“To reteach a thing its loveliness is the nature of metta. Through lovingkindness, everyone & everything can flower again from within.”
― Sharon Salzberg
Good evening and welcome to Monday Group Meditation, we will be sitting from 7:30 to 10:00 PM EST. It is not necessary to sit for the entire extended time, which is set up to make it convenient for people in four North American Time Zones; sit for as long as you like and when it is most convenient for you.
Monday Group Meditation is open to everyone, believers and non-believers of all stripes who are interested in gathering in silence. If you are new to meditation and would like to try it for yourself, Mindful Nature gave a good description of one way to meditate in an earlier diary, copied and pasted below:
"It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat."
Still coming to you from the library this week, and all I'll say about it is I've been a mac user for some years and the shine is definitely wearing thin on this Apple user. However it has been a chance to practice patience and surrender, so as Carl Spackler would say, I've got that goin' for me. ;-)
This week I'd like to think a bit about meditation and loving kindness. What do you do, what happens to you during meditation, at the exact moment you realize you've spun off into thinking? I ask because sometimes when I discover I've "gone off" especially if it has been an extended detour, I become very harsh with myself. So for tonight, at least, my commitment is to turn the lens of loving kindness on myself, and when I find I've gone, once again, on a meditative detour, I am going to simply forgive myself and begin again.
I invite you all to join me. :-)
“For all of us, love can be the natural state of our own being; naturally at peace, naturally connected, because this becomes the reflection of who we simply are.”
― Sharon Salzberg,