Cattāri Brahmavihārā

I had a strange experience last night while laying in bed with my kids as and waiting for them to drift off to sleep. I was radiating loving-kindness and imagine it as a warm light that grew within my chest and extended outward to fill the room. As I was doing so I began to notice that a feeling of fear was beginning to arise accompanied by fantasmagorical images of malevolent creatures in the dark recesses of the apartment. I was initially quite surprised as metta bhavana is supposed to be a protection against just such thoughts and, dare I say, beings as well. My confusion was compounded by the fact that there have been actual cases wherein I relied on metta for protection from unseen beings-the time that comes to mind was an occasion years ago in Krabi, Thailand where it seemed that a peta was flushing our toilet repeatedly throughout the night. But, I digress.

Anyway, since it was impossible to determine whether these things I was seeing in my mind’s eye were actually there or not I turned my attention back to what I was doing and noticed that my attempt to forcefully radiate metta was causing tension. In effect, I was attempting to beat all beings over the head with metta or so it felt to me. Somehow, in a way I can’t adequately describe, I attenuated the radiation so that I was not trying to fill the room and the universe with love and crowd out all else but instead just made the wish and let it drift out like gauzy plumes of a fragrant incense. 
As I did this the fear and the images faded away.

What does this mean? Well, of course I’m unsure but it does seem to stand in support of practicing metta bhavana without forcefully trying to feel its effects. In essence, when there is confidence in the practice the results come but when you cling so tightly to an idea of how things should proceed there is inevitable tension and suffering.  Strange night and lots of food for thought but all good practice.