My family consists of my husband, me, and my two kids who are 3 & 5 years old and two cats who are in their "toddler" stage. My 16 year old nephew has been here since mid-November living with us and we have been solely providing for him since then. This week my sister in law and her two "baby" cats are moving in, so there has been some chaos going on. Our cats are not getting along and the house was not ready for another occupant - we are still trying to finish the "guest" room - which will be the kids room until the rest of the family moves out.
I explain this because my mind has been all over the place this week and I wasn't able to come up with anything catchy for this week's blog title, which makes me rather sad. Ah, but life will go on and a title is not the end of the world - but may garner less interest this week. Sorry classmates & professor!
So, this week we are to discuss both universal loving-kindness and do an integral health assessment and discuss our results. I fully expected the universal loving-kindness to "flop" this week considering the difficulty I had with our first attempt at loving-kindness, but I decided to give it a try.
So I found the quietest time and place I could - the kitchen table and right after I got off work, before everyone was awake. Everything is perfect so I can do this right? Not so much... the children woke up again, the cats all got into a fight and I was frustrated. So I retreated to the garage after someone was awake to get the kids!
I sat out there and tried just the universal loving-kindness exercise. I kept opening my eyes to try and remember exactly what I was supposed to repeat and checking the time to see if I could do it. That didn't work so well as the "chatter" of my mind kept creeping into my thoughts. That was attempt one so I gave in and went back into the house until a later date.
The next time I tried it I went to the library on Saturday and shut myself into a study alcove only 5 minutes after the library opened. I found some music that was about 15 minutes long with no lyrics, plugged in my headset and began to clean my mind. I finally worked on finding my inner stillness and then I forgot what I was supposed to repeat. I opened my eyes and some chatter came through - but I worked on refocusing and began to repeat the four sentences we have in the book - but the chatter remained, because my eyes were open. So the amount of OCD (I am obsessed with doing things the way I am instructed to make sure they "work" properly) I have kicked in and I let it go to the side. I remembered the sentiment of the instructions and worked to settle my mind again - restarting my 15 minutes of music. I figured approximately 5 minutes to clear my mind and 10 to do my repeating was about right.
I cleared my mind, settled into the inner calm I could and began my universal kindness - originally I tried saying it out loud since I was in a study alcove and alone and realized external noise brought back the chatter so I resorted to saying it over and over in my head... eventually it worked itself into the background and I tried to work on expanding my mind and heart while going over the sentiment. It mostly worked as universal loving-kindness is much easier for me to try than personal loving-kindness aimed at myself. I have a great love for people in general, just one reason I am ready to change careers from one which makes me doubt humanity in general. For the rest of the day I tried to also perform random acts of kindness - which were mostly met with awe and disbelief and in some cases even anger, which surprised me. I attempted to pay for the person behind me in line for lunch and they were not happy. It doesn't mean I will stop hoping for the overall good for people or stop random acts of kindness.
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