TERMS STARTING WITH
TERMS ANYWHERE
action slips: a form of absent-mindedness where a person performs an action that was not intended; caused by not paying attention to what is going on.
Clairvoyance ::: In its largest sense the word simply means "clear-seeing," insight behind the veils, inner visioning.Genuine clairvoyance is a spiritual faculty and is the ability to see and to see aright; and in seeing toknow that your seeing is truth. This is no psychical faculty. The clairvoyance commonly called thepsychical clairvoyance is very deceptive, because it is a mere moonlight reflection so to speak, and thismoonlight reflection is uncertain, deceiving, and illusory. Genuine spiritual clairvoyance, of which thepsychical clairvoyance so called is but a feeble ray, will enable one to see what passes at immensedistances. You can sit in your armchair and see, with eyes closed, all that you care to see, however faraway. This can be done not only in this exterior world, but one can penetrate into the interior andinvisible worlds with this spiritual vision, and thus know what is going on in the worlds spiritual andethereal. This vision is not physical vision, nor that which, on the astral plane, manifests itself aspsychical clairvoyance; but true vision is spiritual clairvoyance -- seeing through the inner spiritual eye.
MEGO /me"goh/ or /mee'goh/ ["My Eyes Glaze Over", often "Mine Eyes Glazeth (sic) Over", attributed to the futurologist Herman Kahn] Also "MEGO factor". 1. A {handwave} intended to confuse the listener and hopefully induce agreement because the listener does not want to admit to not understanding what is going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior management by engineers and contains a high proportion of {TLAs}. 2. excl. An appropriate response to MEGO tactics. 3. Among non-hackers, often refers not to behaviour that causes the eyes to glaze, but to the eye-glazing reaction itself, which may be triggered by the mere threat of technical detail as effectively as by an actual excess of it.
KEYS (10k)
3 The Mother
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
17 Bessel A van der Kolk
10 Thich Nhat Hanh
7 Nhat Hanh
6 Janet Malcolm
6 Anonymous
5 Paulo Coelho
5 Paul David Tripp
5 Kurt Vonnegut
4 Jiddu Krishnamurti
4 Frederick Lenz
4 Daniel Kahneman
3 William S Burroughs
3 The Mother
3 Joyce Meyer
3 Joan D Chittister
3 Iyanla Vanzant
3 Ilona Andrews
3 Gary Zukav
3 Eugene H Peterson
3 Doris Lessing
1:Sweet Mother, here it is written: "It is part of the foundation of Yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge." Are these forces different for each person?
Yes. The composition is completely different, otherwise everybody would be the same. There are not two beings with an identical combination; between the different parts of the being and the composition of these parts the proportion is different in each individual. There are people, primitive men, people like the yet undeveloped races or the degenerated ones whose combinations are fairly simple; they are still complicated, but comparatively simple. And there are people absolutely at the top of the human ladder, the e ́lite of humanity; their combinations become so complicated that a very special discernment is needed to find the relations between all these things.
There are beings who carry in themselves thousands of different personalities, and then each one has its own rhythm and alternation, and there is a kind of combination; sometimes there are inner conflicts, and there is a play of activities which are rhythmic and with alternations of certain parts which come to the front and then go back and again come to the front. But when one takes all that, it makes such complicated combinations that some people truly find it difficult to understand what is going on in themselves; and yet these are the ones most capable of a complete, coordinated, conscious, organised action; but their organisation is infinitely more complicated than that of primitive or undeveloped men who have two or three impulses and four or five ideas, and who can arrange all this very easily in themselves and seem to be very co-ordinated and logical because there is not very much to organise. But there are people truly like a multitude, and so that gives them a plasticity, a fluidity of action and an extraordinary complexity of perception, and these people are capable of understanding a considerable number of things, as though they had at their disposal a veritable army which they move according to circumstance and need; and all this is inside them. So when these people, with the help of yoga, the discipline of yoga, succeed in centralising all these beings around the central light of the divine Presence, they become powerful entities, precisely because of their complexity. So long as this is not organised they often give the impression of an incoherence, they are almost incomprehensible, one can't manage to understand why they are like that, they are so complex. But when they have organised all these beings, that is, put each one in its place around the divine centre, then truly they are terrific, for they have the capacity of understanding almost everything and doing almost everything because of the multitude of entities they contain, of which they are constituted. And the nearer one is to the top of the ladder, the more it is like that, and consequently the more difficult it is to organise one's being; because when you have about a dozen elements, you can quickly compass and organise them, but when you have thousands of them, it is difficult. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 215-216,#KEYS
2:Mother, how to change one's consciousness?
Naturally, there are many ways, but each person must do it by the means accessible to him; and the indication of the way usually comes spontaneously, through something like an unexpected experience. And for each one, it appears a little differently.
For instance, one may have the perception of the ordinary consciousness which is extended on the surface, horizontally, and works on a plane which is simultaneously the surface of things and has a contact with the superficial outer side of things, people, circumstances; and then, suddenly, for some reason or other - as I say for each one it is different - there is a shifting upwards, and instead of seeing things horizontally, of being at the same level as they are, you suddenly dominate them and see them from above, in their totality, instead of seeing a small number of things immediately next to yourself; it is as though something were drawing you above and making you see as from a mountain-top or an aeroplane. And instead of seeing each detail and seeing it on its own level, you see the whole as one unity, and from far above.
There are many ways of having this experience, but it usually comes to you as if by chance, one fine day.
Or else, one may have an experience which is almost its very opposite but which comes to the same thing. Suddenly one plunges into a depth, one moves away from the thing one perceived, it seems distant, superficial, unimportant; one enters an inner silence or an inner calm or an inward vision of things, a profound feeling, a more intimate perception of circumstances and things, in which all values change. And one becomes aware of a sort of unity, a deep identity which is one in spite of the diverse appearances.
Or else, suddenly also, the sense of limitation disappears and one enters the perception of a kind of indefinite duration beginningless and endless, of something which has always been and always will be.
These experiences come to you suddenly in a flash, for a second, a moment in your life, you don't know why or how.... There are other ways, other experiences - they are innumerable, they vary according to people; but with this, with one minute, one second of such an existence, one catches the tail of the thing. So one must remember that, try to relive it, go to the depths of the experience, recall it, aspire, concentrate. This is the startingpoint, the end of the guiding thread, the clue. For all those who are destined to find their inner being, the truth of their being, there is always at least one moment in life when they were no longer the same, perhaps just like a lightning-flash - but that is enough. It indicates the road one should take, it is the door that opens on this path. And so you must pass through the door, and with perseverance and an unfailing steadfastness seek to renew the state which will lead you to something more real and more total.
Many ways have always been given, but a way you have been taught, a way you have read about in books or heard from a teacher, does not have the effective value of a spontaneous experience which has come without any apparent reason, and which is simply the blossoming of the soul's awakening, one second of contact with your psychic being which shows you the best way for you, the one most within your reach, which you will then have to follow with perseverance to reach the goal - one second which shows you how to start, the beginning.... Some have this in dreams at night; some have it at any odd time: something one sees which awakens in one this new consciousness, something one hears, a beautiful landscape, beautiful music, or else simply a few words one reads, or else the intensity of concentration in some effort - anything at all, there are a thousand reasons and thousands of ways of having it. But, I repeat, all those who are destined to realise have had this at least once in their life. It may be very fleeting, it may have come when they were very young, but always at least once in one's life one has the experience of what true consciousness is. Well, that is the best indication of the path to be followed.
One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, that's all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch.
First of all, you must feel the necessity for this change of consciousness, accept the idea that it is this, the path which must lead to the goal; and once you admit the principle, you must be watchful. And you will find, you do find it. And once you have found it, you must start walking without any hesitation.
Indeed, the starting-point is to observe oneself, not to live in a perpetual nonchalance, a perpetual apathy; one must be attentive.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, [T6],#KEYS
3:Intuition And The Value Of Concentration :::
Mother, how can the faculty of intuition be developed?
... There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we don't notice them because we don't pay enough attention to what is going on in us. Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified. In other cases there is something that urges, indicates, insists - I am not speaking of impulses, you understand, of all the movements which come from the vital and much lower still - indications which are behind the feelings, which come from the affective part of the being; there too one can receive a fairly sure indication of the thing to be done. These are forms of intuition or of a higher instinct which can be cultivated by observation and also by studying the results. Naturally, it must be done very sincerely, objectively, without prejudice. If one wants to see things in a particular way and at the same time practise this observation, it is all useless. One must do it as if one were looking at what is happening from outside oneself, in someone else. It is one form of intuition and perhaps the first one that usually manifests. There is also another form but that one is much more difficult to observe because for those who are accustomed to think, to act by reason - not by impulse but by reason - to reflect before doing anything, there is an extremely swift process from cause to effect in the half-conscious thought which prevents you from seeing the line, the whole line of reasoning and so you don't think that it is a chain of reasoning, and that is quite deceptive. You have the impression of an intuition but it is not an intuition, it is an extremely rapid subconscious reasoning, which takes up a problem and goes straight to the conclusions. This must not be mistaken for intuition. In the ordinary functioning of the brain, intuition is something which suddenly falls like a drop of light. If one has the faculty, the beginning of a faculty of mental vision, it gives the impression of something coming from outside or above, like a little impact of a drop of light in the brain, absolutely independent of all reasoning. This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence one's mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention. That too one can learn to do. One must learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline.
When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate your attention here (pointing between the eyebrows), at the centre just above the eyes, the centre of the conscious will. But then if you do that, you cannot be in contact with intuition. You can be in contact with the source of the will, of effort, even of a certain kind of knowledge, but in the outer, almost material field; whereas, if you want to contact the intuition, you must keep this (Mother indicates the forehead) completely immobile. Active thought must be stopped as far as possible and the entire mental faculty must form - at the top of the head and a little further above if possible - a kind of mirror, very quiet, very still, turned upwards, in silent, very concentrated attention. If you succeed, you can - perhaps not immediately - but you can have the perception of the drops of light falling upon the mirror from a still unknown region and expressing themselves as a conscious thought which has no connection with all the rest of your thought since you have been able to keep it silent. That is the real beginning of the intellectual intuition.
It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a mirror, still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre.
Naturally, first these two faculties must be developed; then, as soon as there is any result, one must observe the result, as I said, and see the connection with what is happening, the consequences: see, observe very attentively what has come in, what may have caused a distortion, what one has added by way of more or less conscious reasoning or the intervention of a lower will, also more or less conscious; and it is by a very deep study - indeed, almost of every moment, in any case daily and very frequent - that one succeeds in developing one's intuition. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and there are ambushes: one can deceive oneself, take for intuitions subconscious wills which try to manifest, indications given by impulses one has refused to receive openly, indeed all sorts of difficulties. One must be prepared for that. But if one persists, one is sure to succeed.
And there comes a time when one feels a kind of inner guidance, something which is leading one very perceptibly in all that one does. But then, for the guidance to have its maximum power, one must naturally add to it a conscious surrender: one must be sincerely determined to follow the indication given by the higher force. If one does that, then... one saves years of study, one can seize the result extremely rapidly. If one also does that, the result comes very rapidly. But for that, it must be done with sincerity and... a kind of inner spontaneity. If one wants to try without this surrender, one may succeed - as one can also succeed in developing one's personal will and making it into a very considerable power - but that takes a very long time and one meets many obstacles and the result is very precarious; one must be very persistent, obstinate, persevering, and one is sure to succeed, but only after a great labour.
Make your surrender with a sincere, complete self-giving, and you will go ahead at full speed, you will go much faster - but you must not do this calculatingly, for that spoils everything! (Silence) Moreover, whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it - whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing - that's not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate.
And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention.
And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important.
There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration - but one must learn how to do it. There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key. You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it - it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Set your mind that no matter what is going on in your life, you will have a good attitude. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 2:I neither act nor cause others to act; I am timelessly aware of what is going on. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 3:The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 4:Happiness has little to do with what is going on around you, and a lot to do with what is going on inside you. ~ alan-cohen, @wisdomtrove 5:Meditation is to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 6:The time will come when man will know even what is going on in the other planets and perhaps be able to visit them. ~ henry-ford, @wisdomtrove 7:But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what is going on in his heart and mind. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 8:Where action is needed, action happens. Man is not the actor. His is to be aware of what is going on. His very presence is action. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 9:Perspective - Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove 10:Although I have a regular work schedule, I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove 11:The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 12:The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the President has to tell 'em. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 13:Be happy and free. Be able to see psychically and understand what is going on in the universe, what your luminosity is about, and how to reorder your luminous fibers. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 14:When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 15:What is going on right now? And what can you do Right Now to make Now better? Make each Now better and the future will take care of itself, while the past will not matter. ~ neale-donald-walsch, @wisdomtrove 16:It is our job to listen to God and let Him tell us what is going on and what we are to do about it - leaving the rest to Him to work out according to His knowledge and will, not ours. ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 17:I have no idea on timing. Its easier to tell what will happen than when it will happen. I would say that what is going on in terms of trade policy is going to have very important consequences. ~ warren-buffet, @wisdomtrove 18:I want to suggest that life is like a dream and that right now we are so engrossed in the life-dream that we don’t realise we are dreaming. We believe we know what is going on, but really we don’t. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 19:To meditate is to be aware of what is going on - in our bodies, our feelings our minds, and in the world. When we settle into the present moment, we can see the beauties and wonders before our eyes. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 20:You do not have to love what is going on in your life, but you must accept that it, whatever it is, is going on. As long as you do not accept reality, you are powerless to define the role you will play. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 21:Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 22:Meditation is, first of all, a tool for surveying our territory so we can know what is going on. With the energy of mindfulness, we can calm things down, understand them, and bring harmony back to the conflicting elements inside us. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 23:Mindfulness is paying attention to what is going on. Just look at beauty. Not just the beauty of things you see with your eyes, but beautiful feelings, beautiful awareness. There is no such thing as reality. Reality is what you make it. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 24:We must travel; we must go to foreign parts. We must see how the engine of society works in other countries, and keep free and open communication with what is going on in the minds of other nations, if we really want to be a nation again. ~ swami-vivekananda, @wisdomtrove 25:Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. ~ kurt-vonnegut, @wisdomtrove 26:When the most important things in our life happen we quite often do not know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not always say to himself, "hullo! i'm growing up." It is only when he looks back that he realises what has happened and recognises it as what people call "growing up. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 27:Of course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is). What is going on in you at present is simply the beginning of the treatment. Continue seeking with cheerful seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 28:No matter what has happened to you in the past or what is going on in your life right now, it has no power to keep you from having an amazingly good future if you will walk by faith in God. God loves you! He wants you to live with victory over sin so you can possess His promises for your life today! ~ joyce-meyer, @wisdomtrove 29:If you’re willing to be objective and watch all your thoughts, you’ll see that the vast majority of them have no relevance. They have no effect on anything or anybody, except you. They are simply making you feel better or worse about what is going on now, what has gone on in the past, or what might go on in the future. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove 30:Becoming conscious of the mystery of existence is an extremely simple way to step out of my conceptual story. When I'm stuck in my dramas, I remember that in reality I have no idea what is going on, as life is always so much more than I can possibly understand. Then if I dive deeply into the mystery, my state of consciousness begins to change. ~ tim-freke, @wisdomtrove 31:No matter what is going on in your life today, remember, it is only preparation. People come and go; situations rise and fall; it's all preparation for better things. You must stretch, reach, grow into your goodness. Without the preparation we receive through adversity, disappointment, confusion, or pain, we could not appreciate the goodness when it arrives. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 32:Our president delivered his State of the Union message to Congress. That is one of the things his contract calls for - to tell congress the condition of the country. This message, as I say, is to Congress. The rest of the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the president has to tell 'em. ~ will-rogers, @wisdomtrove 33:Inside every one of us is a garden, and every practitioner has to go back to their garden and take care of it. Maybe in the past, you left in untended for a long time. You should know exactly what is going on in your own garden, and try to put everything in order. Restore the beauty; restore the harmony in your garden. If it is well tended, many people will enjoy your garden. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 34:Everything that's happening in our world is a function of what is going on inside of people. We are violent in our minds. We are violent with one another. We walk past one another in the street and don't even look nor make eye contact - don't speak. We can be outraged about the missiles and the planes. I'm more outraged that somebody will walk past me in the street and not look me in the face and say good morning. ~ lyania-vanzant, @wisdomtrove 35:Love is the ability to live your life with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome, the ability within yourself to distinguish within yourself between love and fear and choose love regardless of what is going on inside yourself or outside. This is self-mastery or authentic power... that means you become clear, forgiving, humble and loving... you are grounded in harmony, cooperating, sharing and reverence for life. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 36:To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this, a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 37:True awareness is a state of pure witnessing, without the least attempt to do anything about the event witnessed. Your thoughts and feelings, words and actions may also be a part of the event; you watch all unconcerned in the full light of clarity and understanding. You understand precisely what is going on, because it does not affect you. It may seem to be an attitude of cold aloofness, but it is not really so. Once you are in it, you will find that you love what you see, whatever may beits nature. This choiceless love is the touchstone of awareness. If it is not there, you are merely interested - for some personal reasons. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:No matter what is going on, everything is grace. ~ Martin Sheen, #NFDB
2:We have a very narrow view of what is going on. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
3:We should care about what is going on in the world. ~ John Legend, #NFDB
4:If you are not confused, you don´t know what is going on. ~ Jack Welch, #NFDB
5:I don’t even understand life right now. What is going on? ~ Jamie McGuire, #NFDB
6:Oh my God, what is going on? Did you just curtsy at someone? ~ Jessica Park, #NFDB
7:If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on? ~ Robert Fripp, #NFDB
8:Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour? ~ Juan Ram n Jim nez, #NFDB
9:As usual, the sock yarns have no idea what is going on. ~ Stephanie Pearl McPhee, #NFDB
10:Shambhala can be relevant in terms of what is going on in the world. ~ Sakyong Mipham, #NFDB
11:I know what is going on," said Sir. "I am the Boss! Of course I know! ~ Daniel Handler, #NFDB
12:As President, I will not be the last to know what is going on in my command. ~ John F Kerry, #NFDB
13:Don't throw out buzz words without really knowing what is going on behind it. ~ Salman Khan, #NFDB
14:There will be moments when you simply don’t understand what is going on. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
15:Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative. ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
16:What is going on in your head?” “It’s a dark, lawless place, Catalina. So dark. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
17:no matter what is happening, no matter what is going on around you, never give up ~ Dalai Lama XIV, #NFDB
18:Don't ask whether it is right or wrong. Instead try to find out what is going on. ~ Marshall McLuhan, #NFDB
19:The audience will only truly respect you when they have no idea what is going on. ~ Nelson Rodrigues, #NFDB
20:aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
21:The average gardener probably knows little about what is going on in his or her garden. ~ Ken Thompson, #NFDB
22:"Mindfulness is the capacity of being aware of what is going on in the present moment." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
23:Those who talk don't know what is going on and those who know what is going on won't talk. ~ Larry Speakes, #NFDB
24:Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
25:An iron curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind. ~ Winston S Churchill, #NFDB
26:The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
27:Never give up. No matter what is happening, no matter what is going on around you, never give up. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
28:The ultimate challenge is to keep fixing your eyes on Me, no matter what is going on around you. ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
29:In any power game, it seems, the dominant party is the least likely to be aware of what is going on. ~ Tim Parks, #NFDB
30:Ultimately, we become aware of most of what is going on within us mainly through the muscles. ~ Moshe Feldenkrais, #NFDB
31:You have to love the office and you have to love our country and what is going on right now. ~ Anthony Scaramucci, #NFDB
32:You’re getting a tattoo? What is going on with you, Abby? Did you breathe toxic fumes in that fire? ~ Jamie McGuire, #NFDB
33:Understand what is going on inside you and you will understand what is going on inside everyone else. Don ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
34:Meditation is to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
35:If you want to understand what is going on in the White House today, you have to begin with Barack Obama. ~ Dinesh D Souza, #NFDB
36:One likes to hear what is going on, to be au fait as to the newest modes of being trifling and silly. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
37:The worst excesses of the Congress of the 1980s pale in comparison with what is going on in Washington today. ~ Marty Meehan, #NFDB
38:You may not always figure out
what is going on in their lives,
but you can always figure out yours. ~ Sahndra Fon Dufe,#NFDB
39:Meditation is to be aware of what is going on: in your body, in your feelings, in your mind, and in the world. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
40:The journalist must strive to find out what is going on and tell it, not neuter the truth in the name of equal time. ~ Joe Sacco, #NFDB
41:The peanut gallery around me has stopped giving any commentary, so I have no idea what is going on.
- Violet ~ Kristy Cunning,#NFDB
42:The time will come when man will know even what is going on in the other planets and perhaps be able to visit them. ~ Henry Ford, #NFDB
43:A lack of money is never, ever, ever a problem. A lack of money is merely a symptom of what is going on underneath. ~ T Harv Eker, #NFDB
44:We are looking at these rock 'n' roll campers, and we know what is going on in their minds because we've been there. ~ Rob Halford, #NFDB
45:your subjective experience consists largely of the story that your System 2 tells itself about what is going on. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
46:I read a picture not for what's really going on there, I read it more for what is going on in our world generally. ~ Andreas Gursky, #NFDB
47:Floote, what is going on? Do they think I
am contagious? Should I assure them I was
born with a nose this size? ~ Gail Carriger,#NFDB
48:You cant get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV. ~ David Hare, #NFDB
49:Our bodies demand our attention; our bodies demand that we actually pay attention to what is going on with our lives. ~ Chogyam Trungpa, #NFDB
50:All the body's systems and processes - your nerves, your emotions - take instruction from what is going on with your breath. ~ Tara Stiles, #NFDB
51:She’s one of my best friends, thought Neverfell, and most of the time I don’t know what is going on in her head at all. ~ Frances Hardinge, #NFDB
52:Potatoes are very interesting folks. I think they must see a lot of what is going on in the earth - they have so many eyes. ~ Opal Whiteley, #NFDB
53:Feeling burdened rather than uplifted by everyday duties is more a mindset than a measure of what is going on in your life. ~ Kelly McGonigal, #NFDB
54:The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on in front. ~ Ulysses S Grant, #NFDB
55:I can only ask of those who care about me and the issues in my case to support me and spread the word about what is going on. ~ Chelsea Manning, #NFDB
56:I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world. ~ James Laughlin, #NFDB
57:Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. ~ Clive Owen, #NFDB
58:I should probably be grading projects, but I'm kind of over it right now. I'll catch up this weekend. So, what is going on with you? ~ Claire Kingsley, #NFDB
59:Wishing is a way to remove oneself from what is going on now. Hope springs eternal. Fuck hope. Hope is how most of us avoid growing up. ~ Brad Blanton, #NFDB
60:I write the lyrics based on what is going on in my life - I'm not going to write about the old hair metal stuff, like castles and stuff. ~ Oliver Sykes, #NFDB
61:Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film. ~ Philip Seymour Hoffman, #NFDB
62:Being in touch with oneself is the meaning of meditation, to be aware of what is going on in your body, in your feelings, in your mind. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
63:I listened a little to punk when I was younger, but it was straight edge punk. It was nothing like what is going on now, like poppy punk. ~ Travis Barker, #NFDB
64:It doesn't matter to me what is going on today because my music encompasses every kind of mood that exists in human beings. That's my stick. ~ Nina Simone, #NFDB
65:The question which we must ask ourselves is not whether we like or do not like what is going on, but what we are going to do about it. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
66:Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. ~ Ben Hecht, #NFDB
67:Illumination in the outer world is to be happy no matter what is going on. In the inner world, it's more ineffable. It's harder to express. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
68:Why did this happen to me? To the other girls? Doesn’t anyone else know what is going on in the world? Why don’t they send someone to help us? ~ Sibel Hodge, #NFDB
69:Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
70:The Cavaliere has retired to his study and reads, trying not to think about what is going on around him -- one of the principal uses of a book. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
71:You cannot get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have the facts, you cannot make proper judgments about what is going on. ~ Harry S Truman, #NFDB
72:Perspective - Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. ~ Richard Bach, #NFDB
73:I think documentary filmmakers need as much protection as possible under journalist's privilege. How else is the public to know what is going on? ~ Robert Redford, #NFDB
74:I have traveled to all the continents except for one, and I know what is going on out there... The world is rapidly becoming Ahmadinejadized. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, #NFDB
75:You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on ~ Harry Truman, #NFDB
76:he has a lot going on inside of him all the time so he doesn't worry so much about what is going on outside him. That's what people don't understand ~ Matthew Dicks, #NFDB
77:The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds. ~ Walter Bagehot, #NFDB
78:When I walk in love, I am not so caught up in how I feel, but I care more about what is going on in the lives of others than what is going on in mine. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
79:The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
80:being a garbage dump for other people does not promote peace for me, and I want peace more than I want to know what is going on in everyone else’s life. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
81:You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
82:In the last James Bond movie, the villain was a culture captain, a tycoon of culture, a Murdoch figure. It's not as if people don't know what is going on. ~ Thomas Frank, #NFDB
83:Many Americans have no idea of what has been the foreign policy of their country. If you don't know about something, you can't understand what is going on. ~ Mick Jagger, #NFDB
84:With migration [in Europe] you look at the lines and you look at the tremendous amount of young strong men in these lines and you wonder what is going on? ~ Donald Trump, #NFDB
85:My heart feels not so much in my chest as in my hands. I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside me. ~ Claire Keegan, #NFDB
86:Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
87:I think, collectively, we should be paying more attention to what is going on around us in the world among people who dont have the advantages that we have. ~ Anthony S Fauci, #NFDB
88:Both parties are injured by what is going on at Washington. Both are, therefore, more and more disposed to look for candidates outside of that atmosphere. ~ Rutherford B Hayes, #NFDB
89:I remember everything about it—with an effort. I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but transparent. ~ J Sheridan Le Fanu, #NFDB
90:I am really dedicated to understanding the planet/creature on which we live and know that means I must go beneath the sea to see 72 percent of what is going on. ~ Robert Ballard, #NFDB
91:Politics is a thing that I follow because it determines what is going on in my country, but I vote and deal with politicians with a great degree of jaundiced eye. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
92:When I watch people like Cate Blanchett act, I don't know what is going on in her life, you just get lost in her performance and that's what I hope to do as well. ~ Kate Bosworth, #NFDB
93:Open offices keep everyone in tune with what is going on and keep the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show him or her how to use the lock on the bathroom. ~ Mark Cuban, #NFDB
94:Respect talent. Get respect where respect is due, but don't be caught up in yourself where you do things obliviously and not pay attention to what is going on. ~ Robert Griffin III, #NFDB
95:Be happy and free. Be able to see psychically and understand what is going on in the universe, what your luminosity is about, and how to reorder your luminous fibers. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
96:If your life is broken right now, be encouraged that God knows what is going on in your life and will restore you. Until He does, rejoice in Him and praise His name. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
97:I think that today, faith drives so much of our politics, that I thought, "If you don't talk about it, you are missing a whole big part of what is going on politically." ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
98:When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
99:My whole life is reading tabloid magazines. It’s really sad, because that’s what my show is all about — what is going on with celebrities. So I have to know everything. ~ Chelsea Handler, #NFDB
100:While our illnesses are not always a psychosomatic response to what is going on in our lives, there is no question that we become ill when difficult life factors are at play. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
101:What is going on in America is extreme. The youth cult, they worship youth so much it's almost paranoid. And LA is the Mecca of it all; they're taking it to the hilt. ~ Billie Joe Armstrong, #NFDB
102:When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace and love. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
103:Write in different places—for example, in a laundromat, and pick up on the rhythm of the washing machines. Write at bus stops, in cafés. Write what is going on around you. ~ Natalie Goldberg, #NFDB
104:You see a woman, 22 years old, going out with a guy over 60 - and it's kind of natural. But if it happens in the opposite direction everyone says, 'What is going on there? ~ Antonio Banderas, #NFDB
105:A self that is very robust, that has many, many levels of organization, from simple to complex, and that functions as a sort of witness to what is going on in our organisms. ~ Antonio Damasio, #NFDB
106:Our modern ideas of 'functioning' through things are really quite inhuman. We have this idea that no matter what is going on we still have to color between the lines, act normal. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
107:The only reality of the theater exists in the mind of the audience. That audience looks collectively at what is going on on the stage and collectively imagines that this is real. ~ Simon McBurney, #NFDB
108:What is going on with you?" she says, shaking her head and pushing me away. "What's up with all the love and affection? I mean, you of all people, you of the eternal iPod-hoodie combo. ~ Alyson Noel, #NFDB
109:The youth of this country are not behind what is going on. We all know that. If you looked at a [political] map of the United States 25 and under, it's all-revealing. It's a unified map. ~ Neil Young, #NFDB
110:Throughout the day remind yourself that you are moving through eternity. Be focused. Be centered. Be in the now. Know what is going on in the world. Read a newspaper once in a while. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
111:Gratitude is one of the sweet shortcuts to finding peace of mind and happiness inside. No matter what is going on outside of us, there's always something we could be grateful for. ~ Barry Neil Kaufman, #NFDB
112:Ordinary citizens are so accepting of what is going on, grumbling when their material interests were affected, but seemingly accepting the spiritual poverty so characteristic of today. ~ Charles Handy, #NFDB
113:What is going on in our minds, then, that we should be more highly delighted at finding cherished objects, or having them restored to us, than if we had always kept them safe? ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
114:Don't shut yourself up in a band box because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, and educate yourself to take part in the world's work, for it all affects you and yours. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
115:Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
116:So don't blame me for the problems. You can't fault me for it. You can't blame me. You want to blame me but I'm just trying to express what is going on, and trying to keep America open to it. ~ Snoop Dogg, #NFDB
117:This is 2003, 2004. And then I started - after the Patriot Act, I would always get my financial packages in the mail and they would just be opened. And it was like, what is going on here? ~ Mahershala Ali, #NFDB
118:Writing for adults, you have to keep reminding them of what is going on. The poor things have given up using their brains when they read. Children you only need to tell things to once. ~ Diana Wynne Jones, #NFDB
119:I do hot yoga. I try to keep one hour a day where I have space to reflect and meditate and take care of me and what is going on inside. This way, I can be a better person to be around. ~ Patricia Velasquez, #NFDB
120:Russian people, like their Chinese comrades, are well aware of what is going on. And there are tens of millions of their martyrs who are reminding them what is to be expected from the West. ~ Andre Vltchek, #NFDB
121:If we want to preserve our liberty, it is up to us to know what is going on, to know the Constitution, to know these limitation on the power of Congress and to insist that our leaders obey. ~ Michael Farris, #NFDB
122:Artists are part of the information process... Visual history is important in providing a record of what is going on - levels of intention, levels of confidence, levels of aggression or control. ~ Leon Golub, #NFDB
123:[Donald Trump] is trying to stop immigration into the country from countries where there are major terrorist issues until we can figure out what is going on, but this seems like something else. ~ Megyn Kelly, #NFDB
124:It's frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what is going on. ~ Amos Tversky, #NFDB
125:So far as the colleges go, the side-shows have swallowed up the circus, and we don't know what is going on in the main tent: and I don't want to continue as ringmaster under those conditions. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
126:The lesson is: Even if you know exactly what is going on in you system, measure performance, don't speculate. You'll learn something, and nine times out of ten, it won't be that you were right!! ~ Ron Jeffries, #NFDB
127:I have no idea on timing. It’s easier to tell what will happen than when it will happen. I would say that what is going on in terms of trade policy is going to have very important consequences. ~ Warren Buffett, #NFDB
128:I think it's a part of being a citizen in a country, to know what is going on and to have a say in how they want their country being run. You know, that's a part of the privilege of democracy. ~ Bridgit Mendler, #NFDB
129:Memory is not about what went on in the past, it is about what is going on inside us right this moment. It is made up of the stuff of life in the process of becoming the grist of the soul. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
130:The lesson is: Even if you know exactly what is going on in your system, measure performance, don't speculate. You'll learn something, and nine times out of ten, it won't be that you were right! ~ Martin Fowler, #NFDB
131:To meditate is to be aware of what is going on - in our bodies, our feelings our minds, and in the world. When we settle into the present moment, we can see the beauties and wonders before our eyes. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
132:Ordinarily the executive capacities of the prefrontal cortex enable people to observe what is going on, predict what will happen if they take a certain action, and make a conscious choice. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
133:But your subjective experience consists largely of the story that your System 2 tells itself about what is going on. Priming phenomena arise in System 1, and you have no conscious access to them. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
134:whole universe can be thought of as a delayed-choice experiment in which the existence of observers who notice what is going on is what imparts tangible reality to the origin of everything. Following ~ John Gribbin, #NFDB
135:I believe that the average person can help a lot, not by giving material goods but by participating, by being part of the discussion, by being truly concerned about what is going on in the world. ~ Sebastiao Salgado, #NFDB
136:There are no 'good' or 'bad' people. Some are a little better or a little worse, but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other's hearts. ~ Tennessee Williams, #NFDB
137:You see, the richest people I know don't always understand what is going on. They don't always like what they see. But they have a quiet confidence that God will put all things together for their good. ~ Phil Callaway, #NFDB
138:Meditation is not to escape from society, but to come back to ourselves and see what is going on. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. With mindfulness, we know what to do and what not to do to help. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
139:I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on. ~ Ken Burns, #NFDB
140:You do not have to love what is going on in your life, but you must accept that it, whatever it is, is going on. As long as you do not accept reality, you are powerless to define the role you will play. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
141:I remember to breathe throughout the day. I remind myself that I can choose peace, no matter what is going on around me. Whenever I desire, I can retreat to that quiet place within simply by closing my eyes. ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
142:Sometimes she’d scream at him, laughing but irritated too. ‘How can you just sit there? What is going on inside your head?’ He was never quite sure how to answer. Stories, he thought. I just tell myself stories. ~ Ann Cleeves, #NFDB
143:I think the city of Washington itself is insular to a certain extent. You have to get out in the country to realize what is going on and discover that the perceptions in Washington aren't necessarily accurate. ~ Rosalynn Carter, #NFDB
144:Severin, what is going on?” she asked. “I was in the middle of reading a delightful book—anyone who tells you I was sleeping is mistaken—when Emele wrenched me into my room and dressed me for mountain climbing.” “You ~ K M Shea, #NFDB
145:Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves. ~ Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, #NFDB
146:Moshe Feldenkrais put it: “You can’t do what you want till you know what you’re doing.” The implications are clear: to feel present you have to know where you are and be aware of what is going on with you. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
147:Keep your finger on the pulse of society, take controversies with a grain of salt, lick your finger and then lift it to the wind; always know what is going on, my friend, so this world can never steer you wrong again. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
148:The first and most important thing an individual can do is to become an individual again, decontrol himself, train himself as to what is going on and win back as much independent ground for himself as possible ~ William S Burroughs, #NFDB
149:It's not an act. I love it. It's totally original. People go, 'What's going on with this guy? Why does he sound so weird? What is going on in his brain. I don't know. Just one day I suddenly woke up with a new brain. ~ Charlie Sheen, #NFDB
150:I went to work. That was a turning point. When you have to do eight shows a week and your name is on the marquee, no matter what is going on at home or what's on the cover of the newspapers, you've got to do your job. ~ Marla Maples, #NFDB
151:Sometimes you'll read something and think, "What is going on here? There must be more to this." The constraints of the news format didn't allow for more detail, or the writer didn't see it or just wasn't interested. ~ Joshuah Bearman, #NFDB
152:I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them. ~ Richard Russo, #NFDB
153:The perfect fight is one that is over before the loser really understands what is going on. The perfect defense is a counterattack that succeeds before the assailant discovers that he has bitten off more than he can chew. ~ Jeff Cooper, #NFDB
154:In the end, when they are unsure of what is going on-
I always tell my daughters the same thing.
