"Ten Scrolls” / 1000 words (60 points)
Please submit all work to hiddenpowers[at]mugglestudies.org with the subject “Exam – Your HOL Name”
Your task for this Examination is to write a Reflective Essay on this past semester. Each of the four Powers (Faith, Hope, Courage, and Love for Part I, or Peace, Wisdom, Understanding, and Familiarity for Part II) must be incorporated in one fashion or another with a minimum of 125 words apiece. The other 500 words may be spread out as you please across each of the energies and/or within an introduction and inclusion, etc. Returning members from Part II are also welcome to incorporate thoughts and correlations from the modules over Part I of this class should you so wish.
Perhaps there will be a general theme or through-line to your composition with some primary topic or theory you’d like to delve into. Maybe each area will be entirely different, or you’ll compare and contrast one thing against another. You could write about what has impacted you the most overall in one or many sections, or discuss what has come up for you over the course of our months together within all the different Modules and across any interactions you’ve shared with me and your classmates.
Has any part of your life been drawn into a greater sense of harmony and balance, or have you thought of any new ways of approaching how that might happen? Feel encouraged to include how other experiences here at HOL (past or present) or in other parts of your offline world might be incorporated, or if your perspective(s) on anything has changed over time.
Trust that whatever is internally craving to be worked into the mix will let you know. In many ways, if you’re tuned inward and listening with an open mind and heart, the Essay will mostly write itself! So long as you conduct yourself under HOL guideline then there are no accidents, coincidences, or mistakes here. If you wish to share your Essay, go ahead and below. In any case, I hope you’ll have some fun with it!
Exam - "MIRROR ESSAYS" - Fall 2021
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Prof. Sindor Aloyarc
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Exam - "MIRROR ESSAYS" - Fall 2021
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"—Starry, starry night. Paint your palette blue & grey."
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Prof. Will Lestrange
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Re: Exam - "MIRROR ESSAYS" - Fall 2021
When preparing for the final exam, I remembered how this term's assignments focused on a mantra and media selections for each power. I remembered that none of the mantras I chose really worked for me at all, so I turned to last term's assignments for inspiration, in hope of finding better ways to work on powers. Last term, when I took Part I of the course, each assignment had us do 5 minutes of meditation followed by 5 minutes of reflection to sum up our thoughts - and I repeated this model for the final exam last term, with one power per day. So I decided this would be a reasonable plan for this term too!
So, at the start of the new year - as January began - I began my reflections on the first power for the term: peace. I remembered that the term-time lesson on 'peace' focused on how an unusually sweet drink (sweeter than the instructor's normal preference) provided peace to the instructor after learning of loss. Looking for an equivalent this time around, I realized I had just received a gift of 24 chocolate praline truffles: I opened the box, savoured one and recalled the taste in my mouth as I went into the Muggle heating box I had used for reflections last term.
As I sat in the box, memories of the chocolate lingered on my tongue. While entering into the box, I felt a bit sore and awkward, though that feeling did ease up. I did my usual practice of dipping my head into the box only to find that it, along with the back of my knees, were now really sweaty! Pulling my head out of the box, the sweaty feeling left my head and focused on my neck and shoulders area. Then I tried a breathing technique I had learned over the past month: "in for four, hold for seven, out for eight" repeated a total of four times. Unfortunately, that did not really help at all. Throughout the time I sat in the box, I ended up feeling comfortably warm (except for the sweatiness) but not really at peace in any meaningful way.
Reflecting further, I turned to my lesson notes: when I studied peace in this class back in September, my mantra was "I can survive"... repeating it, it still did not seem to hold any power for me. What was interesting, though, was the musical selection I chose - "Morning Mood" from Peer Gynt, which has an incredibly peaceful sound even though its literary selection was the exact opposite. As a further irony, I compared the weather and my mood from this January evening to the late May evening when I did my first reflection for last term's final. The weather was nearly identical: dark, damp, sixty degrees or so (unusually warm for now, but unusually cool for a late spring day)... and, somehow - my reflections on faith then (a healthy sense of and response to fear and excitement) matched things now! And, once I turned the "Morning Mood" selection back on, the Power of Peace came back into focus for me!
The next day, with the weather nearly identical to the day before (just as with my second meditation for last term's final), I decided to focus on wisdom, which was the second power for the term. Here, the term-time lesson seemed to focus on knowing yourself, prioritising your health, and especially listening to your own body. There were discussions about partying versus staying at home - and I remembered how much fun I had at parties a few years back! Right now, of course, wisdom suggests that I shouldn't try to do a lot of active partying now though...
