1. Compare and contrast the Loving Kindness exercise and the Subtle mind exercise. Explain your experience including the benefits, frustrations etc. 2. Discuss the connection of the spiritual wellness to mental and physical wellness. Explain how the connection is manifested in your personal life. #1 exercise, we visualized a loved one who was suffering. We were asked to allow the “dark cloud of suffering to ride the in-breath into our body” and then allowing them to completely dissolve in our heart (Dacher, 2006). You just wanted us to understand loving-kindness and accept it into our hearts. This helps withdrawing our self-interest and being able to share loving-kindness with others as we exhale out wellbeing, love and happiness. This assignment eased my stress levels by eliminating the mental and physical stress in my busy life, meaning I entered pathway of integral health and human flourishing (Dacher, 2006). #2 exercise reflects on three levels of the psychospiritual flourishing, namely the witnessing mind, calm-abiding and unity consciousness (Dacher, 2006). The aim is to train the mind from the ceaseless mental activity of thoughts, feelings and images. In contrasting both exercises I found that the subtle mind was a little more challenging than loving-kindness because I had to train myself to stop all mental activity, which is crazy to me. I could not control my thoughts for 10 whole minutes before I got upset. That was a little stressful alone. Spiritual wellness embraces seeking significance and reason of life, following a rewarding life, and contributing to the spiritual health of others. The process of incorporating spiritual wellness into one’s life can differ from attending minster to committed meditation. You must begin by focusing on your inner self and become more in touch with the spiritual proportions of your living years. I think one should try relaxation techniques such as yoga and tai chi can help you achieve the relaxation response, a state of deep calmness that counteracts the negative effects of stress
You make such an important distinction here in your post. "Spiritual wellness embraces seeking significance and reason of life, following a rewarding life, and contributing to the spiritual health of others." Spiritual wellness is not only ourselves it is everyone and everything we come in contact with, a fact at times I feel may be too easy to forget. This thought just has be centering on our current state of environment. The whole move to be more "green" and attempt to be more conscious of the consequences to our actions is greatly tied to the Unity Consciousness. If we know that we are connected and feel it, we would naturally be more aware of how what we are doing effects the whole and beings around us. This may seem like a trite correlation, but to me, it serves as the foundation for a greater sense of civic-mindedness and environmental consciousness that it is imperative that it be developed in order for us as a people to flourish and thrive.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see your blog up and running.
Blessings,
Christine M. Dixon
thanks so much, i was struggling
DeleteAtalaya,
ReplyDeleteI thought I was the only one struggling with the subtle mind practice! It definitely was tough to avoid mental chatter in this meditation for me as well. I am a visual person so to be able to picture a specific individual in Loving Kindness was very helpful.
Maria