JOYFUL WANDERING -- 39

+ It has been 6 months since the last Joyful Wandering post.  No excuses.  No explanation.

+

If you could get rid
of yourself just once,
The secret of secrets
Would open to you.
The face of the unknown,
Hidden beyond the universe
Would appear on the
Mirror of your perception.
-- Rumi

I found that quote at http://www.allspirit.co.uk/sufism.html

+ Joseph Naft continues to inspire, illuminate, guide, challenge as we seek to become truly mindful and aware.  In Inner Frontier Inner Work, he has been expanding our consciousness in the project of Learning To Be.  This week: Affirming 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hither and thither, to be distracted easily, with no staying power, indicates that we are not here, that our I has withdrawn beyond our reach.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.

 

+ The current Spirituality and Practice Newsletter has great stuff, like usual, including:

 

• Remembering a great spiritual storyteller and interfaith pioneer. New in the Remembering Spiritual Masters Project is a tribute to Anthony de Mello, including a quotation sampler, links to reviews of his books, and video clips. More profiles in the Remembering Spiritual Masters Project.

 

• A prayer for forgiveness of our daily pollutions: We're "Praying the News" by focusing on what's behind the extreme weather happening all over the world. More prayers.