TERMS STARTING WITH
Rejectionist Front ::: Coalition of groups created in Baghdad in 1974. Its members are PFLP, PFLP-GC, PSF and PLF.
rejection ::: n. --> Act of rejecting, or state of being rejected.
rejection ::: rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.
rejection ::: the act of rejecting or the state of being rejected.
REJECTION. ::: The jjersonal effort required is a itficdon of the movements of the lower nature — rejection of the mind’s ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind ; rejection of
TERMS ANYWHERE
abjudication ::: n. --> Rejection by judicial sentence.
abnegation ::: denial, negation; refusal, formal rejection (of a doctrine, etc.).
acceptance sampling: A method of make a decision of acceptance or rejection of a batch of items by randomly sampling a portion of it. A decision is taken by comparing the proportion of defective samples against an acceptable proportion beforehand. It is a necessary method when the items perish under testing and yet ensuring that the items are of sufficient high quality is important.
After a certain stage of preparation one must stress more on the positive side of the sadhana than on the negative side of rejection, — though this of course must remain to help the other.
Ajita. (T. Ma pham pa; C. Ayiduo; J. Aitta; K. Ailta 阿逸多). In Sanskrit and PAli, "Invincible"; proper name of several different figures in Buddhist literature. In the PAli tradition, Ajita is said to have been one of the sixteen mendicant disciples of the brAhmana ascetic BAvarĪ who visited the Buddha at the request of their teacher. Upon meeting the Buddha, Ajita saw that he was endowed with the thirty-two marks of a great man (MAHAPURUsALAKsAnA) and gained assurance that the Buddha's renown was well deserved. Starting with Ajita, all sixteen of the mendicants asked the Buddha questions. Ajita's question is preserved as the AjitamAnavapucchA in the ParAyanavagga of the SUTTANIPATA. At the end of the Buddha's explanations, Ajita and sixteen thousand followers are said to have become worthy ones (ARHAT) and entered the SAMGHA. Ajita returned to his old teacher BAvarī and recounted to him what happened. BAvarī himself converted and later became a nonreturner (ANAGAMIN). ¶ Another Ajita is Ajita-Kesakambala (Ajita of the Hair Blanket), a prominent leader of the LOKAYATA (Naturalist) school of Indian wandering religious (sRAMAnA) during the Buddha's time, who is mentioned occasionally in Buddhist scriptures. His doctrine is recounted in the PAli SAMANNAPHALASUTTA, where he is claimed to have denied the efficacy of moral cause and effect because of his materialist rejection of any prospect of transmigration or rebirth. ¶ An Ajita also traditionally appears as the fifteenth on the list of the sixteen ARHAT elders (sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who were charged by the Buddha with protecting his dispensation until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. Ajita is said to reside on Mt. GṚDHRAKutA (Vulture Peak) with 1,500 disciples. He is known in Chinese as the "long-eyebrowed arhat" (changmei luohan) because he is said to have been born with long white eyebrows. In CHANYUE GUANXIU's standard Chinese depiction, Ajita is shown sitting on a rock, with both hands holding his right knee; his mouth is open, with his tongue and teeth exposed. East Asian images also sometimes show him leaning on a staff. In Tibetan iconography, he holds his two hands in his lap in DHYANAMUDRA. ¶ Ajita is finally a common epithet of the bodhisattva MAITREYA, used mostly when he is invoked in direct address.
All of these factors were seen by the Faxiang school as being simply projections of consciousness (VIJNAPTIMĀTRALĀ). As noted earlier, consciousness (VIJNĀNA) was itself subdivided into an eightfold schema: the six sensory consciousnesses (visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, and mental), plus the seventh ego consciousness (manas, or KLIstAMANAS), which invests these sensory experiences with selfhood, and an eighth "storehouse consciousness" (ālayavijNāna), which stores the seeds or potentialities (BĪJA) of these experiences until they sprout as new cognition. One of the most controversial doctrines of the Faxiang school was its rejection of a theory of inherent enlightenment or buddhahood (i.e., TATHĀGATAGARBHA) and its advocacy of five distinct spiritual lineages or destinies (PANCAGOTRA): (1) the TATHĀGATA lineage (GOTRA), for those destined to become buddhas; (2) the PRATYEKABUDDHA lineage, for those destined to become ARHATs via the pratyekabuddha vehicle; (3) the sRĀVAKAYĀNA lineage, for those who will become arhats via the sRĀVAKA vehicle; (4) those of indefinite (ANIYATA) lineage, who may follow any of three vehicles; and (5) those without lineage (agotra), who are ineligible for liberation or who have lost the potential to become enlightened by becoming "incorrigibles" (ICCHANTIKA). The Faxiang school's claim that beings belonged to these various lineages because of the seeds (BĪJA) already present in the mind seemed too fatalistic to its East Asian rivals. In addition, Faxiang's acceptance of the notion that some beings could completely lose all yearning for enlightenment and fall permanently into the state of icchantikas so profoundly conflicted with the pervasive East Asian acceptance of innate enlightenment that it thwarted the school's aspirations to become a dominant tradition in China, Korea, or Japan. Even so, much in the Faxiang analysis of consciousness, as well as its exegetical techniques, were incorporated into mainstream scholasticism in East Asia and continued to influence the subsequent development of Buddhism in the region.
And until the transfer is complete which always takes time, there must always be as personal contribution, a constant consent to the true Force, a constant rejection of any lower mixture.
Animitta. (P. animitta; T. mtshan ma med pa; C. wuxiang; J. muso; K. musang 無相). In Sanskrit, "signless"; one of three "gates to deliverance" (VIMOKsAMUKHA), along with emptiness (suNYATA) and wishlessness (APRAnIHITA). A sign or characteristic (NIMITTA) refers to the generic appearance of an object, in distinction to its secondary characteristics or ANUVYANJANA. Advertence toward the generic sign and secondary characteristics of an object produces a recognition or perception (SAMJNA) of that object, which may in turn lead to clinging or rejection and ultimately suffering. Hence, signlessness is crucial in the process of sensory restraint (INDRIYASAMVARA), a process in which one does not actively react to the generic signs of an object (i.e., treating it in terms of the effect it has on oneself), but instead seeks to halt the perceptual process at the level of simple recognition. By not seizing on these signs, perception is maintained at a pure level prior to an object's conceptualization and the resulting proliferation of concepts (PRAPANCA) throughout the full range of sensory experience. As the frequent refrain in the SuTRAs states, "In the seen, there is only the seen," and not the superimpositions (cf. SAMAROPA) created by the intrusion of ego (ATMAN) into the perceptual process. Mastery of this technique of sensory restraint provides access to the signless gate to deliverance. Signlessness is produced through insight into impermanence (ANITYA) and serves as the counteragent (PRATIPAKsA) to attachments to anything experienced through the senses; once the meditator has abandoned all such attachments to the senses, he is then able to advert toward NIRVAnA, which ipso facto has no sensory signs of its own by which it can be recognized. In the PRAJNAPARAMITA literature, signlessness, emptiness, and wishlessness are equally the absence of the marks or signs of intrinsic existence (SVABHAVA). The YOGACARABHuMIsASTRA says when signlessness, emptiness, and wishlessness are spoken of without differentiation, the knowledge of them is that which arises from hearing or learning (sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNA), thinking (CINTAMAYĪPRAJNA), and meditation (BHAVANAMAYĪPRAJNA), respectively.
ANUBHAVA. ::: The system of getting rid of things by anubhava* has behind it two well-known psychological motives. One, the motive of purposeful exhaustion, is valid only in some cases, especially when some natural tendency has too strong a hold or too strong a drive in it to be got rid of by vicāra+ t or by the process of rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place. The other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability ; for in order to reject anything from the being, one has first to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is en entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement.
anuvyaNjana. (T. dpe byad; C. hao; J. ko; K. ho 好). In Sanskrit and PAli, "minor mark" or "secondary characteristic"; the secondary characteristics of an object, in distinction to its generic appearance, or "sign" (NIMITTA). Advertence toward the generic sign and secondary characteristics of an object produces a recognition or perception (SAMJNA) of that object, which may then lead to clinging or rejection and ultimately suffering. ¶ The term anuvyaNjana [alt. vyaNjana] also refers specifically to the eighty minor marks of a "great man" (MAHAPURUsA) and specifically of a buddha; these are typically mentioned in conjunction with the thirty-two major marks of a great man (MAHAPURUsALAKsAnA). These are set forth at length in, for example, the PANCAVIMsATISAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA (see PRAJNAPARAMITA) and chapter eight of the ABHISAMAYALAMKARA and are known as well in mainstream Buddhist sources.
. Apart from the total rejection of sex-thoughts and imagina- tions and actions, which ends by acting in the subconscient also,
Apavada: Exception; negation; rejection; sublation, refutation, as of a wrong imputation or belief; rajjuvivartasya sarpasya rajjumatratvat vastubhuta brahmano vivartasya prapancha desa vastu bhutrupadaupadesah apavadah: just as you take the rope alone in a rope superimposed as a serpent, similarly, you will take to the original thing itself in the original thing superimposed as world (the five elements and others). This is Apavada.
AriyapariyesanAsutta. (C. Luomo jing; J. Ramakyo; K. Rama kyong 羅摩經). In PAli, "Discourse on the Noble Quest"; the twenty-sixth sutta (SuTRA) in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA, also known as the PAsarAsisutta (a separate SARVASTIVADA recension appears as the 204th SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA); preached by the Buddha to an assembly of monks at the hemitage of the brAhmana Rammaka in the town of sRAVASTĪ. The Buddha explains the difference between noble and ignoble quests and recounts his own life as an example of striving to distinguish between the two. Beginning with his renunciation of the householder's life, he tells of his training under two meditation masters, his rejection of this training in favor of austerities, and ultimately his rejection of austerities in order to discover for himself his own path to enlightenment. The Buddha also relates how he was initially hesitant to teach what he had discovered, but was convinced to do so by the god BRAHMA SAHAMPATI, and how he then converted the "group of five" ascetics (PANCAVARGIKA) who had been his companions while he practiced austerities. There is an understated tone of the narrative, devoid of the detail so familiar from the biographies. There is no mention of the opulence of his youth, no mention of his wife, no mention of the chariot rides, no description of the departure from the palace in the dead of night, no mention of MARA. Instead, the Buddha states, "Later, while still young, a black-haired young man endowed with the blessing of youth, in the prime of life, though my mother and father wished otherwise and wept with tearful faces, I shaved off my hair and beard, put on the yellow robe, and went forth from the home life into homelessness." Although the accounts of his study with other meditation masters assume a sophisticated system of states of concentration, the description of the enlightenment itself is both simple and sober, portrayed as the outcome of long reflection rather than as an ecstatic moment of revelation.
ATTACHMENT. ::: All attachment is a hindrance to sadhana. Goodwāl you should have for all, psychic kindness for all, but no vital attachment.
To become indifferent to the attraction of outer objects is one of the first rules of yoga, for this non-attachment liberates the inner being into peace and the true consciousness.
Even after the liberation, one has to remain vigilant, for often these things go out and remain at a far distance, waiting to see if under any circumstances in any condition they can make a rush and recover their kingdom. If there has been an entire purification down to the depths and nothing is there to open the gate, then they cannot do it.
Attachment to things ::: the physical rejection of them is not the best way to get rid of it. Accept what is given you, ask for what is needed and think no more of it - attaching no importance, using them when you have, not troubled if you have not. That is the best way of getting rid of the attachment.
belongs to the Divine Truth, Good, Beauty, rejection of all that is false, evD, ugly, discordant, union through love and sympathy wth all existence, openness to the Truth of the Self and the
Body-mind ::: There is an obscure mind of the body, of the very cells, molecules, corpuscles. This body-mind is a very tangible truth ; owing to its obscurity and mechanical clinging to past movements, and facile oblivion and rejection of the new. we find in it one of the chief obstacles to pemiealion by the Supermind
Rejectionist Front ::: Coalition of groups created in Baghdad in 1974. Its members are PFLP, PFLP-GC, PSF and PLF.
But with all the krpa is there working in one way or another and it can only abandon the disciple if the disciple himself abandons or rejects it — by decisive and deSnitive revolts, by rejection of the Guru, by cutting the painter and declaring his
circumcision ::: n. --> The act of cutting off the prepuce or foreskin of males, or the internal labia of females.
The Jews, as a circumcised people.
Rejection of the sins of the flesh; spiritual purification, and acceptance of the Christian faith.
Conditions lor equality ::: Complete samata takes long to establish and it is dependent on three things ::: the soul’s self- giving to the Divine by an inner surrender, the descent of the spiritual calm and peace from above and the steady, long and persistent rejection of all egoistic, rajasic and other feelings that contradict samata.
Consequently, the dialectical method means basically that all things must be investigated in terms of their histories; the important consideration is not the state in which the object appears at the moment, but the rate, direction and probable outcome of the changes which are taking place as a result of the conflict of forces, internal and external. The necessity of observation and prediction in every field is thus ontologically grounded, according to dialectical materialism, which not only rejects a priorism, holding that "nature is the test of dialectics" (Engels: Anti-Dühring), but claims to express with much more fidelity than formal logic, with its emphasis on unmoving form rather than changing content, the basis of the method modern science actually uses. There is an equal rejection of theory without practice and practice without theory.
CulasīhanAdasutta. (C. Shizihou jing; J. Shishikukyo; K. Sajahu kyong 師子吼經). In PAli, "Shorter Discourse on the Lion's Roar"; eleventh sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA (a SARVASTIVADA recension appears as the 103rd sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA; a separate recension of unidentified affiliation appears, without title, in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARAGAMA), preached by the Buddha to a group of monks in the JETAVANA grove in the city of SAvatthi (S. sRAVASTĪ). The Buddha explains how only in his teachings can one attain any of the four degrees of sanctity (see ARYAPUDGALA): stream-enterer, once-returner, nonreturner, and perfected ARHAT; all other teachings lack these. Also, only in his teachings are found a rejection of all notions of a perduring self (P. atta; S. ATMAN).
deafness ::: n. --> Incapacity of perceiving sounds; the state of the organs which prevents the impression which constitute hearing; want of the sense of hearing.
Unwillingness to hear; voluntary rejection of what is addressed to the understanding.
defiance ::: n. --> The act of defying, putting in opposition, or provoking to combat; a challenge; a provocation; a summons to combat.
A state of opposition; willingness to flight; disposition to resist; contempt of opposition.
A casting aside; renunciation; rejection.
denial ::: n. --> The act of gainsaying, refusing, or disowning; negation; -- the contrary of affirmation.
A refusal to admit the truth of a statement, charge, imputation, etc.; assertion of the untruth of a thing stated or maintained; a contradiction.
A refusal to grant; rejection of a request.
A refusal to acknowledge; disclaimer of connection with; disavowal; -- the contrary of confession; as, the denial of a fault
Desire-rejection ::: the rejection of desire is essentially the rejection of the element of craving, putting that out from the consciousness itself as a foreign clement not belonging to the true self and the inner nature. But refusal to indulge the sugges- tions of desire is also a part of the rejection ; to abstain from the action suggested, if it is not the right action, must be included in the yogic discipline. The first condition for getting rid of desire is, therefore, to become conscious with the true consciousness *, for then it becomes much easier to dismiss it than when one has to struggle with it as if it were a constituent part of oneself to be thrown out from the being. When the psychic being is in front, then also to get rid of desire becomes easy ; for the psychic being has in itself no desires, it has only aspirations and a seeking and love for the Divine and all things that are or tend towards the Divine.
Dhyana ::: There are two words used in English to express the Indian idea of Dhyana, "meditation" and "contemplation". Meditation means properly the concentration of the mind on a single train of ideas which work out a single subject. Contemplation means regarding mentally a single object, image, idea so that the knowledge about the object, image or idea may arise naturally in the mind by force of the concentration. Both these things are forms of dhyana; for the principle of dhyana is mental concentration whether in thought, vision or knowledge. There are other forms of dhyana. There is a passage in which Vivekananda advises you to stand back from your thoughts, let them occur in your mind as they will and simply observe them & see what they are. This may be called concentration in self-observation. This form leads to another, the emptying of all thought out of the mind so as to leave it a sort of pure vigilant blank on which the divine knowledge may come and imprint itself, undisturbed by the inferior thoughts of the ordinary human mind and with the clearness of a writing in white chalk on a blackboard. You will find that the Gita speaks of this rejection of all mental thought as one of the methods of Yoga and even the method it seems to prefer. This may be called the dhyana of liberation, as it frees the mind from slavery to the mechanical process of thinking and allows it to think or not think as it pleases and when it pleases, or to choose its own thoughts or else to go beyond thought to the pure perception of Truth called in our philosophy Vijnana. Meditation is the easiest process for the human mind, but the narrowest in its results; contemplation more difficult, but greater; self-observation and liberation from the chains of Thought the most difficult of all, but the widest and greatest in its fruits. One can choose any of them according to one’s bent and capacity. The perfect method is to use them all, each in its own place and for its own object.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 36, Page: 293-294
disallowance ::: n. --> The act of disallowing; refusal to admit or permit; rejection.
disavowal ::: n. --> The act of disavowing, disclaiming, or disowning; rejection and denial.
discardure ::: n. --> Rejection; dismissal.
dismission ::: n. --> The act dismissing or sending away; permission to leave; leave to depart; dismissal; as, the dismission of the grand jury.
Removal from office or employment; discharge, either with honor or with disgrace.
Rejection; a setting aside as trivial, invalid, or unworthy of consideration.
DISTURBANCES. ::: There are always two things that can rise up and assail the silence — vital suggestions, the physical mind’s mechanical recurrences. Calm rejection for both is the cure
dravyasat. (T. rdzas yod; C. shi you; J. jitsuu; K. sil yu 實有). In Sanskrit, "substantially existent," or "existent in substance"; a term used in Buddhist philosophical literature to describe phenomena whose inherent nature is more real than those designated as PRAJNAPTISAT, "existent by imputation." The contrast drawn in doctrinal discussions between the way things appear to be and the way they exist in reality appears to have developed out of the early contrast drawn between the false view (MITHYĀDṚstI) of a perduring self (ĀTMAN) and five real aggregates (SKANDHA). The five aggregates as the real constituents of compounded things were further elaborated into the theory of factors (DHARMA), which were generally conceived as dravyasat, although the ABHIDHARMA schools differed regarding how they defined the term and which phenomena fell into which category. In the SARVĀSTIVĀDA abhidharma, for example, dharmas are categorized as dravyasat because they have "inherent existence" (SVABHĀVA), while all compounded things, by contrast, are prajNaptisat, or merely conventional constructs that derive from dravyasat. In the MADHYAMAKA school of MAHĀYĀNA scholasticism, however, all things are considered to lack any inherent existence (NIḤSVABHĀVA). Therefore, Madhyamaka asserts that even dharmas are marked by emptiness (suNYATĀ) and thus nothing is "substantially existent" (dravyasat). In contrast to the Madhyamaka's exclusive rejection of anything being dravyasat, the YOGĀCĀRA school maintained that at least one thing, the flow of consciousness or the process of subjective imputation (VIJNAPTI), was substantially existent (dravyasat). For Yogācāra followers, however, the reason that the flow of consciousness is dravyasat is not because it is free from causal conditioning and thereby involves inherent existence (svabhāva), but because the Yogācāra denies the ontological claim that causal conditioning involves the absence of svabhāva, or vice versa. Thus the flow of consciousness, even though it is causally conditioned, may still be conceived as "substantially existent" (dravyasat) because its inherent existence is "dependent" (PARATANTRA), one of the three natures (TRISVABHĀVA) recognized in the school. Another strand of Mahāyāna thought that asserts there is something that is substantially existent is the doctrine of the buddha-nature (BUDDHADHĀTU) or TATHĀGATAGARBHA. As the potentiality inherent in each sentient being to become a buddha, the tathāgatagarbha is sometimes said to be both empty (of all afflictions) and nonempty (of all the attributes and qualities inherent in enlightenment). In this context, there has been some dispute as to whether the buddhadhātu or tathāgatagarbha should be conceived as only dravyasat, or as both dravyasat and prajNaptisat.
dunjiao. (J. tongyo; K. ton'gyo 頓教). In Chinese, "sudden teachings," or "subitism"; a polemical term used by HOZE SHENHUI in the so-called "Southern school" (NAN ZONG) of Chan to disparage his rival "Northern school" (BEI ZONG) as a gradualist, and therefore inferior, presentation of Chan teachings and practice. Unlike the Northern school's more traditional soteriological approach, which was claimed to involve gradual purification of the mind so that defilements would be removed and the mind's innate purity revealed, the Southern school instead claimed to offer immediate access to enlightenment itself (viz., "sudden awakening"; see DUNWU) without the necessity of preparatory practices or conceptual mediation. See also LIUZU TAN JING. ¶ The "sudden teaching" (dunjiao) was also the fourth of the five classifications of the teachings in the Huayan school (see HUAYAN WUJIAO), as outlined by DUSHUN and FAZANG (643-712). In a Huayan context, the sudden teachings were ranked as a unique category of subitist teachings befitting sharp people of keen spiritual faculties (S. TĪKsNENDRIYA), which therefore bypassed systematic approaches to enlightenment. Huayan thus treats the Chan school's touted methods involving sudden enlightenment (dunwu) and its rejection of reliance on written texts (BULI WENZI) as inferior to the fifth and final category of the "perfect" or "consummate teaching" (YUANJIAO), which was reserved for the HUAYAN ZONG.
Effort ::: The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender." And "rejection of the movements of the lower nature—rejection of the mind’s ideas, opinions,
references, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind,—rejection of the vital nature’s desires . . .", etc.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 35, Page: 110
Epistemological Dualism: See Dualism, Epistemological. Epistemological Idealism: The form of epistemological monism which identifies the content and the object of knowledge by assimilating the object to the content. Berkeleyeyan idealism by its rejection of a physical object independent of ideas directly present to the mind is an example of epistemological monism. See Epistemological Monism. -- L.W.
Erotema: (Gr. erotema) A question in Aristotle's logic a premise stated in interrogative form for acceptance or rejection by the respondent; hence, any premise used in dialectical reasoning. -- G.R.M.
Erru sixing lun. (J. Ninyu shigyoron; K. Iip sahaeng non 二入四行論). In Chinese, "Treatise on the Two Accesses and Four Practices," attributed to the legendary Indian monk BODHIDHARMA, putative founder of the CHAN ZONG; regardless of the authenticity of this ascription, the text is legitimately regarded as the earliest text of the Chan school. The treatise provides an outline of "two accesses" (ER RU): the access of principle (liru) a more static approach to practice, which sought an intuitive insight into the DHARMA and a recognition of the fact that each and every person was innately endowed with the capacity for enlightenment. This was complemented by the access of practice (xingru), which was subdivided into four progressive practices: retribution of enmity, acquiescing to conditions, seeking nothing, and practicing in accord with the dharma. The treatise underscores the inherent purity of the practitioner, which it glosses as the dharma or principle, and betrays little evidence of features that come to characterize the later Chan tradition, such as the debate over sudden or gradual enlightenment, the rejection of traditional meditative techniques, etc. Numerous copies of this treatise were found in DUNHUANG, and citations of this text are found in the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN, LENGQIE SHIZI JI, and JINGDE CHUANDENG LU. The text was published in Korea as part of the SoNMUN CH'WARYO and in Japan as the SHoSHITSU ROKUMONSHu. A preface to this relatively short treatise was prepared by the monk Tanlin (fl. 506-574) and some editions of the treatise also contain two letters attributed to Bodhidharma's disciple HUIKE.
excepting ::: p. pr. & vb. n. --> of Except ::: prep. & conj., but p --> With rejection or exception of; excluding; except.
exclusion ::: n. --> The act of excluding, or of shutting out, whether by thrusting out or by preventing admission; a debarring; rejection; prohibition; the state of being excluded.
The act of expelling or ejecting a fetus or an egg from the womb.
Thing emitted.
"Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power.” *The Synthesis of Yoga
“Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power.” The Synthesis of Yoga
For the account given by Brouwerian intuitionism of the nature of mathematics, and the asserted priority of mathematics to logic and philosophy, see the article Mathematics. This account, with its reliance on the intuition of ordinary thinking and on the immediate evidence of mathematical concepts and inferences, and with its insistence on intuitively understandable construction as the only method for mathematical existence proofs, leads to a rejection of certain methods and assumptions of classical mathematics. In consequence, certain parts of classical mathematics have to be abandoned and others have to be reconstructed in different and often more complicated fashion.
Genius: Originally the word applied to a demon such as Socrates' inner voice. During the 17th century it was linked to the Plntonic theory of inspiration and was applied to the rejection of too rigid rules in art. It defined the real artist and distinguished his creative imagination from the logical reasoning of the scientist. In Kant (Critique of Judgment), genius creates its own rules. -- L.V.
Haredi or Charedi ::: (Heb. Shaker) Ultra-Orthodox Jews, so called by the backwards and forwards motions they make when praying. The term is also a scriptural reference to a verse describing "the righteous person who fears the word of God". Haredim adhere strictly to traditional form of dress, a strict interpretation of Jewish law, rejection of secular culture, and an ambivalent attitude toward the present State of Israel. Formerly a term for any Orthodox Jew, currently it means an “ultra-Orthodox” Jew. Internally, Haredim are broadly divided between hasidim and misnagdim (q.v.)
heresy ::: n. --> An opinion held in opposition to the established or commonly received doctrine, and tending to promote a division or party, as in politics, literature, philosophy, etc.; -- usually, but not necessarily, said in reproach.
