Universal Loving Kindness Exercise and Integral Assessment

The universal Loving Kindness exercise experience for me was a very relaxing like most meditation exercises are. This practice for me is a good way to release anger and frustration especially provoked by interpersonal relationships. The assessment that was discussed really gives insight into what aspects of your life could use attention. The purpose of assessment is just that, to see what aspects of your life need work and make goals to improve in those areas. The goal is never to be complete and fulfilled in all aspects of our life but to be sure that your life is balances and not one-sided or unbalanced.   

Unit 5 Reflection on the Subtle Mind Practice

1.        Compare and contrast the Loving Kindness exercise and the Subtle mind exercise. Explain your experience including the benefits, frustrations etc.

The Kindness exercise at I pointed out last week was a little frustrating the first time but with practice became a little easier each time. The Subtle mind exercise I absolutely love and came quite easy for me to grasp the concept of the witnessing mind. The exercise is very relaxing. I am just looking forward to what will be ahead with more practice and experience of exploring the true ability of a calm abiding mind and unity consciousness.

2.        Discuss the connection of the spiritual wellness to mental and physical wellness. Explain how the connection is manifested in your personal life.

Spiritual wellness calms the mind which in turn reduces stress. Stress can cause the physical body harm effecting blood pressure, sleep deprivations, headaches and fatigue. This is just one way that the mind, the body, and the spirit is connected in wellness.

Unit 4 reflection

Loving-Kindness

I found that this practice was both beneficial and a bit difficult. The concept of transferring the feeling of love was a bit difficult for me but I can see that with more practice, this concept will come much easier.  After the 15 minutes of visualizing the give and take of love and dissolving suffering of others, I did feel an inner peace that really does quiet the mind. I would recommend this practice to others for the simple reason that we live in a world with so much hate and not enough love. I truly believe that in order for us to receive love from others we have to learn to first be able to accept love from ourselves, this practice helps to do just that.

Mental Workout

Mental workout is a concept much like physical workout. A person must train their mind consistently to see and maintain benefits just as someone strength training with weights would have to do. With mental workout, the daily practice will help the mind to focus with a much higher level of clarity and capacity of the importance of live and lead you to a path of health, happiness, and ultimately human flourishing.

Unit 3 Reflection

1. Based on your reflections, and on a scale of 1 to 10 (ten being optimal wellbeing), where do you rate your A-physical wellbeing, B-spiritual well-being, C-psychological well-being? Why?

I would rate my physical wellbeing at a 9 because I truly feel like my physical health is at the best in my 27 years; I would not say that it is a 10 because I also believe that there is always room for improvement. Spiritually on the other hand, I have to rate myself at about a 5. Spiritually I feel that my life did have purpose at one time but a series of event took place and somewhere in the last four years or so I feel like I lost that purpose. I feel like I am making progress in the right direction but haven’t quit reach spiritual inner peace.  Psychologically I rate myself about a 7. I tend to deal with stress for the most part very well but again still have goals to work towards.

2. Develop a goal for yourself in each area (physical, spiritual, psychological).

Physically I would be happy just to maintain my health. Spiritually I would like to really secure a true purpose in my life and psychologically I would like to be able to train my mind to become a mental Olympian.

3. What activities or exercise can you implement in your life to assist in moving toward each goal?

Physically I need to maintain exercising, eating right, and keeping injuries to a minimum. Spiritually I will need to just keep moving forward to find my way. Psychologically, meditation seems to really work for me.

4. Complete the relaxation exercise The Crime of the Century. To hear this exercise, click here. Describe your experience. (Was it beneficial? Frustrating? etc.)

I understand all the concepts of this exercise but honestly I found this exercise more frustrating than helpful. I almost felt like picturing all the shapes, colors, body part, and meanings to be more annoying and less relaxing personally but I can see if your mind wanders a lot during meditation, this type of exercise could work for you.