Friday, January 7, 2011

Loving Kindness

I have done the loving kindness exercise a few times now. I enjoyed the first part with envisioning someone you feel loving about and then turning the love back into yourself. I kind of pictured this as radiating light from me to the other person and then reabsorbing that light and love. The next couple of things were a little harder. Once I started allowing any acknowledgement of the thoughts and feelings that flitted in and out of my mind I felt like I was losing concentration. The last part about visualizing a loved one who is now suffering and breathing in their suffering, allowing it to dissolve in your heart and breathing out loving kindness I not only had trouble with, but didn’t like. This may sound crazy but I couldn’t get past the feeling that I was breathing in something harmful to myself and that even though it was supposed to dissolve with my love I didn’t like the feeling.

The mental workout concept discussed by Dacher has to do with expanding our minds and our thinking. We all have heard about “thinking outside the box”. These types of mental exercises involve “thinking inside the box” of our selves both mentally and spiritually. Hopefully these exercises will help us toward a healthier, happier life.
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4 comments:

  1. MonteJanuary 7, 2011 at 5:03 PM

    Lori,

    We actually had problems with the same part of the exercise. Have you ever seen the Green Mile with Tom Hanks? The prisoner John Coffey had super powers and could heal people by sucking the evil or harmful things out. Kinda the same concept I guess...
    I agree with you about thinking inside the box and finding our spiritual selves. This will take practice and not all these exercises will be successful. Good luck and enjoy

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  2. JenJanuary 8, 2011 at 6:14 AM

    Hi Lori,

    I enjoyed this practice as well and have been doing it for the past few days now. I can see an improvement in my ability to relax and get a deeper understanding from what I am doing, rather than wondering what people are going to think of me when I am sitting on my bed and doing this meditation.

    I must agree that some parts of the practice are taking time to get the total concept and use it but I guess the saying, "Practice makes perfect," kind of applies to this scenario.

    Good luck with continuing your experiences in the exercise and have a great week!

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  3. Wellness TreeJanuary 8, 2011 at 7:53 PM

    Hello Lori,
    I am glad you brought up the point of letting the pain in and out. I did the first time but I found when I did it over and over again that it kind of made me feel stressed inside. That it was getting worst. So I stop exhaled relaxed myself. And pondered that this would be a good technique for someone that has lost a loved one. That would need to feel the feeling over and over again. With this exercise it might help them to let go easier.

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 10, 2011 at 8:39 PM

    Thank you for bring this up. The part of the visualization exercise that asked me to breath in a little black cloud made me feel yucky and I didn't appreciate it. I thought the idea was not congruent with the overall task. I did not want to put someone else little black storm cloud in my heart. LOL.... so I skipped that part & went ahead and sent my love.

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