The Loving Kindness exercise is one that ushers in peace,
stillness, love, and gentleness. It
teaches you to be aware of all things, even the unpleasant ones and treat them
with equal care, love and kindness. The
act of wishes health, happiness, wholeness, and freedom from suffering is one
that deeply touches the heart. In
practicing loving kindness, you reach beyond immediate family and friends to
all humankind.
The
integral assessment process allows you to choose your path of focus. You can choose to concentrate on any area of
life such as fitness, personal relationships, or emotional development. It offers the opportunity to be accurate in
the assessment of your development and level of achievement. It also allows us to choose a path that is
most appropriate and will lead us to our goal which is ending needless
suffering.
For me this
process will take time. It seems that
during the day, so many problems arise that before I can get one handled
another one pops up. By the end of the
day, I am sometimes to weary to practice the loving kindness exercise. When this happens, I try to go through the
subtle mind exercise first to clear away all the random thoughts. Then I am better able to focus on the loving
kindness process. My integral assessment
improves greatly when I do the exercises in this order.
Hopefully,
I will get better at this.
Debbie
Reference: Dacher,
Elliott; Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing, 2006;
Basic Health Publications, Inc.; Laguna Beach, California; pp. 93-115.
I too felt the peace and stillness in this exercise. My favorite saying out of all of them was, may all individuals gain freedom from suffering.. What a powerful statement!! One of the most helpless feelings in the world is to not take the pain and suffering away from ones that you love. The assessments of this exercise give us a starting point on where our need for improvements may be. My philosophy in life when it gets to overwhelming with demands is to take one step at a time, and to just keep moving forward.
ReplyDeleteI can't stand those days, you get involved trying to fix one thing and another crises pops up. Sometimes it's hard to prioritize and we get overwhelmed. I try to just deal with one thing at a time and I make sure it's something that I can handle then get it out of the way. Freedom from suffering would be nice. Did you ever have a friend or relative that was suffering and you want to take the pain for them? I don't like it when someone I care about is suffering.
ReplyDeleteI think I function the opposite of you :) I need to practice the Loving-Kindness exercise first to help clear the cobwebs of craziness and hectiness form my day, then I can sufficiently practice the Subtle Mind. The Subtle Mind practice gets me a bit wound up oddly enough. I do agree that the assessment helps us to know where to focus but I will say that I think this tool is useful because it does not tell us where or how to go about it. It is a never ending process and we can choose to work on any area we feel like we need to.
ReplyDeleteHave a great week,
Christine M Dixon
Debbie,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated your post! This is easier said than done, sometimes the best thing to do is focus on the things that you can control, and you cannot solve all problems. I am always reminded that you are only giving problems that you can handle.
Debbie,
ReplyDeleteEvery new technique takes time to master. Life throws challenges our way so that we may grow stronger. This practice was very uplifting and inspiring. Each and every one of us has a right to be here, free of needless suffering, our lives filled with peace, love and wholeness. At times, it may be challenging not to be angered by a person's actions. But, what I try to remind myself is that I do not walk in that person's shoes. We are all on this journey together.
I wish you the very best!
Blessings and light,
Vanessa =-)