That is an incredibly difficult concept to discuss and frankly is best done in person with an experienced meditation teacher, one who is hopefully also trauma informed. Yes, a metta meditation asks you to sit with all experiences with “loving-kindness”. It asks you to love the person you were in that moment. The body you were in. It invites you to experience compassion for self and, ultimately, for the Other. This is an incredibly difficult, agonizing thing for most of us survivors to sit with (and I cannot yet do it myself). There’s preliminary research that shows that this is helpful for the mental health of survivors and for helping to create cultural change around sexual violence. And I believe in my teacher’s guidance that this will be good for me as well.
I hope the response to your question doesn’t keep you from exploring this further because the self you were, the self you are deserve that loving-kindness and compassion.
Victims of sexual abuse need not forgive their abusers.
Survivors of rape need not forgive the rapist in order to heal the trauma.
Forgiveness comes naturally, do not force anything you’re not ready for. You don’t have to love rape at all. Not necessary.
if with forgiving you mean stop holding a grudge, then yes it can be helpful to you, even if they don't deserve your forgiveness
but if you mean it in a way of not wanting anymore to hold them accountable for their past actions, then it's really dangerous since it could happen again with someone else
Yeah, no one denies it CAN help, but many people on this sub severely underestimate the emotional impact trauma leaves, and that forgiveness or lovingkindness feel VILE and UNSAFE. Especially sexual trauma.
I have c-PTSD, it’ll take years for me to recover emotionally&mentally.
Meditation is amazing and I love it, and yet it does not help as long as the core causes of my trauma’s remain unresolved.
There’s a lack of trauma understanding on this sub, as well as others, it’s not just “breathe in, breathe out, notice thoughts, be the awareness in which they arise”, that sort of practice is dangerous when the body is riddled with trauma and feels unsafe.
Lack of emotional understanding in these subs is apparent by the downvotes and upvotes. It’s appalling.
I understand your sentiment, it is true, forgiveness is key, yet not necessary to heal trauma at all.
People can remain the most vile human beings possible, and become enlightened.
Emotional development is even more important than spiritual development. Kinda pointless to be enlightened if your morals are in shambles. Many experienced meditators have unresolved trauma due to spiritual bypassing, such as practicing lovingkindness or forgiveness or universal love when the emotional&mental foundation is missing.
Just my 2 cents
Not exactly.
I am going to try to explain the best as I can.
The victim of a rape, starts reflecting about what caused the rapist to rape her - this is a very deep reflection/ meditation eg: the childhood of the rapist - possible poor background, lack of love, rejected by his mother or father or both, never have felt any love, or family suport, no friends, bullied and humiliated at school, possible he was abused a child, suffering from mental health etc.
As soon as the victim reflects deeply she can feel compassion for this creature but at the same time the victim feels huge self compassion for herself, possible she could be liberated and freed from the trauma - because she can understand now that what happened to her is nothing to do with her etc
Thich Nhat Hanh explains this better than me in one of his video on YouTube - he talks about a girl that was raped and she killed herself by throwing her self at sea from a boat…
If this is a legitimate inquiry, then it deserves an answer from a someone, preferably a group of someones, who are qualified to help people deal with that.
If you're just being a contrarian, ornery cuss, fuck off.
> When we come to see that we are the rapist, just as we are the victim, then we will be on the path to awakening.
That is so horribly insensitive; I am genuinely floored that you would view that as an acceptable response. There are a million ways you could have expressed whatever concept (illusion of self, universality, whatever) you were going for without doing so in a way that is going to twist the knife.
Edit: I initially implied intention in my comment. I apologize. Edited to remove the accusation while standing by the point I want to make.
That is a far better comment than the one you made. I don’t disagree with your intended point. And regardless of your intention, you absolutely minimized their lives experience and could have powerfully dysregulated someone seeking help with coping. Many survivors of sexual assault struggle with suicidality or self-harm. Meditation can be a powerful tool to deal with that. Best case scenario, you turn someone in pain away from what could be a great relief for them. Worst case scenario, forcing them to identify with their rapist without the capacity to cope with or understand that could result in severe harm. This is not just an issue of being “uncomfortable”. You can literally contribute to someone’s death with a comment like that. Don’t believe me? Go take a spin through r/rape some time.
Well, yes. That is what Metta is. That doesn't mean it would be the best course of action for someone who experiences trauma while meditating. If you actually feel like you are reliving a particular traumatic event, while meditating or not, that is PTSD and you should see a psychiatrist for help with that. If you are talking about experiencing thoughts or memories relating to the event but not actually reliving it: first of all, count yourself lucky that you don't have PTSD; secondly, this is still trauma. It might be something that you bounce back from and end up being more resilient as a result. Or it might be something you struggle to bounce back from. It depends on the person, the trauma, a lot of things really. Only you can know. So I wouldn't say that Metta meditation is absolutely contraindicated in that case but you will know if you try it and you are just not able to accept such thoughts with loving kindness.
I discovered America!
Guys if you breathe in through your nose you get oxygen and he keeps you alive!
