About Pondercentral.com

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. It also 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.

NOTE: For those visiting this site using a smartphone or other mobile device, please either move the display to the left or right (or page down) to find the nav-bar content, which includes links to specific categories of posts based on their primary subject matter (e.g., Abundance, Belief, Challenges and Obstacles, Change, Forgiveness, Present Moment Awareness, Surrender) and other links.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Friday, February 14th, 2025 by Ching Ning Chu in THICK FACE BLACK HEART

“When one’s duty is performed with a sense of detachment, the very work performed becomes a sacrifice and therefore a worship to our Maker. What do I mean by detachment? Because we are made of flesh, it is necessary to receive a monetary reward to support our life. Being overly concerned with the reward will never enhance the outcome of our work but instead will interfere with our performance. When an archer’s eye is on the prize rather than the bull’s-eye, he surely will miss the bull’s-eye as well as the prize.

What do I mean by sacrifice? Sacrifice is an act of offering – offering our labor to the One who grants us the ability to act. We perform our work without the attachment to self-gratification. Just adopting this attitude, our efforts become a sacrifice to our Maker. Thus, the sacrifice serves as worship.

Treating your work as sacrifice and worship will not lessen your compensation. Whatever reward we deserve will come to us. In fact, this attitude will transform the ordinary task to something sacred. It will enhance your performance and lead to greater compensation.”

Chin-Ning Chu, in “Thick Face, Black Heart”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Thursday, February 13th, by Philip Comella in THE COLLAPSE OF MATERIALISM

“When future historians write the chronicle of our age, they will tell the story of a people rising to the realization that together they dream the world. This realization – or enlightenment – will start slowly and then gain momentum as the evidence supporting it builds and other explanations for the world begin to fade away. As the realization grows, it will mark the beginning of a new world, one that reflects humankind’s highest dream: a people united in body and in spirit. This new world will be joined together by a higher truth, a transcendent purpose, a unified way of thinking that connects our souls with the galaxies spiraling high above in the cosmos.”

Philip Comella, in “The Collapse of Materialism”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Wednesday, February 12th, 2025 by Paul Ferrini in THE SILENCE OF THE HEART

“Every fear or insecurity you have about yourself is a button waiting to be pushed. The fact that people push these buttons is not at all remarkable. What is remarkable is that you blame them for pushing them. When you wear a sign that says “hit me,” are you surprised that a few people come along and take you literally? True, not everyone does. Some people just laugh and move along. But others stop and glare at you or take you at your word. They are wearing a sign that says “hit me” too. They know you how feel. They know you need to be hit to feel better about yourself. You have been a bad girl or boy and you need to be punished. They are only too happy to oblige.

People who attack you are doing what they, in their self-deluded way, think you want them to do. They are doing it “for your own good.” They are always able to justify their behavior toward you and you in turn can justify it too.

Never do you think “This is unacceptable. This should not and cannot happen. I will not permit it.” If the abused were to believe and communicate this fully, abuse could not happen.”

Paul Ferrini, in “The Silence of the Heart”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Tuesday, February 11th, 2025 by Fr. Anthony DeMello in AWARENESS

“Don’t ask the world to change – you change first. Then you’ll get a good enough look at the world so that you’ll be able to change whatever you think ought to be changed. Take the obstruction out of your own eye. If you don’t, you have lost the right to change anyone or anything. Till you are aware of yourself, you have no right to interfere with anyone else or with the world.

Now the danger of attempting to change others or change things when you yourself are not aware is that you may be changing things for your own convenience, your pride, your dogmatic convictions and beliefs, or just to relieve your negative feelings. First, cope with YOUR negative feelings so that when you move out to change others, you’re not coming from hate or negativity but from love. It may seem strange, too, that people can be very hard on others and still be very loving. The surgeon can be hard on a patient and yet loving. Love can be very hard indeed.”

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

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Monday, February 10th, 2025 by Neale Donald Walsch in FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD

“So this is how you’ve got it constructed: if I’m to grant you your reward in heaven, I expect you to do things My way. And this you call God’s love. Then, you hold each other in the same place of expectation, and you call this love. Yet it not love, in either case, for love expects nothing save what freedom provides, and freedom knows nothing of expectation.