That for the most part...
People wo care, act like they care.
And people who don't care, act like they don't care. ~ Jos N Harris,#NFDB
155:Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on. Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
156:At your most daring moments you believe that what is going on is the ultimate human work the shaping of a soul. The power of life comes from within; go there; pray; meditate. Reach for those luminous places in yourself. ~ Jean Shinoda Bolen, #NFDB
157:I am passionate about what is going on with the oceans, mainly because we are for some idiotic reason, really screwing it up. I mean, we're really killing the ocean. It's like putting out the sun. Without it, there is no us. ~ Morgan Freeman, #NFDB
158:Meditation helps us gain the capacity to relax, to connect with what is going on right here and right now, to connect with other people, to re-access our resourcefulness, our clarity and our ability to focus and keep an open heart. ~ Tara Brach, #NFDB
159:Meditation is, first of all, a tool for surveying our territory so we can know what is going on. With the energy of mindfulness, we can calm things down, understand them, and bring harmony back to the conflicting elements inside us. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
160:I am trying to make some kind of connection to what is going on in the world, to make some sort of contact. And I use the instruments that our modern world offers, these extraordinary instruments of photography and film and computers. ~ Leon Golub, #NFDB
161:A small town is automatically a world of pretense. Since everyone knows everyone else's business, it becomes the job of the populace to act as if they don't know what is going on instead of its being their job to try to find out. ~ Jeanine Basinger, #NFDB
162:I remember after 9/11, I started - I was working quite a bit in Vancouver. And then I realized I would go to catch my flight, and it would take me like 20 minutes to get cleared to fly, like, every time. I'm like, what is going on? ~ Mahershala Ali, #NFDB
163:The things of the world become human for us only when we can discuss them with our fellows. We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
164:When I fight about what is going on in the neighborhood, or when I fight about what is happening to other people’s children, I’m doing that because I want to leave a community and a world that is better than the one I found. ~ Marian Wright Edelman, #NFDB
165:They who shall enter into [the] joy [of the Lord] shall know what is going on outside in the outer darkness. . .The saints'. . . knowledge, which shall be great, shall keep them acquainted. . .with the eternal sufferings of the lost. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
166:AMELIA: Thank you for understanding that life happens and isn’t scripted. Thank you all for understanding that it takes time to write, and sickness doesn’t care what you have planned, or what is going on in your world, it just happens. ~ Amelia Hutchins, #NFDB
167:Mindfulness is paying attention to what is going on. Just look at beauty. Not just the beauty of things you see with your eyes, but beautiful feelings, beautiful awareness. There is no such thing as reality. Reality is what you make it. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
168:The media has been very bad about informing us about what is going on. They focus on surface things. They do not focus enough on the fact that the Fourth Amendment is on life support and that we need a return to transparency in government. ~ Nat Hentoff, #NFDB
169:One way to keep your mind healthy is to simply not believe negative thoughts. No matter what is going on in your life, turn your mind to positive thoughts of beauty, love, gratitude, and joy, and you will give your body the panacea it needs. ~ Rhonda Byrne, #NFDB
170:They practice a passive activism. They don’t bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
171:We must travel; we must go to foreign parts. We must see how the engine of society works in other countries, and keep free and open communication with what is going on in the minds of other nations, if we really want to be a nation again. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
172:The educative value of manual activities and of laboratory exercises, as well as of play, depends upon the extent in which they aid in bringing about a sensing of the meaning of what is going on. In effect, if not in name, they are dramatizations. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
173:Sitting by myself.
Laughing until tears flow,
writing these quotes.
I don't know what is going on,
but I remember this side of myself.
The one who laughed herself to tears
all the time. She's baaccck!
Oh hunny, she's back. ~ Sahndra Fon Dufe,#NFDB
174:GREG ANNOUNCES HIS RESEARCH AS TO WHAT IS GOING ON:
'Alright I have a theory " he announced rejoining us and taking a healthy slug of scotch himself. "And if I'm right we're going to need more booze. And more ammo. And maybe an extra priest. ~ John G Hartness,#NFDB
175:If marketers could uncover what is going on in our brains that makes us choose one brand over another-what information passes through our brain's filter and what information doesn't-well, that would be key to truly building brands of the future. ~ Martin Lindstrom, #NFDB
176:I soon realized that a student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is going on in what he reads: The most conscientous student will be continually misconstruing the implications, even the meaning. ~ Northrop Frye, #NFDB
177:I soon realized that a student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is going on in what he reads: the most conscientious student will be continually misconstruing the implications, even the meaning. ~ Northrop Frye, #NFDB
178:But I must say, if you could vulgarize what Nietzsche says you [would] arrive at what is going on all the time in the social sciences: the destruction of the whole, of every possibility of distinguishing responsibly between high
and low, good and bad. ~ Leo Strauss,#NFDB
179:I got a letter from a lightning rod company this morning trying to out the fear of God in me, but with small success. Lightning seems to have lost its menace. Compared to what is going on on earth today, heaven’s firebrands are penny fireworks with wet fuses. ~ E B White, #NFDB
180:You, and you alone, decide what something means to you. Yet this is a decision that most people make based upon past feelings, experiences, understandings, or future fears. None of this has anything to do with what is going on right here, right now. ~ Neale Donald Walsch, #NFDB
181:You think that somehow they didn’t come after me to get rid of me because my vote is the deciding vote in the health care bill then, ladies and gentlemen, you live today in a world that is so innocent as not to understand what is going on in Washington, D.C. ~ Eric Massa, #NFDB
182:If the Russian word "perestroika" has easily entered the international lexicon, this is due to more than just interest in what is going on in the Soviet Union. Now the whole world needs restructuring, i.e. progressive development, a fundamental change. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev, #NFDB
183:When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, "We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what is going on in this world." If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
184:I tell them that if compulsive eating is anything, it’s a way we leave ourselves when life gets hard. When we don’t want to notice what is going on. Compulsive eating is a way we distance ourselves from the way things are when they are not how we want them to be. ~ Geneen Roth, #NFDB
185:It has become very difficult, in the world’s present state of upheaval and distraction, to form any idea of the significance of what is going on except by rising above the individual level. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, A Great Event Foreshadowed - The Planetization of Mankind, #NFDB
186:More than anything, people want the reality of the discussion at hand. If what is going on in that building is the real thing, if the transforming love and power of Jesus Christ is being experienced, you can sit on a metal folding chair or in a plush theater seat. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
187:you will see that the vast majority of them have no relevance. They have no effect on anything or anybody, except you. They are simply making you feel better or worse about what is going on now, what has gone on in the past, or what might go on in the future. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
188:The Ocean Health Index is like the thermometer of the ocean. It will allow us to take the temperature to know what is going on at the global level, trying to integrate different impacts, including overfishing, invasive species, coastal development, and climate change. ~ Enric Sala, #NFDB
189:I write all my own songs and they are just simple melodies with a lot of lyrics. They usually have to do with current events and what is going on in the news. You can call them topical songs, songs about the news, and then developing into more philosophical songs later. ~ Phil Ochs, #NFDB
190:No matter what is going on around or within you, everything at some point must change. It's harder to accept when things are great - and a source of strength when change is what you need. Either way, it reminds me to try my best to be fully present in every moment. ~ Kandyse McClure, #NFDB
191:Mindfulness is the awareness of what is going on in us and around us in the present moment. It requires stopping, looking deeply, and recognizing both the uniqueness of the moment and its connection to everything that has gone on before and will go on in the future. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
192:The photograph as an objective representation of reality simply does not exist. The photograph does not explain to you what is going on to the left or to the right or above or below the frame. Oftentimes, it doesn't even explain to you what is going on inside the frame. ~ Pedro Meyer, #NFDB
193:Health care is one-sixth of our economy. If the government can control that, they can control just about everything. We need to understand what is going on, because there are much more economic models that can be used to give us good health care than what we have now. ~ Benjamin Carson, #NFDB
194:If you have just an emotion, you would not necessarily feel it. To feel an emotion, you need to represent in the brain in structures that are actually different from the structures that lead to the emotion, what is going on in the organs when you're having the emotion. ~ Antonio Damasio, #NFDB
195:If you are in business trying to make it, things are falling apart and you can’t get it together and you don’t know what is going on and you wanna stop. Don’t stop. The only way you can make it and have true success in your life. And there’s one way. You can’t have any fear. ~ Tyler Perry, #NFDB
196:Nicholas of Cusa said we have to be educated into our ignorance or else the full presence of the divine will be kept at bay. We have to arrive at that difficult point where we don’t know what is going on or what we can do. That precise point is an opening to true faith. The ~ Thomas Moore, #NFDB
197:Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. ~ Janet Malcolm, #NFDB
198:Even if a ghost is ripping a house to pieces, throwing tin pans all over, pouring water on pillows, making clocks chime at all hours, mortals will accept almost any "natural explanation" offered, no matter how absurd, rather than the obvious supernatural one, for what is going on. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
199:Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. ~ Janet Malcolm, #NFDB
200:EVERY journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. ~ Janet Malcolm, #NFDB
201:Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. ~ Janet Malcolm, #NFDB
202:This war proceeds along its terrible path by the slaughter of infantry...I say to myself every day. What is going on while we sit here, while we go away to dinner or home to bed? Nearly, 1000 - Englishmen, Britishers, and the other is America...Everything else is swept away. ~ Winston Churchill, #NFDB
203:Imagination, which is a quality writers must have, does not mean the ability to weave pretty stories out of nothing. In the right sense, imagination is a response to what is going on — a sensitiveness to which outside things appeal. It is a composition of sympathy and observation. ~ Willa Cather, #NFDB
204:There comes a point in your moviegoing life where you look at the screen and then you look at the world and you ask, 'What is going on?' You want the movies to show you the chaos and mess and risk and failure that are normal for a lot of us. Generally, the movies hide all of that. ~ Wesley Morris, #NFDB
205:Fortunately, how we choose to be today is not predetermined by how we were yesterday...You and you alone choose moment by moment who and how you want to be in the world. I encourage you to pay attention to what is going on in your brain. Own your power and show up for your life. ~ Jill Bolte Taylor, #NFDB
206:EVERY journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like ~ Janet Malcolm, #NFDB
207:I just picked up a camera without any kind of ambition to be good or bad. And especially without any ambition to make a living... My whole freedom working in photography comes because I say to myself, Let's see what is going on in this world. Let's find out. How do these people look? ~ Lisette Model, #NFDB
208:In every single moment, we have the choice to be happy or not. No matter what is going on, we can choose to focus on what is right, what is good and whole in ourselves and our lives, and what options we have in any given situation. In other words, we can choose to be happy no matter what. ~ M J Ryan, #NFDB
209:When the most important things in our life happen we quite often do not know, at the moment, what is going on. A man does not always say to himself, "hullo! i'm growing up." It is only when he looks back that he realises what has happened and recognises it as what people call "growing up. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
210:I don't think that we can figure out what is going on in conscious colour perception just by phenomenological introspection. We need to know about brain mechanisms as well. We need to figure out what information is present in the mechanisms that constitute conscious colour perception. ~ David Papineau, #NFDB
211:It's very much an exploration of the human condition and how different people react and respond to their lives. And what they present to the world, in terms of who they are as characters and what is going on behind the mask, in terms of what demons their holding... and how that interacts. ~ Sean Mahon, #NFDB
212:Of course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is). What is going on in you at present is simply the beginning of the treatment. Continue seeking with cheerful seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
213:Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. It is a strange movie with no plot and no beginning. The movie is in black and white, and grainy. Sometimes the camera moves in so close that you can’t tell what is going on and you just listen to the sounds and guess. ~ Walter Dean Myers, #NFDB
214:Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way. If we are aware of the constant changes in our inner and outer environment, we can mobilize to manage them. But we can’t do this unless our watchtower, the MPFC, learns to observe what is going on inside us. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
215:I'm sort of laughing and so Zach [ Galifianakis] started laughing [on the set of The Hangover]. And Todd [Phillips] was baffled because what we were saying wasn't that funny, you know what I mean? And it was like all the baby's face. So Todd was like, 'What is going on? Get it together guys.' ~ Ed Helms, #NFDB
216:p5-what they need..is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves. It this this quality..what may be called the sociological imagination. ~ C Wright Mills, #NFDB
217:Between what is going on in Iraq and Mumia being locked up unjustly, things going on in Israel, Palestine, we don't really have anyone right now like Gandhi. We don't have anyone like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X anymore. It's really a reference to a vision of hope, like someone like Gandhi. ~ Vinnie Paz, #NFDB
218:Human megalomania will have suffered its third and most wounding blow from the psychological research of the present time which seeks to prove to the ego that it is not even master in its own house, but must content itself with scanty information of what is going on unconsciously in its mind. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
219:…Something isn’t right with you and this property. Strange things happen around it. I don’t know what is going on, but I will find out. You could make it easier on yourself by coming clean.”
“Sure. This is a magic bed-and-breakfast and the two guys in my kitchen are aliens from outerspace. ~ Ilona Andrews,#NFDB
220:Human beings evolved to reverberate with the emotional states of others, to the point that we internalize, mostly via our bodies, what is going on with them. This is social connectivity at its best, the glue of all animal and human societies, which guarantees supportive and comforting company. ~ Frans de Waal, #NFDB
221:Britain cannot afford to cut itself off from what is going on in the world, we are too interconnected with what is going on, we have a powerful history and tradition of taking an interest in what is going on in the world, we've also got a very real interest in the future, in remaining connected. ~ George Osborne, #NFDB
222:Turkey has its own interests and historically, Turkey conquered most of the Arab world, and the Arabs had to fight wars of liberation to free themselves from the Turks. That's in the past and that doesn't necessarily shape what is going on but it's there and it's there in people's memories. ~ Samuel P Huntington, #NFDB
223:We are not alone. Even now there are thousands of beings in heaven watching what is going on down here—a ‘great cloud of witnesses,’ the Scripture says. It reminds me that there is so much more to our existence than what we can see. What we do reverberates through the heavens and into eternity. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
224:To appear to be on the inside and know more than others about what is going on is a great temptation for most people. It is a rare person who is willing to seem to know less than he does ... Somehow, people seem to feel that it is belittling to their importance not to know more than other people. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
225:I am a person that is very curious about what is going on in the world and there are a lot of subjects to write about, you meet a lot of interesting people. But one idea will be there and it will show up without any logic. It is a book that has been written in my heart before it is written into sentences. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
226:Much of the big media outlets in North America are owned by arms manufacturers, like Westinghouse, or G.E. [General Electric]. That's unacceptable. So we're not getting editorial policy, we're not getting a vision of truth. People just don't know what is going on anymore, and that's really dangerous stuff. ~ Denis Halliday, #NFDB
227:What is a professional, anyway? A professional is someone who can keep working at a high level of effort and ethics, no matter what is going on—for good or ill—around him or inside him. A professional shows up every day. A professional plays hurt. A professional takes neither success nor failure personally. ~ Jocelyn K Glei, #NFDB
228:Mothers close ranks, and perpetrate a fictional mystery about motherhood. It’s only a way of compensating for an inability to live with the truth. Truth being that they do not understand what is going on inside them; that it is a mechanical and alien growth which at some point acquires a soul. They are possessed. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
229:Sometimes a trial comes along, and we run to the Bible, pull out a quote and say, “According to this Scripture right here, we got it.” We have certain confidence in ourselves. We think we know exactly what is going on. The problem is that we do not know what is happening, and so God will deal with our self-trust. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
230:We have already noticed the difference in the attitude of a spectator and of an agent or participant. The former is indifferent to what is going on; one result is just as good as another, since each is just something to look at. The latter is bound up with what is going on; its outcome makes a difference to him. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
231:Neal stood, kicking free of the clinging curtain. "I'll kill you." I drew the firestar and pointed it at him. "I don't think so." "She is pack now," Sylvie said. "You fight one of us, and you fight all of us." Edward raised his eyebrows at me. "What is going on, Anita?" "I think I've been adopted," I said. ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
232:What is called “apathy” is, I believe, a feeling of helplessness on the part of the ordinary citizen, a feeling of impotence in the face of enormous power. It’s not that people are apathetic; they do care about what is going on, but don’t know what to do about it, so they do nothing, and appear to be indifferent. ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
233:The young hear memory in the voice of their elders and, delighted by these voices from the past or bored by them, too often miss the content behind the content. Memory is not about what went on in the past. It is about what is going on inside of us right this moment. It is never idle. It never lets us alone. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
234:When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in [my] stories is the fact that when I write, I really want to find out what is going on-I'm writing for myself as a reader. It's like when you dream a dream. I want to know what's behind the door. If I navigate, it's from a place that's totally intuitive. ~ Etgar Keret, #NFDB
235:It helps me keep things in perspective, and sometimes it helps me forget. Whenever I think things are too much, I come here. No matter what is going on or how bad it seems, when I sit on this bench, I’m reminded that the water continues to flow, the waves keep crashing on the shore, and life goes on around me. ~ Victoria Michaels, #NFDB
236:I know from my constituency what is going on. Doctors that are told, begged, by mothers, 'Please don't write down that my child as asthma. Please lie and say it's bronchitis, because if you write down asthma, when my child turns 18 or 20 and has to get his or her own insurance, it will be a pre-existing condition.' ~ Barbara Boxer, #NFDB
237:On the other hand, although I have a regular work schedule, I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn't going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
238:When you're working on a television show with actors, what you hope you're doing is playing jazz with them all the time. You see what they're giving you, so you try to write back to that, and then they play with that, and you get a sense of what is going on. That's just a natural way in which TV series usually work. ~ Remi Aubuchon, #NFDB
239:does require anyone who makes the trip to abandon some precious intuitions, but I think that I have at last found ways of making the act of jettisoning these “obvious truths” not just bearable but even delightful: it turns your head inside out, in a way, yielding some striking new perspectives on what is going on. ~ Daniel C Dennett, #NFDB
240:Although we have no actual written communications from the world of emptiness, we have some hints or suggestions about what is going on in that world, and that is, you might say, enlightenment. When you see plum blossoms or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that is a letter from the world of emptiness. ~ Shunryu Suzuki, #NFDB
241:There are no 'good' or 'bad' people. Some are a little better or a little worse but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other's hearts... Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in life. ~ Tennessee Williams, #NFDB
242:It is important to realize that a large percentage of what we hear or see on the news focuses on those places where there is violent conflict...It gives us a slightly or very distorted view of what is going on because there are many other parts of the planet where there is no violent conflict, but that is not on the news. ~ Eckhart Tolle, #NFDB
243:the face is an enormously rich source of information about emotion. In fact, he makes an even bolder claim—one central to understanding how mind reading works—and that is that the information on our face is not just a signal of what is going on inside our mind. In a certain sense, it is what is going on inside our mind. ~ Malcolm Gladwell, #NFDB
244:Neal stood, kicking free of the clinging curtain. "I'll kill you." I drew the firestar and pointed it at him.
"I don't think so."
"She is pack now," Sylvie said. "You fight one of us, and you fight all of us." Edward raised his eyebrows at me.
"What is going on, Anita?"
"I think I've been adopted," I said. ~ Laurell K Hamilton,#NFDB
245:Most times you do a movie every place except for what the camera sees is just a mess with the lights, people, and cameras so you get used to it. There is no way to shut that out, there is always a constant reminder of how many people it takes, what is going on and how many elements that goes into making this scene look right. ~ Jeremy Sisto, #NFDB
246:At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year - 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me. These folks are creative and ironic, and the government can ultimately not control what is going on in their heads. ~ Ai Weiwei, #NFDB
247:Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
248:Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what is going on, but that there is something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world. ~ Pema Chodron, #NFDB
249:I'm not sure leaders listen enough, especially to their people. And I've always thought in everything I've tried to do in my life, in the jobs I've had, is that if we can turn our transmitters off and our receivers on more often, we're better leaders and we know more of what is going on and therefore we can lead more effectively. ~ Chuck Hagel, #NFDB
250:is starting to happen between the two teenagers: “It gave me a queer feeling each time I looked into his deep blue eyes, and he sat there with that mysterious laugh playing round his lips…and with my whole heart I almost beseeched him: oh, tell me, what is going on inside you, oh, can’t you look beyond this ridiculous chatter? ~ Francine Prose, #NFDB
251:We’re not taught to look at what is going on and say, ‘Look what I have created in my life. Isn’t that interesting?’ Instead, we are taught to judge, lay blame, accuse, play victim, and seek revenge. Neither are we taught to think that our lives are directed by forces other than our own conscious mind—but, in truth, they are. ~ Colin C Tipping, #NFDB
252:Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps they need to take to get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals rather than all the other distractions that life presents to them. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
253:And this lesson about mortal peace of mind I never forgot. Even if a ghost is ripping a house to pieces, throwing in pans all over, pouring water of pillows, making clocks chime at all hours, mortal will accept almost any "natural explanation" offered, no matter how absurd, rather than the obvious supernatural one, for what is going on. ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
254:The world is being created and destroyed in this very moment. Whoever you met will reappear, whoever you lost will return. Don’t betray the grace that was bestowed on you. Understand what is going on inside you and you will understand what is going on inside everyone else. Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace. I came with a sword. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
255:Working with the kind of talent that I've gotten to work with, like the cast of Sin City, it makes me think probably more fully dimensionally about what is going on behind their eyes. But I draw the way I draw, and ain't nothing gonna change that. Although, I draw Marv and I think, "Boy, I could throw a little Mickey [Rourke] in there." ~ Frank Miller, #NFDB
256:Only the individual who is solitary is like a thing placed under profound laws, and when he goes out into the morning that is just beginning, or looks out into the evening that is full of happening, and if he feels what is going on there, then all status drops from him as from a dead man, though he stands in the midst of sheer life. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, #NFDB
257:When you are totally absorbed in the subject of your meditation, when you merge with or become one with the subject, you are completely unaware. That too is not jhana, at least not what Buddhism considers “right jhana.” In right jhana, you may be unaware of the outside world, but you are completely aware of what is going on within. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
258:I don't know that it makes any difference whether it's at this time or a hundred years before or a hundred years later. I think always it's a matter of simply listen[ing] to what is going on around you and in your own experience. Try to understand what's happening, or if not to understand it, at least to appreciate the reality of it. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
259:I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right; for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
260:So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
261:The evil into which these philosophers have fallen is greater than that from which they sought to escape, because they refuse to say that God neglects or forgets a thing, and yet they maintain that His knowledge is imperfect, that He is ignorant of what is going on here on earth, that He does not perceive it. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
262:It seems to me that one thing people do over and over again is try to figure out how to get married, stay married, fall in love, how to rekindle all this stuff. It seems to me to be a pretty eternal theme so I don't know if you can get typecast from making movies about men relating to women. It seems to be what is going on on the planet a lot. ~ John Cusack, #NFDB
263:I know what its like to direct. You become a more considerate actor. After you have directed, you understand what is going on. You can't help but think of the material as a director. You do come up with suggestions. You come up with shortcuts that you weren't aware of before. You try to be helpful to the director if he has a lot on his hands. ~ Dolph Lundgren, #NFDB
264:Today, journalists more than any other cohort of professionals, are responsible for the confusion that surrounds power and its criminality in contemporary society. As Janet Malcolm said in another context, 'Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.' ~ Martin Walker, #NFDB
265:Every difficult work presents us with a choice of whether to judge the author inept for not being clear, or ourselves stupid for not grasping what is going on. Montaigne encouraged us to blame the author. An incomprehensible prose-style is likely to have resulted more from laziness than cleverness; what reads easily is rarely so written... ~ John Kennedy Toole, #NFDB
266:When we see the relatedness of ourselves to the universe, that we do not live as isolated entities, untouched by what is going on around us, not affecting what is going on around us, when we see through that, that we are interrelated, then we can see that to protect others is to protect ourselves, and to protect ourselves it to protect others. ~ Sharon Salzberg, #NFDB
267:Adam shook his head. “You’re both crazy.” “No, I’m trying to keep tabs on what is going on with my best friend. If that makes me crazy, I can deal with that,” I declared. “I hardly know you. I’m just along for the ride,” Olivia said honestly. “You’re wickedly truthful,” I said with admiration to her. “I know. It’s a gift.” Olivia grinned. “Well, ~ Rhiannon Frater, #NFDB
268:He never once tells me what Tiffany thinks or what is going on in her heart: the awful feelings, the conflicting impulses, the needs, the desperation, everything that makes her different from Ronnie and Veronica, who have each other and their daughter, Emily, and a good income and a house and everything else that keeps people from calling them "odd. ~ Matthew Quick, #NFDB
269:She understands enough of what is going on. She understands that he wants to save her, more than anything in the world. She understands what he understands, that if only he could save her, he could save himself. She understands also that she loves him, and as she stays inside his helpless stare, she knows that fate is something she has to steer herself. ~ Matt Haig, #NFDB
270:The commands, principles, and case studies of Scripture will take you only so far in your quest to figure out your life. There will be moments when you simply don’t understand what is going on. In fact, you will face moments when what the God who has declared himself to be good brings into your life won’t seem good. It may even seem bad, very bad. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
271:Never underestimate a populist. We have come to a moment where language is very important. Saying the media is the number one enemy of society is a way to create confusion and set people against each other. It's like a virus. Democracy dies and is born every day. If you don't take an active role in what is going on, somebody can easily steal it from you. ~ Edgar Ramirez, #NFDB
272:What is going on? Who are you?"
