Universal Loving Kindness Meditation ~ Integral Assessment

Contemplative practice / meditation of any form (in today’s case Universal Loving Kindness) is harder for me some days than others, not so much in the actual visualizing the loving kindness aspects, just slowing myself down enough to only focus on this one activity instead of the multitudes of things I should/could be doing.  This exercise was very easy, to repeat 4 lines * May all individuals gain freedom from suffering. * May all individuals find sustained health, happiness, and wholeness. *May I assist all individuals in gaining freedom from suffering. *May I assist all individuals in finding health, happiness, and wholeness, for ten minutes of calm, still, focused suggestions, yet I found myself getting frustrated with not remembering the simple lines, having to open my eyes and look at the words, and trying to re-enter a place that I even wanted to do the exercise at all.  I know this is just one example of a not so successful experience in a line of very pleasant meditative experiences, yet frustrating none the less.  For the brief moments I could hold my focus on the repetitive actions of this exercise, I felt good thinking of focusing on others.  I work with others everyday in my line of work and in my private life so I really do find peace in my spirit by doing so, and actually find it very difficult to pay attention to myself, yet there are moments that I feel like there is just so much to do for others that I cannot not slow my thoughts to focus on any one aspect of thinking of others, and yes, there are also those moments that I get overwhelmed by everyone else’s needs that I just simply cannot force myself to think about them for one more moment. 

From the personal assessment of my development and the areas I believe I would like to work on, I can see aspects of all 4 areas of my personal experiences that could use help.  I can also see the positive aspects I have already attained and see glimpses of higher levels of growth in each as well.  I believe that over time I will work on different aspects, yet for now I want to continue to work on the psychospiritual area to attain higher levels of consciousness.  I like the more specific aspects of conative (source and character of my motivations), cognitive, and emotional aspects of development and see where I am not at the most basic levels of these areas yet, move around the middle areas.  I think I am also going to work on the Interpersonal aspects of my life experiences, more so in the specific areas of personal and family, because the areas of personal and family are areas that I struggle with.  I seem to deplete all of my energies at work or helping others outside of my family or even helping my family take care of external issues and never have the energy just to be with them and enjoy them and have patience to listen to them and learn who they are.  I do for them, and I fix things for them, and, and, and, yet I miss them and time has moved so quickly, wasting anymore seems frightening.   

I think I want to really work on the meditation exercises more intentionally to find that place of calm, to allow myself to sit still and not DO anything in particular to fulfill a deadline or fix something or be there to do something for someone, but just to find calm.   I want to work on the Life-as-Practice approach to integral practice to be able to stop my mental and physical movements and just give time and patience to the ones I love and myself, I want to show intentional love and kindness to them by using the meditation practices to train my mind to find the importance in this just like I find the importance in my work.

Mental Fitness Power Point Link

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fslidesha.re%2FvIfGdV&h=pAQFo6jwtAQGUW_DXhyADhT7XAtzxETV2SwhJDVIGtdgEow

~The Subtle Mind ~ Contemplative Practice #2

We continue on our path of Integral Health and Human Flourishing this week by moving through the contemplative practices (mental training) which help us evolve our psychospiritual life as well as cross-train our body, mind, and spirit.

Attaining well-being requires diminishing self centeredness and enhanced compassion for the welfare of others.  To develop/progress through the last three levels of psychospiritual flourishing of witnessing consciousness, to calm abiding, to unity consciousness, we use these contemplative practices. 

Starting out with practice 1 “Loving-Kindness” using breathing, imagery and thought suggestions to feel loving kindness for self (because we must love ourselves to be able to love others) and then moving loving-kindness thoughts towards others we are then ready to move to practice 2 “Subtle Mind exercise” of calming and stilling our minds and cultivating wisdom by using breathing to focus our attention and still the mental movements we all experience.  With this exercise we focus on the in or out breaths, or the rising of the chest while breathing comfortably, and maintaining a firm concentration on the breathing focal point , when thoughts start to wander or feelings or images emerge, we have to gently return our attention to the breath; being intentional and sometimes forceful to “tame the busy mind”.  In time, this practice quiets the mind and we can spend more time just witnessing the breathing and mental activity and less time struggling or being absorbed by the mental chatter.  Through this practice we see how our mind works, how we are involuntarily moved to random thoughts, feelings, and visual images which we have been trained to cling to, yet we can learn to let go of these mental movements and not focus on them; if we just leave them alone, they will dissolve and disappear.  Once we train our minds to not focus on this mental disruptions we can focus on the stillness itself which allows the subtle mind to reveal itself and opens us up to a place of calm abiding and unity consciousness and pure awareness.

