Softening via the sense-perceptions.
To talk about loving kindness, which is defined by Princeton University as 'tender kindness motivated by a feeling of affection', I'm extending firstly into the direction of romantic relationship, oddly, looking at relationship from the perspective of when it's all gone bung.
The video clip below is for the Tori Amos song, 'A Sorta Fairytale'.
This song speaks to a softening that was birthed in me, back in about 2004, when, admidst being a hard-nosed career woman-bitch, (forgive me), I fell head over heels in love with a red-headed German Adonis, who had an already-loved, really, a school sweetheart who lived a way away up the north coast.
It didn't work out between us, and I completely fell apart. This song helped me to soften my voice, unrealisedly cranky, and it helped me to soften the cycle of storytelling about what was and what could of been and what should of been. The melody is soft and calming, the words speak of release. A different version of myself came to be, through playing this song over and over and over again.
The first step in learning to extend loving kindness to ourselves and to others is to soften the hard shell of all our reified defences, built up with years of engaged history in practice. To go via the senses into softness is a direct experience of the shift, a known sense in the body that is easily called to mind, that can be called to mind more often, once it is named.
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