WE ARE EXPLORING THE PRACTICE
OF DELIGHT
+ The quality of
life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for
delight is the gift of paying attention.
-- Julia Cameron
+ And, of course, we can get plenty of inspiration and
wisdom and guidance from Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat who offer so much at
what I like to call the best website in the universe: Spirituality & Practice.
Attention
is the first of their 37 spiritual practices. Here is what they say about the essential
practice of Attention:
Attention is also
known as mindfulness, awareness, concentration, recollection. It is a primary
practice, and not just alphabetically. We must stay alert or we risk missing
critical elements of the spiritual life — moments of grace, opportunities for
gratitude, evidence of our connections to others, signs of the presence of
Spirit. The good news is that attention can be practiced anywhere, anytime, in
the daily rounds of our lives.
Begin by doing one
thing at a time. Keep your mind focused on whatever you happen to be doing at
the moment. It is through the mundane and the familiar that we discover a world
of ceaseless wonders. Train yourself to notice details.
Most of us have
exhibited the symptoms of lack of attention at one time or another. It's
actually harder to stay awake than we might think. Perhaps we are easily
distracted by trivial pursuits, attracted to any media message, ready to jump
into any conversation, or susceptible to periods of endless surfing through the
information and choices available to us.
Eventually, without
awareness, we end up living in a daze of stimulation without any grasp of its
significance. We are operating on automatic pilot. Because nothing really
registers on our consciousness, we feel drained of energy.
Sometimes, however,
not paying attention has just the opposite effect: everything registers, and we
find we don't know what to do with it all. We are so bombarded with stimuli
that we can't focus on anything. We feel scattered. We are, to put it simply,
stressed.
For both lack of energy
and stress, attention is a good corrective prescription.
So, pay attention and you will find all kinds of reasons
to be delighted and delightful.
+ There
is an S&P Twelves Gallery on
Attention. The meme here is found in that gallery.
+ Delight
is not one of the 37 Spirituality & Practice practices BUT put Delight in
their Search Engine and you come up with 85 items including 67 quotes, 16
books, 1 practice, and 1 film as of 6/14/16.
Go to http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/search/?q=Delight. However, it is clear that Mary Ann &
Frederic Brussat are big fans of Joy.
Therefore, put Joy in their
Search Engine and you come up with 2057 items including 867 quotes, 835
books, 160 practices, 11 teachers, 24 arts links, 29 e-courses, 98 films, 26
blogs and 4 traditions as of 6/14/16. Oh, and Joy IS
one of the 37 spiritual practices. You can also be inspired by their
Twelves Gallery on Joy.
+ Joy will
come up again very soon in these explorations since it is the second of 9
heavenly attributes we will be exploring.
+ I would love it if you offered a guest post on this
practice or any practice. And, I have
work to do on my Delight page. Maybe you can help. Send an email with the subject “Delight”
or “Guest Post” to John@abundancetrek.com.
+ You can always find a link to any of the
Spiritual Explorations posts by going to http://abundancetrek.com/sepostsaccess.html
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