What is Meditation?
To meditate means to pay full attention to something. It doesn’t mean running away from life or wanting to activate your kundalini. Instead, it’s an opportunity to look deeply into ourselves and into the situation we’re in. So often in our daily lives we just get caught up in the spiral of negative emotions such as hating, disliking, and non-satisfaction and end up blaming others and ourselves for the whole misery.
What we need more in our life is love, care, and kindness for ourselves and everyone around us. However, it is never easy to do this activity in every given situation because it is difficult to respond with love and kindness when it is not reciprocated from the other end. Hence, actively practicing love and kindness could be a conscious practice that we can work on and make a part of ourselves.
The moment something has become the oneness or the union is happening and that is what the whole purpose of meditation is. So can we develop this innate habit of love and kindness for others, of course, yes, by doing the love and kindness meditation, we can surely change our neural patterns and respond better, even in difficult situations.
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What is Loving and Kindness Meditation?
Do we really need to do loving and kindness and meditation? : Well, there is no compulsion, if are okay with being grumpy, sad, and love the blame game, then you probably do not need this mediation but if you are someone who doesn’t like violence outside and conflicts inside then that’s only one of the many reasons to know more about the love and kindness meditation.
Because a life without love is practical death. There is no power greater than love. You can win the hearts of others through love alone. You can conquer your enemies through love alone. You can tame wild animals through love alone. The glory of love is ineffable. Its splendor is indescribable. The power of love is unfathomable. Love is powerful enough to raise the kundalini of a true seeker.
True religion does not consist of ritualistic observances, baths, and pilgrimages but of loving all. Cosmic Love is all-embracing and all-inclusive. In the presence of pure love all distinctions and differences, all hatred, jealousy, and egoism are dispelled just as darkness is dispelled by the penetrating rays of the morning sun.
There is no religion higher than Love. There is no knowledge higher than Love. There is no treasure higher than Love because Love is Truth, and Love is God. This world came out of Love; it exists in Love and it will ultimately dissolve in Love. A heart without love is a desert without water. God is an ocean of Love. In every corner of His creation, you can see ample evidence of His unbounded Love for His children.
It is all so easy to talk of Universal Love, meditation, liberation, or kundalini but when you come to the practical field, you manifestly show signs of failure. If someone speaks ill of you and uses harsh words, you are thrown out of balance instantaneously. You get irritated, show your angry face and pay him in the same coin. If you are in such a state, how can you think about experiencing liberation or kundalini rising?
You do not like to part with your possessions when you see people in distress. If you are struggling to meditate or develop cosmic love and suddenly realize yourself through love then you cannot keep anything just for yourself more than you need to keep your life going peacefully.
You will willingly sacrifice even this little to serve a needy person and undergo starvation with much pleasure. You will rejoice that the supreme energy has given you a wonderful opportunity to serve Him. People generally talk of Universal Love but are very niggardly in action. They show lip-sympathy and lip-love in mere words. This is nothing short of hypocrisy. Those who talk of Universal Love should endeavor to develop various good qualities.
They should serve humanity untiringly day and night with a disinterested, selfless spirit for many years. They must be prepared to bear calmly insults and injuries. Then only there is a prospect of developing Cosmic Love. Otherwise, it is all vain, flowery talk and idle gossiping only.
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Does Loving and Kindness meditation work?
A study of monks after love and kindness meditation: Tibetan monks who had practiced 10,000 hours of loving-kindness meditation had built neural connections for self-understanding and empathy. Monks had shown a higher degree of self-contentment and inner joy than non-meditators or non-practitioners of loving-kindness meditation.
Love and Kindness Meditation Offers a Direct Experience: Love and kindness is a way to change emotional patterns is to cultivating a direct experience of the present moment and your body. You might be wondering what not being in the moment (or in your body) could possibly have to do with anxiety and depression. Or how being in the moment (or in the body) can contribute to emotional balance. As a yoga student once commented testily, “I don’t have the time or luxury to get all ‘Zen’ about my depression.” But because of its close relationship to anxiety and depression, present-moment awareness isn’t. Emotional balance has a lot to do with how centered we are in the body and how closely we pay attention to what’s happening right now, at the moment, and being in the moment is meditation. Cultivating the conscious emotion of love and kindness for yourself is way bigger than chasing the kundalini experience for yourself because kundalini may give you the experience of the divine but only in the feeling of love, you will be able to serve others and make life joyful for everybody.
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How do you meditate Loving-Kindness?
Sit down in a comfortable position, and make sure you are not disturbed during the time you are going to meditate by e.g. switching off your phone.
Close your eyes and take a long deep breath. Relax. Allow any sounds and body sensations to just be as they are. Listen to your breath to calm down.
Feel the relaxation.
Become aware of yourself, focus on peace and calm and let them grow within you. Let them grow and develop into love in your heart.
Now to do the actual Loving-Kindness towards yourself, use either an image or words. An image can e.g. be a warm light flooding from your heart to your whole body. Or you can use words, and say them silently and slowly to yourself:
“May I be happy”
“May I be well”
“May I be safe”
“May I be filled with ease”
And then you repeat these words to yourself for a few minutes or use the image for a few minutes.
Now think of a neutral person, a person that you don’t know very well and have only met, e.g. a bus driver or a cashier. Bring this person to mind as vividly as possible and do Loving-Kindness towards this person, use an image or words. The image can e.g. be a warm light flooding from your heart to this person’s heart. Or you can use the words:
“May you be happy”
“May you be well”
“May you be safe”
“May you be filled with ease”
And then you repeat these words to yourself for a few minutes or use the image for a few minutes.
You can do this for as long as you want with anyone and anything you want to build a connection with. We hope this meditation will bring more love, peace, and calmness into your life. End it by adding a mantra- “sarve sukhinah bhavantu”- everybody becomes joyful.
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