Generating Loving Thoughts

[Plenum]

What are some good ways to generate loving thoughts?

start with those closest to you, in this case, probably your mother.

Observe when you don't think kind thoughts about her (ie unloving thoughts) and then try to backtrack the narrative to the seed point - what triggered the chain of thoughts in the first place.  

Once you have the seed thought, you can try to find an earlier memory that it's connected with.  In that way, you can keep going back in time, to find the true incident that triggered the path of thoughts.  It will usually be a sense of betrayal, or mistrust, or that she wasn't there for you as a child (or didn't take your side in an issue involving other family members).  Once you can forgive the first trauma, the first moment you felt unloved by your mother, the rest of the memories will fall down like a trail of dominoes.  That's how powerful forgiveness can be if you apply it directly to the first trauma.  Trying to forgive things at a later stage also works, but it never gets to the first cause.  The first moment one felt unloved by the person who a child expects constant love from - your mother.

This isn't easy - and it involves some serious soul searching - but it's worth doing.  I had the classic experience of being the oldest child, and then feeling betrayed once my younger sister came along (she is 3 years younger than me, my brother 2 years younger).  The first incident of feeling unloved by my mother was when my sister was still being breastfed, and my mum was on one side of the room, and I was on the other.  My sister (quite obviously) was getting all the attention, and I was just standing there feeling all alone.  Unvalued and unappreciated.  It's a child's way of misinterpreting a situation, and that misinterpretation was never later discussed or reassessed.  But that feeling of hurt stays with one until it is consciously forgiven.