Metta is a meditation practice for cultivating loving kindness, first towards ourselves and then, step by step, towards other people and all living things. Therapeutic Shamanism treats it as central, because compassion is at the heart of the work and metta is a way of actually becoming more compassionate, not only being told to be. In its shamanic form it can be done with Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer and the GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this present, or within a journey.
What is metta? #
Metta is a meditation technique designed to help us cultivate loving kindness within ourselves. It meets a gap in some spiritual traditions: “they tell you that you should be compassionate, but they do not necessarily help you to actually become more compassionate.”
Metta is “an easily learnt and highly effective way of developing compassion within oneself”, and as such it is central to Therapeutic Shamanism. It goes hand in hand with the point that reliably ethical behaviour “arises more from within than just from some externally-applied rules”.1
Where does metta come from? #
People who have heard of metta usually think of it as a Buddhist practice, most often a Tibetan Buddhist one. Yet Tibetan Buddhism was heavily influenced by the earlier Bon tradition of Tibet, and Bon in turn grew out of even earlier Tibetan shamanic practices. So “it is quite possible that metta is originally a shamanic practice”, and that is what Paul Francis’s Guides tell him.
Nothing rests on that history, though. Whatever its origins, what matters more is whether something works and is useful.2
Why is compassion so central to Therapeutic Shamanism? #
Therapeutic Shamanism is a compassionate practice, “or at least strives hard to be”. That might seem a given for any spiritual path, but it is not. There are shamanic traditions where compassion is lacking and shamanism is used for personal gain and to do harm to others. Those traditions are sorcery and not shamanism, even though the people who practise them are often adamant that they are shamans.
Compassion needs to be at the heart of shamanic practice, and Paul aims to keep it at the heart of his teaching and his writing too. Metta is the practice for growing that compassion, rather than leaving it as an ideal.3
How is metta practised? #
“The heart of the practice is to start with showing yourself loving kindness first.” Only once this self-compassion is established does the practice move on to other people: first the easy ones, people we like; then people we find more challenging; and then “all people and all things”.
That last widening runs from all people, to all animals, to all living things, and finally to all of creation. The practice uses a simple phrase, such as “May I be safe” or “May I be well”, slowly repeated over and over with feeling, first for ourselves and then for each person or group in turn. And if at any point we get stuck, the guidance is to come back to practising loving kindness towards ourselves again.
The full practice, and a version done as a journey, are given as exercises in The Shamanic Journey.4
What makes metta a shamanic practice? #
Power Animal and the other Guides can be called to be present: “You may call your Power Animal and other shamanic guides to be around you whilst doing this, feeling their loving kindness towards you.”
Metta can also be done within a shamanic journey, where it “can add a whole other dimension to the experience, and greatly enhance the power of the meditation”. In a metta journey the same widening circle is carried into the journey, with the Guides joining in and surrounding the journeyer as they offer loving kindness.
Because the circle widens beyond people to animals, all living things and all of creation, the practice reaches out to the whole living world, the other-than-human Peoples included, and not only to humans. See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?5
Is metta doing something to other people? #
No: “metta is about healing you, and healing the way that you are in the world. It is not about doing a healing on anyone else without their permission.”
Wishing someone well, in the sense of feeling kindness and compassion towards them, is fine: “we have the right to do that, as that is about us and our feelings.” But it is done without any attachment to outcomes, and without trying to make something happen. What we must not do, without someone’s express consent, is anything shamanic to them in a journey, or visualise anything happening to them. See What does consent mean in shamanic work?6
How does metta sit alongside gratitude and activism? #
Metta belongs to a group of practices that keep the work compassionate and engaged with the world, alongside gratitude practice and Joanna Macy‘s Work That Reconnects. Activism, right living and right action are at the very heart of Therapeutic Shamanism.
So metta is not a private retreat into good feelings. It works on the way we are in the world, and the chapter around it turns that outwards, towards the living world and what is happening to it. See Why is gratitude an animist practice?7
