With everything going on in the world, it can help to deepen our meditation practices. This Meditate with Me: Metta Loving Kindness Reiki Meditation can support you. Do this as often as you need to.
Metta bhavana, or loving-kindness meditation, is a method of developing compassion. It comes from the Buddhist tradition, but it can be adapted and practiced by anyone, regardless of religious affiliation; loving-kindness meditation is essentially about cultivating love.
Loving-kindness, or metta, as it in called in the Pali language, is unconditional, inclusive love, a love with wisdom. It has no conditions; it does not depend on whether one "deserves" it or not; it is not restricted to friends and family; it extends out from personal categories to include all living beings. There are no expectations of anything in return. This is the ideal, pure love, which everyone has in potential. We begin with loving ourselves, for unless we have a measure of this unconditional love and acceptance for ourselves, it is difficult to extend it to others. Then we include others who are special to us, and, ultimately, all living things. Gradually, both the visualization and the meditation Metta Loving Kindness phrases blend into the actual experience, the feeling of loving kindness.
This is a meditation of care, concern, tenderness, loving kindness --a feeling of warmth for oneself and others. The practice is the softening of the mind and heart, an opening to deeper and deeper levels of the feeling of kindness, of pure love. The process is first one of softening, breaking down barriers that we feel inwardly toward ourselves and to bring in loving kindness and then to others.
This Metta Loving Kindness Meditation can serve not only to reduce your personal stress, anxiety, support individuals yet can also help by adding to the collective consciousness the energy of promoting peace.
Much love,
H
