Hello fellow bloggers,
I just finished the Love and Kindness exercise for the third time. I can say the first couple of exercises for this class help with the preparation for this one. I found the sound of water soothing and the time of silence where we were able to concentrate on the feeling of love and kindness beneficial. I found it difficult because I know that it will take a lot of practice to be able to accomplish this state of taking other people sorrow and pain into our self and eventually getting to the stage of taking enemies as well. When I was finished I thought about all it was asking us to do. I imagined that Gandhi and other great leaders would have to be at this stage of meditation and love and kindness. I often wondered how they managed to remain calm and strong in their faith of non-violence and undaunted in their cause able to give their followers the message of hope and faith to continue. I am hoping that I can get to the stage of connecting my mind with my heart and body and taking negative emotions and turn them into feelings of love and kindness.
I did find the exercise beneficial it allowed me to let my negative emotions flow and then replace them with feelings of something positive. It allowed me to think of my sister who is suffering from heart failure and think about the assistance I can offer her. It allowed me for a moment to view the experience through her eyes. It was easier for me to try and take the suffering of love ones into my thoughts then it was to take strangers but I do plan on repeating this exercise as I think it will help improve my course of life over-time. I would recommend it to others only after they have been introduced to basic meditation and they are very comfortable with it. I do think if we has a community could get to this stage of integral health what a positive world we would have.
Mental Work-Out refers to training our mind just as we would train our bodies our muscles to get to a stage of change. Training our mind by reducing disturbing emotions that cause anger, fear, hatred, worry and confusion and replacing them with positive emotions like patience, love and kindness, openess, acceptance and happiness. The ability to take the mind to a stage of enhanced resistance to mental distress and physical disease will enhance healing capabilities and promotes well being.
Taking about 15 minutes in the morning and at night to train my mind practicing exercises like the love and kindness exercise as well as doing general meditation will promote this mental training and help me reach the stage of better well being and greater physical health.
Great post Deb, I also enjoyed this piece more than the others. I do think that the previous peices made me more appreciative of this peice. I think I am gender bias though. While I appreciated the moments of silence I think some where too long. I listened to this at least three times. Each time I notice that it was paused. If I where to listen to it before bed as a relaxation piece I would have fallen asleep and never finished. :-) I did like how it forces you to push negative energy out and replace with positive energy. Great post.
ReplyDelete