I did this kind of thing at the very beginning of my interest in meditation; I red one psychology book (that was what I was studiying at the time) where they mentioned the brhama viharas (without calling them like this, obviously), and I found that I was able to create at will feeling of joy and imperturbability. (The other two felt too mawkish in he beginning)
I kept going this for some time and then I bumped in some writings of the Dalai Lama, so I begun coultivating metta and compassion in a sistematic way (by that I mean, I would instantly evocate metta for every single human being that would happen to be my view field during the day).
It has to be told that at the time I was completely clueless about anything regarding buddhism and meditation at all. With that I mean so completely clueless that I had no idea that there was comething called "meditation" and "formal practice"; I just did it during daily life, wich means, only informal practice.
Since at the time I had no clue about nothing at all, thinking about it now I did it in a very rookie and primitive way... and still it worked pretty well.
So...
Whether it makes your life more joyful
Absolutely yes. A lot.
Whether it reduces your suffering
From a duality point of view obviously no change at all; however, there was so much joy and happiness and hearth-warm in general that it was great regardless
-Whether it worked out as expected (and how, or how not)
-Anything else you find interesting, regardless of whether it confirms or goes contrary to your expectations
Here I put some considerations...
There was a lot of good changes;
-I was able to relate more happily and skillfully with thoose around me, even in cases where my relation with them was very much tense at the time
-There was a general feeling of having found something absolutely extraordinary
-People would tell me that I was happier and so on
What it didn't do:
-many much ingrained tendencies remained the same; the more profound stuff was not worked out by doing this (though I didn't realized that at the time)
-it didn't created massive and lasting personality changes
Others:
-I could decide to create metta before talking to anyone, before having to relate with them; this would create a massive change in that particoular moments together, and it would easily pass away after having left them.
-Sometimes I would just try to sustain happiness; this would eventually require some effort, so after like one hour of straight happiness it was a relief to drop the effort in order to mantein that state of mind; same goes for metta.
-In regard to metta, at the beginning there was the sense that it wasn't real: the feeling was there, but it felt somehow forced, fabricated, not true, so I would experience both metta and some kind of underlying tension. However, with weeks and months passing, the feelings would arise in a way that was more and more spontaneous and much less forced, and that was quite an improvement. However, while my life at that time was much better than before, there was a general sense that there was always something not perfect there, and that was annoying (and I think that's the main reason why after some time I switched to vipassana -even that without knowing what I was doing, just following the mindfullness instructions from a cognitivist manual without any formal practice at all, and still Mind&Body was absolutely great and the A&P was amazing, and then I was hooked up...XD)
-While it's true that there was not any profound personality change, it's also true that, even if I stopped doing it quite a long time ago, the consequences of what I did in that period are still ringing in many ways; the most obvious thing is that I can evocate metta and joy with incredible ease, but the fact that there are theese feeling arising in a way that is quite spontaneous and random in my daily life is something that I'm sure had and is still having an incredible amount of consequences that I'm not really aware of, but that are still having an huge impact in my life. In general, I would say that the only way you can possibly overstimate metta is by considering it superior to insight...
I'm pretty sure now I'm a better person for having done thoose months of training in that way.
From a traditional buddhist point of view, what Ajhan Sona is talking about here falls squarely in the realm of right effort [wich I have the feeling that is a part of the path that is quite overlooked in this community...].
Now, having learned something from my mistakes, I'll give some slightly refined instructions, hoping that someone will find them helpful.
In my opinion, the thing should go something like this:
1)mindfullness of mental states all over the place
2)If some negative mental state or tension is going on, let it go;
if you can't do it, just have fun experimenting with it; see how it changes when you make it flow into your body, when you expand your awareness outside your body, when you label or vipassanize it, or maybe what happens if you resolve/decide something like "This is not skillful, there is not any reason to perpetrate this madness, so I won't", or relaxing the attention around it, or watching it with metta, or playing with it in some other way...
3)If the mental state is neutral or positive, only then one should create a positive mental state as described by Sona, and all of this should be done paying an extra eye on avoiding to create tension in the process of sustaining the feeling.
Just remembering how it feels to feel good is more than enought to create the feeling, there is no need to force it (I put it strong because I really believe that to be a key factor in this kind of practices); if it fades immediatly, you can just wait a moment and then remember it again; this process is a lot of fun, there is no reason to try hard to do something when you can just be there enjoing happiness; once it is effortlessly created and recreated again and again, after some time it will become more and more stable and lasting, and at that point it should be very possible to extend this at will in the whole body.
-Also, wandering mind should not be a problem, since you just can use it in order to think about happiness, something that makes you happy, or about how it feels in general to feel happy in this very moment..
-Also, you might want to recall different flavors of happiness, finding out the one you like the most...
By doing that for a some time, by the way, going into jhanas should be very easy (for, quoting Ajhan Sucitto quoting some sutta, "For a person who is experiencing pleasure, there is no need for an act of will, "May my mind grow concentrated"; it is in the nature of things that the mind of a person experiencing pleasure grows concentrated"), and I also wonder whether while doing that is really possible to avoid some insight progress, since mindfullness of the mind states and of subtle tensions is a key factor of the process.
However, that's it; hope that report and advices will be useful to someone... bye!
Metta
