Post #2

           Since arriving on the Loyola Maryland campus, I have been overwhelmed with all my daily activities. From balancing all the studying with the commitment of being a division one athlete and having a social life. This has led to me not living up to one of the Jesuit educational values, unity of mind, and heart. While my mind has been in everything that I have done sense being at Loyola, my heart, on the other hand, I have been vary disconnected. To attempt to fix this, I started to do a meditation class. This class was brought to me by my understanding literature professor. The meditation class is technically a requirement, however, I would have been interested in trying it out even if it wasn’t a requirement.

           So how did it go? Well, …it didn’t go bad. I was far outside my comfertone the moment I was told to leave my phone outside the meditation room. I never really saw myself as someone who is super attached to their phones, but those first 10 minutes without it felt vary uncomfortable. However, after that 10 minutes, I quickly forgot about it. During the meditation, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing. I knew I was supposed to sit there in silence and motionless. Yet all I could think about was, what am I suppose to be thinking about. Am I supposed to be thinking about my day? Should I be reflecting on something? Soon, however, I was thinking of nothing, and I was just sitting there motionless. It felt weird, but the time did go by fast. Again, at the end, I didn’t know how I was supposed to fell, but I can honestly say I felt more relaxed and calmer.

           However, the big question was, did this experience reunite my mind and heart? In some ways, I guess it did. After the meditation, I had to study for a bio exam, and I found while I was studying, I was enjoying it. I was finding every word I read off the textbook exciting, and it engaged me. Also, for the first time, I was able to study without feeling the stress of the exam itself. I think meditation had something to do with this because the meditation got my body to focus on one thing and nothing else. In the meditation room, it was being motionless; in the library, it was the words in the textbook.

      While reading a poem called A Red Palm by Gary Soto, I couldn’t help but think how meditation could have affected the main character. The poem was about a man picking cotton on a cotton plant. While he was picking cotton, he was focusing on how each cotton would feed him and his family. Everything he was doing, he would be thought about the money. This made be wonder maybe if he meditated like I did, he would be able to focus on the task he was doing without thinking about money.

      All in all, I look forward to what will happen the next time I go to the meditation class. It’s the beginning of a new journey witch hopefully will lead to new self-discovery.