To compare and contrast:  Loving-kindness is an attitude and desire to move from self need to the needs of others, which prepares our hearts and minds to move forward in our development where the subtle mind is calming and controlling the mind’s mental movements to cultivate wisdom both of which develop awareness and levels of consciousness.

This development is to bring about integral health and healing, spiritual, mental, and physical wellness all of which are interconnected.  Therefore, instead of thinking of health as the physical body alone, we look at ourselves as outer and inner and innermost, highly sophisticated systems.

I think many of us use these interconnected systems almost daily without even realizing it.  Have you ever stubbed your toe for instance and used breathing and mental imagery or self talk to take your mind off of the pain or to lessen or stop the pain all together?  Have you ever used lamaze during childbirth? How about prayer to heal yourself or others or to even find inner peace?  Or have you used something as simple as stepping away from a situation to calm yourself, which in turn has lowered your blood pressure or eased a stress headache?  These examples are our interconnected mind, body, and spirit in action. 


This is a very complex process and not one that will happen over night or the first time participating in the meditation/relaxation guided exercises.  Again, if it were that simple everyone would be doing it and have perfect health and human flourishing.  This is a way of life, a way of believing and training with intentional dedication and effort, and to think that we (first time students of this concept) already have control of our run away thoughts and are perfectly loving to all creatures great and small or have come anywhere near these levels of conscious awareness without years of studying and practice would be ridiculous.  This course is a start, a foundation of knowledge to grow upon and in my opinion, one well worth the pursuit. 


Sandy 

Contemplative Practice ~ Loving-Kindness~ A Mental Workout

This week’s Integral Health exercise is the beginning of our journey through the four levels of psychospiritual development (Heightened levels of conscious awareness) by using a method called contemplative practice, an opportunity to enter into a relationship with our inner self. One type of contemplative practice is called Loving-kindness which opens our hearts to others and gradually diminishes self-centeredness to get our minds ready for further development.

The exercise in loving-kindness I found to be beautiful and exciting yet not something that is easily understood or experienced fully the first time out.  Being guided first to be in a restful, at peace and ease state to then think of someone close to my heart whom I hold with great love and tenderness.  I naturally brought to mind my son Daniel.  I hold him dear not only because he is my child but because I cherish the relationship we have and continue to build of respect and communication and love.  I was guided to fully experience the love I feel for Daniel and then was surprised by the instruction to turn those thoughts of care and affection around and feel that loving-kindness for myself.  There were a few things that I am not sure I understood about loosening any grasping or attachment with physical sensations, yet the thought of being in tuned to myself and my body was interesting.  I found it more difficult to feel for myself than I did to think about my son. The guide asked to then shift to thoughts, feelings and images that move in and out of my awareness whether pleasant or not and just give them equal care, love and kindness, and then to fully embrace myself as the unique and precious expression of life that I am because loving ourselves is a prelude to extending love out to others.  The exercise then moves to visualizing a loved one who is suffering, and through in and out breaths, breathe in the suffering and have it dissolve in the heart and breathe out health, happiness, and wholeness to the same person and consider how I could be a specific help to this person and breathe out what would be most helpful, I found this in concept alone to be beautiful and will be honored to do this regularly.  Next I was to expand that to include strangers and then all living beings which is also a beautiful feeling.

Although very interesting and calming and would recommend it to others that want a deeper fulfillment of self and consciousness and are interested in integral health and healing, I found this exercise difficult and I can see why it is not something everybody is doing.  This will take time and dedication to be able to train myself to be guided in this way let alone move through such levels of consciousness.  The dedication and training that is needed for this level of change is considered a “Mental Workout” because of the daily commitment I “we” will have to put forth to attain such levels of wholeness.  Just like Olympians or doctors or others attaining uncommon levels of success put in hard work and daily commitments to learn and grow above and beyond, high levels of mental awareness and health will take the extra effort of those wishing to attain it.

I’m in!!

~Reflection and Goals

This week’s assignment is

to reflect on my overall Spiritual, Psychological, and Physical wellness 

and rate it from 1-10, 10 being optimal.

Personally, I am not really sure how to answer that….

Optimal...compared to whom?

To me....I am relatively okay.  I believe I am a well rounded individual who is closer to my God now than ever before, I have no real health problems yet could stand to improve physically, and although not without my bumps and bruises from life’s lessons over the years, I remain sitting firmly on this side of the rubber room, so overall I’m thinking a solid 6. HaHa

However I think the question is trying to go a bit deeper and I just do not have it in me to dig at this time.