In any event, when going into the Muggle heating box for five minutes, the mindset of "listen to your body" was prominent. I immediately felt myself being called down to the chair in the box as I sat down, engulfed by a sense of warmth and relaxation except for a bit of a stomachache. On instinct, I placed my head back inside the box for about ten seconds before lifting it back above the box. Instead of feeling uncomfortably sweaty, though, my stomach pains eased a bit. For more relaxation I tried another breathing technique: breathe in for a 4 count and out for a 6 count, and this seemed to do better. I stayed calm and still for the remainder of the five minutes, and one thought remained: is there a way for me to attend some parties over a venue like Zoom, where I can try to capture the feel of partying without leaving my room? This carried me through until the timer said 5 minutes, I stepped out of the box, and the back of my knees finally felt sweaty again.
Once again, it was time to turn back to my class notes: when I had studied the Power of Wisdom, my mantra was "On second thought" - which seemed to be almost the opposite of my current reflections: second-guessing one's instincts seems to be somewhat different from listening to your instincts, but maybe both are needed to truly harness that power? The thoughts I had made about partying throughout my reflections, though, seemed to tie into the Power of Hope as well from last term: here, I was hoping that I would be able to enjoy parties (in various forms) that were as fun and satisfying as some of my favourites from my past! In late May/early June there were definitely things I had hoped for the future... but I had the wisdom to know that none of them were guarantees. Sure, the second half of 2021 was disappointing in many ways - but likewise, the Power of Wisdom tells me that disappointment is NOT a guarantee in the future! Pairing this back up with Hope again says that there may be quite a bit to look forward to in 2022 - maybe even parties, for what it's worth!
Between the second day and the third was one of the sharpest seasonal transitions I had ever experienced: the temperature dropped to well below freezing and a blizzard's worth of snow had fallen in the morning. My plan to focus on understanding, though, the third power of the term, was unchanged. The lesson from the term focused on the difference between seeing most of the picture and seeing everything; even missing a relatively small piece of the puzzle can hide true understanding from view. And sometimes, according to the lesson, it seems appropriate to either not understand everything... or suppress your understanding to be better immersed in a situation!
In any event, because it was much colder this day, I found myself pulled deep into the box and its comforting warmth. Unlike the first two meditations, today my head wanted to stay in the box for nearly the full five minutes... even if this meant contorting my body to achieve this warmth! On the other hand, my body felt comfortable and warm (with a minor ache in the stomach area) except for my hands and feet: my feet were numb and once I touched my hands to my chin I understood they were cold. In a state of relaxation with my eyes closed, I was thinking about warming up my hands: touching them to the walls of the heating box. My hands never got warm, but they became normal enough that they no longer cooled other parts of my body by touching them. And what about my feet? They now vacillated between being numb and feeling truly cold! (Lifting them up helped, but only a little). And I remembered that I don't really understand why my feet constantly feel so cold: this is something I had been trying to understand for a long time!
As usual, it was time to turn to my class notes: my mantra had taken the form "now I get it"... and I was writing about paths to understanding via a bottle opener. One thing I realized between then and now, though, which fits in well with the lesson, is that it is very easy for two people to see the same events as being very different. In the context of the lesson, this might be reflected by the fact that both people have an incomplete understanding. And when we try to use our understanding to see the future ("how much will it snow tomorrow?", for example)... we might not understand the full picture until the future arrives and gives us the context to better understand things! Flipping back to my discussions on the third power of last term, courage, I wasn't expecting to find any parallels between then and now... but then I saw the question I actually asked about courage:
"if no one else realizes the risk of taking a particular path, but you alone see the risk and therefore choose a different way, are you showing courage or not?"
This does reflect the Power of Understanding after all! Here, what was being understood (or not) was the risk of taking a different path, and your decision to go your own way shows a mixture of the Powers of Courage and Understanding: taking the courage to truly understand risks and acting accordingly!
On my fourth day since starting these reflections, the snow had long since stopped falling but the weather was nearly identical to the previous evening: still very cold - below freezing, and it still looked very much like winter outside. I had only one power left, the Power of Understanding, and I turned to the term-time lesson for inspiration. There, the instructor explained a lot about relationships: like family and friendship, and the spectrum between "showing your best side" for strangers and "showing your true selves" to the people you are closest to. As I thought about that, and how my time at HOL fit into this scene, I went back to the Muggle heating box for one last time.
Since it was just as cold this day as it had been the day before, I was not surprised to immediately feel a pull into the box for warmth and comfort. This time, my head stayed inside the box for nearly the entire time, with my eyes mainly closed. Meanwhile my head was primarily leaning to the left, on my left hand, and there wasn't a lot of contortion at all. I noticed that warmth was completely enveloping my body except for my feet and upper legs, which - as usual - vacillated between numbness and cold. Throughout this time, I was sitting and relaxing. There wasn't much room for deep thought: I was primarily just comforted and enveloped by the familiarity of the heating box (even though I had it for less than a year). The 5 minutes ended surprisingly quickly as I moved out of the box - and this time there was no sweat at all!
