TERMS STARTING WITH
exercises dominion over rivers.
exercises dominion over the great sciences,
exercises dominion over the stars and constella¬
exercises dominion over the zodiacal sign of
TERMS ANYWHERE
Ahadiss—an angel who exercises dominion
Al-Qabid ::: The One who exercises His verdict by retaining the essence of an individual’s Name reality. The One who restrains and enforces withdrawnness.
Altarib—an angel who exercises dominion
ambulatory ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to walking; having the faculty of walking; formed or fitted for walking; as, an ambulatory animal.
Accustomed to move from place to place; not stationary; movable; as, an ambulatory court, which exercises its jurisdiction in different places.
Pertaining to a walk.
Not yet fixed legally, or settled past alteration; alterable; as, the dispositions of a will are ambulatory until the
anam ::: knowledge-will; the operation of consciousness by which it "dwells on an image of things so as to hold, govern and possess it in power", one of the four functions of active consciousness (of which the others are vijñana, prajñana and saṁjñana) and the means by which the supreme consciousness that is the master of the world (isvara) exercises control of all things; same as ajña.
angel Shaphiel. Baradiel also exercises dominion
angel who exercises dominion over one of the
anusmṛti. (P. anussati; T. rjes su dran pa; C. nian; J. nen; K. yom 念). In Sanskrit, "recollection." The PAli form anussati is applied to a number of mental exercises enumerated in the PAli tradition under the category of KAMMAttHANA, or topics of meditation. The fifth-century VISUDDHIMAGGA lists ten such recollections conducive to the cultivation of concentration (SAMADHI): namely, recollection of (1) the BUDDHA, (2) the DHARMA, (3) the SAMGHA, (4) morality, (5) generosity, (6) the gods, (7) death, (8) the body, (9) the in-breath and out-breath, and (10) peace. Of these, recollection or mindfulness (P. sati; S. SMṚTI) of the in-breath and out-breath can produce all four meditative absorptions (DHYANA; P. JHANA), while recollection of the body can produce the first absorption. The remaining recollections can produce only "access concentration" (UPACARASAMADHI), which immediately precedes but does not quite reach the first absorption. In East Asia, the practice of recollection of the Buddha (BUDDHANUSMṚTI) evolved into the recitation of name of the buddha AMITABHA in the form of the Chinese phrase namo Amituo fo (Homage to the buddha AmitAbha; see NAMU AMIDABUTSU). See also BUDDHANUSMṚTI.
Apheta: In astrology, the planet or place that exercises an influence over the life and death of the native (q.v.).
aquatic ::: a. --> Pertaining to water; growing in water; living in, swimming in, or frequenting the margins of waters; as, aquatic plants and fowls. ::: n. --> An aquatic animal or plant.
Sports or exercises practiced in or on the water.
archbishop ::: n. --> A chief bishop; a church dignitary of the first class (often called a metropolitan or primate) who superintends the conduct of the suffragan bishops in his province, and also exercises episcopal authority in his own diocese.
archbishopric ::: n. --> The jurisdiction or office of an archbishop; the see or province over which archbishop exercises archiepiscopal authority.
Arundhati (Sanskrit) Arundhatī [probably from a not + the verbal root rudh to check, restrain, bind] One who releases, frees, unbinds; a medicinal climber, with power to heal severe wounds; consort of the sage Vasishtha; consort of Dharma, meaning established law, procedure, truth, referring in this case to the cosmos; from Arundhati were born “the divisions of earth” (VP 1:15); personification of the morning star, Phosphoros or Lucifer-Venus of the ancient Greeks and Latins, one of the seven stars of Ursa Major; power invoked by the bridegroom for conjugal excellence; name of kundalini, the occult energy in humanity symbolized by a coiled serpent said to lie latent at the base of the spinal column until energized into activity by strenuous yoga exercises.
asana (asana; asan) ::: sitting; any of various postures assumed in asana hat.hayoga with a view to "the habituating of the body to certain attitudes of immobility" in order "to force it to hold the Pranic energy instead of dissipating and squandering it"; any position of the body, especially those that involve keeping different limbs raised in exercises for developing secondary utthapana.
ASPIRATION. ::: The call in the being for the Divine or for the higher things that belong to the Divine Consciousness.
A call to the Divine; aspiration for the discovery and embodiment of the Divine Truth and to nothing else whatever.
An aspiration vigilant, constant, unceasing- the mind’s will, the heart’s seeking, the assent of the vital being, the will to open and make plastic the physical consciousness and nature.
There is no need of words in aspiration. It can be expressed or unexpressed in words.
Aspiration need not be in the form of thought; it can be a feeling within that remains even when the mind is attending to the work.
Aspiration is to call the forces. When the forces have answered, there is a natural state of quiet receptivity concentrated but spontaneous.
In aspiration there is a self-giving for the higher consciousness to descend and take possession ; the more intense the call, the greater the self-giving.
Aspiration keeps the consciousness open, prevents an inert state of acquiescence in all that comes and exercises a sort of pull on the sources of the higher consciousness.
The intensity of aspiration brings the intensity of the experience and by repeated intensity of the experience, the change. It is the psychic that gives the true aspiration; if the vital is purified and subjected to the psychic, then the vital gives intensity.
Aspiration in the physical consciousness ::: the physical consciousness is always in everybody in its own nature a little inert and in it a constant strong aspiration is not natural, it has to be created. But first there must be the opening, a purification, a fixed quietude, otherwise the physical vital will turn the strong aspiration into over-eagerness and impatience or rather it will try to give it that turn.
athlete ::: n. --> One who contended for a prize in the public games of ancient Greece or Rome.
Any one trained to contend in exercises requiring great physical agility and strength; one who has great activity and strength; a champion.
One fitted for, or skilled in, intellectual contests; as, athletes of debate.
athletic ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to athletes or to the exercises practiced by them; as, athletic games or sports.
Befitting an athlete; strong; muscular; robust; vigorous; as, athletic Celts.
athletics ::: n. --> The art of training by athletic exercises; the games and sports of athletes.
autocrat ::: a. --> An absolute sovereign; a monarch who holds and exercises the powers of government by claim of absolute right, not subject to restriction; as, Autocrat of all the Russias (a title of the Czar).
One who rules with undisputed sway in any company or relation; a despot.
(b) A sage (Confucianism). A great man who exercises a transforming influence (as in Mencius).
exercises dominion over rivers.
exercises dominion over the great sciences,
exercises dominion over the stars and constella¬
exercises dominion over the zodiacal sign of
bhAvanA. (T. sgom pa; C. xiuxi; J. shuju; K. susŭp 修習). In Sanskrit and PAli, "cultivation" (lit. "bringing into being"); a Sanskrit term commonly translated into English as "meditation." It is derived from the root √bhu, "to be" or "to become," and has a wide range of meanings including cultivating, producing, manifesting, imagining, suffusing, and reflecting. It is in the first sense, that of cultivation, that the term is used to mean the sustained development of particular states of mind. However, bhAvanA in Buddhism can include studying doctrine, memorizing sutras, and chanting verses to ward off evil spirits. The term thus refers broadly to the full range of Buddhist spiritual culture, embracing the "bringing into being" (viz., cultivating) of such generic aspects of training as the path (MARGA), specific spiritual exercises (e.g., loving-kindness, or MAITRĪ), or even a general mental attitude, such as virtuous (KUsALA) states of mind. The term is also used in the specific sense of a "path of cultivation" (BHAVANAMARGA), which "brings into being" the insights of the preceding path of vision (DARsANAMARGA). Hence, bhAvanA entails all the various sorts of cultivation that an adept must undertake in order to enhance meditation, improve its efficacy, and "bring it into being." More specifically as "meditation," two general types of meditation are sometimes distinguished in the commentarial literature: stabilizing meditation (sAMATHA) in which the mind focuses with one-pointedness on an object in an effort to expand the powers of concentration; and analytical meditation (VIPAsYANA), in which the meditator conceptually investigates a topic in order to develop insight into it.
Blessed Angels, an angel that exercises dominion
Breathing Exercises. See HATHA YOGA; PRANAYAMA
buddhAnusmṛti. (P. buddhAnussati; T. sangs rgyas rjes su dran pa; C. nianfo; J. nenbutsu; K. yombul 念佛). In Sanskrit, "recollection of the Buddha"; one of the common practices designed to develop concentration, in which the meditator reflects on the meritorious qualities of the Buddha, often through contemplating a series of his epithets. The oldest list of epithets of the Buddha used in such recollection, which is found across all traditions, is worthy one (ARHAT), fully enlightened (SAMYAKSAMBUDDHA), perfect in both knowledge and conduct (vidyAcaranasampanna), well gone (SUGATA), knower of all worlds (lokavid), teacher of divinities (or kings) and human beings (sAstṛ devamanusyAnaM), buddha, and BHAGAVAT. BuddhAnusmṛti is listed among the forty meditative exercises (KAMMAttHANA) discussed in the VISUDDHIMAGGA and is said to be conducive to gaining access concentration (UPACARASAMADHI). In East Asia, this recollection practice evolved into the recitation of the name of the buddha AMITABHA (see NIANFO) in the form of the phrase namo Amituo fo ("homage to AmitAbha Buddha"; J. NAMU AMIDABUTSU). This recitation was often performed in a ritual setting accompanied by the performance of prostrations, the burning of incense, and the recitation of scriptures, all directed toward gaining a vision of AmitAbha's PURE LAND (SUKHAVATĪ), which was considered proof that one would be reborn there. Nianfo practice was widely practiced across schools and social strata in China. In Japan, repetition of the phrase in its Japanese pronunciation of namu Amidabutsu (homage to AmitAbha Buddha) became a central practice of the Japanese Pure Land schools of Buddhism (see JoDOSHu, JoDO SHINSHu).
carita. (T. spyod pa; C. xing; J. gyo; K. haeng 行). In Sanskrit and PAli, "conduct," "behavior," or "temperament"; an alternative form is Sanskrit caryA (P. cariyA). As "behavior," carita is typically bifurcated into either good (sucarita) or bad (S. duscarita; P. duccarita) conduct. As "temperament," carita is used to indicate six general character types, which are predominantly biased toward the negative temperaments of greedy (RAGA), hateful (S. DVEsA; P. dosa), and deluded (MOHA), or the more positive temperaments of faithful (S. sRADDHA; P. saddhA), intelligent (BUDDHI), and discursive (S. VITARKA; P. vitakka), a taxonomy found in the VISUDDHIMAGGA. The first three types of temperaments are negative and thus need to be corrected. (1) A greedy temperament is constantly searching out new sensory experiences and clings to things that are not beneficial. (2) A hateful temperament is disaffected, always finding imaginary faults in others; along with the intelligent temperament, he is less prone to clinging than the other character types. (3) A deluded temperament is agitated and restless, because he is unable to make up his mind about anything and follows along with others' decisions. The latter three types of temperaments are positive and thus need to be enhanced. (4) A faithful temperament is like a greedy type who instead cultivates wholesome actions and clings to what is beneficial. (5) An intelligent temperament is like a hateful type who performs salutary actions and points out real faults; along with the hateful temperament, he is less prone to clinging than the other character types. (6) A discursive temperament is characterized by a restlessness of mind that constantly flits from topic to topic and vacillates due to his constant conjecturing; if these discursive energies can be harnessed, however, that knowledge may lead to wisdom. The Visuddhimagga also provides detailed guidelines for determining a person's temperament by observing their posture, their preferences in food, and the sort of mental concomitants with which they are typically associated. This knowledge of temperaments is important as a tool of practice (BHAVANA), because in the Visuddhimagga's account of visualization (P. KASInA) exercises, the practitioner is taught to use an appropriate kasina device or meditation topic (P. KAMMAttHANA) either to mitigate the influence of the negative temperaments or enhance the influence of the positive ones. Thus, a practitioner with a greedy temperament is advised to emphasize the cemetery contemplations on foulness (S. AsUBHABHAVANA; P. asubhabhAvanA) and mindfulness of the body (S. KAYANUPAsYANA; P. kAyAnupassanA; see also SMṚTYUPASTHANA); the hateful temperament, the four divine abidings (BRAHMAVIHARA) and the four color kasinas (of blue, yellow, red, white); the deluded temperament, mindfulness of breathing (S. ANAPANASMṚTI; P. AnApAnasati); the discursive temperament, also mindfulness of breathing; the faithful temperament, the first six recollections (S. ANUSMṚTI; P. anussati), viz., of the Buddha, the DHARMA, the SAMGHA, morality, generosity, and the divinities; and the intelligent temperament, the recollections of death and peace, the analysis of the four elements, and the loathsomeness of food. Suitable to all six temperaments are the other six kasinas (viz., of earth, water, fire, air, light, and empty space) and the immaterial absorptions (S. ARuPYAVACARADHYANA; P. arupAvacarajhAna). ¶ In the MAHAYANA, caryA, carita, and related terms (e.g., Sanskrit compounds such as duscara) refer specifically to the difficult course of action that a BODHISATTVA pursues in order to reach the goal of enlightenment. These actions include the unending search or pilgrimage for a teacher, the sacrifices required to meet with an authentic teacher who can teach MahAyAna doctrines (see SADAPRARUDITA, SUDHANA), and the difficult practices of charity, such as giving away all possessions, including family members and even one's body (see DEHADANA; SHESHEN). The JATAKAMALA of sura, the BODHICARYAVATARA of sANTIDEVA, and to a certain extent the BUDDHACARITA of AsVAGHOsA set forth a model of the authentic bodhisattva's behavior for aspirants to emulate. In Buddhist TANTRA, caryA refers to a code of ritual purity, and to an esoteric practice called "yoga with signs" (SANIMITTAYOGA) followed by CARYATANTRA practitioners.
chancery ::: n. --> In England, formerly, the highest court of judicature next to the Parliament, exercising jurisdiction at law, but chiefly in equity; but under the jurisdiction act of 1873 it became the chancery division of the High Court of Justice, and now exercises jurisdiction only in equity.
In the Unites States, a court of equity; equity; proceeding in equity.
chaplain ::: n. --> An ecclesiastic who has a chapel, or who performs religious service in a chapel.
A clergyman who is officially attached to the army or navy, to some public institution, or to a family or court, for the purpose of performing divine service.
Any person (clergyman or layman) chosen to conduct religious exercises for a society, etc.; as, a chaplain of a Masonic or a temperance lodge.
commissary ::: n. --> One to whom is committed some charge, duty, or office, by a superior power; a commissioner.
An officer of the bishop, who exercises ecclesiastical jurisdiction in parts of the diocese at a distance from the residence of the bishop.
An officer having charge of a special service; as, the commissary of musters.
An officer whose business is to provide food for a body
Connected with the meditation there was practiced by certain individuals some form of breath control, as expressed by Chuang Tzu: the breathing of the sage is not like ordinary men, “he breathes with every part of him right down to the heels” (6:2). However, this author condemned physical exercises analogous to the yoga asanas (postures).
delivers prophecies in rhyme, and exercises
devotional ::: a. --> Pertaining to, suited to, or used in, devotion; as, a devotional posture; devotional exercises; a devotional frame of mind.
devout ::: v. t. --> Devoted to religion or to religious feelings and duties; absorbed in religious exercises; given to devotion; pious; reverent; religious.
Expressing devotion or piety; as, eyes devout; sighs devout; a devout posture.
Warmly devoted; hearty; sincere; earnest; as, devout wishes for one&
dialogue ::: n. --> A conversation between two or more persons; particularly, a formal conservation in theatrical performances or in scholastic exercises.
A written composition in which two or more persons are represented as conversing or reasoning on some topic; as, the Dialogues of Plato. ::: v. i.
diocese ::: n. --> The circuit or extent of a bishop&
disturbance ::: n. --> An interruption of a state of peace or quiet; derangement of the regular course of things; disquiet; disorder; as, a disturbance of religious exercises; a disturbance of the galvanic current.
Confusion of the mind; agitation of the feelings; perplexity; uneasiness.
Violent agitation in the body politic; public commotion; tumult.
drilling ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Drill ::: n. --> The act of piercing with a drill.
A training by repeated exercises.
The act of using a drill in sowing seeds.
A heavy, twilled fabric of linen or cotton.
drill ::: v. t. --> To pierce or bore with a drill, or a with a drill; to perforate; as, to drill a hole into a rock; to drill a piece of metal.
To train in the military art; to exercise diligently, as soldiers, in military evolutions and exercises; hence, to instruct thoroughly in the rudiments of any art or branch of knowledge; to discipline.
To cause to flow in drills or rills or by trickling; to drain by trickling; as, waters drilled through a sandy stratum.
drummer ::: n. --> One whose office is to best the drum, as in military exercises and marching.
One who solicits custom; a commercial traveler.
A fish that makes a sound when caught
The squeteague.
A California sculpin.
A large West Indian cockroach (Blatta gigantea) which drums on woodwork, as a sexual call.
exerciser ::: n. --> One who exercises.
Exorcism [from Greek exorkizein to bind by an oath] In the Christian Church, the casting out of evil spirits by adjuring and commanding them. Under other names the rite has been practiced in all lands and times, with a great variety of ceremonies, and by the power of a person who is versed in the procedure and especially efficaciously by one whose life is holy. Jesus of the Gospels exercises the power and delegates it to his disciples.
Free Will The inherent power or capacity of choice, divine in its origin, which every being in the kosmos exercises in some degree as, consciously or unself-consciously, it evolves forth its essential self. Every thing and being has its own essential characteristic or svabhava and, the universal urge being towards self-expression and self-consciousness, of necessity each has its relative share of inherent free will with which to work out its destiny. Since evolution is a coming forth of the involved monadic essence, the unfolding of inner capacities and attributes, it cannot be produced, however stimulated, by something outside of itself. The one divine will is the force behind evolution on all planes of manifestation throughout the kosmos. Hence, each entity, as a unit of the divine All, has its portion of free choice and power to bring forth what is within itself.
fugleman ::: n. --> A soldier especially expert and well drilled, who takes his place in front of a military company, as a guide for the others in their exercises; a file leader. He originally stood in front of the right wing.
Hence, one who leads the way.
Gayatri or Savitri(Sanskrit) ::: A verse of the Rig-Veda (iii.62.10) which from immemorial time in India has been surroundedwith the attributes of quasi-divinity. The Sanskrit words of this verse are: Tat savitur varenyam bhargodevasya dhimahi, dhiyo yo nah prachodayat. Every orthodox Brahmana is supposed to repeat this archaichymn, at least mentally, at both his morning and evening religious exercises or devotions. A translationin explanatory paraphrase, giving the essential esoteric meaning of the Gayatri or Savitri, is thefollowing: "Oh thou golden sun of most excellent splendor, illumine our hearts and fill our minds, so thatwe, recognizing our oneness with the Divinity which is the heart of the universe, may see the pathwaybefore our feet, and tread it to those distant goals of perfection, stimulated by thine own radiant light."
Greece. In Jewish legend, Javan exercises domin¬
gymnasium ::: n. --> A place or building where athletic exercises are performed; a school for gymnastics.
A school for the higher branches of literature and science; a preparatory school for the university; -- used esp. of German schools of this kind.
gymnastical ::: a. --> Pertaining to athletic exercises intended for health, defense, or diversion; -- said of games or exercises, as running, leaping, wrestling, throwing the discus, the javelin, etc.; also, pertaining to disciplinary exercises for the intellect; athletic; as, gymnastic exercises, contests, etc.
gymnastics ::: n. --> Athletic or disciplinary exercises; the art of performing gymnastic exercises; also, disciplinary exercises for the intellect or character.
gymnast ::: n. --> One who teaches or practices gymnastic exercises; the manager of a gymnasium; an athlete.
Habu(h)iah —an angel who exercises dominion
Haim—an angel who exercises dominion over
halma ::: n. --> The long jump, with weights in the hands, -- the most important of the exercises of the Pentathlon.
Hannuel—an angel who exercises dominion
Hatha Yoga (Sanskrit) Haṭha-yoga A lower form of yoga practice which uses physical means for purposes of self-development, teaching that it is possible to attain to a certain grade of psychomental abstraction and to develop some of the lower vital-astral powers, by means of a set of physical exercises and postures, by the regulation of the breath, or by certain other psychophysical methods. These methods are to be neither recommended nor followed, for they are exceedingly dangerous except when practiced in minor degree under the supervision of a teacher, and above everything else in full coordination with the higher forms of yoga.
he exercises authority over lawyers. His sigil is
housekeeper ::: n. --> One who occupies a house with his family; a householder; the master or mistress of a family.
One who does, or oversees, the work of keeping house; as, his wife is a good housekeeper; often, a woman hired to superintend the servants of a household and manage the ordinary domestic affairs.
One who exercises hospitality, or has a plentiful and hospitable household.
One who keeps or stays much at home.
hypnotism ::: Hypnosis / Hypnotism Hypnotism is used to induce an altered state of consciousness in a person (the subject), during which suggestions can be made directly to that person's unconscious mind. It can involve a combination of relaxation, visualisation and repetition exercises, besides a number of other techniques. There is an increasing acceptance that the various magical states of consciousness (such as astral projection) can be achieved by self-hypnosis.
IIH ::: Initiation Into Hermetics. A work by Franz Bardon that discusses modern Hermetic theory and gives exhaustive lists and details of exercises and practices involving consciousness and magic. One of the best modern-day handbooks of practical occult exercises.
impression ::: n. --> The act of impressing, or the state of being impressed; the communication of a stamp, mold, style, or character, by external force or by influence.
That which is impressed; stamp; mark; indentation; sensible result of an influence exerted from without.
That which impresses, or exercises an effect, action, or agency; appearance; phenomenon.
Influence or effect on the senses or the intellect
inaugural ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or performed or pronounced at, an inauguration; as, an inaugural address; the inaugural exercises. ::: n. --> An inaugural address.
is an angel who exercises dominion over wild fowl
ishments in the lower world. Kakabel, a high holy prince who exercises dominion over the con¬
Israel; he exercises control over rain. ( Cf. Matarel.)
kammatthāna. In Pāli, lit. "working ground," viz., "meditative topic"; a topic or object of meditation (BHĀVANĀ) used for training the mind and cultivating mental concentration (SAMĀDHI). The term originally referred to an occupation or vocation, such as farmer, merchant, or mendicant, but was adopted as a technical term to refer generically to various types of meditative exercises. The VISUDDHIMAGGA lists forty topics used for this purpose. First are ten "visualization devices" (KASInA)-devices that are constructed from the elements earth, water, fire, and air; the colors blue, yellow, red, and white, and light and space-to develop concentration. Kasina exercises can produce all four of the "meditative absorptions" (JHĀNA; DHYĀNA) associated with the realm of subtle materiality. Next are ten "loathsome topics" (asubha; see S. AsUBHABHĀVANĀ), such as the decaying of a corpse, which can lead only to the first meditative absorption (dhyāna). These are followed by ten "recollections" (P. anussati; S. ANUSMṚTI): viz., of (1) the Buddha, (2) the dhamma (DHARMA), (3) the sangha (SAMGHA), (4) morality, (5) generosity, (6) the divinities, (7) death, (8) the body, (9) the inbreath and outbreath (P. ānāpānasati, S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI), and (10) peace. Of these, recollection or mindfulness (P. sati; S. SMṚTI) of the inbreath and outbreath can produce all four meditative absorptions, while recollection of the body can produce the first absorption; the remaining recollections only lead to "access concentration" (UPACĀRASAMĀDHI), which immediately precedes but does not reach the level of the first absorption. Next are four "immaterial spheres" (arupāyatana), viz., the "sphere of infinite space" (ākāsānaNcāyatana, S. ĀKĀsĀNANTYĀYATANA); of "infinite consciousness" (viNNānaNcāyatana, S. VIJNĀNĀNANTYĀYATANA); of "nothingness" (ākiNcaNNāyatana, S. ĀKINCANYĀYATANA); and of "neither perception nor nonperception" (nevasaNNānāsaNNāyatana, S. NAIVASAMJNĀNĀSAMJNĀYATANA). Meditation on these objects involves the increasing refinement of the fourth absorption and leads to the acquisition of the "immaterial attainments" (ARuPASAMĀPATTI), also called "immaterial absorptions" (P. arupāvacarajhāna; S. ĀRuPYĀVACARADHYĀNA, see DHYĀNA, SAMĀPATTI). Four positive affective states or "divine abidings" (BRAHMAVIHĀRA; [alt. P. appamaNNa]; S. APRAMĀnA), are loving-kindness (mettā; MAITRĪ), compassion (KARUnĀ), altruistic or empathetic joy (MUDITĀ), and equanimity or impartiality (upekkhā; UPEKsĀ). Of these, loving-kindness, compassion, and altruistic joy can produce only the first three meditative absorptions, but equanimity can produce all four. There is one perception of the loathsomeness of food (āhāre patikkulasaNNā) and one analysis of the four elements (catudhātu vavatthāna), both of which can produce access concentration. Certain of these topics were said to be better suited to specific character types, such as the loathsome topics to persons with strong tendencies toward lust or the perception of the loathsomeness of food for gluttons; others, such as the meditation on the in- and outbreaths, were universally suitable to all character types. The Buddha was said to have had the ability to assess his disciples' character types and determine which topics of meditation would best suit them; as later generations lost this assessment ability, the number of kammatthānas in regular use dropped dramatically, with mindfulness of breathing being by far the most popular topic.
karmāvarana. (P. kammāvarana; T. las kyi sgrib pa; C. yezhang; J. gosho/gossho; K. opchang 業障). In Sanskrit, "karmic obstruction," or "hindered by KARMAN." The term is used in the VISUDDHIMAGGA with reference to meditators who are incapable of making any progress in concentration (SAMĀDHI) exercises, specifically involving the KASInA visualization devices. The text notes that a practitioner who has engaged in any of the five types of unwholesome "acts that are of immediate effect" (P. ānantariyakamma; S. ĀNANTARYAKARMAN), such as patricide or causing schism in the community of monks (SAMGHBHEDA), is "obstructed by his acts" and will therefore never be able to develop a viable meditation practice. ¶ The relation of karmāvarana to meditation practice continues in Korean Buddhism, where the term opchang is colloquially used to refer to any kind of persistent physical, mental, or emotional obstacle to meditation practice, whether that be, for example, constant pain in one's legs that makes it difficult to sit in meditation for long periods, an inability to concentrate, or emotional distress caused by being apart from one's family. Anything that continually inhibits one's ability to practice effectively may be termed an opchang (karmāvarana). In the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA, obstacles to meditation practice are referred to as vimoksāvarana, obstruction to the production of the eight VIMOKsAs, that is, physical and mental inflexibility (akarmanyatā). The ARHAT who is free in both ways (ubhayatobhāgavimukta) is free from this as well as from the KLEsĀVARAnA.
Kriya: Physical action; particular exercises in Hath Yoga, such as Basti, Neti, Nauli, etc.
Kumbhaka(Sanskrit) ::: An extremely dangerous practice belonging to the hatha yoga system. It consists in retainingthe breath by shutting the mouth and holding the nostrils closed with the fingers of the right hand. Allthese breathing exercises of whatever kind are attended with the utmost physiological danger to thosewho attempt to practice them, unless under the skilled guidance of a genuine Adept; and their practice isvirtually forbidden, at least in the first few degrees, to all chelas of genuinely occult or esoteric schools.Indeed, except in rare instances, and for extraordinary reasons, the chela of a true Master of Wisdom willhave no need to practice these hatha yoga exercises, for the whole purpose of esoteric training is toevolve forth the faculties and powers of the inner divinity, and not to gain minor and often misleadingpowers of small range which are occasionally acquired by following the hatha yoga physiologic andphysical practices.
Kumbhaka (Sanskrit) Kumbhaka An extremely dangerous practice belonging to the hatha yoga system, consisting in retaining the breath by shutting the mouth and holding the nostrils closed with the fingers of the right hand. Such breathing exercises are attended with the utmost physiological danger unless practiced under the guidance of a genuine adept.
Lamach—an angel who exercises dominion
Lasherism "jargon, algorithm" (Harvard) A program that solves a standard problem (such as the {Eight Queens Puzzle} or implementing the {life} {algorithm}) in a deliberately nonstandard way. Distinguished from a {crock} or {kluge} by the fact that the programmer did it on purpose as a mental exercise. Such constructions are quite popular in exercises such as the {Obfuscated C contest}, and occasionally in {retrocomputing}. Lew Lasher was a student at Harvard around 1980 who became notorious for such behaviour. [{Jargon File}] (1994-12-07)
Lucid Dreaming ::: The ability to become aware that one is dreaming within a dream. This meta-awareness can be trained and utilized to either use the dream as a basis for exercises of will or to astral project proper. Lucid dreams can be entered from both a state of wakefulness and from a state of sleep.
Madan —an angel that exercises dominion over
Maion —an angel who exercises dominion over
martialism ::: n. --> The quality of being warlike; exercises suitable for war.
mistress ::: n. --> A woman having power, authority, or ownership; a woman who exercises authority, is chief, etc.; the female head of a family, a school, etc.
A woman well skilled in anything, or having the mastery over it.
A woman regarded with love and devotion; she who has command over one&
monological ::: A descriptor of any approach where an individual conducts a “monologue” with an object and apprehends their immediate experience of that object, usually without acknowledging or recognizing cultural embeddedness and intersubjectivity. Monological approaches, in themselves, are sometimes referred to as subscribing to the “myth of the given,” “the philosophy of the subject,” “the philosophy of consciousness,” or what Integral Theory would describe as the belief that the contents of the Upper-Left quadrant are given without being intertwined in the remaining three quadrants. Monological approaches are typically associated with phenomenology, empiricism, meditation, all experiential exercises and therapies, etc.
moulinet ::: n. --> The drum upon which the rope is wound in a capstan, crane, or the like.
A machine formerly used for bending a crossbow by winding it up.
In sword and saber exercises, a circular swing of the weapon.
Mtniel —an angel who exercises dominion over
Mudra: A certain class of exercises in Hatha Yoga; symbols shown in hands during worship.
name Araqiel denotes one who exercises dominion
Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her normal ope- rations. Id the ancient tradition of Hatha Yoga it has always been supposed that this conquest could be pushed so far even as to conquer to a great extent the force of gravitation. By various subsidiary but elaborate processes the Hatha Yogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the ner- vous system unclogged for those exercises of respiration which are his most important instruments. These are called prana- yama, the control of the breath or vital power ; for breathing is the chief physical functioning of the vital forces. Prdnayaina, for the Hatha Yogin, serves a double purpose. First, it completes the perfection of the body. The vitality is liberated from many of the ordinary necessities of physical Nature ; robust health, prolonged youth, often an extraordinary longevity arc attained.
Neti: Hatha Yogic Kriya for cleansing the nostrils, by passing a thread through the nostrils; one of the six Kriyas or preliminary purificatory exercises in Hatha Yoga.
nianfo. (J. nenbutsu; K. yombul 念佛). In Chinese, "recollection, invocation, or chanting of [the name of] the Buddha." The term nianfo has a long history of usage across the Buddhist tradition and has been used to refer to a variety of practices. The Chinese term nianfo is a translation of the Sanskrit term BUDDHĀNUSMṚTI (recollection of [the qualities of] the Buddha), one of the common practices designed to help develop meditative absorption (DHYĀNA) in the mainstream traditions. Buddhānusmṛti is listed as the first of six fundamental contemplative practices, along with recollection of the DHARMA, SAMGHA, giving (DĀNA), morality (sĪLA), and the divinities (DEVA). Buddhānusmṛti (P. buddhānussati) is also the first in the Pāli list of ten "recollections" (P. anussati; S. ANUSMṚTI), which are included among the forty meditative exercises (see KAMMAttHĀNA) discussed in the VISUDDHIMAGGA. The meditator is instructed to reflect on the good qualities of the Buddha, often through contemplating a series of his epithets, contemplation that is said to lead specifically to "access concentration" (UPACĀRASAMĀDHI). In early Mahāyāna texts, the term seems to refer to the meditative practice of recollecting, invoking, or visualizing an image of a buddha or advanced BODHISATTVA, such as sĀKYAMUNI, MAITREYA, or AMITĀBHA. In East Asia, the term nianfo came to be used primarily in the sense of reciting the name of the Buddha, referring especially to recitation of the Chinese phrase namo Amituo fo (K. namu Amit'abul; J. NAMU AMIDABUTSU; Homage to the buddha Amitābha). This recitation was often performed in a ritual setting and accompanied by the performance of prostrations, the burning of incense, and the intonation of scriptures, all directed toward gaining a vision of Amitābha's PURE LAND of SUKHĀVATĪ, a vision that was considered proof that one would be reborn there in the next lifetime. New forms of chanting Amitābha's name developed in China, such as WUHUI NIANFO (five-tempo intonation of [the name of] the Buddha), which used leisurely and increasingly rapid tempos, and YINSHENG NIANFO (intoning [the name of] the Buddha by drawing out the sound). Nianfo practice was often portrayed as a relatively easy means of guaranteeing rebirth in Amitābha's pure land. Many exegetes referred to the vows of the bodhisattva DHARMĀKARA (the bodhisattva who became Amitābha) as set forth in the SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA, as evidence of the efficacy of nianfo practice in the degenerate age of the dharma (MOFA). In China, these various forms of nianfo were advocated by such famous monks as TANLUAN, DAOCHUO, and SHANDAO; these monks later came to be retroactively regarded as patriarchs of a so-called pure land school (JINGTU ZONG). In fact, however, nianfo was widely practiced across schools and social strata in both China and Korea and was not exclusively associated with a putative pure land tradition. In Japan, nenbutsu, or repetition of the phrase "namu Amidabutsu" (homage to Amitābha Buddha) became a central practice of the Japanese PURE LAND schools of Buddhism, such as JoDOSHu, JoDO SHINSHu, and JISHu. The practice spread rapidly among common people largely through the efforts of such itinerant holy men (HIJIRI) as KuYA and IPPEN. Influential pure land teachers, such as HoNEN and his disciple SHINRAN, also promoted the exclusive practice of chanting the phrase NAMU AMIDABUTSU and debated whether multiple recitations of the Buddha's name (TANENGI) were expected of pure land adherents or whether a single recitation (ICHINENGI) would be enough to ensure rebirth. Despite periodic suppressions of this movement, Honen and Shinran's schools, known as the Jodoshu and Jodo Shinshu, became the largest Buddhist communities in Japan.
occupation, employment, business; study; occupying, filling up; keeping employed at. Inayat Khan uses this term to describe certain mystical concentration exercises. (in some texts as shaghal or shagal)
Our subliminal self is not, like our surface physical being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient; it is a meeting-place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or subtle-physical being larger than our outer being and nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature,—and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being’s direct consciousness of things than its informants: the subliminal is not dependent on its senses for its knowledge, they only give a form to its direct experience of objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind’s documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution created in its passage and with all corresponding planes or worlds that may have arisen or been constructed to serve the purpose of the re-ascent from Inconscience to Superconscience. It is into this large realm of interior existence that our mind and vital being retire when they withdraw from the surface activities whether by sleep or inward-drawn concentration or by the inner plunge of trance. Our waking state is unaware of its connection with the subliminal being, although it receives from it—but without any knowledge of the place of origin—the inspirations, intuitions, ideas, will-suggestions, sense-suggestions, urges to action that rise from below or from behind our limited surface existence. Sleep like trance opens the gate of the subliminal to us; for in sleep, as in trance, we retire behind the veil of the limited waking personality and it is behind this veil that the subliminal has its existence. But we receive the records of our sleep experience through dream and in dream figures and not in that condition which might be called an inner waking and which is the most accessible form of the trance state, nor through the supernormal clarities of vision and other more luminous and concrete ways of communication developed by the inner subliminal cognition when it gets into habitual or occasional conscious connection with our waking self. The subliminal, with the subconscious as an annexe of itself,—for the subconscious is also part of the behind-the-veil entity,—is the seer of inner things and of supraphysical experiences; the surface subconscious is only a transcriber. It is for this reason that the Upanishad describes the subliminal being as the Dream Self because it is normally in dreams, visions, absorbed states of inner experience that we enter into and are part of its experiences...
Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 236
overrules ::: prevails over, against, exercises rule over.
parikammanimitta. In Pāli, "preparatory image" or "preliminary sign;" the first of the three major visualization signs experienced in tranquillity (P. samatha; S. sAMATHA) exercises, along with the UGGAHANIMITTA (eidetic image) and the PAtIBHĀGANIMITTA (representational or counterpart image). Any object of attention, such as a visualization device (KASInA) that is used in the initial development of concentration, is termed a parikammanimitta. Generally, these devices involve visual objects such as fire, a circle of earth, or a particular color, though the breath may also be considered a parikammanimitta. These three signs and the meditative exercises employed to experience them are discussed in detail in BUDDHAGHOSA's VISUDDHIMAGGA, where they are listed sequentially according to the degree of concentration necessary for them to appear. In these exercises, the meditator attempts to convert a visual object of meditation, such as earth, fire, or a color, into a mental projection or conceptualization that is as clear as the visual image itself. The image the practitioner views with his eyes is called the parikammanimitta or "preparatory image," and the effort the practitioner makes is called parikammabhāvanā. When that parikammanimitta is equally clear when visualized in the mind, the practitioner is then said to have obtained the uggahanimitta (eidetic image). Even that image, however, still represents a relatively weak degree of concentration, and it must be enhanced until the patibhāganimitta, or "counterpart image," emerges, which marks the access to meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA, S. DHYĀNA).
patibhāganimitta. In Pāli, lit., "counterpart image," "representational image"; the third of the three major visualization signs experienced in tranquillity (P. samatha; S. sAMATHA) exercises, along with the PARIKAMMANIMITTA (preparatory image) and the UGGAHANIMITTA (eidetic image). These three images and the meditative exercises employed to experience them are discussed in detail in BUDDHAGHOSA's VISUDDHIMAGGA, where they are listed sequentially according to the degree of concentration necessary to develop them. These images are particularly associated with the use of the ten visualization devices (KASInA) that are used in the initial development of concentration. In these exercises, the meditator attempts to convert a visual object of meditation, such as soil, fire, or a color, into a mental projection or conceptualization that is as clear as the visual image itself. When the image the practitioner sees with his eyes (the so-called parikammanimitta or "preparatory image") is equally clear when visualized in the mind, the practitioner is said to have obtained the uggahanimitta (eidetic image). This image, however, still represents a relatively weak degree of concentration, and it must be strengthened until the patibhāganimitta, or "representational image," emerges, which marks the access to meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA, S. DHYĀNA). This representational image is said to be a purely abstract, conceptual form of the visualized image that appears to "break out" from the eidetic sign, e.g., with the fire kasina, the representational image of the visualized flame appears motionless, like a piece of red cloth hanging in space, or like a golden fan.
patriarchal ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a patriarch or to patriarchs; possessed by, or subject to, patriarchs; as, patriarchal authority or jurisdiction; a patriarchal see; a patriarchal church.
Characteristic of a patriarch; venerable.
Having an organization of society and government in which the head of the family exercises authority over all its generations.
perfectionism ::: An ethical view that maintains an individual lives the Good life to the extent she successfully exercises character traits that are a part of her nature.
plural riyādāt, Farsi riyāzāt: practices, exercises; religious exercises, austerities, devotions.
Pniel —in geonic lore, an angel who exercises
POWER. ::: Whatever or whoever exercises a conscious power in the cosmic field and has authority over the world-movement or some movement in it.
Power ::: Whatever or whoever exercises a conscious power in the cosmic field and has authority over the world movement or some part of it or some movement in it.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 104
practicer ::: n. --> One who practices, or puts in practice; one who customarily performs certain acts.
One who exercises a profession; a practitioner.
One who uses art or stratagem.
Pranayama ::: …regulated direction and arrestation by exercises of breathing of the vital currents of energy in the body.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 530
pranayama ::: the government and control of the respiration; regulated direction and arrestation by exercises of breathing of the vital currents of energy in the body.
pranayama. ::: yogic breathing exercises; control of the subtle life-force by means of special modes of breathing; regulation of breath leading to integration of mind and body; the fourth of the eight limbs of ashtanga yoga
Pratyaharana (Sanskrit) Pratyāharaṇa [from prati-ā-hṛ to draw back, recover] The withdrawing of the senses from external objects; one of the preliminary exercises in practical raja yoga.
providence ::: n. --> The act of providing or preparing for future use or application; a making ready; preparation.
Foresight; care; especially, the foresight and care which God manifests for his creatures; hence, God himself, regarded as exercising a constant wise prescience.
A manifestation of the care and superintendence which God exercises over his creatures; an event ordained by divine direction.
quiz ::: n. --> A riddle or obscure question; an enigma; a ridiculous hoax.
One who quizzes others; as, he is a great quiz.
An odd or absurd fellow.
An exercise, or a course of exercises, conducted as a coaching or as an examination. ::: v. t.
quo warranto ::: --> A writ brought before a proper tribunal, to inquire by what warrant a person or a corporation acts, or exercises certain powers.
Rashiei (Zavael)—an angel who exercises
religion of CHI /ki:/ [Case Western Reserve University] Yet another hackish parody religion (see also {Church of the SubGenius}, {Discordianism}). In the mid-70s, the canonical "Introduction to Programming" courses at CWRU were taught in {ALGOL}, and student exercises were punched on cards and run on a Univac 1108 system using a homebrew operating system named CHI. The religion had no doctrines and but one ritual: whenever the worshipper noted that a digital clock read 11:08, he or she would recite the phrase "It is 11:08; ABS, ALPHABETIC, ARCSIN, ARCCOS, ARCTAN." The last five words were the first five functions in the appropriate chapter of the ALGOL manual; note the special pronunciations /obz/ and /ark'sin/ rather than the more common /ahbz/ and /ark'si:n/. Using an alarm clock to warn of 11:08's arrival was {considered harmful}. [{Jargon File}]
Rubiel or Ruhiel. Ben Nez exercises dominion
ruler ::: n. --> One who rules; one who exercises sway or authority; a governor.
A straight or curved strip of wood, metal, etc., with a smooth edge, used for guiding a pen or pencil in drawing lines. Cf. Rule, n., 7 (a).
ruler of the Friday angels. Anael exercises domin¬
saltatorial ::: a. --> Relating to leaping; saltatory; as, saltatorial exercises.
Same as Saltatorious.
Of or pertaining to the Saltatoria.
salutatorian ::: n. --> The student who pronounces the salutatory oration at the annual Commencement or like exercises of a college, -- an honor commonly assigned to that member of the graduating class who ranks second in scholarship.
salutatory ::: a. --> Containing or expressing salutations; speaking a welcome; greeting; -- applied especially to the oration which introduces the exercises of the Commencements, or similar public exhibitions, in American colleges. ::: n. --> A place for saluting or greeting; a vestibule; a porch.
Satipatthānasutta. (S. *Smṛtyupasthānasutra; T. Dran pa nye bar bzhag pa'i mdo; C. Nianchu jing; J. Nenjogyo; K. Yomch'o kyong 念處經). In Pāli, "Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness"; the tenth sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (a separate SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension appears as the ninety-eighth SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMĀGAMA; there is another unidentified recension in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARĀGAMA). An expanded version of the same sutta, titled the "Great Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness" (MAHĀSATIPAttHĀNASUTTANTA), which adds extensive discussion on mindfulness of breathing (P. ānāpānasati, S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI), is the twenty-second sutta in the Pāli DĪGHANIKĀYA. This sutta is one of the most widely commented upon texts in the Pāli canon and continues to hold a central place in the modern VIPASSANĀ (S. VIPAsYANĀ) movement. The sutta was preached by the Buddha to a gathering of disciples in the town of Kammāsadhamma in the country of the Kurus. The discourse enumerates twenty-one meditation practices for the cultivation of mindfulness (P. sati, S. SMṚTI), a term that refers to an undistracted watchfulness and attentiveness, or to recollection and thus memory. In the text, the Buddha explains the practice under a fourfold rubric called the four foundations of mindfulness (P. satipatthāna, S. SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA). The four foundations are comprised of "contemplation of the body" (P. kāyānupassanā, S. KĀYĀNUPAsYANĀ); "contemplation of sensations" (P. vedanānupassanā, S. vedanānupasyanā), that is, physical and mental sensations (VEDANĀ) that are pleasurable, painful, or neutral; "contemplation of mind" (P. cittānupassanā, S. cittānupasyanā), in which one observes the broader state of mind (CITTA) as, e.g., shrunken or expanded, while under the influence of various positive and negative emotions; and "contemplation of phenomena" (P. dhammānupassanā, S. dharmānupasyanā), which involves the contemplation of several key doctrinal categories, such as the five aggregates (P. khandha, S. SKANDHA) and the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS. The first of the four, the mindfulness of the body, involves fourteen exercises, beginning with the mindfulness of the inhalation and exhalation of the breath (P. ānāpānasati, S. ĀNĀPĀNASMṚTI). Mindfulness of the breath is followed by mindfulness of the four physical postures (P. iriyāpatha, S. ĪRYĀPATHA) of walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. This is then extended to a full general awareness of all physical activities. Thus, mindfulness is something that is also meant to accompany all of one's actions in the course of the day, and is not restricted to formal meditation sessions. This discussion is followed by mindfulness of the various components of the body, an intentionally revolting list that includes fingernails, bile, spittle, and urine. Next is the mindfulness of the body as composed of the four great elements (MAHĀBHuTA) of earth, water, fire, and air. Next are the "contemplations on the impure" (P. asubhabhāvanā, S. AsUBHABHĀVANĀ), viz., contemplation of a corpse in nine successive stages of decomposition. The practice of the mindfulness of the body is designed to induce the understanding that the body is a collection of impure elements that arise and cease in rapid succession, utterly lacking any kind of permanent self. This insight into the three marks of existence-impermanence, suffering, and no-self-leads in turn to enlightenment. Mindfulness of the body is presented as the core meditative practice, with the other three types of mindfulness applied as the meditator's attention is drawn to those factors. The sutta calls the foundations of mindfulness the ekayānamagga, which in this context might be rendered as "the only path" or "the one way forward," and states that correct practice of the four foundations of mindfulness will lead to the stage of the worthy one (P. arahant, S. ARHAT), or at least the stage of the nonreturner (P. anāgāmi, S. ANĀGĀMIN), in as little as seven days of practice, according to some interpretations. See also ANUPASSANĀ.
Saturn The sixth planet from the sun in our solar system, the last of the seven sacred planets of the ancients. In theosophy the regent or rector of Saturn exercises its own characteristic influence especially on our earth, globe D, and closely combines in this respect with the influence emanating from the moon; its influences was likewise especially felt over the fourth root-race. In astrology, its zodiacal houses are Aquarius and Capricorn; its day of the week is Saturday.
Serakel —an angel who exercises dominion
Shaolinsi. (J. Shorinji; K. Sorimsa 少林寺). In Chinese, "Small Grove Monastery"; located at the foot of SONGSHAN in Dengfeng county, Henan province. According to the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Continued Biographies of Eminent Monks"), the Xiaowen emperor (r. 471-500 CE) of the Northern Wei dynasty built the monastery in 496 CE for the Indian monk Fotuo (d.u.). Shaolinsi initially was an important center of translation activities, and many famous monks, including BODHIRUCI, RATNAMATI, JINGYING HUIYUAN, and XUANZANG, resided at the monastery. But the monastery is best known in the East Asian tradition as the putative center of martial arts in China. Fotuo, the monastery's founder, is claimed to have had two disciples who displayed sublime acrobatic skills, perhaps a harbinger of later martial-arts exercises. Li Shimin (599-649; r. 626-649), second ruler and Taizong emperor of the Tang dynasty (618-907), is said to have used the Shaolin monks' martial talents, especially with the heavy cudgel, to help his father found their new dynasty. Within another century, Shaolinsi became associated with the legend of the Indian monk BODHIDHARMA (c. early fifth century), the putative founder of the CHAN school, who is said to have practiced wall-gazing meditation (BIGUAN) for nine years in a cave above the monastery; according to later traditions, Bodhidharma also taught himself self-defense techniques both to protect himself against wild animals and for exercise, which he transmitted to his disciples at the monastery. In subsequent years, the monastery continued to be renowned as a center of both martial arts and Chan Buddhism. In 1245, the Yuan emperor Shizu (r. 1260-1294) appointed the Chan master Xueting Fuyu (1203-1275) abbot of Shaolinsi, and under Xueting's guidance the monastery flourished. At least by the fifteenth century, the connection between Shaolinsi and the martial arts became firmly established in the Chinese popular imagination and "Shaolin monks" remain popular on the international performing-arts circuit.
smṛti. (P. sati; T. dran pa; C. nian; J. nen; K. yom 念). In Sanskrit, "mindfulness" or "memory" and often seen in Western sources in the Pāli equivalency sati; a polysemous term, but commonly used in meditative contexts to refer to the ability to remain focused on a chosen object without forgetfulness or distraction. The SARVĀSTIVĀDA school of ABHIDHARMA lists smṛti as one of a group of five determinative (VINIYATA) mental concomitants (CAITTA), whose function is to aid the mind in ascertaining or determining its object. The five are: aspiration or desire-to-act (CHANDA), determination or resolve (ADHIMOKsA), mindfulness or memory (smṛti), concentration (SAMĀDHI), and wisdom or cognition (PRAJNĀ). According to ASAnGA, these five determinative factors accompany wholesome (KUsALA) states of mind, so that if one is present, all are present. Mindfulness is crucial to all types of formal meditative practice because of its role in bringing clarity to the perceptual process; it leaves the mind in a purely receptive state that inhibits the unwholesome responses to sensory stimuli, such as greed, hatred, and delusion. Mindfulness also contributes to control of the mind, by eliminating distraction and helping the meditator gain mastery of his thought processes. Smṛti is also a catalyst of the related term "circumspection" or "introspection" (SAMPRAJANYA) and ultimately of wisdom (PRAJNĀ). As the third of the five spiritual faculties (PANCENDRIYA), smṛti helps to balance faith (sRADDHĀ) and wisdom (prajNā)-which could degenerate into blind faith or skepticism, respectively-as well as vigor (VĪRYA) and concentration (SAMĀDHI)-which could degenerate respectively into restlessness and indolence. Smṛti is thus the keystone that ensures the uniform development of all five faculties; for this reason, unlike the other four factors, there can never be too much mindfulness, because it cannot degenerate into a negative state. The emphasis on mindfulness is one of the most distinctive features of Buddhist meditation theory. Consequently, the term appears in numerous lists of virtuous qualities, especially in those pertaining to meditation. For example, in perhaps its most popular usage, right mindfulness (SAMYAKSMṚTI) is the seventh of the eight aspects of the noble eightfold path (ĀRYĀstĀnGAMĀRGA). Generally in this context, the cultivation of the "foundations of mindfulness" (SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA) is understood to serve as a basis for the development of liberating wisdom (prajñā). Thus, meditation exercises involving smṛti are often discussed in connection with those related to VIPAsYANĀ, or "insight." In one of the most widely read discourses on mindfulness, the MAHĀSATIPAttHĀNASUTTANTA, the Buddha offers four specific foundations of mindfulness training, namely, on the body (KĀYA), sensations (VEDANĀ), mental states (CITTA), and specific factors (P. dhamma; S. DHARMA). In his Prajñāpāramitāhṛdayanāmatīkā, a commentary on the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀHṚDAYASuTRA ("Heart Sutra"), KAMALAsĪLA lists mindfulness as the third of five "powers" (BALA) that are attained on the path of preparation (PRAYOGAMĀRGA). In another popular schema, smṛti is listed as the first of seven "limbs of awakening" or factors of enlightenment (BODHYAnGA); these are seven factors that contribute to enlightenment. See also ANUSMṚTI; SMṚTYUPASTHĀNA; SATIPAttHANASUTTA.
sovereign ::: n. 1. One that exercises supreme, permanent authority, as a king, queen or monarch. Often applied to the Divine. child-sovereign. adj. 2. Supreme; pre-eminent; indisputable. 3. Being above all others in character, importance, excellence, etc. 4. Having supreme rank, power or authority. 5. Belonging to or characteristic of a king, queen or other supreme ruler; royal, regal, majestic.
Strategic Cooperation ::: Formal agreement between the United States and Israel, initiated in 1983 by Ronald Reagan and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to assist each other in areas of mutual security concern. This strategic relationship has included joint military exercises, repositioning of stockpiles, the use of Haifa port by U.S. naval vessels, intelligence-sharing, Israeli support for U.S. forces in the 1991 Gulf War, and bilateral research and development programs like the Arrow missile.
tapas ::: "concentration of power of consciousness"; will-power; the force that acts through aisvarya, isita and vasita, or the combination of these siddhis of power themselves, sometimes listed as the fourth of five members of the vijñana catus.t.aya; the divine force of action into which rajas is transformed in the liberation (mukti) of the nature from the trigun.a of the lower prakr.ti, a power "which has no desire because it exercises a universal possession and a spontaneous Ananda .. of its movements"; the force manifested by an aspect of daivi prakr.ti (see Mahakali tapas, Mahasarasvati tapas); (also called cit-tapas)"infinite conscious energy", the principle that is the basis of tapoloka; limited mental will and power. Tapas is "the will of the transcendent spirit who creates the universal movement, of the universal spirit who supports and informs it, of the free individual spirit who is the soul centre of its multiplicities. . . . But the moment the individual soul leans away from the universal and transcendent truth of its being, . . . that will changes its character: it becomes an effort, a straining". tapas ananda
theatre ::: n. --> An edifice in which dramatic performances or spectacles are exhibited for the amusement of spectators; anciently uncovered, except the stage, but in modern times roofed.
Any room adapted to the exhibition of any performances before an assembly, as public lectures, scholastic exercises, anatomical demonstrations, surgical operations, etc.
That which resembles a theater in form, use, or the like; a place rising by steps or gradations, like the seats of a theater.
the beginning of the year” and exercises dominion
the Blessed Angels, an angel who exercises dominion
The law of retardation means that certain individuals or groups are from time to time retarded in their forward development because the field of evolution immediately before them is already occupied by a superior aggregate group of evolving entities, which superior group exercises upon the inferior group an influence retarding the full expression of the evolving faculties of the individuals of the lower group. This can be illustrated by considering the evolution of the life-waves, or kingdoms, which run the rounds on our own planetary chain. The beasts are thus subject to a very definite law of retardation, because their immediate and future field of evolutionary unfolding is occupied by the evolving human kingdom, although it is equally true that the human kingdom exercises upon the beast kingdom beneath it a stimulating and elevating power. In the kingdoms of the planetary chain, if one such kingdom has not already reached a certain evolutionary standing on the ladder of life, it will have to wait in a more or less inactive or dormant evolutionary condition until room is made for its further progress by the passing ahead of the kingdom preceding it.
::: "The use of the word Power has already been explained — it can be applied to whatever or whoever exercises a conscious power in the cosmic field and has authority over the world-movement or some movement in it.” Letters on Yoga
“The use of the word Power has already been explained—it can be applied to whatever or whoever exercises a conscious power in the cosmic field and has authority over the world-movement or some movement in it.” Letters on Yoga
To arrive at full possession of the powers of the dream-state, it is necessary first to exclude the attack of the sights, sounds etc. of the outer world upon the physical organs. It is quite possible indeed to be aware in the dream-trance of the outer physical world through the subtle senses which belong to the subtle body ; one may be aware of them just so far as one chooses and on a much wider scale than In the waking condition ; for the subtle senses have a far more powerful range than the gross physical organs, a range which may be made practically unlimited. But this awareness of the phj-sical world through the subtle senses is something quite different from our normal awareness of it through the physical organs ; the latter is incompatible with the settled state of trance, for the pressure of the physical senses breaks the Samadhi and calls back the mind to live in their normal field where alone they have power. But the subtle senses have power both upon their own planes and upon the physical world, though this is to them more remote than their own world of being. In Yoga various devices are used to seal up the doors of the physical sense, some of them physical devices ; but the one all-sufficient means is a force of concentration by which the mind is drawn inward to depths where the call of physical things can no longer easily attain to it. A second necessity is to get rid of the intervention of physical sleep. The ordinary habit of the mind when it goes in away from contact with physical things is to fall into the torpor of sleep or its dreams, and therefore when called in for the purposes of Samadhi, it gives or lends to give, at the first chance, by sheer force of habit, not the response demanded, but its usual response of ph)sical slumber. This habit of the mind has to be got rid of ; the mind has to Icam to be awake in the dream-stale, in possession of itself, not with the outgoing, but with an ingathered wakefulness in which, though immersed in itself, it exercises all its powers.
totalitarian ::: of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed.
trainer ::: n. --> One who trains; an instructor; especially, one who trains or prepares men, horses, etc., for exercises requiring physical agility and strength.
A militiaman when called out for exercise or discipline.
trumpet ::: n. --> A wind instrument of great antiquity, much used in war and military exercises, and of great value in the orchestra. In consists of a long metallic tube, curved (once or twice) into a convenient shape, and ending in a bell. Its scale in the lower octaves is limited to the first natural harmonics; but there are modern trumpets capable, by means of valves or pistons, of producing every tone within their compass, although at the expense of the true ringing quality of tone.
A trumpeter.
turner ::: n. --> One who turns; especially, one whose occupation is to form articles with a lathe.
A variety of pigeon; a tumbler.
A person who practices athletic or gymnastic exercises.
tyrant ::: A ruler who exercises power in a harsh, cruel manner. tyrants. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
tyrant ::: a ruler who exercises power in a harsh, cruel manner. tyrants. (Sri Aurobindo also employs the word as an adj.)
tyrant ::: n. --> An absolute ruler; a sovereign unrestrained by law or constitution; a usurper of sovereignty.
Specifically, a monarch, or other ruler or master, who uses power to oppress his subjects; a person who exercises unlawful authority, or lawful authority in an unlawful manner; one who by taxation, injustice, or cruel punishment, or the demand of unreasonable services, imposes burdens and hardships on those under his control, which law and humanity do not authorize, or which the purposes of
uggahanimitta. In Pāli, "eidetic image" or "learning sign," the second of the three major visualization signs experienced in calmness or tranquillity (P. samatha; S. sAMATHA) exercises, along with the PARIKAMMANIMITTA (preparatory image) and the PAtIBHĀGANIMITTA (counterpart, or representational, image). The signs are listed sequentially according to the degree of concentration necessary for them to appear. These three visualization signs and the meditative exercises employed to experience them are discussed in detail in BUDDHAGHOSA's VISUDDHIMAGGA. These signs are particularly associated with the ten visualization devices (KASInA) that are used in the initial development of concentration. In these exercises, the meditator attempts to convert a visual object of meditation, such as earth, fire, or light, into a mental projection or conceptualization that is as clear as the visual image itself. When the image the practitioner sees with his eyes (the so-called parikammanimitta, or "preparatory image") is equally clear when visualized in the mind, the practitioner is said to have obtained the uggahanimitta. With the fire kasina, for example, the eidetic image of the visualized flame appears like a detached flame, with any embers, ashes, or smoke that were present in the preparatory image still visible. This uggahanimitta, however, still represents a relatively weak degree of concentration, and it must be strengthened until the patibhāganimitta, or "counterpart/representational image," emerges, which marks the access to meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA).
vacation ::: n. --> The act of vacating; a making void or of no force; as, the vacation of an office or a charter.
Intermission of a stated employment, procedure, or office; a period of intermission; rest; leisure.
Intermission of judicial proceedings; the space of time between the end of one term and the beginning of the next; nonterm; recess.
The intermission of the regular studies and exercises of
vigil ::: v. i. --> Abstinence from sleep, whether at a time when sleep is customary or not; the act of keeping awake, or the state of being awake, or the state of being awake; sleeplessness; wakefulness; watch.
Hence, devotional watching; waking for prayer, or other religious exercises.
Originally, the watch kept on the night before a feast.
Later, the day and the night preceding a feast.
A religious service performed in the evening preceding a
who exercises dominion over the earth. In Enoch
wild beasts, just as Behemiel (q.v.) exercises
witch ::: n. --> A cone of paper which is placed in a vessel of lard or other fat, and used as a taper.
One who practices the black art, or magic; one regarded as possessing supernatural or magical power by compact with an evil spirit, esp. with the Devil; a sorcerer or sorceress; -- now applied chiefly or only to women, but formerly used of men as well.
An ugly old woman; a hag.
One who exercises more than common power of attraction; a
xystus ::: n. --> A long and open portico, for athletic exercises, as wrestling, running, etc., for use in winter or in stormy weather.
Yang sheng: "Nurturing life," conserving one's vital powers, by which later Taoists understood sex life, breath control, the physical exercises and diet. -- H.H.
Zafniel —the angel who in geonic lore exercises
KEYS (10k)
6 Sri Ramakrishna
5 The Mother
1 SWAMI BRAHMANANDA
1 Saint John Eudes
1 Rene Guenon
1 Manapurush Swami Shivananda
1 J. Tauler. Institutions
1 Gary Gygax
1 D. T. Suzuki
1 Charles Dickens
1 A N Wilson
1 Sri Aurobindo
1 Epictetus
1 Aleister Crowley
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
21 Anonymous
10 Thomas Jefferson
9 Frederick Lenz
7 Juan de la Cruz
6 Roberto Bola o
6 Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 Jonathan Edwards
6 Hermann Hesse
6 Friedrich Nietzsche
6 Charles Haddon Spurgeon
5 William S Lind
5 The Mother
5 Rebecca Solnit
5 Paulo Coelho
5 Michel Foucault
5 Mark Rippetoe
5 Epictetus
5 C S Lewis
5 Charles Dickens
4 Timothy Ferriss
1:He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God. ~ Epictetus, #KEYS
2:When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect of the mountain exercises vanishes into the air. ~ D. T. Suzuki, #KEYS
3:Some of the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) are grounded in clinical and academic role assumption and role-playing exercises. ~ Gary Gygax, #KEYS
4:Ordinary souls, after long practice and devotional exercises, go into samadhi and do not return. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
5:One who, living amidst the temptations of the world, can discipline the mind by devotional exercises is the true hero. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
6:When going through spiritual exercises do not associate with those who never concern themselves with matters spiritual. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
7:You have to undertake strenuous spiritual exercises. One is vouchsafed the divine mood when one's mind becomes purified through meditation on God. ~ Manapurush Swami Shivananda, #KEYS
8:In past ages people would be busy with devotional exercises. In this Iron-Age, Kali Yuga, life resides in food and the mind is weak. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
9:Whoever performs devotional exercises with the belief that there is one God, is bound to attain Him, no matter what aspect He is worshiped ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
10:If you fail to see God after a few exercises do not lose heart. Go on patiently with your exercises and you are sure to obtain divine grace ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
11:He is the perfect athlete who surmounts temptations and the incline of his nature towards sin and exercises over his mind domination and empire. ~ J. Tauler. Institutions, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
12:Our wish, our object, our chief preoccupation must be to form Jesus in ourselves, to make his spirit, his devotion, his affections, his desires and his disposition live and reign there. All our religious exercises should be directed to this end. ~ Saint John Eudes, #KEYS
13:The name of the Lord purifies both the body & the mind. "I have taken the name of God; what have I to fear? What is there in the world to bind me? I have become immortal by taking the Lord's name with such a burning faith one should practice spiritual exercises ~ SWAMI BRAHMANANDA, #KEYS
14:It [the higher consciousness] may not come exactly according to the aspiration, but the aspiration is not ineffective. It keeps the consciousness open, prevents an inert state of acquiescence in all that comes and exercises a sort of pull on the sources of the higher consciousness. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, #KEYS
15:Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision. ~ Charles Dickens, #KEYS
16:Would you please explain to me how doing Yoga brings you near to the Divine? And what is the real meaning of Yoga? Is it only contortive body-exercises or is there a yoga of the mind also?
This has nothing to do with a spiritual life, not even with religion. X will explain to you in detail, but I can tell you that Yoga is not only an aspiration of the mind towards the Divine but also and chiefly a yearning of the heart.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#KEYS
17:The falsification of everything has been shown to be one of the characteristic features of our period, but falsification is not in itself subversion properly so-called, though contributing directly to the preparation for it. Perhaps the clearest indication of this is what may be called the falsification of language, taking the form of the misuse of certain words that have been diverted from their true meaning; misuse of this kind is to some extent imposed by constant suggestion on the part of everyone who exercises any kind of influence over the mentality of the public. ~ Rene Guenon, #KEYS
18:With many people custom and habit of which ethics is but the social expression are the things most difficult to give up: and it is a useful practice to break any habit just to get into the way of being free from that form of slavery. Hence we have practices for breaking up sleep, for putting our bodies into strained and unnatural positions, for doing difficult exercises of breathing -- all these, apart from any special merit they may have in themselves for any particular purpose, have the main merit that the man forces himself todo them despite any conditions that may exist. Having conquered internal resistance one may conquer external resistance more easily. In a steam boat the engine must first overcome its own inertia before it can attack the resistance of the water.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, Part 2, The Wand,#KEYS
19:
Sweet Mother, Just as there is a methodical progression of exercises for mental and physical education, isn't there a similar method to progress towards Sri Aurobindo's yoga?
It should vary with each individual.
Could you make a step-by-step programme for me to follow daily?
The mechanical regularity of a fixed programme is indispensable for physical, mental and vital development; but this mechanical rigidity has little or no effect on spiritual development where the spontaneity of an absolute sincerity is indispensable. Sri Aurobindo has written very clearly on this subject. And what he has written on it has appeared in The Synthesis Of Yoga.
However, as an initial help to set you on the path, I can tell you: (1) that on getting up, before starting the day, it is good to make an offering of this day to the Divine, an offering of all that one thinks, all that one is, all that one will do; (2) and at night, before going to sleep, it is good to review the day, taking note of all the times one has forgotten or neglected to make an offering of one's self or one's action, and to aspire or pray that these lapses do not recur. This is a minimum, a very small beginning - and it should increase with the sincerity of your consecration. 31 March 1965
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother, [T1],#KEYS
20:John Ruskin did not go to school. Nor did Queen Victoria, nor John Stuart Mill, George Eliot or Harriet Martineau. It would be absurd to suggest that Disraeli, Dickens, Newman or Darwin, to name four very different figures, who attended various schools for short spells in their boyhood, owed very much to their schooling. Had they been born in a later generation, school would have loomed much larger in their psychological stories, if only because they would have spent so much longer there, and found themselves preparing for public examinations. It is hard not to feel that a strong 'syllabus', or a school ethos, might have cramped the style of all four and that in their different ways - Disraeli, comparatively rich, anarchically foppish, indiscriminately bookish; Darwin, considered a dunce, but clearly - as he excitedly learned to shoot, to fish and to bird-watch - beginning his revolutionary relationship with the natural world; Newman, imagining himself an angel; Dickens, escaping the ignominy of his circumstances through theatrical and comedic internalized role-play - they were lucky to have been born before the Age of Control. For the well-meaning educational reforms of the 1860s were the ultimate extension of those Benthamite exercises in control which had begun in the 1820s and 1830s. Having exercised their sway over the poor, the criminals, the agricultural and industrial classes, the civil service and - this was next - the military, the controllers had turned to the last free spirits left, the last potential anarchists: the children. ~ A N Wilson, #KEYS
21:
What is the exact way of feeling that we belong to the Divine and that the Divine is acting in us?
You must not feel with your head (because you may think so, but that's something vague); you must feel with your sense-feeling. Naturally one begins by wanting it with the mind, because that is the first thing that understands. And then one has an aspiration here (pointing to the heart), with a flame which pushes you to realise it. But if you want it to be truly the thing, well, you must feel it.
You are doing something, suppose, for example, you are doing exercises, weight-lifting. Now suddenly without your knowing how it happened, suddenly you have the feeling that there is a force infinitely greater than you, greater, more powerful, a force that does the lifting for you. Your body becomes something almost non-existent and there is this Something that lifts. And then you will see; when that happens to you, you will no longer ask how it should be done, you will know. That does happen.
It depends upon people, depends upon what dominates in their being. Those who think have suddenly the feeling that it is no longer they who think, that there is something which knows much better, sees much more clearly, which is infinitely more luminous, more conscious in them, which organises the thoughts and words; and then they write. But if the experience is complete, it is even no longer they who write, it is that same Thing that takes hold of their hand and makes it write. Well, one knows at that moment that the little physical person is just a tiny insignificant tool trying to remain as quiet as possible in order not to disturb the experience.
Yes, at no cost must the experience be disturbed. If suddenly you say: "Oh, look, how strange it is!"...
How can we reach that state?
Aspire for it, want it. Try to be less and less selfish, but not in the sense of becoming nice to other people or forgetting yourself, not that: have less and less the feeling that you are a person, a separate entity, something existing in itself, isolated from the rest.
And then, above all, above all, it is that inner flame, that aspiration, that need for the light. It is a kind of - how to put it? - luminous enthusiasm that seizes you. It is an irresistible need to melt away, to give oneself, to exist only in the Divine.
At that moment you have the experience of your aspiration.
But that moment should be absolutely sincere and as integral as possible; and all this must occur not only in the head, not only here, but must take place everywhere, in all the cells of the body. The consciousness integrally must have this irresistible need.... The thing lasts for some time, then diminishes, gets extinguished. You cannot keep these things for very long. But then it so happens that a moment later or the next day or some time later, suddenly you have the opposite experience. Instead of feeling this ascent, and all that, this is no longer there and you have the feeling of the Descent, the Answer. And nothing but the Answer exists. Nothing but the divine thought, the divine will, the divine energy, the divine action exists any longer. And you too, you are no longer there.
That is to say, it is the answer to our aspiration. It may happen immediately afterwards - that is very rare but may happen. If you have both simultaneously, then the state is perfect; usually they alternate; they alternate more and more closely until the moment there is a total fusion. Then there is no more distinction. I heard a Sufi mystic, who was besides a great musician, an Indian, saying that for the Sufis there was a state higher than that of adoration and surrender to the Divine, than that of devotion, that this was not the last stage; the last stage of the progress is when there is no longer any distinction; you have no longer this kind of adoration or surrender or consecration; it is a very simple state in which one makes no distinction between the Divine and oneself. They know this. It is even written in their books. It is a commonly known condition in which everything becomes quite simple. There is no longer any difference. There is no longer that kind of ecstatic surrender to "Something" which is beyond you in every way, which you do not understand, which is merely the result of your aspiration, your devotion. There is no difference any longer. When the union is perfect, there is no longer any difference.
Is this the end of self-progress?
There is never any end to progress - never any end, you can never put a full stop there. ~ The Mother,#KEYS
22:The Science of Living
To know oneself and to control oneself
AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection.
All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness.
There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill.
Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness.
Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us.
In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.
When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
Bulletin, November 1950
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
23:Mental Education
OF ALL lines of education, mental education is the most widely known and practised, yet except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make it something very incomplete and in the end quite insufficient.
Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language.
A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases. Normally these phases follow one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may alternate or even proceed simultaneously. These five phases, in brief, are:
(1) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
(2) Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
(3) Organisation of one's ideas around a central idea, a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life.
(4) Thought-control, rejection of undesirable thoughts, to become able to think only what one wants and when one wants.
(5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.
It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be given.
Undeniably, what most impedes mental progress in children is the constant dispersion of their thoughts. Their thoughts flutter hither and thither like butterflies and they have to make a great effort to fix them. Yet this capacity is latent in them, for when you succeed in arousing their interest, they are capable of a good deal of attention. By his ingenuity, therefore, the educator will gradually help the child to become capable of a sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete absorption in the work in hand. All methods that can develop this faculty of attention from games to rewards are good and can all be utilised according to the need and the circumstances. But it is the psychological action that is most important and the sovereign method is to arouse in the child an interest in what you want to teach him, a liking for work, a will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more.
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
You will gradually show the child that everything can become an interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy.
In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his mind, one should see not only that he studies many varied topics, but above all that a single subject is approached in various ways, so that the child understands in a practical manner that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual problem, of considering it and solving it. This will remove all rigidity from his brain and at the same time it will make his thinking richer and more supple and prepare it for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental learning and, little by little, an aspiration for a truer source of knowledge will awaken in him.
Indeed, as the child grows older and progresses in his studies, his mind too ripens and becomes more and more capable of forming general ideas, and with them almost always comes a need for certitude, for a knowledge that is stable enough to form the basis of a mental construction which will permit all the diverse and scattered and often contradictory ideas accumulated in his brain to be organised and put in order. This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's thoughts. All contradictions can be transformed into complements, but for that one must discover the higher idea that will have the power to bring them harmoniously together. It is always good to consider every problem from all possible standpoints so as to avoid partiality and exclusiveness; but if the thought is to be active and creative, it must, in every case, be the natural and logical synthesis of all the points of view adopted. And if you want to make the totality of your thoughts into a dynamic and constructive force, you must also take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of this synthesis. The higher and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise.
It goes without saying that this work of organisation cannot be done once and for all. The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of new knowledge, enlarge its frame-work to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and reorganise its thoughts, so that each of them may find its true place in relation to the others and the whole remain harmonious and orderly.
All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great that they appear almost insurmountable.
And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions.
For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.
But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.
The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep.
