Compassion, The Essence of Humanity – Guided Imagery Meditation & Talk [Episode 26]

The show you're about to hear is a recording from Dr. Miller's webinar series titled Life Meditations. He began this series in response to the pandemic, and his goal has been to provide wisdom, practical tools, and comfort to people during these stressful times. Watch the entire series at drmiller.com/lifemeditations. That's drmiller.com/lifemeditations.

Let's begin with a little bit of imagery. That is a little meditation, a few moments to relax your mind and your body. And focus within. So with your body in a comfortable place, aware of the fact that there's no other place that you're needing to go at this moment in time, give yourself permission to relax. Take a deep breath in. As you let it out Let it be a feeling of letting go completely, completely and totally releasing and letting go. Attune to your breath. Feel how it enters and leaves all by itself. You don't have to do anything, just simply observing. With each breath in, think to yourself, breathing in.

With each breath out, think to yourself, breathing out. Not doing it, just thinking it. And then at the end of each breath out, notice that quiet pause before the next breath begins itself. That's the quietest time of all for all your mind and body. Let yourself sink deeply down into that pause and imagine you can let all the rest of your being pause. Behind your closed eyelids, let your eyes gently roll upward, look at the back of your forehead, and imagine you can see the word Relax. Relax.

Let your eyelid muscles relax to the point they don't want to open. When they feel so heavy they don't want to open, gently test them.

Feel how heavy they feel, and as you do, let that heavy, peaceful, calm feeling flow from your eyelids throughout all the muscles of your face. Across your scalp. Jaw muscles relax as that relaxation flows down through your neck, relaxing. Your shoulders sag a little bit as they release, and the relaxation flows down through your arms, through your hands, down to your fingers. And as it reaches your fingertips, feel that familiar feeling buzzing, pulsation of warmth, however you feel relaxation in the tips of your fingers. Take a deep breath in and draw that relaxation from your fingertips up into the center of your chest. As you let that breath out, think to yourself the words, "It breathes me." Feel the air breathe in for you. With your next breath out, think It breathes me. Sink into that pause and feel the little spark of energy that starts each new breath in. That's a spark of life, like a little spark of light that illuminates the darkness, and it's a gift for you and is always there. And with each rising and falling of your chest Feel all the muscles of your chest relax. Feel your abdomen as it rises and falls with each breath, like a gentle massage of relaxation to all your internal organs. Relaxation flows down through your back, through your pelvis, relaxing all your internal organs, down through your thighs and your knees through your legs and your ankles and your feet, all the way down to the tips of your toes.

Good.

Now imagine that you can float effortlessly through time and space, as if you're floating on a magic carpet or in a time machine that can take you to a very beautiful-bolide place, far away from anything that could ever disturb you, place of utter relaxation and calm.

Good.

Let yourself become aware of this place as if you're gently arriving there now, and you can look around and see the colors and shapes around you. Hear the sounds. Feel the peace and serenity of this safe place. And anytime any unnecessary thoughts come along, with your next breath out, imagine those unnecessary thoughts are like a little puff of smoke or a little cloud suspended in the middle of your head momentarily. And with your next breath out, imagine you simply Breathe them out through your nose, exhausting the unnecessary thought out through your nostrils. And let your next breath in instead. Breathe in clean, pure white light, fresh air. And as you release, think to yourself, "It breathes me," as you sink down into the pause. And are filled again with another breath of relaxation, more and more relaxed with each breath. And anytime an unnecessary thought comes along, empty it in the same way so you can be here in your beautiful place. Good. And as you're here in this beautiful place, bring to mind someone that you love or have loved or who has loved you, someone that you can still feel the glow of love in your heart. Imagine you can bring them to your special place as if it's a moment's vacation when you can be with your loved one, looking into their face, into their eyes, holding their hands or their bodies if that's what's appropriate in your relationship. Could be a child, could be a favorite animal, a pet, could be a newborn baby that was yours at one time. As a baby and feel the love. Feel it enter with each new breath in. Notice how it sometimes causes a deeper breath to come in, and as you do, you can kind of feel that love flowing out from your heart. Notice where you feel the love the strongest in your body and let each breath breathe into this place. We've talked before how love, in its largest meaning of wholeness, togetherness, harmony, peace, affection, dedication, reverence, and appreciation, is it the essence of healing, which means becoming more whole, more complete, more integral, and functioning in harmony with the world around you, just as the cells within your body function in harmony. As you love another, you bring healing, ongoing healing, into this relationship. Feel the love that you share with this person. Now stay in touch with this feeling of love, of vulnerability and openness and intimacy, and think back to some time earlier this week, or maybe last week, some time recently when you felt love for someone. How difficult is it to find someone with whom you felt love? Actually felt it. The warmth, the joy. Picture that person in your mind's eye.

