“St. John of the Cross wrote about life as a chess game you play with God, who is teaching you how to play. The game is designed to suite your particular style of learning and to help you become a master of the game. In other words, your life circumstances are your opportunities for awakening. However, when we feel hurt or ashamed, we usually lash out or run from the experience rather than embracing it as an opportunity for growth. The world is in divine order. You will keep encountering these opportunities. The more resistant we are to these lessons, the more difficult the experiences will be until we finally give up a little control, until we finally say “enough is enough!” Then, we can change things. It’s up to you how much you will endure until you reach this point.
And when you do, you can start exploring the beliefs you take for granted, the ones that you never thought to question. The vast majority of these beliefs cause suffering, but many of our ideas about life are so ingrained in the collective psyche that they seem totally logical, even necessary to our survival. Many of us believe we need our anger, worry, and fear to survive. You may have such a deep-seated and firm conviction about something that it becomes extremely difficult to recognize how deeply it impacts the quality of your life.
We’ve all heard it said: everything happens for a reason. But what we rarely realize is that, most of the time, WE are the reason. We find ourselves in this or that situation because of choices we have made.”
Sara Chetkin, in “The Healing Curve”
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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.