When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity. Bulletin, November 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 2:He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them. ~ sun-tzu, @wisdomtrove 3:Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 4:Of all the mental and physical polluters of life, nothing exercises such a poisonous effect as fear. ~ elbert-hubbard, @wisdomtrove 5:When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air. ~ d-t-suzuki, @wisdomtrove 6:It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 7:& 8:I never used to bother with exercises. Now I spend at least 10 minutes each morning working out with small weights ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 9:The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 10:He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 11:Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 12:He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place when all the stars are rotating about it. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 13:Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 14:Yoga exercises are excellent; the speaker does them every day, for an hour or more; but that is merely physical exercise, to keep the body healthy, and so on. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove 15:I recommend computer science to people who practice meditation. The mental structures that are used in computer science are very similar exercises done in Buddhist monasteries. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 16:People can insert thoughts into your mind. This is more dangerous for psychic people. Use concentration exercises and read to combat this; boredom is an easy way to be drained. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 17:As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove 18:I have evolved my own exercises, for the muscles I wish to keep firm, and I know they are right for me because I can feel them putting the proper muscles into play as I exercise. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 19:Practice mediation and concentration exercises, and begin to think more about regaining your sensitivity by avoiding draining situations. Not because of fear but because of intelligence. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 20:Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 21:The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises. ~ leo-buscaglia, @wisdomtrove 22:During the time of Atlantis, members of the Mystery Schools discovered and developed specific concentration exercises that they found would radically increase and sharpen their innate psychic abilities. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove 23:When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature, and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others. ~ confucius, @wisdomtrove 24:The exercises of practical life are formative activities, a work of adaptation to the environment. Such adaptation to the environment and efficient functioning therein is the very essence of a useful education. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 25:It is tragic-comic to see that all this knowledge and understanding exercises no power at all over men's lives, that their lives do not express in the remotest way what they have understood, but rather the opposite. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 26:It is exactly in the repetition of the exercises that the education of the senses exists; not that the child shall know colors, forms or qualities, but that he refine his senses through an exercise of attention, comparison and judgment. ~ maria-montessori, @wisdomtrove 27:Everyday happiness means getting up in the morning, and you can't wait to finish your breakfast. You can't wait to do your exercises. You can't wait to put on your clothes. You can't wait to get out. And you can't wait to come home, because the soup is hot. ~ george-burns, @wisdomtrove 28:The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink ~ george-orwell, @wisdomtrove 29:The greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere. ~ david-hume, @wisdomtrove 30:When I sit down at the typewriter, I write. Someone once asked me if I had a fixed routine before I start, like setting up exercises, sharpening pencils, or having a drink of orange juice. I said, "No, the only thing I do before I start writing is to make sure that I'm close enough to the typewriter to reach the keys." ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 31:If we get away from the lazy and fuzzy thinking that is like a poison in our society - if we get away from all the bad television that we tend to watch - and begin to take up serious meditation and other sacred exercises, we will have a real revolution of consciousness. If that happens, the world will change by itself. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 32:The believing man hath the Holy Ghost; and where the Holy Ghost dwelleth, He will not suffer a man to be idle, butstirreth him up to all exercises of piety and godliness, and of true religion, to the love of God, to the patient suffering of afflictions, to prayer, to thanksgiving, and the exercise of charity towards all men. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 33:In the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises, and even pastimes for children; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world's culture delineated in faint outline. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 34:People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove 35:Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision. ~ charles-dickens, @wisdomtrove 36:I take exercise for each part of the body: arms, legs, back and whatever muscles are required to keep the body fit. I do at least 20 different exercises daily for my upper and lower body. Then I come here every morning to do calf raises and play tennis. If there is time in the afternoon, I play tennis again. At least three hours I spend on weightlifting and bodybuilding. ~ sri-chinmoy, @wisdomtrove 37:People who are unable to use their hands skillfully for all kinds of work, will not become good thinkers and will behave awkwardly in life. It is not the head alone, but the whole human being that is a logician. Activities demanding manual and bodily skill, such as knitting, leads to the enhancement of the faculty of judgment. This faculty is actually developed least of all by exercises in logic. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove 38:A week filled up with selfishness, and the Sabbath stuffed full of religious exercises, will make a good Pharisee, but a poor Christian. There are many persons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to wipe out the sins of the week. Now, God's altar stands from Sunday to Sunday, and the seventh day is no more for religion than any other. It is for rest. The whole seven are for religion, and one of them for rest. ~ henry-ward-beecher, @wisdomtrove 39:Every philosophy is complete in itself and, like a genuine work of art, contains the totality. Just as the works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, should not have appeared to them as mere preliminary exercises for their own work, but rather as a kindred force of the spirit, so, too reason cannot find in its own earlier forms mere useful preliminary exercises for itself. ~ georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel, @wisdomtrove 40:Frankly, I've never considered my own figure so exceptional; until quite recently, I seldom gave it any thought at all. My biggest single concern used to be getting enough to eat. Now I have to worry about eating too much. I never used to bother with exercises. Now I spend at least 10 minutes each morning working out with small weights. I have evolved my own exercises, for the muscles I wish to keep firm, and I know they are right for me because I can feel them putting the proper muscles into play as I exercise. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 41:Learn to self-conquest, persevere thus for a time, and you will perceive very clearly the advantage which you gain from it. As soon you apply yourself to orison, you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together: they seem like bees which return to the hive and there shut themselves up to work at the making of honey. At the first call of the will, they come back more and more quickly. At last, after countless exercises, of this kind, God disposes them to a state of utter rest and of perfect contemplation. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove 42:There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present. ~ washington-irving, @wisdomtrove 43:If God is the Lord of the world, He can do with it as he pleases. Suppose you have grown beautiful flowers in your garden, but decide to plant fruit trees in their place, won't you have to remove the flowers? If you have a fine house, but wish to build a larger and better one on the same plot, you demolish the old one. The freedom that is yours in small things, God exercises in great ones. In both is He, in destruction as well as in construction. The history of nations, families and individuals is the great Lila (divine sport) that He stages with Himself. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:transparent evasion exercises. ~ Alex Garland, #NFDB
2:Sometimes, things are just exercises. ~ Jami Attenberg, #NFDB
3:Of all exercises, walking is the best. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
4:Do back exercises. Pain is distracting. ~ Margaret Atwood, #NFDB
5:rubbed his temples. He hated these exercises. ~ K F Breene, #NFDB
6:Faith journeys are never simply intellectual exercises. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
7:it brings them to maturity and exercises no control over them;— ~ Lao Tzu, #NFDB
8:Do they have exercises for personality? You should do those. ~ Lauren Layne, #NFDB
9:Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
10:He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
11:He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about God. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
12:He who exercises wisdom, exercises the knowledge which is about God. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
13:Exercises cultivated self-reliance - the foundation of courage. ~ Alexander Suvorov, #NFDB
14:All exercises that you do with your own bodyweight are great. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
15:A long time ago, I stopped trying to look at projects as genre exercises. ~ Ron Howard, #NFDB
16:For me, box step-ups and power clean [exercises] is by far the best. ~ Greg Rutherford, #NFDB
17:Don’t train your ego. Train your muscles to perform the exercises correctly. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
18:Going for a walk is always helpful for me. I also love gratitude exercises. ~ Nikki DeLoach, #NFDB
19:In artillery exercises, women always win because they're more accurate. ~ Michelle Bachelet, #NFDB
20:Normally I make myself swim, do exercises. For zest I like going to the cinema. ~ Antonia Fraser, #NFDB
21:Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust. ~ Grover Cleveland, #NFDB
22:It needs to be said that faith-journeys are never simply intellectual exercises. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
23:Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
24:Do not avoid the stairs because they are really good exercises for the real life! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan, #NFDB
25:I wake up in the morning, I do a little stretching exercises, pick up the horn and play. ~ Herb Alpert, #NFDB
26:Spiritual disciplines are training exercises to give us power to live in the kingdom. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
27:There are endless exercises for arms, but the basics are best-chinups and pushups. ~ Sylvester Stallone, #NFDB
28:In college, before video games, we would amuse ourselves by posing programming exercises. ~ Ken Thompson, #NFDB
29:Doubtless it is very easy to fritter away our inward life in outward exercises, ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
30:the world exercises dominion by force and Christ and Christians conquer by service. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
31:Bodily exercises are to be done discreetly; not to be taken evenly and alike by all men. ~ Thomas a Kempis, #NFDB
32:He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them. ~ Sun Tzu, #NFDB
33:The imperative of war is to kill, and thus all wars are exercises in sanctioned murder. ~ Joseph E Persico, #NFDB
34:Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
35:Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
36:Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel, #NFDB
37:There is nothing he enjoys so much as a good walk, which he calls “the most social of exercises. ~ Will Thomas, #NFDB
38:Be sure to use different exercises with every workout. Always confuse the muscles in to new growth. ~ Shawn Ray, #NFDB
39:Those edges and turns teach control and discipline, just like finger exercises on the piano. ~ Barbara Ann Scott, #NFDB
40:Tools are used to accomplish things; by themselves, they have no value except as academic exercises. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
41:I will be a self-starting individual who exercises initiative in accomplishing my life’s goals. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
42:Stretching exercises in the morning for face & body or my body feels heavy and I can't do anything else. ~ Seungri, #NFDB
43:The hardship of the exercises is intended less to strengthen the back than to toughen the mind. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
44:The more seriously we understand the radical nature of sin, the more it exercises a restraint upon us. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
45:The most important lesson I've learned is that the most productive exercises are simple and compound. ~ Markus Ruhl, #NFDB
46:The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
47:The best way I know to define privilege is the ongoing benefits of past successful exercises of power. ~ Andy Crouch, #NFDB
48:Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.” Ideally, ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
49:Of all the mental and physical polluters of life, nothing exercises such a poisonous effect as fear. ~ Elbert Hubbard, #NFDB
50:The fight training was very extensive, a lot of stretching, a lot of coordination of balance exercises. ~ Jason Statham, #NFDB
51:We undertake certain spiritual exercises to achieve alignment with the creative energy of the universe. ~ Julia Cameron, #NFDB
52:When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air. ~ D T Suzuki, #NFDB
53:I love practice. It is when a coach exercises the most control over the improvement of his or her team. ~ Mike Krzyzewski, #NFDB
54:We used these rifles in field exercises to simulate a lot of deadlier and nastier aimed weapons, too. ~ Robert A Heinlein, #NFDB
55:There is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called sportsmanship. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
56:It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
57:I have yet to see a career that is similar in benefit as computer science for doing the advanced exercises. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
58:Most of the supposedly Sufi organizations, exercises and “orders” are in fact only of archaeological interest. ~ Idries Shah, #NFDB
59:When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect of the mountain exercises vanishes into the air. ~ D. T. Suzuki, #NFDB
60:the good of man, and likewise his ill, lies in how he exercises his choice, while everything else is nothing to us, ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
61:Often the aspirant is not ready to start these two exercises until after one or several glimpses of the Overself. ~ Paul Brunton, #NFDB
62:Roughly, execution and understanding are merely different exercises of knowledge of the tricks of the same trade. ~ Gilbert Ryle, #NFDB
63:Yoga exercises are the best connecting tools for unity, human dignity, health, equality, global peace and compassion. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
64:Goethe’s Faust, Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship ~ Susan Elia MacNeal, #NFDB
65:My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
66:I never used to bother with exercises. Now I spend at least 10 minutes each morning working out with small weights ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
67:Harry [Styles] is like a younger brother. We do exercises together then he asks me to prepare a sandwich for the effort. ~ Liam Payne, #NFDB
68:I think in retrospect that all those 'alternative'modes of living were little more than exercises in arrested development. ~ Will Self, #NFDB
69:It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper,' said Mr. Bumble. 'So cry away. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
70:Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner. ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #NFDB
71:The logical and extralogical exercises you do in meditation are very similar to advanced systems analysis and programming. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
72:It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper, said Mr. Bumble. So cry away. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
73:I was able to work with two heads. If anything, doing ads and other commercial work were at least exercises in discipline. ~ Garry Winogrand, #NFDB
74:By constant practices, deliberate repetitions and uninterrupted exercises, leaders go from zero to hero. They don't quit. ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
75:Some of the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) are grounded in clinical and academic role assumption and role-playing exercises. ~ Gary Gygax, #NFDB
76:It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper,’ said Mr. Bumble. ‘So cry away. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
77:Some of the roots of role-playing games (RPGs) are grounded in clinical and academic role assumption and role-playing exercises. ~ Gary Gygax, #NFDB
78:I have a bad neighbour – bad, that is, for himself. For me, though, he is good: he exercises my powers of fairness and sociability. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
79:I believe that every human has a finite number of heart-beats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. ~ Buzz Aldrin, #NFDB
80:towed a banner the others were trying to shoot at. These exercises were done using real bullets, which seems like a terrible idea, ~ Scott Kelly, #NFDB
81:Trauma-Informed Interventions: Activities, Exercises and Assignments to Move the Client and Therapy Forward. PESI, 2013. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
82:I believe that every human has a finite number of heart-beats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. ~ Buzz Aldrin, #NFDB
83:There is a little gland in the brain in which the soul exercises its functions in a more particular way than in the other parts. ~ Rene Descartes, #NFDB
84:I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. ~ Neil Armstrong, #NFDB
85:I do the same exercises I did 50 years ago and they still work. I eat the same food I ate 50 years ago and it still works. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
86:There is a word for such exercises we Germans do,” Canaris said. “Vergangenheitsbewältigung—coming to terms with the past.” Karl ~ Gregory Benford, #NFDB
87:When Heaven is about to confer a great office upon you, it first exercises your mind with suffering and your sinews and bones with toil. ~ Mencius, #NFDB
88:Some things stay forever, but most of the exercises, practices, and teachings end up disappearing down a black hole. Or so it seems. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
89:The very freedom which the sinner supposedly exercises in his self-indulgence is only another proof that he is ruled by the tyrant. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
90:I’ve developed a pretty good survival system involving nothing more than mental alertness exercises, positive thinking and amphetamines. ~ David Wong, #NFDB
91:Ignorance is worst when it amounts to ignorance of God, and knowledge is best when it exercises itself upon the name of God. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
92:The Stanford prison experiment came out of class exercises in which I encouraged students to understand the dynamics of prison life. ~ Philip Zimbardo, #NFDB
93:What would a brain do if not these sorts of exercises? I have no idea how people function without near-constant chaos. I'd lose my mind. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
94:When I stopped doing ballet, I started training in the pool. I would do my barre exercises in the water, because that prevents injuries. ~ Summer Glau, #NFDB
95:Primal Essential Movements—four of the most simple and effective exercises ever known to humankind: pushups, pullups, squats, and planks. ~ Mark Sisson, #NFDB
96:had shown that patients who had been paralyzed for twenty years were capable of making late recoveries with brain-stimulating exercises. ~ Norman Doidge, #NFDB
97:The education of the senses has, as its aim, the refinement of the differential perception of stimuli by means of repeated exercises. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
98:The tyranny of the many would be when one body takes over the rights of others, and then exercises its power to change the laws in its favor. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
99:Together they went to the chamber and performed a number of erotic exercises, after which Cugel collapsed into a sleep of utter exhaustion, ~ Jack Vance, #NFDB
100:The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
101:When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature, and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
102:You try to improvise in a compositional manner. You don't just do some stupid lick you've been practicing, scale form exercises or something. ~ Terry Bozzio, #NFDB
103:He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
104:Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
105:War makes extremely heavy demands on the soldier's strength and nerves. For this reason, make heavy demands on your men in peacetime exercises. ~ Erwin Rommel, #NFDB
106:Every fact and every work exercises a fresh persuasion over every age and every new species of man. History always enunciates new truths. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
107:He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it. ~ Confucius, #NFDB
108:I’ve given it to, maybe ten of them have actually opened the book and done the exercises. Of those ten, seven have had books, movies, TV shows, ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
109:Any of the exercises that you start out with will get the kundalini moving. You don't have to stay with them for the entire period of meditation. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
110:SPIRITUAL EXERCISES whereby to conquer oneself, and order one's life, without being influenced in one's decision by any inordinate affection. ~ Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
111:Experiential team exercises can be valuable tools for enhancing teamwork as long as they are layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes. ~ Patrick Lencioni, #NFDB
112:I've always said that I think one of the best and cheapest ways to become healthier and happier is through mindfulness exercises like meditation. ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
113:So I ask that these papers be taken for what they merely are: exercises, trials, tryouts, a means of displaying possibilities, not establishing fact. ~ Erving Goffman, #NFDB
114:All one’s feeling goes into practicing exercises, many of which are set to music. Therefore, somehow dancing with boyfriends doesn’t attract me. ~ Ludmilla Tourischeva, #NFDB
115:An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth. ~ Helen Schucman, #NFDB
116:I have an easy tendency to stumble and fall, which is not a good thing in an 84-year-old guy, so when I brush my teeth, then I do balancing exercises. ~ Walter Mischel, #NFDB
117:Whatever kind of workout you settle on, it should include the Big Three of exercise for health and fitness-aerobics, resistance exercises, and stretching. ~ Jane Fonda, #NFDB
118:SPIRITUAL EXERCISES whereby to conquer oneself, and order one's life, without being influenced in one's decision by any inordinate affection. ~ Saint Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
119:How does these things happen? How do we go mad in small ways and calmly work the madness into our everyday little exercises...?
Little by little... ~ Jonathan Carroll,#NFDB
120:I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs. ~ Barry Levinson, #NFDB
121:Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
122:He is the perfect athlete who surmounts temptations and the incline of his nature towards sin and exercises over his mind domination and empire. ~ J. Tauler. Institutions, #NFDB
123:It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very great power over human life and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev, #NFDB
124:Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
125:Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
126:Wealth announces itself with what's easy to break and impossible to clean. The chairs were all curvy works of art that turned sitting into yoga exercises. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
127:Modern discussions of the possibility of tragedy are not exercises in literary analysis; they are exercises in cultural diagnostics, more or less disguised. ~ Susan Sontag, #NFDB
128:Every day I try to do breathing exercises, meditation, and yoga. These things sound awfully cliche, but they help me slow down and try to point to a truth. ~ David Duchovny, #NFDB
129:teachers who pander to minority students by turning their courses into rap sessions and ethnic navel-gazing exercises capture their interest and allegiance. ~ Thomas Sowell, #NFDB
130:Private prayer is the drill ground for our more public exercises, neither can we long neglect it without being out of order when before the people. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
131:The optometry industry profits immensely from most people’s blindness to the fact that civilization has made eye exercises a necessity for most people. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana, #NFDB
132:I think imaginative exercises can have a profound impact on the future - what you can imagine can sometimes turn into something you can figure out how to build. ~ Vinton Cerf, #NFDB
133:You don't learn to write by going through a series of preset writing exercises. You learn to write by grappling with a real subject that truly matters to you. ~ Ralph Fletcher, #NFDB
134:I hate to try to be that person in my own skin, in my own way, in my own head, not through exercises or anything else, just by, I guess, belief, concentration. ~ Elizabeth Taylor, #NFDB
135:the reason that you exercise is actually more important than the exercises that you do perform. The reason can promote your good health or actually impede it. Thus ~ Jane Roberts, #NFDB
136:He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again. ~ Saint John of the Cross, #NFDB
137:Yoga exercises are excellent; the speaker does them every day, for an hour or more; but that is merely physical exercise, to keep the body healthy, and so on. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, #NFDB
138:Men of all ages have the same inclinations, over which reason exercises no control. Thus, wherever men are found, there are follies, ay, and the same follies. ~ Jean de La Fontaine, #NFDB
139:I exercise regularly; I make it a point to spend some time in the gym. It is important for people to enjoy their exercises, so choose a form of exercise that makes you happy. ~ Rain, #NFDB
140:I think my very earliest stories were all intellectual exercises and I was writing from experiences I had never had about characters who were about an inch deep. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
141:Computer science is fascinating. As you study computer science, you will find that you develop your mind. It is literally like doing Buddhist exercises all day long. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
142:I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
143:I didn't go to acting school, so it was great to be able to rehearse for a month or two, to workshop, and be with a director who even gave me acting exercises. ~ Charlotte Gainsbourg, #NFDB
144:That being said, experiential team exercises can be valuable tools for enhancing teamwork as long as they are layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes. ~ Patrick Lencioni, #NFDB
145:We watched the field exercises first and then sat in on a class by. Shafi Khan on classic attack formations. It was a lucid talk with ample diagrams and case-studies. ~ Kiran Nagarkar, #NFDB
146:Oh yes as a matter of fact it's quite interesting that exercises can be conducted which demonstrate conclusively that there are memories which exist prior to this life. ~ L Ron Hubbard, #NFDB
147:The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
148:it. Philosophy may instruct men to be calm under their troubles; but Christianity teaches them to be joyful, because such exercises proceed from love and not fury in God. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
149:One of the first lessons one learns is that the mind is a powerful factor in everything you do, including those exercises that seem to require a maximum of physical strength. ~ Joe Hyams, #NFDB
150:Judo has helped me to understand that pictorial space is above all the product of spiritual exercises. Judo is, in fact, the discovery by the human body of a spiritual space. ~ Yves Klein, #NFDB
151:Life was a series of complicated tactical exercises, as complicated as the alignments at Waterloo, thought out on a brass bedstead among the crumbs of sausage roll. [p107] ~ Graham Greene, #NFDB
152:Therefore if a man has in his heart that love to God which the Law enjoins, it is perfectly lawful, nay, laudable in him to take part in exercises which promote it. ~ Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, #NFDB
153:Especially when the original critique is sharply worded, the reply and the rejoinder are often exercises in what I have called sarcasm for beginners and advanced sarcasm. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
154:I get into certain yoga positions at times, when Im working out and for exercises. I use a little of it in some of my meditation, but I chant now and that sort of replaced it. ~ John Astin, #NFDB
155:Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. In life it is mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies. ~ Heinrich Heine, #NFDB
156:Remember, planning the future and reflecting on the past are valuable exercises, but doing this throughout your day interferes with what is in front of you—your present. ~ Travis Bradberry, #NFDB
157:Today, because photography exercises such a profound influence upon the study of art, we tend to disregard the way in which prints continue to function as information. ~ Edward Lucie Smith, #NFDB
158:Sometimes I think of blogging as finger exercises for a violinist; sometimes I think of it as mulching a garden. It is incredibly useful and helpful to my "real" writing. ~ Kate Christensen, #NFDB
159:Muslim students would go through a bunch of feel-good exercises and leave with the impression that without Islamic contributions to science, there would be no U.S. space program. ~ Brad Thor, #NFDB
160:He who, though dressed in fine apparel, exercises tranquillity, is quiet, subdued, restrained, chaste, and has ceased to find fault with all other beings, he indeed is an ascetic. ~ Max Muller, #NFDB
161:I have a skill set that often helps me get through hurtful moments or experiences. However, sometimes when the pain cuts really deep, my normal go-to exercises just won't work. ~ Nikki DeLoach, #NFDB
162:Modern life cannot be constructed on . . . physically strenuous principles. A great deal of work is sedentary, and most manual work exercises only a few specialized muscles. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
163:I recommend computer science to people who practice meditation. The mental structures that are used in computer science are very similar exercises done in Buddhist monasteries. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
164:A word says more than a thousand images. Exercises for the visually inclined: illustrate "appreciation", "humor", "software", "education", "inalienable rights", "elegance", "fact". ~ Erik Naggum, #NFDB
165:As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. ~ Edgar Allan Poe, #NFDB
166:Except for naval and air exercises, our military should be stationed on American soil, where service men and women can lead normal lives in close proximity to family and friends. ~ Camille Paglia, #NFDB
167:I have evolved my own exercises, for the muscles I wish to keep firm, and I know they are right for me because I can feel them putting the proper muscles into play as I exercise. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
168:My Yoga practice is number one, straight physical exercises are number two, and when I can do neither, I focus on the breath. Make sure I drink enough water and get enough sleep. ~ Leilani Bishop, #NFDB
169:People can insert thoughts into your mind. This is more dangerous for psychic people. Use concentration exercises and read to combat this; boredom is an easy way to be drained. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
170:There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it. ~ Simone Weil, #NFDB
171:Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, R. J. Hollingdale trans., C16., #NFDB
172:That must drive you insa— Oh please. What would a brain do if not these sorts of exercises? I have no idea how people function without near-constant internal chaos. I’d lose my mind. ~ Dave Eggers, #NFDB
173:Mindfulness exercises produce literal changes in the brain’s connections, significantly affecting how well a person interacts with other people and adapts to difficult situations. ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
174:There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition. . . ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
175:Work is not a drag for me. I like to get here early, hang out, catch up with the boys. I'll go in the cage and hit, do my exercises. I try to keep it fun and find ways to enjoy it. ~ Carlos Delgado, #NFDB
176:It is hard to produce work in New York. You kind of have to center yourself - do some Zen meditation exercises and just focus. It is very distracting, and money, of course, is an issue. ~ Toyin Odutola, #NFDB
177:Practice mediation and concentration exercises, and begin to think more about regaining your sensitivity by avoiding draining situations. Not because of fear but because of intelligence. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
178:I've just looked for ideas and great characters that I relate to and that I think I can offer something to the audience, and I no longer look at them as experiments or genre exercises at all. ~ Ron Howard, #NFDB
179:God is the foundation of all authority, He exercises that foundation because He is the author and the owner of His creation. He is the foundation upon which all other authority stands or falls. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
180:How's things, buddy?" Trey asks after we run through a few finger-warming exercises. I realize this is what people call small talk. I also realize the world would be a better place without it. ~ Julie Buxbaum, #NFDB
181:Since the trainee is both inefficient and unadapted, only a few basic exercises should be used, and they should be repeated frequently to establish the basic motor pathways and basic strength. ~ Mark Rippetoe, #NFDB
182:One night, Don Henley called, and I told him, 'I'm washing dishes and bike shorts.' He said, 'It's in the domestic exercises of life that one will find the biggest inspiration.' And he was right. ~ Sheryl Crow, #NFDB
183:Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
184:Giddon broke off a piece and handed the loaf to Oll. “Are you angry that we weren’t performing strength exercises when you arrived, Katsa? Should we have been doing gymnastics in the treetops? ~ Kristin Cashore, #NFDB
185:Prepare yourself for the world, as athletes used to do for their exercises; oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do. ~ Lord Chesterfield, #NFDB
186:Quality reading exercises the crucial dialogue with yourself, the dialogue you must undergo to become yourself, to know where on the vista of existence you can place your own identity and awareness. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
187:In one way an arrow moves, in another way the mind. The mind indeed, both when it exercises caution and when it is employed about inquiry, moves straight onward not the less, and to its object. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
188:In particular, aerobic exercises, like running and biking, are best at boosting serotonin. Interestingly, if you try to do too much exercise or feel forced to do it, it may not have the right effect. ~ Alex Korb, #NFDB
189:Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
190:But it was her face that he saw through the rest of his appointment. Through the balance and strength exercises, the electrical stimulation, and finally the massage that soothed his screaming muscles. ~ Lucy Score, #NFDB
191:Forgive me for using the term 'fat little brother'. It is not a criticism, rather a suggestion that he do some exercises and go on a diet, don't you think? I'm doing this for the gentleman's health. ~ Fidel Castro, #NFDB
192:We must not inquire too curiously into the absolute value of literature. Enough that it amuses and exercises us. At least it leaves us where we were. It names things, but does not add things. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
193:GUYS,” Owen Meany said. That spring, less than a month before Gravesend Academy’s graduation exercises, the TV showed us a map of Thailand; five thousand U.S. Marines and fifty jet fighters were being ~ John Irving, #NFDB
194:The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises. ~ Leo F Buscaglia, #NFDB
195:Amateur musicians, for example, are more likely to spend their practice time playing music, whereas pros are more likely to work through tedious exercises or focus on specific, difficult parts of pieces. ~ Joshua Foer, #NFDB
196:Domination is not that solid and global kind of domination that one person exercises over others, or one group over another, but the manifold forms of domination that can be exercised within society. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
197:You only do exercises in art school. That's not the real thing. A little bit tells you so much. You have to find your own self. And you don't know what you are! But that's what you have to search for. ~ Harry Callahan, #NFDB
198:Aerobics is a really whacked-out way to get going. The loud rock 'n' roll music and the teachers standing before you, doing the exercises and screaming into the microphone, "Go! Go! Go for the burn!" ~ Michael Richards, #NFDB
199:Reaching your potential is not simply about dreaming or being idealistic, It is a process that involve specific actions, exercises, discipline and hard work. It is challenging, rewarding and unending. ~ Robert S Kaplan, #NFDB
200:During the time of Atlantis, members of the Mystery Schools discovered and developed specific concentration exercises that they found would radically increase and sharpen their innate psychic abilities. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
201:Having heard Clifford Brown play all those fast runs, I used to really practice Clarke trumpet exercises all day long so that I could play fast. That's all I wanted to do. I was like a child with a toy. ~ Wynton Marsalis, #NFDB
202:Reaching your potential is not simply about dreaming or being idealistic. It is a process that involves specific actions, exercises, discipline, and hard work. It is challenging, rewarding, and unending. ~ Robert S Kaplan, #NFDB
203:The gymnasium of running, walking on stilts, climbing, etc. stells and makes hardy single powers and muscles, but dancing, like a corporeal poesy, embellishes, exercises, and equalizes all the muscles at once. ~ Jean Paul, #NFDB
204:A humanitarian as opposed to a group ethic requires the most difficult of all imaginative exercises: role reversal – putting yourself in the place of those you despise, or pity, or simply do not understand ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
205:All behavior involves conscious or unconscious selection of particular actions out of all those which are physically possible to the actor and to those persons over whom he exercises influence and authority. ~ Herbert Simon, #NFDB
206:Only my dead body would allow her to walk out that door." Warner exercises his jaw and spits blood on the floor.
"You, I would kill for pleasure," he says to Adam. "But Juliette is the one I want forever. ~ Tahereh Mafi,#NFDB
207:Core strength and stability is very important to me. Tennis is all about rotation of the body and my ability to create power. I incorporate a lot of abdominal, back and glute exercises into my gym sessions. ~ Samantha Stosur, #NFDB
208:Swami Vivekananda: The genuine orator exercises a sort of hypnotism over his audience. I have listened to many orators, Indian, English and American; but Keshub Chunder Sen is easily the greatest of all. ~ Keshub Chandra Sen, #NFDB
209:All behavior involves conscious or unconscious selection of particular actions out of all those which are physically possible to the actor and to those persons over whom he exercises influence and authority. ~ Herbert A Simon, #NFDB
210:I started reading all these men's magazines, trying to follow all the tips: what you're supposed to wear, what you're supposed to have, things you're supposed to say, and all the exercises you're supposed to do. ~ Ryan Gosling, #NFDB
211:The exercises of practical life are formative activities, a work of adaptation to the environment. Such adaptation to the environment and efficient functioning therein is the very essence of a useful education. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
212:As basic rules of a language must be practiced continually, and therefore are never fixed, so exercises toward distinct color effects never are done or over. New and different cases will be discovered time and again. ~ Josef Albers, #NFDB
213:The bad things about theatre get balanced by the good things in film and vice versa. So to tell you the truth, I love it when I can go back and forth - it feeds different parts of you and exercises different muscles. ~ Willem Dafoe, #NFDB
214:... it may express the solitary's conviction that he is not good enough for most of the visible exercises of the community, that his own part is to carry out some hidden function, in the community's spiritual cellar. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
215:I was an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises. A message would go round the department: 'Please give a list of your recent publications.' And I would send back a statement: 'None.' ~ Peter Higgs, #NFDB
216:Learn to control your emotions. Be able to glide through them. By practicing concentration exercises and meditation, you will find that when strong emotions strike, you will gain the ability to not be swayed by them. ~ Frederick Lenz, #NFDB
217:I was seeing everything through pain. I would roll out of bed and do my exercises. I had to do that to work out the remainder of the pain pills. I would drink coffee and go to the set and plunge myself so far into my work. ~ Dick York, #NFDB
218:It is tragic-comic to see that all this knowledge and understanding exercises no power at all over men's lives, that their lives do not express in the remotest way what they have understood, but rather the opposite. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
219:Tofu and futons. The adepts of Orientalism seem to spend most of their lives reclining. They can't quite summon the energy to crawl up onto a chair. Even their Yogic exercises are carried out in a prone or sitting position. ~ Edward Abbey, #NFDB
220:A sacred thing has to be used on sacred and lawful occasions. A kirpan is undoubtedly a symbol of strength, which adorns the possessor only if he exercises amazing restraint over himself and uses it against enormous odds… ~ Rajmohan Gandhi, #NFDB
221:In the United States religion exercises but little influence upon the laws and upon the details of public opinion, but it directs the manners of the community, and by regulating domestic life it regulates the state. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
222:One way to reach a state of mindfulness is through meditation, which helps filter the information that reaches us from the outside world. It can also be achieved through breathing exercises, yoga, and body scans. ~ Hector Garcia Puigcerver, #NFDB
223:The true Masters never appear in public teaching large classes or groups concerning occult exercises, but come privately to their disciples and instruct each on individually. ~ Manly P Hall, What the Ancient Wisdom Expects of Its Disciples, #NFDB
224:Whether we like it or not, the ultimate goal of every science is to become trivial, to become a well-controlled apparatus for the solution of schoolbook exercises or for practical application in the construction of engines. ~ Aharon Katzir, #NFDB
225:Good for you,” Portnov said. “And now show me exercises fifty-two through fifty-four. Simultaneously, don’t forget. Three branches of the process must be led in parallel, with a half-measure step between them. Concentrate. ~ Marina Dyachenko, #NFDB
226:The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert. ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
227:Somatic Exercises can change how we live our lives, how we believe that our minds and bodies interrelate, how powerful we think we are in controlling our lives, and how responsible we should be in taking care of our total being. ~ Thomas Hanna, #NFDB
228:We are not a country that subscribes to policing any part of the world. The areas we are comfortable with are capacity building, intelligence sharing, exchange of ships, call on each other's ports, joint training and exercises. ~ Salman Khurshid, #NFDB
229:And the good ruler is precisely the one who exercises his power as it ought to be exercised, that is, simultaneously exercising his power over himself. And it is the power over oneself that thus regulates one's power over others. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
230:It is when the new community is most obviously distinct from the world – in its values, standards and lifestyle – that it presents the world with a radically attractive alternative and so exercises its greatest influence for Christ. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
231:I love to read. I love to stretch. In the morning, I get up, and if I'm not in a hurry, I will lie on the floor on a rug, look through some books and magazines, and maybe listen to music and try to do stretching exercises to tune up. ~ Jackson Browne, #NFDB
232:Many are the exercises of power reserved to the States wherein a uniformity of proceeding would be advantageous to all. Such are quarantines, health laws, regulations of the press, banking institutions, training militia, etc., etc. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
233:Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
234:The Iranian leaders describe the American government exactly the way American analysts describe the Iranian one, as an opaque, factionalized system with competing power centers, over which the president exercises very limited authority. ~ Ali Khamenei, #NFDB
235:But after the nightmares started, the incessant bouts of racing heart and clammy palms, he’d gone to a therapist. The breathing exercises and the antianxiety meds had helped some. But he still dealt with nightmares and lack of sleep, which ~ Liz Talley, #NFDB
236:I believe that political power exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions which look as if they have nothing in common with the political power, and as if they are independent of it, while they are not. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
237:I have been doodling with ink and watercolor on paper all my life. It's my way of stirring up my imagination to see what I find hidden in my head. I call the results dream pictures, fantasy sketches, and even brain-sharpenin g exercises. ~ Maurice Sendak, #NFDB
238:That the equalization of property exercises an influence on political society was clearly understood even by some of the old legislators. Laws were made by Solon and others prohibiting an individual from possessing as much land as he pleased. ~ Aristotle, #NFDB
239:It is exactly in the repetition of the exercises that the education of the senses exists; not that the child shall know colors, forms or qualities, but that he refine his senses through an exercise of attention, comparison and judgment. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
240:Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today's youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active. ~ Richard M Nixon, #NFDB
241:While everyone exercises influence, the size and strength of our influence depends upon our effort. No one leads well without paying the price of discipline. As we push ourselves to grow and to learn, we enlarge our sphere of influence. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
242:Some people let themselves die when their time came. Some grappled to a reasonable facsimile of life, sustained by insurance contracts, phylacteric trusts, and premortem exercises. Others were Vogel. He just died, decayed, and stuck around. ~ Max Gladstone, #NFDB
243:Fishing, if I a fisher may protest, Of pleasures is the sweetest of sports the best, Of exercises the most excellent, Of recreations the most innocent. But now the sport is marred, and why you ask? Fishes decrease, and fishers multiply. ~ Thomas Bastard, #NFDB
244:In my opinion, using creation and evolution as topics for critical-thinking exercises in primary and secondary schools is virtually guaranteed to confuse students about evolution and may lead them to reject one of the major themes in science. ~ Eugenie Scott, #NFDB
245:I guess I am basically most comfortable when I'm alone. As a kid, I was very much a loner. I love long distance running and long distance biking. A director once pointed out that those are all very isolated exercises you do for hours at a time. ~ Kevin Conroy, #NFDB
246:I will not speak to Vladimir Putin personally until we've rebuilt the 6th Fleet a little bit right under his nose; rebuilt the missile defense program in Poland right under his nose; and conducted a few military exercises in the Baltic states. ~ Carly Fiorina, #NFDB
247:At about the same time that St. Augustine lived, the Roman jurists ruled, under the Code of Mathematicians and Evil-Doers, that “to learn the art of geometry and to take part in public exercises, an art as damnable as mathematics, are forbidden. ~ Morris Kline, #NFDB
248:Buddhify has over 80 custom guided audio meditation tracks on various topics. Omvana, with dozens of guided meditations by very famous authors, teachers, and spiritual celebrities. Headspace has a series of 10-minute guided exercises for your mind. ~ S J Scott, #NFDB
249:Keep records of your fitness progress throughout your training. Chart all of the food you eat, the exercises you complete, and even the amount of sleep you get each night. Refer back to your records to see where things went right or went wrong. ~ Robert Cheeke, #NFDB
250: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
251:The best way to prepare for a night out with a Shakespearean tragedy is to do a bit of reading up in the afternoon, eat a light supper - perhaps Welsh rarebit - and then arrive early to do some stretching exercises in the foyer before curtain-up. ~ Arthur Smith, #NFDB
252:Doing 20 minutes of stretching, light weights and floor exercises three times a week takes the same amount of time as a long coffee break - and eating a tuna fish salad, sardines on toast or scrambled eggs is surely preferable to a Big Mac or KFC. ~ Joan Collins, #NFDB
253:A humanitarian as opposed to a group ethic requires the most difficult of all imaginative exercises: role reversal – putting yourself in the place of those you despise, or pity, or simply do not understand. Not only do most religions not do this. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
254:I think we have started accelerating over the past years. It's a modernization of NATO. It's at air, it's at sea, it's undersea, it's in cyber. Estonia in 2007, hit by Russian cyber-attacks. So what you see there with those exercises are critical. ~ Michael Leiter, #NFDB
255:Sex and breathing are about the only two things that generally work best when they are least worried about. That, I suppose, is why the same sophisticated age that has poisoned the world with Feminism is also polluting it with Breathing Exercises. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
256:Is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened?
As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning.
Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?
To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise. ~ Anthony de Mello,#NFDB
257:I work barefooted on balance plates. I do explosive squats on balance surfaces that your body has to use muscles it's not used to. It's all kinds of exercises that your body isn't really used to, and it tricks your body into getting stronger every time. ~ Troy Polamalu, #NFDB
258:I do a lot of exercises where I'm so tired that I'm not supposed to do the last rep. What that does is it teaches me that no matter how far I am, how hard I've fallen, I'm never out of the fight. I just take that with me every time I'm in the weight room. ~ Dwight Howard, #NFDB
259:I like sports, and swimming is my favorite. Doing physical exercises keeps one fit and healthy and helps one work more efficiently. I think we all need to strike a balance between work and relaxation. This can keep us energetic and help us do our job better. ~ Xi Jinping, #NFDB
260:With the freeing of the captive and the founding of a new kingdom, the patriarchal age comes into force. It is not yet patriarchal in the sense that the female is subjugated, only in the sense that the male exercises independent control over his children. ~ Erich Neumann, #NFDB
261:I don't really believe in cardio. I train with a very high intensity, which in turn gives it an aerobic effect. I like to use anaerobic resistance type movements or exercises. I don't believe in sitting on a Stairmaster or a bike for hours, that's just not me. ~ Kai Greene, #NFDB
262:Being passionately interested in religion, and unable to speak about it, I wrote down my thoughts in Greek letters, in a book which I headed “Greek exercises”, in which, to make concealment more complete, I adopted an original system of phonetic spelling. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
263:It doesn't hurt me on a personal level, but it hurts me on a larger level of like, why are people so stupid? Why do we have to go through these unnecessary exercises. Fight crime, don't fight me. If you really want to make a difference don't fight me or Fugazi. ~ Ian MacKaye, #NFDB
264:For being human, we remember and forget. We stray and return, fall down and get up, and cling and let go, again and again. But it is this straying and returning that makes life interesting, this clinging and letting go - damned as it is - that exercises the heart. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
265:Routines may include taking a warm bath or a relaxing walk in the evening, or practicing meditation/relaxation exercises. Psychologically, the completion of such a practice tells your mind and body that the day's work is over and you are free to relax and sleep. ~ Andrew Weil, #NFDB
266:The incentive to peacemaking is love, but it degenerates into appeasement whenever justice is ignored. To forgive and to ask for forgiveness are both costly exercises. All authentic Christian peacemaking exhibits the love and justice-and so the pain-of the cross. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
267:The presence of cats exercises such a magic influence upon highly organized men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces of the animal kingdom...have been the favorite animal of a Mahommed, Cardinal Richelieu, Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland. ~ Leopold von Sacher Masoch, #NFDB
268:I eat everything, that's a problem. I don't have discipline. My favorite dish is the Caribbean. Meat, rice, lots of grains. But I do like to do exercises. Lately, I've been having capoeira classes and lots of cardiovascular exercises, such as jogging and cycling. ~ Ricky Martin, #NFDB
269:It is well known, that the best productions of the best human intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as initiatives for entering the great University of God after death. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
270:Many self-help gurus teach you new forms of denial and pump you up with exercises that feel good in the short term, while ignoring the underlying issue. Remember, nobody who is actually happy has to stand in front of a mirror and tell himself that he’s happy. Highs ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
271:One of the great exercises you can do is to stop and acknowledge the colors around you... If you're constantly distracting yourself, then you're never really experiencing anything fully. It can cause you to feel like you have no center, like nothing is grounding you. ~ Sheryl Crow, #NFDB
272:Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war? ~ Georg C Lichtenberg, #NFDB
273:I agree we have enough books that attempt to explain why God allows suffering, presumably in a way that lets God off the hook. And while much smarter men than I have constructed elaborate systems in this pursuit, they are by definition exercises in speculation. ~ Tullian Tchividjian, #NFDB
274:Much of the self-help world is predicated on peddling highs to people rather than solving legitimate problems. Many self-help gurus teach you new forms of denial and pump you up with exercises that feel good in the short term, while ignoring the underlying issue (p.33) ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
275:Whoever is willing to enter the magic path should regard it as his sacred duty to practice regular exercises. He ought to be kind, generous and tolerant with his fellow men, but relentless and hard with himself. Only such behavior will be followed by success in magic. ~ Franz Bardon, #NFDB
276:Similarly for marking exercises, quantitative exercises, maybe not so much in mathematics, but certainly problem sets in physics, chemistry, and engineering and things like that where answers and methods are clear cut, absolutely. I would like to see that done online. ~ David Gelernter, #NFDB
277:The hardship of the exercises is intended less to strengthen the back than to toughen the mind. The Spartans say that any army may win while it still has its legs under it; the real test comes when all strength is fled and the men must produce victory on will alone. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
278:In China the integration of these methods is called Qigong (Chi Kung), meaning “vitality enhancement practice.” In India it is called Yoga. Both of these Asian traditions of self-healing have been called “internal exercises,” “moving meditation,” or “meditation in motion. ~ Roger Jahnke, #NFDB
279:He was very impressed - and touched - by what he found. He realised that, during the dark winter evenings by the fire, when he had often talked about his time in the Young Army, Marcia had not only listened to his descriptions of the night exercises, she had remembered them. ~ Angie Sage, #NFDB
280:I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises. ~ Elvis Costello, #NFDB
281:But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor. ~ Voltaire, #NFDB
282:The home world exercises its siren call over us all. No matter how far we wander, or how long we are gone, it waits patiently. And when we return to it, as we must, it sings to us. We came out of its forests, waded ashore from its seas. It is in our blood, for good or ill. ~ Jack McDevitt, #NFDB
283:The worship of the church has become a feel-good experience, rather than a meeting with the holy God of the universe. Exciting music has become the new sacrament mediating the presence of God and his grace. Sermons have become pop psychology, moralistic exercises in self-help.8 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
284:Just as breathing exercises help integrate body and mind, writing is a kind of psycho-neural muscular activity which helps bridge and integrate the conscious and subconscious minds. Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought and helps break the whole into parts. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
285:Just about every system magic advocates the use of a magical diary. It is important to record the results of exercises, workings and rituals, not only so you can see a progression in your work, but also as a reference book should you need to look back and repeat anything. ~ Storm Constantine, #NFDB
286:A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests. ~ William Hazlitt, #NFDB
287:mental life—today I would speak of the life of System 2—is normally conducted at the pace of a comfortable walk, sometimes interrupted by episodes of jogging and on rare occasions by a frantic sprint. The Add-1 and Add-3 exercises are sprints, and casual chatting is a stroll. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
288:The exercises I wholly condemn are dicing and carding, especially if you play for any great sum of money, or spend any time in them, or use to come to meetings in dicing-houses, where cheaters meet and cozen young gentlemen out of all their money. ~ Edward Herbert 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, #NFDB
289:How to evolve? Read my book Prometheus Rising, and do all the exercises in that. There are a lot of exercises. It will keep you busy for at least a year. And if at the end of that year you haven't evolved, write me a letter of complaint, and I'll try to write a better book. ~ Robert Anton Wilson, #NFDB
290:To me, the best purpose of an interview would be to illuminate some things about how somebody works for the benefit of somebody else who wants to do those things. And that's not where most interviews go at all, so to me, they seem like strange exercises in small talk and wasted air. ~ Will Oldham, #NFDB
291:School presents daily exercises in dis-association. It forces unwelcome associations on most of its prisoners. It sets petty, meaningless competitions in motion on a daily basis, pitting potential associates against one another in contests for praise and other worthless prizes. ~ John Taylor Gatto, #NFDB
292:In Workaholics Anonymous, one the exercises involves a simple reminder. We must, they say, "catch ourselves before we relapse into ego and self-will.” That is: Rest before you get tired. Check your impulses before they take over. Avoid the idiot lights—stop before there is a problem. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
293:That being said, experiential team exercises can be valuable tools for enhancing teamwork as long as they are layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes. While each of these tools and exercises can have a significant short-term impact on a team’s ability to build trust, ~ Patrick Lencioni, #NFDB
294:When you join the Parachute Regiment they send you on training and initiation exercises. One of the tasks is to accept and care for a pet white rabbit. The young squaddie has to feed, brush, stroke and comfort his rabbit for a week, and become attached to it. Then he has to shoot it. ~ Matthew Parris, #NFDB
295:Wherever thou goest, whatever thou dost at home, or abroad, in the field, or at church, do all in a desire of union with Christ, in imitation of His tempers and inclinations, and look upon all as nothing, but that which exercises, and increases the spirit and life of Christ in thy soul. ~ William Law, #NFDB
296:I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music. ~ Igor Stravinsky, #NFDB
297:This prince enjoyed exceptionally good health, even for a prince ; and, owing to his gymnastic exercises and the scrupulous care he took of himself, notwithstanding the excesses to which he let his love for pleasure carry him, he remained as fresh as a great, green, shiny Dutch cucumber. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
298:Why is it that there was always a unit on history, math, science and god knows what other useless, totally forgettable information you taught those seventh graders year after year, but never any unit on death? No exercises, no workbooks, no final exams on the only subject that matters? ~ Nicole Krauss, #NFDB
299:I readily discovered the prodigious influence that this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society; it gives a peculiar direction to public opinion and a peculiar tenor to the laws; it imparts new maxims to the governing authorities and peculiar habits to the governed. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
300:We need additional funding for more U.S. combat brigades in Europe. NATO needs to continue to modernize. It is starting to show with the Russians but these exercises are central to show that the alliance is firm, especially as the E.U. starts to have some weakness on the economic front. ~ Michael Leiter, #NFDB
301:By learning about my body and making small, subtle changes, I find out what I enjoy and what is effective. I'm always finessing: adjusting my diet and my workouts. You have to figure out which exercises are fun and interesting and stimulate your brain - or else you'll never keep at them. ~ Lisa Edelstein, #NFDB
302:Jesuits make a vow of obedience to the Pope. But if the Pope is a Jesuit, perhaps he has to make a vow of obedience to the General of the Jesuits! I don’t know how to resolve this … I feel a Jesuit in my spirituality; in the spirituality of the Exercises, the spirituality deep in my heart. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
303:Poetry, at all times, exercises two distinct functions: it may reveal, it may unveil to every eye, the ideal aspects of common thingsor it may actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in themselves, by the imaginative creation of things that are ideal from their very birth. ~ Walter Pater, #NFDB
304:Today I realize that many recent exercises in "deconstructive reading" read as if inspired by my parody. This is parody's mission: it must never be afraid of going too far. If its aim is true, it simply heralds what others will later produce, unblushing, with impassive and assertive gravity. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
305:O, Begin! Fix some part of every day for private exercises... Whether you like it or no, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way; else you will be a trifler all your days... Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer. ~ John Wesley, #NFDB
306:Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
307:If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the "owner" of the program, that controls the program and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power. ~ Richard Stallman, #NFDB
308:I'm on a constant yo-yo of health. I will go a week eating incredibly clean, but then I'll follow that up with a month's worth of binge eating. Then I hit the gym and eat clean, and then I mix it up with core exercises, yoga, Pilates, and sitting on an incline bench while checking my phone. ~ Josh McDermitt, #NFDB
309:To want a job that exercises a man's capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the "sole prerogative" to determine the products. ~ Paul Goodman, #NFDB
310:Be bold and resolute then in performing the spiritual exercises I have set before you, and God will give you time and strength for all other duties, yea, even if He were to cause the sun to stand still, as He did in Joshua’s time. 211 We are sure always to do enough when God works with us. ~ Francis de Sales, #NFDB
311:Being a singer, being a performer, you have tricks, somehow, to calm yourself when things feel a little overwhelming. I don't do breathing exercises, per se, but I definitely have to have a sort of internal word with myself before things got completely out of hand and I fainted on the floor. ~ Shirley Manson, #NFDB
312:Primal Essential Movements—four of the most simple and effective exercises ever known to humankind: pushups, pullups, squats, and planks. Collectively, these exercises work all the muscles in your body and promote functional fitness for a broad application of athletic and daily life activities. ~ Mark Sisson, #NFDB
313:Travel is very useful and it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our own journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It’s a novel, simply a fictitious narrative. ~ Louis Ferdinand C line, #NFDB
314:The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink ~ George Orwell, #NFDB
315:Instead of spending his afternoons prowling the parks and jerking off like this he should have been working on his French, which was so poor that even the simplest tasks – deciphering menus, buying bleach to clean out the toilet, ordering sandwiches – became major exercises in pantomime diplomacy. ~ Geoff Dyer, #NFDB
316:Be bold and resolute then in performing the spiritual exercises I have set before you, and God will give you time and strength for all other duties, yea, even if He were to cause the sun to stand still, as He did in Joshua’s time. 211 We are sure always to do enough when God works with us. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
317:He was a man of his time on the question of guns, writing in 1822 that “every American who wishes to protect his farm from the ravages of quadrupeds and his country from those of biped invaders” should be a “gun-man,” adding: “I am a great friend to the manly and healthy exercises of the gun.”43,44,45 ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
318:The greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere. ~ David Hume, #NFDB
319:Almost every man we meet requires some civility; requires to be humored; - he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
320:But Jackson also used less conventional teaching methods. In one drill he would lead the team in breathing exercises, getting all the players to synchronize their respiratory rhythm. “It helped align them on a nonverbal level far more effectively than words,” Jackson wrote. “One breath equals one mind. ~ David Gelles, #NFDB
321:In War, the young soldier is very apt to regard unusual fatigues as the consquence of faults, mistakes, and embarrassment in the conduct of the whole, and to become distressed and depondent as a consequence. This would not happen if he had been prepared for this beforehand by exercises in peace. ~ Carl von Clausewitz, #NFDB
322:All in all, it does not appear that ejaculation, voluntary or involuntary, does much to enhance the pleasure of orgasm. To that end, a woman’s time would be better spent on Kegel exercises and the strengthening of the pelvic floor muscles—an exercise known to increase the quality of orgasmic contractions. ~ Ian Kerner, #NFDB
323:So the state founded on natural principles is wise as a whole in virtue of the knowledge inherent in its smallest constituent class, which exercises authority over the rest. And the smallest class is the one which naturally possesses that form of knowledge which alone of all others deserves the title of wisdom. ~ Plato, #NFDB
324:Together we are stronger, our voices louder, and the synergy of our actions more powerful. Together we can prevail on the Navy to put commonsense safeguards in place, like requiring its ships to avoid the most sensitive marine mammal habitats and to stop their training exercises during peak migrations. ~ Pierce Brosnan, #NFDB
325:[92] Plato, in his fourth book of Laws, says that the præfectures of music and gymnic exercises are the most important employments in the city; and, in his Republic, iii, Damon will tell you, says he, what sounds are capable of corrupting the mind with base sentiments, or of inspiring the contrary virtues. ~ Montesquieu, #NFDB
326:One thing that was rarely mentioned in “wet” Navy theoretical exercises was that there was one more thing standing between a carrier and a ship-killer. Other, lesser, ships. Frigate crews, however, were well aware of the concept. Which was why they referred to themselves as mobile missile intercept systems. ~ John Ringo, #NFDB
327:The prince enjoyed unusually good health even among princes; both by gymnastic exercises and by taking good care of his body he had brought himself to such a state of physical fitness that in spite of the excesses he indulged in when enjoying himself, he looked as fresh as a big shiny green Dutch cucumber. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
328:I did a real boot camp once which with The Thin Red Line which was learning military exercises and this was far less strenuous. I really had a blast. We were all kind of thrown into the woods and we didn't have any of the modern conveniences that we take for granted. Learned how to survive without anything. ~ Adrien Brody, #NFDB
329:I've never really focused on if I had good habits when I sang or if I had bad habits, or if I was breathing correctly. So, I started doing vocal exercises and would stretch out before I sang, stuff to help my breathing. It's funny, you breathe your whole life then you find out you're not doing it correctly. ~ Rodney Atkins, #NFDB
330:The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness... &
... Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.
– ~ John Kenneth Galbraith,#NFDB
331:Albert Jay Nock wrote vividly that the State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime. . . . It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or of alien. Nock, ~ Murray N Rothbard, #NFDB
332:I always give my students exercises where they really have to open a vein and bleed all over the paper and that's the way you get the important characters. Sooner or later every writer worth reading writes a story his mother wouldn't read and having to get that stuff out is part of one's growth as a writer. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
333:I am interested in a lot of things - not just show business and my passion for animals. I try to keep current in what's going on in the world. I do mental exercises. I don't have any trouble memorizing lines because of the crossword puzzles I do every day to keep my mind a little limber. I don't sit and vegetate. ~ Betty White, #NFDB
334:The danger is one which democracy by itself does not suffice to avert. A democracy in which the majority exercises its power without restraint may be almost as tyrannical as a dictatorship. Toleration of minorities is an essential part of wise democracy, but a part which is not always sufficiently remembered. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
335:The next step is Asana, posture. A series of exercises, physical and mental, is to be gone through every day, until certain higher states are reached. Therefore it is quite necessary that we should find a posture in which we can remain long. That posture which is the easiest for one should be the one chosen. ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
336:Thus the young ladies are as much ashamed of being cowards and fools as the men, and despise all personal ornaments, beyond decency and cleanliness: neither did I perceive any difference in their education made by their difference of sex, only that the exercises of the females were not altogether so robust; and ~ Jonathan Swift, #NFDB
337:To give style to one’s character—that is a grand and rare art! He who surveys all that his nature presents in its strength and in its weakness, and then fashions it into an ingenious plan, until everything appears artistic and rational, and even the weaknesses enchant the eye..exercises that admirable art. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
338:for as they who use no bodily exercises are awkward and unwieldy in the actions of the body, so they who exercise not their minds are incapable of the noble actions of the mind, and have not courage enough to undertake anything worthy of praise, nor command enough over themselves to abstain from things that are forbid. ~ Xenophon, #NFDB
339:If you are observing someone you naturally dislike, or who reminds you of someone unpleasant in your past, you will tend to see almost any cue as unfriendly or hostile. You will do the opposite for people you like. In these exercises you must strive to subtract your personal preferences and prejudices about people. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
340:A social group can, indeed must, already exercise 'leadership' before winning governmental power (this is indeed one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to 'lead' as well. ~ Antonio Gramsci, #NFDB
341:The fact is, i don't have a drop of patience. If something goes wrong in my life, I'm not able to wait for an auspicious moment to remedy the situation. I'd rather spoil everything once and for all, as long as it's today, than subject myself to anguished expectation and breathing exercises with an eye towards the future. ~ Max Frei, #NFDB
342:What if you can't do what you once did, like run and jump up and down? You can walk, which is also good for your mind and mental attitude. You can do simpler exercises, like getting up and down from a chair without using your hands. You can stay fairly flexible. The most important thing is to not become sedentary. ~ Richard Simmons, #NFDB
343:For the child with such exercises makes, to a certain extent, a selection of his own tendencies, which were at first confused in the unconscious disorder of his movements. It is remarkable how clearly individual differences show themselves, if we proceed in this way; the child, conscious and free, reveals himself. ~ Maria Montessori, #NFDB
344:When I sit down at the typewriter, I write. Someone once asked me if I had a fixed routine before I start, like setting up exercises, sharpening pencils, or having a drink of orange juice. I said, "No, the only thing I do before I start writing is to make sure that I'm close enough to the typewriter to reach the keys." ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
345:Reading activates and exercises the mind. Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on the page, make them into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into concepts. Reading pushes us to use our imagination and makes us more creatively inclined. ~ Benjamin Carson, #NFDB
346:But when all is said and done, the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence and can make their exercises interesting, whilst others simply cannot. And psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things over to the deeper spring of human personality to conduct the task. ~ William James, #NFDB
347:Reading activates and exercises the mind.
Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on the page, make them into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into concepts.
Reading pushes us to use our imagination and makes us more creatively inclined. ~ Ben Carson,#NFDB
348:the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses. The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular with the society at large, and several that are generally unpopular—and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
349:The tiny space, the toilet, two hundred strangers just a few inches away, it's so exciting, the lack of room to maneuver, it helps if you're double-jointed. Use your imagination. Some creativity and a few simple stretching exercises and you can be knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door. You'll be amazed how time flies. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
350:It's tough, you know, when you're thin and you don't put on muscle mass that easily. What you've got to remember is that you really have to eat a lot and you have to work your body out with basic exercises like deadlifts and squats and the bench press - the workouts that are basic in form but work a large group of muscles. ~ Daniel Cudmore, #NFDB
351:When I was 25, I was in a show called 'Bajour,' and I was going to leave the show because I couldn't breathe. I couldn't sing, and I couldn't do the basic dance steps I had to do. Fortunately, two actors in the production - who were also yoga instructors - taught me some breathing exercises, and my asthma was cured that day. ~ Paul Sorvino, #NFDB
352:If we get away from the lazy and fuzzy thinking that is like a poison in our society - if we get away from all the bad television that we tend to watch - and begin to take up serious meditation and other sacred exercises, we will have a real revolution of consciousness. If that happens, the world will change by itself. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
353:The believing man hath the Holy Ghost; and where the Holy Ghost dwelleth, He will not suffer a man to be idle, butstirreth him up to all exercises of piety and godliness, and of true religion, to the love of God, to the patient suffering of afflictions, to prayer, to thanksgiving, and the exercise of charity towards all men. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
354:Yet conquering distance and gaining assurances that we are needed aren't exercises to be performed only once; they have to be repeated every time there's been a break -- a day away, a busy period, an evening at work -- for every interlude has the power once again to raise the question of whether or not we are still wanted. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
355:When Heaven is about to confer a great office on a man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil ; it exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty ; it confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies. ~ Mencius, #NFDB
356:Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no: but it may be we are more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises that thwart and hinder one another in their vigor. Lechery weakens our stomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce and amorous for the exercise of love. ~ Michel de Montaigne, #NFDB
357:Prayer and contemplation are both exercises in concentration. The normal deluge of conscious thought is restricted and the mind is brought to one conscious area of operation. The results are those you find in any concentrative practice: deep calm, a physiological slowing of the metabolism and a sense of peace and wellbeing ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
358:In the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, exercises, and even pastimes for children; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world's culture delineated in faint outline. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
359:Prayer exercises your willpower and gives God authority to work in your life. Prayer relieves the stress of perceived inactivity. Now that God has been given the task, you don’t have to worry about it any longer. God has his people on it. With less stress comes more strength. Prayer transfers the burden to God and lightens your load. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
360:If one prays in order to be holy, or exercises to develop strong pectoral muscles, or learns to be knowledgeable, then a great deal of the benefit is lost. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one's attention. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
361:I never set limits or created mental barriers. You may have read that I imagined my biceps as big as mountain peaks when I did my curling exercises. This visualization process was essential if I was to gain the kind of mass and size I needed to win the mr Olympia contest against monsters like Sergio Olivia and Lou ferrigno. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, #NFDB
362:The people would realize that full human rights are exercised and enjoyed by one person only – the ruling Kim. He is the only figure in North Korea who exercises freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, his right not to be tortured, imprisoned, or executed without trial, and his right to proper healthcare and food. ~ Hyeonseo Lee, #NFDB
363:Who will deny that true religion consists, in a great measure, in vigorous and lively actings of the inclination and will of the soul, or the fervent exercises of the heart? That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless, wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
364:If the Lord Jehovah makes us wait, let us do so with our whole hearts; for blessed are all they that wait for Him. He is worth waiting for. The waiting itself is beneficial to us: it tries faith, exercises patience, trains submission, and endears the blessing when it comes. The Lord’s people have always been a waiting people. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
365:The modern Westerner, persuaded that he has a right to "think for himself" and imagining that he exercises this right, is unwilling to acknowledge that his every thought has been shaped by cultural and historical influences and that his opinions fit, like pieces of jigsaw puzzle, into a pattern which has nothing random about it. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton, #NFDB
366:Hannah Whitehall Smith, the author of The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, said, “God disciplines the soul by inward exercises and outward providences.” What she means is that God will put into our hearts the right thing to do in every situation, but if we choose not to do it, then He will allow our circumstances to become our teacher. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
367:A deep, wise, and wonderful exploration of the Vedanta path for relationships both with yourself and with others. In this book, Shubhraji provides everything you need to create healthy, fulfilling relationships, using ancient wisdom, beautiful stories, tools, and exercises. This book is a must read for those on a serious spiritual journey. ~ Arielle Ford, #NFDB
368:I was never a class clown or anything like that, but I do remember being in the first grade and my teacher, Mr. Chad, told the class one day that we were going to do some exercises. He meant math exercises, but I stood up and started doing jumping jacks. To this day, I don't know what possessed me to do that, but all my friends cracked up. ~ Will Ferrell, #NFDB
369:He who takes the oath today to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States only assumes the solemn obligation which every patriotic citizen . . . should share with him. . . . Your every voter, as surely as your Chief Magistrate, under the same high sanction, though in a different sphere, exercises a public trust. ~ Grover Cleveland, #NFDB
370:The fourth noble truth states that, once you have identified the cause of your suffering, you must find an appropriate path. I believe that the exercises I’ve developed and that you’ll be learning in the Twelve-Phase Healing Trauma Program can serve as the path to lead you out of suffering and help you recapture the simple wonders of life. ~ Peter A Levine, #NFDB
371:I look upon prayer-meetings as the most profitable exercises (excepting the public preaching) in which Christians can engage. They have a direct tendency to kill a worldly, trifling spirit, and to draw down a Divine blessing upon all our concerns, compose differences, and enkindle (at least maintain) the flames of Divine love amongst brethren. ~ John Newton, #NFDB
372:The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century when it was written. One timeless lesson is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people. ~ Anthony Kennedy, #NFDB
373:There could, in principle, be an institution that looked like what we call "science" but in which there was no genuine responsiveness to the world. Experiments would be no more than expensive "PR" exercises, and theories
would change via a process of negotiation between factions. How do we know that our own science is not like this? ~ Peter Godfrey Smith,#NFDB
374:unlock hidden memories. Some trauma is just too much for the conscious mind to handle and you have to go in through a back door to access it. So I reluctantly submitted to a few sessions. It wasn’t what I thought it would be. No swinging amulet, no metronome. It was more like those guided imagery exercises they’d sometimes have us do at camp. ~ Gayle Forman, #NFDB
375:Intravenous injections of extract from dog's pancreas, removed from seven to ten weeks after ligation of the ducts, invariably exercises a reducing influence upon the percentage sugar of the blood and the amount of sugar excreted in the urine ... the extent and duration of the reduction varies directly with the amount of extract injected. ~ Frederick Banting, #NFDB
376:If you want to achieve your objectives, you have to be prepared for a daily dose of pain or discomfort. At first, it's unpleasant and demotivating, but in time you come to realise that it's part of the process of feeling good, and the moment arrives when, if you don't feel pain, you have a sense that the exercises aren't having the desired effect. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
377:I had the opportunity in this visit of seeing how great a power the master exercises over his slaves, but at the same time I could perceive at what a cost this power was bought; for though at the presence of my uncle all redoubled their efforts, I could perceive that there was as much hatred as terror in the looks that they furtively cast upon him. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
378:It is regrettable, then, to behold some souls, laden as rich vessels with wealth, deeds, spiritual exercises, virtues, and favors from God, who never advance because they lack the courage to make a complete break with some little satisfaction, attachment, or affection (which are all about the same) and thereby never reach the port of perfection. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
379:Philip is being very vocal about it. For me, I don't think the story isn't at all anti-religious in any way. I think what's it more against is the control and the misuse of power that any organised religion, or any political organisation exercises over the people they're supposed to represent. I think that, for me, is what's important in the movie. ~ Daniel Craig, #NFDB
380:The way to God lies through love of other people, and there is no other way. At the Last Judgement I shall not be asked if I was successful in my ascetic exercises or how many prostrations I made in the course of my prayers. I shall be asked, did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners: that is all I shall be asked.23 ~ Kallistos Ware, #NFDB
381:Genius is a sovereign power; it forms schools; it lays hold on the spirits of men, with irresistible might; and it exercises an immeasurable influence on the whole condition of human life. This sovereignty of genius is a gift of God, possessed only by his grace. It is subject to no one and is responsible to him alone who has granted it this ascendancy. ~ Abraham Kuyper, #NFDB
382:People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. ~ Carl Jung, #NFDB
383:23 Thus says the LORD, “Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; 24but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
384:He neglected not his own body, and praised not those that neglected theirs. In like manner, he blamed the custom of some who eat too much, and afterwards use violent exercises; but he approved of eating till nature be satisfied, and of a moderate exercise after it, believing that method to be an advantage to health, and proper to unbend and divert the mind. ~ Xenophon, #NFDB
385:Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
386:Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision. ~ Charles Dickens, #NFDB
387:Third, there is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called 'sportsmanship'. Our tools for the pursuit of wildlife improve faster than we do, and sportsmanship is the voluntary limitation in the use of these armaments. It is aimed to augment the role of skill and shrink the role of Gadgets in the pursuit of wild things. ~ Aldo Leopold, #NFDB
388:Divine Love is the primary Quality of God. Divine Love is an emotion of God, and as such is a substance that God can transmit to humans. Divine Love can be received by the human soul if the human soul exercises its Free Will to receive Divine Love, and desires to eradicate all those emotions within itself that prevents the flow and demonstration of Love. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha, #NFDB
389:To be guilty of the sin of prayerlessness is to be guilty of the worst form of practical atheism. It is actually saying we can get along without His help while the evidence is very clear on every hand that we cannot. Could it be that the sin of prayerlessness steams from our unbelief that he is a living God who exercises direct influence on the affairs of men? ~ Bruce Willis, #NFDB
390:On two occasions, the person I had chosen as airplane captain came through as environmental leader in this second exercise. These exercises reinforced my belief that leadership indeed depends on the situation. As circumstances change, leadership must change. A certain set of skills, instincts, and personality traits may be perfect today, but useless tomorrow. ~ Ricardo Semler, #NFDB
391:The mind of God does not change for God does not change. Things change, and they change according to His sovereign will, which He exercises through secondary means and secondary activities. The prayer of His people is one of the means He uses to bring things to pass in this world. So if you ask me whether prayer changes things, I answer with an unhesitating "Yes! ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
392:In 1928, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a New York law requiring the Klan to file membership lists with state authorities on the grounds that, as the appellate court in the case wrote, “It is a matter of common knowledge that the association or organization”—the Klan—“exercises activities tending to the prejudice and intimidation of sundry classes of our citizens. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
393:There is a point in the meditator’s career where he or she may practice special exercises to develop psychic powers. But this occurs far down the line. Only after the meditator has reached a very deep stage of jhana will he or she be advanced enough to work with such powers without the danger of their running out of control or taking over his or her life. ~ Henepola Gunaratana, #NFDB
394:Not everyone can have the same devotion. One exactly suits this person, another that. Different exercises, likewise, are suitable for different times, some for feast days and some again for weekdays. In time of temptation we need certain devotions. For days of rest and peace we need others. Some are suitable when we are sad, others when we are joyful in the Lord. ~ Thomas Kempis, #NFDB
395:But yet it is evident that religion consists so much in affection, as that without holy affection there is no true religion; and no light in the understanding is good which does not produce holy affection in the heart: no habit or principle in the heart is good which has no such exercise; and no external fruit is good which does not proceed from such exercises. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
396:Religion consists much in holy affection; but those exercises of affection which are most distinguishing of true religion are these practical exercises. Friendship between earthly friends consists much in affection; but those strong exercises of affection that actually carry them through fire and water for each other are the highest evidences of true friendship. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
397:We call it 3HO, an organization of healthy, happy, and holy people. It has no membership charge, no presidents, and at this point not even a secretary. Anybody can be a member who will promise that he shall undertake to practice these exercises, and to practice to breathe consciously. Be aware that the breath is the divine charge and it is a gift of the God. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi, #NFDB
398:An altered state of consciousness simply means any state of awareness that is different from our normal waking state. When we daydream or dream at night, we are in an altered state. We can also get into an altered state by using meditations, hypnosis and exercises like jogging or yoga. Using drugs or alcohol can also produce an altered state, but in a less healthy way. ~ Susan Gregg, #NFDB
399:Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment. ~ Will Self, #NFDB
400:I take exercise for each part of the body: arms, legs, back and whatever muscles are required to keep the body fit. I do at least 20 different exercises daily for my upper and lower body. Then I come here every morning to do calf raises and play tennis. If there is time in the afternoon, I play tennis again. At least three hours I spend on weightlifting and bodybuilding. ~ Sri Chinmoy, #NFDB
401:As a skilled psychologist, Dr. Reznick draws from her wealth of experience to offer children and parents a treasure trove of skills to relieve stress. She presents well-written, easy-to-follow tools to use in every situation. From visualization techniques to breathing exercises, Dr. Reznick taps the power of a child's imagination to ensure kids achieve peace and success. ~ Judith Orloff, #NFDB
402:We are next informed that bookworms, a term which seems to be held applicable to whoever has the smallest tincture of book-knowledge, may not be good at bodily exercises, or have the habits of gentlemen. This is a very common line of remark with dunces of condition; but whatever the dunces may think, they have no monopoly of either gentlemanly habits or bodily activity. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
403:Fashion is not a real element of beauty in external objects; and to persons who possess a good endowment of Form, Constructiveness and Ideality, intrinsic elegance is much more pleasing and permanently agreeable, than forms of less merit, recommended merely by being new. Hence there is a beauty which never palls, and there are objects over which fashion exercises no control. ~ George Combe, #NFDB
404:When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brainthat is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious--to get rid of boundaries, not to create them. ~ Edward T Hall, #NFDB
405:Fitness trainers will tell you that arm lifts with light weights can prevent wiggle waggle. But if that were true, would Jane Fonda have it? This is hard-body Jane, the woman who, back in the ’80s, produced the best-selling workout videos. When she was 72, she made two more, though they included things like exercises for arthritic hands (and wore a leotard that covered her arms). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
406:Admit at least one painful truth to yourself every day. Teach yourself to feel that life would still be worth living even if you were not immeasurably superior to all your friends. Exercises of this sort, prolonged through several years, will at last enable you to admit facts without flinching, and will, in so doing, free you from the empire of fear over a very large field. ~ Bertrand Russell, #NFDB
407:A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
408:Buy or borrow self-improvement books, but don't read them. Stack them around your bedroom and use them as places to rest bowls of cookies.Watch exercise shows on television, but don't do the exercises. Practice believing that the benefit lies in imagining yourself doing the exercises.Don't power walk. Saunter slowly in the sun, eating chocolate, and carry a blanket so you can take a nap. ~ Sark, #NFDB
409:I had studied Dadaism after the Second World War. What attracted me to this movement was the style its inventors used when not engaged in Dadaistic activities. It was clear, luminous, simple without being banal, precise without being narrow; it was a style adapted to the expression of thought as well as of emotion. I connected this style with the Dadaistic exercises themselves ~ Paul Feyerabend, #NFDB
410:In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently executes its own wishes without their intervention. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, #NFDB
411:What I often do in my work is to take a great story, such as the Odyssey, the search for the Grail, the story of Jesus, or the story of the great peacemaker who helped create the Iroquois Confederacy in the 15th century. I then use these tales as templates upon which to weave psychological and spiritual exercises which allow us to open ourselves up to the larger venue of a story. ~ Jean Houston, #NFDB
412:A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
413:Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is. The lengths people go to — and the extremes and the conditions and the mental exercises and guilt and shame and happiness that everybody goes through — and what they'll do for sex is never-ending and mind-boggling and very interesting to me. And I don't think a lot of times people choose any of it. ~ John Waters, #NFDB
414:All the fruits of the Spirit which we are to lay weight upon as evidential of grace, are summed up in charity, or Christian love; because this is the sum of all grace. And the only way, therefore, in which any can know their good estate, is by discerning the exercises of this divine charity in their hearts; for without charity, let men have what gifts you please, they are nothing. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
415:Anyone who practises sport knows this: if you want to achieve your objectives, you have to be prepared for a daily dose of pain or discomfort. At first, it's unpleasant and demotivating, but in time you come to realise that it's part of the process of feeling good, and the moment arrives when, if you don't feel pain, you have a sense that the exercises aren't having the desired effect. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
416:The Abbé Sieyès, in his inflammatory pamphlet, What is the Third Estate? of 1789, expressed the point succinctly. ‘The nation is prior to everything. It is the source of everything. Its will is always legal … The manner in which a nation exercises its will does not matter; the point is that it does exercise it; any procedure is adequate, and its will is always the supreme law.’ Twenty ~ Roger Scruton, #NFDB
417:What about you?" I kept my voice carefully indifferent.
He flashed me a cold smile, sharp at the edges. "Worried about me?"
Because I couldn't think of anything snide to say, I stuck my tongue out at him. Jude wagged his head. "More tongue exercises? Would have thought you'd had enough last night."
"Go to hell."
"Sorry, love, but we're already there. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick,#NFDB
418:Yet is not the power which injustice exercises of such a nature that wherever she takes up her abode, whether in a city, in an army, in a family, or in any other body, that body is, to begin with, rendered incapable of united action by reason of sedition and distraction; and does it not become its own enemy and at variance with all that opposes it, and with the just? Is not this the case? Yes, ~ Plato, #NFDB
419:No one ever told us we had to study our lives,make of our lives a study, as if learning natural historyor music, that we should beginwith the simple exercises firstand slowly go on tryingthe hard ones, practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue. ~ Adrienne Rich, #NFDB
420:Know also that you will probably gain more by praying fifteen minutes before the Blessed Sacrament than by all the other spiritual exercises of the day. True, Our Lord hears our prayers anywhere, for He has made the promise, 'Ask, and you shall receive,' but He has revealed to His servants that those who visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament will obtain a more abundant measure of grace. ~ Alphonsus Liguori, #NFDB
421:Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
422:A cat actually thinks visibly. If you watch him jump on a shelf, the wish to jump and the action of jumping are one and the same thing... It's in exactly the same way that all Brook's exercises try to train the actor. The actor is trained to become so organically related within himself, he thinks completely with his body. He becomes one sensitive, responding whole... The whole of him is one. ~ John Heilpern, #NFDB
423:state of calm produced by meditation, yoga, and breathing exercises—actually switched on genes that are related to augmenting our immune system, reducing inflammation, and fighting a range of conditions from arthritis to high blood pressure to diabetes. So with all these results, it’s no surprise that, according to another study, meditation correlates to reduced yearly medical costs. It ~ Arianna Huffington, #NFDB
424:The athletic sort of Backson - one of the many common varieties - is concerned with physical fitness, he says. But for some reason, he sees it as something that has to be pounded in from the outside, rather than built up from the inside. Therefore, he confuses exercise with work. He works when he works, works when he exercises, and, more often than not, works when he plays. Work, work, work. ~ Benjamin Hoff, #NFDB
425:Have you ever played a sport?” Dane asked, attention still on the field. He knew she was there? That startled her a little, and Anna wondered if she’d be perpetually uncomfortable in the presence of Dane Sivac, not that she would let that show. “I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises,” flew off her lips before she had a chance to stop herself. ~ Tracy Ewens, #NFDB
426:This solidarity can grow only in inverse ratio to personality... Solidarity which comes from likenesses is at its maximum when the collective conscience completely envelops our whole conscience and coincides in all points with it... when this solidarity exercises its force, our personality vanishes, as our definition permits us to say, for we are no longer ourselves, but the collective life. ~ Emile Durkheim, #NFDB
427:Know also that you will probably gain more by praying fifteen minutes before the Blessed Sacrament than by all the other spiritual exercises of the day. True, Our Lord hears our prayers anywhere, for He has made the promise, 'Ask, and you shall receive,' but He has revealed to His servants that those who visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament will obtain a more abundant measure of grace. ~ Saint Alphonsus Liguori, #NFDB
428:That is my way of doing things, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to anybody else; if you need to do technical exercises, you do them. The whole point of practicing is to get to know yourself, to know your weaknesses and to zero in on them and target them. It's not really about employing anybody else's formulas, because you really have to find what is best for you and what you need. ~ Marc Andre Hamelin, #NFDB
429:These principles with due regard to time and place, must, in accordance with Christian prudence, be applied to all schools, particularly in the most delicate and decisive period of formation, that, namely, of adolescence; and in gymnastic exercises and deportment special care must be had of Christian modesty in young women and girls which is so gravely impaired by any kind of exhibition in public. ~ Pope Pius XI, #NFDB
430:Buy or borrow self-improvement books, but don't read them. Stack them around your bedroom and use them as places to rest bowls of cookies.
Watch exercise shows on television, but don't do the exercises. Practice believing that the benefit lies in imagining yourself doing the exercises.
Don't power walk. Saunter slowly in the sun, eating chocolate, and carry a blanket so you can take a nap. ~ S A R K,#NFDB
431:Changing the mindset of your men is not a “one-off” event. It must start immediately and continue throughout training. One part of this is an ongoing education program to teach troops about the basics of light infantry. Such an education program may consist of guided professional reading with linked discussions, tactical decision games, sand-table exercises, and tactical exercises without troops. ~ William S Lind, #NFDB
432:People who are unable to use their hands skillfully for all kinds of work, will not become good thinkers and will behave awkwardly in life. It is not the head alone, but the whole human being that is a logician. Activities demanding manual and bodily skill, such as knitting, leads to the enhancement of the faculty of judgment. This faculty is actually developed least of all by exercises in logic. ~ Rudolf Steiner, #NFDB
433:The modern conservative is not even especially modern. He is engaged, on the contrary, in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith, #NFDB
434:Children need to be moral more than they need to be in touch with their feelings. They need to be well educated more than they need classroom self-esteem exercises and support groups. Nor are they improved by having their femininity or masculinity “reinvented.” Emotional fixes are not the answer. Genuine self-esteem comes with pride in achievement, which is the fruit of disciplined effort. ~ Christina Hoff Sommers, #NFDB
435:Workout A All exercises, except for kettlebell swings, are performed for 10 repetitions using a 13-Repetition Max2 (RM) weight. 1. Heavy dumbbell front squat to press (ass to heels)—squeeze glutes at bottom for one second before rising 2. One-arm, one-leg DB row 3. Walking lunges with sprinter knee raise 4. Wide-grip push-ups3 5. Two-arm kettlebell swings × 20–25 Repeat sequence 2–4 times. Workout ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
436:In my Deep Listening class at RPI, I always do an hour of energy exercises to start with. Then we do a listening meditation after that, after the body has been loosened up and warmed up and is ready. We do the listening. After that, there's the journaling of the experience, which they do each time throughout the semester to the point that I have them write a final paper on what they've experienced. ~ Pauline Oliveros, #NFDB
437:We should not...think of our fellowship with other Christians as a spiritual luxury, an optional addition to the exercises of private devotion. We should recognise rather that such fellowship is a spiritual necessity, for God has made us in such a way that our fellowship with himself is fed by our fellowship with fellow Christians, and requires to be so fed constantly for its own deepening and enrichment. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
438:With your talents and industry, with science, and that steadfast honesty which eternally pursues right, regardless of consequences, you may promise yourself every thing-but health, without which there is no happiness. An attention to health then should take place of evey other object. The time necessary to secure this by active exercises, should be devoted to it in preference to every other pursuit. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
439:How any human being ever has had the impudence to speak against the right to speak, is beyond the power of my imagination. Here is a man who speaks-who exercises a right that he, by his speech, denies. Can liberty go further than that? Is there any toleration possible beyond the liberty to speak against liberty-the real believer in free speech allowing others to speak against the right to speak? ~ Robert Green Ingersoll, #NFDB
440:"I think you're begging the question," said Haydock, "and I can see looming ahead one of those terrible exercises in probability where six men have white hats and six men have black hats and you have to work it out by mathematics how likely it is that the hats will get mixed up and in what proportion. If you start thinking about things like that, you would go round the bend. Let me assure you of that!" ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
441:Manuscripts - at least for Muslims who understand the subject - are to be read as books whose contents are to be known and understood, for that is why they were written, and not to be regarded as enigmatic specimens for critical textual and philological exercises. To them what is in the manuscripts is more important than what is on them, and so they say: Al-'ilmu fi'l-sudur la fi'l-sutur. ~ Syed Muhammad Naquib al Attas, #NFDB
442:In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them as the Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of State or Church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
443:All we seem to be left with now is paranoid gibberish about a War on Terror whose whole purpose is to expand the War, increase the Terror, and obfuscate the fact that the wars of today are not aberrations but systemic, logical exercises to preserve a way of life whose delicate pleasures and exquisite comforts can only be delivered to the chosen few by a continuous, protracted war for hegemony--Lifestyle Wars. ~ Arundhati Roy, #NFDB
444:Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported confidence. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
445:Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
446:Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
447:Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
448:3. Pointless bustling of processions, opera arias, herds of sheep and cattle, military exercises. A bone flung to pet poodles, a little food in the fish tank. The miserable servitude of ants, scampering of frightened mice, puppets jerked on strings. Surrounded as we are by all of this, we need to practice acceptance. Without disdain. But remembering that our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
449:Besides, the woman who strengthens her body and exercises her mind will, by managing her family and practising various virtues, become the friend, and not the humble dependent of her husband; and if she deserves his regard by possessing such substantial qualities, she will not find it necessary to conceal her affection, nor to pretend to an unnatural coldness of constitution to excite her husband's passions. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, #NFDB
450:A week filled up with selfishness, and the Sabbath stuffed full of religious exercises, will make a good Pharisee, but a poor Christian. There are many persons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to wipe out the sins of the week. Now, God's altar stands from Sunday to Sunday, and the seventh day is no more for religion than any other. It is for rest. The whole seven are for religion, and one of them for rest. ~ Henry Ward Beecher, #NFDB
451:Every philosophy is complete in itself and, like a genuine work of art, contains the totality. Just as the works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, should not have appeared to them as mere preliminary exercises for their own work, but rather as a kindred force of the spirit, so, too reason cannot find in its own earlier forms mere useful preliminary exercises for itself. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, #NFDB
452:Whenever they finished a section they would pass it to Constance, who glanced at the headlines and drew mustaches and devil horns on people in the photographs. The children were allowed to linger over the papers as long as they wished, but they seldom lingered long, for the older ones looked forward to their exercises and lessons, which offered a welcome change of pace, and Constance ran out of pictures to deface. ~ Trenton Lee Stewart, #NFDB
453:In every generation that man is a rarity who exercises such a power over himself that he can will what is not pleasant to him, that he can hold fast that truth which does not please him, hold that it is the truth although it does not please him, hold that it is the truth precisely because it does not please him, and then nevertheless, in spite of the fact that it does not please him, can commit himself to it. pp 151-2 ~ S ren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
454:These are two different exercises. One of them is, "You don't know and I know, so just shut up and listen," and the other one is, you're curious and you're learning, and I have a way where you can learn this so you'll know it as well. And when you know it, and know why you know it, then you don't have to reference me ever again because you take ownership of the knowledge, and you can then share it with someone else. ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson, #NFDB
455:We believe that we have checks and balances, but have rarely faced a situation like the present: when the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses. The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular with the society at large, and several that are generally unpopular—and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
456:Dr. Brown has the ability to make complex matters easy to understand. His book has taken the topic of communication to a new level. The book is easy to read. The exercises and appendices provide both a practical learning approach and a depth of understanding of the subject..."
Alberto DeFeo, Ph.D. (Law)
Chief Administrative Officer of Lake Country and Adjunct Professor of University of Northern British Columbia ~ Asa Don Brown,#NFDB
457:[Sanctification] is a process that includes on the one hand medication and diet (in the form of biblical instruction and admonition coming in various ways to the heart), and on the other hand tests and exercises (in the form of internal and external pressures, providentially ordered, to which we have to make active response). The process goes on as long as we are in the world, which is something that God decides in each case. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
458:Everyone wants to be foremost in this future-and yet death and the stillness of death are the only things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men, and that they are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
459:The Dao is no longer understood. There is an endless number of side doors and twisted byways, constituting a few basic groups. There are those who are fixated on voidness and those who are attached to forms, and those who do psychosomatic exercises. There are actually 72 schools of material alchemy, and 3600 aberrant practices. Since the blind lead the blind, they lose the right road; they block students and lead them into a pen. ~ Liu Yiming, #NFDB
460:All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light, is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,--an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
461:There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few, that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right. ~ William Blackstone, #NFDB
462:Well, you’ll need some strong recommendations for your application. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to write one for you. I’ve already written one for a girl at Sacred Heart, you see, and that recommendation would be diluted if I were to write another one. But I do encourage you with your application, Miss Moraine. These exercises, no matter how futile, build character.” Futile. She was telling me it was useless. That I was useless. ~ Ruta Sepetys, #NFDB
463:Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. ... One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs - not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can be, that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
464:Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. ... One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs — not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can "be", that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
465:For many of us, the computer is the means by which we earn a living. To give it a nod, then, is a way of thanking the tool for what it provides in life. It helps put bread on the table and a roof overhead. It gives us work and pleasure, exercises our minds, brings us information, connects us with other people. It is a partner helping us achieve our goals. Nodding also thanks the unseen hands and minds who helped create our machine. ~ Philip Toshio Sudo, #NFDB
466:I've seen a lot of people getting into Jazzmasters because of me, and, well, people don't know what they're in for. I mean if you're looking for endless sustain, you're going to have to get it out of your hands (laughs). Because a saxophonist gets it out of his breath. You've got to work for it on the guitar - it means you have to pull it out of yourself, otherwise, what are you doing? You end up playing a lot of noise or scale exercises. ~ Tom Verlaine, #NFDB
467:Suzette was different, her responses were honest, her need real not feigned to jolly the exercises along, and that passion in her had called out to his own. Feeling her tremble with excitement had excited him, tasting her passion had made his own hunger stretch and roar, and just watching her find her release had nearly brought on his own. He wanted to possess that, and if it took marriage to do it, then dammit, Gretna Green here he came. ~ Lynsay Sands, #NFDB
468:Zohar-kabbalah is heresy of the most pernicious kind. Yet it is a fact that this kind of mystic pantheism exercises a curious appeal to very clever people whose customary approach to thought is soberly rational. By a remarkable paradox, the current of speculation which was to carry Spinoza out of Judaism brought him to pantheism too, so that he was the end-product both of the rationalism of Maimonides and the anti-rationalism of his opponents. ~ Paul Johnson, #NFDB
469:Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.
