“We’ve created a God in our own image: angry and judgmental because we are. God Himself is merciful and all-loving, but we have projected onto Him our fear. This separates us from His love, from His healing, and from each other. When we change our perception from a God of wrath to a God of mercy, we will realize God is a divine physician. Our pain is the pain of hell, or separation from love. It isn’t God who sends us to hell for being bad, it’s God who delivers us from hell after the ego told us we are bad.

Hell is when you think you’re a terrible person and you never do anything right; God is the One who reminds you of the innocence in which you were created and to which He will help you return. Hell is when you feel you’re a complete and utter failure who will never succeed; God is the One who reminds you that He lives within you and that in Him all things are possible. Hell is when you think you can never escape your past mistakes; God is the One who makes all things new. It is the ego – not God – who casts us into the “fires of hell.” It is God who lifts us out of them.”

Marianne Williamson, in “The Gift of Change”

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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 devil is never anything other than one’s own devilish thoughts and feelings and these, no matter how devilish, can be changed. That is not to imply that it is always an easy task to do. While sometimes changes happen in the twinkling of an eye, more often they take months or even years of diligent attention.

Let’s face it, there can be plenty of dark thoughts and feelings. You’ve experienced them and so have we. Everyone has. To be rid of them, you have to deny that they have an existence of their own. They don’t exist on their own – they can’t. Acknowledge them as part of yourself. Once you’ve done this, you have begun the process of releasing them. You’ll be absolutely astonished at how the shadows scurry away when you turn on the light.”

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla, in “The Quest”

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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.

“As you become more powerful, you will begin to detach from the world because it is basically weak. Part of this detachment is your ability to withdraw from the mind-set and the feelings of society around you. The way that society controls you is that it implies that you are in some way responsible to it, or that at the very least you have a duty to it.

This, of course, is not true, and the God-Force does not ask you to support or not support anything. To accommodate this feeling, we tend to try to do what people want of us and have them like us. Once you go beyond worrying about whether people like you or not, then you can undercut their manipulation of you and establish a feeling of total independence. This is not a simple process, for remember, as a child you were programmed to seek approval by constantly doing what people wanted. Once you can go beyond that, the sky’s the limit.”

Stuart Wilde, in “Affirmations”

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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.

“Human beings often look outside of themselves to other individuals and admire or idolize their marvelous abilities rather than looking within and searching for their own remarkable talents. I learned a while ago that I am no different from the people I admire and the people I derive inspiration from. I just need to discover my unique ability and apply it in my life. Rather than looking to the external world for inspiration, look within and begin to utilize the enormous amount of resources contained within you. Realize the great abilities that are living silently inside of you waiting for their chance to experience excellence in your life. Admire and inspire yourself rather than those outside of you.”

Richard A. Singer, in “Your Daily Walk With the Great Minds”

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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.

“Everyone at some time or the other experiences feelings of what is known as insecurity. You feel insecure with the amount of money you have in the bank, or the amount of love you are getting from your friend or the type of educational background you have. Or you have insecurity feelings regarding your health or your age or your physical appearance.

If you were asked the question, “What is it that makes you feel insecure?” you would almost certainly give the wrong answer. You might say, “I don’t have enough of the love of a friend” or “I don’t have the kind of academic training I need,”  or some such thing. In other words, you would point to some outside condition not realizing that insecurity feelings are not generated by anything outside of you, but only by your emotional programming, by something you are telling yourself in your head.

If you change your program, your insecurity feelings would vanish in a second even though everything in the outside world remained exactly as it was before.”

Fr. Anthony DeMello, 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.