Metta and Patience

                    

My wife and I have been searching and waiting for someone to join us in our marriage for over the last 5 years. Throughout this time we have been practising  and refining Metta Tantra. 

We are happy to report that we have been dating someone for the last 2 months. The patience and the Metta Tantra have paid off. She is utterly what we wanted, intelligent, good looking and fierce.

You remember that one of the Eleven Benefits of Metta is becoming more attractive to people.. Because as practitioners of Metta Tantra we cultivate a healthy diet, fitness and meditation regime, we are naturally attractive to other people. Because we have proper and proportionate nutrition we bring into existence the benefits of Metta. The idea that sitting on a cushion and wishing everyone the best will make us beautiful is patently absurd. What will make us beautiful is the exercise, restraint and treating our bodies properly that Metta Tantra teaches us to do.

The practice of Patience, another key Buddhist teaching has also been effective. We have carefully and very discretely interviewed without them even being aware it was happening, easily 100 women over the last 5 years that we have been looking for our girl. We knew what we wanted and weren't willing to settle for anything less.

We have been patient, methodical and sure of what exactly it was that we wanted...and now have it. And this is the key to success: knowing exactly what it is that you want, and then being patient and methodical in pursuing it. Whilst pursuing it you must continue creating conditions for what you want to happen to happen. So continue the Metta, continue eating properly, continue exercising and reading the great books and never for a moment take your eyes off your goal.
We did these things and she is wonderful.

A True Valentine

Be your Valentine.
Have a wild and passionate romance with yourself. Dote on yourself. Make yourself the absolute centre of your world.
Eat and exercise in a way that expresses this adoration. Because exercise and diet ARE how you adore, dote and have a wild, passionate romance with yourself.
Stop reading this blog and go visit your local shopping centre/mall.
If you live in the West there is a guarantee that between 1in 3 and half the people you will see there will be obese.
The people you will see and or saw there are people who aren't having a romance with themselves.
They have about as much love for themselves as people who have had a nasty divorce have for each other. Their relationship with themselves may have started out every bit as magical as a new romance, but it has been a long time since they rejoiced in rubbing their hands over themselves and feeling the muscle tone, felt and loved the proof of life, of virility.
It is a long time since they rejoiced in another hill conquered, another milestone achieved.
These people simply do not love themselves. Their relationship with themselves is the most toxic thing in their lives and that toxicity is expressed in their obesity.
Love, romance and dote on yourself by not smoking, not having fad diets, not having toxic relationships.
Express your love for yourself by eating properly, by refusing to listen to the fads, the misinformation about food. Express your love for yourself by minimising your chances of having lifestyle related illnesses such as stroke and Type 2 Diabetes.
Love yourself by treating yourself with respect. By dressing and behaving in ways that flatter you.
By finding your unique style and then using it. We all have the ability to be breath takingly attractive, find your style and be that breath takingly attractive person.
Love yourself by waking each morning and being determined to live and love in the healthiest way possible. Love yourself by making this a central theme in your meditation. Love yourself by engaging in Caganussati when you give yourself exercise or a proper diet or when you behave in a particularly loving and gentle way. Spend your meditation recollecting these deeply powerful and beautiful gifts that ultimately you have given yourself and rejoice in them. By loving someone else you are ultimately loving yourself.
So go romance yourself. Be your Valentine....365 days a year.