“Humans are the only animals on earth who punish themselves a thousand times or more for the same mistake, and who punish everybody else a thousand times or more for the same mistake. How can we talk about injustice in the rest of the world when there is no justice in the world inside our own head? The entire universe is ruled by justice, but by true justice, not by the distortion of justice that we artists have created. True justice is facing what I call action-reaction. We live in a world of consequences; for every action there’s a reaction. True justice is to pay one time for every mistake we make. And how many times do we pay for every mistake? Obviously, this is not justice.
Let’s say you’re living with guilt and shame for a mistake you made ten years ago. The excuse for your suffering is, “I made a terrible mistake,” and you’re still suffering for something that happened ten years ago, but the truth is you’re suffering from something that happened ten seconds ago. You judged yourself again for the same mistake, and of course the big judge says, “You need to be punished.” It’s simple action-reaction. The action is self-judgment; the reaction is self punishment in the form of guilt and shame. All your life you repeat the same action, hoping to have a different reaction, and it never happens. The only way to change your life is to change the action, and then the reaction will change.”
Don Miguel 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.
