Working with Loving-Kindness in Three Levels - Loving

This exercise with loving kindness engages the mind, the 'clear and knowing' consciousness, beyond perception and conception.

I include below an adaptation of a B. Alan Wallace loving kindness meditation. It kind of blows me away, every time I do it, but I'm easily turned on by imagery that includes radiant light extending from the heart centre.

I deeply hope you enjoy it.

Loving - Kindness Meditation – adapted from B Alan Wallace podcast ‘Loving Kindness Guided Meditation’. Downloaded 09/06/2008

This meditation falls into the general category of ‘metta’ or loving-kindness.

Begin by settling the body in it’s natural state, at ease, still, vigilant, you may take three slow deep breaths, feeling the rippling effect, the sensations of the breath throughout the body.

And set the respiration into it’s natural rhythm, as you let your awareness descend into the body, into this quiet space, supported by the earth element, permeated especially by the fire and wind elements, the sensations correlated with the breath be silently aware of the tactile sensations, without distraction and without grasping.

And then from this platform of relative quiescence, relative balance and calm, I invite you to set out on a quest in search of the vision of your own fulfilment, your own flourishing. How do you envision yourself realising a sense of profound well being and fulfilment? What is your own vision of a good life? Bring it vividly to life.

As you envisage your own flourishing, arouse the yearning that you may truly realise such well being and find the happiness you seek, fulfil your genuine heart’s desires.

With each out breath you may arouse the yearning ‘may I find genuine happiness, and cultivate the causes of such wellbeing’.

Then bring to mind, in order to realise the fulfilment that is your heart’s desire, what would you love to receive from the environment, from other people. From society, from the environment at large. Such genuine happiness and well being is a result, a consequence. What are the causes from outside of you that are necessary to realise such fulfilment. Tangible and intangible. What would you love to receive from the world around you, in order to realise your heart’s desire.

And if you’d like to add another dimension to this practice, with each in breath, you can imagine the light of blessings from the world, in the mundane and transcendent dimensions of the world around us imagine light flowing in from all sides, all directions, with each in breath breathe in the blessings of the world as the world as it rises up to meet you. Imagine that it indeed does. From moment to moment day to day to fulfil not your mundane desires but your heart’s desires with each in breath feeling saturated in your body-mind, with each in breath, feeling the blessing, inside.

In order to realise the fulfilment of your innermost desire, it is obviously not sufficient simply to encounter very conducive nurturing and supportive conditions from outside. The transformation must take place from within. Each of us is constantly in a process of change, dying and reborn with each moment, with each day, reinventing ourselves. How would you love to transform, in order to transform , to realise the fulfilment that is your innermost desire. What sort of person would you love to become? Imbued with what qualities? Free of what qualities?

And imagine if you will, the deepest dimension of your own awareness, pristine awareness, primordial consciousness symbolically radiant. Primordial purity, the wellspring of all virtue, the source of your deepest desires for happiness. With each out breath, from this innersource of light from your heart imagine light pouring out and permeating your body, imagine becoming the person that you would love to become.

Imagine with each out breath becoming this person, as you free yourself from the impediments and find your freedom, your awakening, and imagine yourself becoming endowed with all the inner qualities that will enable that transformation to take place. With each outbreath imagine this light permeating , purifying, blessing your entire body/mind, with the spirit and light, of loving kindness.

Each of us in every moment, in waking and in sleeping, is constantly influencing the world around us, biologically, socially, personally we are leaving our imprint on the world. This is inevitable, we are making our mark. As you envisage your own fulfilment, what would you most love to offer to the world, over the course of your life, or if your vision extends so far, over the course of your lives. What would you most love to offer to the world, to bring the greatest meaning to your own life, so that when you see that your life is almost over, when you look back, you’ll loo back with a sense of deep satisfaction, the confidence, the knowing, you’ll see that this was a life well lived. It’s fine to leave now.

What would you love to offer to the world?

With each out breath, imagine white light with all the colours of the prism, rays of light emanating from this nucleus in all directions from your heart, emanating all your good, and all your goods, tangible and intangible with each out breath imagine offering your very best to the world, to those both near and far.