Kindness is Underrated
This is part four of a five part series, detailing the most important tricks I’ve found to meditation. In the last post, we covered why it’s important to stay in contact with a competent meditation teacher.
The tip I want to talk about today is actually a specific style of meditation, which is often called Loving Kindness meditation, or metta. The practice consists of intentionally creating positive will towards yourself and the world, usually by repeating a phrase in your mind, such as “May all beings be happy.”
Of the people I have met in my life who practice meditation, I would say the majority do hardly any Loving Kindness meditation, if they practice it at all. There are a lot of different reasons why people don’t find time for this style of meditation, but I believe it’s the most underrated component to spiritual development and happiness.
We often don’t realize how frequently our thoughts are critical of ourselves and others in a way that is complete overkill. Our brains have actually evolved to notice negative experiences faster and more often than we do positive ones. From a natural selection perspective this isn’t very surprising, it would have been more important to be skilled at avoiding saber tooth tigers than to be grateful for what life has given you. Now that survival doesn’t consume most of our daily lives, this negativity bias has become less helpful.
By practicing Loving Kindness meditation we are able to tilt the scale closer to being balanced between our positive and negative thoughts. I would suggest you try making Loving Kindness meditation your main or only form of practice for a week, and see how you feel. It has been my experience that you can get a lot of “bang for your buck” by loading up on these sits. If you don’t get anything out of it after a week, your other meditation techniques will still be there waiting for you :)
It has been my experience with these techniques that I had to overcome some resistance to doing it, but once I gave it a fair shake, I was amazed by how much happier I felt. My daily experience of life became a lot more pleasant, which in turn made me more effective in my daily responsibilities. I hope this is your experience too. Best of luck, and please let me know how it goes for you!
-Christian