Sending Good Vibes

I’ve been feeling kinda crabby for the past few days. Maybe it’s the cold, or the wind, but something is deranging my dosha.

Then, to make matters worse, I just happened to read an account of some mean-spirited interchanges between some people I know, and I was like, “Whoah. This simply will not do.”

Everyone, even if they are behaving badly, is just trying to get their needs met as best they can, right?

Sometimes as I lead my class out of savasana I’ll guide them in this little “metta meditation” where they send good mojo to themselves, to someone they love, then to someone they are having difficulty with.

It’s hard to wish happiness and a good life to people you are having difficulty with, but it changes you.

I remembered a version of this exercise I did during a 10-day training. We were asked to look around the circle of our fellow trainees and pick someone. They should not be told we had picked them. It was a secret. Then, for the next 10 days, whenever we would see them or even think of them we were to send them metta, (which just means “good vibes.”)

I remember picking out a woman, and then everytime I saw her in the cafeteria or just in class, I would say in my mind,”My you be happy. May all good things come your way.”

I must have sent that vibe to her a hundred times during that training. At the same time, I wondered if anybody had picked me, and was sending ME messages. If they were, I really wanted to feel them, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t.

So while it was a very lovely exercise, I don’t think it made any difference in the life of “my woman.”

Today in my crabbiness, I thought for the millionth time that I needed to re-read and re-study and start practicing NVC again, or at least read that book on my list about how “What we say matters.” Because, holy shit, it totally does.

And if what we say matters, what we think probably matters, too. That’s why I thought of the exercise where I sent those good vibes to that woman all week. I remember thinking that even though my telepathic communiques probably had no effect on her, they were making a big difference in MY life. They were sweetening me. It was like being a secret Santa or something.

She wasn’t just a random person to me anymore. She was “my person.”  And everytime I saw her in the food line, or taking her shoes off before coming in to class, or I passed her in the hall or held the door for her going into the Ladies room, or I ran into her in the shop, I switched to this really sweet mode in my brain. It was sort of Little Prince-like: she was  “my flower” and precious to me in all the world. I was changed even if she wasn’t, and that was probably the point the teachers wanted us to see.

So I am going to pick somebody this week and secretly send them “metta.” I think it might cure what ails me, purge the crabbiness, make me sweeter.