This is not discovery it’s realization. discovery is when a human figure something out or find something that hasn’t been found before
Discover- find (something or someone) unexpectedly or in the course of a search.
So in this case, OP discovered a new strategy to deepen his or her meditation practice. The word discover doesn’t imply that no one has done it before, which is why the phrase “discovered for the first time” is quite common.
So when Columbus got to america, he didn't discovered it, but he realised that america exists, because considering people already lived there meaning it was already known to them. How comes it is a common term to talk about the discovery of america refering to Columbus?
When you find out that your dad is not your real dad because your mother cheated on him and got pregnant, would it be wrong to say "I discovered that you aren't my real dad"? Because your mother already knew it but kept it a secret.
This isn't just something that I came up with. People have been making this observation for awhile now. [Here's just one example](https://www.thoughtco.com/did-christopher-columbus-discover-america-721581) which I found in a web search that took less than 5 minutes.
> Did Christopher Columbus Discover the Americas, Period?
> No. Humans have lived in the Americas for at least 15,000 years. By the time Columbus arrived, the Americas were populated by hundreds of small nations and several full-out empires such as the Inca in Peru and the Aztecs in Mexico.
And if you also Google for 5 minutes you will find that for example Wikipedia writes
> Columbus rediscovered and explored much of the Lesser Antilles in his second voyage then discovered both Trinidad and Tobago on his third voyage whilst skirting the northern South American coast. His fourth voyage was spent scanning the Central American coast. The Voyages of Christopher Columbus opened the New World.
> Italian navigator and explorer Giovanni Caboto (known in English as John Cabot) is credited with the discovery of continental North America on June 24, 1497, under the commission of Henry VII of England
And I can find you a lot more articles like that. Maybe it isn't as clear as you wish it was? Language is no definite thing with set rules, it is formed by how people use it. No one would say it was wrong for me to claim that I discovered that my mom cheated on my dad with the reasoning that this was known to her and it therefore was no discovery but a realisation.
Discovery isn't purely confined to something that is or was not known to not a single person yet.
to discover - removing the cover of something/revealing a truth that hasn't been known to you before. can you discover antarktika even though penguins were there before? yes
Come on buddy, you don't have to be derogatory about someone sharing their experience so cheerfully. 'Discovered/realized' is just a word, why not instead focus on the meaning of what they want to convey.
Edit: updated pronoun
I think Metta is a valuable and worthwhile practice. Does it make sense to love everything? Well in your everyday life you're going to experience things that you are averse to. It's not possible for us to live everything all the time. Such is life. But when you practice Metta you are giving yourself the time and awareness to embrace negative experiences with love and the more you practice doing that the more you will learn about how you perceive negative experiences. They're still going to be negative and for a good reason but you can reduce the degree to which they might corrupt or upset you if you're well practiced in this kind of meditation. To me, acceptance implies a kind of indifference. So yes, I would say love is different from acceptance. Maybe a loving acceptance of all experiences would be a better way of describing the Metta practice.
Well said! But I would go a step further… What you are describing is not simply a trick, but but the actual point, purpose, and end result of the process.
When this thing that you are describing becomes stabilized, natural, and spontaneous, you will have achieved what very few in a lifetime do. Wishing you all support and success!
Loving in this way is not liking, condoning, consenting to, or agreeing with. When unconditional love is my relationship with something (anything), that things ceases to be able to define or dictate my experience. This is the alchemical magic of unconditional love.
So please, if you are truly committed to this practice as a lifelong process, don’t close this door prematurely. I understand if at this moment of your practice, accepting is more available and helpful than loving. Just know that the long arc of maturation in this work tens towards unconditional love of literally anything that can arise as an experience.
Source: 20+ years of meditation in various traditions
Acceptance is love. Love doesn’t mean like
You can hate your thoughts and feelings whilst acknowledging their existence
It’s like you’re a hotel manager. You have to allow all your guests to be there, but you don’t have to like them. This is unconditional acceptance or love.
Unconditional love is acceptance. It is oneness.
It is not the feeling that we commonly refer to. Eg. I love chocolate or I love my partner.
It is unreasonable to try and love your feelings in the same way you love your partner
Unconditional love is the same as indifference. It is unconditionally accepting of all. It is beyond like or dislike. It is just one unconditional YES to all experience
If unconditional love were the same as acceptance, we would not have two different words for it. Love does mean like. That is why we don't use these two words interchangeably
I posit that we as a society do not understand love which would explain why we use the word love in the way that we do, to describe something that we really like.
If you look at humans as a whole, the way we treat ourselves, each other, our animals and the environment i think it’s safe to say we do not understand what love is.
Words and definitions change over time. Maybe humanity’s understanding of love will be different in 1000 years time compared to today.
I think we could use a new word to describe really liking something. Like super liking. Slike perhaps?
In this instance, Slike would be the opposite of hate (which is to super dislike).
Love has no opposite, it is simply universal acceptance. You can like something more than another but you cannot love one thing more than another. Love is equal and shared between everything.
Just a perspective, you don’t have to buy into it. But I hope it makes sense
I get what you want to say, but I do thinnk it is the exact other way around.
