What would I do without it?
Loving kindness is a meditation and practice in mindfulness and Buddhist theory that wishes the best for another without self regard. It is a delightful practice and the mainstay of much of my life, but I had to learn about it.
I grew up without any loving kindness, informally, spontaneously or not, it just wasn’t present in my mother, she didn’t have it in her. She was very mentally ill, with NDP ( narcissistic personality disorder) and I think undiagnosed PTSD too, and quite psychopathic with it. I was not allowed to be loved by anyone and was taught to question anything kind that someone did for me as a manipulation. This was a bit extreme for sure, but for many others it is similar, if not so extreme.
I didn’t want to die as a child but was left with the distinct impression that if I did my mother and father would be relieved of the burden of my living on. What I wanted was to be loved, to be seen and to be found acceptable, kind even. But that never happened within family circles.
This history was my deep mud, from which my lotus would eventually grow.
It is true of us all, that our troubled histories are our mud from which beautiful flowers can grow. We may take longer to push our flowers to the surface up from its depth, but we can bloom as much if not more than anyone else. Shallow mud grows weak flowers.
That is how to look at it.
We are a beautiful bloom forming and that is all. There is nothing to fear from our darkness if we simply look at it.
Discovering loving kindness was a shock. Nothing more or less than a shock. It still is. Some days I pinch myself that I am loved and that it is safe for me to love others in return.
Most people understand what loving kindness is — a meditation which leads you through various forms of positive emotions and wishes for yourself and for others. But it can also be a healing meditation for when you face the tough stuff. When I am facing my own darkness in the past, I use loving kindness to help me get through it, reminding myself to be compassionate whilst not avoiding these dark corners of our psyche that still need flushing out. Avoidance is a form of self harm really, since you condemn yourself to continue living with this darkness stuffed away, waiting always for it to leap out at you once more.
I start out by reminding myself that at every point in my life I did my best. Even when I messed up or fell into bad beliefs and attitudes, for me at that point it was all I knew how to be. Then I look at whatever this dark corner is, what underpins it, how much am I beating myself up about it, making it more than reasonable about my share of responsibility without avoiding my own complicity. Then I send loving kindness and compassion to that younger self.
Even if it a week younger than today, it is worth doing.
I learn new things every week. Within the last year I have managed to explore, face and release my fear of not having enough food and secret eating disordered behaviours, of being rejected wherever I go, of travelling on my own. All these were conquered through a retreat to plum village, and oh boy did I have to use a lot of loving kindness on myself whilst there, but also I found people who were loving and kind to me and even made some friends.
More recently I started the second year of an MA online programme and found all my old terrors from school via both teachers and parents had resurfaced. As a result I tried to withdraw and reclaim my money back. The student support team got in touch and talked me through it, and their kindness made me realise that these people are not ‘out to get me’ and my choice to do another degree was my choice also unconsciously to face the fear I have of education generally, and the horror of secondary school in particular. I didn’t even realise I had that terror so firmly lodged in my body until it surfaced. But the kindness from those tutors and support team helped me to feel safe again and now I am sailing through my MA programme and thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve got studying high if that is a thing.
Loving kindness is more than a meditation to do from time to time, it should be an active part of your regular practise so it is at your finger tips when you need it, as it was for me on these occasions. Without it, as I was in the past, I would have gone down some very destructive rabbit holes, but this last eight months or so have been enormously healing and releasing, liberating me to do so much more. I have a few more traumas to tackle, and for now I am in no rush to do so. I am sure they will come to me soon enough anyway. After all it is the purpose of life, to learn, to heal, and to grow in love. But without loving kindness meditation to help me on my way, I almost certainly wouldn’t have made it.