"I don't have ti-"
"Make time!" I snapped. "I've covered almost two hundred miles on horseback. I haven't had a good night's sleep in a week, and I've nearly been killed twice. So before I do anything else, you're going to have to tell me who you are and why it's so very important that you get my clothes off. ~ Leigh Bardugo,#NFDB
273:If there is an exoneration of Donald Trump and collusion with the Russians to affect the outcome of the election, you think that's gonna make the Democrats go away? Do you think that's gonna make the deep state shut down? Is that gonna stop people in the intelligence community trying to overthrow an elected president? Because that is what is going on here. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
274:I'm not really sure what the psychology is, but for me, I'm interested in it because it's such a juxtaposition to what is going on in my life with a newborn, as you can see. So because of that juxtaposition I'm really fascinated by it, but I'm equally terrified by it, and I think that diving in it makes me feel safer as a woman and a mother for some reason. ~ Teresa Palmer, #NFDB
275:What is going on now, or should happen in one or two generations, is the disintegration of the world. Real time 'live' technologies, cyberreality, will permit the incorporation of the world within oneself. One will be able to read the entire world, just like during the Gulf War. And I will have become the world. The body of the world and my body will be one. ~ Paul Virilio, #NFDB
276:No matter what is going on in your life today, remember, it is only preparation. People come and go; situations rise and fall; it's all preparation for better things. You must stretch, reach, grow into your goodness. Without the preparation we receive through adversity, disappointment, confusion, or pain, we could not appreciate the goodness when it arrives. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
277:NEVER GIVE UP No matter what is going on Never give up Develop the heart Too much energy in your country Is spent developing the mind Instead of the heart Be compassionate Not just to your friends But to everyone Be compassionate Work for peace In your heart and in the world Work for peace And I say again Never give up No matter what is going on around you Never give up ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
278:When I worry about privacy I worry about peer-to-peer invasion of privacy. About the fact that anytime anything of any note happens, there are three arms holding cell phones with cameras in them or video records capturing the event ready to go on the nightly news, if necessary. And I think that does change a lot our sense of what is going on in our neighborhoods. ~ Jonathan Zittrain, #NFDB
279:You would know. You were listening.” “Of course.” She winked. “I’m your mother. That is what we do.” “Eavesdropping on conversations?” “Yes. How else am I supposed to know what is going on?” she asked innocently. I rolled my eyes and turned to go back into the living room. “Privacy, Mom.” “Honey,” she called from the kitchen, “there is no such thing as privacy. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout, #NFDB
280:Managers who don’t have a plan to talk to everyone on their team regularly are deluded. They believe they are going to learn what is going on in their group through some magical organizational osmosis and they won’t. Ideas will not be discovered, talent will be ignored, and the team will slowly begin to believe what they think does not matter, and the team is the company. ~ Michael Lopp, #NFDB
281:Inside every one of us is a garden, and every practitioner has to go back to their garden and take care of it. Maybe in the past, you left in untended for a long time. You should know exactly what is going on in your own garden, and try to put everything in order. Restore the beauty; restore the harmony in your garden. If it is well tended, many people will enjoy your garden. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
282:When I was sixteen and knew nothing about art, I sat through almost six hours of Andy Warhol’s Empire. I did not understand it but thought: this is in a major museum, it must be important, what is going on here? I stayed until the museum closed. His Screen Test films are some of my favorite works made this century, but you need to give them back the time they took to be made. ~ Uta Barth, #NFDB
283:Ambient awareness is the experience of knowing what's going on in the lives of other people - what they're thinking about, what they're doing, what they're looking at - by paying attention to the small stray status messages that people are putting online. We're now able to stitch together these fantastic details and mental maps of what is going on in other people's lives. ~ Clive Thompson, #NFDB
284:Ambient awareness is the experience of knowing what’s going on in the lives of other people — what they’re thinking about, what they’re doing, what they’re looking at — by paying attention to the small stray status messages that people are putting online. We’re now able to stitch together these fantastic details and mental maps of what is going on in other people’s lives. ~ Clive Thompson, #NFDB
285:For example, we take our children to the park after work while fitting in a call to a colleague; we attend a meeting while working on our to-do list for the following day; or we post a LinkedIn update as we are having lunch with a friend. When multitasking, we are never fully attentive to what is going on right now—and we lose out on what is happening in that precise moment. ~ Emma Sepp l, #NFDB
286:The drys seemingly are afraid of the truth. Why not take inventory and ascertain the true conditions. Let us not leave it to the charge of an antiprohibition organization, or to any other private association, let us have an official survey and let the American people know what is going on. A complete and honest and impartial survey would reveal incredible conditions. ~ Fiorello H La Guardia, #NFDB
287:We know there are a lot of good secondaries out there. We are just trying to focus on what we can do to get better. We've got some new, young guys coming in and we are trying to catch them up to speed. We are trying to make sure that we have depth, making sure the guys behind us know what is going on. We are going to keep pushing each other to raise the standard for our secondary. ~ Eric Berry, #NFDB
288:Being a woman no longer means being silent and subservient. A modern woman is strong, but in a subtle, confident way that doesn't need to be abrasive. A woman's looks can be helpful, but her brains will always propel her to where she wants to go. A modern woman is well-educated; she is up on what is going on in the world around her so that no one can pull the wool over her eyes. ~ Shannon Ables, #NFDB
289:If we can agree that it’s hard, if not impossible, to get a complete picture of what is going on at any given time in any given company, it becomes even harder when you are successful. That’s because success convinces us that we are doing things the right way. There is nothing quite as effective, when it comes to shutting down alternative viewpoints, as being convinced you are right. ~ Ed Catmull, #NFDB
290:So, you can define emotions very simply as the process of perceiving what is going on in the organs when you are in the throws of an emotion, and that is achieved by a collection of structures, some of which are in the brain stem, and some of which are in the cerebral cortex, namely the insular cortex, which I like to mention not because I think it's the most important, it's not. ~ Antonio Damasio, #NFDB
291:Democracy is not about trust; it is about distrust. It is about accountability, exposure, open debate, critical challenge, and popular input and feedback from the citizenry. It is about responsible government. We have to get our fellow Americans to trust their leaders less and themselves more, trust their own questions and suspicions, and their own desire to know what is going on. ~ Michael Parenti, #NFDB
292:What matters is not to allow my whole life to be dominated by what is going on inside me. That has to be kept subordinate one way or another. What I mean is: one must not let oneself be completely disabled by just one thing, however bad; don’t let it impede the great stream of life that flows through you. I have the feeling of something secret deep inside me that no one knows about. ~ Etty Hillesum, #NFDB
293:What makes me think we need a new religion? That’s easy. An effective religion allows people to imagine from moment to moment what is going on and how they should behave. Christianity used to be like that. Our country is now jammed with human beings who say out loud that life is chaos to them, and that it doesn’t seem to matter what anybody does next. This is worse than being seasick. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
294:After Iraq, there's been Libya, there's Syria, and the rhetoric of, you know, democracy versus radical Islam. When you look at the countries that were attacked, none of them were Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalist countries. Those ones are supported, financed by the U.S., so there is a real collusion between radical Islam and capitalism. What is going on is really a different kind of battle. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
295:I told Hugh Hefner, "I have this crazy boyfriend." And Hef was like, "You're not going anywhere with a crazy boyfriend," and so he put me in a mansion in Bel-Air with an opera singing Chinese maid, and I was driving a Bentley, and a friend of mine came by and was like, "What is going on? Why are you living in this mansion?" And I was like, "Isn't this what happens when people move to LA? ~ Pamela Anderson, #NFDB
296:Father, today I lift my eyes to You, for my help comes from You. Thank You for doing a work in my life. I choose to cooperate with You and keep an attitude of faith. I believe You are using every situation in my life for my good. I declare You are preparing me for promotion! I praise You today no matter what is going on around me, knowing that You have a good plan for me in Jesus’ Name. Amen. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
297:We have created a society in which the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, and in which we are so caught up in our own immediate problems that we cannot afford to be aware of what is going on with the rest of the human family or our planet Earth. In my mind I see a group of chickens in a cage disputing over a few seeds of grain, unaware that in a few hours they will all be killed. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
298:The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux and his colleagues have shown that the only way we can consciously access the emotional brain is through self-awareness, i.e. by activating the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that notices what is going on inside us and thus allows us to feel what we’re feeling.5 (The technical term for this is “interoception”—Latin for “looking inside.”) ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
299:Mitt Romney and I don't agree on every issue and certainly housing is one of them. When you look at what is going on here in Southern Nevada, you can't say you got to let the housing market hit bottom. We have been bouncing along the bottom for years. And the fact is we have to do everything possible to: 1) keep people in their homes and 2) get people who are out of their homes back into their homes. ~ Joe Heck, #NFDB
300:Well, he worked for a fairly harmless agency. He worked for the agency that looked after French prisoners of war. Though he was capable of some horrendous blunders when he was president. He once said that the Vichy legislation against Jews affected only foreign Jews, which was, of course, absolutely wrong. So he obviously wasn't too well-informed about what is going on in the Vichy government. ~ Robert O Paxton, #NFDB
301:You know, it’s just never a good idea for people to get involved when there’s some kind of…whatever between them.”
“What is this whatever that’s between us?”
She huffs. “This weirdness.”
“There’s nothing weird about what is going on here. I like you. I would’ve taken you back to my room, we would’ve fucked until the sun came up and then we’d be sitting here now, talking about designs. ~ Corinne Michaels,#NFDB
302:Solar flares affect our everyday lives in all kinds of mundane ways. They affect satellites, they affect our emotions, and so on, but they also affect the nature of the light that is coming to us, which is kind of the way that the DNA unfolds. And on those levels hardly anyone really understands all of this, and I don't either. I just know that what is going on in the Sun is very important. ~ Drunvalo Melchizedek, #NFDB
303:Who are these people sharing the street with me? What is going on in their worlds, inside their heads? Are they in love? If so, is it the kind that Mum and Dad have? Based on having things in common, like raspberry picking and a love of dogs, and Shakespeare, and long country walks? Or is it the knock-you-out, eat-you-up, set-you-on-fire kind of love that I have longed for-and avoided-all my life? ~ Alison Larkin, #NFDB
304:Americans live in a free country, which allows you to believe what you want. Because you think that something is true does not require that it is objectively true. The value of science concerning itself with objective truths is that we can make decisions and statements that affect everyone, which is why legislation really should be based on objective truths, not what is going on in your head. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
305:It is not an overstatement to say that the destiny of the entire human race depends on what is going on in America today. This is a staggering reality to the rest of the world; they must feel like passengers in a supersonic jetliner who are forced to watch helplessly while a passel of drunks, hypes, freaks, and madmen fight for the controls and the pilot's seat. – Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice, 1968 ~ Mark Kurlansky, #NFDB
306:Are you sure that I’ll be enough? These places can get pretty rough. You walk into a cake shop and then some gunslinger tells you, ‘You ain’t from around here, partner,’ and the next thing you know, you’re in the middle of the street, your horse is dead, the bad guy’s got your girl by her hair, and you’re down to one bullet.” “What is going on in your head?” “It’s a dark, lawless place, Catalina. So dark. ~ Ilona Andrews, #NFDB
307:For years he’d lived by the maxim Henry Green put so beautifully in his public-school memoir Pack My Bag: ‘The safest way to avoid trouble if one may not be going to fit is to take as great a part as possible in what is going on.’12 To gain approval, to avoid trouble, he had to mirror what was around him: it was how he had tried to win love from his mother as a child. It was a life of perpetual disguise. ~ Helen Macdonald, #NFDB
308:I promised myself as a kid that I would not become that guy. So I have my finger on the pulse of what is going on and I love relevant music today. We are talking about artists like Kendrick Lamar, School Boy Q, Absoul, that whole crew. Of course Evidence and Alchemist, those guys are my brothers and I love those guys, they have been lifelong friends but I have always sort of looked up to them artistically. ~ Shane Bunting, #NFDB
309:everything you ever experienced or will experience is in the here and now. The world is being created and destroyed in this very moment. Whoever you met will reappear, whoever you lost will return. Don’t betray the grace that was bestowed on you. Understand what is going on inside you and you will understand what is going on inside everyone else. Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace. I came with a sword. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
310:The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment. Practicing conscious breathing, aware of each thought and each act, we are reborn, fully alive, in the present moment. We needn’t abandon our hope entirely, but unless we channel our energies toward being aware of what is going on in the present moment, we might not discover the peace and happiness that are available right now. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
311:Giving ourselves permission allows us to hack rules that don’t make sense rather than follow them; to take ideas and stories apart that aren’t working; to go around the gatekeepers, bullies, and bureaucratic bottlenecks that would stifle change. Developing a habit of self-permission will instill in you the belief that you are in control of your career and your life, regardless of what is going on around you. ~ Beth Comstock, #NFDB
312:Again, when we view a scene fleetingly, do we consciously see all the details even though we don't retain them, or do we not see them in the first place? Neurological information is crucial to deciding these questions. After all, they are so interesting precisely because unaided introspection cannot resolve them. Rather we need to know what is going on in the brain activities that constitute visual awareness. ~ David Papineau, #NFDB
313:Many people like to think that their moral or political enemies are not just wicked or wrong - as if that were not enough - but stupid or idiotic too. We tend to find this attitude too in the contemporary religion debate. It might console those on each side of the debate to think of their opponents in these terms, but if we want to make real progress in understanding what is going on here, this approach cannot help. ~ Tim Crane, #NFDB
314:Everything that's happening in our world is a function of what is going on inside of people. We are violent in our minds. We are violent with one another. We walk past one another in the street and don't even look nor make eye contact - don't speak. We can be outraged about the missiles and the planes. I'm more outraged that somebody will walk past me in the street and not look me in the face and say good morning. ~ Iyanla Vanzant, #NFDB
315:Much of what is going on and will go on could be learned by the outside world from Mein Kampf, the Bible and Koran together of the Third Reich. But—amazingly—there is no decent translation of it in English or French, and Hitler will not allow one to be made, which is understandable, for it would shock many in the West. How many visiting butter-and-egg men have I told that the Nazi goal is domination! They laughed. ~ William L Shirer, #NFDB
316:We can hope to solve the problems of these children only if we correctly define what is going on with them and do more than developing new drugs to control them or trying to find “the” gene that is responsible for their “disease.” The challenge is to find ways to help them lead productive lives and, in so doing, save hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. That process starts with facing the facts. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
317:NEVER GIVE UP
No matter what is going on
Never give up
Develop the heart
Too much energy in your country
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart
Be compassionate
Not just to your friends
But to everyone
Be compassionate
Work for peace
In your heart and in the world
Work for peace
And I say again
Never give up
No matter what is going on around you
Never give up ~ Dalai Lama XIV,#NFDB
318:The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux and his colleagues have shown that the only way we can consciously access the emotional brain is through self-awareness, i.e. by activating the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that notices what is going on inside us and thus allows us to feel what we’re feeling.5 (The technical term for this is “interoception”—Latin for “looking inside.”) Most of our conscious brain ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
319:Love is the ability to live your life with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome, the ability within yourself to distinguish within yourself between love and fear and choose love regardless of what is going on inside yourself or outside. This is self-mastery or authentic power...that means you become clear, forgiving, humble and loving... you are grounded in harmony, cooperating, sharing and reverence for life. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
320:The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don't know - Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel - the quality of philosophy. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
321:I only wish the NRA and its jellyfish, well-paid supporters in legislatures both State and Federal would be careful to recite the whole of it, and then tell us how a heavily armed man, woman, or child, recruited by no official, led by no official, given no goals by any official, motivated or restrained only by his or her personality and perceptions of what is going on, can be considered a member of a well-regulated militia. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, #NFDB
322:Next to education there must come abundant, prompt, and truthful information of what is going on in the state, and frank and free discussion of the issues of the time. Even nowadays these functions are performed only very imperfectly and badly by the press we have and by our publicists and politicians; but badly though it is done, the thing is done, and the fact that it is done at all argues that it may ultimately be done well. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
323:I believe in being fully present," Morrie said. "That means you should be with the person you're with. When I'm talking to you now, Mitch, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I am not thinking about something we said last week. I am not thinking of what's coming up this Friday. I am not thinking about doing another Koppel show, or about what medications I'm taking. I am talking to you. I am thinking about you. ~ Mitch Albom, #NFDB
324:There is a remarkably distinctive smell emitted by fearful bureaucrats. It is acrid, rank, and seems to cling to the clothing and the hair. Acting like a pheromone, it drives senior management to form small defensive herds from which to scream homicidally at middle management that they must not tell junior staff who can fix the problem what is going on because everything, including what has just been reported on the radio, is secret. ~ Peter Macinnis, #NFDB
325:I think that what happened is that we grew up with the Holocaust within us. It turned us into harsh, emotionally incapable people who have become blind to what they are doing to other people. A lot of times, Holocaust abuse justifies terrible things done to the Palestinians. And you have to realize that what is going on is terrible, and that we are responsible, and we have to take responsibility - even if we are not completely responsible. ~ Eytan Fox, #NFDB
326:When I look at the human brain I'm still in awe of it. Every single time you lift off the bone and open the durra and there it is - the human brain, the thing that gives a person a personality, that distinguishes each one of us, that there could be more than 6 billion of us here on this planet with brains that look the same, but each one being distinctly different because of what is going on in that thing. I'll never get over my awe of that. ~ Benjamin Carson, #NFDB
327:Meditation is to be aware of what is going on - in our bodies, in our feelings, in our minds, and in the world. Each day...children die of hunger.... Yet the sunrise is beautiful, and the rose that bloomed this morning along the wall is a miracle. Life is both dreadful and wonderful. To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects. Please do not think we must be solemn in order to meditate. In fact, to meditate well, we have to smile a lot. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
328:When I was a child, we seemed to be living in a world remote from the rest of the world. But television has made a great difference to all of us. If something happens where I live, you see it tomorrow or perhaps even at the same time it is happening there. It's not "one world" in the sense that conflicts are resolved in the world. But we are more one world in that we know what is going on and are psychologically influenced by what goes on around us. ~ Nadine Gordimer, #NFDB
329:In a Zen retreat we have a format for working with these quicksilver changes: we sit with them, we pay attention to them... Being steady with mindfulness as an anchor for all the changes we go through is the way we practice forbearance. And you can employ this same method anywhere anytime: just pay close attention to the details of what is going on internally and externally. Don't flinch, don't run away. Trust what happens. Take your stand there." (71) ~ Norman Fischer, #NFDB
330:He [Daniel Craig] is mysterious, and I think that that's the thing Bond has to exude, that kind of mysterious edge. He draws you in, but he is also incredibly cool, you know, James Bond is cool and sharp and Daniel has that to a tee, and he's also got the rawness and an edginess to him that is slightly unhinged, and you're not sure what is going on there, and I think that is really intriguing and interesting. It is a lot weightier and gritty, and he has that. ~ Gemma Arterton, #NFDB
331:[The message of listening to and wrestling with God] is conveyed in a series of passages whose meaning does not lie on the surface of the text, but discloses itself only to those who listen to what is going on beneath the words: the unspoken cry, the implicit appeal, the unheard tears, the unarticulated pain. Those who wish to learn to listen to God must learn to listen to other people – to the kol demama daka, “the still, small voice” of those who need our love. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
332:He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the factory where Uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes a slicer is not working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it. ~ Mark Haddon, #NFDB
333:release me—an eye gouge or a knee to the testicles—though the best I managed was to drive my elbow into a chair. “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Chip snarled. “Would you just fight like a man?” “I’ll pass,” I said. The Bashful Armadillo was working for me. “What is going on here?!” The principal’s voice was frightening enough to scare even Chip cold. Our fight stopped instantly. For the first time since emerging from the subterranean level, I had a chance to take in my surroundings. ~ Stuart Gibbs, #NFDB
334:I think that everything in the world around us is a reflection of what is going on inside of us. So each of us as an individual creates a life - we draw to us certain people and events and circumstances that reflect what's going on inside of us, so we can literally look at our life and see a mirror of our own consciousness. And if that's true on an individual level, it's also true that what's going on in the world in a bigger way is a reflection of the collective consciousness. ~ Shakti Gawain, #NFDB
335:The research projects that I have recently undertaken have shown me that our modern societies, which claim to be secular, are, on the contrary, governed by secularised theological concepts, which act all the more powerfully because we are not conscious of their existence. We will never grasp what is going on today unless we understand that capitalism is, in reality, a religion. And, as Walter Benjamin said, it is the fiercest of all religions because it does not allow for atonement... ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
336:Mitch gripped her chin, pulling her away from her thoughts. “What is going on in that head of yours?” “Nothing,” she said, far too quickly. He searched her face. “You know, Maddie, you can tell me anything.” “Yes, I know,” she lied. She flashed a blinding smile. His eyes narrowed doubtfully. “I’m fine,” she said, fluttering her lashes at him. “Except for how awful the whole messy ordeal was.” He rolled over, trapping her and pinning her under him. “I knew you liked it mean.” Yes, ~ Jennifer Dawson, #NFDB
337:I also want to raise the possibility that there are, in the very long term, "virtue effects" in economics- for instance that widespread corrupt accounting will eventually create bad long term consequences as a sort of obverse effect from the virtue-based boost double-entry book-keeping gave to the heyday of Venice. I suggest that when the financial scene starts reminding you of Sodomand Gomorrah, you should fear practical consequences even if you like to participate in what is going on. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
338:We are all living in the world, and we are part of what is going on all around us. We have things to do, people to see, places to visit. But if that is all we are doing, we are missing out on the point of living. The point is to respond to the heart of God and be conformed to the likeness of Jesus, who is the image of the invisible One. Our quest in this life is the ecstasy of communion that can never be broken. This is not religiosity. It is real spirituality, and there is a difference. ~ Mahesh Chavda, #NFDB
339:We are all such escape artists, you and I. We don’t like to get too serious about things, especially about ourselves. When we are with other people, we are apt to talk about almost anything under the sun except for what really matters to us, except for our own lives, except for what is going on inside our own skins. We pass the time of day. We chatter. We hold each other at bay, keep our distance from each other even when God knows it is precisely each other that we desperately need. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
340:In the 1860s the leaders of the cotton belt made one of the most prodigious miscalculations in recorded history. On the eve of the era of applied technologies, in which more and more work is done with fewer people and less effort, they made war to preserve the day of chattel slavery - the era of gang labor, with its reliance on the same use of human muscles that built the pyramids. The lost cause was lost before it started to fight. Inability to see what is going on in the world can be costly. ~ Bruce Catton, #NFDB
341:Meditation means disidentification with the mind. It is a simple method, not something complex that only a few people can do. Just sit silently at any time, any moment, and watch. Close your eyes and watch what is going on. Just be a watcher. Don’t judge what is good, what is bad, this should not be, this should be… No judgment, you are simply a watcher. It takes a little time to attain pure watchfulness. And the moment you are a pure watcher, you will be surprised that the mind has disappeared. There ~ Osho, #NFDB
342:The Buddha described his teaching as "going against the stream." The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit. The moment we decide to stop and look at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by powerful currents we had never even suspected - precisely because until that moment we were largely living at their command. ~ Stephen Batchelor, #NFDB
343:To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
344:To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this, a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
345:Buddhism and Western psychotherapy have much in common. They each recognize that the key to overcoming suffering is the conscious acknowledgment of the ego’s nefarious ways. Without such consciousness, we remain pushed around by impulses and held in check by unrecognized defenses. But when we are able to see the extent of our own fears and desires, there is something in us, recognized by both Buddha and Freud, which is able to break free. Taking responsibility for what is going on inside of us gives hope. ~ Mark Epstein, #NFDB
346:But a theory is not like an airline or bus timetable. We are not interested simply in the accuracy of its predictions. A theory also serves as a base for thinking. It helps us to understand what is going on by enabling us to organize our thoughts. Faced with a choice between a theory which predicts well but gives us little insight into how the system works and one which gives us this insight but predicts badly, I would choose the latter, and I am inclined to think that most economists would do the same. ~ Ronald H Coase, #NFDB
347:Eventually there comes the day of reckoning and awakening, and then we shall know that it was all a great dream. Only fools think that they are now awake and that they really know what is going on, playing the prince and then playing the servant. What fools! The Master and you are both living in a dream. When I say a dream, I am also dreaming. This very saying is a deception. If after ten thousand years we could once meet a truly great sage, one who understands, it would seem as if it had only been a morning. ~ Zhuangzi, #NFDB
348:However much we are affected by the things of the world, however deeply they may stir and stimulate us, they become human for us only when we can discuss them with our fellows. Whatever cannot become the object of discourse - the truly sublime, the truly horrible or the uncanny - may find human voice through which to sound into the world, but it is not exactly human. We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human. ~ Hannah Arendt, #NFDB
349:Many traumatized children and adults simply cannot describe what they are feeling because they cannot identify what their physical sensations mean. They may look furious but deny that they are angry; they may appear terrified but say that they are fine. Not being able to discern what is going on inside their bodies causes them to be out of touch with their needs, and they have trouble taking care of themselves, whether it involves eating the right amount at the right time or getting the sleep they need. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
350:On learning. — Learning is discovery, the discovery of the cause of our ignorance. However, the best way of learning is not the computation of information. Learning is discovering, uncovering what is there in us. When we discover, we are uncovering our own ability, our own eyes, in order to find our potential, to see what is going on, to discover how we can enlarge our lives, to find means at our disposal that will let us cope with a difficult situation. And all this, I maintain, is taking place in the here and now. ~ Bruce Lee, #NFDB
351:When we see someone overflowing with love and understanding, someone who is keenly aware of what is going on, we know that they are very close to the Buddha and to Jesus Christ.” How would you feel if you met a person like that? Overjoyed? Of course. Comfortable. Perhaps not. I have had the privilege of encountering men and women close to the living Buddha, the living Christ—some of them world-famous, others completely unknown; it makes no difference. Their very presence awakens us and challenges our complacency. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
352:It is certainly of great importance for a general to keep his plans secret; and Frederick the Great was right when he said that if his night-cap knew what was in his head he would throw it into the fire. That kind of secrecy was practicable in Frederick's time when his whole army was kept closely about him; but when maneuvers of the vastness of Napoleon's are executed, and war is waged as in our day, what concert of action can be expected from generals who are utterly ignorant of what is going on around them? ~ Antoine Henri Jomini, #NFDB
353:We like books that have a lot of dreck in them, matter which presents itself as not wholly relevant (or indeed, at all relevant) but which, carefully attended to, can supply a kind of "sense" of what is going on. This "sense" is not to be obtained by reading between the lines (for there is nothing there, in those white spaces) but by reading the lines themselves looking at them and so arriving at a feeling not of satisfaction exactly, that is too much to expect, but of having read them, of having "completed" them. ~ Donald Barthelme, #NFDB
354:I really must become a bit simpler. Let myself live a bit more. Not always insist on the results straight away. I know what the remedy is, though: just to crouch huddled up on the ground in a corner and listen to what is going on inside me. Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can't think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then, and just listen. Reestablish contact with a slice of eternity. ~ Etty Hillesum, #NFDB
355:Wrong' training can be a very innocent thing. Consider a father who allows his child to read good books. That child may soon cease to watch television or go to the movies, nor will he eventually read Book-of-the-Month Club selections, because they are ludicrous and dull. As a young man, then, he will effectually be excluded from all of Madison Avenue and Hollywood and most of publishing, because what moves him or what he creates is quite irrelevant to what is going on: it is too fine. His father has brought him up as a dodo. ~ Paul Goodman, #NFDB
356:I think when people try to use their art for political views, I think they're art becomes smaller, less interesting. And so for me, as an artist, I'm trying to speak about things in a universal way and not be pedantic or small-minded and try to convince other people of my political views. But having said that, every day I live in sort of complete terror because of what I read in the newspaper and what is going on in the world. I'm constantly, as I think many of us are, overwhelmed by the sort of, mass psychosis that's occurring. ~ Sean Lennon, #NFDB
357:There are fundamentally three avenues: 1) top down, by talking, (re-) connecting with others, and allowing ourselves to know and understand what is going on with us, while processing the memories of the trauma; 2) by taking medicines that shut down inappropriate alarm reactions, or by utilizing other technologies that change the way the brain organizes information, and 3) bottom up: by allowing the body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
358:You and I are going to figure out what is going on, and then we’re going to make it stop,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
He smiled. “And in return, you will never again ask me to vet one of your dates.”
She shook her head, reluctantly amused. “That really irritated you, didn’t it?”
“A hell of a lot more than I anticipated.”
“Why?”
“Probably because there’s a conflict of interest involved. When this is over I want to be your next date. If you say yes, you’re going to have to ask someone else to do the background check. ~ Jayne Ann Krentz,#NFDB
359:Sometimes it is necessary in a counseling situation to share with a wise person what is going on in our minds so we can get to the root cause of our conflict. But otherwise, walking around repeating what is being spoken against us in the unseen realm only helps reinforce these lies in our own hearts. Politicians and marketing gurus understand the “principle of repetition” very well. This principle says, “People tend to believe what they hear repeated, whether it is true or not.” Think about that—it is possible to talk yourself to death! ~ Kris Vallotton, #NFDB
360:I knew she was not telling me the truth. I asked her again what had happned because I don't like it when she keeps something from me. She's not allowed. Because when she lies, someting inside me changes, and it's like the WHOLE WORLD is one way and I'm the other. Like I can't trust a thing, as if the whole world knows a secret I don't and I'm running around from person to person asking them to tell me but they won't and the more I don't know what is going on the more scared I become and I feel myself drifting farther and farther away from everyone. ~ Jack Gantos, #NFDB
361:I own no TV stations, or Radio Stations or Newspapers. But I feel that people need to be educated as to what is going on, and to understand the connection between the news media and the instruments of repression in Amerika. All I have is my voice, my spirit and the will to tell the truth. But I sincerely ask, those of you in the Black media, those of you in the progressive media, those of you who believe in true freedom, to publish this statement and to let people know what is happening. We have no voice, so you must be the voice of the voiceless. ~ Assata Shakur, #NFDB
362:Simon: I love you Isabelle Lightwood! I love you and I will not go away until you tell me you love me too!
Isabelle: Take your clothes and go!
