Unit 7

Well the person that came to my mind was my best friend who is like a brother and who was like a teacher and mentor to me about many of the mysticism beliefs that we both share. He guided me get more in touch and in tune with the universe and the capabilities, power, and strength of the mind and soul. For him much of what we have learned in this class is second nature for him, he can meditate at the drop of a dime, switch to the witnessing mind, calm abiding mind, and unity consciousness like it is a piece of cake, and he can channel the power of his mind over matter like no other. I know that I have the capability of being a wise and caring healer that is much of what I do in life. I have always been a life coach for people, I care for, respect, and nurture people, animals, and even things. I share my love, energy, and emotions with people with the intention of helping them to be happy and healthy. I have come a long way towards loving and taking care of myself also. By nature I have always been a care giver, most times I feel like a psychologist or therapist, a nurturer of those in need, and a leader of example. Mainly this exercise made me think about my best friend whom we had a falling away because we had differences of opinions on my life path and his life path took him to far and busy places. I am sure he was very frustrated with where I was going because it was not a conducive path towards where I want to go, the path was filled with heartache, depression, hurt, and abuse, and mainly it took away from my integral path towards human flourishing. It was actually quite the opposite, so I can understand why my friend was upset with the choice in direction I was taking. Although, I do believe that people need to figure it out for themselves, sometimes they need to go through experiences, learn the hard way, learn in their own way, and so forth. There have been many times where I had people ask me advice but they didn't take it and learned the hard way instead of taking my advice so they could achieve what it was that they wanted. I learned that in that circumstance you just need to be there for that person and help them when they need help back up, and support them. I think the mindful practices have had great information to offer and talk about. I did not have very good luck with incorporating these exercises into my life but I would like to search for ones that I do like that I could incorporate into my daily life. On my Youtube meditation playlist I not only have Omharmonic meditative music, I also have subliminal message music, and also guided meditations that I have found to be more pleasing and easier to listen and pay attention to. Mainly the information that has been presented in class are things that I already knew about so it has given me an opportunity to refresh, be consciously aware of the information each day, and work towards applying it more, perfecting what I already do, work on incorporating more, and improve where I falter. The saying about not being able to lead somewhere where you have not gone is a very simple concept. It would be like teaching someone how to snowboard but you yourself don't know how to snowboard, that doesn't make much sense. You can learn together, but that is learning not teaching another. People also do not appreciate being given advice from someone who does not know first hand about what they are trying to teach. I am the oldest of 20 grandchildren on one side of the family, taken care of my friend's and family's children, worked in day cares since I was young, have a natural talent with children, but I do not have any of my own yet so I would never expect to get a job teaching parents how to deal with their children. As soon as people found out I don't have any children they would walk out of the class. It wouldn't matter how much experience I have with children, I am not a parent, therefore I do not completely know or understand. I absolutely believe that I have an obligation to develop my health psychologically, physically, and spiritually! Lead by example! My quitting smoking cigarettes has been an inspiration to many people around me. Going to the gym and talking about it has lead to many people around me to check out gyms, use the temporary passes the gyms offer to check out their gym, people getting gym memberships, and getting people who have memberships to start going more often. Talking to people about ways to decrease stress, sharing information about what I know and what I have learned impacts those around me in a positive way. I talk about eating healthy, being healthy, active, happy, and so forth and people want to hear about it, discuss it, they ask me question that I look into and get back to them about if I didn't know or misconceptions that they heard about that aren't true. I have been implementing psychological, spiritual, and physical growth in my life, so what is on my agenda is to maintain, perfect, and incorporate new things when the opportunity presents itself. I realized today that much of my life I was telling myself to go with the flow, go where life took me, but since I took back control of my life I have realized that wasn't really the right way to look at it. My mind set now is that instead of going with the flow of life I am the one in charge of the flow of my life. One of things that I emphasize when talking with people about the changes I have made in my life and where I have come from to where I am now, is that every day takes work, every moment of the day takes effort, it does however take the simple thought of deciding that it is time to make the change.

