JOYFUL WANDERING -- 61

+ Updated on Tuesday, March 8 at 7:49am

+ Spiritual & Practice offers A Thought to Carry with You :

Way back in 1971, humorist Erma Bombeck wrote that it seems "rather incongruous that in a society of supersophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners." She was not only perceptive but prophetic. 

This week, help reverse the trend. Look for a way each day to listen to someone, letting go of any other agenda. Remember all the tools at your disposal: concentrated silence, a nod, simple words of support like "um hmm" or "oh?" or "wow!" Reflect back what you hear the other person saying, so that they can hear themselves more clearly. Ask follow-up questions like "How come?" or "What happened then?" Offer gentle encouragement to someone by your unconditionally accepting presence. It's okay if that someone is yourself.

+ Spiritual & Practice offers "Unleashing America's Shadow" by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Excerpt: "'With media complicity, Trump has unleashed the beast that has long resided not far from the American hearth, from those who started a Civil War to preserve the right to enslave a fellow human to the Know-Nothing mobs who burned Irish-Catholic churches out of fear of immigrants.' This observation is from Timothy Egan's excellent article "The Beast Is Us" in The New York Times."

+ Patheos offers "The Making of Donald Trump and the Unmaking of a Nation" by Frederic Schmidt. Excerpt: "But Donald Trump is also the media’s creation. Together, since Richard Nixon’s appearance on 'Laugh In,' Presidents and the media have been erasing the boundary between entertainment and national leadership. Presidents make the rounds on talk shows and fawn over the hosts, treating them as the high priests of public opinion. They try their hand at stand-up comedy and they reduce policy debates into punch lines."

+ Dharma Wisdom offers "The Heart's Intention" by Phillip Moffitt. Excerpt: "Setting intention, at least according to Buddhist teachings, is quite different than goal making. It is not oriented toward a future outcome. Instead, it is a path or practice that is focused on how you are 'being' in the present moment. Your attention is on the ever present 'now' in the constantly changing flow of life. You set your intentions based on understanding what matters most to you and make a commitment to align your worldly actions with your inner values."

+ Weaving Home offers "Wilderness Places" by Naomi Kelly. Excerpt: "So we can come face to face with ourselves in the wilderness, with our fears, with what gets under our skin and makes us act in certain ways,. When we are on a Lenten journey, we take the time to see, to let our inner nature see the false self that so often holds us hostage. Seeng with the eyes of the heart can reveal all the pettiness and fear that tends to drive us into habitual directions of non-functionality."

+ Patheos offers "On Making America Great Again" by Erin Wathen. 

+ So, would a Bernie Sanders presidency be good for the economy?  An independent analysis suggests that it would be a dream come true for millions of hard working Americans who deserve much better than what the plutocracy has offered us in recent years. Common Dreams offers "Enacting Sanders Agenda Would Catapult Economy, Shatter Inequality" by Lauren McCauley.

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

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+ updated at 2:26pm ESDT on Saturday, April 19, 2014

+ What Teachers Make > http://thesocialcrat.com/?p=511

+ Today's Daily Zen:

Know the essence of mind.

Its intrinsic essence is

Pure clarity.

It is essentially the same as a Buddha.

- Tao-hsin (580-651)

+ Gratefulness Word for the Day today: “Confusion is the welcome mat at the door of creativity.” -- Michael J. Gelb

+ Inner Frontier Inner Work > Energy Breathing (Deepening Our Inner Life: Part 2) > excerpt > “As we work on becoming aware of and breathing this energy, we discover an unmistakable and wonderful flow of energy in our breath, strengthening our energy body. But this energy flow is never automatic; it requires intention and attention to separate the energy from the ordinary air. Spending time every day on this energy breathing practice proves invaluable in filling us with sensation and establishing our energy body, giving us a sturdy vessel for presence and for deepening our path.”

+ This is a very important read: Jerusalem is a sacred city for all 3 Abrahamic faiths and must be treated as such. Palestinians definitely regard Jerusalem as their capital and international law recognizes Palestinian rights. So, read this > http://www.kairospalestine.ps/sites/default/Documents/Easter%20Alert%202014.pdf

Here is more solid information about the plight of the citizens of East Jerusalem > The Ghettoization of East Jerusalem > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-farah/the-ghettoization-of-east_b_3387202.html

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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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+ Four pages of The Amazing Journey are now posted on The Abundancetrek Blog. 

There will be 46 or 47 more pages.  I wrote these pages last year with pen and paper and I am slowly putting them into the computer with my keyboard word for word. 

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 

It's the first draft of a book I hope to publish but it would be so much better if YOU contributed. It is the result of years of prayer, contemplation, meditation and study. I  got a lot of help from the Heavenly Council so it is already a joint project. I would like it to be the joint project of many fellow adventurers journeying in the Inner Frontier.  

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 

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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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+ Peter Russell is amazing.  He has a great series posts on Letting Go and how difficult it is.  His The Church of I AM has been a favorite of mine for a long time.

+ I am slowly but surely posting the first draft of The Amazing Journey on The Abundancetrek Blog.  Today I posted page 4.  I have 50 hand written pages of the 12 heavenly practices and the 9 attributes of heaven.  I have put the first 11 in to the computer.  

Here is what I posted on my Facebook page: WE are on an Amazing Journey. We are intimately, intricately, infinitely connected by a matrix of unconditional, unlimited, uniting LOVE which is miraculous, mysterious and marvelous. #Stillness is the key. Getting in touch with your inner Burning Bush is the gift. Join me. I have written a first draft of about 50 hand written pages. With YOUR help I can make big improvements and make our journey together even more amazing.  Comments welcome here or on Facebook where you will find me as Abundancetrek.

