Ancient Meditation of Love
For a male like me who has been raised to be tough and to ignore my feelings, developing an additional meditation that opens me up to feelings took some time and iterations. But eventually I found one! It has brough me to having feelings of gratitude, compassion, caring, and love for all beings!
After trying different types of meditations for several months, what evolved is a meditation that supplements Vedic meditation. If Vedic is practiced in the morning, this new one can be practice in the afternoon. Because of its use of many hand and arm movements, it is best done in a private setting.
Wordless Meditation with Silence and Feelings
Each 20-minute meditation is divided into four segments of 5 minutes each. They are separated by the ringing of a bell or gong. At home I use a cell phone app from Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village website to do this bell ringing. To do this, go to the mindfulness section at plumvillage.org. Or go to your app store on your phone and download the free app. In the app, select “Silent Meditations” and “20 minues with 4 intervals.”
The First 5-Minute Section:
While sitting comfortably upright, the goal is to just be here in silence without words for 5 minutes.
First, take three slow, full in and out breaths. While doing so, come to a full-body awareness and relax any tense body parts.
Go into full, relaxed peripheral vision for both side-to-side viewing and top-to-bottom viewing. To make it more effective, try to do this while you are doing slow and deep breathing.
Try to move your head around in a circle to ensure that this peripheral vision is staying with you.
As has been discussed in Realizations 4 and 5, this practice takes us back to the hunter-gatherer, older part of our brain that gets us away from frontal vision’s fight or flight, worry, and anxiety. Also, because of the hunter-gatherer, gift-giving, equality ways that are embedded in us, peripheral vision gets us intertwined with our vagus nerve system that fosters our feelings of love, compassion, empathy, and gratitude.
Do the Vedic meditation to slowly say “love you” to yourself while tapping your foot to keep a beat.
After a while, slowly feel this going down to reside in your heart.
Do this for several minutes to let it get softer and softer. (Also, after a while, every now and then, instead use the mantra of “love me, love me, love me.)
When the bell rings once, it indicates an end to the 5-minute period. Now, put your hands together with palms facing each other and raise them on an in-breath and lower them on an out-breath.
The Second 5 Minute Section:
Before beginning, select your first partner from the following group to be with you in this meditation:
Your spouse or a very good friend
Your grandchildren
Your parents
All your body and brain parts
All female beings that give us life and show us the way to love
All our scientists that reveal what is really going on
Our trees, plants, and fungi that give us oxygen and food and show us the way to live
Our Mother Earth with her waters, air, and soil that give us life
All the universe’s beings
While sitting comfortably with hands folded and resting on your lap and while still being in peripheral vision and keeping your foot tapping from the previous, silence-without-words, 5-minute period:
Take one full and slow breath.
While keeping in mind the first partner you have selected to connect with, bring your hands up in front of you in a horizontal position, with the palms facing each other, so that the right hand is on top and the left hand is below, about six inches apart. Then, use your vertical peripheral vision to look softly at your hands as you slowly spread them apart vertically.
Then, while remembering the first partner you selected, bring your hands into a vertical position, with the palms facing each other, so that the right hand is on the right side of your vision and the left hand on the left side of your vision. Use your horizontal peripheral vision to look softly at them as you spread them apart horizontally.
Now, to give this partner a big hug, bring your hands back to your chest so that the right hand is over your heart and the left hand is over the right side of your chest.
On the next full in-breath, feel gratitude for all that this partner has done for you while your eyes are rising up and with a small smile on your face.
While breathing slowly in, feel compassion for what this partner has been going through while your eyes are rising up,
On the next slow and full in-breath, feel love for this partner while your eyes are rising up,
With the fingers of your right hand that are over your heart, feel your heart beating in time with your foot tapping.
Then bring your hands back down to be resting on your lap.
And take another full breath.
Next, select another partner from the above list and repeat the above six steps.
If the bell hasn’t rung, select a third partner and once again repeat the above six steps.
When the bell rings once it indicates an end to that five minute period. After finishing the step you are currently working on,, put your hands together with palms facing each other and raise them on an in-breath and lower them on an out-breath.
Whenever thoughts and thinking start to happen, gently come back to the present moment, to the here and now with full, peripheral-vision viewing.
The Remaining Two Sections of 5-Minutes Each:
Select other partners from the above group and repeat those six steps until you hear the bell ringing twice. This indicates the end of the meditation period.
When the bell rings twice, put your hands together with palms facing each other, and:
Slowly raise them up on an in-breath and softly say Amen.
On the out-breath, slowly lower them down and softly say Amen.
On the next in-breath, slowly raise them up again and softly say Amen.
Here are some suggestions for additional meditation partners for another meditation period:
Your sisters, brothers, and their families
Your grandparents
Your shame-wounded ego with all its excessive thinking
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors that are also inside you
All those who disagree with you or have wounded you due to our alienated society.
All the fishes, birds, and animals that give you food and show the way to community sharing
All those who are trying to bring us all back together in sharing, love, and compassion — we are all in this together!
The universe’s Creator(s), Creatress(es), and Sustainer(s).
. . . . .
After doing this meditation for several months, I have found that the first 5-minute period of just being in joyful silence instead of NST (non-stop thinking, planning, worrying) brings me to a wondrous presence with all beings. I become more fully HERE!Then its next three sections bring me to much stronger feelings of thanks, compassion, and love for all beings. I hope you enjoy it!
