Hello,
This is our quick five minute metta meditation practice.
The intention is to try to practice metta once a day or integrate it sort of into your daily life.
So practices like this are helpful to just show what five minutes can do for you in your life.
We'll start by finding a comfortable seated position.
And take the time to arrive here.
Grounding down through your sits bones and perhaps your feet on the floor,
Grounding down.
Softening your gaze and closing the eyes.
You can take your hands either palms facing up or palms facing down.
Whatever feels right for this practice today.
And you can close the eyes.
I will offer a series of phrases that you can repeat after me.
I invite you to change them as feels right for you,
But this is really the basis line of what we're trying to cultivate here.
We'll draw to mind certain folks,
Certain things throughout this practice.
So get curious and yes,
Just be with what comes up for you here.
Okay,
So we start by sending love and kindness to ourselves.
Saying to yourself,
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be peaceful.
And may I feel love.
Letting those words land with you.
And from that space of love and self-love,
We'll extend our heart out towards someone that we love.
Someone that brings joy to our life.
This can also be a pet or it can be a place in the world.
Someone or something that brings joy to our life.
And extending love out from ourselves and our heart,
We'll send it towards them.
Saying may you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be peaceful.
And may you feel love.
Noticing the sensations that arise in you when you send love outwards.
And now we'll push the edges of this,
Our ability to do this,
By thinking of us actually as stranger.
But this is a stranger in our environment.
So someone that you have seen recently or someone you see occasionally but you don't know them.
This could be a barista.
This could be your downstairs neighbor.
They have a little grandchild or somebody that you see around but you don't really know them.
Bringing them to mind.
And we'll extend that same love to them.
Saying may you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be peaceful.
May you feel love.
How does it feel in you to send love to a stranger?
We can see in this practice that love is an unlimited resource.
And the more of it we create,
The more we share,
The more we hold space with others.
The more it grows.
We are all giving,
Sharing,
And receiving.
And keeping that in mind,
For our final practice,
We'll try to extend our love out to all beings.
Now that's pretty abstract and pretty wide.
So you can take it as a map in your mind and imagine your mind expanding from your town to your country to your continent to the whole world.
And if you can expand it out to the universe,
That's beautiful too.
Or you can imagine the whole world or the whole universe,
Some image in front of you,
Like marbles in your hands.
And we'll extend that same loving kindness that we've cultivated for ourselves and others to all beings.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be healthy.
May all beings be peaceful.
And may all beings feel love.
Just noticing how that feels in your heart space and letting these words land.
A teacher of mine once said,
If you want to feel love and connection with others,
First open your hand.
And that's what these metta practices are about,
In a way.
It's seeing how when we open ourselves to others and we open ourselves to the process of giving and sharing positive feelings and love,
We receive these things back and it's this cycle that makes the world a better place,
One thought and one intention at a time.
So thank you for sharing the practice with me today.
See if this feels good for you to go about your day and occasionally think when you see a stranger or maybe you see someone suffering.
Just quickly say to yourself,
May you be happy.
And just notice what arises for you.
Thank you.
And I hope to practice with you someday soon.
