Integral Assessment and Universal Loving Kindness

In conducting the universal loving kindness exercise I felt a shift in energy that is difficult to explain. As I repeated the phrases I started visualizing people that I know who are suffering such as the victims and families of the Boston bombings, victims of the fertilizer plant explosion in West, TX, families and members of our Armed Forces who have suffered a loss or severe injury, friends who have experienced tragedies and are experiencing heartache. Then, I realized that pain and suffering as well as lack of health, happiness, and wholeness is even more widespread than the people I know and learn about through the media so I began visualizing the whole world and imagining that my words were able to reach every area of the world and as I repeated the phrases I imagined my words covering each area like paint covering a wall until the whole world was covered, in red, which could represent many things, but to me represents love. I have to admit that I feel a little strange sharing all of that, but I felt really moved by this exercise and amazed at the path that my mind took while repeating those phrases.

I found the assessment process to be interesting and a little challenging, but I like assessments in general as I think it forces us to think critically and look at the things that we may not like about ourselves or our lives. I identified the things that cause distress in my life and realized that the greatest conflict in my life exists in the interpersonal area. I think it is easy to blame others for the way that we feel, but in reality I think we can change our perception of others by changing our way of thinking and behavior. I think to improve in this area I need to focus on the loving-kindness exercise to actively give love. I think it will also be important to me to focus on being grateful. I listened to a short inspirational message on a Christian radio station the other day that talked about a woman who was dissatisfied in her marriage and constantly thought about all the things that her husband did that she didn’t like. She prayed for her husband to change so she could be happy and one day she realized that perhaps it wasn’t her husband who needed to change, but that she needed to change. She said that she made a list of all the qualities and characteristics that she liked about her husband and realized that there were so many things that she was grateful for in relation to her husband’s character. From that point on she said that she focused on these positives and slowly her relationship began to change for the better. I think this can be applied in many different situations and relationships and reflects how our negative and positive emotions can dominate our lives.