COFFEE BREAK 350

+ Joseph Naft's Inner Frontier Inner Work this week has been on Affrirming Presence.  Here is an excerpt:

So how do we get engaged, get involved? It begins with attention. The secret quality of attention is that it is driven by our will, it is our will. The practice of active attention is the road to coming into our own, our own will, our I. When you pay attention to what you are doing or seeing or touching or thinking, your I is there; it is you who are doing or seeing or touching or thinking. Not paying attention, allowing our attention to be drawn hither and thither, to be distracted easily, with no staying power, indicates that we are not here, that our I has withdrawn beyond our reach. We can learn to affirm our life, our living, our presence.

 
And we do that first by affirming our attention, by being our attention. It may sound abstract, but the actual practice of it is simple. We just pay attention to what we are doing and/or perceiving and we get fully behind that attention. We are there attending, wholly and completely, simply and directly. If you try this, you may see that you can do it. You may see how it is different than letting your attention just wander wherever it is drawn. We bring our power, the power of our will, our I, into our attention. We become our attention for that moment. Though it is simple, this is not so easy to maintain moment-to-moment over time. To do so, we need to continually renew our attention and our being in it. | Read it all