Religious opinion opposed to the authorized doctrinal standards of any particular church, especially when tending to promote schism or separation; lack of orthodox or sound belief; rejection of, or erroneous belief in regard to, some fundamental religious doctrine
hoc: A dubious assumption or argument arbitrarily introduced as explanation after the fact. Adeism: Max Müller coined the term which means the rejection of the devas, or gods, of ancient India; similar to atheism which denies the one God. -- J.J.R.
Honen. (法然) (1133-1212). Japanese monk regarded as the founder of the JoDOSHu, or PURE LAND school. Honen was a native of Mimasaka province. After his father's violent death, Honen was entrusted to his uncle, a monk at the nearby monastery of Bodaiji. Honen later headed for HIEIZAN in 1147 to received ordination. He began his studies under the TENDAISHu (C. TIANTAI ZONG) monks Genko (d.u.) and Koen (d. 1169), but the corruption he perceived within the Tendai community at ENRYAKUJI led Honen to seek teachings elsewhere. In 1150, he visited the master Eiku (d. 1179), a disciple of the monk RYoNIN, in Kurodani on Mt. Hiei, where he remained for the next twenty years. Under Eiku's guidance, Honen studied GENSHIN's influential treatise, the oJo YoSHu and became a specialist in the practice of nenbutsu ("recollecting the Buddha's name"; see C. NIANFO). Honen is also said to have devoted himself exclusively to the practice of invoking the name of the buddha AMITĀBHA (a type of nenbutsu) after perusing the Chinese monk SHANDAO's influential commentary on the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING, the Guan Wuliangshou jing shu. In 1175, Honen left Mt. Hiei and established himself in the district of Higashiyama Yoshimizu in the capital Kyoto. His fame grew after his participation in the ohara discussion of 1186, which explored how pure land beliefs and practices could help overcome human suffering. Honen soon attracted many followers, including such prominent figures as the regent Kujo Kanezane (1149-1207). In 1198, Honen compiled his influential treatise, SENCHAKUSHu. Due perhaps to his growing influence and his purported rejection of the Tendai teachings of original enlightenment (HONGAKU), the monks of Enryakuji began attacking Honen, banning his practice of nenbutsu in 1204. The monks of the Nara monastery of KoFUKUJI also petitioned the retired emperor Gotoba (r. 1183-1198) to ban the practice in 1205. A scandal involving two of Honen's disciples led to his exile to Shikoku in 1207 and the execution of four of his disciples. He was later pardoned and returned to Kyoto in 1211. Due to illness, he died the next year in what is now known as the Seishido in the monastery of Chion'in. Honen preached that, in the current degeneration age of the dharma (J. mappo; C. MOFA), the exclusive practice of nenbutsu was the only way through which salvation could be achieved. Due in part to Honen's advocacy, nenbutsu eventually became one of the predominant practices of Japanese Buddhism. Honen's preeminent disciple was SHINRAN (1173-1262), who further radicalized pure land practice by insisting that salvation was only possible through the grace of Amitābha, rather than through continuous nenbutsu practice.
Huayan wujiao. (J. Kegon no gokyo; K. Hwaom ogyo 華嚴五教). In Chinese, "Huayan's five classifications of the teachings." The HUAYAN ZONG recognizes two different versions of this doctrinal-classification schema, which ranks different strands of Buddhist teachings. The best-known version was outlined by DUSHUN and FAZANG: (1) The HĪNAYĀNA teachings (xiaojiao; cf. XIAOSHENG JIAO), also known as the srāvakayāna teaching (shengwenjiao), was pejoratively referred to as "teachings befitting the [spiritually] obtuse" (yufa). The ĀGAMAs and the ABHIDHARMAs were relegated to this class, which supposedly dealt primarily with theories of elements (DHĀTU) and more basic concepts such as dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPĀDA). (2) The "elementary teaching [of Mahāyāna]" ([Dasheng] SHIJIAO). Within this category, two additional subgroups were differentiated. The first was the "initial teaching pertaining to emptiness" (kong shijiao), which encompassed the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ literature and exegetical traditions such as MADHYAMAKA. This class of teachings was characterized by an emphasis (or, in Huayan's polemical assessment, an overemphasis) on the doctrine of emptiness (suNYATĀ). The second subgroup, the "initial teaching pertaining to phenomena" (xiang shijiao), broaches the dynamic and phenomenal aspects of reality and did not confine itself to the theme of emptiness. YOGĀCĀRA and its traditional affiliate sutras and commentaries were classified under this subgroup. Together, these two subgroups were deemed the provisional teachings (quanjiao) within the MAHĀYĀNA tradition. (3) The "advanced [Mahāyāna] teachings" ([Dasheng] ZHONGJIAO) focused on the way true suchness (ZHENRU; S. TATHATĀ) was innately immaculate but could be activated in response to myriad conditions. The DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith"), sRĪMĀLĀDEVĪSIMHANĀDASuTRA, and LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA are examples of texts belonging to this doctrinal category. The treatment in these texts of the one mind (YIXIN) and TATHĀGATAGARBHA thought was considered a more definitive rendition of the MAHĀYĀNA teachings than were the elementary teachings (shijiao). (4) The "sudden teachings" (DUNJIAO), which includes texts like the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, was ranked as a unique category of subitist teachings befitting people of keen spiritual faculties (TĪKsnENDRIYA), and therefore bypasses traditional, systematic approaches to enlightenment. The CHAN ZONG's touted soteriological methods involving sudden enlightenment (DUNWU) and its rejection of reliance on written texts led some Huayan teachers to relegate that school to this advanced, but still inferior, category of the teachings. Chan was thus superseded by, (5) the "perfect teachings" or "consummate teachings" (YUANJIAO). This supposedly most comprehensive and definitive strand of Buddhist teaching was reserved for the Huayan school and especially its definitive scripture, the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. ¶ The second version of five classifications was made by GUIFENG ZONGMI (780-841) in his YUANREN LUN: (1) The "teachings pertaining to the human and heavenly realms" (RENTIAN JIAO) encompassed "mundane" (LAUKIKA) practices, such as the observation of the five precepts (PANCAsĪLA) and the ten wholesome ways of action (KUsALA-KARMAPATHA); this classification was named because of its believed efficacy to lead practitioners to higher realms of rebirth. (2) The "HĪNAYĀNA teachings" (XIAOSHENG JIAO), which were similar to the previous "xiaojiao." (3) The "dharma-characteristics teachings of MAHĀYĀNA" (Dasheng faxiang jiao), which was analogous to the aforementioned "elementary teaching pertaining to phenomena" (xiang shijiao) in the preceding classification scheme. (4) The "characteristics-negating teachings of MAHĀYĀNA" (Dasheng poxiang jiao) was analogous to the preceding "elementary teaching pertaining to emptiness." (5) The "nature-revealing teaching of the one vehicle" (yisheng xiangxing jiao) was equivalent to the last three categories Fazang's system combined together. See also HUAYAN WUJIAO ZHANG.
Hypothesis: In general, an assumption, a supposition, a conjecture, a postulate, a condition, an antecedent, a contingency, a possibility, a probability, a principle, a premiss, a ground or foundation, a tentative explanation, a probable cause, a theoretical situation, an academic question, a specific consideration, a conceded statement, a theory or view for debate or action, a likely relation, the conditioning of one thing by another. In logic, the conditional clause or antecedent in a hypothetical proposition. Also a thesis subordinate to a more general one. In methodology, a principle offered as a conditional explanation of a fact or a group of facts; or again, a provisional assumption about the ground of certain phenomena, used as a guiding norm in making observations and experiments until verified or disproved by subsequent evidence. A hypothesis is conditional or provisional, because it is based on probable and insufficient arguments or elements; yet, it is not an arbitrary opinion, but a justifiable assumption with some foundation in fact, this accounts for the expectation of some measure of agreement between the logical conclusion or implications drawn from a hypothesis, and the phenomena which are known or which may be determined by further tests. A scientific hypothesis must be proposed after the observations it must explain (a posteriori), compatible with established theories, reasonable and relevant, fruitful in its applications and controllable, general in terms and more fundamental than the statements it has to explain. A hypothesis is descriptive (forecasting the external circumstances of the event) or explanatory (offering causal accounts of the event). There are two kinds of explanatory hypotheses the hypothesis of law (or genetic hypothesis) which attempts to determine the manner in which the causes or conditions of a phenomenon operate and the hypothesis of cause (or causal hypothesis) which attempt to determine the causes or conditions for the production of the phenomenon. A working hypothesis is a preliminary assumption based on few, uncertain or obscure elements, which is used provisionally as a guiding norm in the investigation of certain phenomena. Often, the difference between a working hypothesis and a scientific hypothesis is one of degree; and in any case, a hypothesis is seldom verified completely with all its detailed implications. The Socratic Method of Hypothesis, as developed by Plato in the Phaedo particularly, consists in positing an assumption without questioning its value, for the purpose of determining and analyzing its consequences only when these are clearly debated and judged, the assumption itself is considered for justification or rejection. Usually, a real condition is taken as a ground for inferences, as the aim of the method is to attain knowledge or to favor action. Plato used more specially the word "hypothesis" for the assumptions of geometry (postulates and nominal definitions) Anstotle extended this use to cover the immediate principles of mathematics. It may be observed that the modern hypothetico-deductive method in logical and mathematical theories, is a development of the Socratic method stripped of its ontological implications and purposes.
In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
In regard to Jehovah: “Jehovah was a substitute for purposes of an exoteric national faith, and had no importance or reality in the eyes of the erudite priests and philosophers — the Sadducees, the most refined as the most learned of all the Israelite sects, who stand as a living proof with their contemptuous rejection of every belief, save the Law” (SD 2:472-3).
INTEGRAL YOGA ::: This yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ānanda. But for that, the surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to the Higher Consciousnessis indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this yoga.
Aim of the Integral Yoga ::: It is not merely to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter.
Conditions of the Integral Yoga ::: This yoga can only be done to the end by those who are in total earnest about it and ready to abolish their little human ego and its demands in order to find themselves in the Divine. It cannot be done in a spirit of levity or laxity; the work is too high and difficult, the adverse powers in the lower Nature too ready to take advantage of the least sanction or the smallest opening, the aspiration and tapasyā needed too constant and intense.
Method in the Integral Yoga ::: To concentrate, preferably in the heart and call the presence and power of the Mother to take up the being and by the workings of her force transform the consciousness. One can concentrate also in the head or between the eye-brows, but for many this is a too difficult opening. When the mind falls quiet and the concentration becomes strong and the aspiration intense, then there is the beginning of experience. The more the faith, the more rapid the result is likely to be. For the rest one must not depend on one’s own efforts only, but succeed in establishing a contact with the Divine and a receptivity to the Mother’s Power and Presence.
Integral method ::: The method we have to pursue is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform Our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the sādhaka of the sādhana* as well as the Master of the Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection. In effect, the pressure of the Tapas, the force of consciousness in us dwelling in the Idea of the divine Nature upon that which we are in our entirety, produces its own realisation. The divine and all-knowing and all-effecting descends upon the limited and obscure, progressively illumines and energises the whole lower nature and substitutes its own action for all the terms of the inferior human light and mortal activity.
In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy sādhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, - the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for the weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It” makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.” The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a Succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some elements or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and selfconscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
Key-methods ::: The way to devotion and surrender. It is the psychic movement that brings the constant and pure devotion and the removal of the ego that makes it possible to surrender.
The way to knowledge. Meditation in the head by which there comes the opening above, the quietude or silence of the mind and the descent of peace etc. of the higher consciousness generally till it envelops the being and fills the body and begins to take up all the movements.
Yoga by works ::: Separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti, the inner silent being from the outer active one, so that one has two consciousnesses or a double consciousness, one behind watching and observing and finally controlling and changing the other which is active in front. The other way of beginning the yoga of works is by doing them for the Divine, for the Mother, and not for oneself, consecrating and dedicating them till one concretely feels the Divine Force taking up the activities and doing them for one.
Object of the Integral Yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine’s sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine.
Principle of the Integral Yoga ::: The whole principle of Integral Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother all the transcendent light, power, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ānanda of the Supramental Divine.
Central purpose of the Integral Yoga ::: Transformation of our superficial, narrow and fragmentary human way of thinking, seeing, feeling and being into a deep and wide spiritual consciousness and an integrated inner and outer existence and of our ordinary human living into the divine way of life.
Fundamental realisations of the Integral Yoga ::: The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence. The descent of the Peace, Power, Light etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.
Results ::: First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujya mukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokya mukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the same status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda ; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmya mukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe.
By this integral realisation and liberation, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. For there is attained the complete release from ego and identification in being with the One in all and beyond all. But since the attaining consciousness is not limited by its attainment, we win also the unity in Beatitude and the harmonised diversity in Love, so that all relations of the play remain possible to us even while we retain on the heights of our being the eternal oneness with the Beloved. And by a similar wideness, being capable of a freedom in spirit that embraces life and does not depend upon withdrawal from life, we are able to become without egoism, bondage or reaction the channel in our mind and body for a divine action poured out freely upon the world.
The divine existence is of the nature not only of freedom, but of purity, beatitude and perfection. In integral purity which shall enable on the one hand the perfect reflection of the divine Being in ourselves and on the other the perfect outpouring of its Truth and Law in us in the terms of life and through the right functioning of the complex instrument we are in our outer parts, is the condition of an integral liberty. Its result is an integral beatitude, in which there becomes possible at once the Ānanda of all that is in the world seen as symbols of the Divine and the Ānanda of that which is not-world. And it prepares the integral perfection of our humanity as a type of the Divine in the conditions of the human manifestation, a perfection founded on a certain free universality of being, of love and joy, of play of knowledge and of play of will in power and will in unegoistic action. This integrality also can be attained by the integral Yoga.
Sādhanā of the Integral Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by a self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The yoga does not proceed by upadeśa but by inner influence.
Integral Yoga and Gita ::: The Gita’s Yoga consists in the offering of one’s work as a sacrifice to the Divine, the conquest of desire, egoless and desireless action, bhakti for the Divine, an entering into the cosmic consciousness, the sense of unity with all creatures, oneness with the Divine. This yoga adds the bringing down of the supramental Light and Force (its ultimate aim) and the transformation of the nature.
Our yoga is not identical with the yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s yoga. In our yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress ; or else we make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.
Integral Yoga, Gita and Tantra ::: The Gita follows the Vedantic tradition which leans entirely on the Ishvara aspect of the Divine and speaks little of the Divine Mother because its object is to draw back from world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation beyond it.
The Tantric tradition leans on the Shakti or Ishvari aspect and makes all depend on the Divine Mother because its object is to possess and dominate the world-nature and arrive at the supreme realisation through it.
This yoga insists on both the aspects; the surrender to the Divine Mother is essential, for without it there is no fulfilment of the object of the yoga.
Integral Yoga and Hatha-Raja Yogas ::: For an integral yoga the special methods of Rajayoga and Hathayoga may be useful at times in certain stages of the progress, but are not indispensable. Their principal aims must be included in the integrality of the yoga; but they can be brought about by other means. For the methods of the integral yoga must be mainly spiritual, and dependence on physical methods or fixed psychic or psychophysical processes on a large scale would be the substitution of a lower for a higher action. Integral Yoga and Kundalini Yoga: There is a feeling of waves surging up, mounting to the head, which brings an outer unconsciousness and an inner waking. It is the ascending of the lower consciousness in the ādhāra to meet the greater consciousness above. It is a movement analogous to that on which so much stress is laid in the Tantric process, the awakening of the Kundalini, the Energy coiled up and latent in the body and its mounting through the spinal cord and the centres (cakras) and the Brahmarandhra to meet the Divine above. In our yoga it is not a specialised process, but a spontaneous upnish of the whole lower consciousness sometimes in currents or waves, sometimes in a less concrete motion, and on the other side a descent of the Divine Consciousness and its Force into the body.
Integral Yoga and other Yogas ::: The old yogas reach Sachchidananda through the spiritualised mind and depart into the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Non-exist- ence, absolute and eternal. Ours having realised Sachchidananda in the spiritualised mind plane proceeds to realise it in the Supramcntal plane.
The suprcfhe supra-cosmic Sachchidananda is above all. Supermind may be described as its power of self-awareness and W’orld- awareness, the world being known as within itself and not out- side. So to live consciously in the supreme Sachchidananda one must pass through the Supermind.
Distinction ::: The realisation of Self and of the Cosmic being (without which the realisation of the Self is incomplete) are essential steps in our yoga ; it is the end of other yogas, but it is, as it were, the beginning of outs, that is to say, the point where its own characteristic realisation can commence.
It is new as compared with the old yogas (1) Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven and Nir- vana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object.
If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent — the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new coosdousness attain- ed by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life ; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
(2) Because the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic acbievement. The thing to be gained also is the bringing of a Power of consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.
(3) Because a method has been preconized for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods, but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive.
Integral Yoga and Patanjali Yoga ::: Cilia is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse etc.
It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be stilled altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi.
Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature.
In the symbolism of Hafiz (14th-century mystic Persian poet) dervish is one who has reached the highest degree of spirituality by giving up worldly possessions and in a beggar-like appearance holds the secret of alchemy. In later times, people who did not understand the subtleties of mysticism took the symbolic rejection of the material world too literally and the attitude of certain dervishes also contributed to this misconception, particularly during the Safavids, who were themselves dervishes, followers of the Sharia or Shariat (the outward rituals of religion).
Intuitionism (mathematical): The name given to the school (of mathematics) founded by L. E. J. Brouwer (q. v.) and represented also by Hermann Weyl, Hans Freudenthal, Arend Heyting, and others. In some respects a historical forerunner of intuitionism is the mathematician Leopold Kronecker (1823-1891). Views related to intuitionism (but usually not including the rejection of the law of excluded middle) have been expressed by many recent or contemporary mathematicians, among whom are J. Richard, Th. Skolem, and the French semi-intuitionists -- as Heyting calls them -- E. Borel, H. Lebesgue, R. Baire, N. Lusin. (Lusin is Russian but has been closely associated with the French school.)
irrecusable ::: a. --> Not liable to exception or rejection.
It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our appa- rent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakrit!, of phenomenal Nature, crea- tions of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right ideotiflcadon with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the supreme.
It will be seen that the scope we give to the idea of renunciation is different from the meaning currently attached to it. Currently its meaning is self-denial, inhibition of pleasure, rejection of the objects of pleasure. Self-denial is a necessary discipline for the soul of man, because his heart is ignorantly attached; inhibition of pleasure is necessary because his sense is caught and clogged in the mud-honey of sensuous satisfactions; rejection of the objects of pleasure is imposed because the mind fixes on the object and will not leave it to go beyond it and within itself. If the mind of man were not thus ignorant, attached, bound even in its restless inconstancy, deluded by the forms of things, renunciation would not have been needed; the soul could have travelled on the path of delight, from the lesser to the greater, from joy to diviner joy. At present that is not practicable. It must give up from within everything to which it is attached in order that it may gain that which they are in their reality. The external renunciation is not the essential, but even that is necessary for a time, indispensable in many things and sometimes useful in all; we may even say that a complete external renunciation is a stage through which the soul must pass at some period of its progress,—though always it should be without those self-willed violences and fierce self-torturings which are an offence to the Divine seated within us. But in the end this renunciation or self-denial is always an instrument and the period for its use passes. The rejection of the object ceases to be necessary when the object can no longer ensnare us because what the soul enjoys is no longer the object as an object but the Divine which it expresses; the inhibition of pleasure is no longer needed when the soul no longer seeks pleasure but possesses the delight of the Divine in all things equally without the need of a personal or physical possession of the thing itself; self-denial loses its field when the soul no longer claims anything, but obeys consciously the will of the one Self in all beings.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 333
JEDR "person, abuse, humour" Synonymous with {IYFEG}. At one time, people in the {Usenet} {newsgroup} {news:rec.humor.funny} tended to use "JEDR" instead of {IYFEG} or ""ethnic""; this stemmed from a public attempt to suppress the group once made by a loser with initials JEDR after he was offended by an ethnic joke posted there. (The practice was {retcon}ned by expanding these initials as "Joke Ethnic/Denomination/Race".) After much sound and fury JEDR faded away; this term appears to be doing likewise. JEDR's only permanent effect on the net.culture was to discredit "sensitivity" arguments for censorship so thoroughly that more recent attempts to raise them have met with immediate and near-universal rejection. [{Jargon File}] (1994-11-22)
JEDR ::: (person, abuse, humour) Synonymous with IYFEG. At one time, people in the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny tended to use JEDR instead of IYFEG or recent attempts to raise them have met with immediate and near-universal rejection.[Jargon File] (1994-11-22)
Jnana Yoga ::: The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual
reflection, vicara, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme. But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one’s own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.
Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 38-39
John of Salisbury: (c 1115-1180) From the works of this Englishman, much can be learned about the schoolmen of his day for he presents cogent criticism of their views which he characterizes as fruitless. In his Metalogicus he advocates reform in logic. He was among the earliest adherents of absolute separation of church and state, a view which he advanced in Policraticus. He adopted a practical attitude toward knowledge, seeking the rejection of what was useless and contrary to a pious life, even though proof positive could not be advanced for what was found favorable to the true good. -- L.E.D.
klesa. (P. kilesa; T. nyon mongs; C. fannao; J. bonno; K. ponnoe 煩腦). In Sanskrit, "afflictions," or "defilements"; mental factors that disturb the mind and incite unwholesome (AKUsALA) deeds of body, speech, and/or mind. In order to be liberated from rebirth, the klesa and the actions they incite must be controlled and finally eliminated. A typical standard list of klesa includes the so-called three poisons (TRIVIsA) of greed or sensuality (RĀGA or LOBHA), hatred or aversion (DVEsA), and delusion (MOHA). According to the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school, there are six "fundamental afflictions" or "defiled factors of wide extent" (KLEsAMAHĀBHuMIKA) that are associated with all defiled thoughts: delusion (MOHA), heedlessness (PRAMĀDA), lassitude (KAUSĪDYA), lack of faith (ĀsRADDHYA), sloth (STYĀNA), and restlessness (AUDDHATYA). There are similarly ten "defiled factors of limited extent" (upaklesaparīttabhumika), which may be associated with defiled thoughts: anger (KRODHA), hypocrisy (MRAKsA), selfishness (MĀTSARYA), envy (ĪRsYĀ), agitation or competition (PRADĀSA), harmfulness (VIHIMSĀ), enmity (UPANĀHA), trickery or guile (sĀtHYA), and arrogance (MADA). In the YOGĀCĀRA school, there are typically enumerated six fundamental klesa-greed (rāga), aversion (PRATIGHA), stupidity (mudhi), pride (MĀNA), skeptical doubt (VICIKITSĀ), and the five wrong views (DṚstI), viz., (1) presuming that the five aggregates (SKANDHA) possess a self, (2) the two extreme views of eternalism and annihilationism, (3) rejection of the law of causality, (4) maintaining wrong views and presuming them superior to all other views, (5) misconceiving wrong types of conduct or morality to be conducive to enlightenment-and twenty derivative ones (UPAKLEsA).
Lokāyata. (T. 'Jig rten rgyang phan pa; C. Shunshi waidao; J. Junse gedo; K. Sunse oedo 順世外道). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "Naturalist" or "Worldly" school; one of the major early schools of the Indian movement of wandering religious (sRAMAnA), which is mentioned occasionally in Buddhist scriptures. Its founding is attributed to the legendary figure Bṛhaspati, but during the Buddha's lifetime, its most prominent exponent was AJITA Kesakambala. The Lokāyata school is claimed to have taken a rigidly materialist perspective toward the world, in which everything in the universe, including consciousness, was composed only of the four elements (MAHĀBHuTA) of earth, water, heat, and air. Since everything occurs spontaneously through the interaction of its inherent material properties, the Lokāyatas advocated a "natural," even laissez-faire, attitude toward conduct (yadṛcchāvāda), in which the summum bonum of existence was thought to be sensual pleasure (KĀMA). As a materialist school, the Lokāyatas also denied the efficacy of moral cause and effect because of its rejection of any prospect of transmigration or rebirth.
Mahāsaccakasutta. In Pāli, the "Great Discourse to Saccaka"; the thirty-sixth sutta contained in the MAJJHIMANIKĀYA (fragments are extant in Sanskrit, and portions corresponding to a untitled recension of uncertain affiliation are included in the Chinese translation of the EKOTTARĀGAMA); preached by the Buddha to the JAINA adherent Saccaka (S. MAHĀSATYANIRGRANTHA) in the Mahāvana forest in Vesāli (VAIsĀlĪ). Saccaka asks about the proper method of cultivating the mind and the body in order to attain liberation. The Buddha explains the various methods of training mind and body he had tried during his own quest for liberation. Beginning with his renunciation of the householder's life, he tells of his training under two meditation masters, his rejection of meditation in favor of severe austerities, and his rejection of austerities for his own path midway between self-indulgence and extreme asceticism, which finally led to his enlightenment.
Manas: Sanskrit for mind or mentality. The reasoning faculty, intelligence, understanding, the individual mind, the power of attention, selection and rejection.
