Tuesday, March 03, 2015

3 Directions

Meditation really destroys my ability to write. Such that I have to arbitrarily 'mark the page' just to get things started.

So Metta is the budhist practice of loving-compassion meditation. I've learned the basic form I think now, but it turns out that doing a good quality guided meditation performance is not a simple matter, and unforch, the guided meditations I have thus far used to learn Meta have fallen down on their pacing, making them in themselves a session of dubious value.

But I found one on 'self-forgiveness' that produced value, and unlike more cerebral videos of value such as Gabor Mate talks or whatever, this one was more of a practice. With embarassing oversight-insight rather than food for thought insight.

The three directions of forgiveness:

1. Recognizing you've hurt somebody else and asking them to forgive you.
2. Recognizing you've hurt yourself and asking yourself for forgiveness.
3. Recognizing that others have hurt you, and forgiving them.

The words in Italics were what were revelations for me. When you look at that list the three directions make sense. It makes sense and it is comprehensive.

But in meditation I can actually notice what my mind struggles to do and recall and conceive of. While it is easy for me to dredge up and take responsibility for things I have done, that in itself serves as an impediment to asking somebody else to forgive me. This is an obvious (to me now) impediment to self forgiveness. A double standard, if I believe myself worthy of my own understanding and forgiveness, but other people don't.

My mind went fragmented and crazy, trying to hold anyone but me responsible for hurting me. There are of course cases where I have been hurt by others, but I realise now I pay them almost no mind. Quite literally, I have a need for control, a need for me to be the only responsible entity in the system of my life. It's self protective, and a problem. I need to think on this more.

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