Turn Your Internal Compass Toward Loving Kindness

2022 update: Audio Track now on Insight Timer! Check out the full-length version and the children’s version 

I first learned the loving-kindness meditation during a training course. I had been so taken by it that I immediately began integrating it into my personal life. Over the years, I have brought it forward into my counselling practice.

The loving-kindness meditation comes from the Buddhist tradition as a means to develop compassion. Its simple sentences aim to foster unconditional acceptance, love, and compassion for self as well as for others, with no expectation of anything in return.
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In this post, I am sharing two versions of the loving-kindness meditation. The first one is longer and may take approximately 10 minutes, and the second one is abbreviated for those days when we feel pressed for time.

Here are some suggestions on when to use the loving-kindness meditation:

1. To get centred in the morning and set your intention for the day. Take a few minutes each morning, and create space for loving kindness in your life.
2. To tune your heart. Elisha Goldstein writes about using compassion to tune the heart, and places this action in the context of a natural antidepressant.
3. To let go of the emotional journey of others, and still feel as though you are helping. There will be moments when we want to help those in our lives, but we can not carry their emotional suffering for them. The loving-kindness meditation creates space for you to connect with compassion for others, in a way that honours their strength and ability.  I have often directed my loving-kindness meditation to my children, when they have appeared to be struggling with peers or with the pressures of adolescence. I have directed it toward my husband, when I have known he was entering into stressful times at work. I have directed it toward family members, when I have been keenly aware of the miles between us and my inability to reach out and hug them. When sitting with the loving-kindness meditation, picture the individuals in your life, their inherent goodness, and their desire to be happy. Wish the words of the loving-kindness meditation to them, with an open heart, unconditional acceptance, and without judgment.

The loving-kindness meditation can help you cultivate compassion for self and others. Challenge yourself to use it daily for 2 weeks, and notice with curiousity the beneficial impact it can have on you and your relationships!

Resources:

• The loving-kindness meditation (as depicted in the first image) was shared with me by Counsellor Mahara Albert, in Vancouver BC, during the Stopping the Violence core training by EVA BC (2008)
• The shortened version of the loving-kindness meditation (as depicted in the second image) is by Jack Kornfield