Moreover, it is a serious wide-spread error of interpretation to consider Bergson as an anti-intellectualist. His alleged anti-intellectualism should be considered as a protest against taking the static materialism and spatialization of Newton's conception of nature is being anything but a high abstraction, as a rejection of the extreme claims of mechanistic and materialistic science, as an effort of reason to transcend itself in harmony with the greatest idealistic thinkers, as an effort of thinkers to stress the dynamic nature of reality, and as a persistent criticism of reason, a continuation of the Kantian tradition. His much misread conception of intuition may be viewed as akin to Spinoza's intuitio, to wit: a completion rather than a rejection of reason. -- H.H.
nimitta. (T. mtshan ma; C. xiang/ruixiang; J. so/zuiso; K. sang/sosang 相/瑞相). In Sanskrit and Pāli, "mark" or "sign," in the sense of a distinguishing characteristic, or a meditative "image." Among its several denotations, three especially deserve attention. (1) In Buddhist epistemology, nimitta refers to the generic appearance of an object, in distinction to its secondary characteristics, or ANUVYANJANA. Advertence toward the generic sign and secondary characteristics of an object produces a recognition or perception (SAMJNĀ) of that object, which may in turn lead to clinging or rejection and ultimately suffering. Thus nimitta often carries the negative sense of false or deceptive marks that are imagined to inhere in an object, resulting in the misperception of that object as real, intrinsically existent, or endowed with self. Thus, the apprehension of signs (nimittagrāha) is considered a form of ignorance (AVIDYĀ), and the perception of phenomena as signless (ĀNIMITTA) is a form of wisdom that constitutes one of three "gates to deliverance" (VIMOKsAMUKHA), along with emptiness (suNYATĀ) and wishlessness (APRAnIHITA). (2) In the context of THERAVĀDA meditation practice (BHĀVANĀ), as set forth in such works as the VISUDDHIMAGGA, nimitta refers to an image that appears to the mind after developing a certain degree of mental concentration (SAMĀDHI). At the beginning of a meditation exercise that relies, e.g., on an external visual support (KASInA), such as a blue circle, the initial mental image one recalls is termed the "preparatory image" (PARIKAMMANIMITTA). With the deepening of concentration, the image becomes more refined but is still unsteady; at that stage, it is called the "acquired image" or "eidetic image" (UGGAHANIMITTA). When one reaches access or neighborhood concentration (UPACĀRASAMĀDHI), a clear, luminous image appears to the mind, which is called the "counterpart image" or "representational image" (PAtIBHĀGANIMITTA). It is through further concentration on this stable "representational image" that the mind finally attains "full concentration" (APPANĀSAMĀDHI), i.e, meditative absorption (P. JHĀNA; S. DHYĀNA). (3) The term also appears in CATURNIMITTA, the "four signs," "sights," or "portents," which were the catalysts that led the future buddha SIDDHĀRTHA GAUTAMA to renounce the world (see PRAVRAJITA) and pursue liberation from the cycle of birth and death (SAMSĀRA): specifically, the sight of an old man, a sick man, a dead man, and a religious mendicant (sRAMAnA).
offer ::: v. t. --> To present, as an act of worship; to immolate; to sacrifice; to present in prayer or devotion; -- often with up.
To bring to or before; to hold out to; to present for acceptance or rejection; as, to offer a present, or a bribe; to offer one&
Olcott, Henry Steel. (1832-1907). Cofounder of the Theosophical Society and a key figure in the modern history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Born in Orange, New Jersey, to a Presbyterian family, Olcott developed an interest in spiritualism during his twenties. He served in the Union Army during the American Civil War and subsequently was appointed to the commission that investigated the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Working as a journalist in New York City, he traveled to the Eddy Farm in Chittenden, Vermont, in 1874 to investigate paranormal events occurring in a farmhouse. While there, he met HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATKSY. Together, they founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875, an organization that was responsible for bringing the teachings of the Buddha, at least as interpreted by the Society, to a large audience in Europe and America. With the aim of establishing links with Asian teachers, they traveled to India, arriving in Bombay in 1879 and proceeding to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) the next year. Enthusiastically embracing his new Buddhist faith and shocked at what he perceived to be the ignorance of the Sinhalese about their own religion, Olcott took it upon himself to restore true Buddhism to Ceylon and to counter the efforts of Christian missionaries on the island. In order to accomplish this aim, he adopted some of the techniques of Protestant missionaries, founding lay and monastic branches of the Buddhist Theosophical Society to disseminate Buddhist knowledge (and later assisted in the founding of the Young Men's Buddhist Association), designing a Buddhist flag, and publishing in 1881 A Buddhist Catechism. The book was printed in some forty editions in twenty languages and was long used in schools in Sri Lanka. Buddhist leaders (including his former protégé, ANAGĀRIKA DHARMAPĀLA) eventually grew alarmed at his rejection of traditional devotional practices and feared that he was misappropriating Buddhism into a universalist Theosophy. In 1885, Olcott set out for Burma and Japan on a mission to heal the schism he perceived between "the northern and southern Churches," that is, between the Buddhists of Ceylon and Burma (southern) and those of China and Japan (northern). In subsequent years, Olcott was involved in often acrimonious debates within the Theosophical Society, failing to prevent a schism in 1895 into an American section and the international headquarters in Adyar, India.
overture ::: --> An opening or aperture; a recess; a recess; a chamber.
Disclosure; discovery; revelation.
A proposal; an offer; a proposition formally submitted for consideration, acceptance, or rejection.
A composition, for a full orchestra, designed as an introduction to an oratorio, opera, or ballet, or as an independent piece; -- called in the latter case a concert overture.
Palestinian Refugees ::: About 600,000 Palestinian (other estimates range form 500,000 to 800,0000) fled Israel between 1947 and 1949, fundamentally because of the Arab states' rejection of the United Nation partition plan and invasion of Israel. The refugees fled out of fear of war and in response to Arab leaders' calls for Arabs to evacuate the areas allocated to the Jews until Israel had been eliminated. In a handful of cases, Palestinians were expelled. A majority of the refugees and their descendants now live in the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the West Bank. About 360,000 Palestinians fled eastern Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights during and after Israel's defensive 1967 War. Palestinian who fled in 1967 are technically considered displaced persons and do not have official refugee status. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency estimated that 175,000 of these 360,000 Palestinians were refugees from the 1948 War. The May 4, 1994, Gaza-Jericho Accord calls for Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan, and Egypt to form a Continuing Committee to discuss the 1967 displaced persons. The problem of the 1947-1949 refugees, on the other hand, is to be left for the “final status” negotiations under the terms of the Israeli-PLO Decl
common-mode rejection ratio - (CMRR) The ratio of op-amp differential gain to common-mode gain. A measure of an op-amp's ability to reject common-mode signals such as noise.
power supply rejection ratio - A measure of an op-amps ability to maintain a constant output when the supply voltage varies.
POSSIBILITIES. ::: Three main possibilities for the sadhaka . to wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine ; to do everything himself like the Advaitin and the Buddhist ; to take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and rejection etc , helped by the
post-modernism: A general name which refers to the philosophical, artistic, andliterary changes and tendencies after the 1940s and 1950s up to the present day. Primarily, the tendencies of post-modernism include a rejection of traditional authority and a doubt over established discourses. Post-modernist authors include Carter and Rushdie.
Powers undivine in their nature present themselves as the Sup- reme Lord or as the Divine Mother and claim the being’s service and surrender. 1C these (hiags are accepted, there will be an extremely disastrous consequence. If indeed there is the assent of the sSdhaka to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all can go smoothly. This assent and a rejection of all egoistic force or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana. But the ways of nature are full of snares, the disguises of the ego are innumerable, the ilfusions of the Powers of Darkness, Rakshasi Maya, are e.ttraordinariIy skilful ; the reason is an insulBdent guide and often turns traitor; vital desire is ahvays with us tempting to follow any alluring call. This is the reason why in this Yoga we insist so much on what we call samarpana — rather inade- quately rendered by the Engikh word surrender. If the heart centre is fully opened and the psychic is always in control, then there is no question ; all fe Safe. But the psychic can at any moment be veiled by a lower upsurge. It is only a few who arc exempt from these dangers and it is precisely those to whom surrender is easily possible. The guidance of one who is himself
Power ; there must a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and integral rejection of the false- hood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.
Psychic conversion ::: The conversion which- keeps Ihe cons- ciousness turned towards the light and makes the right attitude spontaneous and natural and abiding and rejection also spon- taneous.
Psychic Summation: See Psychic Fusion. Psycho-analysis: The psychological method and therapeutic technique developed by Freud (see Freud, Sigmund). This method consists in the use of such procedures as free association, automatic writing and especially dream-analysis to recover forgotten memories, suppressed desires and other subconscious items which exert a disturbing influence on the conscious life of an individual. The cure of the psychic disturbances is effected by bringing the suppressed items into the full of consciousness of the individual. Psycho-analytic theory has posited a subconscious mind as a repository for the suppressed elements. Freud exaggerated the sexual origin of the suppressed desires but other psycho-analysts, notably Jung and Adler, corrected this exaggeration. The psycho-analytical school has developed its terminology in which the following are characteristic. Free association is the method of encouraging the patient to recall in random fashion experiences, particularly of childhood. A "complex" is a more or less permanent emotional system or mechjnism responsible for the mental disturbances of the patient. Libido designates the underlying sexual drive or impulse, the suppression of which is responsible for the psychic disturbance. Suppression or repression is the rejection from consciousness of desires and urges which it finds intolerable. Sublimation is the transference of a suppressed desire to a new object. These terms are only a few samples of the elaborate and at times highly mythological terminology of psycho-analysis. -- L.W.
rebuff ::: n. --> Repercussion, or beating back; a quick and sudden resistance.
Sudden check; unexpected repulse; defeat; refusal; repellence; rejection of solicitation. ::: v. t. --> To beat back; to offer sudden resistance to; to check;
Reichenbach's work has been devoted mainly to the philosophy of empirical science; for a brief general survey of the problems which have particularly attracted his attention, and of his conception of an adequate method for their solution, cf. his Raum. Zeit Lehre. His contributions center around (I) the problems of space and time, and (II) those of causality, induction and probability. His studies of the first group of problems include thorough analyses of the nature of geometry and of the logical structure of relativistic physics, these researches led Reichenbach to a rejection of the aprioristic theory of space and time. Reichenbach's contributions to the second group of problems pivot around his general theory of probability which is based on a statistical definition of the probability concept. In terms of this probabilistic approach, Relchenbach has carried out comprehensive analyses of methodological and epistemological problems such as those of causality and induction. He has also extended his formal probability theory into a probability logic in which probabilities play the part of truth values. -- C.G.H.
Rejected in particular by intuitionism are the use of impredicative definition (q. v.); the assumption that all things satisfying a given condition can be united into a set and this set then treated as an individual thing --or even the weakened form of this assumption which is found in Zermelo's Aussonderungsaxiom or axiom of subset formation (see logic, formal, § 9); the law of excluded middle as applied to propositions whose expression lequires a quantifier for which the variable involved has an infinite range. As an example of the rejection of the law of excluded middle, consider the proposition, "Either every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers or else not every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers." This proposition is intuitionistically unacceptable, because there are infinitely many even numbers greater than 2 and it is impossible to try them all one by one and decide of each whether or not it is the sum of two prime numbers. An intuitionist would accept the disjunction only after a proof had been given of one or other of the two disjoined propositions -- and in the present state of mathematical knowledge it is not certain that this can be done (it is not certain that the mathematical problem involved is solvable). If, however, we replace "greater than 2" by "greater than 2 and less than 1,000,000,000," the resulting disjunction becomes intuitionistically acceptable, since the number of numbers involved is then finite. The intuitionistic rejection of the law of excluded middle is not to be understood as an assertion of the negation of the law of excluded middle; on the contrary, Brouwer asserts the negation of the negation of the law of excluded middle, i.e., ∼∼[p ∨ ∼p]. Still less is the intuitionistic rejection of the law of excluded middle to be understood as the assertion of the existence of a third truth-value intermediate between truth and falsehood.
rejection ::: n. --> Act of rejecting, or state of being rejected.
rejection ::: rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.
rejection ::: the act of rejecting or the state of being rejected.
REJECTION. ::: The jjersonal effort required is a itficdon of the movements of the lower nature — rejection of the mind’s ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind ; rejection of
rejectitious ::: a. --> Implying or requiring rejection; rejectable.
Renaissance: (Lat. re + nasci, to be born) Is a term used by historians to characterize various periods of intellectual revival, and especially that which took place in Italy and Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. The term was coined by Michelet and developed into a historical concept by J. Burckhardt (1860) who considered individualism, the revival of classical antiquity, the "discovery" of the world and of man as the main characters of that period as opposed to the Middle Ages. The meaning, the temporal limits, and even the usefulness of the concept have been disputed ever since. For the emphasis placed by various historians on the different fields of culture and on the contribution of different countries must lead to different interpretations of the whole period, and attempts to express a complicated historical phenomenon in a simple, abstract definition are apt to fail. Historians are now inclined to admit a very considerable continuity between the "Renaissance" and the Middle Ages. Yet a sweeping rejection of the whole concept is excluded, for it expresses the view of the writers of the period itself, who considered their century a revival of ancient civilization after a penod of decay. While Burckhardt had paid no attention to philosophy, others began to speak of a "philosophy of the renaissance," regarding thought of those centuries not as an accidental accompaniment of renaissance culture, but as its characteristic philosophical manifestation. As yet this view has served as a fruitful guiding principle rather than as a verified hypothesis. Renaissance thought can be defined in a negative way as the period of transition from the medieval, theological to the modern, scientific interpretation of reality. It also displays a few common features, such as an emphasis on man and on his place in the universe, the rejection of certain medieval standards and methods of science, the increased influence of some newly discovered ancient sources, and a new style and literary form in the presentation of philosophical ideas. More obvious are the differences between the various schools and traditions which cannot easily be brought to a common denominator Humimsm, Platonism, Aristotelianism, scepticism and natural philosophy, to which may be added the group of the founders of modern science (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo). -- P.O.K.
samyama ::: 1. self-control, rejection or self-dissociation. ::: 2. concentration, directing or dwelling of the consciousness (by which one becomes aware of all that is in an object).
Sautrāntika. (T. Mdo sde pa; C. Jingliang bu; J. Kyoryobu; K. Kyongnyang pu 經量部). In Sanskrit, "Followers of the Sutras," one of the "mainstream" (that is, non-MAHĀYĀNA) schools of Indian Buddhism, which may have been a dissenting offshoot of the SARVĀSTIVĀDA school. Its name was apparently meant to distinguish this school from those ĀBHIDHARMIKAs who based themselves on ABHIDHARMA treatises, such as the ABHIDHARMAMAHĀVIBHĀsĀ. The Sautrāntika were "Followers of the Sutras" because they were said to have rejected the validity of the abhidharma as being the word of the Buddha (BUDDHAVACANA) and advocated a doctrine of momentariness (KsAnIKAVĀDA), in which (again in distinction to the Sarvāstivāda) only present activity exists. No texts of the school are extant, but its positions are represented in the ABHIDHARMAKOsABHĀsYA, which presents the SARVĀSTIVĀDA-VAIBHĀsIKA positions in detail, and as deficient relative to a putative Sautrāntika position. According to Tibetan accounts, VASUBANDHU, the author of the Abhidharmakosabhāsya, wrote from the perspective of the Sautrāntika position even while he himself was a YOGĀCĀRA adherent. Similarly, some of the chapters of the Yogācāra DHARMAKĪRTI's explanation of Dignāga's logical system are written from the Sautrāntika perspective. According to sĀNTARAKsITA and his student KAMALAsĪLA, one major difference between the Vaibhāsika and Sautrāntika schools is their respective rejection or acceptance of SVASAMVEDANA ("self-cognizing awareness"). Although both schools accept that atoms (PARAMĀnU) build up to form external objects that are perceived by consciousness, the Vaibhāsika say that the mind knows these objects directly, while the Sautrāntika position is that it knows them through images (ākāra). In late Indian and Tibetan classifications, the Sautrāntika and Vaibhāsika are called the two sRĀVAKA schools (T. nyan thos sde pa), to distinguish them from the two Mahāyāna schools of YOGĀCĀRA and MADHYAMAKA.
Sometimes, if that is done, there is automatic extension of the habit of rejection to the subconscient, so that when the dream Is coming there is an automatic prohibition that stops it.
Such a general attitude and purpose of course allow for vast specific differences, and under the term romantics must be included artists and theorists who stress varying aspects of nature and man. All have in common a rejection of formal restraints, an obseesion with their experience of nature, and the conviction that this felt quality of things is of ultimate value in its immediacy.
Supreme Lord, as the Divine Mother and claim the being’s ser- vice and surrender. If these things are accepted, there will be an extremely disastrous consequence. If indeed there is the assent of the sadhaka to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all can go smoothly. This assent and a rejection of all egoistic forces or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana. But the ways of nature are full of snares, the disguises of the ego arc innumerable, the illusions of the Powers of Darkness, Rakshasl,
Surrender ::: There must be a total and sincere surrender; there must be an exclusive self-opening to the divine Power; there must be a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and integral rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.The surrender must be total and seize all the parts of the being. It is not enough that the psychics should respond and the higher mental accept or even the inner vital submit and the inner physical consciousness feel the influence. There must be inno part of the being, even the most external, anything that makes a reserve, anything that hides behind doubts, confusions and subterfuges, anything that revolts or
refuses.If part of the being surrenders, but another part reserves itself, follows its own way or makes its own conditions, then each time that that happens, you are yourself pushing the divine Grace away from you.If behind your devotion and surrender you make a cover for your desires, egoistic demands and vital insistences, if you put these things in place of the true aspiration or mix them with it and try to impose them on the Divine Shakti, then it is idle to invoke the divine Grace to transform you.If you open yourself on one side or in one part to the Truth and on another side are constantly opening the gates to hostile forces, it is vain to expect that the divine Grace will abide with you. You must keep the temple clean if you wish to install there the living Presence.If each time the Power intervenes and brings in the Truth, you turn your back on it and call in again the falsehood that has been expelled, it is not the divine Grace that you must blame for failing you, but the falsity of your own will and the imperfection of your own surrender.If you call for the Truth and yet something in you chooses what is false, ignorant and undivine or even simply is unwilling to reject it altogether, then always you will be open to attack and the Grace will recede from you. Detect first what is false or obscure in you and persistently reject it, then alone can you rightly call for the divine Power to transform you.Do not imagine that truth and falsehood, light and darkness, surrender and selfishness can be allowed to dwell together in the house consecrated to the Divine. The transformation must be integral, and integral th
refore the rejection of all that withstands it.The Mother
thanatos: a Freudian term which represents the death instinct, characterised by aggressive behaviour and a rejection of pleasurable stimuli.
The Disputationes Metaphysicae (no Eng. translation) forms a complete exposition of Suarez general metaphysics, psychology, theory of knowledge, cosmology and natural theology. Basic is the rejection of the thomistic real distinction between essence and existence in finite things. Physical substances are individuated, neither by their matter nor their form, but by their total entities. Their components, matter and form, are individual entities united in the composite of physical substance by a "mode" (unio) which has itself no reality apart from the composite. Except in the case of the human form which is the soul, matter and form in the natural order cannot exist in isolation. Accidental "modes" are used to explain the association of accidents with their subjects. Spiritual creatures (angels and human souls) are not specific natures as in Thomism, but are individuals, constituted such by their own entities.
The general superiority of theology in this system over the admittedly distinct discipline of philosophy, makes it impossible for unaided reason to solve certain problems which Thomism claims are quite within the province of the latter, e.g., the omnipotence of God, the immortality of the soul. Indeed the Scotist position on this latter question has been thought by some critics to come quite close to the double standard of truth of Averroes, (q.v.) namely, that which is true in theology may be false in philosophy. The univocal assertion of being in God and creatures; the doctrine of universal prime matter (q.v.) in all created substances, even angels, though characteristically there are three kinds of prime matter); the plurality of forms in substances (e.g., two in man) giving successive generic and specific determinations of the substance; all indicate the opposition of Scotistic metaphysics to that of Thomism despite the large body of ideas the two systems have in common. The denial of real distinction between the soul and its faculties; the superiority of will over intellect, the attainment of perfect happiness through a will act of love; the denial of the absolute unchangeableness of the natural law in view of its dependence on the will of God, acts being good because God commanded them; indicate the further rejection of St. Thomas who holds the opposite on each of these questions. However the opposition is not merely for itself but that of a voluntarist against an intellectualist. This has caused many students to point out the affinity of Duns Scotus with Immanuel Kant. (q.v.) But unlike the great German philosopher who relies entirely upon the supremacy of moral consciousness, Duns Scotus makes a constant appeal to revelation and its order of truth as above all philosophy. In his own age, which followed immediately upon the great constructive synthesis of Saints Albert, Bonaventure, and Thomas, this lesser light was less a philosopher because he and his School were incapable of powerful synthesis and so gave themselves to analysis and controversy. The principal Scotists were Francis of Mayron (d. 1327) and Antonio Andrea (d. 1320); and later John of Basoles, John Dumbleton, Walter Burleigh, Alexander of Alexandria, Lychetus of Brescia and Nicholas de Orbellis. The complete works with a life of Duns Scotus were published in 1639 by Luke Wadding (Lyons) and reprinted by Vives in 1891. (Paris) -- C.A.H.
the house consecrated lo the Divine. The transformation must be integral, and integral therefore the rejection of all that with- stands it.
The personal effort required Is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender ; an aspiration vigilant, constant, un- ceasing — 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 ; rejection of the movements of the lower nature — rejection of the mind’s ideas, opinions, prefer- ences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find room in a silent mind, — rejection of the vital nature’s desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arro- gance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, — rejection of the physical nature’s stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine ; surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the ShaUi.
The power to say ‘NO’ is indispensable in life and- still more so in sadhana. It is the power of rejection put into speech.
There is one way by which it is possible to get rid of the per- verse habit ::: to establish a strong mental control and so get rid of the wrong movement. A resolute and persistent effort of will can enforce in the end the rejection of the desire and finally even of any roechanical habit of the movement upon this part of the nature also.
The rejection of the law of excluded middle carries with it the rejection of various other laws of the classical propositional calculus and functional calculus of first order, including the law of double negation (and hence the method of indirect proof). In general the double negation of a proposition is weaker than the proposition itself; but the triple negation of a proposition is equivalent to its single negation. Noteworthy also is the rejection of ∼(x)F(x) ⊃ (Ex)∼F(x); but the reverse implication is valid. (The sign ⊃ here does not denote material implication, but is a distinct primitive symbol of implication.) -- A.C.
There must be a total and sincere surrender ; there must be an exclusive self-opening to the divine Power ; there must be a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and integral rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Naturc.
the vital nature’s desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hosti- lity to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being ; rejection of the physical nature’s stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine.
The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of meditation, not fighting with the mind or making mental efforts to pall down the Power or the Silence, but keeping only a .silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active, one has to learn to look at it, drawn back and not giving any sanction from within, until its habitual or mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. If it is too persistent, a steady rejection without strain or st/uggJe is the one thing to be done.
tyaga. ::: abandonment; renunciation; rejection; giving up
ultimatum ::: n. --> A final proposition, concession, or condition; especially, the final propositions, conditions, or terms, offered by either of the parties in a diplomatic negotiation; the most favorable terms a negotiator can offer, the rejection of which usually puts an end to the hesitation.
Verification, Confirmation: Verification: the procedure of finding out whether a sentence (or proposition) is true or false. A sentence is verifiable (in principle) if a (positive or negative) verification of it is possible under suitable conditions, leaving aside technical difficulties. Many philosophical doctrines (e.g. Scientific Empiricism, q.v.) hold that a verification is replaced here by the concept of confirmation. A certain hypothesis is said to be confirmed to a certain degree by a certain amount of evidence. The concept of degree of confirmation is closely connected or perhaps identical (Reichenbach) with the statistical concept of probability (q.v.). A sentence is confirmable if suitable (possible, not necessarily actual) experiences could contribute positively or negatively to its confirmation. Many etnpiricists (see e.g. Scientific Empiricism 1C) regard either verifiability (e.g. Wittgenstein, the Vienna Circle in its earlier phase) or confirimability as a criterion of meaningfulness (in the sense of factual meaning, see Meaning, Kinds of, 2). This view leads to a rejection of certain metaphysical doctrines (see Anti-metaphysics, 2)
who interview the dead in their graves (along with Munkar); disavowal, rejection; loathsome, disgusting.
Will: In the widest sense, will is synonymous with conation. See Conation. In the restricted sense, will designates the sequence of mental acts eventuating in decision or choice between conflicting conative tendencies. An act of will of the highest type is analyzable into: The envisaging of alternative courses of action, each of which expresses conative tendencies of the subject. Deliberation, consisting in the examination and comparison of the alternative courses of action with special reference to the dominant ideals of the self. Decision or choice consisting in giving assent to one of the alternatives and the rejection of the rest.
