FINDING LOVING-KINDNESS PHRASES
This is a pen and paper exercise. You will close your eyes and do some reflection, then open your eyes and write. Then close and open your eyes again.
This exercise is designed to help you discover loving-kindness and compassion phrases that are deeply meaningful to you. If you already have phrases, and wish to continue using them, you can try this exercise as an experiment. Please don’t feel the need to find new phrases.
What Do I Long to Hear?
To start, close your eyes, put a hand over your heart, or elsewhere, and feel your body gently breathe.
Take a moment, open your heart, and ask yourself a few questions:
What do I long to hear from others?
What words do I long to hear because, as a person, I really need to hear words like this?
Open the door of your heart, and wait for the words to come.
If I could, what words would I want to hear every day for the rest of my life–words that would fill me with gratitude every time I hear them?
Open to the possibility, with courage. Listen.
Gently open your eyes and take a moment to write down what you heard.
If you heard a lot of words, see if you can make the words into a short phrase–a message to yourself.
Words that we long to hear from others are often qualities that we wish to actualize in our own lives. Or they are attitudes that we wish to know for sure. They are subtle wishes to ourselves.
You can use your phrases just as you wrote them down, with an implicit wish behind them, or you can shape them into an explicit wish for yourself. For example:
“You’re a good person” can become the wish: “May I know my own goodness.”
“I’m here for you” can become the wish: “May I be there for myself.”
“I love you” can become the wish: “May I love myself just as I am.”
What Do I Need?
To start, close your eyes again. Put your hand over your heart, or some other soothing place. Do you have any other needs that are deeply important to you?
What do I need?” “What do I truly need?”
ie. If this need has not been fulfilled in a given day, your day is not complete.
Let the answer be a universal human need. Examples are the need to be happy, safe, kind and peaceful.
When you are ready, open your eyes again, and write down what you, as a person, really need.
If you wish, you can translate your needs into wishes for yourself, such as:
“May I be happy”
“May I be free from fear”
“May I be kind to myself”
“May I live in peace”
Now take a little time to review what you have written, and settle on 2-4 words or phrases that you would enjoy hearing again and again.
Finally, close your eyes for a last time. Begin saying your phrases over and over, slowly and gently, savouring the meaning. Just enjoy them; this gift to yourself.
Please consider this exercise to be only the beginning of a search for phrases that are right for you. Finding phrases is a soulful journey. Hopefully, you will find yourself returning to this process (“What Do I Long to Hear?” and “What Do I Need?”) as you practice loving-kindness meditation.
Gently open your eyes.