While noticing that my main thoughts about familiarity were about how familiar the heating box and the meditation sessions had become, it was time to turn to my notes one last time. Last month, my mantra for the Power of Familiarity was "This reminds me of..." and I was thinking about the 1812 Overture and how it brought themes of familiarity to mind. Turning back to my thoughts last term on the 'complementary' Power of Love: my reflections then referred to the story of how I got the heating box in the first place as a gift. The gift itself reflects the Power of Familiarity as it required knowledge of one of my most frustrating issues (constantly feeling cold)! Not to mention that my understanding of the Power of Love (being focused on relationships with others) feels like a good fit for the way the lesson explained the Power of Familiarity. But my closing reflection for the Power of Familiarity has to be how familiar the rhythms of HOL have been throughout the eight-plus years I have been involved with this school!
Having finished my series of meditations for each of the four powers, I realized that even though I didn't feel like I learned much of anything new from the meditations, I definitely did get more in touch with all four powers for this term, as well as the way they interfaced with the powers from last term. And being better in tune with myself fits in pretty well with the 'mindful self-discovery' goals of the course!
So, at the start of the new year - as January began - I began my reflections on the first power for the term: peace. I remembered that the term-time lesson on 'peace' focused on how an unusually sweet drink (sweeter than the instructor's normal preference) provided peace to the instructor after learning of loss. Looking for an equivalent this time around, I realized I had just received a gift of 24 chocolate praline truffles: I opened the box, savoured one and recalled the taste in my mouth as I went into the Muggle heating box I had used for reflections last term.
As I sat in the box, memories of the chocolate lingered on my tongue. While entering into the box, I felt a bit sore and awkward, though that feeling did ease up. I did my usual practice of dipping my head into the box only to find that it, along with the back of my knees, were now really sweaty! Pulling my head out of the box, the sweaty feeling left my head and focused on my neck and shoulders area. Then I tried a breathing technique I had learned over the past month: "in for four, hold for seven, out for eight" repeated a total of four times. Unfortunately, that did not really help at all. Throughout the time I sat in the box, I ended up feeling comfortably warm (except for the sweatiness) but not really at peace in any meaningful way.
Reflecting further, I turned to my lesson notes: when I studied peace in this class back in September, my mantra was "I can survive"... repeating it, it still did not seem to hold any power for me. What was interesting, though, was the musical selection I chose - "Morning Mood" from Peer Gynt, which has an incredibly peaceful sound even though its literary selection was the exact opposite. As a further irony, I compared the weather and my mood from this January evening to the late May evening when I did my first reflection for last term's final. The weather was nearly identical: dark, damp, sixty degrees or so (unusually warm for now, but unusually cool for a late spring day)... and, somehow - my reflections on faith then (a healthy sense of and response to fear and excitement) matched things now! And, once I turned the "Morning Mood" selection back on, the Power of Peace came back into focus for me!
The next day, with the weather nearly identical to the day before (just as with my second meditation for last term's final), I decided to focus on wisdom, which was the second power for the term. Here, the term-time lesson seemed to focus on knowing yourself, prioritising your health, and especially listening to your own body. There were discussions about partying versus staying at home - and I remembered how much fun I had at parties a few years back! Right now, of course, wisdom suggests that I shouldn't try to do a lot of active partying now though...
In any event, when going into the Muggle heating box for five minutes, the mindset of "listen to your body" was prominent. I immediately felt myself being called down to the chair in the box as I sat down, engulfed by a sense of warmth and relaxation except for a bit of a stomachache. On instinct, I placed my head back inside the box for about ten seconds before lifting it back above the box. Instead of feeling uncomfortably sweaty, though, my stomach pains eased a bit. For more relaxation I tried another breathing technique: breathe in for a 4 count and out for a 6 count, and this seemed to do better. I stayed calm and still for the remainder of the five minutes, and one thought remained: is there a way for me to attend some parties over a venue like Zoom, where I can try to capture the feel of partying without leaving my room? This carried me through until the timer said 5 minutes, I stepped out of the box, and the back of my knees finally felt sweaty again.
Once again, it was time to turn back to my class notes: when I had studied the Power of Wisdom, my mantra was "On second thought" - which seemed to be almost the opposite of my current reflections: second-guessing one's instincts seems to be somewhat different from listening to your instincts, but maybe both are needed to truly harness that power? The thoughts I had made about partying throughout my reflections, though, seemed to tie into the Power of Hope as well from last term: here, I was hoping that I would be able to enjoy parties (in various forms) that were as fun and satisfying as some of my favourites from my past! In late May/early June there were definitely things I had hoped for the future... but I had the wisdom to know that none of them were guarantees. Sure, the second half of 2021 was disappointing in many ways - but likewise, the Power of Wisdom tells me that disappointment is NOT a guarantee in the future! Pairing this back up with Hope again says that there may be quite a bit to look forward to in 2022 - maybe even parties, for what it's worth!
