Start out by working on the technique of getting familiar with your breath, noticing when you breathe in, breathe out, where does it feel good, where does it not feel so good?

"You have to train yourself, if you can, to feed off the good qualities of your own mind. That way, you can live with the ups and downs and the goods and the bads in the world, and not have any ill will over the bad parts. Ill will comes from wanting something out of other people and then not getting it. But if you can put yourself in a position where you don’t feel threatened by other people’s bad actions, bad words, bad thoughts, and you’re not trying to find anything to feed off of them, then you can live in the world with goodwill [mettā] for everybody — realizing we all have our good and bad sides.

You try to look for the good in other people so that you can help develop goodwill, but realizing at the same time that you can’t always trust that it’s going to be there or it’s going to be ready to be developed. So how do you do all this? Start out by working on the technique of getting familiar with your breath, noticing when you breathe in, breathe out, where does it feel good, where does it not feel so good? How can you tell when a breath is too long or too short? How can you read what the body’s needs in terms of breath energy? These are all skills that you can work with over time, over time.

Find a spot where you feel at home inside, let your attention settle there and learn how to protect it. One of the ways in which we feel invaded or threatened by other people is when we feel their energy moving into our energy field. And one way to prevent that is, once you’ve got some good energy going in your selected spot, that you allow it to spread. Think of your own awareness filling the whole body, at the same time allowing that sense of well-being to seep out and spread throughout the whole body as well. This then becomes your place. Other people’s energy can be directed at you but you’ve got this force field inside that repels it, so it slips past. The first time you notice this actually happening, you begin to gain a sense that you do have a sense of strength and a sense of not being threatened that you didn’t have before. You want to nurture this, look after it."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Guarded"

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