KEYS (10k)
19 Sri Aurobindo
1 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
1 Jalaluddin Rumi
1 Gabor Mate
1 A. N. Whitehead
1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
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24 Mark Manson
17 Henri J M Nouwen
15 Anonymous
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13 Nick Hornby
12 John Steinbeck
12 Albert Camus
11 Trevor Noah
10 Timothy J Keller
9 Steven Pressfield
9 Brennan Manning
8 Roosh V
8 Nir Eyal
8 Edward T Welch
8 Dietrich Bonhoeffer
8 Cassandra Clare
7 Stephen R Covey
7 Miguel Ruiz
7 Henri Nouwen
1:The principle of the Yoga is rejection-throwing out of the being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T5],#KEYS
2:Sannyasa is only the renunciation of the 'I-thought', and not the rejection of the external objects. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #KEYS
3:The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith. ~ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, #KEYS
4:The rejection of the object ceases to be necessary when the object can no longer ensnare us ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
5:The rejection of any source of evidence is always treason to that ultimate rationalism which urges forward science and philosophy alike. ~ A. N. Whitehead, The Function of Reason, #KEYS
6:renunciation of life cannot be the goal of life nor rejection of the world the object for which the world was created. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #KEYS
7:The difference between suppression and an inward essential rejection is the difference between mental or moral control and a spiritual purification. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #KEYS
8:In the texture of our bound humanity
He felt the stark resistance huge and dumb
Of our inconscient and unseeing base,
The stubborn mute rejection in life's depths,
The ignorant No in the origin of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,#KEYS
9:When He calls me I start a self-inspection: 'Am I fair or will my looks earn rejection? If a fine beauty leads a beast along, She's only mocking what does not belong! To see my own face can there be a way? Is my complexion now like night or day?' I searched for my soul's form in everyone, But it did not reflect in anyone. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi, The Masnavi, #KEYS
10:The passage from the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga; and this passage may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the higher, - the ordinary view-point, - or by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. It is this, rather, that must be the aim of an integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
11:The very same brain centers that interpret and feel physical pain also become activated during experiences of emotional rejection. In brain scans, they light up in response to social ostracism, just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli. When people speak of feeling hurt or of having emotional pain, they are not being abstract or poetic, but scientifically quite precise. ~ Gabor Mate, #KEYS
12:conditions of the psychic opening :::
The realisation of the psychic being, its awakening and the bringing of it in front depend mainly on the extent to which one can develop a personal relation with the Divine, a relation of Bhakti, love, reliance, self-giving, rejection of the insistences of the separating and self-asserting mental, vital and physical ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#KEYS
13:In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#KEYS
14:The sadhana of this Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart, and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T3],#KEYS
15:It is an inertia of the physical consciousness which allows these desires to come and does not react against the suggestions; it is that also which responds to the pains and suggestion of illness. But you must not accept the suggestion that you cannot react and be free, - the physical consciousness itself cannot as yet, but the will can if it is called on to act and made accustomed to act always. Not the struggling will, but a quiet will insisting on the quietude of the mind and vital and insisting on the rejection of these adverse things. That would soon prove sufficient to hold the ground for the Peace and Force to act and they would do the rest.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#KEYS
16:55: A similar rejection is a necessary self-restraint and a spiritual discipline for the immature seeker, since such powers may be a great, even a deadly peril; for their supernormality may easily feed in him an abnormal exaggeration of the ego. Power in itself may be dreaded as a temptation by the aspirant to perfection, because power can abase as well as elevate; nothing is more liable to misuse. But when new capacities come as an inevitable result of the growth into a greater consciousness and a greater life and that growth is part of the very aim of the spiritual being within us, this bar does not operate; for a growth of the being into supernature and its life in supernature cannot take place or cannot be complete without bringing with it a greater power of consciousness and a greater power of life and the spontaneous development of an instrumentation of knowledge and force normal to that supernature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.08, #KEYS
17:Other impacts it meets, but finds them too strong for it or too dissimilar and discordant or too weak to give it satisfaction; these are things which it cannot bear or cannot equate with itself or cannot assimilate, and it is obliged to give to them reactions of grief, pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction, disliking, disapproval, rejection, inability to understand or know, refusal of admission. Against them it seeks to protect itself, to escape from them, to avoid or minimise their recurrence; it has with regard to them movements of fear, anger, shrinking, horror, aversion, disgust, shame, would gladly be delivered from them, but it cannot get away from them, for it is bound to and even invites their causes and therefore the results; for these impacts are part of life, tangled up with the things we desire, and the inability to deal with them is part of the imperfection of our nature. Other impacts again the normal mind succeeds in holding at bay or neutralising and to these it has a natural reaction of indifference, insensibility or tolerance which is neither positive acceptance and enjoymentnor rejection or suffering.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 730,#KEYS
18:In all that is done in the universe, the Divine through his Shakti is behind all action but he is veiled by his Yoga Maya and works through the ego of the Jiva in the lower nature.
In Yoga also it is the Divine who is the Sadhaka and the Sadhana; it is his Shakti with her light, power, knowledge, consciousness, Ananda, acting upon the adhara and, when it is opened to her, pouring into it with these divine forces that makes the Sadhana possible. But so long as the lower nature is active the personal effort of the Sadhaka remains necessary.
The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, rejection and surrender, -
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;
rejection of the movements of the lower nature - rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, - rejection of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, - rejection of the physical nature's stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine;
surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
19:... The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana - accompanied by a rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being - the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, first into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening - without any sense of descent - of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed - for there is no absolute rule for all, - but if the peace has not come first, care must be taken not to swell oneself in exultation or lose the balance. The capital movement however is when the Divine Force or Shakti, the power of the Mother comes down and takes hold, for then the organisation of the consciousness begins and the larger foundation of the Yoga.
The result of the concentration is not usually immediate - though to some there comes a swift and sudden outflowering; but with most there is a time longer or shorter of adaptation or preparation, especially if the nature has not been prepared already to some extent by aspiration and tapasya. ... ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Mother With Letters On The Mother,#KEYS
20:Jnana Yoga, the Path of Knowledge; :::
The Path of Knowledge aims at the realisation of the unique and supreme Self. It proceeds by the method of intellectual reflection, vicara ¯, to right discrimination, viveka. It observes and distinguishes the different elements of our apparent or phenomenal being and rejecting identification with each of them arrives at their exclusion and separation in one common term as constituents of Prakriti, of phenomenal Nature, creations of Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme. But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one's own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect and perception to the divine level, to its spiritualisation and to the justification of the cosmic travail of knowledge in humanity.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Conditions of the Synthesis, The Systems Of Yoga, 38,#KEYS
21:3. Conditions internal and external that are most essential for meditation. There are no essential external conditions, but solitude and seculsion at the time of meditation as well as stillness of the body are helpful, sometimes almost necessary to the beginning. But one should not be bound by external conditions. Once the habit of meditation is formed, it should be made possible to do it in all circumstances, lying, sitting, walking, alone, in company, in silence or in the midst of noise etc.
The first internal condition necessary is concentration of the will against the obstacles to meditation, i.e. wandering of the mind, forgetfulness, sleep, physical and nervous impatience and restlessness etc. If the difficulty in meditation is that thoughts of all kinds come in, that is not due to hostile forces but to the ordinary nature of the human mind. All sadhaks have this difficulty and with many it lasts for a very long time. There are several was of getting rid of it. One of them is to look at the thoughts and observe what is the nature of the human mind as they show it but not to give any sanction and to let them run down till they come to a standstill - this is a way recommended by Vivekananda in his Rajayoga. Another is to look at the thoughts as not one's own, to stand back as the witness Purusha and refuse the sanction - the thoughts are regarded as things coming from outside, from Prakriti, and they must be felt as if they were passers-by crossing the mind-space with whom one has no connection and in whom one takes no interest. In this way it usually happens that after the time the mind divides into two, a part which is the mental witness watching and perfectly undisturbed and quiet and a part in which the thoughts cross or wander. Afterwards one can proceed to silence or quiet the Prakriti part also. There is a third, an active method by which one looks to see where the thoughts come from and finds they come not from oneself, but from outside the head as it were; if one can detect them coming, then, before enter, they have to be thrown away altogether. This is perhaps the most difficult way and not all can do it, but if it can be done it is the shortest and most powerful road to silence. It is not easy to get into the Silence. That is only possible by throwing out all mental-vital activities. It is easier to let the Silence descend into you, i.e., to open yourself and let it descend. The way to do this and the way to call down the higher powers is the same. It is to remain quiet at the time of efforts to pull down the Power or the Silence but keeping only a silent will and aspiration for them. If the mind is active one has to learn to look at it, drawn back and not giving sanction from within, until its habitual or mechanical activities begin to fall quiet for want of support from within. if it is too persistent, a steady rejection without strain or struggle is the one thing to be done.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Autobiographical Notes,#KEYS
22:If this is the truth of works, the first thing the sadhaka has to do is to recoil from the egoistic forms of activity and get rid of the sense of an "I" that acts. He has to see and feel that everything happens in him by the plastic conscious or subconscious or sometimes superconscious automatism of his mental and bodily instruments moved by the forces of spiritual, mental, vital and physical Nature. There is a personality on his surface that chooses and wills, submits and struggles, tries to make good in Nature or prevail over Nature, but this personality is itself a construction of Nature and so dominated, driven, determined by her that it cannot be free. It is a formation or expression of the Self in her, - it is a self of Nature rather than a self of Self, his natural and processive, not his spiritual and permanent being, a temporary constructed personality, not the true immortal Person. It is that Person that he must become. He must succeed in being inwardly quiescent, detach himself as the observer from the outer active personality and learn the play of the cosmic forces in him by standing back from all blinding absorption in its turns and movements. Thus calm, detached, a student of himself and a witness of his nature, he realises that he is the individual soul who observes the works of Nature, accepts tranquilly her results and sanctions or withholds his sanction from the impulse to her acts. At present this soul or Purusha is little more than an acquiescent spectator, influencing perhaps the action and development of the being by the pressure of its veiled consciousness, but for the most part delegating its powers or a fragment of them to the outer personality, - in fact to Nature, for this outer self is not lord but subject to her, anı̄sa; but, once unveiled, it can make its sanction or refusal effective, become the master of the action, dictate sovereignly a change of Nature. Even if for a long time, as the result of fixed association and past storage of energy, the habitual movement takes place independent of the Purusha's assent and even if the sanctioned movement is persistently refused by Nature for want of past habit, still he will discover that in the end his assent or refusal prevails, - slowly with much resistance or quickly with a rapid accommodation of her means and tendencies she modifies herself and her workings in the direction indicated by his inner sight or volition. Thus he learns in place of mental control or egoistic will an inner spiritual control which makes him master of the Nature-forces that work in him and not their unconscious instrument or mechanic slave. Above and around him is the Shakti, the universal Mother and from her he can get all his inmost soul needs and wills if only he has a true knowledge of her ways and a true surrender to the divine Will in her. Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power. The rest of our progress depends on our knowledge of the ways in which the Lord of works manifests his Will in the world and in us and executes them through the transcendent and universal Shakti. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 216, #KEYS
23:summary of the entire process of psychic awakening :::
You have asked what is the discipline to be followed in order to convert the mental seeking into a living spiritual experience. The first necessity is the practice of concentration of your consciousness within yourself. The ordinary human mind has an activity on the surface which veils the real Self. But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real Self and of a larger deeper truth of nature, can realise the Self and liberate and transform the nature. To quiet the surface mind and begin to live within is the object of this concentration. Of this true consciousness other then the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The concentration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it an d all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a greater Force and Consciousness which is waiting above us. To concentrate in the heart centre with the offering of oneself to the Divine and the aspiration for this inward opening and for the Presence in the heart is the first way and, if it can be done, the natural beginning; for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way.
That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind. After a time one feels the consciousness rising upward and it the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a centre above the head where it is liberated into the Infinite. There it behind to come into contact with the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Bliss, to enter into that and become that, to feel the descent of these things into the nature. To concentrate in the head with the aspiration for quietude in the mind and the realisation of the Self and Divine above is the second way of concentration. It is important, however, to remember that the concentration of the consciousness in the head is only a preparation for its rising to the centre above; otherwise, one may get shut up in one's own mind and its experiences or at best attain only to a reflection of the Truth above instead of rising into the spiritual transcendence to live there. For some the mental consciousness is easier, for some the concentration in the heart centre; some are capable of doing both alternatively - but to begin with the heart centre, if one can do it, is the more desirable.
The other side of the discipline is with regard to the activities of the nature, of the mind, of the life-self or vital, of the physical being. Here the principle is to accord the nature with the inner realisation so that one may not be divided into two discordant parts. There are here several disciplines or processes possible. One is to offer all the activities to the Divine and call for the inner guidance and the taking up of one's nature by a Higher Power. If there is the inward soul-opening, if the psychic being comes forward, then there is no great difficulty - there comes with it a psychic discrimination, a constant intimation, finally a governance which discloses and quietly and patiently removes all imperfections, bring the right mental and vital movements and reshapes the physical consciousness also. Another method is to stand back detached from the movements of the mind, life, physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings, not as any part of our real being; in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within us - inner mental, inner vital, inner physical - silent, calm, unbound, unattached which reflects the true Self above and can be its direct representative; from this inner silent Being proceeds a rejection of all that is to be rejected, an acceptance only of what can be kept and transformed, an inmost Will to perfection or a call to the Divine Power to do at each step what is necessary for the change of the Nature. It can also open mind, life and body to the inmost psychic entity and its guiding influence or its direct guidance. In most cases these two methods emerge and work together and finally fuse into one. But one can being with either, the one that one feels most natural and easy to follow.
Finally, in all difficulties where personal effort is hampered, the help of the Teacher can intervene and bring above what is needed for the realisation or for the immediate step that is necessary.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, 6, {871},#KEYS
24: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:A clear rejection is always better than a fake promise. ~ zig-ziglar, @wisdomtrove 2:Self-rejection is the biggest sin that you can commit. ~ don-miguel-ruiz, @wisdomtrove 3:Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove 4:Often, out of our greatest rejection comes our greatest direction. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 5:Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world. ~ albert-camus, @wisdomtrove 6:Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection. ~ martin-luther-king, @wisdomtrove 7:Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story. ~ f-scott-fitzgerald, @wisdomtrove 8:Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious ~ ayn-rand, @wisdomtrove 9:Actors search for rejection. If they don't get it they reject themselves. ~ charlie-chaplan, @wisdomtrove 10:Attitude is your acceptance of the natural laws, or your rejection of the natural laws. ~ jim-rohn, @wisdomtrove 11:The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 12:Refuse to let the fear of rejection hold you back. Remember, rejection is never personal. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 13:I tell ya when I was a kid, all I knew was rejection. My yo-yo, it never came back. ~ rodney-dangerfield, @wisdomtrove 14:If rejection destroys your self-esteem, you're letting others hold you as an emotional hostage. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 15:Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us. ~ sigmund-freud, @wisdomtrove 16:It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ~ chuck-palahniuk, @wisdomtrove 17:Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 18:The flower you single out is a rejection of all other flowers; nevertheless, only on these terms is it beautiful. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove 19:Rejection never feels good, but it certainly hurts less when we are not needing something from the person who is rejecting us. ~ susan-jeffers, @wisdomtrove 20:Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter. ~ longchenpa, @wisdomtrove 21:Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove 22:Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 23:The spirit of rejection finds its support in the consciousness of separateness; the spirit of acceptance finds its base in the consciousness of unity. ~ rabindranath-tagore, @wisdomtrove 24:Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove 25:If you get condemnation out of the Gospel, you put the condemnation into it yourselves! It is not the Gospel, but your rejection of it that will condemn you. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 26:Authors by the hundreds can tell you stories by the thousands of those rejection slips before they found a publisher who was willing to & 27:Rejection is a form of self-assertion. You have only to look back upon yourself as a person who hates this or that to discover what it is that you secretly love. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove 28:By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing. ~ stephen-king, @wisdomtrove 29:The biggest enemies we have to overcome on the road to success are not a lack of ability and a lack of opportunity but fears of failure and rejection and the doubts that they trigger. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 30:The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 31:Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a support. ~ leo-tolstoy, @wisdomtrove 32:Recognize that it is natural and normal to fear rejection. The only thing wrong with it is if you allow the fear to dominate you so that it holds you back from fulfilling your potential in your business. ~ brian-tracy, @wisdomtrove 33:Hungry not only for bread - but hungry for love. Naked not only for clothing - but naked of human dignity and respect. Homeless not only for want of a home of bricks - but homeless because of rejection. ~ mother-teresa, @wisdomtrove 34:When you make a mistake or get ridiculed or rejected, look at mistakes as learning experiences, and ridicule as ignorance. Look at rejection as part of one performance, not as a turn down of the performer. ~ denis-waitley, @wisdomtrove 35:But those who chose to reject God during their lifetime on earth will be separated from him for eternity. This is not God's desire, but man's own choice. God holds every man accountable for his rejection of Christ. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 36:While overeating would be seen by some as an indulgence of self, it is in fact a profound rejection of self. It is a moment of self-betrayal and self-punishment, and anything but a commitment to one's own well-being. ~ marianne-williamson, @wisdomtrove 37:The joy of art is particularly sweet, though, because it carries with it the threat of rejection, of failure, and of missed connections. It's precisely the high-wire act of "this might not work" that makes original art worth doing. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 38:When social forces press for the rejection of age-old Truth, then those who reject it will seek meaning in their own truth. These truths will rarely be Truth at all; they will be only collections of personal preferences and prejudices. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove 39:I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 40:The cross where Jesus died became also the cross where His apostle died. The loss, the rejection, the shame, belong both to Christ and to all who in very truth are His. the cross that saves them also slays them, and anything short of this is a pseudo-faith and not true faith at all. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 41:Recognize that many rejections are rarely personal. They usually reflect more about the other person and how the request doesn’t meet his/her needs, than about you. By taking yourself out of the equation, you’ll realize a lot of your emotional responses with the rejection are unnecessary. ~ celestine-chua, @wisdomtrove 42:What is an example that will prove that you aren't lovable? Rejection? If someone rejects you- and he could only do that because you don't match his beliefs about how he wants the world to be-it has nothing to do with you. Only an inflated ego could say that it had anything to do with you. ~ byron-katie, @wisdomtrove 43:Bad luck with women is a determined man's road to success. For every affliction, he makes, out of indignation, yet another advancement in order to exceed the man that the woman chose over him. This goes to show that great men are made great because they once learned how to fight the feeling of rejection. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 44:Too much openness and you accept every notion, idea, and hypothesis-which is tantamount to knowing nothing. Too much skepticism-especially rejection of new ideas before they are adequately tested-and you're not only unpleasantly grumpy, but also closed to the advance of science. A judicious mix is what we need. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 45:But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it. ~ john-steinbeck, @wisdomtrove 46:I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved". Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 47:The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace... We must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into self-rejection. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 48:It is not a biopic; it is not a trawl through the facts of somebody's life. It is more an evening with a Shakespearean clown who speaks the truth and was whipped for his pains. Writing the play made me love and loathe my country more: love it that it could create, and has always created, one-offs like Quentin; loathe it for its rejection of him. ~ quentin-crisp, @wisdomtrove 49:What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics. ~ oscar-wilde, @wisdomtrove 50:The people who are good in the long run fail a lot, especially at the beginning. So, when you fail early, it might be worth realizing that this is part of the deal, the price you pay for being good in the long run. Every rejection is a gift. A chance to learn and to do it better next time. An opportunity to figure out how to bounce, not break. Don't waste them. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove 51:Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. There are no uneducated people; only most people are educated wrong. The true task of culture today is not a task of expansion, but of selection-and-rejection. The educationist must find a creed and teach it. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 52:The psyche is built upon avoiding this pain, and as a result, it has fear of pain as its foundation. That is what caused the psyche to be. To understand this, notice that if the feeling of rejection is a major problem for you, you will fear experiences that cause rejection. That fear will become part of your psyche.- Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove 53:One may not always know his purpose until his only option is to monopolize in what he truly excels at. He grows weary of hearing the answer & 54:To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking. It's akin to letting your palm open to unhand something you have been holding on to. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove 55:Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of science. In other words, religion has become a matter of the heart and science has become a matter of the mind. This regrettable state of affairs does not reflect the fact that physiologically , one cannot exist without the other. Mind and heart are only different aspects of us. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove 56:The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash! ~ alan-watts, @wisdomtrove 57:If you can understand the reason behind the rejection, you can do things differently next time. One easy way is to follow- up and ask why. This can be done for almost any situation. Let them know you accept the rejection and you sincerely want to learn what went wrong, so you can improve. When done in an appropriate and sincere manner, the other party will often be more than willing to share and help you to improve. ~ celestine-chua, @wisdomtrove 58:Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove 59:To accept Christ is to know the meaning of the words & 60:Once you have understood that you are nothing perceivable or conceivable, that whatever appears in the field of consciousness cannot be your self, you will apply yourself to the eradication of all self-identification, as the only way that can take you to a deeper realisation of your self. You literally progress by rejection - a veritable rocket. To know that you are neither in the body nor in the mind, though aware of both, is already self-knowledge. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove 61:The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper. When your love is truly giving and receiving, those whom you love will not leave your heart even when they depart from you. The pain of rejection, absence, and death can become fruitful. Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 62:Of one thing I am sure. Complaining is self-perpetuating and counterproductive. Whenever I express my complaints in the hope of evoking pity and receiving the satisfaction I so much desire, the result is always the opposite of what I tried to get. A complainer is hard to live with, and very few people know how to respond to the complaints made by a self-rejecting person. The tragedy is that, often, the complaint, once expressed, leads to that which is most feared: further rejection. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 63:Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your life is meant to be. You may go broke. You may experience failure and rejection repeatedly. You may endure multiple dysfunctional relationships. But these are all milestones along the path of a life lived courageously. They are your private victories, carving a deeper space within you to be filled with an abundance of joy, happiness, and fulfillment. So go ahead and feel the fear. Then summon the courage to follow your dreams anyway. ~ steve-pavlina, @wisdomtrove 64:Fear keeps us rooted in the past. Fear of the unknown, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of not having enough, fear of not being enough, fear of the future-all these fears and more keep us trapped, repeating the same old patterns and making the same choices over and over again. Fear prevents us from moving outside the comfort-or even the familiar discomfort-of what we know. It's nearly impossible to achieve our highest vision for our lives as long as we are being guided by our fears. ~ debbie-ford, @wisdomtrove 65:There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove 66:A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves. All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me. ~ henri-nouwen, @wisdomtrove 67:Honest rejection of Christ, however mistaken, will be forgiven and healed ... but to evade the Son of Man, to look the other way, to pretend you haven't noticed, to become suddenly absorbed in something on the other side of the street, to leave the receiver off the telephone because it might be He who was ringing up, to leave unopened certain letters in a strange handwriting because they might be from Him - this is a different matter. You may not be certain yet whether you ought to be a Christian; but you do know you ought to be a Man, not an ostrich, hiding its head in the sand. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 68:The psyche is built upon avoiding this pain, and as a result, it has fear of pain as its foundation. That is what caused the psyche to be. To understand this, notice that if the feeling of rejection is a major problem for you, you will fear experiences that cause rejection. That fear will become part of your psyche. Even though the actual events causing rejection are infrequent, you will have to deal with the fear of rejection all the time. That is how we create a pain that is always there. If you are doing something to avoid pain, then pain is running your life. All of your thoughts and feelings will be affected by your fears. ~ michael-singer, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Be stimulated by rejection ~ Bob Gill, #NFDB
2:Everyone fears rejection. ~ Derek Jeter, #NFDB
3:Rejection is good for the soul. ~ Eva Mendes, #NFDB
4:Acting is a life of rejection. ~ Lauren Bacall, #NFDB
5:All upset is a fear of rejection. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
6:You couldn’t handle the rejection. ~ Pepper Winters, #NFDB
7:Successful people reject rejection. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
8:I never had a rejection slip in my life. ~ Truman Capote, #NFDB
9:It’s not even rejection, it’s dismissal. ~ Paula Hawkins, #NFDB
10:Rejection is the greatest aphrodisiac. ~ Madonna Ciccone, #NFDB
11:Don't get discouraged from all the rejection. ~ Joey King, #NFDB
12:Rejection is the natural course of things. ~ Eric Walters, #NFDB
13:Rejection itself means the finite. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, #NFDB
14:There's no point in dwelling on rejection. ~ Isabel Lucas, #NFDB
15:Don't misinterpret God's silence as rejection. ~ T B Joshua, #NFDB
16:I am the history of the rejection of who I am ~ June Jordan, #NFDB
17:Humankind can tolerate only so much rejection. ~ William Boyd, #NFDB
18:I love my rejection slips. They show me I try. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
19:Our times demand rejection of seven word bios. ~ Jaron Lanier, #NFDB
20:Man’s [or woman’s] rejection is God’s protection. ~ Alan Cohen, #NFDB
21:Rejection kills, disappointment only maims. ~ Janeane Garofalo, #NFDB
22:Self-rejection is the biggest sin that you commit ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
23:Rejection was arbitrary. Rejection was survivable. ~ Frank Bruni, #NFDB
24:Success is buried on the other side of rejection. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
25:rejection of truth is the real core of our crisis. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
26:Sometimes rejection in life is really redirection. ~ Tavis Smiley, #NFDB
27:You're going to have more rejection than acceptance. ~ Barry Mann, #NFDB
28:Break from self rejection, try some introspection. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
29:You've got to really be able to accept the rejection. ~ Barry Mann, #NFDB
30:I am Joe's Enraged, Inflamed, sense of rejection. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
31:Reject rejection! If someone says no, just say NEXT ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
32:Success is buried on the other side of rejection. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
33:Rejection always leaves the deepest, darkest marks. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
34:Rejection is a cancer, Edie. It eats away at a person. ~ Kate Morton, #NFDB
35:Media bias is one thing. Rejection of reality is another ~ Chuck Todd, #NFDB
36:Give rejection the finger, and rejection gives it back. ~ Kevin Dutton, #NFDB
37:Misfortune is the best fortune. Rejection by all is victory. ~ Valmiki, #NFDB
38:A guy who wishes to avoid rejection often has the most pride. ~ Roosh V, #NFDB
39:You can not be successful without confronting rejection. ~ Michael Ealy, #NFDB
40:Chastening is a mark of affection, not a sign of rejection. ~ Max Anders, #NFDB
41:Rejection is one thing - but rejection from a fool is cruel. ~ Morrissey, #NFDB
42:To be a writer is to embrace rejection as a way of life. ~ Dana Stabenow, #NFDB
43:Misfortune is the best fortune.
