Sending good vibes is the modern lexicon for compassion meditation. Although anyone can do it, compassion meditation is a particularly advanced practice. If you don’t already have a simple daily meditation practice, it is easy to feel overwhelmed during compassion practice. For a compassion practice to be effective, it is best if it contains two qualities: staying and touching. First you consider the suffering of the subject in question. If you genuinely imagine the pain and discomfort they are feeling, two things will happen. You will feel uncomfortable and you will wish for both you and the subject to be free from the discomfort. This is where staying comes in. Don’t try to push the discomfort away; be willing to be there with them in that suffering. Then, making use of the fact that you aren’t literally experiencing the same suffering, use that privilege to send them feelings of gentle love, kind blessings, and the sincere wish for them to be free. That is the element of touching. So in compassion practice, you stay with the suffering and you lightly touch it as well. In the beginning we learn to do this for our loved ones. Then we learn to do it for people we have neutral feelings for, such as strangers. Lastly we learn how to do it for enemies. Simple daily meditation helps you to find the space for all of this without it feeing like too much. Like meditation and mindfulness, it is important to set aside specific time for practice and also to practice spontaneously in the moment.
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