“Our culture is obsessed with planning, and much of it is inspired by fear. Heavy scheduling is a formidable way to avoid intimacy. If we are constantly busy, we do not have to face our feelings and deal with our issues I relationships. “Oh, I’m just too busy to be with a woman,” is a clear indication that the speaker is terrified of love and is willing to erect an array of barriers to protect himself from feeling the loneliness that is actually running him. A saturated day planner is often a symptom of weighty denial, and it should be recognized immediately as a warning flag of great psychic distress that is not being acknowledged or dealt with. (The insidious twist in the planaholic’s plight is that nearly our entire culture is heavily hypnotized to avoid intimacy through busy-ness. It is much more difficult to become free when most of the people around you share your form of insanity and call it reality.)

Someone who is heavily overscheduled is usually seriously threatened by absence of structure or quiet time alone. Such a one realizes that given even a little bit of space, she will have to face her feelings, and that kind of intimate confrontation is to be avoided at all costs. Sorrowfully, those costs include aliveness, health, and fulfilling relationships. You cannot be intimate if you erect a calendar as a wall between you and a potential beloved. And neither will you ever get to know yourself.”

Alan Cohen, in “Dare to Be Yourself”

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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.

“Enjoying your life is easy when you’re having fun. The challenge is enjoying being part of it when the going gets tough. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you have to enjoy tragedies. It’s knowing that you can choose to be happy with yourself no matter how miserable you feel or how terrible the circumstances that help you connect with your soul energy. It means learning to love yourself when you’re feeling angry, grief-stricken, or a failure.

It means finding humor in the cosmic joke, which is believing that truth, love and your fulfillment are not within you and that something could take them away.”

Michael J. Tamura, in “You Are the Answer”

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 story you’re dreaming today is not the same story that you were dreaming yesterday, or even half an hour ago. Every time you talk about your story, it changes depending on who you’re telling the story to, depending on your physical and emotional state at the time, depending on your beliefs at the time. Even if you try to tell the same story, your story is always changing. At a certain point, you find out that it’s nothing but a story. It isn’t reality; it’s a shared dream because all humans are dreaming at the same time. The shared dream of humanity, the dream of the planet, was there before you were born, and this is how you learned to create your own art, the story of you.”

Don Miguel Ruiz and Don Jose Ruiz, in “The Fifth Agreement”

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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 an adult, you must rediscover
the moving power of your life.

Tension, a lack of honesty,
and a sense of unreality
come from following
the wrong force in your life.

Work begins
when you don’t like
what you’re doing.”

Joseph Campbell, in “Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion” by Diane K. Osbon

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.

“Developing the ability to let go will accelerate your growth. Think of a time in your life when you let go of something, when you made a change and things were even better than before. One of the challenges of spiritual growth is learning to release those things that no longer serve you, bless them as they leave, and embrace the new as it comes.

Letting go is an important aspect of growing. To grow, you may want to let go of an attitude, such as anger or sadness. Sometimes you will need to let go of roles, such as pretending to be a victim or savior. Sometimes you will need to let go of a relationship, a job, or a way of life. Learn to open to the new and release the old when it no longer serves you. Everything comes into your life to teach you something.”

Sanaya Roman, in “Spiritual Growth”

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.