To get good at anything, you have to do it many times—and meditation is no different. By practicing a technique repeatedly, we discover nuances we didn’t know were there before. We come up against the edges of our skill, so we can refine our approach and deepen in self-awareness.
To get good at anything, you have to do it many times—and meditation is no different. By practicing a technique repeatedly, we discover nuances we didn’t know were there before. We come up against the edges of our skill, so we can refine our approach and deepen in self-awareness.
As Joseph Goldstein says, “This expression of metta, of loving-kindness, of goodwill, is a different way of thinking about our loved ones….The practice is very simple, but the possibility for transformation is vast.”
Because loving-kindness has the potential to challenge our traditional ways of thinking about ourselves and others, it’s important to build a strong foundation in the basic instructions. Using the same guidance helps it stick. Over time, as we gain familiarity with what comes most easily versus what we find difficult in the practice, we can begin to make it our own—for example, changing up the phrases or the amount of time we spend with it. It’s having repeatedly steeped in the essential teaching that gives us a clearer understanding of how to experiment.
Changing habits is difficult, and shifting from being hard on ourselves and others to offering more positive regard is no different. When we practice loving-kindness or any meditation, we’re basically rewiring our minds—and that can bring up a lot of emotions along the way. The good news is, we can learn to ride them out. They may even become fodder for deeper self-kindness.
“For all the people over generations who've taken this practice to great heights, none of them could choose what emotions they would have in a given meditation session,” says Matthew Hepburn. “We'll be angry at ourselves, enamored with ourselves, surprised sometimes, bored at other times. Every feeling that exists, we'll have it. The most important thing to know about strengthening goodwill toward yourself is that it's not dependent on being free from complex feelings.”
Returning to the same meditation repeatedly allows us to see the whole buffet of reactions and moods that may arise. Over time, we get to depersonalize them and see them as just another thing that comes and goes. With repeated practice, we can learn to gracefully let ourselves off the hook for having ordinary human emotions. What a relief!
Negativity bias is our natural capacity for detecting threats. It’s sometimes helpful for our physical survival, but can be deadly for our relationships. So often we can notice (and fixate) on how we want other people to change to make us feel okay. But practicing loving-kindness helps us hold a holistic view, humanizing others while honoring the ways in which we struggle to get along.
As teacher devon hase says. “When we bring this kind of deliberate attention to our relationships, we can notice how we take them for granted when we're busy or caught up in things. So it's important to take a beat and really appreciate what we have.”
Of course, devon would be the first to admit that it’s important to have open dialogue in relationships. But constructive feedback and appreciation don’t have to be in opposition. As she says, “Relationships are a lot of work. And it's work to hold these values, and to keep them at the forefront. But when I am, it's just easier. The actual experience of remembering to do that is exactly what we're doing in mindfulness.”
Building a strong foundation by repeatedly practicing the same meditation technique is the best way to level up our practice. With the practice of loving-kindness, or goodwill, we find that, over time, we can widen the circle of our compassion to include more and more of the world. And that naturally opens up the possibility for a more joyful life—both inwardly, and outwardly.
As Pascal Auclair says, “If instead of being harsh with yourself, you give yourself a break, even if it's for one second, the whole system will recognize that it's a good way to be with this. To me, it's an open door to compassion, like, wow, we're all in this together. We all have this in common And when we discover this, of course, benevolence arises. I want you to be safe. I want you to be healthy. I want it to go well for you, and for me.”
