Mindfulness Metta Meditation is not simply a practice, but a profound journey that leads the meditator to an unconditional and expansive love for oneself and others. This gentle, yet powerful form of meditation nurtures friendship in the most radical sense of the word, where kindness deepens to love, where opponents becomes friends, where strangers become our loved ones, and where there can exist a gentle and opening heart to all of life.
Metta Meditation was believed to have been originally taught by the Buddha, but its practice is universal, covering all kinds of cultural and religious boundaries. It is a timeless practice that goes beyond tradition as it leads us on a gentle path to non-violence and love. It leads us to an inner world that is naturally filled with positive feelings of goodwill, openheartedness, understanding, and grace in personal relationships with oneself, one’s friends and family, enemies and with those for whom one has feelings of indifference.
Mindfulness Metta Meditation is a heart-centered practice involving the meditative cultivation of loving-kindness, first toward oneself and then progressively towards others. It involves:
Repetition of Metta Phrases: silenty repeating a series of loving and kind affirmations such as “May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe, and may I live with ease”, and then, once those feelings are alight in our heart, we can direct these wishes out towards others.
Visualization and Emotional Connection: Imagining oneself and others basking in these intentions of loving-kindness.Visualizing them receiving them and feeling the feelings, the emotions, and the well-wishes that go along with those.Visualizing others so filled with the warmth of your compassion that they can’t help but have those feelings spill out from their hearts as well.
Inclusive Expansion of Metta: Beginning to extend that circle of loving-kindness out gradually.Beyond yourself, to friendly acquaintances, to people you don’t really know, and even to people for whom you have difficulties— people you may not like very much, people who are opposed to you in some way. Just begin to extend those feelings of loving-kindness out and out, until you embrace all beings without exception, without boundary.
Mindfulness Metta Meditation is a way to transform the heart and mind that sees others as separate, as separate from us, and who we are. It’s a journey of the heart that includes one’s self and from there radiates out infinitely.Until we have included we have excluded someone, we will feel that the walls of our isolation or our individual selves have defined.Limited love, bound love, love within bounds, is conditional love, it’s based on needs or are not the human heart. Unbounded, boundless love is simply conditional love.
Entering the practice Embracing Mindfulness Metta Meditation is to embark on a radical path of universal love and heartfelt connection. It is the practice of cultivating a compassionate heart. We are healing the wounds of division and hatred that exist in the world. We are recognizing the shared humanity that forms our truest identity. It is a practice that helps us not only to enrich our own lives, but also to contribute to a world in such desperate need of love, understanding, and peace.