“Our thoughts powerfully influence the health of our minds and bodies, and delving into our inner selves is essential to the healing process. Yet negative patterns are not always at the root of illness, and a failure to heal should not always be blamed on negative past experiences or on negative beliefs buried deep in the unconscious mind. Too many people have told me that they have searched long and hard in their background for that missing negative experience, only to come up empty. Why and how, they wonder, can they unearth that missing piece of their psyche?

Healing from illness would be better served if we investigated our past for positive patterns as well as negative ones. Even as we seek out all that contribute to our weaknesses, we need to bring into focus the strong and enduring parts of our personalities. When people focus only on their negative patterns, all that is good about them and their lives can be eclipsed.”

Caroline Myss, in “Why People Don’t Heal And How They Can”

For more information regarding this book, visit Amazon.

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.

“Making pronouncements is like casting spells, as in spelling out your thought in word form. You always have the choice between seeing a situation, yours or someone else’s, in a positive or negative light. If a friend tells you her story, and you choose to see it in a negative light and make a negative pronouncement based on that view, this is tantamount to cursing her. Medical doctors often do this inadvertently by mistakenly pronouncing someone incurable, i.e., cursing them, thereby sabotaging the patient’s recuperative power.

If, on the other hand, you choose to see that situation in a positive light and make your pronouncement accordingly, this is tantamount to blessing them. So if someone comes to you complaining of her knee pain, telling her she’ll never walk again is a curse, whereas telling her you see her hiking up a mountain in six months time is a blessing.

When people inadvertently curse you in this way, on account of their own negative bent, be sure to counter it with an affirmation of your own. For example, your friend says, “You’ll never achieve that,” and rather than letting that negativity be the final command to the universe, you counter, “I can achieve anything I choose to.”

Stephen Russell, in “Barefoot Doctor’s Guide to the TAO”

For more information regarding this book, visit Amazon.

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.

“Have you ever been in a room so dark that even your hand in front of your face is blacked out? And the only way to get through the room without hurting yourself is to feel your way along the backs of the chairs or along the wall? In that case, all one can do is trust that they will eventually make it through to the light beyond the door on the other side of the room. The same is true of life…You must trust that you will make it through; and when you finally reach the light, the light will be that much sweeter to the eyes. Even the air will be different. You will feel peace and relax that the darkness is over.”

JB Lewis, in “The Soul & The Brain”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

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.

“As there are no problems in the NOW, there is no illness either. The belief in a label that someone attaches to your condition keeps the condition in place, empowers it, and makes it a seemingly solid reality out of a temporary imbalance. It gives it not only reality and solidity but also a continuity in time that it did not have before.

By focusing on this instant and refraining from labeling it mentally, illness is reduced to one of several of these factors: physical pain, weakness, discomfort, or disability. THAT is what you surrender to – now. You do not surrender to the idea of “illness.” Allow the suffering to force you into the present moment, into a state of intense conscious presence. Use it for enlightenment.”

Eckhart Tolle,  in “The Power of Now”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

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 harder you try to change, the worse it can get. Does this mean that a certain degree of passivity is all right? Yes, the more you resist something, the greater power you give to it. That’s the meaning, I think of, of Jesus’ words: “When someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him your left as well.” You always empower the demons you fight. That’s very Oriental. But if you flow with the enemy, you overcome the enemy.

How does one cope with evil? Not buy fighting it but by understanding it. In understanding, it disappears. How does one cope with darkness? Not with one’s fist. You don’t chase darkness out of the room with a broom, you turn on a light. The more you fight darkness, the more real it becomes to you, and the more you exhaust yourself. But when you turn on the light of awareness, it melts.”

Fr. Anthony DeMello, S.J., in “Awareness”

For more information regarding this book, visit Amazon.

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.