Unit 6 (super long)

I don't think I need much improvement in the loving kindness department.  For the most part I tend to put everyone else ahead of myself & I am always thinking about others & how my actions affect those around me.  At my work I always stay late because I don't want to leave the manager high & dry when there is still work that needs to get done.  In order to make things easier on the manager who has to do the schedule of about 40 employees, I told them that I had a completely open & available schedule, which has not worked in my favor at all...  I used to have a major problem telling people, "no" when the needed something from me, because I always wanted to help & be there for people.  However, too many people started taking advantage of me & I was burning the candle at both ends, stretching myself out too thin, & leaving nothing left for myself.  I'm usually the life coach that people turn to because people perceive that I always have myself together & I am a stable person for them to turn to.  Even when I am wronged by a person I justify why they did what they did by understanding that they are only human, no ones perfect, I try to understand what made them the way that they are, something from their childhood, their environment, a past trauma, their own self esteem issues, etc.  I do not wish ill on others, & I try very not to speak negatively about others.  I am only human too though I yell swear words in my car while driving on the road with other drivers & I do get upset when someone hurts me.  The loving kindness exercise is very important message though.  We are all interconnected so if we wish ill on others then we are also wishing ill on ourselves, because when others are suffering we are affected by their suffering & if we are not compassionate to others, then why would people want to be compassionate towards us.  It is also an important concept about selflessness & being more of a selfless person.  

