The Open-Eyed Meditation of Delight

So, you might try practicing this subtle and refined awareness whenever you see or smell or touch something delightful, especially if its something that arrests you.

Notice the sensation of wonder or appreciation or pleasure. Feel it as fully as you can. Then pause for a moment and acknowledge that this feeling comes from inside you, and see if you can simply rest in the sensation of pleasure itself, relishing it, feeling content with it almost as if you are removing the object of pleasure and just enjoying the sensation of wonder. You might also take a moment to recognize that when you do that, you are opening to what tantra calls the divine self, the joyful creative Intelligence that not only witnesses your life, but actually sees and tastes and hears through your senses.

If you make a habit of this practice, you'll probably notice how it begins to refine your perceptions, so that over time you find yourself experiencing the life around you with much greater subtlety. The inner experience you've cultivated not only becomes a resting place, it begins to filter your experience so that you see how everything that exists has its own beauty.

One of the great tantric sages, Abhinavagupta, says that when we remove the obstruction of focusing on the object we're enjoying, "we gain attentive Hearts, and that is supreme bliss." The tantric sages wrote a lot about this phenomenon—how their vision had shifted so that the world no longer seemed obstructive and 'other', but had become a reflection of their inner joy.

What we're doing when we practice the yoga of delight is cultivating their awakened outlook.

Of course, to live all the time in the experience of the world as bliss marks a radically advanced stage of enlightenment. Yet, each time we draw ourselves into the heart to savor external experience as an aspect of our own self, we can turn a moment of pleasure into a doorway to ecstasy.