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+ updated at 4:13pm EST on Friday, February 21, 2014

+ Wildmind offers Ten Tips for Mindful Driving.

+ I love listening to the Sound of the Surf. Listen to a four hour recording of Pacific surf.

+ You can hear the sound of the surf as Ed Bastian leads you through the 7 steps of InterSpiritual Meditation which are:

1. May we be happy and healthy.
2. May we be grateful.
3. May we be transformed.
4. May we be loving and compassionate.
5. May we be mindful through our breathing.
6. May we become wise through meditation.
7. May we be in service to all.

Listen and watch.

You can start the surf video and then the Ed Bastian video. Your computer can probably handle both of the soundtracks.  

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+ Shambala Sun offers “Love & Relationships: What the Buddhists Teach“ > The Introduction states: “From the profound to the practical, from the basic split between self and other to dealing with your partner’s anger, four prominent teachers and psychologists talked about all the issues of relationships at this year’s annual Shambhala Sun/Omega Institute program, ‘What the Buddhists Teach.’ Here are four essays on the dharma of relationships, adapted from their presentations. Presenters were  The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Sylvia Boorstein, John Tarrant, and Polly Young-Eisendrath.

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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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+ updated at 11:53am EST on Wednesday, January 8, 2014

+ On FB, Robert Reich posted the following:
"I'm freezing in Chicago. Meanwhile, in Washington, Republicans say they won't extend emergency unemployment benefits unless their cost is offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget. But they won't even consider offsetting the cost by closing tax loopholes for the rich -- such as the "carried interest" loophole that gives hedge-fund and private-equity partners an annual $11 billion tax subsidy, almost twice the cost of extending unemployment benefits. Put this in a larger context and see the pattern: (1) Not only do they oppose extending unemployment benefits, but (2) they oppose any jobs program to put the long-term unemployed to work, (3) they want to cut food stamps, (4) they refuse to raise the minimum wage, and (5) they're determined to kill off unions. Connect the dots and you have a calculated strategy to keep wages as low as possible -- forcing large numbers of Americans to choose between working for peanuts or having nothing at all. Republicans are pushing this strategy because lower wages give their big-business patrons fatter profits (at least in the short term; longer term, they reduce overall demand for goods and services). The strategy is already succeeding: Real median household incomes are now 4.4 percent below what they were at the start of the so-called recovery, and corporate profits are up. Democrats, including Obama, should be calling them out on this strategy. Why aren't they?"

+ Richard Rohr offers "The Contemplative Alternative." Excerpt: “What we are enjoying now is a renaissance of the contemplative mind, the one truly unique alternative mind and heart that religion has to offer the world. Without this new mind, most doctrines, moralities, dogmas, and church structures will almost certainly be misunderstood, misused, and mishandled. Small people make everything small.” | Read it all

+ Robert Reich is very wise, intelligent, informed and compassionate. Recently he offered "The Year of the Great Distribution." It begins: “One of the worst epithets that can be leveled at a politician these days is to call him a 'redistributionist.' Yet 2013 marked one of the biggest redistributions in recent American history. It was a redistribution upward, from average working people to the owners of America.” | Read it all

+ “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul.” -- Mahatma Gandhi

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+ What a blog! (PS - It's not mine.) > http://livingstonesweb.blogspot.com/. I love what David Norling wrote on February 1.  Here is an excerpt: "I'm currently seeking to find out what it means to feel called to a ministry that doesn't exist, that is, Pastor of Listening. I made up the title and wrote my own job description, at the encouragement of God's spirit, as far as I can tell. I've sought counsel from several pastors. And while most could see the legitimacy of my vision and even my capacity to fulfill it, there seems to be a consensus that the programmatic nature of modern American Christianity can't conceive of the role that I seek to fill." | Read it all 

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+ updated at 1:23pm EST on Friday, February 1, 2013

 

+ We need our hearts to be full, open, clear, and strong and that's the message of Day 1 of Heart Month at S&P.

Spirituality & Practice: Map: The Heart: A months' worth of quotes about the heart illustrated with photographs of hearts found in nature.

+ Maybe we should pray for a change of heart by the Koch brothers and all climate change deniers during Heart Month which begins today.  The Independent offers "Exclusive: Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science" by Steve Connor. He reports that a new climate change denial effort is being funded by the Koch brothers and others.

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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 2:37pm EST on Wednesday, February 2

+ I appreciate this post -- http://www.evolvingchristianfaith.net/2010/12/trinitarian-calling-unity-in-and.html -- and made a comment.  More recently, this blogger offered "Introducing Slavoj Zizek."  I made a comment not published yet.

+ a RETWEET: For the last week, Democracy Now! has covered the protests in #Egypt closely. View all of our reports in our archive: http://ow.ly/3P0O1

+ Spirituality and Practice is offering a course on InterSpiritual Meditation.  It began Sunday.  Not to late to sign up.  I wrote the following on the Introductions and Intentions pages:

I believe we must work on creating a new faith for a new earth. The planet needs a new narrative, a compelling story we can all hear and enjoy and sing and dance to the beat. It has begun. Actually it began a long time ago. But we still have a long way to go.

A course like this which brings together people from different wisdom traditions is essential. I wouldn't miss it, even though it overlaps with the other S&P course I'm taking.

Sign Up!