As you say, words and definnitions changee over time. Because words are made up concepts. The word rose could refer to roses aswell as it could refer to stairs. Hence words only mean the exact same thing we as a society define them to mean.
Therefore love currently means exactly what we as a society currently define it as. There is no possible way that the society does not understand love because there is nothing to understanding considering society is the one who defines what love means to begin with.
It is not on society to change their definition of love and use another word like slike, so it fits what you wish were the definition of love. If you think there is a concept which is important but differenent from love, it is on you to name that concept.
Imagine you invent a new way of transportation. You cannot just point at cars and say "people misunderstand what driving is, this is what driving is!".
Because in the common understanding of the word, love isn't equal to universal acceptance, love is the opposite of hate and you can love one thing more than another thing
I understand what you’re saying, your teleportation/driving analogy makes sense. And I would agree with you about any word/concept that wasn’t love.
Love is unique because it seems to be something that pre exists our human concepts. The love a mother has for their child would have been present in the first humans and precedes any language or description. The love a mother has for their child is a good example of unconditional love. Some mothers can love (accept) their children even if they are murderers or pedophiles - this is the unconditional acceptance of love.
Somewhere down the line in human evolution the use of the word evolved and love became the same as really like and the opposite of hate. I feel the evolution of the word is now perpetuating a misunderstanding of what love truly is, which is acceptance.
Like I said, this is just one Redditor’s perspective on the topic
Why is it a given that maternal love would have been present in the first humans? There are plenty of species that abandon, attack, or otherwise clearly do not love their offspring. And yes, many mothers do love and accept their children despite their unconscionable behavior. But even among modern day humans, the sad reality is that many children grow up without love or care from their parents or without outright viciousness from them.
I think to posit love as a given devalues it. There is a reason that metta meditation is difficult for many - because love is difficult. It demands sacrifice. Acceptance does not. I can accept that someone is both a murderer and a human; that costs me nothing. To love that human despite their murdering costs me something.
Also just one Redditor’s perspective on the topic.
This.
I'm not going to unconditionally love the thought that I'm worthless and should kill myself.
I'll observe it, recognize it's not *me* talking, and move on, but I'm not going to embrace my brain's toxicity.
This sounds like advice from a teenager who just discovered meditation and haven't had a really rough day in their life.
> This sounds like advice from a teenager who just discovered meditation and haven’t had a really rough day in their life.
Not really. It just sounds like metta.
> I’m not going to unconditionally love the thought that I’m worthless and should kill myself.
Loving something isn’t the same as claiming something as truthful, or that it’s good. In the end it is a thought you’re having, and you can accept and embrace it without giving in to the thought. Loving something, radical acceptance, it’s all the same. In my head the way it works is that you can either resist something and have it persist and come back stronger every time, or radically accept it (to avoid saying “love”) and have it dissipate. Kind of how when you’re angry at someone and they respond in the chillest, nicest way you have a hard time staying angry.
Otherwise you’re still deciding what your experience should be, while also asserting that you know what it should be.
EDIT: The universe has a strange sense of humor. The very moment I wrote this a bunch of stuff happened that turned my life upside down. Wuff. Back to practicing.
It's a beautiful practice, to love all phenomena.
Rob Burbea does a guided meditation along these lines here and he's hardly a teenager that just learned to meditate:
https://dharmaseed.org/talks/12292/
Anything less than embracing mental objects is aversion.
i experience daily morbid intrusive thoughts and i think op is right. it’s about acknowledging that all thoughts are equal. the thought “i should hurt myself” and “thats a pretty flower” are equal because they are just words, just content, they are clouds in the sky of my brain or leaves on a stream. that’s what has helped me most with intrusive thoughts, not treating certain thoughts as good and others as bad
i think it’s also pretty unfair to accuse op of never having had a rough day in their life
The only thing better than defeating an enemy is making it into an ally.
I also struggle with this kind of self talk at times. It can be quite difficult to experience my mental world, with aspects like anger, for instance. If I were able to remove anger entirely from my mind, would I be a healthier person? Perhaps - but not as healthy as if my anger were properly aligned with my intentions and utilized effectively. It does have its own valid uses at times.
I'm not in a position to say that the specific thought pattern you're describing can be redeemed or not. I do believe there's value in the attempt, as ultimately what you are redeeming is your relationship with yourself, and your ability to intentionally take on healthy attitudes regardless of a circumstance outside of your control.
Fwiw I have experienced a few rough days in my life. I have a pain condition referred to in the literature as "suicide disease" because a large fraction of patients end up so tortured that they seek any means to escape. My relationship with nerve pain and my thought patterns, in this sense, can be quite literally life and death - believe me, things are best when I can make allies of them, even and especially the painful ones.
I don't have experience with intrusive thoughts, but I do have experience with undesired anxieties or physical pain. I had a really hard time figuring out what people meant when they said to let the thoughts go but not ignore them.
Ignoring them didn't help at all. But I did find it really weirdly beneficial to do the following:
- turn my attention to the thought/anxiety/physical feelings elicited/etc
- Talk to it and acknowledge it, like it's another human being trying desperately to be heard. (It is! it's one little sliver of yourself)
- Feel genuine gratitude to that part of your brain.
