JOYFUL WANDERING -- 62

+ Updated at 11:05am on Monday, May 16, 2016.

+ This post includes entries from Tuesday, March 15, 2016 until Monday, May 16, 2016. Latest entries are at the top. If you would like to contribute, write JW in your subject line and send it to John@abundancetrek.com or put a comment on my Facebook page.

+ Check out an impressive Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute special exhibit of Terry Slade's unique art now happening. The artist is very much focused on the damage we are doing to our environment. However, he offers art as tools for meditation and contemplation making it possible to change our ways.

+ Inner Frontier offers "Sustaining Presence" by Joseph Naft. Excerpt: "If we want to be present, not just momentarily, but to stay present a little longer, the key is to relax into being here. We relax our body, sense it, and relax into the sensation. We notice our thoughts and relax into the cognizant space behind them. We relax into the equanimity behind our more superficial and fleeting emotions."

+ The Guardian offers "Let Donald Trump Be Our Unifier" by Eve Ensler.  Excerpt: "He is the outcome of an insidious exceptionalism – the bedrock belief that American lives are more precious and valuable than any Others, those that we stigmatize, bomb, torture, murder, control, invade and whose economies we trash, whose resources we devour, whose futures we steal."

I do believe that we can be transformed by our better angels as we deal creatively and energetically with this long shadow over the planet. This is a powerful, far-reaching and all too revealing article about what the problem is.

+ Inner Frontier offers Modes of Presence by Joseph Naft.  Excerpt: "In the coming weeks, we will experiment with each of these twelve modes of presence. For this week, please look at your own work of presence and its various flavors and aspects. How do you come into presence? Does it descend on you unbidden? Do you rise into presence? Do you choose to be present? Do you choose to stay present? Who is the you that is present?"

+ Common Dreams offers "The New Truth About Free Trade" by Robert Reich. It begins: "I used to believe in trade agreements. That was before the wages of most Americans stagnated and a relative few at the top captured just about all the economic gains."

+ Joyful Wandering posts 1 to 58 are found on The Abundancetrek Blog. You can find them all here.

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+ updated at 4:14pm ESDT on Friday, March 28, 2014

+ Page 5 of The Amazing Journey is now posted on The Abundancetrek Blog.

+ Here is an excerpt from this week's Inner Work at Inner Frontier > Rising Above Our Plateaus > As our inner work deepens, joy, love, conscience, and equanimity suffuse our life. This is wonderful and, for many who come to it, good enough. So after reaching that grand plateau, one can practice just enough to maintain the necessary inner tone. If that meets a person’s goals and aspirations with regard to their inner life, then he or she has attained what they sought. This is completely honorable. The world certainly is a better place because of people who live in such a state. This is a groove, not a rut.

For others, however, the spiritual path has no upper bound. Their aspirations reach all the way to the Divine. For them, any spiritual plateau, no matter how sublime, is a rut, a temptation to be overcome.

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+ At Inner Frontier, Joseph Naft begins a new series of Inner Work, The Path of the Path.  He began today with Peaks, Valleys and Plateaus.  

Excerpt 1: "The single most important act, in terms of our progress on the spiritual path, is to resolve and continually renew our resolution to keep with our practice come what may. The seasons of our path, with the rebirth of spring, the growth of summer, the inward turn of fall, and treadmill of winter, come and go of their own accord, without a schedule. As we have seen, the causes are complex and often indecipherable. It taxes our wisdom to do more than just muddle through."

Excerpt 2: "In serving the spirit, happiness often comes as a byproduct of leading a right life. In primarily seeking happiness, we tend not to find it. The extent to which we stay committed to our inner work in the sunny moments, reveals our motivations to us."

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+ updated at 4:36pm EST on Monday, January 20, 2014

+ Daily Kos offers "Most of You Have No Idea of What Martin Luther King Actually Did" by Hamden Rice. Excerpt: 

He ended the terror of living as a black person, especially in the south.

I'm guessing that most of you, especially those having come fresh from seeing The Help, may not understand what this was all about. But living in the south (and in parts of the midwest and in many ghettos of the north) was living under terrorism.  

It wasn't that black people had to use a separate drinking fountain or couldn't sit at lunch counters, or had to sit in the back of the bus.  

You really must disabuse yourself of this idea. Lunch counters and buses were crucial symbolic planes of struggle that the civil rights movement used to dramatize the issue, but the main suffering in the south did not come from our inability to drink from the same fountain, ride in the front of the bus or eat lunch at Woolworth's.

It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them. You all know about lynching. But you may forget or not know that white people also randomly beat black people, and the black people could not fight back, for fear of even worse punishment.  