Most of my stress I would say comes from work, schoolwork, & driving.  When it comes to work, I feel like I am working myself to death for an extremely small paycheck.  I may still be young at 25 years old but my back does not feel young at all.  I like my job but I do not like working so hard thinking that I am going to get a decent paycheck & I end up crying instead.  I've been contemplating the last couple days about looking at different job that is tipped based as well as hourly & has a more consistent schedule.  This term has been the most chaotic term I have had since I started going to Kaplan.  I have had an easier time moving across state & still doing school work than working & trying to accomplish the work load of assignments.  It feels like it is non stop each week of so many assignments for both classes.  I am grateful that I am not taking more than 2 classes or else I would probably lose my mind.  My grades are highly important to me so with the heavier workload and chaotic unstructured work schedule I have been stressed out everyday of each week.  If I was working full time instead of part time & a half I would surely be more stressed out trying to get the school workload done each week.  As it is I have to manage & budget my time hour by hour day by day, I am lucky if I get 4.5-6 hours of sleep a night, which is not enough for me because I need 7.5-9 hours to be able to optimally function.  When I am not getting enough sleep I start to make minor mistakes that increase my frustrations because I am such an overachiever & perfectionist.  Everyday when confronted with stress from work or school I have to talk myself through it by telling myself that it isn't the end of the world, it is only a couple points, I am doing the best I can with what I have to work with, and I can still achieve my 4.0 term.  Pretty much my life has been revolving around getting ready for work, driving to work, working, driving, school work, & maybe a little bit of sleep if I am lucky.  There is no time for me & so far I don't feel like I am getting back nearly the amount of effort, energy, & sanity that I am putting in.  When it comes to looking at what is the source of difficulty in myself is the constant mental & emotional refinement that I put myself through.  This includes being conscious & aware of when I am having destructive behaviors, thoughts, & attitudes such as being angry, stressed out from mainly fears, speaking or thinking mean/negative thoughts that are not constructive or positive they are just reactive.  Pretty much psychoanalyzing myself on a constant basis, holding high expectations for myself, being very critical of myself because I know I can always do better but get frustration when I don't do well.  Not long ago I had an epihany about the timeline of my life an a pivotal moment that forever changed my life to why I have been where I have been & why I am at where I am at.  That everyday is a struggle to make the best out of my life despite the choice that changed my life that was not of my doing but has altered all aspects of my life & who I was, who I am, & who I will be.  One of the major things that this has affected is my relationships with others, & apparently I have the worst luck, I don't know how but I attract all the wrong ones.  I have counteracted this by being very particular, having standards & expectations that I don't compromise on, I trust my gut instinct, & I am very clear that I will know what I am looking for when I find it.  I just get very frustrated with people's perceptions and misconceptions that I am a right instead of a privilege.  Moving on to what line of development is most important I would say being on top of my stress levels with positive affirmations, keeping up with my exercising & active meditation, & being actively aware & deciphering my stressful situations in the moment.  Such as stopping, thinking, asking myself what is it that I am really stressed about, what am I afraid of, why does this anger me, what can I do about it, is it in my control or not, and telling myself I am in charge of my attitude & I choose to have a good one & make the best out of the situation & do the best I can.  I don't know what label I would give my level of development on a scale of 1-10 or a F-A grade.  I would like to say I am higher up on the scale, but every time I look back on my life timeline I think to myself man I did not know what the heck I was doing, or thinking, where was my mind at!  Maybe I would go with a B- or an 8, that I know a lot but I still have lots of improvement because let's face it I am only 25 & I have a whole lot of life left to live & a whole heck of a lot of experiences to experience.  I would say that sometimes though I am a 7 because there are periods of time where I get caught up in the chaos of reacting & not being in control of my own life, or going down dead end roads creating more work for myself by having to back track & get back on the main road.  What areas of my life are ready for growth & development?  I would say all areas of my life!  Physically, I am still in recovery mode from being so depressed I was bed ridden & sick for over a year losing a lot of lean muscle tone.  I am also only 4.5 months quit from smoking cigarettes after 10 years of smoking.  There are also needs that need to be attended to most importantly going to the chiropractor because I know my hips are still out of alignment causing pinched nerves, difficulty working out, & work takes a physical toll on my body.  I have my gym membership & my routine is an hour & a half but I need to include Pilates for lower back function & I would love to make yoga a part of my daily lifestyle.  Belly dancing is also on my bucket list.  Meeting my own personal nutrient needs is still not completely down pat, I eat healthy but I tend to not be able to get enough from forgetting or not having enough time for breakfast, forgetting to pack a lunch for work, not having the money to buy groceries or stop & get food, & most places are closed when I am out & about.  I was doing really great but then my schedule changed once I got a job & since my work schedule is never consistent I have had a hard time adapting so far.  After the holiday is over I want to put in a request at my work for no less than 20 hours a week, Monday & Tuesday off for school work, & to work only from afternoon & after.  Working night, then morning, then afternoon, then double shift, then this, then that, there's just no rhythm or reason!  Spiritually there is always room for improvement.  I am very spiritual & it is a part of me & my life everyday with how I think, behave, treat others, see the universe, & how we are all interconnected.  I feel there is room for improvement because I don't participate in some of the activities like I used to that made me feel more in tune with the universe, I haven't studied any of my spiritual books in a long while.  I bought a short book last term about dreams & I only got a couple pages in & it hasn't been touched since.  With the weather being so cold I don't ever want to go outside even bundled up to participate in contemplation in nature.  Mentally & emotionally I will always have room for development, that will never stop needing attention.  For me this is one of the aspects that becomes out of balance affecting the other aspects on a regular basis.  There are many hereditary traits, environmental learned behaviors, many major traumas throughout my life, & the tendency to be a codependent stress prone personality type as well as type A, luckily I am also the survivor stress resistant personality type so I always preserver no matter what.  An area that could use healing aside from my back needing chiropractic attention & probably a massage wouldn't hurt I could afford it right now, would be my mental & emotional state.  A major goal that I have really been taking action on the last handful of months has been decreasing my stress levels, not being unhappy or depressed, & being happy.  For the most part I have been doing very well except when crazy work hours like Black Friday, over-night floor shift project which is an intense redo of the entire store, & midterms or finals.  I have terrible luck with timing, usually everything will land all at the same time & I drink way too much coffee to keep up, not enough water, not enough food, not enough sleep at all, and mental drainage ha ha!  I would say that the same areas in my life that need healing also have room for growth & development.  I also believe though that every aspect has room for growth & development because there is no end to transcendence  it keeps going to the next stage of evolution.  What would the next level of development look like?  That is a really good question.  I think the next level of development would be having many of the positive lifestyle choices be a part of my everyday life, that it will be second nature, I would just do it without thinking about it.  I think I skipped a few levels though.  Some things are in the pre-contemplation stage, some in the contemplation, others in the preparation, and some in the action stage.  My goal is to be in the maintenance stage.  For example, my gym membership & exercising is in the maintenance stage, I went from the contemplation stage of thinking about a specific gym, I researched some information, I went straight into the preparation stage by deciding that week on a specific day before work I was going to go in & talk to the people.  I even signed up for a week pass but I knew that the times that I was allowed to come in to the gym weren't going to work, I was going to be better off getting a membership.  Upon going to the gym talking to the person & having a tour I told her to sign me up & I went 3 times that week!  Sadly I didn't get to go this last week because of work & school work.  Quitting smoking is in the maintenance stage so is taking my supplements & drinking more water.  Yoga & Pilates is in the contemplation stage, school is in the action stage, and going to the chiropractor is in the preparation stage to name a few examples.  So, I guess it depends on what area I am looking at to know which level of development I am at.  

