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MIND/BODY/SPIRIT/SHADOW EXPLORATIONS

Questions I get: 

What is meditation?

What is your book club reading?

What was it like to visit Ghana?

How was that Diana Ross performance
at the Kennedy Center?

What was it like “to do” Cryotherapy?

In this section, I share my insights gained from meditating, practicing yoga, reading, and living.

 

While meditation, practicing yoga, reading, living each has an individual theme, each theme relates to an overarching one: “clarifying issues, ideas, and information (sensemaking).”  I’ll be sharing  my ruminations and insights as I explore my thinking mind, my feeling body, and my “beyond mind and body” experiences.

 

Meditation: A Gateway for Knowledge, Being & Action: I highlight that  meditation has several uses: (I) entertainment,  (ii) relaxation; (iii) enhanced performance (concentration & focus); (iv) access to and experimentation with the “numinous;” (v) insight into who one is and the nature of “reality;” and exploration of other “states” beyond our familiar sleep, dream, and waking ones. I highlight “meditation” as a gateway to knowledge, being and action;  as a “mode of investigation,” I gain insight into my “being” and to use that knowledge to guide my actions.  (I have posted several meditations I’ve recorded to provide examples.)

 

Fitness & the Infinite: “Bikram Yoga” is my primary yoga practice. Like many folks, I got started with yoga as a “fitness practice,” but once I got into the “fitness practice,” I discovered that these practices provided a bridge to “The Infinite.” I was engaging my body to go beyond it. In the words of a Yoga Nidra reflection: I have a body and I honor it. But, I’m not my body. And, I’m more than my body. While my fitness journey now focuses on “yoga,” stops along the way included completing the Marine Corps Marathon and  biking over two days the 187 miles of the C & O Canal to raise funds to fight Alzheimers.

 

Reading for Enjoyment & Illumination: I refer to my participation in my 17-year old neighborhood book club, the North Portal Readers, as “book clubbing.”  Approximately two years after we began, “The Known World” by Edward P. Jones became the benchmark for subsequent readings. We began to investigate how our own “known worlds” shape our reading and how the known world of the writers shape their writing. Key to our analysis is being able to distinguish between “perception” and “perspective.” I will be sharing my reflections on our book club and other readings and publications.

 

Life Experiences: When I visited Ghana in August 2019 to participate in “The Year of Return,” I received many requests for me to share my experiences. This is just one example of what friends, colleagues, family members and acquaintances inquire about “What’s on My Mind?”  I’ll be sharing some of my “life experiences”  — past, present and future ones.

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