Bonus: Conscious Enjoyment Practice

Thomas Hübl:

Hello and welcome back. Today’s day three of the challenge that we are going through, mastering our inner world training, aligning our energy, but also having a longer term practice. So these practices are here for you to take away and to of course, practice far beyond this challenge if you need them because they all fulfill different, let’s say, qualities in us, needs in us, but also train certain capacities. And yesterday we went from stress to more relaxation. And I said, it’s yummy. Relaxing is yummy. And it puts us into a lovely inner space and it gives us also perspective. So when I want to reflect on something or I need to have more space to understand something deeper, find new solutions, stress, relaxation or stress regulation, important things, because when my mind is more stressed it, I might stay in habitual thinking patterns that are more fueled by the stress.

But if I gain perspective, so I’ll come up with new things. And one important part that’s maybe sometimes neglected in the spiritual practice is enjoyment. And enjoyment is joyful and pleasant and lovely. So we don’t need to say why enjoyment is good, simply good, but it also has certain functions. For example, it helps me to recharge my battery. It helps me to up level or upgrade my life energy. And it’s in a way, a very powerful presencing practice in disguise because in order to consciously enjoy something, if I drink a cup of tea or I walk through the forest, or I listen to lovely music, so either the music’s there, the forest there, and I’m in my thinking bubble, and I’m busy with my inner experience and solving things and being busy with my life or the forest and me, myself start to be in a resonance. The music that I listen to and my body, my emotions, my experience, enter a mutual space, the tea that I’m drinking and the quality, the taste, the smell, temperature, there’s a resonant mutual space.

And I want us to pay attention today to choose something because I think even when we have very packed days, high profile jobs, a lot to do, many commitments or responsibilities, it’s just taking five minutes, five minutes, sometimes even one minute and or of course we can do it also longer, but five minutes of real enjoyment of something that I choose to enjoy. And whatever that is for you, see if you can find something today to commit to the practice of I will enter into a conscious relation resonance space with something that I do, something that I eat, something that I drink, something that I listen to, something just enjoying the sunshine on my skin or enjoying a sunset or a sunrise, whatever it is where I walk through nature. And I allow myself to feel and connect to all the nuances that in my daily life I’m often not aware of. So I use the practices of the first two days I ground myself. I look at my stress levels, I relax them a bit so that I’m free enough to be a space of enjoyment. And then whatever I like to do, choose something that you like or like to do or like to consume or whatever, be with.

And then see if you can get deeper and deeper into very refined nuances. When you sit in nature and you hear the birds, you feel the breeze, or you feel the rain, or you feel the wind and you feel the ground, you hear very fine noises and a bird singing, and you allow yourself that resonance space.

It’s almost like as if you’re becoming more one with the experience itself and so that the body can participate in the pleasure of enjoyment. It is not just a spiritual joy, it’s also like a physical joy. I enjoy through my body, sitting in nature, walking through nature, listening to music. I listen to music and I let my whole body participate in that experience. And I listen to finer and finer details that usually in my regular busyness I can’t perceive because my focus is too narrow. Just do five minutes,

Doesn’t need to be long. It should be a concentrated practice. And then see how that affects your life energy, your inner experience, and do it with something that you really enjoy. And of course, this suggestion today is also an invitation to scan your life in general and see how many quality moments of joy or enjoyment do you have. And do you have moments in your days where you can in a way rest for a moment to enjoy the presence that enjoyment brings? As I said, to really enjoy something consciously means that I become more present. I slow down enough to have a much richer experience of something that I enjoy. And even the enjoyment in my body, how joy and enjoyment feels in me in resonance with something is a contemplative practice.

So on the one hand, like the question, how much joy in your life do you have altogether? And do you give yourself permission to enjoy life and to enjoy certain parts of your life consciously? And the other one is to practice for five minutes what I said, deepening and deepening into the quality of enjoyment that you have with something that you choose. And that’s our practice for today.