Meditations That I Find Helpful

The two practices that have been the most beneficial to me have been the Loving-Kindness exercise and the Wisdom Visualization exercise.  Loving-kindness comes easy for me.  I always try to listen and understand what people are going through versus guessing and passing judgment.  What I love most about the loving-kindness meditation is that I can breathe in others struggles and concerns and breathe out to them health, happiness, and wholeness.  I have even been working on extending loving-kindness to the one person that I do not like.  Since doing this, I have less negative thoughts about them and have reached a point where I am ready to extend forgiveness to them.   Which feels really good!

I think I like the visualization exercise because I am a very visual person with an active imagination.  I find that using visualization techniques keeps me more focused while doing the exercise.  I have been trying to incorporate visualization in the other meditation practices that I have been doing and I feel that I am getting better and better at meditating each day.  Like they say practice makes perfect.  I am finding that the more that I practice these meditations; the less my mind is wandering to other thoughts and feelings. 

Both of these exercises help to foster “mental fitness” in my life as they both make me more aware of myself and the world around me.  With this awareness, I can reduce the amount of negative thoughts and emotions that try to disrupt my life and replace them with intentional, healthy, and positive thoughts.

Meeting Aesclepius

The meditative practice this week was transforming.  It was the first time that I focused through the entire meditative practice without getting distracted.  I could actually visualize the light emanating from the person who I see as wise onto myself.  When asked to transfer his wisdom onto me, we both turned into monks and bowed are heads.  At that moment, I felt a since of completion and that I was ready to begin the journey on my own. 

Practicing these contemplative practices each week towards integral health has helped me to foster a sense of awareness, developed my attention, and has reshaped my perceptions on the world around me.  I feel more at peace and relaxed on a daily basis – even at times when I should not.  I will continue to do these meditative practices each night before going to bed.  I find this to be the best time for me to practice meditation because it relaxes me enough that I fall right asleep when finished. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The saying “one cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” (p. 477) means to me that if a person has not experienced what they are teaching, then they don’t know all the intricacies about that experience to help someone else out through the process.  For example, if I were a smoker trying to quit, I would want someone who has successfully quit to coach me through the process versus someone who has never smoked before.  The person who has never smoked before does not know the difficulties of the addition and how hard it is to quit – only the person who has experienced this process would.  So, if we are going to help people develop their integral health and work towards human flourishing, we have to go through the process of developing our own integral health first.  When we do, we can assist them when they are struggling to focus during the contemplative practices by giving them the information and tools that helped us through that same problem.

Loving Kindness & Integral Assessment

Whenever I do meditation exercises, I like to do them in a quiet place with my eyes closed.  However, the universal Loving Kindness exercise required reading lines.  I tried to memorize them, but found that it took away from my meditative practice because I was constantly checking to see if I got the words right.  So, to effectively practice this exercise, I recorded the lines and played them on repeat for 10 minutes.  I found it much easier to focus and extend my loving-kindness to others beyond those that are close to me.  After completing the exercise, I was filled with a sense of peace and happiness.  I felt more compassionate for those who are suffering.  And, I found that I started thinking less about my issues and more about what others might be suffering from.  

In doing the integral assessment, I found my focus to shift back to myself and my needs.  As I did the assessment, I started to really think about the areas in my life that are out of balance.  What I discovered is that I need to focus more on my emotional life.  Although I am becoming aware of how I instantly react to experiences versus respond, this area of my life is the most out of balance then other areas.  In some instances, my emotions are taking control – and it is time that I took that control back.  A specific exercise that I found to be helpful in developing a greater wellness in this area is the subtle mind meditative practice.  I do this exercise each day now and I found that I am responding more to emotional experiences versus reacting to them.  For example, my cat does things in the morning to irritate me so that I will get up (which is becoming increasing earlier each day) and give him his daily dose of wet food.  His newest trick to get me out of bed in the morning is to one-by-one knock things off my night stand.  And, I know he is doing it on purpose, because after each item he knocks off, he looks at me to see how I will react.  It is kind of funny to me now, but in the past I would yell at him instinctively.  This morning however, after already knocking off three items, he decided to push a stack of bills that I had on the floor.  Right after he did it, he looked right at me, I looked at the floor covered in paper work, I looked back at the cat and laughed.  Before, I would have been furious, but I am learning to step back, analyze my emotion, and find ways to constructively release that emotion in ways that I control and decide. Because I think it is helping, I will continue to do the subtle mind exercise every day until I feel this area of my life is complete. 

Subtle Mind

I actually like the Subtle mind exercise better than the Loving Kindness exercise.  With the Subtle mind exercise, I found that my mind did not wander as it did with the Loving Kindness exercise.  I think the reason for this is because it had me focusing on my breathing.  When my mind started to wander, I would just take my focus back to my breathing.  What I learned doing this exercise is that I can slow my mind from all my busy thoughts, which is a nice change of pace.  I found both exercises to be relaxing and they both brought me a sense of peace.  What I thought was different about them is that the Loving Kindness exercise had us focus on others while the Subtle mind exercise had us focus inward on ourselves. 

Both of these exercises are beneficial to my spiritual, mental, and physical wellness.  Although they are separate parts of my being, they are interrelated to each other.  In doing these exercises, I have noticed my spirit becoming healthier.  This is making me a much happier person mentally, which is helping me to continue feeding my body right and getting the proper amount of physical fitness.  When my spirit is not doing well, negative feelings and emotions tend to run high, which causes me to be down and then I stop caring about my physical wellness.  It is imperative to acknowledge the connection between mind, body, and spirit because the one affects the other.