Loving Kindness
“In cultivating loving-kindness, we learn first to be honest, loving, and compassionate toward ourselves. Rather than nurturing self-denigration, we begin to cultivate a clear-seeing kindness.”
My first experience, that I remember, in loving kindness and letting go of ego was when I was about thirteen. I can thank my tennis coach for the lesson learned. My coach first alerted me to my hypercritical inner voice during his observation of me in tennis lessons. He would in seriousness tell me to be not so hard on myself and at other times in playfulness tell me to get over myself. The lesson wasn’t going in though and my behaviour wasn’t changing. I, at least, had become aware of the voice but didn’t know how to turn it off. It felt like a reflex.
Then one autumn we started early morning weekend tennis lessons. Our coach lived in our village and picked myself and my brother up for these lessons in town. On the drive into town, on a few occasions, he would play a song and announce it with, ‘This one is for you, Lynne.’ The song was ‘You’re so vain’ by Carly Simon. Obviously at the time I was extremely insulted. I associated vanity with beauty. As a young teenager that was emerging into a young woman I felt awkward and unpretty in myself. At first I accused him of projecting and told him that the song was actually about him. He drove a red sports car at the time so I figured he was going through a mid life crisis! However the more he played the songs on these journeys into our tennis lessons, the more irritated I became and realised that if I’m this irritated he’s hitting a sore point so I began to self reflect.
Taking in his comments on my hypercritical inner voice and the vanity theme in the song, I began to see that my hypercriticism was a form of perfectionism and that this was, in fact, vanity. Once I saw this I was able to lighten up about it and laugh at myself. The song would pop into my head when I became hypercritical. Interestingly, as a result of lightening up and seeing my ego, the hypercritical inner voice lost its power and my tennis improved. Whenever I hear the earthy country melody of ‘You’re so vain’ these days I still think of and am grateful to my coach for that lesson at such a young age. Even though I didn’t know the word ‘ego’ I had been given an awareness of it and even though the phrase ‘loving kindness’ didn’t exist in my vocabulary I had learned how to use it as a concept, laugh at my ego and show myself some compassion when hypercriticism showed up throughout my life.
More recently I observed loving kindness in a relationship. At the end of May my husbands father passed away after over ten years of the family living with his dementia. It took the last weeks of his passing for me to reflect on those years and the loving kindness his wife demonstrated on a daily basis. My husbands mother Valerie was devoted to caring for and loving his father Martin. When people would comment on how amazing Valerie was to Martin during his decline into dementia she would become genuinely perplexed, as to her it was a completely normal thing for her to do for the love of her life. Not only did she demonstrate a devotional, unconditional loving kindness towards her husband and their relationship she also practiced loving kindness towards herself. She was experiencing an intense grief over the change in their relationship while still being able to hold space for the love, that for her, was timeless. Now as she grieves his physical death I hope that we as a family can support her in loving kindness during this next transition.
My children have also been a huge lesson in loving kindness. In trying to hold space for all their emotions and emerging personalities I had to learn over the years to first hold space for the whole spectrum of emotions and paradoxes in my self. I was unable to truly hold space for my children until I began to hold space for myself. It all starts with the practice within. I’m still having lessons in this with my children every minute I spend with them.
Finally there is also a practice of loving kindness in letting go. Observing our reactivity, reflexive patterns and habits helps us to become aware of what we want to change in our lives and then start a journey of choosing something different for ourselves from a place of true self love. This form of love does not involve ego, which has a tendency to project and blame others for our pain. This is difficult to write about or explain as it is an experiential practice. Once we begin to notice our ‘hooks’ (Pema Chodron coined this term to explain the Buddhist concept of shenpa), which can present like a form of tension as a result of an habitual response, we can then pause, breathe, observe the sensation of the discomfort or pleasure and in time choose something different for our selves. This practice will change the trajectory of relationships and life purpose.
My loving kindness practice has emerged primarily through life experiences and observations of others life expereinces. The loving kindness concept can be practiced also in a meditation practice (maitri/metta). It is the practice that is used to close the 10 day (and longer) Vipassana practices and serves as a reminder of why we use introspection to improve ourselves. The ultimate goal is universal/collective unconditional love and awakening to reality.
May I (you/we) have inner peace
May I (you/we) be healthy
May I (you/we) be loved
Benefits of a loving kindness practice:
Emotional regulation
Compassion
Empathy
Unconditional love
Improved vagal tone
Equanimity (harmony/balance)
Reduces self criticism
Resources:
https://www.ekhartyoga.com/articles/meditation/loving-kindness-meditation-script-and-7-reasons-to-use-it
https://plumvillage.org/library/songs/loving-kindness
