all relax, They all settle. Another inhalation. Pull in your lungs, Open your chest, And exhale through your mouth. And gently, Let's go to our regular breathing. It's a slow and gentle inhalation. In a slow and gentle exhalation. Breathing through your nose. If you choose to keep your eyes closed, That's okay. If you want to keep them open, Just keep that look that you're not paying attention to anything. Just that gaze of uninterested. Deep inhalation. Soft and gentle exhalation. A soft and gentle inhalation through your nose. And a soft and gentle exhalation through your nose. Just enough air, Don't need to overdo it. Don't need to bring too much air into your lungs, Just enough. Make sure you're aware of how much air you're bringing in. Just enough inhalation. And a soft exhalation. Soft and gentle inhalation. And a soft and gentle exhalation. As you've just seen it and as you've just started this exercise, Your mind might wonder, Might try to pull your attention away, Body sensations, Noises outside, The neighbor singing or anything. Just don't fight it, Don't engage with it, Just acknowledge it and return to your regular breathing. Just say, Oh okay, Somebody's walking. And return to the breath. Just stay here for a while while you do this exercise. Settling down, Soft and gently acknowledging your thoughts, Not engaging, Even emotionally. Try not to feel anger or anxiety. If you notice that you are starting to feel something, Just name it. Anxiety and return to the breath. If you find it hard to return to the breath, You can pay attention to the sensations of the breath on your body. You can be the tingling sensation on the tip of your nose when the air touches it. You can be the touching of the air on the back of your throat to find a cold air when you inhale. Or you can even be the rising and falling of your body when you inhale and exhale. Choose one place, We call it a home base, Choose one home base to rest your attention. Every time you feel distracted, Every time you feel sensations, Mind thoughts, Mind thoughts, Images, You just acknowledge it and return to the home base. I like the feeling of the air on the back of my throat when I inhale. And that's the place I go when I feel distracted. I go back there and start getting curious about the sensation from, Is it really too cold or when the sensation starts, How long does it last, And things like that. So bring some curiosity to your meditation. Breathe softly and gently, Shallow breathing, A shallow inhalation, And a soft exhalation. Let's stay there for a while. Soft and gentle inhalation. Very shallow, Just enough breathing. And a soft and gentle exhalation. Paying attention to your breath, The sensation of the breath on the home base. Dealing with noises, You don't have to engage with it. They will go away. Think of those sensations, Noises, Distractions, Let's call them all distractions. Think of those distractions as clouds in the sky. They come from wherever they came from and they will go away to wherever they go away to. So it's not up to you to engage with that. Just acknowledge it and return to the home base softly and gently, Mindfully. As our mind starts to settle our body, Relax. And the breath connects mind and body into one harmonic, Rhythmic system. They start to vibrate at the same rhythm. If you feel any discomfort, Physical discomfort, Just gently allow yourself to bring your attention to the discomfort. Like if you feel your legs are numb or anything, Just bring your attention gently to the legs and slowly and mindfully change your position up to the point where the discomfort stops. And gently bring your attention back to the home base. If you feel any sleepiness or drowsiness, That's totally okay. Just give it a stretch, Body, Take a deep inhalation and return to your home base if it's inevitable. Just so you can open your eyes if you want to. As you do it, Return to your home base and keep exploring that location. It's all about exploration. Speaking of exploration, Let's move one step forward towards exploring the image that we have about ourselves, What we think of ourselves. As I like to say, Meditation is between you and yourself, There's nobody listening. So as you think about yourself, Just throw the words around, Just throw qualities or things that you think you need to improve or things that are not so good that you think of, Just throw words around, Just play with the image that you make of yourself. You can even bring a live image of yourself to the mind's eye, See yourself and you might find, Okay, So I need to go to the gym, I need a six pack or whatever, Just play around with that, The concepts that you build around yourself. Oh I'm so fat, Oh I'm so talking, I talk a lot, I talk more than I should, I don't know, Anything, Just play around. This is your playground, Your mind is your playground. Use it to your benefit. Now as you think of yourself, Just throw the words around, Just throw the words around, Now as you think of those words and bring those images to yourself, All of yourself to your mind so that you see the projection of yourself and things you think you need to improve or you don't like about yourself, You like about yourself, What does it make you, How does it make you feel? Look around your body, Your heart, Your gut, Your posture, Maybe you are already almost laying down, Just look around and see how it changes in you, What are the changes that brings you. Spend some time playing around, Identifying, Exploring how the thoughts of yourself have a direct impact in your body. Just notice it. Don't forget to breathe gently and slowly, Soft inhalation, Gentle and soft exhalation. You might notice that your breathing changes as well. As you start feeling those sensations in your body and the images pile up with the words and thoughts about yourself, Invite yourself to notice that all of those characteristics are ones that make you unique, That make who you are, They make you lovable, That make you the person that you are today and that's okay and that's okay. You know there's always room for improvement but it doesn't mean that whoever you are, It's not good enough. You are good enough. You know you are the only person in the world. There's not another person in the world like you. Just like a mother loves a child, Embrace yourself, Embrace your qualities, Embrace your flaws or not so much qualities, Embrace the images or embrace the frustration, Accept them, Welcome them. It's all about accepting yourself as you are. Accept yourself as you are and every time you think about oh I should be this, I should do that, I should be different, Just think to yourself I am enough, I accept, Don't reject okay if you have thoughts about you know I don't like this in myself, I should be this or that, Don't reject those thoughts, Welcome them, Accept it as who you are. You notice a shift in emotions within your body will start to happen as you practice it on your daily basis you start noticing your mind shifting your thoughts towards I should be different, I should be somebody else, I should be you know you should not because if you were you would not be who you were and we need you just the way you were. So, This loving feeling towards yourself you can have that feeling towards others. Once you accept yourself as you are you start accepting others as they are understanding that they too are looking for happiness, They too want to be happy. So you may say to yourself may they be happy, May they be healthy, May they be safe. That's all they want they are humans just like we are the close ones the ones that you love, The ones that you don't know, The ones that you are distant and you don't know you didn't have the opportunity to know or to this whole community around you going through this whole situation that we are going through with this virus and their suffering some people are losing relatives, Children, Parents, Friends, They deserve to be happy. May they be happy, May they be healthy, May they be safe. And I'll say to yourself may I be happy, May I be healthy, May I be safe. We are all humans we all deserve to be happy. Now slowly and gently bring your attention back to the home base. Take a deep inhalation and a soft and slow exhalation. A deep inhalation straighten your spine and straighten your muscles, Wriggle your shoulders back and forth, Your head sideways back and forth. If you have your eyes closed gently and slowly open your eyes get used to the light, The colors around you, The environment where you are and don't hurry don't rush stay there for a while. Enjoy this feeling inside you and thank you for the opportunity you gave me to meditate with you and may you be happy, May you be healthy and may you be safe. Thank you, Namaste.