May All Beings Be Peaceful

The Love Like That project may reveal that you have the following semi-conscious beliefs stored in your brain: 

• Good people do not need loving kindness practice
• Smart people have figured everything out already 
• Strong people don't need support 
• Love and kindness is a luxury, not a necessity

If you hear a voice in your head, or from someone else, wondering who you think you are practicing loving kindness, it could be a sign of one of these beliefs surfacing.  Once you see these beliefs, once you become conscious of them, you can choose whether or not you want to strengthen them.  Personally, I do not experience that any of those beliefs are helpful to me and even still they surface from time to time. When they do, I remind myself that I feel better when I choose to cultivate loving kindness. And when I feel better, the people around me feel better.   

Really, it's this simple. 

The problem is that many of us are so busy - moving from one thing to the next, putting out fires, fulfilling other people's needs and meeting deadlines - that we don't give ourselves an opportunity to pay attention to how we feel.  In which case, how would we know what feels better?

Feeling is Healing 

My access to understanding how I feel is yoga and meditation. When I first started teaching at Portland Power Yoga, I remember Alice coming up to me while I was teaching and poking me. "What do you feel?" she would ask.  I didn't even know because I was trying so hard to teach.

Lots of people live their entire lives like this.  This is not a personal failing but the result of being taught to put a disproportionate amount of our attention and identity on goals and outcomes: 

It can be challenging to confront that you still have a great deal to discover about how you feel and how to relate with those feelings.  You might feel sad or angry that you are as ordinary as the rest of us and can benefit from bringing love and kindness forward.  If you feel sad or angry about this, practice.  One powerful loving kindness practice is reciting the metta prayer above.  

Practice is Victory

The alternative to opening your heart is being cynical.  People become cynical - dismissing the value of opening their hearts - because they think they are safer that way.  People may resist a loving kindness practice because they are afraid that they will fail.  People may worry that deep down they are real jerks and it's better to let sleeping dogs lie.  People worry that the world is not safe and an open heart makes them an easy target. With these fears, which can be unconscious, it seems safer to stay on the sidelines than get out on the field.  

Here's some great news: you cannot lose on the loving kindness field.  It's certain victory.  Yes, sometimes your heart will break.  Yes, you will continue to experience anger and confusion and fear from time to time.  However the practice of loving kindness will harness those feelings to wake you up - step by step using the dance metaphor - into your life.  That is the victory.  

But this is not something to believe.  This is something to experience.  Experience your life.