The importance of focus is not to be overlooked. Where there is focus, there is happiness. Focus with heart's joy is happiness.
Any focus on the negative, which is always less joyous, does not bring happiness.
When there is focus on what is called negative, there is always a division or distance. When you focus on a creative endeavor, however, your focus becomes a laser beam of attention. Focus on pain, for example, is extraneous to your Being. Therefore, awareness of pain shatters you, and you sort yourself into the category of victim. Awareness of pain is an intrusion. No matter how constant, it is intrusion rather than focus.
When you focus on something joyful (not merely pleasant), you become the coherence of that on which you focus. There is nothing else that exists in an exquisite moment of focus but your Being enthralled.
In a creative endeavor, there is a sweetness. This sweetness is much like what We experience when We, you and I, gaze into each other's eyes. Therefore, sweet focus is ennobling. It takes you out of the haphazard mainstream.
Even when your focus is on the mere sewing of a hem, there is a joy and a completion.
In that activity which is called negative, there is no completion. It is interminable.
Eternal is not interminable. Eternal is something else. Eternal has no beginning and no end. Therefore, it cannot be interminable nor seem interminable. Perhaps the reality of focus is that heart and mind work together in perfect synchronicity. Synchrony may be another name for joy. Awayness from joy is out of focus. Perhaps focus is when heart and mind do not compete. Perhaps heart and mind become balanced on a fulcrum of joy.
If We could say there is a scale of joy, the measurement line would indicate the degree of joy. Pleasure and pain would appear on the scale of joy somewhere along the line.
Or we could call the scale God, and have Me at one end. For Our intents and purposes, the other end could be called Limited Degree of God or Lack of Awareness of Joy. Quick fixes, from candy to drugs, would fall at the other end. Teaching and theft would be at different ends of the scale, for one is giving and the other is taking.
We could consider that the ends of the measurement line meet so there are no ends, and then what We would have is a circle. We could call this circle Life. The circle Life has degrees of God awareness along it. The scale would be of life with awareness of God and life with diminishing awareness of God and back again. Until one is totally immersed in God-ness, there would be movement on the scale to on degree or another. That's where you are now.
It is a long walk you take indeed when you don't know what you're about or what the walk is for. May you be spared from such a walk. Spare yourself. A walk without Me (I mean, of course, without Me lively in your awareness) is a barren walk, no matter what side shows there are along the way.
Take a God walk today. No matter which route you are on, no matter which hill you climb, with awareness of Me, your step will be lighter. Maybe you won't be so keen on noticing some of the boulders. Maybe some of the boulders won't even be there.
Why would anyone want to be without Me in their awareness?