JOSEPH NAFT'S INNER WORK -- 2

+ At Inner Frontier, Joseph Naft offers immense wisdom on a comprehensive spiritual practice.  Recently he began a series on The Eightfold Path:

1. Right View
2. Right Intention
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration  

Right Effort is this week's Inner Work focus. Excerpt: "Across the many spiritual and religious paths, the fundamental examples of active inner efforts concern our attention: directing it and maintaining it. Active inner efforts have the feel of ordinary effort, like lifting that weight or an extended period of physical labor. We focus our attention, we form our intention, and we carry it out. The practice of sensing our body and the practice of presence are both primarily active efforts. In the former we hold our attention in our body to awaken and stabilize the energy of body awareness, sensation. In practicing presence, we actively inhabit our life, we will ourselves to be here, to be. We make an initial effort in choosing and beginning a particular practice in a particular moment. And then we make the ongoing effort of continuously maintaining that practice for more than a few seconds, or repeating it regularly. Such active efforts build up enduring pathways in our will, which we experience as determination, commitment, and increasing ability. The steady accumulation of active efforts makes subsequent efforts a little easier and a little stronger."