This constant low level dread of atavistic violence is what kept the system running. It made life miserable, stressful and terrifying for black people.  

White people also occasionally tried black people, esp 

+ The Theological Wanderings of a Street Pastor offers "Pregnant with God." Here it is:

I beheld the fullness of God in which I beheld and comprehended the whole of creation, that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea itself, and everything else.  And in everything that I saw, I could perceive nothing except the presence of the power of God, and in a manner totally indescribable.  And my soul in an excess of wonder cried out: “This world is pregnant with God!”  Wherefore I understood how small is the whole of creation – that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea itself, and everything else – but the power of God fills it all to overflowing.

-St. Angela of Foligno (1248-1309)

Passage retrieved from http://datinggod.org/2010/10/01/the-world-is-pregnant-with-god/

+ Here is today's Daily Zen:

During the moment of illumination,

When I see the original face of mind,

A limitless compassion arises.

The greater the illumination,

The greater is the compassion.

The greater my compassion,

The deeper is the wisdom I feel.

- Garmaba

+ Here is today's Gratefulness Word for the Day: "If you have a strong mind and plant in it a firm resolve, you can change your destiny." -- Paramahansa Yogananda

+ Spirituality and Practice offers resources for MARTIN LUTHER KING jr DAY.

+ Today's S&P poverty month resource is an excerpt from Meal by Meal: 365 Daily Meditations for Finding Balance through Mindful Eating by Donald Altman > The excerpt begins: “"For some, leftovers are associated with poverty. For others, they signify a treasure that is not to be wasted. It seems that people either love leftovers or hate them.” Read the entire excerpt

+ Today's S&P spiritual reading is an excerpt from What You Will See Inside a Hindu Temple by Dr. Mahendra Jani and Dr. Vandana Jani > Dr. Mahendra Jani and Dr. Vendana Jani provide a succinct overview of what goes on in a Hindu temple. | Read an excerpt on devotion in Hindu homes.

+ Inner Frontier is beginning a new Inner Work series on MIND AND THOUGHT. Here is an excerpt from the introduction: “Because of their range and flexibility, our thoughts give us the illusion of freedom. But the truth is that our thoughts are bound by their patterns and by memory. Their central pattern is that they refer to a non-existent self, our ego, that we believe we are. Our thoughts create our ego in the same way that a novelist creates a character.” | Read the Introduction

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+ Advent: Day 17: Throughout most of Advent, the focus is not on Christmas. The focus is on the Kingdom, or the realm, of God which is deep within us and near us and beyond us and not here yet. The “not here yet” is the main concern during Advent. That’s why John the Baptist has the leading role. According to scripture and tradition, he is more like Adam than Christ. And, unless we are born again as a heavenly being focused on heavenly things far more than a human being focused on earthly things, then we too are stuck all too often in the “not here yet” which we are called to examine so closely as we perceive and practice Advent as intended, a time of deep reflection and repentance.

+ Here is an excerpt from this week's Inner Frontier Inner Work: "Our many relationships seem to define who we are and rightly so, because what we are does not stop at our skin. Through our social intelligence, we all deal with variable relationships of many kinds, fleeting or long-term, superficial or intimate. We treat these as being between us and someone else, between two discreet people. This is our ordinary world of separateness, governed by the rules of morality, etiquette, and courtesy. But there are deeper levels to every relationship .... There is sameness, there is uniqueness, and there is unity, three qualities at three different levels." Read it all.
 

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+ updated at 9:57am EST on Monday, January 23, 2012.

+ Spiritual Literacy Blog offers "Just One Thing: Tune Into Others" by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Excerpt:

Empathy can be defined as the capacity to understand and respond to the unique experience of another. It is a skill that can be developed at an early age and applied to mend relationships and conflicts. We can sharpen our empathy by asking the right questions, avoiding snap judgments, learning from the past, and setting limits.

+ Inner Frontier offers another weekly installment in the Inner Work series on Sacred Impulses by Joseph Naft.  This week's offering is on Joy. Here's an excerpt:

At the level of being conscious and fully aware, we rise into a natural, un-caused joy. We are suffused with joy in our awareness itself. Our very presence is joy. Sharing moments with friends and loved ones brings us joy. Taking actions that serve others brings us joy. Being useful, creative, or spontaneous brings us joy. Doing something well brings us joy. Dropping the burdens of egoism, dropping the defense of our pretenses, dropping our clinging, we are released into joy. We even feel empathetic joy in others’ joys. Our joy is no longer limited or in any way dependent. We live in joy.