SPIRITUAL EXPLORATIONS – 300

WE ARE EXPLORING THE HEAVENLY ATTRIBUTE OF ABUNDANCE.

+ We are called to create and enjoy a realm of compassion, peace, justice and sustainable abundance for all.

+ We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.
-- Wendell Berry in The Long-Legged House

+ Abundance must be understood as a heavenly attribute, a spiritual attribute, not primarily as a material attribute.  That definitely requires a change of thinking, a change of heart, a change of perception, a new awareness, a compassionate awakening. 

I will never forget what a friend of mine once said after visiting Nicaragua in the early days of the revolution which brought the Sandinistas to power.  He said that he had never seen such poverty and he had never seen such happiness.  Of course it is not true that one has to be poor to be happy or wealthy to be unhappy but wealth in itself does not create happiness.   Most of us here in the USA live with the kind of material abundance most people on earth do not have.  But many of us are plagued with anxiety which diminishes our quality of life.  That’s not abundance.  Real abundance is based on an attitude of gratitude moment after moment, day after day, breath after breath.  Gratefulness.org is a website which invites us to create and sustain real abundance.  One by one we are changing the world, making it heavenly.  This is the new faith for the new earth, a growing, powerful movement which the forces of ignorance and selfishness cannot stop. 

+ Although Spirituality & Practice doesn’t have Abundance per se as a practice, they do offer an abundance of resources  on many practices which are all about abundance including:  Gratitude |  Wonder | Connections | Attention

Also, many of their Twelves Galleries focus on abundance.  With the following links you can quickly  choose among them >
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/galleries/category/12s
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/galleries/category/12s/2
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/galleries/category/12s/3
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/galleries/category/12s/4
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/galleries/category/12s/5
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/galleries/category/12s/6

+ I would love it if you offered a guest post.  And, I have work to do on the Abundancetrek Abundance page.  Maybe you can help.  Send an email with the subject “Abundance” or “Heavenly Attributes” 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

SPIRITUAL EXPLORATIONS – 286

WE ARE EXPLORING THE PRACTICE OF HEAVENLINESS

+ This is a post on the style of The Way of Relationships as we continue to explore Heavenliness through the lens of the 12 styles of the Mandala process created by Edward Bastian.  There is 1 more Mandala style to explore after this one: Wisdom. After that, we move on to the 9 Attributes of Heaven.

+ Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.

-- Dr. Albert Schweitzer

This was the Gratefulness Word for the Day on April 26, 2016

+ Let’s try to think of those times, probably many times for many of us, when someone was there to rekindle our inner light.  Let us be grateful for them and try to express that gratefulness often in our thought and maybe even in acts of gratitude.  And let us try to be the people who can be that source of rekindling for others.  Let us be alert to those occasions when an ”encounter with another human being” arises and offers us this opportunity.

+ The 12 styles of Mandala: Creating An Authentic Spiritual Path: An InterSpiritual Process by Edward Bastian are listed in SE206.

+ The 7 steps of InterSpiritual Meditation by Edward Bastian are listed in SE21 and SE213. They are described fully in his book, InterSpiritual Meditation. 

+ To get inspired and illuminated by Ed Bastian, I invite you to set aside some time for these videos:  Seven Steps of InterSpiritual Meditation (11 minutes) | 15 minute introduction to InterSpiritual Meditation and the Mandala Process | 2 hour lecture & conversation

+ Spirituality & Practice offers abundant resources on the practices of Love & Compassion: The Practice of Love | The 12s Gallery on Love | The Practice of Compassion | The 12s Gallery on Compassion

+ I would love it if you offered a guest post on this practice or any practice.  And, I have work to do on my Heavenliness page.  Maybe you can help.  Send an email with the subject “Heavenliness” or “Love” 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

SPIRITUAL EXPLORATIONS – 194

WE ARE EXPLORING THE PRACTICE OF DELIGHT

+ You have no cause for anything but gratitude and joy.

-- The Buddha

+ We are on an amazing journey here on earth and even more in the miraculous, mysterious and marvelous heavenly realms our heavenly self always inhabits.  Wise teachers teach this truth.  We can delight in this wisdom.  We can live joyfully in the abundance of love and beauty surrounding and enfolding us.  Let us immerse ourselves in these heavenly realms which we can feel so intimately, intricately and infinitely as we continue to practice, practice, practice in the Journey of the Mind, the Journey of the Heart, the Journey of the Body and the Journey of the Soul.  

Namaste.

