How I Meditate – Examen
Jul/0927
A number of people have emailed me in the last few days asking about what methods of meditation I use (after I mentioned that I meditate in my previous post on the Rest/Work matrix) – so I thought I’d take the opportunity to describe one method that I’ve found to be very helpful.
Image by Baloulumix
The meditation is actually an ancient one – it’s called Examen of Consciousness (sometimes just called Examen) and it was developed by St. Ignatious Loyola (that’s a picture of him below – I think he’s blogging).
Examen a Christian meditation but I’m sure people of other faith backgrounds could use much of it with some modification and that even those who don’t practice any religion could benefit from some of the exercise too. I’ll write it up primarily as I practice it (I’m sure there are many variations) and from the Christian perspective but do feel free to adapt and fit it to your own situation.
The point of Examen is to find the movement of God in our daily lives as we review the day that we’ve just had (or are having). As a result I find that it’s best to do at the end of the day (I quite often use it in bed and fall asleep part way through).
The meditation has 5 stages or steps and can take as long as you have. I usually take 10-15 minutes to move through it but occasionally do a longer one looking back further than the day I’ve just had (ie it can be done looking back over a week, month, year or more).
Work Rest Matrix
Jun/0918
A few weeks ago as I lay on my acupuncturist table attempting to ignore the sensation of the needles by pondering my life – I visualized the following chart.
Later that day I shared it on Twitter – the reaction was quite positive, so I thought I’d share it here with a few thoughts on how it came to be.
By no means do I consider myself to be a self help guru or expert in any of this – the chart comes more as I thought about when I find myself to be ‘at my best’ – physically, emotionally, relationally and spiritually.
As I lay on the table attempting not to squirm I came to the very non earth shattering realization* that I’m at my best when I have a good mix of activity and rest.
*Tangent: I call these realizations ‘goldfish moments’ based upon the myth that goldfish have a three second memory and that I seem to have these ‘ahaaaa!’ moments in a cyclical fashion every few months and then realize that I’ve ‘discovered’ them before time and time again.
Rest and Activity
What was different about this realization that I’d not pondered before is that there are different types of ‘rest’ and ‘activity’. Previously I’d been thinking about it purely on a physical level however the reality is that in my line of work I have extended periods of physical rest and mental activity (I sit at a desk for many hours each day writing, interacting with others, being creative, thinking strategically etc).
On the flip side of this is that when I exercise (something I need to do more of) I quite often let my mind go blank and find it to be a mentally restful experience.
Of course you can also be active both mentally and physically (strategic thinking when playing sport could be an example) and at rest both physically and mentally (something I experience often in times of meditation).
Balance
As I lay on the acupuncture table that day I realized that I’m at my best when I get a balance of all kinds of rest and activity. Conversely it is when I get out of balance (usually for me it’s about a lack of physical exercise or a lack of mental rest) that I find myself getting into some kind of trouble (usually for me it’s when I get sick).
The conclusion that I came to was that I need to be more intentional in thinking about these things. As I’ve mentioned above – I tend to live in top right hand corner of this matrix (Active Mind and Body at Rest). I do stray into the lower right area (Body and Mind) from time to time (mainly for sleep and occassionally for meditation) but I think I’d be a healthier with more balance.
I suspect we all have our natural areas of the matrix where we spend most of our time. I have a number of friends who I shared this with who reflected back that their main struggle is finding times to have rest their mind (even when they lay in bed they’re always thinking/worrying/planning etc).
I’m certain that this matrix is not perfect (for example I’m not sure we all have to live right in the center – it also ignores many other factors of healthy living such as diet) – consider this one of those half thought through ideas* that I have and feel free to add your own thoughts/reflections and experiences.
Note: I suspect this blog will have a lot of these half thought through thoughts. I love to think out loud and love that many of my thoughts and ideas are actually completed by those around me – that’s why I love blogging/social media so much, together we are a lot smarter.
A few questions to ponder.
- Which quadrant do you live in? Which do you need to do/explore more?
