Good Evening Everyone,
Just when I think the exercises for the blog are going to get easier they just get harder for me. In weeks before I thought it was hard to listen to someone tell me what to do but then I tried to read the exercise and then do it and it was even harder for me. For the first exercise I got into a comfortable place and began to repeat the sayings. I repeated "May all the individuals gain freedom from suffering". I repeated this numerous times and did begin to feel happier myself as if saying it for everyone included me. When I was finished with this say I had to stop and look back at the text for the next saying which pulled me out of the place of peace that I was in. This happened each time I moved on to the next saying. Because of this I found it hard to get back to a place of calmness each time and began to loose interest. This week I have found that it is easier for me to get to a place of calmness where I'm not constantly thinking of something else. However with this exercise I was able to get to a quiet place but when I began the exercise which was to ask myself " What aspect of my life is the source of difficulty and suffering. Just by asking myself that question my mind flooded with everything going on this week, this month, this year, everything I started thinking about. By this point I had to stop and go back to the text and read it again I was impossible for me to get past this point. Just when I thought it was getting easier it got harder for me. This week I discovered that I still have more work that I need to do in order to completely turn off my mind during the exercises. I also need to focus on letting go of the negative aspects of my past and everyday life in order to live a happier and healthier one. I feel as though in order to release these aspects I need to acknowledge each of them and fully release them from my life.
-Ashley