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Virtual Book Tour: Guest Post at A Photographic Sage – Quieting the Mind through Contemplative Photography

Last week Patricia Turner at A Photographic Sage reviewed my new book and today I offer up a guest post at her blog on Quieting the Mind through Contemplative Photography:

Eyes of the HeartAbba Poemen said: “A (person) may seem to be silent, but if his heart is condemning others he is babbling ceaselessly. But there may be another  who talks from morning till night and yet he is truly silent; that is,  he says nothing that is not profitable.” (Poemen 27)

Quieting the mind may be the biggest challenge we face as people desiring a more  contemplative way of being.  Finding external silence is the first step, but once we immerse ourselves in a quiet place, we may discover  something unsettling – that our minds are full of chatter, our thoughts  seem to be on a never-ending loop of criticism and commentary. We  discover this in keen ways when we sit down to meditate, or try to  create art from a place of stillness.

The early Christian monks of the desert, described the silence they would seek as hesychia, which means stillness, silence, a profound inner quiet. As Abba Poemen  describes person can live alone and still experience much noise within  and a person can live in the midst of a crowd and have a true sense of  stillness in their heart.  True inner silence offers us the gift of  freedom from the endless stories we make up about the world.

Click here to purchase a copy of Eyes of the Heart>>

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