“We need to keep a very special tool with us throughout the journey – PATIENCE. Without it I don’t think any of us can make it. With patience we can continue to live in the physical world while becoming more and more alive to the spiritual one. Keep a sense of humor too. I’ve noticed that we have a tendency to become too serious about spiritual things. Not all of physical life is evil or mundane, and not all of the resurrection is bearing a cross.
When things have become too much for you, lighten the demands you’re placing on yourself. Balance out your life between heavy and light, serious and funny, work and play, purposefulness and nonsense. Take a long slow walk with a child or learn a new song to sing in the shower or a new joke to share with some friends.
Another old saying that has helped me with patience and staying relaxed yet focused on what I knew must be done is, “Be content, but never satisfied.” There’s a certain energy to contentment that is needed if we are to succeed without wasting ourselves, whereas satisfaction implies an acceptance of what is. We need to keep reaching beyond our present levels if we are to regain our greater state, but do so with a patient, contented energy.”
John Van Auken, in “Born Again & Again”
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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.
