Transcript
So this will be an introduction to the first two sections of the course, because you have some options in terms of the order you do those meditations in.
So, when you’re making a fire the first step is to create a spark, and when you’re cultivating metta the first step is to find a felt sense of metta. That felt sense will be the spark with which you can start making a fire.
What do I mean by a felt sense of metta? Because I’m going to use that term a lot.
When you have this intention, or attitude of kindness, caring, there’s a way that shows up in the body - it’s something you can feel; it’s embodied. If you imagine the difference between getting an insincere hug from somebody that you don’t really like, and getting a really good hug from somebody who loves and cares about you, you feel that difference in the body. That felt sense that you get from a really good hug - the feeling of warmth and love - and that’s what I’m talking about when I say the felt sense of metta.
So how it shows up for me often is: a sense of glowing, a warmth, joy, and gentleness, peacefulness, centred around the middle of my chest and radiating outwards through the rest of my body. It feels light, feels like joy, it’s very pleasant, it feels very open, spacious, soothing. Something like that is quite a common way for the felt sense of metta to be experienced but it may show up quite differently for you.
When you’re starting off metta practice, the first step is to find a way to start creating and getting familiar with that felt sense.
For some people getting familiar with the felt sense seems really easy, and for some people it’s a very difficult first step. If you find it tricky or unintuitive, don’t despair, I also found it completely mystifying for quite a while, and it’s really not any indication of your potential with metta practice. It doesn’t mean that you’re not kind enough as a person, or anything like that. It can just take a little bit of getting used to.
Different practices work for different people, so in Section One, we’re going to start off just experimenting with a few different types of what I call scaffolding practices. That’s a term I’ll use a lot in this course. “Scaffolding practice” refers to any structured practice to help you create and support the felt sense of metta, and to stay engaged with the practice.
The first thing a scaffolding practice does is to help to create the actual felt sense of metta itself. It’s like the flint that you’re using to create sparks. Until the felt sense of metta is stable enough, you need to put some energy into creating and sustaining the felt sense of metta.
The second thing scaffolding practices do is help to keep attention engaged with the meditation. You eventually want to be able to place your attention directly on the felt sense of metta, but for a while, that felt sense will be somewhat unstable, quite light, or sometimes just absent altogether. So you need something to do with your attention to stay engaged with the meditation. If the metta isn’t yet a clear or stable object for attention to land on, attention will be especially prone to wandering off.
So scaffolding practices also provide something structured for your attention to do, like a little game, that helps to make the meditation engaging. Common examples are phrases and visualisations, though we’ll explore others.
So scaffolding practices help you to create the felt sense of metta, and support attention to stay engaged with the meditation. Section one of the course will give you a few of these scaffolding practices to try, with the emphasis on to find what works for you when it comes to making that first little spark of metta. So that’s section 1.
And if you already have a tried and tested metta practice that you like a lot, that really works for you, you can just skip section 1 entirely. I’d suggest trying them out anyway, as you might pick up something useful, but it’s up to you.
There’s also no expectation that you land on one method that you’ll stick with forever. If one day you feel like phrases, the next day you feel like a visualisation, and so on. that’s encouraged - throughout this whole course. Be responsive to what you need, do what feels good.
In Section 2, we’ll focus on Supportive Approaches to the spark practices. For example, there’s a big difference between just repeating the phrases mechanically, without really being connected to the meaning, and using the phrases to express this intention of wellwishing in a way that helps to connect you with your capacity for kindness and warmth, that really sparks that felt sense of metta. And section 2 is about stances, attitudes, ways of approaching the scaffolding practices in such a way that’s going to be most supportive of the felt sense.
Most instructions I’ve seen suggest just continuing with the scaffolding practices - not to worry if it feels like mechanical repetition - and trusting that eventually the felt sense will emerge. That’s one possible approach, and it may be most suitable at times; it may work very well for some people at some times. But it’s also a rather narrow approach - there are many other mindsets that one can bring to the scaffolding practices that might help to connect you with that felt sense more easily. That’s what we’ll explore in section 2 - ways of playing with intentions, different ways of engaging with the scaffolding practice to support the emergence of the metta.
One thing to emphasise is that the purpose of these first two sections is just to find a way to create these little sparks of the felt sense of metta that works for you. Don’t worry so much about sustaining it right now. If the felt sense endures, that’s great, but that’s something that develops over time, and that we’ll focus on more later in the course. These little initial sparks of metta may be quite fleeting, and subtle, they may feel like nothing special; just like actual sparks don’t look like raging fires right away! But by the end of these two sections, if you’re spending most of your meditation with the scaffolding practice rather than mind-wandering, and you’re able to create at least occasional slight sparks of metta, then you’ve accomplished the purpose of these sections with flying colours.
But one thing to note is that for the section 2 practices, I obviously don’t know what scaffolding practice you’ll be using - whether it’s phrases, or visualisations, or something else. So whatever scaffolding practice you use when you move on to section 2, just make sure that you’re familiar enough with the instructions that you can do it without guidance, because there won’t be reminders about the specifics.
So, that means, in terms of how to actually work through these first two sections, you have some options.
You need to start with a scaffolding practice. So you can go through section 1 first, to find one or two practices that work best for you, and then go onto section 2 with that. Or you could try a scaffolding practice, and then pick a supportive approach from section 2 to combine it with, and just go through alternating between section 1 and section 2 practices like that. You could just freestyle. Whatever you’d prefer; there are no rules. Whatever feels most interesting or helpful to you.
So I’m sending much metta to you and hope that you find something supportive and heart-opening in these sections.