“You stupidly squander so much energy trying to rearrange the world. If changing the world is your vocation in life, go right ahead and change it, but do not harbor the illusion that this is going to make you happy. What makes you happy or unhappy is not the world and the people around you, but the thinking in your head. As well as search for an eagle’s nest on the bed of an ocean, as search for happiness in the world outside of you.

So if it is happiness that you seek you can stop wasting your energy trying to cure your baldness, or build up an attractive body, or change your residence or job or community or lifestyle or even your personality. Do you realize that you could change every one of these things, you could have the finest looks and the most charming personality and the most pleasant of surroundings and still be unhappy?”

Fr. Anthony DeMello, S.J., in “The Way to Love”

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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.

“Once awakened, no thought goes unquestioned. Thoughts are recognized, when they cause suffering, to be lies; or at the very least, to be suspect until they are unraveled as a misunderstanding by a mind that can do nothing other than be offended. Thoughts are concepts and they produce an active mind. Even thoughts that contain seemingly altruistic ideas are still noisy thoughts. Simply attend a town meeting about how to obtain peace on Earth and you understand this point. Conversely, a deep sense of peace that arises from within is usually elicited by a feeling, not a thought, that comes from the source of life rather than from the ego. Again, a murderous thought is no different from a conceptual thought of universal brotherhood: busy mind or quiet mind is the choice.”

Lisette Larkins, in “Difficult People”

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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.

“The force that opposes determination is INERTIA. Inertia is not a static thing; it is a “dynamic force.” Like any force, it tends to magnify itself and gain momentum until or unless it is superseded by another force stronger than itself. If you jog every day, and then stop for a day, and then two days, and then three, the momentum of inertia will make it more and more difficult for you to re-initiate your practice. This is how we can get sidetracked from our dreams.

We slip into the undertow of inertia, and then forsake our commitment. It takes a strong will to buck inertia, but overcome it we must. When we refuse to be intimidated by unchosen habit, and we do just one act of our practice again, the momentum of the ‘practice’ will increase, and it will be easier and easier, and not harder and harder to continue.”

Alan Cohen in, “The Dragon Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”

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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.

“Resistance, in a very real way, shows up as blocks in your life. It appears in the form of the same old problems, ongoing arguments, issues that never seem to resolve but always seem to matter – the twenty pounds you are unable to lose, the resolutions you repeat annually, the excuses you make. Because our pockets of resistance become familiar behavior and a habitual way of living, we often fail to notice that we’re resisting at all.

Once you do tune in and gently look for the places resistance may be rooted in your life, you’ll see some distinctive patterns. Resistance is almost always focused around our fears.”

Polly Campbell, in “Imperfect Spirituality”

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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.

“Neale Donald Walsch: If religion can make people ecstatic, why can’t it heal the world?

God: Because organized religion as you currently create it is largely an exclusive experience. It is exclusive to the individual or the group experiencing it. You have not found a way to include everyone in the same experience – that is, society as a whole – because you have not found a way for everyone to agree on how the experience should be experienced. Indeed, you disagree on this question so dramatically that it has caused you to interrupt your own ecstasy to express your disapproval of another for not experiencing their ecstasy in the same way. You have argued with each other, battled with each other; and killed each other in your anger over this ecstasy.

Neale Donald Walsch: Why? Why have we done this? And why can’t religions heal this?

God: Organized religions by their nature exclude as many as they include. This would be non-problematic if religions were tolerant of those they exclude, yet far too often this is not the case.  Religions, which you count on to teach tolerance, have not learned how to practice it, and so, teach just the opposite.”

God, as spoken to Neale Donald Walsch, in “The New Revelations”

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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.