Hello and welcome to your meditation.
Take a moment now to find your centre and begin to relax all of your muscles.
Take a few deep,
Relaxing breaths bringing yourself,
Your energy into this room.
There's nowhere else you need to be right now.
Begin to focus on your breathing and just allow the external world to continue going on around you without your involvement or any sense of attachment to what's going on outside.
Just simply breathe and relax.
We begin this meditation by focusing on a person who you know is suffering in some way.
They may be ill,
Depressed,
Sad,
Upset.
Reflect on their suffering in an objective way.
Try to remain unattached to the person and simply reflect on their experience of suffering and pain.
Continue to focus on your breathing and reflect on this person.
Try to understand their experience of suffering.
And then see if you can relate their experience of suffering back to yourself.
Remind yourself that this person that you know has the capacity for pain and joy and love.
And suffering just as you do.
This person has the capacity for all human experience just as you do.
Just allow that natural compassionate feeling,
The response to their suffering,
Arise inside yourself.
And when that feeling begins to well up or rise up inside you,
Direct it to that person.
You understand that they as well as you have the desire to be free from their suffering,
Free from their pain.
It can be useful to repeat that phrase in your mind.
May you be happy,
May you be free from suffering,
May you have joy and peace.
And see if you can extend that wish for joy and happiness and freedom from suffering all the way out to other people in your life or people that you don't even know.
Try to see that wish extending out from you and your heart and touching all the people around you and moving further and further afield.
May you be happy,
May you be free from suffering,
May you have joy and peace.
Consider people that you know,
People that you don't know,
People you see in passing,
People that you see in the past,
People that you see in the past.
Consider people that you know,
People that you don't know,
People you see in passing,
People all around the world.
May you be happy,
May you be free from suffering,
May you have joy and peace.
And see if you can extend that wish even to people who challenge you at times,
People in your life that rub you up the wrong way,
Annoy you,
Frustrate you,
People you feel you can't understand at all.
See if you can extend that feeling of warmth and love to these people,
Understanding that they too wish to have a life free from suffering.
May you be free from suffering,
May you have joy and peace,
May you be happy.
And then allow that feeling of warmth to spread throughout your entire body,
A feeling of warmth,
A feeling of love,
Extending this compassionate feeling to all beings,
Human,
Animal,
Plant.
And as you inhale,
Repeat to yourself,
May all living beings be free from suffering.
Exhale,
May all living beings have joy and peace.
Continue to repeat the mantra,
Allowing the feeling of loving kindness to extend from your heart and radiate around you.
And then letting go of the mantra,
Take one final inhale and exhale.
Start to extend and lengthen your spine,
Maybe move your body a little bit,
A little stretch and then gently opening your eyes.
Thank you for practicing with me.
