Interdisciplinary Psychology:

I had resistance to this activity, until I realized I was already doing this activity!  Duh.  I was starting to get really anxious about my big work load for school last week, so rather than worry about everything I had to do (ruminate), I bought a weekly calendar and wrote out all my assignments, and the homework I needed to do each week.  Once I did this, I realized my work load isn't as bad and scary as I was imaginging it to be.

For lifting my mood, I visited with a friend and went for a hike in the woods.  It would have been easy for me to not make time for these activities, but I realized they are important and both made me feel really good and more focused on my tasks at hand.  I even had some spiritual insights during my hike, which was a nice bonus.  I thought about how important air is, and how there is only one body of air around the planet.  We are all breathing the same air.  I thought about how I was breathing the same air I breathed when I was at 17,000 feet in Tibet last summer.  This made me feel really good, because it reminded me that we are all interconnected.

To calm myself down, I meditated and had a pretty intense meditation experience.  Usually I don't have intense experiences while meditating, so this was a pleasant surprise.  It gave me a deep reflection into the inherent interdependence of all things.  This is about the core Buddhist belief in emptiness, or selflessness.  Very hard to explain, but I was pretty pleased to get this insight.  It made me feel really calm and grounded, and like I was returning to my center.  It also made me realize that the idea of the interconnectedness of all sentient beings pertains not only to sentient beings that are currently alive, but all sentient beings that have ever been alive.  Again, it's kind of complex.  This relates to the treatise by the Buddhist scholar Nagarjuna in the 2nd century, who wrote on the origination of inherent interdependence.  I attended a teaching by His Holiness the Dalai Lama on this topic last year, and he encouraged us to meditate on Nagarjuna to get a deeper understanding of this concept.  When I've tried to meditate on Nagarjuna it hasn't happened, but it happened spontaneously this time, when I least expected it.  I love it when that happens!