It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so and he's never wrong.
And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes.
It's on the other side of life. ~ Louis Ferdinand C line,#NFDB
470:24Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives s the prize? So t run that you may obtain it. 25Every u athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we v an imperishable. 26So I do not run aimlessly; I w do not box as one x beating the air. 27But I discipline my body and y keep it under control, [2] lest after preaching to others z I myself should be a disqualified. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
471:What matter and opportunity [for thy activity] art thou avoiding? For what else are all these things, except exercises for the reason, when it has viewed carefully and by examination into their nature the things which happen in life? Persevere then until thou shalt have made these things thy own, as the stomach which is strengthened makes all things its own, as the blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
472:We study health, and we deliberate upon our meats and drink and air and exercises, and we hew and we polish every stone that goes to that building; and so our health is a long and regular work. But in a minute a cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity, nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant. ~ John Donne, #NFDB
473:The Hays Code stated: “When right standards are consistently presented, the motion picture exercises the most powerful influences. It builds character, develops right ideals, inculcates correct principles, and all this in attractive story form. If motion pictures consistently hold up for admiration high types of characters and present stories that will affect lives for the better, they can become the most powerful force for the improvement of mankind. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
474:Would you please explain to me how doing Yoga brings you near to the Divine? And what is the real meaning of Yoga? Is it only contortive body-exercises or is there a yoga of the mind also?
This has nothing to do with a spiritual life, not even with religion. X will explain to you in detail, but I can tell you that Yoga is not only an aspiration of the mind towards the Divine but also and chiefly a yearning of the heart.
~ The Mother, Words Of The Mother II,#NFDB
475:Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply. We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad? ~ William Golding, #NFDB
476:Just as we commonly hear people say the doctor prescribed someone particular riding exercises, or ice baths, or walking without shoes, we should in the same way say that nature prescribed someone to be diseased, or disabled, or to suffer any kind of impairment. In the case of the doctor, prescribed means something ordered to help aid someone’s healing. But in the case of nature, it means that what happens to each of us is ordered to help aid our destiny. ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
477:That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
478:This approach goes back to the ancient philosophers. Every bit of the philosophy they developed was intended to reshape, prepare, and fortify them for the challenges to come. Many saw themselves as mental athletes—after all, the brain is a muscle like any other active tissue. It can be built up and toned through the right exercises. Over time, their muscle memory grew to the point that they could intuitively respond to every situation. Especially obstacles. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
479:I have of late--but
wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
480:That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
481:Finally, it means creating a growth-mindset environment in which people can thrive. This involves: • Presenting skills as learnable • Conveying that the organization values learning and perseverance, not just ready-made genius or talent • Giving feedback in a way that promotes learning and future success • Presenting managers as resources for learning Without a belief in human development, many corporate training programs become exercises of limited value. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
482:Mightily and long must a man strive within himself before he learn altogether to overcome himself, and to draw his whole affection towards God. When a man resteth upon himself, he easily slippeth away unto human comforts. But a true lover of Christ, and a diligent seeker after virtue, falleth not back upon those comforts, nor seeketh such sweetness as may be tasted and handled, but desireth rather hard exercises, and to undertake severe labours for Christ. ~ Thomas Kempis, #NFDB
483:Not only does the State do the work badly on a domain not its own, bunglingly, at greater cost, and with less fruit than spontaneous organizations, but, again, through the legal monopoly which it deems its prerogative, or through the overwhelming competition which it exercises, it kills or paralyzes these natural organizations or prevents their birth; and hence so many precious organs, which, absorbed, atropic or abortive, are lost to the great social body. ~ Hippolyte Taine, #NFDB
484:The right string had been touched, and even French exercises and piano practice became endurable, since accomplishments would be useful by and by; dress, manners, and habits were all interesting now, because 'mind and body, heart and soul, must be cultivated', and while training to become an 'intelligent, graceful, healthy girl', little Josie was unconsciously fitting herself to play her part well on whatever stage the great Manager might prepare for her. ~ Louisa May Alcott, #NFDB
485:The Bible teaches that God is completely in control of what happens in history and yet he exercises that control in such a way that human beings are responsible for their freely chosen actions and the results of those actions. Human freedom and God’s direction of historical events are therefore completely compatible. To put it most practically and vividly—if a man robs a bank, that moral evil is fully his responsibility, though it also is part of God’s plan. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
486:When I was living in Mexico, I started reassessing my drawing style, and plunged into a period of doing exercises and research to develop a new way to draw. The result was a style that implies more than it shows, and so, ironically, feels more "true" to the scene I want to draw than a style that is more specific. It seems to me that the reader's imagination is able to fill in the gaps more effectively than I ever could. Plus it's a lot faster and more fun to do. ~ Jessica Abel, #NFDB
487:If I wanted to get my arms as big as I could possibly get them, I would probably do around 20 sets of 4 exercises and 5 sets each for the triceps and 20 sets for the biceps per workout 3 times a week. That would be around 60 sets of triceps and 60 sets of biceps work per week. I would keep the reps between 6 and 8 and I would do all basic movements where I'd handle as heavy a weight as possible. I'd consume nutritious food that had calories in and just flat out eat! ~ Bill Pearl, #NFDB
488:Many have written about what happened to them at the Exercises: theycan’t explain why, but they went home as different people, they resumed their life in a different way, and they can facelife’s circumstances in a different way. This fact, the presence in history of individuals who have changed, and of the people to whom they belong, this reality that is not in the past but in the present, will be what constantly challenges the reason and freedom of whoever encounters ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
489:Two men at Google who do not enjoy the legitimacy of the vote, democratic oversight, or the demands of shareholder governance exercise control over the organization and presentation of the world’s information. One man at Facebook who does not enjoy the legitimacy of the vote, democratic oversight, or the demands of shareholder governance exercises control over an increasingly universal means of social connection along with the information concealed in its networks. ~ Shoshana Zuboff, #NFDB
490:BOBBY KENNEDY recently made me the soul-stirring promise that one day—thirty years, if I’m lucky—I can be President too. It never entered this boy’s mind, I suppose—it has not entered the country’s mind yet—that perhaps I wouldn’t want to be. And in any case, what really exercises my mind is not this hypothetical day on which some other Negro “first” will become the first Negro President. What I am really curious about is just what kind of country he’ll be President of. ~ James Baldwin, #NFDB
491:if you want to achieve your objectives, you have to be prepared for a daily dose of pain or discomfort. At first, it's unpleasant and demotivating, but in time you come to realise that it's part of the process of feeling good, and the moment arrives when, if you don't feel pain, you have a sense that the exercises aren't having the desired effect.' The danger lies in focusing on that pain, giving it a particular person's name, and keeping it always present in your thoughts. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
492:Therefore let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers' (Rom 13.1). The Christian must not be drawn to the bearers of high office; his calling is to stay below. The higher power are over him, and he must remain under them. The world exercises dominion, the Christian serves, and thus he shares the earthly lot of his Lord, who became a servant. 'For there is no power but of God.' (Mark 10.42-45) These words are addressed to the Christians, not to the powers. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
493:I am sure you are only being modest. Particularly if you like such serious pastimes as botany lectures and books. I can't see the point to either, but dear Grace loves anything that exercises her mind."
Lord Jack turned his head, his jewel-colored eyes meeting Grace's over the top of her aunt's bonnet. "Nothing wrong with a bit of exercise for the mind. Or the body."
Warmth swirled abruptly to life within her. Anxious to extinguish the flame, Grace looked away. ~ Tracy Anne Warren,#NFDB
494:If an individual on the team is not performing at the level required for the team to succeed, the leader must train and mentor that underperformer. But if the underperformer continually fails to meet standards, then a leader who exercises Extreme Ownership must be loyal to the team and the mission above any individual. If underperformers cannot improve, the leader must make the tough call to terminate them and hire others who can get the job done. It is all on the leader. ~ Jocko Willink, #NFDB
495:In his treatise on the battles between the gods underlying ancient Dionysian theatre, the young Nietzsche notes: 'Alas! The magic of these struggles is such, that he who sees them must also take part in them.' Similarly, an anthropology of the practising life is infected by its subject. Dealing with practices, asceticisms and exercises, whether or not they are declared as such, the theorist inevitably encounters his own inner constitution, beyond affirmation and denial. ~ Peter Sloterdijk, #NFDB
496:2: Gratitude Science shows that gratitude increases energy, reduces anxiety, improves sleep, and creates feelings of social connection—that’s why several exercises in this book focus on it. In this phase, just think about three things you’re grateful for in your personal life, three things you’re grateful for in your career, and three things you’re grateful for about yourself. This last one is important. Often we look for love from others but fail to truly love ourselves. ~ Vishen Lakhiani, #NFDB
497:In one lifetime it wouldn't be possible to find another woman with whom he can learn to be so free, whom he can please with such abandon and expertise. By some accident of character, it's familiarity that excites him more than sexual novelty. He supects there's something numbed or deficient or timid in himself (...) [M]ight look like virtue or doggedness, but it's neither of these because he exercises no real choice. This is what he has to have: possession, belonging, repetition. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
498:Whereas the exercises of true and holy love in the saints arise in another way. They do not first see that God loves them, and then see that he is lovely; but they first see that God is lovely, and that Christ is excellent and glorious; their hearts are first captivated with this view, and the exercises of their love are wont, from time to time, to begin here, and to arise primarily from these views; and then, consequentially, they see God’s love, and great favour to them.483 ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
499:Amazing!" said Mr. McSwiney. "You've got a permanently fixed larynx," he told Owen. "I've rarely seen such a thing," he said. "Your voice box is never in repose - your Adam's apple sits up there in the position of a permanent scream. I could try giving you some exercises, but you might want to see a throat doctor; you might have to have surgery."
"I DON'T WANT TO HAVE SURGERY, I DON'T NEED ANY EXERCISES," said Owen Meany. "IF GOD GAVE ME THIS VOICE, HE HAD A REASON," Owen said. ~ John Irving,#NFDB
500:Military exercises were considered a joke, and work unnecessary drudgery. The next step down was alcoholism. It appears to have descended upon the whole army overnight. L' ivrognerie -- drunkenness -- had made an immediate appearance, General Ruby noted, and in the larger railroad stations, special rooms had to be set up to cope with it, euphemistically known as 'walls of de-alcoholizing'. So many men were so drunk in public that Commanders began to worry about civilian morale. ~ William Manchester, #NFDB
501:If the North Korean people acquired an awareness of their rights, of individual freedoms and democracy, the game would be up for the regime in Pyongyang. The people would realize that full human rights are exercised and enjoyed by one person only – the ruling Kim. He is the only figure in North Korea who exercises freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, his right not to be tortured, imprisoned, or executed without trial, and his right to proper healthcare and food. ~ Hyeonseo Lee, #NFDB
502:Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
503:A swami may conceivably follow only the path of dry reasoning, of cold renunciation; but a yogi engages himself in a definite, step-by-step procedure by which the body and mind are disciplined and the soul gradually liberated. Taking nothing for granted on emotional grounds or by faith, a yogi practices a thoroughly tested series of exercises that were first mapped out by the ancient rishis. In every age of India, yoga has produced men who became truly free, true Yogi-Christs. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
504:In the Judaic literature, one also finds portrayals of contemplative or meditative exercises. As in other religious literatures, the end purpose here is union with God. The earliest form of mysticism in Judaism is Merkabolism, which dates back approximately to the first century A.D., the time of the Second Temple. Practices of this sect included various forms of asceticism, including fasting. Merkabolism’s meditative exercises focused on body posture and the dwelling upon hymns and a magic ~ Herbert Benson, #NFDB
505:When quite young I can remember I had no thought or wish of surpassing others. I was rather taken with a liking of little arts and bits of learning. My mother carefully fostered a liking for botany, giving me a small microscope and many books, which I yet have. Strange as it may seem, I now believe that botany and the natural system, by exercising discrimination of kinds, is the best of logical exercises. What I may do in logic is perhaps derived from that early attention to botany. ~ William Stanley Jevons, #NFDB
506:The book Dynamic Programming by Richard Bellman is an important, pioneering work in which a group of problems is collected together at the end of some chapters under the heading "Exercises and Research Problems," with extremely trivial questions appearing in the midst of deep, unsolved problems. It is rumored that someone once asked Dr. Bellman how to tell the exercises apart from the research problems, and he replied: "If you can solve it, it is an exercise; otherwise it's a research problem." ~ Donald Knuth, #NFDB
507:As long as in our worship of God we are chiefly occupied with our own thoughts and exercises, we shall not meet Him who is a Spirit, the unseen One. But to the man who withdraws himself from all that is of the world and man, and prepares to wait upon God alone, the Father will reveal Himself. As he forsakes and gives up and shuts out the world, and the life of the world, and surrenders himself to be led of Christ into the secret of God's presence, the light of the Father's love will rise upon him. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
508:In university courses we do exercises. Term papers, quizzes, final examinations are not meant for publication. We move through a course on Dostoevsky or Poe as we move through a mildly good cocktail party, picking up the good bits of food or conversation, bearing with the rest, going home when it comes to seem the reasonable thing to do. Art, at those moments when it feels most like art -- when we feel most alive, most alert, most triumphant -- is less like a cocktail party than a tank full of sharks. ~ John Gardner, #NFDB
509:My father was a very good amateur pianist, and he had a collection of books on technique. One of the things he had was a small volume of exercises by Rudolf Ganz, in which Ganz mentions the pedagogical work of the Swiss composer, Émile-Robert Blanchet, who wrote a ton of polyphonic exercises for one-hand. These exercises were a great help for finger independence, which I acquired early on. This might have given me somewhat of an edge, a facility to be able to knock any obstacle that was in my way. ~ Marc Andre Hamelin, #NFDB
510:America remains today substantially what it has always been, namely a Christian country. That observation can sound aggressively partisan or intolerant, since some extremists believe that Americans are a Christian people who require a Christian government, with all that implies about religious exercises in schools and public displays. I make no such assertion, since I believe that religion flourishes best when it is kept farthest away from any form of government intervention, even the best-intentioned. ~ Philip Jenkins, #NFDB
511:Once, in his first term, Cartwright had been bold enough to ask him why he was clever, what exercises he did to keep his brain fit. Healey had laughed.
"It's memory, Cartwright, old dear. Memory, the mother of the Muses... at least that's what thingummy said."
"Who?"
"You know, what's his name, Greek poet chap. Wrote the Theogony... what was he called? Begins with an 'H'."
"Homer?"
"No, dear. Not Homer, the other one. No, it's gone. Anyway. Memory, that's the key. ~ Stephen Fry,#NFDB
512:Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government. ~ Walter Lippmann, #NFDB
513:I had a vivid illustration of domain dependence in the driveway of a hotel in the pseudocity of Dubai. A fellow who looked like a banker had a uniformed porter carry his luggage (I can instantly tell if someone is a certain type of banker with minimal cues as I have physical allergies to them, even affecting my breathing). About fifteen minutes later I saw the banker lifting free weights at the gym, trying to replicate natural exercises using kettlebells as if he were swinging a suitcase. Domain dependence is ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
514:One of the neuroplasticians I described in The Brain That Changes Itself, Barbara Arrowsmith Young, who had healed her many learning disorders with brain exercises, also visited Kahn. As a younger woman, she had had severe endometriosis, a condition in which the cells lining the womb grow elsewhere in the body; it can cause pain and bleeding and rendered Barbara unable to have children. Multiple surgeries for it led to the development of tremendous scarring inside her abdomen, called postsurgical adhesions. ~ Norman Doidge, #NFDB
515:Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. The possession of a good rifle, as well as the skill to use it well, truly makes a man the monarch of all he surveys. It realizes the ancient dream of the Jovian thunderbolt, and as such it is the embodiment of personal power. For this reason it exercises a curious influence over the minds of most men, and in its best examples it constitutes an object of affection unmatched by any other inanimate object. ~ Jeff Cooper, #NFDB
516:This withdrawal of theology from the world of secular affairs is made more complete by the work of biblical scholars whose endlessly fascinating exercises have made it appear to the lay Christian that no one untrained in their methods can really understand anything the Bible says. We are in a situation analogous to one about which the great Reformers complained. The Bible has been taken out of the hands of the layperson; it has now become the professional property not of the priesthood but of the scholars. ~ Lesslie Newbigin, #NFDB
517:I'm talking of the idea, basically very widespread in America, that the less government the better, which is obviously being used to the advantage of the big corporations, but none-the-less has very radical implications. The idea of a people that exercises a great deal of federalist or confederalist control, the ideal of a grass-roots type of democracy, the idea of the freedom of the individual which is not to get lost in the mazes of anarcho-egotism à la Stirner, or for that matter right-wing libertarianism. ~ Murray Bookchin, #NFDB
518:Frankly, I've never considered my own figure so exceptional; until quite recently, I seldom gave it any thought at all. My biggest single concern used to be getting enough to eat. Now I have to worry about eating too much. I never used to bother with exercises. Now I spend at least 10 minutes each morning working out with small weights. I have evolved my own exercises, for the muscles I wish to keep firm, and I know they are right for me because I can feel them putting the proper muscles into play as I exercise. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
519:Syntheses between East and West based simply on a similarity of “spiritualities” or “mystical experiences” could not be achieved even then—how much less so today! So we must judge any program as inadequate that tries simply to let India and Europe encounter each other at the halfway-station of Byzantine hesychasm, in the practice of the Jesus prayer and of certain bodily positions and breathing exercises—all ways in which Eastern Christianity reorientalized itself after the period of the great synthesis. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
520:To anticipate likely sources of misalignment in any company, it’s useful to distinguish between three concepts: • Ownership: who legally owns a company’s equity? • Possession: who actually runs the company on a day-to-day basis? • Control: who formally governs the company’s affairs? A typical startup allocates ownership among founders, employees, and investors. The managers and employees who operate the company enjoy possession. And a board of directors, usually comprising founders and investors, exercises control. ~ Peter Thiel, #NFDB
521:We should add very much to our happiness by a timely recognition of the simple truth that every man's chief and real existence is in his own skin, and not in other people's opinions [...] To set much too high a value on other people's opinion is a common error everywhere; an error, it may be, rooted in human nature itself, or the result of civilization, and social arrangements generally; but, whatever its source, it exercises a very immoderate influence on all we do, and is very prejudicial to our happiness. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
522:There is also the fact that NORAD-Northeast was conducting war game exercises that morning, a fact that has been very little talked about and certainly not reported to the general public. What's also not been reported, according to the information that I have, at least one of the scenarios they were considering in their war game exercises concerned hijacked aircraft being crashed into buildings. Now, this could explain the lack of response when the air traffic controllers began to report that four planes were off course. ~ Jim Marrs, #NFDB
523:Oh how good,” said the person once, “it is to work for God in the daytime, and at night to lie down under his smiles!” High experiences and religious affections in this person have not been attended with any disposition at all to neglect the necessary business of a secular calling, to spend time in reading and prayer, and other exercises of devotion; but worldly business has been attended with great alacrity, as part of the service of God; the person declaring that it being done thus, “’tis found to be as good as prayer. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
524:You, I said, who are their legislator, having selected the men, will now select the women and give them to them;—they must be as far as possible of like natures with them; and they must live in common houses and meet at common meals. None of them will have anything specially his or her own; they will be together, and will be brought up together, and will associate at gymnastic exercises. And so they will be drawn by a necessity of their natures to have intercourse with each other—necessity is not too strong a word, I think? Yes, ~ Plato, #NFDB
525:One of the best exercises in meekness we can perform is when the subject Is in ourselves. We must not fret over our own imperfections. Although reason requires that we must be displeased and sorry whenever we commit a fault we must refrain from bitter, gloomy,spiteful, and emotional displeasure. Many people are greatly at fault in this way. When overcome by anger they become angry at being angry, disturbed at being disturbed and vexed at being vexed. By such means they keep their hearts drenched and steeped in passion. ~ Francis de Sales, #NFDB
526:You would think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the ‘low’ churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his ‘high’ brother should be moved to irreverence, and the ‘high’ one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his ‘low’ brother into idolatry. And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility. —from The Screwtape Letters ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
527:How many young girls there are who do not see any wrongdoing in following certain shameless styles like so many sheep. They certainly would blush if they could guess the impression they make and the feelings they evoke in those who see them. Do they not see the harm resulting from excess in certain gymnastic exercises and sports not suitable for virtuous girls? What sins are committed or provoked by conversations which are too free, by immodest shows, by dangerous reading. How lax have consciences become, how pagan morals! ~ Pope Pius XII, #NFDB
528:What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
529:Learn to self-conquest, persevere thus for a time, and you will perceive very clearly the advantage which you gain from it. As soon you apply yourself to orison, you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together: they seem like bees which return to the hive and there shut themselves up to work at the making of honey. At the first call of the will, they come back more and more quickly. At last, after countless exercises, of this kind, God disposes them to a state of utter rest and of perfect contemplation. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, #NFDB
530:You must descend from your head into your heart. At present your thoughts of God are in your head. And God Himself is, as it were, outside you, and so your prayer and other spiritual exercises remain exterior. Whilst you are still in your head, thoughts will not easily be subdued but will always be whirling about, like snow in winter or clouds of mosquitoes in summer. [2430.jpg] -- from For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics, by Roger Housden
~ Theophan the Recluse, Descend from your head into your heart
,#NFDB
531:What a sad paradox, though Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze the path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
532:There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present. ~ Washington Irving, #NFDB
533:I had a vivid illustration of domain dependence in the driveway of a hotel in the pseudocity of Dubai. A fellow who looked like a banker had a uniformed porter carry his luggage (I can instantly tell if someone is a certain type of banker with minimal cues as I have physical allergies to them, even affecting my breathing). About fifteen minutes later I saw the banker lifting free weights at the gym, trying to replicate natural exercises using kettlebells as if he were swinging a suitcase. Domain dependence is pervasive. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
534:One of the best exercises in meekness we can perform is when the subject Is in ourselves. We must not fret over our own imperfections. Although reason requires that we must be displeased and sorry whenever we commit a fault we must refrain from bitter, gloomy,spiteful, and emotional displeasure. Many people are greatly at fault in this way. When overcome by anger they become angry at being angry, disturbed at being disturbed and vexed at being vexed. By such means they keep their hearts drenched and steeped in passion. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
535:Oh, you may talk about power; but, if you neglect the one Book that God has given you as the one instrument through which He imparts and exercises His power, you will not have it. You may read many books and go to many conventions and you may have your all-night prayer meetings to pray for the power of the Holy Ghost; but unless you keep in constant and close association with the one Book, the Bible, you will not have power. And if you ever had power, you will not maintain it except by the daily, earnest, intense study of that Book. ~ R A Torrey, #NFDB
536:I believe that prayer in public schools should be voluntary. It is difficult for me to see how religious exercises can be a requirement in public schools, given our Constitutional requirement of separation of church and state. I feel that the highly desirable goal of religious education must be principally the responsibility of church and home. I do not believe that public education should show any hostility toward religion, and neither should it inhibit voluntary participation, if it does not interfere with the educational process. ~ Gerald R Ford, #NFDB
537:In many ways the philosophy at West Point was similar to a way of life that Lombardi had learned earlier at Fordham from the Jesuits. There was a direct line from one to the next, from religion to the military to football, from the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius to the football regimen of Colonel Blaik. Both emphasized discipline, order, organization, planning, attention to detail, repetition, the ability to adjust to different situations and remain flexible in pursuit of a goal while sustaining an obsession with one big idea. ~ David Maraniss, #NFDB
538:People say that the brain is a muscle and that one of the best exercises for any brain is learning another language and to switch from one to another as much as you can. I've found out that when I have trouble regarding any character or any particular scene in English, sometimes I'll switch to Spanish and I'll solve the problem that I've encountered. If I'm working in Spanish and I don't know how to approach certain scenes or certain emotions, or how to say this and that, I just switch to English to try to solve it that way and it works. ~ Demian Bichir, #NFDB
539:The psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best with only tentative, impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, "enlightened" individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
540:You will have to learn ways of relaxing in the present. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve something. It is a state of effortlessness. It is a state of no-action. It is a state of tremendous passivity, receptivity. You are not doing anything, you are not thinking anything, you are not planning for anything, you are not doing yoga exercises, and you are not doing any technique, any method - you are simply existing, just existing. And in that very moment... the sudden realization that all is as it should be. That`s what enlightenment is! ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
541:For young males that weigh between 150-200 lbs., deadlifts can move up 15-20 lbs. per workout, squats 10-15 lbs., with continued steady progress for 3-4 weeks before slowing down to half that rate. Bench presses, presses, and cleans can move up 5-10 lbs. per workout, with progress on these exercises slowing down to 2.5-5 lbs. per workout after only 2-3 weeks. Young women make progress on the squat and the deadlift at about the same rate, adjusted for bodyweight, but much slower on the press, the bench press, cleans, and assistance exercises. ~ Mark Rippetoe, #NFDB
542:Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, in their study American Couples, found that lesbians have sex less often than gay men and heterosexual couples. The sociologists believe that this happens because, as they found, in heterosexual couples the man almost always initiates sex, and the woman either complies or exercises veto power. Among gay men, at least one partner takes the role of initiator. But among lesbians, they found, often neither feels comfortable taking the role of initiator, because neither wants to be perceived as making demands. ~ Deborah Tannen, #NFDB
543:To oscillate between drill exercises that strive to attain efficiency in outward doing without the use of intelligence, and an accumulation of knowledge that is supposed to be an ultimate end in itself, means that education accepts the present social conditions as final, and thereby takes upon itself the responsibility for perpetuating them. A reorganization of education so that learning takes place in connection with the intelligent carrying forward of purposeful activities is a slow work. It can be accomplished only piecemeal, a step at a time. ~ John Dewey, #NFDB
544:is a flight from the Self, it is a temporary escape from the torment of Self. It is a temporary palliative against the pain and folly of life. The driver of oxen makes this same flight, takes this temporary drug when he drinks a few bowls of rice wine or coconut milk in the inn. He then no longer feels his Self, no longer feels the pain of life; he then experiences temporary escape. Falling asleep over his bowl of rice wine, he finds what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape from their bodies by long exercises and dwell in the non-Self. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
545:Self-righteousness....is the largest idol of the human heart - the idol which man loves most and God hates most. Dearly beloved, you will always be going back to this idol. You are always trying to be something in yourself, to gain God's favour by thinking little of your sin, or by looking to your repentance, tears, prayers ; or by looking to your religious exercises, your frames, etc; or by looking to your graces, the Spirit's work in your heart. Beware of false Christs. Study sanctification to the utmost, but make not a Christ of it. ~ Robert Murray M Cheyne, #NFDB
546:The bench press per se is not a risky exercise. When done right, it can help improve upper body strength and size. It's only when form takes a back seat to numbers and when it's grossly overtrained that problems result. Injuries occur in the shoulders and elbows when the bench press is overtrained, poor technique is used, such as rebounding the bar off the chest and bridging, no other exercises for the upper body are included in the program, and there are no core exercises done for the upper back. Quite often, it's a combination all these factors. ~ Bill Starr, #NFDB
547:This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth. Socrates’ “Know thyself” has as much value as the “Be virtuous” of our confessionals. They reveal a nostalgia at the same time as an ignorance. They are sterile exercises on great subjects. They are legitimate only in precisely so far as they are approximate. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
548:Wars results in immediate deaths and destruction, but the environmental consequences can last hundreds, often thousands of years. And it is not just war itself that undermines our life support system, but also the research and development, military exercises and general preparations for battle that are carried out on a daily basis in most parts of the world. The majority of this pre-war activity takes place without the benefit of civilian scrutiny and therefore we are unaware of some of what is being done to our environment in the name of 'security. ~ Rosalie Bertell, #NFDB
549:Confucius, the philosopher and politician who was born in the sixth century B.C.E. He acquired a place in Chinese history akin to that of Socrates in the West, in part because his ideology encouraged order and loyalty. “There is government,” Confucius said, “when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son.” Confucius linked morality to the strength of the state: “He who exercises government by means of virtue may be compared to the North Star, which holds its place while all other stars turn around it. ~ Evan Osnos, #NFDB
550:Once we come to see that one’s degree of self-control directly mirrors one’s self-image, we can understand why we find it so difficult to improve our bodily performance by focusing only on the learning of specific actions. Instead, we might well surmise that to improve one’s self-image so that it more nearly approximates reality will result in a general improvement in one’s bodily actions. And the results of such an improvement would be both quicker and more extensive than the results from any system of exercises that applies only to specific actions. ~ Mosh Feldenkrais, #NFDB
551:Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think. ~ Marlene van Niekerk, #NFDB
552:This diet of Elizabeth Arden is very good. I have gone down between 5 and 7 pounds already living on salads, egg at night, meat once a day, fish if I want, spinach and soup. Wait to [sic] you see me. I will be thin when Jack sees me.” In spite of the pressure from home to conform both physically and intellectually, Rosemary flourished under the Assumption school’s individual instruction, constant reinforcement, repetitious exercises, and emotional support, a program better suited to Rosemary’s needs than that of any other institution she had attended. ~ Kate Clifford Larson, #NFDB
553:This is why I am not overly enthusiastic about the various “spiritual exercises” in meditation or yoga which some consider essential for release from the ego. For when practiced in order to “get” some kind of spiritual illumination or awakening, they strengthen the fallacy that the ego can toss itself away by a tug at its own bootstraps. But there is nothing wrong with meditating just to meditate, in the same way that you listen to music just for the music. If you go to concerts to “get culture” or to improve your mind, you will sit there as deaf as a doorpost. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
554:But let there be no misunderstanding: it is not that a real man, the object of knowledge, philosophical reflection or technological intervention, has been substituted for the soul, the illusion of theologians. The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence, which is itself a factor in the mastery that power exercises over the body. The soul is the effect and instrument of a political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
555:The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining. If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void. When the composer withholds less, the opposite occurs: he forces us to perform gymnastic exercises more skillful than our own. ~ Claude Levi Strauss, #NFDB
556:But these volunteers, like most of the others, were to discover that much preparation must come between the “joining up” and the shooting. Drilling three or four times a day was serious and unromantic business, the more so when these exercises were done under the scorching rays of the summer sun. Chopping down trees lost little of its odium by being dignified with the name of “policing.”30 Marching to new locations, preparing food, washing clothes, fighting lice and cleaning camp were duties that bore little resemblance to Johnny Reb’s conception of soldiering. ~ Bell Irvin Wiley, #NFDB
557:...full range of motion, multi-joint exercises are
not supposed to isolate any one muscle. We use them precisely because they don't. We want them
to work lots of muscles through a long range of motion. We like it when some muscles are called
into function as other muscles drop out of function, and when muscles change function during
the exercise. This is because we are training for strength. We are concerned with improving the
functional motion around a joint. We are not just concerned about our "favorite muscles." We
do not have favorite muscles. ~ Mark Rippetoe,#NFDB
558:To have conscious communication with the angels - we all are continuously and unconsciously connecting with our angels, whether we know it or not - you would start in a place you feel comfortable, all by yourself, so you don't feel self-conscious. Then, just think of something you would like help with. For example, say, "Angels, I want a wonderful new job that exercises all my talents and everything I've learned - so I will wake up on Monday mornings and say 'Yippee!' - and that comfortably pays all my bills, plus some." You ask, and then the next step is to let go. ~ Doreen Virtue, #NFDB
559:The falsification of everything has been shown to be one of the characteristic features of our period, but falsification is not in itself subversion properly so-called, though contributing directly to the preparation for it. Perhaps the clearest indication of this is what may be called the falsification of language, taking the form of the misuse of certain words that have been diverted from their true meaning; misuse of this kind is to some extent imposed by constant suggestion on the part of everyone who exercises any kind of influence over the mentality of the public. ~ Ren Gu non, #NFDB
560:You do not need to do many different exercises to get strong - you need to get strong on a very few important exercises, movements that train the whole body as a system, not as a collection of separate body parts. The problem with the programs advocated by all the national exercise organizations is that they fail to recognize this basic principle: the body best adapts as a whole organism to stress applied to the whole organism. The more stress that can be applied to as much of the body at one time as possible, the more effective and productive the adaptation will be. ~ Mark Rippetoe, #NFDB
561:As a sign of Christ’s presence, joy shapes the habitual state of the consecrated person. We therefore naturally seek out consolation not for its own sake, but as a sign of the Lord’s presence. Consolation may be sought in many different forms, as Saint Ignatius explains in his Spiritual Exercises: “By consolation I mean that which occurs when some interior motion is caused within the soul through which it comes to be inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord. As a result it can love no created thing on the face of the earth in itself, but only in the Creator of them all. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
562:1. If you complete the minimal target number of reps for all exercises (excluding abs and kettlebell swing), increase the weight the next workout at least 10 pounds for that exercise. If the additional 10 pounds feels easy after two to three reps, stop, wait five minutes, increase the weight an additional 5 to 10 pounds, then do your single set to failure. 2. Do not just drop the weight when you hit failure. Attempt to move it, millimeter by millimeter, and then hold it at the limit for five seconds. Only after that should you slowly (take five to ten seconds) lower the weight. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
563:When we contemplate icons, good and wholesome holy meanings are created within us. A human being, you see, is not just soul and spirit but also mind, imagination, feelings, senses. An individual is a unified whole, a unified entity. The aim of the Ecclesia is to divinize the person in his or her totality. It is the whole person that strives to reach God. This is the reason why we offer exercises in the Ecclesia that relate to the body, such as fasting, prostrations, staying up during all-night vigils, all the rituals that the saints have been doing throughout the ages. ~ Kyriacos C Markides, #NFDB
564:The Magician archetype in a man is his “bullshit detector”; it sees through denial and exercises discernment. He sees evil for what and where it is when it masquerades as goodness, as it so often does. In ancient times when a king became possessed by his angry feelings and wanted to punish a village that had refused to pay its taxes, the magician, with measured and reasoned thinking or with the stabbing blows of logic, would reawaken the king’s conscience and good sense by releasing him from his tempestuous mood. The court magician, in effect, was the king’s psychotherapist. ~ Robert L Moore, #NFDB
565:I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the States the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in any religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the States. ~ Thomas Jefferson, #NFDB
566:Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet and what are unsavory…. And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us….All these things we endure from the brain when it is not healthy….In these ways I am of the opinion that the brain exercises the greatest power in the man. ~ Hippocrates, #NFDB
567:I like the name writing practices better than Creative Writing. As I have said, nobody can teach creative writing—run like mad from anybody who thinks he can. But one can teach practices, like finger exercises on the piano; one can share the tools of the trade, and what one has gleaned from the great writers: it is the great writers themselves who do the teaching, rather than the leader of a seminar. It doesn’t take long for the gifted student to realize that there are certain things the great writers always do, and certain things they never do; it is from these that we learn. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
568:You do not need to do many different exercises to get strong - you need to get strong on a very few important exercises, movements that train the whole body as a system, not as a collection of separate body parts. The problem with the programs advocated by all the national exercise organizations is that they fail to recognize this basic principle: the body best adapts as a whole organism to stress applied to the whole organism. The more stress that can be applied to as much of the body at one time as possible, the more effective and productive the adaptation will be. ~ Mark Rippetoe, #NFDB
569:I think locality exercises strange influence over some minds. The peaceful meadow-scenery holds no lurking horrors in its bosom, but in the lonesome moorlands, full of curiously molded boulders, grotesque fancies must assail one there. Creatures seem to come, odd and ill-defined as their surroundings. As a child I had a peculiar horror of those tall, odd-shaped boulders, with seeming faces, featureless, it is true, but sometimes strangely resembling humans and animals. I believe the spinney may be haunted by something of this nature, terrible as the trees. ("The Haunted Spinney") ~ Elliott O Donnell, #NFDB
570:For many months the Lisp advocates pressed on. I was baffled. Many extremely intelligent people I knew and had much respect for were praising Lisp with almost religious dedication. There had to be something there, something I couldn't afford not to get my hands on! Eventually my thirst for knowledge won me over. I took the plunge, bit the bullet, got my hands dirty, and began months of mind bending exercises. It was a journey on an endless lake of frustration. I turned my mind inside out, rinsed it, and put it back in place. I went through seven rings of hell and came back. And then I got it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
571:The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements. . . . ~ Nikola Tesla, #NFDB
572:If someone were to ask whether communications skills or meekness is most important to a marriage, I'd answer meekness, hands down. You can be a superb communicator but still never have the humility to ask, 'Is it I?' Communication skills are no substitute for Christlike attributes. As Dr. Douglas Brinley has observed, 'Without theological perspectives, secular exercises designed to improve our relationship and our communication skills (the common tools of counselors and marriage books) will never work any permanent change in one's heart: they simply develop more clever and skilled fighters! ~ John Bytheway, #NFDB
573:It includes the exercise of God's perfections to produce a proper effect, in opposition to their lying eternally dormant and ineffectual: as his power being eternally without any act or fruit of that power; his wisdom eternally ineffectual in any wise production, or prudent disposal of any thing, &c. The manifestation of his internal glory to created understandings. The communication of the infinite fullness of God to the creature. The creature's high esteem of God, love to him, and complacence [i.e., satisfaction, delight] and joy in him; and the proper exercises and expressions of these. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
574:Teaching leaders at all levels to live with friction. Friction is the inherent condition of war. It is caused by the enemy, by terrain and weather, and by the foul-ups that occur in your own force. The only way to learn how to deal with it is to train with it. Again, this means conducting aggressed, free-play exercises. And it means taking the whole unit to the field. CPXs have great value, but whenever troops are not involved, the level of friction is unrealistically low. Units must get plenty of time in the field as units if they are to learn how to accomplish their missions despite friction. ~ William S Lind, #NFDB
575:The odd American idea that giving money to political campaigns is free speech means that the very rich have far more speech, and so in effect far more voting power, than other citizens. We believe that we have checks and balances, but have rarely faced a situation like the present: when the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses. The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular with the society at large, and several that are generally unpopular—and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it. ~ Timothy Snyder, #NFDB
576:Gong is the foundation of Taijiquan. Physically, the accumulation of gong refers to constant improvements in balance, coordination, agility, and power through the accretion and replenishment of qi, which can be described as “vital energy,” or “life force.” Mentally and spiritually, the accumulation of gong refers to constant advancement toward realizing inner tranquility. Gong practice means practice of essential exercises necessary to understand the art of Taiji and build a solid foundation of skill. It is indispensable. My teacher compared gong to the flour in noodles; that is, it is the main ingredient. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
577:Thank you," he said. "I'm glad you enjoyed it. If there is anyone here this afternoon whom I have convinced that books are meant to be enjoyed, that English is nothing to do with duty, that it has nothing to do with school - with exercises and homework and ticks and crosses - then I am a happy man." He turned away but then he turned back again and he suddenly simply shouted, he bellowed "To hell with school," he cried. "To hell with school. English is what matters. ENGLISH IS LIFE." The Head grabbed him and led him off to her sitting-room for tea, not looking too thrilled, and we were let out and I went flying home. ~ Jane Gardam, #NFDB
578:3. The grace of God,2 like a loving mother, as soon as the soul is regenerated in the new fire and fervor of His service, treats it in the same way; for it enables it, without labor on its own part, to find its spiritual milk, sweet and delicious, in all the things of God, and in devotional exercises great sweetness; God giving it the breasts of His own tender love, as to a tender babe. Such souls, therefore, delight to spend many hours, and perhaps whole nights, in prayer; their pleasures are penances, their joy is fasting, and their consolations lie in the use of the sacraments and in speaking of divine things. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
579:A dog, for example, brings love and expands love in the heart of the owner. Love prolongs life. In fact, research documents that having a dog extends the owner’s life by ten years! Just think of all the bizarre exercises, diets, and other regimens that people go through to add relatively small amounts of time on to their life, when they can simply get a dog and add ten years! Love has a powerful anabolic effect. Love increases endorphins, which are life-enhancing hormones. You live ten years longer with a dog in your life because a pet dog catalyzes the energy of love, and that energy of love heals and prolongs life. ~ David R Hawkins, #NFDB
580:Professional controversies bring out the worst in academics. Scientific journals occasionally publish exchanges, often beginning with someone’s critique of another’s research, followed by a reply and a rejoinder. I have always thought that these exchanges are a waste of time. Especially when the original critique is sharply worded, the reply and the rejoinder are often exercises in what I have called sarcasm for beginners and advanced sarcasm. The replies rarely concede anything to a biting critique, and it is almost unheard of for a rejoinder to admit that the original critique was misguided or erroneous in any way. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
581:Many people have got caught up in the belief known as the “Law of Attraction.” They believe that by their thoughts, affirmations, and other “attraction” exercises they will become wealthy. However, the Tanakh wisely says, “In all work there is profit, but mere talk produces only poverty.” (CJB, Proverbs 14:23). Only through work it is possible to produce results that create wealth and simply talking about wealth will not produce any results. The idea that wealth can come through thoughts or affirmations is a fantasy. “A hard worker has plenty of food, but a person who chases fantasies ends up in poverty” (CJB, Proverbs 28:19). ~ H W Charles, #NFDB
582:It might have helped us considerably to have been shown, perhaps through some simple exercises in elementary school, that we are not our thoughts, that we can watch them come and go and learn not to cling to them or run after them. Even if we didn’t understand it at the time, it would have been helpful just to hear it. Likewise, it would have been helpful to know that the breath is an ally, that it leads to calmness just by watching it. Or that it is okay to just be, that we don’t have to run around all the time doing or striving or competing in order to feel that we have an identity—that we are fundamentally whole as we are. We ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
583:I know who you are," she said. "You're my enemy. The true believer. The righteous man with the righteous mission. The one that jails people for reading and burns the books. That persecutes people who do exercises the wrong way. That dumps out the medicine and pisses on it. That pushes the button that sends the drones to drop the bombs. And hides behind a bunker and doesn't get hurt. Shielded by God. Or the state. Or whatever lie he uses to hide his envy and self-interest and cowardice and lust for power. It took me a while to see you, though. You saw me right away. You knew I was your enemy. Was unrighteous. How did you know it? ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
584:Oh no, we stem from different traditions, all three of us. Monsignor O’Brien is a priest in the tradition of the priests of the Bible, the sons of Aaron. He has certain powers, magical powers, that he exercises in the celebration of the Mass, for example, where the bread and wine are magically changed to the body and blood of Christ. Dr. Skinner as a Protestant minister is in the tradition of the prophets. He has received a call to preach the word of God. I, a rabbi, am essentially a secular figure, having neither the mana of the priest nor the ‘call’ of the minister. If anything, I suppose we come closest to the judges of the Bible. ~ Harry Kemelman, #NFDB
585:And another effect of the scholastic illusion is seen when people describe resistance to domination in the language of consciousness - as does the whole Marxist tradition and also the feminist theorists who, giving way to habits of thought, expect political liberation to come from the ‘raising of consciousness’ - ignoring the extraordinary inertia which results from the inscription of social structures in bodies, for lack of a dispositional theory of practices. While making things explicit can help, only a thoroughgoing process of countertraining, involving repeated exercises, can, like an athlete’s training, durably transform habitus. ~ Pierre Bourdieu, #NFDB
586:Her lips curved up then, as if she liked his answer. “Are you working tomorrow?”
Dax nodded. “Yeah. Training stuff.” He was running weapons-training exercises with three of his guys and a small team of DEA agents. They liked to do joint operations, especially in Miami, where there was a smorgasbord of government agencies. But he couldn’t tell her that.
“When do you get off?”
The way she said “get off” brought up all sorts of images. Hannah must have read his expression, because she shook her head. “Pervert,” she muttered.
He grinned, liking the camaraderie between them, as if part of that wall she’d erected had been knocked down. ~ Katie Reus,#NFDB
587:According to an equally lovingly preserved English translation of the prospectus, the purpose of Ibuka’s firm was “to establish an ideal factory that stresses a spirit of freedom and open-mindedness, and where engineers with sincere motivation can exercise their technological skills to the highest level.” We shall, he pledged, “eliminate any unfair profit-seeking exercises” and “seek expansion not only for the sake of size.” Further, “we shall carefully select employees . . . we shall avoid to have [sic] formal positions for the mere sake of having them, and shall place emphasis on a person’s ability, performance and character, so that each ~ Simon Winchester, #NFDB
588:What if you kill a man who was plotting to shoot up a McDonald's? What if you commit one murder to prevent a dozen murders? The "obviously correct" judgment of the law starts to sound more and more like an opinion when a new variable is introduced, doesn't it? And okay, these "what if this?" exercises may feel like cerebral game play, but you don't even need to look to extreme examples to see the tenuous, opinion-based nature of laws. Abortion. Gay marriage. Determining fair use in a copyright infringement case. Every time a law is applied, it is applied as a matter of opinion. And those are the laws -- the biggest and baddest rules we have. ~ Johnny B Truant, #NFDB
589:Here’s a great home workout that allows you to train and work on the usual issues I find ailing most people: • Right-leg Bulgarian Split Squats with the dumbbell in the suitcase position, 10 reps • Left-leg Bulgarian Split Squats with the dumbbell in the suitcase position, 10 reps • Goblet Squats with the dumbbell cradled on the chest, 10 reps • Deep Push-ups, chest touching the floor, with the push-up handles, 10 reps • Doorway Chin-ups or Pull-ups, 10 reps • Ab Wheel, 10 reps Try to do these six exercises one after another straight through without resting much between movements. Repeat this sequence, after a minute or two of rest, three to five times. ~ Dan John, #NFDB
590:Respectable opinion would never consider an assessment of the Reagan Doctrine or earlier exercises in terms of their actual human costs, and could not comprehend that such an assessment—which would yield a monstrous toll if accurately conducted on a global scale—might perhaps be a proper task in the United States. At the same level of integrity, disciplined Soviet intellectuals are horrified over real or alleged American crimes, but perceive their own only as benevolent intent gone awry, or errors of an earlier day, now overcome; the comparison is inexact and unfair, since Soviet intellectuals can plead fear as an excuse for their services to state violence. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
591:As in other exercises my father taught me, the way to begin is to sit up straight, breathe normally, and gradually allow your mind to relax. “With your mind at rest,” he instructed those of us in his little teaching room in Nepal, “just allow yourself to become aware of all the thoughts, feelings, and sensations passing through it. And as you watch them pass, simply ask yourself, ‘Is there a difference between the mind and the thoughts that pass through it? Is there any difference between the thinker and the thoughts perceived by the thinker?’ Continue watching your thoughts with these questions in mind for about three minutes or so, and then stop. ~ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, #NFDB
592:The modern Westerner, persuaded that he has a right to 'think for himself' and imagining that he exercises this right, is unwilling to acknowledge that his every thought has been shaped by cultural and historical influences and that his opinions fit, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, into a pattern which has nothing random about it. Statements which begin with the words 'I think...' reflect a climate created by all those strands of belief and experience - as also of folly and corruption - which have gone to form the current mindset and to establish principles which cannot be doubted by any sane and reasonable man in this place and at this point in time. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton, #NFDB
593:requirements. In Russia today, everything happened to maintain the nadzirateli, the overseers, to protect their power, to continue looting the country’s patrimony. Nate wanted to devastate the opposition, to avenge MARBLE, to take away their power. Nate was dark—black hair and straight eyebrows—of medium height, and slim from varsity swimming in college. What colleagues and friends noticed however, were darting brown eyes that read faces, weighed gestures, and narrowed with quick comprehension. On the street, those brown eyes scanned ahead, watched the wings, picked up the peripheral anomalies before there was movement. During surveillance exercises as a CIA ~ Jason Matthews, #NFDB
594:On various occasions, especially in trying to think of western American history in the context of the worldwide history of colonialism, it has struck me that much of the mental behavior that we sometimes denounce as ethnocentrism and cultural insensitivity actually derives less from our indifference or hostility than from our clumsiness and awkwardness when we leave the comfort of the English language behind... [V]enturing outside the bounds of the English language exercises and stretches our minds in ways that are essential for getting as close as we can to the act of seeing the world from what would otherwise remain unfamiliar and alien perspectives. ~ Patricia Nelson Limerick, #NFDB
595:The leader bears full responsibility for explaining the strategic mission, developing the tactics, and securing the training and resources to enable the team to properly and successfully execute. If an individual on the team is not performing at the level required for the team to succeed, the leader must train and mentor that underperformer. But if the underperformer continually fails to meet standards, then a leader who exercises Extreme Ownership must be loyal to the team and the mission above any individual. If underperformers cannot improve, the leader must make the tough call to terminate them and hire others who can get the job done. It is all on the leader. ~ Jocko Willink, #NFDB
596:In his differentiation between asceticisms, Nietzsche posited a clear divide between the priestly varieties on the one side, illuminated by his vicious gaze, and the disciplinary rules of intellectual workers, philosophers and artists as well as the exercises of warriors and athletes on the other side. If the former are concerned with what one might call a pathogogical asceticism - an artful self-violation among an elite of sufferers that empowers them to lead other sufferers and induce the healthy to become co-sick - the latter only impose their regulations on themselves because they see them as a means of reaching their optimum as thinkers and creators of works. ~ Peter Sloterdijk, #NFDB
597:Bach-y-Rita developed a program for people with damaged facial motor nerves, who could not move their facial muscles and so couldn’t close their eyes, speak properly, or express emotion, making them look like monstrous automatons. Bach-y-Rita had one of the “extra” nerves that normally goes to the tongue surgically attached to a patient’s facial muscles. Then he developed a program of brain exercises to train the “tongue nerve” (and particularly the part of the brain that controls it) to act like a facial nerve. These patients learned to express normal facial emotions, speak, and close their eyes—one more instance of Bach-y-Rita’s ability to “connect anything to anything. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
598:But men should be individually certain about this, that they are the people of God, or members of the church. Above all things this faith is necessary which firmly apprehends the following syllogism. The whole people of God is blessed, holy, pleasing, and acceptable to God in such a way that it cannot be torn from the hands of God. We are the people of God. Therefore God exercises care for us. The major premise is eminently true, because even the death and blood of the saints are precious in the sight of the Lord (cf. Ps. 116:15); all they do and suffer is pleasing to God. On the contrary, their errors and lapses have been covered and forgiven, as Ps. 32:1 testifies. But ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
599:We might imagine that the fear and insecurity of getting close to someone would happen only once, at the start of a relationship, and that anxieties couldn’t possibly continue after two people had made some explicit commitments to one another, like marrying, securing a joint mortgage, buying a house, having a few children, and naming each other in their wills. Yet conquering distance and gaining assurances that we are needed aren’t exercises to be performed only once; they have to be repeated every time there’s been a break—a day away, a busy period, an evening at work—for every interlude has the power once again to raise the question of whether or not we are still wanted. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
600:What does 'abstract political philosophy' here mean? No medical writer would speak of an 'abstract' anatomical science in which men have no livers, nor would he add that though the student in his closet may disregard the existence of the liver the working physician dares not.
Apparently Merivale means the same thing by 'abstract' political philosophy that Mr. Bryce means by 'ideal' democracy. Both refer to a conception of human nature constructed in all good faith by certain eighteenth-century philosophers, which is now no longer exactly believed in, but which, because nothing else has taken its place, still exercises a kind of shadowy authority in a hypothetical universe. ~ Graham Wallas,#NFDB
601:I too took the plunge - the vow to observe brahmacharya for life. I must confess that I had not then fully realized the magnitude and immensity of the task I undertook. The difficulties are even today staring me in the face. The importance of the vow is being more and more borne in upon me. Life without brahmacharya appears to me to be insipid and animal-like. The brute by nature knows no self-restraint. Man is man because he is capable of, and only in so far as he exercises, self-restraint. What formerly appeared to me to be extravagant praise of brahmacharya in our religious books seems now, with increasing clearness every day, to be absolutely proper and founded on experience. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
602:A lot of role-playing. Sleazy guy at the bus stop wants to sit too close to you: what do you do? Overly friendly nightclub patron follows you out to the parking lot: how do you react? Your boss calls you “sweetie.” What do you say? We practiced making eye contact, speaking assertively, ignoring verbal insults, not smiling or laughing in awkward situations—the most basic of self-defense skills, the ones that are so basic no one ever thinks about practicing them. It seemed silly. I felt as if I were back in grade school, being forced to watch Free to Be . . . You and Me all over again. But I quickly realized these exercises were harder than hitting things. Harder, and more gratifying. ~ Susan Schorn, #NFDB
603:One evening I was walking along Hollywood Boulevard, nothing much to do. I stopped and looked in the window of a stationary shop. A mechanized pen was suspended in space in such a way that, as a mechanized roll of paper passed by it, the pen went through the motions of the same penmanship exercises I had learned as a child in the third grade. Centrally placed in the window was an advertisement explaining the mechanical reasons for the perfection of the operation of the suspended mechanical pen. I was fascinated, for everything was going wrong. Then pen was tearing the paper to shreds and splattering in all over the window and on the advertisement, which, nevertheless, remained legible. ~ John Cage, #NFDB
604:The difference between what people call “community” and what the Bible calls the “church” comes down to the question of authority. Jesus actually gave authority to the local assembly called a church (Matt 16:13–20; 18:15–20; Heb 13:7, 17; 1 Pet 5:1–5). This assembly is not only a fellowship but an accountability fellowship. It’s not just a group of believers at the park; it preaches the gospel and possesses the keys of the kingdom for binding and loosing through the ordinances. It declares who does and does not belong to the kingdom. It exercises oversight. And exercising such affirmation and oversight meaningfully means gathering regularly and getting involved in one another’s lives. ~ Mark Dever, #NFDB
605:The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayer—which is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them—but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
606:social power is power over—the capacity to control others’ states and behaviors. Personal power is power to—the ability to control our own states and behaviors. This is the kind of power Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel was referring to when he wrote, “Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.” Ideally, we want both kinds of power, but, as Wiesel suggests, personal power—the state of being in command of our most precious and authentic inner resources—is uniquely essential. Unless and until we feel personally powerful, we cannot achieve presence, and all the social power in the world won’t compensate for its absence. ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
607:The Art of Papier-Mâché,” he said, reading the title of the lowest book in the stack. He pointed to the ledger above it. “I want you to record notes on it while you read. Take thorough enough notes and I won’t make you write a report.”
Ceony’s jaw fell. “But—”
“A Living Paper Garden,” he said, gesturing to the next book in the stack. “Do the same. I bookmarked chapters five, six, and twelve; they have exercises in them I’d like you to do. And A Tale of Two Cities. It’s just a good book. Have you read it?”
Ceony stared at the paper magician, words caught in her throat. He’d gone mad again. He’d tricked her into thinking he wasn’t mad, and yet now he’d proved— ~ Charlie N Holmberg,#NFDB
608:There’s nothing “grown-up” about wanting the State to punish people without evidence of guilt so that you can feel safe. It’s actually a deeply childish need at the heart of all authoritarianism - the desire for a big daddy figure to keep you safe from the Bad People even it means there are no legal constraints, due process, or transparency.
Children growing up learn that their Daddy is omnipotent and omniscient and exercises his unchecked power for benevolent ends - it’s a nice, safe feeling, and many continue to cling to it in adulthood, hoping the Security State will provide that. Many adjectives can and should be used to describe that need - “grown-up” definitely is not among them. ~ Glenn Greenwald,#NFDB
609:You go on, I presume, with your latin Exercises: and I wish to hear of your beginning upon Sallust who is one of the most polished and perfect of the Roman Historians, every Period of whom, and I had almost said every Syllable and every Letter is worth Studying.
In Company with Sallust, Cicero, Tacitus and Livy, you will learn Wisdom and Virtue. You will see them represented, with all the Charms which Language and Imagination can exhibit, and Vice and Folly painted in all their Deformity and Horror.
You will ever remember that all the End of study is to make you a good Man and a useful Citizen.—This will ever be the Sum total of the Advice of your affectionate Father,
John Adams ~ John Adams,#NFDB
610:I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead stranger, and not the breathlessness of hearing a shotgun pumped outside of Becca Arrington’s house. This cannot be addressed by breathing exercises. This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead. ~ John Green, #NFDB
611:It is easy for us to delude ourselves into thinking that our notions of the healthy person are unbiased by our particular circumstances or partialities. It is comforting for us to think that, in totalitarian societies, where troublesome people are often psychiatrically hospitalized, the indigenous mental health professionals are themselves aware that their behavior is nakedly political and actually aimed at social control rather than the health of the person. Bus what is the possibility that American mental health workers are themselves vulnerable to what amounts to the goals of adjustment couched in notions of health, and which lead to equal - and probably equally unwitting - exercises of social control? ~ Robert Kegan, #NFDB
612:The bodies of our fellow human beings must be treated with more care than our own. Christian love teaches us to give our brethren not only spiritual gifts, but material gifts as well. Even our last shirt, our last piece of bread must be given to them. Personal almsgiving and the most wide-ranging social work are equally justifiable and necessary. The way to God lies through love of other people, and there is no other way. At the Last Judgement I shall not be asked if I was successful in my ascetic exercises or how many prostrations I made in the course of my prayers. I shall be asked, did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners: that is all I shall be asked.23 Mother Maria of Paris ~ Kallistos Ware, #NFDB
613:What is meditation? What is leaving one's body? What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. Then he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises, staying in the non-self. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
614:My brand of Satanism is the ultimate conscious alternative to herd mentality and institutionalized thought. It is a studied and contrived set of principles and exercises designed to liberate individuals from a contagion of mindlessness that destroys innovation. I have termed my thought “Satanism” because it is most stimulating under that name. Self-discipline and motivation are effected more easily under stimulating conditions. Satanism means “the opposition” and epitomizes all symbols of nonconformity. Satanism calls forth the strong ability to turn a liability into an advantage, to turn alienation into exclusivity. In other words, the reason it’s called Satanism is because it’s fun, it’s accurate, and it’s productive. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
615:1. She switched her breakfast to a high-protein meal (at least 30% protein) à la the Slow-Carb Diet. Her favorite: spinach, black beans, and egg whites (one-third of a carton of Eggology liquid egg whites) with cayenne pepper flakes. 2. Three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), she performed a simple sequence of three exercises prior to breakfast, all of which are illustrated in the next few pages: One set: 20 two-legged glute activation raises from the floor One set: 15 flying dogs, one set each side One set: 50 kettlebell swings (For you: start with a weight that allows you to do 20 perfect repetitions but no more than 30. In other words, start with a weight, no less than 20 pounds, that you can “grow into. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
616:With snow-white hair and a massive forehead, Bismarck, in military uniform, welcomed Grant with both hands extended. Turning on the charm, he expressed surprise that Grant was only seven years his junior. “That shows the value of a military life,” he remarked, “for here you have the frame of a young man, while I feel like an old one.”70 Grant was entranced by the flow of wit that emanated from the worldly Bismarck with his imposing physique, beautiful manners, ready laugh, and penetrating insights. As they sat in his study, smoking cigars, with the window thrown open to a gorgeous park, the conversation turned to the varied exercises in nation building in which both men had so strenuously engaged. Bismarck commiserated ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
617:The dinner bell rings, and everyone trots off, Frederick coming in last with his taffy-colored hair and wounded eyes, bootlaces trailing. Werner washes Frederick’s mess tin for him; he shares homework answers, shoe polish, sweets from Dr. Hauptmann; they run next to each other during field exercises. A brass pin weighs lightly on each of their lapels; one hundred and fourteen hobnailed boots spark against pebbles on the trail. The castle with its towers and battlements looms below them like some misty vision of foregone glory. Werner’s blood gallops through his ventricles, his thoughts on Hauptmann’s transceiver, on solder, fuses, batteries, antennas; his boot and Frederick’s touch the ground at the exact same moment. ~ Anthony Doerr, #NFDB
618:He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecuchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
619:He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pécuchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
620:Yes, people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
621:Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. This modifies the picture which is sometimes painted of a progressive emancipation from tradition and a progressive control of natural processes resulting in a continual increase of human power. In reality, of course, if any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power. They are weaker, not stronger: for though we may have put wonderful machines in their hands we have pre-ordained how they are to use them. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
622:What is this thing we call form, and to what extent do we comprehend our own forms? I have a form, surely, as do you, and let us grant that we’re both conscious even though certain philosophers would argue that assertion—fortunately they’re not here. So! Both conscious. But we have imperfect knowledge of our own forms, let alone our own selves—consider the human man, his last self-image formed at the age of twenty-five, surprised by wrinkles on his forehead as he looks in the bathroom mirror. Deathless Kings’ residual physicalities endure long after they’ve become skeletons—and they perform premortem exercises to stem mental fragmentation. You’d be surprised how frequently and how widely mental image and physical form differ. ~ Max Gladstone, #NFDB
623:Hatred can survive only as long as we feel trapped in the situation of a child who has no choice, who is forced to hold out in hopeless circumstances in order to survive. As soon as the adult sees an alternative, a way out of the trap, the hatred disappears of its own accord. It is then entirely unnecessary to preach morality, forgiveness, or exercises in positive feeling. The idea that we can arouse positive feelings in ourselves by engaging in relaxation training or meditation is one that I feel to be profoundly illusory. But again and again I come across advice of this kind, coupled with the assurance that one will free oneself of one’s symptoms by forgiving one’s parents and substituting positive feelings for negative ones. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
624:Now he who exercises his reason and cultivates
it seems to be both in the best state of mind and most dear to the
gods. For if the gods have any care for human affairs, as they are
thought to have, it would be reasonable both that they should delight
in that which was best and most akin to them (i.e. reason) and that
they should reward those who love and honour this most, as caring
for the things that are dear to them and acting both rightly and nobly.
And that all these attributes belong most of all to the philosopher
is manifest. He, therefore, is the dearest to the gods. And he who
is that will presumably be also the happiest; so that in this way
too the philosopher will more than any other be happy. ~ Aristotle,#NFDB
625:Standing before this building, I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead stranger, and not the breathlessness of hearing a shotgun pumped outside of Becca Arrington’s house. This cannot be addressed by breathing exercises. This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead. ~ John Green, #NFDB
626:For though, outside the Exercises, we can lawfully and with merit influence every one who is probably fit to choose continence, virginity, the religious life and all manner of evangelical perfection, still in the Spiritual Exercises, when seeking the Divine Will, it is more fitting and much better, that the Creator and Lord Himself should communicate Himself to His devout soul, inflaming it with His love and praise, and disposing it for the way in which it will be better able to serve Him in future. So, he who is giving the Exercises should not turn or incline to one side or the other, but standing in the centre like a balance, leave the Creator to act immediately with the creature, and the creature with its Creator and Lord. ~ Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
627:Originators, however, do not merely master functionalities and use them once and finally in their great creation. What always precedes invention is a lengthy period of accumulating functionalities and of experimenting with them on small problems as five-finger exercises. Often in this period of working with functionalities you can see hints of what originators will use. Five years before his revelation, Charles Townes had argued in a memo that microwave radio "has now been extended to such short wavelengths that it overlaps a region rich in molecular resonances, where quantum mechanical theory and spectroscopic techniques can provide aids to radio engineering." Molecular resonance was exactly what he would use to invent the maser. ~ W Brian Arthur, #NFDB
628:Standing before this building, I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead stranger, and not the breathlessness of hearing a shotgun pumped outside of Becca Arrington's house. This cannot be addressed by breathing exercises. This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead. ~ John Green, #NFDB
629:For though, outside the Exercises, we can lawfully and with merit influence every one who is probably fit to choose continence, virginity, the religious life and all manner of evangelical perfection, still in the Spiritual Exercises, when seeking the Divine Will, it is more fitting and much better, that the Creator and Lord Himself should communicate Himself to His devout soul, inflaming it with His love and praise, and disposing it for the way in which it will be better able to serve Him in future. So, he who is giving the Exercises should not turn or incline to one side or the other, but standing in the centre like a balance, leave the Creator to act immediately with the creature, and the creature with its Creator and Lord. ~ Saint Ignatius of Loyola, #NFDB
630:Sometimes when one cannot stand the story or novel one
is working on, it helps to write something else—a different
story or novel, or essays venting one's favorite peeves, or exercises
aimed at passing the time and incidentally polishing up
one's craft. The best way in the world for breaking a writer's
block is to write a lot. Jabbering away on paper, one gets
tricked into feeling interested, all at once, in something one is
saying, and behold, the magic waters are flowing again. Often
it helps to work on a journal, since that allows the writer to
write about those things that most interest him, yet frees him
of the pressure of achievement and encourages him to develop
a more natural, more personal style. ~ John Gardner,#NFDB
631:These objects and postures are not that important, but understanding impermanence directly is. In one of these exercises, I sit quietly in a quiet place, close my eyes, put one hand on each knee, and concentrate just on my two index fingers. Basic dharma theory tells me that it is definitely not possible to perceive both fingers simultaneously, so with this knowledge I try to see in each instant which one of the two finger’s physical sensations are being perceived. Once the mind has sped up a bit and yet become more stable, I try to perceive the arising and passing of each of these sensations. I may do this for half an hour or an hour, just staying with the sensations in my two fingers and perceiving when each sensation is and isn’t there. ~ Daniel M Ingram, #NFDB
632:What is meditation? What is leaving one's body? What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. Then he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises, staying in the non-self. This is how it is, oh Govinda. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
633:As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely
and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altogether bad.
Still, as Jacob Burckhardt says, power is evil in itself, no matter who exercises it.
It tends to corrupt those who wield it and leads to abuse. Not only absolute sovereigns and aristocrats, but the masses also, in whose hands democracy entrusts the supreme power of government, are only too easily inclined to excesses. ~ Ludwig von Mises,#NFDB
634:Free-Play Training The next step that you, the commander, take is to make virtually all training free-play. The best way to train your unit is to replicate the conditions of combat as closely as possible. The best method for doing so is free-play training. One of the salient features of war is that it is a clash of opposing wills. Training that does not incorporate this will not be effective in preparing units for combat. On the rare occasions that troops get the opportunity to act freely as “aggressors” during current training exercises, they unleash their creativity and often cause great difficulty for their opponents. The philosophical goal for training light infantry is to make this “aggressor” mindset the mindset of your men all the time. ~ William S Lind, #NFDB
635:Scientology, a fundamentally narcissistic philosophy that demonizes doubt and insecurity as products of the "reactive mind," is a belief system tailor-made for actors. The Training Routines that are part of early Scientology indoctrination have been compared to acting exercises: students are taught to "duplicate," or mirror, a partner's actions; project their "intention," or thoughts, onto inanimate objects; experiment with vocal tones, the most dominant being a commanding bark known as "tone 40"; and deepen their ability to "be in their bodies" without reacting to outside stimuli. In auditing, Scientologists re-create scenes from past lives. Some processes focus directly on members "mocking up," or visualizing themselves, in different scenarios. ~ Janet Reitman, #NFDB
636:Among the clues for sorting out the truth is how a leader handles things going wrong—not the show that happens in front of crowds but in the daily meetings and decisions where there is no audience. If they genuinely share credit but take the lion's share of blame, you might just have someone sincerely invested in doing what's best. A leader who shields others from things that get in the way inspires everyone to do the same. It's small habits like these that shift a culture away from the pointless exercises of finger pointing and dodging blame and toward a contagious confidence that the best work of your career is possible right now. The feeling that there's nothing in your way is something few feel often in their careers, if they ever feel it at all. ~ Scott Berkun, #NFDB
637:When I was admitted to the University of Leiden, I expected to be presented with a single narrative of events and their significance and one explanation for why everything had happened as it did. Instead, the professors began every course with a central question; spent a lot of time on definitions and their importance; then presented key thinkers and their critics over time. My job as a student was to grasp the central question; to learn about the thinkers, their theories of power, political elites, mass psychology and sociology, and public policy; the methods by which they got to their conclusions; their critics and their methods of criticism. The point of all these exercises was to learn to improve on old ways of doing things through critical thinking. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
638:Oh Beck, I love reading your e-mail. Learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won't get alarmed. My good fortune doesn't stop there; You prefer e-mail. You don't like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an "essay" for some blog in which you stated that "e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away." I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I'm so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don't publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise. ~ Caroline Kepnes, #NFDB
639:You’re serious? You want me to go to school?”
“Why not?” he challenged. “So long as you take care of shit around here, I’m fine with it. Might want to move on that whole divorce thing too while you’re at it. Club’s got a lawyer, I’ll set up an appointment for you. I can pretty much guarantee your ex won’t put up a fight.”
He smiled when he said it—not a nice smile.
“Okay, I’ll go check it out,” I said slowly. “This is weird, you get that? You kidnapping me, holding me hostage and then sending me to school? This isn’t how things like this usually work.”
Horse grinned at me, eyes lazy and satisfied.
“Just roll with it,” he whispered. “And keep doing whatever exercises you do to make your cunt squeeze like that. They got a college degree for that? ~ Joanna Wylde,#NFDB
640:(1) Inhale a complete breath. (2) Retain the air a few seconds. (3) Pucker up the lips as if for a whistle (but do not swell out the cheeks), then exhale a little air through the opening, with considerable vigor. Then stop for a moment, retaining the air, and then exhale a little more air. Repeat until the air is completely exhaled. Remember that considerable vigor is to be used in exhaling the air through the opening in the lips. This breath will be found quite refreshing when one is tired and generally "used up." A trial will convince the student of its merits. This exercise should be practiced until it can be performed naturally and easily, as it is used to finish up a number of other exercises given in this book, and it should be thoroughly understood ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
641:Back in 2008, unable to come to terms with its many creditors, Vallejo had declared bankruptcy. Eighty percent of the city’s budget—and the lion’s share of the claims that had thrown it into bankruptcy—were wrapped up in the pay and benefits of public safety workers. Relations between the police and the firefighters, on the one hand, and the citizens, on the other, were at historic lows. The public safety workers thought that the city was out to screw them on their contracts; the citizenry thought that the public safety workers were using fear as a tool to extort money from them. The local joke was that “P.D.” stands for “Pay or Die.” The city council meetings had become exercises in outrage: at one, a citizen arrived and tossed a severed pig’s head onto the floor. ~ Michael Lewis, #NFDB
642:They find it increasingly hard to believe those glorious truths that God is near, that he hears, that he cares, that he is faithful, that he is wise, that he exercises his power for the good of his children, and that he is loving, kind, gracious, and patient. They feel that they’ve been forsaken. They feel they’re being punished. They are being tempted to conclude that what they were taught was true isn’t really true after all. They wonder why they have been singled out for suffering that others don’t seem to be going through. They wonder why they pray and nothing seems to happen. They have quit reading their Bible because it doesn’t seem to help, and they find that the songs on Sunday morning seem to be describing a very different reality from the one they live in ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
643:What is the library? If one believes Mallarmé’s antithesis, then the library would first of all be the place of instrumental spirituality. As a consequence, it would be a place of “production,” because the instrument exercises (instruire) a material, which it trans-forms. It would be the place of the life of spirit, of its genesis—but of its material genesis. In short, the library is a place of writing. It is at once the place of the conservation and elaboration of forms of knowledge—of their memory. But this memory is dead: supported by inorganic, yet organized objects, those which Husserl names “spirit-invested objects.” On the other hand, the library is trans-formed as a network, which is to say that it is digitized—and so it requires “new spiritual instruments. ~ Bernard Stiegler, #NFDB
644:As the current U.S.-Israel assault raged, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained that Israel’s tactics in the current attack, as in its invasion of Lebanon in 2006, are based on the sound principle of “trying to ‘educate’ Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population.” That makes sense on pragmatic grounds, as it did in Lebanon, where “the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians—the families and employers of the militants—to restrain Hezbollah in the future.”10 And by similar logic, bin Laden’s effort to “educate” Americans on 9/11 was highly praiseworthy, as were the Nazi attacks on Lidice and Oradour, Putin’s destruction of Grozny, and other notable educational exercises. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
645:We may get some idea of the change in perspective that may occur in our reading and interpretation of the philosophical works of antiquity when we consider them from the point of view of the practice of spiritual exercises. Philosophy then appears in its original aspect: not as a theoretical construct, but as a method for training people to live and to look at the world in a new way. It is an attempt to transform mankind. Contemporary historians of philosophy are today scarcely inclined to pay attention to this aspect, although it is an essential one. The reason for this is that, in conformity with a tradition inherited from the Middle Ages … they consider philosophy to be purely abstract-theoretical activity. ~ Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 107., #NFDB
646:These examples suggest what one needs to learn to control attention. In principle any skill or discipline one can master on one’s own will serve: meditation and prayer if one is so inclined; exercise, aerobics, martial arts for those who prefer concentrating on physical skills. Any specialization or expertise that one finds enjoyable and where one can improve one’s knowledge over time. The important thing, however, is the attitude toward these disciplines. If one prays in order to be holy, or exercises to develop strong pectoral muscles, or learns to be knowledgeable, then a great deal of the benefit is lost. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one’s attention. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, #NFDB
647:As we made our way steadily northward, their spirits lifted at the prospect of home, and leave-time to enjoy it. From remarks they let fall it seemed that the Marquis had had them on duty day and night, with no breaks, during all the days of my run for freedom.
I really liked Nessaren and her riding. With good-natured generosity they treated me as a companion rather than as a prisoner. The last four mornings they even let me run through their morning sword drills with them. Some of it I knew from our own exercises with Khesot, but they had far better ones. I did my best to memorize the new material for taking back to our people in Tlanth.
The problem was, I realized as we raced across the northern hills, I was still furious with their leader.
My duty was clear: I had to escape. ~ Sherwood Smith,#NFDB
648:You can think of the curriculum as the shadows cast on a wall by the light of education itself as it shines over, under, around, and through the myriad phases of our experience. It is a mistake to be sure to take these shadows for the reality, but they are something that helps us find or grasp or intuit that reality. The false notions that there is a fixed curriculum, that there is a list of things that an educated person ought to know, and that the shadow-exercises on the wall themselves are the content of education—these false notions all come from taking too seriously what was originally a wise recognition—the recognition that the shadows do in fact provide a starting point in our attempt to fully envision reality. ~ Andrew Abbott, “Welcome to the University of Chicago,” Aims of Education Address, September 26, 2002, #NFDB
649:It was not said amiss by Antisthenes, when people told him that one Ismenias was an excellent piper, “It may be so,” said he, “but he is but a wretched human being, otherwise he would not have been an excellent piper.” And king Philip, to the same purpose, told his son Alexander, who once at a merry-meeting played a piece of music charmingly and skilfully, “Are you not ashamed, son, to play so well?” For it is enough for a king or prince to find leisure sometimes to hear others sing, and he does the muses quite honor enough when he pleases to be but present, while others engage in such exercises and trials of skill. He who busies himself in mean occupations produces, in the very pains he takes about things of little or no use, an evidence against himself of his negligence and indisposition to what is really good. ~ Plutarch, #NFDB
650:Knowledge was rarer then. A secondhand magazine was an occasion. For a Far Rockaway teenager merely to find a mathematics textbook took will and enterprise. Each radio program, each telephone call, each lecture in a local synagogue, each movie at the new Gem theater on Mott Avenue carried the weight of something special. Each book Richard possessed burned itself into his memory. When a primer on mathematical methods baffled him, he worked through it formula by formula, filling a notebook with self-imposed exercises. He and his friends traded mathematical tidbits like baseball cards. If a boy named Morrie Jacobs told him that the cosine of 20 degrees multiplied by the cosine of 40 degrees multiplied by the cosine of 80 degrees equaled exactly one-eighth, he would remember that curiosity for the rest of his life, ~ James Gleick, #NFDB
651:...in order for agape to flourish, I must not be afraid to change my life. If I liked what I was doing, very well. But if I did not, there was always the time for a change. If I allowed change to occur, I would be transforming myself into a fertile field and allowing the Creative Imagination to sow its seeds in me.
"Everything I have taught you, include agape, makes sense only if you are satisfied with yourself. If you are not, then the exercises you have learned are inevitably going to make you seek change. And if you do not want all of those exercises to work against you, you have to allow change to happen.
"This is the most difficult moment in a person's life--when the person witnesses the good fight and is unable to change and join the battle. When this happens, knowledge turns against the person who holds it. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
652:We often fail to realize the depth of evil, terrifying as it is. I am not speaking only of the selfishness of the wealthy, heaping up riches for themselves, or of those who sacrifice to achieve their self-selected goals. Or of the dictator who breathes in the incense due only to God. I am speaking of the selfishness of good people, devout people, those who have succeeded through spiritual exercises and self-denial in being able to make the proud profession before the altar of the Most High, “Lord, I am not like the rest of men.” Yes, we have had the audacity at certain times of our lives to believe we are different from other men. And here is the deepest form of self-deception, dictated by self-centeredness at its worst: spiritual egotism. This most insidious form of egotism even uses piety and prayer for its own gain. ~ Carlo Carretto, #NFDB
653:With many people custom and habit of which ethics is but the social expression are the things most difficult to give up: and it is a useful practice to break any habit just to get into the way of being free from that form of slavery. Hence we have practices for breaking up sleep, for putting our bodies into strained and unnatural positions, for doing difficult exercises of breathing -- all these, apart from any special merit they may have in themselves for any particular purpose, have the main merit that the man forces himself todo them despite any conditions that may exist. Having conquered internal resistance one may conquer external resistance more easily. In a steam boat the engine must first overcome its own inertia before it can attack the resistance of the water.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, Part 2, The Wand,#NFDB
654:I try Dr. Pat's breathing exercises but they're not working because my entire mind is focused on keeping myself glued to the couch. I don't want to move any closer to the bathroom just in case. But I hate myself for the thought. I know it's not right or normal. I know I'm not simply some cute quirky girl like Beck says, and every moment I can't get off the couch is a moment that makes me one level crazier. That heavy, pre-crying feeling floods my sinuses and I drop my head from the weight of it. Cover my face with my hands long enough to get out a cry or two. Because there is nothing, nothing worse than not being able to undo the crazy thoughts. I ask them to leave, but they won't. I try to ignore them, but the only thing that works is giving in to them.
Torture: knowing something makes no sense, doing it anyway. ~ Corey Ann Haydu,#NFDB
655:What is more, the whole apparatus of life has become so complex and the processes of production, distribution, and consumption have become so specialized and subdivided, that the individual person loses confidence in his own unaided capacities: he is increasingly subject to commands he does not understand, at the mercy of forces over which he exercises no effective control, moving to a destination he has not chosen. Unlike the taboo-ridden savage, who is often childishly over-confident in the powers of his shaman or magician to control formidable natural forces, however inimical, the machine-conditioned individual feels lost and helpless as day by day he metaphorically punches his time-card, takes his place on the assembly line, and at the end draws a pay check that proves worthless for obtaining any of the genuine goods of life. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
656:But although experience molds the brain, it molds only an attending brain. “Passive, unattended, or little-attended exercises are of limited value for driving” neuroplasticity, Merzenich and Jenkins concluded. “Plastic changes in brain representations are generated only when behaviors are specifically attended.” And therein lies the key. Physical changes in the brain depend for their creation on a mental state in the mind—the state called attention. Paying attention matters. It matters not only for the size of the brain’s representation of this or that part of the body’s surface, of this or that muscle. It matters for the dynamic structure of the very circuits of the brain and for the brain’s ability to remake itself. This would be the next frontier for neuroplasticity, harnessing the transforming power of mind to reshape the brain. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz, #NFDB
657:I have of late—but wherefore
I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of
exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my
disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to
me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy,
the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why,
it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent
congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man!
