Loving Kindness for Healing

Every week, I’ve been setting areas of focus for myself, because I have a tendency to take on everything or nothing.  Read: I believe I can completely overhaul my entire existence, exhaust myself into existential crisis, collapse.

In everything, I have to maintain balance.  I read somewhere about weight loss, “You did not gain all of the weight in a day, and you will not lose it all in a day.”  Likewise, I’ve been around for 34.5 years, and it will not be “fixed” in 1 day or week or month.  Fixed is in quotes on purpose too, because I’m not fixing myself.  To say I need fixing is to suggest I am broken, which I am not.  I am healing myself and I am growing stronger.

I am diagnosed with PTSD, but coming away from a diagnostic aspect, everyone has pain and trauma.  I have trauma from my own brain, really.  The first step in my healing was becoming aware that I even needed to heal.  That process has taken me almost 2 years, really.  While it’s not fun by any stretch, I definitely am starting to feel lighter and more myself.  I truly enjoy becoming aware of choice; whereas before I felt like my life was pure reaction.  I can choose how I respond, and that leaves me empowered instead of victimized, hurt, or upset.

In awareness, I had to find triggers, and work.   In October, meditation and yoga became a part of my journey.  I had reached a point where I was fed up.  In a sense, I felt worse than when I even started! I’m removing people from my life, I feel guilt, sadness, grief, etc.  Both Yoga and Meditation brought me inward.  Prior to October, my focus remained external – this person did that, I am doing this to this person, and so forth.

I now think of my mind like a large backyard full of beautiful trees in fall.  There’s colors, beauty, and majesty, and there’s quite a lot of leaves falling down.  It’s my job to keep things beautiful, tidy, and simple.  Meditation and yoga are the rake that I use to keep the upstairs tidy.  As I clear out dead leaves that do not serve me, I find new beauty, inspiration, and thought patterns.  Best of all, I find my intuition, which, I think, is the greatest gift we all have.

I use my intuition now as my compass.  I allow my sparks of inspiration to illuminate paths of study and even a simple daily “What do you want to do today/this week/this month” all stem from that little voice.  My brain used to be far too noisy for that voice to be heard, but now that voice is louder than everything else.  Earlier this week, when I asked myself what to do, forgiveness was the word.  Last week was healing my heart.  I remembered how deeply I had connected with Loving Kindness meditation.

Loving Kindness is a very simple and profound meditation.  You can choose a comfortable seat or lie down.  Honestly, I meditate lying down more often than not.  I find that the key to meditation is about being comfortable in your body to unlock yourself.  At this point, I meditate so much, I use everything and anything. There are so many vehicles and options, I love letting my body and my little voice guide.

The meditation is this: Focus then on your heart, and say to yourself “May I be well, May I be happy, May I be peaceful, May I be loved.” repeat this, and then come to focus on someone you love and picture them.  You recite these four phrases and direct that love to them.  You then think of someone you feel neutral towards, someone you do not know well – cashier, bus driver, etc. and direct those same four phases and energy at them.  Lastly, you call to mind someone you struggle with.  Someone who has caused you pain or maybe you have problems with presently.  You direct those same four phrases to them.  I like to end with directing the same four phrases to everyone.  Every meditation is different – you can go on YouTube, Spotify, 7cups, iTunes U, etc. and get copies of this guided meditation, but I usually hear to visualize the light coming from your heart to that person and enveloping them, and so forth.

This meditation has brought me profound healing and peace.  This month, I set the intention of genuine acceptance and self love.  I truly feel as though I am in my own way more often than not, and that I harbor too much negative crap against myself.  I started doing Loving Kindness again, and I have committed myself to doing it every day. I am envisioning new people in each, and I am specifically targeting the fourth with the intention of healing past and present.  I am calling to mind people who have caused a lot of pain and converting it to love.  It’s helping me a lot with forgiveness and ultimately gratitude.

As random bad memories have floated up, or even surprise interactions with people that have hurt me, I have said to myself “I release ___(persons name)” and envision a balloon floating up containing all the bad feelings.  It is incredible the transformation you can make by choosing your thoughts and emotions.  Loving Kindness meditations have opened that door for me.  I hope this suggestion can help someone else towards healing and happiness!

I love Deepak, so I thought I’d share this.  His meditations help me so much 🙂

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