I love metta practice.
Today, for neutral people I was able to focus in on one of the gals at the grocery store that I see quite a bit. She’s got a great smile and energy, and while I’m not close to her I find it easy to bring up metta for her.
I usually struggle to some extent summoning metta for friends/family, and other folks in the spectrum of the practice – but for some reason I’ve always been great with neutral people. I’m not entirely sure what that says about me and my close relationships. My boyfriend was not particularly amused by this discovery.
The sit didn’t start out easily though, as I was falling into metta based concentration I started to get seriously nauseous as the energy began to build. So nauseous I thought I would have to stop sitting. I did my best to treat it like any other intrusive sensation and refocus on the metta – and within a few moments the nausea went away.
What I was left with was a really beautiful metta state – a few visual formations of geometric patterns and seated buddhas. I contunually dropped those formations and refocused on the metta state with relative ease.
I found on this sit it was really easy for me to stay with the one person for the whole sit, and to bring up and stay concentrated on the feeling of metta fairly consistently. I touched into some of the deeper concentration states for a moment, and from a place of metta those states just felt so joyful.
It was interesting to note the moments that I slipped from metta practice into concentration practice, and I was actually able to discern the difference in feeling between those two concentration states. I patted myself on the back for such great noticing, and then had to bring my attention back to the metta.
Great morning.
muchas muchas metta,
Sophia
the Good Heretic 