Unit 6

After silencing my mind and focusing my full attention on the four quadrants of the integral map, I began a personal mental inventory. I realized there was a lot of work to do. I think this assessment is a tool of motivation to realize our current level of development lapses. It really makes you think about what can be improved in your life when you 'see 'the big picture. 
My main area needing more attention is the biological aspect of nutrition. I know what I need to do, but doing it is the hard part. Eating raw more often than not is the key for me. I can start adding a spinach salad a couple days a week and add raw spinach to the home-made quiche I make. I can seek spinach recipes on the web as well to motivate myself. Adding raw broccoli and carrots on the days I don't spinach is another option I can start to practice. But in order to do this the right way I need to be honest with myself…I HATE spinach and vegetables, it has never been my strong suite.


The "UNIVERSAL LOVING-KINDNESS", in my opinion, does not apply to intimate romantic relationships other than the one I am in with my own husband. I do not agree with this author-of-the-book, Integral Health, or his ideas about sharing my physical intimacy and even my emotional intimacy with all my relationships, strangers, and even my enemy's. This to me is not normal, it is not moral and it has no integrity whatsoever associated or connected with this kind of behavior.
Saying a 4-sentence chant over and over for 10 minutes, wishing no more suffering, health, happiness and wholeness on all people is a nice thought, but, does not really expand my mind or heart. I already have a big heart and expanded mind. 

Unit 4

The subtle mind is all about breathing, if you still the breath you still the mind. A peaceful breath is a peaceful mind. The first concentration is to use your breath as your focal point. My mind runs a million miles a second! I tried to settle into the natural ease of my body, returning my mind back to the breath. We are supposed to witness things without reacting to them. In our witnessing consciousness or healthy psychology, we can stop, see, understand, make choices about our thoughts and feelings and have clearer intentions.
We can see it/things/thoughts/feelings/images, what’s in our head rolling around, our mental activity, but not grasp it, just see it. We can still our mind. Not hold on to the mental activity, just see it and let go of it and let it fade away and just witness it come and go. We can control the mental chatter, shut it down, turn it off and be in stillness again focusing on breath only.

If I were to compare the Loving-kindness practice, with the subtle mind exercise, I like the first one more. In the loving-kindness practice, it is enjoyable to think of a loved one, and open my heart to their thoughts. I do not like to think about the bad sensations, as it suggests, but, I try not to grasp at it.
Observing and not grasping. Loving myself, feeling a natural rest, ease, and openness is hard for me, but necessary according to the loving kindness practice. I have thought of others more in my life and turning it to myself is harder for me.

Both practices do not allow grasping the thoughts, feelings and/or images of the mind, but, just observation. The natural home is awareness of and not the grasping of what we observe with our mind.

I take the mind-body connection to mean that we need to keep our mind stable, not upset or stressed, but under complete control. Our body and the way we treat it, needs to be controlled. If we don't control what we eat, we will end up weighing 400 pounds. If we do not eat healthy, we could get cancer or die of a heart attack, or high blood pressure. Our exercise, diet, habits, all need to be balanced with our mind and emotions to have a flourishing life.

Loving Kindness

The Loving kindness CD was interesting and beneficial. The waves crashing on the beach shore were nice and soothing and brought me back to the many times at the beach specifically the virgin islands.
Trying to think of stillness, peace, and loving-kindness in my heart, was calming. I loved thinking about my partner in crime and soon to be legal dating partner!(in other words we're engaged).I love thinking about the life we currently have and our plans for the future, I always get happy and excited.
Some of the content seemed a little weird and slightly creepy, like taking in a breath of a loved ones suffering. All I had to do is breath it into my heart, then breath out and on the out breath giving health and joy to the suffering one, (this was the creepy part too, it was very hard for me to focus on this with out feeling stupid and annoyed by it). Taking in the suffering of strangers was kinda odd to. It was a new-worded experience I was not expecting.
Embracing enemies, taking in their suffering, and giving out health, happiness, and wholeness was a challenge for me as well. I do appreciate the practice though but I think I would go about it in a different way, maybe not meditating on it so much. But rather practice it as I go through out my day.
The constant lapping of the waves on shore, were calming, the solo flute was curious and compelling. I really do enjoy the sounds of the waves, they always put me asleep, in fact I usually listen to it before I go to bed to relax.  The peaceful sounds together and actually put me to sleep before the CD was over!

Unit 3 Rainbow-ness!!

Physical Well being = 7
Spiritual Well-being = 7
Psychological Well-being = 8
If I were going to say how I would improve in the above areas:
Diet and exercise for the physical, as I have some weight to loose to get back down to my size 2 for my wedding in 2013!
Spiritual improvement: I don't read many books about anything. I think the one thing I do is go out into nature and reconnect. My family and I go camping at lakes and the desert. During the summer is when I feel the most centered and at peace!
Psychological improvement could be made by me continuing going to a counselor. I have been seeing mine for about 11 years now and he has helped me through so many difficulties.

The nice relaxing male voice asked me to get into a comfortable sitting or laying position, and as it was playing nice slow guitar music I think, asked me to focus all my attention on my breathing, taking deep belly breaths, exhale, relax, to think of a rainbow. We had to imagine our body had a beam coming to it and has 7 rays coming on different spots on our body, with different colors and light beams coming into our body, one at a time, as we took deep breaths.
My body was calm and relaxed through this exercise. I found that the orange color was focused on for me and that is the color of the lower abdomen, I’m going to assume that it was for that fact that I am on baby mode now that I’m getting the wedding ball moving!