metta practice (well, a strange variation on it)

So I wanted to share something that is a bit tangential for most of you, perhaps, but quite interesting. I have been working with a small group of colleagues who also practice magick to create what is called a servitor, which is a sort of imaginary entity that embodies a specific intention. Sort of like a made up spirit with a specific job to do.

In this case the job is to bring peace to situations we come across in daily life where there is conflict - people arguing in the street or supermarket, people getting nasty at work, the neighbors fighting, that kind of thing. The idea is that as a group we each do a kind of metta practice every day where we visualize deep peace in association with an agreed upon symbol and phrase, thus charging up the servitor like a battery. Then when we encounter a situation that could use a dose of peace we visualize the symbol and say the phrase, and it releases the peace into the situation.

What is interesting is that the guy in the group who came up with the idea has been using this method for some time at his job, which involves dealing with crowds of people who come in off the street into the public office where he works, often bringing with them all kinds of emotional or mental difficulties and antagonistic attitudes. He has on many occasions used this practice to send peace out into the waiting room and calm the tempers and arguments, and says it works very well. He said part of the effect is that one becomes filled with peace oneself, so it is a little hard to measure how much it is affecting others and how much it is affecting your perception. Thus we all decided to do it together for several weeks to compare results.

I have only had one brief situation where I used it, and indeed the fighting at the neighbors fell silent in a few minutes; but the other interesting effect right now is that by doing this work each day i have found a place of deep peace in my own meditation that I can access through brief concentration and maintain throughout the ritual.

I had done Buddhist metta practices before when guided by a teacher at a Tibetan or Tendai center, and found that nice, if usually a bit challenging because of the complex visualizations. But anyway just thought I'd share this perhaps somewhat unusual exercise, and would welcome others thoughts on metta practices in general or anything else that comes to mind.