what metta taught me about my most difficult relationship (plus, 2 FREE meditations)
If you’ve followed my work or read my book, you’ve heard me talk about my greatest teacher—my father. And, also, how my father wasn’t an easy person to be around.
He hyper-controlled everything in our house, from the thermostat to the emotional climate. I learned how important it was to yield to him and appease him, because when he felt out of control, it was scary.
In the first 30 years of my life, my relationship with my dad took up so much of my thinking time. And these thoughts formed “my story”… and my story became who I was.
This story solidified into a mindset in which I thought I wasn’t good enough. In order to get my father’s love and approval, I had to be better. This unconscious throughline pushed me to be better in all ways. I pushed myself to be better in sports, school, my job. (Sometimes this behavior is referred to as trauma drive.)
It’s a familiar story for a lot of us.
And in many cases we aren’t consciously aware of how these decades-old foundational dynamics live inside of us and frame our perspective. Whether we are taking about small trauma or capital-T Trauma, these undigested pains can dictate our behavior.
It wasn’t until I started practicing Metta and forming my Deep Listening practice that this became clear. I began to observe my tension and pain, to create space, and to learn how to respond differently to the stories stored in my mind and my body.
what is metta meditation?
Also known as Lovingkindness, Metta is a 25,000-year-old practice that is classically taught in four “parts,” with each part inviting us to send love and compassion to ourselves, a loved one, a “neutral” person (think: receptionist, barista), and finally a challenging person.
Metta is a progressive practice, with each part and person training us to experience more love, compassion, and grace in our lives.
This practice isn’t meant to cover anything up or change the person or conditions in front of us. Rather, Metta is a practice of studying ourselves, our sensations, our patterns of thought… so we can be a better witness on how we contract or open up around the theme of love and presence and being with.
Our ability to be with can set the conditions to help us learn to relax more with what is. We do this because relaxing creates spaciousness, and speciousness helps us feel more at ease in our body, to see things more clearly, and to make room to choose how we participate and respond (or not respond), even when things are difficult.
Metta inherently changes our relationship to our most difficult people and most difficult conditions in our lives.
Over time, it shifted my relationship to my dad.
Metta became real medicine.
GIFT PRACTICE: Try These Lovingkindness Meditations
My recent Deep Listening meditation series was an exploration of Metta. In four 30-minute dharma talks and practices over four weeks, we focused on offering metta to each “person,” including ourselves. Join my weekly FREE meditation community and you can practice live or via recordings.