Maybe you can recall those moments when you felt that love most strongly, most strongly with them.

These last few days. Feel it.

Good.

And now I want you to see if you can just scan back through recent days and think of someone that you don't particularly know very well, but someone with whom you felt empathy. Could be someone you know, or your community. Gee, it might even have been someone on television that you felt some compassion for, some empathy, some connection. A little bit different kind of love but definitely a kind of love, a kind of connection, of oneness.

Good.

Now take a deep breath in. As you let that breath out, let it be a feeling of letting go. And once again, Breathe into that place of love within as you once again picture that loved being that we started with earlier. Bring them to your special place.

Let go of all other thoughts.

Realize you are exactly where you're supposed to be at this moment in time and feeling the love that is within you. And allow yourself to know that this love is an extraordinarily powerful force. And although we live in a world that often does not reinforce it for us, it is nevertheless extremely important. In fact, even more important. And realize that you have a responsibility to keep your love as a living, vibrant, powerful entity within you, and that you have the power to expand your circle of love just as much as you are willing to. Simply know that you have the power to do that, and you have the power to choose whether you're willing to do that. Good. And in our explorations today, I'm going to ask you to continually be open to discovering when are you willing to do that and how much are you willing to do that. Gradually, in your own time, bring yourself back here to being Alert, refreshed, and in touch with the world around you.

Stretching, moving. Ah!

Take a moment to notice how comfortable you feel. Good.

And if you would, just kind of use your little chat box and Give me a word or two, let me know that you're back with me again and how you're feeling.

Embraced. Calm and grateful. Lovely. Lovingly. That's a beautiful one.

Hi, Jennifer. Feeling blissful here and now.

Here and now, very good place to be.

Especially since it's the only place that exists. Every other time this ever happened is gone now.

Hopeful, back and relaxed, peaceful.