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,
in form and moving how express and admirable,
in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man
delights not me—no, nor woman neither, though by
your smiling you seem to say so. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
658:Designed to be led by a spiritual director over a thirty-day retreat, the retreatant is supposed to focus on Ignatius’s exercises (although the gospels are also used in the process). The first week is spent in deep contemplation of God’s love and in praying to be purified and rid of “disordered attachments”—anything that stands in the way of doing God’s will. In the second week, the life of Jesus the Christ is contemplated, with the objective of moving beyond mere history into a sense of Jesus’s life as a present, participatory reality. The third week is devoted to a complex understanding of pondering the intensity of God’s unconditional love. The final week shares in the joy of resurrection and synthesizes the experience so that a whole vision may be achieved. The objective is a daily life that glorifies God and extends love to others. ~ Alexander John Shaia, #NFDB
659:Along the rough cobbled streets that had served so well in surprise attacks and buccaneer landings, weeds hung from the balconies and opened cracks in the whitewashed walls of even the best-kept mansions, and the only signs of life at two o’clock in the afternoon were languid piano exercises played in the dim light of siesta. Indoors, in the cool bedrooms saturated with incense, women protected themselves from the sun as if it were a shameful infection, and even at early Mass they hid their faces in their mantillas. Their love affairs were slow and difficult and were often disturbed by sinister omens, and life seemed interminable. At nightfall, at the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose out of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirred the certainty of death in the depths of one’s soul. And ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez, #NFDB
660:the school the Seer had set up trained select men in the calling of prophet. If a man felt he had the calling upon him, he would be interviewed by the Seer for sincerity and integrity. If accepted into the school, he was then educated in the Torah and Wisdom literature of Israel and surrounding nations. Prophecy was not merely foretelling of the future by revelation from Yahweh. It was mostly forth-telling of truth, be it directly from Yahweh’s revelation or from the learned precepts of their sacred texts. Prophets would spend long hours in the spiritual exercises of religious devotion and scribal disciplines of learned education to become messengers of Yahweh. Hearing from their god involved both supernatural and natural pursuits to be both holy and wise. Part of that education included the playing of musical instruments that would accompany ecstatic trances and dances. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
661:For a perfect yogī, there are eight kinds of superachievements: one can become lighter than air, one can become smaller than the atom, one can become bigger than a mountain, one can achieve whatever he desires, one can control like the Lord, and so on. But when one rises to the perfectional stage of receiving dictation from the Lord, that is greater than any stage of material achievements above mentioned. The breathing exercise of the yoga system which is generally practiced is just the beginning. Meditation on the Supersoul is just another step forward. But to obtain direct contact with the Supersoul and take dictation from Him is the highest perfectional stage. The breathing exercises of meditation practice were very difficult even five thousand years ago; otherwise Arjuna would not have rejected the proposal of Kṛṣṇa that he adopt this system. This ~ A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhup da, #NFDB
662:The adepts of certain forms of yoga affirm that most of the techniques appropriate to other ages are impracticable in the age in which we live, in which life is too short to bring them to fulfillment. The methods they propose as most suitable for the modem age can only be taught secretly, since they sometimes contradict religious and ethical concepts and taboos which are inherited from past times but whose value few individuals are mentally free to challenge.
[...] Yoga is often spoken of as though it were a system of exercises, physical culture for the mind and body. This is true to a certain extent in the preliminary stages connected with Hatha yoga. Although it is absolutely unnecessary to utilize this training to attain the highest forms of realization, it is such a great aid, such a useful preparation, that there seems no advantage to be had in neglecting it. ~ Alain Dani lou,#NFDB
663:The Mania Speaks
You clumsy bootlegger. Little daffodil.
I watered you with an ocean and you plucked one little vein?
Downed a couple bottles of pills and got yourself carted off to the ER?
I gifted you the will of gunpowder, a matchstick tongue, and all you managed
was a shredded sweater and a police warning?
You should be legend by now.
Girl in an orange jumpsuit, a headline.
I built you from the purest napalm, fed you wine and bourbon.
Preened you in the dark, hammered lullabies into your thin skull.
I painted over the walls, wrote the poems. I shook your goddamn boots.
Now you want out? Think you’ll wrestle me out of you with prescriptions?
A good man’s good love and some breathing exercises?
You think I can’t tame that? I always come home. Always.
Ravenous. Loaded. You know better than anybody:
I’m bigger than God. ~ Jeanann Verlee,#NFDB
664:Do not close a single sermon without addressing the ungodly, but at the same time set yourself seasons for a determined and continuous assault upon them, and proceed with all your soul to the conflict. On such occasions aim distinctly at immediate conversions; labor to remove prejudices, to resolve doubts, to conquer objections, and to drive the sinner out of his hiding-places at once. Summon the church members to special prayer, beseech them to speak personally both with the concerned and the unconcerned, and be yourself doubly upon the watch to address individuals. We have found that our February meetings at the Tabernacle have yielded remarkable results: the whole month being dedicated to special effort. Winter is usually the preacher's harvest, because the people can come together better in the long evenings, and are debarred from out-of-door exercises and amusements. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
665:He knew how the audition was going to affect their lives for the next ten weeks as she slowly lost her mind from nerves and the strain of trying to scrounge precious practice time from an already jam-packed life. No matter how much time poor Sam gave her, it would never be quite enough, because what she actually needed was for him and the kids to just temporarily not exist. She needed to slip into another dimension where she was a single, childless person. Just between now and the audition. She needed to go to a mountain chalet (somewhere with good acoustics) and live and breathe nothing but music. Go for walks. Meditate. Eat well. Do all those positive-visualization exercises young musicians did these days. She had an awful suspicion that if she were to do this in reality, she might not even miss Sam and the children that much, or if she did miss them, it would be quite bearable. ~ Liane Moriarty, #NFDB
666:If these preconditions are not met, success is unlikely. The first precondition is officer education and training that produces adaptive leaders. The schools must constantly place students in difficult, unexpected situations, then require them to make decisions and take action under time pressure. Schools must take students out of their comfort zones. Stress– mental and moral as well as physical – must be constant. War games, map exercises, and free-play field exercises must constitute the bulk of the curriculum. Drill and ceremonies are not important. Higher command levels overseeing officers’ schools must learn to view high drop-out and expulsion rates as indications that the job of preparing new officers is being done correctly. Those officers who successfully graduate from the schools must continue to be developed by their commanders. Learning cannot stop at the schoolhouse door. ~ William S Lind, #NFDB
667:It is not a sin to be happy. Half a dozen exercises and an attentive ear are enough to allow us to realize our most impossible dreams. Because of my pride in wisdom, you made me walk the Road that every person can walk, and discover what everyone else already knows if they have paid the slightest attention to life. You made me see that the search for happiness is a personal search and not a model we can pass on to others.
...I have walked to many miles to discover things I already knew, things that all of us know but that are so hard to accept. Is there anything harder for us...than discovering that we can achieve the power?...Few can accept the burden of their own victory: most give up their dreams when they see that they can be realized. They refuse to fight the good fight because they do not know what to do with their own happiness; they are imprisoned by the things of the world. ~ Paulo Coelho,#NFDB
668:blind belief in a variety of scientific teachings about infinitely small atoms and molecules and in all the infinitely great and infinitely remote worlds, their movements and origin, as well as from faith in the infallibility of the scientific law to which humanity is at present subjected: the historic law, the economic laws, the law of struggle and survival, and so on—if people only freed themselves from this terrible accumulation of futile exercises of our lower capacities of mind and memory called the 'Sciences', and from the innumerable divisions of all sorts of histories, anthropologies, homiletics, bacteriologics, jurisprudences, cosmographies, strategies—their name is legion—and freed themselves from all this harmful, stupifying ballast—the simple law of love, natural to man, accessible to all and solving all questions and perplexities, would of itself become clear and obligatory. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
669:I’m standing in front of Enrique’s Auto Body, doing deep-breathing exercises to keep from being nervous. Enrique’s Camry is nowhere in sight, so I know Alex is alone.
I’m going to seduce Alex.
If what I’m wearing doesn’t capture his attention, nothing will. I’m giving this my all…bringing out all the artillery. I rap on the door, then close my eyes tight and pray this goes as planned.
I open my long, silver satin jacket and the cool night air rushes onto my exposed skin. When the creak of the door alerts me to Alex’s presence, I slowly open my eyes. But it’s not Alex’s black eyes staring at my scantily clad body. It’s Enrique--who’s staring at my pink lace bra and pom-pom skirt as if he’s won the lottery.
Ripped with embarrassment, I wrap my coat around myself. If I could wrap it around twice, I would.
“Uh, Alex,” Enrique laughs. “There’s a trick-or-treater here to see you. ~ Simone Elkeles,#NFDB
670:Phobologic discipline is comprised of twenty-eight exercises, each focusing upon a separate nexus of the nervous system. The five primaries are the knees and hams, lungs and heart, loins and bowels, the lower back, and the girdle of the shoulders, particularly the trapezius muscles, which yoke the shoulder to the neck.
A secondary nexus, for which the Lakedaemonians have twelve more exercises, is the face, specifically the muscles of the jaw, the neck and the four ocular constrictors around the eye sockets. These nexuses are termed by the Spartans phobosynakteres, fear accumulators.
Fear spawns in the body, phonologic science teaches, and must be combated there. For once the flesh is seized, a phobokyklos, or loop of fear, may commence, feeding upon itself, mounting into a “runaway” of terror. Put the body into a state of phobia, fearlessness, the Spartans believe, and the mind will follow. ~ Steven Pressfield,#NFDB
671:Dr. Ransome marked the exercises in the algebra textbook and gave him two strips of rice-paper bandage on which to solve the simultaneous equations. As he stood up, Dr. Ransome removed the three tomatoes from Jim's pocket. He laid them on the table by the wax tray.
'Did they come from the hospital garden?'
'Yes.' Jim gazed back frankly at Dr. Ransome. Recently he had begun to see him with a more adult eye. The long years of imprisonment, the constant disputes with the Japanese had made this young physician seem middle-aged. Dr. Ransome was often unsure of himself, as he was of Jim's theft.
'I have to give Basie something whenever I see him.'
'I know. It's a good thing that you're friends with Basie. He's a survivor, though survivors can be dangerous. Wars exist for people like Basie.' Dr. Ransome placed the tomatoes in Jim's hand. 'I want you to eat them, Jim. I'll get you something for Basie. ~ J G Ballard,#NFDB
672:Even as our world is being daily transformed by breathtaking innovations in science and technology, many people continue to imagine that math and science are mostly a matter of memorizing formulas to get “the right answer.” Even engineering, which is in fact the process of creating something from scratch or putting things together in novel and non-self-evident ways, is perplexingly viewed as a mechanical or rote subject. This viewpoint, frankly, could only be held by people who never truly learned math or science, who are stubbornly installed on one side of the so-called Two Culture divide. The truth is that anything significant that happens in math, science, or engineering is the result of heightened intuition and creativity. This is art by another name, and it’s something that tests are not very good at identifying or measuring. The skills and knowledge that tests can measure are merely warm-up exercises. ~ Salman Khan, #NFDB
673:Keep the following guidelines in mind: Refined starches such as white bread and pasta are particularly harmful; avoid them completely. Do not consume any fruit juice or dried fruits. Avoid all sweets, except for fresh fruit in reasonable quantities. Two or three fruits for breakfast is fine, and one fruit after lunch and dinner is ideal. The best fruits are those with less sugar—grapefruit, oranges, kiwifruit, strawberries and other berries, melons, and green apples. Avoid all oil. Raw nuts are permitted, but only one ounce or less. The name of your diet is the “greens and beans diet”; green vegetables and beans should make up most of your diet. Limit animal-food intake to no more than two servings of fish weekly. Try to exercise regularly and consistently, like dispensing your medication. Do it on a regimented schedule, preferably twice daily. Walking stairs is one of the greatest exercises for weight loss. ~ Joel Fuhrman, #NFDB
674:Monopoly
Finally the day dawned when a monopoly owned everything in the
world
So it went looking for its stockholders to celebrate
But they were all owned by it they were all dead they were
someplace
Their photographs hung in elevators which went up and down up and
down carrying nobody
Everyone else was in bed doing exercises to get in shape for noon
Hey the monopoly said let's uncork the World Trade Center and get
blotto
Silence
The monopoly scowled
All it wanted was a little good-fellowship, like you get in the
highrise apartment-buildings
Then the sky got awful dark
Gee
And everyone was in bed frantically doing those exercises that get us in
shape for death
Exercises known as "kissing" "fucking" "caressing"
Everyone was unaware that they had been bought
Or that the earth was about to sell them to the moon
For a little light
~ Bill Knott,#NFDB
675:The Thai people are pathologically shy. Combine that with a reluctance to lose face by giving a wrong answer, and it makes for a painfully long [ESL] class. Usually I ask the students to work on exercises in small groups, and then I move around and check their progress. But for days like today, when I'm grading on participation, speaking up in public is a necessary evil. "Jao," I say to a man in my class. "You own a pet store, and you want to convince Jaidee to buy a pet." I turn to a second man. "Jaidee, you do not want to buy that pet. Let's hear your conversation."
They stand up, clutching their papers. "This dog is reccommended," Jao begins.
"I have one already," Jaidee replies.
"Good job!" I encourage. "Jao, give him a reason why he should buy your dog."
"This dog is alive," Jao adds.
Jaidee shrugs. "Not everyone wants a pet that is alive."
Well, not all days are successes... ~ Jodi Picoult,#NFDB
676:With the advent of medieval Scholasticism, … we find a clear distinction between theologia and philosophia. Theology became conscious of its autonomy qua supreme science, which philosophy was emptied of its spiritual exercises, which, from now on, were relegated to Christian mysticism and ethics. Reduced to the rank of a “handmaid of theology,” philosophy’s role was henceforth to furnish theology with conceptual—and hence purely theoretical—material. When, in the modern age, philosophy regained its autonomy, it still retained many features inherited from this medieval conception. In particular, it maintained its purely theoretical character, which even evolved in the direction of a more and more thorough systemization. Not until Nietzsche, Bergson, and existentialism does philosophy consciously return to being a concrete attitude, a way of life and of seeing the world. ~ Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase (1995), p. 107., #NFDB
677:One more point must be made with regard to the general conditions of learning an art. One does not begin to learn an art directly, but indirectly, as it were. One must learn a great number of other — and often seemingly disconnected things — before one starts with the art itself. An apprentice in carpentry begins by learning how to plane wood; an apprentice in the art of piano playing begins by practicing scales; an apprentice in the Zen art of archery begins by doing breathing exercises. 1 If one wants to become a master in any art, one's whole life must be devoted to it, or at least related to it. One's own person becomes an instrument in the practice of the art, and must be kept fit, according to the specific functions it has to fulfill. With regard to the art of loving, this means that anyone who aspires to become a master in this art must begin by practicing discipline, concentration and patience throughout every phase of his life. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
678:That day, after barely resurfacing from a seventy-two meter warm up dive into the Blue Hole, Mevoli went into cardiac arrest and died. This time, he wasn’t able to bring himself back. When asked to comment on the accident, Natalia Molchanova, regarded by many as the greatest freehold breath diver in the world, said, “the biggest problem with freedivers . . . [is] now they go too deep too fast.” Less than two years later, off the coast of Spain, Molchanova took a quick recreational dive of her
own. She deliberately ran though her usual set of breathing exercises, attached a light weight to her belt to help her descend, and swam downward, alone. It was
supposed to be a head-clearing reset. But, Molchanova didn’t come back either.
And that’s the problem that free diving shares with many other state-shifting techniques: return too soon, and you’ll always wonder if you could have gone
deeper. Go too far, and you might not make it back. ~ Steven Kotler,#NFDB
679:God has made it incumbent upon us to struggle to raise high His word. Gihad is a pillar of Islam, exactly like prayer and fasting. Indeed, gihad is the most important of those pillars but the corrupt rulers dedicated to the pursuit of money and the pleasures of the flesh who have ruled the Islamic world in times of decadence have attempted, with the help of their hypocritical men of religion, to exclude gihad from the pillars of Islam, knowing that if the people cleaved fast to gihad, it would in the end be turned against them and cost them their thrones. In this way, by eliminating gihad, Islam was robbed of its real meaning and our great religion was transformed into a collection of meaningless rituals that the Muslims performed like athletic exercises, mere physical movements without spiritual significance. When the Muslims abandoned gihad, they became slaves to this world, clinging to it, shy of death, cowards. Thus their enemies prevailed ~ Alaa Al Aswany, #NFDB
680:Rewards encourage repeat behavior, but did you know that they also restore our willpower? Cognitive scientist Art Markman says, “When you stand in front of that buffet table filled with desserts, seek out a friend and have a fun conversation.” 39 It may seem like a puzzling suggestion, but rewards of all kinds may be a viable way to restore your willpower. Based on Baumeister's “ego depletion” concept, multiple studies have concluded that people can overcome ego depletion by restoring glucose.40 Some scientists, however, wanted to put another willpower restoration theory to the test: rewards. Their theory was that perhaps it is the reward from eating sugar that restores willpower.41 Sugar is known to activate the reward centers in the brain. They started with typical exercises to deplete willpower. Then, one group swished a solution sweetened with artificial sweetener and spit it out (artificial sweeteners do not activate the brain’s reward centers). The ~ Stephen Guise, #NFDB
681:I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
Prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king
And queen moult no feather. I have of late--but
Wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
Custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
With my disposition that this goodly frame, the
Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
Excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
O'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
With golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
Me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
Express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
In apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
World! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
What is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
Me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
You seem to say so. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
682:CHAPTER II Of certain spiritual imperfections which beginners have with respect to the habit of pride. AS these beginners feel themselves to be very fervent and diligent in spiritual things and devout exercises, from this prosperity (although it is true that holy things of their own nature cause humility) there often comes to them, through their imperfections, a certain kind of secret pride, whence they come to have some degree of satisfaction with their works and with themselves. And hence there comes to them likewise a certain desire, which is somewhat vain, and at times very vain, to speak of spiritual things in the presence of others, and sometimes even to teach such things rather than to learn them. They condemn others in their heart when they see that they have not the kind of devotion which they themselves desire; and sometimes they even say this in words, herein resembling the Pharisee, who boasted of himself, praising God for his own good works and despising the publican. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
683:I am well aware that certain exercises, tasks setup by the facilitator, can practically force the group to more of a here-and-now communication or more of a feeling level. There are leaders who do these very skillfully, and with good effect at the time. However, I am enough of a scientist-clinician to make many casual follow-up inquiries, and I know that frequently the lasting result of such procedures is not nearly as satisfying as the immediate effect. At it's best it may lead to discipleship (which I happen not to like): "What a marvelous leader he is to have made me open up when I had no intention of doing it!" It can also lead to a rejection of the whole experience. "Why did I do those silly things he asked me to?" At worst, it can make the person feel that his private self has been in some way violated, and he will be careful never to expose himself to a group again. From my experience I know that if I attempt to push a group to a deeper level it is not, in the long run, going to work. ~ Carl R Rogers, #NFDB
684:It was Plato who gave the word cosmos its meaning as world. His Timaeus provided the first description of reality as forming an ordered whole, being both good and beautiful. The cosmos, according to Plato, was created by a divine craftsman who strove to render his work as similar as possible to the perfect model.12 The Good, the supreme principle, exercises power over physical reality and influences the conduct of the human person who, through the Good, turns his or her soul into a coherent whole (ethics) and gives the public sphere the unity it would otherwise be without. The Timaeus describes cosmology required by a particular anthropology. The plan for human life is an imitation of the cosmos. The wise person knows the cosmos and sees in it the mirror of his or her own wisdom. The individual soul was to imitate the regularity of the movements of the soul of the world. Nature has drawn us upright that we might be inspired by what is “cosmic.” In Plato’s world we stand upright to contemplate the stars. ~ Ilia Delio, #NFDB
685:When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root, and bathed every vein of earth with that liquid by whose power the flowers are engendered; when the zephyr, too, with its dulcet breath, has breathed life into the tender new shoots in every copse and on every hearth, and the young sun has run half his course in the sign of the Ram, and the little birds that sleep all night with their eyes open give song (so Nature prompts them in their hearts), then, as the poet Geoffrey Chaucer observed many years ago, folk long to go on pilgrimages. Only, these days, professional people call them conferences.
The modern conference resembles the pilgrimage of medieval Christendom in that it allows the participants to indulge themselves in all the pleasures and diversions of travel while appearing to be austerely bent on self-improvement. To be sure, there are certain penitential exercises to be performed - the presentation of a paper, perhaps, and certainly listening to papers of others. ~ David Lodge,#NFDB
686:In Bergotte’s books, which I constantly reread, the sentences were as clear to me as my own thoughts, I perceived them as distinctly as the furniture in my room and the carriages in the streets. Everything was easily visible, if not as one had always seen it, then certainly as one was accustomed to see it now. But a new writer had just started to publish work in which the relations between things were so different from those that connected them for me, that I could understand almost nothing in his writing.... Only I felt that it was not the sentence that was badly constructed, but that I myself lacked the energy and agility to see it through to the end. I would make a fresh start, working really hard to reach the point where I could see the new connections between things. At each attempt, about half-way through the sentence, I would fall back defeated, as I did later in the army in horizontal bar exercises... From then on I felt less admiration for Bergotte, whose transparency struck me as a shortcoming. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
687:. In Bergotte’s books, which I constantly reread, the sentences were as clear to me as my own thoughts, I perceived them as distinctly as the furniture in my room and the carriages in the streets. Everything was easily visible, if not as one had always seen it, then certainly as one was accustomed to see it now. But a new writer had just started to publish work in which the relations between things were so different from those that connected them for me, that I could understand almost nothing in his writing.... Only I felt that it was not the sentence that was badly constructed, but that I myself lacked the energy and agility to see it through to the end. I would make a fresh start, working really hard to reach the point where I could see the new connections between things. At each attempt, about half-way through the sentence, I would fall back defeated, as I did later in the army in horizontal bar exercises... From then on I felt less admiration for Bergotte, whose transparency struck me as a shortcoming. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
688: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
689:Everything is upside down. All scientific evidence points to a model of the most efficient human learning as being completely individual. Humans, from infants to the elderly, learn in their own style, in their own time, driven by curiosity. February tenth is not the day that every third-grader in the country is ready to learn their four times table, but that’s how it’s been taught for a hundred years. Without teachers’ unions, it was easy to replace teachers with teacher-technicians. They only know scripts; they don’t know anything about how children learn. They have a few layers of how to keep everyone on the same page; that’s all. If that doesn’t work, then they fail the children, hold them back to go through the same fruitless exercises. So one key move is to take education out of the hands of business and put it into the hands of kids and of educators, in that order. ~ Kathleen Ann Goonan, Girl in Wave : Wave in Girl, in Ed Finn & Kathryn Cramer (eds.) Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (2014), ISBN 978-0-06-220469-1, p. 49, #NFDB
690:The Yogi practices exercises by which he attains control of his body, and is enabled to send to any organ or part an increased flow of vital force or “prana,” thereby strengthening and invigorating the part or organ. He knows all that his Western scientific brother knows about the physiological effect of correct breathing, but he also knows that the air contains more than oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen, and that something more is accomplished than the mere oxygenating of the blood. He knows something about “prana,” of which his Western brother is ignorant, and he is fully aware of the nature and manner of handling that great principle of energy, and is fully informed as to its effect upon the human body and mind. He knows that by rhythmical breathing one may bring himself into harmonious vibration with nature, and aid in the unfoldment of his latent powers. He knows that by controlled breathing he may not only cure disease in himself and others, but also practically do away with fear and worry and the baser emotions. ~ William Walker Atkinson, #NFDB
691:Music can be appreciated from several points of view: the listener, the performer, the composer. In mathematics there is nothing analogous to the listener; and even if there were, it would be the composer, rather than the performer, that would interest him. It is the creation of new mathematics, rather than its mundane practice, that is interesting. Mathematics is not about symbols and calculations. These are just tools of the tradequavers and crotchets and five-finger exercises. Mathematics is about ideas. In particular it is about the way that different ideas relate to each other. If certain information is known, what else must necessarily follow? The aim of mathematics is to understand such questions by stripping away the inessentials and penetrating to the core of the problem. It is not just a question of getting the right answer; more a matter of understanding why an answer is possible at all, and why it takes the form that it does. Good mathematics has an air of economy and an element of surprise. But, above all, it has significance. ~ Ian Stewart, #NFDB
692:Standing before this building, I learn something about fear. I learn that it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead stranger, and not the breathlessness of hearing a shotgun pumped outside of Becca Arrington’s house. This cannot be addressed by breathing exercises. This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead.
The smell leaves me seized by desperate panic―panic not like my lungs are out of air, but like the atmosphere itself is out of air. I think maybe the reason I have spent most of my life being afraid is that I have been trying to prepare myself, to train my body for the real fear when it comes. But I am not prepared. ~ John Green,#NFDB
693:Submission means that a wife acknowledges her husband’s headship as spiritual leader and guide for the family. It has nothing whatsoever to do with her denying or suppressing her will, her spirit, her intellect, her gifts, or her personality. To submit means to recognize, affirm, and support her husband’s God-given responsibility of overall family leadership. Biblical submission of a wife to her husband is a submission of position, not personhood. It is the free and willing subordination of an equal to an equal for the sake of order, stability, and obedience to God’s design. As a man, a husband will fulfill his destiny and his manhood as he exercises his headship in prayerful and humble submission to Christ and gives himself in sacrificial love to his wife. As a woman, a wife will realize her womanhood as she submits to her husband in honor of the Lord, receiving his love and accepting his leadership. When a proper relationship of mutual submission is present and active, a wife will be released and empowered to become the woman God always intended her to be. ~ Myles Munroe, #NFDB
694:The others just didn’t seem to have any flare for the theoretical side of magic. They learned their spells by rote, but they weren’t interested in the basic patterns that underlay them. Only a few of them went into the deeper linguistic work, the grammars and the root systems. They preferred to just memorize the syllables and gestures and forget the rest. They were wrong. It sapped the power of their casting, and it meant that every time they started a new spell they were starting over from scratch. They didn’t see the connections between them. And you could forget about doing any original work, which Julia was already looking forward to. Along with Jared she started an ancient languages working group. They only got four other members, and most of those were there because Julia was hot. She kicked them out one by one when they didn’t keep up with the homework. As for the hand exercises, she worked doubly hard at those, because she knew she wasn’t naturally gifted at them. Nobody kept up with her on the hand exercises, not even Jared. They didn’t have her taste for pain. ~ Lev Grossman, #NFDB
695:Avoiding the facility’s tangle of Life Cycles and Cybex machines, he had focused instead on a series of punches, blocks, and kicks to the air that, to the uninitiated, might have looked like some kind of martial dance routine. Actually, his moves were good—smooth, practiced, and powerful. They would have been impressive in any twenty-year-old, but this guy looked at least twice that. I do some similar solo exercises myself, from time to time, although nothing so formal and stylized. And when I do work out this way, I don’t do it in public. It draws too much attention, especially from someone who knows what to look for. Someone like me. In my line of work, drawing attention is a serious violation of the laws of common sense, and therefore of survival. Because if someone notices you for one thing, he’ll be inclined to look more closely, at which point he might notice something else. A pattern, which would have remained quietly hidden, might then begin to emerge, after which your cloak of anonymity will be methodically pulled apart, probably to be rewoven into something more closely resembling a shroud. ~ Barry Eisler, #NFDB
696:This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this up bringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up. This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth. Socrates' "Know thyself" has as much value as the "Be virtuous" of our confessionals. They reveal a nostalgia at the same time as an ignorance. They are sterile exercises on great subjects. They are legitimate only in precisely so far as they are approximate. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
697:An old story is told about Rabia of Basra, an eighth-century Sufi mystic who was seen running through the streets of her city one day carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she said she wanted to burn down the rewards of paradise with the torch and put out the fires of hell with the water, because both blocked the way to God, 'O, Allah,' Rabia prayed, 'if I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell, and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.'
In Christian tradition this comes under the heading of unconditional love, though it is usually understood as the kind of love God exercises toward humans instead of the other way around. Now, thanks to a Muslim mystic from Iraq, I have a new way of understanding what it means to love God unconditionally. Whenever I am tempted to act from fear of divine punishment or hope of divine reward, Rabia leans over from here religion into mine and empties a bucket of water on my head. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor,#NFDB
698:If a mini-habit isn’t working, it’s probably just too big. Make it smaller and let it grow organically. Committing to one workout per day might not sound like much, but it can easily get lost in the whirlpool of daily living. Trim it down to something stupidly easy, quick, and unskippable: a couple of sets of body-weight exercises to failure or a 15-minute walk, for example. The mini-habit tool is incredibly versatile. You can apply it to just about any endeavor and immediately reap the benefits. For example… • Read five pages of the book you want to finish. • Write 50 words on your project. • Do 10 minutes of that exercise DVD. • Lift weights one day per week. • Practice your yoga poses for 5 minutes. • Follow your meal plan for one day. • Cook one new recipe per week. • Give one compliment per day. • Replace one cup of soda with water. You get the idea. So, what major, scary change do you want to make in your life? And what’s the stupidest, simplest action you can take every day to nudge the needle in that direction? There’s your breadcrumb of a mini-habit. Pick it up and see where the trail takes you. ~ Michael Matthews, #NFDB
699:The problem was that this sort of training took weeks, if not months—and we still had to go through the door in the meantime. We tried to do the exercises. We gave it our best shot. Or to be honest, we gave it our best shot for a while. But it was exhausting, for us and for Oliver. He was so finely attuned to the various stages Jude and I had for getting ready to leave that as soon as we tried to decouple one cue from his “they are leaving me” anxiety, picking up our keys, for example, Oliver would figure out another, such as making our lunches or putting on our work clothes. He may have been dysfunctional and disturbed, but he wasn’t stupid. Sometimes I stored my computer bag in our building’s shared hallway because even the sight of it would make Oliver start vigilantly watching for our departure, panting heavily and pacing. He also reacted to the sight of suitcases. And the putting on of shoes. And the opening of the coat closet. Possibly, if Jude and I had left for work naked, through a window, with no lunches, no keys, no bags, no shoes, and at odd hours, we could have avoided triggering Oliver’s anxiety. ~ Laurel Braitman, #NFDB
700:Schoolmastering kept me busy by day and part of each night. I was an assistant housemaster, with a fine big room under the eaves of the main building, and a wretched kennel of a bedroom, and rights in a bathroom used by two or three other resident masters. I taught all day, but my wooden leg mercifully spared me from the nuisance of having to supervise sports after school. There were exercises to mark every night, but I soon gained a professional attitude towards these woeful explorations of the caves of ignorance and did not let them depress me. I liked the company of most of my colleagues, who were about equally divided among good men who were good teachers, awful men who were awful teachers, and the grotesques and misfits who drift into teaching and are so often the most educative influences a boy meets in school. If a boy can't have a good teacher, give him a psychological cripple or an exotic failure to cope with; don't just give him a bad, dull teacher. This is where the private schools score over state-run schools; they can accommodate a few cultured madmen on the staff without having to offer explanations. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
701:Cortical representations are not immutable; they are, to the contrary, dynamic, continuously modified by the lives we lead. Our brains allocate space to body parts that are used in activities that we perform most often-the thumb of a video-game addict, the index finger of a Braille reader. But although experience molds the brain, it molds only an attending brain. "Passive, unattended, or little-attended exercises are of limited value for driving" neuroplasticity, Merzenich and Jenkins concluded. "Plastic changes in brain representations are generated only when behaviors are specifically attended." And therein lies the key. Physical changes in the brain depend for their on a mental state in the mind-the state called attention. Paying attention matters. It matters not only for the size of the brain's representation of this or that part of the body's surface, of this or that muscle. It matters for the dynamic structure of the very circuits of the brain and for the brain's ability to remake itself.
This would be the next frontier for neuroplasticity, harnessing the transforming power of mind to reshape the brain. ~ Jeffrey M Schwartz,#NFDB
702:It was as if the plague had broken out in a country and news had been spreading around that in one or another place there was a man, a wise man, a knowledgeable one, whose word and breath was enough to heal everyone who had been infected with the pestilence, and as such news would go through the land and everyone would talk about it, many would believe, many would doubt, but many would get on their way as soon as possible, to seek the wise man, the helper, just like this this myth ran through the land, that fragrant myth of Gotama, the Buddha, the wise man of the family of Sakya. He possessed, so the believers said, the highest enlightenment, he remembered his previous lives, he had reached Nirvana and never returned into the cycle, was never again submerged in the murky river of physical forms. Many wonderful and unbelievable things were reported of him, he had performed miracles, had overcome the devil, had spoken to the gods. But his enemies and disbelievers said, this Gotama was a vain seducer, he would spent his days in luxury, scorned the offerings, was without learning, and knew neither exercises nor self-castigation. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
703:This about it for a moment. It is truly very odd.
We apparently believe that we own our own bodies as possessions and should be allowed to do with them more or less anything we choose, from euthanasia to a boob job, but we do not want to be on our own with these precise possessions.
We live in a society which sees high self-esteem as a proof of well-being, but we do not want to be intimate with this admirable and desirable person.
We see moral and social conventions as inhibitions on our personal freedoms, and yet we are frightened of anyone who goes away from the crowd and develops 'eccentric' habits.
We believe that everyone has a singular personal 'voice' and is, moreover, unquestionably creative, but we treat with dark suspicion (at best) anyone who uses one of the most clearly established methods of developing that creativity - solitude.
We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone.
We declare that personal freedom and autonomy is both a right and good, but we think anyone who exercises that freedom autonomously is 'sad, mad or bad'. Or all three at once. ~ Sara Maitland,#NFDB
704:Highlights 1) Structure is the selection of events from characters’ lives strategically arranged to serve the writer’s purpose. 2) You should know the lives of your main characters from cradle to grave. 3) In addition to telling a good story, a writer’s secondary goal is to stir ideas or emotions in the reader. Red Sneaker Exercises 1) List your three favorite books of all time. What do they have in common? Do common themes emerge? Did they produce a specific emotional or intellectual response? 2) Write a job application for your protagonist and antagonist using the form attached as Appendix A. Take your time. Do you know as much about these critical characters as you should? 3) You may have heard the term “takeaway,” meaning what the reader takes away with them after reading a book. What do readers get from your book? How are they rewarded for spending their time in your fictional world? Complete the following sentences: When readers finish my book, I want them to feel . When readers finish my book, I want them to think . Now how are you going to arrange your story to make that happen? ~ William Bernhardt, #NFDB
705:Highlights 1) Structure is the selection of events from characters’ lives strategically arranged to serve the writer’s purpose. 2) You should know the lives of your main characters from cradle to grave. 3) In addition to telling a good story, a writer’s secondary goal is to stir ideas or emotions in the reader. Red Sneaker Exercises 1) List your three favorite books of all time. What do they have in common? Do common themes emerge? Did they produce a specific emotional or intellectual response? 2) Write a job application for your protagonist and antagonist using the form attached as Appendix A. Take your time. Do you know as much about these critical characters as you should? 3) You may have heard the term “takeaway,” meaning what the reader takes away with them after reading a book. What do readers get from your book? How are they rewarded for spending their time in your fictional world? Complete the following sentences: When readers finish my book, I want them to feel ____________________. When readers finish my book, I want them to think ______________________. Now how are you going to arrange your story to make that happen? ~ William Bernhardt, #NFDB
706:Without turning, the pharmacist answered that he liked books like The Metamorphosis, Bartleby, A Simple Heart, A Christmas Carol. And then he said that he was reading Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Leaving aside the fact that A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol were stories, not books, there was something revelatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist, who ... clearly and inarguably preferred minor works to major ones. He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecouchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench. ~ Roberto Bola o, #NFDB
707:Let me tell you about this leg, Miss Oldridge," he said. "This used to be a modest, well-behaved leg, quietly going about its business, troubling nobody. But ever since it was hurt, it has become tyrannical."
Her expression eased another degree, and amusement glinted in her eyes, like faint, distant stars in a midsummer night's sky.
Encouraged, he went on, "This limb is selfish, surly, and ungrateful. When English medical expertise declared the case hopeless, we took the leg to a Turkish healer. He plied it with exotic unguents and cleaned and dressed it several times a day. By this means he staved off the fatal and malodorous infection it should have suffered otherwise. Was the leg grateful? Did it go back to work like a proper leg? No, it did not."
Lips twitching, she made a sympathetic murmur.
"This limb, madam," he said, "demanded months of boring exercises before it would condescend to perform the simplest movements. Even now, after nearly three years of devoted care and maintenance, it will fly into a fit over damp weather. And this, may I remind you, is an English leg, not one of your delicate foreign varieties. ~ Loretta Chase,#NFDB
708:the Omegas harnessed Prometheus to revolutionize education. Given any person’s knowledge and abilities, Prometheus could determine the fastest way for them to learn any new subject in a manner that kept them highly engaged and motivated to continue, and produce the corresponding optimized videos, reading materials, exercises and other learning tools. Omega-controlled companies therefore marketed online courses about virtually everything, highly customized not only by language and cultural background but also by starting level.
Whether you were an illiterate forty-year-old wanting to learn to read or a biology PhD seeking the latest about cancer immunotherapy, Prometheus had the perfect course for you. These offerings bore little resemblance to most present-day online courses: by leveraging Prometheus’ movie-making talents, the video segments would truly engage, providing powerful metaphors that you would relate to, leaving you craving to learn more.
Some courses were sold for profit, but many were made available for free, much to the delight of teachers around the world who could use them in their classrooms—and to most anybody eager to learn anything. ~ Max Tegmark,#NFDB
709:Sometimes, You Just Need a Vibrator Coach Sommer introduced me to a Russian medical massage specialist who recommended I use the plug-in (not cordless) model of the Hitachi Magic Wand on its high setting. I’ve never experienced such heights of ecstasy. Thanks, Vladmir! Just kidding. In this case, it’s for relaxing hypertonic muscles (i.e., muscles that are tense even though they shouldn’t be). Just place the wand on your muscle belly (not insertion points) for 20 to 30 seconds, which is often all it takes at the proper hertz. Tension headaches or a stiff neck? It’s great for relaxing the occipitals at the base of the skull. Warning: Having Hitachi Magic Wands lying out around your house can go terribly wrong—or terribly right. Good luck explaining your “hypertonic muscles.” As one friend said to me, “I think my wife has that same problem. . . .” Gymnast Strong Unusual and Effective Bodyweight Exercises In less than eight weeks of following Coach Sommer’s protocols, I saw unbelievable improvement in areas I’d largely given up on. Try a few of my favorite exercises, and you’ll quickly realize that gymnasts use muscles you didn’t even know you had. QL Walk—An Unusual Warmup ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
710:It is love. I will have to run or hide.
The walls of its prison rise up, as in a twisted dream. The beautiful mask has changed, but as always it is the one. Of what use are my talismans: the literary exercises, the vague erudition, the knowledge of words used by the harsh North to sing its seas and swords, the temperate friendship, the galleries of the Library, the common things, the habits, the young love of my mother, the militant shadow of my dead, the timeless night, the taste of dreams?
Being with you or being without you is the measure of my time.
Now the pitcher breaks about the spring, now the man arises to the sound of birds, now those that watch at the windows have gone dark, but the darkness has brought no peace.
It, I know, is love: the anxiety and the relief at hearing your voice, the expectation and the memory, the horror of living in succession.
It is love with its mythologies, with its tiny useless magics.
There exists a corner that I dare not cross.
Now the armies confine me, the hordes.
(This room is unreal; she has not seen it.)
The name of a woman gives me away.
A woman hurts me in all of my body. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,#NFDB
711:I started thinking deeply about human rights. One of the main reasons that distinctions between oppressor and victim are blurred in North Korea is that no one there has any concept of rights. To know that your rights are being abused, or that you are abusing someone else’s, you first have to know that you have them, and what they are. But with no comparative information about societies elsewhere in the world, such awareness in North Korea cannot exist. This is also why most people escape because they’re hungry or in trouble – not because they’re craving liberty. Many defectors hiding in China even baulk at the idea of going to South Korea – they’d see it as a betrayal of their country and the legacy of the Great Leader. If the North Korean people acquired an awareness of their rights, of individual freedoms and democracy, the game would be up for the regime in Pyongyang. The people would realize that full human rights are exercised and enjoyed by one person only – the ruling Kim. He is the only figure in North Korea who exercises freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, his right not to be tortured, imprisoned, or executed without trial, and his right to proper healthcare and food. ~ Hyeonseo Lee, #NFDB
712:In 2010, the Priesthood quorums and Relief Society used the same manual (Gospel Principles)… Most lessons consist of a few pages of exposition on various themes… studded with scriptural citations and quotations from leaders of the church. These are followed by points of discussion like “Think about what you can do to keep the purpose of the Sabbath in mind as you prepare for the day each week.” Gospel Principles instructs teachers not to substitute outside materials, however interesting they may be. In practice this ensures that a common set of ideas are taught in all Mormon chapels every Sunday. That these ideas are the basic principles of the faith mean that Mormon Sunday schools and other church lessons function quite intentionally as devotional exercises rather than instruction in new concepts. The curriculum encourages teachers to ask questions that encourage catechistic reaffirmation of core beliefs. Further, lessons focus to a great extent on the importance of basic practices like prayer, paying tithing, and reading scripture rather than on doctrinal content… Correlated materials are designed not to promote theological reflection, but to produce Mormons dedicated to living the tenants of their faith. ~ Matthew Bowman, #NFDB
713:Once beyond school age, individuals were all expected to carry out two functions: to contribute to production and to take part in military operations. The whole system was based on the “Four Military Lines.” The key tenets were “arm the entire people,” “fortify the entire nation,” “build a nation of military leaders,” and “complete military modernization.” So various militias were formed. When I grew too old for the Youth League, I had no choice but to join one of these militias. In my case, it was the Laborers’ and Farmers’ Red Army. I enlisted when I graduated from high school and embarked on a period of training. The training was professional enough. We learned how to dig trenches and fight to protect our position. We were well trained as snipers. Groups of individuals who were used to working together were formed into military units. The idea was that, in the event of a crisis, the units could be mobilized very quickly. We had exercises twice a year, at the hottest and the coldest time of year. We’d do things like climb a mountain or dig trenches out of the frozen ground. Right from the start, the one thing I kept asking myself was this: What was with the party’s obsession with militarizing the entire nation? ~ Masaji Ishikawa, #NFDB
714:The view that external things like rank, money, and honors bring happiness has frequently been criticized, but it is not necessarily incorrect. After all, these things belong, as Aquinas would have it, among the "accidents."
Accidens is the unessential, which includes the body. If one manages to separate essence from flesh, if one manages, that is, to gain distance from oneself, then one climbs the first step toward spiritual power. Many exercises are geared to this--from the soldier's drill to the hermit's meditation.
However, once the self has been successfully distanced, the essential can be brought back to the accidental. This process, resembling a vaccination with one's own blood, is initially manifested as a reanimation of the body. The physiognomy takes on the kind of features seen in paintings by old masters. They added something of their own. They blended it into the pigments.
This also applies to objects; they were meaningful, now they gain a sense. A new light shines on things, they glow. Anyone can manage this; I heard the following from a disciple of Bruno's: "The world seemed hollow to me because my head was hollow." But the head, too, can be filled. First we must forget what we have learned. ~ Ernst J nger,#NFDB
715:We don’t treat each other very well, I suppose. Even from the start. It was as though we had the seven-year itch the day we met. The day she went into a coma, I heard her telling her friend Shelley that I was useless, that I leave my socks hanging on every doorknob in the house. At weddings we roll our eyes at the burgeoning love around us, the vows that we know will morph into new kinds of promises: I vow not to kiss you when you’re trying to read. I will tolerate you in sickness and ignore you in health. I promise to let you watch that stupid news show about celebrities, since you’re so disenchanted with your own life.
Joanie and I were urged by her brother, Barry, to subject ourselves to counseling as a decent couple would. Barry is a man of the couch, a believer in weekly therapy, affirmations, and pulse points. Once he tried to show us exercises he’d been doing in session with his girlfriend. We were instructed to trade reasons, abstract or specific, why we stayed with each other. I started off by saying that Joanie would get drunk and pretend I was someone else and do this neat thing with her tongue. Joanie said tax breaks. Barry cried. Openly. His second wife had recently left him for someone who understood that a man didn’t do volunteer work. ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings,#NFDB
716:
Sweet Mother, Just as there is a methodical progression of exercises for mental and physical education, isn't there a similar method to progress towards Sri Aurobindo's yoga?
It should vary with each individual.
Could you make a step-by-step programme for me to follow daily?
The mechanical regularity of a fixed programme is indispensable for physical, mental and vital development; but this mechanical rigidity has little or no effect on spiritual development where the spontaneity of an absolute sincerity is indispensable. Sri Aurobindo has written very clearly on this subject. And what he has written on it has appeared in The Synthesis Of Yoga.
However, as an initial help to set you on the path, I can tell you: (1) that on getting up, before starting the day, it is good to make an offering of this day to the Divine, an offering of all that one thinks, all that one is, all that one will do; (2) and at night, before going to sleep, it is good to review the day, taking note of all the times one has forgotten or neglected to make an offering of one's self or one's action, and to aspire or pray that these lapses do not recur. This is a minimum, a very small beginning - and it should increase with the sincerity of your consecration. 31 March 1965
~ The Mother, Some Answers From The Mother, [T1],#NFDB
717:To pastors and teachers
If all who laboured for the conversion of others were to introduce them immediately into Prayer and the Interior Life, and make it their main design to gain and win over the heart, numberless as well as permanent conversions would certainly ensue. On the contrary, few and transient fruits must attend that labour which is confined to outward matters; such as burdening the disciple with a thousand precepts for external exercises, instead of leaving the soul to Christ by the occupation of the heart in him . . .
O when once the heart is gained, how easily is all moral evil corrected! It is, therefore, that God above all things requires the heart. It is the conquest of the heart alone that can extirpate those dreadful vices which are so predominant, such as drunkenness, blasphemy, lewdness,envy, and theft. Jesus Christ would become the universal and peaceful Sovereign, and the face of the church would be wholly renewed.
The decay of internal piety is unquestionably the source of the various errors that have arisen in the church, all which would would speedily be sapped and overthrown should inward religion be reestablished . . .
O how inexpressibly great is the loss sustained by mankind from the neglect of the Interior Life! ~ Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon,#NFDB
718:We should get into the way of appearing lively in religion, more by being lively in the service of God and our generation than by the liveliness and forwardness of our tongues, and making a business of proclaiming on the house tops with our mouths the holy and eminent acts and exercises of our own hearts. Christians that are intimate friends would talk together of their experiences and comforts in a manner better becoming Christian humility and modesty, and more to each other's profit: their tongues not running before, but rather going behind their hands and feet, after the prudent example of the blessed apostle, 2 Cor. xii. 6. Many occasions of spiritual pride would thus be cut off, and so a great door shut against the devil. A great many of the main stumbling-blocks against experimental and powerful religion would be removed, and religion would be declared and manifested in such a way that, instead of hardening spectators, and exceedingly promoting infidelity and atheism, it would, above all things, tend to convince men that there is a reality in religion, and greatly awaken them, and win them, by convincing their consciences of the importance and excellency of religion. Thus the light of professors would so shine before men, that others, seeing their good works, would glorify their Father which is in heaven. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
719:As for what motivated me, it is quite simple; I would hope that in the eyes of some people it might be sufficient in itself. It was curiosity – the only kind of curiosity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what it is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself. After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or another and to the extent possible, in the knower’s straying afield of himself? There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently that one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all. People will say, perhaps, that these games with oneself would better be left backstage; or, at best, that they might properly form part of those preliminary exercises that are forgotten once they have served their purpose. But, then, what is philosophy today – philosophical activity, I mean – if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavour to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known? ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
720:Remember and Share - The Investment Phase is the fourth step in the Hook Model. - Unlike the Action Phase, which delivers immediate gratification, the Investment Phase is about the anticipation of rewards in the future. - Investments in a product create preference because of our tendency to overvalue our work, be consistent with past behaviors, and avoid cognitive dissonance. - Investment comes after the variable reward phase when users are primed to reciprocate. - Investments increase the likelihood of users returning by improving the service the more it is used. They enable the accrual of stored value in the form of content, data, followers, reputation or skill. - Investments increase the likelihood of users passing through the Hook again by loading the next trigger to start the cycle all over again. *** Do This Now Refer to the answers you came up with in the last “Do This Now” section to complete the following exercises: - Review your flow. What “bit of work” are your users doing to increase their likelihood of returning? - Brainstorm three ways to add small investments into your product to: - Load the next trigger - Store value as data, content, followers, reputation and skill - Identify how long it takes for a “loaded trigger” to re-engage your users. How can you reduce the delay to shorten cycle-time through the Hook? ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
721:Men will allow God to be everywhere except on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow him to be in his almonry to dispense his alms and bestow his bounties. They will allow him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends his throne, his creatures then gnash their teeth; and when we proclaim an enthroned God, and his right to do as he wills with his own, to dispose of his creatures as he thinks well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on his throne is not the God they love. They love him anywhere better than they do when he sits with his sceptre in his hand and his crown upon his head. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon his throne whom we trust. It is God upon his throne of whom we have been singing this morning; and it is God upon his throne of whom we shall speak in this discourse. I shall dwell only, however, upon one portion of God’s Sovereignty, and that is God’s Sovereignty in the distribution of his gifts. In this respect I believe he has a right to do as he wills with his own, and that he exercises that right. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
722:The opposite of spare time is, I guess, occupied time. In my case I still don’t know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It’s occupied by living.
An increasing part of living, at my age, is mere bodily maintenance, which is tiresome. But I cannot find anywhere in my life a time, or a kind of time, that is unoccupied. I am free, but my time is not. My time is fully and vitally occupied with sleep, with daydreaming, with doing business and writing friends and family on email, with reading, with writing poetry, with writing prose, with thinking, with forgetting, with embroidering, with cooking and eating a meal and cleaning up the kitchen, with construing Virgil, with meeting friends, with talking with my husband, with going out to shop for groceries, with walking if I can walk and traveling if we are traveling, with sitting Vipassana sometimes, with watching a movie sometimes, with doing the Eight Precious Chinese exercises when I can, with lying down for an afternoon rest with a volume of Krazy Kat to read and my own slightly crazy cat occupying the region between my upper thighs and mid-calves, where he arranges himself and goes instantly and deeply to sleep. None of this is spare time. I can’t spare it. What is Harvard thinking of? I am going to be eighty-one next week. I have no time to spare. ~ Ursula K Le Guin,#NFDB
723:This long letter is because I'm writing before breakfast. Oh, the beautiful vine leaves! The house is covered with a vine. I looked out earlier, and Mrs. Wilcox was already in the garden. No wonder she sometimes looks tired. She was watching the large red poppies come out. Then she walked off the lawn to the meadow, whose corner to the right I can just see. Trail, trail, went her long dress over the sopping grass, and she came back with her hands full of the hay that was cut yesterday - I suppose for rabbits or something, as she kept on smelling it. The air here is delicious. Later on I heard the noise of croquet balls, and looked out again, and it was Charles Wilcox practising; they are keen on all games. Presently he started sneezing and had to stop. Then I hear more clicketing, and it is Mr. Wilcox practising, and then, "a-tissue, a-tissue": he has to stop too. Then Evie comes out, and does some calisthenic exercises on a machine that is tacked to a greengage-tree - they put everything to use - and then she says "a-tissue," and in she goes. And finally Mrs. Wilcox reappears, trail, trail, still smelling hay and looking at the flowers. I inflict all this on you because once you said that life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which, and up to now I have always put that down as "Meg's clever nonsense. ~ E M Forster, #NFDB
724:SECTION SUMMARY TO BE AN EFFECTIVE LEADER … Recognize that you have limited strengths. Do whatever it takes to discover what they are. Once you know, find a work environment that allows you to focus your energies on the few things you were created to do well. Don’t allow your time to get eaten up with responsibilities and projects that call for skills that fall outside your core competencies. That is a recipe for mediocrity. Embrace this truth: The less you do, the more you will accomplish. Narrow your focus to increase your productivity and expand your influence within your organization. Empower the leaders around you by delegating those responsibilities that fall outside your zone. Somebody is dying to pick up the ball you drop. Your weakness is his opportunity. Remember: Great leaders know when to follow. THE NEXT GENERATION CHALLENGE What defines success for you in your current employment situation? Is there alignment between your core competencies and those competencies necessary to succeed in your job? What would change about your current job description if you were given the freedom to focus on the two or three things you do best? What would need to change in your current employment situation in order for you to focus on the things that add the most value to your organization? Take some time to complete the exercises described on this page through this page. ~ Andy Stanley, #NFDB
725:But how does the Atonement motivate, invite, and draw all men unto the Savior? What causes this gravitational pull-- this spiritual tug? There is a certain compelling power that flows from righteous suffering-- not indiscriminate suffering, not needless suffering, but righteous, voluntary suffering for another. Such suffering for another is the highest and purest form of motivation we can offer to those we love. Contemplate that for a moment: How does one change the attitude or the course of conduct of a loved one whose every step seems bent on destruction? If example fails to influence, words of kindness go unheeded, and the powers of logic are dismissed as chaff before the wind, then where does one turn...
In the words of the missionary evangelist, E. Stanley Jones, suffering has "an intesnse moral appeal." Jones once asked Mahatma Gandhi as he sat on a cot in an open courtyard of Yervavda jail, "'Isn't your fasting a species of coercion?' 'Yes,' he said very slowly, 'the same kind of coercion which Jesus exercises upon you from the cross.'" As Jones reflected upon that sobering rejoinder, he said: "I was silent. It was so obviously true that I am silent again every time I think of it. He was prfoundly right. The years have clarified it. And I now see it for what it is: a very morally potent and redenptive power if used rightly. But it has to be used rightly. ~ Tad R Callister,#NFDB
726:Who wants to serve in a police vice squad, spending hours peeking into men’s johns to detect acts of homosexuality? Who wants a job as a debt-collection agent, spending his whole day being nasty to people? What sort of person voluntarily serves as a prison guard or hangman? Also, alas, one might ask what kind of individual would want to spend millions of dollars to become president of the United States, never away from the telephone, guarded around the clock by agents of the Secret Service, reading tomes of amazingly uninteresting documents, and being accompanied day and night by a warrant officer carrying a black bag containing the mechanisms to set off the atomic bomb? We believe that all such occupations, dreary or dangerous as they may be, are exercises of high responsibility and even of glory, despite the maxim that “the paths of glory lead but to the grave.” But what is their actual end and purpose? Towards what is Progress? In fact, what on Earth are we doing? No one has even the ghost of a notion, save perhaps a few simple-minded people who live to smell flowers, to listen to the sea, to watch trees in the wind, to climb mountains, to eat pâté de veau en croûte, to drink the Malvasia wine from Ruby Hill, and to cuddle up with a lovely woman—and such pursuits are not really expensive, as compared with the trillions spent on the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
727:Pharaohs
It took Khufu twenty-three years to build his Great Pyramid at Giza, where some eleven hundred stone blocks, each weighing about two and a half tons, had to be quarried, moved, and set in place every day during the annual building season, roughly four months long. Few commentators on these facts can resist noting that this achievement is an amazing testimonial to the pharaoh’s iron control over the workers of Egypt. I submit, on the contrary, that pharaoh Khufu needed to exercise no more control over his workers at Giza than pharaoh Bill Gates exercises over his workers at Microsoft. I submit that Egyptian workers, relatively speaking, got as much out of building Khufu’s pyramid as Microsoft workers will get out of building Bill Gates’s pyramid (which will surely dwarf Khufu’s a hundred times over, though it will not, of course, be built of stone).
No special control is needed to make people into pyramid builders—if they see themselves as having no choice but to build pyramids. They’ll build whatever they’re told to build, whether it’s pyramids, parking garages, or computer programs.
Karl Marx recognized that workers without a choice are workers in chains. But his idea of breaking chains was for us to depose the pharaohs and then build the pyramids for ourselves, as if building pyramids is something we just can’t stop doing, we love it so much. ~ Daniel Quinn,#NFDB
728:Suicide is a form of murder— premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes some getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.
It’s important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there’s a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there’s a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there’s a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.
The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.
In reality, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy. ~ Susanna Kaysen,#NFDB
729:Brainhacking works. By following a few simple instructions, you can, over time, change the nature of your brain to make it more resilient, more resistant to aging, and more capable of happiness, compassion, and clarity. The data is in, and it matters. It matters, in fact, in two distinct ways. First, as this hard data filters through the U.S. healthcare industry, the educational system, the military, and the corporate world, to name just a few examples, it will become clear that mindfulness is among the most cost-effective methods ever for reducing hospital stays, advancing educational opportunity, and improving the functioning of organizations. This will be a game-changer. Second, the science changes how the dharma is even to be understood. This hard data is the opposite of soft spirituality. Meditation and mindfulness are tools, not a set of spiritual exercises whose merit depends on faith or some unknown forces. This is why I’ve used the word “technology” in describing the work of meditation, why Kenneth Folk calls it a form of “contemplative fitness,” and why I like the term “brainhacking.” We’re not referring here to actual, physical technologies like electrodes or vibrating implants or special sounds that put you into an altered state (although all of these exist). Rather, when I say “technology,” I’m thinking of how meditation and mindfulness are tools—processes that lead to predictable results. ~ Jay Michaelson, #NFDB
730:Instead, he (and Epictetus and Seneca) focused on a series of questions not unlike the ones we continue to ask ourselves today: “What is the best way to live?” “What do I do about my anger?” “What are my obligations to my fellow human beings?” “I’m afraid to die; why is that?” “How can I deal with the difficult situations I face?” “How should I handle the success or power I hold?” These weren’t abstract questions. In their writings—often private letters or diaries—and in their lectures, the Stoics struggled to come up with real, actionable answers. They ultimately framed their work around a series of exercises in three critical disciplines: The Discipline of Perception (how we see and perceive the world around us) The Discipline of Action (the decisions and actions we take—and to what end) The Discipline of Will (how we deal with the things we cannot change, attain clear and convincing judgment, and come to a true understanding of our place in the world) By controlling our perceptions, the Stoics tell us, we can find mental clarity. In directing our actions properly and justly, we’ll be effective. In utilizing and aligning our will, we will find the wisdom and perspective to deal with anything the world puts before us. It was their belief that by strengthening themselves and their fellow citizens in these disciplines, they could cultivate resilience, purpose, and even joy. Born in the tumultuous ancient world, ~ Ryan Holiday, #NFDB
731:WHEN beginners become aware of their own fervor and diligence in their spiritual works and devotional exercises, this prosperity of theirs gives rise to secret pride—though holy things tend of their own nature to humility—because of their imperfections; and the issue is that they conceive a certain satisfaction in the contemplation of their works and of themselves. From the same source, too, proceeds that empty eagerness which they display to some extent, and occasionally very much,1 in speaking before others of the spiritual life, and sometimes as teachers rather than learners. They condemn others in their heart when they see that they are not devout in their way. Sometimes also they say it in words, showing themselves herein to be like the Pharisee, who in the act of prayer boasted of his own works and despised the Publican.2 2. Their fervor, and desire to do these and other works, is frequently fed by Satan in order that they may grow in pride and presumption: he knows perfectly well that all their virtue and works are not only nothing worth, but rather tending to sin. Some of them go so far as to desire none should be thought good but themselves,3 and so, at all times, both in word and deed fall into condemnation and detraction of others. They see the mote in the eye of their brother, but not the beam which is in their own.4 They strain out the gnat in another man’s cup, and swallow the camel in their own.5 3. ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
732:It was at that moment that I called in a few of the top Fidgeters who, under my directions, set about organizing the destruction of the young. The method is quite straightforward; the children are taken at the time when their intelligence is not yet fully developed, and their passions respond to the slightest stimulation; they are made to live in companies, dressed and armed uniformly, and by means of magic speeches and collective physical exercises, whose secret is ours alone, we give them what we call "the cult of the common ideal"; this is an absolute devotion to a loud-mouthed, authoritarian person, or to a particular form of dress, or to some catch phrase, or to a certain grouping of colors, or whatever. All we need then is to have here two opposing groups of young people (or more than two, but an even number is preferable) who have been kept at a high level of emotional tension; the sole precaution to take is to leave no time for their brains to function, but that's easy enough. Then (are you with me?) when they have reached just the right pitch, they are let loose on one another...and afterwards, we can breathe easy for a while. This, at the same time, occupies and enriches the manufacturers and sellers of uniforms and armaments, and the authors of tracts which recommend the uses of carnage, one of whom wrote recently: "The young man who is not killed in the flower of youth is not a young man, he is the old man of tomorrow. ~ Ren Daumal, #NFDB
733:The list of structures is pretty much the same list (racism, sexism, poverty, and the rest), but the implication is there could, for example, exist a system of patriarchy that operated in the total absence of domestic violence or sexual assault, or a system of racism that was in no way backed up by government-enforced property rights—despite the fact that, to my knowledge, no example of either has ever been observed.50 Once again, it’s puzzling why anyone would make such an argument, unless they were for some reason determined to insist that the physical violence isn’t the essence of the thing, that this isn’t what really needs to be addressed. To pose the question of violence directly would, apparently, mean opening a series of doors that most academics seem to feel would really better be left shut. Most of these doors lead directly to the problem of what we call “the state”—and the bureaucratic structures through which it actually exercises power. Is the state’s claim to a monopoly of violence ultimately the problem, or is the state an essential part of any possible solution? Is the very practice of laying down rules and then threatening physical harm against anyone who does not follow them itself objectionable, or is it just that the authorities are not deploying such threats in the right way? To talk of racism, sexism, and the rest as a bunch of abstract structures floating about is the best way to dodge such questions entirely. ~ David Graeber, #NFDB
734:In terms of "quiet" bourgeois democracy two fundamental possibilities are open to the industrial worker: identification with the bourgeoisie, which holds a higher position in the social scale, or identification with his own social class, which produces its own anti-reactionary way of life. To pursue the first possibility means to envy the reactionary man, to imitate him, and, if the opportunity arises, to assimilate his habits of life. To pursue the second of these possibilities means to reject the reactionary man's ideologies and habits of life. Due to the simultaneous influence exercised by both social and class habits, these two possibilities are equally strong. The revolutionary movement also failed to appreciate the importance of the seemingly irrelevant everyday habits, indeed, very often turned them to bad account. The lower middle-class bedroom suite, which the "rabble" buys as soon as he has the means, even if he is otherwise revolutionary minded; the consequent suppression of the wife, even if he is a Communist; the "decent" suit of clothes for Sunday; "proper" dance steps and a thousand other "banalities," have an incomparably greater reactionary influence when repeated day after day than thousands of revolutionary rallies and leaflets can ever hope to counterbalance. Narrow conservative life exercises a continuous influence, penetrates every facet of everyday life; whereas factory work and revolutionary leaflets have only a brief effect. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #NFDB
735:Body Prayer We must hunker down into the “Body of Hope and Resurrection” (Philippians 3:9–11; 1 Corinthians 15:44) and pray also from below and from within, on a cellular and energetic level too—or the attitude of prayer does not last or go deep. You are not thinking your prayer as much as energetically feeling your prayer. You pay attention from the bottom up and from the inside out. Rest into the Body of Christ energy instead of trying to pull an Infinite God into your finite world. Your body itself receives and knows, and is indeed “a temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16–17) where God dwells in the Spirit. Walking meditation, yoga, and breathing exercises are all helpful here. Body prayer actually works much more quickly and more naturally than thought prayer alone. Body prayer is what we have tried to do with inspiring music, body gestures, and all sacraments, so this is not a new idea. It is what many are seeking in tai chi, pilgrimages, prayer beads, chanting, repeating the Jesus Prayer until it prays itself in us and through us, and so on. To “pray from the clay” will also move you to the shared level of prayer. You will know that “you” are not doing the prayer, but you are falling into the unified field, and the Body of Christ is now praying through you (Romans 8:26–27) and with you. It becomes “our” prayer, and not just my prayer. Now you pray not so much to Christ as much as through Christ, and you will know experientially that you are Christ's Body too. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
736:Meanwhile, God seeks to raise them higher, to draw them out of this miserable manner of loving to a higher state of the love of God, to deliver them from the low usage of the senses and meditation whereby they seek after God, as I said before,4 in ways so miserable and so unworthy of Him. He seeks to place them in the way of the spirit wherein they may the more abundantly, and more free from imperfections, commune with God now that they have been for some time tried in the way of goodness, persevering in meditation and prayer, and because of the sweetness they found therein have withdrawn their affections from the things of this world, and gained a certain spiritual strength in God, whereby they in some measure curb their love of the creature, and are able, for the love of God, to carry a slight burden of dryness, without going back to that more pleasant time when their spiritual exercises abounded in delights, and when the sun of the divine graces shone, as they think, more clearly upon them. God is now changing that light into darkness, and sealing up the door of the fountain of the sweet spiritual waters, which they tasted in God as often and as long as they wished. For when they were weak and tender, this door was then not shut, as it is written, “Behold, I have given before thee an opened door, which no man can shut; because thou hast a little strength, and hast kept My word, and hast not denied My name.”5 4. God thus leaves them in darkness so great ~ Juan de la Cruz, #NFDB
737:The Thought of Death. It gives me a melancholy happiness to live in the midst of this confusion of streets, of necessities, of voices: how much enjoyment, impatience and desire, how much thirsty life and drunkenness of life comes to light here every moment! And yet it will soon be so still for all these shouting, lively, life- loving people! How everyone's shadow, his gloomy travelling companion stands behind him! It is always as in the last moment before the departure of an emigrant- ship: people have more than ever to say to one another, the hour presses, the ocean with its lonely silence waits impatiently behind all the noise-so greedy, so certain of its prey! And all, all, suppose that the past has been nothing, or a small matter, that the near future is everything: hence this haste, this crying, this self-deafening and self-overreaching! Everyone wants to be foremost in this future-and yet death and the stillness of death are the only things certain and common to all in this future! How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on men, and that they are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death! It makes me happy to see that men do not want to think at all of the idea of death! I would fain do something to make the idea of life to us to be more than friends in the sense of that sublime possibility. And so we will believe in our even a hundred times more worthy of their attention. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
738:Calvinism teaches that the unsaved elect is sanctified by the Spirit unto salvation. 1. Does Acts 26:18 tell us that sanctification if by faith? If so, how can the unsaved be sanctified unless he exercises faith? 2. Does Acts 20: 32 tell us that only believers (the brethren) are sanctified and heirs of God? If there are unsaved who are sanctified, then, such unsaved men can already be called brethren before they got saved. 3. Is the sanctification of a person possible only IN CHRIST? (I Cor.1: 2). Are unsaved men already in Christ? Does 2 Cor.5:17 teach that only the believers are in Christ? According to I Cor.1: 2, those who are sanctified are called saints. If there are sanctified unsaved men, then, there are unsaved saints. 4. In I Cor.6: 11, who were called as washed, sanctified, and justified, the saved or unsaved? If there is an unsaved who is sanctified, then, there will also be a justified unsaved. Such two words are contradicting each other. 5. In Heb.2:11, did Christ call “brethren” those whom He sanctified? Is Christ united with those that are sanctified? Therefore, only believers are sanctified. C. Calvinism teaches that a person is quickened (made alive) by the Spirit in order that he can hear, repent, and believe. 1. What do you mean by the word "quicken"? It means the giving of life to a spiritually dead person. "Quickened" means regenerated or made alive. The question is, does God give life to a person before repentance and faith in Christ? See John 5:24 and Eph.1: 13, Rom.8:14, & John 1:12 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
739:He cupped my chin with his big hand and watched me. He breathed hard through his nose. His shoulders heaved way harder than they should have after a few minutes
of kissing. I was about to suggest some additional conditioning exercises before football season started. I opened my mouth to tell him.
He kissed me again. His tongue passed my lips and played across my teeth. We’d only been kissing like this for a week, but it seemed very natural when I kissed him back
the same way. My body was on autopilot as I reached blindly for his waist and dragged him even closer, his torso skin-to-skin with mine against the tree. Who were we? I
was turning into any of the assorted older girls who’d been seen leaving the cab of Sean’s truck at night. I’d always viewed those girls with a mixture of awe and derision.
Sexual attraction was funny. Lust was hilarious.
Now, not so much. Those girls had my sympathy, because I totally got it. I ran my fingers lightly up Adam’s bare back.
He gasped.
I opened my eyes to see if I’d done something wrong. He still touched the tree, but his muscles were taut, holding on to it for dear life. His eyes were closed. He rubbed
his rough cheek slowly against mine. I had done nothing wrong. He was savoring.
I knew how he felt. Tracing my fingernails down his back again, I whispered, “Stubble or what?”
Eyes still closed, he chuckled. “I’m not shaving until our parents let us date again.” He kissed my cheek.
“What if it takes… a… while?” I asked, struggling to talk. ~ Jennifer Echols,#NFDB
740:If I am attached to another person because I cannot stand on my own feet, he or she may be a lifesaver, but the relationship is not one of love. Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love. Anyone who tries to be alone with himself will discover how difficult it is. He will begin to feel restless, fidgety, or even to sense considerable anxiety. He will be prone to rationalize his unwillingness to go on with this practice by thinking that it has no value, is just silly, that it takes too much time, and so on, and so on. He will also observe that all sorts of thoughts come to mind which take possession of him. He will find himself thinking about his plans for later in the day, or about some difficulty in a job he has to do, or where to go in the evening, or about any number of things that fill his mind – rather than permitting it to empty itself. It would be helpful to practice a few very simple exercises, as for instance, to sit in a relaxed position (neither slouching, nor rigid), to close one’s eyes, and to try to see a white screen in front of one’s eyes, and to try to remove all interfering pictures and thoughts, then to try to follow one’s breathing; not to think about it, nor force it, but to follow it – and in doing so to sense it; furthermore to try to have a sense of 'I'; I = myself, as the center of my powers, as the creator of my world. One should, at least, do such a concentration exercise every morning for twenty minutes (and if possible longer) and every evening before going to bed. ~ Erich Fromm, #NFDB
741:In Bergotte’s books, which I constantly reread, the sentences were as clear to me as my own thoughts, I perceived them as distinctly as the furniture in my room and the carriages in the streets. Everything was easily visible, if not as one had always seen it, then certainly as one was accustomed to see it now. But a new writer had just started to publish work in which the relations between things were so different from those that connected them for me, that I could understand almost nothing in his writing.... Only I felt that it was not the sentence that was badly constructed, but that I myself lacked the energy and agility to see it through to the end. I would make a fresh start, working really hard to reach the point where I could see the new connections between things. At each attempt, about half-way through the sentence, I would fall back defeated, as I did later in the army in horizontal bar exercises... From then on I felt less admiration for Bergotte, whose transparency struck me as a shortcoming... The writer who had supplanted Bergotte in my estimation sapped my energy not by the incoherence but by the novelty – perfectly coherent – of associations I was not used to making. Because I always felt myself falter in the same place, it was clear that I needed to perform the same feat of endeavour each time. And when I did, very occasionally, manage to follow the author to the end of his sentence, what I discovered was always a humour, a truthfulness, a charm similar to those I had once found reading Bergotte, only more delightful. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
742:John Ruskin did not go to school. Nor did Queen Victoria, nor John Stuart Mill, George Eliot or Harriet Martineau. It would be absurd to suggest that Disraeli, Dickens, Newman or Darwin, to name four very different figures, who attended various schools for short spells in their boyhood, owed very much to their schooling. Had they been born in a later generation, school would have loomed much larger in their psychological stories, if only because they would have spent so much longer there, and found themselves preparing for public examinations. It is hard not to feel that a strong ‘syllabus’, or a school ethos, might have cramped the style of all four and that in their different ways – Disraeli, comparatively rich, anarchically foppish, indiscriminately bookish; Darwin, considered a dunce, but clearly – as he excitedly learned to shoot, to fish and to bird-watch – beginning his revolutionary relationship with the natural world; Newman, imagining himself an angel; Dickens, escaping the ignominy of his circumstances through theatrical and comedic internalized role-play – they were lucky to have been born before the Age of Control. For the well-meaning educational reforms of the 1860s were the ultimate extension of those Benthamite exercises in control which had begun in the 1820s and 1830s. Having exercised their sway over the poor, the criminals, the agricultural and industrial classes, the civil service and – this was next – the military, the controllers had turned to the last free spirits left, the last potential anarchists: the children. ~ A N Wilson, #NFDB
743:John Ruskin did not go to school. Nor did Queen Victoria, nor John Stuart Mill, George Eliot or Harriet Martineau. It would be absurd to suggest that Disraeli, Dickens, Newman or Darwin, to name four very different figures, who attended various schools for short spells in their boyhood, owed very much to their schooling. Had they been born in a later generation, school would have loomed much larger in their psychological stories, if only because they would have spent so much longer there, and found themselves preparing for public examinations. It is hard not to feel that a strong ‘syllabus’, or a school ethos, might have cramped the style of all four and that in their different ways – Disraeli, comparatively rich, anarchically foppish, indiscriminately bookish; Darwin, considered a dunce, but clearly – as he excitedly learned to shoot, to fish and to bird-watch – beginning his revolutionary relationship with the natural world; Newman, imagining himself an angel; Dickens, escaping the ignominy of his circumstances through theatrical and comedic internalized role-play – they were lucky to have been born before the Age of Control. For the well-meaning educational reforms of the 1860s were the ultimate extension of those Benthamite exercises in control which had begun in the 1820s and 1830s. Having exercised their sway over the poor, the criminals, the agricultural and industrial classes, the civil service and – this was next – the military, the controllers had turned to the last free spirits left, the last potential anarchists: the children. ~ A N Wilson, #NFDB
744:About a month later, we left for our final training exercise, maneuvers on the planet Charon. Though nearing perihelion, it was still more than twice as far from the sun as Pluto. The troopship was a converted “cattlewagon” made to carry two hundred colonists and assorted bushes and beasts. Don’t think it was roomy, though, just because there were half that many of us. Most of the excess space was taken up with extra reaction mass and ordnance. The whole trip took three weeks, accelerating at two gees halfway, decelerating the other half. Our top speed, as we roared by the orbit of Pluto, was around one-twentieth of the speed of light—not quite enough for relativity to rear its complicated head. Three weeks of carrying around twice as much weight as normal…it’s no picnic. We did some cautious exercises three times a day and remained horizontal as much as possible. Still, we got several broken bones and serious dislocations. The men had to wear special supporters to keep from littering the floor with loose organs. It was almost impossible to sleep; nightmares of choking and being crushed, rolling over periodically to prevent blood pooling and bedsores. One girl got so fatigued that she almost slept through the experience of having a rib push out into the open air. I’d been in space several times before, so when we finally stopped decelerating and went into free fall, it was nothing but relief. But some people had never been out, except for our training on the moon, and succumbed to the sudden vertigo and disorientation. The rest of us cleaned up after them, floating through the quarters with ~ Joe Haldeman, #NFDB
745:Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict. Writers who cannot grasp this truth, the truth of conflict, writers who have been misled by the counterfeit comforts of modern life into believing that life is easy once you know how to play the game.
These writers give conflict a false inflection. The scripts they write fail for one of two reasons, either a glut of banal conflict or a lack of meaningful conflict. The former are exercises in turbo special effects written by those who follow textbook imperatives to create conflict but because they're disinterested in or insensitive to the honest struggles of life, devise overwrought excuses for mayhem. The latter are tedious portraits written in reaction against conflict itself, these writers take the pollyanna view, that life would really be nice if it weren't for conflict.
What writers at these extremes fail to realize is that while the quality of conflict in life changes as it shifts from level to level, the quantity of conflict is constant. When we remove conflict from one level of life, it amplifies ten times over on another level. When, for example, we don't have to work from dawn to dark to put bread on the table, we now have time to reflect on the great conflict within our mind and heart or we may become aware of the terrible tyrannies and suffering in the world at large.
As Jean-Paul Sartre expressed it, "The essence of reality is scarcity. There isn't enough love in the world, enough food, enough justice, enough time in life. To gain any sense of satisfaction in our life we must go in to heady conflict with the forces of scarcity. To be alive is to be in perpetual conflict at one or all three levels of our lives. ~ Robert McKee,#NFDB
746:Remember to write continuously the entire twenty minutes. And never forget that this writing is for you and you alone. At the conclusion of your twenty minutes of writing, read the section “Post-writing thoughts” and complete the post-writing questionnaire. Post-Writing Thoughts Following the Day One Writing Session Congratulations! You have completed the first day of writing. After each writing exercise, it can be helpful to make objective assessments about how the writing felt. In this way, you can go back and determine which writing methods are most effective for you. For this and for all future writing exercises, respond to each of the five following questions either at the end of your writing or in a separate place. Put a number between 0 and 10 by each question. 0 — Not at all 1 2 3 4 5— Somewhat 6 7 8 9 10— A great deal A. To what degree did you express your deepest thoughts and feelings? B. To what degree do you currently feel sad or upset? C. To what degree do you currently feel happy? D. To what degree was today’s writing valuable and meaningful for you? E. Briefly describe how your writing went today so you may refer to this later. For many people, the first day of writing is the most difficult. This kind of writing can bring up emotions and thoughts that you may not have known that you had. It may also have flowed much more easily than you expected — especially if you wrote about something that you have been keeping to yourself for a long time. If you don’t want anyone to see your writing, keep the pages in a secure place or destroy them. If keeping them is not a problem, you can go back and analyze the pages at the end of the four days of writing. Now, take some time for yourself. Until tomorrow. ~ James W Pennebaker, #NFDB
747:THE 1920’S, IT IS SAID, WERE A TIME OF “DISILLUSIONMENT.” Progressivism had failed. The war for democracy had ended in the debacle of Versailles; idealism gave way to “normalcy.” Defeated, intellectuals turned away from reform. Following H. L. Mencken, they now ridiculed “the people,” whom they had once idolized. Many of them fled to Europe. Others cultivated the personal life, transferring their search for salvation from society to the individual. Still others turned to Communism. In the general confusion, only one thing was certain: the old ideals, the old standards, were dead, and liberal democracy was part of the wreckage. Such is the standard picture of the twenties; but it is a gross distortion, a caricature, of the period. It has the unfortunate effect, moreover, of isolating the twenties from the rest of American history, of making them seem a mere interval between two periods of reform, and thus of obscuring the continuity between the twenties and the “progressive era” on the one hand and the period of the New Deal on the other. The idea of historical “periods” is misleading in itself. It exercises a subtle tyranny over the historical imagination. Essentially a verbal and pedagogical convenience, it tends to become a principle of historical interpretation as well; and as such it leads people to think of history not as the development of social organisms far too complicated to be depicted in simple linear terms but as a succession of neatly defined epochs, happily corresponding, moreover, to the divisions of the calendar, each century, each decade even, having its own distinctive “spirit of the age.” Thus the Zeitgeist of the twenties, it is assumed, must have been “disillusionment,” just as that of the thirties was reform. The ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
748:The asceticism of the medieval saints and of the yogis of India, the Hellenistic mystery initiations, the ancient philosophies of the East and of the West, are techniques for the shifting of the emphasis of individual consciousness away from the garments. The preliminary meditations of the aspirant detach his mind and sentiments from the accidents of life and drive him to the core. “I am not that, not that,” he meditates: “not my mother or son who has just died; my body, which is ill or aging; my arm, my eye, my head; not the summation of all these things. I am not my feeling; not my mind; not my power of intuition.” By such meditations he is driven to his own profundity and breaks through, at last, to unfathomable realizations. No man can return from such exercises and take very seriously himself as Mr. So-an-so of Such-and-such a township, U.S.A.—Society and duties drop away. Mr. So-and-so, having discovered himself big with man, becomes indrawn and aloof. This is the stage of Narcissus looking into the pool, of the Buddha sitting contemplative under the tree, but it is not the ultimate goal; it is a requisite step, but not the end. The aim is not to see, but to realize that one is, that essence; then one is free to wander as that essence in the world. Furthermore: the world too is of that essence. The essence of oneself and the essence of the world: these two are one. Hence separateness, withdrawal, is no longer necessary. Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence—for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness. Thus, just as the way of social participation may lead in the end to a realization of the All in the individual, so that of exile brings the hero to the Self in all. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
749: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
750:Remember and Share - Variable Reward is the third phase of the Hook Model, and there are three types of variable rewards: tribe, hunt and self. - Rewards of the tribe is the search for social rewards fueled by connectedness with other people. - Rewards of the hunt is the search for material resources and information. - Rewards of the self is the search for intrinsic rewards of mastery, competence, and completion. - When our autonomy is threatened, we feel constrained by our lack of choices and often rebel against doing a new behavior. Psychologists call this “reactance.” Maintaining a sense of user autonomy is a requirement for repeat engagement. - Experiences with finite variability become increasingly predictable with use and lose their appeal over time. Experiences that maintain user interest by sustaining variability with use exhibit infinite variability. - Variable rewards must satisfy users’ needs, while leaving them wanting to re-engage with the product. *** Do This Now Refer to the answers you came up with in the last “Do This Now” section to complete the following exercises: - Speak with five of your customers in an open-ended interview to identify what they find enjoyable or encouraging about using your product. Are there any moments of delight or surprise? Is there anything they find particularly satisfying about using the product? - Review the steps your customer takes to use your product or service habitually. What outcome (reward) alleviates the user’s pain? Is the reward fulfilling, yet leaves the user wanting more? - Brainstorm three ways your product might heighten users’ search for variable rewards using: - Rewards of the Tribe - gratification from others - Rewards of the Hunt - things, money or information - Rewards of the Self - mastery, completion, competency or consistency ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
751:Music In The Flat
When Tom and I were married, we took a little flat;
I had a taste for singing and playing and all that.