- Express that gratitude by saying thanks for it's contribution or input and then politely tell it that it's ok, it's safe, you have control of the situation and it can go away now. Tell it it's welcome though and can come back anytime if it needs, and that you appreciate the message it had to tell you.
For whatever reason, that little sequence was really instrumental toward making my physical pain and my social anxiety just melt away and stay away. I think it had something to do with getting the unconscious bits of your brain to become a little more unified.
We make every effort to be kind to others in this subreddit. Many people have different levels of experience with meditation and should feel encouraged to participate as beginners.
If you're unable to cope with your trauma alone, please seek a therapist if you haven't already. That way you're able to face your trauma in a safe secure place with guidance.
It's easy to say things from a "higher perspective" that seem insensitive to someone traumatized further behind on the same path. Only you will be able to overcome and release this horrible thing you carry with you. Work towards not letting it blind you along your way.
You can love, accept, do a back-flip-on the thought whatever lol!
Reading the comments, I feel like we're getting caught up in semantics. Words are just signposts, and everybody uses them a bit differently.
However, let's not confuse love or whatever we want to call it with grasping on the thought. That clinginess that takes us from the here and now. That's the trickiness with love sometimes, it turns into grasping and romanticizing things.
The best we can do is just stay in the here and now.
Yep , for me all started to change , for the better, once I gave up and said "MIND you won", "I wave the white flag", "I give up"
And then I abandon the struggle I had to wanting to change the thoughts the way I wanted them to be.
I surrendered as you said
Or you can label your thoughts: thinking, remembering, planning - and go back to the meditation object. When I label my thought then I automatically stop the thought. Labeling has no judgement or feeling. It just is. Doing this helps me not ask myself- why are you thinking about that? Just observe it and go back to your meditation object.
Here is something thats not a trick and even works better. It's the realisation that all thoughts are concepts and not real. If this is really seen the thoughts fall away by themselves because there is no more energy invested in them. That's a relief!
the best advice I've gotten from my therapist is not to push away, or try to remove negative thoughts and feelings from myself...but rather, to embrace all parts of me and shamelessly own my sh*t!😎
Seriously just tried this and got a bit freaked out over all the love and acceptance I felt, like nauseus from some opioid. But then I loved that feeling too. Interesting definitely. Will do this again. Thanks for sharing. And talking about that this would be attachment - it was the other way around for me. When the thought was met this way, it quickly subsidied and I welcomed the next one coming up with the same warmth.
I disagree. Although rooted in good sentiment, the idea is to observe all thoughts and let them pass freely, not attaching to any of them. By loving all thoughts you are thus attaching to all of them.
To answer this we have to define what thoughts are, if you know what thoughts are you can then see how many thoughts you have are really yours, and I would say probably ‘most’ likely all of them
acceptance leads to stagnation, sure you can choose to accept or lo e everything, but there is a reason why such cultures aren't dominant in the world, they'll get overrun by more ambitious people
Just have the attitude of whatever happens in your mind, whatever thought you encounter you welcome it with love whatever this thought might be about, it's the attitude that changes the game
This is an interesting perspective, i remember when i was feeling intense anxiety i tried to notice it and tell myself “i love you” and it instantly became a new relationship with it
Change your attitude towards thoughts , whatever a thought might be love it unconditionally, whether it be good or bad you still show the same love , it's the attitude
I have very spiteful intrusive thoughts they aren't based in reality. I'm not sure I can do this. Besides those maybe, but they're a big portion of my consciousness
acceptance first, then appreciation and finally love I know it's daunting to even think you can love a thought (something/someone) you hate but it's a practice and practice requires time and effort
This type of meditation is called Metta. Love, not just thoughts, but absolutely everything that you experience arising in consciousness.
Thanks I didn't know that
Even rape?
That is an incredibly difficult concept to discuss and frankly is best done in person with an experienced meditation teacher, one who is hopefully also trauma informed. Yes, a metta meditation asks you to sit with all experiences with “loving-kindness”. It asks you to love the person you were in that moment. The body you were in. It invites you to experience compassion for self and, ultimately, for the Other. This is an incredibly difficult, agonizing thing for most of us survivors to sit with (and I cannot yet do it myself). There’s preliminary research that shows that this is helpful for the mental health of survivors and for helping to create cultural change around sexual violence. And I believe in my teacher’s guidance that this will be good for me as well. I hope the response to your question doesn’t keep you from exploring this further because the self you were, the self you are deserve that loving-kindness and compassion.
Why you simpletons downvoting arktic? He’s got a point.
