Life Challenges

Creative Ways to Transform Challenges:
Loving and Nurturing Yourself / Meditating

Cultivating Loving Kindness: Practices for Everyone, for Caregivers and for People with Chronic or Terminal Illness Raphael Rod Birney, MD

I would like to introduce a practice to help us develop compassion and loving kindness. In many different wisdom traditions, there are thought to be different qualities within each one of us that are inherent to who we are as human beings and, with the right environment, these qualities can flourish and grow. Some of those qualities are loving kindness, compassion, strength, will, clarity, peace, and joy, to name a few.

This specific practice is designed to help the quality of compassion and loving kindness develop and grow. It consists of simple phrases which are said in English on the breath. As we stay with these phrases,

Our power of concentration develops. So by going back to these phrases, you begin to shift your attachment and connection with many of the negative phrases that are constantly going on in our minds. And
By putting in phrases that are helpful in developing loving kindness, we actually begin to train our minds and hearts in that direction.

One of the biggest challenges to being compassionate and kind is the constant stream of critical, negative thoughts that we are all bombarded by day after day. In the language of meditation, this is referred to as judging mind. Psychologically, we refer to the inner critic, and in psychoanalytic terms, we talk about the super-ego. These critical negative thoughts create a tighter and more constricted, more rigid sense of ourselves; blocking our natural capacity to be in a state of loving kindness and express this quality in the world.

So these specific phrases are designed to really challenge the inner critic and support this quality of loving kindness. Say each phrase silently on the breath. I usually like to say half of the phrase on the inhale and half on the exhale.

Now your mind undoubtedly will want to go back to the usual patterns and stories that your mind fixates around. That's fine. When this happens, be very gentle with yourself and just bring yourself back to the phrase and to the breath. Just bring your concentration back. So it's kind of like being with a small child and just saying, Well, I know that interests you, but right now this is what we're doing, and you gently come back to the phrase. So it's really training the monkey mind or training this wild bull or wild stallion of a mind so that you can begin to develop a sense of mastery and begin to direct your life, rather than be directed by your unconscious.

Read through the phrases and then I will introduce more specific instructions on ways to train your mind with them.

Loving Kindness for Everyone

May I remain in peace and let go of expectations.
May I see my limits compassionately, just as I view the suffering of others.
May I accept my pain without thinking it makes me bad or wrong.
May my love for myself and others flow boundlessly.
May I accept my anger, fear, and sadness, knowing that my vast heart is not limited by them.
May I be peaceful and happy, at ease in body and mind.
I forgive myself for mistakes made or things left undone.
May I open to the unknown as I leave behind the known like a bird flying free.

To train your mind take one phrase, one sentence, and stay with that for a while. You can do it formally and sit down and say I'm going to do this for five minutes. You can go through each one ten times, or you might just informally just let one of the phrases be your phrase for the day. And whenever you remember, go back to saying that phrase a couple of times.

Variations on this practice can also be helpful for specific challenges, such as caregivers and people with chronic or terminal illness. Utilizing the same procedure as you did for the first loving kindness practice, repeat the following phrases (Feel free to adjust or change them as feels appropriate or to create your own):

Loving Kindness for Caregivers

May I offer my care and presence unconditionally, knowing it may be met by gratitude, indifference, anger, or anguish.
May I find the inner resources to truly be able to give.
May I offer love, knowing I can't control the course of life, suffering, or death.
May I remain in peace, and let go of expectations.
I care about your pain, yet cannot control it.
I wish you happiness and peace, but cannot make your choices for you.
May this experience be a heavenly messenger for me, helping me open to the true nature of life.
May I see my limits compassionately, just as I view the suffering of others.
May I and all beings live and die in ease/grace.

Loving Kindness for People with Chronic and Terminal Illness

May I accept my pain, without thinking it makes me bad or wrong.
May all beings everywhere be safe, be happy, be peaceful.
May my love for myself and others flow boundlessly.
May the power of loving kindness sustain me.
May I accept my anger, fear, and sadness, knowing that my vast heart is not limited by them.
May I be free of danger, may I be peaceful.
May I be peaceful and happy, at ease in body and mind.
May I be free from anger, fear, and worry.
If I have hurt or harmed anyone, intentionally or unintentionally, I ask their forgiveness.
If anyone has hurt or harmed me intentionally or unintentionally, I freely forgive them.
I forgive myself for mistakes or things left undone.
May I remember my consciousness is vaster than this body, as I let go of this body.
May all those I leave behind be safe, be happy, be peaceful.
May I open to the unknown, as I leave behind the known, like a bird flying free.
May I live and die in ease.

Raphael Rod Birney MD, Dipl. ABPN specializes in psychotherapy, meditation instruction and group trainings. He is co-director of the Self & Soul Center, Talent, Oregon. Selfsoul@cdsnet.net 541-535-3338 Also, visit the Self and Soul Center Web site at www.selfsoulcenter.org