2001-11-03-The Discipline of Joy

Session 1

Opening

­Recently, I have been assigned the task of writing about the discipline of love, the discipline of joy. Perhaps later some explanation will be included as to who assigned me this task and how the concept of the discipline of love and joy came to my attention. I do not presume that I was given this assignment because I have some kind of expertise on this subject. On the contrary, I am a beginner. So I will just record the little knowledge I have gained in the past year and what I pick up day to day from this point on.

Lesson

When I first noticed the term discipline of joy it caught my attention because the phrase contained, what seemed to me at the time, this odd juxtaposition of the words, joy and discipline. I had never associated joy with discipline. In my previous understanding, joy was associated with a feeling tone of happiness that arose spontaneously as the result of some other experience: the winning of a sports event, or the meeting of a friend or friends one has not seen in a long time, weddings, the birth of a child. To wit: a derivative experience.

Discipline, on the other hand, has as one of its major connotations, the notion of punishment for some failure. Its other major usage is associated with regularity. A disciplined person is one who does their duty no matter what. A well disciplined army unit can be commanded to walk straight toward their own death, and they will do so. There is also a little bit of drudgery that hangs around its meaning, as well as a sense of the mechanical.

Therefore, the oddness jumped out at me because I did not understand how one could produce what I perceived to be a spontaneous and derivative experience on the basis of simply repeating something daily, like going to the bathroom or brushing your teeth. Past experience had led me to observe that the automatic repetition of any kind of behavior ordinarily led to a dulling of awareness and sensibility rather than an enlivening that might move one in the direction of joy. My curiosity was piqued.

Naivete led me to believe that I ought to review a catalogue of experiences or behaviors that I knew gave me joy. Can you believe the first thing that popped into my mind was making love? While I have no idea of the individual history of making love in the experience of my readers, whether it be positive or negative or some mixture of each, for me it was just the top of the list, hands down, no contest. Someone or something has scripted into the human body a tremendous potential for pleasure in the act of making love. Humankind has the potential for many kinds of ecstatic experience, but I saw nothing remotely approaching the potential for heightened pleasure in the body, the giving and receiving of love, the quality of attention exchanged in the eyes of the lover, and the necessity for the superb and delicate cooperation in the dance between the partners that results in the merging of these two distinct identities into an ecstatic experience of oneness.

So then, why not make love every day?

Note

My dear reader: Just a short note to inform you that at the age of 73 my mind has developed a natural resistance to writing in a linear fashion. The only dimension of my life that seems to move in a linear fashion is my age. I am more interested in what is vivid and what is being impressed upon me from day to day, from moment to moment. With that caveat, perhaps we can proceed. However, I promise you that I will return to my original adventure in the discovery of love and joy through the avenue of making love. Bear with me.

Session 2

Lesson

• LISTENING

Listening is a learning mode. "Hear ye, hear ye." "Now, hear this." So listening demands the focus of an inner attention. We have to hold still. Do you see the doe in the field that has suddenly lifted her head from grazing and is now giving that total survival attention to the fact that she has become aware of your presence? This is the quality of listening attention that is demanded if we expect to hear from the subtlest dimension of all: the divine dimension.

What do we most want to hear? Perhaps the answer might be: to "hear" that we are loved. Well, yes, that would be just wonderful wouldn’t it, to be constantly aware that we are loved. But how are we to hear this most wonderful message if we are caught up in the cacophony, the turbulence of our inner states? The answer is that we are not likely to be aware of this love unless or until we develop the muscle of listening.

The first step in the discipline of love that I would lay down is the discipline of retreating to a quiet place each day, to shut out all distractions, to open one’s mind and heart, and listen. At first what one will hear is the endless tape loop of sub-vocal chatter that goes on in what we are wont to call our mind. This is natural. The trick, the discipline, is to listen for this obstreperous puppy of the mind and bring him to heel without scolding or feeling that you have failed. The lesson in listening at this level is most elementary, but basic. What you will hear at this level, when you “wake up,” or hear, is that your mind has been leading you in a merry chase down all these rabbit holes. Your thought patterns have wandered off in their usual fashion of what is commonly referred to as the stream of consciousness. You just give a gentle tug on the leash of listening and bring awareness back to the still point. You practice this, and practice this, until you reach the point where you can stay focused on that needle point of stillness. This needle point of stillness is your Godpoint; the point or place where you will discover the embrace of love. So the first step in the discipline of love is to choose a quiet place to listen, otherwise you don’t have a chance. Or to turn the phrase of chance slightly, the only chance you will have of hearing will be that of chance rather than choice.

It is very important to practice this discipline of listening, since in doing so you strengthen your ability to stay at this point, and also your ability to swiftly go to that place of inner nurturing when you are in, shall we say, dire straits.

The degree to which you are first willing and then able to establish your awareness in the stillpoint of God’s love is the degree to which you yourself will be able to love.

Now, one of the ways to also practice listening is to listen to our brothers and sisters. Sometimes our brothers and sisters have some downright gnarly things to say to us. When you have established that quiet stillpoint inside of yourself, when you have built a bit of a foundation there, you will gradually be able to listen to these indictments without shouting back or quietly conjuring your defenses while the other goes on talking. It is obvious this other person feels this way apart from any adjudication as to the fairness or proper perspective of their perceptions. It is in our ability to listen to another that we most fundamentally show love. If you won’t listen to someone, generally speaking, it is a cancellation of that person, certainly not a demonstration of love. Would you not agree that the quality of attention that you give to another is a reflection of the quality of your love? Attending-to is just another way of expressing what we mean by listening.

Case in point. When I am in the midst of some gnarly disputation with my beloved, when I have listened carefully to what she is saying, and quite frequently feel that she has not heard me or does not understand, out of desperation, I will take my head in my hands, go inside to my stillpoint, and try listening from that place. Prior to this movement I did not feel particularly understood or loved. As soon as I move to the stillpoint, I am ordinarily quite easily moved to a feeling of being embraced by God’s love. The feelings of not being understood or whatever the negative feelings might be, suddenly dissolve and I feel embraced by this all encompassing space of love. And I am also able to recall from this vantage point, that this fierce demon in the female form opposite me is in fact my lover, the one who creates within me the quality of adoration while making love.

It is humbling to imagine how patient the divine must be in waiting to get our attention so that they can assure us of their love.

I am not yet ready to speak of our loving others. That will only come as a result of our first being loved.

Closing

This listening, this willingness to learn, when once it has become established in us as not just something that we do from time to time when we are in a good mood, but is what we have become; when this state of being is who we are, then it is that the listening begins to take on the quality of "communion." You will recall that when in those rare times we have communion with another it is in a state of silence. But it is more than just no speaking. There is a deepening in the quality of the silence. It is as though you become one with the other.