All these arise

Just these words…

May I be safe.
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I live with ease.

Over and over again, for myself, and then for a benefactor, for a loved one, for someone I feel neutrally about, for someone with whom I am having difficulty. And then for all beings everywhere, without exception.

These are words I said daily in January, February, and March, after the idea came to me to practice love this year. Three months on each of the four divine abodes — lovingkindess, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

Each morning I sat on my bench in my little nook, and I practiced lovingkindess.

I said these phrases, these simple words, while imagining the faces of those known to me, not so well-known to me, those with whom I’ve become entangled. No need to force any feelings, just say the words, and the feelings will come.

All kinds of feelings. I have felt anxious, wanting so badly for a loved one to be happy. I have felt a little bored or disinterested, often with a neutral person (the person at the check-out line), but not always. I have noticed doubt, hopelessness. I noticed how easily a feeling of friendliness flowed at times, and how it felt stuck and a little stale at others. I have felt a silly-sort of happiness, a swelling of pure love. I noticed whatever came up, and I went back to the words.

I noticed things while not on the bench too. Like how I couldn’t really believe that my kids love me so much. Like how I constantly qualified whatever I offered to the world — from the soup I made to sharing what I was grateful for about myself.

“Oh, sorry, it’s a little bland,” or “I don’t really mean to imply…”

How I said things and then leaned forward and covered my mouth, as if trying to take them back. How I chewed my lips.

On the last day of a three-day meditation retreat where I practiced the brahma-viharas — my first retreat! and the first time away from both boys; I was somewhere beautiful and green and quiet and it was lovely and intense and purifying — on this last day, I noticed my heart, aching like a little grinch heart as it suddenly burst into bloom. The tears flowed from my eyes.

I felt my heart ache into its own fullness, from just these words: May I be…

I didn’t really understand before but bringing forth lovingkindess also brings forth all those things that can keep lovingkindness from coming forth… All these things arise — feelings, memories, images — and when they arise they can be received, and when they are received, they may be set free.

So I’ve watched things rising up, I’ve seen things cracking open, all from the simple act of saying these words:

May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease.
May you be be safe. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you live with ease.

I offer these words…over and over again, with intention, to myself, to the world, to you. I hold out my hands, and they give and receive.

~ * ~

{linking up with Just Write at The Extraordinary Ordinary… this time with the prompt “words.”}

If you want to learn more about lovingkindness and each of the brahma-viharas, read Sharon Salzberg’s book Lovingkindness. It’s beautiful.