Visit with My Dad - Metta Meditation

I've led meditation workshops for years now and one of the sample meditation styles we do is a Metta Meditation. In it, we think about different "kinds" of people - totally revered, people we've loved, people we don't know, and people we withhold our love from. I've always said the person could be alive or have passed on already and there's usually someone in the group who shares that they thought about someone, often a parent or a sibling, who has died. I could relate, but not as strongly as I can relate now.

My dad died in January and since then, I've had the opportunity to "visit" with him, especially during the times when I do metta meditation, which isn't all the time, so it seems special. When his face slips into that screen of my mind's eye, it makes me feel happy, and it's a treat to send him metta so that he can feel happy too. It doesn't make me feel sad at all to have him visit at these times because it's so real for me and it counts as a real visit. I feel like I just saw him and smiled with him and was close to him and by opening my heart in that "metta" (lovingkindness) way, I feel really connected to him - maybe even more than I did sometimes when he was alive.

The technique of giving metta to people is usually a short one and yet it is so powerful. I find people can go on such a journey in even 6-8 minutes, it's amazing. The video below talks about what Metta Meditation is or can be.

More on Metta

So I led the Meditation workshop again on Sunday. (I love that workshop.) During the workshop we try different styles of meditation and chat about it afterwards to see how it worked. We do two that focus on the breath, one that focuses on the body's sensations and one that is guided in a "metta" style, which I've described before.

During the metta meditation we end up at one point imagining someone we're withholding our love from and we send it anyway, even though we may not like that person. It's an interesting experience if you haven't tried it. Anyways, there was someone in the class with cancer and she told me afterwards that the metta thing didn't work for her because part of her practice is to imagine her cancer like someone she hates and try to get them to go away. Wow. I said then that this meditation wouldn't be indicated in her case as it is going against what she's been working with.

I can't imagine hating someone so badly that there's no compassion for them. I wind up feeling some compassion for people or I get to a place where I can imagine they're doing the best they can with what they have and making it not necessarily okay that they're being that way, but I can at least understand that's how they are. Maybe I'm naive and there really are evil people or I've been lucky to have not been around people I hate or maybe I've been brainwashed by a cult or something. I don't believe there are bad people. I believe people do bad things and that we are all capable of doing "bad things" under certain circumstances.

Anyways, if I end up having cancer, I don't think it will work for me to imagine my cancer as something hated to make go away. I can imagine making it go away - my sister told me they're using the idea of popping bubbles that are misshaped with kids - that might work for me. I'm hoping I won't have to find out, but I'm well aware I have no idea how it's going to go!

I learned something for sure and I have a better understanding of what it's like for some people during the meditation we're doing. Another opportunity for me to learn and to be sensitive to other peoples' experiences.