I am always
looking for ways to increase my awareness about my reactions and be more open
and selfless. The universal
loving-kindness exercise was a quick, easy way to take a few minutes and think
about others. I found the exercise
calming and helpful. This was a little
easier for me than the previous exercise where we had to think about the
suffering or pain of a loved one. I
found this exercise to be a good reminder that we are all human and on this
earth together and it is important to be conscious of our self as well as
others around us. I have discovered that
I have a longing to help others, I just have not figured out the best way for
me to do that.
The integral
assessment process is a bit more involved.
While I enjoyed the activity, I found it difficult at times because the
true honesty required is tough. I liked
that the assessment walked us through various questions, but they were
challenging questions to answer. Because
of the exercises over the last few weeks, I do not feel like I learned anything
new about myself this time. I feel like
I have solid perspective about where I am and where I need to develop and grow,
for now. I anticipate completing this
assessment again in the future and learning more about myself and my growth
during that time. I have chosen to focus
on the biological and interpersonal aspects of my growth and development at
this time. My reasoning is twofold. First, I need to focus on my nutrition,
fitness, and overall health in order to ensure I am not hurting myself for the
future. Second, is that I am going to be
finishing my degree in approximately 7 months.
I need to focus my efforts on my community relationships and work toward
figuring out what my next career will be and how I will use that to help
people. Now that I have these focus
areas in place, I can include various activities in my daily routine in order
to help me grow in these areas. First,
is to continue to practice the mindful meditation exercises from this course in
order to help me gain clarity about everything.
Another exercise I will use is a food journal to track my meals and the
physical reaction I get from them. This
will help me focus on my health and address issues that are currently
challenging.
Hi Deb, I enjoyed reading your blog.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the universal loving-kindness exercise as well. It was very enlightening.
It sounds like you are on the right path. As you mentioned you have a longing to help others, but you haven’t figured out the best way to do that yet…the “way” will come.
Sometimes we just need to take relax and take a step back and when it’s the right time you will know what to do.
I am confident that everything will fall into place for you because you are willing to continue and integrate the mediation exercises into your life.
Good luck during the next 7 months, maybe I’ll see you at graduation :-)
Lori O.
Hello Deb,
DeleteWow! I really enjoyed reading your post! It seems you have a great plan for reaching your goals of integral health and healing. This great. I know many of us make plans and do not stick with the plan. I think the key to staying on track with plans is to do it in small steps to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves.
The practice were both very enlightening in making feel calm and relaxed and giving that feeling of floating or looking at yourself from the outside in, for me. I really liked and enjoyed the loving-kindness practice better than the other because the were no waves crashing. The waves for me were distracting and it took away from the practice. On the other hand the music was soothing and more to my liking. The other practice was great...as I already meditate so it was pretty easy for me to get into it and just flow freely. Good luck to you on your path to integral health!!
~Linda Jackson
Hello Deb I also found this exercise to be easier as well because of the same reason as you did I was able to focus and concentrate more on connecting with someone who i had a very strong bond with while i was growing up. Your post really hit home with me when you said that we were all put together on this earth to be concious of ourselves excelelnt post I enjoyed reading it very much Chris.
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