“Beliefs form the foundation for a person’s life, so changing any fundamental belief in particular can be very challenging, and even more so if your family’s opinion remains a dominant influence in your life. However, once you make the decision to become more open-minded, it actually is increasingly easy to look at all of your beliefs in a more detached way. This “belief-review” process takes a bit of effort, but the potential rewards are significant as you come to the realization that perhaps much of what you’ve accepted as the truth actually serves to limit your possibilities for meaningful spiritual growth…
Simply put, it just takes some practice at being the “witness” that looks upon your life from the perspective of an observer. Once you develop some proficiency at being the detached observer of your life, you will find yourself being less emotionally attached to your beliefs. In my own life, there are times these days when I’ll look back at some of the old beliefs that were important to me, and I am actually amazed that I could have ever believed so many things that were not the least bit sustaining for me.
To me, the whole idea that God is some monarch in the sky who is keeping tabs on all of our choices is not reasonable. From a purely logical perspective, it doesn’t make sense that the Creator, the All That Is, the Pure Love of the Cosmos who loves without condition, actually “makes a list and checks it twice to find out who’s naughty and nice.” It really is somewhat amusing to think that the Creator who gave us “free will choice” now sits back and keeps moment-to-moment score of how each of us are doing with respect to obeying His/Her/Its commandments. Preposterous in my view, but an incredible number of people throughout the world believe it, making it exceptionally easy for many traditional religions to manipulate their behavior through the application of fear-based motivation (e.g., threats of Divine punishment) and guilt.”
Jeff Maziarek, in “Spirituality Simplified”
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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.