Feeling a little perplexed? Good. One of my teachers, Milton Erickson, used to say into everyone's life should come some confusion and also some enlightenment. They tend to come together. Let me talk a little bit about compassion then, and I think it will emerge for you why it is that I feel that it is such an important quality. I like to sh— in the course of my medical practice then, beginning in about 1970, I was seeking the meaning of healing. What is healing? And first of all, I realized that healing was not just something that happened physically because of a drug that we gave. But that the mind was involved, the emotions were involved, and a person's spiritual condition was very important to their healing, which led me to initiate that field of holistic medicine back in 1970. Um, I realized there were several other people who had stumbled upon the same thing. Gradually, over the next 20 years, we came together and realized we're all talking about the same thing. Holistic healing— mind, body, emotion, spirit, behavior, and relationship are all crucial to healing. Um, so throughout the first part of the 1970s, I was seeking just what is healing. I realized it had to do with the integration of many aspects such as mind-body-emotion-spirit relationship, and that they needed to be integrated by a part of the mind that was capable of wisdom. The place within our bodies that, that wisdom, um, evolves or emerges is from the prefrontal cortex of the brain. This part of the brain up here. If this part of the brain is damaged, then our personality gets flipped over. We're not able to think at that level of wisdom, which is higher than just knowing. There's learning and knowing, and you learn and know by taking in more stuff. Wisdom grows by letting go of what no longer pertains, what you no longer need. So knowledge comes, wisdom lingers. So I learned more about wisdom and what that was, and that was fascinating because it took me out of the physical, out of the psychological, really right into the philosophical. And then I begin to ask, what are we accessing through our wisdom that ultimately gives us the guidance as to how to bring healing to all these other levels, whether it's to relationships or healing our emotions or healing our attitudes about life, of overcoming addictions and dependencies, whatever it is, where is that coming from? What is that source? And I came up with a notion of Love with a capital L, and which, which is what led me to write that book that I wrote, actually my most recent of my 6 or 7 or 8 books, whatever, uh, yeah, in about 19— well, it really began in the early 2000s, published it in 2009, and most of you have had an opportunity opportunity to look at it because it comes free when you sign up for my free newsletter at drmiller.com, along with those free imagery experiences. And that is Our Culture on the Couch. And the point that I was making primarily in Our Culture on the Couch is that we live in a world of enormous violence, enormous violence, and that it was increasing and spreading so much in our world and in our country that if we didn't do something, that we were going to see a collapse of our democracy, a collapse perhaps even of the world. I wrote the book and it was, you know, nobody cared about violence back in those days. I talked about there being violence, and in violence I mean violent actions, violent words, violent behavior, the kinds of things that we see on the internet, the kind of thing that Philip Wiley wrote about in his amazing book Mindfuck, in which he described how they flipped elections in different countries, created Brexit, and even led to the election of the president that was elected in the United States back in 1996. And it was pure violence what they did, because it took away from people their ability to make sensible and wise decisions. The importance then of love is how to regain that wholeness. And we've talked a lot more about love and violence, and I'll talk more with you and exactly how we can apply that. So once I had come to that, and as I say, I reached that, I would say, in the early, early part of this century, early part of this millennium, and then I began to look at what are the ways that we can share this knowledge and this information. And that's when I began to realize about the power of compassion. Because compassion is something that pulls us together. And a house divided cannot stand. Remember the old Aesop's fable of the father and his sons who were fighting and fighting and fighting with each other? And so he said, I have to teach you boys something. Go out and bring me some sticks. So they came back and brought him about a, gonna admit, about a dozen sticks. And he took the sticks and he bound them together until it was a big bundle, and he gave them to the, to the youngest boy, said, can you break this bundle? And the boy tried to break the bundle, but of course he couldn't because it It was just this bundle of sticks you can't break. They went all the way up the line to the biggest and strongest brother, and he couldn't break it at all. And then the father said, now. And he cut the bonds from around the sticks and gave them back to the boys one at a time and said, now, break them. And one by one, they were able to break it. And so right now, as I look on the world stage, as several other countries are growing stronger and stronger, several other, other countries are gaining nuclear weapons. And up until now, the peace has been kept by the United States. For all the strangeness we've had, we have kept the peace in the world, and we've been together to a certain degree. And now we're like those boys fighting with each other. And if we don't pull it together sometimes soon, all the disasters that I wrote about in Our Culture on the Couch: 7 Steps to Global Healing. And we'll— we go over those steps in some of our other webinars. That's going to come to pass, and it can be fast, just like COVID.

Just like COVID.

This is the kind of world that we live in. It's not going to be the old-fashioned kind of war, you know, like invading the Capitol building. No. But so we have an opportunity, and I want to encourage the world to take that opportunity. Compassion literally means to suffer together. Come together, com, C-O-M, passion, like the Passion of Christ, to suffer together. Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another's suffering and you feel motivated to do something to relieve that suffering. It's not the same as empathy or altruism, although there's a relationship. Compassion is an emotional response to feel sympathy, and it creates a desire to help. Empathy is a feeling of awareness of another person's emotion and a sense within yourself, oh yeah, I know how that feels.

Oh yeah.

Oh man, that's rotten to have that.

Oh yeah, I've felt that.

