Unit 7 question 2

The saying " one cannot lead another where one has not gone him or herself" is just an awesome saying!! We actually discussed this in my church a few weeks ago. Even thought the message was "why does God allow bad things to happen" it almost goes hand in hand. For myself, had I not experienced obesity, poor self esteem, bad relationships, and many other nightmares in my life I would not have the strength, courage, compassion, passion, and empathy towards those who's paths I believe I come across in order to influence their life in some way. I choose to change my life, I choose to change the types of people I allowed myself to become involved with. SOme life experiences where so horrible I wouldn't wish them upon anyone. Yet I know several people who have gone though similar things. SO when I am talking to a client who may be obese, and have terrible self esteem and allow people to take advantage of her insecurities I can honestly say I know exactly how you feel and mean it. WIth these types of experiences I can help guide her though mental and emotional changes as well as physical. When undergoing extreme weight loss I remember experiencing so many mental and emotional struggles pilled on top of the physical. I would allow myself to be used and abused by people, I would hide from my parents and family to try and hide what was happening in my life. Finally a life and death situation came across my path and I am blessed to have the family I do and my parents where there without question. Having the support and encouragement in all areas made the world of difference in my success. I pray I can provide the same support to my clients who may not have a lot of encouragement and support. Having gone through similar challenges gives me the grace, wisdom, and apathy needed while training clients. THere are times when they need a more stern and hard push and other times I know they are in a delicate state of mind and need love and compassion. I use this daily and pray as I continue to grow and experience life that God teaches me life lesson and directs me on the path He has set out for me to follow. I choose to not be a victim in the bad circumstance in life, I choose to be the student and learn and grow both in wisdom and strength. With all the situations that come from life we can learn and help others who go through similar situations realize there is hope and light. I use my spirituality, life experience, and knowledge to bring hope and encouragement as much as possible. I am by far perfect, but I strive to be better every day. Jeremiah 29:11 " For I know the plans I have for you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Once I stopped trying to turn away from God's plans and try to live according to His plans I can help lead others through paths I have already traveled.

Unit 7 Question 1: Meditative practice

Well for anyone who has read my post knows where i stand in my faith and beliefs. SO no big surprise, I REFUSE to take part of this meditation. One big commandment for any Christian; Exodus 20:3 " You shall have no other gods before me." So no offense false god Aesclepius, I will NOT be meditating on your healing powers or energy. However those who read my post know I use Jesus and my one true God instead. At first I tried to envision my actual father seeing I look up to him and try to incorporate all his teachings. My father first and foremost is a wise and Godly man who raised my sisters and I in a GOdly home. He was the spiritual leader of my home. Not only is he one of the most Godly men I know, he also is a man if integrity, honesty, love, wisdom, a loving husband and father, a man who cherishes life, and who helps anyone in need. He shows compassion and mercy, grace and forgiveness. He is strong and influential, he corrects the wrongs and guides us in loving manor. Even though I will not perform the meditation because I will not put another god before my one true God. I can reflect on God healing powers and his blessing of allowing me to have a father that raised me to be the strong and outspoken woman I am today. I do not need to envision my father with lights coming from his head, throat, stomach and butt to appreciate him and his teachings. My father followed God's word and instructions for raising children. Ephesians 6:4 " Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." I may have exasperated him more then anything, and though we all are human my father followed God's direction. He and my mother are my heros and mentors.  I do not need to envision God surrounded in light because to me GOd is the light in the darkness. Instead I chose to meditate and be still in my prayers with God. Psalm 46:10 tells us " Be still and know that I am GOd." I do think it is important to take time to reflect in God's word. God is the true healer in my opinion. Exodus 23:25 " Worship the Lord your God, and His blessings will be upon your food and water. He will take away sickness from among you...". So this is what I focused on and prayed upon instead of meditating to a false god. Psalms 147:3 " He heals the broken hearted and binds their wounds." Without the guidance and wisdom instaled by both my parents, and if I was not truly my fathers daughter I would not have been able to fight for what I believe. I was raised in God's word and I fought against His word for a long time. Now I know where I stand, and with my God, my husband, and my family, I do not stand alone, and I will honor my father and mother and GOd. God is my hero, my salvation, my savior and my healer. Through him only can we truly be healed.

Unit 6 Whammi! :)

Okay so here is the deal. I am not doing the Loving kindness meditation according to our text. First I will explain why. Ever since I began this course I have become, anxious, agitated, stressed to the point of becoming ill, depressed and over all unhappy. I was nothing like this before this course began. The last time I did the loving kindness audio I was irritated for over a week with it. So I am going to tweak every meditation I am forced to do for this course from now on. I realized today what a part of my problem was, I feel like I am cheating on my beliefs and God. And honestly that is not okay for me. The premise of the loving kindness is to reflect love towards the world. Well I can do that through my faith and belief. So instead of being quiet and chanting some ridiculous saying that doesn't work for me I am going to speak my mind.

Loving kindness reflection for myself, today I was reflecting on God's word to us. He states in Jeremiah 31:3 (NKJ). "..I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with a loving kindness." God also tell us to "love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you."- Matthew 5:44 (NKJ). SO instead of me trying to breathe in all the worlds problems I reflected on God's word and let go of any anger, hurt, sadness and all the negative feelings and handed them to God. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and Love your neighbor as yourself." - Luke 10:27 (NKJ). See I don't feel as though I need to practice modern day meditation in order to become connected with God. I do not need to take in all the worlds burden onto myself. That is not my job, my job is to love and show kindness, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and share my beliefs and stand firm in them.

