all about metta (lovingkindess) meditation: the practice for precarious times
In these times, contributing to the collective well-being and evolution feels like an urgent endeavor. Life feels so precarious, as though it’s nearly falling apart, fast and furiously. It’s hard not to feel a little (or maybe a lot!) of anxiety right now.
Thanks to our neurological wiring, the more we feel threatened by current conditions, the more we experience a sense of separation. And the more we feel separate, the less we feel our connectedness, which is an essential ingredient necessary to support our ability—neurologically—to act, behave, respond, and live from a place of compassion and collaboration.
However, there is an ancient practice that’s truly important medicine for our times. This simple practice is called Metta meditation.
What Is Metta (Lovingkindness) Meditation?
For over 2,500 years, practitioners have worked with Metta, a form of meditation from used to foster patience, compassion, and acceptance as well as enrich a sense of connectedness to ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
Metta comes from the Pali word Metta, derived from the word Mitra, meaning friend or friendship, though Metta is usually translated to “lovingkindness.”
Metta may be a simple practice, but it isn’t always easy. It combines visualization, affirmations or blessings, as well as self-awareness and self-study. In this practice, we specifically notice the way we soften and open up… or maybe harden and close down… or maybe grow numb, agitated, or excited… all around the topic of LOVE.
After more than 25 years of practicing Metta, my interpretation of the heart of this practice—and yoga and meditation, for that matter—is learning that our true connection is to universal energy, or source, or love. Our practices are here to help illuminate how we allow love to flow through us, to us, and from us. It also lights up the ways we resist love.
Do we allow connection or do we cut ourselves off from connection? As Rumi teaches, “Our task is not to seek love but to seek and find the barriers we build against love.” A Sufi teaching extends this thought to say, “Our task is not to seek love, but to seek and find the barriers we build against love, and to love them.”
The Science of Metta Meditation
Maybe Metta feels too “soft” to create such great shifts, but this ancient practice is supported by modern science. Over the past few years, research on heart-centered meditation practices has been pouring into the mainstream, and the results emphasize its medicinal impact on our mind, body, and relationships.
Science now shows that practicing Metta meditation for 12 minutes a day can help transform how we handle conflict and help us feel more connected and open—even when life gets really stressful.
Through creating neurological, physiological, and biological shifts in us, our practice can help us think and behave in more friendly and compassionate ways. To respond to our “conditions” in a way that adds more peace (rather than aggression) and cultivates more healing (rather than more separation).
Expanding Awareness Through Compassion: How Metta Meditation Works
Remember, Metta is a practice that helps us set conditions to find—and love—the barriers we build against our own love, wholeness, and oneness. As we practice observing what comes up in meditation, we practice relaxing with what we discover. Not adding on. Not judging. Not harassing ourselves.
In other words, we’re training in relaxing with whatever we experience. We’re learning that we can choose to relax rather than follow the impulse to contract and harden. This softness, this relaxation, that we offer ourselves, is the medicine.
It’s not intended for us to use it to cover over anything or change the way we feel. It’s more to help to create an environment where we can feel more at ease—and more clearly see—our habitual reactions, our habitual or unconscious biases. When we can create space around the way we react and relax with it, the more we set the stage for shifting our habitual reactions.
How to Practice Metta Meditation
In Metta Meditation, we use the same basic affirmations (or blessings) to ourselves and then different groups of people with whom we have a different relationship. The affirmations are a portal that open up to love and warmth; it’s where the central nutrients of this practice lie.
In the traditional practice, we’d begin with sending love to ourselves, but however, this can be an experience fraught with too much baggage. In my decades of practice, I find that we can build a good muscle of compassion by beginning with a Benefactor, a Loved One, and then move to different groups of people who perhaps surface more complexity.
Benefactor: A loved one, one we feel grateful for, or are easily lifted up by. Someone who makes it easy to experience warm feelings and love.
Neutral Person: Someone we see in our lives throughout the day or week but don’t have a strong feeling about, either for or against.
Difficult Person: This is nuanced and sensitive aspect of the practice, and one in which the most questions arise. This is a person who makes it difficult to experience loving feelings. (If you’d like to try a Difficult Person practice with more support and context, I invite you to join my FREE Friday meditations, and we’ll cover this person in depth on June 7. Sign up here.)
Ourselves: It may seem counterintuitive, but offering blessings to ourselves can be equally as difficult as a Difficult Person, simply because of all of the judgements and stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. However, our previous practices help support us in expanding our capacity for compassion and creating space so we can experience warmth and love for ourselves.
You may address each group in a single practice, or you may spend each practice on each group, which is how I am offering Metta in my current free meditation practice series.
Sending Your Blessings Through Metta Affirmations
The classic Metta (lovingkindess) blessing is:
May you be safe,
May you be healthy,
May you live with ease,
May you feel loved and loving.
If the metta phrases I offer aren’t comfortable, feel free to make your own, but remember they are simply a vehicle for the heart energy to convey warmth, ease, and kindness. They are surviving us by conveying a sense of inclusion and care; they are like the heart’s song, radiating deeper wishes beyond the mind.
Try a Metta Meditation Focusing on a Loved One
This Lovingkindness practice will bring to mind someone who lifts our spirits or lightens our hearts, and help set the foundation for experiencing our connectedness when it comes to ourselves, each other, and the world.