I know what that feels like. But that's not necessarily the same as compassion, which is, what can I do to help this person? Is there anything I can do? I decided to do something a little bit different today, and I hope you won't mind listening as I share some personal experiences, because I think compassion is very personal. Back when I was in PS 138 in Brooklyn, New York City, I was in the 5th grade, and our teacher, Mrs. Schiff, told everybody to come up, grab a book off the table, and she was going to teach us how to write a book group. For it. Now I grabbed a book entitled Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I had never heard those names before, and I really didn't know anything about the Holocaust. I had heard Adolf Hitler, we killed him, killed all the bad guys, uh, and I heard the word concentration camp, but I wasn't anywhere near having any idea what I was gonna find out when I opened up this book. The woman was a physician who had been captured with her family by the Nazis and confined to the camps for several years. And the book was her personal story about the cruelty, the murder, the sexual abuse, the starvation that she and others had experienced during her years, years there, as well as the acts of love and courage she had experienced during her imprisonment at Auschwitz. And she described how the soldiers would come in at night, drag families from their bed, herd them into railroad cattle cars where they would ride for days in suffocating darkness. And then how they were prepared for death, cremated after their hair was shaved off and their gold teeth were pulled out. I'm 12 years old. And I am horrified, you know, because this is back in fifth grade. So what, 1950 or something? Uh, and it was very shocking. I was revolted. Could human beings really be this cruel? How could they have operated for so long? How could American companies have supported the Nazis in doing it? You know, IBM setting up the credit— the IBM cards for keeping track of the numbers that were being tattooed on the arms of the prisoners. And I went on to— in life to see people who still had those tattoos on them. How had our country, the home of the brave, really looked on with such complacency in the face of such indisputable evidence of the existence of these camps. And I went around complaining to people, this is not okay. And they said, oh no, no, we've killed Hitler, it's all over. And I said, no, it's not over. I knew it wasn't over. I don't know how, but something said, hmm, Somehow people don't get it. This is a man who built machines for exterminating human beings. Well, I'll just keep it to myself, and one day I'll figure out something that can be done about all this. Now I want to take you to— back to school again, but now I'm in college, my sophomore year, toward the end of my sophomore year in college. The registrar asks me to come to his appointment, come to his office to make an appointment, come see him. And I go, uh-oh, I've been busted, because I was not the best behaved kid. I was always sneaking around and doing funny things. So I felt an undeniable physical and emotional tension through the days leading up to that appointment. Until finally I found myself in his office frightened, but I wasn't prepared for what he had to say. Basically, it seems I'd taken a set of psychological tests during my freshman year, a strong vocational guidance test, and he had the results of the test. And then he told me, Mr. Smith told me, he said, you know, we don't show scores on these kinds of tests. To students. They're just part of research that's going on. In fact, in my 20 years of practicing psychology, I've never shared anyone's results with them. But for you, I had to make an exception.

Woo!

