Love
Welcome to ATTUNEMENT, my monthly blog!
Each month we "tune into" a theme related to mindfulness,
and I share a creative mindfulness practice and tune based on this theme.
This month of February 2023, we're TUNING INTO the frequency of:
LOVE.
LOVE is one of the fruits of mindfulness.
Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn said:
When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace, and love.
Love takes many forms, some of which psychologist Donna Rockwell names below:
"Self-compassion is love, as researcher Kristin Neff discovered in her groundbreaking work. Dedication to human rights is love. "Justice," said Martin Luther King, Jr., "is really love in calculation." The Buddha's focus on right view or clarity was also arrived at through a mindful awareness of primordial love existent beneath the layers of discursive mind. Holding a space for the experience of "the self" and of "the other" in all walks of life is love. And finally, embracing inclusive community is love..."
Rockwell adds, "Mindfulness...helps quiet neurological excitation in parts of the brain that habitually recycle negative messaging and instead makes a habit of returning the mind to present moment awareness that love is all you need, or more poignantly, that underneath it all, love is all there is."
Brown University meditation teacher Éowyn Ahlstrom says that mindfulness can help us grow healthy love because through mindfulness we develop clarity.
"We cannot transform something we are unaware of", so "we bring curious attention to our hearts and minds. With awareness, we begin gently inclining toward care, patience and respect for ourselves and others."
The above is certainly true for me (and perhaps for you?)
When I’m not tuned into my own thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, I’m not self-aware.
Without this mindful awareness, I don't have the clarity to make skillful choices (that are inclined toward care, patience, and respect for myself and others). Rather, I'm apt to react with irritability, anxiety, fear, or anger.
We see this pattern on a global scale--those acting without mindful awareness--without love-- cause harm to themselves and others. But at each and every moment, we as a society and as individuals (especially those of us with power and privilege) have the choice to move towards love. This isn't always an easy choice. It may feel inconvenient or uncomfortable.
But, as author Meredith Gaston writes in her book Choosing Love,
"We cannot survive and flourish with our personal interests at the heart of our thinking."
"We must," she says, "choose the way of love: a way of unity, peace, and joy".
Creative Mindfulness Practice: Lovingkindness
In this meditation practice of lovingkindness, we recite specific phrases that send well wishes to ourselves and others.
At first it might seem silly, or even phony, but meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg says:
"…the practice of loving-kindness is about cultivating love as a strength, a muscle, a tool that challenges our tendency to see people (including ourselves) as disconnected, statically and rigidly isolated from one another.Loving-kindness is about opening ourselves up to others with compassion and equanimity, which is a challenging exercise, requiring us to push back against assumptions, prejudices, and labels that most of us have internalized."
The traditional phrases are:
May I (you / we) be happy
May I (you / we) be peaceful
May I (you / we) be well
Traditionally, you'd recite these phrases first to yourself and then to an increasingly wider group: someone you feel close to (even a pet!), then someone neutral, then someone you have some negative feelings about, and finally to all beings.
But you can adapt the phrases as you wish, and you can also change up the order of recipients (i.e. first your pet, then your partner, then all beings, then finally yourself).
You can also direct lovingkindness to specific groups or individuals at any point in this practice. Basically, play with this practice and feel free to experiment.
Like any type of mindfulness practice, lovingkindness meditation isn't a magic bullet. Rather, it's a tool that can support you in living more lovingly and compassionately in your daily life.
The more united and connected we allow ourselves to feel in love, the happier, healthier, and richer we become. The more we seek to care for, understand and harmonise with one another and life, the more connected, inspired and alive we feel.
-MEREDITH GASTON
This Month’s Tune
For our February theme of LOVE I've chosen my original song "A Place of Love".
This song was commissioned as a "Handmade Song" by the Spiritual Life and Learning Center in Columbus, OH.
Listen to it on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you stream music. Some of its lyrics are below:
With compassion as the mission,
Peace is what we’re wishing for,
And wishes can become reality,
When I love you, and you see love in me.
