That may be good advice for a beginner. I am not a master teacher of metta meditation so I am not qualified to have an opinion. However I do think once someone has learned the technique and has some facility with it and is using it to elevate their mood, it would be okay to do what I said. That is more in line with what I was thinking about when I wrote the post. I was not thinking that someone would do that as their main practice of metta when learning.

Aside from the point about using family members, the point about not making an emotional connection with a dead person may be true for some people but is not true for everyone. If you loved the person while they lived and you believe in the afterlife, you can have a very strong connection. 



Thanks

I also think we are free to be creative, I often do metta thinking of one of my grandmothers, who passed away last year. It works pretty well ! And sometimes interesting things happen. I am not at all into powers and magic, so have nothing to tell on that front, but here is a short story about heart :

During my last retreat we used a mix of metta/visualization to practice open awareness, "asking" some figure we idealize to come lend us their consciousness, and meditate for us, to take over our experience and get us to mahamudra.

I would think of my grandmother, imagining her as embodying the highest spiritual and heart qualities (it was an idealized version of her, of course).

A while later, a very strong image appeared in my mind : it was myself, as a child. The image itself I could recognize from a picture I own. I must be three or four or five years old, my father is there with other kids, and I'm just completely absorbed in my book (things don't change), looking baby-like still, with cute and kinda long curly hair. The image appeared, and then the kid looked up and gazed at me, eyes in the eyes, very intensly. In this moment I had the craziest feeling, goosebumps everywhere, elation, I knew that this kid was my child, and I felt the deepest love for him, a love I have rarely experienced, but that I imagine parents must feel - the kind where you know you could die for that one. 

It was a very special moment, and I have a sense that this is actually what she would have felt looking at her grandchildren... Very very moving and intense. 

So, I can feel what you're talking about Jim, although I don't necessarily believe in an "afterlife" (well, what do we mean by that exactly, etc.)