Simon: Isabelle! Stop throwing clothes at me! Just because your a Shadowhunter and I'm a vampire doesn't mean we can never happen. Our love is forbidden like the love of a shark and a-a sharkhunter! But that's what makes it special!
Isabelle: Oh? Which one of us is the shark, Simon? Which one of us is the shark?
Robert Lightwood: What is going on? Why are you yelling outside my house? ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
363:Split-brain patients act in a unique way. It appeared the left, speaking hemisphere initially offered a utilitarian response to all scenarios. Thus, if an act had mal-intent but no harm came from it, it was judged as “permissible.” And if an act did not have mal-intent, but resulted in harm, it was judged “forbidden.” Given the clarity of the stories used, this was a jarring result. What is going on? The disconnected left hemisphere is unable to take into account the intent of the person in the stories, acting as if it didn’t have a theory of mind. ~ Michael S Gazzaniga, #NFDB
364:on the other hand, a neurotic fear, such as agoraphobia, cannot be cured by philosophical understanding. However, logotherapy has developed a special technique to handle such cases, too. To understand what is going on whenever this technique is used, we take as a starting point a condition which is frequently observed in neurotic individuals, namely, anticipatory anxiety. It is characteristic of this fear that it produces precisely that of which the patient is afraid. An individual, for example, who is afraid of blushing when he enters a large room and faces many ~ Viktor E Frankl, #NFDB
365:The TAT is a so-called projective test, which uses a set of cards to discover how people’s inner reality shapes their view of the world. Unlike the Rorschach cards we used with the veterans, the TAT cards depict realistic but ambiguous and somewhat troubling scenes: a man and a woman gloomily staring away from each other, a boy looking at a broken violin. Subjects are asked to tell stories about what is going on in the photo, what has happened previously, and what happens next. In most cases their interpretations quickly reveal the themes that preoccupy them. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
366:Yet emotions are our most direct reaction to our perception of ourselves and the world around us. Whether positive or negative, feelings put us in touch with our true selves. They are neither good nor bad: They are simply the truth of what is going on within us. What we do with our feelings will determine whether we live lives of honesty or of deceit. When submitted to the discretion of a faith-formed intellect, our emotions serve as trustworthy beacons for appropriate action or inaction. The denial, displacement, and repression of feelings thwarts self-intimacy. My ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
367:Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty. ~ John Muir, #NFDB
368:In the brain, naming an emotion can help calm it. Here is where finding words to label an internal experience becomes really helpful. We can call this “Name it to tame it.” And sometimes these low-road states can go beyond being unpleasant and confusing—they can even make life feel terrifying. If that is going on, talk about it. Sharing your experience with others can often make even terrifying moments understood and not traumatizing. Your inner sea and your interpersonal relationships will all benefit from naming what is going on and bringing more integration into your life. ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
369:Thank heaven, then, that a little illusion is left to us, to enable us to be useful and agreeable – that we don’t know exactly what our friends think of us – that the world is not made of looking-glass, to show us just the figure we are making, and just what is going on behind our backs! By the help of dear friendly illusion, we are able to dream that we are charming – and our faces wear a becoming air of self-possession; we are able to dream that other men admire our talents – and our benignity is undisturbed; we are able to dream that we are doing much good – and we do a little. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
370:The private citizen today has come to feel rather like a deaf spectator in the back row, who ought to keep his mind on the mystery off there, but cannot quite manage to keep awake. He knows he is somehow affected by what is going on. Rules and regulations continually, taxes annually and wars occasionally remind him that he is being swept along by great drifts of circumstance. Yet these public affairs are in no convincing way his affairs. They are for the most part invisible. They are managed, if they are managed at all, at distant centers, from behind the scenes, by unnamed powers. ~ Walter Lippmann, #NFDB
371:• Take a deep breath, sit quietly, and feel the sensation in your body. • Feel the sensation without judgment. Just be with it. • Let any feelings, thoughts, or energies that want to come up do so—this often means listening to the voice of anxiety, anger, fear, or woundedness. Let the voices say what they want to say. Listen and understand what is going on. • Watch the energy disperse as much as it can. Don’t demand complete discharge. Take the attitude that your body will let go of as much stored energy as it is able to. • After a few hours or the next day, repeat this whole process. ~ Deepak Chopra, #NFDB
372:One of the central arguments of this essay so far is that structural violence creates lopsided structures of the imagination. Those on the bottom of the heap have to spend a great deal of imaginative energy trying to understand the social dynamics that surround them--including having to imagine the perspectives of those on top--while the latter can wander about largely oblivious to much of what is going on around them. That is, the powerless not only end up doing most of the actual, physical labor required to keep society running, they also do most of the interpretive labor as well. (p. 81) ~ David Graeber, #NFDB
373:Circumstances can have a motive force by which they bring about events without aid of human imagination or apprehension. On such occasions you yourself keep in touch with what is going on by attentively following it from moment to moment, like a blind person who is being led, and who places one foot in front of the other cautiously but unwittingly. Things are happening to you, and you feel them happening, but except for this one fact, you have no connection with them, and no key to the cause or meaning of them. [...] - a passage outside the range of imagination, but within the range of experience. ~ Karen Blixen, #NFDB
374:Sometimes we understand what is going on. But sometimes it is impossible to figure out why rising demand does not result in better performance. The innovator, therefore, need not always try to understand why things do not work as they should. He should ask instead: ‘What would exploit this incongruity? What would convert it into an opportunity? What can be done?’ Incongruity between economic realities is a call to action. Sometimes the action to be taken is rather obvious, even though the problem itself is quite obscure. And sometimes we understand the problem thoroughly and yet cannot figure out what to do about it. ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
375:What is going on?” Abram asked Mikael. “El Shaddai has confused their language so that they may not understand each other’s speech,” he said. “Why would he do that?” “To divide their unity and disperse them over the face of the earth.” Then it came clear to Abram what El Shaddai had done. He would not destroy the world again with water. But he would protect his plan against a world of unified rebellion. All across the ruins of Babylon, survivors from various cities tried to communicate with one another. But they had miraculously been given different languages. They could not understand one another and could barely help one another. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
376:I can say I am a scientist. I find excitement in discovery. The excitement is not in the fact that you’ve created something, but that you’ve found something beautiful that’s always been there. So scientific stuff affects every part of my life. And affects my attitudes toward many things. I can’t say which is the cart and which is the horse. Because I’m an integrated person and I can’t tell you whether for instance my skepticism is the reason I’m interested in science or my science is the reason I’m skeptical. Those things are impossible. But I want to know what is true. That is why I look into things. To see and to find out what is going on. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
377:The human mind suffers from three ailments as it comes into contact with history, what I call the triplet of opacity. They are: the illusion of understanding, or how everyone thinks he knows what is going on in a world that is more complicated (or random) than they realize; the retrospective distortion, or how we can assess matters only after the fact, as if they were in a rearview mirror (history seems clearer and more organized in history books than in empirical reality); and the overvaluation of factual information and the handicap of authoritative and learned people, particularly when they create categories—when they “Platonify. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
378:But maybe something new could work with the impossible child-man in the White House: positive reinforcement.
That was very smart, Mr. President, not to tangle with the Persians, who have been engaged in geopolitics since 550 B.C., until you have a better sense of exactly what is going on here. Listen to your isolationist instincts and your base, not to batty Bolton. You don’t want to get mired in a war that could spill over to Saudi Arabia and Israel, sparking conflagrations from Afghanistan to Lebanon and beyond.
Just remember: The Iranians are great negotiators with a bad hand and you are a terrible negotiator with a good hand. ~ Maureen Dowd,#NFDB
379:TRUST ME in the midst of a messy day. Your inner calm—your Peace in My Presence—need not be shaken by what is going on around you. Though you live in this temporal world, your innermost being is rooted and grounded in eternity. When you start to feel stressed, detach yourself from the disturbances around you. Instead of desperately striving to maintain order and control in your little world, relax and remember that circumstances cannot touch My Peace. Seek My Face, and I will share My mind with you, opening your eyes to see things from My perspective. Do not let your heart be troubled, and do not be afraid. The Peace I give is sufficient for you. ~ Sarah Young, #NFDB
380:In a threatening situation it is natural to mobilize psychic energy, draw it inward, and use it as a defense against the threat. But this innate reaction more often than not compromises the ability to cope. It exacerbates the experience of inner turmoil, reduces the flexibility of response, and, perhaps worse than anything else, it isolates a person from the rest of the world, leaving him alone with his frustrations. On the other hand, if one continues to stay in touch with what is going on, new possibilities are likely to emerge, which in turn might suggest new responses, and one is less likely to be entirely cut off from the stream of life. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
381:Why couldn’t I find one action that would make the need to binge automatically disappear? Because there is no magic action to make that horrible prebinge feeling go away. The cool thing is that we are designed so that the feeling will pass through us on its own—in time. All we have to do is sit there and feel what is going on inside of us. We must experience the feelings. To help us deal with the feelings, we can call someone on our support team. We can also express the feelings by focusing on our breath or even hitting a pillow. The important thing to remember is that no matter how terrible, feelings do pass. It takes patience and trust—not food . . . ~ Jenni Schaefer, #NFDB
382:Many have found the secret of which I speak and, without giving much thought to what is going on within them, constantly practice this habit of inwardly gazing upon God. They know that something inside their hearts sees God. Even when they are compelled to withdraw their conscious attention in order to engage in earthly affairs there is within them a secret communion always going on. Let their attention but be released for a moment from necessary business and it flies at once to God again. This has been the testimony of many Christians, so many that even as I state it thus I have a feeling that I am quoting, though from whom or from how many I cannot possibly know. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
383:For the remaining animals in research and the agricultural industry, I place my hopes on transparency. It's up to society to decide what kind of relations we'll have with animals, and what kind of uses we'll permit, but it is absolutely essential to bring animals out of the shadows. We barely know what is going on at many places, which makes it easy to act as if nothing is the matter. We need research facilities with open-door policies and farms with an obligation to show how they keep their animals . . . . If we made all locations with captive animals as public as zoos, matters would improve in a hurry. Public pressure and consumer preferences would do the job. ~ Frans de Waal, #NFDB
384:What is going on inside me I cannot tell. In the sky a thousand stars are magnetized, and I lie glued by the swing of the planet to the sand. A different weight brings me back to myself. I feel the weight of my body drawing me towards so many things. My dreams are more real than these dunes, than that moon, than these presences. My civilization is an empire more imperious than this empire. The marvel of a house is not that it shelters or warms a man, nor that its walls belong to him. It is that it leaves its trace on the language. Let it remain a sign. Let it form, deep in the heart, that obscure range from which, as waters from a spring, are born our dreams. ~ Antoine de Saint Exup ry, #NFDB
385:inevitably I think sometimes about my death, but those thoughts go away as quickly as they come. I tend not to dwell on them. Somebody asked me if I wanted to join a suicide society. It’s some organisation in Edinburgh that helps people to commit suicide and I believe that a lot of Parkinson’s sufferers choose that course of action. But I don’t want to. I’m too interested in what is going on around me. In any case, the fuckers didn’t even offer me a lifetime membership.
I think life and death is a very simple question that is made far too complex by people who have an axe to grind. I think that when you die, you go to where you were before you were born: nowhere. ~ Billy Connolly,#NFDB
386:Science Fiction properly conceived, like all serious fiction, however funny, is a way of trying to describe what is going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story. In it, as in all fiction, there is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things, there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them, too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool's joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn't over. Still there are seeds to be gathered and room in the bag of stars. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
387:A sense of humor is a serious business; and it isn't funny, not having one. Watch the humorless closely: the cocked and furtive way they monitor all conversation, their flashes of panic as irony or exaggeration eludes them, the relief with which they submit to the meaningless babble of unanimous laughter. The humorless can programme themselves to relish situations of human farce or slapstick — and that's about it. They are handicapped in the head, or mentally 'challenged', as Americans say (euphemism itself being a denial of humour). The trouble is that the challenge wins, every time, hands down. The humorless have no idea what is going on and can't make sense of anything at all. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
388:When I describe priming studies to audiences, the reaction is often disbelief. [...] The idea you should focus on, however, is that disbelief is not an option. The results are not made up, nor are they statistical flukes. You have no choice but to accept that the major conclusions of these studies are true. More important, you must accept that they are true about you. [...] You do not believe that these results apply to you because they correspond to nothing in your subjective experience. But your subjective experience consists largely of the story that your System 2 tells itself about what is going on. Priming phenomena arise in System 1, and you have no conscious access to them. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
389:What is going on with you, Rev?”
He rubs his eyes. “I don’t know. I’m just tired.”
I think of how he sat in the hospital with me, saying nothing. His silence was more supportive than anything he could have said.
I don’t know how to do that in return. Maybe I can offer something else, though. I pull out my phone and do a quick search, then turn it around and slide it across the bed.
He doesn’t reach for it. “Did she send more?”
“No. It’s a poem I had to read for English. Read it.”
He looks up, and the expression on his face is exactly the one I’d wear if he suddenly said, Hey bro, read this poem. “What?”
“Just read it. I think you’ll like it. ~ Brigid Kemmerer,#NFDB
390:Frewen and his colleague Ruth Lanius found that the more people were out of touch with their feelings, the less activity they had in the self-sensing areas of the brain.22 Because traumatized people often have trouble sensing what is going on in their bodies, they lack a nuanced response to frustration. They either react to stress by becoming “spaced out” or with excessive anger. Whatever their response, they often can’t tell what is upsetting them. This failure to be in touch with their bodies contributes to their well-documented lack of self-protection and high rates of revictimization23 and also to their remarkable difficulties feeling pleasure, sensuality, and having a sense of meaning. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
391:Next, they do the practical things—making lunch, dusting the room, washing the towels. Finally, they don’t try to minimize what is going on. They don’t attempt to reassure with false, saccharine sentiments. They don’t say that the pain is all for the best. They don’t search for silver linings. They do what wise souls do in the presence of tragedy and trauma. They practice a passive activism. They don’t bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. She just sits simply through the nights of pain and darkness, being practical, human, simple, and direct. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
392:Garnett wrote, who had ‘found himself always in the dilemma of either being sincere and cruel, or false and unnatural. Whichever line he followed, he revolted the object of his love and disgusted himself.’
When White took up his position at Stowe in 1932 he was already expert at hiding who he was. For years he’d lived by the maxim Henry Green put so beautifully in his public-school memoir Pack My Bag: ‘The safest way to avoid trouble if one may not be going to fit is to take as great a part as possible in what is going on.’ To gain approval, to avoid trouble, he had to mirror what was around him: it was how he had tried to win love from his mother as a child. It was a life of perpetual disguise. ~ Helen Macdonald,#NFDB
393:It is only through difference that progress can be made. What threatens us right now is probably what we may call over-communication--that is, the tendency to know exactly in one point of the world what is going on in all other parts of the world. In order for a culture to be really itself and to produce something, the culture and its members must be convinced of their originality and even, to some extent, of their superiority over the others; it is only under conditions of under-communication that it can produce anything. We are now threatened with the prospect of our being only consumers, able to consume anything from any point in the world and from any culture, but of losing all originality. ~ Claude L vi Strauss, #NFDB
394:Generally the rational brain can override the emotional brain, as long as our fears don’t hijack us. (For example, your fear at being flagged down by the police can turn instantly to gratitude when the cop warns you that there’s an accident ahead.) But the moment we feel trapped, enraged, or rejected, we are vulnerable to activating old maps and to follow their directions. Change begins when we learn to "own" our emotional brains. That means learning to observe and tolerate the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations that register misery and humiliation. Only after learning to bear what is going on inside can we start to befriend, rather than obliterate, the emotions that keep our maps fixed and immutable. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
395:Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction learns—when the article or book appears—his hard lesson. Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and "the public's right to know"; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living. ~ Janet Malcolm, #NFDB
396:The function of consciousness is to represent information about what is happening outside and inside the organism in such a way that it can be evaluated and acted upon by the body. In this sense, it functions as a clearinghouse for sensations, perceptions, feelings, and ideas, establishing priorities among all the diverse information. Without consciousness we would still “know” what is going on, but we would have to react to it in a reflexive, instinctive way. With consciousness, we can deliberately weigh what the senses tell us, and respond accordingly. And we can also invent information that did not exist before: it is because we have consciousness that we can daydream, make up lies, and write beautiful poems and scientific theories. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
397:However, traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.
The more people try to push away and ignore internal warning signs, the more likely they are to take over and leave them bewildered, confused, and ashamed. People who cannot comfortably notice what is going on inside become vulnerable to respond to any sensory shift either by shutting down or by going into a panic — they develop a fear of fear itself. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk,#NFDB
398:Essentially, this extra structure covering our life has no reality. It has come to be there because of the misuse of our minds. It’s not a question of getting rid of it, since it has no reality; but it is a question of seeing its nature. And as we see its nature, instead of it being so thick and dark, the covering becomes more transparent: we see through it. Enlightenment (bringing in more light) is what happens in practice. Actually we’re not getting rid of a structure, we’re seeing through it as the dream it is, and as we realize its true nature its whole function in our life weakens; and at the same time we can see more accurately what is going on in our daily life. It’s as if we have to go full circle. Our life is always all right. There’s nothing ~ Charlotte Joko Beck, #NFDB
399:How pathetic it is that such products now appeal to a huge market of people who do not understand that the way to introduce children to music is by playing good music, uninterrupted by video clowns, at home; the way to introduce poetry is by reciting or reading it at bedtime; and the way to instill an appreciation of beauty is not to bombard a toddler with screen images of Monet’s Giverny but to introduce her to the real sights and scents of a garden. It is a fine thing for tired parents to gain a quiet hour for themselves by mesmerizing small children with videos—who would be stuffy enough to suggest that the occasional hour in front of animals dancing to Tchaikovsky can do a baby any real harm?—but let us not delude ourselves that education is what is going on. ~ Susan Jacoby, #NFDB
400:I believe I can read a little in the souls of those around me; maybe it is not so. Oh, when I have a good day I feel as if I can peer deep into other people’s souls, although I don’t have a particularly good head on my shoulders. We sit in a room, some men and women and I, and I seem to see what is going on in the hearts of these people and what they think of me. I put something into every flashing glance of their eyes; occasionally the blood rushes to their cheeks so they turn red, at other times they pretend to be looking another way while still watching me out of the corner of their eyes. There I sit observing all this, and nobody suspects that I see through every soul. For several years I have thought I could read the souls of everybody. Maybe it is not so. . . . ~ Knut Hamsun, #NFDB
401:Every one of us has the tendency to run. We have run all of our lives, and we continue to run into the future where we think that some happiness may be waiting. We have received the habit of running from our parents and ancestors. When we learn to recognize our habit of running, we can use mindful breathing, and simply smile at this habit and say, “Hello, my dear old friend, I know you are there.” And then you are free from this habit energy. You don’t have to fight it. There is no fighting in this practice. There is only recognition and awareness of what is going on. When the habit energy of running manifests itself, you just smile and come back to your mindful breathing. Then you are free from it, and you continue to breathe in, breathe out, and enjoy the present moment. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
402:It does appear that some parts of our evolutionary process seem inevitable. It is striking that throughout evolutionary history, the eye evolved independently fifty to a hundred times. This is strong evidence for the fact that the different rolls of the dice that have occurred across different species seem to have produced species with eyes regardless of what is going on around them. Lots of other examples illustrate how some features, if they are advantageous, seem to rise to the top of the evolutionary swamp. This is illustrated every time you see the same feature appearing more than once in different parts of the animal kingdom. Dolphins and bats, for example, use echolocation, but they evolved this trait independently at very different points on the evolutionary tree. ~ Marcus du Sautoy, #NFDB
403:The human brain runs first-class simulation software. Our eyes don’t present to our brains a faithful photograph of what is out there, or an accurate movie of what is going on through time. Our brains construct a continuously updated model: updated by coded pulses chattering along the optic nerve, but constructed nevertheless. Optical illusions are vivid reminders of this.47 A major class of illusions, of which the Necker Cube is an example, arise because the sense data that the brain receives are compatible with two alternative models of reality. The brain, having no basis for choosing between them, alternates, and we experience a series of flips from one internal model to the other. The picture we are looking at appears, almost literally, to flip over and become something else. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
404:Because traumatized people often have trouble sensing what is going on in their bodies, they lack a nuanced response to frustration. They either react to stress by becoming “spaced out” or with excessive anger. Whatever their response, they often can’t tell what is upsetting them. This failure to be in touch with their bodies contributes to their well-documented lack of self-protection and high rates of revictimization23 and also to their remarkable difficulties feeling pleasure, sensuality, and having a sense of meaning. People with alexithymia can get better only by learning to recognize the relationship between their physical sensations and their emotions, much as colorblind people can only enter the world of color by learning to distinguish and appreciate shades of gray. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
405:Shakespeare, Compactly
Shakespeare, Compactly
Look at Hamlet
What Hamlet’s father said to him,
In Hamlet’s mind grew rather dim.
The lesson is: We can’t obey
Unless our mind is just one way.
Self-reproof Isn’t Everything
The prince soliloquizes;
His indignation rises.
And Hamlet stands reproved.
But Hamlet hasn’t moved.
All about Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth, too ambitious,
Caused her husband to be vicious.
Macbeth heeding her commands,
Made his lady wash her hands.
Family Net
Romeo and Juliet
Is about a family net.
Love fares sadly by a vault.
Wasn’t it the families’ fault?
The Question in King Lear
All through the play this is asked by King Lear:
Could anyone tell me what is going on here?
~ Eli Siegel,#NFDB
406:All I knew was what I wasn’t, and it took me some years to discover what I was.
Which was a writer.
By which I mean not a "good" writer or a "bad" writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hourse are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Why did the oil refineries around Carquinez Straits seem sinister to me in the summer of 1956? Why have the night lights in the bevatron burned in my mind for twenty years? What is going on in these pictures in my mind? ~ Joan Didion,#NFDB
407:And the hundred million cowards,’ Abdul Ghani continued, pinching the handle of the teacup between his plump fingers, ‘they are the bureaucrats and paper shufflers and pen-pushers who permit the rule of the evil men, and look the other way. They are the head of this department, and the secretary of that committee, and the president of the other association. They are managers, and officials, and mayors, and officers of the court. They always defend themselves by saying that they are just following orders, or just doing their job, and it’s nothing personal, and if they don’t do it, someone else surely will. They are the hundred million cowards who know what is going on, but say nothing, while they sign the paper that puts one man before a firing squad, or condemns one million men to the slower death of a famine. ~ Gregory David Roberts, #NFDB
408:If he would just work with pure ideas like a proper mathematician he could go as fast as thought. As it happens, Alan has become fascinated by the incarnations of pure ideas in the physical world. The underlying math of the universe is like the light streaming in through the window. Alan is not satisfied with merely knowing that it streams in. He blows smoke into the air to make the light visible. He sits in meadows gazing at pine cones and flowers, tracing the mathematical patterns in their structure, and he dreams about electron winds blowing over the glowing filaments and screens of radio tubes, and, in their surges and eddies, capturing something of what is going on in his own brain. Turing is neither a mortal nor a god. He is Antaeus. That he bridges the mathematical and physical worlds is his strength and his weakness. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
409:We can now develop methods and experiences that utilize the brain’s own natural neuroplasticity to help survivors feel fully alive in the present and move on with their lives. There are fundamentally three avenues: 1) top down, by talking, (re-) connecting with others, and allowing ourselves to know and understand what is going on with us, while processing the memories of the trauma; 2) by taking medicines that shut down inappropriate alarm reactions, or by utilizing other technologies that change the way the brain organizes information, and 3) bottom up: by allowing the body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma. Which one of these is best for any particular survivor is an empirical question. Most people I have worked with require a combination. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
410:JANUARY 22 Let God Be God For who has known or understood the mind (the counsels and purposes) of the Lord so as to guide and instruct Him and give Him knowledge? 1 CORINTHIANS 2:16 It is not your job to give God guidance, counsel, or direction. It is your job to listen to God and let Him tell you what is going on and what you are to do about it—leaving the rest to Him to work out according to His knowledge and will, not yours. God is God—and you are not. You need to recognize that truth and simply trust yourself to Him, because He is greater than you are in every way. You are created in His image, but He is still above and beyond you. His thoughts and ways are higher than yours. So listen to God tonight, be obedient to Him, and He will teach you His ways. Cast off your care, releasing the weight of all your burdens and sleep peacefully. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
411:meditate on the passage: Write down answers to the following questions: What does this text show me about God for which I should praise or thank him? What does the text show me about my sin that I should confess and repent of? What false attitudes, behavior, emotions, or idols come alive in me whenever I forget this truth? What does the text show me about a need that I have? What do I need to do or become in light of this? How shall I petition God for it? How is Jesus Christ or the grace that I have in him crucial to helping me overcome the sin I have confessed or to answering the need I have? Finally: How would this change my life if I took it seriously—if this truth were fully alive and effective in my inward being? Also, why might God be showing this to me now? What is going on in my life that he would be bringing this to my attention today? ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
412:People make the mistake of assuming far too many things about armies,’ Lefevre told me one evening. ‘They assume, for a start, that generals know what they are doing and know what is going on. They assume that orders pass down from top to bottom in a smooth and regulated fashion. And above all they assume that wars start only when people decide to start them.’ ‘You are going to tell me that is not the case?’ ‘Wars begin when they are ready, when humanity needs a bloodletting. Kings and politicians and generals have little say in it. You can feel it in the air when one is brewing. There is a tension and nervousness on the face of the least soldier. They can smell it coming in a way politicians cannot. The desire to hurt and destroy spreads over a region and over the troops. And then the generals can only hope to have the vaguest notion of what they are doing. ~ Iain Pears, #NFDB
413:In my experience, seriously picky eaters are often picky due to food intolerances. Different foods make them not feel very well, so they refuse to eat them. Over time they suffer from gut damage[1] (like my oldest) and they self-limit to the foods that feed the “bad” bacteria in their systems: fruit, cheese, breads, and sugary foods[2]. If your child will literally only eat chicken nuggets, bread, pasta, cheese, and fruit – this may likely be what is going on. This is especially likely if they also suffer from eczema, diarrhea or constipation, sleep disturbances (frequent waking, night terrors), behavior issues (screaming, tantrums beyond what’s developmentally appropriate; ADHD), etc. If you suspect this may be a problem, the top culprits are dairy, gluten, soy, corn, seafood, although intolerances may be to just about anything. The best solution for children with serious ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
414:The delights of the physical world were carefully crafted to point to the One who alone is able to give your heart eternal delight. God alone is able to bring the deepest of joy and contentment to your heart. He alone is able to give you a reason for getting up in the morning and a purpose for living. He alone can infuse your heart with hope, no matter what is going on around you. So in amazing grace, he welcomes you to surrender all your hopes and dreams to him. In love, he beckons you to follow. Again today, he promises you life. It’s what he came to live, die, and rise again to give you. That empty tomb not only means he has conquered death, but it tells you he has life in his hands, the kind of life all human beings were designed to long for whether they know it or not. You can’t find or earn that life on your own. It is yours only by means of the work of another. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
415:There is something more to be said about our freedom to improvise inside of the composer’s form. The jazz lifestyle of the kingdom of God is a communal freedom. Jazz musicians make harmonious music, not just because they stay inside an agreed upon musical structure, but because they play in community with one another. Good jazz musicians are not just good players; they are also very skilled listeners. Their jazz is always an interaction with what is going on around them. God hasn’t given us sheet music. He has composed a structure that liberates us to improvise within the structure, and all while listening intently to one another and to him. What is he doing in and through my brothers and sisters in this moment? How can I make music that is harmonious with what God is intending, and with what others need? These are the questions of the communal freedom of the kingdom of God. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
416:the job of the brain is to constantly monitor and evaluate what is going on within and around us. These evaluations are transmitted by chemical messages in the bloodstream and electrical messages in our nerves, causing subtle or dramatic changes throughout the body and brain. These shifts usually occur entirely without conscious input or awareness: The subcortical regions of the brain are astoundingly efficient in regulating our breathing, heartbeat, digestion, hormone secretion, and immune system. However, these systems can become overwhelmed if we are challenged by an ongoing threat, or even the perception of threat. This accounts for the wide array of physical problems researchers have documented in traumatized people. Yet our conscious self also plays a vital role in maintaining our inner equilibrium: We need to register and act on our physical sensations to keep our bodies safe. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
417:When there is this simple, clear watching and listening, then there is an awareness - awareness of the colour of those flowers, red, yellow, white, of the spring leaves, the stems, so tender, so delicate, awareness of the heavens, the earth and those people who are passing by. They have been chattering along that long road, never looking at the trees, at the flowers, at the skies and the marvellous hills. They are not even aware of what is going on around them. They talk a great deal about the environment, how we must protect nature and so on, but it seems they are not aware of the beauty and the silence of the hills and the dignity of a marvellous old tree. They are not even aware of their own thoughts, their own reactions, nor are they aware of the way they walk, of their clothes. It does not mean that they are to be selfcentred in their watching, in their awareness, but just be aware. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
418:First of all, when we are all finished, and we have a mathematical theory by which we can compute consequences, what can we do? It really is an amazing thing. In order to figure out what an atom is going to do in a given situation we make up rules with marks on paper, carry them into a machine which has switches that open and close in some complicated way, and the result will tell us what the atom is going to do! If the way that these switches open and close were some kind of model of the atom, if we thought that the atom had switches in it, then I would say that I understood more or less what is going on. I find it quite amazing that it is possible to predict what will happen by mathematics, which is simply following rules which really have nothing to do with what is going on in the original thing. The closing and opening of switches in a computer is quite different from what is happening in nature. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
419:But all the pressures go the other way, towards learning only what is immediately useful, what is functional. More and more the demand is for people to be educated to function in an almost certainly temporary stage of technology. Educated for the short term.
We have to look at the word useful again. In the long run what is useful is what survives, revives, comes to life in different contexts, It may look now as if people educated to use our newest technologies efficiently are the world's elite, but in the long run I believe that people educated to have, as well, that point of view that used to be described as humanistic-- the long-term, over-all, contemplative point of view--will turn out to be more influential. Simply because they understand more of what is going on in the world .It is not that I undervalue the new technicians. On the contrary. It is only that what they know is by definition a temporary necessity. ~ Doris Lessing,#NFDB
420:Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah: “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you.” This turns everything we ever thought about God around. We think that God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late-night bull sessions about God. We drop into church from time to time to see what is going on with God. We indulge in an occasional sunset or symphony to cultivate a feeling of reverence for God. But that is not the reality of our lives with God. Long before we ever got around to asking questions about God, God had been questioning us. Long before we got interested in the subject of God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
421:1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
422:I’m not going on!” I said loudly, and the tears came to my eyes fairly easily. “Fine!” he screamed, not looking at me. Then he turned to a kid named David, who was a set decorator. “Go find Olivia in the lighting booth! Tell her she’s filling in for Miranda tonight!” “What?” said David, who wasn’t too swift. “Go!” shouted Davenport in his face. “Now!” The other kids had caught on to what was happening and gathered around. “What’s going on?” said Justin. “Last-minute change of plans,” said Davenport. “Miranda doesn’t feel well.” “I feel sick,” I said, trying to sound sick. “So why are you still here?” Davenport said to me angrily. “Stop talking, take off your costume, and give it to Olivia! Okay? Come on, everybody! Let’s go! Go! Go!” I ran backstage to the dressing room as quickly as I could and started peeling off my costume. Two seconds later there was a knock and Via half opened the door. “What is going on?” she said. “Hurry up, put it on,” I answered, handing her the dress. “You’re sick? ~ R J Palacio, #NFDB
423:For all their weirdness, I LOVE the penis people. I don't understand them. I can't imagine I'll ever learn their language of grunting and scratching, but I'm going to try. If I have to devote my life to learning, I will do it. I can't explain the compulsion that is me thinking about Stephen now. Or just watching a boy walk by and wondering what is going on inside his head. To have him want to play with my hair and take me exciting places. To touch his amazingly fabulous butt and not be arrested for assault.
Don't they have a distinct smell? When do they start producing that spicy, manly, different-from-me scent? I don't mean the sweaty, take-a-shower odor, but the yummy soap and a hint of cologne. The kind of scent that makes me want to inhale in their general vicinity just because I can.
I get fluttery and gooey and cease to function at higher levels. Like I shut down except for feeling things; like the hot rays of Stephen's manliness and the solid rock of femur and muscle under his denim cargo pants. ~ Amber Kizer,#NFDB
424:Eight rules for writing fiction:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
425:If we want to participate in this Advent and Christmas event, we cannot simply sit there like spectators in a theater and enjoy all the friendly pictures. Rather, we must join in the action that is taking place and be drawn into this reversal of all things ourselves. Here we too must act on the stage, for here the spectator is always a person acting in the drama. We cannot remove ourselves from the action. With whom, then, are we acting? Pious shepherds who are on their knees? Kings who bring their gifts? What is going on here, where Mary becomes the mother of God, where God comes into the world in the lowliness of the manger? World judgment and world redemption—that is what’s happening here. And it is the Christ child in the manger himself who holds world judgment and world redemption. He pushes back the high and mighty; he overturns the thrones of the powerful; he humbles the haughty; his arm exercises power over all the high and mighty; he lifts what is lowly, and makes it great and glorious in his mercy. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
426:With each step you make on the path of kundalini sadhana, you unlock a new level of your consciousness. The clarity of your thought begins to improve noticeably. Your memory improves and an inexplicable stillness arises in the body. You feel more grounded, you find it hard to react to other’s criticism, and you begin to maintain an awareness without being affected about what is going on around you. You start to see that your thoughts have started manifesting in real life, they begin to materialize. You are able to attract your desired objects with greater ease. Your sense of individuality starts to find its place in your life, lifestyle and living. You and everyone around you notice a definitive positive change in you. Your imperfections no longer are like the thumb in front of your eye blocking your vision of the bright sun or the glorious moon, instead, they become like the temporary clouds that dissipate on their own. Even your imperfections, like the tiny and twinkling stars add beauty to the universe of your existence. ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
427:The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.
These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.
While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy. ~ Julian Assange,#NFDB
428:We are called at certain moments to comfort people who are enduring some trauma. Many of us don't know how to react in such situations, but others do. In the first place, they just show up. They provide a ministry of presence. Next, they don't compare. The sensitive person understands that each person's ordeal is unique and should not be compared to anyone else's. Next, they do the practical things--making lunch, dusting the room, washing the towels. Finally, they don't try to minimize what is going on. They don't attempt to reassure with false, saccharine sentiments. They don't say that the pain is all for the best. They don't search for silver linings. They do what wise souls do in the presence of tragedy and trauma. They practice a passive activism. They don't bustle about trying to solve something that cannot be solved. The sensitive person grants the sufferer the dignity of her own process. She lets the sufferer define the meaning of what is going on. She just sits simply through the nights of pain and darkness, being practical, human, simple, and direct. ~ David Brooks, #NFDB
429:Folks who are hell bent on having an angry God have difficulty swallowing the idea that God doesn’t want to destroy sinners. Another proof text for them would be Romans 5:9, “Having now been justified by His blood, we will be saved through Him from the wrath. …” “But that still does not mean that Christ’s death propitiated God,” continue the authors. “For Paul the wrath of God is God’s judgment which destroys all unholiness and sin. In the light of the threatening wrath of God, the need of sinners can be said not to be the transformation of God’s attitude toward them but the transformation of their sinful existence before God.” This accurate understanding that God’s wrath is against sinfulness and not sinners, helps us to get a clearer picture of what is going on. It is more like a doctor fighting a patient’s disease, or a freedom fighter liberating slaves from bondage. That God’s wrath is redemptively aimed against sinfulness itself finds solid Biblical support. “The wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18). ~ John Crowder, #NFDB
430:Of course none of this will stop us from wanting to know what it is that is really going on in consciousness and intelligence. I want to know too. Basically the arguments of this book are making the point that what is not going on is solely a great deal of computational activity-as is commonly believed these days-and what is going on will have no chance of being properly understood until we have a much more profound appreciation of the very nature of matter, time, space, and the laws that govern them. We shall need also to have much better knowledge of the detailed physiology of brains, particularly at the very tiny levels that have received little attention until recent years. We shall need to know more about the circumstances under which consciousness arises or disappears, about the curious matter of its timing, of what it is used for, and what are the specific advantages of its possession-in addition to many other issues where objective testing is possible. It is a very broad field indeed, in which progress in many different directions is surely to be anticipated. ~ Roger Penrose, #NFDB
431:Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.”
"An authentically powered person lives in love. Love is the energy of the soul. Love is what heals the personality. There is nothing that cannot be healed by love. There is nothing but love."
"Love is the ability to live your life with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome, the ability within yourself to distinguish within yourself between love and fear and choose love regardless of what is going on inside yourself or outside. This is self-mastery or authentic power...that means you become clear, forgiving, humble and loving... you are grounded in harmony, cooperating, sharing and reverence for life."
"When you become completely loving and kind without fear and without thought of harming others, you graudate from the Earth school. That is when reincarnation ends."
"The journey from love to love. This is the journey all of us are on- what happens between the beginning and end of the journey is your life."
"Open to others as you would like them to open to you ~ Gary Zukav,#NFDB
432:Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.”
"An authentically powered person lives in love. Love is the energy of the soul. Love is what heals the personality. There is nothing that cannot be healed by love. There is nothing but love."
"Love is the ability to live your life with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome, the ability within yourself to distinguish within yourself between love and fear and choose love regardless of what is going on inside yourself or outside. This is self-mastery or authentic power...that means you become clear, forgiving, humble and loving... you are grounded in harmony, cooperating, sharing and reverence for life."
"When you become completely loving and kind without fear and without thought of harming others, you graudate from the Earth school. That is when reincarnation ends."
"The journey from love to love. This is the journey all of us are on- what happens between teh beginning and end of the journey is your life."
"Open to others as you would like them to open to you. ~ Gary Zukav,#NFDB
433:Calm down, Miss.” Alexandra’s voice was cold. “Jean Louise, nobody in Maycomb goes to see Negroes any more, not after what they’ve been doing to us. Besides being shiftless now they look at you sometimes with open insolence, and as far as depending on them goes, why that’s out. “That NAACP’s come down here and filled ’em with poison till it runs out of their ears. It’s simply because we’ve got a strong sheriff that we haven’t had bad trouble in this county so far. You do not realize what is going on. We’ve been good to ’em, we’ve bailed ’em out of jail and out of debt since the beginning of time, we’ve made work for ’em when there was no work, we’ve encouraged ’em to better themselves, they’ve gotten civilized, but my dear—that veneer of civilization’s so thin that a bunch of uppity Yankee Negroes can shatter a hundred years’ progress in five. . . . “No ma’am, after the thanks they’ve given us for looking after ’em, nobody in Maycomb feels much inclined to help ’em when they get in trouble now. All they do is bite the hands that feed ’em. No sir, not any more—they can shift for themselves, now. ~ Harper Lee, #NFDB
434:Cade studied her for a moment, then sat forward in his chair. “Seriously, what is it about this guy? He’s just a rich computer geek with good hair.”
Rylann smiled. “I think there’s a little more to it than that.”
“Christ, you are smitten.” He threw up his hands. “What is going on with everyone these days? Sam Wilkins is babbling about a meet-cute, Cameron’s sneaking off to get hitched, and now you’re all starry-eyed over the Twitter Terrorist. Has everyone been sneaking happy pills out of the evidence room when I’m not looking?”
"No, just some really good pot.”
Cade laughed out loud at that. “You are a funny one, Pierce. I’ll say that.”
“So does that mean we’re still on for Starbucks later today?”
He studied her suspiciously. “You’re not going to want to talk about Kyle Rhodes the whole time, are you?”
“Actually, yes. And then we’ll go shoe shopping together and get mani-pedis.” She threw him a get-real look. “We’ll talk about the same stuff we always talk about.”
With a grin, he finally nodded. “Fine. Three o’clock, Pierce. I’ll swing by your office ~ Julie James,#NFDB
435:By the time the draft constitution for the expanded European Union was finished and ready to be submitted for ratification by the member states, "Europe" as a political entity resembled nothing so much as a teenager who had just gone through a tremendous physical growth spurt but without a parallel growth in intellectual and moral maturity: physically an adult but spiritually stuck in adolescence. . . . Connoisseurs of political texts will note that the European constitution approved in June 2004 contains some 70,000 words (almost ten times the length of the U.S. Constitution). Yet the one word that could not be fit into the constitution for the new Europe--"Christianity"--is the embodiment of a story that has arguably had more to do with "constituting" Europe than anything else. What is going on when this story can't be acknowledged? Is it a case, as suggested above, of an adolescent engaging in a typically adolescent rebellion against parents? Is that rebellion in service of a particular (and particularly adolescent) understanding of the freedom that Europe's new constitution is meant to celebrate and advance? ~ George Weigel, #NFDB
436:The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don’t know — Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel — the quality of philosophy. I find that I read with the same kind of curiosity most novels, and a book of reportage. Most novels, if they are successful at all, are original in the sense that they report the existence of an area of society, a type of person, not yet admitted to the general literate consciousness. The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves, reflecting the world, that they reach out desperately, not knowing they do it, for information about other groups inside their own country, let alone about groups in other countries. It is a blind grasping out for their own wholeness, and the novel-report is a means towards it. ~ Doris Lessing, #NFDB
437:Just what is going on? Just… what do you think is going on? I mean, have you backed off from it? Do you have a grip on the outlines of the problem? Or are you just sort of adrift inside the context? Because the situation is mighty peculiar, friends! What we have here is a kind of creature made out of information, apparently loose in an environment of meaning, on the surface of a planet upon which gene swarming is happening. And all of these things—gene swarming, self-reflection, production of epigenetic codes like writing and this sort of thing—have no precedent. We don’t go out and collect other forms of these things, they all are generated out of us. We, as moderns, as inheritors of Cartesian rationalism, look out at a universe that our science tells us is energy, matter, conservation of mass and momentum, and yet we never notice the peculiar enigma posed by the question: who’s looking? Who’s looking? How is it possible that the coextensive continuum of apparent being is coordinated inside organism into an experience of ongoing becoming with which we have some kind of identification? This is very weird! It should provoke more comment than it is. ~ Terence McKenna, The Edge Runner, #NFDB
438:Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:
1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
439:This is not one of the bandits,” she said.
Gavril looked closer at the shadow-stalker-abandoned corpse. “You are correct,” he said, as if with some surprise.
She gave him a look. “Thank you. So it seems we are stuck in the middle—sorry, the edge of the steppes—with no horses and a useless wagon and a landscape populated by shadow stalkers. If they are indeed raised by some confederate of your father’s, then we should be safe enough. We simply need to find this sorcerer and turn ourselves in to him to be returned to your father and resume our original mission. However, the fact that it”—Moria waved at the shadow stalker—“attempted to attack you suggests we are not safe at all. What is going on here, Kitsune?”
“I . . . I’m thinking.”
“If you do it aloud, perhaps I can help. Unless you still think me a dull-witted Northerner.”
“I only said that to needle you.”
“You also did it in front of your father.”
“As I said, it was to convince him you were not intellectually capable . . .” He stopped and scowled at her. “You’re needling me now, Keeper. Playing on my guilt to make me share my thoughts.”
“I do not believe I am intellectually capable of such cunning—”
“Enough. ~ Kelley Armstrong,#NFDB
440:First, relax. ... And my second helpful hint is that you should not try to memorize anything you read in this book. ... My two words of advice are exemplified in what I call the Russian Novel Phenomenon. Every reader must have experienced that depressing moment about fifty pages into a Russian novel when we realize that we have lost track of all the characters, the variety of names by which they are known, their family relationships and relative ranks in the civil service. At this point we can give in to our anxiety, and start again to read more carefully, trying to memorize all the details on the offchance that some may prove to be important. If such a course is followed, the second reading is almost certain to be more incomprehensible than the first. The probable result: one Russian novel lost forever. But there is another alternative: to read faster, to push ahead, to make sense of what we can and to enjoy whatever we make sense of. And suddenly the book becomes readable, the story makes sense, and we find that we can remember all the important characters and events simply because we know what is important. Any re-reading we then have to do is bound to make sense, because at least we comprehend what is going on and what we are looking for. ~ Frank Smith, #NFDB
441:So enticing is the red gape of a cuckoo nestling that it is not uncommon for ornithologists to see a bird dropping food into the mouth of a baby cuckoo sitting in some other bird's nest! A bird may be flying home, carrying food for its own young. Suddenly, out of the corner of its eye, it sees the red super-gape of a young cuckoo, in the nest of a bird of some quite different species. It is diverted to the alien nest where it drops into the cuckoo's mouth the food that had been destined for its own young. The 'irresistibility theory' fits with the views of early German ornithologists who referred to foster-parents as behaving like 'addicts' and to the cuckoo nestling as their 'vice'. It is only fair to add that this kind of language finds less favour with some modern experimenters. But there's no doubt that if we do assume that the cuckoo's gape is a powerful drug-like super-stimulus, it becomes very much easier to explain what is going on. It becomes easier to sympathize with the behaviour of the diminutive parent standing on the back of its monstrous child. It is not being stupid. 'Fooled' is the wrong word to use. Its nervous system is being controlled, as irresistibly as if it were a helpless drug addict, or as if the cuckoo were a scientist plugging electrodes into its brain. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
442:How do I know that the love of life is not a delusion? Or that the fear of death is not like a young person running away from home and unable to find his way back? The Lady Li Chi was the daughter of a border warden, Ai. When the state of Chin captured her, she wept until she had drenched her robes; then she came to the King’s palace, shared the King’s bed, ate his food, and repented of her tears. How do I know whether the dead now repent for their former clinging to life? ‘Come the morning, those who dream of the drunken feast may weep and moan; when the morning comes, those who dream of weeping and moaning go hunting in the fields. When they dream, they don’t know it is a dream. Indeed, in their dreams they may think they are interpreting dreams, only when they awake do they know it was a dream. Eventually there comes the day of reckoning and awakening, and then we shall know that it was all a great dream. Only fools think that they are now awake and that they really know what is going on, playing the prince and then playing the servant. What fools! The Master and you are both living in a dream. When I say a dream, I am also dreaming. This very saying is a deception. If after ten thousand years we could once meet a truly great sage, one who understands, it would seem as if it had only been a morning. ~ Zhuangzi, #NFDB
443:Many have found the secret of which I speak and, without giving much thought to what is going on within them, constantly practice this habit of inwardly gazing upon God. They know that something inside their hearts sees God. Even when they are compelled to withdraw their conscious attention in order to engage in earthly affairs there is within them a secret communion always going on. Let their attention but be released for a moment from necessary business and it flies at once to God again. This has been the testimony of many Christians, so many that even as I state it thus I have a feeling that I am quoting, though from whom or from how many I cannot possibly know. I do not want to leave the impression that the ordinary means of grace have no value. They most assuredly have. Private prayer should be practiced by every Christian. Long periods of Bible meditation will purify our gaze and direct it; church attendance will enlarge our outlook and increase our love for others. Service and work and activity; all are good and should be engaged in by every Christian. But at the bottom of all these things, giving meaning to them, will be the inward habit of beholding God. A new set of eyes (so to speak) will develop within us enabling us to be looking at God while our outward eyes are seeing the scenes of this passing world. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
444:I came to love the way Morrie lit up when I entered the room. He did this for many people, I know, but it was his special talent to make each visitor feel that the smile was unique.
“Ahhhh, it’s my buddy,” he would say when he saw me, in that foggy, high-pitched voice. And it didn’t stop with the greeting. When Morrie was with you, he was really with you. He looked you straight in the eye, and he listened as if you were the only person in the world. How much better would people get along if their first encounter each day were like this—instead of a grumble from a waitress or a bus driver or a boss?
“I believe in being fully present,” Morrie said. “That means you should be with the person you’re with. When I’m talking to you now, Mitch, I try to keep focused only on what is going on between us. I am not thinking about something we said last week. I am not thinking of what’s coming up this Friday. I am not thinking about doing another Koppel show, or about what medications I’m taking.
“I am talking to you. I am thinking about you.”
I remembered how he used to teach this idea in the Group Process class back at Brandeis. I had scoffed back then, thinking this was hardly a lesson plan for a university course. Learning to pay attention? How important could that be? I now know it is more important than almost everything they taught us in college. ~ Mitch Albom,#NFDB
445:Populism is ultimately always sustained by the frustrated exasperation of ordinary people, by the cry "I don’t know what is going on, but I’ve just had enough of it! It cannot go on! It must stop!" Such impatient outbursts betray a refusal to understand or engage with the complexity of the situation, and give rise to the conviction that there must be somebody responsible for the mess—which is why some agent lurking behind the scenes is invariably required. Therein, in this refusal-to-know, resides the properly fetishistic dimension of populism. That is to say, although at a purely formal level fetishism involves a gesture of transference (onto the object-fetish), it functions as an exact inversion of the standard formula of transference (with the "subject supposed to know"): what fetishism gives body to is precisely my disavowal of knowledge, my refusal to subjectively assume what I know. That is why, to put it in Nietzschean terms which are here highly appropriate, the ultimate difference between a truly radical emancipatory politics and a populist politics is that the former is active, it imposes and enforces its vision, while populism is fundamentally re-active, the result of a reaction to a disturbing intruder. In other words, populism remains a version of the politics of fear: it mobilizes the crowd by stoking up fear of the corrupt external agent. ~ Slavoj i ek, #NFDB
446:Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two great outrages upon its naive self-love. The first was when it realized that our earth was not the center of the universe, but only a tiny speck in a world-system of a magnitude hardly conceivable; this is associated in our minds with the name of Copernicus, although Alexandrian doctrines taught something very similar. The second was when biological research robbed man of his peculiar privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him to a descent from the animal world, implying an ineradicable animal nature in him: this transvaluation has been accomplished in our own time upon the instigation of Charles Darwin, Wallace, and their predecessors, and not without the most violent opposition from their contemporaries. But man's craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most bitter blow from present-day psychological research which is endeavoring to prove to the ego of each one of us that he is not even master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind. We psycho-analysts were neither the first nor the only ones to propose to mankind that they should look inward; but it appears to be our lot to advocate it most insistently and to support it by empirical evidence which touches every man closely. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
447:Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah: “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you.” This turns everything we ever thought about God around. We think that God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late-night bull sessions about God. We drop into church from time to time to see what is going on with God. We indulge in an occasional sunset or symphony to cultivate a feeling of reverence for God. But that is not the reality of our lives with God. Long before we ever got around to asking questions about God, God had been questioning us. Long before we got interested in the subject of God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know. This realization has a practical result: no longer do we run here and there, panicked and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops. If we use our ego as the center from which to plot the geometry of our lives, we will live eccentrically. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
448:Victoria’s hands are still and she’s staring back at me. Is she actually chewing on the edge of her bottom lip? Surely she’s not. Victoria is poised and perfect at all times. “I did love him. But I tried not to. For years, I tried not to. And now I think of those wasted years and I wish I could have them back.”
All I can do is stare. I’d been so sure she was grumpy for no reason at all. That she just thought she was better than everyone else. But in reality she’s lived the most twisted and tragic love story I’ve ever heard. Way worse than Shakespeare.
So she’s hiding behind all her perfect etiquette and all her rules.
“There are few who fall in love, Rebecca. Even fewer who stay in love. Emily has no better idea what she wants than I did. She will marry Lord Denworth, just as I married the duke. It is to be expected.”
Oh, but it’s not. She has no idea what is going on just a few miles away. No idea at all. She got lucky with the old duke. She fell for him. But I refuse to believe that some fifty-one-year-old guy has as much in common with Emily as someone her own age. Someone who might already be in love with her.
“Don’t you think it’s Emily’s choice to make?”
Victoria’s voice softens a little. “It will never be her choice.” And for approximately one second as she looks at me, I think Victoria is trying to tell me that she agrees. That it should be Emily’s choice, even if it isn’t.
But then she ruins it. “Your elbow is on the table again.”
I roll my eyes but I pull my elbow off the table and sit back in my chair. I guess some things never change. ~ Mandy Hubbard,#NFDB
449:Hey, brah,” Quinn said.
“What is going on, do you know?” Sam asked.
“It’s a club.” Quinn grinned. “Man, you must be working too hard. Everyone knows about it.”
Sam stared at him. “It’s a what?”
“McClub, brah. All you need is some batteries or some toilet paper.”
This announcement left Sam baffled. He considered asking Quinn for clarification, but then Albert appeared, formally dressed, like he thought it was graduation or something. He actually had on a dark sports coat and slacks in a lighter shade. His shirt was pale blue, collared, and ironed. Spotting Sam, he extended his hand.
Sam ignored the hand. “Albert, what is going on here?”
“Dancing, mostly,” Albert said.
“Excuse me?”
“Kids are dancing.”
Quinn caught up then and stepped in front of Sam to shake Albert’s still-extended hand. “Hey, dude. I have batteries.”
“Good to see you, Quinn. The price is four D cells, or eight double As, or ten triple As, or a dozen Cs. If you have a mix, I can work it out.”
Quinn dug in his pocket and produced four triple A batteries and three D cells. He handed them to Albert, who agreed to the price and dropped the batteries into a plastic bag at his feet.
“Okay, the rules are no food, no alcohol, no attitude, no fights, and when I call ‘time,’ there’s no arguing about it. Do you agree to these rules?”
“Dude, if I had any food, would I be here? I’d be home eating it.” Quinn put his hand over his heart like he was pledging allegiance to the flag and said, “I do.” He jerked a thumb back at Sam. “Don’t bother with him: Sam doesn’t dance.”
“Have a good time, Quinn. ~ Michael Grant,#NFDB
450:Everything becomes a blur when you travel beyond a certain speed. Distant objects may still be clear in outline, but the blurred foreground makes it impossible to attend to them. This landscape is unreal and the passengers in the express train turn to their books, their thoughts or their private fantasies.
The subjectivism of our age has a good deal to do with this imprisonment in a speeding vehicle, and the fact that we made this vehicle ourselves, with all the tireless care that children give to a contrivance of wood and wire, does not save us from the sense of being trapped without hope of escape.
A further effect of such vertiginous speed is a kind of anaesthesia, entirely natural when the operation of the senses by which we normally make contact with our environment is suspended. With no opportunity to assimilate what is going on, our powers of assimilation are inevitably weakened and certain numbness sets in; nothing is fully savoured and nothing is properly understood. Even fear (which exists to forewarn us of danger) is suspended. This would be so even if speed of change were the only factor involved, but the kind of environment in which a large part of humanity lives today --- the environment created by technology at the service of immediate, short-term needs – does much to intensify this effect. Outside of works of art which embody something beyond our physical needs, our own constructions bore us. Those who, when they have built something and admired the finished product for a decent moment, are ready to pull it down and start on something new have good sense on their side. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton,#NFDB
451:Everything becomes a blur when you travel beyond a certain speed. Distant objects may still be clear in outline, but the blurred foreground makes it impossible to attend to them. This landscape is unreal and the passengers in the express train turn to their books, their thoughts or their private fantasies.
The subjectivism of our age has a good deal to do with this imprisonment in a speeding vehicle, and the fact that we made this vehicle ourselves, with all the tireless care that children give to a contrivance of wood and wire, does not save us from the sense of being trapped without hope of escape.
A further effect of such vertiginous speed is a kind of anaesthesia, entirely natural when the operation of the senses by which we normally make contact with our environment is suspended. With no opportunity to assimilate what is going on, our powers of assimilation are inevitably weakened and certain numbness sets in; nothing is fully savoured and nothing is properly understood. Even fear (which exists to forewarn us of danger) is suspended. This would be so even if speed of change were the only factor involved, but the kind of environment in which a large part of humanity lives today --- the environment created by technology at the service of immediate, short-term needs – does much to intensify this effect. Outside of works of art which embody something beyond our physical needs, our own constructions bore us. Those who, when they have built something and admired the finished product for a decent moment, are ready to pull it down and start on something new have good sense on their side. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton,#NFDB
452:my office that I can’t really transport.” “What the hell are you talking about?” “Just trust me, sir.” “I don’t see why I should. I’ve already gotten an earful from the DD about you.” Pine drew a deep breath. “I think the DD might be involved in what’s going on.” Which is the reason I’m calling you and not him, she said to herself. “What in the hell are you saying? That sort of talk could cost you your shield, Pine.” “Why else would he have intervened and had you call me off this case, sir? Wasn’t that extraordinary on his part? I mean, what does the DD care about a dead mule?” Dobbs didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then: “What the hell are you involved in, Pine?” “Something bigger than I could have ever imagined, sir. That’s why I need your help and support. I can’t do it alone. And if the DD won’t do it, I need you to have my back, sir.” “And why do I need to bring reinforcements?” asked Dobbs after another few moments of silence. “Because I expect company here.” “Company? What do you mean, some criminals? A gang?” “Depends on how you define that, sir, but this company might actually be more dangerous.” “Look, Pine, this is beyond ridiculous. If you think—” She broke in, “Sir, I would not be asking this if it were not absolutely critical. Once you get here you will understand exactly what is going on. It’s a matter of national security. Not just for this country, but for the world.” She paused. “I’m trying to do my job, sir, as an FBI agent. I gave an oath. I intend to carry that oath out.” She once more listened to him breathing. “You’re really not joking, are you?” “I have never been more serious in my life. ~ David Baldacci, #NFDB
453:BE THE MAN Set a good example. Even if you’ve got to fake it. Your kids observe everything you do. And even though it may not seem like it at the time, your kids want to be like you. They want to be proud of you and brag about their dad at school and to their friends. Be observant of your own actions around them kids. Listen to your girl. We men sometimes get frustrated when our ladies talk. We will try to actually converse when she is deep into a story about the boss being a dick, or some other friend of hers doing your girl wrong. Do not even try to fix this situation! Your sweetie just wants you to listen. Hell, you don’t even have to agree. Just listen. This is black-belt-level man stuff. Do the dishes. Hell, take it one level further: cook the dinner and do the dishes. Doing laundry is man’s work too, as well as cleaning up after the dogs and cuddling your kids. Having a home life where you get the opportunity to be a family man and partake in all these things is a very good thing. It means that you have elevated your man thing to the very top level. Keep it up. Don’t be a pussy. Don’t shy away from a situation just because it’s tough. If you need to protect the one you love or things are tough at work . . . pin those ears back and remember who the fuck you are. Get smart. Educate yourself on what is going on in culture and politics. Read some books about history. Don’t be a pawn, be a scholar. Evolve. Our dads and granddads grew up in a different time. Communication and tenderness were not necessarily components of their age groups’ makeup. You don’t have to be exactly like them. Even though we saw good examples of man stuff in them, the times, they are a-changing. ~ Duff McKagan, #NFDB
454:I would like to ofer some exercises that can help us use the Five Precepts to cultivate and strengthen mindfulness. It is best to choose one of these exercises and work with it meticulously for a week. Then examine the results and choose another for a subsequent week. These practices can help us understand and find ways to work with each precept.
1. Refrain from killing: reverence for life. Undertake for one week to purposefully bring no harm in thought, word, or deed to any living creature. Particularly, become aware of any living beings in your world (people, animals, even plants) whom you ignore, and cultivate a sense of care and reverence for them too.
2. Refraining from stealing: care with material goods. Undertake for one week to act on every single thought of generosity that arises spontaneously in your heart.
3. Refraining from sexual misconduct: conscious sexuality. Undertake for one week to observe meticulously how often sexual feelings arise in your consciousness. Each time, note what particular mind states you find associated with them such as love, tension, compulsion, caring, loneliness, desire for communication, greed, pleasure, agression, and so forth.
4. Refraining from false speech: speech from the heart. Undertake for one week not to gossip (positively or negatively) or speak about anyone you know who is not present with you (any third party).
5. Refraining from intoxicants to the point of heedlessness. Undertake for one week or one month to refrain from all intoxicants and addictive substances (such as wine, marijuana, even cigarettes and/or caffeine if you wish). Observe the impulses to use these, and become aware of what is going on in the heart and mind at the time of those impulses (88-89). ~ Jack Kornfield,#NFDB
455:You are a passenger. We are all, often, passengers. The boat, history, is going somewhere. You are not the captain. But you have excellent accommodations. Of course, down there in the hold are famished immigrants or enslaved Africans or press-ganged tars. You can’t help them—you do feel sorry for them—and you can’t control the captain, either. Cosseted though you may be, you are actually quite powerless. A gesture on your part might relieve your bad conscience, if you have a bad conscience, but would not materially improve their situation. How would it help them to give up your own spacious cabin, with the room you require for your copious belongings, since, although those below have very few belongings, there are so many of them? The food you are eating would never be enough to feed all of them; indeed, if prepared with them in mind as well, it would no longer be as refined; and of course the view would be spoiled (crowds spoil a view, crowds litter, etc.). So you have no choice but to enjoy the excellent food and the view. Nevertheless, assuming you are not indifferent, you think a lot about what is going on. Even if it is not your responsibility, how can it be your responsibility, you are still a participant and a witness. (First- or second-class passengers, these are the points of view from which most accounts of history are written.) And if those being persecuted are those who might have had accommodations as agreeable as your own, people of your own rank or who have your interests, you are far less likely to be indifferent to their present distress. Of course, you cannot prevent them from being punished if they are in fact guilty. But, assuming you are not indifferent, that you are a decent person, you will try to intervene when you can. Counsel leniency. Or at least prudence. The ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
456:Society, in which we all live, is corrupt, immoral, aggressive, destructive. This society has been going on in primitive or modified form for thousands of years upon thousands of years, but it is the same pattern being repeated. These are all facts, not opinion or judgment. Facing this enormous crisis, one asks not only what one is to do but also who is responsible, who has brought the chaos, the confusion, the utter misery of humanity. Is the economic crisis, the social crisis, the crisis of war, the building of enormous armaments, the appalling waste, outside of us? Inwardly, psychologically, we are also very confused; there is constant conflict, struggle, pain, anxiety.
We are together taking a journey into the whole structure that mankind has created, the disorder that human beings have brought about in this world. There is misery, chaos, confusion outwardly in society; and also inwardly, psychologically, in the psyche, the consciousness, there are pain and struggles. What are you going to do about all this? Turn to leaders, better politicians? This one isn’t good, but the next one will be better; and the next one still better. We keep this game going. We have looked to various so-called spiritual leaders, the whole hierarchy of the Christian world. They are as confused, as uncertain, as we are. If you turn to the psychologists or the psychotherapists, they are confused like you and me.
And there are all the ideologies: communist ideologies, Marxist ideologies, philosophical ideologies, the ideologies of the Hindus and the ideologies of those people who have brought Hinduism here, and you have your own ideologies. The whole world is fragmented, broken up, as we are broken up, driven by various urges, reactions, each one wanting to be important, each one acting in his own self-interest. This is actually what is going on in the world, wherever you go. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,#NFDB
457:Classic Eastern and Western spiritual traditions identify three ways of approaching life: the way of action, the way of knowing, and the way of feeling. It is assumed that a full life involves all three, but at any given time a person tends to prefer one. It is not important to do psychological gymnastics to figure out which orientation you might have. It is critical, however, to recognize that neither love nor anything else of consequence can rightfully be reduced to one narrow vision. Love is feeling – tenderness, caring, and longing – but it is also much more. Love is action – kindness, charity, and commitment – and again, it is much more. Love is knowing – openness of attitude, realization of connectedness, expansion of attention beyond ourselves – and still it is more. . .
In both Eastern and Western spirituality, there is a fourth way, an appreciation that embraces action, feeling, and knowing and also seeks the “more” that love always is. . . In the West, it is called the contemplative way.
Contemplative moments can happen in crisis, excitement, and great activity, or in quiet stillness and simple appreciation. However it happens, contemplation and immerses us in the reality of the moment. We are no longer standing apart and reflecting upon our experience, we are vitally, consciously involved with what is going on. Everything is more clear, more real than it usually is.
. . . Contemplative appreciation is the fullest possible realization of love. The contemplative moments that come to us all as flashes of immediate presence or glimpses of the way life yearns to be lived. They are hints of the vast, graceful gift of love that has already been given to the family of humanity. The contemplative heart says, “only open your hands, receive the gift.” This does not mean we can control contemplation or that we can be contemplative at will. It is a gift that we can accept only as it is given. But it is given far more frequently, for more steadily than we could ever imagine. ~ Gerald G May,#NFDB
458:The Five Levels of Personality You can imagine your personality by thinking of a target with concentric rings. Your personality is made up of five rings, starting from the center with your values and radiating outward to the next circle, your beliefs. Your values determine your beliefs about yourself and the world around you. If you have positive values, such as love, compassion, and generosity, you will believe that people in your world are deserving of these values and you will treat them accordingly. Your beliefs, in turn, determine the third ring of your personality, your expectations. If you have positive values, you will believe yourself to be a good person. If you believe yourself to be a good person, you will expect good things to happen to you. If you expect good things to happen to you, you will be positive, cheerful, and future oriented. You will look for the good in other people and situations. The fourth level of your personality, determined by your expectations, is your attitude. Your attitude will be an outward manifestation or reflection of your values, beliefs, and expectations. For example, if your value is that this is a good world to live in and your belief is that you are going to be very successful in life, you will expect that everything that happens to you is helping you in some way. As a result, you will have a positive mental attitude toward other people, and they will respond positively toward you. You will be a more cheerful and optimistic person. You will be someone who others want to work with and for, buy from and sell to, and generally help to be more successful. This is why a positive mental attitude goes hand in hand with great success in every walk of life. The fifth ring, or level of your personality, is your actions. Your actions on the outside will ultimately be a reflection of your innermost values, beliefs, and expectations on the inside. This is why what you achieve in life and work will be determined more by what is going on inside of you than by any other factor. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
459:It’s only an hour later that a servant comes to my room. And when she tells me the duke has invited me out for a horseback ride, I’m flooded with the strangest mix of emotions. I can’t believe that after running off like that, he still wants to hang out.
What is going on between us? And why do I want so desperately for it to be something? I shouldn’t want anything. Not with a guy like him.
I mean, yeah, I might have been wrong about the illegitimate kid and Lord Brimmon, but the dude still thinks I don’t have opinions or options because I’m a girl. He thinks I have a “place, my place” and that it’s behind a guy.
And worse, I keep thinking about our kiss. The part where I bash into the wall in my haste to get away is a particular highlight on the reel I keep playing over and over again in my head.
When I walk out the back of the house and he turns to look at me, it’s impossible to fight the burn in my cheeks as he steps up beside me and the horse. I can’t look at him. I’m so embarrassed I stare at the stirrup as if it will take all concentration to get my foot into it.
Is he going to say anything?
Is he going to apologize for just…kissing me like that? Maybe if he brings it up…Maybe if he apologizes, I can apologize too. For running off. It was so sudden all I could do was react.
But he says nothing. He just steps up beside me and gives me a boost. I’m up on the first try and feeling rather proud of myself as I situate my pretty skirts so they drape over my ankles. Until, that is, I see him swing aboard and am reminded of how graceful and easy he makes it look, even when his horse swings away from him when he’s only halfway on.
We ride past the stable, and when I glance in, I see one of the stable boys showing the other how to do the robot, his arms stuck out at odd angles, his hands dangling. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing when I see Alex’s eyebrows shoot up so high they’re nearly to his hairline.
It’s nice seeing him caught off-guard. I like it. It makes me want to do something totally crazy, just to see his expression. ~ Mandy Hubbard,#NFDB
460:MSB: La Rochefoucauld says that Cardinal de Retz (whom he didn't like) looked upon Pascal as a great rival. RG: The cardinal didn't have Pascal's genius, but he did have the human experience that Pascal lacked as both a very sick and a very lonely man. Montaigne, on the other hand, was too happy, too untroubled. Montaigne really prefigures the French bourgeois who has tasted success—the rat in his cheese, as one might say. MSB: You consider Montaigne's carefree spirit as a form of social blindness. Do you see a comparable danger in the determination to experience love as the only thing, the last thing possible in life? One finds this determination embodied, for example, by Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot. RG: Prince Myshkin is an ambiguous, ambivalent character, and to consider him as truly good, as many people do, is an error. Looking at Dostoevsky's notebooks for The Idiot, we see that Prince Myshkin, just like Stavrogin in The Demons, is the hypostasis of a person who has no desire. The absence of desire is Stavrogin's weakness, his suicidal side. He makes all sorts of attempts to arouse in others the desire, the mimetic desire, that he doesn't have. This is very clear in the duels: he always wins, because he never loses his nerve. Myshkin's attitude is much the same, I believe. Dostoevsky himself, confronted with a personality that was stronger than his own, wondered if it was the result of an excess of desire, or of a total absence of it. His notebooks make it clear that Stavrogin and Myshkin are monstrous figures who lack the same thing. Like Stavrogin, Myshkin has a negative effect on people around him—General Ivolgin, for example. Women fall in love with him because he has no mimetic desire. They are therefore his victims, although Myshkin himself seems not to understand what is going on. Isn't this precisely because he is unacquainted with mimetic desire? It seems to be a kind of physical defect, almost a biological deficiency. Otherwise, Myshkin must be regarded as a kind of Buddhist. One character in The Idiot wonders whether Myshkin isn't carrying out a deliberate strategy. His attitude may well be entirely calculating, who knows? Dostoevsky himself, it seems to me, hadn't answered these questions in his own mind. MSB ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
461:There is a porter at the door and at the reception-desk a grey-haired woman and a sleek young man.
'I want a room for tonight.'
'A room? A room with bath?'
I am still feeling ill and giddy. I say confidentially, leaning forward: 'I want a light room.'
The young man lifts his eyebrows and stares at me.
I try again. 'I don't want a room looking on the courtyard. I want a light room.'
'A light room?' the lady says pensively. She turns over the pages of her books, looking for a light room.
'We have number 219,' she says. 'A beautiful room with bath. Seventy-five francs a night.' (God, I can't afford that.) 'It's a very beautiful room with bath. Two windows. Very light,' she says persuasively.
A girl is called to show me the room. As we are about to start for the lift, the young man says, speaking out of the side of his mouth: 'Of course you know that number 219 is occupied.'
'Oh no. Number 219 had his bill before yesterday.' the receptionist says. 'I remember. I gave it to him myself.'
I listen anxiously to this conversation. Suddenly I feel that I must have number 219, with bath - number 219, with rose-coloured curtains, carpet and bath. I shall exist on a different planet at once if I can get this room, if only for a couple of nights. It will be an omen. Who says you can't escape from your faith? I'll escape from mine, into room number 219. Just try me, just give me a chance.
'He asked for his bill,' the young man says, in a voice which is a triumph of scorn and cynicism. 'He asked for his bill but that doesn't mean that he has gone.'
The receptionist starts arguing. 'When people ask for their bills, it's because they are going, isn't it?'
'Yes,' he says, 'French' people. The others ask for their bills to see if we're going to cheat them.'
'My God,' says the receptionist, 'foreigners, foreigners, my God. ...'
The young man turns his back, entirely dissociating himself from what is going on.
Number 219 - well, now I know all about him. All the time they are talking I am seeing him - his trousers, his shoes, the way he brushes his hair, the sort of girls he likes. His hand-luggage is light yellow and he has a paunch. But I can't see his face. He wears a mask, number 219. ...
'Show the lady number 334. ~ Jean Rhys,#NFDB
462:APRIL 7 Corporate worship is designed to confront you with a view of life that has at its center a dead man’s cross and a living man’s empty tomb. There are two themes that I have repeated in writing and speaking again and again. I will repeat them here: Human beings made in the image of God do not live life based on the facts of their experience, but based on their interpretation of the facts. Whether you know it or not, you have been designed by God to be a meaning maker. You are a rational human being (even if you don’t always show it), and you have a constant desire for life to make sense. So you are constantly thinking and constantly interpreting. You don’t actually respond to what is going on around you; you respond to the sense you have made of what is going on around you. This means that there is always some kind of interpretive grid that you are carrying around with you that helps you to make sense out of your life. Everybody believes something. Everybody assumes that certain things are true. Everybody brings some system of “wisdom” to their lives to help them to explain and understand. No one is more influential in your life than you are, because no one talks to you more than you do. We never stop talking to ourselves. We are in a constant conversation with ourselves about God, others, ourselves, meaning and purpose, identity, and such. The things you say to you about you, God, and life are profoundly important because they form and shape the way you then respond to the things that God has put on your plate. You see, you are always preaching to yourself some kind of worldview, some kind of “gospel,” if you will. The question is, in your private moment-by-moment conversation, what are you saying to you? Paul argues very powerfully that the “dead man’s cross, live man’s empty tomb” gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, which the world sees as utter foolishness, is in fact the wisest of wisdom. It is the only way to make sense out of life. It is the only lens through which you can see life accurately. It is the only kind of wisdom that really does give a final and reliable answer to the fundamental questions of life that every person asks. And at the center of this message of wisdom is not a set of ideas but a person who, in his life and death, offers you not only answers, but every grace you need to be what you were created to be and to do what you have been called to do. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
463:These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus.
Conchis, the principle character in the novel, finds himself Mayor of his home
town in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communist
partisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town.
Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself the
direct guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men?
I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory space-time, outside their heads— find the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any 'correct' answer.
I don’t know the 'correct' answer either, and I doubt that there is one. The
universe may not contain 'right' and 'wrong' answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have 'right' and 'wrong' answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and self-hypnosis.
To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone. ~ Robert Anton Wilson,#NFDB
464:If somebody swapped the real sword for the fake while it was in Dumbledore’s office,” she panted, as they propped the painting against the side of the tent, “Phineas Nigellus would have seen it happen, he hangs right beside the case!”
“Unless he was asleep,” said Harry, but he still held his breath as Hermione knelt down in front of the empty canvas, her wand directed at its center, cleared her throat, then said:
“Er--Phineas? Phineas Nigellus?”
Nothing happened.
“Phineas Nigellus?” said Hermione again. “Professor Black? Please could we talk to you? Please?”
“‘Please’ always helps,” said a cold, snide voice, and Phineas Nigellus slid into his portrait. At once, Hermione cried:
“Obscuro!”
A black blindfold appeared over Phineas Nigellus’s clever, dark eyes, causing him to bump into the frame and shriek with pain.
“What--how dare--what are you--?”
“I’m very sorry, Professor Black,” said Hermione, “but it’s a necessary precaution!”
“Remove this foul addition at once! Remove it, I say! You are ruining a great work of art! Where am I? What is going on?”
“Never mind where we are,” said Harry, and Phineas Nigellus froze, abandoning his attempts to peel off the painted blindfold.
“Can that possibly be the voice of the elusive Mr. Potter?”
“Maybe,” said Harry, knowing that this would keep Phineas Nigellus’s interest. “We’ve got a couple of questions to ask you--about the sword of Gryffindor.”
“Ah,” said Phineas Nigellus, now turning his head this way and that in an effort to catch sight of Harry, “yes. That silly girl acted most unwisely there--”
“Shut up about my sister,” said Ron roughly. Phineas Nigellus raised supercilious eyebrows.
“Who else is here?” he asked, turning his head from side to side. “Your tone displeases me! The girl and her friends were foolhardy in the extreme. Thieving from the headmaster!”
“They weren’t thieving,” said Harry. “That sword isn’t Snape’s.”
“It belongs to Professor Snape’s school,” said Phineas Nigellus. “Exactly what claim did the Weasley girl have upon it? She deserved her punishment, as did the idiot Longbottom and the Lovegood oddity!”
“Neville is not an idiot and Luna is not an oddity!” said Hermione.
“Where am I?” repeated Phineas Nigellus, staring to wrestle with the blindfold again. “Where have you brought me? Why have you removed me from the house of my forebears?”
“Never mind that! How did Snape punish Ginny, Neville, and Luna?” asked Harry urgently.
“Professor Snape sent them into the Forbidden Forest, to do some work for the oaf, Hagrid.”
“Hagrid’s not an oaf!” said Hermione shrilly.
“And Snape might’ve thought that was a punishment,” said Harry, “but Ginny, Neville, and Luna probably had a good laugh with Hagrid. The Forbidden Forest…they’ve faced plenty worse than the Forbidden Forest, big deal! ~ J K Rowling,#NFDB
465:Our joy, our peace, our happiness depend very much on our practice of recognizing and transforming our habit energies. There are positive habit energies that we have to cultivate, there are negative habit energies that we have to recognize, embrace, and transform. The energy with which we do these things is mindfulness. Mindfulness helps us be aware of what is going on. Then, when the habit energy shows itself, we know right away. "Hello, my little habit energy, I know you are there. I will take good care of you." By recognizing this energy as it is, you are in control of the situation. You don't have to fight your habit energy. In fact the Buddha does not recommend that you fight it, because that habit energy is you and you should not fight against yourself. You have to generate the energy of mindfulness, which is also you, and that positive energy will do the work of recognizing and embracing. Every time you embrace your habit energy, you can help it transform a little bit. The habit energy is a kind of seed within your consciousness, and when it becomes a source of energy, you have to recognize it. You have to bring your mindfulness into the present moment, and you just embrace that negative energy: "Hello, my negative habit energy. I know you are there. I am here for you." After maybe one or two or three minutes, that energy will go back into the form of a seed. But it may re-manifest later on. You have to be very alert.
Every time a negative energy is embraced by the energy of mindfulness, it will no longer push you to do or to say things you do not want to do or say, and it loses a little bit of its strength as it returns as a seed to the lower level of consciousness. The same thing is true for all mental formations: your fear, your anguish, your anxiety, and your despair. They exist in us in the form of seeds, and every time one of the seeds is watered, it becomes a zone of energy on the upper level of our consciousness. If you don't know how to take care of it, it will cause damage, and push us to do or to say things that will damage us and damage the people we love. Therefore, generating the energy of mindfulness to recognize, embrace, and take care of negative energy is the practice. And the practice should be done in a very tender, nonviolent way. There should be no fighting, because when you fight, you create damage within yourself.
The Buddhist practice is based on the insight of non-duality: you are love, you are mindfulness, but you are also that habit energy within you. To meditate does not mean to transform yourself into a battlefield with right fighting wrong, positive fighting negative. That's not Buddhist. Based on the insight of nonduality, the practice should be nonviolent. Mindfulness embracing anger is like a mother embracing her child, big sister embracing younger sister. The embrace always brings a positive effect. You can bring relief, and you can cause the negative energy to lose some of its strength, just by embracing it. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh,#NFDB
466:Very often, we really do want to help the people around us however we can, but we get so focused on finding a quick solution to the external behavior that we overlook the real problem. Here’s an example. If a friend struggles with anger, we find out what makes him angry, and then keep him away from the things that provoke his anger (e.g., don’t drive during rush hour, interact with your boss as little as possible, avoid talking politics). But changing the external situation doesn’t change his heart. In reality, his anger is rooted in his heart, and that anger will find a way to express itself even if his circumstances change. When Jesus’s disciples started eating without going through the necessary cleansing rituals, the Pharisees accused them of defiling themselves. But Jesus’s response calls us to look beyond the external to what is going on in the heart: “Whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. (Mark 7:18–23) Every struggle with sin that we could possibly encounter in our own lives or in the lives of the people around us are represented in the list Jesus offered here: evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. Jesus said that these things come from within. In other words, if we are trying to address these problems by regulating a person’s circumstances or behavior, then we are wasting our time. These things come “out of the heart of man.” Whatever help we can offer people who are struggling with sin has to be aimed at transforming hearts, not behavior. 5. Why do you think we tend to focus on the external circumstances and behavior when we try to help people change? 6. Using your own words, try to explain why it is essential to get to the heart of the problem rather than merely addressing the circumstances and behavior. Transformed by the Gospel So how do we change a person’s heart? It’s impossible. We might be able to restrain a person’s angry outbursts by tying him up and gagging him, but we are powerless to change a person’s heart. This is where God’s plan of redemption comes into play. The gospel is not merely about “getting us saved,” as if we simply pray a prayer and are immediately transported into heaven. God describes “salvation” and the transformation of the Christian life like this: I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. (Ezek. 36:26–27) ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
467:Closing The Cycle
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.
Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?
You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.
None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.
Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.
Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.
Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
468:Sweet Mother, here it is written: "It is part of the foundation of Yoga to become conscious of the great complexity of our nature, see the different forces that move it and get over it a control of directing knowledge." Are these forces different for each person?
Yes. The composition is completely different, otherwise everybody would be the same. There are not two beings with an identical combination; between the different parts of the being and the composition of these parts the proportion is different in each individual. There are people, primitive men, people like the yet undeveloped races or the degenerated ones whose combinations are fairly simple; they are still complicated, but comparatively simple. And there are people absolutely at the top of the human ladder, the e ́lite of humanity; their combinations become so complicated that a very special discernment is needed to find the relations between all these things.
There are beings who carry in themselves thousands of different personalities, and then each one has its own rhythm and alternation, and there is a kind of combination; sometimes there are inner conflicts, and there is a play of activities which are rhythmic and with alternations of certain parts which come to the front and then go back and again come to the front. But when one takes all that, it makes such complicated combinations that some people truly find it difficult to understand what is going on in themselves; and yet these are the ones most capable of a complete, coordinated, conscious, organised action; but their organisation is infinitely more complicated than that of primitive or undeveloped men who have two or three impulses and four or five ideas, and who can arrange all this very easily in themselves and seem to be very co-ordinated and logical because there is not very much to organise. But there are people truly like a multitude, and so that gives them a plasticity, a fluidity of action and an extraordinary complexity of perception, and these people are capable of understanding a considerable number of things, as though they had at their disposal a veritable army which they move according to circumstance and need; and all this is inside them. So when these people, with the help of yoga, the discipline of yoga, succeed in centralising all these beings around the central light of the divine Presence, they become powerful entities, precisely because of their complexity. So long as this is not organised they often give the impression of an incoherence, they are almost incomprehensible, one can't manage to understand why they are like that, they are so complex. But when they have organised all these beings, that is, put each one in its place around the divine centre, then truly they are terrific, for they have the capacity of understanding almost everything and doing almost everything because of the multitude of entities they contain, of which they are constituted. And the nearer one is to the top of the ladder, the more it is like that, and consequently the more difficult it is to organise one's being; because when you have about a dozen elements, you can quickly compass and organise them, but when you have thousands of them, it is difficult. ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1955, 215-216,#NFDB
469:No, she couldn’t blame this one on him. This one was entirely hers. She’d sent him running away.
Everyone knew it, too, which was nowhere more apparent than in the carriage once they were all settled in and headed off.
Lisette was unusually silent. The duke’s wooden expression said that he wished he could be anywhere else but here. And Tristan was studying her with a cold gaze.
He did that for a mile or so before he spoke. “You’re a cruel woman, Jane Vernon.”
“Tristan!” Lisette chided. “Don’t be rude.”
“I’ll be as rude as I please to her,” he told his sister, with a jerk of his head toward Jane. “That man is mad for her, and she just keeps toying with him.”
Guilt swamped Jane. And she’d thought that spending half a day trapped with Dom would be bad? She must have been dreaming.
“It’s none of our concern,” Lisette murmured.
“The hell it isn’t.” Tristan stared hard at Jane. “Is this about Nancy? About the fact that if she has a child, Dom will lose the title and the estate?”
“No, of course not!” How dared he!
“Tristan, please--” Lisette began.
“That’s why you jilted him years ago, isn’t it?” Tristan persisted. “Because he no longer had any money, and you’d lose your fortune if you married him?”
“I did not jilt him!” Jane shouted.
An unnatural silence fell in the carriage, and she cursed her quick tongue. But really, this was all Dom’s fault for never telling his family the truth. She was tired of being made to look the villainess when she’d done nothing wrong.
“What do you mean?” Lisette asked.
Jane released an exasperated breath. “I mean, I did jilt him. But only because he tricked me into it.” When that brought a smug smile to Tristan’s face, she narrowed her eyes on him. “You knew.”
“Not the details. I just knew something wasn’t right. But since it was clear that neither you nor my idiot brother were going to say anything without being prodded into it, I…er…did a bit of prodding.” He smirked at her. “You do tend to speak your mind when you get angry.”
Jane scowled at him. “You’re just like him, manipulative and arrogant and--”
“I beg to differ,” Tristan said jovially. “He’s just like me. I taught him everything he knows.”
“Yes, indeed,” Lisette said with a snort. “You taught him to be as much an idiot as you.” She glanced from Tristan to Jane. “So, is one of you going to tell me what is going on? About the jilting, I mean?”
Tristan cocked an eyebrow at Jane. “Well?”
She sighed. The cat was out of the bag now. Might as well reveal the rest.
So she related the whole tale, from Dom’s plotting with Nancy at the ball to George’s involvement to how she’d finally discovered the truth.
When she finished, Tristan let out a low whistle. “Hell and thunder. My big brother has a better talent for deception than I realized.”
“Not as good as you’d think,” Jane muttered. “If I hadn’t been so wounded and angry at the time, I would have noticed how…manufactured the whole thing felt.”
Lisette patted her hand. “You were young. We were all more volatile then.” Her voice hardened. “And he hit you just where it hurt, the curst devil. No wonder you want to strangle him half the time. I would have strung him up by his toes if he’d done such a thing to me! ~ Sabrina Jeffries,#NFDB
470:During this same period of his life Bohm also continued to refine his alternative approach to quantum physics. As he looked more carefully into the meaning of the quantum potential he discovered it had a number of features that implied an even more radical departure from orthodox thinking. One was the importance of wholeness. Classical science had always viewed the state of a system as a whole as merely the result of the interaction of its parts. However, the quantum potential stood this view on its ear and indicated that the behavior of the parts was actually organized by the whole. This not only took Bohr's assertion that subatomic particles are not independent "things, " but are part of an indivisible system one step further, but even suggested that wholeness was in some ways the more primary reality. It also explained how electrons in plasmas (and other specialized states such as superconductivity) could behave like interconnected wholes. As Bohm states, such "electrons are not scattered because, through the action of the quantum potential, the whole system is undergoing a co-ordinated movement more like a ballet dance than like a crowd of unorganized people. " Once again he notes that "such quantum wholeness of activity is closer to the organized unity of functioning of the parts of a living being than it is to the kind of unity that is obtained by putting together the parts of a machine. "6 An even more surprising feature of the quantum potential was its implications for the nature of location. At the level of our everyday lives things have very specific locations, but Bohm's interpretation of quantum physics indicated that at the subquantum level, the level in which the quantum potential operated, location ceased to exist All points in space became equal to all other points in space, and it was meaningless to speak of anything as being separate from anything else. Physicists call this property "nonlocality. " The nonlocal aspect of the quantum potential enabled Bohm to explain the connection between twin particles without violating special relativity's ban against anything traveling faster than the speed of light. To illustrate how, he offers the following analogy: Imagine a fish swimming in an aquarium. Imagine also that you have never seen a fish or an aquarium before and your only knowledge about them comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the other at its side. When you look at the two television monitors you might mistakenly assume that the fish on the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch you will eventually realize there is a relationship between the two fish. When one turns, the other makes a slightly different but corresponding turn. When one faces the front, the other faces the side, and so on. If you are unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might wrongly conclude that the fish are instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is not the case. No communication is taking place because at a deeper level of reality, the reality of the aquarium, the two fish are actually one and the same. This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between particles such as the two photons emitted when a positronium atom decays (see fig. 8). ~ Michael Talbot, #NFDB
471:Perspective - Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.
Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place.
You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.
Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers.
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a false messiah.
Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change.
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.
Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.
Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect.
Then be sure of one thing:
The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have.
The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion....this is the place to go now.
But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.
If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums.
It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.
Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.
The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities."
The truth you speak has no past and no future. It is, and that's all it needs to be.
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.
Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again.
And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind.
Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution it not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy.
Everything above may be wrong! ~ Richard Bach,#NFDB
472:Everything in Nature ran according to its own nature; the running of grass was in its growing, the running of rivers their flowing, granite bubbled up, cooled, compressed and crumbled, birds lived, flew, sang and died, everything did what it needed to do, each simultaneously running its own race, each by living according to its own nature together, never leaving any other part of the universe behind. The world’s Holy things raced constantly together, not to win anything over the next, but to keep the entire surging diverse motion of the living world from grinding to a halt, which is why there is no end to that race; no finish line. That would be oblivion to all.
For the Indigenous Souls of all people who can still remember how to be real cultures, life is a race to be elegantly run, not a race to be competitively won. It cannot be won; it is the gift of the world’s diverse beautiful motion that must be maintained. Because human life has been give the gift of our elegant motion, whether we limp, roll, crawl, stroll, or fly, it is an obligation to engender that elegance of motion in our daily lives in service of maintaining life by moving and living as beautifully as we can. All else has, to me, the familiar taste of that domineering warlike harshness that daily tries to cover its tracks in order to camouflage the deep ruts of some old, sick, grinding, ungainly need to flee away from the elegance of our original Indigenous human souls. Our attempt to avariciously conquer or win a place where there are no problems, whether it be Heaven or a “New Democracy,” never mind if it is spiritually ugly and immorally “won” and taken from someone who is already there, has made a citifying world of people who, unconscious of it, have become our own ogreish problem to ourselves, our future, and the world. This is a problem that we cannot continue to attempt to competitively outrun by more and more effectively designed technological approaches to speed away from the past, for the specter of our own earth-wasting reality runs grinning competitively right alongside us. By developing even more effective and entertaining methods of escape that only burn up the earth, the air, animals, plants, and the deeper substance of what it should mean to be human, by competing to get ahead, we have created a brakeless competition that has outrun our innate beauty and marked out a very definite and imminent “finish” line.
Living in and on a sphere, we cannot really outrun ourselves anyway. Therefore, I say, the entire devastating and hideous state of the world and its constant wounding and wrecking of the wild, beautiful, natural, viable and small, only to keep alive an untenable cultural proceedance is truly a spiritual sickness, one that will not be cured by the efficient use of the same thinking that maintains the sickness. Nor can this overly expensive, highly funded illness be symptomatically kept at bay any longer by yet more political, environmental, or social programs.
We must as individuals and communities take the time necessary to learn how to indigenously remember what a sane, original existence for a viable people might look like.
Though there are marvellous things and amazing people doing them, both seen and unseen, these do not resemble in any way the general trend of what is going on now.
To begin remembering our Indigenous belonging on the Earth back to life we must metabolize as individuals the grief of recognition of our lost directions, digest it into a valuable spiritual compost that allows us to learn to stay put without outrunning our strange past, and get small, unarmed, brave, and beautiful.
By trying to feed the Holy in Nature the fruit of beauty from the tree of memory of our Indigenous Souls, grown in the composted failures of our past need to conquer, watered by the tears of cultural grief, we might become ancestors worth descending from and possibly grow a place of hope for a time beyond our own. ~ Martin Prechtel,#NFDB
473:Mother, how to change one's consciousness?
Naturally, there are many ways, but each person must do it by the means accessible to him; and the indication of the way usually comes spontaneously, through something like an unexpected experience. And for each one, it appears a little differently.
For instance, one may have the perception of the ordinary consciousness which is extended on the surface, horizontally, and works on a plane which is simultaneously the surface of things and has a contact with the superficial outer side of things, people, circumstances; and then, suddenly, for some reason or other - as I say for each one it is different - there is a shifting upwards, and instead of seeing things horizontally, of being at the same level as they are, you suddenly dominate them and see them from above, in their totality, instead of seeing a small number of things immediately next to yourself; it is as though something were drawing you above and making you see as from a mountain-top or an aeroplane. And instead of seeing each detail and seeing it on its own level, you see the whole as one unity, and from far above.
There are many ways of having this experience, but it usually comes to you as if by chance, one fine day.
Or else, one may have an experience which is almost its very opposite but which comes to the same thing. Suddenly one plunges into a depth, one moves away from the thing one perceived, it seems distant, superficial, unimportant; one enters an inner silence or an inner calm or an inward vision of things, a profound feeling, a more intimate perception of circumstances and things, in which all values change. And one becomes aware of a sort of unity, a deep identity which is one in spite of the diverse appearances.
Or else, suddenly also, the sense of limitation disappears and one enters the perception of a kind of indefinite duration beginningless and endless, of something which has always been and always will be.
These experiences come to you suddenly in a flash, for a second, a moment in your life, you don't know why or how.... There are other ways, other experiences - they are innumerable, they vary according to people; but with this, with one minute, one second of such an existence, one catches the tail of the thing. So one must remember that, try to relive it, go to the depths of the experience, recall it, aspire, concentrate. This is the startingpoint, the end of the guiding thread, the clue. For all those who are destined to find their inner being, the truth of their being, there is always at least one moment in life when they were no longer the same, perhaps just like a lightning-flash - but that is enough. It indicates the road one should take, it is the door that opens on this path. And so you must pass through the door, and with perseverance and an unfailing steadfastness seek to renew the state which will lead you to something more real and more total.
Many ways have always been given, but a way you have been taught, a way you have read about in books or heard from a teacher, does not have the effective value of a spontaneous experience which has come without any apparent reason, and which is simply the blossoming of the soul's awakening, one second of contact with your psychic being which shows you the best way for you, the one most within your reach, which you will then have to follow with perseverance to reach the goal - one second which shows you how to start, the beginning.... Some have this in dreams at night; some have it at any odd time: something one sees which awakens in one this new consciousness, something one hears, a beautiful landscape, beautiful music, or else simply a few words one reads, or else the intensity of concentration in some effort - anything at all, there are a thousand reasons and thousands of ways of having it. But, I repeat, all those who are destined to realise have had this at least once in their life. It may be very fleeting, it may have come when they were very young, but always at least once in one's life one has the experience of what true consciousness is. Well, that is the best indication of the path to be followed.
One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; one must notice what is going on, one must pay attention, that's all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch.
First of all, you must feel the necessity for this change of consciousness, accept the idea that it is this, the path which must lead to the goal; and once you admit the principle, you must be watchful. And you will find, you do find it. And once you have found it, you must start walking without any hesitation.
Indeed, the starting-point is to observe oneself, not to live in a perpetual nonchalance, a perpetual apathy; one must be attentive.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1956, [T6],#NFDB
474:THE AWAKENING
1
After the song of the wanderer and shadow, the cave
all at once became full of noise and laughter; and since
all of the assembled guests talked at the same time and
even the ass, thus encouraged, would no longer remain
silent, Zarathustra was overcome by a slight aversion
and by scorn for his company, although he enjoyed their
gaiety. For this seemed to him a sign of convalescence.
So he slipped out into the open and talked to his
animals.
'Where is their distress now?" he said, and immediately he felt relief from his own little annoyance. "Up
here with me, it seems, they have unlearned crying in
distress. Although unfortunately not yet crying in general." And Zarathustra covered up his ears, for just then
the Yeah-Yuh of the ass was strangely blended with the
jubilating noise of these higher men.
"They are merry," he began again, "and, who knows?
perhaps at their hoses expense. And if they learned to
laugh from me, it still is not my laughter that they have
learned. But what does it matter? They are old people,
convalescing in their own way, laughing in their own
way; my ears have suffered worse things without becoming grumpy. This day represents a triumph: he is
even now retreating, he is fleeing, the spirit of gravity,
my old archenemy. How happily this day wants to end
after beginning so badly and gravely. And it wants to
end. Even now evening is approaching: he is riding over
the sea, this good rider. How the blessed one, returning
home, sways in his crimson saddle! The sky looks clear,
the world lies deep: 0 all you strange visitors, living
with me is well worth while!"
311
Thus spoke Zarathustra. And again the clamor and
laughter of the higher men came to him from the cave,
so he began again: "They are biting, my bait is working: from them too their enemy retreats, the spirit of
gravity. Even now they have learned to laugh at themselves: do I hear right? My virile nourishment, the savor
and strength of my words, are taking effect; and verily,
I did not feed them bloating vegetables, but warriors'
nourishment, conquerors' nourishment: I wakened new
desires. New hopes throb in their arms and legs; their
hearts stretch out. They are finding new words, soon
their spirit will brea the prankishness. Such nourishment,
to be sure, may not be suitable for children or for
nostalgic old and young little females. Their entrails are
persuaded in a different way; I am not their physician
and teacher.
"Nausea is retreating from these higher men. Well
then That is my triumph. In my realm they feel safe,
all stupid shame runs away, they unburden themselves.
They unburden their hearts, good hours come back to
them, they celebrate and chew the cud: they become
grateful. This I take to be the best sign: they become
grateful. Not much longer, and they will think up
festivals and put up monuments to their old friends.
They are convalescing" Thus spoke Zarathustra gaily
to his heart, and he looked out; but his animals pressed
close to him and respected his happiness and his
silence.
2
Suddenly, however, Zarathustra's ears were startled;
for the cave which had so far been full of noise and
laughter suddenly became deathly still, while his nose
perceived a pleasant smoke and incense, as of burning
pine cones. "What is going on? What are they doing?"
312
he asked himself, and he stole to the entrance to watch
his guests, unnoticed. But, wonder upon wonder What
did he have to see with his own eyes?
"They have all become pious again, they are praying,
thev are mad!" he said, and he was amazed beyond
measure. And indeed, all these higher men, the two
kings, the retired pope, the wicked magician, the voluntary beggar, the wanderer and shadow, the old soothsayer, the conscientious in spirit, and the ugliest manthey were all kneeling like children and devout little
old women and adoring the ass. And just then the ugliest
man began to gurgle and snort as if something inexpressible wanted to get out of him; but when he really
found words, behold, it was a pious, strange litany to
glorify the adored and censed ass. And this litany went
thus:
Amen! And praise and honor and wisdom and thanks
and glory and strength be to our god, from everlasting
to everlasting
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh.
He carries our burden, he took upon himself the
form of a servant, he is patient of heart and never says
No; and whoever loves his God, chastises him.
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh.
He does not speak, except he always says Yea to the
world he created: thus he praises his world. It is his
cleverness that does not speak: thus he is rarely found
to be wrong.
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh.
Plain-looking, he walks through the world. Gray is
the body color in which he shrouds his virtue. If he has
spirit, he hides it; but everybody believes in his long
ears.
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh.
313
What hidden wisdom it is that he has long ears and
only says Yea and never No! Has he not created the
world in his own image, namely, as stupid as possible?
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh.
You walk on straight and crooked paths; it matters
little to you what seems straight or crooked to us men.
Beyond good and evil is your kingdom. It is your innocence not to know what innocence is.
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh.
Behold how you push none away from you, not the
beggars nor the kings. Little children you let come unto
you, and when sinners entice you, you simply say YeaYuh.
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh.
You love she-asses and fresh figs; you do not despise
food. A thistle tickles your heart if you happen to be
hungry. In this lies the wisdom of a god.
But the ass brayed: Yea-Yuh.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, THE AWAKENING
,#NFDB
475:Intuition And The Value Of Concentration :::
Mother, how can the faculty of intuition be developed?
... There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we don't notice them because we don't pay enough attention to what is going on in us. Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified. In other cases there is something that urges, indicates, insists - I am not speaking of impulses, you understand, of all the movements which come from the vital and much lower still - indications which are behind the feelings, which come from the affective part of the being; there too one can receive a fairly sure indication of the thing to be done. These are forms of intuition or of a higher instinct which can be cultivated by observation and also by studying the results. Naturally, it must be done very sincerely, objectively, without prejudice. If one wants to see things in a particular way and at the same time practise this observation, it is all useless. One must do it as if one were looking at what is happening from outside oneself, in someone else. It is one form of intuition and perhaps the first one that usually manifests. There is also another form but that one is much more difficult to observe because for those who are accustomed to think, to act by reason - not by impulse but by reason - to reflect before doing anything, there is an extremely swift process from cause to effect in the half-conscious thought which prevents you from seeing the line, the whole line of reasoning and so you don't think that it is a chain of reasoning, and that is quite deceptive. You have the impression of an intuition but it is not an intuition, it is an extremely rapid subconscious reasoning, which takes up a problem and goes straight to the conclusions. This must not be mistaken for intuition. In the ordinary functioning of the brain, intuition is something which suddenly falls like a drop of light. If one has the faculty, the beginning of a faculty of mental vision, it gives the impression of something coming from outside or above, like a little impact of a drop of light in the brain, absolutely independent of all reasoning. This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence one's mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention. That too one can learn to do. One must learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline.
When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate your attention here (pointing between the eyebrows), at the centre just above the eyes, the centre of the conscious will. But then if you do that, you cannot be in contact with intuition. You can be in contact with the source of the will, of effort, even of a certain kind of knowledge, but in the outer, almost material field; whereas, if you want to contact the intuition, you must keep this (Mother indicates the forehead) completely immobile. Active thought must be stopped as far as possible and the entire mental faculty must form - at the top of the head and a little further above if possible - a kind of mirror, very quiet, very still, turned upwards, in silent, very concentrated attention. If you succeed, you can - perhaps not immediately - but you can have the perception of the drops of light falling upon the mirror from a still unknown region and expressing themselves as a conscious thought which has no connection with all the rest of your thought since you have been able to keep it silent. That is the real beginning of the intellectual intuition.
It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a mirror, still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre.
Naturally, first these two faculties must be developed; then, as soon as there is any result, one must observe the result, as I said, and see the connection with what is happening, the consequences: see, observe very attentively what has come in, what may have caused a distortion, what one has added by way of more or less conscious reasoning or the intervention of a lower will, also more or less conscious; and it is by a very deep study - indeed, almost of every moment, in any case daily and very frequent - that one succeeds in developing one's intuition. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and there are ambushes: one can deceive oneself, take for intuitions subconscious wills which try to manifest, indications given by impulses one has refused to receive openly, indeed all sorts of difficulties. One must be prepared for that. But if one persists, one is sure to succeed.
And there comes a time when one feels a kind of inner guidance, something which is leading one very perceptibly in all that one does. But then, for the guidance to have its maximum power, one must naturally add to it a conscious surrender: one must be sincerely determined to follow the indication given by the higher force. If one does that, then... one saves years of study, one can seize the result extremely rapidly. If one also does that, the result comes very rapidly. But for that, it must be done with sincerity and... a kind of inner spontaneity. If one wants to try without this surrender, one may succeed - as one can also succeed in developing one's personal will and making it into a very considerable power - but that takes a very long time and one meets many obstacles and the result is very precarious; one must be very persistent, obstinate, persevering, and one is sure to succeed, but only after a great labour.
Make your surrender with a sincere, complete self-giving, and you will go ahead at full speed, you will go much faster - but you must not do this calculatingly, for that spoils everything! (Silence) Moreover, whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it - whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing - that's not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate.
And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention.
And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important.
There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration - but one must learn how to do it. There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key. You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it - it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.
~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,#NFDB
29 Integral Yoga
5 Christianity
3 Psychology
3 Philosophy
3 Occultism
1 Yoga
1 Science
1 Mythology
1 Hinduism
19 The Mother
6 Sri Aurobindo
5 Satprem
3 Plotinus
3 A B Purani
2 Thubten Chodron
5 Questions And Answers 1954
4 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
4 Letters On Yoga IV
3 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
2 Questions And Answers 1955
2 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Agenda Vol 04
0 1963-06-08, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Obviously, there was there must have been a cause for alarm, because as soon as I became conscious of the experience (it started before I became conscious of it; when I did, it seemed to me it had already been going on for a long time; so when I say three hours, it means three hours during which I was conscious, but it had started long before; it was around eleven at night and lasted till three in the morning), so the second I was made conscious of the thing, obviously there was a cause for alarm, because immediately I was told, You see, this is What is going on, and it was thanks to that ecstasy in the body that there was no alarm: Oh, things are fine, everything is fine. And when the experience was over, it didnt end like an experience exhausting itself; it ended as if, very slowly, the thing were, not exactly veiled to my consciousness, but as if my consciousness were turned away from it, with the feeling, Dont worry. At the start and at the end. All the same, when I woke up, I thought (because my head felt strange, there was a bizarre sensation as if I had become quite swollen! Swollen, inordinately swollen), I thought, Maybe when I get up tomorrow morning (I get up at 4:30), Ill find myself in a complete daze! Thats why I observed but everything was fine, there only remained that sort of feeling of being swollen. I feel (yet it was two nights ago, not last night), I feel as if my head were swollen! But the clear-headedness is the same as ever!! (laughing) Nothings been disturbed!
On the contrary, there is a sort of like an acuteness, something more acute in the perception, a little bit ironic I dont know why. A magnified impression that all the things in the world are much ado about nothing, a lot of fuss about nothing Ive had that feeling for for centuries, I could say, but there is in addition something ever so slightly acute and ironic.
0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But all that, you see, its the play of the world. What is going on now is something else, altogether something else.
It comes, it acts, it goes. And it doesnt give any advance notice of its coming!
0 1967-04-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the last part, what he calls the cellular level is indeed the descriptionONE descriptionof cellular phenomena and activities on their level of consciousness, and also on the level of consciousness of the infinitesimal. He speaks of great currents and cellular transformations and all that; its quite correct, only.1 Its What is going on at present, but its just the consciousness reduced to the dimension of the infinitesimal. And its a reproduction of what takes place in the other dimensions. But, for example, after all this discipline of the cells that there has been for several years now, his description strikes me as the same thing SEEN THROUGH AN ILLUSION. And the illusion is caused by that very imbalance: the illusion of an absolute reality, while its a quite relative reality. You understand, its the difference between seeing something with a sense of relativity, with a whole immensity of other things, and seeing it all alone as an exclusive and unique reality. Its the sense of the harmony and balance of the Whole that is gone. And so, it becomes dreadful: as he says, some people may find it frightening. And thats precisely because that equilibrium is missing. Its the same thing in a smaller version in an individual: that vision of the whole which gives the proportion of every event, the importance of every event and every thing, changes completely when you have the sense of the Whole, and what appears frightening or catastrophic or marvellous becomes again just a part of the Whole. Its the sense of equilibrium that is gone. When I read the end, it gave me one more confirmation of my experience.
It may be necessary, in certain cases, to disrupt that equilibrium so as to come into contact with something new, but thats always dangerous. And the way of consecration and surrender to the supreme Power is infinitely superiorits slightly more difficult. Its more difficult than swallowing a drug, but infinitely superior.
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
No, there is this factor in all success: self-confidence. If we analyze this, we find that it means that one is aware that all one's mental and physical faculties are working harmoniously. The deadliest and subtlest enemy of that feeling is anxiety about the result; the finest gauze of doubt is enough to dim one's vision, to throw the entire field out of focus. Hence, even to be aware that there is a result in prospect must militate against that serenity of spirit which is the essence of self-confidence. As you will know, all our automatic physiological functions are deranged if one is aware of This then, is the difficulty, to enjoy consciously while not disturbing the process involved. The obvious physical case is the sexual act: perhaps its chief importance is just that it is a type of this exceptional spiritual-mental condition. I hope, however, that you will remember what I have said on the subject in paragraphs 1517 of my 3rd Lecture on Yoga for Yellowbellies (pp. 71-72); there is a way of obtaining ecstacy from the most insignificant physiological function. Observe that in transferring the whole consciousness to (say) one's little finger or big toe is not trying to interfere with the normal exercise of its activities, but only to realize What is going on in the organism, the exquisite pleasure of a function in its normal activity. With a little imagination one can conceive the analogical case of the Universe itself; and, still less fettered by even the mildest limitation which material symbols necessarily (however little) suggest, "Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; ..." (AL, II, 9).
Is it too bold to suggest that the gradual merging of all these Ways into an interwoven unity may be taken as one mode of presentation of the Accomplishment of the Great Work itself?
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
sense of apprehension increases. She motions for you to sit, so you do. What is going on? She says, I have
some bad news for you. This is not good. This is not what you wanted. Your heart rate is rising
1.02 - Meditating on Tara, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
reason that they got so upset is because of What is going on inside of them.
We might also look at how we made ourselves into a target or accidentally
1.02 - Prana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Think of the universe as an ocean of ether, consisting of layer after layer of varying degrees of vibration under the action of Prana; away from the centre the vibrations are less, nearer to it they become quicker and quicker; one order of vibration makes one plane. Then suppose these ranges of vibrations are cut into planes, so many millions of miles one set of vibration, and then so many millions of miles another still higher set of vibration, and so on. It is, therefore, probable, that those who live on the plane of a certain state of vibration will have the power of recognising one another, but will not recognise those above them. Yet, just as by the telescope and the microscope we can increase the scope of our vision, similarly we can by Yoga bring ourselves to the state of vibration of another plane, and thus enable ourselves to see What is going on there. Suppose this room is full of beings whom we do not see. They represent Prana in a certain state of vibration while we represent another. Suppose they represent a quick one, and we the opposite. Prana is the material of which they are composed, as well as we. All are parts of the same ocean of Prana, they differ only in their rate of vibration. If I can bring myself to the quick vibration, this plane will immediately change for me: I shall not see you any more; you vanish and they appear. Some of you, perhaps, know this to be true. All this bringing of the mind into a higher state of vibration is included in one word in Yoga Samadhi. All these states of higher vibration, superconscious vibrations of the mind, are grouped in that one word, Samadhi, and the lower states of Samadhi give us visions of these beings. The highest grade of Samadhi is when we see the real thing, when we see the material out of which the whole of these grades of beings are composed, and that one lump of clay being known, we know all the clay in the universe.
Thus we see that Pranayama includes all that is true of spiritualism even. Similarly, you will find that wherever any sect or body of people is trying to search out anything occult and mystical, or hidden, what they are doing is really this Yoga, this attempt to control the Prana. You will find that wherever there is any extraordinary display of power, it is the manifestation of this Prana. Even the physical sciences can be included in Pranayama. What moves the steam engine? Prana, acting through the steam. What are all these phenomena of electricity and so forth but Prana? What is physical science? The science of Pranayama, by external means. Prana, manifesting itself as mental power, can only be controlled by mental means. That part of Pranayama which attempts to control the physical manifestations of the Prana by physical means is called physical science, and that part which tries to control the manifestations of the Prana as mental force by mental means is called Raja-Yoga.
1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The movement of watching What is going on in you is not the separation of the true Purusha, but the Mental Purusha. As the Purusha you can not only watch as the Sakshi, but act as the giver of sanction, Anumanta. You can stop the movement of Nature that is going on in you.
Athavale: Yes. I found I could control my thought or imagination by sheer force of will.
1.03 - Tara, Liberator from the Eight Dangers, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
ethical guidelines and our meditation object, and vigilance arises from frequently observing, What is my mind focused on? What is going on in my
mind? When our mind is focused on something conducive to the path, vigilance lets it be. If we are distracted to sense pleasures, preoccupied with worries, or burning with anger, vigilance calls forth the appropriate antidote to
1.04 - The Crossing of the First Threshold, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
are set on its instep, so that to discover What is going on it has to
get down on hands and knees, and hold up one foot. The eye
1.06 - Quieting the Vital, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
we will know exactly What is going on and whom we are facing (a person's external veneer having usually nothing to do with that unostentatious vibrating reality). Our relationships with the outer world will become clear: we will understand why we instinctively like or dislike someone, why we feel afraid or ill at ease then we will be able to correct our reactions, accept the helpful vibrations, deflect the darker vibrations, and neutralize the harmful ones. Indeed, we will notice quite an interesting phenomenon: our inner silence has power.
If, instead of responding to the incoming vibration, we maintain an absolute inner stillness, we will notice that this stillness dissolves the vibration; it's as if we were surrounded by a field of snow in which all impacts are absorbed and neutralized. Let us take the simple example of anger: if, instead of vibrating inwardly in unison with the person facing us, we can remain absolutely still within, we will see that person's anger gradually dissolving. Mother observed that this inner stillness, this power not to respond, can even stop an assassin's hand or a snake's bite. But wearing an impassive mask while we are still boiling on the inside will not do; we cannot cheat with vibrations (as animals know full well). This has nothing to do with so-called selfcontrol, which is only a mastery of appearances, but with true inner mastery. Moreover, this silence can neutralize any vibration at all, for the simple reason that all vibrations are contagious, from the highest vibrations to the lowest (this is how a master can pass on spiritual experiences or a power to a disciple), and it is up to us to accept the contagion or not; if we become afraid, it means we have already accepted the contagion, and hence have already accepted the angry man's blow or the snake's bite. (One can also accept a blow out of love, like Sri Ramakrishna, who at the sight of a cart driver beating an ox, suddenly cried out in pain and found himself lacerated and bleeding, his back covered with lash marks.) The same holds for
1.08 - The Splitting of the Human Personality during Spiritual Training, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
so, too, does the soul live in a higher world; only, this life of the soul continues also during sleep. The soul is in full activity during sleep, but we can know nothing of this activity so long as we have no spiritual organs of perception through which to observe What is going on around us and see what we ourselves are doing during sleep, as we observe our daily physical environment with our ordinary senses. The preceding chapters have shown that esoteric training consists in the development of such spiritual sense organs. Now if, as a result of esoteric training, the student's life during sleep is transformed in the manner described in the foregoing chapter, he will, when in that condition, be able to follow consciously everything going on around him. He can at will find his way in his environment as he could, when awake, with his ordinary senses. It should here be noted that a higher degree of clairvoyance is required for the higher perception of ordinary physical environment. This was indicated in the last chapter. In the initial stages of his development the student perceives things pertaining to another world without being able to discern their connection
p. 217
1.10 - The Revolutionary Yogi, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
depression of the body which they animate is a small matter, for they know well how to transmigrate. Germany overthrew the Napoleonic spirit in France in 1813 and broke the remnants of her European leadership in 1870; the same Germany became the incarnation of that which it had overthrown. The phenomenon is easily capable of renewal on a more formidable scale.7 We now know that the old gods are capable of transmigrating. Seeing all the years of nonviolence ending in the terrible violence that marked the partition of India in 1947, Gandhi himself said with a touch of sadness just before his death, "The attitude of violence we have secretly harbored comes back on us, and we fly at each other's throats when the question of distribution of power arises. . . . Now that the yoke of subjection is lifted, all the forces of evil have come to the surface." For neither violence nor nonviolence goes to the root of Evil. Right in the middle of the Second World War, while Sri Aurobindo was taking a public stand in favor of the Allies,109 because it was the only practical thing to do, he wrote to a disciple: You write as if What is going on in Europe were a war between the powers of the Light and the powers of Darkness but that is no more so than during the Great War. It is a fight between two kinds of Ignorance. . . . The eye of the yogin sees not only the outward events and persons and causes, but the enormous forces which precipitate them into action. If the men who fought were instruments in the hands of rulers and financiers, etc.,
these in turn were mere puppets in the clutch of these forces. When one is habituated to see the things behind, one is no longer prone to be touched by the outward aspects or to expect any remedy from political, institutional or social changes.110 Sri Aurobindo had become aware of these "enormous forces" behind, of the constant infiltration of the supraphysical into the physical. His energies were not focused on a moral problem violence versus nonviolence which after all would be rather superficial, but on a problem of effectiveness. He saw clearly, again through experience, that in order to cure the world's evil it is first necessary to cure "what is at its roots in man." Nothing can 109
1.17 - DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY UPON ITSELF?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
worried by What is going on in New York or Moscow or China . . .
To steady ourselves in face of this progressive invasion of our pri-
1.3.05 - Silence, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The condition you describe shows precisely the growth of this inner silence. It has to fix itself eventually as the basis of all spiritual experience and activity. It does not matter if one does not know What is going on within behind the silence. For there are two conditions in the Yoga, one in which all is silent and there is no thought, feeling or movement even though one is acting outwardly as others do - another in which a new consciousness becomes active bringing knowledge, joy, love and other spiritual feelings and inner activities, but yet at the same time there is a fundamental silence or quietude. Both are necessary in the development of the inner being. The absolutely silent state, which is one of lightness, voidness and release, prepares the other and supports it when it comes.
The passive silence is that in which the inner consciousness remains void and at rest, not making any reaction on outer things and forces.
1916 11 28p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thou madest me read these childish babblings once again, for they are awkward attempts at expression of a mind still in its infancy and all this seemed to me far, very remote, clad in the charm and purity of the experiences of a candid and enthusiastic childhood. And yet, before Thee, O eternal Lord, I have not grown any older and have not made any progress; the expression of today will not be better than that of those early days. The mind is still as poor and clumsy as before. And what could it have to express that is so remarkable? No sensational experience: all experiences now seem simple and natural. No powerful or exceptional new idea, none of those ideas which fill one with the joy of discovery: all ideas, whatever form they may take, now seem like old acquaintances one greets amicably in passing, but from whom one expects nothing new. No scrupulous and detailed psychological analysis, exposing some yet unexplored inner recess: internal complications no longer exist in themselves; they are faithful and impartial reflections of all the surrounding psychological movements; and to describe What is going on in the being would be at once as complicated and monotonous as to describe the world in its almost exclusively subsconscient gropings and wanderings.
Poverty, poverty! Thou hast placed me in an arid and bare desert and yet this desert is sweet to me as everything that comes from Thee, O Lord. In this dull and wan greyness, in this dim ashen light, I taste the savour of the infinite spaces: the pure breeze of the open seas, the powerful breath of the free heights constantly fill my heart and penetrate my life; all barriers have fallen, within and around me, and I feel like a bird opening its wings for an unrestrained flight. But the bird remains perched upon a rock, its wings outspread against the grey, fleecy sky, awaiting, in order to soar upwards, the coming of something it expects without knowing what it is. As it no longer has any chains to check its flight, it no longer dreams of flying away. Conscious of its freedom, it does not enjoy it, and remains like the others, among the others, perched on the ground in the midst of the dark and dense fog.
1929-05-26 - Individual, illusion of separateness - Hostile forces and the mental plane - Psychic world, psychic being - Spiritual and psychic - Words, understanding speech and reading - Hostile forces, their utility - Illusion of action, true action, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We spoke once of individual minds as worlds that are distinct and separate from one another; each is shut up in itself and has almost no direct point of contact with any other. But that is in the region of the inferior mind; there your own formations close you in; you cannot get out of them or out of yourself; you can understand only yourself and your own reflection in things. But here in this higher region of the unexpressed mind and its purer altitudes you are free; when you enter there, you go out of yourself and penetrate into a universal mental plane in which each individual mental world is dipping as if into a huge sea. There you can understand entirely What is going on in another and read his mind as if it were your own, because there no separation divides mind from mind. It is only when you unite in that region with others that you can understand them; otherwise you are not attuned, you do not touch, you have no means of knowing precisely what is happening in another mind than yours. Most often when you are in the presence of another you are quite ignorant of what he thinks or feels; but if you are able to go beyond and above this external plane of expression, if you can enter into a plane where a silent communion is possible, then you can read in that other as you would in yourself. Then the words you use for your expression are of very little importance, because the full comprehension lies beyond them in something else and a minimum of words is sufficient for your purpose. Long explanations are not necessary there; you do not need that a thought should be brought out into full expression, for the direct vision of what is meant is with you.
Will a time come when the hostile forces will be there no longer?
1951-03-19 - Mental worlds and their beings - Understanding in silence - Psychic world- its characteristics - True experiences and mental formations - twelve senses, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But here in this higher region of the unexpressed mind and its purer altitudes you are free; when you enter there, you go out of yourself and penetrate into a universal mental plane in which each individual mental world is dipping as if into a huge sea. There you can understand entirely What is going on in another and read his mind as if it were your own, because there no separation divides mind from mind. It is only when you unite in that region with others that you can understand them; otherwise you are not attuned, you do not touch.
Questions and Answers 1929 (26 May)
--
You must distrust the mind altogether when you want to enter the world of experiences. It is enough for the mind to be just slightly roused for it to say, Ah, What is going on? Then it may be that things do happen but it is no longer the thing, it is a fabrication.
First condition, know how to keep silent. And not only keep your tongue quiet, but silence your mind, keep the head silent. If you wish to have a true, sincere experience upon which you can build, you must know how to be silent, otherwise you have nothing but what you fabricate yourself, which is equivalent to zero. All that one can say is, Heavens, what a fashioner my mind is!
1951-05-14 - Chance - the play of forces - Peace, given and lost - Abolishing the ego, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
We do not see it harming anyone or anything simply because we do not have sufficient data. We cannot judge circumstances, for we do not know the world. What do we know about it? Our vision is so short and so limited. Just think, a man can never know what lies beyond his hundred and twenty years, at the maximum, and I am putting a very big limit, and I count the first years of his existence, though generally he does not remember what has happened then. What does one know about the world in so short a time and about the consequences of things? Nothing at all. And even granting that one can remember sufficiently well to know the result or antecedent of a so-called chance, it is altogether a local knowledge. What does one know about what is happening at the antipodes or in a million other places on the earth at the same moment? We know nothing about it. And as we know that all that happens is linked, that all things are closely linked, consciously, that there cannot be a vibration in one place without there being its consequences in another, how can we tell whether our chance is not harmful to someone, though it be favourable for us? I think it is impossible to form a judgment (how shall I put it?) a correct judgment about things, for one does not know What is going on in the world. We do not know the whole, we know nothing of the play of forces. And we say that chance is the result of a play of forces; only, instead of being the expression of divine harmony, it is the expression of conflicting wills. These wills are not all necessarily bad or hostile but they are always ignorant. Each one tries to realise his own will and the victory is to the strongest the strongest is not necessarily the best in this field. When one thing is realised, how many others could have been realised, which were not, because this one was realised? And all these things, we do not know. We cannot compare what is with what could have been. No, I have not said anywhere that chance was necessarily the work of hostile forces, but it is certainly the work of ignorant forces.
