What unites us all as human beings is an urge for happiness, which is a yearning for union, for overcoming our feelings of separateness. We want to feel our identity with

something larger than our small selves. We long to be one with our own lives and with each other.

If we look at the root of even the most appalling violence in this world, we will find this urge to unite, to be happy. In some form it is there, even in the most distorted and odious disguises. We can touch that. We can connect to the difficult forces within ourselves, and to the different experiences in our lives.

Metta is the ability to embrace all parts of ourselves and of the world. Practicing metta illuminates our inner integrity because it relieves us of the need to deny different aspects of ourselves. We can open to everything with the healing force of love. When we feel love, our mind is expansive and open enough to include the entirety of life in full awareness. We feel neither betrayed by pain nor overcome by it, and thus we can contact that which is undamaged within us.

Metta sees truly that our integrity is inviolate. We do not need to fear anything. We are whole: Our deepest happiness is intrinsic to the nature of our minds, and it is not damaged through uncertainty and change. In cultivating love, we remember one of the most powerful truths the Buddha taught - that the mind is naturally radiant and pure. It is because of visiting defilements that we suffer. — Beliefnet.com