I wonder and wander in the wonders of others

The Growing Capacity to Focus and Direct while Dwelling in Chaos

Oh, if the soul only had to wonder at simple things. Are there any simple things in the face of growing wonder?  I think not. 

Things are layered, swirled, tumbled and twisted. Things rise, sparkle, dance and dim. Things delight and disturb, stimulate and soothe, confound and clarify.

We do not wonder in our sleep.  Wonder wakes us up.  But wonder needs the support of focus and direction.

Awake, our souls wonder at all these things: All our thoughts, all our feelings, all our intentions and all the stuff of our stories, our perceptions and our bodily sensations. Most of us automatically tune out most of what is going on in our souls, but as we grow our capacity to focus, we can direct more and more of the creative chaos we dwell in.

Can you smile an inner smile when you find yourself in a wondrous chaos?  Can you choose one thing and direct your attention to it? And go deep into it? and deeper again? Can you direct your wonder so that your questions become illuminating, focused on the true, the beautiful, the good? Do you focus on the past, the present, the future, the very flow of time?

Our souls grow the capacity to dance between the forest and the tree.

Tonight recollect your soul's vast numbers of encounters and experiences of just today.  Choose one experience or encounter and focus into it.  If you are journaling, write down a question about this one thing and then begin to answer your question.  Stay focused and maintain your direction into deep meaning. Be surprised.

Here's a sweet suggestion: If you love Christmas music, like I do, choose one carol or one song.  Listen to it. Now focus on one phrase like "Angels we have heard on high," "Let heaven and nature sing," "Joyful and Triumphant," or "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams." Now focus on this one phrase and direct your attention to what this means to you. 
 
Focusing and directing warms your heart without sentimentalizing.  Enjoy and grow your soul's capacity. 
 
Dear all:

Those are the thoughts of somebody sent to me. While I acknowledged the sincerity and earnestness of the sentiments, I was not overwhelmed or moved by them for they were somehow platitudinous and prosaic to me. I realize it is crass and rude and plainly cruel to make light of somebody's spiritual musings, but in truth (or at least the version it makes sense to me) I trust, so goes I:

First and foremost, I am typing this, lying in bed, and on top of my head, without notes, without organizing my thoughts. I let my right index finger do the walking and the shining of my interior.

Second, please remember words are an imprecise tool, albeit useful, in communication because people tend to read their own experiences into the words used by others, and not trying to understand what the author really wanted to say. Very often, we are guilty of reading too quickly and couldn't wait to get up on a soapbox and pontificate what we want to say, which has little to do with what we just read. That's the tragedy and the farce of what is often passed up as comment and criticism. So, I am aware of my own faults, too. Boy, I am so self-conscious today on this post-Christmas Sunday. Without further ado, however, let me take a plunge into the murky water.

Christmas is meant to celebrate the birth of a man viewed by the believers as divine and who could and would and actually did many wondrous and miraculous things. I am not here to debate the validity of the theological assertions put forth by Christian theologians who are in the business of bending minds and influencing what gullible and logic-deprived folks how to think and believe. I would feel much better and think more highly of the theologians if they had said that Jesus of Nazareth was the incarnation of unconditional love and if they had stopped at that and gone no further. Anyway I am here to state that some folks around this time of the year get more spiritual than usual and thus pen their thoughts. The person whose message was pasted at the beginning of this email of mine was one of them. Since the style of writing seemed to suggest that it was a female, I would refer to that person as such.

She maintained that things were not simple and we needed to excercise the faculty called wonder and then she went on and on exhorting us to wonder and yet she kept referring to generalities and stock phrases which are true but still trite. She sounded like she was the first human who was given to introspection, which is not true.

To live is to make sense of the experience of living and assign it a meaning. I wish she had said that. Also, she could have said that not all meanings were the same. Some humans are in this world to get as much pleasure and power as they can; others want knowledge because the very existence of the universe and their own fascinate them; still others have a lingering feeling that they are made of finer and superior stuff than most of their fellow humans, and they constantly look for evidence to substantiate that feeling.

Wissai