Tag: loving kindness meditation

How the Metta Prayer and the Shower Juggle Are Alike

I’ve been practicing mindfulness meditation since 2014, when I became uncomfortably aware of how unpleasant I was becoming on the job and elsewhere. I called this “burnout.” The word still works as an explanation although it was and is sometimes still an excuse.

I learned about the Lovingkindness meditation or the Metta Prayer during the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course I took almost a decade ago.

I used to pray when I was a child. I read the Bible and prayed. I viewed the act of prayer as a request to God back then. And I still probably regard the Metta Prayer as a kind of bargain between me and the cosmos or whatever it is I think of as a higher power.

Just because I say the Metta Prayer doesn’t mean that anybody’s going to treat each other differently. It doesn’t make people get up and square dance together. However, the caution about not expecting others to change just because you say the Metta Prayer doesn’t mean that the practice would not enhance a sense of community—if enough people did it.

There are dozens of scripts for the Metta Prayer easily accessible on the web. The part of it that is directed to those with whom I’m having a difficult time is tricky. Often enough, my goal is to use it as a way of somehow changing the person I’m having difficulty with. It’s the same way I used prayers as a child.

That’s a mistake, but at least I’m aware of it. Prayer is not a request for God or the cosmos to intercede on my behalf so that life won’t be so difficult for me sometimes.

I have trouble remembering that I’m not really a role model, especially nowadays. I’m just an old retired guy who was difficult to work with and needed to change, despite my status as a psychiatrist. I tell dad jokes and clown around but I’m still an old guy with problems—like just about every other old guy.

So, I’m still off and on practicing the Metta Prayer. I’ve noticed that practicing mindfulness is a lot like practicing juggling, which I’ve been doing for almost a year now. I still can’t do certain tricks, like the shower juggle. I can do about three or four throws and drop the balls, sometimes on my head (which is why I wear safety goggles!). And I still tend to use prayer like I’m negotiating a deal to get rid of my faults and troubles.

But I haven’t given up practicing the shower juggle. And I haven’t given up on the Metta Prayer.

Loving-Kindness Meditation in the Real World

Today is the first day of Martin Luther King, Jr. Human Rights Week and I’m giving a shout-out for acts of kindness as well as the Loving-Kindness meditation. A neighbor with a snowblower helped clear our driveway a couple of weeks ago. A couple of days ago he did the same for his next-door neighbor. I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate the city snowplow driver was kind enough to avoid plugging the driveways on our street. No kidding, we watched the snowplow use what was obviously a different plowing technique which left our driveways relatively clear of snow.

The Loving-Kindness meditation is a mindfulness practice that Dr. King would probably have supported. It’s a way to send love to yourself and others, including those with whom you might be in conflict—even your enemies. King might say, “Now is the time” for something like that.

I’m reestablishing my mindfulness and exercise practice after a several month lapse. I first took the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course several years ago through The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. It made a difference in how I approached problem-solving and conflict. I was on autopilot most of the time and wrote a blog post about my experience before and after my mindfulness training experience, “How I left the walking dead for the walking dead meditation.”

Part of that program included instruction on the Loving-Kindness meditation. I’m still a beginner at mindfulness, although my approach to life is still ironically more like the expert’s in Shunryu Suzuki’s quote:

“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”–Shunryu Suzuki

I need to keep working on being more open to different ideas, interpretations, and ways of getting things done—approaching challenges with a beginner’s mind.

One recent challenge is hanging pictures. Sena and I hung a picture yesterday. I wanted to measure everything and she wanted to estimate. She had misgivings about my measurements but went along with it. After the picture was hung, even I had to admit it was not in the right spot. Funny thing, after a short while, she admitted that the misplacement was not that far off and that she was getting used to it. If you’ve ever hung pictures, you know I’m leaving out a lot of the back-and-forth negotiation about how we finally arrived at that middle ground. It involved loving kindness on both sides.

We’ll see how the next picture hanging goes.