Hello everybody,

I have gained an insight into the nature of mettā. Over the past 5 months, I have been practicing mettā for several hours a day. My sense of identification with the material body has decreased. I find myself being less identified with the body.

Ego cannot be removed merely by an act of will. In my experience, mettā acts as a solvent for the fabrication of ego. All you need to do is practice goodwill constantly, for a significant period of time. It's not easy to express the whole experience in words. The effect of mettā is noticeable only after some time. But it changes you as a person as the practice has a transformative character.

Now what I have heard long time ago--that our ego is not real--has became partially part of my reality. Words of Buddha come from the experience of meditation. Intellectual understanding is superficial. Real understanding comes from experience of meditation. I have written a story on Medium, expressing my experience with mettā. Here's an excerpt:


Please read it for your own benefit.

Thank you,
Marino

If you are not the body then what are you?

+1

Just witnessing.

What exactly is witnessing?

Awareness. What else can it be? 

What is witnessing what?

Where does awareness come from? How does awareness come to be?

I find that practicing metta, in meditation and in daily life, leads to a kind of feeling that includes metta along with something else ... that is a combination humility, forgiveness, and surrender. The surrender has different aspects: one is surrendering to emotions, not resisting emotions, the resistance creates more suffering than the emotion. Also surrendering to God, or a higher power, or fate, or the universe or whatever. This means not rejecting what happens not resisting reality at an emotional level - again, resistance just causes more suffering. (This doesn't mean you don't react to situations, it means you can react with compassion and wisdom rather than out of control emotions.)  It feels a lot like letting go - so when clinging arises (dukkha) you are already letting go, you don't have to do anything else, you are already doing what you need to do.

The effect is that you don't put your own personal interests ahead of anyone else's interests. You don't try to push your goals / wants / needs / likes / dislikes ahead of other people's. The result is a diminishing of the ego and a diminishing of the sense of agency also a diminishing of the sense of separateness.

There is a kind of feedback loop where metta feeds humility and surrender, and humility and surrender reduce self-centeredness that enhances the ability to feel metta.

It's jhana like in that you can crank up the intensity if you want. It can be deeply spiritual in the sense of the non-physical aspect of consciousness - its a spiritual vibe that opens one to their spiritual faculties (which are most safely approached when done without selfishness intentions).

My awareness is witnessing various phenomena of this world, including my bodily and mental processes. This is called externally oriented awareness. When awareness is focused on itself, it is said to be internally oriented awareness. Awareness and consciousness are terms with very similar meanings.  Consciousness is always in relation to some object. You are always conscious of something. Consciousness always needs some object to be. There are three fundamental requirements for consciousness: the subject, the object, and the relationship between the subject and the object. However, awareness can exist without an object. It can be... well... aware of itself. This is a technical description. I don't have the experience of being aware of awareness so I can't speak firsthand. 
 

Hi Marino,

You write that practicing metta loving kindness has decreased your identification with the body. What do you mean by body and why do you feel the lessening of identification with it being helpful?

In my understanding we have two different subtle bodies or minds. I am a tantric so I don't know how they are called in theravada but sometimes people speak of the causal body and the astral body. Astral body is the one that is very bodily and follows the form of the physical body and causal is the one which is spread out to create the aura and various centers outside the body as well as inside the body. Astral is made of meridians, causal of nadis. 

Metta meditation works mainly with the astral body which like I said is very bodily. Sometimes it is actually difficult to differentiate which sensation is physical and which is astral (which is nonphysical) because the two are so tied to each other. To me metta is a healer of psychological trauma which gradually returns the system back into its original pure condition. I understand that identification with the body can in some sense be a relief but my experience is that the more loving kindness, that wonderful soft purity, sets into the body the more embodied we become. Healing of trauma is as you describe dissolving of ego but in a different way than through insight (which takes place in the other subtle body, causal).

Much love