Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (25 page)

If you have been following along with the meditations up to this point, you may have experienced this for yourself. Acceptance of the “guilts” and “fears” from the past—seeing them as mere straws in the wind—may have begun to allow you some respite. You may be finding oases of peace in your life. Perhaps you have found yourself recalling with a greater sense of ease events from the past—events that you had previously found difficult to bring to mind without huge emotional turbulence. You may still feel the pain of them, perhaps even acutely, but begin to sense that these events actually belong to t
he past, and could be let go of, placed back in the past where they rightly belong.

This is because, day by day, you have been exploring an alternative to the automatic brooding “avoidant” mode of mind that induces overgenerality, getting you stuck in the past, putting a fog over the future. The Raisin meditation, the Breath and Body meditation, the Body Scan, the Mindful Movement, the learning to relate to thoughts as you relate to sounds, the exploration of the difficult by working through the body—each of these has contributed to learning that there is, for you, a new possibility. There is a possibility of dwelling, moment by moment, in a state of mind that cradles you in a nonjudgmental and compassionate wisdom.

In teaching mindfulness classes, we see many examples of people discovering the freedom that comes when they realize that something they thought was permanent was, in fact, changeable. But sometimes, all of the meditations you’ve practiced up to now can leave a corner of the mind untouched. Somehow, many people seem to be able to meditate for weeks, months or years, and never really hear the message of kindness for themselves. They think of meditation as another thing
to do.

So, you need to go one step further if you want not only to bring about the bone-deep peace that comes from cultivating mindfulness, but also to help sustain it in the light of the stresses that life throws at you. You need to relate to the world with kindness and compassion, and you can only do this if you come home to who
you
are, accepting yourself with deepest respect, honor and, yes, love. The last meditation we are going to invite you to share is a befriending meditation. In this meditation you acknowledge that however hard you find it to be compassionate to
others
, it can feel even harder to bring kindness to yo
urself
.

Week Six helps you bring kindness back into your life—kindness not just for others but for yourself too.

Take a few minutes now to become settled in a warm and comfortable place where you can be by yourself for a while, relaxed and alert.

Find a posture that, for you, embodies a sense of dignity and wakefulness. If you are sitting, allow the spine to be strong, the shoulders relaxed, the chest open and the head balanced.

Focus on the breath, and then expand attention to the whole body for a few minutes, until you feel settled.

When the mind wanders, acknowledge where it went, remembering that you have a choice now: either to escort it back to whatever you had intended to focus on or, instead, to allow your attention to drop into the body to explore where you are experiencing the trouble or concern. Feel free to use any previous meditations as part of your preparation for this one.

When you are ready, allow some—or all—of these phrases to come to mind, changing the words if you choose, so that they connect to you and become, for you, your own gateway into a deep sense of friendliness toward yourself:

May I be free from suffering.
May I be as happy and healthy as it is possible for me to be.
May I have ease of being.

Taking your time, imagine that each phrase is a pebble dropped down into a deep well. You are dropping each one in turn, then listening to any reaction in thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations or impulse to act. There is no need to judge what arises. This is for you.

If you find it difficult to bring forth any sense of friendship toward yourself, bring to mind a person (or even a pet) who, either in the past or present, has loved you unconditionally. Once you have a clear sense of their love for you, see if you can return to offering this love to yourself:
May I be free from suffering. May I be happy and healthy. May I have ease of being.

Remain with this step for as long as you wish before moving to the next.

At a certain point, bring to mind a loved one, and wish them well in the same way (using he, she, or they, as you prefer):
May he (she/they) be free from suffering. May he (she/they) be as happy and healthy as it is possible for them to be. May he (she/they) have ease of being.

Once again, see what arises in mind and body as you hold the person in mind and heart, wishing them well. Once again, allow responses to come. Take your time. Pause between phrases—listening attentively. Breathing.

