Flowers of loving kindness

How to deal with the injuries and injustices that life seems to deal us at times?   How do we come to peace with the abuse we may have suffered due to others ignorance or unkindness?  How do we work with these hurts so that we are not re-traumatised but develop loving kindness both for ourselves and for others in the midst of this hurt?

Such questions are deeply on my mind this evening.  I had a week where intense hurts from the past flooded up into my awareness.  I was consciously extremely angry and I was working in therapy to acknowledge this anger.  I am aware that such anger when held inside and even sometimes in the course of trying to express it out of my system ends up injuring me in some way.  I know it is so important to have the protest and nothing that follows in this post it intended to minimise or deny that process whereby we come into possession our full degree of outrage which will help us to set better boundaries in the future.

However there is a time when we need to work an alchemy on these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and turn them into flowers.  Such an approach was suggested to me many years ago when I undertook a Calm Abiding Meditation Course.

This evening I read the following in David Richo’s book The Five Things We Cannot Change and the Happiness We Find Embracing Them.

Loving kindness can apply to our mind’s activities… For instance, memories that suddenly arise in us can be felt as flowers or arrows.  Some are happy, some are painful or even regretful.  Whenever a memory arises we can attach a loving kindness practice to it.  For example you recall a time when your mother did not stand up for you.  Add a loving kindness practice by saying “May my mother and all mothers learn to stand up for their children…May all of us find comfort in Mother Nature.”

It is no mistake that when we cannot find the understanding, empathy and solace in the human around us, many of us turn towards nature and animals.  It is almost as though in these natural, instinctive things we feel a force of authenticity or love which will receive us kindly, even in our darkest moments.

I certainly recall in early sobriety spending a lot of time sitting at the base of a huge Morton Bay fig such as the one that headlines this blog and connecting to the power of love I felt there, as the flood banks in my soul opened up.

Later in life I have begun to find human consolation too, but Mother Nature was always there. Now when I am feeling the pain of the things that hurt I can choose not to let myself get stung again by the sharp edges of arrow like memories that pierce, sear and hurt me.    Time perhaps helps in this process.  Over time that which was raw and painful can form a scar tissue of sorts.

But what is most important at all times is to treat myself with loving kindness and to extend the gift of loving kindness to the ignorant hurtful people who lacking consciousness hurt me and made me suffer.  In this way I keep myself open to the sore raw spot in such a way that it becomes a powerful place of self acceptance and healing in my own life.  This prevents the hardening that may in forming a reactive defence hurt me more and block out the good love that wants to come to me from others.

Loving kindness practice confuse(s) and shocks the ego, with its penchant towards retaliation as the tried and true answer to the blows others inflict on us.  When we chose to practice loving kindness, we shake the foundations of ego and crack its hard shell.  Through these fissures dawns the light of wisdom and compassion….and the ego becomes more tender…  The practice of loving kindness ….helps us find the grace not only to transcend ego but to grant it peace.

David Richo

Buddhist loving kindness reminds us that no matter how horrible our abuse we need to remember that somewhere deep inside everyone longs for happiness.  Injured people often injure us and we can injure others when feeling injured.  Loving kindness shows us a way to hold all this hurt tenderly and give relief to the sore sore spots inside, as well as a way to turn the arrows of unkindness into flowers of self healing.