  

Over the last few years I have been on a personal journey of transformation.   I am gaining knowledge through the courses I take at Kaplan in many different areas and am gaining personal and professional insights and wisdom through my career as well as personal life (both of which are submerged in human services).  Developing my knowledge in the areas of psychology, behavior (others’ as well as my own), spiritual growth, well being, fitness, aging, happiness and many more are helping me grow as an individual which in turn helps me help others.

My goal for psychological, spiritual, and physical wellness is to continue on my educational path of knowledge and growth.   I believe the knowledge I am gaining helps my confidence and self esteem which in turn improves my overall psychological wellbeing as well as my physical and spiritual wellbeing seeing that the mind, body, and spirit are interconnected. I work out regularly and plan to continue and even increase my physical fitness training over the next few months.  I struggle with my spiritual growth yet have increased prayer and overall time I spend in search of a relationship with God over the past few years.  I have to become more intentional and plan to add meditation or time to “be still” to my day with the intention of growing in this area.

I am going to be intentional in my desire for integral health and be conscious and mindful to acknowledge that my life is unique, precious, and worthy and that human life in general holds unique and precious opportunities.  I am going to cultivate an attitude of loving-kindness everyday (I believe this is one area where my reactive awareness shows up and shows out regularly).  Although I display loving-kindness to all people respectfully and regularly I still react poorly to life’s “bumps” and the poor behaviors of others which then in turn puts me back in a bad place within my personal growth and integral health. I plan on working harder to not be reactive conscious and strive harder for unity consciousness and finally I will find time daily to sit in silence and contemplate life and love, peace, and joy, and integral health and healing to increase my life experience and level of consciousness.

Participating in the relaxation exercise for class this week was enjoyable and peaceful.  The title “The Crime of the Century” left me bewildered.  I am not really sure I understand the title, hmmm I wonder now if I was in the correct place at all…oh well, the good thing about relaxation is that is tends to (at least for the moment) give you a sense of “who cares, I’m relaxed and at peace with it”  J  Regardless of whether I was in the correct exercise or not, the relaxation exercise that I participated in was successful in helping me focus my energy, to think positive affirming thoughts about myself and to relax my spirit which in turn helps me to return to the responsibilities of my life with a renewed sense of peace and joy which is the purpose of meditation, relaxations, and focusing energy to begin with.

I am on a journey....

and the exciting part about it is that it can go in a wonderfully new direction and change daily, and that the power is in my thoughts and actions to make it do so.

~Sandy

~Journey on Relaxation exercise

Within my course material there was an exercise in relaxation called ~Journey on Relaxation.  Basically it was an audio of a soft spoken gentleman guiding the listeners in feeling the blood which, in a resting state is centrally located in the core of our bodies, move into our arms and hands using our thoughts to promote the muscles in those areas to relax. Using slow, deep breaths and quiet, inner thought suggestions, I was able to feel the blood from my core (which makes it heavy and warm feeling) move into my arms and hands which in turn made the warm and heavy feeling enter those parts, and then return to my core upon issuing a new thought to do so.

This, like many other relaxation tapes proved to be highly effective in focusing my attention (which is typically spread out in many directions) to the present moment and onto myself. I was able to stop my mind from wondering to the many things that I have to get done to this one task.

After spending time with my mom, quite a bit of time reading, designing this blog and completing other class work, as well as other day to day interruptions to my information and thought processing for both courses, this brief exercise in focusing my thoughts and energy to relax my muscles and mind, seemed to relieve me of the stress and tensions I did not even realize I was feeling at the time until, by experiencing this exercise, they were gone and I felt better.

Now I can return to my work, less stressed, less anxious, and better able to focus and process my thoughts into words.

Sandy 

Welcome to Totality...

Hello All,

I am Sandy, mother of two great young men, daughter of God and my sweet mother Edna,
employee of the Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services, friend to a select few,
and technically a Junior at Kaplan at the time of this blog's inception.

Totality ~ Mind, Body & Spirit was started solely for the purpose of my
"Creating Wellness, Psychological and Spiritual aspects of Healing" course,
however depending on how well I acclimate to it, could possibly continue
afterwards.

I look forward to learning from and within this environment and hope there are
interesting responses and interactions from all.

Welcome!

Sandy

Personal thoughts of "Wellness"

~Currently I am taking a course entitled "Creating Wellness",
The Psychological and Spiritual aspects of of Healing...

What does it mean to you when you hear/read the word "Wellness"?
and what would it mean to ~create wellness?