what is meditation?

practices to calm, clear, and feel more connected

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire
universe, deserve your love and affection.

—Buddha

It's said that the normal mind is like a snow globe when it is shaken up: thoughts flying everywhere in a chaotic swirl. And the meditative mind is supposed to be more like a snow globe when the flakes all settle. In this way, the metaphor is to practice letting the snowflakes settle gradually.

But this isn't necessarily the only way to use this metaphor or work with the mind or our present conditions.

There is also the practice of learning to connect with the space that holds the snowflakes—the space that the snowflakes are swirling and flowing through. We can learn to expand our awareness into the space that the snow swirls around in.

We could work with our inner snow globe—the swirling of thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations—as well as our outer conditions that are always swirling around us. We can learn to work with the "swirling" without always expecting our work to make things "just right."

In fact, from the perspective of the expansive space, we could even observe the individual flakes for their uniqueness, or the whole storm for its energy and power. And perhaps enjoy more of the beauty along the way.

From my current perspective, things may not actually “settle” . . . at least for not more than an exhale. So how are we learning to live with the ebb and flow of the inner and outer swirling?

This is what I'm interested in.

my meditation practice

The form of meditation I use mostly is a blend of mindfulness, metta, and deep listening.

Mindfulness is a way of being in the present, practicing moment-to-moment awareness through the breath and possibly with movement. When we are mindful, we drop the “narrative” around our present moment and simple rest with what is in the ever-changing now.

Metta means “loving-kindness,” and is an affirmation type of practice where we offer blessings or a friendly gesture of well-being to beings in your life, as well as to ourselves. As we use these affirmations, we study how we respond inside. Do we soften? Do we tighten up? We practice simply noticing how we feel, and relaxing with that. We notice if the way we talk and listen to ourselves will leave us feeling cared for or as if we need to protect ourselves. Eventually we may notice that we are able to stay softer and more compassionate where we used to shut down or “turn off.”

This sense of compassion, friendliness, and unconditional love to all is at the heart of the metta.

It may be strange to some of us to think of love this way. Usually, love is thought of as relational, as dependent on someone else giving us or receiving our love. But the yogic “love story” is one of self-love—of creating a union with our true nature, which applies to us individually but also to all beings, who are all made of the same nature.

Like metta, a Deep Listening practice begins with making a choice to relax with whatever comes up in our body, mind, and heart. It means choosing to receive in a tender, nonjudgmental way whatever our tension has been protecting. It means opening up, over and over, to anything we discover, without feeling the need to critique or fix or change. One breath at a time we listen. When we forget, get lost, zip away, that's okay. We are always welcome back. We can always begin again. We can welcome ourselves back to begin again and again and yet again.

The more we practice giving awareness, love, and gratitude for ourselves, the more we increase our potential to have a more nourishing impact on all those we come into contact with. Metta has been shown to increase social connectedness, even for strangers. A study conducted by a group of researchers from Stanford University found that in just seven minutes of metta, subjects reported greater social connection toward others. As Pema Chodron teaches, “What you do for yourself—any gesture of kindness, any gesture of gentleness, any gesture of honesty and clear seeing toward yourself—will affect how you experience your world. What you do for yourself, you're doing for others . . . and what you do for others, you're doing for yourself.”

FREE: metta meditation

This metta meditation-inspired practice, “Just Like Me,” invites us to feel our connectedness and to consider that we are all human beings. This practice helps us to remember our shared humanity and our shared basic needs—to be safe, to be well, to be happy, to be peaceful and at ease—and to be loved.

practice meditation with me