Rejection by all is victory. ~ Valmiki,#NFDB
44:Rich folks can tolerate almost anything, but not rejection. ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
45:Self-rejection is the biggest sin that you can commit. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz, #NFDB
46:Arms control is by definition a rejection of disarmament. ~ David Dellinger, #NFDB
47:Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection. ~ Marilyn Monroe, #NFDB
48:The cat’s manner of rejection was like cold, white light. ~ Takashi Hiraide, #NFDB
49:Actors are no strangers to self-doubt, fear, and rejection. ~ Monica Raymund, #NFDB
50:Respect depicts acceptance while disrespect is rejection. ~ Fawad Afzal Khan, #NFDB
51:without repercussion. Without rejection. Without heartache. ~ Scott Hildreth, #NFDB
52:Most people think rejection is the end. It’s actually a beginning. ~ Bob Mayer, #NFDB
53:You get used to the rejection and you don't take it personally. ~ Daniel Craig, #NFDB
54:You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
55:Acceptance, under someone else's terms, is worse than rejection. ~ Mary Cassatt, #NFDB
56:Gay parenting is a rejection of God's law engraved in our hearts ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
57:If we live for people’s approval, we will die by their rejection ~ Louie Giglio, #NFDB
58:If you live for people’s acceptance you will die from their rejection. ~ LeCrae, #NFDB
59:Often, out of our greatest rejection comes our greatest direction. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
60:Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion ~ Ottessa Moshfegh, #NFDB
61:Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide. ~ P D James, #NFDB
62:He was an alpha bear. He had balls big enough to handle rejection. ~ Nalini Singh, #NFDB
63:Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh, #NFDB
64:Influence is a matter of selection - both acceptance and rejection. ~ Edward Albee, #NFDB
65:Love breaks us vulnerably open—and then can break us with rejection. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
66:Rejection always hurt, but having it come from my best friend was worst ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
67:Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
68:I am good at walking away. Rejection teaches you how to reject. ~ Jeanette Winterson, #NFDB
69:Rejection is nature's way of telling you to write a better book. ~ James D Macdonald, #NFDB
70:Being overly sensitive to rejection can become a destructive virus. ~ Robert Herjavec, #NFDB
71:Rejection is one of the worst, most neglected and most common wounds. ~ Frank Hammond, #NFDB
72:Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald, #NFDB
73:if you live for the approval of others, you will die by their rejection. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
74:Sacrifice does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of the precious ~ Ayn Rand, #NFDB
75:Rejection is merely a redirection; a course correction to your destiny. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
76:You've got to love this business. You have to be able to take rejection. ~ Jessica Biel, #NFDB
77:Lukewarm acceptance is more bewildering than outright rejection. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
78:Rejection always hurts, but having it come from my best friend was the worst. ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
79:Rejection is merely a redirection; a course correction to your destiny. ~ Bryant H McGill, #NFDB
80:There is no doubt; even a rejection can be the shadow of a caress”. ~ Jos Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
81:Toxic shame can also be created by constant parental neglect and rejection. ~ Pete Walker, #NFDB
82:I always feel like rejection is my petrol. That's what keeps me going. ~ Laura Kightlinger, #NFDB
83:I don't care. I'll start my own group. Rejection from society is what created X-Men! ~ LIZ, #NFDB
84:The problem with rejection is that it feels imposed even when it's earned. ~ Anthony Marra, #NFDB
85:There is no doubt; even a rejection can be the shadow of a caress”. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset, #NFDB
86:Actors search for rejection. If they don't get it they reject themselves. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
87:Actors search for rejection. If they don’t get it they reject themselves. ~ Charlie Chaplin, #NFDB
88:Learn to take rejection, keep fit and work only with the best in your field. ~ Elaine Paige, #NFDB
89:Remember, the pain of rejection is nothing compared to the pain of regret. ~ Matthew Hussey, #NFDB
90:One of the most important lessons I ever learnt was to stop fearing rejection. ~ Marisa Peer, #NFDB
91:But if rejection was his only stumbling block, then pride was his real problem ~ Mesu Andrews, #NFDB
92:Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
93:I don't really have disappointments, because I build myself up for rejection. ~ Nicholas Hoult, #NFDB
94:Rejection always hurts, but having it come from my best friend was the worst. Emma ~ Jay Asher, #NFDB
95:An excuse is a polite rejection. Men are not afraid of 'ruining the friendship. ~ Greg Behrendt, #NFDB
96:Rejection and failure are the bread and butter of this gluten-free, nondairy town. ~ Nell Scovell, #NFDB
97:When you are an actor, rejection and disappointment are an occupational hazard. ~ David Morrissey, #NFDB
98:Attitude is your acceptance of the natural laws, or your rejection of the natural laws. ~ Jim Rohn, #NFDB
99:Because rejection is an abstract word that doesn’t have an image attached to it, I ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
100:Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky ~ Anais Nin, #NFDB
101:Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
102:Don't fear rejection. Instead, reject the rejecter and move forward with your life. ~ Shahida Arabi, #NFDB
103:I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection. ~ Billy Joel, #NFDB
104:Rejection brings out the worst in people. Love and acceptance bring out the best. ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
105:With this rejection I’ve only just begun. Consistency makes progress, and I’ll keep going. ~ Roosh V, #NFDB
106:By 17, I was submitting to publications and collecting my first rejection slips. ~ Laurell K Hamilton, #NFDB
107:Social rejection doesn't just cause emotional pain; it affects our physical being. ~ Leonard Mlodinow, #NFDB
108:That was the most epic rejection I’ve ever seen,” Kelly said, snickering behind his hand. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
109:The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
110:What better way to exorcise rejection demons than to screw the person who rejected you? ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
111:As a writer, the worst thing you can do is work in an environment of fear of rejection. ~ Carol Leifer, #NFDB
112:In light of God’s deep affection, we no longer have to live in fear of rejection. The ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
113:To be successful you have to deal with CRAP. Criticism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure. ~ Ryan Blair, #NFDB
114:Despite the rejection, and in violation of all the rules, I came back year after year. ~ Joseph Barbera, #NFDB
115:No one goes into standup to make money. The frustration and rejection are just too much. ~ Jim Gaffigan, #NFDB
116:You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. — RAY BRADBURY ~ Stephanie Pearl McPhee, #NFDB
117:I tell ya when I was a kid, all I knew was rejection. My yo-yo, it never came back. ~ Rodney Dangerfield, #NFDB
118:Denial and rejection is one of the most powerful weapons that can turn a man into an evil. ~ M F Moonzajer, #NFDB
119:Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
120:In my work, there's a tremendous amount of rejection and waves of fertile and fallow times. ~ Marlo Thomas, #NFDB
121:Rejection steals the best of who I am by reinforcing the worst of what’s been said to me. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
122:Instead of looking at life with the hope of receiving love, I started expecting rejection. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
123:Silence is the cruelest means of rejection, even if it only masks confusion or regret. The ~ Megan Marshall, #NFDB
124:Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating in us. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
125:It's not a matter of rejection (of Israel's existence). Israel is here, present by power. ~ Mahmoud al Zahar, #NFDB
126:I have a pathological fear of rejection, so I always wait for the other person to make the move. ~ Alexa Land, #NFDB
127:I told the ambulance men the wrong blood type for my ex, so he knows what rejection feels like. ~ Pippa Evans, #NFDB
128:Rejection-and the fear of rejection-is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves. ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
129:Rejection—and the fear of rejection—is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves. ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
130:Rejection is inevitable. Let it hit you hard for a moment, feel the hurt, and then move on. ~ Molly Crabapple, #NFDB
131:Relying on God’s rules is as much self-reliance and God-rejection as ignoring God’s rules. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
132:Someone should have warned me about love's dark underbelly, about the rejection and despair. ~ Victoria Scott, #NFDB
133:What if you considered rejection to be a crucial part of your search instead of an obstacle? ~ Robert D Smith, #NFDB
134:Everything is a rejection of you, not your product, or your script, or a cosmetic. It's you. ~ Morgan Brittany, #NFDB
135:He showed her that love doesn’t have to have attachments, conditions, or the fear of rejection. ~ Marina Adair, #NFDB
136:The wall that protects you from rejection also keeps out love and success. Accept your abundance. ~ Randy Gage, #NFDB
137:What part of me was born with the courage to stand in front of strangers and risk rejection? ~ William Shatner, #NFDB
138:After rejection - misery, then thoughts of revenge, and finally, oh well, another try elsewhere. ~ Mason Cooley, #NFDB
139:Does rejection ever get any easier? Only if we decide not to invest emotion in the dismissal… ~ Martha Alderson, #NFDB
140:Conscience is the internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us. ~ Sigmund Freud, #NFDB
141:Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley, #NFDB
142:Rejection exists for a reason — it’s a means to keep people apart who are not good for each other. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
143:The principle of the Yoga is rejection-throwing out of the being.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T5],#NFDB
144:An intention that rejects what has no meaning in fact is a rejection of the entirety of being. ~ Georges Bataille, #NFDB
145:The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism - nay, it is identical with nihilism. ~ Leo Strauss, #NFDB
146:A man's primary fantasy is access to a variety of attractive women without the fear of rejection. ~ Warren Farrell, #NFDB
147:I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly. ~ Howard Barker, #NFDB
148:The recurring theme which predisposes people to depression is rejection and lack of self-esteem. ~ Richard Winters, #NFDB
149:The thing I learned from playing tennis is that I know what competition is. I can handle rejection. ~ Aaron Zigman, #NFDB
150:To judge individuals before understanding them is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
151:it appears that repeated social rejection perturbs the normal functioning of the dopamine systems. ~ David Eagleman, #NFDB
152:Rejection is a gift and failure is the best educator, so when someone knocks you down, get back up! ~ Kathy Ireland, #NFDB
153:You have to learn to take rejection not as an indication of personal failing but as a wrong address. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
154:Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
155:The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about, yet refuse to investigate. ~ Wayne Dyer, #NFDB
156:Writers have to be tenacious to the point of being pathological. Rejection and criticism is assured. ~ Mary Lawrence, #NFDB
157:The pinnacle of human consciousness must be the rejection of unhealthy competition, war and violence. ~ Bryant McGill, #NFDB
158:When we don't ask, we don't let others give. When we fear rejection, we don't let generosity arise. ~ Bernie Glassman, #NFDB
159:You put yourself on the line as a performer, and when people reject you, it's a personal rejection. ~ Morgan Brittany, #NFDB
160:And she breathed in opportunity, and breathed out rejection, breathed in despondence, and exhaled chance. ~ Julia Kent, #NFDB
161:Rejection is painful. Loss, grief, and confusion are painful. But not love. Love is healing and beautiful. ~ Elin Peer, #NFDB
162:And the sexes eyeing each other uneasily, for nothing is easier for a teenager to imagine than rejection. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
163:and the sexes eyeing each other uneasily, for nothing is easier for a teenager to imagine than rejection. ~ Roger Ebert, #NFDB
164:Being an actor is mostly about rejection and being out of work. It was a fast lesson in all of that stuff. ~ Rose Byrne, #NFDB
165:For many transgender people, some of the most painful rejection they’ve experienced has been in church. ~ Austen Hartke, #NFDB
166:I'm an actress so the amount of rejection and commentary you get right to your face is pretty rough. ~ Melanie Griffith, #NFDB
167:Rejection isn’t just an emotional feeling. It’s a message that alters what you believe about yourself. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
168:Almost more than talent you need tenacity, and an infinite capacity for rejection, if you are to succeed. ~ Larry Kramer, #NFDB
169:Every successful author I know faced crushing rejection early on, and they got back up and kept going. ~ Karin Slaughter, #NFDB
170:My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it. ~ David Antin, #NFDB
171:Negative self-talk was a rejection from my past that I had allowed to settle into the core of who I am. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
172:Perhaps that was a thing about attractive women: A rejection demanded their respect, made them trust you more. ~ Jo Nesb, #NFDB
173:Rejection was a high-flying bitch without brakes. Once it was airborne, pain followed closely behind. ~ Coreene Callahan, #NFDB
174:When you're just an actor, maybe not the top of the list guys, you get constant rejection and it's fun. ~ David Arquette, #NFDB
175:Men don’t take rejection so well. It’s like they’re raised expecting that they can have whatever they want. ~ Tendai Huchu, #NFDB
176:Rejection is a dish best served in a paper envelope because then at least you can tear it up or burn it. ~ Caroline Kepnes, #NFDB
177:Sannyasa is only the renunciation of the ‘I-thought’, and not the rejection of the external objects. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, #NFDB
178:But when your unemployed, every rejection is personal, every drop in your bank account a wrench in the gut. ~ Kirsten Weiss, #NFDB
179:Perhaps the deepest and most devastating aspect of neurotic shame is the rejection of the self by the self. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
180:Rejection comes easy, because you learn quickly that the worst thing that can happen is to hear the word "no ~ John Grisham, #NFDB
181:At the root of each and every sin, and each and every problem, is unbelief and a rejection of the gospel. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
182:Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
183:In the heart of appeasement there's the fear of rejection, and in acts of fear there are mirrors of oppression. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
184:I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat. ~ Sylvester Stallone, #NFDB
185:The better you are at communicating, negotiating, and handling your fear of rejection, the easier life is. ~ Robert Kiyosaki, #NFDB
186:But avoiding rejection gives us short-term pleasure by making us rudderless and directionless in the long term. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
187:So struggling for work here has been very good for me, but it's also been very hard to handle rejection. ~ Patricia Velasquez, #NFDB
188:It’s not easy to follow your art. You experience rejection, and judgment from others, and downright heartbreak. ~ David Kadavy, #NFDB
189:the whole point of science, the whole thrust of the Enlightenment, is the rejection of arguments from authority. ~ Matt Ridley, #NFDB
190:...to become exceptional, a Cartier-Bresson, a Capa or a Brandt, would require toil, rejection & struggle ~ David Nicholls, #NFDB
191:When air is charged with emotions, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
192:...to be some exceptional, a Cartier-Bresson, a Capa or a Brandt, would require toil, rejection & struggle ~ David Nicholls, #NFDB
193:The presence of ghosts is only as close as your belief.
The existence of aliens is only as far as your rejection. ~ Toba Beta,#NFDB
194:This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. ~ Charles Darwin, #NFDB
195:When air is charged with emotions, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
196:There are people who say that "when you reject one thing about me, I take it as a full rejection of me as a person". ~ Kabi Nagata, #NFDB
197:How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh, #NFDB
198:Rejection process is not fun. It's the red pen on the page, the discarded sketch, sometimes is the only way forward. ~ Jonah Lehrer, #NFDB
199:I don't remember anything about that summer because I existed in a lonely fog of memories, longing, and rejection. ~ Emily P Freeman, #NFDB
200:It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
201:It’s my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
202:When Schmitt and Shulsky rejected empirical inquiry they confused a critique of scientism with a rejection of evidence ~ John N Gray, #NFDB
203:I'd cycled through the stages of rejection - denial, anger, homicidal mania, hating Matt's stupid face, and acceptance ~ Tim Anderson, #NFDB
204:Let’s be clear about this. The rejection of the constitution was a mistake that will have to be corrected. ~ Valery Giscard d Estaing, #NFDB
205:The only thing that will help us move past the giant of rejection is to immerse ourselves in the acceptance of Christ. ~ Louie Giglio, #NFDB
206:And an inky-colored despair of rejection enveloped me like the black tortilla of depression around a pain burrito. ~ Christopher Moore, #NFDB
207:Most of us start from nothing, with plenty of rejection. I remind myself of that whenever I get to feeling too important. ~ Kate Alcott, #NFDB
208:Self-conscious rejection of the absolute is the best way to resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is saved. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
209:The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order. ~ Gustavo Gutierrez, #NFDB
210: “With this rejection I’ve gained more knowledge in getting what I want. It wasn’t a rejection—it was a learning opportunity. ~ Roosh V, #NFDB
211:You ask me, rejection sucks, but you can choke it down. Regret will give you food poisoning for the rest of your life. ~ Suanne Laqueur, #NFDB
212:discrimination, and rejection, then the obvious solution is to create an environment in which the injured, the worn-out, ~ Austen Hartke, #NFDB
213:Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
-- Thomas H. Huxley ~ Thomas Henry Huxley,#NFDB
214:Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
215:Self-conscious rejection of the absolute is the best way to resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is saved. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
216:Self-rejection paves the landing strip for the rejection of others to arrive and pull on up to the gates of our hearts. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
217:Because discipline is not rejection, it is protection and affection, one of the most glorious things God can extend to us. ~ Kelly Minter, #NFDB
218:Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don't base your self-esteem on their opinions. ~ Harvey Mackay, #NFDB
219:Rejection, though--it could make the loss of someone you weren't even that crazy about feel gut wrenching and world ending. ~ Deb Caletti, #NFDB
220:The key to understanding why many Germans supported him lies in the Nazis’ rejection of a rational, factual world. ~ Benjamin Carter Hett, #NFDB
221:The resulting hurt of any form of rejection can linger and entangle us from moving forward if we don't put it behind us. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
222:Dialogue and education for peace can help free our hearts from the impulse toward intolerance and the rejection of others. ~ Daisaku Ikeda, #NFDB
223:Imagine immensities. Pick yourself up from rejection and plow ahead. Don’t compromise. Start now. Start now, every single day. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
224:The desire to be different from the people we live with is sometimes the result of our rejection- real or imagined- by them. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
225:God’s idea of ministry training is a broken vessel. His idea of spiritual preparation is suffering, which includes rejection. ~ Frank Viola, #NFDB
226:There is going to be a hundred thousand doors slammed in your face before one opens, so feel ok about taking rejection. ~ Heather Matarazzo, #NFDB
227:Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the Beloved. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
228:The flower you single out is a rejection of all other flowers; nevertheless, only on these terms is it beautiful. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery, #NFDB
229:Value the unconditional love of God more than the conditional approval of other human beings, and you will overcome rejection. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
230:but by not reaching out to him because I was scared of rejection I wasn’t giving either one of us a chance to change the story. ~ Bobby Bones, #NFDB
231:Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
232:Look up the definition of rejection in the dictionary, get really comfortable with it, and then maybe you can go into acting. ~ Loni Anderson, #NFDB
233:The real fear isn't rejection, but that there won't be enough time in your life to write all the stories that you have in you. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
234:There have been seasons of my life when rejection rained down. And then there have been typhoons. Kimberly Rossi’s Diary ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
235:The severing of an established connection is exponentially more painful than the rejection of an attempted connection. ~ David Foster Wallace, #NFDB
236:Rejection is part of the game. Or rather, rejection is part of the profession. A profession which at times can feel like a game. ~ Robin Black, #NFDB
237:Rejection never feels good, but it certainly hurts less when we are not needing something from the person who is rejecting us. ~ Susan Jeffers, #NFDB
238:Some actors couldn't figure out how to withstand the constant rejection. They couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. ~ Harrison Ford, #NFDB
239:There was a time when time did not yet exist. … The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time. ~ Emil M Cioran, #NFDB
240:Acknowledged differences may create mutual respect, but hazy misunderstandings bring forth nothing but prejudice and rejection. ~ Tariq Ramadan, #NFDB
241:Love is no conditions. Love is given, despite hurt or rejection. Love is life and breath and touch. Love is helping someone live. ~ Misty Upham, #NFDB
242:There was a time when time did not yet exist. … The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time. ~ Emile M Cioran, #NFDB
243:The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own? ~ Joseph Murray, #NFDB
244:As a teenager, my favourite rejection was, 'She looks too healthy,' which of course translates as, 'She needs to lose weight.' ~ Christina Ricci, #NFDB
245:Girls who have the lingering whispers of rejection still echoing in the hollows of their soul rarely feel completely held safe. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
246:Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
247:Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
248:The enemy loves to take our rejection and twist it into a raw, irrational fear that God really doesn’t have a good plan for us. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
249:Cicero's words also increased my personal satisfaction by supporting my long-standing rejection of a conventional point of view. ~ Charlie Munger, #NFDB
250:Don’t get so consumed by and focused on the mess—the feelings of rejection, hurt, and disillusionment—that you miss the miracle. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
251:Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude (1870), #NFDB
252:For years, I tried medication, blade, work, escape, all attempts to drown out that incessant, reverberating drum of self-rejection. ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
253:In my early career I was like a goldfish. Rejection didn't affect me; I'd just forget how bad it was and keep going back for more. ~ Emily Watson, #NFDB
254:The rejection of the object ceases to be necessary when the object can no longer ensnare us ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
255:In fact our brains respond so similarly to rejection and physical pain that Tylenol reduces the emotional pain rejection elicits. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
256:Rejection tells you that you’re pushing to get all you can. A man who doesn’t get rejected is one who isn’t reaching his true potential. ~ Roosh V, #NFDB
257:Attitude, humor and action (persistence) will whip fears and rejection. Fear of failure doesn't exist, if you believe it doesn't. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer, #NFDB
258:... Bond selection is primarily a negative art. It is a process of exclusion and rejection, rather than of search and acceptance. ~ Benjamin Graham, #NFDB
259:Girls who have the lingering whispers of rejection still echoing in the hollows of their soul rarely feel completely held safe. So ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
260:He had a hard time fitting in. A sense of isolation left over from all those years. Not quite peer pressure. More like peer rejection. ~ Jamie Ford, #NFDB
261:He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
262:Another boy might have been crestfallen, but Rockefeller was the sort of stubborn person who only grew more determined with rejection. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
263:As an actor, you deal with so much rejection and humiliation. When the good things come around, you tend not to trust your instincts. ~ Jim Gaffigan, #NFDB
264:Rejection isn't failure. Failure is giving up. Everybody gets rejected. It's how you handle it that determines where you'll end up. ~ Richard Castle, #NFDB
265:When we know Christ, it should show in our overflow, regardless of our relative success or discouragement in the face of rejection. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
266:Even later, the red colour was replaced by saffron colour, indicating celibacy and continence, a rejection of all things sensory. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
267:Here she joined the universal struggle shared by men and women throughout time, to temper rejection so as not to lose a friend forever. ~ Erik Larson, #NFDB
268:Those who push themselves, and are willing to face pain, exhaustion, humiliation, rejection, or worse, are the ones who become champions. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
269:Rejection—It may be a delay. It may be a distraction. It may even be a devastation for a season but it is not your final destination. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
270:The only common feature of the three successful Reformations was their rejection of papal authority; otherwise they were quite at odds. ~ Rodney Stark, #NFDB
271:There is no doubt as to what needs to happen. There has to be a complete rejection of the type of terrorist attacks carried out in India. ~ Tony Blair, #NFDB
272:It's important in show business to have friends who understand the cut and thrust of everyday working life and the constant rejection. ~ Julian Ovenden, #NFDB
273:Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter. ~ Longchenpa, #NFDB
274:The bombs of heartbreak, rejection and destruction that had been dropped on his life that awful day could not be forgotten or ignored. ~ Jill Thrussell, #NFDB
275:John Steinbeck wrote in East of Eden: “The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. ~ Robert Holden, #NFDB
276:My parents didn't want me to be an actor. They didn't think I could take the rejection, and I have to say they were probably right. ~ Rupert Penry Jones, #NFDB
277:The Creationists, like all bigots, derive their fervour from rejection--the more they can reject, the more righteous they themselves feel. ~ John Berger, #NFDB
278:Rejection steals the security of all we thought was beautiful and stable and leaves us scared and fragile and more vulnerable than ever. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
279:The voices of condemnation, shame, and rejection can come at you, but they don’t have to reside in you. That’s your miracle in the mess. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
280:A rejection of the way a woman speaks is often a way of blaming or dismissing her without dealing with the content of what she is saying. ~ Gloria Steinem, #NFDB
281:bears repeating: in Eve’s case antinomianism (her opposition to and rejection of God’s law) was itself an expression of her legalism! ~ Sinclair B Ferguson, #NFDB
282:Downplaying their faults is pretty much the point of campaigns. But we do count on them living with the constant terror of public rejection. ~ Gail Collins, #NFDB
283:Rejection is a writer's best friend. If you are not failing regularly, you are living so far below your potential that you're failing anyway. ~ Gregg Levoy, #NFDB
284:You are making an inopportune rejection of what Nature has given you today, if all your mind is set on what men will say of you tomorrow. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
285:And so I’m waiting for another rejection, another affirmation that I don’t belong among these people. That it’s not safe for me to be here. ~ Mindy McGinnis, #NFDB
286:Lament is the loss of true kingship, whereas doxology is the faithful embrace of the true king and the rejection of all the phony ones. ~ Walter Brueggemann, #NFDB
287:The writing life is punctuated by words, sentences, paragraph & pages. And by spurts of elation, inspiration, rejection & despair. ~ Mark Rubinstein, #NFDB
288:all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek hope and avoid fear, and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
289:all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain; to seek hope and avoid fear; and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
290:Have you had a failure or rejection? You could get bitter. That's one way to deal with it. Or...you could just get BETTER. What do you think? ~ Destiny Booze, #NFDB
