Unit 6 Discussion

Tidings,

   Welcome, again, to my blog. In this week I'll be posting my thoughts on the Exercise and the Integral Assessment from Ch. 11.

 Assessment:

   The exercise is, by the time I listened to it for this unit, one that I have listened to quite a few times. I enjoy the practice of it and actually get into it pretty quickly and deeply because of how familiar I am with it. I know what's coming next. There's no new wrinkles or turns and twists in the process. Really makes the exercise that much easier.

   The Assessment was pretty interesting. I decided to focus on the psychospiritual. While the assessment asks to focus on the one that was a source of difficulty or suffering, and I don't have any areas like that, I instead focused on the area that escapes me the most. I'm a firm believer in the biological (body) and the mind but the spiritual aspect of it all gets me sometimes. It's almost too conceptual and not as tangible as my ordered mind would like.

   During the course of this class, to date, I've discovered that I actually like meditation. Meditation, then, has become my key to unlock the doorway to better psychospiritual development and eventually wellness. Sounds like I've got a lot of meditation to do, yes? Ha! Yes, indeed!

Thanks,

James

Unit 5 Blog Post

Tidings,

   I noticed that the differences between both of the practices weren't entirely surface level differences. They were subtle focusing changes that made you move from an outward perspective to more of an inward perspective. Again, I noticed that I was able to achieve greater focus on the task at hand much quicker than before. I'm attributing this almost solely to dedicated practice with calming and focus. I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. To be completely honest, I told myself to relax, do the exercise and then when I was finished I would allow myself a beer for the night. By the time I was done I didn't even want the beer. I was relaxed and ready to just enjoy a night of reading and exploring the world through an author's observations. Very cool.

   I'm constantly learning that spriritual wellness is not the same as being religious in a definitive term. There's a lot of appreciating the self in a higher light than just saying, "James you're the bomb, man." When you have a higher sense of self, it makes a lot of things better in a way that's not easy put a tangible claim to. When I'm going for a run I don't question the distance or pace. I just know that I'm strong and that I can do it and I don't have to think about it. When I have to get in the right mind for hard work I know that it's nothing I can't handle - much like everything else. It's just a way of making things easier for you in a way that you might not appreciate if you're not being mindful of things.

   Thanks for stopping by.

James

Unit 4 Blog Post

Tidings,

  My Experience with the Loving Kindness Practice:

   This exercise was perhaps the most calming exercise yet. I think that I'm starting to get the hang of truly letting myself just become enveloped by the idea of letting myself go to the suggestive ways of relaxation and inner focus. I honestly believe that a lot of the comfort and ease felt had a lot to do with the sounds of the ocean and the waves gently crashing upon the shore. I found it beneficial because I felt refreshed by the time it was done. I've been working all day and my face is greasy, however, even that felt clean (No worries...I'm still going to clean my face...). It was not difficult for me, but that may just be because of the research into this kind of focus I've been delving into for the last four weeks. I'm mentally opening up to this practice. I would recommend this to others, but I would not recommend this one to others first. I think tha there would have to be more beginner or baseline practices first. I think the time allowed to let your mind roam free could potentially be overwhelming for someone with no experience in trying to just let the calm envelope them.

The Mental Workout:

   The concept of the Mental Workout is just that - working out with your brain to strengthen it and your psychospiritual life. Much like a physical workout, the more time you spend effectively (with intent) training your mind the stronger and more powerful it will become! Research has shown that working out mentally will increase your memory, allow your brain to process information faster and can even slow the onset of Alzheimers. I actually do mental exercises every single day. I have a program on my computer called "Dr. Kawashima" and it allows my brain to focus on individual and uniquely challenging tasks that help to jump start my brain for the day. I've noticed that on days I skip it that it takes me a little longer to work up to the normally very expressive version of me.

   Thanks for reading, everyone!

James Banks

Reflections, ratings and other well intentioned whatnots.

Tidings,

   Hi, again! This weeks blog input has me looking inward and attempting to rate where I am in three categories: mental, phsyical and spiritual. So here goes:

Mental: I'd give myself a solid 7. I'm sure I could be better, however, I'm pretty tough mentally. I don't dwell on things any longer than I have to (almost literally not at all) and commonly find myself upbeat when times are tough well before everyone else affected by the situation.

Physical: I'd give myself an 8 in this area. I wasn't born physically gifted but I turned that around through lots of dedication and hard work. I've achieved something pretty close to true balance physically.

Spirituality: I'd give myself a 2 here. I'm not a spiritual person at all. I've never been able to blindly apply faith to something that isn't tangible in any kind of way. Then I'm reminded of what being too spiritual can become when I meet a lot of people during my travels. Some people take this topic wayyyy toooo farrrrr.

Goals:

  

   When it comes to setting goals I've already started working on a few of them. Because of this course I'm starting and researching meditation techniques and methodology. I've already gotten over the "But I'm not doing anything.." hurdle. Hopefully the breakthroughs continue. Unfortunately, meditation benefits may not be readily measurable for me. We shall see.

   Physically I'm preparing to run a marathon in July. Over the past few months I've been upping my weekly mileage up from 20 a week to now just under 50. I'm feeling pretty good about how my body has responded to the new challenges. I think I'll be just fine when the time comes to run the full distance.

   Spiritually...well...this is going to be a hard one for me to challenge myself in. I truly don't have a desire to become a better spiritual being. Perhaps I can work on being more open to spirituality in general. Not in practice, obviously, but in the way I approach learning and discovering it.

Crime of the Century:

   This exercise was a bit odd for me. First, I couldn't help but start to realize that we were going to go through the ROYGBIV of the rainbow. And we did. Then I started to think that this was an exercise to enhance the way I feel about myself and the way I want to feel about myself by telling things to myself. I'm a grounded, confident and worldly person already to a degree. I do feel that I could be better in a lot of areas, but I feel like I should be doing more to go about that then just telling myself about it. To me, that would be like thinking about baking a cooking but meditating beforehand and telling myself on the exhalation, "I am the cookie master." Very "wagon in front of the horse-ish" to me.

   To be fair, as soon as I caught on to the contrived ROYGBIV scheme of things (As soon as we went from Red to Yellow) I lost a lot of focus. From that point on I gave my focus away to what this exercise would allow me to do better and I couldn't reasonably see that connection. I have to get past those contrived notions, I think. I'm going to listen to this again and attempt to overcome my previous lack of focus. I'll reply again, to this entry to see if anything changes.

   Thanks,

James