With the practice of meditation we can develop this ability to more fully love ourselves and to more consistently love others.

Loving-kindness and compassion are the basis for wise, powerful, sometimes gentle, and sometimes fierce actions that can really make a difference - in our own lives and those of others.

For all of us, love can be the natural state of our own being; naturally at peace, naturally connected, because this becomes the reflection of who we simply are.

We long for permanence but everything in the known universe is transient. That's a fact but one we fight.

We need the compassion and the courage to change the conditions that support our suffering. Those conditions are things like ignorance, bitterness, negligence, clinging, and holding on.

Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves, as well as all parts of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves.

Even on the spiritual path, we have things we'll tend to cover up or be in denial about.