A guided mediation for closings.

This spiritual exercise is adapted from the Buddhist practice of the four Abodes: loving kindness, compassion, joy in the joy of others and equanimity. It helps us to see each other more truly and experience the depths of our interconnection.

Sit in pairs facing each other (you can mill first so that people do not feel “not chosen”). Ask people to look into each other’s eyes.

In many cultural settings, it is considered rude to look directly into another’s eyes. In high schools and colleges, sustained eye contact may provoke embarrassment. In such situations, suggest that the partners still sit facing each other, but with their eyes closed, picturing the other’s face in the mind’s eye. Then, from time to time as they wish, they can open their eyes and look at the other’s face to refresh their memory, for as long as it comfortable. Then read the following:

Face your partner with eyes closed, remaining silent. Take a couple of slow breath, centering yourself and exhaling tension.

Open your eyes in soft focus and look upon your partner’s face…. If you feel discomfort, just note it with patience and gentleness, and come back, when you can, to regard your partner. You may never see this person again; the opportunity to behold the uniqueness of this human being is given to you now.

To enter the first abode, open your awareness to the gifts and strengths that are in this being… Though you can only guess at them, there are behind those eyes unmeasured reserves of courage and intelligence… of patience, endurance, wit and wisdom… There are gifts there, of which even this person is unaware… Consider what these powers could do for the healing of our world, if they were to be believed and acted on… As you consider that, experience your desire that this person be free from fear…. Experience how much you want this being to be released as well from greed, from hatred and confusion and from the causes of suffering… Know that what you are now experiencing is the great Loving-kindness… closing your eyes now, rest into your breathing…

Opening them again, we enter the second abode… Now as you look into those eyes, let yourself become aware of the pain that is there. There are sorrows accumulated in that life, as in all human lives, though you can only guess at them. There are disappointments and failures, losses and loneliness and abuse… There are hurts beyond the telling… Let yourself open to that pain, to hurts that this person may never have told to another human being… You cannot take that pain away, but you can be with it. As you draw upon your capacity to be with your partner’s suffering, know that what you are experiencing is the great compassion. it is very good for the healing of our world…

Again we close our eyes, opening them as we enter the third abode. As you behold the person before you, consider how good it would be to work together…on a joint project, towards a common goal…. What it would be like, taking risks together…conspiring together in zest and laughter…. Celebrating the successes, consoling each other over the setbacks, forgiving each other when you make mistakes… and simply being there for each other….. As you open to that possibility, you open to the great wealth, the pleasure in each other’s powers, the joy in each other’s joy..

Now entering the fourth and last abode, your eyes open, let your awareness drop deep within you like a stone, sinking below the level of what words can express… to the deep web of relationship that underlies all experience…. It is the web of life in which you have taken being and which interweaves us through all space and time… See the being before you as if seeing the face of one who, at another time, another place, was your lover or your enemy, your parent or your child…. And now you meet again on this brink of time, almost as if by appointment…. And you know that your lives are as inextricably interwoven as nerve cells in the mind of a great being… Out of that vast web you cannot fall… No stupidity, or failure, or cowardice, can ever sever you from that living web. For that is what you are… Rest in that knowing. Rest in the Great Peace…. Out of it we can act, we can risk anything.. and let every encounter be a homecoming to our true nature.

From Coming back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown.