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Let me tell you about my day. I get up at 8 o'clock in the morning. At 8:30 am, I leave the house and I arrive at my office at 8:37. I stay in the office until 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I get in my Porsche and I'm home at 2:03 because the one-way streets make it faster for me to drive. And between 8:36 am and 2 pm, I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.
Beyond Words is an exceptionally useful and inspiring digest of Dzogchen (Great Perfection) teachings and the teachers associated with them. The ancient prediction that Dzogchen would benefit many during these degenerate times, makes this comprehensive introduction especially relevant. The authors have made these profound teachings accessible and Beyond Words will be useful to both inexperienced and seasoned readers.
For hevene myghte nat holden it, so was it hevy of hymself,Til it hadde of the erthe eten his fille.And whan it hadde of this fold flessh and blood taken,Was nevere leef upon lynde lighter therafter,And portatif and persaunt as the point of a nedle,That myghte noon armure it lette ne none heighe walles.Forthi is love ledere of the Lordes folk of hevene,And a meene, as the mair is, [inmiddes] the kyng and the commune.
Especially look to those sins to which your crosses have some reference and respect. Are you crossed in your goods? Think if you did not over-love them and get them unjustly, or if in your children, see if you did not over-love them and cocker them, and so in all things of like kind. In what God smites vou, see if you have not in that sinned against Him, and so frame to lament your sins and to seek help against them.
It was clear: I was sick. I never used to dream. They say in the old days it was the most normal thing in the world to have dreams. Which makes sense: Their whole life was some kind of horrible merry-go-round of green, orange, Buddha, juice. But today we know that dreams point to a serious mental illness. And I know that up to now my brain has checked out chronometrically perfect, a mechanism without a speck of dust.
I have to throw in on a personal note that I didn't like history when I was in high school. I didn't study history when I was in college, none at all, and only started to do graduate study when my children were going to graduate school. What first intrigued me was this desire to understand my family and put it in the context of American history. That makes history so appealing and so central to what I am trying to do.
Yet, isn't it strange, isn't it weird, how we can KNOW that someone is not behaving in the way we imagine, and at the same time we can be totally convinced that he is! How clever the human mind is, that it can accept two contradictory things as 'facts.' Yes, I know that in this case one 'fact' was untrue. But the human mind can KNOW something is untrue and still accept it as a 'fact,' and act on it as if it were true.
I looked upon a clock to find the truth. The hours were passing like ivory chess figures, striking piano notes, and the minutes raced on wires mounted like tin soldiers. Hours like tall ebony women with gongs between their legs, tolling continuously so that I could not count them. I heard the rolling of my heart-beats; I heard the footsteps of my dreams, and the beat of time was lost among them like the face of truth.
The reputation of a Don Juan gives to a man the most dangerous power. Wise virgins resist it, but foolish virgins frequently yield to the desire to take a celebrated lover from a rival - even from a friend. This emotion is a complex one, mad up of vanity, respect for another woman's taste, and the need to establish self-assurance by winning a difficult victory. Don Juan chose his first mistresses; later he was chosen.
Most people fail at whatever they attempt because of an undecided heart. Should I? Should I not? Go forward? Go back? Success requires the emotional balance of a committed heart. When confronted with a challenge, the committed heart will search for a solution. The undecided heart searches for an escape. A committed heart does not wait for conditions to be exactly right. Why? Because conditions are never exactly right.
Black was bestlooking. ... Ebony was the best wood, the hardest wood; it was black. Virginia ham was the best ham. It was black on the outside. Tuxedos and tail coats were black and they were a man's finest, most expensive clothes. You had to use pepper to make most meats and vegetables fit to eat. The most flavorsome pepper was black. The best caviar was black. The rarest jewels were black: black opals, black pearls.
Americans like warm characters. It's why, no matter what he did in the early days, they kind of resonated to Bill Clinton because he seems like a guy that you could sit down and have a burger and a beer with. It's even why, despite the fact that he sometimes seemed to be not firing on all cylinders, lots of them still like George W. Bush - because he seemed like the kind of guy you could have a burger and a beer with.
Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us. It is a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly, or the conversations among the cognoscenti, those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.
Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. When independent-thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the “Nation,” it’s time for all of us to sit up and worry.
In Iraq, until before the war, the women were scientists, museum directors, doctors. I'm not valourising Saddam Hussein or the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which was brutal and killed hundreds of thousands of people - it was the Soviet Union's Vietnam. I'm just saying that now, in these new wars, whole countries have slipped into mayhem - the women have just been pushed back into their burqas - and not by choice.
I don’t see any police cars.” “They probably had to park a couple blocks over. Anyway, as I was saying, I noticed illegal substances in the hands of a few guests.” “So?” she snapped. “It’s a party.” “Alcohol is illegal under the age of twenty-one.” “Great!” Marcie shouted. “What am I going to do?” She paused, then raised her voice again. “You probably called them!” “Who, me?” Vee said. “And lose the free food? No way.
Your goal is simple: Finish. Experience your first race, don't race it. Your first race should be slightly longer or slightly faster than your normal run. Run your first race. Later you can race. You will be a hero just for finishing, so don't put pressure on yourself by announcing a time goal. Look at it this way: The slower you run the distance, the easier it will be to show off by improving your time the next race!
I think that people who study the scriptures get a dimension to their life that nobody else gets and that can’t be gained in any way except by studying the scriptures. There’s an increase in faith and a desire to do what’s right and a feeling of inspiration and understanding that comes to people who study the gospel—meaning particularly the Standard Works—and who ponder the principles, that can’t come in any other way
In February, the overcast sky isn’t gloomy so much as neutral and vague. It’s a significant factor in the common experience of depression among the locals. The snow crunches under your boots and clings to your trousers, to the cuffs, and once you’re inside, the snow clings to you psyche, and eventually you have to go to the doctor. The past soaks into you in this weather because the present is missing almost entirely.
Though it is true we are the highest and smartest animals, ospreys have eyes we have calculated to be sixty times more powerful and sophisticated than our own and that blindness, often caused by microscopic parasites that are themselves miracles of ingenuity, is one of the oldest and most tragic disorders known to man. And why award the superior eye (or in the case of cat or bat, also the ear) to the inferior species.
You should go." "I can't." "Because you want to stare at the monster?" Alec's green eyes blaze, but with a wholly human fire now. "Or because you pity me?" I couldn't guess which possibility he loathes more. I fold my arms. "I can't leave because the door's locked. Believe me, I would've gone hours ago if I could have." "Oh. Of course." Then he looks so abashed--so boyish, and so handsome--that I almost want to laugh.
i learned that predators don't intentionally choose the weak or old or sick. they kill what they can, which means the slow members of the pack. thus, they strengthen the very gene pool they're feeding from. the threshold for what is weak, old or sick gets raised, and the strength, speed and instincts of new generations of hunters grow. a beautiful, self-perpetuating system where evolution is the antithesis of entropy.
Many people have trouble sticking to their resolutions, and there is a simple scientific explanation for this. In 1987, a team of psychologists conducted a study in which they monitored the New Year's resolutions of 275 people. After one week the psychologists found that 92 percent of the people were keeping their resolutions; after two weeks we have no idea what happened because the psychologists had quit monitoring.
Mum said earlier what a lovely dress you’re wearing.” Beryl’s eyebrows wriggled like two tiny tapeworms. “This?” she said. “But I’ve had this for years.” It was a beige dress that would have looked better on an eighty year-old. Any eighty-year-old, man or woman. “I think you’ve really grown into it,” Valkyrie said. “I always thought it was a little shapeless.” Valkyrie resisted the urge to say that was what she meant.
The rest of the journey passed uneventfully, if you consider it uneventful to ride fifteen miles on horseback through rough country at night, frequently without benefit of roads, in company with kilted men armed to the teeth, and sharing a horse with a wounded man. At least we were not set upon by highwaymen, we encountered no wild beasts, and it didn't rain. By the standards I was becoming used to, it was quite dull.
We certainly did take the country from the Indians. Right. So, but what's going on here, as I would call it a, sort of, morality tale. What the progressives do is, they take a few nuggets of American history, Columbus' arrival, then the founder's compromise with slavery, and what they do is they fast forward to their favorite episode, so to speak, and they create a story out of that leaving a whole bunch of facts out.
Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever.
Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.
Prejudice against womenis many, many times intensified against older women. You are viewed not as an intellect but as a body.... Astonishingly, even women's liberation has paid extraordinarily little attention to the older woman and to the fact that her job is limited because she is [older]. They say that women shouldn't be sex objects, but you damned well better be a sex object if you want to get ahead in television.
The Last Arrow transcends a moment or an issue. It is a call to move beyond self-indulgence to a life of sacrificial service. In The Last Arrow I address a broad spectrum of issues from the Syrian refugee crisis to the cultural epidemic of depression to the personal struggle of insignificance. The Last Arrow is a clarion call to make a difference in the world rather than a self-help book for personal self-improvement.
The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.
