Metta Practice

Loving-kindness, or Metta, has been a wonderful practice for me to start in the Buddhist tradition. It involves wishing yourself and others health, happiness, peace, and life at ease. I did the practice last night while I was doing yoga after my workout in the gym. I can't explain the release and the joy I felt as I was walking back to my car from the gym. I knew that if I could sustain that feeling for a lifetime, than I will truly find my bliss.

Meditation and reading the Buddhist books over the last few months has really made me feel in control of my experience. I have always known that God gives us free choice, and we have talked about that at a more substantial level in my MSOD program, but I never fully realized what it meant until I started reading on these topics. It is not contradictory to my Catholic practice, it actually compliments it very well. Especially in the tradition I was brought up in, where everyone deserves and needs love. Free choice in the Buddhist tradition explores the idea of being in control of our own thoughts and experience. We can't control others, but we can control our response and our experience. A really good example in my book was about one of the students who approached his teacher and said, "As I was meditating, I noticed that my jaw was really tight, and then I realized that I have spent my whole life closed off, and not enjoying life from my tightness, and that made me sad, and I thought about all the people I was closed too." The teacher interrupted the student and said, "You mean you were mediating and your jaw was tight." Then the student started again, "Yes, which means that I'm closed off, and not open, and clenched tight." The teacher said again, "You mean you were mediating and your jaw was tight." This went on for awhile before the student got it. Its the human brain that tries to apply meaning to everything and categorize it into something that is useful to us, but the fact is if we just let go and see what is really there, our experience becomes much easier and lighter.

I want that light feeling, and to be free of judgement and applying meaning to experiences. I'm falling into the trap of either/or as my therapist would say, opposed to the idea of both/and. What I mean by that is I try to make things rational and make a clear decision, and what I'm contemplating is how can I let go of judgement and applying meaning to experience when everyone else in the world isn't? Will this further isolate me from people and widen the gap that makes me unique? I feel that I can wander down the total path of self-discovery, guided by the wonderful feelings in my soul, letting go of all trappings of modern thought and judgement, but that path will take me away from normalcy. I need to change my focus to both/and so I can hold myself and the trappings of normalcy in the world at the same time. That's the learning.

I also have been having weird dreams.... which is normal for this time of month. The first was the other night about Sam. I just kept seeing his eyes, as he would capture my gaze and hold it. I was at a restaurant waiting for a friend to join me, and the friend was someone from the old days at country line dancing who I haven't talked to in years. The restaurant was literally across the street from where Sam was staying, and from my window seat I could see into his place. He kept catching my eye and holding the gaze for awhile from across the street. He finally called me and asked what I was doing, and I invited him over to meet us for dinner. My friend called at that time and told me that he couldn't make it. Another woman friend of mine was there, but I have no idea who she was. When we all sat down at the table, before ordering, I said that I don't like to be a 3rd wheel, and I got up and left them to have dinner.

Last night, the dream was even more odd, and I can't even begin to explain how it all tied together. At first I was at church, it was my priest, but we were at my old church of Our Lady of Hope. My priest was there because he was introducing the new priest that would fill-in while mine was gone. My priest and I always greet each other with huge hugs, and we got to talking late into the night. I finally made it home, and a man that I was seeing was there. This is where it got really weird. He was a Dom, and I had broken up with him awhile ago because he was violent. For some reason he was there in my apartment. Sometimes I was her, the woman who was involved with him, but other times I was a third party watching but couldn't do anything. He was angry that I had broken up with him, and was there to punish me for being out with another man so late. I was trying to explain that it was my priest, but he wasn't taking that as an answer. At this point I moved out of her, and became the 3rd party watching. I actually think I called the police, because the man was so enraged that it looked as if he wanted to kill her. He began stalking her around the living room, and at that moment the police barged into the room. He materialized a gun from somewhere, and shot one of the officers, but then another officer shot him. He didn't die, but they used his own restraints on him, and they took him off to jail. That's about when I woke up... WEIRD!