And Tom, who loved to hear me, said he hoped
I would not stop
All practice, like so many wives who let their
music drop.
So I resolved to set apart an hour or two each day
To keeping vocal chords and hands in trim to sing and play.
The second morning I had been for half and hour or more
At work on Haydn’s masses, when a tap came at my door.
A nurse, who wore a dainty cap and apron, and a smile,
Ran down to ask if I would cease my music for awhile.
The lady in the flat above was very ill, she said,
And the sound of my piano was distracting to her head.
A fortnight’s exercises lost, ere I began them, when,
The following morning at my door, there came that tap again;
A woman with an anguished face implored me to forego
My music for some days to come – a man was dead below.
I shut down my piano till the corpse had left the house,
And spoke to Tom in whispers and was quiet as a mouse.
A week of labour limbered up my stiffened hand and voice,
I stole an extra hour from sleep, to practice and rejoice;
When, ting-a-ling, the door-bell rang a discord in my trill –
The baby in the flat across was very, very ill.
For ten long days that infant’s life was hanging by a thread,
And all that time my instrument was silent as the dead.
So pain and death and sickness came in one perpetual row,
When babies were not born above, then tenants died below.
The funeral over underneath, some one fell ill on top,
And begged me, for the love of God, to let my music drop.
When trouble went not up or down, it stalked across the hall,
And so in spite of my resolve, I do not play at all.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,#NFDB
752:George Alfred Henty (1832–1902), who began his writing career in the 1860s. Henty – educated at Westminster and Caius, Cambridge, the son of a wealthy stockbroker – had been commissioned in the Purveyor’s Department of the army, and gone to the Crimea during the war. There he had drifted into journalism, sending back reports for the Morning Advertiser and the Morning Post before catching fever and being invalided home. He continued to work in the Purveyor’s Department until the mid-Sixties, when the life of the war correspondent and the writer of boys’ adventure stories seemed overwhelmingly more interesting and better paid. Four generations of British children grew up with Henry’s irresistible stories, beautifully produced, bound and edited, on their shelves. The Henty phenomenon – over seventy titles celebrating imperialistic derring-do – really belongs to the 1880s, but deserves a mention here not only because of his radical and political views, but because of the direction taken by his career as a writer. The Henty story, by the time he had got into his stride, followed the formula that a young English lad in his early teens, freed from the shackles of public school or home upbringing by the convenient accident of orphanhood, finds himself caught up in some thrilling historical episode. The temporal sweep is impressive, ranging from Beric at Agincourt to The Briton: a story of the Roman Invasion; but the huge majority are exercises in British imperialist myth-building: By Conduct and Courage, A Story of the Days of Nelson, By Pike and Dyke, By Sheer Pluck, A Tale of the Ashanti War, Condemned as a Nihilist, The Dash for Khartoum, For Name and Fame: or through the Afghan Passes, Jack Archer, A Tale of the Crimea, Through the Sikh War. A Tale of the Punjaub (sic); The Tiger of Mysore, With Buller in Natal, With Kitchener in the Soudan, and so on. ~ A N Wilson, #NFDB
753:All right,” she said. “Inductive reasoning. It’s what those so-called detectives on CSI, SVU, LMNOP and all the rest of them call deductive reasoning, which is wrong and they should know better. It’s inductive reasoning, a tool you will use frequently in geometry as well as calculus and trigonometry, assuming you get that far and that certainly won’t be you, Jacquon. Stop messing with that girl’s hair and pay attention. Your grade on that last test was so low I had to write it on the bottom of my shoe.” Mrs. Washington glared at Jacquon until his face melted. She began again: “Inductive reasoning is reasoning to the most likely explanation. It begins with one or more observations, and from those observations we come to a conclusion that seems to make sense. All right. An example: Jacquon was walking home from school and somebody hit him on the head with a brick twenty-five times. Mrs. Washington and her husband, Wendell, are the suspects. Mrs. Washington is five feet three, a hundred and ten pounds, and teaches school. Wendell is six-two, two-fifty, and works at a warehouse. So who would you say is the more likely culprit?” Isaiah and the rest of the class said Wendell. “Why?” Mrs. Washington said. “Because Mrs. Washington may have wanted to hit Jacquon with a brick twenty-five times but she isn’t big or strong enough. Seems reasonable given the facts at hand, but here’s where inductive reasoning can lead you astray. You might not have all the facts. Such as Wendell is an accountant at the warehouse who exercises by getting out of bed in the morning, and before Mrs. Washington was a schoolteacher she was on the wrestling team at San Diego State in the hundred-and-five-to-hundred-and-sixteen-pound weight class and would have won her division if that blond girl from Cal Northridge hadn’t stuck a thumb in her eye. Jacquon, I know your mother and if I tell her about your behavior she will beat you ’til your name is Jesus.” The ~ Joe Ide, #NFDB
754:The plea for ethical veganism, which rejects the treatment of birds and other animals as a food source or other commodity, is sometimes mistaken as a plea for dietary purity and elitism, as if formalistic food exercises and barren piety were the point of the desire to get the slaughterhouse out of one’s kitchen and one’s system. Abstractions such as 'vegetarianism' and 'veganism' mask the experiential and philosophical roots of a plant-based diet. They make the realities of 'food' animal production and consumption seem abstract and trivial, mere matters of ideological preference and consequence, or of individual taste, like selecting a shirt, or hair color.
However, the decision that has led millions of people to stop eating other animals is not rooted in arid adherence to diet or dogma, but in the desire to eliminate the kinds of experiences that using animals for food confers upon beings with feelings. The philosophic vegetarian believes with Isaac Bashevis Singer that even if God or Nature sides with the killers, one is obliged to protest. The human commitment to harmony, justice, peace, and love is ironic as long as we continue to support the suffering and shame of the slaughterhouse and its satellite operations.
Vegetarians do not eat animals, but, according to the traditional use of the term, they may choose to consume dairy products and eggs, in which case they are called lacto-ovo (milk and egg) vegetarians. In reality, the distinction between meat on the one hand and dairy products and eggs on the other is moot, as the production of milk and eggs involves as much cruelty and killing as meat production does: surplus cockerels and calves, as well as spent hens and cows, have been slaughtered, bludgeoned, drowned, ditched, and buried alive through the ages. Spent commercial dairy cows and laying hens endure agonizing days of pre-slaughter starvation and long trips to the slaughterhouse because of their low market value. ~ Karen Davis,#NFDB
755:Yoga has been superficially misunderstood by certain Western writers, but its critics have never been its practitioners. Among many thoughtful tributes to yoga may be mentioned one by Dr. C. G. Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist. “When a religious method recommends itself as ‘scientific,’ it can be certain of its public in the West. Yoga fulfills this expectation,” Dr. Jung writes.10 “Quite apart from the charm of the new and the fascination of the half-understood, there is good cause for Yoga to have many adherents. It offers the possibility of controllable experience and thus satisfies the scientific need for ‘facts’; and, besides this, by reason of its breadth and depth, its venerable age, its doctrine and method, which include every phase of life, it promises undreamed-of possibilities. “Every religious or philosophical practice means a psychological discipline, that is, a method of mental hygiene. The manifold, purely bodily procedures of Yoga11 also mean a physiological hygiene which is superior to ordinary gymnastics and breathing exercises, inasmuch as it is not merely mechanistic and scientific, but also philosophical; in its training of the parts of the body, it unites them with the whole of the spirit, as is quite clear, for instance, in the Pranayama exercises where Prana is both the breath and the universal dynamics of the cosmos…. “Yoga practice...would be ineffectual without the concepts on which Yoga is based. It combines the bodily and the spiritual in an extraordinarily complete way. “In the East, where these ideas and practices have developed, and where for several thousand years an unbroken tradition has created the necessary spiritual foundations, Yoga is, as I can readily believe, the perfect and appropriate method of fusing body and mind together so that they form a unity which is scarcely to be questioned. This unity creates a psychological disposition which makes possible intuitions that transcend consciousness. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
756:FUNDAMENTAL FIVE  MONDAY - The first exercise you will do is the push-up. Try and perform 3 sets and as many reps as you can in each set. It is fine here if you use a raised platform for the hands as we are just trying to get stronger here. The second exercise you will perform is the dip exercise. Here you can do either a ledge dip if your strength is not strong enough, or some triceps dips if your strength is at a decent level. Keep trying to work towards the goal of doing 10 perfect triceps dips. Thirdly you will perform 3 sets of squats. Concentrate on good form here and try and descend as low as you are able to. Your target is to be able to perform 25 perfect reps before moving on. You can also do conditioning exercises here as well if that is part of your goal. Note that this is not required, as our main focus is to build strength. TUESDAY - On this day you will aim to perform a pulling exercise, ideally the chin-up. If you are not strong enough to perform any chin-ups, work with the row until your strength increases. Again, you should be aiming for 3 sets of as many reps as you can do, until you can do 10 perfect reps. The second exercise should be your core exercise. This can be any of the easier variations, such as the plank, crunch, dish, or hanging leg raise. Remember, that the sole aim here is to work up to performing 10 perfect hanging knee raises. WEDNESDAY - This is a rest day, and you should ensure that you get plenty of good food and sleep on this day. THURSDAY - This should be the same as Mondays workout. FRIDAY - This should be the same as Tuesdays workout. SATURDAY / SUNDAY - These are both rest days, as in the beginning it is important for your body to have enough rest and to be able to recover properly from the workouts. This also leaves you totally fresh for the week ahead. As was said before, only once you can perform the five fundamental movements and their required number of repetitions, you should move on to the next program. ~ Ashley Kalym, #NFDB
757:Remember and Share - Action is the second step in The Hook. - The action is the simplest behavior in anticipation of reward. - As described by the Dr. BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model: - For any behavior to occur, a trigger must be present at the same time as the user has sufficient ability and motivation to take action. - To increase the desired behavior, ensure a clear trigger is present, then increase ability by making the action easier to do, and finally align with the right motivator. - Every behavior is driven by one of three Core Motivators: seeking pleasure or avoiding pain, seeking hope and avoiding fear, seeking social acceptance while avoiding social rejection. - Ability is influenced by the six factors of time, money, physical effort, brain cycles, social deviance, and non-routineness. Ability is dependent on users and their context at that moment. - Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts we take to make quick decisions. Product designers can utilize many of the hundreds of heuristics to increase the likelihood of their desired action. *** Do This Now Refer to the answers you came up with in the last “Do This Now” section to complete the following exercises: - Walk through the path your users would take to use your product or service, beginning from the time they feel their internal trigger to the point where they receive their expected outcome. How many steps does it take before users obtain the reward they came for? How does this process compare with the simplicity of some of the examples described in this chapter? How does it compare with competing products and services? - Which resources are limiting your users’ ability to accomplish the tasks that will become habits? - Time - Money - Physical effort - Brain cycles (too confusing) - Social deviance (outside the norm) - Non-routine (too new) - Brainstorm three testable ways to make the intended tasks easier to complete. - Consider how you might apply heuristics to make habit-forming actions more likely. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
758:I’m standing in front of Enrique’s Auto Body, doing deep-breathing exercises to keep from being nervous. Enrique’s Camry is nowhere in sight, so I know Alex is alone.
I’m going to seduce Alex.
If what I’m wearing doesn’t capture his attention, nothing will. I’m giving this my all…bringing out all the artillery. I rap on the door, then close my eyes tight and pray this goes as planned.
I open my long, silver satin jacket and the cool night air rushes onto my exposed skin. When the creak of the door alerts me to Alex’s presence, I slowly open my eyes. But it’s not Alex’s black eyes staring at my scantily clad body. It’s Enrique--who’s staring at my pink lace bra and pom-pom skirt as if he’s won the lottery.
Ripped with embarrassment, I wrap my coat around myself. If I could wrap it around twice, I would.
“Uh, Alex,” Enrique laughs. “There’s a trick-or-treater here to see you.”
My face is probably beet red, but I’m determined to see this through. I’m here to show Alex I’m not going to desert him.
“Who is it?” comes Alex’s voice from somewhere inside the garage.
“I was just leavin’,” Enrique says, slipping past me. “Tell Alex to lock up. Adiós.”
Enrique walks across the darkened street, humming to himself.
“Yo, Enrique. ¿Quién está ahi?” Alex’s voice fades when he reaches the front of the shop. He looks at me with contemp. “Need directions or your car fixed.”
“None of the above,” I say.
“Trick-or-treatin’ on my side of town?”
“No.”
“It’s over, mujer. ¿Me oyes? Why do you keep droppin’ into my life and fuckin’ with my head? Besides, aren’t you supposed to be at the Halloween dance with some college guy?”
“I blew him off. Can we talk?”
“Listen, I’ve got a shitload of work that still needs to get done. What did you come here for? And where’s Enrique?”
“He, uh, left,” I say nervously. “I think I scared him away.”
“You? I don’t think so.”
“I showed him what I was wearing under my coat.”
Alex’s eyebrows shoot up. ~ Simone Elkeles,#NFDB
759:down all the current stressors in your life and one step you could take to alleviate each one. Accepting that a difficult situation is real and clearly identifying the root problem is an important step. Proper diagnosis is half the cure. • Simplify your life. Eliminate and concentrate. Focus on the vital few things that contribute the most to your overall life satisfaction. Taking on too much or spreading yourself too thin inevitably leads to a sense of overload. 4. Combine aerobic, strength, and flexibility exercises. If you want maximum levels of energy, take responsibility for becoming a mini-expert on exercise and fitness. Subscribe to the most credible health and exercise magazines, add informative fitness sites to your Web favorites, and build your own library with the latest books, DVDs, and other resources related to energy and wellness. Aerobic exercise The most important component of effective exercise is aerobic exercise. Aerobics, or cardiovascular endurance, refers to the sustained ability of the heart, lungs, and blood to perform optimally. Through consistent aerobic conditioning, your body improves the way it takes in, transports, and uses oxygen. This means your heart and lungs will be stronger and more efficient at performing their functions. Proper aerobic exercise causes your body to burn fat, while anaerobic exercise causes the body to burn glycogen and store fat. Many people unknowingly exercise anaerobically when they intend to exercise aerobically. This results in, among other things, a frustrating retention of fat. The intensity of your exercise is what makes it anaerobic or aerobic. Consistent and proper aerobic exercise has the following benefits: • improves quality of sleep • relieves stress and anxiety • burns excess fat • suppresses appetite • enhances attitude and mood • stabilizes chemical balance • heightens self-esteem Each of the above benefits either directly or indirectly leads to high levels of both mental and physical energy. Here are some tips for maximizing the ~ Tommy Newberry, #NFDB
760:What is more, the whole apparatus of life has become so complex and the processes of production, distribution, and consumption have become so specialized and subdivided, that the individual person loses confidence in his own unaided capacities: he is increasingly subject to commands he does not understand, at the mercy of forces over which he exercises no effective control, moving to a destination he has not chosen. Unlike the taboo-ridden savage, who is often childishly over-confident in the powers of his shaman or magician to control formidable natural forces, however inimical, the machine-conditioned individual feels lost and helpless as day by day he metaphorically punches his time-card, takes his place on the assembly line, and at the end draws a pay check that proves worthless for obtaining any of the genuine goods of life.
This lack of close personal involvement in the daily routine brings a general loss of contact with reality: instead of continuous interplay between the inner and the outer world, with constant feedback or readjustment and with stimulus to fresh creativity, only the outer world-and mainly the collectively organized outer world of the power system-exercises authority: even private dreams must be channeled through television, film, and disc, in order to become acceptable.
With this feeling of alienation goes the typical psychological problem of our time, characterized in classic terms by Erik Erikson as the 'Identity Crisis.' In a world of transitory family nurture, transitory human contacts, transitory jobs and places of residence, transitory sexual and family relations, the basic conditions for maintaining continuity and establishing personal equilibrium disappear. The individual suddenly awakens, as Tolstoi did in a famous crisis in his own life at Arzamas, to find himself in a strange, dark room, far from home, threatened by obscure hostile forces, unable to discover where he is or who he is, appalled by the prospect of a meaningless death at the end of a meaningless life. ~ Lewis Mumford,#NFDB
761:Where do you search me
Moko Kahan Dhundhere Bande
Mein To Tere Paas Mein
Na Teerath Mein, Na Moorat Mein
Na Ekant Niwas Mein
Na Mandir Mein, Na Masjid Mein
Na Kabe Kailas Mein
Mein To Tere Paas Mein Bande
Mein To Tere Paas Mein
Na Mein Jap Mein, Na Mein Tap Mein
Na Mein Barat Upaas Mein
Na Mein Kiriya Karm Mein Rehta
Nahin Jog Sanyas Mein
Nahin Pran Mein Nahin Pind Mein
Na Brahmand Akas Mein
Na Mein Prakuti Prawar Gufa Mein
Nahin Swasan Ki Swans Mein
Khoji Hoye Turat Mil Jaoon
Ik Pal Ki Talas Mein
Kahet Kabir Suno Bhai Sadho
Mein To Hun Viswas Mein
English Translation:
Where do you search me?
I am with you
Not in pilgrimage, nor in icons
Neither in solitudes
Not in temples, nor in mosques
Neither in Kaba nor in Kailash
I am with you O man
I am with you
Not in prayers, nor in meditation
Neither in fasting
Not in yogic exercises
Neither in renunciation
Neither in the vital force nor in the body
Not even in the ethereal space
Neither in the womb of Nature
Not in the breath of the breath
Seek earnestly and discover
In but a moment of search
Says Kabir, Listen with care
Where your faith is, I am there.
Kabir reveals in this verse the various search patterns adopted by mankind. And each one seems to be justifying his chosen method. Some say God will be realized through pilgrimages while some justify the idol worship. Some say He is up in the mountains while some believe that He is in places of worship. Some proclaim prayers and meditation the path, others believe realization through fasting. Many talk about yogic exercises (activity) and renunciation. When Kabir says that God is not in any of these things it does not mean that God is not in any of these but that to find God what one needs is but to believe and have faith, and when one will have faith he will find God in a moments search, for God is with him all the time. In this poem Kabir emphasises the all-pervading, omniscient, omnipresent qualities of God.
~ Kabir, Where do you search me
,#NFDB
762:Learn how to critique. The value of exercises is very much a product of the quality of the critique, because it is in the critique that lessons can be drawn for all to see. Today, many critiques are poor quality. Often, they are not a critique at all, but just a narrative of who shot whom. At other times, the critique is stifled by an etiquette that demands no one be criticized and nothing negative be said. Too often, critiques can be summarized as “The comm was fouled up but we all did great.” There are a number of things you can do locally to improve the quality of critiques: First, the commanding officer can set a ground rule that demands frankness in critiquing. A good way to encourage this is for the CO to give a trenchant self-critique of his own actions and encourage others to do the same. Beginning a critique with the most junior officers and ending up with the most senior can also help encourage frankness. Second, a critique should be defined as something that looks beyond what happened to why it happened as it did. It may be helpful to look for instances where key decisions were made and ask the man who made them such questions as, “What options did you have here? What other options did you have that you failed to see? How quickly were you able to see, decide and act? If you were too slow, why? Why did you do what you did? Was your reasoning process sound, and if not, why not?” Third, the unit commander can attempt to identify individuals who are good critiquers and have them lead the critique. Not everyone can do it well; it takes a certain natural ability. Finally, the unit can hold a class on critiquing and from it develop some critique SOPs. These can help exercise participants look for key points during the exercise, points that can later serve to frame the critique. These actions are not substitutes for an overall reform of Marine Corps training. But they are concrete ways you can improve your own training. And just as individual self-education will be important after the schools are reformed, so these actions will help you train even after overall training is improved. ~ William S Lind, #NFDB
763:He was a good, even a shining light as a Castalian to the extent that he had a many-sided mind, tirelessly active in scholarship as well as in the art of the Glass Bead Game, and enormously hard-working; but in character, in his attitude toward the hierarchy and the morality of the Order he was a very mediocre, not to say bad Castalian. The greatest of his vices was a persistent neglect of meditation, which he refused to take seriously. The purpose of meditation, after all, is adaptation of the individual to the hierarchy, and application in it might very well have cured him of his neurasthenia. For it infallibly helped him whenever, after a period of bad conduct, excessive excitement, or melancholia, his superiors disciplined him by prescribing strict meditation exercises under supervision. Even Knecht, kindly disposed and forgiving though he was, frequently had to resort to this measure.
There was no question about it: Tegularius was a willful, moody person who refused to fit into his society. Every so often he would display the liveliness of his intellect. When highly stimulated he could be entrancing; his mordant wit sparkled and he overwhelmed everyone with the audacity and richness of his sometimes somber inspirations. But basically he was incurable, for he did not want to be cured; he cared nothing for co-ordination and a place in the scheme of things. He loved nothing but his freedom, his perpetual student status, and preferred spending his whole life as the unpredictable and obstinate loner, the gifted fool and nihilist, to following the path of subordination to the hierarchy and thus attaining peace. He cared nothing for peace, had no regard for the hierarchy, hardly minded reproof and isolation. Certainly he was a most inconvenient and indigestible component in a community whose idea was harmony and orderliness. But because of this very troublesomeness and indigestiblity he was, in the midst of such a limpid and prearranged little world, a constant source of vital unrest, a reproach, an admonition and warning, a spur to new, bold, forbidden, intrepid ideas, an unruly, stubborn sheep in the herd. And, to our mind, this was the very reason his friend cherished him. ~ Hermann Hesse,#NFDB
764:For Kierkegaard has an answer. Human existence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not in tragedy—it is possible as existence in faith. The opposite of Sin—to use the traditional term for existence purely in society—is not virtue; it is faith. Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful. In my favorite among Kierkegaard’s books, a little volume called Fear and Trembling[published in 1843], Kierkegaard raises the question: What is it that distinguishes Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, from ordinary murder? If the distinction would be that Abraham never intended to go through with the sacrifice but intended all the time only to make a show of his obedience to God, then Abraham indeed would not have been a murderer, but he would have been something more despicable: a fraud and a cheat. If he had not loved Isaac but had been indifferent, he would have been willing to be a murderer. But Abraham was a holy man, and God’s command was for him an absolute command to be executed without reservation. And we are told that he loved Isaac more than himself. But Abraham had faith. He believed that in God the impossible would become possible, that he could execute God’s order and yet retain Isaac. If you looked into this little volume on Fear and Trembling, you may have seen from the introduction of the translator that it deals symbolically with Kierkegaard’s innermost secret, his great and tragic love. When he talks of himself, then he talks of Abraham. But this meaning as a symbolic autobiography is only incidental. The true, the universal meaning is that human existence is possible, only possible, in faith. In faith, the individual becomes the universal, ceases to be isolated, becomes meaningful and absolute; hence in faith there is a true ethic. And in faith existence in society becomes meaningful too as existence in true charity. This faith is not what today so often is called a “mystical experience”—something that can apparently be induced by the proper breathing exercises, by fasting, by narcotic drugs or by prolonged exposure to Bach with closed eyes and closed ears. It is something ~ Peter F Drucker, #NFDB
765:12 Many uninformed persons speak of yoga as Hatha Yoga or consider yoga to be “magic,” dark mysterious rites for attaining spectacular powers. When scholars, however, speak of yoga they mean the system expounded in Yoga Sutras (also known as Patanjali’s Aphorisms): Raja (“royal”) Yoga. The treatise embodies philosophic concepts of such grandeur as to have inspired commentaries by some of India’s greatest thinkers, including the illumined master Sadasivendra. Like the other five orthodox (Vedas-based) philosophical systems, Yoga Sutras considers the “magic” of moral purity (the “ten commandments” of yama and niyama) to be the indispensable preliminary for sound philosophical investigation. This personal demand, not insisted on in the West, has bestowed lasting vitality on the six Indian disciplines. The cosmic order (rita) that upholds the universe is not different from the moral order that rules man’s destiny. He who is unwilling to observe the universal moral precepts is not seriously determined to pursue truth. Section III of Yoga Sutras mentions various yogic miraculous powers (vibhutis and siddhis). True knowledge is always power. The path of yoga is divided into four stages, each with its vibhuti expression. Achieving a certain power, the yogi knows that he has successfully passed the tests of one of the four stages. Emergence of the characteristic powers is evidence of the scientific structure of the yoga system, wherein delusive imaginations about one’s “spiritual progress” are banished; proof is required! Patanjali warns the devotee that unity with Spirit should be the sole goal, not the possession of vibhutis — the merely incidental flowers along the sacred path. May the Eternal Giver be sought, not His phenomenal gifts! God does not reveal Himself to a seeker who is satisfied with any lesser attainment. The striving yogi is therefore careful not to exercise his phenomenal powers, lest they arouse false pride and distract him from entering the ultimate state of Kaivalya. When the yogi has reached his Infinite Goal, he exercises the vibhutis, or refrains from exercising them, just as he pleases. All his actions, miraculous or otherwise, are then performed without karmic involvement. The iron filings of karma are attracted only where a magnet of the personal ego still exists. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
766:Remember and Share - The Hook Model helps the product designer generate an initial prototype for a habit-forming technology. It also helps uncover potential weaknesses in an existing product’s habit-forming potential. - Once a product is built, Habit Testing helps uncover product devotees, discover which product elements are habit forming (if any), and why those aspects of your product change user behavior. Habit Testing includes three steps: identify, codify, and modify. - First, dig into the data to identify how people are behaving and using the product. - Next, codify these findings in search of habitual users. To generate new hypotheses, study the actions and paths taken by devoted users. - Lastly, modify the product to influence more users to follow the same path as your habitual users, and then evaluate results and continue to modify as needed. - Keen observation of one's own behavior can lead to new insights and habit-forming product opportunities. - Identifying areas where a new technology makes cycling through the Hook Model faster, more frequent or more rewarding provides fertile ground for developing new habit-forming products. - Nascent behaviors — new behaviors that few people see or do, and yet ultimately fulfill a mass-market need — can inform future breakthrough habit-forming opportunities. - New interfaces lead to transformative behavior change and business opportunities. *** Do This Now Refer to the answers you came up with in the “Do This Now” section in chapter five to complete the following exercises: - Perform Habit Testing, as described in this chapter, to identify the steps users take toward long-term engagement. - Be aware of your behaviors and emotions for the next week as you use everyday products. Ask yourself: - What triggered me to use these products? Was I prompted externally or through internal means? - Am I using these products as intended? - How might these products improve their on-boarding funnels, re-engage users through additional external triggers, or encourage users to invest in their services? - Speak with three people outside your social circle to discover which apps occupy the first screen on their mobile devices. Ask them to use these apps as they normally would and see if you uncover any unnecessary or nascent behaviors. - Brainstorm five new interfaces that could introduce opportunities or threats to your business. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
767:As for the vice of lust - aside from what it means for spiritual persons to fall into this vice, since my intent is to treat of the imperfections that have to be purged by means of the dark night - spiritual persons have numerous imperfections, many of which can be called spiritual lust, not because the lust is spiritual but because it proceeds from spiritual things. It happens frequently that in a person's spiritual exercises themselves, without the person being able to avoid it, impure movements will be experienced in the sensory part of the soul, and even
sometimes when the spirit is deep in prayer or when receiving the sacraments of Penance or the Eucharist. These impure feelings arise from any of three causes outside one's control.
First, they often proceed from the pleasure human nature finds in spiritual exercises. Since both the spiritual and the sensory part of the soul receive gratification from that refreshment, each part experiences delight according to its own nature and properties. The spirit, the superior part of the soul, experiences renewal and satisfaction in God; and the sense, the lower part, feels sensory gratification and delight because it is ignorant of how to get anything else, and hence takes whatever is nearest, which is the impure sensory satisfaction. It may happen that while a soul is with God in deep spiritual prayer, it will conversely passively experience sensual rebellions, movements, and acts in the senses, not without its own great displeasure.
This frequently happens at the time of Communion. Since the soul receives joy and gladness in this act of love - for the Lord grants the grace and gives himself for this reason - the sensory part also takes its share, as we said, according to its mode. Since, after all, these two parts form one individual, each one usually shares according to its mode in what the other receives. As the Philosopher says: Whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver. Because in the initial stages of the spiritual life, and even more advanced ones, the sensory part of the soul is imperfect, God's spirit is frequently received in this sensory part with this same imperfection. Once the sensory part is reformed through the purgation of the dark night, it no longer has these infirmities. Then the spiritual part of the soul, rather than the sensory part, receives God's Spirit, and the soul thus receives everything
according to the mode of the Spirit. ~ Juan de la Cruz,#NFDB
768:Yoga has been superficially misunderstood by certain Western writers, but its critics have never been its practitioners. Among many thoughtful tributes to yoga may be mentioned one by Dr. C. G. Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist. “When a religious method recommends itself as ‘scientific,’ it can be certain of its public in the West. Yoga fulfills this expectation,” Dr. Jung writes (7). “Quite apart from the charm of the new, and the fascination of the half-understood, there is good cause for Yoga to have many adherents. It offers the possibility of controllable experience, and thus satisfies the scientific need of ‘facts,’ and besides this, by reason of its breadth and depth, its venerable age, its doctrine and method, which include every phase of life, it promises undreamed-of possibilities. “Every religious or philosophical practice means a psychological discipline, that is, a method of mental hygiene. The manifold, purely bodily procedures of Yoga (8) also mean a physiological hygiene which is superior to ordinary gymnastics and breathing exercises, inasmuch as it is not merely mechanistic and scientific, but also philosophical; in its training of the parts of the body, it unites them with the whole of the spirit, as is quite clear, for instance, in the Pranayama exercises where Prana is both the breath and the universal dynamics of the cosmos. “When the thing which the individual is doing is also a cosmic event, the effect experienced in the body (the innervation), unites with the emotion of the spirit (the universal idea), and out of this there develops a lively unity which no technique, however scientific, can produce. Yoga practice is unthinkable, and would also be ineffectual, without the concepts on which Yoga is based. It combines the bodily and the spiritual with each other in an extraordinarily complete way. “In the East, where these ideas and practices have developed, and where for several thousand years an unbroken tradition has created the necessary spiritual foundations, Yoga is, as I can readily believe, the perfect and appropriate method of fusing body and mind together so that they form a unity which is scarcely to be questioned. This unity creates a psychological disposition which makes possible intuitions that transcend consciousness.” The Western day is indeed nearing when the inner science of self- control will be found as necessary as the outer conquest of nature. This new Atomic Age will see men’s minds sobered and broadened by the now scientifically indisputable truth that matter is in reality a concentrate of energy. Finer forces of the human mind can and must liberate energies greater than those within stones and metals, lest the material atomic giant, newly unleashed, turn on the world in mindless destruction (9). ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
769:Then the Yogi suddenly fell silent, and when I looked puzzled he shrugged and said: ‘Don’t you see yourself where the fault lies?’ But I could not see it. At this point he recapitulated with astonishing exactness everything he had learned from me by his questioning. He went back to the first signs of fatigue, repugnance, and intellectual constipation, and showed me that this could have happened only to someone who had submerged himself disproportionately in his studies and that it was high time for me to recover my self-control, and to regain my energy with outside help. Since I had taken the liberty of discontinuing my regular meditation exercises, he pointed out, I should at least have realized what was wrong as soon as the first evil consequences appeared, and should have resumed meditation. He was perfectly right. I had omitted meditating for quite a while on the grounds that I had no time, was too distracted or out of spirits, or too busy and excited with my studies. Moreover, as time went on I had completely lost all awareness of my continuous sin of omission. Even now, when I was desperate and had almost run aground, it had taken an outsider to remind me of it. As a matter of fact, I was to have the greatest difficulty snapping out of this state of neglect. I had to return to the training routines and beginners’ exercises in meditation in order gradually to relearn the art of composing myself and sinking into contemplation.” With a small sigh the Magister ceased pacing the room. “That is what happened to me, and to this day I am still a little ashamed to talk about it. But the fact is, Joseph, that the more we demand of ourselves, or the more our task at any given time demands of us, the more dependant we are on meditation as a wellspring of energy, as the ever-renewing concord of mind and soul. And – I could if I wished give you quite a few more examples of this – the more intensively a task requires our energies, arousing and exalting us at one time, tiring and depressing us at another, the more easily we may come to neglect this wellspring, just as when we are carried away by some intellectual work we easily forget to attend to the body. The really great men in the history of the world have all either known how to meditate or have unconsciously found their way to the place to which meditation leads us. Even the most vigorous and gifted among the others all failed and were defeated in the end because their task or their ambitious dream seized hold of them, made them into persons so possessed that they lost the capacity for liberating themselves from present things, and attaining perspective. Well, you know all this; it’s taught during the first exercises, of course. But it is inexorably true. How inexorably true it is, one realizes only after having gone astray. ~ Hermann Hesse, #NFDB
770:Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going. ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
771:Most exciting, the growth mindset can be taught to managers. Heslin and his colleagues conducted a brief workshop based on well-established psychological principles. (By the way, with a few changes, it could just as easily be used to promote a growth mindset in teachers or coaches.) The workshop starts off with a video and a scientific article about how the brain changes with learning. As with our “Brainology” workshop (described in chapter 8), it’s always compelling for people to understand how dynamic the brain is and how it changes with learning. The article goes on to talk about how change is possible throughout life and how people can develop their abilities at most tasks with coaching and practice. Although managers, of course, want to find the right person for a job, the exactly right person doesn’t always come along. However, training and experience can often draw out and develop the qualities required for successful performance. The workshop then takes managers through a series of exercises in which a) they consider why it’s important to understand that people can develop their abilities, b) they think of areas in which they once had low ability but now perform well, c) they write to a struggling protégé about how his or her abilities can be developed, and d) they recall times they have seen people learn to do things they never thought these people could do. In each case, they reflect upon why and how change takes place. After the workshop, there was a rapid change in how readily the participating managers detected improvement in employee performance, in how willing they were to coach a poor performer, and in the quantity and quality of their coaching suggestions. What’s more, these changes persisted over the six-week period in which they were followed up. What does this mean? First, it means that our best bet is not simply to hire the most talented managers we can find and turn them loose, but to look for managers who also embody a growth mindset: a zest for teaching and learning, an openness to giving and receiving feedback, and an ability to confront and surmount obstacles. It also means we need to train leaders, managers, and employees to believe in growth, in addition to training them in the specifics of effective communication and mentoring. Indeed, a growth mindset workshop might be a good first step in any major training program. Finally, it means creating a growth-mindset environment in which people can thrive. This involves: • Presenting skills as learnable • Conveying that the organization values learning and perseverance, not just ready-made genius or talent • Giving feedback in a way that promotes learning and future success • Presenting managers as resources for learning Without a belief in human development, many corporate training programs become exercises of limited value. With a belief in development, such programs give meaning to the term “human resources” and become a means of tapping enormous potential. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
772:For now, the Simple Daily Practice means doing ONE thing every day. Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going. ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
773:I TAUGHT MY WRITING CLASS from a Chinese-published text called A Handbook of Writing. Like all of the books we used, its political intent was never understated, and the chapter on “Argumentation” featured a model essay entitled “The Three Gorges Project Is Beneficial.” It was a standard five-paragraph essay and the opening section explained some of the risks that had led people to oppose the project: flooded scenery and cultural relics, endangered species that might be pushed to extinction, the threat of earthquake, landslide, or war destroying a dam that would hold back a lake four hundred miles long. “In short,” the second paragraph concluded, “the risks of the project may be too great for it to be beneficial.” The next two sentences provided the transition. “Their worries and warnings are well justified,” the essay continued. “But we should not give up eating for fear of choking.” And the writer went on to describe the benefits—more electricity, improved transportation, better flood control—and concluded by asserting that the Three Gorges Project had more advantages than disadvantages. I had some moral qualms about teaching a model persuasive essay whose topic had been banned from public debate in China since 1987—this seemed a slap in the face to the very notion of argumentation. At worst it was an exercise in propaganda, and at best it didn’t seem particularly sporting. But I had nothing else to work with, and the truth was that the essay, apart from its political agenda, provided a good structural model. My job was to teach the students how to write such a composition, and so I went ahead and taught it. I reckoned there was no sense in giving up eating for fear of choking. I was punished by having that transition sentence infect my students’ papers for the rest of the term. They were accustomed to learning by rote, which meant that they often followed models to the point of plagiarism. They were also inveterate copiers; it wasn’t uncommon to receive the exact same paper from two or three students. There wasn’t really a sense of wrong associated with these acts—all through school they had been taught to imitate models, and copy things, and accept what they were told without question, and often that was what they did. When I told them that the Three Gorges essay was a good model, they listened carefully and adopted its nuances in future work. I assigned argumentative essays on whether students should be required to do morning exercises, and many of them opened their compositions by describing the benefits of the morning routine. After that was finished, they made their shift: “But we should not give up eating for fear of choking.” Even students who were writing on opposite sides of the issue used that same transition. Later I assigned an argumentative essay on Hamlet’s character, and they listed his shortcomings—indecisiveness, cruelty to Ophelia—and many of them seemed like good papers until suddenly that cursed sentence came from nowhere and boomed out, “But we should not give up eating for fear of choking.” I came to loathe the phrase, and repeatedly I told them that it was a horrid transition, but it always reappeared. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
774:Martha would come over every week and check on Mia and work with her on relaxation and breathing exercises to prepare for the natural labor. Jenny was on board with the natural thing too, so of course she and Mia dragged Tyler and me to the Bradley Birthing Method classes.
It was hysterical; we had to get in all kinds of weird poses with the girls while they mimicked being in labor. We would massage their backs while they were perched on all fours, moaning. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is contain my laughter during those classes. Mia was the freakin’ teacher’s pet because she was taking it so seriously.
Right around the third class, they showed us a video of a live birth. I had nightmares for a week after that. Tyler and I agreed that we had to find a way to get out of going to the classes.
We hadn’t mutually agreed on a plan, so during the fifth class, Tyler took it upon himself and used his own bodily gifts to get us into a heap of trouble. Tyler is lactose intolerant, and he has to take these little white tablets every time he eats cheese. The morning of the class, he stopped by the studio with a half-eaten pizza. I didn’t even think twice about it until that night in class during our visualization exercises when this god-awful, horrendous odor overtook our senses.
At first everyone kept quiet and just looked around for the source. There wasn’t a sound to accompany the lethal attack, so everyone went into investigation mode, staring each other down. Mia began to gag. I heard Jenny cry a little behind us. Finally when I turned toward Tyler, I noticed he had the most triumphant glimmer in his eyes. I completely lost my shit. I was rolling around, laughing hysterically.
Mia grabbed the hood of my sweatshirt and pulled me to my feet. “Outside, now!” She was scowling as she dragged me along. When we passed Tyler, she pointed to him angrily. “You too, joker.”
Mia and Jenny pressed us up against the brick wall outside and then gave us the death stare, both of them with their arms crossed over their blooming bellies. They whispered something to each other and then turned and walked off, arm in arm.
We followed. “Come on, you guys, it was funny.”
Jenny stopped dead in her tracks and turned. She jabbed her index finger into my chest and said, “Yes, it is funny. When you’re five! Not when you’re in a room full of pregnant women. Do you know how sensitive our noses are?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t me.”
“Oh, I know he’s a child,” she said but wouldn’t even look at Tyler. “And you are too, Will, for encouraging it.”
Mia was glaring at me with a disappointed look, and then she shook her head and turned to continue down the street. Jenny caught up and walked away with her.
“God, they’re so sensitive,” I whispered to Tyler.
“Yeah, I kinda feel bad.”
Without turning around, Mia yelled to us, “You guys don’t have to come anymore. Jenny and I can be each other’s partners.”
I turned to Tyler and mouthed, “It worked!” I had a huge smile on my face.
Tyler and I high-fived.
“Why don’t you guys go celebrate? I know that’s what you wanted,” Jenny yelled back as they made a sharp turn down the sidewalk and down the stairs to the subway.
“Nothing gets past them,” Tyler said ~ Renee Carlino,#NFDB
775:Bill Bradley (b. 1943) fell in love with the sport of basketball somewhere around the age of ten. He had one advantage over his peers—he was tall for his age. But beyond that, he had no real natural gift for the game. He was slow and gawky, and could not jump very high. None of the aspects of the game came easily to him. He would have to compensate for all of his inadequacies through sheer practice. And so he proceeded to devise one of the most rigorous and efficient training routines in the history of sports. Managing to get his hands on the keys to the high school gym, he created for himself a schedule—three and a half hours of practice after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday, and three hours a day during the summer. Over the years, he would keep rigidly to this schedule. In the gym, he would put ten-pound weights in his shoes to strengthen his legs and give him more spring to his jump. His greatest weaknesses, he decided, were his dribbling and his overall slowness. He would have to work on these and also transform himself into a superior passer to make up for his lack of speed. For this purpose, he devised various exercises. He wore eyeglass frames with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom, so he could not see the basketball while he practiced dribbling. This would train him to always look around him rather than at the ball—a key skill in passing. He set up chairs on the court to act as opponents. He would dribble around them, back and forth, for hours, until he could glide past them, quickly changing direction. He spent hours at both of these exercises, well past any feelings of boredom or pain. Walking down the main street of his hometown in Missouri, he would keep his eyes focused straight ahead and try to notice the goods in the store windows, on either side, without turning his head. He worked on this endlessly, developing his peripheral vision so he could see more of the court. In his room at home, he practiced pivot moves and fakes well into the night—such skills that would also help him compensate for his lack of speed. Bradley put all of his creative energy into coming up with novel and effective ways of practicing. One time his family traveled to Europe via transatlantic ship. Finally, they thought, he would give his training regimen a break—there was really no place to practice on board. But below deck and running the length of the ship were two corridors, 900 feet long and quite narrow—just enough room for two passengers. This was the perfect location to practice dribbling at top speed while maintaining perfect ball control. To make it even harder, he decided to wear special eyeglasses that narrowed his vision. For hours every day he dribbled up one side and down the other, until the voyage was done. Working this way over the years, Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball—first as an All-American at Princeton University and then as a professional with the New York Knicks. Fans were in awe of his ability to make the most astounding passes, as if he had eyes on the back and sides of his head—not to mention his dribbling prowess, his incredible arsenal of fakes and pivots, and his complete gracefulness on the court. Little did they know that such apparent ease was the result of so many hours of intense practice over so many years. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
776:5. Move toward resistance and pain A. Bill Bradley (b. 1943) fell in love with the sport of basketball somewhere around the age of ten. He had one advantage over his peers—he was tall for his age. But beyond that, he had no real natural gift for the game. He was slow and gawky, and could not jump very high. None of the aspects of the game came easily to him. He would have to compensate for all of his inadequacies through sheer practice. And so he proceeded to devise one of the most rigorous and efficient training routines in the history of sports. Managing to get his hands on the keys to the high school gym, he created for himself a schedule—three and a half hours of practice after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday, and three hours a day during the summer. Over the years, he would keep rigidly to this schedule. In the gym, he would put ten-pound weights in his shoes to strengthen his legs and give him more spring to his jump. His greatest weaknesses, he decided, were his dribbling and his overall slowness. He would have to work on these and also transform himself into a superior passer to make up for his lack of speed. For this purpose, he devised various exercises. He wore eyeglass frames with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom, so he could not see the basketball while he practiced dribbling. This would train him to always look around him rather than at the ball—a key skill in passing. He set up chairs on the court to act as opponents. He would dribble around them, back and forth, for hours, until he could glide past them, quickly changing direction. He spent hours at both of these exercises, well past any feelings of boredom or pain. Walking down the main street of his hometown in Missouri, he would keep his eyes focused straight ahead and try to notice the goods in the store windows, on either side, without turning his head. He worked on this endlessly, developing his peripheral vision so he could see more of the court. In his room at home, he practiced pivot moves and fakes well into the night—such skills that would also help him compensate for his lack of speed. Bradley put all of his creative energy into coming up with novel and effective ways of practicing. One time his family traveled to Europe via transatlantic ship. Finally, they thought, he would give his training regimen a break—there was really no place to practice on board. But below deck and running the length of the ship were two corridors, 900 feet long and quite narrow—just enough room for two passengers. This was the perfect location to practice dribbling at top speed while maintaining perfect ball control. To make it even harder, he decided to wear special eyeglasses that narrowed his vision. For hours every day he dribbled up one side and down the other, until the voyage was done. Working this way over the years, Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball—first as an All-American at Princeton University and then as a professional with the New York Knicks. Fans were in awe of his ability to make the most astounding passes, as if he had eyes on the back and sides of his head—not to mention his dribbling prowess, his incredible arsenal of fakes and pivots, and his complete gracefulness on the court. Little did they know that such apparent ease was the result of so many hours of intense practice over so many years. ~ Robert Greene, #NFDB
777:KNEE SURGERY I’D FIRST HURT MY KNEES IN FALLUJAH WHEN THE WALL FELL on me. Cortisone shots helped for a while, but the pain kept coming back and getting worse. The docs told me I needed to have my legs operated on, but doing that would have meant I would have to take time off and miss the war. So I kept putting it off. I settled into a routine where I’d go to the doc, get a shot, go back to work. The time between shots became shorter and shorter. It got down to every two months, then every month. I made it through Ramadi, but just barely. My knees started locking and it was difficult to get down the stairs. I no longer had a choice, so, soon after I got home in 2007, I went under the knife. The surgeons cut my tendons to relieve pressure so my kneecaps would slide back over. They had to shave down my kneecaps because I had worn grooves in them. They injected synthetic cartilage material and shaved the meniscus. Somewhere along the way they also repaired an ACL. I was like a racing car, being repaired from the ground up. When they were done, they sent me to see Jason, a physical therapist who specializes in working with SEALs. He’d been a trainer for the Pittsburgh Pirates. After 9/11, he decided to devote himself to helping the country. He chose to do that by working with the military. He took a massive pay cut to help put us back together. I DIDN’T KNOW ALL THAT THE FIRST DAY WE MET. ALL I WANTED to hear was how long it was going to take to rehab. He gave me a pensive look. “This surgery—civilians need a year to get back,” he said finally. “Football players, they’re out eight months. SEALs—it’s hard to say. You hate being out of action and will punish yourselves to get back.” He finally predicted six months. I think we did it in five. But I thought I would surely die along the way. JASON PUT ME INTO A MACHINE THAT WOULD STRETCH MY knee. Every day I had to see how much further I could adjust it. I would sweat up a storm as it bent my knee. I finally got it to ninety degrees. “That’s outstanding,” he told me. “Now get more.” “More?” “More!” He also had a machine that sent a shock to my muscle through electrodes. Depending on the muscle, I would have to stretch and point my toes up and down. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is clearly a form of torture that should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention, even for use on SEALs. Naturally, Jason kept upping the voltage. But the worst of all was the simplest: the exercise. I had to do more, more, more. I remember calling Taya many times and telling her I was sure I was going to puke if not die before the day was out. She seemed sympathetic but, come to think of it in retrospect, she and Jason may have been in on it together. There was a stretch where Jason had me doing crazy amounts of ab exercises and other things to my core muscles. “Do you understand it’s my knees that were operated on?” I asked him one day when I thought I’d reached my limit. He just laughed. He had a scientific explanation about how everything in the body depends on strong core muscles, but I think he just liked kicking my ass around the gym. I swear I heard a bullwhip crack over my head any time I started to slack. I always thought the best shape I was ever in was straight out of BUD/S. But I was in far better shape after spending five months with him. Not only were my knees okay, the rest of me was in top condition. When I came back to my platoon, they all asked if I had been taking steroids. ~ Chris Kyle, #NFDB
778:Arts of energy management and of combat are, of course, not confined to the Chinese only. Peoples of different cultures have practised and spread these arts since ancient times. Those who follow the Chinese tradition call these arts chi kung and kungfu (or qigong and gongfu in Romanized Chinese), and those following other traditions call them by other names.
Muslims in various parts of the world have developed arts of energy management and of combat to very high levels. Many practices in Sufism, which is spiritual cultivation in Islamic tradition, are similar to chi kung practices. As in chi kung, Sufi practitioners pay much importance to the training of energy and spirit, called “qi” and “shen” in Chinese, but “nafas” and “roh” in Muslim terms.
When one can free himself from cultural and religious connotations, he will find that the philosophy of Sufism and of chi kung are similar. A Sufi practitioner believes that his own breath, or nafas, is a gift of God, and his ultimate goal in life is to be united with God. Hence, he practises appropriate breathing exercises so that the breath of God flows harmoniously through him, cleansing him of his weakness and sin, which are manifested as illness and pain.
And he practises meditation so that ultimately his personal spirit will return to the universal Spirit of God. In chi kung terms, this returning to God is expressed as “cultivating spirit to return to the Great Void”, which is “lian shen huan shi” in Chinese. Interestingly the breathing and meditation methods in Sufism and in chi kung are quite similar.
Some people, including some Muslims, may think that meditation is unIslamic, and therefore taboo. This is a serious mis-conception. Indeed, Prophet Mohammed himself clearly states that a day of meditation is better than sixty years of worship. As in any religion, there is often a huge conceptual gap between the highest teaching and the common followers. In Buddhism, for example, although the Buddha clearly states that meditation is the essential path to the highest spiritual attainment, most common Buddhists do not have any idea of meditation.
The martial arts of the Muslims were effective and sophisticated. At many points in world history, the Muslims, such as the Arabs, the Persians and the Turks, were formidable warriors. Modern Muslim martial arts are very advanced and are complete by themselves, i.e. they do not need to borrow from outside arts for their force training or combat application — for example, they do not need to borrow from chi kung for internal force training, Western aerobics for stretching, judo and kickboxing for throws and kicks.
[...]
It is reasonable if sceptics ask, “If they are really so advanced, why don't they take part in international full contact fighting competitions and win titles?” The answer is that they hold different values. They are not interested in fighting or titles. At their level, their main concern is spiritual cultivation. Not only they will not be bothered whether you believe in such abilities, generally they are reluctant to let others know of their abilities.
Muslims form a substantial portion of the population in China, and they have contributed an important part in the development of chi kung and kungfu. But because the Chinese generally do not relate one's achievements to one's religion, the contributions of these Chinese Muslim masters did not carry the label “Muslim” with them.
In fact, in China the Muslim places of worship are not called mosques, as in many other countries, but are called temples. Most people cannot tell the difference be ~ Wong Kiew Kit,#NFDB
779:PART 1-Introduction I:1 A theoretical foundation such as the text is necessary as a background to make these exercises meaningful. Yet it is the exercises which will make the goal possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth. 2 The exercises are very simple. They do not require more than a few minutes, and it does not matter where or when you do them. They need no preparation. They are numbered, running from 1 to 365. The training period is one year. Do not undertake more than one exercise a day. 3 The purpose of these exercises is to train the mind to a different perception of everything in the world. The workbook is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the undoing of what you see now and the second with the restoration of sight. It is recommended that each exercise be repeated several times a day, preferably in a different place each time and, if possible, in every situation in which you spend any long period of time. The purpose is to train the mind to generalize the lessons, so that you will understand that each of them is as applicable to one situation as it is to another. 4 Unless specified to the contrary, the exercise should be practiced with the eyes open, since the aim is to learn how to see. The only rule that should be followed throughout is to practice the exercises with great specificity. Each one applies to every situation in which you find yourself and to everything you see in it. Each day’s exercises are planned around one central idea, the exercises themselves consisting of applying that idea to as many specifics as possible. Be sure that you do not decide that there are some things you see to which the idea for the day is inapplicable. The aim of the exercises will always be to increase the application of the idea to everything. This will not require effort. Only be sure that you make no exceptions in applying the idea. 5 Some of the ideas you will find hard to believe, and others will seem quite startling. It does not matter. You are merely asked to apply them to what you see. You are not asked to judge them nor even to believe them. You are asked only to use them. It is their use which will give them meaning to you and show you they are true. Remember only this—you need not believe them, you need not accept them, and you need not welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist. None of this will matter nor decrease their efficacy. But allow yourself to make no exceptions in applying the ideas the exercises contain. Whatever your reactions to the ideas may be, use them. Nothing more than this is required. Lesson 1 - Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything. 1 Now look slowly around you, and practice applying this idea very specifically to whatever you see: 2 This table does not mean anything. This chair does not mean anything. This hand does not mean anything. This foot does not mean anything. This pen does not mean anything. 3 Then look farther away from your immediate area, and apply the idea to a wider range: 4 That door does not mean anything. That body does not mean anything. That lamp does not mean anything. That sign does not mean anything. That shadow does not mean anything. 5 Notice that these statements are not arranged in any order, and make no allowance for differences in the kinds of things to which they are applied. That is the purpose of the exercise. The statement is merely applied to anything you see. As you practice applying the idea for the day, use it totally indiscriminately. Do not attempt to apply it to everything you see, for these exercises should not become ritualistic. Only be sure that nothing you see is specifically excluded. One thing is like another as far as the application of the idea is concerned. ~ Helen Schucman, #NFDB
780:As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely
and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altogether bad.
Still, as Jacob Burckhardt says, power is evil in itself, no matter who exercises it.
It tends to corrupt those who wield it and leads to abuse. Not only absolute sovereigns and aristocrats, but the masses also, in whose hands democracy entrusts the supreme power of government, are only too easily inclined to excesses.
In the United States, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages are
prohibited. Other countries do not go so far, but nearly everywhere some
restrictions are imposed on the sale of opium, cocaine, and similar narcotics. It is universally deemed one of the tasks of legislation and government to protect the individual from himself. Even those who otherwise generally have misgivings about extending the area of governmental activity consider it quite proper that the freedom of the individual should be curtailed in this respect, and they think that only a benighted doctrinairism could oppose such prohibitions. Indeed, so general is the acceptance of this kind of interference by the authorities in the life of the individual that those who, are opposed to liberalism on principle are prone to base their argument on the ostensibly undisputed acknowledgment of the necessity of such prohibitions and to draw from it the conclusion that complete freedom is an evil and that some measure of restriction must be imposed upon the freedom of the
individual by the governmental authorities in their capacity as guardians of his welfare. The question cannot be whether the authorities ought to impose restrictions upon the freedom of the individual, but only how far they ought to go in this respect.
No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora's box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism.
Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffeine, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life, and it seems especially difficult for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirel ~ Ludwig von Mises,#NFDB
781:
What is the exact way of feeling that we belong to the Divine and that the Divine is acting in us?
You must not feel with your head (because you may think so, but that's something vague); you must feel with your sense-feeling. Naturally one begins by wanting it with the mind, because that is the first thing that understands. And then one has an aspiration here (pointing to the heart), with a flame which pushes you to realise it. But if you want it to be truly the thing, well, you must feel it.
You are doing something, suppose, for example, you are doing exercises, weight-lifting. Now suddenly without your knowing how it happened, suddenly you have the feeling that there is a force infinitely greater than you, greater, more powerful, a force that does the lifting for you. Your body becomes something almost non-existent and there is this Something that lifts. And then you will see; when that happens to you, you will no longer ask how it should be done, you will know. That does happen.
It depends upon people, depends upon what dominates in their being. Those who think have suddenly the feeling that it is no longer they who think, that there is something which knows much better, sees much more clearly, which is infinitely more luminous, more conscious in them, which organises the thoughts and words; and then they write. But if the experience is complete, it is even no longer they who write, it is that same Thing that takes hold of their hand and makes it write. Well, one knows at that moment that the little physical person is just a tiny insignificant tool trying to remain as quiet as possible in order not to disturb the experience.
Yes, at no cost must the experience be disturbed. If suddenly you say: "Oh, look, how strange it is!"...
How can we reach that state?
Aspire for it, want it. Try to be less and less selfish, but not in the sense of becoming nice to other people or forgetting yourself, not that: have less and less the feeling that you are a person, a separate entity, something existing in itself, isolated from the rest.
And then, above all, above all, it is that inner flame, that aspiration, that need for the light. It is a kind of - how to put it? - luminous enthusiasm that seizes you. It is an irresistible need to melt away, to give oneself, to exist only in the Divine.
At that moment you have the experience of your aspiration.
But that moment should be absolutely sincere and as integral as possible; and all this must occur not only in the head, not only here, but must take place everywhere, in all the cells of the body. The consciousness integrally must have this irresistible need.... The thing lasts for some time, then diminishes, gets extinguished. You cannot keep these things for very long. But then it so happens that a moment later or the next day or some time later, suddenly you have the opposite experience. Instead of feeling this ascent, and all that, this is no longer there and you have the feeling of the Descent, the Answer. And nothing but the Answer exists. Nothing but the divine thought, the divine will, the divine energy, the divine action exists any longer. And you too, you are no longer there.
That is to say, it is the answer to our aspiration. It may happen immediately afterwards - that is very rare but may happen. If you have both simultaneously, then the state is perfect; usually they alternate; they alternate more and more closely until the moment there is a total fusion. Then there is no more distinction. I heard a Sufi mystic, who was besides a great musician, an Indian, saying that for the Sufis there was a state higher than that of adoration and surrender to the Divine, than that of devotion, that this was not the last stage; the last stage of the progress is when there is no longer any distinction; you have no longer this kind of adoration or surrender or consecration; it is a very simple state in which one makes no distinction between the Divine and oneself. They know this. It is even written in their books. It is a commonly known condition in which everything becomes quite simple. There is no longer any difference. There is no longer that kind of ecstatic surrender to "Something" which is beyond you in every way, which you do not understand, which is merely the result of your aspiration, your devotion. There is no difference any longer. When the union is perfect, there is no longer any difference.
Is this the end of self-progress?
There is never any end to progress - never any end, you can never put a full stop there. ~ The Mother,#NFDB
782:Mr. Fink's Debating Donkey
Of a person known as Peters I will humbly crave your leave
An unusual adventure into narrative to weave
Mr. William Perry Peters, of the town of Muscatel,
A public educator and an orator as well.
Mr. Peters had a weakness which, 'tis painful to relate,
Was a strong predisposition to the pleasures of debate.
He would foster disputation wheresoever he might be;
In polygonal contention none so happy was as he.
'Twas observable, however, that the exercises ran
Into monologue by Peters, that rhetorical young man.
And the Muscatelian rustics who assisted at the show,
By involuntary silence testified their overthrowMr. Peters, all unheedful of their silence and their grief,
Still effacing every vestige of erroneous belief.
O, he was a sore affliction to all heretics so bold
As to entertain opinions that he didn't care to hold.
One day-'t was in pursuance of a pedagogic plan
For the mental elevation of Uncultivated Man
Mr. Peters, to his pupils, in dismissing them, explained
That the Friday evening following (unless, indeed, it rained)
Would be signalized by holding in the schoolhouse a debate
Free to all who their opinions might desire to ventilate
On the question, 'Which is better, as a serviceable gift,
Speech or hearing, from barbarity the human mind to lift?'
The pupils told their fathers, who, forehanded always, met
At the barroom to discuss it every evening, dry or wet,
They argued it and argued it and spat upon the stove,
And the non-committal 'barkeep' on their differences throve.
And I state it as a maxim in a loosish kind of way:
You'll have the more to back your word the less you have to say.
Public interest was lively, but one Ebenezer Fink
Of the Rancho del Jackrabbit, only seemed to sit and think.
On the memorable evening all the men of Muscatel
Came to listen to the logic and the eloquence as well
All but William Perry Peters, whose attendance there, I fear.
Was to wreak his ready rhetoric upon the public ear,
And prove (whichever side he took) that hearing wouldn't lift
354
The human mind as ably as the other, greater gift.
The judges being chosen and the disputants enrolled,
The question he proceeded _in extenso_ to unfold:
'_Resolved_-The sense of hearing lifts the mind up out of reach
Of the fogs of error better than the faculty of speech.'
This simple proposition he expounded, word by word,
Until they best understood it who least perfectly had heard.
Even the judges comprehended as he ventured to explain
The impact of a spit-ball admonishing in vain.
Beginning at a period before Creation's morn,
He had reached the bounds of tolerance and Adam yet unborn.
As down the early centuries of pre-historic time
He tracked important principles and quoted striking rhyme,
And Whisky Bill, prosaic soul! proclaiming him a jay,
Had risen and like an earthquake, 'reeled unheededly away,'
And a late lamented cat, when opportunity should serve,
Was preparing to embark upon her parabolic curve,
A noise arose outside-the door was opened with a bang
And old Ebenezer Fink was heard ejaculating 'G'lang!'
Straight into that assembly gravely marched without a wink
An ancient ass-the property it was of Mr. Fink.
Its ears depressed and beating time to its infestive tread,
Silent through silence moved amain that stately quadruped!
It stopped before the orator, and in the lamplight thrown
Upon its tail they saw that member weighted with a stone.
Then spake old Ebenezer: 'Gents, I heern o' this debate
On w'ether v'ice or y'ears is best the mind to elevate.
Now 'yer's a bird ken throw some light uponto that tough theme:
He has 'em both, I'm free to say, oncommonly extreme.
He wa'n't invited for to speak, but he will not refuse
(If t'other gentleman ken wait) to exposay his views.'
Ere merriment or anger o'er amazement could prevail;
He cut the string that held the stone on that canary's tail.
Freed from the weight, that member made a gesture of delight,
Then rose until its rigid length was horizontal quite.
With lifted head and level ears along his withers laid,
Jack sighed, refilled his lungs and then-to put it mildly-brayed!
He brayed until the stones were stirred in circumjacent hills,
And sleeping women rose and fled, in divers kinds of frills.
'T is said that awful bugle-blast-to make the story briefWafted William Perry Peters through the window, like a leaf!
355
Such is the tale. If anything additional occurred
'Tis not set down, though, truly, I remember to have heard
That a gentleman named Peters, now residing at Soquel,
A considerable distance from the town of Muscatel,
Is opposed to education, and to rhetoric, as well.
~ Ambrose Bierce,#NFDB
783:The Science of Living
To know oneself and to control oneself
AN AIMLESS life is always a miserable life.
Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life.
Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others.
But whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised unless you have realised perfection in yourself.
To work for your perfection, the first step is to become conscious of yourself, of the different parts of your being and their respective activities. You must learn to distinguish these different parts one from another, so that you may become clearly aware of the origin of the movements that occur in you, the many impulses, reactions and conflicting wills that drive you to action. It is an assiduous study which demands much perseverance and sincerity. For man's nature, especially his mental nature, has a spontaneous tendency to give a favourable explanation for everything he thinks, feels, says and does. It is only by observing these movements with great care, by bringing them, as it were, before the tribunal of our highest ideal, with a sincere will to submit to its judgment, that we can hope to form in ourselves a discernment that never errs. For if we truly want to progress and acquire the capacity of knowing the truth of our being, that is to say, what we are truly created for, what we can call our mission upon earth, then we must, in a very regular and constant manner, reject from us or eliminate in us whatever contradicts the truth of our existence, whatever is opposed to it. In this way, little by little, all the parts, all the elements of our being can be organised into a homogeneous whole around our psychic centre. This work of unification requires much time to be brought to some degree of perfection. Therefore, in order to accomplish it, we must arm ourselves with patience and endurance, with a determination to prolong our life as long as necessary for the success of our endeavour.
As you pursue this labour of purification and unification, you must at the same time take great care to perfect the external and instrumental part of your being. When the higher truth manifests, it must find in you a mind that is supple and rich enough to be able to give the idea that seeks to express itself a form of thought which preserves its force and clarity. This thought, again, when it seeks to clothe itself in words, must find in you a sufficient power of expression so that the words reveal the thought and do not deform it. And the formula in which you embody the truth should be manifested in all your feelings, all your acts of will, all your actions, in all the movements of your being. Finally, these movements themselves should, by constant effort, attain their highest perfection.
All this can be realised by means of a fourfold discipline, the general outline of which is given here. The four aspects of the discipline do not exclude each other, and can be followed at the same time; indeed, this is preferable. The starting-point is what can be called the psychic discipline. We give the name "psychic" to the psychological centre of our being, the seat within us of the highest truth of our existence, that which can know this truth and set it in movement. It is therefore of capital importance to become conscious of its presence in us, to concentrate on this presence until it becomes a living fact for us and we can identify ourselves with it.
In various times and places many methods have been prescribed for attaining this perception and ultimately achieving this identification. Some methods are psychological, some religious, some even mechanical. In reality, everyone has to find the one which suits him best, and if one has an ardent and steadfast aspiration, a persistent and dynamic will, one is sure to meet, in one way or another - outwardly through reading and study, inwardly through concentration, meditation, revelation and experience - the help one needs to reach the goal. Only one thing is absolutely indispensable: the will to discover and to realise. This discovery and realisation should be the primary preoccupation of our being, the pearl of great price which we must acquire at any cost. Whatever you do, whatever your occupations and activities, the will to find the truth of your being and to unite with it must be always living and present behind all that you do, all that you feel, all that you think.
To complement this movement of inner discovery, it would be good not to neglect the development of the mind. For the mental instrument can equally be a great help or a great hindrance. In its natural state the human mind is always limited in its vision, narrow in its understanding, rigid in its conceptions, and a constant effort is therefore needed to widen it, to make it more supple and profound. So it is very necessary to consider everything from as many points of view as possible. Towards this end, there is an exercise which gives great suppleness and elevation to the thought. It is as follows: a clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed its antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and their consequences. For example, you must never allow your mind to judge things and people, for the mind is not an instrument of knowledge; it is incapable of finding knowledge, but it must be moved by knowledge. Knowledge belongs to a much higher domain than that of the human mind, far above the region of pure ideas. The mind has to be silent and attentive to receive knowledge from above and manifest it. For it is an instrument of formation, of organisation and action, and it is in these functions that it attains its full value and real usefulness.
There is another practice which can be very helpful to the progress of the consciousness. Whenever there is a disagreement on any matter, such as a decision to be taken, or an action to be carried out, one must never remain closed up in one's own conception or point of view. On the contrary, one must make an effort to understand the other's point of view, to put oneself in his place and, instead of quarrelling or even fighting, find the solution which can reasonably satisfy both parties; there always is one for men of goodwill.
Here we must mention the discipline of the vital. The vital being in us is the seat of impulses and desires, of enthusiasm and violence, of dynamic energy and desperate depressions, of passions and revolts. It can set everything in motion, build and realise; but it can also destroy and mar everything. Thus it may be the most difficult part to discipline in the human being. It is a long and exacting labour requiring great patience and perfect sincerity, for without sincerity you will deceive yourself from the very outset, and all endeavour for progress will be in vain. With the collaboration of the vital no realisation seems impossible, no transformation impracticable. But the difficulty lies in securing this constant collaboration. The vital is a good worker, but most often it seeks its own satisfaction. If that is refused, totally or even partially, the vital gets vexed, sulks and goes on strike. Its energy disappears more or less completely and in its place leaves disgust for people and things, discouragement or revolt, depression and dissatisfaction. At such moments it is good to remain quiet and refuse to act; for these are the times when one does stupid things and in a few moments one can destroy or spoil the progress that has been made during months of regular effort. These crises are shorter and less dangerous for those who have established a contact with their psychic being which is sufficient to keep alive in them the flame of aspiration and the consciousness of the ideal to be realised. They can, with the help of this consciousness, deal with their vital as one deals with a rebellious child, with patience and perseverance, showing it the truth and light, endeavouring to convince it and awaken in it the goodwill which has been veiled for a time. By means of such patient intervention each crisis can be turned into a new progress, into one more step towards the goal. Progress may be slow, relapses may be frequent, but if a courageous will is maintained, one is sure to triumph one day and see all difficulties melt and vanish before the radiance of the truth-consciousness.
Lastly, by means of a rational and discerning physical education, we must make our body strong and supple enough to become a fit instrument in the material world for the truth-force which wants to manifest through us.
In fact, the body must not rule, it must obey. By its very nature it is a docile and faithful servant. Unfortunately, it rarely has the capacity of discernment it ought to have with regard to its masters, the mind and the vital. It obeys them blindly, at the cost of its own well-being. The mind with its dogmas, its rigid and arbitrary principles, the vital with its passions, its excesses and dissipations soon destroy the natural balance of the body and create in it fatigue, exhaustion and disease. It must be freed from this tyranny and this can be done only through a constant union with the psychic centre of the being. The body has a wonderful capacity of adaptation and endurance. It is able to do so many more things than one usually imagines. If, instead of the ignorant and despotic masters that now govern it, it is ruled by the central truth of the being, you will be amazed at what it is capable of doing. Calm and quiet, strong and poised, at every minute it will be able to put forth the effort that is demanded of it, for it will have learnt to find rest in action and to recuperate, through contact with the universal forces, the energies it expends consciously and usefully. In this sound and balanced life a new harmony will manifest in the body, reflecting the harmony of the higher regions, which will give it perfect proportions and ideal beauty of form. And this harmony will be progressive, for the truth of the being is never static; it is a perpetual unfolding of a growing perfection that is more and more total and comprehensive. As soon as the body has learnt to follow this movement of progressive harmony, it will be possible for it to escape, through a continuous process of transformation, from the necessity of disintegration and destruction. Thus the irrevocable law of death will no longer have any reason to exist.
When we reach this degree of perfection which is our goal, we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.
Bulletin, November 1950
~ The Mother, On Education, #self-knowledge,#NFDB
784:Mental Education
OF ALL lines of education, mental education is the most widely known and practised, yet except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make it something very incomplete and in the end quite insufficient.
Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language.
A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases. Normally these phases follow one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may alternate or even proceed simultaneously. These five phases, in brief, are:
(1) Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
(2) Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
(3) Organisation of one's ideas around a central idea, a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life.
(4) Thought-control, rejection of undesirable thoughts, to become able to think only what one wants and when one wants.
(5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.
It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be given.
Undeniably, what most impedes mental progress in children is the constant dispersion of their thoughts. Their thoughts flutter hither and thither like butterflies and they have to make a great effort to fix them. Yet this capacity is latent in them, for when you succeed in arousing their interest, they are capable of a good deal of attention. By his ingenuity, therefore, the educator will gradually help the child to become capable of a sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete absorption in the work in hand. All methods that can develop this faculty of attention from games to rewards are good and can all be utilised according to the need and the circumstances. But it is the psychological action that is most important and the sovereign method is to arouse in the child an interest in what you want to teach him, a liking for work, a will to progress. To love to learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more.
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
You will gradually show the child that everything can become an interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and the mind develops in joy.
In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his mind, one should see not only that he studies many varied topics, but above all that a single subject is approached in various ways, so that the child understands in a practical manner that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual problem, of considering it and solving it. This will remove all rigidity from his brain and at the same time it will make his thinking richer and more supple and prepare it for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental learning and, little by little, an aspiration for a truer source of knowledge will awaken in him.
Indeed, as the child grows older and progresses in his studies, his mind too ripens and becomes more and more capable of forming general ideas, and with them almost always comes a need for certitude, for a knowledge that is stable enough to form the basis of a mental construction which will permit all the diverse and scattered and often contradictory ideas accumulated in his brain to be organised and put in order. This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's thoughts. All contradictions can be transformed into complements, but for that one must discover the higher idea that will have the power to bring them harmoniously together. It is always good to consider every problem from all possible standpoints so as to avoid partiality and exclusiveness; but if the thought is to be active and creative, it must, in every case, be the natural and logical synthesis of all the points of view adopted. And if you want to make the totality of your thoughts into a dynamic and constructive force, you must also take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of this synthesis. The higher and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise.
It goes without saying that this work of organisation cannot be done once and for all. The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of new knowledge, enlarge its frame-work to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and reorganise its thoughts, so that each of them may find its true place in relation to the others and the whole remain harmonious and orderly.
All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only those who want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great that they appear almost insurmountable.
And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions.
For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.
But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.
The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep.
When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity. Bulletin, November 1951
~ The Mother, On Education,#NFDB
785:Monadnoc
Thousand minstrels woke within me,
Our music's in the hills;
Gayest pictures rose to win me,
Leopard-colored rills.
Up!If thou knew'st who calls
To twilight parks of beech and pine,
High over the river intervals,
Above the ploughman's highest line,
Over the owner's farthest walls;
Up!where the airy citadel
O'erlooks the purging landscape's swell.
Let not unto the stones the day
Her lily and rose, her sea and land display;
Read the celestial sign!
Lo! the South answers to the North;
Bookworm, break this sloth urbane;
A greater Spirit bids thee forth,
Than the gray dreams which thee detain.
Mark how the climbing Oreads
Beckon thee to their arcades;
Youth, for a moment free as they,
Teach thy feet to feel the ground,
Ere yet arrive the wintry day
When Time thy feet has bound.
Accept the bounty of thy birth;
Taste the lordship of the earth.
I heard and I obeyed,
Assured that he who pressed the claim,
Well-known, but loving not a name,
Was not to be gainsaid.
Ere yet the summoning voice was still,
I turned to Cheshire's haughty hill.
From the fixed cone the cloud-rack flowed
Like ample banner flung abroad
Round about, a hundred miles,
With invitation to the sea, and to the bordering isles.
In his own loom's garment drest,
By his own bounty blest,
Fast abides this constant giver,
Pouring many a cheerful river;
To far eyes, an arial isle,
Unploughed, which finer spirits pile,
Which morn and crimson evening paint
For bard, for lover, and for saint;
The country's core,
Inspirer, prophet evermore,
Pillar which God aloft had set
So that men might it not forget,
It should be their life's ornament,
And mix itself with each event;
Their calendar and dial,
Barometer, and chemic phial,
Garden of berries, perch of birds,
Pasture of pool-haunting herds,
Graced by each change of sum untold,
Earth-baking heat, stone-cleaving cold.
The Titan minds his sky-affairs,
Rich rents and wide alliance shares;
Mysteries of color daily laid
By the great sun in light and shade,
And, sweet varieties of chance,
And the mystic seasons' dance,
And thief-like step of liberal hours
Which thawed the snow-drift into flowers.
O wondrous craft of plant and stone
By eldest science done and shown!
Happy, I said, whose home is here,
Fair fortunes to the mountaineer!
Boon nature to his poorest shed
Has royal pleasure-grounds outspread.
Intent I searched the region round,
And in low hut my monarch found.
He was no eagle and no earl,
Alas! my foundling was a churl,
With heart of cat, and eyes of bug,
Dull victim of his pipe and mug;
Woe is me for my hopes' downfall!
Lord! is yon squalid peasant all
That this proud nursery could breed
For God's vicegerency and stead?
Time out of mind this forge of ores,
Quarry of spars in mountain pores,
Old cradle, hunting ground, and bier
Of wolf and otter, bear, and deer;
Well-built abode of many a race;
Tower of observance searching space;
Factory of river, and of rain;
Link in the alps' globe-girding chain;
By million changes skilled to tell
What in the Eternal standeth well,
And what obedient nature can,
Is this colossal talisman
Kindly to creature, blood, and kind,
And speechless to the master's mind?
I thought to find the patriots
In whom the stock of freedom roots.
To myself I oft recount
Tales of many a famous mount.
Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells,
Roys, and Scanderbegs, and Tells.
Here now shall nature crowd her powers,
Her music, and her meteors,
And, lifting man to the blue deep
Where stars their perfect courses keep,
Like wise preceptor lure his eye
To sound the science of the sky,
And carry learning to its height
Of untried power and sane delight;
The Indian cheer, the frosty skies
Breed purer wits, inventive eyes,
Eyes that frame cities where none be,
And hands that stablish what these see:
And, by the moral of his place,
Hint summits of heroic grace;
Man in these crags a fastness find
To fight pollution of the mind;
In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong,
Adhere like this foundation strong,
The insanity of towns to stem
With simpleness for stratagem.
But if the brave old mould is broke,
And end in clowns the mountain-folk,
In tavern cheer and tavern joke,
Sink, O mountain! in the swamp,
Hide in thy skies, O sovereign lap!
Perish like leaves the highland breed!
No sire survive, no son succeed!
Soft! let not the offended muse
Toil's hard hap with scorn accuse.
Many hamlets sought I then,
Many farms of mountain men;
Found I not a minstrel seed,
But men of bone, and good at need.
Rallying round a parish steeple
Nestle warm the highland people,
Coarse and boisterous, yet mild,
Strong as giant, slow as child,
Smoking in a squalid room,
Where yet the westland breezes come.
Close hid in those rough guises lurk
Western magicians, here they work;
Sweat and season are their arts,
Their talismans are ploughs and carts;
And well the youngest can command
Honey from the frozen land,
With sweet hay the swamp adorn,
Change the running sand to corn,
For wolves and foxes, lowing herds,
And for cold mosses, cream and curds;
Weave wood to canisters and mats,
Drain sweet maple-juice in vats.
No bird is safe that cuts the air,
From their rifle or their snare;
No fish in river or in lake,
But their long hands it thence will take;
And the country's iron face
Like wax their fashioning skill betrays,
To fill the hollows, sink the hills,
Bridge gulfs, drain swamps, build dams and mills,
And fit the bleak and howling place
For gardens of a finer race,
The world-soul knows his own affair,
Fore-looking when his hands prepare
For the next ages men of mould,
Well embodied, well ensouled,
He cools the present's fiery glow,
Sets the life pulse strong, but slow.
Bitter winds and fasts austere.
His quarantines and grottos, where
He slowly cures decrepit flesh,
And brings it infantile and fresh.
These exercises are the toys
And games with which he breathes his boys.
They bide their time, and well can prove,
If need were, their line from Jove,
Of the same stuff, and so allayed,
As that whereof the sun is made;
And of that fibre quick and strong
Whose throbs are love, whose thrills are song.
Now in sordid weeds they sleep,
Their secret now in dullness keep.
Yet, will you learn our ancient speech,
These the masters who can teach,
Fourscore or a hundred words
All their vocal muse affords,
These they turn in other fashion
Than the writer or the parson.
I can spare the college-bell,
And the learned lecture well.
Spare the clergy and libraries,
Institutes and dictionaries,
For the hardy English root
Thrives here unvalued underfoot.
Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
Squandering your unquoted mirth,
Which keeps the ground and never soars,
While Jake retorts and Reuben roars,
Tough and screaming as birch-bark,
Goes like bullet to its mark,
While the solid curse and jeer
Never balk the waiting ear:
To student ears keen-relished jokes
On truck, and stock, and farming-folks,
Nought the mountain yields thereof
But savage health and sinews tough.
On the summit as I stood,
O'er the wide floor of plain and flood,
Seemed to me the towering hill
Was not altogether still,
But a quiet sense conveyed;
If I err not, thus it said:
Many feet in summer seek
Betimes my far-appearing peak;
In the dreaded winter-time,
None save dappling shadows climb
Under clouds my lonely head,
Old as the sun, old almost as the shade.
And comest thou
To see strange forests and new snow,
And tread uplifted land?
And leavest thou thy lowland race,
Here amid clouds to stand,
And would'st be my companion,
Where I gaze
And shall gaze
When forests fall, and man is gone,
Over tribes and over times
As the burning Lyre
Nearing me,
With its stars of northern fire,
In many a thousand years.
Ah! welcome, if thou bring
My secret in thy brain;
To mountain-top may muse's wing
With good allowance strain.
Gentle pilgrim, if thou know
The gamut old of Pan,
And how the hills began,
The frank blessings of the hill
Fall on thee, as fall they will.
'Tis the law of bush and stone
Each can only take his own.
Let him heed who can and will,
Enchantment fixed me here
To stand the hurts of time, until
In mightier chant I disappear.
If thou trowest
How the chemic eddies play
Pole to pole, and what they say,
And that these gray crags
Not on crags are hung,
But beads are of a rosary
On prayer and music strung;
And, credulous, through the granite seeming
Seest the smile of Reason beaming;
Can thy style-discerning eye
The hidden-working Builder spy,
Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din,
With hammer soft as snow-flake's flight;
Knowest thou this?
O pilgrim, wandering not amiss!
Already my rocks lie light,
And soon my cone will spin.
For the world was built in order,
And the atoms march in tune,
Rhyme the pipe, and time the warder,
Cannot forget the sun, the moon.
Orb and atom forth they prance,
When they hear from far the rune,
None so backward in the troop,
When the music and the dance
Reach his place and circumstance,
But knows the sun-creating sound,
And, though a pyramid, will bound.
Monadnoc is a mountain strong,
Tall and good my kind among,
But well I know, no mountain can
Measure with a perfect man;
For it is on Zodiack's writ,
Adamant is soft to wit;
And when the greater comes again,
With my music in his brain,
I shall pass as glides my shadow
Daily over hill and meadow.
