Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash
Are you feeling the need for grounding and peace? Try this Buddhist meditation which has been used successfully for over 2500 years, and has a few different versions (as with all translated texts). It’s a wonderful way to start the day and create positive intention.
This meditation is offered totally unconditionally, with no expectations, with no obligations, with no investment in the outcome. It begins and ends with love, from love, with acceptance.
This meditation starts with loving-kindness for the Self, then moves outward to others —as far as you want to take it.
Loving-Kindness (aka Metta bhavana) Meditation
- Start by getting in a comfortable position.
- Take a deep breath from your heart.
- Inhale through your nose slowly and hold it for as long as you can.
- Exhale slowly from your heart, through your mouth.
- Repeat this heart breath five or six times, until you feel the stillness and calm start to enter your body.
- When you start to feel connected to that stillness and calm, speak the beautiful and simple words of the Loving-Kindness meditation, either out loud or with your inner voice. You can even modify or expand the words to align even more with your view of the world and with what you might need:
May I be filled with loving-kindness
May I be well
May I be peaceful and at ease
May I be happy
Take five or six more deep heart breaths. Repeat the meditation until you feel calm, relaxed, at peace with yourself . . . and filled with loving kindness.
Then turn your attention and awareness to other beings, offering them the same loving-kindness with love, from your heart, speaking the beautiful words of the Loving-Kindness meditation for others, out loud or with your inner voice :
May you (or “all living beings”) be filled with loving-kindness
May you be well
May you be peaceful and at ease
May you be happy
Take five or six more deep breaths. Repeat the meditation until you feel the loving kindness spread out, bringing loving kindness to others.
You can extend this meditation even further, naming specific groups substituting their names or categories for “I” or “you”. That might be, for instance, all living beings, all in your family, animals of the world, spiritual allies and guides, ancestors, all those in pain or torment, etc.
Feel the loving-kindness. Spread the loving-kindness.
Do one last check-in with your Higher Self. Do you feel calm? Happy? Filled with love? You can repeat this meditation until you sense that inner shift, that release of expectations and outcomes.
Give thanks . . . and repeat tomorrow, or whenever you feel the need.