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This lesson is about one of the key practices for this course, the Loving-Kindness or Compassion meditation. We will focus on how to start loving ourselves.
There are two types of meditation. One of them is where you wish for someone to be happy, including yourself. Another one is where you wish to an end to your pain, suffering, difficulties, and stress. Compassion is wishing to an end to whatever pain or difficulty you are going through.
Self-compassion, is wishing for your own peace and difficulty to end. What happens to when we wish for that pain we cause ourselves to end? Perhaps there will be a shift. If we can see what we are doing to cause it, we can stop doing what we are doing to cause it. We will stop telling ourselves negative stories and stop criticizing ourselves. Self-compassion is a wish for your own pain to end or a wish for someone else’s pain to end.
Loving-Kindness is a tern that means that I am wishing for you
- to be happy
- to find peace in the world
- to be content
- to find joy
We will practice a short meditation with a few key elements.
- Sit in upright, relaxed, comfortable position. Notice how our body feels. Notice our posture. Notice the feelings coming up whether they be stress, frustration, anxiety. Be present with how that feels in your body.
- Loving-Kindness meditation. Picture someone you love very much. Perhaps a child, sibling, best friends, or someone who there is not a lot of hostility towards. Picture that person going through stress, difficulty, anger. With as much genuine feeling as you can. Wish for them to have an end to their difficulty. May you find an end to your stress and your pain. With the same genuine feeling wish for their happiness. May you be happy. May you be at peace. The wording is not the most important thing. The important thing is the genuine feeling for a wish for them to be at peace, to be happy, and to have an end to their difficulty. Find that genuine place in your heart. Notice the feeling in your heart. Where is t coming from and how does it feel? May you be happy. May you be at peace. May you find an end to your pain..
- With the same genuine place in your heart, wish for an end to your own difficulty and your own happiness. May I be happy. May I be at peace. May I find an end to my difficulty.
- Expand that genuine wish to everyone you know and expand it out to all beings, including yourself. Wish for happiness, peace, and end to pain to everyone in this course. May we all be happy. May we all be at peace. May we all find an end to our difficulties. May all beings be happy. May all beings fond peace. May all beings find an end to their difficulties.
Practice this everyday. Wish for a loved one, for yourself, everyone in this course, and to all beings. Repeat the phrases, “May you be happy. May you be at peace. May you find an end to your difficulties.”. Repeat these phrases three times each for yourself, three times for a loved one, and three times for all beings.
In this practice, we start to feel in our hearts a genuine wish of concern, care, happiness and a relief of pain for other people. Each day you do this, you can picture someone different. When you can find that feeling in your heart, you can start to feel it towards yourself. This is not always easy to do. Trying to wish for our own happiness, we start to change our relationship with ourself. We see in our hearts to wish for an end to all difficulty. If you are feeling any kind of stress, spontaneously say, May I have an end to my stress. Throughout the day check in with yourself and notice how you are feeling.
This is a practice of self-compassion, compassion for others, and compassion for all beings. We can practice this with anybody. Wishing for a genuine happiness and end to pain, comes from a good place in our hearts. Practice this for yourself every day of this course. Thank you, my friends.
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