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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+ In the Gratefulness Word for the Day today we are reminded that silence is often the best policy:

“Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace. Keep silent, refrain from judgement. This will raise you above the deadly arrows of slander, insult and outrage and will shield your glowing heart against all evil.” -- St. Seraphim of Sarov

+ Joseph Naft's illuminating Inner Frontier Inner Work this week is on Profiting from our Valleys. 

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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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+ 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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+ 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

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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.

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+ updated at 11:03am ESDT on Wednesday, March 23, 2011

+ Inner Frontier offers "The Illusion of Self" by Joseph Naft. This is the first of 9 in The Path of Liberation Series which will be offered over the next 9 weeks.  Here are the next 8: Cracks in the Illusion; Peace of Meditation; Coexistence; Exposing the Illusion; Freedom in Presence; Not Making Something of Nothing; Be Your Attention; I Am.

+ Democracy: A Journal of Ideas offers "First Principles: Arguing the Economy" by The Editors. They write: "As the economy begins to show signs of life, it's important that progressives own the recovery. Despite the fact that conservative policies plunged us into the economic crisis, the right's ideas continue to dominate the discourse. It's time for new ideas and arguments that can restore broad-based prosperity, and for a sharper critique of conservative economics."

+ Shuck and Jive offers "Rev. Sally Bingham in Johnson City this Week" by John Shuck. She is the founder of Interfaith Power and Light.  The post feature a Johnson City Press article about the Green Interfaith Network of NE Tennessee and SW Virginia.

JOSEPH NAFT'S INNER WORK -- 2

+ At Inner Frontier, Joseph Naft offers immense wisdom on a comprehensive spiritual practice.  Recently he began a series on The Eightfold Path:

1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration  

Right Effort is this week's Inner Work focus. Excerpt: "Across the many spiritual and religious paths, the fundamental examples of active inner efforts concern our attention: directing it and maintaining it. Active inner efforts have the feel of ordinary effort, like lifting that weight or an extended period of physical labor. We focus our attention, we form our intention, and we carry it out. The practice of sensing our body and the practice of presence are both primarily active efforts. In the former we hold our attention in our body to awaken and stabilize the energy of body awareness, sensation. In practicing presence, we actively inhabit our life, we will ourselves to be here, to be. We make an initial effort in choosing and beginning a particular practice in a particular moment. And then we make the ongoing effort of continuously maintaining that practice for more than a few seconds, or repeating it regularly. Such active efforts build up enduring pathways in our will, which we experience as determination, commitment, and increasing ability. The steady accumulation of active efforts makes subsequent efforts a little easier and a little stronger."

JOSEPH NAFT'S INNER WORK -- 1

+ At Inner Frontier, Joseph Naft offers immense wisdom on a comprehensive spiritual practice.  Recently he began a series on The Eightfold Path:

1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration  

Right Speech is this week's Inner Work focus. Excerpt: "To be right in a moral sense, our speech needs to be helpful, appropriate, and true, non-harming, not divisive, not abusive, and not negative gossip. Listening to our conscience, our intuition of rightness, can guide us in knowing what to say and what not to say. Beyond questions of morality, which concern intentions, we need to understand in advance the likely effects of our words apart from the intentions behind them. Too often those effects work at cross-purposes to what we intended."

SELF-ACCEPTANCE

+ I'm a fan of Joseph Naft, author of The Sacred Art of Soul Making: Balance and Depth in Spiritual Practice. He has led workshops and seminars and conferences for many years. He has created and maintains Inner Frontier which is quite comprehensive and full of wisdom and practical guidance for prayer and meditation. Each week he offers a new page of wisdom at In Inner Work at Inner Frontier. This week's page is on "Self-Acceptance." Excerpts:

• "All our inner shortcomings and outer imperfections lead us to obsess about them and reject certain aspects of our body and personality. That rejection wastes our precious time and energy in a self-absorbed, fruitless, and unnecessary battle among our rejected parts and our rejecting ego. Contrary to some views of spirituality, that inner battle hinders our spiritual path."
• "The basic and enduring resolution to the whole predicament must be founded on love for ourselves, on a radical, all-inclusive acceptance of ourselves as we are, today. If we embark on a program of self-improvement, we shall never reach its end. Neither our personality nor our body can ever be perfect enough, nor can our financial net worth ever be large enough to satisfy our ego."
  
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