Through all time
I hear the approaching feet
Along the flinty pathway beat
Of him that cometh, and shall come,
Of him who shall as lightly bear
My daily load of woods and streams,
As now the round sky-cleaving boat
Which never strains its rocky beams,
Whose timbers, as they silent float,
Alps and Caucasus uprear,
And the long Alleghanies here,
And all town-sprinkled lands that be,
Sailing through stars with all their history.
Every morn I lift my head,
Gaze o'er New England underspread
South from Saint Lawrence to the Sound,
From Katshill east to the sea-bound.
Anchored fast for many an age,
I await the bard and sage,
Who in large thoughts, like fair pearl-seed,
Shall string Monadnoc like a bead.
Comes that cheerful troubadour,
This mound shall throb his face before,
As when with inward fires and pain
It rose a bubble from the plain.
When he cometh, I shall shed
From this well-spring in my head
Fountain drop of spicier worth
Than all vintage of the earth.
There's fruit upon my barren soil
Costlier far than wine or oil;
There's a berry blue and gold,
Autumn-ripe its juices hold,
Sparta's stoutness, Bethlehem's heart,
Asia's rancor, Athens' art,
Slowsure Britain's secular might,
And the German's inward sight;
I will give my son to eat
Best of Pan's immortal meat,
Bread to eat and juice to drink,
So the thoughts that he shall think
Shall not be forms of stars, but stars,
Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars.
He comes, but not of that race bred
Who daily climb my specular head.
Oft as morning wreathes my scarf,
Fled the last plumule of the dark,
Pants up hither the spruce clerk
From South-Cove and City-wharf;
I take him up my rugged sides,
Half-repentant, scant of breath,
Bead-eyes my granite chaos show,
And my midsummer snow;
Open the daunting map beneath,
All his county, sea and land,
Dwarfed to measure of his hand;
His day's ride is a furlong space,
His city tops a glimmering haze:
I plant his eyes on the sky-hoop bounding;
See there the grim gray rounding
Of the bullet of the earth
Whereon ye sail,
Tumbling steep
In the uncontinented deep;
He looks on that, and he turns pale:
'Tis even so, this treacherous kite,
Farm-furrowed, town-incrusted sphere,
Thoughtless of its anxious freight,
Plunges eyeless on for ever,
And he, poor parasite,
Cooped in a ship he cannot steer,
Who is the captain he knows not,
Port or pilot trows not,
Risk or ruin he must share.
I scowl on him with my cloud,
With my north wind chill his blood,
I lame him clattering down the rocks,
And to live he is in fear.
Then, at last, I let him down
Once more into his dapper town,
To chatter frightened to his clan,
And forget me, if he can.
As in the old poetic fame
The gods are blind and lame,
And the simular despite
Betrays the more abounding might,
So call not waste that barren cone
Above the floral zone,
Where forests starve:
It is pure use;
What sheaves like those which here we glean and bind,
Of a celestial Ceres, and the Muse?
Ages are thy days,
Thou grand expressor of the present tense,
And type of permanence,
Firm ensign of the fatal Being,
Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief
That will not bide the seeing.
Hither we bring
Our insect miseries to the rocks,
And the whole flight with pestering wing
Vanish and end their murmuring,
Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,
Which, who can tell what mason laid?
Spoils of a front none need restore,
Replacing frieze and architrave;
Yet flowers each stone rosette and metope brave,
Still is the haughty pile erect
Of the old building Intellect.
Complement of human kind,
Having us at vantage still,
Our sumptuous indigence,
O barren mound! thy plenties fill.
We fool and prate,
Thou art silent and sedate.
To million kinds and times one sense
The constant mountain doth dispense,
Shedding on all its snows and leaves,
One joy it joys, one grief it grieves.
Thou seest, O watchman tall!
Our towns and races grow and fall,
And imagest the stable Good
For which we all our lifetime grope,
In shifting form the formless mind;
And though the substance us elude,
We in thee the shadow find.
Thou in our astronomy
An opaker star,
Seen, haply, from afar,
Above the horizon's hoop.
A moment by the railway troop,
As o'er some bolder height they speed,
By circumspect ambition,
By errant Gain,
By feasters, and the frivolous,
Recallest us,
And makest sane.
Mute orator! well-skilled to plead,
And send conviction without phrase,
Thou dost supply
The shortness of our days,
And promise, on thy Founder's truth,
Long morrow to this mortal youth.
by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Monadnoc
,#NFDB
89 Integral Yoga
28 Philosophy
26 Occultism
20 Christianity
15 Yoga
9 Psychology
9 Hinduism
6 Education
4 Sufism
4 Poetry
2 Theosophy
2 Fiction
1 Philsophy
1 Mythology
1 Mysticism
1 Integral Theory
1 Alchemy
57 The Mother
40 Sri Aurobindo
25 Satprem
17 Nolini Kanta Gupta
14 Plotinus
9 Sri Ramakrishna
8 Carl Jung
8 Aleister Crowley
8 Aldous Huxley
7 Rudolf Steiner
5 Vyasa
5 Swami Vivekananda
5 Saint Augustine of Hippo
5 Plato
5 Franz Bardon
3 Saint John of Climacus
3 Nirodbaran
3 Al-Ghazali
2 Swami Krishnananda
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Peter J Carroll
2 H P Lovecraft
2 Friedrich Nietzsche
2 A B Purani
13 The Synthesis Of Yoga
8 The Perennial Philosophy
8 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
7 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
7 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
6 On Education
6 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
5 Vishnu Purana
5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
5 Some Answers From The Mother
5 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
5 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
5 Magick Without Tears
5 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
5 Dark Night of the Soul
5 City of God
5 Agenda Vol 03
4 Raja-Yoga
4 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
4 Mysterium Coniunctionis
3 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
3 The Practice of Magical Evocation
3 The Life Divine
3 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
3 The Alchemy of Happiness
3 Questions And Answers 1953
3 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
3 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
3 Liber ABA
3 Agenda Vol 04
2 Twilight of the Idols
2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
2 The Secret Doctrine
2 Theosophy
2 The Human Cycle
2 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
2 Record of Yoga
2 Questions And Answers 1956
2 Questions And Answers 1955
2 Questions And Answers 1954
2 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
2 Lovecraft - Poems
2 Liber Null
2 Letters On Yoga IV
2 Letters On Poetry And Art
2 Initiation Into Hermetics
2 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
2 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 Agenda Vol 10
2 Agenda Vol 09
2 Agenda Vol 07
2 Agenda Vol 01
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The disciplines of Tantra are graded to suit aspirants of all degrees. exercises are prescribed for people with "animal", "heroic", and "divine" outlooks. Certain of the rites require the presence of members of the opposite sex. Here the aspirant learns to look on woman as the embodiment of the Goddess Kali, the Mother of the Universe. The very basis of Tantra is the Motherhood of God and the glorification of woman. Every part of a woman's body is to be regarded as incarnate Divinity. But the rites are extremely dangerous. The help of a qualified guru is absolutely necessary. An unwary devotee may lose his foothold and fall into a pit of depravity.
According to the Tantra, Sakti is the active creative force in the universe. Siva, the Absolute, is a more or less passive principle. Further, Sakti is as inseparable from Siva as fire's power to burn is from fire itself. Sakti, the Creative Power, contains in Its womb the universe, and therefore is the Divine Mother. All women are Her symbols. Kali is one of Her several forms. The meditation on Kali, the Creative Power, is the central discipline of the Tantra. While meditating, the aspirant at first regards himself as one with the Absolute and then thinks that out of that Impersonal Consciousness emerge two entities, namely, his own self and the living form of the Goddess. He then projects the Goddess into the tangible image before him and worships it as the Divine Mother.
0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You are absolutely right, and I don't see why, instead of reading interesting things, you should start doing boring exercises.
To learn a language one must read, read, read - and talk as
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her normal operations. In the ancient tradition of Hathayoga it has always been supposed that this conquest could be pushed so far even as to conquer to a great extent the force of gravitation. By various subsidiary but elaborate processes the Hathayogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the nervous system unclogged for those exercises of respiration which are his most important instruments. These are called pran.ayama, the control of the breath or vital power; for breathing is the chief physical functioning of the vital forces. Pranayama, for the Hathayogin, serves a double purpose. First, it completes the perfection of the body. The vitality is liberated from many of the ordinary necessities of physical Nature; robust health, prolonged youth, often an extraordinary longevity are attained.
On the other hand, Pranayama awakens the coiled-up serpent of the Pranic dynamism in the vital sheath and opens to the Yogin fields of consciousness, ranges of experience, abnormal faculties denied to the ordinary human life while it puissantly intensifies such normal powers and faculties as he already possesses.
0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And it is through the various yogic exercises of breathing,
meditation, japa and concentration that one puts oneself in
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
By studying much, by reflecting much, by doing intellectual exercises. For instance, state a general idea clearly, then state the
opposite idea, then look for the synthesis of both - that is, find
--
Just as there are tangible and concrete bodily exercises and disciplines for physical culture, is there not
something tangible and concrete for the progress of the
--
Just as there is a methodical progression of exercises
for mental and physical education, isn't there a similar
--
This should alternate in the course of the day with exercises
of mental silence in concentration.
0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
3) Repeat these exercises every day until you begin
to perceive a result.
0.12 - Letters to a Student, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Physical education means principally all the various exercises for the development and maintenance of the body.
Naturally, here we have combined the two. But this is mainly
0 1960-09-20, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its an almost physical discipline. Moreover, I have seen that the japa has an organizing effect on the subconscient, on the inconscient, on matter, on the bodys cellsit takes time, but by persistently repeating it, in the long run it has an effect. It is the same principle as doing daily exercises on the piano, for example. You keep mechanically repeating them, and in the end your hands are filled with consciousness it fills the body with consciousness.
I have a hard time making X understand that I have work to do when Im with him. He doesnt understand that one can work.
--
For years, from 1912 to 1914, I did endless exercises, all kinds of things, even pranayama8if it would only shut up! Really, if it would only be quiet! I was able to go out (that wasnt difficult), but inside it kept turning.
This lasted about half an hour. I quietly remained there I heard the noise of their conversation, but I wasnt listening. And then when I got up, I no longer knew anything, I no longer thought anything, I no longer had any mental constructioneverything was gone, absolutely gone, blank!as if I had just been born.
--
Pranayama: breathing exercises.
New Horizon Sugar Mills, which belongs to a disciple. The inauguration was on September 15.
0 1960-11-12, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Certainly, we CAN be heard. So far I never said anything. It even surprised me, for I had never paid it any attention, I was quite away from all that: its raining?so what, its raining, it happens. Its not raining?so what, its not raining, its the same thing. And then gradually people started mentioning that should it continue, they wouldnt be able to do their exercises, and they wouldnt be ready for December 2.1 Then I started receiving desperate lettersone person even told me he was doing his puja underwater! So I answered by saying, Take it as the Lords blessing but Im not sure he appreciated it! And then I learned that 200 houses [in the Ashram]200!are leaking. Naturally, each one is in a great hurryits terribly urgent! So perhaps I shall file a complaint and ask them what they mean by this!
Actually, if communications are interrupted, it can be troublesome Let us see.
0 1962-02-24, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Pranayama: breathing exercises.
Uddiyana-bandha and jalandhara-bandha.
0 1962-02-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It depends. Each thing has its method. But the primary method is to want it, to make a decision. Then you are given a description of all these senses and how they function thats a lengthy process. You choose one sense (or several), perhaps the one for which you have the greatest initial aptitude, and you decide. Then you follow the discipline. Its similar to doing exercises for developing muscles. You can even manage to create willpower in yourself.
For the subtler senses, the method is to create an exact image of what you want, make contact with the corresponding vibration and then concentrate and practice. For instance, you practice seeing through an object, or hearing through a sound2 or seeing at a distance. As an example, I was once bedridden for several months, which I found quite boring I wanted to see. I was staying in one room and beyond that room was another little room and after that a sort of bridge; in the middle of the garden the bridge changed into a stairway going down into a very spacious and beautiful studio built in the middle of the garden.3 I wanted to go see what was happening in the studio I was bored stiff in my room! So I stayed very still, shut my eyes and gradually, gradually sent out my consciousness. I did the exercise regularly, day after day, at a set hour. You begin with your imagination, and then it becomes a fact. After a while, I distinctly sensed my vision physically moving: I followed it and saw things going on downstairs I knew absolutely nothing about. I would verify it in the evening, asking, Did it happen like this? Was that how it was?
0 1962-05-29, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Theres a little American boy here (I dont know if his mother is completely helpless or just idolizes him, but anyway she lets him run wildshes always defending him, she wont allow anyone to scold or punish him), and this child wont take any classes or accept any teacher, but just runs around the school from one classroom to anothermaking noise, hitting people, calling the teacher nameslike a whirlwind; and then off he goes! And one day he went into the Playground; hes such a maniac that hes not allowed there, but he sneaked in, and there were some girls and women doing exercises on the groundhe started running around on their stomachs! (Laughter) It was a scandal.
Oh, what a circus! But thats the atmosphere.
0 1962-07-25, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Is it different for men? I dont know. Sri Aurobindos case was quite special, and apart from him I dont see any convincing example. But generally speaking, what is most developed in a man, along with the mind, is the physical consciousness; the vital is very impulsive, practically ungoverned. Thats my experience of the hundreds and hundreds of men I have met. Theres normally a physical strength built up through games and exercises, and side by side a more or less advanced, but primarily mental development, very mental. The vital is terribly impulsive and barely organized, except in artists, and even there. I lived among artists for ten years and found this ground to be mostly fallow. I mingled with all the great artists of the time, I was like a kid sister to them (it was at the turn of the century, with the Universal Exposition in 1900; and these were the leading artists of the epoch); so I was by far the youngest, much younger than any of themthey were all thirty, thirty-five, forty years old, while I was nineteen or twenty. Well I was much more advanced in their own fieldnot in what I was producing (I was a perfectly ordinary artist), but from the viewpoint of consciousness: observations, experiences, studies.
I am not sure, but it seems to me that the problem of consciousness ought to come first.
0 1962-07-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Psychology: thats abstract. What they want is: on such and such a date he went to this place, saw these people and did thisall the most external and banal sorts of things. Even yoga boils down to: he sat down and stayed there for so many hours, he had this vision, he tried out that method, he did asanas and breathing exercises. That, for them, is concrete. That and that alone. Psychology is thoroughly abstractthoroughly. Its unreal to them.
But Ive tried to be as concrete as possible! Like cutting up a rat on a dissecting table to see whats inside it.
0 1963-03-09, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was another occurrence (less striking), once in a room as long as this one and wider,5 the salon in my familys house. Some little friends had come and we were playing. I told them, Ill show you how one should dance. I went to a corner of the room to get the longest distance to another corner, and I told them, One single step in the middle. And I did it! (Mother laughs) I sprang (I didnt even feel I was jumping, it was like dancing, you know, like when they dance on point), landed on the tips of my toes, bounced up and reached the other corneryou cant do that alone, even champions cannot. The length of the jump went beyond records, because afterwards I asked here, when we started physical exercises at the Ashram, I asked what the longest jump wasmine was longer! And they take a run up, you see, they run and then jump. But I didnt run: I was standing in the corner, and hop! up I went (I said hop! to myself, soundlessly), and frrrt! I landed on the tips of my toes, bounced and landed the other sidequite evidently I was carried.
All this took place before the age of thirteen or fourteen (from eight to thirteen or fourteen). Many things of the kind, all of which seemed to me perfectly naturalit didnt feel as though I was doing something miraculous. Perfectly natural.
0 1963-06-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its true, people are generally built for the place where they are to live, but in my case, I felt comfortable only here. Up to the age of thirty, my whole childhood and youth, I always felt coldalways cold. And in winter Yet I went skating, did exercises, I led a very active life but cold, terribly cold! I felt as if I lacked the sun. But when I came here: Ah, at last! (Mother takes a breath) Now I am comfortable. The first year when I came here, bringing all that accumulated cold in my body, at the height of summer, in this season, I was going about in a woolen suit! A skirt, a blouse and a cloak. People would stare at me. I didnt even notice itit was my natural dress.
When I left again, I went by boat (people didnt travel by plane at the time), and when I came to the middle of the Mediterranean, I fell sicksick from the cold, in the Mediterranean! So you see, I was built for the work here, (laughing) it was foreseen!
0 1963-10-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its to show you that you have inner sensesone goes and sees, one wanders about and comes back. (Laughing) Its exercises!
Tamas: inertia, darkness.
0 1965-09-04, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(About a second operation that Satprem shouldsupposedlyundergo. Mother refuses and advises some exercises:)
I was in fact asking for you to cure me without any operations!
No, the body must be helped! It goes without saying that in the exercises and in the material aids and in everything I will put the Consciousness, but one must helpone must help the body. Its a necessary modesty.
Its the same thing with food. We are obliged to eat, of course, and thats not interesting, its not for pleasure, but (Mother speaks to her body:) Look here, be modest, indispensably modest: its necessary to eat and you must eat. And in addition, we must eat what we SHOULD eat, what helps the body the most. Its a story I have been telling myself for years, but its absolutely true. And when you start getting proud, you get a good smack on the face, that is to say, a pain or an accident: Thats what you get! Now be modest, you understand? Then it says, Yes, yes, Ive understood!
0 1966-03-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It may be good to remind you that we are here for a special work, a work not done anywhere else: we want to come into contact with the supreme consciousness, the universal consciousness, we want to receive it and manifest it. For that, we need a very solid base, and our base is our physical being, our body. We therefore need to prepare a solid, healthy, enduring body, skillful, agile and strong, so it may be ready for anything. There is no better way to prepare the body than physical exercises: sports, athletics, gymnastics and all other games are the best means to develop and streng then the body.
Therefore I invite you to participate in the competitions beginning today wholeheartedly, with all your energy and will.
0 1966-06-29, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It would be far easier if those things were written in large characters. Its a pity about my eyes. I waste a lot of time, quite a lot. I am forced to ask, or else to take a magnifying glass. What I used to do in three minutes takes me half an hour. Thats how it is. But to recover my sight (that would be possible, nothing is damaged, its only worn), I would have to spend a lot of time on it; it would take me a lot of time in exercises, concentrations. I dont have the time.
But the promptness of the consciousness when I used to see! I dont find it with other eyes. That was so convenient.
0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Or should we abolish exams? This proposal seems to me doubtful, for exercises and essays amount to the same thing.
Anyway, the problem is there, and to solve it truly we should understand why the children behave that way.
0 1968-01-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And I come with my work unfinished! The work remains to be done (Mother points to a bundle of letters) Now the nights begin at 11 P.M., no more lunch, of course rest is out of the question, and no more exercises, so And people and people and more people at least a quarter of whom go back unsatisfied, without my having seen them, because I dont have the time.
I think its because my whole life long, until the age of about forty, I was perhaps the most punctual person in the world: I was always right on the dotmaybe there was something proud which has got a good knock!
0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, thats right! But I am referring to the system all the way down, socialistic or communistic, which represents material needs. Basically, it corresponds to a sort of absence of government, because they dont have the power to govern others: they are forced to transfer their power to someone who exercises it, like a Lenin, for instance, because he was a brain. But all that all that has been tried out and has given proof of its incompetence. The only thing that could be competent is the Truth-Consciousness choosing instruments and expressing itself through a certain number of instruments, if one cant be found (just one isnt enough, either, that one would necessarily need to choose a whole collectivity). Those possessing this consciousness may belong to any class of society: its not a privilege arising from birth, but the result of personal effort and development. In fact, that would be an external sign, an evident sign of change on the political level: no question anymore of classes or categories or birth (all that is outdated), but those individualities that have reached a higher consciousness would have the right to govern, whatever class they belong toand no others.
That would be the true vision.
0 1969-05-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Two nights ago, I spent more than three hours with Sri Aurobindo, and I showed him all that was going to descend for Auroville. It was rather interesting. There were games, there was art, there was even cooking! But all that was very symbolic. I explained it to him as if on a table, in front of a large landscape; I explained the principle on whose basis physical exercises and games were going to be organized. It was very clear, very precise, I even did a demonstration, as if showing him on a very small scale: a representation on a very small scale of what was going to be done. I moved people, things (gesture as if on a chessboard). But it was very interesting, and he was interested: he gave kinds of broad laws of organization (I dont know how to explain).
There was art and it was lovely, it was fine. And how to make houses pleasant and beautiful, with what principle of construction. And cooking too, it was very amusing! There were the different manners of presenting a dish; take a fish, for instance, with the different ways of preparing it, and everyone came with his own invention. It went on for more than three hours (three hours of the night, thats huge). I woke up at 4 oclock with that (4 oclock, and I had gone back to bed at I oclock: I to 4 is three hours I can still calculate!). Very interesting.
--
No It was just there, it didnt seem foreign to the earth. It was a harmony A conscious harmony behind things: a conscious harmony behind physical exercises and games; a conscious harmony behind decoration and art; a conscious harmony behind food
I mean that all this looks poles apart from what is now on earth.
0 1969-07-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then its all a bit chaotic, but anyway I saw Sri Aurobindo. I saw an image of him in which he told me (he was speaking in French, by the way), Come, we need to do some physical exercises! And it was as if he were taking me along for a walk.
(Mother laughs)
--
But not in the least! He told me, Come, we need to do some physical exercises! And then it was as if he took me along for a walk.
Yes.
0 1971-02-10, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
An oculist's chart with letters of various sizes. Mother does regular reading exercises.
***
03.07 - Brahmacharya, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Modern education means storage of information, knowledge of thingsas much knowledge of as many things as it is possible for the brain to contain. The older ideal, however, was not so much knowledge, that is to say, packet of knowings, but capacity, first capacity in a general way, and then as its application, the capacity of knowledge. The problem was to locate, that is to say, find out the source of energy then master it, increase it, harness it and utilise it. The physico-vital energy is the most elementary and elemental energy that is nearest to us and most easily available. It is the basic energy; man starts his life with that, a child possesses it abundantly. The first problem is how to store it; evidently it is most liable to be thrown or frittered away. The first form of the discipline in the preparatory stage of early life is regularity in habits, methodical physical exercises; even a fixed routine sometimes helps much. Next comes self-control, continence, physical purity. This is Brahmacharya proper. It means the exercise of conscious will.
We do not speak of Brahmacharya in relation to a child. The discipline can be taken up only when the body and the consciousness have attained a certain degree of growth and development. A child grows in the full free play of its life movements: the care or attention of others should weigh upon it as lightly as possible, maintaining only an atmosphere of happy influence and protection. The transition from the stage of free play to conscious control is marked in Indian society by the ceremony of upanayana, the first approach or initiation: it is the beginning of the life of Brahmacharya.
04.03 - Consciousness as Energy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A live wirethrough which an electric current, say of several thousand volts, is passinglooks quite innocent, motionless, inactive, almost inert. The appearance, needless to say, is deceptive. Even so the still life of a Yogin. Action does not consist merely in mechanical motion visible to the eye: intra-atomic movements that are subtle, invisible, hard to detect even by the most sensitive instruments, possess a tremendous potency, even to unimaginable degrees. Likewise in man, the extent of muscular flexions does not give the measure or potential of his activity. One cannot say that the first-line infantryman who rushes and charges, shoots, bayonets, kills and is killed is more active and dynamic than the general who sits quiet behind in a cabin and merely sends out orders. Vivekananda wandered about the whole of India, crossed the seas, traversed continents, undertook whirlwind campaignstalking, debating, lecturing: it was a life superbly rich in muscular movements. By his side, Ramakrishna would appear quite tameinactive, introvert: fewer physical displacements or muscular exercises marked his life. And yet, ask anyone who is in touch with the inner life of these great souls, he will tell you, Vivekananda is only a spark from the mighty and concentrated Energy that Ramakrishna was.
What is this spiritual or Yogic Energy? Ordinary people, people with a modern mind, would concede at the most that there are two kinds of activity: (1) real activityphysical action, work, labour with muscle and nerve, and (2) passive activityactivity of mind and thought. According to the pragmatic standard especial, if not entire, importance is given the first category; the other category, sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, is held at a discount. The thoughtful people are philosophers at the most, they are ineffectual angels in this workaday world of ours. We need upon earth people of sterner stuff, dynamic people who are not thought-bound, but know how to apply and execute their ideas, whatever they may be. Lenin was great, not because he had revolutionary ideas, but because he gave a muscular frame to them. Such people alone are the pragmatic, dynamic, useful category of humanity. The others are, according to the more radical leftist view, merely parasitic, and according to a more generous liberal view, chiefly decorative elements in human society. Mind-energy can draw dream pictures, beautiful perhaps, but inane; it is only muscular energy that gives a living and material bodya local habitation and a nameto what otherwise would be airy nothing.
08.02 - Order and Discipline, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
You are sent to school, you are asked to do exercises (both mental and physical); do you think it is just to put you to trouble? No, it is because a surrounding is absolutely necessary where you can learn to form yourself. If you tried by yourself this work of individualisation, integral formation, all alone in one corner, you would be asked nothing till you have done it; but you are not likely to do it, not a single child would do it, he would not even know how to do it or where to begin. If a child is not taught how to live, he would not be able to live, he would not know how to do anything. The most elementary movements it is not able to do unless it is taught. Therefore if every one were to go through the whole experience, unaided, in the matter of forming his individuality, he would be dead long before he could begin to exist even. That is the utility of the experiences of others, accumulated through centuries, of those who have had the experience and who tell you, "If you want to go quick, and learn in a few years what needed centuries to learnwell, do this, do that, this way, that way, read, study, attend to your lessons at school, in the playground." Once you are on the way, you can find your own method if you are a genius. But in the beginning you must know from others how to stand on your legs and walk. It is not easy to go all by oneself. That is why one needs education.
II
08.26 - Faith and Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Meat-Eating Value of Religious exercises
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part EightFaith and Progress
--
Meat-Eating Value of Religious exercises
08.27 - Value of Religious Exercises, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:08.27 - Value of Religious exercises
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
--
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part EightValue of Religious exercises
Value of Religious exercises
What is the value of religious exercises (such as Japa etc.)?
These things, if they help you, are all right; if they do not, naturally they are of no use. The value is quite relative. It is worth only the effect it has on you or the measure of your belief in it. If it is an aid to your concentration, then, as I say, it is welcome. The ordinary consciousness takes to the thing through a kind of superstition; one thinks, "If I go to the temple or to the church once a week, for example, if I say my prayers regularly, something good will happen to me." It is a superstition spread all over the world, but it has no spiritual value.
08.28 - Prayer and Aspiration, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Value of Religious exercises Meditation and Wakefulness
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part EightPrayer and Aspiration
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Value of Religious exercises Meditation and Wakefulness
10.08 - Consciousness as Freedom, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In fact, education means precisely this instilling of the consciousness into the part that is sought to be educated. Usually the thing is done in a different way which is wrong, at least an inefficient way. By education we usually mean exercising, that is teaching some exercises mostly of memory on some subject in which one seeks education. It is more or less an exercise of mechanical repetition. Whether it is of the mind or of the body the procedure is the same. As the muscles of the body are sought to be streng thened and developed through repetitive exercises, the mental faculties too are put under a training that consists of similar repetitive exercises. To store the mind with as many kinds of information as possible, hammer all ingredients of knowledge into the brain cellslearning by rote as it is termed, this is what education normally means; but as I said, it is consciousness that is to be evoked in the mind and it is not done by mere mechanical exercises. Even the body does not reach its true perfection unless the exercises are attended with consciousness, awareness, a play of light into the movements of the body, into the limbs that participate in the play of the exercises. Naturally the vital does not need any exercise for its development, it is naturally exercised, much exercised. It has to be not exercised but exorcised, that is to say, purified and controlled. And that means the introduction of the pure light of consciousness into it.
I have laid stress on consciousness, but consciousness has three facets or steps. The first is simple consciousness, the next is self-consciousness and the last supra-consciousness. First you become conscious of a thing, next you become conscious that you are conscious of the thing, last something else is conscious in and through your consciousness.
1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
5. God-forms. See Magick pp. 378-9. Quite clear: quite adequate: no use at all without continual practice. No one can join with you --- off you go again! No, no, a thousand times no: this is the practice par excellence where you have to do it all yourself. The Vibration of God-names: that perhaps, I can at least test you in. But don't you dare come up for a test until you've been at it and hard for at least 100 exercises.
I think this is your trouble about being "left in the air." When I "present many new things" to you, the sting is in the tail the practice that vitalizes it. Doctrinal stuff is fine "Lazily, lazily, drowsily, drowsily, in the noo-on-dye shaun!" An ounce of your practice is worth a ton of my teaching. GET THAT. It's all your hatred of hard work:
1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
a man should appear to be. He takes a name, earns a title, exercises a function, he is this or that. In a
certain sense all this is real, yet in relation to the essential individuality of the person concerned it is only
10.14 - Night and Day, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The night is the background to the day or otherwise the day is the stage and the night the green room, that is to say, whatever is expressed in the day, all your activities physical or mental, are in a large part determined or coloured by your activities at night in sleep. The day represents your conscious activities, products of choice and the exercise of conscious will, but of the night we are wholly unconscious and we have no control over its hidden activities. Even so, it exercises a tremendous influence on the life of the day. The mood, the rhythm in the sleep-state colours, as I say, very much the mood and rhythm of the active life of the day. The contrary also is true. For the nature of the day-life has an influence also on the nature of the night that follows.
As the day-life is consciously controlled, so also the night-life has to be controlled. Otherwise half of our life goes to waste. As we seek to utilise the day to our benefit we must know in the same way how to utilise the night. Indeed the night and the day must work together in union for a common purpose. The Vedic Rishi says, "The Night and the Day, although they look different, are of one mind."
1.01 - How is Knowledge Of The Higher Worlds Attained?, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
with cognition. This is due to the fact that we are inclined to set cognition aside as a faculty by itself-one that stands in no relation to what otherwise occurs in the soul. In so thinking we do not bear in mind that it is the soul which exercises the faculty of cognition; and feelings are for the soul what food is for the body. If we give the body stones in place of bread, its activity will cease. It is the same with the soul. Veneration, homage, devotion are like nutriment making it healthy and strong, especially strong for the activity of cognition. Disrespect, antipathy, underestimation of what deserves recognition, all exert a paralyzing and withering effect on this faculty of cognition. For the spiritually experienced this fact is visible in the aura. A soul which harbors feelings of reverence and devotion produces a change in its aura. Certain spiritual colorings, as they may be called, yellow-red and brown-red in tone, vanish and are replaced by blue-red tints. Thereby the cognitional faculty is ripened; it receives intelligence of facts in its environment of which it had hitherto no idea. Reverence awakens in the soul a sympathetic
p. 14
1.01 - On knowledge of the soul, and how knowledge of the soul is the key to the knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
The heart has dominion and control through three channels. One is through visions, by which revelations are made to all men. But the kind of mysteries generally revealed to people in visions, are revealed to prophets and saints in the outward world. The second kind is through the dominion which the heart exercises over its own body, a quality, which is possessed by all men in general, though prophets and saints for the good of the community, possess the same power over other bodies than their own. The third source of dominiou of the heart is through knowledge. The mass of men obtain it by instruction and learning, but it is bestowed by God upon prophets and saints directly, without the mediums of learning and instruction. It is possible also for persons of pure minds to acquire a knowledge of some arts and sciences without instruction, and it is also possible that some persons should have all things opened up to them by the will of God. This kind of knowledge is called "infused and illuminated," as God says in his word : "we have illuminated him with our knowledge."1 These three specialities are all of them found in certain measure in some men, in others two of them are found, and in others, only one is found: but whenever the three are found in the same person, he belongs to the rank of prophets or of the greatest of the saints. In our Lord the prophet Mohammed Mustafa, these three specialities [30] existed in perfection. The Lord in bestowing these three properties upon certain individuals, designates them to exhort the nations and to be prophets of the people. To every man there is given a certain portion of each one of these peculiarities, to serve as a pattern.
Man cannot comprehend states of being which transcend his own nature. Hence none but the great God himself can comprehend God, as we have shown in our Commentary upon the "Names of God." So also the prophets cannot be comprehended by any but the prophets themselves. No person, in short, can understand any individual who belongs to a scale of rank above him. It is possible that there is a peculiarity in prophets, of which no pattern or model is found in other persons, and therefore, we are incapable of understanding them. If we knew not what a vision is, and an individual should say to us, that a man, at a moment when he can neither move, see or hear, can perceive events which are to occur at a future period, and yet might not be able to perceive the same while walking, listening or looking, we should not in any wise be able to persuade ourselves of the truth of it, as God says in his Holy word: "They treat as a lie that which they cannot comprehend with their knowledge."1 And you, do you not see that he who comes blind into the world, does not understand the pleasure which is derived from seeing? Let us not regard, therefore, as impossible all those states ascribed to the prophets which we cannot understand: for they are the accepted and praiseworthy servants of God.
1.01 - On renunciation of the world, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
Those who have really determined to serve Christ, with the help of spiritual fathers and their own self-knowledge will strive before all else to choose a place, and a way of life, and a habitation, and exercises suitable for them. For community life is not for all, on account of greed; and not for all are places of solitude, on account of anger. But each will consider what is most suited to his needs.
The whole monastic state consists of three specific kinds of establishment: either the retirement and solitude of a spiritual athlete, or living in silence with one or two others, or settling patiently in a community. Turn not to the right hand nor to the left,1 but follow the Kings highway.2 Of the three ways of life stated above, the second is suitable for many people, for it is said: Woe unto him who is alone when he falleth into despondency or lethargy or laziness or despair, and hath not another among men to lift him up. 3For where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them, said the Lord.4
1.01 - Sets down the first line and begins to treat of the imperfections of beginners., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
2. It must be known, then, that the soul, after it has been definitely converted to the service of God, is, as a rule, spiritually nurtured and caressed by God, even as is the tender child by its loving mother, who warms it with the heat of her bosom and nurtures it with sweet milk and soft and pleasant food, and carries it and caresses it in her arms; but, as the child grows bigger, the mother gradually ceases caressing it, and, hiding her tender love, puts bitter aloes upon her sweet breast, sets down the child from her arms and makes it walk upon its feet, so that it may lose the habits of a child and betake itself to more important and substantial occupations. The loving mother is like the grace of God, for, as soon as the soul is regenerated by its new warmth and fervour for the service of God, He treats it in the same way; He makes it to find spiritual milk, sweet and delectable, in all the things of God, without any labour of its own, and also great pleasure in spiritual exercises, for here God is giving to it the breast of His tender love, even as to a tender child.
3. Therefore, such a soul finds its delight in spending long periods perchance whole nightsin prayer; penances are its pleasures; fasts its joys; and its consolations are to make use of the sacraments and to occupy itself in Divine things.
In the which things spiritual persons (though taking part in them with great efficacy and persistence and using and treating them with great care) often find themselves, spiritually speaking, very weak and imperfect. For since they are moved to these things and to these spiritual exercises by the consolation and pleasure that they find in them, and since, too, they have not been prepared for them by the practice of earnest striving in the virtues, they have many faults and imperfections with respect to these spiritual actions of theirs; for, after all, any man's actions correspond to the habit of perfection attained by him. And, as these persons have not had the opportunity of acquiring the said habits of strength, they have necessarily to work like feebler children, feebly. In order that this may be seen more clearly, and likewise how much these beginners in the virtues lacks with respect to the works in which they so readily engage with the pleasure aforementioned, we shall describe it by reference to the seven capital sins, each in its turn, indicating some of the many imperfections which they have under each heading; wherein it will be clearly seen how like to children are these persons in all they do. And it will also be seen how many blessings the dark night of which we shall afterwards treat brings with it, since it cleanses the soul and purifies it from all these imperfections.
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In India, as in Persia, Mohammedan thought came to be enriched by the doctrine that God is immanent as well as transcendent, while to Mohammedan practice were added the moral disciplines and spiritual exercises, by means of which the soul is prepared for contemplation or the unitive knowledge of the Godhead. It is a significant historical fact that the poet-saint Kabir is claimed as a co-religionist both by Moslems and Hindus. The politics of those whose goal is beyond time are always pacific; it is the idolaters of past and future, of reactionary memory and Utopian dream, who do the persecuting and make the wars.
Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray.
1.01 - The First Steps, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The next step is Asana, posture. A series of exercises, physical and mental, is to be gone through every day, until certain higher states are reached. Therefore it is quite necessary that we should find a posture in which we can remain long. That posture which is the easiest for one should be the one chosen. For thinking, a certain posture may be very easy for one man, while to another it may be very difficult. We will find later on that during the study of these psychological matters a good deal of activity goes on in the body. Nerve currents will have to be displaced and given a new channel. New sorts of vibrations will begin, the whole constitution will be remodelled as it were. But the main part of the activity will lie along the spinal column, so that the one thing necessary for the posture is to hold the spinal column free, sitting erect, holding the three parts the chest, neck, and head in a straight line. Let the whole weight of the body be supported by the ribs, and then you have an easy natural postures with the spine straight. You will easily see that you cannot think very high thoughts with the chest in. This portion of the Yoga is a little similar to the Hatha-Yoga which deals entirely with the physical body, its aim being to make the physical body very strong. We have nothing to do with it here, because its practices are very difficult, and cannot be learned in a day, and, after all, do not lead to much spiritual growth. Many of these practices you will find in Delsarte and other teachers, such as placing the body in different postures, but the object in these is physical, not psychological. There is not one muscle in the body over which a man cannot establish a perfect control. The heart can be made to stop or go on at his bidding, and each part of the organism can be similarly controlled.
The result of this branch of Yoga is to make men live long; health is the chief idea, the one goal of the Hatha-Yogi. He is determined not to fall sick, and he never does. He lives long; a hundred years is nothing to him; he is quite young and fresh when he is 150, without one hair turned grey. But that is all. A banyan tree lives sometimes 5000 years, but it is a banyan tree and nothing more. So, if a man lives long, he is only a healthy animal. One or two ordinary lessons of the Hatha-Yogis are very useful. For instance, some of you will find it a good thing for headaches to drink cold water through the nose as soon as you get up in the morning; the whole day your brain will be nice and cool, and you will never catch cold. It is very easy to do; put your nose into the water, draw it up through the nostrils and make a pump action in the throat.
1.01 - The Science of Living, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Many other exercises of the same kind can be undertaken; some have a beneficial effect on the character and
so possess a double advantage: that of educating the mind and that of establishing control over the feelings and
10.28 - Love and Love, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Of course, there was always in the ancient days also, in some disciplines or others, an aspiration, an urge to immortalise the body, but the means they adopted, the instruments they chose for the operation were indirect and secondary. It was either through the force of a luminous mind influencing the body or through the pressure of concentrated vital force making the body an obedient and docile instrument. The former was the process followed by the Vaishnavas who envisaged a luminous body, the second was the aim of the Tantriks who sought to rejuvenate the body, possess it youthful and vigorous indefinitely. The Hatha yogis also in their turn through physico-vital exercises attempted to acquire a new body changing the modalities of the old. The ancient alchemists tried more material means, the use of alchemic substances for cleansing the body making it free from disease and, if possible, death. But the secret power lies in the body itself, that is, in the very self of the body, not anywhere else. The hidden consciousness lodged in the cell, the material cell, that is the key to the problem, that secret consciousness and its energy asleep in the cell, has to be awakened and brought into play. When the physical cell itself awakes and declares its purpose, the thing is done.
This secret consciousness-energy appearing as a material form is also intrinsically the delight of existence. Its other name is Divine Grace and Love.
1.02 - Of certain spiritual imperfections which beginners have with respect to the habit of pride., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
AS these beginners feel themselves to be very fervent and diligent in spiritual things and devout exercises, from this prosperity (although it is true that holy things of their own nature cause humility) there often comes to them, through their imperfections, a certain kind of secret pride, whence they come to have some degree of satisfaction with their works and with themselves. And hence there comes to them likewise a certain desire, which is somewhat vain, and at times very vain, to speak of spiritual things in the presence of others, and sometimes even to teach such things rather than to learn them. They condemn others in their heart when they see that they have not the kind of devotion which they themselves desire; and sometimes they even say this in words, herein resembling the Pharisee, who boasted of himself, praising God for his own good works and despising the publican.21
2. In these persons the devil often increases the fervour that they have and the desire to perform these and other works more frequently, so that their pride and presumption may grow greater. For the devil knows quite well that all these works and virtues which they perform are not only valueless to them, but even become vices in them. And such a degree of evil are some of these persons wont to reach that they would have none appear good save themselves; and thus, in deed and word, whenever the opportunity occurs, they condemn them and slander them, beholding the mote in their brother's eye and not considering the beam which is in their own;22 they strain at another's gnat and themselves swallow a camel.23
1.02 - On the Knowledge of God., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
Know, therefore, that man from his own existence knows the existence of a Creator; from his own attributes, he knows the attributes of his maker; from the control which he has over his own kingdom, he knows the control that God exercises over all the world. The reason of this is, that when a man looks at himself, beginning at the time when there was no trace or notion of his existence, and contemplates his creation with attention, he sees that he had his origin from a drop of water. He had neither mind nor understanding: and neither fat, flesh nor bones. Afterwards by divine operation and sovereign power, most strange and wonderful internal changes took place, and strong organs, passions, affections, and agreeable qualities rose up all adorned with beauty. When man comes to look upon his organs and members, whether upon the external, as the hand, the foot, the eye, the tongue and the mouth, or upon the internal organs, as the liver, the stomach and the spleen, he sees that each is the result of a special wisdom, that each one has been created for some peculiar ue, and that each one is in its place and perfect. After a man has observed these things, he knows that the Creator has power to do what he pleases with all things, that his knowledge includes and embraces in perfection whatever is to be known of creatures [43] either externally or internally, and that his power and wisdom pervade every organ and particle.
Beloved, in proportion as a man analyzes the nature of his body and the variety of uses of its several members, his reverence and love for its Creator and Maker will increase. Let a man observe, for example, that his hands are made like columns and separated from the body, to serve as an instrument to seize, or take hold of, or to defend it from an enemy. At the extremity of the hands are five fingers, four of which are in a row, and some long and some short, SO that when they take hold of anything, they may come equally together in the palm of the hand. The thumb, which is opposite to the four fingers, is shorter than any of them and stronger, that it may be a help to the whole and render them capable of retaining and grasping. The four fingers have three joints each, and the thumb has but two, that when contracted they may become like the bowl of a spoon or ladle, and that when open they may become like a plate, and so discharge an infinity of services. The front teeth were formed sharp, to cut and separate the food : the side teeth were formed broad to mash and grind the food. The tongue was formed like a spoon to throw the food into the throat. There is, also, under the tongue, an organ by which water is poured out, and the food is made of the consistence of dough, that it may be more easily swallowed and digested. All the organs, in short, have been devised with the best arrangement and form for use, and each one of them is punctual day and night in discharging its function. Think not, that they are lazy or sleeping. If the minds of the intelligent, the science of the learned, and the wisdom of the sage had been united and had been employed since the beginning of the world, in reflection and contrivance, they could not have discovered anything more excellent than the present arrangement, [44] nor any forms more useful and beautiful. If the eye had been attached to the top of the head, or the ear to the nape of the neck, or the mouth to the back of the body, or if three fingers had been given instead of four, it is plain to a person of intelligence that the existing advantages would not have been secured, and the present beauty of form and appearance would have been imperfect.
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And now, student of the divine mysteries, that you have in general understood, as far as your mind can reach, the being and attributes of God, by having your own soul as an example, it is important that you should become acquainted with the influence of the word, government and sovereignty of God in the world. This is called knowledge of operation. You ought to understand, also, as far as reason can go, the government that he exercises over the body, so that you may comprehend in what way creatures obey the word and the will of God, in what way the angels by his decree convey their ministrations from heaven to earth, in what way the movements of the heavens and the revolutions of the constellations are effected, and what is the key to the method by which the orders of dæmons are effected. But unless you know in what way you exercise authority over your body, what probability is there that you can understand how God exercises control over all things.
"Know thyself, and thou shalt know thy Lord." Observe then that when you desire to write upon paper the phrase, In the name of God, there arises first of all an inclination and a decision in the heart to write it. Next in order, that inclination and decision by means of the animal spirit is carried to the brain. When that decision has reached the brain then the image of the phrase, In the name of God is formed in the faculty of imagination in the brain. Afterwards the image reaches a nerve resembling a white thread, and descends by means of it to the ends of the fingers. Finally by means of the senses the fingers write the phrase In the name of God, in the form in which by the will of the heart, it exists in the treasury of the imagination. Again, also, when the will of God is to anything, a token of it rises and appears in [48] the empyreal heaven. And there is an essence called both the Spirit of Power, and the Holy Spirit, by means of which it arrives at the throne in the heavens. As the phrase, In the name of God, appears in the treasury of the imagination, so the image of the thing dependent on the will of God appears upon the Preserved Tablet. The angels appointed to serve in the empyrean and at the throne, cause it to descend to the inferior world, and by means of the periods and hours of the constellations, it is made to appear through the four elementary qualities - heat, cold, moisture and dryness. As the phrase In the name of God is written down by first dipping the pen in the ink, so the thing which God wills, comes to light by mixing heat and cold with water and earth. As paper is so adapted to writing as to preserve the forms which are written upon it, so dryness and moisture are recipient of those other forms and preserve the images that are produced. If moisture did not exist, forms and images could not be preserved. In the same manner as by the will of the heart and by the method above mentioned, the image In the name of God, which is in the treasury of the imagination is painted with the pen upon paper, so also the will of God, which is an image produced upon the Preserved Tablet in the empyrean, is produced and made visible in the material world, by means of the angels, the constellations and the elemental qualities of water and earth.
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O seeker after the divine secrets, now that you have learned that within the body of man, there is a sovereign who possesses and controls it, it is time that you should learn the meaning of the sentences, "Glory to God," "God be praised," "There is no God but God," and "God is the greatest." These sentences are very current on the tongues of men, but they do not know the signification of them. [54] Although these four sentences are in appearance very short, yet there are no others that embrace so much of the knowledge of God. Since from the consideration of the freedom and independence of your own spirit, you have learned the freedom and independence of God, you have in consequence learned the meaning and import of the sentence, "Glory to God." Seeing that from the sovereignty which you exercise over your own spirit, you have learned the sovereignty which God exercises, and know that all causes and instruments are subject to his power, and that all outward and inward mercies, which are incalculable and innumerable, are from him, you therefore know the meaning and import of the phrase, "God be praised." As you know also that all things are of his creation, that his government extends over all things, and that without his will no motion or change can affect any thing, you see the meaning of the words, "There is no God but God. " Listen now to the explanation of the sentence, "God is the greatest."
Do not suppose that, from all that has hitherto been said, you can understand the greatness of God. His greatness and power are above and beyond the comprehension of the mind and wisdom of man. Moreover the phrase "God is the greatest" does not mean that God is larger than other things : it is a sin to indulge in such a belief. It is as much as to say, that there are large things, but that God is larger than they are. The holy meaning of the phrase "God is the greatest" is that God is so great, that he cannot be known or comprehended by the mind or understanding, or be compared with any thing,-that the knowledge of God cannot be attained by means of the knowledge which a man has of his own soul (which God forbid!), that a knowledge of his attributes cannot be attained from a knowledge of the attributes of man, and that his independence and holiness cannot be compared with the independence and holiness of man in any form whatever. God [55] forbid that His sovereignty and government should be compared and measured ! The doctors of the law have been allowed however, in the way of illustration to explain in a certain degree the knowledge, power, excellence and sovereignty of God to man, who is frail and weak in understanding.
1.02 - Prana, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Prnyma is not, as many think, something about breath; breath indeed has very little to do with it, if anything. Breathing is only one of the many exercises through which we get to the real Pranayama. Pranayama means the control of Prna. According to the philosophers of India, the whole universe is composed of two materials, one of which they call ksha. It is the omnipresent, all-penetrating existence. Everything that has form, everything that is the result of combination, is evolved out of this Akasha. It is the Akasha that becomes the air, that becomes the liquids, that becomes the solids; it is the Akasha that becomes the sun, the earth, the moon, the stars, the comets; it is the Akasha that becomes the human body, the animal body, the plants, every form that we see, everything that can be sensed, everything that exists. It cannot be perceived; it is so subtle that it is beyond all ordinary perception; it can only be seen when it has become gross, has taken form. At the beginning of creation there is only this Akasha. At the end of the cycle the solids, the liquids, and the gases all melt into the Akasha again, and the next creation similarly proceeds out of this Akasha.
By what power is this Akasha manufactured into this universe? By the power of Prana. Just as Akasha is the infinite, omnipresent material of this universe, so is this Prana the infinite, omnipresent manifesting power of this universe. At the beginning and at the end of a cycle everything becomes Akasha, and all the forces that are in the universe resolve back into the Prana; in the next cycle, out of this Prana is evolved everything that we call energy, everything that we call force. It is the Prana that is manifesting as motion; it is the Prana that is manifesting as gravitation, as magnetism. It is the Prana that is manifesting as the actions of the body, as the nerve currents, as thought force. From thought down to the lowest force, everything is but the manifestation of Prana. The sum total of all forces in the universe, mental or physical, when resolved back to their original state, is called Prana. "When there was neither aught nor naught, when darkness was covering darkness, what existed then? That Akasha existed without motion." The physical motion of the Prana was stopped, but it existed all the same.
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How to control the Prana is the one idea of Pranayama. All the trainings and exercises in this regard are for that one end. Each man must begin where he stands, must learn how to control the things that are nearest to him. This body is very near to us, nearer than anything in the external universe, and this mind is the nearest of all. The Prana which is working this mind and body is the nearest to us of all the Prana in this universe. This little wave of the Prana which represents our own energies, mental and physical, is the nearest to us of all the waves of the infinite ocean of Prana. If we can succeed in controlling that little wave, then alone we can hope to control the whole of Prana. The Yogi who has done this gains perfection; no longer is he under any power. He becomes almost almighty, almost all-knowing. We see sects in every country who have attempted this control of Prana. In this country there are Mind-healers, Faith-healers, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, Hypnotists, etc., and if we examine these different bodies, we shall find at the back of each this control of the Prana, whether they know it or not. If you boil all their theories down, the residuum will be that. It is the one and the same force they are manipulating, only unknowingly. They have stumbled on the discovery of a force and are using it unconsciously without knowing its nature, but it is the same as the Yogi uses, and which comes from Prana.
The Prana is the vital force in every being. Thought is the finest and highest action of Prana. Thought, again, as we see, is not all. There is also what we call instinct or unconscious thought, the lowest plane of action. If a mosquito stings us, our hand will strike it automatically, instinctively. This is one expression of thought. All reflex actions of the body belong to this plane of thought. There is again the other plane of thought, the conscious. I reason, I judge, I think, I see the pros and cons of certain things, yet that is not all. We know that reason is limited. Reason can go only to a certain extent, beyond that it cannot reach. The circle within which it runs is very very limited indeed. Yet at the same time, we find facts rush into this circle. Like the coming of comets certain things come into this circle; it is certain they come from outside the limit, although our reason cannot go beyond. The causes of the phenomena intruding themselves in this small limit are outside of this limit. The mind can exist on a still higher plane, the superconscious. When the mind has attained to that state, which is called Samdhi perfect concentration, superconsciousness it goes beyond the limits of reason, and comes face to face with facts which no instinct or reason can ever know. All manipulations of the subtle forces of the body, the different manifestations of Prana, if trained, give a push to the mind, help it to go up higher, and become superconscious, from where it acts.
1.02 - SADHANA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
cannot practice the breathing and other exercises. The seat
being firm means that you do not feel the body at all; then
1.02 - The Magic Circle, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The trained magician, having a thorough comm and of the practical exercises of the first tarot-card, as explained in my first work "Initiation into Hermetics" , has learned during one of the steps of that book how to become fully conscious of the spirit and how to act consciously as a spirit. It is not difficult for him to imagine that not he, but the Divine Spirit in all its high aspects is actually drawing the magic circle he wishes to have. The magician has thus learned also that in the world of the Invisible it is not the same although two persons might physically be doing the same, for a sorcerer, who does not possess the necessary maturity, will never be able to draw a true magic circle.
The magician who is also acquainted with Quabbalah can draw another snake-like circle within the inner circle and divide it into 72 fields, giving each of these fields the name of a genius. These names of genii, together with their analogies, must be drawn magically by pronouncing them correctly. If working with a circle embroidered into a piece of cloth, the names inserted into the various fields must either be in Latin or in Hebrew. I shall give exact details about the genii and their analogies, use and effect in my next work called "The Key to the True Quabbalah". An embroidered circle has the advantage that it can easily be laid out and folded -together again without having to be drawn and charged anew each time it is to be used. The snake presented in the centre is not only the copy of an inner circle, but, above that, it is the symbol of wisdom. Besides this, other meanings may be attributed to this snake-symbol, for example the snake's strength, the power of imagination, etc. It is not possible to give a full description of all this, for this would go far beyond the aim of this book.
1.02 - The Recovery, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
While waiting for the Mother's arrival, he would practise various bending exercises for the knee which had been improvised by Dr. Manilal. He did them sitting on the edge of the bed. He actively obeyed whatever was demanded of him. One of the exercises was hanging of the leg which later became a common joke amongst us.
It was not an unreasonable fear that the slightest inattention in walking on his part might upset his balance and cause a fall. He had to walk with his head bent, looking at the ground, and had to be very careful, particularly at turnings, by checking his speed. We were posted at these turnings to prevent any possibility of a mishap. His steps were now not like those of Zeus on Mount Olympus! They had naturally lost that resounding force we were accustomed to hear, when he used to pace up and down above, during our meditation in the hall below. He told us that it was during those walks that he used to bring down the highest Force. As the walking progressed with of his former strength, we expected a return to his God-like steps.
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Another imposition placed on him by the doctor was that in order to tone up his body he had to do some free-hand exercises. Every morning while still in bed, he would, without fail, practise them vigorously the flexion and extension of his arms and the raising and lowering of his legs. Sometimes the arms overcome by sleep would sink into feeble, mechanical movements and then would wake up with a start to resume their duty! The summer heat or an uncomfortable position in bed could not persuade him to break the rule. When I entered the room for my morning work, this assiduous application would greet my eyes. His leg would rise and fall like a hammer, and I could not contain my feeling of amusement and admiration at this hard Tapasya to achieve the supramental perfection of the body. Perhaps this semi-blasphemy has come upon me like a boomerang, now making me undergo physical Tapasya even at this age! It cannot be denied, anyway, that Sri Aurobindo was not meant for such hard and rough gymnastics. There are some things which cannot be conceived of, for instance Tagore or Dilip courting jail during the Non-cooperation movement.
Manilal's prescription did some good all the same; for the soft and mellow frame got a firm nervous tone and the muscles developed fine contours, to his great satisfaction. Perfection is the supramental key-word. Any imperfection, however slight, was foreign to Sri Aurobindo's nature. I give a minor example: one day, while talking about snoring, one of us was tactless enough to tell him that he too had the habit. It must have been an awkward side-effect of the accident due to a malposition of the body. But it came to him as a great surprise. And I was astonished to mark that from the very next day the physiological aberration stopped for good! Even while correcting our poems, he would always do it perfectly. If he was pressed for time, he would ask the poem back and make it flawless. Any perfection achieved in any field by him was a cosmic conquest. "One man's perfection still can save the world."
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Thanks to all these arduous and assiduous exercises, the limb gained in solid strength, and the body its requisite tone. He began now to read the daily papers himself. One day as I was passing a rapid glance over the morning paper, assuming that he was not yet ready, he enquired, "The paper hasn't come?" I promptly handed it over to him. "Have you digested the news?" he asked. I smiled abashed! Quiet casual humour, characteristic of Sri Aurobindo.
We reached the month of April. Sri Aurobindo's rapid progress became widely known and people began to clamour for a Darshan; they had already missed two of them, and for the next one in August it would be too painfully long to wait. The Mother also began to plead on behalf of the bhaktas, though not much pleading was needed. For we know that when the Mother's heart had melted, the Father's would not take long to do so. Besides, the Mother probably wanted Sri Aurobindo to take up his regular activities as soon as possible. Even for him she would not make any exception. Her dynamic nature cannot brook too long an ease. April 24th was then fixed for the Darshan, as it was the day of the Mother's final arrival in Pondicherry. Thenceforth the April Darshan became a permanent feature. The date well suited the professors and students, since it fell within the span of the summer holidays. But the darshan time had to be changed from the morning to the afternoon and it would be a darshan in the true sense of the word. For the devotees would simply come and stand for a brief while before the Mother and the Master, have their darshan and quietly leave. Sri Aurobindo tersely remarked, "No more of that long seven-hour darshan!" Formerly the Darshan was observed with a great ceremonial pomp. Starting at about 7.30 a.m., it ran with one breathing interval, up to 3 p.m. The devotees offered their garlands and flowers, did two, even three or four pranams to the Mother and the Master who remained glued to one place throughout the ordeal, and endured another martyrdom under this excessive display of bhakti even as Raman Maharshi suffered from the "plague of prasads". Now, all that was cut down at one stroke by the force of external circumstances, and all expression transformed into a quiet inner adoration which is a characteristic of this Yoga. Sri Aurobindo's accident made the ceremonial Darshan a thing of past history.
1.02 - The Stages of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
THE information given in the following chapters constitutes steps in an esoteric training, the name and character of which will be understood by all who apply this information in the right way. It refers to the three stages through which the training of the spiritual life leads to a certain degree of initiation. But only so much will here be explained as can be publicly imparted. These are merely indications extracted from a still deeper and more intimate doctrine. In esoteric training itself a quite definite course of instruction is followed. Certain exercises enable the soul to attain to a conscious intercourse with the spiritual world. These exercises bear about the same relation to what will be imparted in the following pages, as the instruction given in
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unite his own feeling with the pleasure or pain of which the sound tells him. He must get beyond the point of caring whether, for him, the sound is pleasant or unpleasant, agreeable or disagreeable, and his soul must be filled with whatever is occurring in the being from which the sound proceeds. Through such exercises, if systematically and deliberately performed, the student will develop within himself the faculty of intermingling, as it were, with the being from which the sound proceeds. A person sensitive to music will find it easier than one who is unmusical to cultivate his inner life in this way; but no one should suppose that a mere sense for music can take the place of this inner activity. The student must learn to feel in this way in the face of the whole of nature. This implants a new faculty in his world of thought and feeling. Through her resounding tones, the whole of nature begins to whisper her secrets to the student. What was hitherto merely incomprehensible noise to his soul becomes by this means a coherent language of nature. And whereas hitherto he only heard sound from the so-called inanimate objects, he now is aware of a new language of the soul. Should he advance further
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the soul of the other. Through continued exercise of this kind, sound becomes the right medium for the perception of soul and spirit. Of course it implies the very strictest self-discipline, but the latter leads to a high goal. When these exercises are practiced in connection with the other already given, dealing with the sounds of nature, the soul develops a new sense of hearing. She is now able to perceive manifestations from the spiritual world which do not find their expression in sounds perceptible to the physical ear. The perception of the "inner word" awakens. Gradually truths reveal themselves to the student from the spiritual world. He hears speech uttered to him in a spiritual way. Only to those who, by selfless listening, train themselves to be really receptive from within, in stillness, unmoved by personal opinion or feeling only to such can the higher beings speak of whom spiritual science tells. As long as one hurls any personal opinion or feeling against the speaker to whom one must listen, the beings of the spiritual world remain silent.
All higher truths are attained through such inwardly instilled speech, and what we hear
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during the elementary exercises on enlightenment, the student must take care always to enlarge his sympathy for the animal and the human worlds, and his sense for the beauty of nature. Failing this care, such exercises would continually blunt that feeling and that sense; the heart would become hardened, and the senses blunted, and that could only lead to perilous results.
How enlightenment proceeds if the student rises, in the sense of the foregoing exercises, from the stone, the plant, and the animal, up to man, and how, after enlightenment, under all circumstances the union of the soul with the spiritual world is effected, leading to initiation-with these things the following chapters will deal, in as far as they can and may do so.
In our time the path to spiritual science is sought by many. It is sought in many ways, and many dangerous and even despicable practices are attempted. It is for this reason that they who claim to know something of the truth in these matters place before others the possibility of learning something of esoteric training. Only so much is here imparted as accords with this possibility. It is necessary that something of the truth
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should become known, in order to prevent error causing great harm. No harm can come to anyone following the way here described, so long as he does not force matters. Only, one thing should be noted: no student should spend more time and strength upon these exercises than he can spare with due regard to his station in life and to his duties; nor should he change anything, for the time being, in the external conditions of his life through taking this path. Without patience no genuine results can be attained. After doing an exercise for a few minutes, the student must be able to stop and continue quietly his daily work, and no thought of these exercises should mingle with the day's work. No one is of use as an esoteric student or will ever attain results of real value who has not learned to wait in the highest and best sense of the word.
The Control of Thoughts and Feelings
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It is not surprising that all this appears to many as illusion. "What is the use of such visions," they ask, "and such hallucinations?" And many will thus fall away and abandon the path. But this is precisely the important point: not to confuse spiritual reality with imagination at this difficult stage of human evolution, and furthermore, to have the courage to press onward and not become timorous and faint-hearted. On the other hand, however, the necessity must be emphasized of maintaining unimpaired and of perpetually cultivating that healthy sound sense which distinguishes truth from illusion. Fully conscious self-control must never be lost during all these exercises, and they must be accompanied by the same sane, sound thinking which is applied to the details of every-day life. To lapse into reveries would be fatal. The intellectual clarity, not to say the sobriety of thought, must never for a moment be dulled. The greatest mistake would be made if the student's mental balance
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were disturbed through such exercises, if he were hampered in judging the matters of his daily life as sanely and as soundly as before. He should examine himself again and again to find out if he has remained unaltered in relation to the circumstances among which he lives, or whether he may perhaps have become unbalanced. Above all, strict care must be taken not to drift at random into vague reveries, or to experiment with all kinds of exercises. The trains of thought here indicated have been tested and practiced in esoteric training since the earliest times, and only such are given in these pages. Anyone attempting to use others devised by himself, or of which he may have heard or read at one place or another, will inevitably go astray and find himself on the path of boundless chimera.
As a further exercise to succeed the one just described, the following may be taken: Let the student place before him a plant which has attained the stage of full development. Now let him fill his mind with the thought that the time will come when this plant will wither and die. "Nothing will be left of what I now see before me. But this plant will have developed seeds which, in their turn,
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Once the student has found the beginnings of spiritual vision by means of such exercises, he may proceed to the contemplation of man himself. Simple phenomena of human life must first be chosen. But before making any attempt in this direction it is imperative for the student to strive for the absolute purity of his moral character. He must banish all through of ever using knowledge gained in this way for his own personal benefit. He must be convinced that he would never, under any circumstances, avail himself in an evil sense of any power he may gain over his fellow-creatures. For this reason, all who seek to discover through personal vision the secrets in
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higher stages of knowledge and power is beset with obstacles. A firearm should not be used until sufficient experience has been gained to avoid disaster, caused by its use. A person initiated today without further ado would lack the experience which he will gain during his future incarnations before he can attain to higher knowledge in the normal course of his development. At the portal of initiation, therefore, this experience must be supplied in some other way. Thus the first instructions given to the candidate for initiation serve as a substitute for these future experiences. These are the so-called trials, which he has to undergo, and which constitute a normal course of inner development resulting from due application to such exercises as are described in the preceding chapters.
These trials are often discussed in books, but it is only natural that such discussions should as a rule give quite false impressions of their nature; for without passing through preparation and enlightenment no one can know anything of these tests and appropriately describe them.
1.032 - Our Concept of God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
vara praidhnt v (I.23), is a sutra of Sage Patanjali. One of the methods of controlling the mind is surrender to God. According to many, it is perhaps the principal method of controlling the mind. This is a most positive approach, of the many that can be thought of. When our mind is absorbed in love for something 'absorbed' is the word, completely occupied with the thought of a particular thing there is no chance for the mind to think of anything else. The modifications of the mind, the vrittis in respect of objects, should cease spontaneously when they are all focused in the direction of love of God. There is no need for any struggle in the form of breathing exercises or any type of hardship in the control of the mind or its vrittis, if it is absorbed in a love which is all-consuming.
The extent of our love of God, the intensity of our feeling for God, will depend upon our idea of God, our concept of God. There are various concepts of the Creator, of God, the Absolute, etc., according to the various philosophical theories, doctrines, and religious traditions. One of the primitive forms of conceiving God is that He is the Creator of the world. We have a childish idea of a creator. A creator is one who makes things, and God is someone who has made this world. "God made this world" is an old saying which we often repeat. God made the world and, therefore, God is the Creator of the world. God is the Father of the world and, therefore, all His children should love Him as the Supreme Parent. The idea of creatorship that is in our minds is the conditioning factor of our love towards this Creator. We have seen in this world that if someone makes something, he is the efficient or sometimes the instrumental cause of that particular thing that he has made, and the thing that he has made is an effect that is produced by him, standing outside him. God can thus be regarded as extra-cosmic, which is the usual way in which we conceive God.
1.03 - Some Practical Aspects, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
mania for imparting information, and the making of distinctions in human beings according to the outward characteristics of rank, sex, race, and so forth. In our time it is difficult for people to understand how the combating of such qualities can have anything to do with the heightening of the faculty of cognition. But every spiritual scientist knows that much more depends upon such matters than upon the increase of intelligence and employment of artificial exercises. Especially can misunderstanding arise if we believe that we must become foolhardy in order to be fearless; that we must close our eyes to the differences between people, because we must combat the prejudices of rank, race, and so forth. Rather is it true that a correct estimate of all things is to be attained only when we are no longer entangled in prejudice. Even in the ordinary sense it is true that the fear of some phenomenon prevents us from estimating it rightly; that a racial prejudice prevents us from seeing into a man's soul. It is this ordinary sense that the student must develop in all its delicacy and subtlety.
Every word spoken without having been thoroughly purged in thought is a stone thrown in
1.03 - The End of the Intellect, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The day came, however, when Sri Aurobindo had had enough of these intellectual exercises. He probably realized that one can go on amassing knowledge indefinitely, reading and learning languages,
even learning all the languages in the world and reading all the books in the world, and yet not progress at all. For the mind does not truly know, even though it may appear to it seeks to grind. Its need of knowledge is primarily a need for something to grind. If by chance the machine were to come to a stop because knowledge had been obtained, it would soon rise up in revolt and find something new to grind, just for the sake of grinding and grinding; such is its function.
1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Let us then begin from the very break of day. The sun's rays came in by the eastern window; he was awake and the exercises started in bed, prescribed by Manilal. By 6.30 a.m. he sat up to receive the Mother who on her way to the Balcony Darshan visited him to have his darshan. Sri Aurobindo gave us definite instructions to wake him up before the Mother's arrival. On the other hand, the Mother wanted us not to disturb his sleep. So at times we found ourselves in a quandary. Champaklal's devotional nature would not interrupt his sweet nap after the exercises, while I, when alone, would try by all sorts of devices to wake him up. Sometimes he himself would wake up only to learn that the Mother had come and gone! Then she would come back after the darshan and begin her day with his blessings, just as we did after her darshan. This was followed by his reading The Hindu. Between 9.00 a.m. and 10.00 a.m. the Mother came to comb his hair, apply a lotion and plait it. Most often she finished some business during this period. When a sadhak translated the Mother's Prayers and Meditations into English and wanted her approval, she had it read out before Sri Aurobindo and both of them made the necessary changes. She sometimes talked of private matters, and when her voice sank low, we took the hint and withdrew discreetly. She believed more in subtle methods than in open expressions. The gesture, the look, the smile, the fugitive glance, the silence, a thousand are her ways of communication to the soul! After the Mother had left, there started the routine of washing the face and mouth. Here a small detail calls for mention by its unusualness. When he had finished using Neem paste for his teeth and the mouth-wash (Vademecum), he massaged his gums with a little bit of Oriental Balm.
After this, till 3 or 4 p.m. Sri Aurobindo was all alone. Then his first meal would come; in between he sometimes took a glass of plain water. Now, what could he be doing at this time wrapped in a most mysterious silence? None except the Mother could throw any precise light on it. We were only told that he had a special work to do and must be left alone unless, of course, some very urgent business needed his attention. All that was visible to our naked eye was that he sat silently in his bed, afterwards in the capacious armchair, with his eyes wide open just as any other person would. Only he passed hours and hours thus, changing his position at times and making himself comfortable; the yes moving a little, and though usually gazing at the wall in front, never fixed trak-like at any particular point. Sometimes the face would beam with a bright mile without any apparent reason, much to our amusement, as a child smiles in sleep. Only it was a waking sleep, for as we passed across the room, there was a dim recognition of our shadow-like movements. Occasionally he would look towards the door. That was when he heard some sound which might indicate the Mother's coming. But his external consciousness would certainly not be obliterated. When he wanted something, his voice seemed to come from a distant cave; rarely did we find him plunged within, with his eyes closed. If at that time, the Mother happened to come for some urgent work or with a glass of water, finding him thus indrawn, she would wait, usually by the bedside till he opened his eyes. Then seeing her waiting, he would exclaim "Oh!" and the Mother's lips would part into an exquisite smile. He had told us that he was in the habit of meditating with open eyes. We kept ourselves ready for the call, sitting behind the bed at our assigned places or someone cleaning the furniture or doing other work in the room. One regular call was for a peppermint lozenge which he took some time before his meal. If the meal was late in coming he would ask for a second one. When our chatting became too animated and made us feel uneasy, one better informed would exclaim, "Do you think he is disturbed by such petty bubbles? He must be soaring in a consciousness where I wonder if even a bomb explosion would make any impression." At other relaxed moments he would take cognizance of incidental noises.
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About an hour after food, came the bath. I have described the sponge-bath. Now I shall speak of the shower-bath, given with a spraying arrangement. For this kind of bath to be possible we had to wait for over two years. He would take some rest after his meal, then get up and sit on the edge of the bed waiting for the Mother's arrival. In the interval he would do the leg exercises prescribed by Dr. Manilal. Sometimes if she was late in coming, we used to fidget but Sri Aurobindo was an image of patience. Now and then if he felt drowsy, Champaklal would put a few pillows as back-rest and support them from behind till the Mother came. Then he would start walking in her presence for about half an hour. One may be tempted to ask, "Why should he walk in her presence?" It was certainly not for any physical reason. As Sri Aurobindo's walking had not yet become steady, the Mother's presence was necessary to protect him from any harm that could be caused by occult forces that is how I understand it. Just as Sri Aurobindo used to protect the Mother, she protected him, when needed: it was the role of the Lord and the Shakti. These are occult phenomena beyond our human intelligence. After her departure, he would go to the adjacent room which had been turned into a small bathroom, with walls of glazed tiles, the floor of mosaic and there was constant supply of hot and cold water. After long years of austerity, affluence and luxury indeed! The Divine also passes through hardships, though with a smile! The bath itself was simple enough, not taking more than half an hour. This again was like the bath of the temple Deity in a shrine, except that here the Deity was in a human body one of the most sensitive. The Deity, entirely passive, submitted himself to the care of the attendants, the sevaks who did what they thought best. In this priestly act of ablution, we felt a thrill as we touched and cleansed his body, part by part. As the face was rubbed, he closed his eyes, leaned in front or back when these parts were done respectively, and when one arm was lifted for cleaning, his hand gently pressed the fingers of the operator. Finally came the turn of the two small and dainty feet all the activities going on silently and in mutual understanding, while the conversation proceeded simultaneously. Another operation that we, following the ancient traditional practice, undertook during the bath for a short time, at the earnest request of some devotees, was what we call "sipping of water touched by the feet of the Deity". Sri Aurobindo granted the boon and even put forward his feet so that we could wash them and collect the water in a bowl.
After the bath when the word "finished" was uttered, he would rise and walk to his bed for rest. We would Put a sprinkling of talcum powder on his body. Then relaxing himself, he would enjoy a calm repose.
1.04 - Of other imperfections which these beginners are apt to have with respect to the third sin, which is luxury., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
MANY of these beginners have many other imperfections than those which I am describing with respect to each of the deadly sins, but these I set aside, in order to avoid prolixity, touching upon a few of the most important, which are, as it were, the origin and cause of the rest. And thus, with respect to this sin of luxury (leaving apart the falling of spiritual persons into this sin, since my intent is to treat of the imperfections which have to be purged by the dark night), they have many imperfections which might be described as spiritual luxury, not because they are so, but because the imperfections proceed from spiritual things. For it often comes to pass that, in their very spiritual exercises, when they are powerless to prevent it, there arise and assert themselves in the sensual part of the soul impure acts and motions, and sometimes this happens even when the spirit is deep in prayer, or engaged in the Sacrament of Penance or in the Eucharist. These things are not, as I say, in their power; they proceed from one of three causes.
31 [The agnusdei was a wax medal with a representation of the lamb stamped upon it, often blessed by the Pope; at the time of the Saint such medals were greatly sought after, as we know from various references in St. Teresa's letters.]
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3. The second cause whence these rebellions sometimes proceed is the devil, who, in order to disquiet and disturb the soul, at times when it is at prayer or is striving to pray, contrives to stir up these motions of impurity in its nature; and if the soul gives heed to any of these, they cause it great harm. For through fear of these not only do persons become lax in prayerwhich is the aim of the devil when he begins to strive with them but some give up prayer altogether, because they think that these things attack them more during that exercise than apart from it, which is true, since the devil attacks them then more than at other times, so that they may give up spiritual exercises. And not only so, but he succeeds in portraying to them very vividly things that are most foul and impure, and at times are very closely related to certain spiritual things and persons that are of profit to their souls, in order to terrify them and make them fearful; so that those who are affected by this dare not even look at anything or meditate upon anything, because they immediately encounter this temptation. And upon those who are inclined to melancholy this acts with such effect that they become greatly to be pitied since they are suffering so sadly; for this trial reaches such a point in certain persons, when they have this evil humour, that they believe it to be clear that the devil is ever present with them and that they have no power to prevent this, although some of these persons can prevent his attack by dint of great effort and labour. When these impurities attack such souls through the medium of melancholy, they are not as a rule freed from them until they have been cured of that kind of humour, unless the dark night has entered the soul, and rids them of all impurities, one after another.36
34[Lit., 'recreation.']
1.04 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
I saw among these holy fathers things that were truly profitable and admirable. I saw a brotherhood gathered and united in the Lord, with a wonderful active and contemplative life. For they were so occupied with divine thoughts and they exercised themselves so much in good deeds that there was scarcely any need for the superior to remind them of anything, but of their own good will they aroused one another to divine vigilance. For they had certain holy and divine exercises that were defined, studied and fixed. If in the absence of the superior one of them began to use abusive language or criticize people or simply talk idly, some other brother by a secret nod reminded him of this, and quietly put a stop to it. But if, by chance, the brother did not notice, then the one who reminded him would make a prostration and retire. And the incessant and ceaseless topic of their conversation (when it was necessary to say anything) was the remembrance of death and the thought of eternal judgment.
I must not omit to tell you about the extraordinary achievement of the baker of that community. Seeing that he had attained to constant recollection2 and tears during his service, I asked him to tell me how he came to be granted such a grace. And when I pressed him, he replied: I have never thought that I was serving men but God. And having judged myself unworthy of all rest,3 by this visible fire4 I am unceasingly reminded of the future flame.
1.04 - On Knowledge of the Future World., #The Alchemy of Happiness, #Al-Ghazali, #Sufism
Hence it happens, that when a person becomes breathless and is entranced, as sometimes happens in the first exercises among the Soofees, he has a delightful vision of the state after death, notwithstanding the animal spirit continues in the enjoyment of health. Yet if, while in that state, fear and terror should happen to predominate and deprive him of feeling and motion, and if he become so far like the dead that he perceives no external object, the same [82] things may be revealed to him which are revealed to others after death. It is sometimes permitted, after he returns from that state to the sensible world, that all he has seen should remain in his memory, or that if he does not remember it, traces of it should remain in his mind. If he saw hell, he will retain traces of despondency, sadness, heaviness of spirit, suspicion and melancholy. If in the treasury of his imagination he has preserved these traces, it is lawful for him to communicate them to others....
The torments of the grave, O seeker after the divine mysteries, are of two kinds: one kind is spiritual and the other is material torment, and they have been repeatedly explained.
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Let those, then, who wish to be saved from the torments of the grave, be earnest in cutting off the ties of the world; and let them acquire a habit of being satisfied with just that which is of actual necessity. Be satisfied for example with that amount of food and drink which is necessary to give strength for devotional exercises; be satisfied with the amount of clothing necessary to protect the body from cold and heat; and so in everything else. If a man cannot purify his heart from attachment to the world let him at least be assiduous in devotion and in calling upon God, and show a preference for cultivating an intimacy with the love of God. Let him look with fear and dread upon trust in the world, and weaken and relax the demands of sense by strict obedience to the law. If notwithstanding he should prefer to yield to the animal soul and to trust in this world, let him prepare himself to experience the torment of the grave and the terrors of the future world. And may the grace and mercy of God which embrace all men, and his pardon and forgiveness which extend to rich and poor, to great and small, reach and save him !
The miterizl torments of the grave, O seeker after the divine mysteries, are those which are addressed to the body and through the body to the spirit. Spiritual torments are those which reach the spirit only. The language of God, "It is the fire of God, the lighted fire which shall reach the hearts of the reprobates," refers to spiritual torments which affect the heart. The spiritual hell then is of three kinds. The first is the fire of separation from the [88] lusts of the world; the second is the fire of shame, ignominy and reproach; and the third is the fire of exclusion from the beauty of the one Lord. These fires only burn the soul and do not touch the body.
1.04 - The Control of Psychic Prana, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
We have now to deal with the exercises in Prnyma. We have seen that the first step, according to the Yogis, is to control the motion of the lungs. What we want to do is to feel the finer motions that are going on in the body. Our minds have become externalised, and have lost sight of the fine motions inside. If we can begin to feel them, we can begin to control them. These nerve currents go on all over the body, bringing life and vitality to every muscle, but we do not feel them. The Yogi says we can learn to do so. How? By taking up and controlling the motion of the lungs; when we have done that for a sufficient length of time, we shall be able to control the finer motions.
We now come to the exercises in Pranayama. Sit upright; the body must be kept straight. The spinal cord, although not attached to the vertebral column, is yet inside of it. If you sit crookedly you disturb this spinal cord, so let it be free. Any time that you sit crookedly and try to meditate you do yourself an injury. The three parts of the body, the chest, the neck, and the head, must be always held straight in one line. You will find that by a little practice this will come to you as easy as breathing. The second thing is to get control of the nerves. We have said that the nerve centre that controls the respiratory organs has a sort of controlling effect on the other nerves, and rhythmical breathing is, therefore, necessary. The breathing that we generally use should not be called breathing at all. It is very irregular. Then there are some natural differences of breathing between men and women.
The first lesson is just to brea the in a measured way, in and out. That will harmonise the system. When you have practiced this for some time, you will do well to join to it the repetition of some word as "Om," or any other sacred word. In India we use certain symbolical words instead of counting one, two, three, four. That is why I advise you to join the mental repetition of the "Om," or some other sacred word to the Pranayama. Let the word flow in and out with the breath, rhythmically, harmoniously, and you will find the whole body is becoming rhythmical. Then you will learn what rest is. Compared with it, sleep is not rest. Once this rest comes the most tired nerves will be calmed down, and you will find that you have never before really rested.
1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
The Mother now began to identify herself more and more with this new generation. In the evening when Sri Aurobindo was enjoying his solitude, the Mother, after her tennis, busied herself in the Playground meeting the children, watching their games and exercises, taking classes, etc. and through all these means, establishing an intimate contact with them. The exercises were done in cumbersome pyjamas which consequently checked free movement. One evening when I went to visit the Playground, I found the gate closed. The gate-keeper told me that the Mother did not want anyone except the group-members to enter the Playground. When it was thrown open we found, to our surprise, that the girls were doing exercises in shorts! How did this revolutionary change come about? Here, in brief, is the story from one who played an active part in it. One day, one of the girls, doing her exercises in pyjamas in the Playground, fell down and got hurt owing to the impractical dress. When the Mother was told about it, she listened quietly. After a couple of days, she called Bratati, one of the sadhikas of her intimate circle (she had such small intimate groups of young boys, girls and adults) and said, "I have solved the problem of the uniform. The girls will put on white shorts, a white shirt and a kitty-cap on the head for their hair. Prepare them and try them on yourself. Pyjamas are unwieldy. When you are ready, let me know about it." When everything was ready, she informed the Mother and a day was fixed for the rehearsal in strict privacy. The Mother was pleased with the design. Calling the girls together she gave a short impressive talk on the new experiment and the necessity for trying it. They at once fell in with the proposal and adopted the new uniform. But what was the reaction to this drastic step? Some, particularly old people, were shocked to see their daughters scantily dressed and doing exercises jointly with boys; a few conservative guardians were planning to take their wards away from such a modernised Ashram. I, personally, admired, on the one hand, the revolutionary step taken by the Mother far in advance of the time in Eastern countries, in anticipation of the modern movement in dress; on the other hand, my cautious mind, or as Sri Aurobindo would say, my coward-mind, could not but feel the risk involved in this forward venture. At the same time I knew that the Mother's very nature is to face danger, if necessary. And whenever we had tried to argue with her that we were doing things which were not done outside, she replied sharply, "Why should we follow the others? They have no ideas, we have ideas. I have come to break down old conventions and superstitions." Besides, whatever measures she adopts are not done for the sake of novelty or from mental reasons. "Mother is guided by her intuition," Sri Aurobindo reminded us very often. Also, I believe, she prepares the ground in the occult planes and manipulates the forces to her advantage before she takes any hazardous step. That is why we hear her say, "Wait, wait!" for the opportune moment, I suppose. We can realise now the wisdom of her vision in taking that revolutionary step. Further, I think it was one of the most effective means to eliminate sex-consciousness between the male and the female. We are in this respect much better than before now that shorts have become almost our normal dress.
To cut short the story, thanks to her long and sustained labour, these two institutions have gained today their well-deserved recognition abroad; particularly the physical culture. On the occasion of the April Darshan in 1949, the members of this organisation called J.S.A.S.A.[^7] were given the privilege of a march past in their group uniforms before the Master and the Mother. Sri Aurobindo seemed to have been much impressed by the smartness of the young boys' group.
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We do not find that the Rishi Mahachamasya succeeded in getting his fourth vyahriti accepted by the great body of Vedantic thinkers. With a little reflection we can see the reason why. The vijnana or mahat is superior to reasoning. It sees and knows, hears and knows, remembers & knows by the ideal principles of drishti, sruti and smriti; it does not reason and know.Or withdrawing into the Mahan Atma, it is what it exercises itself upon and therefore knowsas it were, by conscious identity; for that is the nature of the Mahan Atma to be everything separately and collectively & know it as an object of his Knowledge and yet as himself. Always vijnana knows things in the whole & therefore in the part, in the mass & therefore in the particular. But when ideal knowledge, vijnana, looks out on the phenomenal world in its separate details, it then acquires an ambiguous nature. So long as it is not assailed by mind, it is still the pure buddhi and free from liability to errors. The pure buddhi may assign its reasons, but it knows first & reasons afterwards,to explain, not to justify. Assailed by mind, the ideal buddhi ceases to be pure, ceases to be ideal, becomes sensational, emotional, is obliged to found itself on data, ends not in knowledge but in opinion and is obliged to hold doubt with one hand even while it tries to grasp certainty by the other. For it is the nature of mind to be shackled & frightened by its data. It looks at things as entirely outside itself, separate from itself and it approaches them one by one, groups them & thus arrives at knowledge by synthesis; or if [it] looks at things in the mass, it has to appreciate them vaguely and then take its parts and qualities one by one, arriving at knowledge by a process of analysis. But it cannot be sure that the knowledge it acquires, is pure truth; it can never be safe against mixture of truth & error, against one-sided knowledge which leads to serious misconception, against its own sensations, passions, prejudices and false associations. Such truth as it gets can only be correct even so far as it goes, if all the essential data have been collected and scrupulously weighed without any false weights or any unconscious or semi-conscious interference with the balance. A difficult undertaking! So we can form reliable conclusions, and then too always with some reserve of doubt,about the past & the present.Of the future the mind can know nothing except in eternally fixed movements, for it has no data. We try to read the future from the past & present and make the most colossal blunders. The practical man of action who follows there his will, his intuition & his instinct, is far more likely to be correct than the scientific reasoner. Moreover, the mind has to rely for its data on the outer senses or on its own inner sensations & perceptions & it can never be sure that these are informing it correctly or are, even, in their nature anything but lying instruments. Therefore we say we know the objective world on the strength of a perpetual hypothesis. The subjective world we know only as in a dream, sure only of our own inner movements & the little we can learn from them about others, but there too sure only of this objective world & end always in conflict of transitory opinions, a doubt, a perhaps. Yet sure knowledge, indubitable Truth, the Vedic thinkers have held, is not only possible to mankind, but is the goal of our journey. Satyam eva jayate nanritam satyena pantha vitato devayanah yenakramantyrishayo hyaptakama yatra tat satyasya paramam nidhanam. Truth conquers and not falsehood, by truth the path has been extended which the gods follow, by which sages attaining all their desire arrive where is that Supreme Abode of Truth. The very eagerness of man for Truth, his untameable yearning towards an infinite reality, an infinite extension of knowledge, the fact that he has the conception of a fixed & firm truth, nay the very fact that error is possible & persistent, mare indications that pure Truth exists.We follow no chimaera as a supreme good, nor do the Powers of Darkness fight against a mere shadow. The ideal Truth is constantly coming down to us, constantly seeking to deliver us from our slavery to our senses and the magic circle of our limited data. It speaks to our hearts & creates the phenomenon of Faith, but the heart has its lawless & self-regarding emotions & disfigures the message. It speaks to the Imagination, our great intellectual instrument which liberates us from the immediate fact and opens the mind to infinite possibility; but the imagination has her pleasant fictions & her headlong creative impulse and exaggerates the truth & distorts & misplaces circumstances. It speaks to the intellect itself, bids it criticise its instruments by vichara and creates the critical reason, bids it approach the truth directly by a wide passionless & luminous use of the pure judgment, and creates shuddha buddhi or Kants pure reason; bids it divine truth & learn to hold the true divination & reject the counterfeit, and creates the intuitive reason & its guardian, intuitive discrimination or viveka. But the intellect is impatient of error, eager for immediate results and hurries to apply what it receives before it has waited & seen & understood. Therefore error maintains & even extends her reign. At last come the logician & modern rationalist thinker; disgusted with the exaggeration of these movements, seeing their errors, unable to see their indispensable utility, he sets about sweeping them away as intellectual rubbish, gets rid of faith, gets rid of flexibility of mind, gets rid of sympathy, pure reason & intuition, puts critical reason into an ill lightened dungeon & thinks now, delivered from these false issues, to compass truth by laborious observation & a rigid logic. To live on these dry & insufficient husks is the last fate of impure vijnanam or buddhi confined in the data of the mind & sensesuntil man wronged in his nature, cabined in his possibilities revolts & either prefers a luminous error or resumes his broadening & upward march.
It was this aspect of impure mahas, vijnanam working not in its own home, swe dame but in the house of a stranger, as a servant of an inferior faculty, reason as we call it, which led the Rishi Mahachamasya to include mahas among the vyahritis. But vijnana itself is an integral part of the supreme movement, it is divine thought in divine being,therefore not a vyahriti. The Veda uses to express this pure Truth &ideal knowledge another word, equivalent in meaning to mahat,the word brihat and couples with it two other significant expressions, satyam & ritam. This trinity of satyam ritam brihatSacchidananda objectivisedis the Mahan Atma. Satyam is Truth, the principle of infinite & divine Being, Sat objectivised to Knowledge as the Truth of things self-manifested; Ritam is Law, the motion of things thought out, the principle of divine self-aware energy, Chit-shakti objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things selfarranged; Brihat is full content & fullness, satisfaction, Nature, the principle of divine Bliss objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things contented with its own manifestation in law of being & law of action. For, as the Vedanta tells us, there is no lasting satisfaction in the little, in the unillumined or half-illumined things of mind & sense, satisfaction there is only in the large, the self-true & self-existent. Nalpe sukham asti bhumaiva sukham. Bhuma, brihat, mahat, that is God. It is Ananda therefore that insists on largeness & constitutes the mahat or brihat. Ananda is the soul of Nature, its essentiality, creative power & peace. The harmony of creative power & peace, pravritti & nivritti, jana & shama, is the divine state which we feelas Wordsworth felt itwhen we go back to the brihat, the wide & infinite which, containing & contented with its works, says of it Sukritam, What I have made, is good. Whoever enters this kingdom of Mahat, this Maho Arnas or great sea of ideal knowledge, comes into possession of his true being, true knowledge, true bliss. He attains the ideal powers of drishti, sruti, smritisees truth face to face, hears her unerring voice or knows her by immediate recognising memoryjust as we say of a friend This is he and need no reasoning of observation, comparison, induction or deduction to tell us who he is or to explain our knowledge to ourselvesthough we may, already knowing the truth, use a self-evident reasoning masterfully in order to convince others. The characteristic of ideal knowledge is first that it is direct in its approach, secondly, that it is self-evident in its revelation, swayamprakasha, thirdly, that it is unerring fact of being, sat, satyam in its substance. Moreover, it is always perfectly satisfied & divinely pleasurable; it is atmarati & atmastha, confines itself to itself & does not reach out beyond itself to grasp at error or grope within itself to stumble over ignorance. It is, too, perfectly effective whether for knowledge, speech or action, satyakarma, satyapratijna, satyavadi. The man who rising beyond the state of the manu, manishi or thinker which men are now, becomes the kavi or direct seer, containing what he sees,he who draws the manomaya purusha up into the vijnanamaya,is in all things true. Truth is his characteristic, his law of being, the stamp that God has put upon him. But even for the manishi ideal Truth has its bounties. For from thence come the intuitions of the poet, the thinker, the artist, scientist, man of action, merchant, craftsman, labourer each in his sphere, the seed of the great thoughts, discoveries, faiths that help the world and save our human works & destinies from decay & dissolution. But in utilising these messages from our higher selves for the world, in giving them a form or a practical tendency, we use our intellects, feelings or imaginations and alter to their moulds or colour with their pigments the Truth. That alloy seems to be needed to make this gold from the mines above run current among men. This then is Maho Arnas.The psychological conceptions of our remote forefa thers concerning it have so long been alien to our thought & experience that they may be a little difficult to follow & more difficult to accept mentally. But we must understand & grasp them in their fullness if we have any desire to know the meaning of the Veda. For they are the very centre & keystone of Vedic psychology. Maho Arnas, the Great Ocean, is the stream of our being which at once divides & connects the human in us from the divine, & to cross over from the human to the divine, from this small & divided finite to that one, great & infinite, from this death to that immortality, leaving Diti for Aditi, alpam for bhuma, martyam for amritam is the great preoccupation & final aim of Veda & Vedanta.
1.04 - The Qabalah The Best Training for Memory, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Well, when you've got this Alphabet of Numbers (in its proper shape) absolutely by heart, with as many sets of attri butions as you can commit to memory without getting confused, you may try a few easy exercises, beginning with the past.
("How many sets of attri butions?" Well, certainly, the Hebrew and Greek Alphabets with the names and numbers of each letter, and its mean- ing: a couple of lists of God-names, with a clear idea of the character, qualities, functions, and importance of each; the "King-scale" of colour, all the Tarot attri butions, of course; then animals, plants, drugs, per- fumes, a list or two of archangels, angels, intelligences and spirits that ought to be enough for a start.)
1.04 - The Silent Mind, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
But exercises of meditation are not the true solution to the problem (though they may be necessary at the beginning to provide an initial momentum), because even if we achieve a relative silence, the moment we set foot outside our room or retreat, we fall right back into the usual turmoil as well as into the familiar separation between inner and outer self, inner life and worldly life. What we need is a total life;
we need to live the truth of our being every day, at every moment, not only on holidays or in solitude, and blissful meditations in pastoral settings simply will not achieve this. We may get incrusted in our spiritual seclusion and find it difficult later on to pour ourselves triumphantly outwards and apply to life our gains in the higher Nature. When we turn to add this external kingdom also to our inner conquests, we shall find ourselves too much accustomed to an activity purely subjective and ineffective on the material plane. There will be 31
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the asanas of hatha yoga, the concentrations of raja yoga, the breathing exercises of pranayama, etc. aim at arousing that ascending Force; they can be dangerous and cause profound perturbations, which make the presence and protection of an enlightened Master indispensable. We will return to this later. The difference in the direction of the current, ascending vs. descending,
has to do with a difference in goals which cannot be overemphasized.
1.05 - Consciousness, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
through concentration and exercises, we can eventually feel a Force awakening at the bottom of the spine and ascending from level to level up to the top of the head, with an undulating movement, just like a snake. At each level this Force pierces (rather violently) through the corresponding center, which opens up, thereby putting us in contact with all the universal vibrations or energies associated with the frequency of that particular center. With Sri Aurobindo's yoga, the descending Force opens the same centers, slowly and gently, from top to bottom. Often, the lower centers do not even fully open until much later. This process has a distinct advantage if we appreciate that each center corresponds to a universal mode of consciousness or energy.
To open the lower vital or subconscious centers at the beginning is to run the risk of being flooded not only by our own small personal problems, but by torrents of universal mud; we are automatically in contact with the confusion and mud of the world. This is why traditional yogas require the protective presence of a Master. With the descending Force this danger is avoided; we confront the lower centers only after our being is firmly established in the higher,
1.05 - Mental Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For that, to attention and concentration should be added observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful, alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to a child the how and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
1.05 - Problems of Modern Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
further than uninterpreted confession alone, for at least it exercises the
mind and may awaken dormant forces which can intervene in a helpful
1.05 - Some Results of Initiation, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
Some effects produced upon the soul of the student will here be indicated. For only those who know such things as they are here communicated can undertake in full consciousness the exercises that lead to knowledge of the higher worlds. Without the latter no genuine esoteric
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The exercises described in the preceding chapters, if practiced in the right way, involve certain changes in the organism of the soul (astral body). The latter is only perceptible to the clairvoyant, and may be compared to a cloud, psycho-spiritually luminous to a certain degree, in the center of which the physical body is discernible. (A description will be found in the author's book, Theosophy.) In this astral body desires, lusts, passions, and ideas become visible in a spiritual way. Sensual appetites, for instance, create the impression of a dark red radiance with a definite shape; a pure and noble thought finds its expression in a reddish-violet radiance; the clear-cut concept of the logical thinker is experienced as a yellowish figure with sharply defined outline; the confused thought of the muddled head appears as a figure with vague outline. The thoughts of a person with one-sided, queer views appear sharply outlined but immobile, while the
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Now, when the student begins his exercises, the lotus flowers become more luminous; later on they begin to revolve. When this occurs,
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Now certain activities of the soul are connected with the development of these organs, and anyone devoting himself to them in a certain definite way contri butes something to the development of the corresponding organs. In the sixteen-petalled lotus, eight of its sixteen petals were developed in the remote past during an earlier stage of human evolution. Man himself contri buted nothing to this development; he received them as a gift from nature, at a time when his consciousness was in a dull, dreamy condition. At that stage of human evolution they were in active use, but the manner of their activity was only compatible with that dull state of consciousness. As consciousness became clearer and brighter, the petals became obscured and ceased their activity. Man himself can now develop the remaining eight petals by means of conscious exercises, and thereby the whole lotus flower becomes luminous and mobile. The acquisition of certain faculties depends on the development of each one of the sixteen petals. Yet, as already shown, only
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of his life, run over in his thoughts the sum total of his knowledge, weigh his duties, and reflect upon the content and aim of life. All these things have been mentioned in the preceding chapters; here they are merely recapitulated in connection with the development of the sixteen-petalled lotus. By means of these exercises the latter will become ever more and more perfect, for it is upon such exercises that the development of clairvoyance depends. The better the student's thoughts and speech harmonize with the processes in the outer world, the more quickly will he develop this faculty. Whoever thinks and speaks what is contrary to truth destroys something in the germ of his sixteen-petalled lotus. Truthfulness, uprightness, and honesty are in this connection creative forces, while mendacity, deceitfulness, and dishonesty are destructive forces. The student must realize, however, that actual deeds are needed, and not merely good intentions. If I think or say anything that does not conform with reality, I kill something in my spiritual organs, even though I believe my intentions to be ever so good. It is here as with the child which needs must burn itself when it touches
p. 142
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clarity of speech. People who begin to have some presentiment of supersensible things are apt to wax talkative on this subject, thereby retarding their normal development. The less one talks about these matters the better. Only someone who has achieved a certain degree of clarity should speak about them. At the beginning of their instruction, students are as a rule astonishes at the teacher's lack of curiosity concerning their own experiences. It would be much better for them to remain entirely silent on this subject, and to content themselves with mentioning only whether they have been successful or unsuccessful in performing the exercises and observing the instructions given them. For the teacher has quite other means of estimating their progress than the students' own statements. The eight petals now under consideration always become a little hardened through such statements, whereas they should be kept soft and supple. The following example taken, for the sake of clarity, not from the supersensible world but from ordinary life, will illustrate this point. Suppose I hear a piece of news and thereupon immediately form an opinion. Shortly afterwards I receive some
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awaken in others, and who are unquestionably in a position to know whether the directions they give lead to the exact results desired. If the student follows the directions that have been given him, he introduces into his etheric body currents and movements which are in harmony with the laws and the evolution of the world to which he belongs. Consequently these instructions are reflections of the great laws of cosmic evolution. They consist of the above-mentioned and similar exercises in meditation and concentration which, if correctly practiced, produce the results described. The student must at certain times let these instructions permeate his soul with their content, so that he is inwardly entirely filled with it. A simple start is made with a view to the deepening of the logical activity of the mind and the producing of an inward intensification of thought. Thought it thereby made free and independent of all sense impressions and experiences; it is concentrated in one point which is held entirely under control. Thus a preliminary center is formed for the currents of the etheric body. This center is not yet in the region of the heart but in the head, and it appears to the clairvoyant
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The center in the head, once duly fixed, is then moved lower down, to the region of the larynx. This is effected by further exercises in concentration. Then the currents of the etheric body radiate from this point and illumine the astral space surrounding the individual.
Continued practice enables the student to determine for himself the position of this etheric body. Hitherto this position depended upon external forces proceeding from the physical body. Through further development the student is able to turn his etheric body to all sides. This faculty is effected by currents moving approximately
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And now the time has come to give the complete system of currents and movements its center situated in the region of the heart. This again is effected by persevering with the exercises in concentration and meditation; and at this point also the stage is reached when the student becomes gifted with the inner word. All things now acquire a new significance for him. They become
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described is formed and the center in the region of the larynx prepared. The actual development of these centers is of course dependent on the exercises in concentration described above; the latter make for development and the four attri butes bring to fruition. Once the center in the larynx has been prepared, the free control of the etheric body and its enclosure within a network covering, as explained above, results from the correct estimation of what is true as against what is apparent and non-essential. If the student acquires this faculty of estimation, the facts of the higher worlds will gradually become perceptible to him. But he must not think that he has to perform only such actions which appear significant when judged by the standard of a mere intellectual estimate. The most trifling action, every little thing accomplished, has something of importance in the great cosmic household, and it is merely a question of being aware of this importance. A correct estimation of the affairs of daily life is required, not an underestimation of them. The six virtues of which the third attri bute consists have already been dealt with; they are connected with the development of the twelve-petalled
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1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For the same reason the ethical solution is insufficient; for an ethical rule merely puts a bit in the mouth of the wild horses of Nature and exercises over them a difficult and partial control, but it has no power to transform Nature so that she may move in a secure freedom fulfilling the intuitions that proceed from a divine self-knowledge. At best its method is to lay down limits, to coerce the devil, to put the wall of a relative and very doubtful safety around us. This or some similar device of self-protection may be necessary for a time whether in ordinary life or in Yoga; but in Yoga it can only be the mark of a transition. A fundamental transformation and a pure wideness of spiritual life are the aim before us and, if we are to reach it, we must find a deeper solution, a surer supra-ethical dynamic principle. To be spiritual within, ethical in the outside life, this is the ordinary religious solution, but it is a compromise; the spiritualisation of both the inward being and the outward life and not a compromise between life and the spirit is the goal of which we are the seekers. Nor can the human confusion of values which obliterates the distinction between spiritual and moral and even claims that the moral is the only true spiritual element in our nature be of any use to us; for ethics is a mental control and the limited erring mind is not and cannot be the free and everluminous Spirit. It is equally impossible to accept the gospel that makes life the one aim, takes its elements fundamentally as they are and only calls in a half-spiritual or pseudo-spiritual light to flush and embellish it. Inadequate too is the very frequent attempt at a misalliance between the vital and the spiritual, a mystic experience within with an aestheticised intellectual and sensuous Paganism or exalted hedonism outside leaning upon it and satisfying itself in the glow of a spiritual sanction; for this too is a precarious and never successful compromise and it is as far from the divine Truth and its integrality as the puritanic opposite. These are all stumbling solutions of the fallible human mind groping for a transaction between the high spiritual summits and the lower pitch of the ordinary mind-motives and life-motives. Whatever partial truth may be hidden behind them, that truth can only be accepted when it has been raised to the spiritual level, tested in the supreme Truth-Consciousness and extricated from the soil and error of the Ignorance.
In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-Consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience -- or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, representations or conclusions of the intellect, the suggestions or instigations of the Life-force, the positive necessities of physical things are sometimes half-lights, sometimes false lights that can at best only serve for a while or serve a little and for the rest either detain or confuse us. The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and comm and and dynamic presence of the Divine shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-Consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga.
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Living in religion (as I can speak by experience) if one is not in a right course of prayer and other exercises between God and our soul, ones nature groweth much worse than ever it would have been, if one had lived in the world. For pride and self-love, which are rooted in the soul by sin, find means to streng then themselves exceedingly in religion, if the soul is not in a course that may teach her and procure her true humility. For by the corrections and contradictions of the will (which cannot be avoided by any living in a religious community) I find my heart grown, as I may say, as hard as a stone; and nothing would have been able to soften it but by being put into a course of prayer, by which the soul tendeth towards God and learneth of Him the lesson of truly humbling herself.
Dame Gertrude More
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To sum up, that mortification is the best which results in the elimination of self-will, self-interest, self-centred thinking, wishing and imagining. Extreme physical austerities are not likely to achieve this kind of mortification. But the acceptance of what happens to us (apart, of course, from our own sins) in the course of daily living is likely to produce this result. If specific exercises in self-denial are undertaken, they should be inconspicuous, non-competitive and uninjurious to health. Thus, in the matter of diet, most people will find it sufficiently mortifying to refrain from eating all the things which the experts in nutrition condemn as unwholesome. And where social relations are concerned, self-denial should take the form, not of showy acts of would-be humility, but of control of the tongue and the moodsin refraining from saying anything uncharitable or merely frivolous (which means, in practice, refraining from about fifty per cent of ordinary conversation), and in behaving calmly and with quiet cheerfulness when external circumstances or the state of our bodies pre-disposes us to anxiety, gloom or an excessive elation.
When a man practises charity in order to be reborn in heaven, or for fame, or reward, or from fear, such charity can obtain no pure effect.
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There are souls who have made some progress in divine love, and have cut off all the love they had for dangerous things; yet they still have dangerous and superfluous loves, because they love what God wills them to love, but with excess and too tender and passionate a love. The love of our relations, friends and benefactors is itself according to God, but we may love them excessively; as also our vocations, however spiritual they be; and our devotional exercises (which we should yet love very greatly) may be loved inordinately, when we set them above obedience and the more general good, or care for them as an end, when they are only means.
St. Franois de Sales
1.06 - Of imperfections with respect to spiritual gluttony., #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
WITH respect to the fourth sin, which is spiritual gluttony, there is much to be said, for there is scarce one of these beginners who, however satisfactory his progress, falls not into some of the many imperfections which come to these beginners with respect to this sin, on account of the sweetness which they find at first in spiritual exercises. For many of these, lured by the sweetness and pleasure which they find in such exercises, strive more after spiritual sweetness than after spiritual purity and discretion, which is that which God regards and accepts throughout the spiritual journey.40 Therefore, besides the imperfections into which the seeking for sweetness of this kind makes them fall, the gluttony which they now have makes them continually go to extremes, so that they pass beyond the limits of moderation within which the virtues are acquired and wherein they have their being. For some of these persons, attracted by the pleasure which they find therein, kill themselves with penances, and others weaken themselves with fasts, by performing more than their frailty can bear, without the order or advice of any, but rather endeavouring to avoid those whom they should obey in these matters; some, indeed, dare to do these things even though the contrary has been commanded them.
2. These persons are most imperfect and unreasonable; for they set bodily penance before subjection and obedience, which is penance according to reason and discretion, and therefore a sacrifice more acceptable and pleasing to God than any other. But such one-sided penance is no more than the penance of beasts, to which they are attracted, exactly like beasts, by the desire and pleasure which they find therein. Inasmuch as all extremes are vicious, and as in behaving thus such persons41 are working their own will, they grow in vice rather than in virtue; for, to say the least, they are acquiring spiritual gluttony and pride in this way, through not walking in obedience. And many of these the devil assails, stirring up this gluttony in them through the pleasures and desires which he increases within them, to such an extent that, since they can no longer help themselves, they either change or vary or add to that which is commanded them, as any obedience in this respect is so bitter to them. To such an evil pass have some persons come that, simply because it is through obedience that they engage in these exercises, they lose the desire and devotion to perform them, their only desire and pleasure being to do what they themselves are inclined to do, so that it would probably be more profitable for them not to engage in these exercises at all.
3. You will find that many of these persons are very insistent with their spiritual masters to be granted that which they desire, extracting it from them almost by force; if they be refused it they become as peevish as children and go about in great displeasure, thinking that they are not serving God when they are not allowed to do that which they would. For they go about clinging to their own will and pleasure, which they treat as though it came from God;42 and immediately their directors43 take it from them, and try to subject them to the will of God, they become peevish, grow faint-hearted and fall away. These persons think that their own satisfaction and pleasure are the satisfaction and service of God.
1.06 - On Thought, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These are only exercises for training ourselves gradually to an individualising control of our thoughts. For control of the mental activity is indispensable to one who wants to meditate.
I cannot speak to you in detail today about meditation; I shall only say that in order to be genuine, to serve its full purpose, meditation must be disinterested, impersonal in the integral sense of the word.
1.06 - The Objective and Subjective Views of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Similarly, the subjective search for the self may, like the objective, lean preponderantly to identification with the conscious physical life, because the body is or seems to be the frame and determinant here of the mental and vital movements and capacities. Or it may identify itself with the vital being, the life-soul in us and its emotions, desires, impulses, seekings for power and growth and egoistic fulfilment. Or it may rise to a conception of man as a mental and moral being, exalt to the first place his inner growth, power and perfection, individual and collective, and set it before us as the true aim of our existence. A sort of subjective materialism, pragmatic and outward-going, is a possible standpoint; but in this the subjective tendency cannot long linger. For its natural impulse is to go always inward and it only begins to feel itself and have satisfaction of itself when it gets to the full conscious life within and feels all its power, joy and forceful potentiality pressing for fulfilment. Man at this stage regards himself as a profound, vital Will-to-be which uses body as its instrument and to which the powers of mind are servants and ministers. This is the cast of that vitalism which in various striking forms has played recently so great a part and still exercises a considerable influence on human thought. Beyond it we get to a subjective idealism now beginning to emerge and become prominent, which seeks the fulfilment of man in the satisfaction of his inmost religious, aesthetic, intuitive, his highest intellectual and ethical, his deepest sympathetic and emotional nature and, regarding this as the fullness of our being and the whole object of our being, tries to subject to it the physical and vital existence. These come to be considered rather as a possible symbol and instrument of the subjective life flowing out into forms than as having any value in themselves. A certain tendency to mysticism, occultism and the search for a self independent of the life and the body accompanies this new movementnew to modern life after the reign of individualism and objective intellectualism and emphasises its real trend and character.
But here also it is possible for subjectivism to go beyond and to discover the true Self as something greater even than mind. Mind, life and body then become merely an instrumentation for the increasing expression of this Self in the world,instruments not equal in their hierarchy, but equal in their necessity to the whole, so that their complete perfection and harmony and unity as elements of our self-expression become essential to the true aim of our living. And yet that aim would not be to perfect life, body and mind in themselves, but to develop them so as to make a fit basis and fit instruments for the revelation in our inner and outer life of the luminous Self, the secret Godhead who is one and yet various in all of us, in every being and existence, thing and creature. The ideal of human existence personal and social would be its progressive transformation into a conscious outflowering of the joy, power, love, light, beauty of the transcendent and universal Spirit.
1.07 - The Continuity of Consciousness, #Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, #Rudolf Steiner, #Theosophy
Now this condition is only transitional to still higher stages of knowledge. If the student continues his esoteric exercises he will find, in due time, that the radical change, as described above, does not confine itself to his dream life, but that this transformation also extends to what was previously a condition of deep dreamless sleep. Isolated conscious experiences begin to interrupt the complete insensibility of this deep sleep. Perceptions previously unknown to him emerge from the pervading unknown to him emerge from the pervading darkness of sleep. It is, of course, not easy to describe these perceptions, for our language is only adapted to the physical world, and therefore only approximate terms can be found to express what does not at all belong to that world. Still, such terms must be used to describe the higher worlds, and this is only possible by the free use of simile; yet seeing that everything in the world is interrelated, the attempt may be made. The things and beings of the higher worlds are closely enough related to those of the physical world to enable, with a little good will, some sort of conception of these higher worlds to be formed, even though words suitable for the physical world are used. Only the reader
p. 206
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It is easy to see that this higher perceptive faculty can prove a blessing only if the opened soul-senses are in perfect order, just as the ordinary senses can only be used for a true observation of the world if their equipment is regular and normal. Now man himself forms these higher senses through the exercises indicated by spiritual science. The latter include concentration, in which the attention is directed to certain definite ideas and concepts connected with the secrets of the universe; and meditation, which is a life in such ideas, a complete submersion in them, in the right way. By concentration and meditation the student works upon his soul and develops within it the soul-organs of perception. While thus applying himself to the task of concentration and meditation his soul grows within his body, just as the embryo child grows in the body of the mother. When the isolated experiences during sleep begin, as described, the moment of birth is approaching for the liberated soul; for she has literally become a new being, developed by the individual within
p. 211
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Now, the student must realize at this stage of development that he is dealing with separate and more or less isolated spiritual experiences. He should therefore beware of constructing out of them a complete whole or even a connected system of knowledge. In this case, all manner of fantastic ideas and conceptions would be mixed into the soul-world, and a world might thus easily be constructed which had nothing to do with the real spiritual world. The student must continually practice self-control. The right thing to do is to strive for an ever clearer conception of the isolated real experiences, and to await the spontaneous arrival of new experiences which will connect themselves, as though of their own accord, with those already recorded. By virtue of the power of the spiritual world into which he has now found his way, and through continued application to his prescribed exercises, the student experiences an
p. 213
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Against this we must set Dr. Tennants viewnamely, that religious experience is something real and unique, but does not add anything to the experiencers knowledge of ultimate Reality and must always be interpreted in terms of an idea of God derived from other sources. A study of the facts would suggest that both these opinions are to some degree correct. The facts of mystical insight (together with the facts of what is taken to be historic revelation) are rationalized in terms of general knowledge and become the basis of a theology. And, reciprocally, an existing theology in terms of general knowledge exercises a profound influence upon those who have undertaken the spiritual life, causing them, if it is low, to be content with a low form of experience, if it is high, to reject as inadequate the experience of any form of reality having characteristics incompatible with those of the God described in the books. Thus mystics make theology, and theology makes mystics.
A person who gives assent to untrue dogma, or who pays all his attention and allegiance to one true dogma in a comprehensive system, while neglecting the others (as many Christians concentrate exclusively on the humanity of the Second Person of the Trinity and ignore the Father and the Holy Ghost), runs the risk of limiting in advance his direct apprehension of Reality. In religion as in natural science, experience is determined only by experience. It is fatal to prejudge it, to compel it to fit the mould imposed by a theory which either does not correspond to the facts at all, or corresponds to only some of the facts. Do not strive to seek after the true, writes a Zen master, only cease to cherish opinions. There is only one way to cure the results of belief in a false or incomplete theology and it is the same as the only known way of passing from belief in even the truest theology to knowledge or primordial Factselflessness, docility, openness to the datum of Eternity. Opinions are things which we make and can therefore understand, formulate and argue about. But to rest in the consideration of objects perceptible to the sense or comprehended by the understanding is to be content, in the words of St. John of the Cross, with what is less than God. Unitive knowledge of God is possible only to those who have ceased to cherish opinionseven opinions that are as true as it is possible for verbalized abstractions to be.
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
One may profitably confirm this theory in the exercises of
St. Ignatius of Loyola. By this exercise some thoughts are barred altogether from forcing entry into consciousness, and those which do come into the mind do so more slowly than before, giving the practitioner sufficient time to per- ceive their falsity and consequently destroy them. In short, there is undoubtedly a real connection between the rate of respiration and the condition of the brain or the state of mind, as even a little experimentation will go to prove.
1.08 - Independence from the Physical, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
submerged in Matter, has grown accustomed to depending upon outer organs and antennas to perceive the world; and since we have seen the antennas appear before the master of the antennas, we have childishly concluded that the antennas have created the master, and that without antennas there is no master, no perception of the world. But this is an illusion. Our dependence upon the senses is merely a habit true, a millenary one, but no more inescapable than the flintstone implements of the Chellean man: It is possible for the mind and it would be natural for it, if it could be persuaded to liberate itself from its consent to the domination of matter, to take direct cognizance of the objects of sense without the aid of the sense-organs.91 We can see and feel across continents as if distances did not exist, because distance is an obstacle only to the body and its organs, not to consciousness, which can reach anywhere it wishes in a second, provided it has learned to expand itself; there is another, lighter space where all is together in a flash point. Here we might expect to receive some "recipe" for clairvoyance or ubiquity, but recipes are just another kind of machinery, which is why we are so fond of them. True, hatha yoga can be effective, as can many other kinds of yogic exercises, such as concentrating on a lighted candle (tratak), evolving infallible diets,
doing breathing exercises and choking scientifically (pranayama).
Everything is or can be useful. But all these methods take a long time,
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should be ready to understand what one sees. In practice, our task will be made much easier if we can only realize that it is consciousness that uses all the methods and exercises, and works through them; we will therefore save a lot of time by going directly to consciousness,
with the added advantage that consciousness does not deceive. Even with a wooden stick as its only method, consciousness would eventually turn this stick into a magic wand, but the merit would not rest with either the stick or the method. Even if consciousness were imprisoned in a dungeon, it would find a way out. Such, in fact, is the whole story of the evolution of consciousness in Matter.
1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
:::All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie,-an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.2
The observer in you, the Witness in you, transcends the isolated person in you and opens instead-from within or from behind, as Emerson said-onto a vast expanse of awareness no longer obsessed with the individual bodymind, no longer a respecter or abuser of persons, no longer fascinated by the passing joys and set-apart sorrows of the lonely self, but standing still in silence as an opening or clearing through which light shines, not from the world but into it-"a light shines through us upon things." That which observes or witnesses the self, the person, is precisely to that degree free of the self, the person, and through that opening comes pouring the light and power of a Self, a Soul, that, as Emerson puts it, "would make our knees bend."
1.08 - The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
After the austerity of a night spent wholly in resting in a calm and peaceful sleep comes the austerity of a day which is sensibly organised; its activities will be divided between the progressive and skilfully graded exercises required for the culture of the body, and work of some kind or other. For both can and ought to form part of the physical tapasya. With regard to exercises, each one will choose the ones best suited to his body and, if possible, take guidance from an expert on the subject, who knows how to combine and grade the exercises to obtain a maximum effect. Neither the choice nor the execution of these exercises should be governed by fancy. One must not do this or that because it seems easier or more amusing; there should be no change of training until the instructor considers it necessary. The self-perfection or even simply the self-improvement of each individual body is a problem to be solved, and its solution demands much patience, perseverance and regularity. In spite of what many people think, the athletes life is not a life of amusement or distraction; on the contrary, it is a life of methodical efforts and austere habits, which leave no room for useless fancies that go against the result one wants to achieve.
In work too there is an austerity. It consists in not having any preferences and in doing everything one does with interest. For one who wants to grow in self-perfection, there are no great or small tasks, none that are important or unimportant; all are equally useful for one who aspires for progress and self-mastery. It is said that one only does well what one is interested in doing. This is true, but it is truer still that one can learn to find interest in everything one does, even in what appear to be the most insignificant chores. The secret of this attainment lies in the urge towards self-perfection. Whatever occupation or task falls to your lot, you must do it with a will to progress; whatever one does, one must not only do it as best one can but strive to do it better and better in a constant effort for perfection. In this way everything without exception becomes interesting, from the most material chore to the most artistic and intellectual work. The scope for progress is infinite and can be applied to the smallest thing.
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Man is the first animal on earth to be able to use articulate sounds. Indeed, he is very proud of this capacity and exercises it without moderation or discernment. The world is deafened with the sound of his words and sometimes one almost misses the harmonious silence of the plant kingdom.
Besides, it is a well-known fact that the weaker the mental power, the greater is the need to use speech. Thus there are primitive and uneducated people who cannot think at all unless they speak, and they can be heard muttering sounds more or less loudly to themselves, because this is the only way they can follow a train of thought, which would not be formulated in them but for the spoken word.
1.08 - Wherein is expounded the first line of the first stanza, and a beginning is made of the explanation of this dark night, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
3. Since, then, the conduct of these beginners upon the way of God is ignoble,61 and has much to do with their love of self and their own inclinations, as has been explained above, God desires to lead them farther. He seeks to bring them out of that ignoble kind of love to a higher degree of love for Him, to free them from the ignoble exercises of sense and meditation (wherewith, as we have said, they go seeking God so unworthily and in so many ways that are unbefitting), and to lead them to a kind of spiritual exercise wherein they can commune with Him more abundantly and are freed more completely from imperfections. For they have now had practice for some time in the way of virtue and have persevered in meditation and prayer, whereby, through the sweetness and pleasure that they have found therein, they have lost their love of the things of the world and have gained some degree of spiritual strength in God; this has enabled them to some extent to refrain from creature desires, so that for God's sake they are now able to suffer a light burden and a little aridity without turning back to a time62 which they found more pleasant. When they are going about these spiritual exercises with the greatest delight and pleasure, and when they believe that the sun of Divine favour is shining most brightly upon them, God turns all this light of theirs into darkness, and shuts against them the door and the source of the sweet spiritual water which they were tasting in God whensoever and for as long as they desired. (For, as they were weak and tender, there was no door closed to them, as Saint John says in the Apocalypse, iii, 8). And thus He leaves them so completely in the dark that they know not whither to go with their sensible imagination and meditation; for they cannot advance a step in meditation, as they were wont to do afore time, their inward senses being submerged in this night, and left with such dryness that not only do they experience no pleasure and consolation in the spiritual things and good exercises wherein they were wont to find their delights and pleasures, but instead, on the contrary, they find insipidity and bitterness in the said things. For, as I have said, God now sees that they have grown a little, and are becoming strong enough to lay aside their swaddling clothes and be taken from the gentle breast; so He sets them down from His arms and teaches them to walk on their own feet; which they feel to be very strange, for everything seems to be going wrong with them.
4. To recollected persons this commonly happens sooner after their beginnings than to others, inasmuch as they are freer from occasions of backsliding, and their desires turn more quickly from the things of the world, which is necessary if they are to begin to enter this blessed night of sense. Ordinarily no great time passes after their beginnings before they begin to enter this night of sense; and the great majority of them do in fact enter it, for they will generally be seen to fall into these aridities.
1.096 - Powers that Accrue in the Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
How is it that we come to acquire power at all? What is the secret behind it? Why is it that we do not simply have any power now, at this present moment? Why has this power come now? Where was it hidden up to this time? This has been made clear in a sutra in the Samadhi Pada which goes as follows: kavtte abhijtasya iva mae graht grahaa grhyeu tatstha tadajanat sampatti (I.41). This requires the meditating mind to become consubstantial with the object the subject united with the object so that it gains insight into the nature of the object. Then it is that the gulf separating the mind from the object is bridged by the practice of samyama, and the powers inherent in the object flow into the subject. That is the secret. Whatever is your power becomes my power when I become one with you. This is to state the whole method in simple terms. That which is outside our capacity comes within our capacity when that in which this capacity is inherent comes under our control. And this control is not an ordinary type of authority that we exercise over an object, as a master exercises authority over a servant. It is not like that. It is a complete mastery where that which is to be controlled does not stand outside the subject controlling it. It has become one, organically. This is the meaning of this sutra which has been given to us in the Samadhi Pada.
Now, applying this technique, Patanjali tells us that we can control anything, whether it is visible or invisible, material or otherwise. The objective side, which is known as grahaya samapatti in the language of yoga, is intended to control the elements. The five elements which constitute this vast world, or rather the entire universe of physical nature, are supposed to be under ones control, provided samyama is practised on them. Earth, water, fire, air and ether these are the elements, and no one can have any control over them. They are the masters, as is well known. But they can be controlled, says the sutra, provided we establish a harmony with them and we become one with the law which operates them in the universe. This is called bhutajaya control of the elements.
1.09 - Civilisation and Culture, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But in a civilised society there is still the distinction between the partially, crudely, conventionally civilised and the cultured. It would seem therefore that the mere participation in the ordinary benefits of civilisation is not enough to raise a man into the mental life proper; a farther development, a higher elevation is needed. The last generation drew emphatically the distinction between the cultured man and the Philistine and got a fairly clear idea of what was meant by it. Roughly, the Philistine was for them the man who lives outwardly the civilised life, possesses all its paraphernalia, has and mouths the current stock of opinions, prejudices, conventions, sentiments, but is impervious to ideas, exercises no free intelligence, is innocent of beauty and art, vulgarises everything that he touches, religion, ethics, literature, life. The Philistine is in fact the modern civilised barbarian; he is often the half-civilised physical and vital barbarian by his unintelligent attachment to the life of the body, the life of the vital needs and impulses and the ideal of the merely domestic and economic human animal; but essentially and commonly he is the mental barbarian, the average sensational man. That is to say, his mental life is that of the lower substratum of the mind, the life of the senses, the life of the sensations, the life of the emotions, the life of practical conduct the first status of the mental being. In all these he may be very active, very vigorous, but he does not govern them by a higher light or seek to uplift them to a freer and nobler eminence; rather he pulls the higher faculties down to the level of his senses, his sensations, his unenlightened and unchastened emotions, his gross utilitarian practicality. His aesthetic side is little developed; either he cares nothing for beauty or has the crudest aesthetic tastes which help to lower and vulgarise the general standard of aesthetic creation and the aesthetic sense. He is often strong about morals, far more particular usually about moral conduct than the man of culture, but his moral being is as crude and undeveloped as the rest of him; it is conventional, unchastened, unintelligent, a mass of likes and dislikes, prejudices and current opinions, attachment to social conventions and respectabilities and an obscure dislikerooted in the mind of sensations and not in the intelligenceof any open defiance or departure from the generally accepted standard of conduct. His ethical bent is a habit of the sensemind; it is the morality of the average sensational man. He has a reason and the appearance of an intelligent will, but they are not his own, they are part of the group-mind, received from his environment; or so far as they are his own, merely a practical, sensational, emotional reason and will, a mechanical repetition of habitual notions and rules of conduct, not a play of real thought and intelligent determination. His use of them no more makes him a developed mental being than the daily movement to and from his place of business makes the average Londoner a developed physical being or his quotidian contri butions to the economic life of the country make the bank-clerk a developed economic man. He is not mentally active, but mentally reactive,a very different matter.
The Philistine is not dead,quite the contrary, he abounds,but he no longer reigns. The sons of Culture have not exactly conquered, but they have got rid of the old Goliath and replaced him by a new giant. This is the sensational man who has got awakened to the necessity at least of some intelligent use of the higher faculties and is trying to be mentally active. He has been whipped and censured and educated into that activity and he lives besides in a maelstrom of new information, new intellectual fashions, new ideas and new movements to which he can no longer be obstinately impervious. He is open to new ideas, he can catch at them and hurl them about in a rather confused fashion; he can understand or misunderstand ideals, organise to get them carried out and even, it would appear, fight and die for them. He knows he has to think about ethical problems, social problems, problems of science and religion, to welcome new political developments, to look with as understanding an eye as he can attain to at all the new movements of thought and inquiry and action that chase each other across the modern field or clash upon it. He is a reader of poetry as well as a devourer of fiction and periodical literature,you will find in him perhaps a student of Tagore or an admirer of Whitman; he has perhaps no very clear ideas about beauty and aesthetics, but he has heard that Art is a not altogether unimportant part of life. The shadow of this new colossus is everywhere. He is the great reading public; the newspapers and weekly and monthly reviews are his; fiction and poetry and art are his mental caterers, the theatre and the cinema and the radio exist for him: Science hastens to bring her knowledge and discoveries to his doors and equip his life with endless machinery; politics are shaped in his image. It is he who opposed and then brought about the enfranchisement of women, who has been evolving syndicalism, anarchism, the war of classes, the uprising of labour, waging what we are told are wars of ideas or of cultures,a ferocious type of conflict made in the very image of this new barbarism,or bringing about in a few days Russian revolutions which the century-long efforts and sufferings of the intelligentsia failed to achieve. It is his coming which has been the precipitative agent for the reshaping of the modern world. If a Lenin, a Mussolini, a Hitler have achieved their rapid and almost stupefying success, it was because this driving force, this responsive quick-acting mass was there to carry them to victorya force lacking to their less fortunate predecessors.
1.09 - Legend of Lakshmi, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Having thus spoken, the Brahman went his way; and the king of the gods, remounting his elephant, returned to his capital Amarāvati. Thenceforward, Maitreya, the three worlds and Śakra lost their vigour, and all vegetable products, plants, and herbs were withered and died; sacrifices were no longer offered; devout exercises no longer practised; men were no more addicted to charity, or any moral or religious obligation; all beings became devoid of steadiness[4]; all the faculties of sense were obstructed by cupidity; and men's desires were excited by frivolous objects. Where there is energy, there is prosperity; and upon prosperity energy depends. How can those abandoned by prosperity be possessed of energy; and without energy, where is excellence? Without excellence there can be no vigour nor heroism amongst men: he who has neither courage nor strength, will be spurned by all: and he who is universally treated with disgrace, must suffer abasement of his intellectual faculties.
The three regions being thus wholly divested of prosperity, and deprived of energy, the Dānavas and sons of Diti, the enemies of the gods, who were incapable of steadiness, and agitated by ambition, put forth their strength against the gods. They engaged in war with the feeble and unfortunate divinities; and Indra and the rest, being overcome in fight, fled for refuge to Brahmā, preceded by the god of flame (Hutāśana). When the great father of the universe had heard all that had come to pass, he said to the deities, "Repair for protection to the god of high and low; the tamer of the demons; the causeless cause of creation, preservation, and destruction; the progenitor of the progenitors; the immortal, unconquerable Viṣṇu; the cause of matter and spirit, of his unengendered products; the remover of the grief of all who humble themselves before him: he will give you aid." Having thus spoken to the deities, Brahmā proceeded along with them to the northern shore of the sea of milk; and with reverential words thus prayed to the supreme Hari:-
1.09 - Man - About the Body, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
With the help of certain exercises as well as by a correct attitude and an exact observance of these rules, the capacitance, strength and influence of this electromagnetic fluid or Od can be increased or diminished according to whatever necessity requires. The way of doing it will exhaustively be illustrated in the practical part of the present work.
The electrical as well as the magnetical fluid in the human body have nothing to do with the kind of electricity or magnetism we know, although a certain analogy exists.
1.09 - SKIRMISHES IN A WAY WITH THE AGE, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
Revolution, by means of which it still exercises power and draws all
flat and mediocre things over to its side. The doctrine of equality!
1.10 - Concentration - Its Practice, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
Now comes Asana, posture. Until you can get a firm seat you cannot practice the breathing and other exercises. Firmness of seat means that you do not feel the body at all. In the ordinary way, you will find that as soon as you sit for a few minutes all sorts of disturbances come into the body; but when you have got beyond the idea of a concrete body, you will lose all sense of the body. You will feel neither pleasure nor pain. And when you take your body up again, it will feel so rested. It is only perfect rest that you can give to the body. When you have succeeded in conquering the body and keeping it firm, your practice will remain firm, but while you are disturbed by the body, your nerves become disturbed, and you cannot concentrate the mind.
47. By lessening the natural tendency (for restlessness) and meditating on the unlimited, posture becomes firm and pleasant.
1.11 - Legend of Dhruva, the son of Uttanapada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
Legend of Dhruva, the son of Uttānapāda: he is unkindly treated by his father's second wife: applies to his mother: her advice: he resolves to engage in religious exercises: sees the seven Ṛṣis, who recommend him to propitiate Viṣṇu.
Parāśara continued:-
1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The hathayogi practises physical exercises. His goal is to acquire supernatural powers: longevity and the eight psychic powers. These are his aims. But the aim of rajayoga is the attainment of devotion, ecstatic love, knowledge, and renunciation. Of these two, rajayoga is the better.
Seven planes of the Vedas
1.12 - Dhruva commences a course of religious austerities, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
The celestials called Yāmas, being excessively alarmed, then took counsel with Indra how they should interrupt the devout exercises of Dhruva; and the divine beings termed Kushmāṇḍas, in company with their king, commenced anxious efforts to distract his meditations. One, assuming the semblance of his mother Sunīti, stood weeping before him, and calling in tender accents, "My son, my son, desist from destroying thy strength by this fearful penance. I have gained thee, my son, after much anxious hope: thou canst not have the cruelty to quit me, helpless, alone, and unprotected, on account of the unkindness of my rival. Thou art my only refuge; I have no hope but thou. What hast thou, a child but five years old, to do with rigorous penance? Desist from such fearful practices, that yield no beneficial fruit. First comes the season of youthful pastime; and when that is over, it is the time for study: then succeeds the period of worldly enjoyment; and lastly, that of austere devotion. This is thy season of pastime, my child. Hast thou engaged in these practices to put an end to thine existence? Thy chief duty is love for me: duties are according to time of life. Lose not thyself in bewildering error: desist from such unrighteous actions. If not, if thou wilt not desist from these austerities, I will terminate my life before thee."
But Dhruva, being wholly intent on seeing Viṣṇu, beheld not his mother weeping in his presence, and calling upon him; and the illusion, crying out, "Fly, fly, my child, the hideous spirits of ill are crowding into this dreadful forest with uplifted weapons," quickly disappeared. Then advanced frightful Rākṣasas, wielding terrible arms, and with countenances emitting fiery flame; and nocturnal fiends thronged around the prince, uttering fearful noises, and whirling and tossing their threatening weapons. Hundreds of jackals, from whose mouths gushed flame[1] as they devoured their prey, were howling aloud, to appal the boy, wholly engrossed by meditation. The goblins called out, "Kill him, kill him; cut him to pieces; eat him, eat him;" and monsters, with the faces of lions and camels and crocodiles, roared and yelled with horrible cries, to terrify the prince. But all these uncouth spectres, appalling cries, and threatening weapons, made no impression upon his senses, whose mind was completely intent on Govinda. The son of the monarch of the earth, engrossed by one only idea, beheld uninterruptedly Viṣṇu seated in his soul, and saw no other object.
1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"People practise various Tantrik disciplines to acquire supernatural powers. How mean such people are! Krishna said to Arjuna, 'Friend, by acquiring one of the eight siddhis you may add a little to your power, but you will not be able to realize Me.' One cannot get rid of maya as long as one exercises supernatural powers. And maya begets egotism.
"Body and wealth are impermanent. Why go to so much trouble for their sakes? Just think of the plight of the hathayogis. Their attention is fixed on one ideal only-longevity. They do not aim at the realization of God at all. They practise such exercises as washing out the intestines, drinking milk through a tube, and the like, with that one aim in view.
"There was once a goldsmith whose tongue suddenly turned up and stuck to his palate.
1.14 - Bibliography, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[Ignatius of Loyola, Saint.] The Spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius
Loyola. Edited and translated by Joseph Rickaby, S.J. 2nd edn.,
1.15 - In the Domain of the Spirit Beings, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
The average person will have a conception of these beings corresponding to his power of understanding. In his imagination angels and archangels will have wings, demons and archdemons will have horns. But the person well acquainted with the symbolism will be able to interpret this conception according to true hermetics. A magician knows that an angel has no wings in the literal sense of the word and will see the analogy in these wings: the wings are an analogy to the birds who move about freely in the air above us. The wings are the symbol of what is superior to us, the symbol of agility, liberty, freedom and at the same time the principle of floating above us in the air, the element which is lightest and penetrates everything. The negative beings or demons are usually symbolized by animals with horns and tails, or by creatures that are half human and half animal. Their symbolism, on the contrary, stands for the opposite of what is good: the inferior, incomplete, defective, etc. The question of whether these beings, positive or negative, in their own spheres actually have the shapes attri buted to them by men, and meet each other in these shapes, may be left undecided to the non-initiate. The magician who is capable of visiting these zones by mental and astral travelling and who is able to influence himself with the vibration of these zones so that for the time of his stay he is like an inhabitant of the respective sphere, will have found out that this is not so. Without losing his individuality, he will find quite different .shapes there, which cannot be expressed by words. He will not find personified beings and their leaders there, but powers and vibrations that are analogous to the names and qualities. If he tried to concretise, from his individual point of view, one of these powers, or give it a shape according to his power of understanding, that power would appear in to him in a shape equivalent to his power of symbolic comprehension, no matter whether positive power, alias angel, or negative power, alias demon. A magician working with beings will make the beings perform the causes in that zone in which he exercises his influence. The work of a quabbalist is different. The latter places himself, with his spirit, into the zone in which a certain cause and effect is intended. Though he, too, masters the laws of the zone, he does not need the interposition of the beings for his purposes, but does everything by himself with the help of the quabbalistic word. There will be more about in my next work "The Key to the True Quabbalah".
The principles of the quabbalist's work are quite different. The magician, however, in his present state of development, cannot, for the time being, do otherwise than go on making use of beings up to the point where he has reached a higher degree of development. Each quabbalist must first have become a magician, in order to be able to work differently and more advantageous by later.
1.15 - The world overrun with trees; they are destroyed by the Pracetasas, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
"Thus spoken to by the Muni, Pramlocā stood trembling, whilst big drops of perspiration started from every pore; till he angrily cried to her, 'Depart, begone.' She then, reproached by him, went forth from his dwelling, and, passing through the air, wiped the perspiration from her person with the leaves of the trees. The nymph went from tree to tree, and as with the dusky shoots that crowned their summits she dried her limbs, which were covered with moisture, the child she had conceived by the Ṛṣi came forth from the pores of her skin in drops of perspiration. The trees received the living dews, and the winds collected them into one mass. "This," said Soma, "I matured by my rays, and gradually it increased in size, till the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely girl named Māṛṣā. The trees will give her to you, Pracetasas: let your indignation be appeased. She is the progeny of Kaṇḍu, the child of Pramlocā, the nursling of the trees, the daughter of the wind and of the moon. The holy Kaṇḍu, after the interruption of his pious exercises, went, excellent princes, to the region of Viṣṇu, termed Puruṣottama, where, Maitreya[2], with his whole mind he devoted himself to the adoration of Hari; standing fixed, with uplifted arms, and repeating the prayers that comprehend the essence of divine truth[3]."
The Pracetasas said, "We are desirous to hear the transcendental prayers, by inaudibly reciting which the pious Kaṇḍu propitiated Keśava." On which Soma repeated as follows: "'Viṣṇu is beyond the boundary of all things: he is the infinite: he is beyond that which is boundless: he is above all that is above: he exists as finite truth: he is the object of the Veda; the limit of elemental being; unappreciable by the senses; possessed of illimitable might: he is the cause of cause; the cause of the cause of cause; the cause of finite cause; and in effects, he, both as every object and agent, preserves the universe: he is Brahma the lord; Brahma all beings; Brahma the progenitor of all beings; the imperishable: he is the eternal, undecaying, unborn Brahma, incapable of increase or diminution: Puruṣottama is the everlasting, untreated, immutable Brahma. May the imperfections of my nature be annihilated through his favour.' Reciting this eulogium, the essence of divine truth, and propitiating Keśava, Kaṇḍu obtained final emancipation.
1.16 - PRAYER, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The spirit, in order to work, must have all sensible images, both good and bad, removed. The beginner in a spiritual course commences with the use of good sensible images, and it is impossible to begin in a good spiritual course with the exercises of the spirit. Those souls who have not a propensity to the interior must abide always in the exercises, in which sensible images are used, and these souls will find the sensible exercises very profitable to themselves and to others, and pleasing to God. And this is the way of the active life. But others, who have the propensity to the interior, do not always remain in the exercises of the senses, but after a time these will give place to the exercises of the spirit, which are independent of the senses and the imagination and consist simply in the elevation of the will of the intellective soul to God. The soul elevates her will towards God, apprehended by the understanding as a spirit, and not as an imaginary thing, the human spirit in this way aspiring to a union with the Divine Spirit.
Augustine Baker
1.16 - The Season of Truth, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The secrets are simple, we have said, and we wonder if that difficult transmutation, that complex alchemy, those thick manuals and mysterious initiations, those educated austerities and spiritual exercises, those meditations and retreats and tortured breathing, that whole labor of the spirit are not actually the labor of the mind trying to make it difficult, tremendously difficult, so it can inflate itself further, and then glory in untying the enormous knot it had itself tied. If things are too simple, it does not believe in them, because it has nothing to do because it yearns to do, at all costs. That is its food and livelihood its ego's livelihood. But that mental inflation and pontification may hide from us an utter simplicity, a supreme facility, a supreme nondoing that is the art of doing well. We have had to do and do again, tramp around the trails of the mind to individualize a fragment of that formidable, immense Consciousness-Force, that universal Energy-Harmony, to make it self-conscious, as it were, in one form and in billions of forms. But has not the time come, at the end of the little flame's long journey, to break the mold that helped us to grow and rediscover the totality of Consciousness and Energy and Harmony in one small center of being, a little point of matter, in one clear little note, and to let That do, That change our eyes, That permeate our tissues, That widen our substance to let a supreme Child who runs over the great prairies of the world play in us and for us, if we want, because he is us? This difficult transmutation may not be so difficult after all. It must be as simple as truth, simple as a smile, simple as a child at play. Perhaps everything hinges simply on whether we wish to take the path of difficulty the path of the mind desperately inflating itself to try to blow itself up to the size of the universe, the path of the buts and whys and hows and all the implacable laws that choke us time and again in our mental straitjacket or the path of an unknown little something stealing through the air, sparkling in the air, winking at every street corner and every encounter, in everything, all the trifles of the day, as though carrying us along in an indescribable golden wake in which everything is easy and simple and miraculous we are right in the midst of the miracle! We are in the full supramental season. It is knocking at all our closed windows, at our countries, our hearts, our crumbling systems, our shaky laws, our faltering wisdoms, in our thousands of ills that keep coming out, our thousands of little lies abandoning the skiff in distress it is softly slipping its golden skiff beneath the old specious appearances, it is growing its unexpected buds beneath the old rags, awaiting a tiny little crack to spring out into the open, a tiny little call. The transmutation is not difficult; it is all there, already done, only waiting for us to open our eyes to the unreality of misery and falsehood and death and our impotence to the unreality of the mind and the laws of the mind. It is waiting for our radical saltus into that future of truth, our mass uprising against the old cage, our general strike against the Machine. Oh! let us leave it to the elders, the old elders of the old world, the old believers in misery and suffering and the bomb and the gospel and the millions of gospels that struggle for a share of the world, to run their old squeaky machine for a few more days, to quarrel over borders, argue over reforms of the rot, debate agreements of disagreement, stockpile bombs and false knowledge and libraries and museums, preach good and evil, preach the friend and the enemy, preach country and no-country, build more and more machines and supermachines and rockets to the moon and misery for every pocketbook let us leave to them the last convulsions of the falsehood, the last cries of the rot, we who do not care about countries, borders, machines and all that walled-in future, we who believe in a light and inexpressible something that is pounding at the doors of the world and pounding in our hearts, in a completely new future, completely clear and vibrant and marvelous, without borders, without laws, without gospels, beyond all their possibilities and impossibilities, their good and evil, their small countries and small thoughts we who believe in Truth, in the supreme beauty of Truth, the supreme joy of Truth, the supreme power of Truth. We are the sons of a more marvelous Future which is already there, which will spring out into the open by our cry of trust, sweeping away all the old machinery like an unreal dream, a nightmare of the mind, an old windbag filled with only as much air as we still consent to lend it. The transmutation has to be done in our hearts, the last revolution to be carried out, the supramental revolution of the human species as others had launched the human revolution among the apes its great rebellion against the Machine, its general strike against mental knowledge, mental power and mental fabrications against the mental prison its mass defection from the old groove of pain, and its calling out for what has to be, its simple cry for truth amidst the rubble of the mental age: the truth, the truth, the truth, and nothing but the truth.
Then Truth shall be.
1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "A man practising hathayoga dwells a great deal on his body. He washes his intestines by means of a bamboo tube through his anus. He draws ghee and milk through his sexual organ. He learns how to manipulate his tongue by performing exercises. He sits in a fixed posture and bow and then levitates. All these are actions of prana. A magician was performing his feats when his tongue turned up and clove to the roof of his mouth. Immediately his body became motionless. People thought he was dead. He was buried and remained many years in the grave. After a long time the grave somehow broke open. Suddenly the man regained consciousness of the world and cried out, 'Come delusion! Come confusion!' (All laugh.) All these are actions of prana.
"The Vedantists do not accept hathayoga. There is also rajayoga. Rajayoga describes how to achieve union with God through the mind by means of discrimination and bhakti.
1.17 - God, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
It is evident that true initiation knows neither a mystic nor a magic path. There is only one initiation linking both conceptions, in opposition to most of the mystic and spiritual schools which are dealing with the very highest problems, through meditation or other spiritual exercises, without having gone through the first steps at first. This would be very similar to somebody starting with the university studies without having gone through the elementary classes first. The results of such a onesided training, in some cases, are disastrous, sometimes even drastic, according to the individual talents. Generally the error is to be found in the fact that most of the matter comes from the Orient, where the material as well as the astral world is regarded as maya (illusion), and consequently little attention is paid to it. It is impossible to point out the details, for this would overstep the frame of this book. Sticking to a carefully planned, step-by-step development, there will be neither a mishap nor a failure nor bad consequences, for the simple reason that ripening takes place slowly but surely. It is quite an individual matter whether the adept will choose as his idea of God, Christ, Buddha, Brahma, Allah, or someone else. All depends on the idea, in the initiation.
The pure mystic wishes to approach his God only in the all-embracing love. The yogi, too, walks toward one single aspect of God. The bhakti- yogi keeps to the road of love and devotion, the raja and hatha yogi choose the path of self-control or volition, the jnana yogi will follow that of wisdom and cognition.
1.17 - Legend of Prahlada, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
[2]: The Purāṇas teach constantly incompatible doctrines. According to this passage, the Supreme Being is not the inert cause of creation only, but exercises the p. 128 functions of an active Providence. The commentator quotes a text of the Veda in support of this view: 'Universal soul entering into men, governs their conduct.' Incongruities, however, are as frequent in the Vedas as in the Purāṇas; but apparently the most ancient parts of the Hindu ritual recognised an active ruler in the Creator of the universe; the notion of abstract deity originating with the schools of philosophy.
[3]: This is the purport of the sentence apparently, and is that which the comment in part confirms. Literally it is, 'A blow is the pleasure of those whose eyes are darkened by ignorance, whose limbs, exceedingly benumbed, desire pleasure by exercise: The commentator divides the sentence, however, and reads it, 'As fatigue would be like pleasure to paralyzed limbs; and a blow is enjoyment to those who are blinded by delusion; that is, by love; for to them a slap, or even a kick, from a mistress would be a favour.' It is not improbably an allusion to some such venerable pastime as blindman's buff. This interpretation, however, leaves the construction of the first half of the sentence imperfect, unless the nominative and verb apply to both portions.
1.17 - The Burden of Royalty, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
he yet exercises far more influence in the island than the Spanish
governor at Santa Isabel. In him the conservative spirit of the
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civil rajah, he exercises a momentous influence on the course of
events, for his secular colleague is bound to consult him in all
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
This "true movement" behind our breathing is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the same as the one governing electromagnetic fields, what the ancient yogis termed vayu, the Life-Energy. The well-known breathing exercises (pranayama) are simply one system (among others) of controlling vayu, which eventually enables one to escape gravity.
347
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every minute of the day and night. This is why Sri Aurobindo insisted on the need for outer work and basic physical exercises, because such activities are the only way to measure oneself against Matter and to drive a little bit of true consciousness into it, or, rather, to allow Agni to emerge. This is why, too, he used to walk for many hours every day and then work at night.
Through this external work, and because of it, the seeker will see all the false vibrations appear in broad daylight, all the creases of the body, as the Mother calls them. Next each false vibration will have to be rectified. But this is still a negative way of putting it, for there is only one Vibration of divine joy in the world and in things the Vibration because God is Joy. The moment falsehood sets in, that very vibration begins to become discolored, hardened, tense, and everything begins grating. Suffering is the most certain sign of 370
1.19 - The Practice of Magical Evocation, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
Similar examples are given in "Initiation into Hermetics" in the chapter dealing with room-impregnation and here you find the evidence that all the exercises and magic operations of that first work have their special purpose. You will also see that when carrying out further magical operations you will not be able to do without any of these practices. If you have not actively gone through the exercises of the first book you are unable to get into conscious contact with any spirit being outside you, or of materialising such a being.
Now you start impregnating the other mirror by charging it with the Akasha-principle. Project, by force of imagination, into the surface of the mirror, which previously has been covered with a fluid condenser, the desire that not any disturbing being, not any unwanted power or the like will penetrate into your workroom, into your evocational operating-room. This has been the second step of your evocation. The room in which you work is now appropriately impregnated. However, you have yet another possibility: you can impregnate the mirror that you intend to use for keeping off unwanted influences with the wish that the being you want to evoke must appear in it. This impregnation, of course, must have accumulated light in the relevant planetary colour. In our case it must be green.
1.2.05 - Aspiration, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It [the higher consciousness] may not come exactly according to the aspiration, but the aspiration is not ineffective. It keeps the consciousness open, prevents an inert state of acquiescence in all that comes and exercises a sort of pull on the sources of the higher consciousness.
Aspiration during the period of experience is not so necessary.
1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
next chapter: 1.25 - SPIRITUAL exercises
1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
object:1.25 - SPIRITUAL exercises
class:chapter
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Spiritual exercises
RITES, sacraments, ceremonies, liturgiesall these belong to public worship. They are devices, by means of which the individual members of a congregation are reminded of the true Nature of Things and of their proper relations to one another, the universe and God. What ritual is to public worship, spiritual exercises are to private devotion. They are devices to be used by the solitary individual when he enters into his closet, shuts the door and prays to his Father which is in secret. Like all other devices, from psalm singing to Swedish exercises and from logic to internal combustion engines, spiritual exercises can be used either well or badly. Some of those who use spiritual exercises make progress in the life of the spirit; others, using the same exercises, make no progress. To believe that their use either constitutes enlightenment, or guarantees it, is mere idolatry and superstition. To neglect them altogether, to refuse to find out whether and in what way they can help in the achievement of our final end, is nothing but self-opinionatedness and stubborn obscurantism.
St Franois de Sales used to say, I hear of nothing but perfection on every side, so far as talk goes; but I see very few people who really practice it. Everybody has his own notion of perfection. One man thinks it lies in the cut of his clothes, another in fasting, a third in almsgiving, or in frequenting the Sacraments, in meditation, in some special gift of contemplation, or in extraordinary gifts or graces but they are all mistaken, as it seems to me, because they confuse the means, or the results, with the end and cause.
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St. Franois himself recommended the use of spiritual exercises as a means to the love of God and ones neighbours, and affirmed that such exercises deserved to be greatly cherished; but this affection for the set forms and hours of mental prayer must never, he warned, be allowed to become excessive. To neglect any urgent call to charity or obe thence for the sake of practising ones spiritual exercises would be to neglect the end and the proximate means for the sake of means which are not proximate, but at several removes from the ultimate goal.
Spiritual exercises constitute a special class of ascetic practices, whose purpose is, primarily, to prepare the intellect and emotions for those higher forms of prayer in which the soul is essentially passive in relation to divine Reality, and secondarily, by means of this self-exposure to the Light and of the increased self-knowledge and self-loathing resulting from it, to modify character.
In the Orient the systematization of mental prayer was carried out at some unknown but certainly very early date. Both in India and China spiritual exercises (accompanied or preceded by more or less elaborate physical exercises, especially breathing exercises) are known to have been used several centuries before the birth of Christ. In the West, the monks of the Thebaid spent a good part of each day in meditatioq as a means to contemplation or the unitive knowledge of God; and at all periods of Christian history, more or less methodical mental prayer has been largely used to supplement the vocal praying of public and private worship. But the systematization of mental prayer into elaborate spiritual exercises was not undertaken, it would seem, until near the end of the Middle Ages, when reformers within the Church popularized this new form of spirituality in an effort to revivify a decaying monasticism and to reinforce the religious life of a laity that had been bewildered by the Great Schism and profoundly shocked by the corruption of the clergy. Among these early systematizers the most effective and influential were the canons of Windesheim, who were in close touch with the Brethren of the Common Life. During the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries spiritual exercises became, one might almost say, positively fashionable. The early Jesuits had shown what extraordinary transformations of character, what intensities of will and devotion, could be achieved by men systematically trained on the intellectual and imaginative exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, and as the prestige of the Jesuits stood very high, at this time, in Catholic Europe, the prestige of spiritual exercises also stood high. Throughout the first century of the Counter-Reformation numerous systems of mental prayer (many of them, unlike the Ignatian exercises, specifically mystical) were composed, published and eagerly bought. After the Quietist controversy mysticism fell into disrepute and, along with mysticism, many of the once popular systems, which their authors had designed to assist the soul on the path towards contemplation. For more detailed information on this interesting and important subject the reader should consult Pourrats Christian Spirituality, Bede Frosts The Art of Mental Prayer, Edward Leens Progress through Mental Prayer and Aelfrida Tillyards Spiritual exercises. Here it is only possible to give a few characteristic specimens from the various religious traditions.
Know that when you learn to lose yourself, you will reach the Beloved. There is no other secret to be learnt, and more than this is not known to me.
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Six hundred years later, as we have seen, St. Franois de Sales was saying very much the same thing to young Camus and all the others who came to him in the ingenuous hope that he could reveal some easy and infallible trick for achieving the unitive knowledge of God. But to lose self in the Beloved there is no other secret. And yet the Sufis, like their Christian counterparts, made ample use of spiritual exercisesnot, of course, as ends in themselves, not even as proximate means, but as means to the proximate means of union with God, namely selfless and loving contemplation.
For twelve years I was the smith of my soul. I put it in the furnace of austerity and burned it in the fire of combat, I laid it on the anvil of reproach and smote it with the hammer of blame until I made of my soul a mirror. Five years I was the mirror of myself and was ever polishing that mirror with divers acts of worship and piety. Then for a year I gazed in contemplation. On my waist I saw a girdle of pride and vanity and self-conceit and reliance on devotion and approbation of my works. I laboured for five years more until that girdle became worn out and I professed Islam anew. I looked and saw that all created things were dead. I pronounced four akbirs over them and returned from the funeral of them all, and without intrusion of creatures, through Gods help alone, I attained unto God.
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In India the repetition of the divine name or the mantram (a short devotional or doctrinal affirmation) is called japam and is a favourite spiritual exercise among all the sects of Hinduism and Buddhism. The shortest mantram is OMa spoken sym bol that concentrates within itself the whole Vedanta philosophy. To this and other mantrams Hindus attribute a kind of magical power. The repetition of them is a sacramental act, conferring grace ex opere operato. A similar efficacity was and indeed still is attri buted to sacred words and formulas by Buddhists, Moslems, Jews and Christians. And, of course, just as traditional religious rites seem to possess the power to evoke the real presence of existents projected into psychic objectivity by the faith and devotion of generations of worshippers, so too long-hallowed words and phrases may become channels for conveying powers other and greater than those belonging to the individual who happens at the moment to be pronouncing them. And meanwhile the constant repetition of this word GOD or this word LOVE may, in favourable circumstances, have a profound effect upon the subconscious mind, inducing that selfless one-pointedness of will and thought and feeling, without which the unitive knowledge of God is impossible. Furthermore, it may happen that, if the word is simply repeated all whole, and not broken up or undone by discursive analysis, the Fact for which the word stands will end by presenting itself to the soul in the form of an integral intuition. When this happens, the doors of the letters of this word are opened (to use the language of the Sufis) and the soul passes through into Reality. But though all this may happen, it need not necessarily happen. For there is no spiritual patent medicine, no pleasant and infallible panacea for souls suffering from separateness and the deprivation of God. No, there is no guaranteed cure; and, if used improperly, the medicine of spiritual exercises may start a new disease or aggravate the old. For example, a mere mechanical repetition of the divine name can result in a kind of numbed stupefaction that is as much below analytical thought as intellectual vision is above it. And because the sacred word constitutes a kind of prejudgment of the experience induced by its repetition, this stupefaction, or some other abnormal state, is taken to be the imme thate awareness of Reality and is idolatrously cultivated and hunted after, with a turning of the will towards what is supposed to be God before there has been a turning of it away from the self.
The dangers which beset the practicer of japam, who is insufficiently mortified and insufficiently recollected and aware, are encountered in the same or different forms by those who make use of more elaborate spiritual exercises. Intense concentration on an image or idea, such as is recommended by many teachers, both Eastern and Western, may be very helpful for certain persons in certain circumstances, very harmful in other cases. It is helpful when the concentration results in such mental stillness, such a silence of intellect, will and feeling, that the divine Word can be uttered within the soul. It is harmful when the image concentrated upon becomes so hallucinatingly real that it is taken for objective Reality and idolatrously worshipped; harmful, too, when the exercise of concentration produces unusual psycho-physical results, in which the person experiencing them takes a personal pride, as being special graces and divine communications. Of these unusual psycho-physical occurrences the most ordinary are visions and auditions, foreknowledge, telepathy and other psychic powers, and the curious bodily phenomenon of intense neat. Many persons who practise concentration exercises experience this heat occasionally. A number of Christian saints, of whom the best known are St. Philip Neri and St. Catherine of Siena, have experienced it continuously. In the East techniques have been developed whereby the accession of heat resulting from intense concentration can be regulated, controlled and put to do useful work, such as keeping the contemplative warm in freezing weather. In Europe, where the phenomenon is not well understood, many would-be contemplatives have experienced this heat, and have imagined it to be some special divine favour, or even the experience of union, and being insufficiently mortified and humble, have fallen into idolatry and a God-eclipsing spiritual pride.
The following passage from one of the great Mahayana scriptures contains a searching criticism of the kind of spiritual exercises prescribed by Hinayanist teachersconcentration on symbolic objects, meditations on transience and decay (to wean the soul away from attachment to earthly things), on the different virtues which must be cultivated, on the fundamental doctrines of Buddhism. (Many of these exercises are described at length in The Path of Purity, a book which has been translated in full and published by the Pali Text Society. Mahayanist exercises are described in the Surangama Sutra, translated by Dwight Goddard and in the volume on Tibetan Yoga, edited by Dr. Evans-Wentz.)
In his exercise the Yogin sees (imaginatively) the form of the sun or moon, or something looking like a lotus, or the underworld, or various forms, such as sky, fire and the like. All these appearances lead him in the way of the philosophers; they throw him down into the state of Sravakahood, into the realm of the Pratyekabuddhas. When all these are put aside and there is a state of imagelessness, then a condition in conformity with Suchness presents itself, and the Buddhas will come together from all their countries and with their shining hands will touch the head of this benefactor.
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If exercises in concentration, repetitions of the divine name, or meditations on Gods attri butes or on imagined scenes in the life of saint or Avatar help those who make use of them to come to selflessness, openness and (to use Augustine Bakers phrase) that love of the pure divinity, which makes possible the souls union with the Godhead, then such spiritual exercises are wholly good and desirable. If they have other resultswell, the tree is known by its fruits.
Benet of Canfield, the English Capuchin who wrote The Rule of Perfection and was the spiritual guide of Mme. Acarie and Cardinal Brulle, hints in his treatise at a method by which concentration on an image may be made to lead up to imageless contemplation, blind beholding, love of the pure divinity. The period of mental prayer is to begin with intense concentration on a scene of Christs passion; then the mind is, as it were, to abolish this imagination of the sacred humanity and to pass from it to the formless and attri buteless Godhead which that humanity incarnates. A strikingly similar exercise is described in the Bardo Thdol or Tibetan Book of the Dead (a work of quite extraordinary profundity and beauty, now fortunately available in translation with a valuable introduction and notes by Dr. Evans-Wentz).
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Probably all persons, even the most saintly, suffer to some extent from distractions. But it is obvious that the distractions of one who, in the intervals of mental prayer, leads a dispersed, unrecollected, self-centred life will have more and worse distractions to contend with than a person who lives one-pointedly, never forgetting who he is and how related to the universe and its divine Ground. Some of the most profitable spiritual exercises actually make use of distractions, in such a way that these impediments to self-abandonment, mental silence and passivity in relation to God are transformed into means of progress.
But first, by way of preface to the description of these exercises, it should be remarked that all teachers of the art of mental prayer concur in advising their pupils never to use violent efforts of the surface will against the distractions which arise in the mind during periods of recollection. The reason for this has been succinctly stated by Benet of Canfield in his Rule of Perfection. The more a man operates, the more he is and exists. And the more he is and exists, the less of God is and exists within him. Every enhancement of the separate personal self produces a corresponding diminution of that selfs awareness of divine Reality. But any violent reaction of the surface will against distractions automatically enhances the separate, personal self and therefore reduces the individuals chances of coming to the knowledge and love of God. In the process of trying forcibly to abolish our God-eclipsing day-dreams, we merely deepen the darkness of our native ignorance. This being so, we must give up the attempt to fight distractions and find ways either of circumventing them, or of somehow making use of them. For example, if we have already achieved a certain degree of alert passivity in relation to Reality and distractions intervene, we can simply look over the shoulder of the malicious and concupiscent imbecile who stands between us and the object of our simple regard. The distractions now appear in the foreground of consciousness; we take notice of their presence, then, lightly and gently, without any straining of the will, we shift the focus of attention to Reality which we glimpse, or divine, or (by past experience or an act of faith) merely know about, in the background. In many cases, this effortless shift of attention will cause the distractions to lose their obsessive thereness and, for a time at least, to disappear.
If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently and replace it tenderly in its Masters presence. And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back and place it again in Our Lords presence, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.
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Noverim me, noverim Te, St. Francis of Assisi used to repeat. Self-knowledge, leading to self-hatred and humility, is the condition of the love and knowledge of God. Spiritual exercises that make use of distractions have this great merit, that they increase self-knowledge. Every soul that approaches God must be aware of who and what it is. To practice a form of mental or vocal prayer that is, so to speak, above ones moral station is to act a lie: and the consequences of such lying are wrong notions about God, idolatrous worship of private and unrealistic phantasies and (for lack of the humility of self-knowledge) spiritual pride.
It is hardly necessary to add that this method has, like every other, its dangers as well as its advantages. For those who employ it there is a standing temptation to forget the end in the all too squalidly personal meansto become absorbed in a whitewashing or remorseful essay in autobiography to the exclusion of the pure Divinity, before whom the angry ape played all the fantastic tricks which he now so relishingly remembers.
We come now to what may be called the spiritual exercises of daily life. The problem, here, is simple enoughhow to keep oneself reminded, during the hours of work and recreation, that there is a good deal more to the universe than that which meets the eye of one absorbed in business or pleasure? There is no single solution to this problem. Some kinds of work and recreation are so simple and unexactive that they permit of continuous repetition of sacred name or phrase, unbroken thought about divine Reality, or, what is still better, uninterrupted mental silence and alert passivity. Such occupations as were the daily task of Brother Lawrence (whose practice of the presence of God has enjoyed a kind of celebrity in circles otherwise completely uninterested in mental prayer or spiritual exercises) were almost all of this simple and unexacting kind. But there are other tasks too complex to admit of this constant recollectedness. Thus, to quote Eckhart, a celebrant of the mass who is over-intent on recollection is liable to make mistakes. The best way is to try to concentrate the mind before and afterwards, but, when saying it, to do so quite straightforwardly. This advice applies to any occupation demanding undivided attention. But undivided attention is seldom demanded and is with difficulty sustained for long periods at a stretch. There are always intervals of relaxation. Everyone is free to choose whether these intervals shall be filled with day-dreaming or with something better.