My ears opened up. Then he went on to tell me on that crisp New England winter's day that according to this test, that when they looked at my perspective on life and what I enjoyed about life, and then they compared that with the answers were given by people who were successful in various professions to see how well my interest and joys lined up with theirs. Well, I ranked extraordinarily low in my interest correlations with successful and happy practitioners in all the professions which I had been focused on— engineering, mathematics, physics, and science— which I loved. And as I described, I think, before, I loved it because there's a truth. I ended up in mathematics, as a matter of fact, because it's like, you know, the equations work no matter where you were in the world. Whereas you, you write a paper and, you know, in sociology or history or something like that, and you get graded according to— I don't know how, but I wrote great papers that didn't get good grades and lousy papers that, that were outstanding, but in math and science anyway. But here I was, I didn't correlate my interests. On the other hand, my response was also extreme with a number of other groups such as YMCA physical director, minister, osteopath. And what was so strange that I either correlated more than 95% with this, with one group and less than 5% with the other group. So normally people's interests are 40%, 60%, 30%, 70%. "but for you," he said as he showed me the graph, "look at all that white space down the middle. You are so extreme." I said, "Well, you know, I certainly didn't drag myself out of the inner city to get a top-notch academic education in order to be a YMCA physical director, although it seems like it could be a fun job, and I wouldn't make a very good minister because I'm a militant agnostic." And I didn't even know what an osteopath was. No, no, no, Miller, he said. I'm not saying you should go into any of those fields. What it's really shouting loud and clear is that you are a do-gooder. I never, never heard that word before. What's a do-gooder? He says, well, you have a deep need to care for others, to give to others, to serve and honor what— who other people are. You have extraordinary compassion for others, and you will not be happy in life unless your work enables you to give to other people. You are a do-gooder, Miller. And then he said, perhaps you may be the biggest do-gooder since Jesus Christ. I swear that's what he told this little freshman in high school who was kind of looking for where am I going to go in this strange world. And he said he owed it to me to break his cast iron rule of not sharing. But as he explained, you know, I was kind of off in my mind. I'm thinking, the biggest do-gooder since Jesus Christ, how cool! I mean, it had a nice ring to it. I mean, even though I was agnostic, uh, it was like Wow, I was flattered. I mean, I dug Jesus. I mean, the sort of miracles, I couldn't— I was a scientist. I can't understand virgin births and resurrections. I couldn't square that. But no question about it, Jesus had some good ideas. And to think that I was similar to him, And then he told me, he says, look, you have great grades in science, so you have an opportunity to go to medical school, and that way you can give to people. And so I actually went to summer school for the next two summers because I had to take biology and chemistry in order to fill out my requirements. I took the grades, and sure enough I found myself on the way to medical school. Another seminal experience that I had was while I was taking that biology course that I would never have taken, but I had to take it to get the credits for medical school, looking in my microscope at some drops of pond water, and I was awestruck, to put it mildly. It wasn't with the dispassionate eye of a scientist that I beheld that wondrous phenomenon through the lens of my microscope that day. Far from it. I realized that that invisible thing now that I could see paddling around in this murky pond water shared something with me: life. We were both alive. And that day was the beginning of a long love affair with life. And I've always thought of that cell as being my muse. I used to go back every day. I mean, we finished the pond water thing at the end of the first week, but every day I would go back into the lab and take another drop of pond water and look in it to see how my little friends were doing. And it was a connection that has served me for a long time. Yeah, the first night that I was in medical school, I was quite confused. And, but in time, and some of you have heard the story that I've told when I was in my second year of medical school, when we went to, to see a patient who was lying in bed in obvious pain, uh, and the teacher who had his 7 medical students walked over, pulled the covers back, didn't even say hello to the woman. She's nude underneath. She's in so much pain she doesn't even notice. Then he presses on her belly and he said, this woman has peritonitis, severe peritonitis. And then he performed what's called the rebound tenderness test. What you do is you push in, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and then you suddenly let go and it's like, ah! That's called rebound tenderness, how we can diagnose peritonitis. Well, he did it on her And even though she was in such terrible pain, when he let go, it was like an ungodly shriek came out of this woman. And then he turned to me and he said, Dr.

Miller—

that's what they always say to make you feel bad in medical school, that you know you better just mind your business and do what you're told— he said, demonstrate rebound tenderness. Now, I don't know how or where it came from, but I said, you know, I've seen rebound tenderness in the emergency room, and I agree with you, that's by far the worst rebound tenderness I've ever seen. He said, demonstrate it. And I said, you know, I think she's had enough pain. I don't feel right in creating more pain for this woman. You know, his steam rose from his head, and he said, step back, Dr.

Miller.

And then he had each of the other 6 medical students create that same pain for the woman. And he watched my eyes the whole time, and I knew he felt a sense of victory. I knew he felt he was teaching me a lesson, but I don't think he knew the lesson that he was teaching me. He was teaching me that even in a really good medical school that cares about human beings, that such behavior could take place. And that is the point when I knew where I was headed. I realized that there was something huge missing in the field of medicine.