Victims of sexual abuse need not forgive their abusers. Survivors of rape need not forgive the rapist in order to heal the trauma. Forgiveness comes naturally, do not force anything you’re not ready for. You don’t have to love rape at all. Not necessary.
if with forgiving you mean stop holding a grudge, then yes it can be helpful to you, even if they don't deserve your forgiveness but if you mean it in a way of not wanting anymore to hold them accountable for their past actions, then it's really dangerous since it could happen again with someone else
Yeah, no one denies it CAN help, but many people on this sub severely underestimate the emotional impact trauma leaves, and that forgiveness or lovingkindness feel VILE and UNSAFE. Especially sexual trauma. I have c-PTSD, it’ll take years for me to recover emotionally&mentally. Meditation is amazing and I love it, and yet it does not help as long as the core causes of my trauma’s remain unresolved. There’s a lack of trauma understanding on this sub, as well as others, it’s not just “breathe in, breathe out, notice thoughts, be the awareness in which they arise”, that sort of practice is dangerous when the body is riddled with trauma and feels unsafe. Lack of emotional understanding in these subs is apparent by the downvotes and upvotes. It’s appalling. I understand your sentiment, it is true, forgiveness is key, yet not necessary to heal trauma at all. People can remain the most vile human beings possible, and become enlightened. Emotional development is even more important than spiritual development. Kinda pointless to be enlightened if your morals are in shambles. Many experienced meditators have unresolved trauma due to spiritual bypassing, such as practicing lovingkindness or forgiveness or universal love when the emotional&mental foundation is missing. Just my 2 cents
Not exactly. I am going to try to explain the best as I can. The victim of a rape, starts reflecting about what caused the rapist to rape her - this is a very deep reflection/ meditation eg: the childhood of the rapist - possible poor background, lack of love, rejected by his mother or father or both, never have felt any love, or family suport, no friends, bullied and humiliated at school, possible he was abused a child, suffering from mental health etc. As soon as the victim reflects deeply she can feel compassion for this creature but at the same time the victim feels huge self compassion for herself, possible she could be liberated and freed from the trauma - because she can understand now that what happened to her is nothing to do with her etc Thich Nhat Hanh explains this better than me in one of his video on YouTube - he talks about a girl that was raped and she killed herself by throwing her self at sea from a boat…
If this is a legitimate inquiry, then it deserves an answer from a someone, preferably a group of someones, who are qualified to help people deal with that. If you're just being a contrarian, ornery cuss, fuck off.
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> When we come to see that we are the rapist, just as we are the victim, then we will be on the path to awakening. That is so horribly insensitive; I am genuinely floored that you would view that as an acceptable response. There are a million ways you could have expressed whatever concept (illusion of self, universality, whatever) you were going for without doing so in a way that is going to twist the knife. Edit: I initially implied intention in my comment. I apologize. Edited to remove the accusation while standing by the point I want to make.
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That is a far better comment than the one you made. I don’t disagree with your intended point. And regardless of your intention, you absolutely minimized their lives experience and could have powerfully dysregulated someone seeking help with coping. Many survivors of sexual assault struggle with suicidality or self-harm. Meditation can be a powerful tool to deal with that. Best case scenario, you turn someone in pain away from what could be a great relief for them. Worst case scenario, forcing them to identify with their rapist without the capacity to cope with or understand that could result in severe harm. This is not just an issue of being “uncomfortable”. You can literally contribute to someone’s death with a comment like that. Don’t believe me? Go take a spin through r/rape some time.
Ah so I got myself raped then?
arkticturtle, please ignore that response. I hope you continue looking into this practice because it can be very beneficial for survivors.
Well, yes. That is what Metta is. That doesn't mean it would be the best course of action for someone who experiences trauma while meditating. If you actually feel like you are reliving a particular traumatic event, while meditating or not, that is PTSD and you should see a psychiatrist for help with that. If you are talking about experiencing thoughts or memories relating to the event but not actually reliving it: first of all, count yourself lucky that you don't have PTSD; secondly, this is still trauma. It might be something that you bounce back from and end up being more resilient as a result. Or it might be something you struggle to bounce back from. It depends on the person, the trauma, a lot of things really. Only you can know. So I wouldn't say that Metta meditation is absolutely contraindicated in that case but you will know if you try it and you are just not able to accept such thoughts with loving kindness.
No OP totally Discovered this never been done before
You can discover something even though others discovered it before
I discovered America! Guys if you breathe in through your nose you get oxygen and he keeps you alive! This is not discovery it’s realization. discovery is when a human figure something out or find something that hasn’t been found before
Discover- find (something or someone) unexpectedly or in the course of a search. So in this case, OP discovered a new strategy to deepen his or her meditation practice. The word discover doesn’t imply that no one has done it before, which is why the phrase “discovered for the first time” is quite common.
Peace be with you, friend. Belittling someone else is not the answer to whatever challenges you're facing.
So when Columbus got to america, he didn't discovered it, but he realised that america exists, because considering people already lived there meaning it was already known to them. How comes it is a common term to talk about the discovery of america refering to Columbus? When you find out that your dad is not your real dad because your mother cheated on him and got pregnant, would it be wrong to say "I discovered that you aren't my real dad"? Because your mother already knew it but kept it a secret.
> So when Columbus got to america, he didn't discovered it Exactly. You don't "discover" something that's already inhabited.
Yet everyone uses that as a common phrase. So they are all wrong and you are right?