Whoever has God in mind, simply and solely God, in all things, such a man carries God with him into all his works and into all places, and God alone does all his works. He seeks nothing but God, nothing seems good to him but God. He becomes one with God in every thought. Just as no multiplicity can dissipate God, so nothing can dissipate this man or make him multiple.
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I do not mean that we ought voluntarily to put ourselves in the way of dissipating influences; God forbid! That would be tempting God and seeking danger. But such distractions as come in any way providentially, if met with due precaution and carefully guarded hours of prayer and reading, will turn to good. Often those things which make you sigh for solitude are more profitable to your humiliation and self-denial than the most utter solitude itself would be. Sometimes a stimulating book of devotion, a fervent meditation, a striking conversation, may flatter your tastes and make you feel self-satisfied and complacent, imagining yourself far advanced towards perfection; and by filling you with unreal notions, be all the time swelling your pride and making you come from your religious exercises less tolerant of whatever crosses your will. I would have you hold fast to this simple rule: seek nothing dissipating, but bear quietly with whatever God sends without your seeking it, whether of dissipation or interruption. It is a great delusion to seek God afar off in matters perhaps quite unattainable, ignoring that He is beside us in our daily annoyances, so long as we bear humbly and bravely all those which arise from the manifold imperfections of our neighbours and ourselves.
Fnelon
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The extract which follows is taken from the translation by Waitao and Goddard of the Chinese text of The Awakening of Faith, by Ashvaghoshaa work originally composed in Sanskrit during the first century of our era, but of which the original has been lost. Ashvaghosha devotes a section of his treatise to the expedient means, as they are called in Buddhist terminology, whereby unitive knowledge of Thusness may be achieved. The list of these indispensable means includes charity and compassion towards all sentient beings, sub-human as well as human, self-naughting or mortification, personal devotion to the incarnations of the Absolute Buddha-nature, and spiritual exercises designed to free the mind from its infatuating desires for separateness and independent selfhood and so make it capable of realizing the identity of its own essence with the universal Essence of Mind. Of these various expedient means I will cite only the last two the Way of Tranquillity, and the Way of Wisdom.
The Way of Tranquillity. The purpose of this discipline is twofold: to bring to a standstill all disturbing thoughts (and all discriminating thoughts are disturbing), to quiet all engrossing moods and emotions, so that it will be possible to concentrate the mind for the purpose of meditation and realization. Secondly, when the mind is tranquillized by stopping all discursive thinking, to practise reflection or meditation, not in a discriminating, analytical way, but in a more intellectual way (cp. the scholastic distinction between reason and intellect), by realizing the meaning and significances of ones thoughts and experiences. By this twofold practice of stopping and realizing ones faith, which has already been awakened, will be developed, and gradually the two aspects of this practice will merge into one another the mind perfectly tranquil, but most active in realization. In the past one naturally had confidence in ones faculty of discrimination (analytical thinking), but this is now to be eradicated and ended.
1.26 - On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
When our good and all-gracious Lord and Master sees people too lazy in their exercises, He lays their flesh low with sickness, an exercise that gives them no labour; and sometimes it also cleanses the soul from evil thoughts or passions.
All that happens to us, seen or unseen, can be taken by us in a good or a passionate or some middle disposition. I saw three brethren punished: one was angry, one suppressed his grief, but the third reaped the fruit of great joy.
1.26 - PERSEVERANCE AND REGULARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
He who interrupts the course of his spiritual exercises and prayer is like a man who allows a bird to escape from his hand; he can hardly catch it again.
St. John of the Cross
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Yea, some souls there are conducted by Almighty God by no other way, but only by such prayer of aridity, finding no sensible contentment in any recollection, but, on the contrary, continual pain and contradiction, and yet, by a privy grace and courage imprinted deeply in the spirit, cease not for all that, but resolutely break through all difficulties and continue, the best way they can, their internal exercises to the great advancement of their spirit.
Augustine Baker
1.26 - The Ascending Series of Substance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
12:Certainly, if that body, life and consciousness were limited to the possibilities of the gross body which are all that our physical senses and physical mentality accept, there would be a very narrow term for this evolution, and the human being could not hope to accomplish anything essentially greater than his present achievement. But this body, as ancient occult science discovered, is not the whole even of our physical being; this gross density is not all of our substance. The oldest Vedantic knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific and to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of our substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient figurative language. A later psychology found that these five sheaths of our substance were the material of three bodies, gross physical, subtle and causal, in all of which the soul actually and simultaneously dwells, although here and now we are superficially conscious only of the material vehicle. But it is possible to become conscious in our other bodies as well and it is in fact the opening up of the veil between them and consequently between our physical, psychical and ideal personalities which is the cause of those "psychic" and "occult" phenomena that are now beginning to be increasingly though yet too little and too clumsily examined, even while they are far too much exploited. The old Hathayogins and Tantriks of India had long ago reduced this matter of the higher human life and body to a science. They had discovered six nervous centres of life in the dense body corresponding to six centres of life and mind faculty in the subtle, and they had found out subtle physical exercises by which these centres, now closed, could be opened up, the higher psychical life proper to our subtle existence entered into by man, and even the physical and vital obstructions to the experience of the ideal and spiritual being could be destroyed. It is significant that one prominent result claimed by the Hathayogins for their practices and verified in many respects was a control of the physical life-force which liberated them from some of the ordinary habits or so-called laws thought by physical science to be inseparable from life in the body.
13:Behind all these terms of ancient psycho-physical science lies the one great fact and law of our being that whatever be its temporary poise of form, consciousness, power in this material evolution, there must be behind it and there is a greater, a truer existence of which this is only the external result and physically sensible aspect. Our substance does not end with the physical body; that is only the earthly pedestal, the terrestrial base, the material starting-point. As there are behind our waking mentality vaster ranges of consciousness subconscient and superconscient to it of which we become sometimes abnormally aware, so there are behind our gross physical being other and subtler grades of substance with a finer law and a greater power which support the denser body and which can by our entering into the ranges of consciousness belonging to them be made to impose that law and power on our dense matter and substitute their purer, higher, intenser conditions of being for the grossness and limitation of our present physical life and impulses and habits. If that be so, then the evolution of a nobler physical existence not limited by the ordinary conditions of animal birth and life and death, of difficult alimentation and facility of disorder and disease and subjection to poor and unsatisfied vital cravings ceases to have the appearance of a dream and chimera and becomes a possibility founded upon a rational and philosophic truth which is in accordance with all the rest that we have hitherto known, experienced or been able to think out about the overt and secret truth of our existence.
1.28 - Describes the nature of the Prayer of Recollection and sets down some of the means by which we can make it a habit., #The Way of Perfection, #Saint Teresa of Avila, #Christianity
its own head. But if we cultivate the habit, make the necessary effort and practise the exercises for
several days, the benefits will reveal themselves, and when we begin to pray we shall realize that
13.03 - A Programme for the Second Century of the Divine Manifestation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is not sufficient that the central psychic being comes forward and exercises what is at most a general influence on the other limbs of the being. It should enter into its counter-parts or counter-points the inherent psychic centres of each part and parcel and make them directly active. The central psychicselfhas its delegated selves everywhere in the global being. Indeed each particle of the being must itself be a psychic or psychicised particle: a consciousness-photon. There is thus a vital photon, a mental photon, a photon of the physical consciousness even as the material photon. And all these in their hierarchic harmonious arrangement shall constitute the global system of the new person.
Even so, there is to be a transmutation of the environment also: the outer objects and circumstances and happenings will be a fieldan Einsteinian fieldof modulations, pulsations, tensions, of these consciousness-particles of the psychic.
14.06 - Liberty, Self-Control and Friendship, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I was speaking of self-control, self-discipline in your inner being, that is to say, with regard to your desires and impulses and feelings. It is however the same discipline as you follow with regard to your body in the playground. Physical education means nothing else than controlling and disciplining the body. You control and discipline the body through physical exercises and these mean controlled and guided movements. You have to make these movements in a regular, persistent, ordered and a neat way, it is the way to make your body strong and beautiful. As by means of this physical discipline you secure a strong and beautiful body, even so by the inner discipline, by controlling your passions and impulsions you build an inner body strong and beautiful. Yes, even like a physical body you have a subtle body, a body as it were within this material frame. It is not, however, for that reason, something vague and imprecise, on the contrary, it is very concrete and has a definite shape. As I said, by controlled and directed movements you make this outer body strong and beautiful; the inner body also in the same way through controlled and directed inner movements can be made strong and beautiful. In properly doing the physical exercises, you know, two things are needed: first of all, doing the physical movements according to the rules, in other words, exercising the muscles in a given manner, and then along with it relaxation. Relaxation and exercise should alternate. Relaxation restores the muscles, brings repose to the system and serves as a kind of basic support. In the field of the inner discipline, this relaxation corresponds to what I have called freedom. And the muscular exercises correspond to the exercise of your will and consciousness in regard to the inner body.
The building up of the inner beautiful body has a great influence upon the building of the physical body, it adds something, it gives a feeling of inherent capacity, firmness and charm even to the physical frame.
Many find it difficult at the outset to make the right movement even in the matter of physical exercises. What is needed is will and persistence. More difficult, much more difficult it is to make the right inner movement, there also what is needed is will and persistence. Sometimes in the matter of inner discipline which means doing the right thing, you say, "If I know the right thing to do, then I can do it; to do the right thing I must know the right thing. If I do not know the right thing, how can I do it?" In the same way many exclaim: "How to find God, how to see God? I do not know what God is. Then how can I try to find Him?" They say: "First you must see God, then you can believe." In fact this is not true. The truth is the other way round. The Mother says, "If you are sincere, absolutely sincere and you take the resolution that you will do the right thing whatever happens, then surely the right thing will reveal itself to you." But the basic condition is that. Your resolve must be there, to do the right whenever it presents itself to you whatever the cost. Indeed you are not, a human being is not so obscure and inert as the appearance shows. There is a soul in everyone, there is a light within you which always points to the right. Only you are absent-minded, you do not care to look around and be on the alert. If you care, truly want to see the light, you will see it there before you. You must be ready to recognise it. It all depends upon your will, your good will, your inner sincerity. The inner sincerity will show you your path, the next step you are to take and you will know more and more as you advance. But if you hesitate, if you have in the background of your mind as it usually happens, the feeling that even if you see the right thing you may not do it, you may not be prepared to face too much difficulty or opposition in the execution. The very wavering thought that you may not do it will obscure your path and the light will not be there. You have to believe, believe blindly, for you know what you believe in is not anything wrong or mistaken, for your urge is to welcome the truth, a sincere readiness to welcome the truth when it comes, this will bring forward the truth and if you proceed, proceed in this way, welcoming the light every time it comes, disregarding all other pulls and distractions, your welcoming becomes easier and warmer and the light grows brighter and brighter. By your faith and trust you increase the power of your discrimination, increase the force of your character, increase the influence of a growing light upon your nature and your inner being; your true person in you grows in stature, grows in strength and beauty.
In this path there is another line for growth and development which is of considerable importance as you will see. You are here or for that matter anywhere in society-not alone but you live together with others. You study together, play together, work together. You have friends, comrades, companions, you are in a group, in a company. Now it is of great importance to have the right company, you must have good companions, good comrades, good friends. That will help you in ways more than one. In this connection I can do nothing better than just to read out what the Mother says on the subject. She says: usually in your ignorance and simplicity, foolish simplicity, you choose convenient friends, that is to say, those who praise you, flatter you, who do not contradict you even if you go the wrong way, even they encourage you in doing the wrong thing in order to be friendly with you. Such friends are dangerous, dangerous to yourself and dangerous to your so-called friends too. Here is the text of the Mother's words:
1.41 - Are we Reincarnations of the Ancient Egyptians?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I have studied, and my secretary has studied, and we can make no head or tail of your remark about brain exercises with sketch.
Well, I must hope for the best, and leave you with my blessing.
1.52 - Family - Public Enemy No. 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Even centuries after one of them is dead, he exercises his abominable craft; and you are only the less able to ward off the slaps of the Dead Hand, because (after all!) there is a whole lot of him in you. He appears at times as a sort of alien conscience; and, indebted as you may be to him for your physical constitution I give him credit for not having saddled you with gout, rheumatism, T.B., or other plague and many of your most useful virtues, you want to handle your assets yourself, without a subterranean current of criticism, or even active interference through others in your sole preoccupation in the Great Work.
I have not actually detected any ancestor of mine stealing my whiskey, as the advertisement warns us may happen: but oh well! However you like to look at it, he is always an influence upon you; and that, good or bad, you quite rightly resent.
1.77 - Work Worthwhile - Why?, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
I began by pointing out that Nature exercises many forms of Energy, which are not directly observable by the senses. In fact, the History of Science for the last hundred and fifty years or so has consisted principally of the discovery of such types, with their analysis, measurement and manipulation. There is every reason to suppose that many such remain to be discovered.
But what has in no case been observed is any trace of will or of intelligence, except through some apparatus involving a nervous and cerebral system.
1929-06-16 - Illness and Yoga - Subtle body (nervous envelope) - Fear and illness, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is the action of this medium that partly explains why people often feel a spontaneous and unreasoning attraction or repulsion for each other. The first seat of these reactions is in this protecting envelope. Easily we feel attracted towards people who bring a reinforcement to our nervous envelope; we are repelled by those who disturb or hurt it. Whatever gives it a sense of expansion and comfort and ease, whatever makes it respond with a feeling of happiness and pleasure exercises on us at once an attraction; when the effect is in the contrary sense, it responds with a protecting repulsion. This movement, when two people meet, is often mutual. It is not, of course, the only cause of affinities, but it is one and a very frequent cause.
If the whole being could simultaneously advance in its progressive transformation, keeping pace with the inner march of the universe, there would be no illness, there would be no death. But it would have to be literally the whole being integrally from the highest planes, where it is more plastic and yields in the required measure to transforming forces, down to the most material, which is by nature rigid, stationary, refractory to any rapid remoulding change.
1951-01-20 - Developing the mind. Misfortunes, suffering; developed reason. Knowledge and pure ideas., #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Unfortunately, most people, the more they think, the more they believe themselves superior. The mind is satisfied with itself and does not aspire much for progressit thinks it knows everything. And many people believe that their way of thinking is the best; they cannot understand that there are always several ways of thinking about the same subject. And the more their thought is strong and precise, the more are they convinced that there is only one way of thinking. That is why I have said here that certain exercises can enlarge your thought and give you the habit of seeing things from several points of view at the same time:
It is very necessary that one should consider everything from as many points of view as possible. There is an exercise in this connection which gives great suppleness and elevation to thought; it is as follows. A clearly formulated thesis is set; against it is opposed the antithesis, formulated with the same precision. Then by careful reflection, the problem must be widened or transcended until a synthesis is found which unites the two contraries in a larger, higher and more comprehensive idea.
1951-02-08 - Unifying the being - ideas of good and bad - Miracles - determinism - Supreme Will - Distinguishing the voice of the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know the story of a man who had a few small powers and indulged in all kinds of so-called spiritualist practices, and through repeated exercises he had succeeded in coming into conscious contact with what he called a spirit. This man was doing business; he was a financier and was even a speculator. His relations with his spirit were of a very practical kind! This spirit used to tell him when the stocks and shares would go up and when they would come down; it told him, Sell this, Buy thatit gave him very precise financial particulars. For years he had been listening to his spirit and had followed it, and was fantastically successful; he became tremendously rich and naturally boasted a lot about the spirit which guided him. He used to tell everybody, You see, it is really worth while learning how to put oneself in contact with these spirits. But one day he met a man who was a little wiser, who told him, Take care. He did not listen to him, he was swollen with his power and ambition. And it was then that his spirit gave him a last advice, Now you can become the richest man in the world. Your ambition will be fulfilled. You have only to follow my direction. Do this: put all that you have into this transaction and you will become the richest man in the world. The stupid fool did not even realise the trap laid for him: for years he had followed his guide and succeeded, so he followed the last direction; and he lost everything, to the last penny.
So you see, these are small entities who make fun of you, and to make sure of you they work these little miracles to encourage you, and when they feel that you are well trapped, they play a fine trick upon you and it is all over with you.
1951-02-26 - On reading books - gossip - Discipline and realisation - Imaginary stories- value of - Private lives of big men - relaxation - Understanding others - gnostic consciousness, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, the effort to keep the consciousness at a high level is tiring in the beginning, like the exercises you do to develop your muscles. But you do not give up gymnastics because of that! So mentally also you must do the same thing. You must not allow your mind to stoop low: gossiping degrades you and, if you want to do Yoga, you must abstain from it, thats all.
You can read sacred books and yet be far away from the Divine; and you can read the most stupid productions and be in touch with the Divine. There is a way of consciousness in union with the Divine in which you can enjoy all you read, as you can all you observe. For there is nothing in the world which has not its ultimate truth and support in the Divine. And if you are not stopped by the appearance, physical or moral or aesthetic you can reach beauty and delight even through what affects the ordinary sense only as something ugly, poor, painful or discordant.
1951-05-03 - Money and its use for the divine work - problems - Mastery over desire- individual and collective change, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This depends upon how one acquires it. If you get it by foul ways, that does not mean that you have a control. But if someone, scrupulously doing his duty, sees that money comes to him, it is evidently because he exercises a control over these forces. There are people who have the power of attracting money and they havent the least need to practise dishonesty to get it. Others, even to get a few pennies, must make all sorts of contrivances, more or less clean. So one cannot say. We see a rich man and think he must be exercising a control over the forces of moneyno, not necessarily. But if a man remains perfectly honest and does what he thinks is his duty without caring to acquire money, and yet money comes to him, evidently he has a certain affinity with those forces.
It is said, One cannot make a heap without making a hole, one cannot enrich oneself without impoverishing someone else. Is this true?
1951-05-12 - Mahalakshmi and beauty in life - Mahasaraswati - conscious hand - Riches and poverty, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What! I have told you this I dont know how many times, I have explained it hundreds of times and you still ask this question? I have told you that no matter what you want to do, the first thing is to put consciousness in the cells of your hand. If you want to play, if you want to work, if you want to do anything at all with your hand, unless you push consciousness into the cells of your hand you will never do anything good how many times have I told you that? And this is felt. You feel it. You can acquire it. All sorts of exercises may be done to make the hand conscious and there comes a moment when it becomes so conscious that you can leave it to do things; it does them by itself without your little mind having to intervene.
Sri Aurobindo says here about Mahalakshmi: All that is poor repels her advent? ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p. 31
1953-05-20, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You are doing something, suppose, for example, you are doing exercises, weightlifting. Now suddenly without your knowing how it happened, suddenly you have the feeling that there is a force infinitely greater than you, greater, more powerful, a force that does the lifting for you. Your body becomes something almost non-existent and there is this Something that lifts. And then you will see; when that happens to you, you will no longer ask how it should be done, you will know. That does happen.
It depends upon people, depends upon what dominates in their being. Those who think have suddenly the feeling that it is no longer they who think, that there is something which knows much better, sees much more clearly, which is infinitely more luminous, more conscious in them, which organises the thoughts and words; and then they write. But if the experience is complete, it is even no longer they who write, it is that same Thing that takes hold of their hand and makes it write. Well, one knows at that moment that the little physical person is just a tiny insignificant tool trying to remain as quiet as possible in order not to disturb the experience.
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According to Sri Aurobindo, this true movement behind respiration is the same as the one governing electrical and magnetic fields; it is what the ancient yogis used to call Vayu, the Life-Energy. The breathing exercises (pryma) are simply one system (among others) for acquiring mastery over Vayu which eventually enables you to be free from gravitation and gives certain powers know to the ancients: the power to be extremely light or extremely heavy, very big or very tine (garim, laghim, mahim, aim). As an appendix to this talk we publish an extract from a conversation of Sri Aurobindo with a French scientist-disciple, dealing with some of these "true movements" behind the external movement of Matter.
It is remarkable to observe that since then (1926) we have indeed discovered a third "fire", that which accompanies nuclear reactionsand that this fire is in fact that of the sun, the enormous radiation of which is liberated in course of the fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium (Be the cycle). The first fire is that of chemical reactions wherein molecules get destroyed and reconstituted without the constituent atoms being changed. The second fire comes from the modifications of the peripheral levels of the electrons in the atom, modifications which are at the origin of all electro-magnetic phenomena.
1953-07-08, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Both are good exercises. Try to compare them, youll see: you are walking on a street, there is an army of ants going from one nest to another (you do not look down, you are talking with someone); very negligently you put one foot and then the other, and you crush hundreds of ants without even being aware of it. If you were an ant, you would say: What a wicked and beastly force! You are just walking. You have not paid attention. But suppose there are beings of this kind for whom we are just tiny little ants. They put one foot and then the other and millions of people are killed. They are not even aware of it! They have not done it on purpose. They were just walking along, thats all. The only difference you could make (and yet I am not quite sure), the only difference between the ant and man is that man is able to think of what happens to him, and perhaps the ant is not conscious of it? I dont know at all. I dont guarantee it. Voil.
***
1953-09-16, #Questions And Answers 1953, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is possible. When you do gymnastics, is it not to make your body less rigid? And you go on progressing: what you cannot do the first year, you are able to do after a few years. There are people who obtain an almost total suppleness, those, for example, who do Asanas. Yes, one can obtain almost complete suppleness. But an ordinary man, if he tried to do these exercises, would break something in him. Well, it happens like that. With the mind, it is the same thing. It is through gymnastic exercises that you make yourself supple. It is a question of discipline, of development.
Suppose a man endeavours in this life to become very intelligent, but if in the next life he is born an idiot, what is the use of all these efforts?
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
Sweet Mother, are religious exercises very important for those who have an ordinary consciousness?
Religious exercises? I dont know! What do you mean by religious exercises?
Japa, etc.
1954-07-28 - Money - Ego and individuality - The shadow, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You think that you are sent to school, that you are made to do exercises, all this just for the pleasure of vexing you? Oh, no! It is because its indispensable for you to have a frame in which you can learn how to form yourself. If you did your work of individualisation, of total formations, by yourself, all alone in a corner, nothing at all would be asked of you. But you dont do it, you wouldnt do it, theres not a single child who would do it, he wouldnt even know how to do it, where to begin. If a child were not taught how to live, he could not live, he wouldnt know how to do anything, anything. I dont want to speak about disgusting details, but even the most elementary things he would not do properly if he were not taught how to do them. Therefore, one must, step by step That is to say, if everyone had to go through the whole experience needed for the formations of an individuality, he would be long dead before having begun to live! This is the contri butionaccumulated through centuriesof those who have had the experience and tell you, Well, if you want to go quickly, to know in a few years what has been learnt through centuries, do this! Read, learn, study and then, in the material field, you will be taught to do this in this way, that in that way, this again in this way (gestures). Once you know a little, you can find your own method, if you have the genius for it! But first one must stand on ones own feet and know how to walk. It is very difficult to learn it all alone. Its like that for everyone. One must form oneself. Therefore, one needs education. There we are!
(To a child) Do you have something to ask? No? Is there anyone who has something to ask?
1954-11-24 - Aspiration mixed with desire - Willing and desiring - Children and desires - Supermind and the higher ranges of mind - Stages in the supramental manifestation, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If one can orient them-it requires much discernment, much patience, but it can be done-and if one can orient them towards something like this, to succeed in very difficult games or to work out something which requires much care and attention, and can push them in some line like this so that it exercises a persevering will in them, then this can have results: turn their attention away from certain things and towards others. This needs constant care and it seems to be a way that's most-I can't say the easiest, for it is certainly not easy-but the most effective way. To say "No" does not cure and to say "Yes" does not cure either; and sometimes it becomes extremely difficult also, naturally.
I knew people, for example, whose children wanted to eat everything they saw. They were allowed to do it. So they fell very ill. After that, they felt disgusted. But this is a little risky, isn't it? There are children who fidget with everything. Now, one day, you see, one child got hold of a box of matches. Then, instead of telling him, "Don't touch it", they let him do it: he burnt himself. He never touched them again.
1955-04-13 - Psychoanalysts - The underground super-ego, dreams, sleep, control - Archetypes, Overmind and higher - Dream of someone dying - Integral repose, entering Sachchidananda - Organising ones life, concentration, repose, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But if one organised his life in accordance with a higher principle of consciousness and without the groping one usually tries, that is, with a precise indication at every minute of what is to be done and how it is to be done, I think that one could so manage that things dont become awkwardly difficult. It is very good to be a good teacher, but perhaps it is not absolutely necessary to correct all the homework just at the time one is going to bed. I dont know, you see, because I was never a good teacher, so I never prepared the exercises for my students, never corrected the homework of my students. But still, it seems to me this ought to be quite possible.
Usually, instead of choosing ones work very carefully and taking exactly what one can do and doing it as well as one can, very often one takes too much. And in this too much there are many things which are at least partially useless, which could be considerably reduced, without harming the result (note that I am not making a general rule of it, it is only an experience I have); and when one is very attentive to the inner indication and refuses to be tossed by the waves that come from outside these waves are of all kinds of movements arising from the wills of others or from a kind of routine of circumstances or from oppositions coming from forces which are not very favourableso, instead of being pushed like that and moved by these things, if one receives a very clear, very precise inner indication and follows it without equivocating, you see, without any hesitation, a little strictlyindeed, if it doesnt please others, so much the worse for themwell, it happens that one becomes in a way the master of circumstances, that they are organised favourably, and that one does much more work in much less time.
1956-06-13 - Effects of the Supramental action - Education and the Supermind - Right to remain ignorant - Concentration of mind - Reason, not supreme capacity - Physical education and studies - inner discipline - True usefulness of teachers, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Who said that? People who dont like physical education? Stiff old teachers who cant do exercises any longer? These?I am not asking for names!
Well, I dont think so.
1956-11-21 - Knowings and Knowledge - Reason, summit of mans mental activities - Willings and the true will - Personal effort - First step to have knowledge - Relativity of medical knowledge - Mental gymnastics make the mind supple, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have always said that studies have the same effect on the brain as gymnastics on the muscles. For example, mental gymnastics are very necessary to make ones mental activity supple, to streng then and enrich it and give it a subtlety of understanding it would not have if you didnt do these gymnastics. Of lateindeed for quite a long time already I have noticed, for instance, that if I am unfortunate enough to read to you something with philosophical terms or to speak to you from a slightly philosophical point of view, you cannot follow. And that is simply because you have not done any philosophical gymnastics. It is not that you are not intelligent, it is not that you dont have the capacity to understand: it is because you havent done the proper gymnastics. I could tell you the same thing in another way: you have not learnt the language. But the same words are used, only with a slightly different relation between them, with different turns of phrase, with a different mental attitude to things. Well, this difference of attitude you cannot have unless you have done the corresponding gymnastics. And it is very easy for you to understand this example, for you all know very well that you could never do your athletic exercises if you were not trained. Even if you have special abilities, even if you are gifted, if you do not practise and train yourself, you cannot do them. Consider all your agility exercises, if you were asked to do them on the first day, you could not, it would be quite impossible, and you know it very well. If someone were to tell you spontaneously, Ah! now do thissay, a certain kind of jump, what used to be called the flying somersaultyou would say, This person is truly unreasonable, it is impossible! Well, this is the same thing; if I take certain books and read them to you, you cannot follow because you have completely neglected philosophical mental gymnastics. It is exactly the same thing if someone who has not done mathematics is asked to follow a mathematical reasoninghe wont be able to. And so, this means that if you want to express fully, totally, the deeper reality of your being, you will express it in a much richer, more integral, more varied, more productive way if all the parts of your being are fully developed like this by appropriate gymnastics.
I believe I have already explained this to you once. If it were a question of leading what till today was considered the true spiritual life, that is, of giving up altogether all physical activities in order to unite with the supreme divine Reality and remain in this union, of leaving life and all outer expression and going away into Nirvana, into an identity which not only will no longer be expressed in the world, but which takes you out of the world completely, then it is obvious that all these gymnastics, whether physical, vital, sensory or mental, are absolutely useless, and that those people considered all this simply a waste of time and quite futile. But for us who want to realise almost the very opposite, that is, who, after having identified ourselves with the supreme Reality, want to make It descend into life and transform the world, if we offer to this Reality instruments which are refined, rich, developed, fully conscious, the work of transformation will be more effective.
1957-04-10 - Sports and yoga - Organising ones life, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A true organisation gives a place to each thing to the extent that it is required. You all know very well that with ten to fifteen minutes of well-coordinated exercises, you can give your body all the necessary training. This you have been taught here and it has been proved to you. For the balance of the body this is enough. Naturally there are all sorts of other qualities given by games, but you dont play for more than an hour each day at the most, as far as I know, and that is not much time spent in the day.
It is an excuse! Organise your life and you will see that you have room for everything even for being a good student.
1957-04-17 - Transformation of the body, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But, as Sri Aurobindo says, before this can be done, it is good to utilise all that we have in order to increase and make more exact the control of physical activities. It is very obvious that those who practise physical culture scientifically and with coordination acquire a control over their bodies thats unimaginable for ordinary people. When the Russian gymnasts came here, we saw with what ease they did exercises which for an ordinary man are impossible, and they did them as if it was the simplest thing in the world; there was not even the least sign of effort! Well, that mastery is already a great step towards the transformation of the body. And these people who, I could say, are materialists by profession, used no spiritual method in their education; it was solely by material means and an enlightened use of human will that they had achieved this result. If they had added to this a spiritual knowledge and power, they could have achieved an almost miraculous result. Because of the false ideas prevalent in the world, we dont usually see the two things together, spiritual mastery and material mastery, and so one is always incomplete without the other; but this is exactly what we want to do and what Sri Aurobindo is going to explain: if the two are combined, the result can reach a perfection thats unthinkable for the ordinary human mind, and this is what we want to attempt.
As he goes on to saywe shall probably read it next timefirst one has to fight against a formidable mass of stupid prejudices which create an irreconcilable antagonism between material and spiritual life. And it is something so deep-rooted in human consciousness that it is very difficult to eradicate it, even in those who think they have understood Sri Aurobindos teaching! And many people said, when for altogether different reasons I began to hold meditations again, Ah! At last! We are returning to spiritual life. This was indeed what prevented me from holding them for a long time. It was in order not to encourage this stupidity. But for other reasons it was necessary to do it and so I did. So long as this foolishness is not uprooted from human consciousness, the supramental force will always find it considerably difficult not to be engulfed in the obscurity of a human thought which understands nothing. Thats all. All the same, we shall succeed.
1957-05-01 - Sports competitions, their value, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the admission of an activity such as sports and physical exercises into the life of the Ashram it is evident that the methods and the first objects to be attained must belong to what we have called the lower end of the being. Originally they have been introduced for the physical education and bodily development of the children of the Ashram School and these are too young for a strictly spiritual aim or practice to enter into their activities. Yet what can be attained within the human boundaries can be something very considerable and sometimes immense: what we call genius is part of the development of the human range of being and its achievements, especially in things of the mind and will, can carry us halfway to the divine. Even what the mind and will can do with the body in the field proper to the body and its life, in the way of physical achievement, bodily endurance, feats of prowess of all kinds, a lasting activity refusing fatigue or collapse and continuing beyond what seems at first to be possible, courage and refusal to succumb under an endless and murderous physical suffering, these and other victories of many kinds sometimes approaching or reaching the miraculous are seen in the human field and must be reckoned as a part of our concept of a total perfection.
The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe. Matter is the field and the creation of the Inconscient and the perfection of the operations of inconscient Matter, their perfect adaptation of means to an aim and end, the wonders they perform and the marvels of beauty they create, testify, in spite of all the ignorant denial we can oppose, to the presence and power of consciousness of this Superconscience in every part and movement of the material universe. It is there in the body, has made it and its emergence in our consciousness is the secret aim of evolution and the key to the mystery of our existence.
1957-05-08 - Vital excitement, reason, instinct, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother, usually we see that many of us take an interest in the games and activities in which there is some excitement, but few take interest in serious activities, serious exercises. Why is that?
Because in the vast majority of cases, what gives interest is vital satisfaction. For you to be interested in training exercises which dont have the stimulus of games, the reason must govern the being. In ordinary men reason is the summit of human consciousness, and this is the part of the being which must govern the rest, for it is orderly and reasonable, that is, it does things with a feeling for order, for goodness, usefulness, and in accordance with a plan, a specific plan, recognised and used by each one, whereas the vital part of the being likes excitement, the unexpected, adventureall that makes games attractiveabove all, competition, the effort to win, victory over the opponent, all these things; it is the vital impulse, and the vital in man being the seat of enthusiasm, ardour, normal energy, when the attraction of the unexpected, of struggle and victory is not there, it goes to sleep, unless it is in the habit of obeying, regularly and spontaneously, the will of the reason. And this is even one of the first things for which all physical training is useful: the fact that it cannot be done really well unless the body is in the habit of obeying the reason rather than the vital impulse. For instance, the whole development of bodily perfection, of physical culture with dumb-bells and the exercises which have nothing particularly exciting and demand a discipline, habits which must be regular, reasonable, which give no scope to passion, desire, impulseone must order ones life according to a very strict and very regular disciplinewell, in order to do them really well one must be in the habit of governing ones life by the reason.
This is not very common. Usually, unless one has taken good care to make it otherwise, the impulses the impulses of desireall the enthusiasms and passions with all their reactions are the masters of human life. One must already be something of a sage to be able to undergo a rigorous discipline of the body and obtain from it the ordered, regular effort which can perfect it. There is no longer any room there for all the fancies of desire. You see, as soon as one gives way to excesses, to immoderation of any kind and a disorderly life, it becomes quite impossible to control ones body and develop it normally, not to mention that, naturally, one spoils ones health and as a result the most important part of the ideal of a perfect body disappears; for with bad health, impaired health, one is not much good for anything. And it is certainly the satisfaction of desires and impulses of the vital or the unreasonable demands of certain ambitions which make the body suffer and fall ill.
1958-01-08 - Sri Aurobindos method of exposition - The mind as a public place - Mental control - Sri Aurobindos subtle hand, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In reality, you should take this reading as an opportunity to develop the philosophical mind in yourself and the capacity to arrange ideas in a logical order and establish an argument on a sound basis. You must take this like dumb-bell exercises for developing muscles: these are dumb-bell exercises for the mind to develop ones brain. And you must not jump to hasty conclusions. If we wait with patience, at the end of the chapter he will tell usand tell us on a basis of irrefutable argumentwhy he has come to the conclusion he arrives at.
Now, if there is anything that gives rise to a question
--
You see, all those who have done ordered and organised physical exercises, have the knowledge, for instance, of the various muscles which must be moved to obtain a particular movement, and the best way to move them and how to obtain the maximum result with the minimum loss of energy. Well, it is the same thing with thought. When you train yourself methodically, there comes a time when you can follow a train of reasoning quite objectively, as you would project a picture on a screenyou can follow the logical deduction of one idea from another, and the normal, logical, organised movement, with the minimum loss of time, from a proposition to its conclusion. Once you have acquired the habit of doing that, just as you have the habit of methodically moving the muscles which must be moved to obtain a certain result, your thought becomes clear. Otherwise, movements of thought, intellectual movements, are vague, imprecise, elusive; all of a sudden something rises up, one doesnt know why, and something else comes to contradict it, one doesnt know why either. And if one tries to organise this clearly in order to become aware of the exact relation between ideas, the first few times one does it, one gets a fine headache! And one has the feeling of trying to find ones way in a very dark virgin forest.
The speculative mind needs discipline for its development. If it is not disciplined methodically, one is always in a sort of a cloud. The vast majority of human beings can harbour the most contradictory ideas in their brains without being in the least troubled by them.
1958-07-30 - The planchette - automatic writing - Proofs and knowledge, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo told me that some people needed this because their minds were so inert that this shook them and woke them up a little! Well, that is the same thing. Some people may need to do exercises of this kind to awaken their vital a little, which is sleepy and inert and this gives them a little interest in life. But still, one cant say that these are very valuable occupations. They are pastimes, amusements.
And this has never served to prove anything to anybody. One could say, Oh! It is to make you understand that there is an inner life, an invisible life, and it puts you in touch with things you dont see and proves to you that they exist. That is not true.
1958-08-13 - Profit by staying in the Ashram - What Sri Aurobindo has come to tell us - Finding the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Most of you came here when you were very small, at an age when there can be no question of the spiritual life or spiritual teaching it would be altogether premature. You have indeed lived in this atmosphere but without even being aware of it; you are accustomed to seeing me, hearing me; I speak to you as one does to all children, I have even played with you as one plays with children; you only have to come and sit here and you hear me speak, you only have to ask me a question and I answer you, I have never refused to say anything to anybody it is so easy. It is enough to live to sleep, to eat, to do exercises and study at school. You live here as you would live anywhere else. And so, you are used to it.
If I had made strict rules, if I had said, I shall not tell you anything until you have truly made an effort to know it, then perhaps you might have made some effort, but thats not in keeping with my idea. I believe more in the power of the atmosphere and of example than of a rigorous teaching. I count more on something awakening in the being through contagion rather than by a methodical, disciplined effort.
1958 11 28, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are always people with a wholly external view of things who say, Workers, for example, who have to do hard physical labour and who are compelled by their work to learn to carry heavy weights they too build up their muscles, and instead of spending their time like aristocrats doing exercises with no useful outward results, they at least produce something. This is ignorance. Because there is an essential difference between the muscles developed through specialised, local and limited use and muscles which have been cultivated deliberately and harmoniously according to an integral programme which leaves no part of the body without work or exercise.
People like workers and peasants, who have a specialised occupation and develop only certain muscles, always end up with occupational deformities. And this in no way helps their psychic progress because, although the whole of life necessarily contri butes to the psychic development, it does so in such an unconscious way and so slowly that the poor psychic being must come back again and again and again, indefinitely, to achieve its purpose. Therefore we can say without fear of being mistaken that physical culture is the sadhana of the body and that all sadhana necessarily helps to hasten the achievement of the goal. The more consciously you do it, the quicker and more general the result, but even if you do it blindly, if you can see no further than the tips of your fingers or your feet or your nose, you help the overall development.
1962 02 27, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It depends. For each thing there is a method. And the first method is to want it, to begin with, that is, to take a decision. Then you are given a description of all these senses and how they work that takes some time. You take one sense or several, or the one which is easiest for you to start with, and you decide. Then you follow the discipline. It is the equivalent of exercises for developing the muscles. You can even succeed in creating a will in yourself.
But for more subtle things, the method is to make for yourself an exact image of what you want, to come into contact with the corresponding vibration, and then to concentrate and do exercisessuch as to practise seeing through an object or hearing through a sound,1 or seeing at a distance. For example, once, for a long time, for several months, I was confined to bed and I found it rather boring I wanted to see. I was in a room and at one end there was another little room and at the end of the little room there was a kind of bridge; in the middle of the garden the bridge became a staircase leading down into a very big and very beautiful studio, standing in the middle of the garden. I wanted to go and see what was happening in the studio, for I was feeling bored in my room. So I would remain very quiet, close my eyes and send out my consciousness, little by little, little by little, little by little. And day after day I chose a fixed time and did the exercise regularly. At first you make use of your imagination and then it becomes a fact. After some time I really had the physical sensation that my vision was moving; I followed it and then I could see things downstairs which I knew nothing about. I would check afterwards. In the evening I would ask, Was this like that? And was that like this?
But for each one of these things you must practise for months with patience, with a kind of obstinacy. You take the senses one by one, hearing, sight, and you can even arrive at subtle realities of taste, smell and touch.
1965 05 29, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It has that power and exercises it constantly, but the human consciousness is not aware of it; and the big difference is that it is becoming aware. But it is becoming aware of something that is always there, and which others deny because they cannot see it.
For example, I have had the opportunity to study this. For me, circumstances, characters, all events and all beings move according to certain laws, so to say, which are not rigid, but which I can perceive and which enable me to see: this will lead to that and that will lead there, and since this person is like that, this will happen to him. It is more and more precise. Because of this, I could, if necessary, make predictions. But this relation of cause and effect in that domain is quite obvious for me and it is corroborated by the facts; for themthose who do not have this vision and consciousness of the soul, as Sri Aurobindo sayscircumstances unfold according to other superficial laws, which they consider as the natural consequences of things, completely superficial laws that do not stand up to deep analysis. But they do not have the inner capacity, so it does not worry them, it seems obvious to them.
1f.lovecraft - Medusas Coil, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
beauty exercises, hair-oils, unguents, and everything of that kind. It
was in these morning hours that Denis and Marsh did their real
1f.lovecraft - The Mound, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
religious exercises, exotic experiments, artistic and philosophical
discussions, and the like, as the principal occupations.
1.kbr - Where do you search me, #Songs of Kabir, #Kabir, #Sufism
Not in yogic exercises
Neither in renunciation
--
Kabir reveals in this verse the various search patterns adopted by mankind. And each one seems to be justifying his chosen method. Some say God will be realized through pilgrimages while some justify the idol worship. Some say He is up in the mountains while some believe that He is in places of worship. Some proclaim prayers and meditation the path, others believe realization through fasting. Many talk about yogic exercises (activity) and renunciation. When Kabir says that God is not in any of these things it does not mean that God is not in any of these but that to find God what one needs is but to believe and have faith, and when one will have faith he will find God in a moments search, for God is with him all the time. In this poem Kabir emphasises the all-pervading, omniscient, omnipresent qualities of God.
1.rwe - Monadnoc, #Emerson - Poems, #Ralph Waldo Emerson, #Philosophy
These exercises are the toys
And games with which he breathes his boys.
1.tr - Descend from your head into your heart, #unset, #Anonymous, #Various
Original Language Russian You must descend from your head into your heart. At present your thoughts of God are in your head. And God Himself is, as it were, outside you, and so your prayer and other spiritual exercises remain exterior. Whilst you are still in your head, thoughts will not easily be subdued but will always be whirling about, like snow in winter or clouds of mosquitoes in summer. [2430.jpg] -- from For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics, by Roger Housden
1.whitman - Eidolons, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations!
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,
2.00 - BIBLIOGRAPHY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
TILLYARD, AELFRIDA. Spiritual exercises (London, 1927).
TRAHERNE, THOMAS. Centuries of Meditation (London, 1908).
2.01 - The Road of Trials, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
There can be no question: the psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best, with only tentative, impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, "enlightened" individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence. Never theless, in the multitude of myths and legends that have been preserved to us, or collected from the ends of the earth, we may yet see delineated something of our still human course. To hear and profit, however, one may have to submit somehow to purgation and surrender. And that is part of our problem: just how to do that. "Or do ye think that ye shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed away before you?"
The oldest recorded account of the passage through the gates of metamorphosis is the Sumerian myth of the goddess Inanna's descent to the nether world.
2.02 - Habit 2 Begin with the End in Mind, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
I will be a self-starting individual who exercises initiative in accomplishing my life's goals. I will act on situations and opportunities, rather than to be acted upon.
I will always try to keep myself free from addictive and destructive habits. I will develop habits that free me from old labels and limits and expand my capabilities and choices.
--
In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, "licking the earth."
Friend/Enemy Centeredness. Young people are particularly, though certainly not exclusively, susceptible to becoming friend-centered. Acceptance and belonging to a peer group can become almost supremely important. The distorted and ever-changing social mirror becomes the source for the four life-support factors, creating a high degree of dependence on the fluctuating moods, feelings, attitudes, and behavior of others.
--
I have done similar visualization exercises with some of my university classes. "Assume you only have this one semester to live," I tell my students, "and that during this semester you are to stay in school as a good student. Visualize how you would spend your semester.
Things are suddenly placed in a different perspective. Values quickly surface that before weren't even recognized.
--
Of course, the logical/verbal left brain becomes important also as you attempt to capture your right-brain images, feelings, and pictures in the words of a written mission statement. Just as breathing exercises help integrate body and mind, writing is a kind of psycho-neural muscular activity which helps bridge and integrate the conscious and subconscious minds. Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought and helps break the whole into parts.
We each have a number of different roles in our lives -- different areas or capacities in which we have responsibility. I may, for example, have a role as an individual, a husband, a father, a teacher, a church member, and a businessman. And each of these roles is important.
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
and work which exercises a stupendous influence on others. He
is svB
--
The first condition of Yogic exercises is, as has been said, the
stillness of the body, which implies the suspension of the five
--
of his conduct, it exercises no other coercive influence than that
of social disapproval expressed but not enacted; over another
part of his conduct it exercises the right of enacting that disapproval in the shape of ostracism or excommunication; but that
part of his life which most strongly concerns the community, it
2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
All exercises, like the breathing-practices, are only devices which something that is behind them is using for manifesting itself. On the physical plane also, it is nothing else but certain devices a system of notations that we employ. But we give too much importance to the form of the device, because we think the physical to be the most real. If we only knew that the entire physical world is made up of energy and that it is nothing else but the working of a certain consciousness and power using certain devices then we would not be deceived.
Disciple: Is it true that when the Higher Consciousness comes the brain stops thinking?
2.05 - The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If our dreams wore like our waking life an aspect of coherence, each night taking up and carrying farther a past continuous and connected sleep experience as each day takes up again our waking world-experience, then dreams would assume to our mind quite another character. There is therefore no analogy between a dream and waking life; these are experiences quite different in their character, validity, order. Our life is accused of evanescence and often it is accused too, as a whole, of a lack of inner coherence and significance; but its lack of complete significance may be due to our lack or limitation of understanding: actually, when we go within and begin to see it from within, it assumes a complete connected significance; at the same time whatever lack of inner coherence was felt before disappears and we see that it was due to the incoherence of our own inner seeing and knowledge and was not at all a character of life. There is no surface incoherence in life, it rather appears to our minds as a chain of firm sequences, and, if that is a mental delusion, as is sometimes alleged, if the sequence is created by our minds and does not actually exist in life, that does not remove the difference of the two states of consciousness. For in dream the coherence given by an observing inner consciousness is absent, and whatever sense of sequence there is seems to be due to a vague and false imitation of the connections of waking life, a subconscious mimesis, but this imitative sequence is shadowy and imperfect, fails and breaks always and is often wholly absent. We see too that the dream-consciousness seems to be wholly devoid of that control which the waking consciousness exercises to a certain extent over life-circumstances; it has the Nature-automatism of a subconscient construction and nothing of the conscious will and organising force of the evolved mind of the human being.
Again the evanescence of a dream is radical and one dream has no connection with another; but the evanescence of the waking life is of details, - there is no evidence of evanescence in the connected totality of world-experience. Our bodies perish but
--
There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or subtle-physical being larger than our outer being and nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature, - and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being's direct consciousness of things than its informants: the subliminal is not dependent on its senses for its knowledge, they only give a form to its direct experience of objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution created in its passage and with all corresponding planes or worlds that may have arisen or been constructed to serve the purpose of the re-ascent from Inconscience to Superconscience.
It is into this large realm of interior existence that our mind and vital being retire when they withdraw from the surface activities
2.06 - The Wand, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
42:With many people custom and habit - of which ethics is but the social expression - are the things most difficult to give up: and it is a useful practice to break any habit just to get into the way of being free from that form of slavery. Hence we have practices for breaking up sleep, for putting our bodies into strained and unnatural positions, for doing difficult exercises of breathing - all these, apart from any special merit they may have in themselves for any particular purpose, have the main merit that the man forces himself to do them despite any conditions that may exist. Having conquered internal resistance one may conquer external resistance more easily.
43:In a steam boat the engine must first overcome its own inertia before it can attack the resistance of the water.
--- Overview of noun exercise
The noun exercise has 5 senses (first 4 from tagged texts)
1. (26) exercise, exercising, physical exercise, physical exertion, workout ::: (the activity of exerting your muscles in various ways to keep fit; "the doctor recommended regular exercise"; "he did some exercising"; "the physical exertion required by his work kept him fit")
2. (3) use, usage, utilization, utilisation, employment, exercise ::: (the act of using; "he warned against the use of narcotic drugs"; "skilled in the utilization of computers")
3. (2) exercise, practice, drill, practice session, recitation ::: (systematic training by multiple repetitions; "practice makes perfect")
4. (2) exercise, example ::: (a task performed or problem solved in order to develop skill or understanding; "you must work the examples at the end of each chapter in the textbook")
5. exercise ::: ((usually plural) a ceremony that involves processions and speeches; "academic exercises")
--- Overview of verb exercise
The verb exercise has 5 senses (first 4 from tagged texts)
1. (14) exert, exercise ::: (put to use; "exert one's power or influence")
2. (11) practice, practise, exercise, do ::: (carry out or practice; as of jobs and professions; "practice law")
3. (3) exercise, work, work out ::: (give a workout to; "Some parents exercise their infants"; "My personal trainer works me hard"; "work one's muscles"; "this puzzle will exercise your mind")
4. (3) exercise, work out ::: (do physical exercise; "She works out in the gym every day")
5. drill, exercise, practice, practise ::: (learn by repetition; "We drilled French verbs every day"; "Pianists practice scales")
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun exercise
5 senses of exercise
Sense 1
exercise, exercising, physical exercise, physical exertion, workout
=> effort, elbow grease, exertion, travail, sweat
=> labor, labour, toil
=> work
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
use, usage, utilization, utilisation, employment, exercise
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
exercise, practice, drill, practice session, recitation
=> training, preparation, grooming
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 4
exercise, example
=> lesson
=> school assignment, schoolwork
=> assignment
=> undertaking, project, task, labor
=> work
=> activity
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 5
exercise
=> ceremony, ceremonial, ceremonial occasion, observance
=> affair, occasion, social occasion, function, social function
=> social event
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun exercise
4 of 5 senses of exercise
Sense 1
exercise, exercising, physical exercise, physical exertion, workout
=> cardiopulmonary exercise
=> gymnastic exercise
=> kick up
=> set, exercise set
=> bodybuilding, anaerobic exercise, muscle building, musclebuilding
=> calisthenics, callisthenics
=> isometrics, isometric exercise
=> isotonic exercise
=> Kegel exercises, pubococcygeus exercises
=> stretch, stretching
=> arm exercise
=> back exercise
=> leg exercise
=> neck exercise
=> stomach exercise, tummy crunch
=> yoga
Sense 2
use, usage, utilization, utilisation, employment, exercise
=> practice
=> play
=> misuse, abuse
=> exploitation, development
=> recycling
=> application, practical application
Sense 3
exercise, practice, drill, practice session, recitation
=> fire drill
=> manual of arms, manual
=> military drill
=> rehearsal
=> rehearsal, dry run
=> review, brushup
=> scrimmage
=> shadowboxing
=> target practice
Sense 5
exercise
=> commencement, commencement exercise, commencement ceremony, graduation, graduation exercise
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun exercise
5 senses of exercise
Sense 1
exercise, exercising, physical exercise, physical exertion, workout
=> effort, elbow grease, exertion, travail, sweat
Sense 2
use, usage, utilization, utilisation, employment, exercise
=> activity
Sense 3
exercise, practice, drill, practice session, recitation
=> training, preparation, grooming
Sense 4
exercise, example
=> lesson
Sense 5
exercise
=> ceremony, ceremonial, ceremonial occasion, observance
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun exercise
5 senses of exercise
Sense 1
exercise, exercising, physical exercise, physical exertion, workout
-> effort, elbow grease, exertion, travail, sweat
=> struggle
=> trouble, difficulty
=> least effort, least resistance
=> strain, straining
=> exercise, exercising, physical exercise, physical exertion, workout
=> pull
=> application, diligence
=> overkill
=> supererogation
=> overexertion
=> friction, detrition, rubbing
Sense 2
use, usage, utilization, utilisation, employment, exercise
-> activity
=> variation, variance
=> space walk
=> domesticity
=> operation
=> operation
=> practice, pattern
=> diversion, recreation
=> cup of tea, bag, dish
=> follow-up, followup
=> game
=> turn, play
=> music
=> acting, playing, playacting, performing
=> liveliness, animation
=> burst, fit
=> work
=> works, deeds
=> service
=> occupation, business, job, line of work, line
=> occupation
=> writing, committal to writing
=> role
=> wrongdoing, wrongful conduct, misconduct, actus reus
=> waste, wastefulness, dissipation
=> attempt, effort, endeavor, endeavour, try
=> control
=> protection
=> sensory activity
=> education, instruction, teaching, pedagogy, didactics, educational activity
=> training, preparation, grooming
=> representation
=> creation, creative activity
=> dismantling, dismantlement, disassembly
=> puncture
=> search, hunt, hunting
=> use, usage, utilization, utilisation, employment, exercise
=> operation, military operation
=> measurement, measuring, measure, mensuration
=> calibration, standardization, standardisation
=> organization, organisation
=> grouping
=> support, supporting
=> continuance, continuation
=> procedure, process
=> ceremony
=> ceremony
=> worship
=> energizing, activating, activation
=> concealment, concealing, hiding
=> placement, location, locating, position, positioning, emplacement
=> provision, supply, supplying
=> demand
=> pleasure
=> enjoyment, delectation
=> lamentation, mourning
=> laughter
=> market, marketplace, market place
=> politics
=> preparation, readying
=> aid, assist, assistance, help
=> support
=> behavior, behaviour, conduct, doings
=> behavior, behaviour
=> leadership, leading
=> precession, precedence, precedency
=> solo
=> buzz
=> fun
=> sin, hell
=> release, outlet, vent
=> last
=> mystification, obfuscation
=> negotiation
=> verbalization, verbalisation
=> perturbation, disturbance
=> timekeeping
Sense 3
exercise, practice, drill, practice session, recitation
-> training, preparation, grooming
=> athletic training
=> discipline
=> drill
=> exercise, practice, drill, practice session, recitation
=> military training
=> retraining
=> schooling
=> skull session, skull practice
=> toilet training
Sense 4
exercise, example
-> lesson
=> exercise, example
=> reading assignment
=> history lesson
Sense 5
exercise
-> ceremony, ceremonial, ceremonial occasion, observance
=> circumstance
=> funeral
=> wedding, wedding ceremony, nuptials, hymeneals
=> pageant, pageantry
=> dedication
=> opening
=> commemoration, memorialization, memorialisation
=> military ceremony
=> initiation, induction, installation
=> exercise
=> fire walking
=> formality, formalities
=> Maundy
=> potlatch
--- Grep of noun exercises
kegel exercises
pubococcygeus exercises
Grep of noun exercise
aerobic exercise
anaerobic exercise
arm exercise
back exercise
cardiopulmonary exercise
commencement exercise
exercise
exercise bike
exercise device
exercise set
exerciser
graduation exercise
gymnastic exercise
isometric exercise
isotonic exercise
leg exercise
neck exercise
physical exercise
stomach exercise
Wikipedia - Able Archer 83 -- NATO command post exercise in 1983
Wikipedia - Acute muscle soreness -- Muscle pain during exercise
Wikipedia - Advanced Resistive Exercise Device -- Exercise device for exercise in zero gravity
Wikipedia - Aerobic exercise
Wikipedia - Aerobics -- Form of physical exercise
Wikipedia - Agility drill -- Form of physical exercise which aims to improve agility
Wikipedia - Anaerobic exercise -- Physical exercise intense enough to cause lactate formation
Wikipedia - Anaku -- Exercise in Karate
Wikipedia - Army Manoeuvres of 1912 -- Military exercise
Wikipedia - Authority (sociology) -- The legitimate power which one person or a group holds and exercises over another
Wikipedia - Bakasana -- Hand-balancing posture in hatha yoga and modern yoga as exercise
Wikipedia - Barre (exercise) -- Form of physical exercise
Wikipedia - Bench press -- Exercise of the upper body
Wikipedia - Blanket exercise -- Exercise teaching indigenous history
Wikipedia - Bowflex -- Type of exercise equipment
Wikipedia - British protectorate -- Territory over which the British government exercised limited jurisdiction
Wikipedia - Burpee (exercise) -- Full body exercise
Wikipedia - Calisthenics -- Form of exercise consisting of a variety of exercises, often rhythmical
Wikipedia - Central governor -- A process in the brain that regulates exercise in regard to a neurally calculated safe exertion by the body
Wikipedia - Clade X -- 2018 pandemic modelling exercise
Wikipedia - Command and control -- Military exercise of authority by a commanding officer over assigned forces
Wikipedia - Confederation -- Union of sovereign states linked by treaties whose common government does not directly exercise its sovereignty over their territory
Wikipedia - Continuous training -- Exercise
Wikipedia - Convention on the Exercise of Liberal Professions of 1939 -- 1939 international treaty in South America
Wikipedia - Daoyin -- Series of health-promoting exercises practiced by Daoists
Wikipedia - Delayed onset muscle soreness -- Pain in muscles after exercise
Wikipedia - Dictation (exercise)
Wikipedia - Draft:79 Days Report -- series of political scenario exercises
Wikipedia - Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption -- Increased rate of oxygen intake following strenuous activity
Wikipedia - Exclusion of judicial review in Singapore law -- Singapore's application of legal concept to protect the exercise of executive power
Wikipedia - Exercise and music
Wikipedia - Exercise Ardent -- 1952 RAF military exercise
Wikipedia - Exercise ball -- Type of ball
Wikipedia - Exercise book -- Type of notebook designed for writing schoolwork and study notes
Wikipedia - Exercise Cygnus -- 2016 UK pandemic simulation exercise
Wikipedia - Exercise dress -- Item of athletic wear
Wikipedia - Exercise Paddington Diamond -- A joint Bolivian-British-Swiss scuba diving expedition to Lake Titicaca
Wikipedia - Exercise physiology
Wikipedia - Exercise RIMPAC -- International maritime warfare exercise
Wikipedia - Exercise Saif Sareea -- A series of joint military exercises held by the United Kingdom and Oman
Wikipedia - Exercise Tiger -- D-Day rehearsal in 1944
Wikipedia - Exercise -- Bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness
Wikipedia - F3 Nation -- American exercise organization
Wikipedia - Feldenkrais Method -- Type of alternative exercise therapy with no evidence of efectivity created by Moshe Feldenkrais
Wikipedia - Fitness culture -- A sociocultural phenomenon surrounding exercise and physical fitness.
Wikipedia - Foam roller -- Therapeutic exercise device
Wikipedia - Geometric Exercises in Paper Folding
Wikipedia - Health club -- A place which houses exercise equipment for the purpose of physical exercise
Wikipedia - High-intensity interval training -- Exercise strategy
Wikipedia - Independence -- Condition of a nation, country, or state which exercises self-government, and usually sovereignty, over the territory
Wikipedia - Indian club -- Type of exercise equipment
Wikipedia - Inspection -- Organized examination or formal evaluation exercise
Wikipedia - ISO 22398 -- Security exercise standards
Wikipedia - Jackie Genova -- Australian exercise instructor
Wikipedia - Jane Fonda's Workout -- Exercise video by Jane Fonda
Wikipedia - John Orchard (doctor) -- Australian sport and exercise medicine physician (born 1967)
Wikipedia - Karim M. Khan -- Canadian/Australian sport and exercise medicine physician
Wikipedia - Kathryn H. Schmitz -- American exercise physiologist
Wikipedia - Kegel exercise -- Pelvic floor exercise
Wikipedia - Kenneth William Donald -- British expert on underwater and exercise physiology.
Wikipedia - Key Resolve -- Annual command post exercise
Wikipedia - Koundinyasana -- Asymmetric balancing posture in yoga as exercise
Wikipedia - Leg press -- Weight training exercise
Wikipedia - Light on Yoga -- Book on the Iyengar Yoga style of modern yoga as exercise
Wikipedia - List of asanas -- List of postures in hatha yoga and yoga as exercise
Wikipedia - List of exercises of the Indian Air Force -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - List of weight training exercises
Wikipedia - Lords Commissioners -- Privy Counsellors who exercise certain functions in the UK Parliament
Wikipedia - Lunge (exercise) -- Type of exercise
Wikipedia - Management and Economic Simulation Exercise -- Educational simulation software
Wikipedia - Mental exercise
Wikipedia - Military exercises
Wikipedia - Military exercise
Wikipedia - Millennium Challenge 2002 -- Major war game exercise
Wikipedia - Mind sport -- Game of skill where the mental exercise component is more significant than the physical
Wikipedia - NA-262 (Pishin) -- Constituency of the National Assembly of Pakistan created in the 2018 delimitation exercise
Wikipedia - National Socialist League of the Reich for Physical Exercise -- Umbrella organization for sports and physical education in Nazi Germany
Wikipedia - Negligence -- Failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances
Wikipedia - Neurobiological effects of physical exercise -- Neural, cognitive, and behavioral effects of physical exercise
Wikipedia - Nishi Shiki -- Health exercises system founded in 1927 by KatsuzM-EM-^M Nishi
Wikipedia - Operation Bernhard -- Exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British bank notes
Wikipedia - Operation Dark Winter -- Senior-level U.S. bio-terrorist attack simulation exercise
Wikipedia - Operation Dawn Blitz -- Annual US Navy and Marine exercise
Wikipedia - Operation Sky Shield -- Air-defense exercises in 1960s USA.
Wikipedia - Pelvic floor exercise
Wikipedia - Physical exercise
Wikipedia - PiYo -- Exercise program
Wikipedia - Planche (exercise) -- Gymnastics skill
Wikipedia - Plank (exercise) -- Isometric strength exercise
Wikipedia - Project SHAMROCK -- Cold-War era US espionage exercise
Wikipedia - Pushdown (exercise)
Wikipedia - Push press -- Weightlifting exercise
Wikipedia - Push-up -- Calisthenics exercise
Wikipedia - Radio calisthenics -- Exercise routines distributed by radio broadcast; primarily done in Asia
Wikipedia - Rear delt raise -- Weight training exercise
Wikipedia - Research Assessment Exercise
Wikipedia - Rudolf Steiner's exercises for spiritual development
Wikipedia - Russian twist -- Exercise movement
Wikipedia - Seat of government -- Place from which a government exercises its authority
Wikipedia - Self-efficacy: The exercise of control
Wikipedia - Self-efficacy: the exercise of control
Wikipedia - Seven Days to the River Rhine -- Russian military simulation exercise
Wikipedia - Shadowboxing -- Sports training exercise
Wikipedia - Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola
Wikipedia - Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius
Wikipedia - Sports equipment -- Object used for sport or exercise
Wikipedia - Sportswear -- Clothing worn for sport or physical exercise
Wikipedia - Square dancing (China) -- Exercise activity popular with older Chinese women
Wikipedia - Squat (exercise) -- Workout that targets the legs
Wikipedia - Squat thrust -- Calisthenic exercise
Wikipedia - Step aerobics -- Form of aerobic exercise
Wikipedia - Steven Blair -- American exercise scientist
Wikipedia - Stretching -- Form of physical exercise where a muscle is stretched to improve it
Wikipedia - The Firm (brand) -- Exercise brand
Wikipedia - The Pet Goat -- Children's reading exercise
Wikipedia - Totskoye nuclear exercise
Wikipedia - Transition Integrity Project -- series of political scenario exercises
Wikipedia - Treadmill -- Exercise machine
Wikipedia - Trekking pole -- Used by hikers for balance and extra exercise
Wikipedia - Trust Exercise -- Coming-of-age fiction novel written by Susan Choi
Wikipedia - Tulasana -- Cross-legged hand-balancing posture in yoga as exercise
Wikipedia - Utthita Padangusthasana -- Standing balancing posture in yoga as exercise
Wikipedia - Workwear -- Clothing that is worn in the exercise of a service profession, a craft or an engineering profession
Wikipedia - Yoga as exercise -- Physical activity consisting of yoga poses
Wikipedia - Yoga Body -- 2010 book on the history of yoga as exercise by Mark Singleton
Wikipedia - Yoga Journal -- American magazine on yoga as exercise
Wikipedia - Yoga mat -- Exercise mat, mainly for yoga as exercise
Wikipedia - Zumba -- Exercise program
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/319790.Exercises_in_Style
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https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/File:Australian_soldiers_from_the_2nd_Battalion,_Royal_Australian_Regiment_conducts_a_foot_patrol_during_exercise_Talisman_Sabre_2007.jpg
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/British_Armed_Forces#Exercise_Steppe_Eagle
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Composite_Training_Unit_Exercise
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Live_fire_exercise
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/File:Falun_Dafa_fifth_meditation_exercise.jpg
auromere - a-contemplation-exercise-before-going-to-sleep
Having No Head: A Pointing-Out Exercise
Dharmapedia - Yoga_as_exercise
Psychology Wiki - Category:Exercise
Psychology Wiki - Exercise
Psychology Wiki - Yoga_as_exercise
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/AnExerciseInFutility
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExerciseExcuse
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Exercise
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:A_member_of_the_Japanese_Ground_Self-Defense_Force,_foreground,_rests_during_a_patrolling_exercise_at_Marine_Corps_Base_Camp_Pendleton,_Calif.,_June_12,_2013,_during_exercise_Dawn_Blitz_2013_130612-M-JU912-072.jpg
Extreme Makeover (2002 - 2007) - Three individuals fly to Hollywood to receive an "Extreme Makeover" consisting of plastic surgery, an exercise regimen, and wardrobe changes. The fries and families of each participant were not allowed to see hem for the period during the changes.
Beachy & Friends (2021 - Current) - Upcoming animated TV show being developed by the creators of The Beeps and Jelly Jamm. The show stars a beach ball named Beachy as a main character. His best friends Soccery the Soccer ball, Baskety the Basketball, and Exerciser the Exercise Ball. Together they go on adventures.
Heavyweights(1995) - Jerry, an overweight pre-teen, is sent to a "fat farm" for the summer, lured by the promise of go-karts and swimming fun. When he arrives, however, he finds that the camp has been bought out by an exercise/fitness guru whose mental stability quickly deteriorates. Jerry and his friends--including a c...
Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree(1966) - In the first Winnie the Pooh featurette, we find Pooh doing his best at wanting to find honey. Some of the following methods he uses include an exercise routine, a balloon and a mud disguse to reach a honey tree, (he never succeeds, unfortunately) and of course, going to Rabbit's house, but he canno...
Heavenly Bodies(1984) - Samantha (Cynthia Dale) is a young single mother who starts a health club. The club is a great success, but she could lose it all if her business rivals take over. An exercise marathon takes place, but which club will succeed?
Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College(1991) - Though representing a slight step upward in budget from the previous two Ghoulies installments, this is still a rather silly exercise in childish fart jokes and rubbery monster effects. The title critters are mini-demons summoned forth from a demonic chamber pot (seriously!) by the occult-obsessed D...
Parts: The Clonus Horror(1979) - In a lone isolated area in the United States lies Clonus. This area is used to train and raise clones of the rich and powerful for extra organ transplants. The clones go through various exercises and lesson plans, They are told if they continue their good work they will go to "America". One of the c...
The Item(1999) - This outrageously weird oddity from Dan Clark was the first entry in the Sundance Film Festival's Dramatic Competition shot entirely on Digital Beta video, then transferred to film. This nightmarish and hyper-violent exercise involves the efforts of a group of homicidal thugs to obtain and safeguard...
The Game(1997) - Director David Fincher followed the success of his dark and atmospheric crime thriller Seven (1995) with another exercise in stylish film noir, this time lifting the pallid atmosphere a notch to indulge in a fast-paced trip through the cinematic funhouse. Michael Douglas plays Nicholas Van Orton, a...
Raquel: Total Body And Fitness(1984) - This was the first of several exercise videos in the 80s to feature actress Raquel Welch.
Dog Soldiers(2002) - A group of British Soldiers while on a training exercise are attacked by a group of werewolves. As the retreat they encounter a zoologist who takes them to a isolated cabin as they try to survive the assault of th
Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London(2004) - Agent Cody Banks (Frankie Muniz) attends summer camp, actually a secret facility for training CIA teenage agents. When a group of CIA soldiers attempt to abduct head counselor Victor Diaz (Keith Allen), Cody helps him escape, mistaking the CIA operation for a training exercise. The director informs...
Basic(2003) - A DEA agent investigates the disappearance of a legendary Army ranger drill sergeant and several of his cadets during a training exercise gone severely awry.
Karatix(1986) - Tiana Alexandra (the only woman to be trained by Bruce Lee) is the innovator of KARATIX, a unique exercise and self-defense training program. It combines elements of dance and combat art disciplines to develop self defense skills which the beginner can learn at home through regular practice. Tiana A...
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (2007) ::: 6.7/10 -- R | 1h 26min | Animation, Action, Adventure | 13 April 2007 (USA) -- An action epic that explores the origins of Master Shake, Frylock, and Meatwad, better known as the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, who somehow become pitted in a battle over an immortal piece of exercise equipment. Directors: Matt Maiellaro, Dave Willis Writers:
Basic (2003) ::: 6.5/10 -- R | 1h 38min | Action, Crime, Drama | 28 March 2003 (USA) -- A D.E.A. Agent investigates the disappearance of a legendary Army Ranger Drill Sergeant and several of his cadets during a training exercise gone severely awry. Director: John McTiernan Writer:
Dog Soldiers (2002) ::: 6.8/10 -- R | 1h 45min | Action, Horror, Thriller | 10 May 2002 (UK) -- A routine military exercise turns into a nightmare in the Scotland wilderness. Director: Neil Marshall Writer: Neil Marshall Stars:
Southern Comfort (1981) ::: 7.2/10 -- R | 1h 46min | Action, Thriller | 25 September 1981 (USA) -- During a routine exercise, a team of National Guards are threatened by angry and violent locals. Director: Walter Hill Writers: Michael Kane, Walter Hill | 1 more credit
Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007) -- Season 5 | Episode 13 Previous All Episodes (213) Next Proving Ground Poster ::: While SG-1 is conducting training exercises for new recruits, Jack gets a call about a "foothold" situation. Wounded by compromised officers, O'Neill must lead the recruits in retaking the SGC. Director:
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Baby Steps -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 25 eps -- Manga -- Romance School Shounen Sports -- Baby Steps Baby Steps -- Diligent and methodical honor student Eiichirou Maruo decides to exercise more during the little free time he has available because he is worried about his health. For this reason, after seeing a flyer, he joins the Southern Tennis Club at the beginning of his freshman year. -- -- During his free trial at the club, he meets Natsu Takasaki, another first year student, who is determined on becoming a professional tennis player due to her love for the sport. In contrast, Eiichirou's study-oriented life exists because he believes that it is what he has to do, not because he enjoys it. However, his monotonous days come to an end as the more he plays tennis, the more he becomes fascinated by it. -- -- Baby Steps is the story of a boy who makes the most of his hard-working and perfectionist nature to develop his own unique playing style. Little by little, Eiichirou's skills begin to improve, and he hopes to stand on equal footing with tennis' best players. -- -- TV - Apr 6, 2014 -- 124,951 7.84
Detective Conan Movie 17: Private Eye in the Distant Sea -- -- TMS Entertainment -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Adventure Mystery Comedy Police Shounen -- Detective Conan Movie 17: Private Eye in the Distant Sea Detective Conan Movie 17: Private Eye in the Distant Sea -- The warship Aegis Destroyer is conducting public exercises in Maizuru Bay where, coincidentally, a suspicious foreign ship was recently spotted. Conan Edogawa, Ran Mouri, Kogorou Mouri, Sonoko Suzuki, and the Detective Boys all receive a ticket to attend this event. However, while the ongoing military operations are underway, one of the crew members comes across a lieutenant's severed left arm. Conan later discovers that a foreign spy may have infiltrated the warship to obtain classified information by any means necessary. If the information were to leak, Japan's line of defense would be exposed, leaving the country unprotected from hostile attack. -- -- With the help of the police at sea while other friends and allies investigate on the mainland, Conan must now prevent this national crisis and identify the spy for the sake of Japan. -- -- Movie - Apr 20, 2013 -- 29,499 7.69
Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru? -- -- Doga Kobo -- 12 eps -- Web manga -- Comedy Ecchi Slice of Life Sports -- Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru? Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru? -- During a regular after-school grub crawl, gluttonous high schooler Hibiki Sakura is confronted about her ever-expanding waistline by her best friend, Ayaka Uehara. With her attempts at solitary exercise failing miserably, Hibiki decides to join the newly opened Silverman Gym. At her orientation, Hibiki runs into student council president and school idol Akemi Souryuuin. -- -- However, it soon turns out that Hibiki is in for a lot more than she bargained for. Not only is Silverman Gym full of world-renowned bodybuilders and athletes, but to make matters worse, Akemi turns out to be a total muscle fetishist! Grossed out by the scene unfolding before her eyes, Hibiki begins to leave, only to be stopped by trainer Naruzou Machio. Completely enthralled with her newfound Prince Charming, Hibiki signs up as a gym member. Now, as a result of her spur-of-the-moment decision, Hibiki must adapt to her new lifestyle. -- -- 253,339 7.33
Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru? -- -- Doga Kobo -- 12 eps -- Web manga -- Comedy Ecchi Slice of Life Sports -- Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru? Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru? -- During a regular after-school grub crawl, gluttonous high schooler Hibiki Sakura is confronted about her ever-expanding waistline by her best friend, Ayaka Uehara. With her attempts at solitary exercise failing miserably, Hibiki decides to join the newly opened Silverman Gym. At her orientation, Hibiki runs into student council president and school idol Akemi Souryuuin. -- -- However, it soon turns out that Hibiki is in for a lot more than she bargained for. Not only is Silverman Gym full of world-renowned bodybuilders and athletes, but to make matters worse, Akemi turns out to be a total muscle fetishist! Grossed out by the scene unfolding before her eyes, Hibiki begins to leave, only to be stopped by trainer Naruzou Machio. Completely enthralled with her newfound Prince Charming, Hibiki signs up as a gym member. Now, as a result of her spur-of-the-moment decision, Hibiki must adapt to her new lifestyle. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 253,339 7.33
High School Fleet -- -- Production IMS -- 12 eps -- Original -- Action Military School -- High School Fleet High School Fleet -- A hundred years after catastrophic shifts in tectonic plates caused most of its area to submerge, Japan now thrives as a maritime nation. High functioning cities line the coasts of Japan, and well developed sea routes are defended by specialized naval ships. The marine industry is flourishing, and young girls are eager to join the Blue Mermaids—highly skilled women who devote their lives to protecting the seas. -- -- After some time apart, childhood friends Akeno Misaki and Moeka China are reunited at Yokosuka Girls' Marine High School. Here they are joined by others who share their dream of becoming Blue Mermaids. Soon, training exercises commence, with Akeno and Moeka being put in charge of their own ships and crew. Everything is progressing smoothly for Akeno as she settles into her role as captain and builds camaraderie between her fellow crew members aboard the Harekaze, a destroyer ship. However, unexpected engine and navigation failures soon leave their ship stranded and the crew in danger. -- -- High School Fleet follows the Harekaze's valiant crew as they navigate treacherous waters and other obstacles on their quest to become fully fledged Blue Mermaids. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 87,728 7.30
Mushishi Zoku Shou 2nd Season -- -- Artland -- 10 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Historical Mystery Seinen Slice of Life Supernatural -- Mushishi Zoku Shou 2nd Season Mushishi Zoku Shou 2nd Season -- Ghostly, primordial beings known as Mushi continue to cause mysterious changes in the lives of humans. The travelling Mushishi, Ginko, persists in trying to set right the strange and unsettling situations he encounters. Time loops, living shadows, and telepathy are among the overt effects of interference from Mushi, but more subtle symptoms that take years to be noticed also rouse Ginko's concern as he passes from village to village. -- -- Through circumstance, Ginko has become an arbiter, determining which Mushi are blessings and which are curses. But the lines that he seeks to draw are subjective. Some of his patients would rather exercise their new powers until they are utterly consumed by them; others desperately strive to rid themselves of afflictions which are in fact protecting their lives from devastation. Those who cross paths with Mushi must learn to accept seemingly impossible consequences for their actions, and heal wounds they did not know they had. Otherwise, they risk meeting with fates beyond their comprehension. -- -- 206,606 8.76
Mushishi Zoku Shou 2nd Season -- -- Artland -- 10 eps -- Manga -- Adventure Fantasy Historical Mystery Seinen Slice of Life Supernatural -- Mushishi Zoku Shou 2nd Season Mushishi Zoku Shou 2nd Season -- Ghostly, primordial beings known as Mushi continue to cause mysterious changes in the lives of humans. The travelling Mushishi, Ginko, persists in trying to set right the strange and unsettling situations he encounters. Time loops, living shadows, and telepathy are among the overt effects of interference from Mushi, but more subtle symptoms that take years to be noticed also rouse Ginko's concern as he passes from village to village. -- -- Through circumstance, Ginko has become an arbiter, determining which Mushi are blessings and which are curses. But the lines that he seeks to draw are subjective. Some of his patients would rather exercise their new powers until they are utterly consumed by them; others desperately strive to rid themselves of afflictions which are in fact protecting their lives from devastation. Those who cross paths with Mushi must learn to accept seemingly impossible consequences for their actions, and heal wounds they did not know they had. Otherwise, they risk meeting with fates beyond their comprehension. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Aniplex of America -- 206,606 8.76
Tekkon Kinkreet Pilot -- -- - -- 1 ep -- Manga -- Action Adventure Psychological Supernatural -- Tekkon Kinkreet Pilot Tekkon Kinkreet Pilot -- Softimage's Michael Arias started the project as a short CG exercise, which then came to the attention of Morimoto, who then agreed to work on the project on the Softimage 3D software. A few months later, Visual Director Wilson Tang and Animation Supervisor Lee Fulton introduced a pilot to the Softimage staff, made entirely on computer with a staff of only 12. The pilot won the Excellence Award at the 3rd Japan Media Arts Festival in the Digital Art Division. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- Special - Jan 1, 1999 -- 1,329 4.68
Yawara! -- -- Madhouse -- 124 eps -- Manga -- Action Comedy Drama Martial Arts Romance Slice of Life Sports -- Yawara! Yawara! -- High school student Yawara Inokuma lives a completely happy and ordinary life. She aspires to an average lifestyle as a delicate young lady with a handsome boyfriend in the near future. -- -- Unfortunately for Yawara, she has an undesirable prodigious talent in Judo, a modern martial art that is neither feminine nor fashionable. Moreover, Yawara is the only granddaughter of the seventh dan Judo master Jigorou Inokuma, who expects her to become a Japanese Judoka superstar of the '90s. -- -- Yawara cautiously hides her strength from everyone to maintain a normal reputation but is often pushed to situations when she must exercise her Judo skills. Observing Yawara's immense potential from the shadows, Kousaku Matsuda, a sports reporter from a substandard paper, is willing to do everything he can to bring her into the limelight. -- -- -- Licensor: -- AnimEigo -- 15,295 7.47
Zipang -- -- Studio Deen -- 26 eps -- Manga -- Action Military Sci-Fi Historical Drama Seinen -- Zipang Zipang -- Mirai, an improved Kongou-class Aegis guided missile destroyer, is one of the newest and most advanced ships in the entire Japanese Self Defense Force (SDF). Her crew, also one of the newest, is lead by Capt. Umezu Saburo and Executive Officer Kadomatsu Yosuke. While running scheduled training exercises one day, Mirai encounters a fierce storm that throws their navigation systems into temporary disarray. After a few minutes of recovery, the crew is shocked to discover that they've been transported back in time to June 4, 1942—The Battle of Midway, during World War II. Letting history take its course for this battle, they manage to avoid the conflict firsthand and make a vow to remain anonymous, changing history as little as possible. However, when the crew comes across the dying Lt. Commander Kusaka Takumi, XO. Kadomatsu's instincts to save lives takes over, changing the course of history more than he could've imagined. -- -- (Source: ANN) -- -- Licensor: -- Geneon Entertainment USA -- TV - Oct 8, 2004 -- 16,975 7.51
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2012 US-Israel military exercise
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American Council on Exercise
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An Exercise in Humility
Australasian College of Sport and Exercise Physicians
Barre (exercise)
Bodyweight exercise
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Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine
Cat exercise wheel
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Closed kinetic chain exercises
Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People
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Convention on the Exercise of Liberal Professions of 1889
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Epigenetics of physical exercise
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Free Exercise Clause
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Gymnastics at the 1964 Summer Olympics Women's floor exercise
Gymnastics at the 2015 European Games Men's floor exercise
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Gymnastics at the 2019 European Games Men's floor exercise
Gymnastics at the 2019 European Games Women's floor exercise
Gymnastics at the European Games Women's floor exercise
Gyroscopic exercise tool
Han Kuang Exercise
Hydraulic exercise equipment
Hyperextension (exercise)
Ice Exercise 2009
Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise
INDRA (naval exercise)
International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism
Iron cross (exercise)
Iron Fist (exercise)
Isometric exercise
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List of exercises of the Indian Army
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Low Exercise Price Option
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Malabar (naval exercise)
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
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Muscle Atrophy Research and Exercise System
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Research Assessment Exercise
Royal Canadian Air Force Exercise Plans
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Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola
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Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology
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The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises
Totskoye nuclear exercise
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UCPH Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports
User:Tony1/Redundancy exercises: removing fluff from your writing
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