metta meditation: a self-love practice to set conditions for evolution
If you’ve worked with me, read my book, or heard my Ted Talk, you may know that for years in my metta practice my father was my "difficult" person. And you may also know that this ancient practice transformed my relationship to him—not by changing him but through transforming my relationship to myself.
In short, my dad’s dysregulation, aggression, anger, and tension made me feel vulnerable and sometimes unsafe… along with a lot of other feelings. Mostly it solidified into the belief that, since my father treated me this way, I must be unloveable. And, my "unloveable" story developed with an emphasis on all the ways I needed to be better... in order to be loveable.
What's most important to understand here is that this all developed unconsciously.
We all have our capital-S Stories born out of our histories, but we’re often NOT consciously aware of these old, foundational beliefs that live and operate within us. And how they may define, and even control, us.
In my case, believing that I was unlovable and not good enough was a deep wound around which I developed protective habits and behaviors.
And our wounds become the lens through which we see, react, and respond to the world. It makes sense: It’s how we’re wired for survival.
Metta is the medicine for healing our wounds. It is literally a compassionate balm.
Let me backup for a moment and say: Most of us were never taught how to be gentle, kind, and compassionate with ourselves.
But the love and kindness we extend to ourselves creates the conditions needed to shift our stories, habits, and tensions. It is the essential ingredient needed for change—for our evolution—as well as our ability to be truly compassionate with each other, too.
THIS is at the heart of Metta practice.
While we grow aware of the way we feel through offering affirmations, we practice meeting ourselves—our emotions, thoughts, tension—with the attitude of curiosity, compassion, kindness...
In other words, while working with my dad… when experiencing my anger, tension, fear, sadness… rather than saying, “I hate this feeling, how can I still be feeling this way, even after all these years, what's wrong with me?”…
Rather than lingering in any of those conversations, I learned to meet myself—the one who was experiencing these conditions and feelings—with softness and open heartedness.
I learned to surround myself with compassion for the experience I was having rather than making it go away. This is self-compassion.
We do this practice, the studying and meeting ourselves, during each category of person that we imagine in a metta practice. Most importantly, we offer it to ourselves.
It’s true that wishing ourselves metta blessings or affirmations can feel awkward. For me, anyway. It can also feel silly, difficult, or flat-out impossible.
But remember, we are not only wishing ourselves well through the practice, but we are also extending compassion toward ourselves for the EXPERIENCE we are having, and all the stuff that comes up, while we are wishing ourselves well.
Back to the medicinal value of metta…
Neuroscience shows that this compassionate environment is exactly what is needed to help us not only feel more calm and grow more conscious and aware of our patterns and stories, but it also sets up the conditions—neurologically and hormonally—to help us learn and expand our behavior options so that we’re able to mindfully and heartfully respond to the conditions that arise within us and around us.
Rather than continually, habitually, reacting from our own wounds and protectiveness, this practice helps us create new habits and patterns altogether that better serve our personal and collective well-being.
In the blog, I’d like to share with you the most important (and often the most difficult) metta practice, which is offering blessings and affirmations and lovingkindness to ourselves.
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In the full series, we’ll focus on the overall strength and stability of our whole body—with some extra loving on our core—as well as practices and techniques to expand our breathing, release deep tension, and replenish our inner reserves.
Often it’s easier to work with our emotional and mental layers by first addressing our physical bodies. That’s why we’ll create a strong container so that we feel stable and secure to soften and create more space for our breath and our heart-centered practice. Through a unique progression of practices that couple mindful movement with metta (lovingkindness) meditation, we’ll create shifts in our mood, and perspective.
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