Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

You can also take the practice further. Having
established a radiant center in your being, you can let
loving kindness radiate outwardly and direct it
wherever you like. You might first direct it toward the
members of your immediate family. If you have
children, hold them in your mind's eye and in your
heart, visualizing their essential selves, wishing them
well, that they not suffer needlessly, that they come to
know their true way in the world, that they may
experience love and acceptance in life. And then
including, as you go along, a partner, spouse,
siblings, parents. ...
You can direct loving kindness toward your parents
whether they are alive or dead, wishing them well,
wishing that they may not feel isolated or in pain,
honoring them. If you feel capable of it and it feels
healthy to you, and liberating, finding a place in your
own heart to forgive them for their limitations, for their
fears, and for any wrong actions and suffering they
may have caused, remembering Yeats's line, "Why,
what could she have done, being what she is?"
And there's no need to stop here. You can direct
loving kindness toward anybody, toward people you
know and people you don't. It may benefit them, but it
will certainly benefit you by refining and extending
your emotional being. This extension matures as you