Loving Kindness Meditation

I agree with you Melissa, its a lovely meditation. Thank you so much, Jeanne x

Loving-kindness is a meditation practice, which brings about positive attitudinal changes as it systematically develops the quality of 'loving-acceptance'. It acts, as it were, as a form of self-psychotherapy, a way of healing the troubled mind to free it from its pain. Of all Buddhist meditations, loving-kindness has the immediate benefit of sweetening and changing old habituated negative patterns.

Thank you, Melissa, for starting this topic!  And thank you Dina and Kipjmejia for weighing in. Loving kindness opens your heart. The standard way to do it is to begin by giving it to a benefactor - someone you find it easy to send it to.  Your heart then begins to open. I actually sent it recently to my dog!  Then you give it to yourself. Then to someone you deeply love. Then to a neutral person - someone you don't know but you see a lot, like a shopkeeper, then finally you work on a difficult person.  I just finished a one week loving kindness retreat where we did a meditation like that one all day long. I actually got to the Trump team.  I sent the wish that their hearts heal to the point where they feel greater connection to all the people of the  world. It heals your heart and when that happens, you approach the world from a safe healed place.  You begin to see all these people you don't like as wounded children.  They don't get under your skin. You still want to do activism and you want to stop them, but they no longer hurt your heart and your psyche.  That's a big deal. 

Want to add something about loving kindness. One teacher I had said it was for him the "engine" of meditation practice. I agree. Practicing loving kindness affirmations lifts my heart and makes me more engaged in the world. I'm not so withdrawn.  

When I do it on a benefactor or someone who makes me feel really happy, it puts me in a great mood. The easiest is to do it on my little dog.  She makes me smile and I get all happy when I send her loving kindness. Then comes someone I just love, like my kids and husband, that makes me feel so much more gratitude for them, which is good - better to feel all that gratitude now than wait for when they aren't around. Next comes a neutral person - now that is a very powerful exercise.  Normally we don't give a hoot about people we don't know who we may see everyday, like in shops. Our hearts are closed to them. But when you pick one of those people and start sending loving kindness to them, something huge happens inside of you. The world becomes a safer and more beautiful place for you because you realize there are all these beautiful people out there.  Finally, the most freeing is to do it on a person you do not like, maybe even someone you have hated.  You have to gage yourself on this one by practicing on the easy people first -- dog, self, loved ones. Then if you feel strong, send it out to someone who is hard to love but not necessarily the top of your hate list. When I do this, the dreaded one transforms into a child or someone who is in great pain. They don't feel threatening to me any more. 

Ultimately  it is going to be something like loving kindness practices that will turn our world around.  Fighting our opponents has never worked very well. 

In fact there are good studies that show that non violent revolutions throughout history have succeeded twice as much as violent ones. Here's one.

Thank you all for this section and the developing comments. Everything on this site is moving and growing and opening up new awareness in so many ways.

I first learned the Loving Kindness Meditation many years ago when I was reading, learning, putting into practice everything that seemed to resonate and merge into broader and broader understanding for me. Today, from the generation of additional comments, I learned more.

Sometimes you think you know, understand, and use what you have learned but the growth never ends. I will incorporate these ideas.the stages of reaching out to others and that connecting as part of my mental, emotional, and spiritual outreach process from within my own practices.

Today, a neighbor knocked on my door to borrow our tractor. It grew from that to sharing common troubled neighborhood issues to an opportunity to share with him some loving kindness beliefs as another way to create change. Now, I realized it was truly a loving kindness meditation in action.

I had to progress in my own giving through stages that included judgment and separation to one of sharing and loving. It's not always easy but its always growth and connection. Many blessings back to all.