As for my integral assessment. After reflecting today on everything I definitely had to assess many areas about myself and some of them are not easy for me to have to come to realize. Unfortunately some are personal and no offense are not going to be shared. But some of them are my attitude toward thing. any time I am to sensitive and assume I am being attacked. I believe this steams from insecurities that are left over from my obesity and how I was treated. I obviously have some wounds I have not allowed to heal and only did a temporary fix on. I need to really focus on this area on my life. It make a difference in how i see myself as well as how I portray myself to others. Others areas I need to continue to grow in is my relationship with my husband and where we are going with our future as fare as work, home and children. My career is in a path of change which frightens me a little and I need to assess why and what I want to do with my life. Taking time to truly assess so many areas in my life is going to be a constant challenge because of the ever changing situations. The one are I am not affairs of and excited to grow is in my faith. I am excited to see what God has in store for myself and my family.

Subtle mind practice

Well I can say that I had a much more positive experience with this technique then with the love and kindness audio. I found this one to be very refreshing and relaxing. I will definitely be doing this in the evenings before I am settling into bed. This is the time where I find I can not get my mind to shut down. During the audio I was not surprised how many time my mind began to wander off onto other things. Yet focusing on my breathing truly helped wrangle those thoughts back into order and to release them and just be aware they were there yet not engage in thinking about them . This happened several times, but I was happy to notice I was able to separate from being aware of the thoughts instead off engaging them. I also intend on using this technique while I study me daily devotions and spend time in prayer. I have done the breathing and focus routine while training at my gym and it is a natural habit for me to be able to shut everything and everyone around me out. So I will be excited and willing to try this in different scenarios.

Love and kindness exercise continued

Okay well I tried it again and still just not a good thing for me. I did however realize what was bothering me so much. I again have been talking to my one sister who is one of the most Godly women aside from my mother I am honored to know. She helped me pin point what it was upsetting me about this audi specifically. It isn't the breathing out love and kindness or eve the meditative state we are asked to be in. It was the feeling of taking on all the worlds stress, burdons, and sin. Asking us to breathe in the hurt, pain, anger, suffering, and so many negative emotions that bothered me. I believe in a God who gave the ultimate sacrifice, His only SOn Christ, to die for all of our sins and suffering, to give us hope, peace and love. i do not want to take in this burden into myself. I should not have to GOd has already provided a way and path for me. All I need to do is meditate on breathing out that love and spreading the word of GOd by my actions and speech. So I realized it was not the audio necessarily that was angering me, it was that I do not want to take in any of those negative things because God's word tell us to give it all to Him and that Christ sacrificed his life to cleanse us of all of those feeling and actions. I would rather meditate on the promise of that and handing over those stressors then try to breathe them in and out. I just need to see it differently and open myself up to what I could learn about this type of exercise. Thanks for reading my rant. 1 Peter 5:7 says "Cast all your anxiety on Him..." . So this is what I took from this exercise in the end. I meditated and cast all of my fears, troubles, anxieties, anger, and any negative emotions and feelings and put them in God's hands so I can breathe peace and love and God's will.

Unit 4 mental workouts

You know I have spent the last few days talking with my sister about this course and the difficulties I am having with it. I am very stuck in my ways and in my beliefs. But I was not always this way. I studied many different religions from Buddhism, taoism, harrikrishna, wiccan practices, and so on. I was raised in a Godly home too, which was surprising to many when I began my own journey on what I believed. SO after many years on what I now know as the wrong path I found what I was missing. My personal relationship with Christ. How does this pertain to mental exercise? Well for the most part from what I understand mental exercise is how we train and program our thoughts and mind. I had to teach myself how to pray and study GOD's word. I didn't just miraculously change over night. I have been fighting this meditation and grounding stuff in this course when I should be looking at it in a more loving and open way. I already meditate on God's word, I already breathe out love when I speak in a fashion honoring to Him, I already am grounded to this earth because of my undying devotion to God. I just had not mag=de the connection to how it is relative to this course till now. I have to train my mind to recognize the similarities,and how to slow down and meditate in His word. I still do not like the audio, but I can still simulate what is being asked of us through the audio into what I know God would want me to be focusing and meditating on. Just because it do not feel like I am the holistic type of person does not mean I can not be open to try new ways to allow God to speak to me. I listen to GOD not the earth. This is just my eye opener for the day and how mental exercise can be incorporated in any area of life and practice and made to fit any belief system. Psalm 49:3 "....And the meditation of my heart shall give understanding." SO my mental exercise is to learn and train my mind how to meditate in GOd's word, open up my mind to learn different techniques that can hopefully help my stressors, and thought process. THank for reading! :)

Love and kindness

Okay classmates I apologize in advanced for this blog because it is in no way positive. THis assignment not only frustrated me but actually made me angry. I can say it in no way helped me develop a sense of love or kindness. I started out visualizing my husband whom I adore. But then I remember the struggles we endure and remember that it was my prayers and devotions and faith that healed us. I honestly am having a hard time with this class in general. Then expanding to those who are hurting and enemies and so on. Meditating like this does not make me feel centered or focused on breathing out sickness, animosity or anything. My prayer and devotion does. I will never tell someone not to try new things so for clients I will suggest they try meditation or different forms of meditation whether it is through this type of exercise or prayer or walking along the beach. However these adios are not helping me relax at all they only are adding more stress. Again I apologize to those who read this, but this is how I feel towards the exercise. To each there own, but this is not for me.