foster calmness through concentration and repetition, but in everyday life the phrases can be
changed to fit the situation. Practitioners should also “stick to the wishing side” of the phrases – the
good will – and not be too specific about outcome, such as “May I be free of my diabetes”. We’re
tenderly inclining our hearts towards ourselves, not trying to manipulate the conditions of our lives.
Also, the “may I” aspect is used like the conditional/subjunctive in Romance languages – “that it
would be so…” – rather than appealing to an external higher power.
Part of the healing process of loving-kindness meditation is the phenomenon of
backdraft
.
Backdraft occurs when a firefighter opens a door with a hot fire behind it. Oxygen rushes in,
causing a burst of flame. Similarly, when the door of the heart is opened with compassion, intense
pain can sometimes be released. Some people, especially those with a trauma history, can
experience “fear of compassion”
. Backdraft exposes us to old relational suffering, even from
early childhood, and allows it to be desensitized by the warmth and good will cultivated in the mind
of the meditator.
If resurfaced memories are too disturbing to be desensitized, the practitioner may consider the
following modifications to loving-kindness meditation, in the following order:
1. Continue using the phrases, allowing the difficult feelings to become like background noise. If
there is still too much distress, then:
2. Shift to open monitoring practice – naming the disturbing emotion (“anger”, “grief”, “shame”) or
finding the physical manifestation of the emotion in the body (tension in the stomach,
hollowness in the heart region) and placing a warm hand on that body part.
3. Switch to loving-kindness for a loved one, such as a pet or a beloved child, and eventually
include yourself in that circle of kindness.
4. Anchor your awareness with focused awareness on the breath, a single body sensation like
the soles of the feet, or an external object like ambient sounds in the environment.
5. Stop meditating and be kind to yourself in other, more behavioral, ways, such as a warm bath,
a cup of tea or stroking your pet.
Progress in self-compassion can be measured by the refinement of intention. We all start out by
striving to feel better through self-compassion, then we become disillusioned when we still feel bad
at times, and finally we learn to embrace ourselves “not to feel better, but
because
we feel bad”.
It’s a riddle. When self-compassion training is used to manipulate our moment-to-moment
experience it will inevitably fail because that’s a subtle form of resistance. But when we’re kind to
ourselves simply
because
we feel bad, as we might be towards a child with the flu, then profound
relief occurs as an inevitable side effect. As meditation teacher Rob Nairn put it, our goal is to
“become a compassionate mess”
.
Session 4: Finding Your Compassionate Voice
After learning to meditate with phrases that support our good intentions, the next step is to shape
the inner conversations that dominate our lives, shifting them from self-criticism (“You fool!”) to
self-
encouragement
when things go wrong (“That didn’t work, but it was a good try. Let’s try a different
approach.”). We always come by our self-criticism honestly. When we’re threatened
externally
, a
natural response is to fight off the danger, but when we’re threatened
internally
by disturbing
emotions such as dread, despair or shame, we’re likely to attack ourselves with self-criticism. It’s
not our fault.
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