“Craving distorts and destroys perception. Fears and desires haunt us. Samuel Johnson said, “The knowledge that he is to swing from a scaffold within a week wonderfully concentrates a man’s mind.” You blot out everything else and concentrate only on the fear, or desire, or craving. In many ways we were drugged when we were young. We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, for approval, appreciation, applause – for what they called success. Those are words that do not correspond to reality.
They are conventions, things that are invented, but we don’t realize that they don’t correspond to reality. What is success? It is what one group decided is a good thing. Another group will decide the same thing is bad. What is good in Washington might be considered bad in a Carthusian monastery. Success in a political circle might be considered failure in some other circles. These are conventions. But we treat them like realities, don’t we?”
Fr. Anthony DeMello, S.J., in “Awareness”
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Jeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in May 2007 as a Web-based forum for “PONDER on THIS,” a series of weekday inspirational email messages he began sending to subscribers in March 1999. A FREE service since its inception, “PONDER on THIS” provides subscribers with meaningful content to assist them on their individual paths of spiritual growth. In addition, it benefits subscribers, authors, and publishers by including links to Amazon.com where subscribers can learn more about the book being quoted, and also purchase it.
