There are lots of different orders, lots of different ways of doing Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation. I am not sure, since the person only mentions a couple of examples, whether this is just a little brief thing they want to do every day or not, I don't know, but as to the order, it really doesn't matter that much, just get going, get going, get going. Invent new orders, go forwards, go backwards, people you know, people you don't know, people you like, people you don't like, different countries, different religions, groups of people. There are a lot of suggestions on the paper that we gave you at the start of the retreat. Speaking from experience it is possible to do at least 108 hours of Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation without repeating a system. That is a lot of time.
If you start getting your mind moving, it doesn't actually matter what order, which way, forwards or backwards, just keep moving, just get through hopefully as many people, as many groups of people that you can. As you continue to practice, after a certain amount of time, you want to have covered everyone on the whole planet in one way or another and you can even criss-cross people. You can think of everyone who hasn't a foot. That is one group of people. You think of maybe all people in Germany, that is another group of people. But they are going to overlap, aren't they? There are going to be people in Germany with only one foot. So just keep stimulating these Compassionate thoughts and it doesn't really matter in which order you do so.
When Rosemary and I give you some of the systems, some of them do have an order within that system, because that is how that particular system is designed. Say with the D/D method, we start with ourselves, other men and women same age, up 10 years, down 10 years and so on, and that does have a distinct order. It is not best to go to the last reflection and start thinking about the person who committed suicide and killed their partner and kid right at the beginning of the meditation. So some of the meditations we gave you have a specific order, but many of them don't, and for these you can just go in any order you wish.