+ 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

SPIRITUAL EXPLORATIONS – 185

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

SPIRITUAL EXPLORATIONS – 174

WE ARE EXPLORING THE PRACTICE OF SIMPLICITY

What gets in the way of simplicity is not sophistication but self-importance, with all the complications it creates. The more lightly we take ourselves, the more we leave the narrow confines of our little egos behind and enter the wide-open spaces of our true selves. Men and women who expand themselves in this way find common ground and great inner freedom. Rid of pretense, they seem to breathe more easily. They radiate a sense of being at home in the universe and everybody feels at home with them. They speak a universal language; anyone can understand them. A Swiss proverb even claims, "If you have common sense, you can talk to cattle."

— David Steindl-Rast in Words of Common Sense for Mind, Body, and Soul  

< http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/quotes/quotations/view/16641/spiritual-quotation

+ Sounds so simple, doesn’t it?  David Steindl-Rast focuses on gratitude as the way which brings us to this wonderful state of simplicity.  He offers one of my favorite websites > http://www.gratefulness.org/.

I recently discovered and retweeted a quote by #Confucius which corresponds to the one above: "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." This was tweeted by Jane Bernard who tweets at ‏@intuitivescribe, a good one to follow if you are on Twitter.

+ David Steindl-Rast is an S&P Living Spiritual Teacher.

+ Simplicity is not one of the 37 Spirituality & Practice practices BUT put Simplicity in their Search Engine and you come up with 314 items including 117 quotes, 156 books, 11 practices, 9 teachers, 1 arts link, 11 e-courses, 7 films and 1 blog as of 6/4/16.  Go to http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/search/?q=Simplicity

+ I would love it if you offered a guest post on this practice or any practice.  And, I have work to do on my Simplicity Page.   Maybe you can help.  Send an email with the subject “Simplicity” or “Guest Post” to John@abundancetrek.com. 

SPIRITUAL EXPLORATIONS – 172

WE ARE EXPLORING THE PRACTICE OF SIMPLICITY

+ What we are really talking about here is the act of getting current and staying current with ourselves. We are talking about the act of checking in, honoring ourselves, our intentions, perceptions, and intuitions. We are talking about something very simple that is often difficult to do amid hurly-burly. We are talking about paying attention to what we love.

— Julia Cameron in The Vein of Gold

+ I think that an attitude of gratitude is a good description of a life lived simply wonderfully.  We all know these wonderful people.  You are one of these wonderful people displaying kindness, gentleness, joy, compassion, hope, freedom and you are simply amazing.  Yes, you. 

+ Julia Cameron is one of the S&P Living Spiritual Teachers.

+ Simplicity is not one of the 37 Spirituality & Practice practices BUT put Simplicity in their Search Engine and you come up with 314 items including 117 quotes, 156 books, 11 practices, 9 teachers, 1 arts link, 11 e-courses, 7 films and 1 blog as of 6/4/16.  Go to http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/search/?q=Simplicity

+ I would love it if you offered a guest post on this practice or any practice.  And, I have work to do on my Simplicity Page.   Maybe you can help.  Send an email with the subject “Simplicity” 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

SPIRITUAL EXPLORATIONS -- 69

WE ARE EXPLORING THE PRACTICE OF SILENCE

+ Not all … are called to be hermits, but all … need enough silence and solitude in their lives to enable the deep inner voice of their own true self to be heard at least occasionally.

-- Thomas Merton in The Silent Life

+ Inner solitude and Noble Silence is a way to empty, cleanse, heal, and renew the heart and mind. This is a voluntary way to start the process of simplification and personal downsizing. The peace will help you purify your perceptions and make presence of mind more acute, clear, spacious, and even luminous.  / Incredible satisfaction is available when you begin experiencing the timeless truth that less can actually be more; that the most elegant solution is often the simplest one. Gratitude and appreciation serve us better than attachment and grasping. Peace of mind is the inmost secret treasure.

-- Lama Surya Das in Awakening The Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das found at http://www.kenlauher.com/daily-wisdom/bid/19904/The-Joy-Of-Silence-Solitude-And-Voluntary-Simplicity

+ It is not easy to practice silence these days. Most of us live in noisy environments. Too much noise of all kinds blocks discernment and healing. So let’s see if we can reduce the noise, be silent and be healed. If we can do that we can experience heavenly moments, blissful moments, delightful moments throughout the day.

Miracles happen during moments of silence and as a result of moments of silence.

When you are silent you listen.  Your listen more and more to your inner guide and to all kinds of external sources of information, many previously ignored.

Your true self is your direct connection to heaven, to that glorious realm of abundance, joy, wisdom, beauty, love, truth, peace, justice and freedom which is everywhere and is now here.

Remember:

I am / You are / We are

Intimately

Intricately

Infinitely

Connected 

To a Matrix of

Unconditional

Unlimited

Uniting

LOVE

Which is 

Miraculous

Mysterious

Marvelous

When you are awake, aware and connected in this realm, you are far more real, far more authentic, than you are when you are not awake, aware, connected. Stillness, Silence, Solitude and Simplicity are all essential practices which make it possible for us to awaken to reality. The walls of separation fall and we know ourselves as one heavenly being, right now, right here.