Writing is eternal, For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent, And the quick eye of the reader is cleared by the reed of the scribe. As a fossil in the rock, or a coin in the mortar of a ruin, So the symbolled thoughts tell of a departed soul: The plastic hand hath its witness in a statue, and exactitude of vision in a picture, And so, the mind, that was among us, in its writings is embalmed.
These are illusions of popular history which successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumpths; a good deed is its own rewards; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness
I've traveled all over the world for the Institute, but I never dreamed I'd meet someone like you." "Strong?" A chuckle escaped her. "Yes." "Handsome?" "Of course." "Sharp of wit and skilled with a sword?" "Absolutely." An other chuckle. "But I mean a man… friend… guy. Oh, I don't know what to call you!" He savored her amusement—and her earnest words. "Just call me yours. That is all I want to be." (Ashlyn and Maddox)
"My #1 guiding principle for a successful life (learned from J Brad Britton): "Do the right thing; not the easy thing." Everyday, you are constantly faced with choices to do either the right thing (any activity that moves you closer to where and who you want to be) or the easy thing (anything else). In every moment of choice, choose to do the right thing over the easy thing, and your becoming successful is inevitable.
My father died when I was 10; my sister got polio a couple of years later and was paralyzed. So there I was - my sister in a wheel chair, my father gone, and my mother a quiet little mouse. You see, it was the '30s in the South, so my mother was not prepared to cope. So I was scared to death. And being that scared, everything afterward became a struggle not to go down the drain. Struggling became a way of life for me.
The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, would be good for me, too.
If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly.... You are paid for being something less than a man. The state does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe.
How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?
the present Western civilization ... is dominated by the extravert viewpoint. There are plenty of reasons for this domination: extraverts are more vocal than introverts; they are more numerous, apparently in the ratio of three to one; and they are accessible and understandable, whereas the introverts are not readily understandable, even to each other, and are likely to be thoroughly incomprehensible to the extraverts.
The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was living., though he did not know it. He was realizing his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made.... He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
Wretched unfair, it is,” he remarked. “Of the three of us, I’m the one who’s always collected the rare and unusual, yet you two managed to snag the world’s most unusual women. First you, Crispin, with the only living half-breed, who then turned into an even more unusual vampire. And now you, Charles, have bagged a shape-shifter. Thought you were joking when you said Denise was the kitty. I’m simply green with jealousy
I thought you'd gotten over your whoring when you left him, Catherine, but it seems you only postponed it." Bones' face turned to stone, and he answered her even before I could snap out an indignant response. "Don't you ever speak to her that way again." There was pure warning in the whip of his words. "You can call me any name you like and more, but I will not stand by while you slander her out of your own ignorance.
Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.
let me tell you what happens when you cook down the syrup of loss over the open fire of sorrow: it solidfies into something wlaw. not grief, like you'd expect, or even regret. no, it gets thick as paste, black as ash; yet it isn't until you dip a finger in and feel that sharp taste dissolving on your tounge that you realize this is angel in its purest form, unrefined; a substance to be weighed and measyred and spread.
The only thing we can control is what we do in the present. The more we replay yesterday, the further we get from today's opportunities. And the further away we move from opportunities, the tougher the road is to get back. Opportunities never look as good coming as they do going, and they wait for no one. We need to be highly attentive to spot them. And we must be focused on our present capabilities, not past regrets.
Whenever I mentor people and help them discover their purpose, I always encourage them to start the process by discovering their strengths, not exploring their shortcomings. Why? Because people's purpose in life is always connected to their giftedness. It always works that way. You are not called to do something that you have no talent for. You will discover your purpose by finding and remaining in your strength zone.
The world is broken, and all our attempts to fix it will inevitably fail, and some day all life will be extinguished from the planet and there will be no one to remember that any of us ever did anything. But this fact, strangely, does not delegitimize hope, because every now and again we find evidence that hope is helpful. This evidence, in my opinion, should be celebrated-even as we lament and fight the devastation.
Satan wants to claim our souls and those of our children. He want our marriages and our families to fail. He wants darkness to reign. Despite thise, we needn't worry or back away from our duty to our family (present or future), our community, or others, for God will always support and bless us in our honest efforts t odo His will. He wants us to suceed more than Satan wants us to fail- and God is always more powerful.
We are limited by our agreements on possibility. Agreement is a common exclusion of alternate possibilities. Agreement is the cement of social structure. Two or three gathered together, agreeing on what they are after, may create a subset in which their goals can be achieved, even though folly in the eyes of the world. The world in this case means a set of expectancies agreed upon, a set excluding other possibilities.