14 Jun EXPERIMENTS WITH (DESERT) PRACTICE
Experiments with (Desert) Practice:
One of your responsibilities for this class is to experiment with the place of practice in your life, especially practices that help you open up and deepen your awareness, help you to see more and differently (one of the root meanings of contemplation: to see or behold). In the context of this course, we consider these to be “desert practices.” And it is an important part of how you will deepen your understanding of the ideas that are at the heart of this course.
Over the course of the semester, we invite you to spend 15 to 20 hours engaging in practices that will help you cultivate a fuller awareness of your self, your relationship and responsibility toward others and the presence of the transcendent (however you understand this). A key theoretical idea here is the Ignatian principle of contemplivus simul in actione (“contemplative while also in action”). Simultaneity. Integration. Wholeness. In other words how can you learn to bring greater awareness and attention to your life.
Practice:
To use the language of Jesuit philosopher Michel de Certeau, practices (including the most ordinary, everyday practices) can be understood as “tactics” that we employ to help us recover our own humanity, resist the dehumanizing forces that so often lead to a sense of fragmentation and even alienation, and respond to the suffering of others. In the context of this course, desert practice may refer to contemplative practice (any practice that helps you deepen or open up your own capacity for awareness); a practice that enables you to stand more fully in solidarity with others; or virtually any practice that helps you to see more fully and deeply (and overcome your own habitual blindness).
Guidelines:
We want you to pay attention to the kinds of practices to which you are being drawn at the moment. If you are already involved in a particular practice and want to pay more careful attention to it, that is fine. If you are engaged in some kind of a service activity and want to include that as part of your practice, that is also fine. See what you are being drawn to at this moment in your life and try to respond honestly and openly to that.
The basic distinction regarding the kinds of practices you may choose is between:
(a) “Ongoing practices.” Daily, weekly etc. practices that you give yourself to in a fairly disciplined way (MEDITATION).
(b) “Discrete practices.” These practices (e.g. attending a play or lecture, or participating in an act of social solidarity or going on a retreat, etc.), you will likely do only once.
MY CHOICE:
(a) one ongoing practice (MEDITATION) to commit yourself to during the semester; and that you participate in
(b) two discrete practices (ATTENDING A MUSIC CONCERT and PARTICIPATING IN AN ACT OF SOCIAL SOLIDARITY)
Write a four to five page (double-spaced) account of your “experiements with practice.” We ask that you pay particular attention to the following:
(a) Describe what you did (where, when, with whom etc.).
(b) Why did you choose to engage in this particular practice;
(c) What did you notice? What did this practice do for you, to you? What did it give you that you did not have before?
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