And let's say it's compassion today.

Qualities of compassion. Compassion inhibits fear and it activates courage. Compassion changes the functioning and interrelation of all different aspects of brain functioning and makes us better able to handle demanding situations. When you're in a compassionate state, there's improved heart rate variability and diminished inflammation within the body. Compassion improves mental health and psychosocial functioning. It enhances the ability to deal with stress. And compassion, you know, it's more like courage than niceness. Compassion is a way of responding to the stress of trauma or suffering in another. It kind of goes like this: we see in another person the signals of pain, suffering, or alarm.

And from those signals, we be aware of the suffering.

And then there comes a feeling of open connection to that one who's suffering, and it calls forth the response of engaging rather than retreating from that person who's suffering. And there arises a desire within to try to relieve the suffering. It's a feeling of not wanting that suffering to continue, and at the same time there's somehow an inner belief that somehow there must be something I can do to relieve that suffering to some degree. In other words, there's some sense of empowerment. That empowerment shifts the functioning of the brain to bring about an actual motivation to take whatever actions are possible to attempt to relieve that suffering. And when you're in the process of doing that, it inhibits panic and it inhibits you from avoiding things. It slows your heartbeat. Oxytocin and progesterone shift the stress response then to a giving and caring response. Again, compassion is a form of courage so that you turn toward, rather than away from, the suffering. The heart has the ability to hold the sufferings of life in compassion.

Both compassion and courage have to do with the heart.

So we can think of there being two parts to compassion: sensitivity of— and awareness of the suffering of another. Sensitivity and awareness of the suffering. In addition, there is an awareness there can be a means of alleviating it. Sometimes it means doing something, sometimes it's just sitting with and being with that person that's suffering. Okay, let me just share a little bit from— I know we have professionals out there and yeah, I did have some pictures of— there are some people who don't We don't have a lot of positive orientations toward compassionate and caring and dealing with feelings. But the pattern neurologically is the first thing that happens when you see someone and compassion develops, the insula is this part of the brain. It's deep. The little retractors are pulling back so you can see under the superficial cortex. That's called the insula. And that insula lets the body know something's happening. That's the first thing that happens. The next thing that happens is the amygdala is triggered. That lets you know that something important is happening, awakens feelings. Okay, there's a problem going on here. But the amygdala, of course, is also responsible for triggering the fight-or-flight response. So it's important that before that amygdala gets firing too strongly, overactive, the next thing is that the temporal-parietal junction is brought into play. And that allows us to understand that someone else is having the problem. Because if that doesn't come in, then all the midline structures will be activated, then we get afraid, and then we think, oh my gosh, I've got to save myself. Instead, because of the temporal parietal stimulation, we come up with a thought: someone's in pain, what can I do to serve? And then what comes into action is the prefrontal cortex, and it lets us know, I'm not in trouble, someone else is, and I can do something about it. And so it analyzes and plans and develops the intention, creates a strategy to do something about it, and that downregulates the amygdala. So it kind of shuts the amygdala down, so you feel more comfortable, more relaxed. You're busy doing something about it. Then finally, what kicks in is something that we're just learning about. It's called the oxytocin pathway. Oxytocin, it's also called vasopressin.

That's the love chemical.

That's what floods into a mother's body at the moment that she gives birth. It's developed in the hypothalamus, part of the limbic system. So this is our primitive, uh, mammalian brain. The oxytocin develops in the hypothalamus, but what happens is from where it's developed in the hypothalamus, it's then sent down through nerves into the pituitary gland, and that's where it's released. Very, very interesting how, how that system works. Oxytocin then floods into the body. And there's where it's located, right in the middle of pituitary gland. It's what corresponds to what's been called in mystical traditions the third eye.

The third eye, the pituitary gland.

