I learned to remove self many years ago when I wanted to expand my spiritual walk. The loving kindness meditation practice reminds me of a prayer I heard a woman once say. She asked GOD to forgive all her sins, both known and unknown. This is essentially what the loving kindness meditation does for me… it allows me to detect any anger or hostile feelings I may have toward someone, both known and unknown.
Dacher’s assessment tool has served to further enhance my journey to enlightenment. It helps me to look deeply within and make conscious decisions about my current psychospiritual, biological, interpersonal, and worldly existence. Knowing which areas you need to work on will allow you to choose the right practice for development. In taking a personal inventory, it caused me not only to reflect, but to evaluate my level in each domain. What I found validated my perceived levels of low development and highlighted that there was still room for growth in other areas.
According to Dacher, it is not necessary to fully develop every aspect of integral development because they are all interconnected, but you do need to develop at least one (Dacher, 2006) . My personal assessment revealed the following:
1. The aspect of my life that causes me the most difficulty and suffering is Interpersonal. Although I have taken personal responsibility for my health or lack of health, my family interaction usually stimulates most of my anger. Since I have been practicing loving-kindness I’ve noticed and so has my family members a change. I have found that instead of hanging up when I feel that what they are saying is senseless, I now listen and decide if I’m going to offer some advice. When I do, it is often presented in a mediation format instead of my usual arbitration format.
2. Since family and relationships are an important element in my life, I feel strongly that this is the area of my life that requires the most attention. I am not rude or condescending, but I am somewhat distant to those outside of my immediate circle which currently consist of three sisters, one niece and her family, and my daughter and her daughters. Somehow I have allowed myself to “un-friend” them. I have little or no contact with them nor do I ever find myself thinking about them. The group I am thinking about is my dead brother’s children. I treat that entire side of the family as if they died with my brother, and it’s just me who treats them that way. The loving kindness exercise allowed me to see the hidden anger I have toward his wife and how it has allowed me to disregard my own nieces and nephew.
3. As far as my psychospiritual development, I am good with it. There is still room for improvement since I haven’t actually experience the life giving light of GOD, but I am good with myself and others. But my goal is to become truly at peace with everyone instead of “mourning the loss” of people I don’t want to deal with. That’s what you do initially when you are trying to obtain loving kindness, but you are supposed to return when you are stronger to make those amends. Apparently I just bury you and move on.
4. I sincerely need to work on my Interpersonal development since it has been the most ignored. When I embarked on my journey for self improvement it had little to do with human flourishing. I was only concerned with my spiritual development and have spent years working toward that end. Now I realize that this isn’t enough and that I need to work on the other areas of being. I know I need healing in this area because personal relationships that involve suffering have a tendency to affect ones health. I have two nieces that live with me that suffered migraines before moving here. Both of them felt abandoned and unloved. Since they’ve been here the youngest has only complained of headaches twice, and both of them were during the first month on moving here. They’re both aware that we love them and that their mother’s are just incapable of showing love.
I meditate every day alternating between loving-kindness, mindfulness, and healing. I use to just do mindfulness because of the affects of stress. CAM practices have always been important to me, but as Dacher pointed out, they were still used primarily as an external approach. I used meditation and massages to relieve stress only. I never really thought to apply them for health purposes. That has all changed. Understanding integral health and its practices has opened my eyes to the possibility of acquiring so much more. I now find myself listening to guided healing meditation, loving-kindness meditation, mindfulness practices, and taking a few more mental vacations (visualization). I seem a lot more approachable to my family.
My even asked me if I had found a lover. When I realized that he was serious I told he him yeah… I found myself and the right to love and accept all of me. I am not sure that he believed me, but he has been giving me extra attention. He even did one of the exercises with me. That in itself was a miracle. With that being said, I fully look forward to the next level on my journey without any type of anticipation. I am open to being surprised. So far, every action has resulted in a positive reaction and the law of reciprocity, we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us, has been proven true (Cialdini, 1993) . You really can get what you give.
References:
Dacher, M. E. (2006). Integral Health The Path to Human Flourishing. Laguna Beach, CA, USA: Basic Health Publication, Inc.
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