+ SpiritualityandPractice offers many resources on the Spiritual Practice of Silence and a wonderful  photo and quotes gallery.

+ You can always find a link to any of the Spiritual Explorations posts by going to http://abundancetrek.com/sepostsaccess.html

THE AMAZING JOURNEY page 7

A motto of the Reformed branch of Christianity is: REFORMED AND ALWAYS BEING REFORMED. That’s not only a good idea for a church or a mosque or a sangha. It is also a good idea for each and every person and every nation, tribe, family, neighborhood, association. Humility and openness are absolutely necessary. Gentleness and kindness and patience. An attitude of gratitude. Always forgiving. Always respecting, appreciating, caring, helping, serving. These are all tried and true virtues promoted by all the sages of the ages. They are not to be ignored or dismissed. Violence only as a last resort of self-defense and maybe even that should be examined carefully and thoroughly.

PRAY CONSTANTLY + I hate to use the word “should” BUT you should always be praying, Yes, always. Constant gratitude works. This creates an attitude of gratitude. Constant gratefulness. Constant thanksgiving. Constant communion with God and all the Saints. And everyone is a Saint. The more you pray, the more you know just how holy, wonderful, fantastic, amazing, awesome, you are. You and everyone else. Every human. Every creature. Yes, that means everything. Everything is holy. The more you pray, the more you know that. Wow.

One possible way for you to become one who prays constantly is to say thank you for every situation you encounter as much as you possibly can. I am thankful for this pen and paper and my knowledge of English. I am thankful for my brain, my fingers, my hand, my arm, my eyes, my lungs, my nose, my mouth, coffee, water, air and on and on it goes. Blue Sky. Clouds. Rain. Snow. Dogs. Cats. Birds. Flowers. Pizza. Ice Cream. Apples. Oranges. Television. Radio. Internet. And on and on it goes. Rock’n’Roll. Classical Music. Folk Music. Poems. Stories. The Dance. Running. Walking. Stretching. Breathing. Dreams. And on and on it goes. Mom. Dad. Spouse. Siblings.  Children. Friends.  Cousins.  Aunts. Uncles. Movies. Actors. Plays. Politicians. Lawyers. Teachers. Doctors. Engineers. Cashiers. And on and on it goes.

JOYFUL WANDERING -- 46

+ updated at 2:54pm EST on Tuesday, March 5, 2013

+ Gratefulness.org offers a mini-course in grateful living by Patricia Campbell Carlson. Excerpt: "For most of us, awakenings come as glimpses.  A moment of supreme aliveness on a mountaintop can inform our experience for months or years, even though we wish we could recapture its initial vividness.  To hold on to that vividness requires practice." | Go to mini-course

+ "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Rejoicing today, I celebrate my participation in 2 current internet courses I am taking, both challenging, informative, inspiring: "InterSpiritual Meditation" taught by Ed Bastian of Spiritual Paths and "Becoming a Wise Elder" taught by Angeles Arrien along with Mary Ann and Fred Brussat of Spirituality and Practice.
  
+ Another one of my favorite lists which did not get included in my recent post is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People of Stephen Covey. Here is a summary I just found in Wikipedia:

The First Three Habits surround moving from dependence to independence (i.e., self-mastery):

 

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Take initiative in life by realizing that your decisions (and how they align with life's principles) are the primary determining factor for effectiveness in your life. Take responsibility for your choices and the consequences that follow.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Self-discover and clarify your deeply important character values and life goals. Envision the ideal characteristics for each of your various roles and relationships in life. Create a mission statement.

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Prioritize, plan, and execute your week's tasks based on importance rather than urgency. Evaluate whether your efforts exemplify your desired character values, propel you toward goals, and enrich the roles and relationships that were elaborated in Habit 2.

The next three have to do with Interdependence (i.e., working with others):

 

Habit 4: Think Win-Win

Genuinely strive for mutually beneficial solutions or agreements in your relationships. Value and respect people by understanding a "win" for all is ultimately a better long-term resolution than if only one person in the situation had gotten his way.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

Use empathic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you. This creates an atmosphere of caring, and positive problem solving.

Habit 6: Synergize

Combine the strengths of people through positive teamwork, so as to achieve goals no one person could have done alone.

Change of attitude  When one works on attitude, nothing can be a hindrance to one's effectiveness in life.

 

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, effective lifestyle. It primarily emphasizes exercise for physical renewal, prayer (meditation, yoga, etc.) and good reading for mental renewal. It also mentions service to society for spiritual renewal.