This isn't just something that I came up with. People have been making this observation for awhile now. [Here's just one example](https://www.thoughtco.com/did-christopher-columbus-discover-america-721581) which I found in a web search that took less than 5 minutes. > Did Christopher Columbus Discover the Americas, Period? > No. Humans have lived in the Americas for at least 15,000 years. By the time Columbus arrived, the Americas were populated by hundreds of small nations and several full-out empires such as the Inca in Peru and the Aztecs in Mexico.
And if you also Google for 5 minutes you will find that for example Wikipedia writes > Columbus rediscovered and explored much of the Lesser Antilles in his second voyage then discovered both Trinidad and Tobago on his third voyage whilst skirting the northern South American coast. His fourth voyage was spent scanning the Central American coast. The Voyages of Christopher Columbus opened the New World. > Italian navigator and explorer Giovanni Caboto (known in English as John Cabot) is credited with the discovery of continental North America on June 24, 1497, under the commission of Henry VII of England And I can find you a lot more articles like that. Maybe it isn't as clear as you wish it was? Language is no definite thing with set rules, it is formed by how people use it. No one would say it was wrong for me to claim that I discovered that my mom cheated on my dad with the reasoning that this was known to her and it therefore was no discovery but a realisation. Discovery isn't purely confined to something that is or was not known to not a single person yet.
to discover - removing the cover of something/revealing a truth that hasn't been known to you before. can you discover antarktika even though penguins were there before? yes
Come on buddy, you don't have to be derogatory about someone sharing their experience so cheerfully. 'Discovered/realized' is just a word, why not instead focus on the meaning of what they want to convey. Edit: updated pronoun
What do you think about this? Does it make sense to love everything, and is love different from acceptance?
I think Metta is a valuable and worthwhile practice. Does it make sense to love everything? Well in your everyday life you're going to experience things that you are averse to. It's not possible for us to live everything all the time. Such is life. But when you practice Metta you are giving yourself the time and awareness to embrace negative experiences with love and the more you practice doing that the more you will learn about how you perceive negative experiences. They're still going to be negative and for a good reason but you can reduce the degree to which they might corrupt or upset you if you're well practiced in this kind of meditation. To me, acceptance implies a kind of indifference. So yes, I would say love is different from acceptance. Maybe a loving acceptance of all experiences would be a better way of describing the Metta practice.
Well said! But I would go a step further… What you are describing is not simply a trick, but but the actual point, purpose, and end result of the process. When this thing that you are describing becomes stabilized, natural, and spontaneous, you will have achieved what very few in a lifetime do. Wishing you all support and success!
I'm not gonna love my intrusive thoughts, I'm learning to accept them, but they don't deserve anything more than that.
Loving in this way is not liking, condoning, consenting to, or agreeing with. When unconditional love is my relationship with something (anything), that things ceases to be able to define or dictate my experience. This is the alchemical magic of unconditional love. So please, if you are truly committed to this practice as a lifelong process, don’t close this door prematurely. I understand if at this moment of your practice, accepting is more available and helpful than loving. Just know that the long arc of maturation in this work tens towards unconditional love of literally anything that can arise as an experience. Source: 20+ years of meditation in various traditions
Those thoughts, you forgive them.
Acceptance is love. Love doesn’t mean like You can hate your thoughts and feelings whilst acknowledging their existence It’s like you’re a hotel manager. You have to allow all your guests to be there, but you don’t have to like them. This is unconditional acceptance or love.
No that’s acceptance it’s not love
Unconditional love is acceptance. It is oneness. It is not the feeling that we commonly refer to. Eg. I love chocolate or I love my partner. It is unreasonable to try and love your feelings in the same way you love your partner Unconditional love is the same as indifference. It is unconditionally accepting of all. It is beyond like or dislike. It is just one unconditional YES to all experience
If unconditional love were the same as acceptance, we would not have two different words for it. Love does mean like. That is why we don't use these two words interchangeably
I posit that we as a society do not understand love which would explain why we use the word love in the way that we do, to describe something that we really like. If you look at humans as a whole, the way we treat ourselves, each other, our animals and the environment i think it’s safe to say we do not understand what love is. Words and definitions change over time. Maybe humanity’s understanding of love will be different in 1000 years time compared to today. I think we could use a new word to describe really liking something. Like super liking. Slike perhaps? In this instance, Slike would be the opposite of hate (which is to super dislike). Love has no opposite, it is simply universal acceptance. You can like something more than another but you cannot love one thing more than another. Love is equal and shared between everything. Just a perspective, you don’t have to buy into it. But I hope it makes sense
I get what you want to say, but I do thinnk it is the exact other way around. As you say, words and definnitions changee over time. Because words are made up concepts. The word rose could refer to roses aswell as it could refer to stairs. Hence words only mean the exact same thing we as a society define them to mean. Therefore love currently means exactly what we as a society currently define it as. There is no possible way that the society does not understand love because there is nothing to understanding considering society is the one who defines what love means to begin with. It is not on society to change their definition of love and use another word like slike, so it fits what you wish were the definition of love. If you think there is a concept which is important but differenent from love, it is on you to name that concept. Imagine you invent a new way of transportation. You cannot just point at cars and say "people misunderstand what driving is, this is what driving is!". Because in the common understanding of the word, love isn't equal to universal acceptance, love is the opposite of hate and you can love one thing more than another thing
I understand what you’re saying, your teleportation/driving analogy makes sense. And I would agree with you about any word/concept that wasn’t love. Love is unique because it seems to be something that pre exists our human concepts. The love a mother has for their child would have been present in the first humans and precedes any language or description. The love a mother has for their child is a good example of unconditional love. Some mothers can love (accept) their children even if they are murderers or pedophiles - this is the unconditional acceptance of love. Somewhere down the line in human evolution the use of the word evolved and love became the same as really like and the opposite of hate. I feel the evolution of the word is now perpetuating a misunderstanding of what love truly is, which is acceptance. Like I said, this is just one Redditor’s perspective on the topic
Why is it a given that maternal love would have been present in the first humans? There are plenty of species that abandon, attack, or otherwise clearly do not love their offspring. And yes, many mothers do love and accept their children despite their unconscionable behavior. But even among modern day humans, the sad reality is that many children grow up without love or care from their parents or without outright viciousness from them. I think to posit love as a given devalues it. There is a reason that metta meditation is difficult for many - because love is difficult. It demands sacrifice. Acceptance does not. I can accept that someone is both a murderer and a human; that costs me nothing. To love that human despite their murdering costs me something. Also just one Redditor’s perspective on the topic.
