Last evening my mom and I took our first, of eight, meditation classes.  One of my mom’s best friends is leading the class and she is amazing.  Nancy is a truly spiritual woman who has extensively studied the power of healing, meditation, and energies.  There were many other people in attendance and it would be an understatement to say that it was an eclectic group.  Even though there were so many different types of people there everyone was completely open to the power of meditation so the environment, I felt, was filled with positive energy.

In our first session we focused on Metta meditation. The practice of Metta meditation is that of “lovingkindness.”  The goal of Metta meditation is to find “a sense of love that is not bound to conditions or desire – overcomes the illusion of separateness from the whole and, therefore, all of the states that accompany separateness: fear, alienation, loneliness, and despair. In its place the metta brings a sense of connectedness with the universe.”  In order to invoke feelings of love and kindness towards ourselves we closed our eyes, relaxed our bodies, focused on our breathing, and repeated this script:

“May I be happy.”

“May I be free from danger and harm.”

“May I be healthy.”

“May I be at peace.”

The beauty about the power of meditation is that you can use these words at any point in your day, as long as you are able to clear your mind and focus purely on the meaning of this practice. This phrase, in particular, is very conducive to my recovery.  I need to learn not be so self critical and actually appreciate my true self.  I thoroughly enjoyed this class and am looking forward to seeing, which form of meditation we will learn about next week! I can’t wait to see how far I can grow and hopefully I will be able to embrace the power of meditation.