Reading Sharon Salzberg, I realize Metta runs much deeper than I had imagined, and it has me wondering how it might impact a person.

Ofcourse it feels good and makes you kinder, but I intuit it runs much deeper - I saw some study a while back on expert meditators, where generating compassion had them shift brainwaves from alpha to high gamma, which is usually associated with things like peak performance and lucid dreaming.

If anyone has gone far with Metta, or perhaps even done retreats with and completed it, what changes have you noticed it brings?

Producing metta in meditation and daily life helps me to let go of attachments and aversions. It makes you happy and when you are happy you don't need anything, you don't want anything, liking and disliking doesn't upset you, you are less attached you are more non-attached.

For this reason metta dispels ill will.

It also shows me that emotions are flexible so that even if I can't keep the metta going or if I forget to produce metta, I see emotions as biological phenomena, not reality, emotions are not "truth" I know I don't have to believe the story they are telling me about good and bad, right and wrong, etc. - it shows me the problem is not the situation, the problem is my reaction to the situation. That doesn't mean I ignore problems it means I can respond more with reason and compassion and less with out of control emotions.

Producing metta reduces the feeling of separation between self and not-self - when you love something you don't need to push it away. When you love everything, you don't need to separate yourself from anything.

When the feeling of separation is weaker, the sense of self itself is weaker because if the distinction between self and not-self is not made, then there is nothing by which to define self.

https://inquiringmind.com/article/2701_w_kornfield-enlightenments/

The first retreat I ever attended was a four night residential Mettā retreat. Certain factors came together which triggered a heart opening that lasted for days. I spent hours bawling my eyes out each day because I was so grateful & overjoyed to be alive. It felt as if the entire Universe had unfolded just to get me on that retreat to have that heart opening. To this day, I have similar, smaller heart openings that pop up from time to time. 

Mettā is not my main practice, but it holds a special place in my heart. The practice itself and my experience on that retreat showed me that there is an alternate way to relate to my life with sincerity & genuine gratitude. That feeling often fades in the face of my various self-protective mechanisms, but it can be called up again with a little daily Mettā practice.

Mettā is a beautiful practice that can enrich one's lived experience in ways that are sincerely life affirming - trying to quantify the benefits via brain waves or peak performance misses the point in my opinion, but we all come to these practices in our own way. Sharon's book is a great one - it's the one we used on the retreat.

@akd  Thanks AKD, this is what I intuitively hoped was possible. Your comment was very valuable to me. Do you recall exactly what book of Sharon's you used at the retreat?

@jimsmith Thanks Jim, that explains it super clearly.
It would be so nice to have an ongoing buffer against illwill and attachment.

That's one of the uses of mindfulness in daily life, to keep the mind from "forgetting" what it learned in meditation. When the Buddha taught mindfulness in the satipatthana sutta (the four establishments of mindfulness) He said (paraphrasing), "a monk lives thus..." before each type of meditation and mindfulness practice he describes. Shinzen Young said (paraphrasing) When you start, meditation is something you do in life, later on life is something that happens in meditation.

Apologies Aeon - I somehow thought that you had mentioned the title of the book in question (I guess that's my active imagination for you). 

The book was Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. I believe it was her first book and it handles the subject rather well. I have seen/heard Daniel recommend it in podcasts or maybe in MCTB2. 

​​​​​​​Enjoy!

For years my approach to meditation left me a bit edgy and anti-social. Metta has helped with that. I find I'm much warmer, easier to be around. At least I seem that way.

I also really like the approach of incorporating metta into insight. For example in the TWIM approach. I think it's a helpful and friendly way to start and while I didn't personally start that way, it is helping me immensely a few paths down the line. 

+1 on dispelling ill will. 

I would say this very slowly, with an exhale on each key word, so that even a sentence took multiple breaths. And when I said the words, I would imagine-feel what they meant in the body. Calm, ease, healthy, rested, whole, safe, free from danger, etc.  That way I felt the flicker of my good intention in my body (if just a little bit). 

May I be calm (exhale) and at ease (exhale)
May I be healthy (exhale), rested (exhale), and whole (exhale)
May I be safe () and complete free from danger ()
May I bravely experience this moment () and wisely avoid reactivity ()
May I awaken
May I be free from suffering
May I be happy.

If I didn't connect with a line, I would repeat it over again. I can remember times when it took me multiple times to truly express a heartfelt intention as I said the words. (By the way, when concentration gets strong, their can be all sorts of weird talking/mental speaking effects, words that echo or drop off, and lots of different mental states, odd feelings, etc. So it can be a odd kind of dreamy struggle sometimes just to get through this...)

Anyway, when that developed some momentum (feeling the sincerity of my wish for myself and connecting viscerally with what it did somatically to my felt body), then I did: May those who support me... (all of the lines above)

And eventually added: May those who oppose me... (all of the lines above)

And eventually added: May all beings in the universe, known and unknown, may they... (all of the lines above)

and regardless of what categories I did, I would always end with myself again.


So, you can see that if you did yourself, support, oppose, all, and yourself --- with the very slow approach of using multiple breaths --- that's easily a decently long sit!


Glad you're asking this Aeon, I didn't say it before, but I had a hunch that metta would be a good thing to add to your practice before/while you dive into another round of digesting trauma.

A useful way to access metta, if there's any resistance, is forgiveness. That's often how the TWIM guys teach it when people have difficulty taking loving kindness as an object. 

You can start with yourself or someone you have some friendly feelings towards. Note that person has probably done some wrong in their life, to you or otherwise and feel if you can forgive them for it. Then as forgiveness happens you can let go of "doing forgiveness" and it blossoms into something more compassionate and open. (I defintiely would not start practicing with someone who has really wronged you or who you have difficult history with, you can get to that later) 

Oh and smiling really helps. Doesn't have to be a big smile. Cheeky little buddha grin works wonders on the body-mind !!

+1 from me too!

 I started doing metta and the other bramaviharas from the instructions that Daniel gives in MCTB2 so when I encountered TWIM, it made sense to me to combine them with insight meditation as they do. It's good stuff.

Conal