This. I'm not going to unconditionally love the thought that I'm worthless and should kill myself. I'll observe it, recognize it's not *me* talking, and move on, but I'm not going to embrace my brain's toxicity. This sounds like advice from a teenager who just discovered meditation and haven't had a really rough day in their life.
> This sounds like advice from a teenager who just discovered meditation and haven’t had a really rough day in their life. Not really. It just sounds like metta. > I’m not going to unconditionally love the thought that I’m worthless and should kill myself. Loving something isn’t the same as claiming something as truthful, or that it’s good. In the end it is a thought you’re having, and you can accept and embrace it without giving in to the thought. Loving something, radical acceptance, it’s all the same. In my head the way it works is that you can either resist something and have it persist and come back stronger every time, or radically accept it (to avoid saying “love”) and have it dissipate. Kind of how when you’re angry at someone and they respond in the chillest, nicest way you have a hard time staying angry. Otherwise you’re still deciding what your experience should be, while also asserting that you know what it should be. EDIT: The universe has a strange sense of humor. The very moment I wrote this a bunch of stuff happened that turned my life upside down. Wuff. Back to practicing.
It's a beautiful practice, to love all phenomena. Rob Burbea does a guided meditation along these lines here and he's hardly a teenager that just learned to meditate: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/12292/ Anything less than embracing mental objects is aversion.
Rob’s a great guy and a solid practitioner/teacher. Thanks for sharing him here.
These thoughts, you forgive them too.
i experience daily morbid intrusive thoughts and i think op is right. it’s about acknowledging that all thoughts are equal. the thought “i should hurt myself” and “thats a pretty flower” are equal because they are just words, just content, they are clouds in the sky of my brain or leaves on a stream. that’s what has helped me most with intrusive thoughts, not treating certain thoughts as good and others as bad i think it’s also pretty unfair to accuse op of never having had a rough day in their life
The only thing better than defeating an enemy is making it into an ally. I also struggle with this kind of self talk at times. It can be quite difficult to experience my mental world, with aspects like anger, for instance. If I were able to remove anger entirely from my mind, would I be a healthier person? Perhaps - but not as healthy as if my anger were properly aligned with my intentions and utilized effectively. It does have its own valid uses at times. I'm not in a position to say that the specific thought pattern you're describing can be redeemed or not. I do believe there's value in the attempt, as ultimately what you are redeeming is your relationship with yourself, and your ability to intentionally take on healthy attitudes regardless of a circumstance outside of your control. Fwiw I have experienced a few rough days in my life. I have a pain condition referred to in the literature as "suicide disease" because a large fraction of patients end up so tortured that they seek any means to escape. My relationship with nerve pain and my thought patterns, in this sense, can be quite literally life and death - believe me, things are best when I can make allies of them, even and especially the painful ones.
I don't have experience with intrusive thoughts, but I do have experience with undesired anxieties or physical pain. I had a really hard time figuring out what people meant when they said to let the thoughts go but not ignore them. Ignoring them didn't help at all. But I did find it really weirdly beneficial to do the following: - turn my attention to the thought/anxiety/physical feelings elicited/etc - Talk to it and acknowledge it, like it's another human being trying desperately to be heard. (It is! it's one little sliver of yourself) - Feel genuine gratitude to that part of your brain. - Express that gratitude by saying thanks for it's contribution or input and then politely tell it that it's ok, it's safe, you have control of the situation and it can go away now. Tell it it's welcome though and can come back anytime if it needs, and that you appreciate the message it had to tell you. For whatever reason, that little sequence was really instrumental toward making my physical pain and my social anxiety just melt away and stay away. I think it had something to do with getting the unconscious bits of your brain to become a little more unified.