291:In every potential sponsor’s eyes, I was a nobody. And soon I had notched up more rejection letters than is healthy for any one man to receive. ~ Bear Grylls, #NFDB
292:It is said that there are three stages of life for those of us who live our lives in circles. These are rejection, exploration and acceptance. ~ Claire North, #NFDB
293:The reality, then, was that Indian nationalism was fuelled not by the impoverishment of the many but by the rejection of the privileged few. ~ Niall Ferguson, #NFDB
294:We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don't. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success. ~ Henry Rollins, #NFDB
295:It is said that there are three stages of life for those of us who live our lives in circles. These are rejection, exploration, and acceptance. ~ Claire North, #NFDB
296:The downfall of the industry is that there is a lot of pressure in it, a lot of rejection in it and a lot of competition in it. It's a whole mess. ~ Mila Kunis, #NFDB
297:The feeling of assumed rejection, the feeling of desperation, need only be experienced once for someone to never want to feel it a second time. ~ Chris Dietzel, #NFDB
298:When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
299:But our fear and our rejection does not take away from truth, and truth is what the Bible instructs us to know in order that we may be free. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
300:even there, where the rejection of the system is taken for granted and for that reason a lax and cunning conformism of its own has developed. ~ Theodor W Adorno, #NFDB
301:He is not intimidated by silence, indifference, or rejection. He knows that behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
302:painful emotional experiences, excessive frustration, personal rejection and hurt, physical illness, separation or loss, and death anxiety. ~ Robert W Firestone, #NFDB
303:Rejection is, of course, part of any successful model's career, as ironic as that sounds. It's how you pick yourself up and get on with the job. ~ Erin O Connor, #NFDB
304:The most important element of a free society, where individual rights are held in the highest esteem, is the rejection of the initiation of violence. ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
305:Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down. ~ Lance Armstrong, #NFDB
306:The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
307:after rejection of articles that helpfully advertised their lack of a scientific basis by the use of words such as organic, holistic and natural, ~ Graeme Simsion, #NFDB
308:The next time you feel rejection's sting, remember God's words to Samuel: "It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me." (1 Sam. 8:7) ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
309:Eviction must be considered a traumatic rejection,” they wrote, “a denial of one’s most basic human needs, and an exquisitely shameful experience ~ Matthew Desmond, #NFDB
310:If you feel disappointed when a post you make doesn’t gain any traction, that’s a form of rejection, and it will impact you on a genetic level. ~ Rangan Chatterjee, #NFDB
311:Rejection isn’t a big deal. There are a lot worse things that could happen to me. I could be a homeless war veteran without any legs or I could be blind. ~ Roosh V, #NFDB
312:Understanding that what it is that you're doing isn't limited to the roles and the rejection, it's bigger than that, it's about your purpose in life. ~ Aisha Hinds, #NFDB
313:Like skateboarders, writers live by rejection; like writers, any skater worth his salt must have the single-minded tenacity of a wiener dog. ~ Bret Anthony Johnston, #NFDB
314:The longer I went to the arcade, the more it felt like a study in rejection. It certainly wasn’t a place one went to forget one’s shortcomings. ~ Drew Nellins Smith, #NFDB
315:He who wills to reject nothing, wills the destruction of will; for will is not only the choice of something, but the rejection of almost everything. ~ G K Chesterton, #NFDB
316:His words make sense. He's not the man for me. This is what he meant, and it makes his rejection to accept... almost. I can live with this. I understand. ~ E L James, #NFDB
317:I took all of my rejection letters - there must have been thousands of them in a huge box - and I went out on the curb and burned them all, crying. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
318:I understand.” “Do you?” Hunter asked. “Then why do I still hear rejection in your voice?” “Because I’m impulsive and immature, and…in love with you. ~ Brandon Shire, #NFDB
319:Part of the forced bargain anyone with human augmentations had to make, synthetic anti-rejection drugs like neuropozyne were a necessary evil. Anyone ~ James Swallow, #NFDB
320:A girl who is interested in becoming a model must first accept the fact that she is the product. She must be ready to deal with a lot of rejection. ~ Karolina Kurkova, #NFDB
321:More than a rejection or dissolution of the past, avant-garde originality is conceived as a literal origin, a beginning from ground zero, a birth. ~ Rosalind E Krauss, #NFDB
322:A nasty letter or a sarcastic one can make you righteously angry, but what can you do about a polite letter of rejection? Nothing, really, except cry. ~ E L Konigsburg, #NFDB
323:Her wedding ring, her gentle brush-offs, and her outright rejection had been minor obstacles compared to the big no of another man kissing her cheek. ~ Karin Slaughter, #NFDB
324:He withhold that which I believe will fully nourish me? Why do I live in this sense of rejection, of less than, of pain? Does He not want me to be happy? ~ Ann Voskamp, #NFDB
325:Macmillan's rejection had left him very downcast... Patrick Swift was invited to peruse the contents and decided that the poems should be published. ~ Patrick Kavanagh, #NFDB
326:Without sex, we would be dangerously invulnerable. We might believe we were not ridiculous. We wouldn't know rejection and humiliation so intimately. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
327:The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith. ~ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, #NFDB
328:But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
329:Remember: The fear of something is always scarier than the thing itself. Yes, there is pain and rejection. But the greatest failure is to never risk at all. ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
330:Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
331:Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss. ~ Abba Eban, #NFDB
332:The opening line of the grant rejection read: “It has never been shown that PTSD is relevant to the mission of the Veterans Administration.” Since ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
333:I think the wave of social media rejection is coming. I think there will be a big reaction against it. It's just like sugar- - mean, I loved it as a kid. ~ George Saunders, #NFDB
334:Nothing makes you get down on yourself and worry that you’re undesirable like rejection, so having someone desirable desire you is the ultimate antidote. ~ Daria Snadowsky, #NFDB
335:renunciation of life cannot be the goal of life nor rejection of the world the object for which the world was created. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, Renunciation, #NFDB
336:The belief that objective good and evil do not exist (relativism) is in conflict (rivalry) with a rejection of God based on the existence of objective evil. ~ Gregory Koukl, #NFDB
337:The spirit of rejection finds its support in the consciousness of separateness; the spirit of acceptance finds its base in the consciousness of unity. ~ Rabindranath Tagore, #NFDB
338:Try it: Instead of keeping a rejection file, keep a praise file. Use it sparingly—don’t get lost in past glory—but keep it around for when you need the lift. ~ Austin Kleon, #NFDB
339:And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
340:Fogg states that all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain; to seek hope and avoid fear; and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
341:If you know who you are, rejection matters very little. It says more about the small-mindedness of the person who is doing the rejecting than it does about you. ~ Penny Reid, #NFDB
342:In most important ways, this world is explicitly antibureaucratic: that is, it evinces an explicit rejection of virtually all the core values of bureaucracy. ~ David Graeber, #NFDB
343:the pain in my middle was the unmistakable pain of rejection. I knew the feeling so well, it was like a second skin. I sure hated to crawl back inside it. ~ Charlaine Harris, #NFDB
344:Fogg states that all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek hope and avoid fear, and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
345:Fogg states that all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain; to seek hope and avoid fear; and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
346:In my profession you have to be very strong within yourself in order to block out the rejection and block out the opinions and the commentary that happens. ~ Melanie Griffith, #NFDB
347:I think we keep these moments of rejection and acceptance very close. I think we carry them always, like cracked shells from which a part of us once hatched. ~ Simon Van Booy, #NFDB
348:Let your past rejection experiences work for you instead of against you by allowing them to help you sense the possible pain behind other people’s reactions. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
349:Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them. ~ Isaac Asimov, #NFDB
350:The first step to being more attractive is to see rejection as a means to eliminate women who won't make you happy from your life. It's a blessing, not a curse. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
351:Growing up as a chubby kid with a ton of imaginary friends and a Cyndi Lauper obsession, I learned about rejection early on and was constantly trying to avoid it. ~ Beth Ditto, #NFDB
352:I hope you will not interpret this as rejection, because that is not my intention. You are a part of our family and every one of us holds you in highest regard. ~ Tayari Jones, #NFDB
353:In the Dodge City of romantic love, crowded with betrayal, abandonment and rejection, it was better to fire first than to take the risk of being gunned down. ~ Edward St Aubyn, #NFDB
354:I thought you were going to CALL me? I call this texting ;-)
The reply came back within seconds:
I find it easier to take rejection in writing... ~ Karen Mahoney,#NFDB
355:Piggy’s self-esteem didn’t seem to ruffle from rejection after rejection, but that bitch is like Beyoncé, who is made of steel, and possibly from outer space. ~ Julie Klausner, #NFDB
356:So easy to not say what you think
To not do what you want
Hard to take rejection
Easy to hurt someone else and not know it
Easy to make it hard ~ Henry Rollins,#NFDB
357:If you get condemnation out of the Gospel, you put the condemnation into it yourselves! It is not the Gospel, but your rejection of it that will condemn you. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
358:I think we keep these moments of rejection and acceptance very close. I think we carry them always, like cracked shells from which a part of us once hatched. I ~ Simon Van Booy, #NFDB
359:No matter how I may encounter rejection in the world around me, I am welcomed to abide in the Creator of heaven and earth and the perfect Son of the Most High God. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
360:Rejection was like sandpaper. His skin sloughed away under its constant onslaught. After a while, Samuel wasn't sure which would last long: himself or his dreams. ~ Nicola Yoon, #NFDB
361:Ruins provide the incentive for restoration, and for a return to origins. There has to be an interim of death or rejection before there can be renewal and reform. ~ J B Jackson, #NFDB
362:How many times can a girl face rejection before the only way to find comfort is to close herself off from the very world that rejected her in the first place? ~ Rachel Van Dyken, #NFDB
363:Suffering always comes from rejection of our experience and sensations, not from the experience and sensations themselves, even the most intense and enormous feelings. ~ Nirmala, #NFDB
364:The concept of logical thinking is selection and this is brought about by the processes of acceptance and rejection. Rejection is the basis of logical thinking. ~ Edward de Bono, #NFDB
365:When you can’t reach the standards of another’s heart you must ask yourself,
"What value do I put on my soul that I would subject myself to such rejection? ~ Shannon L Alder,#NFDB
366:At least," she said, "you don't have to worry about rejection, Jace Wayland."
"Not necissarily. I turn myself down occasionally, just to keep it interesting. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
367:It was something she didn't want me to do because she thought the rejection would ruin my self-esteem. My father was, like, 'If she wants to try it, let her try it.' ~ Ellen Muth, #NFDB
368:Madison Avenue is full of masochists who unconsciously provoke rejection by their clients. I know brilliant men who have lost every account they have ever handled. ~ David Ogilvy, #NFDB
369:Satan knows what consumes us controls us. Therefore the more consumed we are with rejection, the more he can control our emotions, our thinking, and our actions. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
370:Stripped of all their masquerades, the fears of men are quite identical: the fear of loneliness, rejection, inferiority, unmanageable anger, illness and death. ~ Joshua L Liebman, #NFDB
371:Rejection is a form of self-assertion. You have only to look back upon yourself as a person who hates this or that to discover what it is that you secretly love. ~ George Santayana, #NFDB
372:There was a girl, once upon a time and in your time. She embraced her life up to a point, then rejected it, and from that rejection have come all her difficulties. ~ Margo Jefferson, #NFDB
373:In a world of scarcity, opportunities don't present themselves in bunches, and the decisions people face are between approach and avoidance, acceptance or rejection. ~ Barry Schwartz, #NFDB
374:I wanted to teach them that rejection, and the sadness that attended it, were an integral part of loving something passionately and therefore nothing to be ashamed of. ~ Kate Mulgrew, #NFDB
375:One or the other of us said 'I can't,' and if it was me I don't know why because I wanted to. Maybe I'm just remembering it wrongly to help me get over the rejection. ~ Helen Oyeyemi, #NFDB
376:The willingness to keep growing: Unfaithfulness is a refusal to become, a rejection of grace (grace that is inactive is an illusion), and the refusal to be oneself. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
377:..determination is the most important quality in a founder, open-mindedness and willingness to change your idea are key, and all startups face rejection at first. ~ Jessica Livingston, #NFDB
378:I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success. ~ Amy Tan, #NFDB
379:Only do acting, if you don't want to do anything else. And know that it's a tough journey with a lot of rejection along the way. You have to have a lot of self-belief. ~ Naomie Harris, #NFDB
380:There are two wrong reactions to a rejection slip: deciding it's a final judgment on your story and/or talent, and deciding it's no judgment on your story and/or talent. ~ Nancy Kress, #NFDB
381:The world may be ever-changing and full of uncertainties, but walking away is not the answer. World-rejection, according to the epic, is dangerous and destructive. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik, #NFDB
382:Negative self-talk was a rejection from my past that I had allowed to settle into the core of who I am. I talked about myself in ways I would never let another person. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
383:Rejection is a big part of show business. It can be tough on anyone who doesn't have fairly good self-esteem. Especially kids, as they try to discover who they are. ~ Angela Cartwright, #NFDB
384:The rejection didn't faze him. "Fine. If I can't have you, then you do the taking. Have all of me, part of me, a small piece, whatever you want. Just please, have something. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
385:To try to write better than you do now is to risk rejection and failure. But not to risk those things in an insult to yourself, to other writers, and to your readers. ~ LouAnne Johnson, #NFDB
386:Changing yourself into who you think someone else wants is hurting yourself. It’s a rejection of who you are, and that’s toxic. You’re committing emotional suicide.” I ~ Jennifer Coburn, #NFDB
387:Fear of rejection isn’t a sophisticated feeling. You know it thwacks you in the gut. But no matter how hard you try to look for it, you will probably never see it coming. ~ Ayisha Malik, #NFDB
388:She received enough attention to get the courtesy of rejection letters and occasional insulting comments instead of the far more insulting and demeaning silence. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
389:The fear of not getting the reward becomes the fear of rejection. The fear of not being good enough... is what makes us try to change, what makes us create an image. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz, #NFDB
390:To attempt to pay for salvation with church membership, prayers, or good deeds is an insult to Christ, who paid the full price-and is a rejection of the gift of God's grace. ~ Dave Hunt, #NFDB
391:To take those risks not only do you need to silence the external critics, you also need to let go of the inner critic that tries to worry you about the fear of rejection. ~ Michael Port, #NFDB
392:I'm big on the importance of science, particularly right now at this point in time when there's sort of a systematic rejection of science by a lot of people in America. ~ Seth MacFarlane, #NFDB
393:Most users of social media have experienced catfishing (which cats hate), senseless rejection, being belittled or ignored, outright sadism, or all of the above, and worse. ~ Jaron Lanier, #NFDB
394:Rejection is a part of any man’s life. If you can’t accept and move past rejection, or at least use it as writing material - you’re not a real man.
-Master Jiraiya ~ Masashi Kishimoto,#NFDB
395:How do people do this? How do people work up the courage to be themselves even if it means facing rejection from people who love them? Why don’t people get medals for this? ~ Sara Farizan, #NFDB
396:Science is the search for truth, that is the effort to understand the world: it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality. ~ Linus Pauling, #NFDB
397:A heart can be destroyed by a sledgehammer disguised as rejection, by a bulldozer masquerading as a careless word. A heart can be blasted to pieces and ruined to the ground. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
398:I tell writers to keep reading, reading, reading. Read widely and deeply. And I tell them not to give up even after getting rejection letters. And only write what you love. ~ Anita Diament, #NFDB
399:At the heart of the pain created by sexual rejection is our habit of interpreting it as a moral judgement, when it might more accurately be categorized as a mere accident. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
400:Be gentle with everyone you meet; we all have experienced pain, hurt, anger, and rejection. Be kind to everyone's spirit; you have no idea what healing your light can afford. ~ Grace Gealey, #NFDB
401:By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
402:If you send your work to the magazines, you may be in for a shock. You may get a rejection note. The worst kind. A printed form. And probably you will be shattered. Shattered. ~ R O Blechman, #NFDB
403:Rejection has long ties pulling the pain of yesterday into the situations of today. What felt hopeless yesterday will feed a hopelessness into today unless we cut those ties. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
404:To get rejected so vehemently
Over and over again
Until some said it was the rejection I was after
No it wasn't
I wanted the intensity that you sometimes promised ~ Dorothea Lasky,#NFDB
405:We have had a number of books casting the acid of angry rejection over the spirit of our age. They are not in error; it is only that in many cases they do not get us anywhere. ~ Gregory Wolfe, #NFDB
406:It is impossible, in my mind, to distinguish between the refusal to receive a petition, or its summary rejection by some general order, and the denial of the right of petition. ~ Caleb Cushing, #NFDB
407:We struggle with authenticity because we fear rejection. We want the world to see us at our very best, because then people are more likely to accept and possibly even admire us. ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
408:Fear of rejection isn’t a sophisticated feeling. You know it thwacks you in the gut. But no matter how hard you try to look for it, you will probably never see it coming. WEDDING ~ Ayisha Malik, #NFDB
409:I’d recommend learning to accept rejection. Become friends with rejection. Be nice to rejection, because it’s a huge part of being a writer, no matter where you are in your career. ~ A J Jacobs, #NFDB
410:I’m not even that upset about the rejection any more. What bothers me most is that I haven’t got to the end of my story, and I can’t start over with someone else, it’s too hard. ~ Paula Hawkins, #NFDB
411:most of us share the same fears: a fear of rejection, a fear of failure, a fear of not being good enough, a fear of being alone, a fear of losing control and a fear of success. ~ Robin S Sharma, #NFDB
412:No person’s rejection can ever exempt me from God’s love for me. Period. No question mark. The most beautiful love story ever written is the one you were made to live with God. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
413:The biggest enemies we have to overcome on the road to success are not lack of ability and lack of opportunity but fears of failure and rejection and the doubts that they trigger. ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
414:The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones. There is no mystery about this. It had to happen by definition. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
415:brain imaging studies show that the experience of physical pain and the experience of relational pain, like rejection, look very similar in terms of location of brain activity. ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
416:Nothing will deter us from building the future we want for our children. What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
417:The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
418:Every behavior is driven by one of three Core Motivators: seeking pleasure and avoiding pain; seeking hope and avoiding fear; seeking social acceptance while avoiding social rejection. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
419:Most of us are so enthralled with the scary tigers in our minds--our stories of loneliness, rejection, grief--that we don't realize they are in the past. They can't hurt us anymore. ~ Geneen Roth, #NFDB
420:Science has, after all, made some colossal blunders in the past... Our current materialism and its rejection of the idea of a spirit or soul might be just another great falsity. ~ Susan Blackmore, #NFDB
421:Since everything is only an illusion, perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one might as well burst out laughing! – Longchenpa ~ Jeff Foster, #NFDB
422:The difference between suppression and an inward essential rejection is the difference between mental or moral control and a spiritual purification. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV, Desire, #NFDB
423:Your ego fears your art because if you follow your art, you will self-actualize. You will become your true self. But to do so, you will experience failure, and rejection, and fear. ~ David Kadavy, #NFDB
424:If one grows up in a family where trust does not exist and support cannot be found, one becomes an adult fearful of further rejection, an adult who will not risk community again. ~ Parker J Palmer, #NFDB
425:Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women. ~ Adrienne Rich, #NFDB
426:Prejudice means literally pre-judgment, the rejection of a contention out of hand, before examining the evidence. Prejudice is the result of powerful emotions, not of sound reasoning. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
427:The act of leaning in to kiss someone, or asking them, is fraught with the possibility of rejection, so the person least likely to get rejected should do the leaning in or the asking. ~ John Green, #NFDB
428:Vanity, wounded pride, rejection, self-delusion. I could recite a litany of little pinpricks that finally produce a gaping wound. That's how marriages and friendships come apart. ~ Helen Van Slyke, #NFDB
429:I'm following hot on her heels, smarting from her latest rebuttal, and I can't contain my temper as the flood of rejection washes over me, tossing me precariously close to the edge. ~ Siobhan Davis, #NFDB
430:tell my students that nothing wonderful, I’m talking really fantastic, will happen without taking a risk and subjecting yourself to rejection. Serendipity is a function of courage. ~ Scott Galloway, #NFDB
431:The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
432:The periods of fear predominate over those of calm; man is much more vexed by the absence than by the profusion of events; thus History is the bloody product of his rejection of boredom. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
433:When someone we love goes rogue and shows no signs of repentance, we feel lost. Few things crush the life out of us more than experiencing the remorseless rejection of someone we love. ~ Dave Harvey, #NFDB
434:I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush piles. I have had a wonderful time. ~ Vikas Swarup, #NFDB
435:I don't think feminism, as I understand the definition, implies the rejection of maternal values, nurturing children, caring about the men in your life. That is just nonsense to me. ~ Hillary Clinton, #NFDB
436:Even after rejection of articles that helpfully advertised their lack of a scientific basis by the use of words such as organic, holistic, and natural, I was left with a mass of data, ~ Graeme Simsion, #NFDB
437:Satanism has been frequently misrepresented as “devil worship”, when in fact it constitutes a clear rejection of all forms of worship as a desirable component of the personality. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey, #NFDB
438:The final conclusion of the absurdist protest is, in fact, the rejection of suicide and persistence in that hopeless encounter between human questioning and the silence of the universe. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
439:There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence. ~ Jacques Ellul, #NFDB
440:Shame is real pain. The importance of social acceptance and connection is reinforced by our brain chemistry, and the pain that results from social rejection and disconnection is real pain. ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
441:If you get condemnation out of the Gospel, you put the condemnation into it yourselves! It is not the Gospel, but your rejection of it that will condemn you.”–1893, Sermon 2300 ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
442:I had never seen a woman in such despair before. It was worse than death, it was a constant longing for death and a constant rejection of life. She lived like darkness in her own day. ~ Philippa Gregory, #NFDB
443:People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they'd much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection. ~ Albert Ellis, #NFDB
444:the thing about God is that He doesn’t take rejection the same way humans do. When He sets His sights on you, He doesn’t give up until He wins your affections. He is the ultimate Dream Guy. ~ Mandy Hale, #NFDB
445:I wonder if the greatest temptation is self-rejection. Could it be that beneath all the lures to greed, lust, and success rests a great fear of never being enough or not being lovable? ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
446:Just as Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as he shares his Lord's suffering and rejection and crucifixion. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
447:When people feel deeply judged by a rejection, their impulse is to feel bad about themselves and to lash out in bitterness. They have been cruelly reduced and they wish to reduce in turn. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
448:Transformation helps us more clearly see Jesus. And when we more clearly see Him, we can more clearly see the miracle in our mess, the good in our difficulty, the redemption in rejection. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
449:All genuinely creative ideas are initially met with rejection, since they necessarily threaten the status quo. An enthusiastic reception for a new idea is a sure sign that it is not original. ~ Eric Weiner, #NFDB
450:A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But it cannot survive the rejection of an immaterial soul. ~ Paul Bloom, #NFDB
451:To be a creative person and be a professional, as an artist you have to be able to withstand pain, rejection, and for some, a lot of bad feelings, but you have to be able to look through those. ~ Ira Sachs, #NFDB
452:Your heart has stolen mine; two souls beating in time.
Yet you push me away-rejection a cruel slay.
I beg you to kiss me. Take me. Claim me.
Make me yours and put my fears at bay. ~ Pepper Winters,#NFDB
453:Humility and obedience are two painfully misunderstood virtues that are really the arts of listening. Humility involves the refusal to coerce, the rejection of all attempts to control others. ~ Ernest Kurtz, #NFDB
454:I didn't have a problem with rejection, because when you go into an audition, you're rejected already. There are hundreds of other actors. You're behind the eight ball when you go in there. ~ Robert De Niro, #NFDB
455:Levin scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and at home the very walls are a support. ~ Leo Tolstoy, #NFDB
456:the rejection of alternatives liberates us—rejection of what does not align with our most important values, with our chosen metrics, rejection of the constant pursuit of breadth without depth. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
457:all the many times I assign thoughts to others that they never actually think. I hold them accountable to harsh judgments they never make. And I own a rejection from them they never gave me. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
458:I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors. ~ Carl Sandburg, #NFDB
459:Our human tendency is to be impatient with the person who cannot see the truth that is so plain to us. We must be careful that our impatience is not interpreted as condemnation or rejection. ~ Henry B Eyring, #NFDB
460:The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart. ~ Walter Lippmann, #NFDB
461:But at least if you hint and are rejected, the rejection is blurable rather than blistering. Whereas if you ask outright and are refused, the humiliation is as stark as a streaker on a football. ~ Anna Maxted, #NFDB
462:Every candle that gets lit in the dark room must feel a little rejection from the darkness around it, but the last thing I want from those who hold a different world view to me is to accept me. ~ Kirk Cameron, #NFDB
463:He could imagine the college rejection letters now.
