THAT BRIGHT VEIN OF GOODNESS IN US ALL

Well, I finished the 8-week Cultivating Kindness Meditation Course at Duke Integrative Medicine.  Just in time.  The news today is more corona-virus shut-downs. Oh my.  What could be more stressful?  We are all a bit on edge.  Or worse.  Yesterday in a drop-in meditation class the program director announced "closed until further notice."  Our college student has been sent home to finish the semester. Clearly more kindness can't hurt.  

Our class had long-time practitioners and newbies, moms and a dad or two, an emergency room physician, a young widow, a librarian, retirees, people who traveled far and locals like myself.  Did the course make us kinder?  Thankfully 🙏 judging ourselves is anti-loving and kind. But yes, I think the practice of meditation is helping me better understand and connect with myself and others.  

So, here is a little of what I've been learning (and unlearning) so far.  You may know it all already. But with some things I am grateful for repetition; perhaps you are too.     

• Meditation isn't a religion.  It can be faith-based or secular.  In my practice I am daily brought closer to God. But that's not everyone's practice. 
• It doesn't require special skill or background.  If you can breathe you can meditate.
• It only takes whatever time you give it.
• It doesn't eliminate sadness, difficulty, grief or pain.  It does teach new ways of coping with these.
• It isn't an attempt to zone out, stop thinking or focus on only positive thoughts.  That's not humanly possible. 
• It is a way to recognize our thoughts and relate to them more skillfully.  Stress, anxiety, pain or depression become more manageable, allowing us to make better decisions.  The result is we feel safer, more confident, calmer. 
• Meditation helps us respond, rather than react, to what is happening in our lives. Or in our minds.
• The concentration we learn restores our energy unlike distractions that deplete it.  
• Meditation is not self-indulgent or self-centered.  We learn about ourselves but what we learn we apply to others.  

Mindfulness the same.  Mindfulness is an attitude, meditation an action.  Neither is a withdrawing from anything, not fun or careers or politics or anything else.  We have all the skills we need for mindfulness at our finger tips.  It's always available to us. 

Specifically, in the loving kindness meditation the anchor is not the breath but a repetition of traditional phrases.  Our class read the book Real Happiness by Sharon Salzberg.  I'm not drawn to the title; happy seems almost too trivial for what we were learning.  I'd choose "at peace" or "content," wider umbrellas than happiness--although one can give rise to the other. The book includes such traditional meditation anchors as "May I live with ease," but in class we were encouraged to create our own.  For painful times I like, "With God's help, may I remember that my life is vaster than this moment."  Or, "With God's help, may my care for myself and others protect and calm me."  Better yet, from our liturgy the prayer "Help, Save, Comfort and Defend Me Gracious Lord."  You could think about what phrases might work for you.  It's a pleasant task, creating a phrase that we'd want to return to. 

Salzberg talks about "add-ons," those unhelpful threads we follow from a painful physical or emotional experience.  Projections into the future that add mental anguish on to what is already difficult enough.  She shows how mindfulness can restore balance, teaching us to observe all feelings of whatever intensity with curiosity, interest and compassion. To watch them come and go. To recognize that we are not our feelings.  

I especially like the idea during these chaotic times of thinking of kindness as a strength, not a weakness.   
                                        In peace, Nina Naomi