Breathing with metta

So as always, the place that we start is by turning towards what’s actually happening this morning in our experience. Just kind of opening the door to your inner life and seeing what’s prominent in your awareness, particularly in your body. And from the very start doing so without any kind of pressure or expectation. There’s no way that we need anything to be so just noticing the parts of your body that are tight, sensations that are arising, sensations of temperature of the clothes against the skin, the movement of the breath, the sense of the body on the ground and the relative stability and solidity of these sensations. And also tuning to the more general sense of the body. We might notice a kind of tiredness pervading the body or some anxiety showing up as just the way the body feels in a general way. We might notice relaxation or ease showing up as a kind of warmth and comfort in the body. Just noticing this general felt sense and noticing how your emotional life this morning, your mood is reflected here in the body, and really wholeheartedly welcoming all of this allowing your body to be just as is this morning, to feel just this way, letting go of the tension of resistance. It shouldn’t be this way; it should be some other way. And then just checking in a little bit more deeply with our emotional state this morning. This could be something very subtle. It might be that we feel quite neutral or a little bit not in touch with any kind of emotion. If that’s the case, just stay there and listen with a careful quiet attention, being interested to feel the nuance. It’s not that we need to make things more kind of big and bold and obvious, but we might pick up more subtlety, subtle flavours of very mild restlessness or some kind of shades of peace or joy. On the other hand, there might be something really clear, some clear emotion dominating your experience. If so, just giving this some space and some time, breathing with it and allowing it to be here. Really adopting this attitude that whatever is happening, it’s not somehow wrong, it’s not a mistake, it’s just our life playing out this morning through our immediate experience. And to whatever extent we can, we really want to welcome everything. Not because we like everything, because we want everything, because the alternative is resistance, contraction, tension, distraction. Just completing this check-in by just noticing what your mind’s up to without getting too caught up in any particular stories. Just noticing in an easy way, mind’s busy this morning, or the mind’s drifting feels vague, however it feels, and noticing what kind of thoughts are coming up. Are they worried thoughts, thoughts of things to do? Are they kind of daydreamy thoughts? Are they incoherent, like a detuned radio? We can just resolve not to make an enemy of the mind in this practice. Don’t need to try and somehow turn it off. That’s quite a painful direction for meditation to take, to try and fight your own mind. So let’s not do that. So instead, just allow it to do its thing, just like traffic noise or birdsong or something. It can just be there in the background and then we can begin to tune into the breath. And there’s a reason we take so much time to check in with ourselves before we do this. We don’t want to kind of try and use the breath as a tool to block out the rest of our lives, the rest of our experience. To breathe with everything that’s going on, the movement of the breath, this kind of expansion and contraction that the whole body partakes in, the breath can kind of be a way for us to deepen our connection, deepen our intimacy with everything that’s happening, rather than a way to kind of tunnel past everything else into some artificially created space. So as we tune into the breath, the whole body is still here. Our mood, our emotional atmosphere is still present in awareness. And the mind’s doing whatever the mind does, and that’s just fine. And the choice we make is to kind of base ourselves with the breath. Plant a little flag here, and it’s the kind of nest from which we can witness everything. It will take some time to really connect with the breath, letting our awareness be soft. Not so much like a sharp, hard attention that draws sharp lines around things, but a kind of relaxed, easy awareness, bringing this attitude of welcoming, of allowing, letting the breath be just how it is. As we rest with the breath, it may change naturally as a result of our awareness. And this is all well and good. Just like when you give another person your wholehearted awareness, how they are might change; they might relax it. With the exhale, there’s a kind of stilling, kind of quietening of this space of the body. It then we can begin to bring the element of matter into the breath. So to start with, that might just look like tuning in a little bit to some intention for kindness, for something good. And you might just acknowledge that just sitting down to meditate kind of embodies an intention of care, of compassion. It’s like there’s something that we want for ourselves. Some wish that we have for more peace, more connection, more stillness, more open-heartedness, whatever it is, some intention for our practice that already has this quality of metta, of kindness, of goodwill. So just be clear about that, be honest about that. All the while, you can stay tuned to the breath and the body, not so much thinking about stuff, but just allowing intention to flavour our experience. Like a drop of food colouring in a glass of water, in whatever way you can, flavouring the breath and the body with your natural intention for kindness for yourself. And there might be some desire that can help with this. You might feel, yeah, I really want to feel more peace in my life. I really want to be nicer to myself. I really want to stop pushing away my experience, my emotions, my thoughts. I want to know myself, whatever it is, whatever resonates, feeling the kind of strength, the kind of psychic power that’s held in some kind of desire for good things, for ourselves. And we’re kind of filtering the kindness out of this desire. So tuning into this intention as best you can and allowing the breath to kind of carry it, we’ll begin to use our visual imagination to help with this process. So you might sense that the breath is this kind of light or energy of a particular colour, golden or orange or purple, blue or white, finding what works for you. And rather than this kindness, this metta sort of coming from you, rather than it being something that you have to kind of generate to then receive it, just allow the breath to bring this quality into your experience and you might sense the ground beneath you to be where it comes from, or the sky above all the space all around. Just finding your own way to visualise this as your body, as the breath, as this medium that carries this energy of care, of compassion, goodwill, joy, brightness. And it’s coming from the ground or the sky or everywhere; it’s coming from the universe. This is actually more like how it works. Kindness is kind of a natural state that we can relax into if we can just find a way to put everything else down, not something that we add on top of everything else that’s going on. It just kind of emerges when we clear enough space. So continuing to breathe in this beautiful quality, tuning into how your body receives it, how your heart receives it, and leaning towards enjoying, savouring, appreciating how this feels. This quality of metta is something that kind of flavours our very awareness. It’s like it permeates our senses and colours everything with a kind of warmth and lightness. And if we’re able to rest in this atmosphere of kindness, just allow the body to really feel it. A kind of easy, relaxed focus just naturally occurs. The kind of focus of harmony, rather than of effort or single-pointedness. So we’ll just take a few more minutes in silence to rest with this awareness infused with love, with Metta, and the breath just connecting us more and more deeply to this sense. As we get near to the end of this practice, just noticing if there’s any sense of gratitude, appreciation for yourself for practising this morning that you can tune into, and just noticing how the body is, how the heart is, how the mind is. After this practice, becoming a little bit more aware of the physical space you’re in, maybe allowing your body to reassert its kind of anatomical shape, and finding your way to gently transition out of formal meditation, taking care of the body with any movements it needs to make, gently opening the eyes.