'After learning that one kiss and a sleepless night led you to fail a test, we have decided you are no longer a fit for our institution. ~ Brigid Kemmerer,#NFDB
464:Punk was a protest against work and against boredom. It was a sign of life, a rant, a scream, a rejection of bourgeois morals. But have things improved since then? Arguably, they've got worse. ~ Tom Hodgkinson, #NFDB
465:Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. ~ Reni Eddo Lodge, #NFDB
466:The direct transfer of artistic gifts is impossible; artistic adaptation takes place through a series of contradictory phases: Shock — Wonder — Imitation — Rejection — Experimentation — Possession. ~ Ken Knabb, #NFDB
467:With the strong bipartisan rejection of the Dorgan amendment today, the Senate cast a vote in favor of the U.S. working to knock down unfair trade barriers that hurt American business and farmers ~ Rob Portman, #NFDB
468:Rejection would be a disaster for the U.S., but ratification alone will not end our problems in Iraq. Even if the constitution is ratified, the insurgents are not going to lay down their arms. ~ Andrew Bacevich, #NFDB
469:The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
470:After fighting for four long years, we were completely surprised by the Soviets’ efforts to absorb Eastern Europe, and their rejection of almost all wartime assurances of elections to come. ~ Victor Davis Hanson, #NFDB
471:At the present day the crude theory of the sexual impulse held on one side, and the ignorant rejection of theory altogether on the other side, are beginning to be seen as both alike unjustified. ~ Havelock Ellis, #NFDB
472:I seemed to recall some words from an old Zen master, something like, "My Zen cuts down mountains." My rejection of Buddhism was a cutting down of mountains; that is precisely how it felt to me. ~ Quentin S Crisp, #NFDB
473:I'm against eating a human being alive - I don't do it. Somebody might make cannibalism jokes and laugh it off like it's nothing. I don't agree with that. I want to proclaim a rejection of cannibalism. ~ John Maus, #NFDB
474:Sinking onto the sand, I turned my face into the wind, hoping the breeze would blow away the pain. The pain of rejection, the pain of betrayal, and the pain of everything that had been lost to us. ~ Kerry Lonsdale, #NFDB
475:Ti Noel vaguely understood that his rejection by the geese was a punishment for his cowardice. Macandal had disguised himself as an animal for years to serve men, not to abjure the world of men. ~ Alejo Carpentier, #NFDB
476:In 2001 the office of the surgeon general of the United States issued a report that found social rejection to be a greater risk factor for adolescent violence than gang membership, poverty, or drug use. ~ Guy Winch, #NFDB
477:You well know, sir, that when the Constitution was submitted to the People of the respective States for their adoption or rejection, it awakened the warmest debates of the several State conventions. ~ Caleb Cushing, #NFDB
478:Acting forces you to ask yourself, 'Can my constitution take a decade of constant rejection?' And after ten years, you either make it or you don't. And the problem is they don't tell you in advance. ~ Camryn Manheim, #NFDB
479:All issues, therefore, must be resolved through dialogue and there can be no place for violence. Negativity and rejection cannot be the path for a vibrant country that is moving to seek its destiny. ~ Pratibha Patil, #NFDB
480:By one means or another, the swiftest method of rejection of the holy prophets has been to find a pretext, however false or absurd, to dismiss the man so that his message could also be dismissed. ~ Spencer W Kimball, #NFDB
481:If you hate taking a shit every day, I have some bad news: you’ll still have to take a daily shit for the rest of your life. You deal with that without much complaint, so embrace rejection in the same way. ~ Roosh V, #NFDB
482:Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
483:of the Wheel of Life three animals are depicted: a pig, a snake, and a bird. They represent the three poisons of ignorance, desire and rejection. The pig stands for ignorance, the snake for rejection ~ Pedro Barrento, #NFDB
484:Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, and aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
485:when someone of great significance in our lives makes us feel like our belonging is more of a question mark than a security blanket, we become very sensitive to even the slightest hints of rejection. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
486:I think the attribute of the church that is most seriously under attack in our day is its Apostolicity, because there has been a wholesale rejection within the church of the authority of sacred Scripture. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
487:Hungry not only for bread - but hungry for love. Naked not only for clothing - but naked of human dignity and respect. Homeless not only for want of a home of bricks - but homeless because of rejection. ~ Mother Teresa, #NFDB
488:I could see why [Candide] appealed to Charlotte Clingstone. It was a rejection of ambition, a blueprint for her small, perfect, human-scale restaurant-- a safe space set apart from the scrum of the world. ~ Robin Sloan, #NFDB
489:Know the difference between its and it’s, between lay and lie: you lay the form rejection slip on the table; you lie on the bed filled with the anguish of self-doubt and feelings of utter worthlessness. ~ Kim Addonizio, #NFDB
490:The rejection that we all take and the sadness and the aggravation and the loss of jobs and all of the things that we live through in our lives, without a sense of humor, I don't know how people make it. ~ Marlo Thomas, #NFDB
491:In a world beset by fundamentalists of both believing and secular varieties, it must be possible to balance a rejection of religious faith with a selective reverence for religious rituals and concepts. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
492:Therefore, she would have to open herself to all the experiences that her new life provided, including the awful possibility of rejection and severe disappointment. Without risk, there was no hope of gain. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
493:You need to develop, somehow, a huge amount of faith and confidence in yourself, because there's a lot of rejection throughout an actor's life and you have to believe in yourself more than anyone else. ~ Stephen Collins, #NFDB
494:In our relationships with others, we have unrealistic expectations, are unable to communicate our own needs, misinterpret disagreement as rejection, and are anxious and unassertive in our presentation. ~ Richard O Connor, #NFDB
495:The great thing about rejection is that it doesn't matter how many times you get rejected. All that needs to happen is if for one person to tell you 'yes' and then everybody else can go f*** themselves. ~ Chelsea Handler, #NFDB
496:Rejection's just something that you need to get used to and you need to accept it and you need to know there's always going to be someone that's smarter, prettier, younger, or knows the right person over you. ~ April Rose, #NFDB
497:After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
498:I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally. ~ Bharati Mukherjee, #NFDB
499:Delivering unique creativity is hardest of all, because not only do you have to have insight, but you also need to be passionate enough to risk the rejection that delivering a solution can bring. You must ship. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
500:Swallowing your pride isn't lethal. It might upset your stomach for a few minutes, but the ultimate result may be the life of your dreams. And that's a result that's worth every rejection you encounter. ~ Georgette Mosbacher, #NFDB
501:We’re taught that in life, we should try to look on the bright side, to be optimistic. Not in this case. In this case, look on the dark side. Assume rejection first. Assume you’re the rule, not the exception. ~ Greg Behrendt, #NFDB
502:Believe me, the next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar, the rejection of the dollar is a big, big event, and then your personal liberties are going to be severely threatened. ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
503:I think with any sort of rejection, you're angry that you weren't enough for that person. So I don't know if I'm angry at myself for not being enough, or if I'm angry at him for not considering me to be enough. ~ Jennie Garth, #NFDB
504:My rejection at the Salon brought an end to my hesitation [to settle in Paris] since after this failure I can no longer claim to cope... alas, that fatal rejection has virtually taken the bread out of my mouth. ~ Claude Monet, #NFDB
505:If they're going to cast one person and not another, it's not rejection of your talent, it's just that they want one person and not someone else. As an actor, unfortunately, it's not your job to cast the movie. ~ Ben Schnetzer, #NFDB
506:In the old days (aka the ’90s), he could blow you off, say, two ways. Now, there are eighteen forms of rejection. We feel obliged to go through each and every form, just to re-re-re-reconfirm that he’s not into us. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
507:Let us all remember that it is not our own reputations that are at stake in the missions to which we are called. It is His. The successes and the setbacks are His. It is His rejection, His reception—not ours. These ~ Neil Cole, #NFDB
508:When a person says “No” and really means it, he or she is doing far more than saying a word of two letters. The entire organism—glandular, nervous, muscular—gathers itself together into a condition of rejection. ~ Dale Carnegie, #NFDB
509:Some of us have incredible potential, but we don’t want to try anything bold because we don’t want to fail. The easy choice: live in the relative safety of mediocrity because we think that’s better than rejection. ~ Louie Giglio, #NFDB
510:But those who chose to reject God during their lifetime on earth will be separated from him for eternity. This is not God's desire, but man's own choice. God holds every man accountable for his rejection of Christ. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
511:I'm sort of exploring where pacifism and socialism come into conflict. How do you reconcile a passionate rejection of might and violence with an attitude of "nil paseran" - "none shall pass" - in the face of fascism? ~ Hal Duncan, #NFDB
512:Sensitivity to the immense needs of humanity brings with it a spontaneous rejection of the arms race, which is incompatible with the all out struggle against hunger, sickness, under-development and illiteracy. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
513:I do think it imperative that you recover from fear of rejection. Forgive me, but that is the sin of pride, and you must avoid that particular manifestation of the sin if you are to reach the goal . . . you hope for. ~ John Farrar, #NFDB
514:I was absorbing a sorry truth of show business - rejection is the norm and acceptance the oddity. I was learning to cut the tops off my highs and stay with the lows where the rejections and letdowns would be shallow. ~ Joan Rivers, #NFDB
515:The only truly safe thing you can do is to try over and over again. To go for it, to get rejected, to repeat, to strive, to wish. Without rejection there is no frontier, there is no passion, and there is no magic. ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
516:We project the lines of rejection we heard from our past on others and hold them accountable for words they never said. And worst of all, we catch ourselves wondering if God secretly agrees with those who hurt us. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
517:Don't be a cynic, and bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. Set down nothing that will help somebody. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
518:I have two choices. Take what I want, what I asked for, or hold on to the rejection he dealt me three years ago. My brain short-circuits on one thought—life is short, and you never know if you’ll get a second chance. ~ Meghan March, #NFDB
519:Another part of the rejection I mention was the realisation that Buddhism quite simply ignores or dismisses a whole hemisphere of human experience that finds expression in and is enshrined by the mystery religions. ~ Quentin S Crisp, #NFDB
520:Note to aspiring writers: This is actually not that many rejections in the grand scheme of things. I know published writers whose rejection count is in the triple digits. Never give up. Never, never, never give up. ~ Jennifer Weiner, #NFDB
521:Parents accept their obsolescence with the best grace they can muster. . . they do all they can to make it easy for the younger generation to surpass the older, while secretly dreading the rejection that follows. ~ Christopher Lasch, #NFDB
522:Sometimes people have been so hurt that they live in fear of it happening again. They don't think they can survive it, so they push the good away even when they want it. That way it's a choice, not a rejection. ~ Sarah Lyons Fleming, #NFDB
523:trauma on body, mind, and soul: the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; the self-loathing; ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
524:By finding, believing, expressing, and then engaging our authentic best selves, especially if we do it right before our biggest challenges, we reduce our anxiety about social rejection and increase our openness to others. ~ Amy Cuddy, #NFDB
525:Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
526:Krishna would continue. He would teach Mom that grasping and aversion are twins: They are mirror images of each other. They both involve a rejection of how it is in this moment. The grasping mind says, “I long for that ~ Stephen Cope, #NFDB
527:True love takes courage, because you have to offer yourself, everything you are, weaknesses and all. And that is the greatest fear of all because rejection of self from someone you love would be a pain beyond enduring. ~ Kathryn Shay, #NFDB
528:It’s the moment when you know that you can have what you want if you’re only brave enough to say so. It’s a split second when everything can change, but you pussy out because you’re too afraid to risk the rejection. ~ Penelope Douglas, #NFDB
529:The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
530:The only truly safe thing you can do is to try over and over again. To go for it, to get rejected, to repeat, to strive, to wish. Without rejection there is no frontier, there is no passion, and there is no magic. How ~ James Altucher, #NFDB
531:The skills of selling and marketing are diffcult for most people, primarily due to their fear of rejection. The better you are at communicating, negotiating, and handling your fear of rejection, the easier life is. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
532:Do not to take everything personally or so seriously, because sometimes you're just not right for a particular job. You have to be able to take rejection quickly and honestly, know what you need to work on, and move on. ~ Kellee Stewart, #NFDB
533:I had immediate success in the sense that I sold something right off the bat. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake and it really wasn't. I have drawers full of - or I did have - drawers full of rejection slips. ~ Fred Saberhagen, #NFDB
534:it attempts to show that the necessary conditions of logical and mathematical reasoning, which undergird the natural sciences as a human activity, require the rejection of all broadly materialist worldviews. Reppert ~ William Lane Craig, #NFDB
535:My experience has been that there are times to teach and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
536:Rejection Minimization Theorem - The act of leaning in to kiss someone, or asking to kiss them, is fraught with the possibility of rejection, so the person least likely to get rejected should do the leaning in or the asking ~ John Green, #NFDB
537:Be sure of what you want work hard, be ready to pick yourself up, do not take rejection personally, be as prepared as you can, always be learning, and eliminate negative people from your life regardless of who they are. ~ Toks Olagundoye, #NFDB
538:Dad gave me two pieces of advice. One was, "No matter how good you think you are, there are people better than you." But he was an optimist too; his other advice: "Never worry about rejection. Every day is a new beginning." ~ John Ritter, #NFDB
539:Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe enforced obedience, by wielding the threat of expulsion. Fear of rejection isn't just psychological; it's biological. It's in our cells. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
540:Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe inforced obedience, by wielding the threat of expulsion. Fear of rejection isn't just psychological; it's biological. It's in our cells. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
541:I realized that for my own part, I was much more likely to take risks, reach out to others, and expose myself to rejection and failure when I felt happy. When I felt unhappy, I felt defensive, touchy, and self-conscious. ~ Gretchen Rubin, #NFDB
542:We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
543:People need to know you have to walk through that rejection, and it's only going to fuel you. If you can somehow look at it like it's a gift, you're just going to regroup, and work harder, and go deeper. So just embrace it. ~ Jeremy Piven, #NFDB
544:She’s insecure, impulsive, fragile, emotionally incontinent, can’t handle rejection, and although she tries extremely hard to hide it, she craves approval like a junkie craving a fix. What can I say, Frank? She’s an actress. ~ J P Delaney, #NFDB
545:While overeating would be seen by some as an indulgence of self, it is in fact a profound rejection of self. It is a moment of self-betrayal and self-punishment, and anything but a commitment to one's own well-being. ~ Marianne Williamson, #NFDB
546:Like every audition I go on, I do my best, but after that, I let it go because, you know, the rejection rate is so great in Hollywood, and I can only control what I do in the audition, and after that it's up to somebody else. ~ Ian Ziering, #NFDB
547:rejection, ordered a series of aerial attacks on the Royal Air Force bases and radar stations in southeast England. By the end of October, Hitler realized that he would not be able to secure air superiority for an invasion ~ Hourly History, #NFDB
548:I tried to avoid Mimi. Her presence seemed to call forth every rejection I'd ever experienced-the teachers who'd looked at me as though I held no promise, the boys who didn't like me back. Around her, I became fourteen again. ~ Melissa Bank, #NFDB
549:...never have I subscribed to the doctrine of willful rejection of the world or its visual image. To the non-objectivist this act of impiety may be shockingly impure, but God, I have no desire to be either hollow or sterile. ~ Norman Mailer, #NFDB
550:The first audition I ever went on, I was accompanied by my mother at the instruction of my father. You have to learn how to take rejection if you really want to be an actor, he said. He had to eat his own words. I got the job. ~ Michele Lee, #NFDB
551:Hamilton had analyzed his own rejection thus: “I am a stranger in this country. I have no property here, no connections. If I have talents and integrity…these are justly deemed very spurious titles in these enlightened days.”83 ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
552:I tried to avoid Mimi. Her presence seemed to call forth every rejection I'd ever experienced--the teachers who'd looked at me as though I held no promise, the boys who didn't like me back. Around her, I became fourteen again. ~ Melissa Bank, #NFDB
553:Since Jesus became thoroughly identified with sin, he would receive its wrath and judgment in our place. This meant he would experience the worst kind of rejection and alienation from the Father, and he would do this for us. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
554:There are no real successes without rejection. The more rejection you get, the better you are, the more you've learned, the closer you are to your outcome... If you can handle rejection, you'll learn to get everything you want. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
555:It’s being ready to accept rejection. You can work on a book for two years and get it published, and it’s like you may as well have thrown it down a well. It’s not all champagne and doing interviews with The New York Times. ~ George R R Martin, #NFDB
556:The joy of art is particularly sweet, though, because it carries with it the threat of rejection, of failure, and of missed connections. It's precisely the high-wire act of "this might not work" that makes original art worth doing. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
557:Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: 'After a heavy rainfall, poems titled 'Rain' pour in from across the nation. ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
558:We want from here to express our solidarity and our support to all the victims of these acts of terrorism and their family members. We reiterate our complete, emphatic rejection of all forms of violence and all forms of terrorism. ~ Vicente Fox, #NFDB
559:Be sure of what you want, focus, work hard, be ready to pick yourself up, do not take rejection personally, be as prepared as you can, always be learning, and eliminate negative people from your life regardless of who they are. ~ Toks Olagundoye, #NFDB
560:I was told to avoid the business all together because of the rejection. People would say to me, 'Don't you want to have a normal job and a normal family?' I guess that would be good advice for some people, but I wanted to act. ~ Jennifer Aniston, #NFDB
561:There are no real successes without rejection. The more rejection you get, the better you are, the more you've learned, the closer you are to your outcome... If you can handle rejection, you'll learn to get everything you want. ~ Anthony Robbins, #NFDB
562:It goes without saying that I will do anything at any price to pull myself out of a situation like this [rejection] so that I can start work immediately on my next Salon picture and ensure that such a thing should not happen again. ~ Claude Monet, #NFDB
563:Jesus Christ’s salvation comes to us through his poverty, rejection, and weakness. And Christians are not saved by summoning up their strength and accomplishing great deeds but by admitting their weakness and need for a savior. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
564:The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
565:We, the weird and sideways folk, have always walked the line of rejection. It's what makes us visionaries. We who are pushed away, to the edge, can see beyond the borders of reality. We frighten the privileged with our possibility. ~ G L Carriger, #NFDB
566:You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you’d experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it. ~ Taylor Swift, #NFDB
567:overtures from a cold-blooded consideration of advantages to an emotional rejection based on their own bigotry. And if I've learned one thing over the years, it's that when it comes down to raw emotion against reason, emotion wins." * ~ David Weber, #NFDB
568:All rejection and negation indicates a deficiency in fertility: fundamentally, if only we were good plowland we would allow nothing to go unused, and in every thing, event, and person we would welcome manure, rain, or sunshine. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, #NFDB
569:I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
570:It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the Dead. ~ H P Blavatsky, #NFDB
571:It is true that my shunning was a message from our community to my mother. Her rejection of me was a measure of the humiliation she felt. She believed until her death that I caused her to lose her friends and her stature in the town. ~ Meredith Hall, #NFDB
572:When social forces press for the rejection of age-old Truth, then those who reject it will seek meaning in their own truth. These truths will rarely be Truth at all; they will be only collections of personal preferences and prejudices. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
573:From where I am, you and my mother and the world are all one. Hyperbole, I know. The world is also full of wonders, which is why I'm foolishly in love with it. And I love and admire you both. What I'm saying is, I'm fearful of rejection. ~ Ian McEwan, #NFDB
574:I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
575:It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
576:REJECTION MINIMIZATION THEOREM (RMT):
Think about it: boys basically, want to kiss girls. Guys want to make out. Always. Hassan aside, there's a rarely a time when a boy is thinking, "Eh, I think I'd rather not kiss a girl today. ~ John Green,#NFDB
577:The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
578:Arin used to clutch his head in disgusted wonder at how fascinated he’d once been by the daughter of the Valorian general. He used to sting at her rejection. Now, though, the thought of Kestrel gave him a cold relief. Ice on a bruise. ~ Marie Rutkoski, #NFDB
579:Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. ~ Stephen Colbert, #NFDB
580:The environmentalist's dream is an egalitarian society based on: rejection of economic growth, a smaller population, eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally. ~ Aaron Wildavsky, #NFDB
581:When my parents had told me I was adopted, it had hurt, despite me loving them more than anything. It was still ... rejection. It damaged a fundamental part of me, making me question why I wasn’t enough. Illogical, but it was what it was. ~ Jaymin Eve, #NFDB
582:When you give yourself permission to communicate what matters to you in every situation you will have peace despite rejection or disapproval. Putting a voice to your soul helps you to let go of the negative energy of fear and regret. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
583:For some reason, notwithstanding the alienation and utter rejection, I consider myself a global citizen. They say misery calls for company and I’ve always been a man of funerals. The companion of the misfortunate, until they are not! ~ Asaad Almohammad, #NFDB
584:What happened yesterday can’t be changed, but it can be forgiven. That’s your miracle in the mess. The voices of condemnation, shame, and rejection can come at you, but they don’t have to reside in you. That’s your miracle in the mess. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
585:Humans, unlike Jedi, are powerfully afraid of rejection. We do not survive well alone, so humans as a species are especially vulnerable to thoughts that make us afraid the rest of the “tribe” will desert us to die a sad, lonely death. ~ Stephen Richards, #NFDB
586:I know books that are really good and writers that are really good and they have become oppressed and ground down from the rejection and they stop. Either they stop writing or they have these books in their drawers. I know that for a fact. ~ Micah Perks, #NFDB
587:I think that having had [Steven Spielberg's] confidence in me probably made me a little more immune to feeling as bad about myself in the face of rejection. I also was just so young - I was unaware enough to not take it too seriously. ~ Alden Ehrenreich, #NFDB
588:Let's begin with a basic premise: The feeling of rejection is real. When a prospect tells you no, your brain doesn't know the difference between the prospect rejecting your proposition or rejecting you. To your brain, it is one and the same. ~ Jeb Blount, #NFDB
589:The movie business can be very frustrating and very circuitous; theres no straight path. You have to have tremendous perseverance, dedication and passion. You have to want it very, very badly and you have to deal with a lot of rejection. ~ Denise Di Novi, #NFDB
590:Answering a call will sometimes feel that way. It won’t make sense and may even open you up to rejection and criticism, but in your heart you will know it’s right. How? There will be confirmation. You will take a step, and things will happen. ~ Jeff Goins, #NFDB
591:An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
592:But when I learned about the dangers of rejection or attack, I thought, it's time to change this. What if we faced any pain we had caused each other and, instead of rejection or attack, could we listen? Could we forgive? Could we merge? ~ Elizabeth Lesser, #NFDB
593:As a general rule, whenever guys have problems approaching girls, it's because they're afraid of rejection or they're afraid of something specific. The way that you get over a fear like that is you figure out what the worst is that can happen. ~ Tucker Max, #NFDB
594:Clair watched the young man pour Paul's Scotch with a previously unseen professionalism. Her wedding ring, her gentle brush-offs, and her outright rejection had been minor obstacles compared to the big no of another man kissing her cheek. ~ Karin Slaughter, #NFDB
595:How His electing grace and predestined purpose can stand beside His love for the world and desire that the gospel be preached to all people, still holding them responsible for their own rejection and condemnation, is a divine mystery. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
596:It comes back to love, they decide. Love & the fear of loss, & even greater fear of opening up yourself in ways that would also leave you open to a bit of rejection & loss if it didn't quite work out the way you had been dreaming. ~ Kris Radish, #NFDB
597:But many more daughters of distant fathers are unable to reach orgasm, or achieve it with consistency with any man. Indeed these daughters have the most trouble in bed: for them, affection and arousal are synonymous with rejection. ~ Victoria Secunda, #NFDB
598:It is because I reject lies and running away that I am accused of pessimism; but this rejection implies hope — the hope that truth may be of use. And this is a more optimistic attitude than the choice of indifference, ignorance or sham. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
599:The thing I wondered about so much as a young artist, particularly when things weren't going well and I was really struggling, was, "Will I know when to give up? Will I know when I've suffered enough rejection? Will I know when to get out?" ~ Laurie Simmons, #NFDB
600:A complainer is hard to live with, and very few people know how to respond to the complaints made by a self-rejecting person. The tragedy is that, often, the complaint, once expressed, leads to that which is most feared: further rejection. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
601:As actors, we deal with rejection so much more than any other business. So I don't care how much of a genius you are, if you don't have the propensity to be able to get back up every time you get knocked down, then you're not going to survive. ~ Ryan Kwanten, #NFDB
602:But where pain was, healing could come; where loneliness was, new relationships could be formed; where rejection was, new love could be found. It was a moment. And moments changed. She would have to live through the moment to get to the next. ~ Cecelia Ahern, #NFDB
603:Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
604:The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, ... underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself. ~ Herbert Marcuse, #NFDB
605:The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors’ rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science. ~ Julian Schwinger, #NFDB
606:To preempt rejection she dresses to exaggerate her difference when the true enemy is not the world's disdain but its indifference. He is surely the next item in a dreary procession and cannot be seen for all those previous disappointments. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
607:At stake are the lives of many children who will be discriminated against in advance, and deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God. At stake is the total rejection of God’s law engraved in our hearts. ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
608:But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think. ~ Susan Cain, #NFDB
609:There is so much rejection, pain, and woundedness among us, but once you choose to claim the joy hidden in the midst of all suffering, life becomes celebration. Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
610:We, the weird and the sideways folk, have always walked the line of rejection. It’s what makes us visionaries. We who are pushed away, to the edge, can see beyond the borders of reality. We frighten the privileged with our possibilities.” Bryan ~ G L Carriger, #NFDB
611:and three suicides, though one minister had tried to protest that decision that they be buried in what was now consecrated ground. That protest was greeted with icy rejection from Charlie, who was now a former member of that congregation. ~ William R Forstchen, #NFDB
612:For the Warrior of Light there is no such thing as an impossible love. He is not intimidated by silence, indifference or rejection. He knows that, behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire. Without love, he is nothing. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
613:one cannot blame a lover for loving or not loving, for it is a matter beyond their choice and hence responsibility – though what makes rejection in love harder to bear than donkeys who can never sing is that one did once see the lover loving. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
614:She needs you to be bigger than her fears. Stronger than her rejection. And yes, if you truly believe that she doesn't want you in her life, then you have to let her go, But a woman who opens her heart up wants to know she will be protected. ~ Susan May Warren, #NFDB
615:This went beyond just rejection from man. That is hard. But what’s downright horrible is when God seems to just silently stand by, withholding answers and solutions for which you’ve cried out. That deep hurt can make you question His goodness. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
616:Distress, whether psychic, physical, or intellectual, need not at all produce nihilism (that is, the radical rejection of value, meaning and desirability). Such distress always permits a variety of interpretations. Nietzsche wrote those words. ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
617:During my late adolescence, never once did a doctor ask me, while administering an HIV test, if I experienced love or rejection, connection or estrangement. It didn't matter that Billy was beautiful and kind...Humans feel, but subjects report. ~ Darnell L Moore, #NFDB
618:I like to joke that I probably hold the world record for rejection letters. Yes, the truth is that I was fed up of being rejected repeatedly, and self-publicatio n was an act of defiance at traditional publishing. But life works in strange ways. ~ Ashwin Sanghi, #NFDB
619:Jesus—for example, his categorical rejection of divorce, or his statement that “if anyone does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26)? ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
620:I received rejection letters for ten years (one on a napkin, written in crayon.) I had all my rejection notices stored in a box. When the box was finally full I took it to the curb and set it on fire. The next day I went out and got a temp job. ~ Janet Evanovich, #NFDB
621:Distress, whether psychic, physical, or intellectual, need not at all produce nihilism (that is, the radical rejection of value, meaning and desirability). Such distress always permits a variety of interpretations. Nietzsche wrote those words. ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
622:The step that a lot of people miss is a dispassionate evaluation of the reasons [for rejection]. If you can dispassionately evaluate the reasons for rejection and find them with merit, you can address them; if without merit, you can ignore them. ~ Brian Koppelman, #NFDB
623:In a word, to perceive an object abstractly means not to perceive some aspects of it. It clearly implies selection of some attributes, rejection of other attributes, creation or distortion of still others. We make of it what we wish. We create it. ~ Abraham Maslow, #NFDB
624:Unfortunately, Lady of Haven, my one true love remains myself. Dorothea roared at that. 'At least' she said, 'you don't have to worry about rejection, Jace Wayland.' 'Not necessarily. I turn myself down occasionally, just to keep it interesting'. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
625:Yes, I think especially the Pentecostal churches, you know, that there's been such a growth in Pentecostalism. And it's a rejection of the much more dour and barren kind of Calvinist worship and also, the very formal Catholic forms of worship. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich, #NFDB
626:You sure you want to waste your night in an empty apartment on me? You know I’m not going to give you any.”
