This course is for those seeking freedom from needless suffering. If you keep finding yourself in patterns that seem inescapable, this course and this practice allow you to disrupt your patterns. From this interruption, a choice is born. You will have the opportunity to develop a new response free of the old programmed reactive pattern that allows you more freedom. 

In January 2020, just before the outbreak of COVID-19, I sensed profound distress beginning to take hold within the social consciousness. I felt called to respond by using my training and skills to serve those in need. My underlying mantra is, "If you can't let it go, work it through." 

With your commitment and follow-through, these fifty-nine daily contemplations and daily practices will transform your life and how you relate to yourself and others. 

Loving-Kindness work always begins with how you treat yourself. The benefits of this process are twofold: reducing your needless suffering, and greater acceptance of yourself and others. make a generous offering to everyone else. With work and practice, these rewards grow into massive happiness gains and the discovery of more excellent value in living.

The daily practice, traditionally known as Lojong, is three-fold: 

• Daily Meditation
• Processing Unpleasant Emotions and 
• Examine one of the Fifty-Nine Contemplations



Additionally, a body-centered mindfulness practice has been included in these original practices to reduce stress, heal your mind-body split, and deepen your overall integration. This method enhances your awareness of various dimensions of how your thoughts and emotions affect your body and how cues from your body can help you be more conscious of your overall processes in living. 

Depending on your lifestyle or association with a specific tradition, your style of daily meditation practice may vary. Below are three styles of meditation to choose from for your daily practice. 

• Daily Meditation: Spaciousness Practice (three options found in the Meditation Resources)
• Heart Centering Meditation
• Spaciousness Meditation
• Symbol Meditation

This fifty-nine-day program includes: 

• Daily Meditation of your choice
• Contemplation Practice: Fifty-Nine Contemplations 
• Emotional Generosity Practice: Processing Unpleasant Emotions/Feelings
• Body-Centered Mindfulness Practice: Releasing Stress
• Gratitude Practice: What are you grateful for today?

Traditionally, the fifty-nine contemplations were known as Kel Bhoe or pithy slogans. This course uses the fifty-nine contemplations as a vehicle for personal transformation and self-acceptance. As you contemplate them over time, you will see how they relate to you and assist in deepening your self-awareness. These contemplations open your mind to a path of inner growth that brings humility, generosity, and spaciousness for yourself and all humanity. As you integrate the fruits of these contemplations, they can assist you in hitting the pause button rather than launching a reactive and retaliatory emotional state. These pauses allow you to feel your emotions rather than defend them and to reframe your life experiences with generosity and spaciousness for all, including yourself. This process gives you freedom from fragmentation and a new integrated design for living. 

The beauty of this practice is its ability to interrupt your typical reactive pattern. This is an opportunity to make a different choice other than pulling the trigger on your reactivity. Reshaping and integrating a new, more effective design for achieving your goals takes time. You are worth whatever effort it takes. 

Watching the movie Groundhog Day can be helpful. This comedy brings humor to the challenges of struggling to get the results that you desire. By watching this movie, you will learn to treat your challenges with more humor. Eventually, you will have redefined your process and integrated a path of loving-kindness, including how you treat yourself. 

The Daily Practice of Loving-Kindness, formally known as Lojong training, embraces the paramitas (perfections), further developing generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation/concentration, and wisdom. The word paramita means perfection. Each developmental step toward perfection grants a more expansive range of motion with new freedoms and happiness. You will find new ways of relating to what shows up in your life that make more generosity and spaciousness available when you need it. 

You will see that Lojong mindfulness, the Daily Practice of Lovingkindness training, is not an arbitrary practice but a specific means of facing your misfortunes and converting them into blessings. It is a direct path to chasing your monsters away by befriending them; your monsters will become allies that help you to become your best self. As you grow, you will move through the stages of development from merely surviving to thriving. Every step you take is a statement of self-love. The only question to resolve is, will you fully commit to this transformational process even when the going gets tough? You are worth the effort. 

Instructions

The daily practice of Lovingkindness involves: 

1. Daily Practice

• Daily Meditation
• Contemplation of the day
• Increasing your body awareness and integration Practice: Body-centered Mindfulness Practice
• Processing Unpleasant Emotions Meditation
• Journaling
• Gratitude Practice

2. Spaciousness Practice:

Go to the meditation resources. Select one of the three different styles of meditation. If you have another style that you prefer, use it instead. Contact the course instructor if you have any questions about your chosen style. Of these choices, the author highly recommends the Spaciousness meditation.

3. Contemplation Practice

• As you read the daily contemplation, notice where this theme occurs in your life. Notice these thoughts and emotions as they play out in the foreground or background of your mind. 
• Review your daily contemplation at your day's beginning, middle, and end. Notice any shifts in your perception of this contemplation. 
• Each contemplation has a suggested focus and daily practice component to enrich your discernment.

4. Generosity Practice: Processing Emotions Meditation 

• Use Processing Unpleasant Emotions Meditation through difficult times. 
• At the end of your workday, practice the Processing Unpleasant Emotions Meditation.
• Throughout this fifty-nine-day program, notice your generosity and acceptance in giving space for things, others, and yourself to be as they are. This is the reality that you were born into.

5. Increasing your body awareness and integration Practice: Body Centered Mindfulness Practice: Body-centered mindfulness practice (See Meditation Resources) 

• Notice your stress level throughout the day.
• Self-assessment: At the beginning, midday, and end of your workday, evaluate your stress level. How high is your stress load on a scale of 1 – 10 (10 being the highest)?
• When your stress level exceeds 3, find time to practice Body-centered Mindfulness.

6. Journaling: Journaling exercise of the day.

7. Gratitude Practice: What are you grateful for today?