and be touched by them lies buried below our own
fears and hurts, below our greed and our hatreds,
below our desperate clinging to the illusion that we
are truly separate and alone.
By invoking such feelings in our practice, we are
stretching against the edges of our own ignorance,
just as in the yoga we stretch against the resistance
of muscle, ligament, and tendon, and as in that and
all other forms of meditation, against the boundaries
and ignorance of our own minds and hearts. And in
the stretching, painful as it sometimes is, we expand,
we grow, we change ourselves, we change the world.
My religion is kindness.
The Dalai Lama
TRY: Touching base with feelings of loving kindness
within yourself at some point in your meditation
practice. See if you can get behind any objections
you may have to this practice, or behind your reasons
for being unlovable or unacceptable. Just look at all
that as thinking. Experiment with allowing yourself to
bathe in the warmth and acceptance of loving
kindness as if you were a child held in a loving
mother's or father's arms. Then play with directing it