Video Notes:

During the course of the Spiritual Exploration class, we learned about ways to cope with our
stress, different religions’ take on the word “evil”, and the power of restorative justice. In
class, students start with a short meditation to relax in heart and mind. Then, the teacher gives
a presentation about a different topic every lesson. The focus for this SPEX 11 is about
cleaning up, in which we explore concepts of evil and learn to become more aware of our
actions. In this spex course, we discuss real life applications of evils that dominate the society
more than we did for other spex courses, which emphasize on self-awareness.

The theme “Clean up” means learning how to my emotions such as anger and cleaning the
stress and negative thinking the best of my ability. One of the strategies that I like best is to
delete Instagram. After the lesson on cell phones reducing our mental ability to focus, I
decided to delete the entire app. Sometimes during the weekend, I wanted to reinstall it. But I
persevered months after months. I realized how much time I have left for homework. I also
was able to sleep at 11: 30 latest every night, which was a great improvement. I felt fully
engaged during lessons that I will never feel with the app. I also feel less jealous of other
people and free from all sorts of pressure to conform to the teenage norms. Moreover, I
learned a lot about the complex issues about classifying what is evil and what is not. In class,
we were given a worksheet to rank the evilness of different scenarios. And it was very funny
that the people in my group all don’t have the same thoughts. We even did a stimulation
about the bullying issues at schools. I realized how hard it is to make restorative justice a
reality as different people have different concerns.
One of the documentaries that impressed me the most is called the “Story of God” by
Morgon Freeman. During the documentary, I saw some real-life examples of how evil can be
turned to good in some individuals. A tattooed guy in drugs who wanted to cause destruction
to the world to those who wanted to do the best for the world turned back to a better health
and lifestyle after having a baby. I believe everything is possible for change and that the
suffering can be healed if they try to choose the right choice. Moreover, I also learned about
different religions such as Egyption, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and India Hindu beliefs. We
also explored whether the concept of evil is recognized by people at an earlier age through
the baby puppet show experiment, which found that babies are more likely to point to the
good puppet when asked.

Throughout this course, I learned about the power of forgiving people and myself. In the
letter that I wrote to my mom, I can definitely feel the change in my thoughts. I felt that all
those emotions of anger and sadness and guilt that I have had when I argue with my mom all
fade away instantly the moment I wrote it. In fact, I don’t recall arguing with her after giving
the letter to her. Also, a big part of my success is because of my sister, who once cried in
front of me because she was worried that I will separate from the family just like how our dad
separated from us just two years ago. I never realized how painful my sister might have felt
when she saw me like that, and made a vow to myself to not disappoint her.

I think that the SPEX course this year is great, and I hope people can play more games such
as mafia and continue the restorative justice stimulation next year.