Unit 5 Subtle Mind

I really enjoyed this guided meditation out of all of the other ones that we have done in this class as well as the ones I have done for other classes. The only problem I had was my patience during the extremely long periods of times of the lady not talking. I tried so hard to stay with it through the whole thing but I broke the concentration 16 minutes in. The first 10 minutes I was all about it, enjoying it, concentrating on my breathing, and clearing my mind, and then the 5 minutes of silence crushed me. I am so exhausted after not sleeping well, trying to get school work done before work, working 10 hours from 8pm to 6am and then going straight to Denny's after work to work on the bazillion school work assignments for both of my classes. Many of the thoughts that ran through my head were work, school, I want to be working out, I am so utterly tired, my back is killing me, I need a chiropractic adjustment and massage so terribly, I want to be sleeping in my warm bed with my cats.... I was able to refocus back onto breathing and also let these thoughts dissolve into nothingness and when asked what was left, there was just me saying in my head to myself, "there is just me." I really liked this guided meditation but the moments of silence are just way too long for me. Compared to the loving kindness guided mediation I feel that they are two totally different types of meditation. One focuses on love and kindness for one's self, those close to us, and everyone and everything else. This meditation focuses on clearing the mind. I had an easier time with the loving kindness guided mediation that I did the subtle mind guided meditation. I am not surprised by this considering I am terrible about shutting my mind off and if I am successful I usually just put myself to sleep.


