Tuesday, October 26, 2010

JOYFUL WANDERING -- 5

+ updated at 12:46pm on Tuesday, October 26, 2010

+ My Spiritual Practice of the week is Humility which is the goal of the practices of Stillness and Detachment which I emphasized in the last couple of weeks. One of my favorite spiritual guides is Joseph Naft who offers amazing wisdom each week in his "Inner Work" section of Inner Frontier.  Not surprisingly, he offers a page on Humility.  Here's an excerpt: "The humble, unassuming person immediately puts us at ease. We can just relax and be ourselves in their presence, a zone of no competition, no judgment, and no fear. The heart of the humble knows love. Humility realizes we are all in the same boat, all human, all equally children of the same God. Humility gladly honors others and, except for reasons of conscience, readily and without rancor gives way." Read more.

+ The Living Stones Blog offers "Thoughts on Detachment". Here it is:

Detachment doesn’t mean not loving. It means to be free to love with God’s love. Without detachment we are not free. We are bound to our limited selves, our egos, and when we are bound we project onto others, grasp after them, and/or reject them. Without detachment we cannot be fully aware of others or fully present to them. So we love selfishly, at least partly, and in self-serving ways.

Detachment enables us to be aware of and engage reality as it really is. It enables us to welcome and embrace the unfolding of reality and be present and responsive to the Spirit at work within it. Without detachment we cannot see truth, cannot realize or actualize the truth.

Detachment requires skillful, intentional humility and vulnerability because detachment does not come naturally to us; it is a supernatural gift, a grace, though we can practice making ourselves available to it. My prayer for myself and for our community is that we continue to grow in loving others with awareness, humility, and skill. And this, I think, requires detachment.

+ OneGodSite offers some very illuminating quotes on the spiritual practice of Detachment.

1 comment:

Abundancetrek said...

Thanks so much for your comment and information. I will explore your path. I look for wisdom from many sources.