While I’m not sure about this, I think mettā might be a form of P.J. Eby’s Mmm Test, which aims specifically at reinforcing positive patterns of feeling about other people.
Yeah, I agree. It’s sort of priming yourself to feel positively about people. That gives me a good idea: on days when I don’t find time for a full vipassana session, I think I will try to still spend a few minutes on mettā just to reinforce those neural pathways.
Also, I just started cleaning my desk. XD I’d been meaning to do that for a while …
After seeing that mettā and P.J. Eby’s Mmm Test could be connected, I crafted my own little practice that kind of melds aspects of both of them. After meditating for an hour in the morning I spend 2-4 minutes imagining an awesome far future, and then imagine doing awesome things to realize it.
For the far future I imagine a fun-theoretic posthuman civilization, with all sorts of exotic amazingness. I then imagine myself taking near future actions toward reducing existential risk.
I don’t know how much this affects my behavior (if at all). The level of abstraction (even in the case of near future actions) might well be too great for this kind of thing to work. In any case, I get a kick out of trying to imagine new kinds of posthuman fun.
Yeah, I agree. It’s sort of priming yourself to feel positively about people. That gives me a good idea: on days when I don’t find time for a full vipassana session, I think I will try to still spend a few minutes on mettā just to reinforce those neural pathways.
Also, I just started cleaning my desk. XD I’d been meaning to do that for a while …
After seeing that mettā and P.J. Eby’s Mmm Test could be connected, I crafted my own little practice that kind of melds aspects of both of them. After meditating for an hour in the morning I spend 2-4 minutes imagining an awesome far future, and then imagine doing awesome things to realize it.
For the far future I imagine a fun-theoretic posthuman civilization, with all sorts of exotic amazingness. I then imagine myself taking near future actions toward reducing existential risk.
I don’t know how much this affects my behavior (if at all). The level of abstraction (even in the case of near future actions) might well be too great for this kind of thing to work. In any case, I get a kick out of trying to imagine new kinds of posthuman fun.