The first is like striking a gong; actively creating a felt sense of metta, and the second is like listening to it.
In the beginning, striking the metta gong may not do all that much; you get some underwhelming little thunks that don’t sound very gongy at all. There’s not a lot of resonance for you to listen to, so the emphasis in the beginning will often need to be on the first kind of intention. This is the emphasis in most metta instructions, which stress simply repeating phrases.
But after a bit of practice, and finding a scaffolding practice that works for you, when you strike the gong, it will ring for quite some time. If the gong is still sounding, you don’t need to hit it again, and if you have a stable felt sense of metta in the body, you don’t have to keep repeating your scaffolding practice; your attention can shift to that felt sense. So more and more, your emphasis will be on the second kind of intention; just listening, appreciating.
We’ll be playing with these two kinds of intention in this practice.
Duration: 23:40