When you do not require a person to show up as you imagine you need them to be, then you can drop expectation. Expectation goes out the window. Then you love them exactly as they are. Yet this can only happen when you love your Self exactly as you are. And that can only happen when you love Me exactly as I am. In order to do that you must know me as I am, not as you have imagined me to be.

That is why the first step in having a friendship with God is to know God, the second step is to trust the God that you know, and the third step is to love the God that you know and trust. You do that by treating God as someone you know and trust.”

God, as spoken to Neale Donald Walsch, “Friendship with God”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Friday, February 7th, 2025 by Russell Kyle in AWAKENED LIVING

“The shift to a higher awareness begins with a change within, a shift it perception; a change in our outlook on life. It is to become aware of the truth that the world that we think determines our happiness is actually only a reflection of our state of mind. Our ideas, judgments, beliefs, points of view, prejudices, hopes, expectations, and fears have become for us a very obscured pair of glasses through which we view our world.

We point the finger at the so called problems, when the true problem is blurring our vision of that which we are pointing. Our view of the world is not as clear as we may think. In fact, in regards to thinking, we can’t even really believe everything we think. Our vision, thinking, has been shaded and obscured by our taught, self and otherwise, interpretations. So long we have lived blaming others or outside situations for our inner discomfort when really the cause of the discomfort is our and has been all along. We have chosen our thoughts, beliefs, and interpretations so we too are choosing the world we live in. We are the creators of our experience, as we choose to interpret it so do we experience it. That’s the bottom line.”

Russell Kyle, in “Awakened Living”

For more information about this book visit Amazon

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Thursday, February 6th, 2025 by P.M.H. Atwater in DYING TO KNOW YOU

“We cannot keep the life we have on the earth-plane, not our possessions or attachments or relationships. What we can keep is our memories and our feelings of what we have integrated into our heart of hearts from the experience of being here, plus the love we have shared with others. This, what we can keep, enriches God’s experience of us as well as enriching our experience of ourselves and one another. How joyful this is depends on what we did about who we are.

Each gain or loss anyone makes affects everyone else to some degree. That’s because we are connected, somehow, as sparks from The Mind of God. Everything created either has a soul or is capable of being “ensouled.” Because human beings contain larger portions of a soul mass than many other forms/beings, they represent opportunities of greater diversity, challenge, and activity. Yet even animals, minerals, plants, and planets, contain degrees of ensoulment replete with intelligence, feeling, memory, and volition. Density and shape may seem to deny this, but the creative fire is ever-present, ever-when.”

P.M.H. Atwater, in “Dying to Know You”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Wednesday, February 5th, 2025 by Susan Shumsky in INSTANT HEALING

“The first step to self-mastery is self-authority, which means realizing you are the captain of your own ship of destiny. When you take mastery over your life, knowing you create your future through your thoughts, words, and deeds, no one and nothing can dissuade you from your divine plan and purpose. You walk the royal highway to glory.

Self-authority means you are in control. Yet, at the same time, you are led by a higher force that guides you. As you walk the straight path toward your goals, a brilliant light illumines the way. You are not seduced by crooked byways and detours leading you astray. You walk patiently, step by step, with full confidence and faith, knowing you are on the highest road. Many people are weakened by the influences of others.”

Susan Shumsky, in “Instant Healing”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Tuesday, February 4th, 2025 by Eric Butterworth in DISCOVER THE POWER WITHIN YOU

“Most of our thoughts about “what we shall eat and drink and wear” are related to tomorrow. We scrimp and save and provide for the “rainy day.” We develop a kind of neurosis based on subtle fears for the future. We save our best linen for special occasions. Certain items of clothes are “too good to wear every day.” Often they deteriorate before we ever put them to use. Today, insurance is a protection against the unknown of the future. Many people carry so much insurance against future discomforts that they may go hungry today in order to pay their premiums. They make themselves unhappy now, in trying to keep from being unhappy in the future.

When you know your divinity, you know it is not for just a day but for always. You enter a higher dimension in thought, and you come to live “with the license of a higher order of beings.” There is no concern for tomorrow, for tomorrow only exists when it becomes today. And when it becomes today, it brings its own challenges and its own blessings.”