When you are ready to move on, choose a stranger. This may be someone you see regularly, perhaps in the street or on the bus or train—someone you recognize, but may not know the name of; someone you feel neutral about. Recognize that, although you do not know them, they probably also have a life full of hopes and fears as you have. They too wish to be happy, as you do. So, keeping them in heart and mind, repeat the phrases and wish them well.

Now, if you choose to extend this meditation further, you might wish to bring to mind someone whom you find difficult (past or present). This does not have to be the most difficult person in your life, but whomever you choose, now intentionally allow
them to be in your heart and mind, acknowledging that they, too, may wish (or have wished) to be happy, and to be free from suffering. Repeat the phrases:
May he (she) be free from suffering. May he (she) be happy and healthy. May he (she) have ease of being
. Pausing. Listening. Noticing sensations in the body. Seeing if it is possible to explore these feelings without censoring them or judging yourself.

Remember that if at any time you feel overwhelmed and drawn away by intense feelings or thoughts, you can come back to the breath in the body to anchor yourself back in the present moment, treating yourself with kindness.

Finally, extend loving-kindness to all beings, including your loved ones and strangers and those whom you find difficult. The intention here is to extend love and friendship to all living beings on the planet—and remembering that all living beings includes you!
May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings be happy and healthy. May all of us have ease of being.
At the end of this time of practice, take time to sit with the breath and the body, resting in clear awareness of the present moment. Whatever your experience of this practice, acknowledge your own courage in taking the time to nourish yourself in this way.

It is hard to bring genuine loving-kindness and friendship to yourself, so taking the time to explore this practice takes some commitment. But it can be done anywhere, at any time, as well as during the formal daily practice. Gradually, you may become aware that it is impossible to nourish others without also
nourishing yourself; impossible to be truly loving to others while you are attacking yourself for not being good enough. This is what Cara found when she took one of our courses:

“I started by steadying myself,” said Cara. “After a moment, I started bringing the phrases to mind: ‘May I be free from suffering …’ After a while, I started noticing something coming to mind—a sense of being overwhelmed with the sheer busyness of my life. I returned to the meditation, but it kept coming up. So I stayed with this, seeing if I could bring friendliness to my sense of busyness.”

What was Cara sensing? Afterwards, she reflected further on her experience. “Although I
knew
I was very busy in my life, I never thought of it as something that was actually doing me harm—that I was actually
suffering
because of it. It reminded me of another phrase that I had once heard—’May I be safe from inner and outer harm’—and I thought, yes, that’s it. I have always thought that it was the
world out there
that makes me busy: my job, my family—the whole thing. But what I was hearing now was: Ah, yes, but this is me too—I’m harming myself. I think that I
need
to be busy; this is a really old pattern for me. And here it was, coming up, in reaction to the ‘wishing myself well’ in this practice. I thought, hmm … I wonder what I’m going to discover?”

Cara certainly felt that she was running to keep up with her life, but in the midst of her loving-kindness meditation, she had a deep sense of not only the suffering that this brought about, but the way in which she was contributing to it. Interestingly, in the context of her mindfulness, there was no self-blame, just a quiet knowing of how things were. Later, she was able to say that, as part of her ongoing practice, she had written five questions to ponder:

 

• How can I nourish myself?
  
 

 

• How can I slow down in the midst of my rushing?
  
 

 

• How can I stand back?
  
 

 

• How can I make choices?
  
 

 

• How can I be kind to myself?
  
 

Gradually, Cara learned that friendship is the quiet voice inside. It all too easily gets drowned out by the louder voices of fear and guilt. Fear of failure had, for her, tried to “protect” her from love. It told her she’d lose out by being kind-hearted. It warned her that if she was not constantly vigilant, she’d be ripped off, double-crossed and resoundingly used and abused by those around her. It had persuaded her, instead, to be angry with the world. It reminded her constantly that “you are indispensable, so you need to keep going whatever the cost” and that “nobody understands the situation like you do” and “nobody cares.”