Metta bhavana for the first time

I attended my first actual, guided metta-meditation last night.  It was short by it's length and if my back could have tolerated, I would gladly have sat through another part, too.  Before I have experienced with some diy-metta bhavana; not really guiding any previously given advices or guidelines, rather just focusing on loving kindness towards all the people in my closest circle, then the circle around it, and so on until I've reached the whole world.  When dealing with people less fantastic, I've tried to focus on the positive sides and silently aiming some loving kindness towards them. Mostly failed miserably with it, for I am the worst person to hide my emotions and when I don't like someone or accept her/his actions, it's really visible.

It's not about denying the feeling of hate, anxiousness, dislike. It's about not spreading it.  It's about accepting that ok, I feel like this person is an utter asshole and I would rather see her moving as far from me as possible, accepting it and working on it.  Why do I feel this way about her, might those things be similar to the ones I hate or dislike in my own persona?  Why shouldn't I still be kind to her and let her be what ever she is, for I already know that bitching about it won't really help either of us?

Metta-meditation on it's simplest could be described somehow like this;

1. focusing loving kindness towards yourself

2. focusing loving kindness towards someone close to you, a best friend or such-someone whom you feel no sexual attraction towards

3.focusing loving kindness towards someone neutral, like a person who you pass by everyday when buying your food, but not really knowing him at all

4.focusing loving kindness towards someone you don't like

5.focusing loving kindness towards everyone who's present at the room etc. you're in, then the whole building, town, country, until you reach the whole world.

An article considering this can also be found from here.

The hardest part was to concentrate loving kindness towards myself.  It tells plenty.  I am deeply grateful of the possibility to be taught these things, and, hopefully, slowly being able to live up to them.

Things that have been part 1

I think it began in a relatively early age.  I remember not believing into stories of my Sunday-school teacher in the age of five.  I remember sitting by my desk in the first grade, our teacher asking us to draw something that we first think about when someone mentions for example gymnastics or religious studies, things we had began learning just then.  I drew tears and rain for the religion-part, cemeteries and crosses.  It was my vision of Christianity.  

I asked to be placed on a non-religious studygroup instead.  I was seven or eight years old by then.  My parents and the school disagreed and told me, that I could do that after six years, when I got into junior high.  I actually counted the days.

In fourth grade I was best friends with a deeply religious girl.  She and her whole family held Christ really close and I wanted to belong, I was curious.  I read the bible, I listened to gospel, I prayed.  I tried really hard but it just felt so phony- well, it wasn't really my piece of cake.

In the time of junior high I was 13, and still denied the access to non-religious studies of ethics and non-Christian point of view to the world's religions.  On the next year, the excuse was that we were about to attend the world of Church's history and art, and as my teacher put the case, "you'll be left out of so huge part of general knowledge if you don't study these things, that you'll be left stupid".  So I had no choice but to stay.  

Yes, I was sad and pissed off in the beginning.  I was on my teens and I was anxious to move forward and get rid of this whole burden.  My parents never saw the depth of my anxiousness and most likely refused to see the craving I had for learning and I don't blame them.  I can imagine plenty of kids trying to swap boring religious studies to something alternative just for the fun, but I don't think it was the case with me to begin with.