This meditation is an attempt to feel loving-kindness, compassion, acceptance and affirmation for ourselves and all other living creatures.
The affirmation itself is in five stages and involves feeling a sense of loving-kindness towards each charcter or group of people/creatures.
1) Use one of the breathing exercises to relax yourself and enter a meditative state.
2) Once you have relaxed and entered the meditative state, visualise yourself in your mind's eye and repeat to yourself 'May I be well. May I be happy'. Continue this for 5 minutes.
3) Now move onto the second stage. Visualise a close friend in your mind's eye and repeat to yourself 'May You be well. May you be happy'. Continue this for 5 minutes.
4) For the third stage visualise a neutral person in your mind's eye, e.g. someone you passed in the street today, repeat to yourself 'May You be well. May you be happy'. Continue this for 5 minutes.
5) In the fourth stage you must visualise an enemy or someone have problems with in your mind's eye, and repeat to yourself 'May You be well. May you be happy'. Continue this for 5 minutes. This is probably one of the hardest parts of the affirmation.
6) For the fifth and final stage, go back over the previous four characters, and repeat to yourself 'May we be well. May we be happy'. Extend the number of gathered characters slowly to include all people in one's area, to all living beings on the planet, in the universe, and all planes of all universes. Continue this for 5 minutes.
7) You may now slowly return from your meditative state, and come back to the physical world.