In these first three months of the project, I see a pattern emerging: someone has had the experience of being ‘stuck,’ and through this meditation practice, plus the invitation to reflect, process, and share, they find space to feel their feelings, which, I believe, is helping them to get ‘un-stuck.’ Is this or will this be a universal experience and outcome? Surely not. And yet, pattern points to possibility.
[This post is part of a series that begins here.]
One meditator eloquently reveals, “when offering loving-kindness to [this person who has been difficult in my life], I feel now that I can close that chapter in the book; I now feel the possibility to move forward.”
Often I have witnessed people practice perspective-taking; that is, acknowledging someone who has challenged them is doing their best, and conceding that they may not know nor understand their whole story. One meditator described this process as “heart-mending.”
And indeed it seems to be the focus on the heart’s capacity to extend loving-kindness in all directions that holds a key. One shared a profound insight about the difficult relationship, “in this invitation, the heart-to-heart channel felt open. Our dynamic is often head-to-head, and that is where we can get stuck. This [heart-to-heart] channel had flow. This remembering readied me for compassionate flow.”
Someone practicing metta for the first time found a glimmer of self-compassion, a monumental and liberating event: “I am feeling like I can decide, at last, to move forward, and this might be the most important moment of my life to date.”
After sharing as backstory a life-long strained relationship with a parent, someone else reflected that when offering loving-kindness in this way, something shifted, after a long time of failed attempts to see them genuinely in a loving light.
“And this time, when I wished him well, I felt it was true.”