And the oxytocin drives the urge to serve another, and one gets a reward for serving the other person. And what we found is that there is a great connection between deep relaxation and meditation and mindfulness. Oh, there's research in that all of those ways all of those behaviors brings about greater compassion. Dan Siegel, Dr. Siegel, has done studies on mindfulness meditation, and they show that increases the number of integrative fibers in the brain. And compassion has the same effect. For we know— what we know is that through loving kindness, through meditations on loving kindness, you stabilize attention and you open it up and you create this gateway of empathy and compassion when you do mindfulness meditations. People who had— who were meditators when they did psychological studies, people who meditate are much more likely to lend a helping hand to an actor, you know, a man who's pretending to be in great pain walking on crutches in front of the research subjects. Those who are the meditators are the ones who say, "Here, can I help you? Can I help ease your pain?" or or help you, or help you walk. So again, meditation, deep relaxation, prayer tends to open the heart and make compassion more available to us. We also know that people live longer when they're compassionate because it adds to your, or prevents the loss of telomeres. From the ends of your chromosomes, which is associated with, with living longer. And there's been a lot of research into such things as ancient Tibetan mindfulness practices, which produce more empathy. And it's fascinating how that these ancient traditions are now showing showing up and proving that they're creating these kinds of changes in the brain that are just so positive and healing. Finally, this ability to come together and connect with each other that we find with compassion is of enormous value in helping to get us together so that we can access our collect— our collective intelligence and our collective wisdom. And those are things that I talk about a great deal at the end of that free book that you've all gotten, which is Our Culture on the Couch: 7 Steps for Global Healing. Well, I think we've reached the end of our hour, but I would like to close with a little meditation for you to practice with. And then that you can follow through with and practice more in, in the time that follows. You can— I'll get you started on it, and then you can, you can continue to— I think the pattern is clear for you. I think you'll get it pretty quickly. So then compassion, letting your body be in a comfortable position, nice easy slow breathing. And as you become aware there's no other place that you need to go and nothing that you need to do at this moment in time, give yourself permission to relax. To go within. And as you're breathing, imagine your nose, your nostrils in the middle of your chest, and imagine that with each breath in, you're breathing right through your chest into your heart. And imagine that each breath is bringing fuel into your body, joy, energy, as well as peace.

Breathe that peace throughout all the rest of your body. Good. This little visualization, as you relax deeper and deeper, letting go of unnecessary thoughts and letting tension drain from your body, breathing directly into your heart, makes you more receptive, more able to connect with others.

In a way, learning compassion is a way of reparenting yourself.

Take a deep breath in and then let it go. Let the air breathe you, noticing when you're breathing in Thinking, breathing in. And notice when you're breathing out. Thinking, breathing out. And let yourself go to your special place of relaxation, far away from anything that could disturb you, erasing all unnecessary thoughts in your mind.

Compassion is a mind free from hatred, When there are no negative thoughts and emotions in our minds, we're automatically at peace.

Compassion is the wish that others not suffer, as well as having the urge to help end the suffering of others. Cultivating your compassion is a source of peace and harmony in your heart. And mind. Now picture someone who's close to you, someone you love, and feel the love. Notice how you feel it in your heart. Notice the sensations around your heart— warmth, openness, tenderness. And with each breath out Imagine you're sending a golden fiber of light from the center of your heart to the heart of that loved one. Imagine that golden light reaches out to this loved being, bringing him or her peace and happiness. And at the same time, repeat these phrases to yourself silently in your mind: May you have happiness. May you be free of suffering. May you experience joy and ease. And as you repeat those phrases, remember to extend that golden light and feel with all your heart how much you wish happiness and freedom from suffering.

Good. Now think of a time when this person or someone else that you've loved was suffering, maybe with an illness or an injury, difficult relationship, whatever it might be, and notice how you feel when you think of his or her suffering.

How does it feel in your heart?

Do the sensations change? Do you continue to feel warmth and openness and tenderness, or do you feel a closing off? Are there other sensations and aching?

Just notice. Nothing's right or wrong. It's just what is.

