Hey Bloggers!
This week we were to practice our subtle mind exercise. I'm going to have to be honest here, the first time I did it... I fell asleep! (lol) I had done it after work and on a full stomach... so one, I was tired and two, the blood left my brain and used all the energy I had left and worked in my digestive system to do its job. I became aware of my first experience and told myself to try again, but this time to practie the subtle mind exercise when I am not tired and not too soon after I eat. The second time was better. I was alert and followed the instructions. During this trial, I had a couple of mental disturbances that came along during my breathing activity. I realized that these thoughts had to do with the fact that I had turned off my phone and was wondering if my boyfriend was trying to get in contact with me. The second disturbance that caused my mind to wander was thinking about my new friend who is going through some bad times in her life. So basically during the subtle mind practice, I was concerned for others. After trying this exercise over and over again, I began to find ways to keep away the thoughts that were trying to creep in before and used those same reasons as examples to keep away new thoughts from creeping in for the next trials.
Overall, this breathing exercise was more difficult than the loving-kindness practice. I say this because in the loving-kindness, we were allowed to participate with others and didn't have to worry if my mind wandered because I was forced to replace my thoughts with love, so I was more focused on doing that. As oppose to the subtle mind practice, I had to focus on my breathing which was a little bit hard since breathing is an involuntary action, and when we are forced to focus on our breathing for a reason such as this exercise, it gets a little frustrating. It's like it is forcing our mind to do work.
The connection of spiritual wellness to mental and physical is greatly needed. You must have a clear, conscious, and sane mind in order to achieve the other aspects of well being in a healthy way. When all of these aspects are in sync, our well-being has a nice flow to it. I believe the better our spirituality is, the better our body and mind will respond to whatever we are trying achieve.
- Welna
Something you wrote really stuck with me-the part about your cell phone and wondering if someone was trying to reach you because you had turned your phone off. It seems very hard to let go of our phones and unplug but I do remember the days when no one had cell phones. How did we survive? The second my phone vibrates or rings I check to see who it was and respond. I really need to let go of that somehow but am not sure where to begin. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
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