My Personal Growth

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."   -Nelson Mandela


This class has helped me to better understand why meditation is so important to my physical, mental, and spiritual health.  It has helped me to fine tune my own prayer and meditation practices and given me ways to use this knowledge to help others.  The two practices that were the most beneficial to me were the visualization exercise and the integral assessment exercise. 

The personal assessment exercise helped me to look closely at the areas in my life that needed to be worked on, to form a plan to rectify the issues, and then implement the changes into my life.  This is important to mental fitness because if I do not take the time to look at and identify areas where improvement is needed then I won't experience  growth towards integral health in those areas.  I plan to use this meditation and assessment practice about once a month to look at any progress that has been made and to see if there are new areas that need to be worked on. 

Doing the visualization practice always gives me a wonderful sense of peace and helps me to feel centered and balanced.  For me it kind of ties in some of the other meditation practices we have done.  As I sit quietly with my eyes closed and visualize times of great happiness, people in my life (living or dead) that have loved and guided me, times when I have experienced a sense of wholeness, radiant health, and well being, I feel a great sense of peace, thankfulness, and gratitude to God and his grace towards me.  This exercise is important for me all the time as it helps me to foster loving-kindness towards others and focuses my mind on what is really important in life and the God who blesses me beyond all measure.  For me visualization practices like this are especially important during times of stress, times of tragedy,  and times when things just seem very overwhelming.  In difficult times, sitting quietly and using visualization is especially important to help me refocus my mind and calm my spirit.  In doing this I am helping my physical body as well by not allowing sadness, anxiety, or any other negative emotion to set me up for disease.

Life is a bit like a roller coaster with its ups and downs.  Being able to take mental snapshots of the joy during the ups as well as look at how we have made it through past downs, helps us to get through what lies ahead of us in the future.  It also helps us to see how much we have grown psychospiritually which is an encouragement to continue on.