Unit 4 Blog-Loving Kindness
Hello everyone! I hope that you are having a wonderful day! :)
Question 1 Response:
My experience was a positive one. At first, I found it much easier to feel loving kindness for a loved one. The second step of turning this loving kindness inward did take me a little longer. Luckily, we did get quite a long span of time to focus on the direction, so I had enough time to turn my feelings of loving kindness inward.
My husband has always told me that before I can truly love him or anyone else that I need to love myself. This exercise and the class as a whole has helped me to understand why that is such a true statement. It has also helped me to realize that I do love myself even though there are times that I have trouble showing or feeling this love.
Question 2 Response:
The concept of mental workout is to do exercise with the mind much like you do with your body. Working out the mind can help someone eventually get to the point of being able to foster certain emotions when needed to make a situation have a better outcome than if they got angry or upset.
Some of the benefits of mental workout that were focused upon in this exercise are: being able to show loving kindness towards oneself, being able to show loving kindness towards loved ones, and being able to even show loving kindness towards strangers.
Mental workouts, for me, help me to relax and forget about the daily stress of life. This allows me to focus on the things that are more important than work or school (yes, even more important than school lol) like relationships with people (loved ones, people I've recently met, and strangers) and my relationship with myself.
Hi Kristen,
ReplyDeleteAnother well thought out post and early response so thanks again. I feel your husband knows you well and offers sage advice. I also feel your spirit shines through in your writing, so you project and outward calmness and happiness. You appear to have mastered steps one and working week towards step two of loving yourself.
I wonder if you were able to think of any past transgressions from your enemies and forgive them hurting you? You seem nice so I’m thinking you haven’t made many enemies but I do see people sometimes treat nice people poorly for the only fact that they are nice. I hope you haven’t run into this but guessing you might have. Thanks again for getting something posted and have a great week.
Jeff
Hello Jeff,
DeleteThank you for your response to my post. I do find that people often treat those who are nice badly, I guess it's because they think they can easily take advantage of them. I had a "friend" in school that used to tease me all the time and try to control what I did, my mom always told me she was jealous of me. My thoughts? "Why would anyone be jealous of ME?" lol Well, it took about 10 years of friendship for me to realize that I needed to stick up for myself with this friend and not let her put me down. I finally was able to do this and now we still talk and are actually, truly, friends.
Kristen
Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI am glad you had a positive experience. I didn't particularly enjoyed this week's exercise since I found the voices to be highly irritating. The woman lacked any passion or compassion and her tone was just blank. Though, I enjoyed the sounds of the waves. After I was done listening to the audio and took notes, I played my own soundtrack of ocean waves while contemplating on the assignment. It worked much better and I was able to focus more. I can say that overall, i really enjoy these exercises as they bring not only relaxation but also work my mind in a different way elevating my senses and my thoughts.
It seems that you have a wonderful and supportive partner and yes, he is right. You must love yourself before you can truly love anyone else.
Your kind spirit transpire through your writing so it seems you are on the right path.
Mental workouts are a great way for me to really try to expand my consciousness like the book talks about. It really allows me to prepare for the day and think positively so I can start the day in a positive state. I'm a firm believer that if you think positive then positive things will happen to you. Great job on figuring out the best way that you were able to turn the loving kindness back onto you!
ReplyDeleteHello Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI understood what the exercise was teaching us to do about loving kindness and I
was on board with turning it inward and one others but the minute it sad to turn your loving kindness on ones that have done you wrong all that filled my mind was all the bad memories rushing into my mind completely ending the relaxing exercise for me.
I would love to be able to set aside time to have a mental workout each day to clear my mind and like reboot if you will. I think now the closest I get to a mental workout is when I am in the bath and only if my kids are sleeping. I do believe that I need to start a regular time to do a mental workout not just for my emotional being but for my physical health. I think that the stress in my life is making me physically ill and I am the only person that change it. I will work on it. Have a great day!
I think mental workout is connected to physical as well; they are not separate. I know going running sounds more physical but when I run, it clears my mind. Since I love nature, I run trails. The fresh air is amazing and also helps in clearing my mind of any worries or busyness. I can then focus on the beauty of nature and the feeling of doing something beneficial to my mind, body and spirit. Also, I did enjoy the loving kindness exercise. I like how it mentioned your love for others and yourself. That is very important and I see how it relates to what we learned about letting go of self-centeredness.
ReplyDelete