CONNECTING WITH AND RADIATING LOVE...

All people have the capacity to love, but few of us understand the benefits of intentionally radiating love into our environment. We know the impact our thoughts have on our own perceptions and filters that we see the world through. Therefore we recognize that by focusing our thoughts on love, kindness, gratitude and compassion we can change the filters processing which information is important and which is not. This will create a different experience of our own lives and we can then ripple that into the many peoples lives that we are connected with.

What happens when FEAR is allowed to take root in our thoughts...

When fear takes root, the fight-or-flight mechanism takes over and we begin defending ourselves – not only from the virus but from all other perceived threats.

The energy of the heart closes as we figure out what steps we want to take in the name of survival. Though the pursuit of survival is understandable, this fear response has led to many secondary challenges of this virus, such as hoarding of goods, aggression, and judgment of others.

The practice of focusing on filling yourself with love and sending it to others in need, helps to quiet the overactive mind and emotions, which increases our ability to handle the elevated stress on the planet. Increasing love and compassion automatically streams more patience, resilience and flow into our interactions. This helps to clear clouded discernment and heightens our reasoning capacity.

With the polarizing politics going on in many countries and the global resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s more important than ever to broadcast love, compassion and calm into the global energetic field.

Love is the core heart frequency that unifies and lifts people’s perceptions above separation. When our heart, mind and emotions are in alignment and not in conflict with each other, this makes it easier to sense our intuitive heart’s direction for effective choices and guidance.

If we are to effectively navigate this time of crisis, we will need to harness the loving energy that rests beneath our shared humanity – that is, the energy of compassion. Those of Buddhist and other spiritual traditions have long understood the power of compassion, but modern science is now also able to revel in its benefits.

Research has found that compassion meditations can help to reduce stress-induced subjective distress, and that both compassion meditation and loving-kindness meditation may be useful strategies in helping people to manage psychological challenges such as anger, social anxiety, and marital conflict (all of which may be on the forefront for many due to these recent events).

How to do the METTA Meditation

The Buddhist tradition of METTA MEDITATION (or loving Kindness meditation) is one of the most fundamental compassion-based practices that we can turn to in this time of crisis. This practice can help us to feel greater compassion for ourselves (reducing the stress response and in turn, improving other markers of health such as immunity) and to soften the walls we’ve built against others.

We can practice this simple technique by taking ten minutes each day to cultivate our connection to the heart space. Once grounded in this core of our being, we can begin silently offering kind and loving wishes to ourselves and to others.

Going through a standard sequence of individuals and ending with an image of the entire world can help us to soften the divides we perceive between us and others – even between us and those we feel have caused us harm or pain.

This practice invites us to repeat the following words to, in sequence: ourselves, a loved one, an acquaintance, someone we have difficulties with, and then the whole world as one living being. The words we might choose to use during this practice are:

May you be safe.
May you be healthy.
May you be loved.
May you be at peace.

inspiration of the above taken from the Buddha weekly