“The first act of spiritual practice is simply “awareness.” Tune into thoughts and feelings. Observe. Witness. Get to know the content of consciousness: our fears, assumptions/beliefs, and emotional reactions. The first act is to turn out attention away from the world to our own subjective experience.
That doesn’t mean that our attention won’t ever come back, that we will become a zombie meditating in a cave in the Himalayas. Our attention can move back outward once we have fully witnessed our own subjective experience. Once we know how we created happiness or suffering in our own heart/mind, then we can be helpful to the world. We can help others see where meaningful change originates. But we can’t do that as long as we are living our lives in reaction to the thoughts and feelings of others. We can’t help others until we learn to help ourselves.”
Paul Ferrini, in “The Ecstatic Moment”
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Jeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in April 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.