From a scientific point of view chance is considered as something without a cause or as the result of a number of small causes which intervene and are more or less independent of each other, giving rise to the notion of disorder. But how to know whether a thing, an event, etc is due to chance or not? The word chance is rather a way of speaking, isnt it?
1954-02-03 - The senses and super-sense - Children can be moulded - Keeping things in order - The shadow, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The names? In the Chaldean tradition they were in Chaldaic. In other traditions, in other languages; in Egypt they were written in hieroglyphs. Each system gave its names. I had a list of the namesnot only of the names but also of what they represented, what kind of see each represented but it was a very long time ago, I dont remember them any longer. As I have said there, it is in the field of things seen, felt, done at a distance by a concentrated projection of consciousness. For in stance, one is in a room and, due to an illness or an accident, one cannot move. Next to this room there is another; next to that there is a sort of bridge; after the bridge there are steps going down; and these steps go down to a big studio in the middle of a garden. Now, the person laid up in the room wishes to know What is going on in the studio. He concentrates his consciousness and then extends it, so to say (truly it is as though he extended it almost materially), and he goes along the whole way and reaches the studio. If he does this properly, he sees what there is in the studio, can hear What is going on, though he is not there himself: the body is lying in a bed in a room, but the consciousness is projected. It is a physical consciousness. It is not an inner state, for one sees physically, hears physically. If there are people in the room one sees them, and if they are speaking one hears them speaking. Naturally, it is not from the very first day that one succeeds; it asks for a very rigorous discipline. It corresponds a little (a little) to that capacity which was developed in the Red India due to the conditions of their life. I dont know how it is at present, but formerly they used to put their ear to the earth, and they had so fine an ear that they could hear steps more than a mile away. They heard the steps of those who were walking at a distance of more than two or three kilometres simply by putting their ear to the ground. Or take the dog which, if given something to smell, finds the trail of that scent again, can follow it with its nose. Well, it is one kind of super-see, that is, a see that has reached such a degree of intensity and refinement that it can indeed feel what the ordinary see does not feel, can see at a distance, really see, see physically at a distance, through walls. It is said that the blind develop a see which enables them to feel an object at a distance. They do not see, they walk in darkness as in a black night; but they have a kind of see of touch at a distance, a material contact due to which, long before touching the object, they know; for example, if there is a piece of furniture in their way, long before knocking against it, they feel it from a distance.
In children the mind is not developed when they are small. Is this also true of the vital?
1954-06-30 - Occultism - Religion and vital beings - Mothers knowledge of what happens in the Ashram - Asking questions to Mother - Drawing on Mother, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No! I mean since you already know What is going on in the Ashram, why is it necessary for the heads of departments to come and give you the information?
No, no, they do not come to give me information: they come to ask me for orders. Thats not the same thing. And if I were to give them my orders in the night, they would not hear me, or if by chance they heard something, it would probably be the contrary! They would do any odd thing according to their own fancy. No, no! Information? Thats because it pleases them to say what they have to say. If I were to tell them at once, It is all right, I know, I know! At times I do that, when I am in a great hurry; but they are quite shocked and think, How can she know? She has not asked me! They alone can give me the exact information, according to them. If they dont explain things to me, I dont know them. Thats what they think, so I have to let them explain. Sometimes, if it takes too long, and I dont have much time, I tell them, Its all right, its all right, I know it; come on, come to the point, what do you want to know? Well, that upsets them a great deal.
1954-11-10 - Inner experience, the basis of action - Keeping open to the Force - Faith through aspiration - The Mothers symbol - The mind and vital seize experience - Degrees of sincerity -Becoming conscious of the Divine Force, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When, at any moment, whatever may happen, the being has given itself to the Divine and wants only the divine Will, when, no matter What is going on in the being, at any moment whatever, always, the whole being in perfect unanimity can say to the Divine and feels for the Divine, Let Thy Will be done, when it is spontaneous, total, integral, then you are sincere. But until this is established, it is a mixed sincerity, more or less mixed, right up to the point where one is not at all sincere.
Sweet Mother, here it is written: The personal effort has to be transformed progressively into a movement of the Divine Force. If you feel conscious of the Divine Force, then call it in more and more to govern your effort, to take it up, to transform it into something not yours, but the Mothers. But if one is not conscious of the Divine Force?
1954-12-08 - Cosmic consciousness - Clutching - The central will of the being - Knowledge by identity, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You have never tried to enter another persons consciousness to know exactly What is going on there? Not projecting your consciousness into someone else, because then you find yourself inside him and this is not interesting but entering into relation with his consciousness which is within him, for example when, for one reason or another, you dont see things eye to eye; one sees them in one way, the other in another. If people are reasonable they do not quarrel. But if they are not reasonable, they begin quarrelling. Then, instead of quarrelling, the best thing to do is to enter into the others consciousness and ask yourself why he says things like that, what is it that pushes him to do this or say that? What is the inner reason, what is his vision of things which makes him take this attitude? It is extremely interesting. If you do this, immediately you stop being angry. First thing: you can no longer be angry. So this is already a great gain. But also, if the other continues being angry, it has no effect on you.
And then, later, one can try to identify oneself more perfectly and prevent the movements of division and deformation and stop quarrels. Very useful.
1954-12-29 - Difficulties and the world - The experience the psychic being wants - After death -Ignorance, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am speaking simply of a slightly higher step: morally, your moral, psychological relation with people. You are with someone who is in difficulty. Do you know what you should say to him? Do you even know the cause, the origin of his difficulty? What is going on in him? You may guess, you may imagine it, you may deduce, may reason, but you dont know!
To have this certitude, the knowledge, the knowledge to know: Thats it, this you dont have. Is it this, is it like that? If I do this, will that happen? And if I do that, is that what will happen? And you go on, you may go on and on for hours, hesitating, groping, asking yourself And this is exactly what Sri Aurobindo has written in his last article which appeared in the Bulletin. He says that if you want to prepare for the descent of the supermind, first of all your mind of ignorance and incapacity must be replaced by a mind of light which sees and knows. And this is the first step! Before this step is crossed, one cannot go forward. It is not to discourage you that I tell you this, but it is for those who believe that one has only to say, Oh, I want the supramental light, and it will come just like that, as when one says, I want to drink a glass of water and drinks it up. Not so easy! There we are.
1955-05-18 - The Problem of Woman - Men and women - The Supreme Mother, the new creation - Gods and goddesses - A story of Creation, earth - Psychic being only on earth, beings everywhere - Going to other worlds by occult means, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Even physically, with this, with the eyes, the nose, the fingers, the mouth, the ears, oh, it is ridiculous! One can develop these if one wants. One can succeed, for example, in hearing something which occurs at a fairly great distance and hearing it physically, not by another means than the physical, but one must have a control over his senses and be able to prolong their vibrations sufficiently. One can see at a distance also, and not by an occult vision. One can manage to stretch his vision, and if he knows how to prolong the vibration of his nerves outside the organ, he can prolong the contact, I dont say some kilometres away, no, but in a certain area, say, for example, through a wall, which is considered something impossible; one can see What is going on in a room which is separated from another by a wall. But a very methodical practice is necessary. Yet this is possible, seeing, feeling, hearing. If one wants to take the trouble, one can enlarge his field considerably. But it asks for work, for perseverance, a kind of assiduous effort. Why, it has even been found that one can develop other visual centres than the eye. It has been tried out with people who, for some reason or other, have no vision in the eye. One can develop other centres or another centre of vision, by a continuous, methodical effort. Jules Romains has written a book about it. He himself conducted experiments and obtained very conclusive results.
This means that we have a number of possibilities which we let sleep within us, because we dont take the trouble to develop them very much. We can do infinitely more than we actually do. But we take things like that, as they come.
1955-06-22 - Awakening the Yoga-shakti - The thousand-petalled lotus- Reading, how far a help for yoga - Simple and complicated combinations in men, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are beings who carry in themselves thousands of different personalities, and then each one has its own rhythm and alternation, and there is a kind of combination; sometimes there are inner conflicts, and there is a play of activities which are rhythmic and with alternations of certain parts which come to the front and then go back and again come to the front. But when one takes all that, it makes such complicated combinations that some people truly find it difficult to understand What is going on in themselves; and yet these are the ones most capable of a complete, coordinated, conscious, organised action; but their organisation is infinitely more complicated than that of primitive or undeveloped men who have two or three impulses and four or five ideas, and who can arrange all this very easily in themselves and seem to be very co-ordinated and logical because there is not very much to organise. But there are people truly like a multitude, and so that gives them a plasticity, a fluidity of action and an extraordinary complexity of perception, and these people are capable of understanding a considerable number of things, as though they had at their disposal a veritable army which they move according to circumstance and need; and all this is inside them. So when these people, with the help of yoga, the discipline of yoga, succeed in centralising all these beings around the central light of the divine Presence, they become powerful entities, precisely because of their complexity. So long as this is not organised they often give the impression of an incoherence, they are almost incomprehensible, one cant manage to understand why they are like that, they are so complex. But when they have organised all these beings, that is, put each one in its place around the divine centre, then truly they are terrific, for they have the capacity of understanding almost everything and doing almost everything because of the multitude of entities they contain, of which they are constituted. And the nearer one is to the top of the ladder, the more it is like that, and consequently the more difficult it is to organise ones being; because when you have about a dozen elements, you can quickly compass and organise them, but when you have thousands of them, it is difficult.
***
1956-12-26 - Defeated victories - Change of consciousness - Experiences that indicate the road to take - Choice and preference - Diversity of the manifestation, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One may seek within oneself, one may remember, may observe; one must notice What is going on, one must pay attention, thats all. Sometimes, when one sees a generous act, hears of something exceptional, when one witnesses heroism or generosity or greatness of soul, meets someone who shows a special talent or acts in an exceptional and beautiful way, there is a kind of enthusiasm or admiration or gratitude which suddenly awakens in the being and opens the door to a state, a new state of consciousness, a light, a warmth, a joy one did not know before. That too is a way of catching the guiding thread. There are a thousand ways, one has only to be awake and to watch.
First of all, you must feel the necessity for this change of consciousness, accept the idea that it is this, the path which must lead to the goal; and once you admit the principle, you must be watchful. And you will find, you do find it. And once you have found it, you must start walking without any hesitation.
1957-01-16 - Seeking something without knowing it - Why are we here?, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are so many things you think, feel, want, even do, without knowing it. Are you fully conscious of yourself and of all that goes on in you?Not at all! If, for example, suddenly, without your expecting it, at a certain moment I ask you: What are you thinking about? your reply, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, will be: I dont know. And if in the same way I ask another question like this: What do you want? you will also say: I dont know. And What do you feel?I dont know. It is only to those who are used to observing themselves, watching how they live, who are concentrated upon this need to know What is going on in them, that one can ask a precise question like this, and only they can immediately reply. In some instances in life, yes, one is absorbed in what one feels, thinks, wants, and then one can say, Yes, I want that, I am thinking of that, I experience that, but these are only moments of existence, not the whole time.
Havent you noticed that? No?
1957-08-07 - The resistances, politics and money - Aspiration to realise the supramental life, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for financial matters, that is, finding a means of exchange and production which is simplesimple, well, which should be simple, simpler than the primitive system of exchange in which people had to give one thing to get another something which could in principle be world-wide, universal; this is also altogether indispensable for the simplification of life. Now, with human nature, just the very opposite is happening! The situation is such that it has become almostintolerable. It has become almost impossible to have the least relation with other countries, and that much-vaunted means of exchange which should have been a simplification has become such a complication that we shall soon reach a deadlockwe are very, very close to being unable to do anything, to being tied up in everything. If one wants the smallest thing from another country, one has to follow such complicated and laborious procedures that in the end one will stay in ones own little corner and be satisfied with the potatoes one can grow in ones garden, without hoping to know anything at all about What is going on and happening elsewhere.
Well, these two points are the most resistant. In the human consciousness this is most subject to the forces of ignorance, inconscience and, I must say, quite generally, ill-will. This is what most refuses all progress and all advance towards the truth; and unfortunately, in every human individual this is also the point of resistance, the point that remains narrowly stupid and refuses to understand anything it is not used to. There it is truly a heroic act to want to take up these things and transform them. Well, we are trying this also, and unless it is done, it will be impossible to change the conditions of the earth.
1958-07-23 - How to develop intuition - Concentration, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we dont notice them because we dont pay enough attention to What is going on in us.
Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified.
1958-07-30 - The planchette - automatic writing - Proofs and knowledge, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But those who indulge in this exercise, an exercise of unhealthy curiosity, get what they deserve; for the atmosphere we live in is filled with a great number of small vital entities which are born of unsatisfied desires, vital movements of a very low type, also the decomposition of larger beings of the vital world; indeed, it is swarming with them, you see. It is surely a protection that most people do not see What is going on in this vital atmosphere, for it is not especially pleasant; but if they have the presumption to want to come into contact with it and set about trying automatic writing or table-turning or indeed, anything of this kind, out of an unhealthy curiosity, well, what happens is that one of these small entities or several of them have fun at their expense and collect all the necessary indications from their subconscious mind and then furnish these things to them as clear proofs that they are the person who has been called!
I could write a book for you with all the examples I have known of these stories, for people are very proud of doing things like this and immediately write them down, giving proofs of the truth of the experience which are so ridiculous that they should be enough to show them that someone was making fun of them! I had another instance, very recently, of somebody who fancied that he had entered into contact with Sri Aurobindo and was receiving sensational revelations from him that was comical in the extreme.
2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
In this Yoga, at any rate, you can't say that "the Guru will do everything", and leave the whole burden to him. I do not know about other Yogas; but this Yoga means growing conscious every moment of What is going on in oneself. One has to give consent to the higher working, rejecting the lower movement. That is the basis.
The conditions for receiving the Guru's help are the same as those for receiving the help of the Higher Power directly. Unless you consent to his working, even God does not help man. In this Yoga there is that perfect liberty to the individual to make his choice.
2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: It depends on his mind. If he can read all these things in order to know What is going on, it is all right, but he should not run away with any idea or programme. He was asked not to read papers because his mind was a slave to politics and attracted by the ideas. The fundamental peace and silence is all right, but he should bring the attitude of the Purusha in his reading also.
Disciple: I did not know that he also has such difficulties!
3.1.3 - Difficulties of the Physical Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is inevitable that in the course of the sadhana all sorts of conditions should come through which one is led towards the fullness of the true consciousness. You are now, as are most, in the physical consciousness and its principal difficulty is externalisation and this covering up of the active experience so that one does not know What is going on inside or feels as if nothing were going on. When that happens, it means that something has come up, some part or layer of the physical, which needs to be worked on and, when that has been done,it may take longer or shorter,the conscious active inner experience recommences. The muteness in the mind is not a bad thing in itself, it is a favourable condition for the working. Also what you describe as taking place in the head, must be the working of the Force there,it sometimes gives the impression of a headache. There must be a working in the physical mind to get rid of some difficulty or else to prepare it better for the admission of what comes from above.
It is necessary to have a great patienceso as to go through these conditions and not get apprehensive or restlessand a confidence that all difficulties will be overcome.
3.2.3 - Dreams, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Again, about the sleep, it is like that because the ordinary state of sleep is an unconscious condition. One has always dreams throughout the night, but the surface being is then unconscious and records only a few of them that come through and even these it records in an incoherent way. Really one is acting or working on one plane or another throughout sleep except for a few minutes. When the inner consciousness grows, then one becomes more and more aware of What is going on, what one is doing and sleep is no longer quite the same thing for it is more conscious.
***
--
The dream you relate in your letter is not of the psychic but of the vital planeit relates entirely to conflicting movements of the vital consciousness, representing on the one side the attachments of the vital nature, on the other the movement of the higher (inner) vital to get free from them. Dreams like this one on the vital plane have to be observed and understood as indications of What is going on within you, but must not be taken too literally, as they are often symbolic and figurative, and cannot be always accepted as decisive directions for action in the external life. Thus the figure of the Mother taking a meal of rice with rice-water and salt might be a valid symbolin this case for the Mothers freedom from all food desire and the necessity of your lower vital attaining to the same freedom; but if you gave it an external and physical application, e.g. that the Mother had actually taken to such a diet and you should do the same, the interpretation would be an obvious mistake. So also the part about the service can only have been enacted on the vital plane to test or to stimulate the vital beings readiness to give up the service, if and when the Mother might demand any such action from you. But to deduce from a vital experience of this kind, however useful for a vital change, that you ought actually to give up service, would be as much a mistake as to take up a diet of rice and salt and rice-water on the strength of that part of the dream.
***
3.3.1 - Illness and Health, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The suggestions that create illness or unhealthy conditions of the physical being come usually through the subconscient for a great part of the physical being, the most material part, is subconscient, i.e. to say, it has an obscure consciousness of its own but so obscure and shut up in itself that the mind does not know its movements or What is going on there. But all the same it is a consciousness and can receive suggestions from Forces outside, just as the mind and vital do. If it were not so, there would not be any possibility of opening it to the Force and the Force curing it; for without this consciousness in it it would not be able to respond. In Europe and America there are many people now who recognise this fact and treat their illnesses by making conscious mental suggestions to the body which counteract the obscure secret suggestions of illness in the subconscient. There was a famous Doctor in France who cured thousands of people by making them persistently put such counter-suggestions upon the body. That proves that illness has not a purely material cause, but is due to a disturbance of the secret consciousness in the body.
To bear quietly and in silence does help to release from the reaction of grief, if one makes the vital quiet; but it should be at the same time surrendered to the Mother. For the Mother to know from within is not enough; there must be this laying before her and giving up to her so that the reaction may disappear.
3.4.1 - The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As there is a superconscient (something above our present consciousness) above the head from which the higher consciousness comes down into the body, so there is also a subconscient (something below our consciousness) below the feet. Matter is under the control of this power, because it is that out of which it has been created that is why matter seems to us to be quite unconscious. The material body is very much under the influence of this power for the same reason; it is why we are not conscious of What is going on in the body, for the most part. The outer consciousness goes down into this subconscient when we are asleep, and so it becomes unaware of What is going on in us when we are asleep except for a few dreams. Many of these dreams rise up from the subconscient and are made up of old memories, impressions etc. put together in an incoherent way. For the subconscient receives impressions of all we do or experience in our lives and keeps these impressions in it, sending up often fragments of them in sleep. It is a very important part of the being, but we can do nothing much with it by the conscious will. It is the higher Force working in us that in its natural course will open the subconscient to itself and bring down into it its control and light.
***
4.01 - Introduction, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
tasy-activity as self-portraits of What is going on in the uncon-
scious, or as statements of the unconscious psyche about itself.
Appendix 4 - Priest Spells, #Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E, #unset, #Zen
By means of this spell, the caster or any other willing person can be put into a cataleptic state that is impossible to distinguish from actual death. Although the person affected can smell, hear, and know What is going on, no feeling or sight of any sort is possible; thus, any wounding or mistreatment of the body is not felt, no reaction occurs, and damage is only one-half normal. In addition, paralysis, poison, or energy level drain does not affect a person under the influence of this spell, but poison injected or otherwise introduced into the body becomes effective when the spell recipient is no longer under the influence of this spell, although a saving throw is permitted. However, the spell offers no protection from causes of certain death--being crushed under a landslide, etc. Only a willing individual can be affected by a feign death spell. The priest is able to end the spell effect at any time, but it requires a full round for bodily functions to begin again.
Note that, unlike the wizard version of this spell, only people can be affected, and that those of any level can be affected by the priest casting this spell.
Blazing P1 - Preconventional consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
is so little aware of What is going on that he tends not even to recognize that which is new or
frustrating. He has now energy to mobilize into anger or fear, or hate or jealousy. He behaves
BOOK XX. - Of the last judgment, and the declarations regarding it in the Old and New Testaments, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But in what way shall the good go out to see the punishment of the wicked? Are they to leave their happy abodes by a bodily movement, and proceed to the places of punishment, so as to witness the torments of the wicked in their bodily presence? Certainly not; but they shall go out by knowledge. For this expression, go out, signifies that those who shall be punished shall be without. And thus the Lord also calls these places "the outer darkness,"[790] to which is opposed that entrance concerning which it is said to the good servant, "Enter into the joy of thy Lord," that it may not be supposed that the wicked can enter thither and be known, but rather that the good by their knowledge go out to them, because the good are to know that which is without. For those who shall be in torment shall not know What is going on within in the joy of the Lord; but they who shall enter into that joy shall know What is going on outside in the outer darkness. Therefore it is said, "They shall go[Pg 393] out," because they shall know what is done by those who are without. For if the prophets were able to know things that had not yet happened, by means of that indwelling of God in their minds, limited though it was, shall not the immortal saints know things that have already happened, when God shall be all in all?[791] The seed, then, and the name of the saints shall remain in that blessedness,the seed, to wit, of which John says, "And his seed remaineth in him;"[792] and the name, of which it was said through Isaiah himself, "I will give them an everlasting name."[793] "And there shall be to them month after month, and Sabbath after Sabbath," as if it were said, Moon after moon, and rest upon rest, both of which they shall themselves be when they shall pass from the old shadows of time into the new lights of eternity. The worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched, which constitute the punishment of the wicked, are differently interpreted by different people. For some refer both to the body, others refer both to the soul; while others again refer the fire literally to the body, and the worm figuratively to the soul, which seems the more credible idea. But the present is not the time to discuss this difference, for we have undertaken to occupy this book with the last judgment, in which the good and the bad are separated: their rewards and punishments we shall more carefully discuss elsewhere.
23. What Daniel predicted regarding the persecution of Antichrist, the judgment of God, and the kingdom of the saints.
Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
But what of the activity of the mind that observes What is going on and expresses it? Shall I try to suppress it?
Not suppress, but simply discard it. But there are movements of the mind more true in character, that are reflections from above and bear some stamp of truth. Are these not of this kind?
ENNEAD 03.04 - Of Our Individual Guardian., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
4. Is the power which is the act of the soul always united to a body? No; for when the soul turns towards the superior regions, she raises this power with her. Does the universal (Soul) also raise with herself to the intelligible world the inferior power which is her actualization (nature)? No: for she does not incline towards her low inferior portion, because she neither came nor descended into the world; but, while she remains in herself, the body of the world comes to unite with her, and to offer itself to receive her light's radiation; besides, her body does not cause her any anxiety, because it is not exposed to any peril. Does not the world, then, possess any senses? "It has no sight" (says Plato324) "for it has no eyes. Neither has it ears, nostrils, nor tongue." Does it, then, as we, possess the consciousness of What is going on within it? As, within the world, all things go on uniformly according to nature, it is, in this respect, in a kind of repose; consequently, it does not feel any pleasure. The power of growth exists within it without being present therein; and so also with the sense-power. Besides, we shall return to a study of the question. For the present, we have said all that relates to the question in hand.
238
ENNEAD 04.04 - Questions About the Soul., #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02, #Plotinus, #Christianity
45. This discussion teaches us that each one of the beings contained in the universe contri butes to the purpose of the universe by its "actions" and "passions" according to its nature and dispositions, as, in an organism, each organ contri butes to the final purpose of the entire body, by fulfilling the function assigned to it by its nature and constitution. From this each organ derives its place and role, and besides communicates something else to the other organs, and from them receives all that its nature would allow. Somehow, all the organs feel What is going on in the others, and if each of them became an organism, it would be quite ready to fulfil the function of an organism,511 which function differs from that of being merely an organ.
HUMAN NATURE IS INTERMEDIATE, SUFFERING WITH THE WHOLE, BUT ALSO ACTING ON IT.
ENNEAD 04.09 - Whether All Souls Form a Single One?, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01, #Plotinus, #Christianity
3. On the other hand, observation teaches us that we sympathize with each other, that we cannot see the suffering of another man without sharing it, that we are naturally inclined to confide in each other, and to love; for love is a fact whose origin is connected with the question that occupies us. Further, if enchantments and magic charms mutually attract individuals, leading distant persons to sympathize, these effects can only be explained by the unity of soul. (It is well known that) words pronounced in a low tone of voice (telepathically?) affect a distant person, and make him hear What is going on at a great distance. Hence appears the unity of all beings, which demands the unity of the Soul.
WHAT OF THE DIFFERENCES OF RATIONALITY, IF THE SOUL BE ONE?
Integral World - About what is going on in the Netherlands and what isn't, Dieuwke Begemann
Gamera: Guardian of the Universe(2012) - Gamera takes on his old foe Gyaos, a giant prehistoric bird, that has nested on top of Tokyo Tower while the military tries to figure out what is going on.
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Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer(2007) - When a strange silver object enters the Earth and causes strange phenomena to occur Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four must come back together to see what is going on. They soon see this is the work of the Silver Surfer, an alien who has destroyed every planet he has visited. They must now work to...
Crystal Blaze -- -- - -- 12 eps -- Original -- Action Sci-Fi -- Crystal Blaze Crystal Blaze -- Rags Town is the garbage dump of Japan. The place where people who want to forget their pasts run to. In this town, where the rules strictly forbid asking about the past or getting to know people, there is small detective agency called S&A Detectives. -- -- The story revolves around Ayamana, the inseparable pair of misfit wannabe detectives, the case Manami takes on impulse, and the trouble that arises from it. On the case they find a woman who is abnormally hot, and who is being chased by a bunch of women with guns. After being dubbed Sara, the detectives try and figure out just what is going on with her. At the same time, all over town teenage girls are burning up and turning into glass. The government is covering everything up, but the detectives, as well as a nosy reporter and the local police, are determined to find out what is happening. -- -- Licensor: -- Maiden Japan -- 15,411 6.15
Fushigi Yuugi OVA -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 3 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Romance Comedy Historical Shoujo -- Fushigi Yuugi OVA Fushigi Yuugi OVA -- A year after the events of Fushigi Yuugi, Tamahome is pulled back into the book and is sent on a complicated ride through illusion, confusion, and betrayal. Meanwhile, Yui is acting oddly and Miaka is heartbroken over the loss of Tamahome, while Keisuke and Tetsuya try to discover what is going on with the book. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA, Media Blasters -- OVA - Oct 25, 1996 -- 20,229 7.16
Kimera -- -- animate Film -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Horror Sci-Fi Shounen Ai Supernatural Vampire -- Kimera Kimera -- Osamu and Jay are two cereal salesmen traveling for work when they encounter a barricade. Curious as to what is going on, they step out of their car and enter into a government secret. Two mysterious demon-like men have been terrorizing the military, who came to respond to a car crash involving a vehicle carrying government research material. Inside the car wreckage, Osamu finds a beautiful hermaphrodite with gold and crimson eyes trapped in a frozen chamber. Osamu shares a kiss with them through the glass before he is forced to flee the scene. -- -- Osamu and Jay interrogate Jay's father, a top researcher at a government laboratory, who reveals that what Osamu and Jay saw was top-secret, and they would likely be sitting in prison if it weren't for his influence. While Jay is ready to forget everything that happened, Osamu cannot let it go that easily. After stealing a security badge, Osamu finds where the person he kissed is being kept, and learns that their name is Kimera. Osamu wants to run away with the beautiful Kimera, though he does not know why Kimera is being held captive or what a relationship with them means for the future of humanity. -- -- -- Licensor: -- ADV Films -- OVA - Jul 31, 1996 -- 6,184 5.12
Kimera -- -- animate Film -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Horror Sci-Fi Shounen Ai Supernatural Vampire -- Kimera Kimera -- Osamu and Jay are two cereal salesmen traveling for work when they encounter a barricade. Curious as to what is going on, they step out of their car and enter into a government secret. Two mysterious demon-like men have been terrorizing the military, who came to respond to a car crash involving a vehicle carrying government research material. Inside the car wreckage, Osamu finds a beautiful hermaphrodite with gold and crimson eyes trapped in a frozen chamber. Osamu shares a kiss with them through the glass before he is forced to flee the scene. -- -- Osamu and Jay interrogate Jay's father, a top researcher at a government laboratory, who reveals that what Osamu and Jay saw was top-secret, and they would likely be sitting in prison if it weren't for his influence. While Jay is ready to forget everything that happened, Osamu cannot let it go that easily. After stealing a security badge, Osamu finds where the person he kissed is being kept, and learns that their name is Kimera. Osamu wants to run away with the beautiful Kimera, though he does not know why Kimera is being held captive or what a relationship with them means for the future of humanity. -- -- OVA - Jul 31, 1996 -- 6,184 5.12
Mahou Shoujo Madoka� -- Magica Movie 3: Hangyaku no Monogatari -- -- Shaft -- 1 ep -- Original -- Mystery Psychological Drama Magic Thriller -- Mahou Shoujo Madoka� -- Magica Movie 3: Hangyaku no Monogatari Mahou Shoujo Madoka� -- Magica Movie 3: Hangyaku no Monogatari -- The young girls of Mitakihara happily live their lives, occasionally fighting off evil, but otherwise going about their peaceful, everyday routines. However, Homura Akemi feels that something is wrong with this unusually pleasant atmosphere—though the others remain oblivious, she can't help but suspect that there is more to what is going on than meets the eye: someone who should not exist is currently present to join in on their activities. -- -- Mahou Shoujo Madoka� -- Magica Movie 3: Hangyaku no Monogatari follows Homura in her struggle to uncover the painful truth behind the mysterious circumstances, as she selfishly and desperately fights for the sake of her undying love in this despair-ridden conclusion to the story of five magical girls. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- Movie - Oct 26, 2013 -- 295,580 8.45
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Tenchi Muyou! Manatsu no Eve -- -- AIC -- 1 ep -- - -- Action Comedy Sci-Fi Shounen Space -- Tenchi Muyou! Manatsu no Eve Tenchi Muyou! Manatsu no Eve -- Tenchi Masaki gets the surprise of his life when a teenage girl approaches him and calls him "Daddy." Believing that the girl is mistaking him for someone else, Tenchi brings her home to figure out what is going on, which turns out to be a big mistake. When the girl introduces herself as Mayuka Masaki, Tenchi's daughter, the Masaki household is thrown into yet another frenzy. -- -- Thinking that Mayuka is just taking advantage of Tenchi, the girls refuse to believe that she is really his child. However, when DNA testing reveals that Tenchi is indeed her father, Washuu comes to the conclusion that Mayuka is his daughter from the future, the result of a recent time distortion. With this new revelation, everyone tries to welcome Mayuka into their lives with the sole exception being Ryouko Hakubi, who senses something sinister lurking beneath Mayuka's charm. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation, Geneon Entertainment USA -- Movie - Aug 2, 1997 -- 13,867 7.14
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