Continue to visualize that loved one. And experience that light coming out from your chest during each breath out. And along with that golden light, send the strong heartfelt wish that they be free from their suffering.

May you be free from this suffering, say it to yourself. May you have joy and happiness. With each breath out, may you be free from this suffering. May you have joy and happiness. And notice what it feels like. Did the sensations change?

Other sensations come about? Now take a deep breath in as you let it out. Let that scene fade and instead contemplate a time when you have suffered yourself, maybe in a conflict with someone, or you were ill, or when you didn't succeed in something that you wanted, or physically ill. And notice how you feel when you think of your suffering.

How does your heart feel?

Do you continue to feel warmth and openness warmth, kindness, and tenderness?

Are there other sensations?

Now, just as you wished for your loved one's suffering to end, you can wish for your own suffering to end.

Allow yourself to do that.

Direct your desire to yourself.

May you be free from this suffering. May you have joy and happiness.

Just as you wished for your loved one's suffering to end, wish for your own to end. And imagine that golden light emanating from your heart is easing your suffering.

And notice how it feels and see if you can feel that same warmth and openness and tenderness.

And then in a little while now, or when you have time for it, do the same thing with a neutral person, a person you don't have any particular feelings for. Maybe someone you saw, maybe grocery clerk or someone at work, work. And then someone that you have difficulty with in your life, like an enemy. Mm-hmm. And as you still feel that warmth in your heart, begin to think of someone that's been an opponent of yours, an enemy, someone you've had trouble with, a roommate you had argument, an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend or parent, whatever, and visualize them. And again, imagine that beam of golden light coming from your heart to them.

And then as well, say to them the same thing: May you be free from your suffering.

May you have joy and happiness, and see if you can feel just as much openness toward them.

And finally, now let's just end this meditation with a wish for all other beings' suffering to be relieved. Just as I wish to have peace and happiness and be free from suffering, so do all beings.

Feel the joy of an open-hearted wish to ease the suffering of all people, almost as if you could now fly around the globe and see people in all places, in China and Iran and Somalia and England and Italy and the South Sea Islands.

Wherever you fly around the earth, may your suffering be relieved.

May you have peace and happiness and be free.

And feel that open-hearted wish within you.

Let the positive feelings of it spread throughout your body and guide yourself back to a wide awake awareness of the space around you, feeling alert and comfortable once again, refreshed and clear.

Good.

And again, post up in the chat box, let me know what your experience was in that rather different kind of meditation from the ones we usually do. But I'm— couple of products that may be useful to you. I have one, and these are experiential meditations, Loving Communication. How to communicate effectively and create respectful, honest, loving relationship. We're going to cover that in our seminar that comes next week. Another is the love meditation, designed to awaken the quality of love within just called Love Meditation. The third one is the video training. It's called— it's two DVDs— The Power of Your Mind to Heal Your Relationships. And all of those are really dealing with the experiences that we had today. On the 25th of February at 11 Pacific time. Our next free webinar is Secrets of Success and Loving Communication. And 2 weeks after that, on March 11th, will be The Magic of Forgiveness. I think you're really going to like that one. So, um, again, um, So good spending time with you. For, for the free meditations for preventing and helping to heal COVID, we still are giving them away free at drmiller.com/covid. COVID, as you probably know by now, drmiller.com/covid. And let me thank you again for, for your being here. Thank you so much for, for your donations, for your kind words, and for your sending information out to other people about when these events are happening. They can go to the— go to my website, drmiller.com, drmiller.com, sign up. You get a free copy of Our Culture on the Couch: 7 Steps to Global Healing, 2 imagery experiences, and will be invited to each of these biweekly webinars. So thank you so much for being here with me, um, and remember, practice this a little bit on your own. And as you know, you can always go back and see past seminars at drmiller.com/lifemeditations. drmiller.com/lifemeditations. Www.dougwilliams.com/lifemeditations. So see you in 2 weeks. Take care of yourself and share love with as many people as you can. Bye now.

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