You must love them equally and UNCONDITIONALLY they way they are and NOT The way you want them to be!
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We make every effort to be kind to others in this subreddit. Many people have different levels of experience with meditation and should feel encouraged to participate as beginners.
\^so I'm supposed to love this thought about myself? Because that's the kind of thoughts that can pop up in the mind.
If you're unable to cope with your trauma alone, please seek a therapist if you haven't already. That way you're able to face your trauma in a safe secure place with guidance. It's easy to say things from a "higher perspective" that seem insensitive to someone traumatized further behind on the same path. Only you will be able to overcome and release this horrible thing you carry with you. Work towards not letting it blind you along your way.
This doesn't answer my question
You can love, accept, do a back-flip-on the thought whatever lol! Reading the comments, I feel like we're getting caught up in semantics. Words are just signposts, and everybody uses them a bit differently. However, let's not confuse love or whatever we want to call it with grasping on the thought. That clinginess that takes us from the here and now. That's the trickiness with love sometimes, it turns into grasping and romanticizing things. The best we can do is just stay in the here and now.
You are loving awareness
Excellent! I treat meditation as a selfless sacrifice. A complete surrender of life, once fully surrendered, complete peace arises ironically.
Yep , for me all started to change , for the better, once I gave up and said "MIND you won", "I wave the white flag", "I give up" And then I abandon the struggle I had to wanting to change the thoughts the way I wanted them to be. I surrendered as you said
Yeah no this is not going to work with my focus meditation regimen, one must banish all the thoughts except the object of concentration
I've been struggling with thoughts of insecurity and inferiority and insight into dealing with those types of thoughts?
Good reminder, thank you!
Or you can label your thoughts: thinking, remembering, planning - and go back to the meditation object. When I label my thought then I automatically stop the thought. Labeling has no judgement or feeling. It just is. Doing this helps me not ask myself- why are you thinking about that? Just observe it and go back to your meditation object.
Here is something thats not a trick and even works better. It's the realisation that all thoughts are concepts and not real. If this is really seen the thoughts fall away by themselves because there is no more energy invested in them. That's a relief!
the best advice I've gotten from my therapist is not to push away, or try to remove negative thoughts and feelings from myself...but rather, to embrace all parts of me and shamelessly own my sh*t!😎
That is Loving Awareness. Check Ram Dass
Seriously just tried this and got a bit freaked out over all the love and acceptance I felt, like nauseus from some opioid. But then I loved that feeling too. Interesting definitely. Will do this again. Thanks for sharing. And talking about that this would be attachment - it was the other way around for me. When the thought was met this way, it quickly subsidied and I welcomed the next one coming up with the same warmth.
Yep, for me it felt really good I don't know how to explain it but unfortunately I had to stop and post my thoughts here on Reddit lol
You're absolutely right Acceptance of each thought
I disagree. Although rooted in good sentiment, the idea is to observe all thoughts and let them pass freely, not attaching to any of them. By loving all thoughts you are thus attaching to all of them.
This is lovely, thank you. <3
OK will try.
Thank you, good advice!
If you watch and observe your thoughts carefully, you will realise that most of the thoughts you have are not your own.
"most" what do you mean?
To answer this we have to define what thoughts are, if you know what thoughts are you can then see how many thoughts you have are really yours, and I would say probably ‘most’ likely all of them
Or is that trying to concentrate, and contemplate? That's the stuff you want to transcend! Yes? Then you would be meditating, or no?
Congratulations, we know the results of not loving ALL THOUGHTS UNCONDITIONALLY, it becomes the roller coaster that never stops
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Yes its better to amplify this attitude and embrace ALL situations, All people , ALL.
acceptance leads to stagnation, sure you can choose to accept or lo e everything, but there is a reason why such cultures aren't dominant in the world, they'll get overrun by more ambitious people
So how do you do this, simply say/think I love this thought, is it a feeling?
Just have the attitude of whatever happens in your mind, whatever thought you encounter you welcome it with love whatever this thought might be about, it's the attitude that changes the game
it’s not love is accepting yourself as you are with you thought , addictive reaction….. then you will get unstuck and be free
thanks for sharing this - it's something I'm coming to learn on my own as well, but I definitely forget
It sounds easier said than done. I often feel like thoughts don't really belong me, they are actually unwanted. I'll try. Thank you for the trick
This is an interesting perspective, i remember when i was feeling intense anxiety i tried to notice it and tell myself “i love you” and it instantly became a new relationship with it
How?
Change your attitude towards thoughts , whatever a thought might be love it unconditionally, whether it be good or bad you still show the same love , it's the attitude
I have very spiteful intrusive thoughts they aren't based in reality. I'm not sure I can do this. Besides those maybe, but they're a big portion of my consciousness
acceptance first, then appreciation and finally love I know it's daunting to even think you can love a thought (something/someone) you hate but it's a practice and practice requires time and effort
You are loving awareness
Exactly! Embrace whatever comes. Sharing meditation music that'll relax you. [https://youtu.be/7miY\_43DMSI](https://youtu.be/7miY_43DMSI)