Reflections

Please take the weekend to reflect on your journal entries this week. Look for patterns in thinking, explore ideas in more detail, and summarize what you learned about yourself this week.

Swami K

Reflections

Please take the weekend to reflect on your journal entries this week. Look for patterns in thinking, explore ideas in more detail, and summarize what you learned about yourself this week.

Swami K

Reflections

Please take the weekend to reflect on your journal entries this week. Look for patterns in thinking, explore ideas in more detail, and summarize what you learned about yourself this week.

Swami K

Reflections

Please take the weekend to reflect on your journal entries this week. Look for patterns in thinking, explore ideas in more detail, and summarize what you learned about yourself this week.

Swami K

Day 3 - Major Life Events

Daily Reflection
If you have come to this post on Day 3, go back and take a look at Day 1 first and work your way up to this day. We are going to be spending the next 5 days reflecting on the major events of our lives. This is going to take some time and is a practice you may want to continue because it will give you many details about who you are, how you handle things, what the patterns are in your life, what your strengths are, what your challenges are, etc. This practice can be very helpful to you, particularly if you have questions about yourself, your life, what you want to do next, what your problem areas are, etc.

In your journal yesterday you wrote down one overall feeling next to each life event you recorded. For example:

Birth of 1st child - fear
Marriage to second husband - great joy
Separation of pelvis - opportunity
Move in 3rd grade - relief

Today and for the rest of the week you will be describing the experience and why you felt the way you did as well as discussing how it currently affects your life. For example:

Separation of pelvis - I saw this as an opportunity because it gave me time with my new daughter. I couldn't do anything but sit in a chair and so I just held my infant all day long. If my pelvis had not separated, I would probably not have taken this time to just hold my daughter. How this has affected my life today - I still have challenges with my pelvis and go through periods of time in which I have trouble walking but it reminds me of this special time I had with my daughter. It still brings feelings of opportunity and joy. My daughter and I share a very close bond. Spiritually, it reminds me to take a break, slow things down, live more in the present moment and look at challenges positively - see them as opportunities rather than hindering.

Make your way through as many of these as possible and continue this process on days 4 and 5.

Swami K

Day 1 - Major Life Events

Daily Reflection
We are going to be spending the next 5 days reflecting on the major events of our lives. This is going to take some time and is a practice you may want to continue because it will give you many details about who you are, how you handle things, what the patterns are in your life, what your strengths are, what your challenges are, etc. This practice can be very helpful to you, particularly if you have questions about yourself, your life, what you want to do next, what your problem areas are, etc.

In your journal today you are simply going to list out all of the major things that have happened in your life - your birth, any major childhood events that were significant, young adulthood, adulthood, marriages, deaths, births, health issues, divorces, etc. Make sure to include the things that you saw as positive as well as negative experiences and everything in between. We will begin working with these on day 2.

Swami K

Reflections

Please take the weekend to reflect on your journal entries this week. Look for patterns in thinking, explore ideas in more detail, and summarize what you learned about yourself this week.

Swami K

Reflections

Please take the weekend to reflect on your journal entries this week. Look for patterns in thinking, explore ideas in more detail, and summarize what you learned about yourself this week.

Swami K

Reflections

Please take the weekend to reflect on your journal entries this week. Look for patterns in thinking, explore ideas in more detail, and summarize what you learned about yourself this week.

Swami K

Reflections

Please take the weekend to reflect on your journal entries this week. Look for patterns in thinking, explore ideas in more detail, and summarize what you learned about yourself this week.

Swami K

Reflections

Please take the weekend to reflect on your journal entries this week. Look for patterns in thinking, explore ideas in more detail, and summarize what you learned about yourself this week.

Swami K

Reflections

Please take the weekend to reflect on your journal entries this week. Look for patterns in thinking, explore ideas in more detail, and summarize what you learned about yourself this week.

Swami K

What Others Think

Announcements 
We will be kicking off our new year with a focus on service work. If you live in the area and wish to join us for service oriented projects throughout the year, please join http://www.meetup.com/Volunteer-South-Florida/ Our first event, a meet and greet, will take place on January 8th. For more events, please check out the events page.

Starting in February there will be a weekly audio meditation and teaching available for a $5 donation. A portion of the donation will go towards a different charity organization each week. Funds raised and donated will be tracked on our giving back page.

Daily Reflection
Today, we will be reflecting on how we make our choices. Oftentimes, we make choices according to what we think other people will think of us. We let these choices guide us and we take on too much or do things we don't really want to do. See if you can think of any choices you have made in your life that you made because you were worried about what others might think. Write them down in your journal. The goal for this year will be to see if you can identify those times you make choices to please others, let these go, and make choices that are more true to you.

Swami K

Blessings on Thanksgiving Day

Visiting for the First Time? Read Me First

Perhaps one of the most important parts of a strong spiritual practice is the practice of tarka or reflective journaling. Reflection upon your inner and outer life is essential if you wish to progress along the path. These reflections on your life can help you see your mind more clearly. Your relationship to yourself, the world, and others is revealed in each journal entry. We can sometimes be blinded by our own beliefs or trapped in a cycle of thinking that is unhealthy for us.

Tarka can help us to illumine the way before us, discard old beliefs, and change our attitudes and ways of thinking.

This blog is designed to help you reflect upon your life and examine your mind so that you may travel the path of enlightenment with greater ease and harmony.

Set aside a little time each day to write in your journal and respond to the prompts in the blog.

The benefits of a strong tarka practice will reveal themselves over time, particularly if you take some time out each month and reread what you have written in your journal. You will find patterns in your life and your examination of these patterns will help you make the changes in your life that you are striving for. The wisdom you gain will help you live the life you seek.


Daily Reflection and Journaling Prompt

May you and your family be blessed as you celebrate and give thanks for all those people who have walked into your life. They are not there by chance. They are all your teachers as you walk along your life's path and awaken to your life's song. Give thanks to all of those that surround you today.

For your journal - take a look around you today at your own Thanksgiving celebration. You have gathered together with your most profound teachers at this time in your life. Think about what each person present has taught you in this lifetime.

Swami K