May You Be Well
May You Be Well One of my favorite Stress Free Now stories is from a participant (let’s call her Susan) who works in a call center. She spends her days calling people who are struggling to pay their credit card bills. No matter how rude or threatening the person on the other end of the phone is being, Susan says she focuses on sending the person positive energy and compassion. She ends all her calls by saying, “May you be well. Thank you for calling.” This, she says, stops the caller in his or her tracks and immediately softens the interaction. Callers are genuinely touched by her sincere gesture of goodwill. Susan says that using the Stress Free Now program has allowed her to separate herself from callers’ anger, which used to make her feel stressed, because she understands that their anger is not personally directed at her. She feels like she has a “shield” that protects her from their negativity. Sending Loving-Kindness The process of generating strong feelings of compassion, empathy, love and goodwill outward to other people, like Susan does, has a powerfully healing effect on our mind and body. When we are able to be fully in the moment and create positive loving feelings toward others, we feel more deeply connected and in tune with the people in our lives. Meditation provides the calm and focus needed to direct these positive feelings outward. Practicing lovingkindness on a regular basis allows you to let go of resentments and petty annoyances and live from a kinder place. The loving-kindness meditation you will learn this week begins with directing positive feelings to yourself before you move to directing feelings outward to others. That’s why one critical first step of practicing loving-kindness is applying last week’s lesson to improving your relationship with yourself. We direct loving-kindness by saying to ourselves, “May I be well,” or, “May I be happy.” We generate feelings of compassion and understanding for ourselves. Next, we focus on a person we may be having difficulty with or are
concerned for. We bring an image of that person into our mind, and we send him or her positive intentions: “May he or she be well,” or, “May he or she have peace.” We see this person as a fallible human being just like us, deserving of compassion and forgiveness. If this person has wronged us, we forgive them by saying, “I forgive you. May you be well.” We ask for forgiveness from this person, saying, “If I have somehow harmed this person, whether I realize it or not, please forgive me.” It doesn’t matter if the person is aware of our anger or even alive; the goal is to release negative emotions by consciously replacing them with positive feelings and goodwill. Loving-kindness meditation can extend far beyond ourselves and the people we know. We can create a field of love and compassion for all living beings by saying to ourselves, “May all living creatures be well.” We focus our awareness on generating warm, accepting feelings to all living creatures. Experiencing Inner Peace When we end a loving kindness meditation, we bring our awareness back to our body and spend a few moments in quiet awareness with the warm, loving feelings we have created. Loving-kindness creates a deep sense of inner peace and is a highly effective strategy for feeling less frustrated and more accepting of others. Loving-kindness can sound forced and seem disingenuous until you practice it a few times. Spending time exerting your energy and awareness to pump positive feelings into the world will make you a kinder person. When you are experiencing conflict or are threatened with being drawn into negative thoughts and feelings, this practice will give you a new perspective so that you can soften your stance and open your heart rather than hunker down into negativity. May you be well.
