Love as resource, love as practice 

Love and fear do not cohabitate very easily. Love can look on fear, as on a scared child, with acceptance and compassion. But, usually when a person is in the throes of depression or anxiety, they’re in a place of fear, and fear is pretty much just interested in survival, in fighting or fleeing. Not loving.

Metta

In Buddhism, there is a practice called metta meditation, or translated, “meditation on loving kindness,” which has variations all through different Western and Eastern traditions. Basically, metta practice is the intentional cultivation of love and compassion, the choosing and strengthening of a certain perspective on one’s experience. Just like fear is an energy, so is metta, and both can be strengthened or weakened by one’s actions and thoughts.

Which is not, however, to set up fear as a bad guy: fear has a long history of working for our survival, and without this klaxon alarm going off when the lion started chasing after us, we as a species would likely not have made it out of the trees.

But, in dealing with thoughts and emotions, rather than real tangible lions with real tangible teeth, fear is not always so accurate, and does not assess the level of threat very subtly. It is, though, a basic mechanism of humans than cannot be excised, but rather has to be shown, like the scared child fearing monsters under the bed, how we are essentially safe.

Metta is often practiced as the ending meditation to a mindfulness meditation session, but can also be done in the throes of upset-not as easily, but it’s still possible.

But the real benefit of these practices is over time, as if you were building a muscle, or perhaps better, a habitual response. Remember “The Karate Kid,” where the aspiring student sands and finishes his teacher’s deck until the motions, the basis of defensive blocking in karate, become habit? Same thing here: a loving “reaction” to ourselves and others can become as much as a habit as those blocking maneuvers, except here it’s an “opening” maneuver.

There are many versions of the practice, and as with all efforts to tame the wild moods of depression and anxiety, it’s up to you to experiment to see what works for you. Rigidity is the friend of the wild moods, and flexibility their bane. So I’ll give the traditional version, and then maybe a more updated one.

Traditional Metta

The traditional metta practice (saying to yourself silently, or out loud if you want) is below. (Sometimes it’s hard to start with oneself–you may be feeling a lot of self-criticism–in which case start with anything which brings a sense of kindness and then work from there, eventually including yourself.)

1) May I be happy and free from physical and mental suffering and danger.
2) May my parents be happy and free from physical and mental suffering and danger.
3) May my family and relatives be always happy and free from physical and mental suffering and danger.
4) May my friends be always happy and free from physical and mental suffering and danger.
5) May my colleague be always happy and free from physical and mental suffering and danger.
6) May the strangers be always happy and free from physical and mental suffering and danger
7) May the animals be always happy and free from physical and mental suffering and danger
8) May other being be always happy and free from physical and mental suffering and danger (if only you believe an existence of other being; Buddhism believe the existence of other being).

A Modern Metta

A much simpler and more “portable” version is this:

As you walk or drive around, through your day, to every person you come across, say:

“I love you.”

That’s it. It doesn’t matter at all if you believe it consciously. Again, this is a practice, and really, you might be surprised down the road at what happens spontaneously, especially in situations you might otherwise reacted to. Or, you might be surprised in the moment to find that simply saying this “I love you” actually opens up something in you, some sense of connectedness or affinity, i.e., love.

For sufferers of the wild moods, which have a part of their wildness the action of pulling you away from connection and openness, this practice can be a profound “taming,” a deep medicine for teaching the demons of anxiety and depression that even they are, at root, totally safe in the world.