Universal Loving-Kindness Meditation
I practiced the loving-kindness
meditation. I found it to be relaxing and stress relieving. The loving kindness
meditation was easy to do. I sat in a quiet place and began to repeat the
phrases:
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.
I practiced this for 10 minutes
and this made me feel at ease. I felt that this meditation allowed me to feel
that I had the power to help others. This exercise helped me to open my mind
and heart to myself and others. I also liked this meditation because unlike a
recorded meditation exercise you can truly use this meditation almost anywhere.
I also completed the integral assessment.
I had to focus really hard to think about my life and it allowed me to put my
life into perspective. I found that I am good with psychospiritual and
biological aspects of my life. I however lack on the interpersonal aspect. I find that it is easy for me when it comes to nutrition, exercise,
meditation, and prayer. On the other
hand I am really bad at community, family, friends, and work relationships. I
have never been good at relationships and I have very few friends, but many acquaintances.
I think for me to work on my interpersonal skills that I first need to work on
my inner self. I need to work on having a positive attitude and behavior. This
will hopefully help me to develop into a better communicator and friend. This
assessment really helped me to evaluate my life and to see where I need to make
some improvements.
Jennifer I always enjoy your blog posts! I too enjoy the Loving-Kindness exercise because it just overall makes me feel really positive after I'm done. When I was looking into myself I also found that my worldly side needed work. I love having alone time and getting to read and have tea to myself however I would love to be more open and feel more gratitude toward my community and the people that live in it! What are some ways you thought of increasing that side of yourself? I thought that participating in more church events would be a good starting point and also incorporate the psychospiritual side!
ReplyDeleteUlani
Ulani,
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that you brought up church and community because this morning in church we talked about community and how in order to be mind, body, and spiritually connected that we need to be apart of a community. Community can help us to feel needed, respected, and have needed relationships that we crave. I think that church events are a great way to help open yourself up to others and get to know others. Building relationships can take work, but by taking it a day at a time and trying to always think of the positives can help to improve your social skills.
Jennifer,
ReplyDeleteI agree this exercise made me feel really good too! I thin any meditation just allows for us all to slow down and become more in tune with what is going on in our mind. The phrases that we had to repeat really were right on with what we discussed in church yesterday. It was all about being grateful and thinking of others and our problems become so much smaller when we focus on others rather than narrowly thinking of just ourselves. We also just completed a 40 day spiritual journey that had us focus on our community as well! It was excellent!
Jennifer
ReplyDeleteGreat post!! We all have the power to help people, this made me feel strong, and I felt relief. Relationships are always a hard part of life. Good luck!!!
Sally
I am much like you. I am more introverted and have very few close friends and a lot of acquaintances. I struggle making time for people because I work a second shift job and everyone else I know works first shift, so I literally see no one during the week and then I get a chance on weekends, but have homework and stuff so it is hard to balance. It is also hard because I am more of a loner by nature and it doesn't really bother me to not see many people. I really have to be intentional about working on my interpersonal relationships for this reason.
ReplyDelete