“What is really yours? The blessings you bring to yourself, through your spoken or silent word; the things you see with your inner eye. Only your doubts, fears and resentments keep your good from you. If you hate or resent a situation, you have fastened it to you, for your attract what you fear or dislike.

For example: someone has been unjust to you and you are filled with wrath and resentment. You cannot forgive that person. Time rolls on and another person does the same thing. It is because you have a picture of injustice engraved in your subconscious. History will repeat itself until you think you are cursed with misfortune and injustice. There is only one way to neutralize it. Be absolutely undisturbed by injustice and send good-will to all concerned.”

Florence Scovel Shinn, in “Power of the Spoken Word”

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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.

“There’s nothing worse than going to one of those New Age conferences and watching all those people strut about. Grim. Absolutely grim. People have such a strange idea about spirituality. They think spirituality is holy-moly, clanking little bells, putting on vestments and robes.

Spirituality is the garbage man who believes in himself, the bag lady who knows who she is. She’s living an uncluttered life – she’s sleeping under the bridge in Central Park. That’s spirituality, where you become the simplicity of the raven flying overhead, the simplicity of the little animal in the forest – at one and at peace with all things, at one and at peace with yourself.”

Stuart Wilde, in “Infinite Self”

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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.

“Criticism, like swearing, is actually nothing more than a bad habit. It’s something we get used to doing; we’re familiar with how it feels. It keeps us busy and gives us something to talk about.

If, however, you take a moment to observe how you actually feel immediately after you criticize someone, you’ll notice that you will feel a little deflated and ashamed, almost like you’re the one who has been attacked. The reason this is true is that when we criticize, it’s a statement to the world and to ourselves, “I have a need to be critical.” This isn’t something we are usually proud to admit.

The solution is to catch yourself in the act of being critical. Notice how often you do it and how bad it makes you feel. What I like to do is turn it into a game. I still catch myself being critical, but as my need to criticize arises, I try to remember to say to myself, “There I go again.” Hopefully, more often than not, I can turn my criticism into tolerance and respect.”

Richard Carlson, PH.D., in “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”

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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.

“Never act out of scarcity or panic. Do not allow yourself to be pressured into doing something you do not want to do or are not ready to do. Never let anyone frighten you into a decision. If you do, you will surely regret your action. Then you will have to retrace your steps and undo what you did from a position of “not enough.”

Instead, proceed from choice. Act when you are ready to act. Wait until you have come to a decision that works for you. If it’s not a “Hell, yes!” it’s a “Hell, no!” Associate with friends and business colleagues who are motivated by a positive vision than panic, hustling, or emotional manipulation. As you trust your inner knowing, your decisions will honor you and your intention.”

Alan Cohen, in “Why Your Life Sucks…And What You Can Do About It

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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.

“I don’t know if it is human nature or the way of life on Earth, but we seldom become all of who we are until forced into it. Some say that something in us rises to the occasion, that there is, as Hemingway called it, “a grace under pressure” that comes forth in most of us when challenged. Others say this talk of grace is merely a way to rationalize hard times and painful experience, a way to put a good face on tragedy.

Yet beneath all the talk of tragedy and grace, I have come to believe that we are destined to be opened by the living of our days, and whether we like it or not, whether we choose to participate or not, we will, in time, every one of us, wear the deeper part of who we are as a new skin.

Either by erosion from without or by shedding from within – and often from both – we are forced to live more authentically. And once the crisis that opened us passes, the real choice then becomes: Will we continue such authentic living?”

Mark Nepo, in “The Book of Awakening”

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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.