“A phase of heightened vulnerability usually occurs when you’re forced to let go of someone or something that you were using to help shore you up a little. This exposes the deficiency you were compensating for by  using that person or thing to prop you up. When you’ve been leaning on a rotten wall (lover, job, bad habit, etc.) and the wall suddenly collapses, you are momentarily unbalanced, and it is in this period, while striving to retrieve your balance, that you feel unsupported and vulnerable.

Vulnerability, however, is the only authentic state. Being vulnerable means being open, for wounding but also for pleasure. Being open to the wounds of life means also being open to the bounty and beauty. Don’t mask or deny your vulnerability; it is your greatest asset. Be vulnerable; quake and shake in your boots with it. The new goodness that is coming to you, in the form of people, situations, and things, can only come to you when you’re vulnerable, i.e., open.”

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

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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 voice that says, “That’s the way I am,” is the voice of knowledge. It’s the voice of the liar living in the Tree of Knowledge in your head. The Toltec consider it a mental disease that is highly contagious because it’s transmitted from human to human through knowledge. The symptoms of the disease are fear, anger, hatred, sadness, jealousy, conflict, and separation between humans. Again, these lies are controlling the dream of our life. I think this is obvious.

My grandfather told me in the simplest way, “Miguel, the conflict is between the truth and what is not the truth,” and this was nothing new. Two thousand years ago one of the greatest masters, at least in my story, said, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ Free from what? From all those lies. Especially from the liar who lives in your head and talks to you all the time. And we call it thinking! I used to tell my apprentices, “Just because you hear a voice in your head it doesn’t mean that it’s speaking the truth.”

Don Miguel Ruiz, in “The Voice of Knowledge”

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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.

“You have to think of yourself as a bank account of energy. How much are you paying out, and what is your return on effort? Sometimes you’ll see that the potential upside in a particular situation is very limited, and the possible downside might include defeat, ruin, ill health, loss of a valued friendship, or suffering of some kind or another. So don’t be obstinate. When faced with obstacles, work your way around them, or wait patiently; sometimes the obstacle disappears or melts away in time. Use your brain, not your skull. There is no heroism in whacking things with your head. That’s dumb.

Trust your feelings, ask, and watch the signs all around you. You’ll know how hard to try, when it’s right to push a little harder, and when it’s best to pull back. It’s in the constant asking of questions that you logically don’t know the answer to that you empower your inner guidance.”

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.

“Whenever you’re trying to be something other than who you are, in a condition other than how  you are, somewhere other than here  and at some time other than now, you’re going to be out of your body. The good news is that the choice is entirely yours. Most of the time, however, you don’t consciously choose to be out of your body. You go out as a means to avoid pain. Nonetheless, you must consciously decide to return to your body if you are to fulfill your purpose. Every time you’re unhappy and choose to blame, judge, criticize, hate, covet, cling or resist in some way, you leave your body’s space-time continuum.

As you can see, there are many ways to leave the body, but there is only one way to be in  it. You must learn to enjoy being who you are under all the present conditions.”

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

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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.

“It is said that if we want to be truly powerful we need but command what is happening to happen. While there is a humorous note in this advice, there is also a profound wisdom. We are most powerful when we are aligned with the flow of the universe. To deny what is, would be like running out on your front lawn in the morning and commanding the sun to reverse direction and set in the east. No matter how strong your wish for this to be so, your chances of succeeding are very slim.

Our attempts to make life other than it is, are just as foolish and ineffectual. To try to change people to suit us or fight against unchangeable situations is debilitating and useless. If something cannot be changed, our most powerful position is to go with it and find a blessing that we could not see when we wanted to be in charge.”

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.