- What’s missing from the matrix? What other examples of activities would fit into the different areas?
Who Else Wants to Change a Child’s Life?
Jun/0931
Will You join me in changing the lives of a group of children?
Today I received an email from a good friend that both convicted and inspired me.
Image by Jer Kunz
My friend (Andrea) is a social worker who works in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne and she told a story of a group of refugee children in a local school who between them had a total of 4 books.
Andrea was emailing a small group of her friends to see if we’d consider donating a book or two for these kids.
You can read part of her email below – but as I read it I felt really strongly that I’d like to help – both by personally donating some books but also by utilizing my own network to help meet this need.
If you’d like to help give these kids some books I’d love to collect your donations and pass it on to Andrea who sent me the email below.
If you’d like to make a donation (big or small) do so via the donate button below (or via this link) in the next 7 days. I’ve put a time limit on it to help me manage collecting it all up and sending it off all in one go.
The Need – an Email from Andrea
Here’s the email (I’ve edited it slightly (mainly names) for reasons of privacy):
“This is a story from a family who access a XXXX Primary School. The school services the local high rise estate, and has 85 students, 82 of whom are refugees from the Horn of Africa.
The grade 1/2s were asked to bring in their favourite book from home, three children brought in books.
- one brought a book that had been donated by Readings (a local bookstore), as he had been involved in a program they support that is run by the Brotherhood;
- another brought in a nursery rhymes book with scribble on every page;
- and another brought in an animal encyclopaedia that had only two pages left in it.
- Then the grade 2/3 teacher said that one of her students brought in a book he had received free in his cereal and asked if it could be kept at school because it would get wrecked at home (he has 5 siblings and lives in a housing commission flat).
Lets Help These Kids
I think we can help these kids to have a better choice for their ‘favourite’ book. All kids need books – I can’t believe how many I have at home!”
As I read Andrea’s email my thoughts immediately went to the basket of books that lives in the corner of our livingroom. It’s a basket where 40-50 of my children’s books live. It’s a basket that brings a lot of joy to the lives of my boys and which I can see is helping them to learn about language, literacy, numeracy and life.
My boys have more books than they can read - I felt convicted that these kids that live just a few kilometers from me say their favorite book is something they got from a cereal packet.
Andrea then went on in her email to ask us to consider donating a book so that she could collect them all up and get them into the hands of these kids.
I’d like to go one better than just donating books of my own – I wanted to share this story here via my blog and social media to put the call out to my network.
Andrea wants to send each child in that grade home with 3 new books. I think we can do better and go a long way to doing it for the whole school.
If you’d like to help impact this small school community in this way you can make a donation via this paypal button. I’ll ensure every cent is passed on to Andrea and that those kids get their books.
Pass it On
If you’re not in a position to donate – please consider passing on word of this to your network via your blog, Twitter, other social networking, email or word of mouth. Thanks for those who are already spreading this.
Update
I will periodically be updating this post with the total donated. It won’t be up to the minute but I’ll attempt to keep a fairly up to date total.
So far the total donated is $1320.40 USD – thanks everyone who has donated so far!
Welcome to a More Personal Home for Darren Rowse
Jun/0949
photo by Neil Creek
Welcome to DarrenRowse.com
I’ve had this domain for quite a few years now but have never done much more than forward it to one of my other blogs.
However over the past few months I’ve had a growing desire to create a space online to write about topics that have less to do with the niches that my blogs talk about and to write more about ‘life’.
I’m not exactly sure what I’ll blog about or how often I’ll post – but whatever it ends up being it’ll be more of a glimpse into what I’m thinking and feeling passionate.
Don’t expect too much in the way of writing about blogging, photography or anything much else to do with social media – I’ve got blogs for each of those topics (see sidebar) – rather expect to see me think out loud about life.
Posts will by no means be daily – they may not even be weekly – rather they’ll come as I’m inspired to add them.
Thanks for stopping by – if you’d like to follow on feel free to subscribe to my feed here.