Between the second day and the third was one of the sharpest seasonal transitions I had ever experienced: the temperature dropped to well below freezing and a blizzard's worth of snow had fallen in the morning. My plan to focus on understanding, though, the third power of the term, was unchanged. The lesson from the term focused on the difference between seeing most of the picture and seeing everything; even missing a relatively small piece of the puzzle can hide true understanding from view. And sometimes, according to the lesson, it seems appropriate to either not understand everything... or suppress your understanding to be better immersed in a situation!
In any event, because it was much colder this day, I found myself pulled deep into the box and its comforting warmth. Unlike the first two meditations, today my head wanted to stay in the box for nearly the full five minutes... even if this meant contorting my body to achieve this warmth! On the other hand, my body felt comfortable and warm (with a minor ache in the stomach area) except for my hands and feet: my feet were numb and once I touched my hands to my chin I understood they were cold. In a state of relaxation with my eyes closed, I was thinking about warming up my hands: touching them to the walls of the heating box. My hands never got warm, but they became normal enough that they no longer cooled other parts of my body by touching them. And what about my feet? They now vacillated between being numb and feeling truly cold! (Lifting them up helped, but only a little). And I remembered that I don't really understand why my feet constantly feel so cold: this is something I had been trying to understand for a long time!
As usual, it was time to turn to my class notes: my mantra had taken the form "now I get it"... and I was writing about paths to understanding via a bottle opener. One thing I realized between then and now, though, which fits in well with the lesson, is that it is very easy for two people to see the same events as being very different. In the context of the lesson, this might be reflected by the fact that both people have an incomplete understanding. And when we try to use our understanding to see the future ("how much will it snow tomorrow?", for example)... we might not understand the full picture until the future arrives and gives us the context to better understand things! Flipping back to my discussions on the third power of last term, courage, I wasn't expecting to find any parallels between then and now... but then I saw the question I actually asked about courage:
"if no one else realizes the risk of taking a particular path, but you alone see the risk and therefore choose a different way, are you showing courage or not?"
This does reflect the Power of Understanding after all! Here, what was being understood (or not) was the risk of taking a different path, and your decision to go your own way shows a mixture of the Powers of Courage and Understanding: taking the courage to truly understand risks and acting accordingly!
On my fourth day since starting these reflections, the snow had long since stopped falling but the weather was nearly identical to the previous evening: still very cold - below freezing, and it still looked very much like winter outside. I had only one power left, the Power of Understanding, and I turned to the term-time lesson for inspiration. There, the instructor explained a lot about relationships: like family and friendship, and the spectrum between "showing your best side" for strangers and "showing your true selves" to the people you are closest to. As I thought about that, and how my time at HOL fit into this scene, I went back to the Muggle heating box for one last time.
Since it was just as cold this day as it had been the day before, I was not surprised to immediately feel a pull into the box for warmth and comfort. This time, my head stayed inside the box for nearly the entire time, with my eyes mainly closed. Meanwhile my head was primarily leaning to the left, on my left hand, and there wasn't a lot of contortion at all. I noticed that warmth was completely enveloping my body except for my feet and upper legs, which - as usual - vacillated between numbness and cold. Throughout this time, I was sitting and relaxing. There wasn't much room for deep thought: I was primarily just comforted and enveloped by the familiarity of the heating box (even though I had it for less than a year). The 5 minutes ended surprisingly quickly as I moved out of the box - and this time there was no sweat at all!
While noticing that my main thoughts about familiarity were about how familiar the heating box and the meditation sessions had become, it was time to turn to my notes one last time. Last month, my mantra for the Power of Familiarity was "This reminds me of..." and I was thinking about the 1812 Overture and how it brought themes of familiarity to mind. Turning back to my thoughts last term on the 'complementary' Power of Love: my reflections then referred to the story of how I got the heating box in the first place as a gift. The gift itself reflects the Power of Familiarity as it required knowledge of one of my most frustrating issues (constantly feeling cold)! Not to mention that my understanding of the Power of Love (being focused on relationships with others) feels like a good fit for the way the lesson explained the Power of Familiarity. But my closing reflection for the Power of Familiarity has to be how familiar the rhythms of HOL have been throughout the eight-plus years I have been involved with this school!
Having finished my series of meditations for each of the four powers, I realized that even though I didn't feel like I learned much of anything new from the meditations, I definitely did get more in touch with all four powers for this term, as well as the way they interfaced with the powers from last term. And being better in tune with myself fits in pretty well with the 'mindful self-discovery' goals of the course!