Spiritual, mental, and physical wellness are all interconnected, meaning if you poke one the others will also react. If one is out of balance the others will become out of balanced as well. If our mental health is low this state starts to manifest physically with problems such as lowered immune system, headaches, high heart rate and blood pressure and stomach problems. Alternatively, if our mental health is high then physical well being is high and this shows physically with a higher immune system, shorter healing time, lower heart rate, and so forth. I think many people forget or not think about spiritual health although I believe that spirituality is ingrained in our nature. Being spiritual to me does not mean being religious or being affiliated to anything religious, although for some religion is a constructive focal point for spirituality. For me spirituality means being in touch with our own soul, what we know to be right and wrong, how we want to be treated and how we believe others should be treated, our compassion, kindness, thoughtfulness, and being in touch with the universe and everything in it. In my life personally I have had many imbalances with these areas of wellness. I believe I have always been spiritual ever since I was a child with vivid dream, great intuition and foresight, a connection with children and animals, a love for smells, plants, and crystals precious and semiprecious, the seasons, the elements, the planets, and so on. However, my mental health and well-being has always been out of balance causing major imbalances in my physical health and well-being and in part affecting my spiritual well-being. I come from a family of mental health illnesses such as depression, bipolar, manic depression, chronic anxiety, worry, and panic. Major bouts of depression, stress, and anxiety attacks have been the biggest troubles that offset my balance because they cause me to go into a hibernation mode where I don't want to eat, I have no appetite, and a revulsion to food, I sleep for 10-15 hours at a time, become bedridden with apathy, I let my hygiene go, my immune system would crash, I would have constant never ending migraines, chronic stomach pain, and the inability to leave the house to accomplish simple tasks like checking the mail or picking up milk. These mental and physical imbalances affected my spirituality by making me question what I believe in or feeling like I was losing faith in humanity and the universe, wondering if I was being punished for something I did in a past life, and wondering why it was necessary for me to go through what I was having to go through. On the other end of the spectrum, taking back charge of my life, I chose to quit smoking and get back to my love of hiking, which opened the door for me to start going to the gym, and I just got my own membership all by myself at a gym of my choice. I have chosen exercising to be my new healthy addiction to release stress hormones and to release beta endorphins for happiness, pain relief, boost my immune system, and a whole plethora of beneficial mental and physical benefits. With stress and my smoking habit I not only had a high heart rate, at 25 I was at a pre-hypertension level! What!? Pre-high blood pressure at 25 even though I am a completely healthy aside from that one bad habit!? Now that I am not in a constant reactive state with stress and anxiety I am able to be more aware and witnessing of my life. I can ask myself why am I stressed, what am I afraid of, is that a reasonable fear, why am I so angry about this particular thing, is that a reasonable anger, are other people in charge of me or am I in charge of myself? I make my own happiness. I take myself out to dinner, I take myself to the gym, I take myself out for a drink, I do not rely on someone taking me out or wanting my time. I also started setting boundaries with people and putting my foot down about what I will and will not tolerate when it comes to how I am treated by others. I am also a lot more proactive when it comes to stressful situations by coming up with constructive and productive strategies and plans such as creating hour by hour day by day weekly schedules of work time, school time, sleep time, and so forth. All in all though, I am only human and I am not perfect but I do strive for evolution of my self everyday, not to become better or worse, just more me, the true potential that we all hold.

Unit 4 Mental Workout

When asked to think of a person the first people I thought of were my best friend Juanita who lives where I live in Washington and also my friend Jessica who lives in California that I have not gotten to see for a few years now. Both I adore wholeheartedly and value their true friendship. I thought it was very cool and surprising that the guided meditation said to turn those feelings of love and kindness of those loved ones towards oneself, I really enjoyed that. I found this guided meditation to be a lot easier than the other ones of this class and ones I have done for other classes. I think maybe that is because I caught up on cleaning, sleep, and relaxation. I don't think I really understand how I am supposed to just observe my thoughts and feelings but not think or feel them, this might be why I have such a hard time with exclusive and inclusive meditation... When told to give oneself to the higher state of mind I visualized me being 2 people much like in the movie What the Bleed Do We Know. The person I thought of that is suffering is my grandmother, she has a heart of gold and is a wonderful person but she suffers from chronic stress and anxiety that causes chronic physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual problems for her. I also visualized blowing away the metaphoric black cloud surrounding my grandmother with every exhale breath. For the circle of strangers I visualized my coworkers, because I work with a very large number of employees many of which I only briefly know. I think it is important to include them because how they think and feel affects me as well because we all work together. After a while the sound of waves started to make me very sleepy even though I slept for 11 hours today! I would recommend this guided meditation to others because it is beneficial, it is very relaxing, and it has you think not only about yourself but those around you. The concept of a mental workout is to workout your brain much like you do the body with exercise and conditioning except instead of physically your are doing it mentally and emotionally. This is important because what we think and feel affects our body physically as well as sets us up for thought process patterns that affect our well-being on all levels. Mental training focuses on a person becoming an observer of their own life, as well as calmness, peace, tranquility, and stillness, which paves the way for health and happiness. Mental training such as meditation, visualization, guided imagery, and breathing technique are proven to be beneficial mental exercises because they decrease negative thoughts, emotions, and physical effects such as high heart rate, blood pressure, and increases memory function. I use self affirmation statements, I use active meditation while I exercise, I use aromatherapy, and when I am stressed I ask myself what am I really afraid of or what is really making me angry.