Eric Butterworth, in “Discover the Power Within You”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Monday, February 3rd, 2025 by Donald Altman in ONE MINUTE MINDFULNESS

“Forgiveness does not mean we forget a violation or injustice and allow it to reappear in our lives. However, every story has many perspectives, and it may be that the truth of our story can reveal our strength, not just our weakness and vulnerability. Viktor Frankl’s five years in Auschwitz and other concentration camps could have buried him in a personal story of abuse, bitterness, and anger. Instead, he used the experience to write Man’s Search for Meaning, a book about finding purpose and meaning in life’s most difficult circumstances. Even when Frankl was close to death in a concentration camp, he did not dwell on the horrific circumstances but maintained a focus on his strengths and his desire to complete his manuscript, and this kept him alive.

What is the alternate story of your experience, and what does it reveal about you? What strengths have you developed? Difficult experiences often call upon our tenacity, hope, cooperation, resourcefulness, adaptability, belief in ourselves, commitment to a goal or purpose, love, generosity, and compassion, as well as our humor, among other qualities. To this list, we can add the strength of extending forgiveness.”

Donald Altman, in “One Minute Mindfulness”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Friday, January 31st, 2025 by Jack Kornfield in A PATH WITH HEART

“Do not confuse desire with pleasure. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying pleasant experiences. Given the many difficulties we often face in life, enjoyment is wonderful to have. However, the wanting mind grasps at the pleasure. We are taught in this culture that if we can grasp enough pleasurable experiences quickly one after another, our life will be happy. By following a good game of tennis with a delicious dinner, a fine move, then wonderful sex and sleep, a good morning jog, a fine hour of meditation, an excellent breakfast, and off to an exciting morning of work, happiness will last. Our society is masterful at perpetuating this ruse. But will this satisfy the heart?”

Jack Kornfield, in “A Path With Heart”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Thursday, January 30th, 2025 by J.M. DeBord in DREAMS 1-2-3

“Everything in a dream is a metaphor, allusion, analogy, figure of speech, comparison – a representation of something else. To connect dream symbolism with yourself, look especially at the action of the dream. It’s like the difference between a photo of a scene and a video of it. You have to guess at what is going on in a photo because the action is frozen in time, but a video shows it happening. A symbol by itself, just a photo, has a variety of interpretations. Combined with the action, it tells a story. Your dreams are stories about your life, so to understand what they are saying, start with the action.”

J.M. DeBord in “Dreams 1-2-3”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Wednesday, January 29th, 2025 by Wayne W. Dyer in MANIFEST YOUR DESTINY

“I have often been asked questions like this one: “If I do this meditation as you suggest, can I really win the lottery?” My response to this question is, “How would you feel if you won the lottery?” The answers are something similar to “I would feel blessed, secure, ecstatic, content.” It is this feeling picture that is crucial for one to have…Manifesting is not about making demands of God and the universe. Manifesting is a cooperative venture in which your intention is aligned with divine intelligence. That intelligence is in all things and in you simultaneously. You are not separate from that which you would like to manifest. It is you, you are it.

There is only one power in the universe, and you are connected to that power. Demanding that God send you your desire according to your timetable and design reinforces the incorrect idea of God as a separate entity.”

Wayne W. Dyer, in “Manifest Your Destiny”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Tuesday, January 28th, 2025 by Deepak Chopra in THE WAY OF THE WIZARD

“When you wake up in the morning, there is an instant before you start thinking about your day, a moment of feeling awake without any particular thought on your mind. You are just yourself, in a simple state of awareness. This experience of simplicity repeats itself off and on during the day, but few people notice it, because our habit is to identify with the thinking process. It too goes on throughout the day. In reality, however, YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU ARE THINKING. You may find this hard to believe, but the thoughts in your head don’t belong to you – they belong to your name, to the roles you have slipped into.”

Deepak Chopra, in “The Way of the Wizard”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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BEST of PONDER on THIS for Monday, January 27th, 2025 by Jeremy E. McDonald in PEACE BE STILL

“The reality is, we are always projecting. You as a being are one giant projector. Since you are projecting out to the world how you feel on the inside, the question you have to ask yourself is, “Do I want to project the fear inside of me, or do I want to project the love inside of me?” If you project the love inside of yourself, then you will also experience love all around on the outside. When we release and face our fears, our world changes to a different projection…This is a far different life from being enslaved by your fears and outside stimuli and being in constant reaction. The abuser in your life is you. You create exactly what happens all around you at all times just by your reactions and how you feel on the inside.”

Jeremy E. McDonald, in “Peace Be Still”

For more information about this book visit Amazon.

Jeff MJeff 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.

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