The Quality of Awareness: Lovingkindness

Lovingkindness is an old-fashioned word. Love is an over-used word. What do they mean to you? Reading them just now, how do you experience them? What do you think about them? How does your emotional intelligence process them?

Somewhere in and between these two words--and related words like compassion, empathy, caring, kindness--we get the gist of a third quality of awareness.

It's so helpful to be able to tolerate whatever comes into our minds and our experience. And to see 'whatever comes' clearly, honestly, accurately and unadorned. But there's more.

As we weave this third thread, lovingkindness, into the fabric of Awareness, there's a wholeness in us--because we've discovered a whole-making process. No matter what we're experiencing, we're learning to welcome it, know it for what it is, and care about it.

Committing our 'selves' to tolerate and clearly see whatever comes our way can be a hard practice--literally: it can make us hard. Lovingkindness not only softens the experience, it softens 'us' and keeps us connected to life's deepest and sweetest spring. Nothing delights, refreshes, and heals us more than love.

I think the thing to recognize in the word lovingkindness is the way it suggests both a quality of feeling and action. Love can remain internal. Kindness takes action, embodiment.

A baby cries. You turn to her--you see what the matter is. Almost all of us know what this is like. Sometimes we change diapers on automatic pilot. Sometimes something a lot richer happens. Sometimes love wells up, we smile, we bring a joyful sense of caring into the process.

It's this very thing we try to cultivate in awareness practices. In awareness practice we commit to NOT defaulting to automatic pilot. We commit to not changing diapers by rote. We commit, as much as we can, to never picking up a baby without trying to open up to that spring of love which is always there under the surface of things.

Again, the instruction is simple. When we meditate we 'tolerate' whatever comes into our minds and do our best to see it clearly and honestly. And we try our best to hold the stuff we're 'tolerating' and 'seeing clearly' with genuine kindness.

It's not an easy practice, though it's a simple instruction. Doing it rewires us. As we continue to cultivate tolerance for and honesty about whatever we're experiencing, and then start bringing active kindness into the mix--life changes.

We practice this formally so that we can embody it naturally. We do it over and over and over, anchored to the breath as we meditate. And it gets to be a really good habit.

And then we're with somebody in ordinary life--somebody who's pushing our buttons--doing something hard to tolerate. Only now, it's not as hard as it used to be! Holy crap, we've gotten better at this tolerance thing!

And we're not having to dress up our friend's behavior. We don't need to sugar coat it. It is what it is. We've gotten better at seeing stuff clearly.

And then, O my God, instead of disdain or superiority (well, usually in along with some kind of negative stuff), we feel empathy. Our response, whatever it may be, is supported by tolerance, clarity, and kindness. And when human responses are nurtured and guided by tolerance, clear-seeing, and kindness, it's a game-changer.

As we weave these three strands into our meditation, our lives get more and more threaded with tolerance and discernment and love. This makes the practice of ordinary mindfulness kinda extraordinary.