Skylar puts an arm around me as we exit the dorm. “Who needs sexual gratification when they can have snarky insults and blatant rejection? ~ Caisey Quinn,#NFDB
627:He won’t say no, but who cares if he does? Do it. Hell, guys go through this every time they make a move on a woman, and none of them has died yet. In many cases, that is, of course, unfortunate, but rejection is definitely not lethal. Go get him. ~ Jennifer Crusie, #NFDB
628:(T)here are worse things than falling on your face right out of college...Like instant, unearned success. Like getting your first novel accepted by the first publisher you send it to. Like getting your first rejection slip at the age of thirty-five. ~ Jincy Willett, #NFDB
629:To judge someone before understanding that person is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself. It intensifies personal insecurities, necessitating more judgment (prejudice) and less understanding. The processes continue in this vicious cycle. ~ Stephen Covey, #NFDB
630:Being an actor is definitely not the hardest job in the world - it's definitely a first-world problem to have, but I'm not very good with rejection. I constantly question whether or not I'm suited for this business, because it is your job to get rejected. ~ Aya Cash, #NFDB
631:Our ability to offer empathy can allow us to stay vulnerable, defuse potential violence, help us hear the word 'no' without taking it as a rejection, revive lifeless conversation, and even hear the feelings and needs expressed through silence. ~ Marshall B Rosenberg, #NFDB
632:Prayer plunges us into the fullness of who he is, and his love becomes more real than the rejection or disappointment we are experiencing. Then we can handle our problems, and we can hold our heads up again. What could be more practical than that? ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
633:To love God is to cooperate with His grace. And since I’m so very aware of my own need for grace, I must be willing to freely give it away. Each hole left from rejection must become an opportunity to create more and more space for grace in my heart. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
634:Every day, the pain of that moment has scored through me. The humiliation and anger and misery and rejection. So many emotions that churn over me, always forcing me to feel it all fresh again and again - never in my life had I felt so ugly and unwanted. ~ Carrie Ryan, #NFDB
635:I think that Diwata does not fit that mold. She's loud, she's a huge personality, she's imposing. I don't know if I'm the same thing in that sense, but what gives me the joy in playing her is the total rejection of needing to fit in. It's so inspiring. ~ Sarah Steele, #NFDB
636:Once you forgive yourself, the self-rejection in your mind is over. Self-acceptance begins, and the self-love will grow so strong that you will finally accept yourself just the way you are. That’s the beginning of the free human. Forgiveness is the key. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
637:Tears never yet saved a soul. Hell is full of weepers weeping over lost opportunities, perhaps over the rejection of an offered Saviour. Your Bible does not say, "Weep, and be saved." It says, "Believe, and be saved." Faith is better than feeling. ~ Theodore L Cuyler, #NFDB
638:To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, #NFDB
639:To judge someone before understanding that person is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself. It intensifies personal insecurities, necessitating more judgment (prejudice) and less understanding. The processes continue in this vicious cycle. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
640:We're taught that in life, we should try to look on the bright side. Not in this case. In this case, assume rejection first. Assume you're the rule, not the exception. It's liberating. But we also know it's not an easy concept. -He's not just into you ~ Greg Behrendt, #NFDB
641:Why would the apostles lie?....Liars always lie for selfish reasons. If they lied, what was their motive, what did they get out of it? What they got out of it was misunderstanding, rejection, persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Hardly a list of perks! ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
642:The radiance of this beautiful scene shed a cruel light on every past horror, every insult tolerated, every unspoken retort, every gesture of rejection. Marianne was grieving, and her boundless grief made her regret every moment of cowardice in her life. ~ Nina George, #NFDB
643:What is this solution?’ asked Sparrow. ‘The breakdowns are a rejection of birth by men who have unconsciously retreated into the world of prebirth. What child would seek birth if he knew that pain and fear – a constant menace – awaited him on the other ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
644:Unless a woman asks men out (the first time) as often as men ask her out, then the assertion 'He asked me out, therefore he pays' is just a double jeopardy of the male role: he must not only do the asking, he must pay extra for risking extra rejection. ~ Warren Farrell, #NFDB
645:Bowl of rejection,” Kees was saying. “Or bowl of regret. That’s what it comes down to, those are your choices. Which will taste worse? You ask me, rejection sucks, but you can choke it down. Regret will give you food poisoning for the rest of your life. ~ Suanne Laqueur, #NFDB
646:Only do it if you absolutely have to, because you are gonna eat rejection every single day. And it's not easy eating that rejection every single day because it hurts. You have to learn not to take it personally. And that is a very hard lesson to learn. ~ Louise Fletcher, #NFDB
647:You'll be amazed how much you have in common with Edith Wharton (who struggled to feel worthy of success), Louisa May Alcott (who badly needed money), Madaleine L'Engle (who could have papered an entire house with her rejection letters) and other writers... ~ Nava Atlas, #NFDB
648:I believed suddenly not merely in evil as a necessary antagonist in movies and books—bad guys and boogeymen—not merely in evil as the consequence of parental rejection or parental indulgence or social injustice, but in Evil as a presence alive in the world. ~ Dean Koontz, #NFDB
649:The basic premise of religion– that if you live a good life, things will go well for you– is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet He had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
650:The PLO and the Palestinian people adhere to the renouncement of violence and rejection and condemning of terrorism in all its forms, especially State terrorism, and adhere to all agreements signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel. ~ Mahmoud Abbas, #NFDB
651:These considerations give us some clues as to why legalism and antinomianism are, in fact, nonidentical twins that emerge from the same womb. Eve’s rejection of God’s law (antinomianism) was in fact the fruit of her distorted view of God (legalism). ~ Sinclair B Ferguson, #NFDB
652:A long list. From getting cut from the high school basketball team, to getting fired from jobs, getting credit cards rejected and cut up. Rejection has only been a distraction, not a roadblock. “Every no gets me closer to a yes,” was the saying I used to use. ~ Mark Cuban, #NFDB
653:The ultimate issue for the evolutionist is not bones, fossils, and strata--it's GOD. Rejection of God and our accountability to Him is foundational to evolutionist thinking. The rejection of God comes first, and THEN comes the interpretation of the date. ~ Frank E Peretti, #NFDB
654:When I was older, I decided that getting a rejection slip was like being told your child was ugly. You got mad and didn’t believe a word of it. Besides, look at all the really ugly literary children out there in the world being published and doing fine! ~ Octavia E Butler, #NFDB
655:Fear of rejection isn't just psychological; it's biological. It's in our cells. Resistance knows this and uses it against us. It uses fear of rejection to paralyze us and prevent us, if not from doing our work, then from exposing it to public evaluation ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
656:Once you forgive yourself, the self-rejection in your mind is over. Self-acceptance begins, and the self-love will grow so strong that you will finally accept yourself just the way you are. That's the beginning of the free human. Forgiveness is the key. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz, #NFDB
657:The basic premise of religion– that if you live a good life, things will go well for you– is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet He had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
658:Everyone says that loves hurts, but that’s not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Everyone confuse these things with love but reality, love is the only thing in this world that covers up all the pain and makes us feel wonderful again. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
659:Liberals are wrong to think that opposition to health reform is a rejection of big government. If health reform consisted of extending Medicare to everyone, people would be delighted. There are millions of 64-year-olds out there who can hardly wait to be 65. ~ Marcia Angell, #NFDB
660:...the basic premise of religion—that if you live a good life, things will go well for you—is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet he had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
661:One of life's fundamental truths states, "Ask and you shall receive." As kids we get used to asking for things, but somehow we lose this ability in adulthood. We come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons to avoid any possibility of criticism or rejection. ~ Jack Canfield, #NFDB
662:When you are passionate, you always have your destination in sight and you are not distracted by obstacles. Because you love what you are pursuing, things like rejection and setbacks will not hinder you in your pursuit. You believe that nothing can stop you! ~ Mike Krzyzewski, #NFDB
663:Death cures psychoneurosis. In a sense all these neurotic concerns--fear of rejection, interpersonal concerns--seem to melt away, and people get another perspective on their lives. The important things are really important, and the trivia of life is trivialized. ~ Irvin D Yalom, #NFDB
664:Slowly, after dozens of rejection slips and failures and false starts and postponed dreams - what Langston Hughes called dreams deferred - I stepped onto the hallowed ground of being a published novelist, and then 15 years later, I even started to make real money. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
665:The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection of all the other useful possibilities a day offers. I make obeisance to the story, its characters, and the muse with burnt offerings. ~ Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, #NFDB
666:This is what it feels like to care about someone who doesn't feel the same. I'd only known how it felt to love someone who loved me just as fiercely. I'd never known rejection. I'd never wanted someone who didn't want me. The longing didn't go away with rejection. ~ Abbi Glines, #NFDB
667:This is why the Word of God exhorts husbands to love their wives, wives to love their husbands, parents to love their children and Christians to love one another. Love defeats the devil, but rejection opens a door of opportunity for the devil to do an evil work. ~ Frank Hammond, #NFDB
668:You know the worst thing about
being rejected? The lack of control. If I could only control the when and how of being dumped by
somebody, then it wouldn’t seem as bad. But then, of course, it wouldn’t be rejection, would it? It
would be by mutual consent. ~ Nick Hornby,#NFDB
669:I could end up having sex here, and the prospect doesn’t appall me. What better way to exorcize rejection demons than to screw the person who rejected you? But you wouldn’t just be sleeping with a person: you’d be sleeping with a whole sad single-person culture. If ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
670:When I was twenty, and my family were business people, and I had disappeared to India and they were like, "What are you doing?" I had a good relationship with them, and it wasn't like a rejection or anything, but they couldn't understand why I was going to India. ~ Gary Kraftsow, #NFDB
671:As a dispensation, grace begins with the death and resurrection of Christ (Rom. 3:24-26; 4:24,25). The point of testing is no longer legal obedience as the condition of salvation, but acceptance or rejection of Christ, with good works as a fruit of salvation. . . . ~ C I Scofield, #NFDB
672:At the exact time that our society embraces shaming, blaming, judgment, and rejection, it also holds acceptance and belonging as immensely important. In other words, it's never been more impossible to 'fit in,' yet 'fitting in' has never been more important and valued ~ Bren Brown, #NFDB
673:Eviction must be considered a traumatic rejection,” they wrote, “a denial of one’s most basic human needs, and an exquisitely shameful experience.” Suicides attributed to evictions and foreclosures doubled between 2005 and 2010, years when housing costs soared.18 ~ Matthew Desmond, #NFDB
674:If tolerance poses as a middle road between rejection on the one side and assimilation on the other, this road, as already suggested, is paved by necessity rather than virtue; tolerance, as Nietzsche would say, becomes a virtue only retroactively and retrospectively. ~ Wendy Brown, #NFDB
675:I realized I wasn't going to find a man until I was willing to expose myself to possible harm, to assume the risks of rejection and betrayal and heartbreak that came along with caring about someone. Someday, I promised myself, I would be ready for that kind of risk. ~ Lisa Kleypas, #NFDB
676:The successes in the entertainment business are like one percent of the iceberg that you see, and the other ninety-nine percent, which is the rejection and the failure and the work and the toil and the sacrifice, is the rest of the iceberg that's below the water. ~ Jonathan Tucker, #NFDB
677:Despite rejection by the establishment, Bowlby pioneered on, giving form to a theory of what he called attachment. (The story goes that when asked by his wife why he didn’t give it its rightful name, a theory of love, he replied, “What? I’d be laughed out of science.”) ~ Sue Johnson, #NFDB
678:He was as needy as she was. Alvin Finch only wanted to be needed. Loved. And absent of either, he resorted to deflecting his pain by killing. Just like a teenager might resort to deflecting the pain of rejection by cutting. People did a lot of crazy things to be wanted. ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
679:Harris argues, perhaps counterintuitively, that “the ability to be alone . . . is anything but a rejection of close bonds,” and can instead affirm them. Calmly experiencing separation, he argues, builds your appreciation for interpersonal connections when they do occur. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
680:I who have gone the gamut from an almost angry rejection of my dark skin by some of my brainwashed brothers and sisters to a surprised queenhood in the new Black sunam qualified to enter at least the kindergarten of new consciousness now... I have hopes for myself. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks, #NFDB
681:asking a new person to go on a romantic outing has never been easy. It means declaring your attraction to someone and putting yourself out there in a huge way, while risking the brutal possibility of rejection—or, in the modern era, even an unexplained, icy-cold silence. ~ Aziz Ansari, #NFDB
682:For a woman to direct a movie in Hollywood, she has to go through so many layers of rejection by the powers that be - I suppose including myself - that it is harder to get to that point. So you can't just create something. And I think there is a whole unconscious mountain. ~ Amy Pascal, #NFDB
683:Kant has been famous for his rejection of eudaimonism, but I think Kantian ethics has a great deal in common with Aristotle, and some things in common with Stoicism as well. The traditions tend, I believe, to talk past each other when it comes to happiness or eudaimonia. ~ Allen W Wood, #NFDB
684:That rejection is an inherent and necessary part of maintaining our values, and therefore our identity. We are defined by what we choose to reject. And if we reject nothing (perhaps in fear of being rejected by something ourselves), we essentially have no identity at all. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
685:The key to success is to not take rejection personally, to know that having faith counts the most when we feel scared the most, that a delay is not a denial and that persistence above all else will prove to be a powerful ally. Oh - and most importantly - do what you LOVE. ~ Mastin Kipp, #NFDB
686:I realized that I could have been in galleries much sooner. I just needed to get past the fear of rejection. I still feel nervous when I approach a new gallery, although it has become more like a job now. The first step on this long road was getting past that initial fear. ~ Mark Edward, #NFDB
687:I think people are hungry for Jesus, but they are starting to realize they have been fed a cheap American version, and they are rightly rejecting this counterfeit. Their rejection should be seen not as a rejection of Jesus, but a rejection of obscured versions of him. ~ Benjamin L Corey, #NFDB
688:In the texture of our bound humanity
He felt the stark resistance huge and dumb
Of our inconscient and unseeing base,
The stubborn mute rejection in life’s depths,
The ignorant No in the origin of things. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,#NFDB
689:Maybe I just don't want another rejection," he shrugs. "I've had enough of that in my so-called acting career."
Oh, so this is what it's all about.
"But you're not auditioning for a role," I try to persuade him.
"Aren't I?" he raises his eyebrows. ~ Alexandra Potter,#NFDB
690:we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X. That rejection is an inherent and necessary part of maintaining our values, and therefore our identity. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
691:All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination. ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
692:I sold 'Time Life' books on the telephone. It's probably the only pure skill job I've ever had. When you're on and you're good, you get 'yes' after 'yes'. When you're slightly off, you get rejection after rejection. It was one of the greatest jobs I ever had. It was brutal. ~ David Nevins, #NFDB
693:Shame is very much on display in Jesus’ crucifixion. When he predicted his own death to his disciples, he made sure to explain that it would be infused with mocking, a public flogging, and spitting (Mark 10:33–34). Witness this hatred and rejection and it will change you. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
694:Deep work is at a severe disadvantage in a technopoly because it builds on values like quality, craftsmanship, and mastery that are decidedly old-fashioned and nontechnological. Even worse, to support deep work often requires the rejection of much of what is new and high-tech. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
695:Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery. ~ Bede Griffiths, #NFDB
696:Not everyone will like you or take the time to understand you. Some people lack the capacity. Don’t worry; it’s okay. Their acceptance or rejection doesn’t change your worth one bit. Hold your head up and live your life regardless, knowing not everyone is worthy of you. ~ Richelle E Goodrich, #NFDB
697:Rejection refines us. Those who fall prey to its enervating soul-sucking tentacles are doomed. Those who persist past it are survivors. Best ask yourself the question: what kind of writer are you? The kind who survives? Or the kind who gets asphyxiated by the tentacles of woe? ~ Chuck Wendig, #NFDB
698:For the Palestinians' efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
699:From what I’ve seen, it isn’t so much the act of asking that paralyzes us—it’s what lies beneath: the fear of being vulnerable, the fear of rejection, the fear of looking needy or weak. The fear of being seen as a burdensome member of the community instead of a productive one. ~ Amanda Palmer, #NFDB
700:He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t tell her how much she had come to mean to him. She could destroy him with her rejection. If she had feigned her feelings for him – if he’d bought into her lies and her quest for freedom…. He wasn’t sure what he would do. He could hurt her." Caleb. ~ C J Roberts, #NFDB
701:Real estate sales was perfect training for the experience to go into public life because you learn to accept rejection, learn to meet new people, learn to work with people and find common ground. That's the way you sell houses... that's also the way you win over constituency. ~ Johnny Isakson, #NFDB
702:If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
703:It stung this new rejection, but it was also a relief to put an end to the ambiguity and incertitude. I had been deceiving myself the day I decided I could master the art of detachment, or maybe the mistake was to allow things to go on in that vein for as long as they had. ~ Catherine Sanderson, #NFDB
704:The cross where Jesus died became also the cross where His apostle died. The loss, the rejection, the shame, belong both to Christ and to all who in very truth are His. the cross that saves them also slays them, and anything short of this is a pseudo-faith and not true faith at all. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
705:And the gaping hole left behind is in some ways worse than death. If their absence was caused by death, you would grieve their loss. But when their absence is caused by rejection, you not only grieve their loss but you also have to wrestle through the fact that they wanted this. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
706:Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence. ~ James Randi, #NFDB
707:David started this stunning soul declaration with the assurance that with God there is fullness. There is no lack. Nothing can be added or subtracted with human acceptance or rejection. With the fullness of God, we are free to let humans be humans—fickle and fragile and forgetful. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
708:Retreaters claim to be doing so in order to avoid more rejection and/or failures; it is almost never the actual rejection or failure that has impacted them. More often than not, it's their impression and evaluation of what failing and rejection mean that is causing them to retreat. ~ Grant Cardone, #NFDB
709:The downside of skepticism: it can easily turn into an arrogant position of a priori rejection of any new phenomenon or idea, a position that is as lacking in critical thinking as the one of the true believer, and that simply does not help either science or the public at large. ~ Massimo Pigliucci, #NFDB
710:Because I am fully aware of what the word “fat” means—what it really means, when you say it, or think it. It’s not just a simple, descriptive word like “brunette” or “34.” It’s a swear word. It’s a weapon. It’s a sociological subspecies. It’s an accusation, dismissal, and rejection. ~ Caitlin Moran, #NFDB
711:I tried very hard to write something today, but it was like drawing blood from a stone. In spite of promising myself not to be influenced by the decision of the Mercury--and I know from what they publish that their canon is wrong--the rejection of my things has made me rather despond... ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
712:You will learn that rejection and abandonment are danger cues that plunge us into real physical pain, that sexual infatuation and novelty are overrated, and that even the most distressed couples can repair their bond if they are guided to deal with their emotions a little differently. ~ Sue Johnson, #NFDB
713:[T]he downside of skepticism: it can easily turn into an arrogant position of a priori rejection of any new phenomenon or idea, a position that is as lacking in critical thinking as the one of the true believer, and that simply does not help either science or the public at large. ~ Massimo Pigliucci, #NFDB
714:This moving story of a small group of people, driven by a passionate belief in the strict purity of their devotion to the word of God and an equally passionate rejection of worldly authority in favour of a divinely sanctioned life, scarcely registered on the consciousness of England. ~ Adam Nicolson, #NFDB
715:Embarrassing ourselves in front of strangers is literally one of the worst things that can happen to us. It's in the slot where polio used to be. Awkwardness, rejection, missing out. We've conquered everything else and these constants of human life are all that remain to bedevil us. ~ Alexandra Petri, #NFDB
716:I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as a Privatdozent. After all, the Senate is not a bathhouse. Objecting to sex discrimination being the reason for rejection of Emmy Noether's application to join the faculty at the University of Gottingen. ~ David Hilbert, #NFDB
717:Paganism therefore implies the rejection of this discontinuity, this rupture, this fundamental tear, which is the “dualistic fiction,” which, as Nietzsche wrote in The Antichrist, “degenerated God into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! ~ Alain de Benoist, #NFDB
718:Every time you close another door—be it the door of immediate satisfaction, the door of distracting entertainment, the door of busyness, the door of guilt and worry, or the door of self-rejection—you commit yourself to go deeper into your heart and thus deeper into the heart of God. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
719:In a theologian such as Lessius we can see that as Europe approached modernity, the theologians themselves were handing the future atheists the ammunition for their rejection of a God who had little religious value and who filled many people with fear rather than with hope and faith. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
720:I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. ~ Karl Popper, #NFDB
721:it’s the mind analogy that bothers Crozier the most. Haunted and plagued by melancholia much of his life, knowing it as a secret weakness made worse by his twelve winters frozen in arctic darkness as an adult, feeling it recently triggered into active agony by Sophia Cracroft’s rejection ~ Dan Simmons, #NFDB
722:Rejection hurts so much because we take it as a damning judgement passed not merely on our physical appeal but on our entire selves, and by extension (at this stage we’re crying into our pillow, as something by Bach or Leonard Cohen plays on the stereo) on our very right to exist. 2. ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
723:Gradually I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically-oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort. ~ John Forbes Nash, #NFDB
724:When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. But to take the child alone, quietly, when the relationship is good and to discuss the teaching or the value seems to have much greater impact. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
725:For refusing to swear his allegiance to Hitler, Barth would be kicked out of Germany in 1934, and he would become the principal author of the Barmen Declaration, in which the Confessing Church trumpeted its rejection of the Nazis’ attempts to bring their philosophy into the German church. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
726:I think rejection is a huge part of the business and there's so many cute girls that grow up with kind of being adored or people kind of bending over backwards for them. I see a lot of girls who aren't used to rejection because of that, and now all of a sudden they drop out of the business. ~ April Rose, #NFDB
727:The fear of rejection really kind of stunts your growth as a person. I mean, it's like a friend of mine says, who cares if you fail? Who cares if you fail? It's like babies try to get up and walk all the time and they keep falling down. If we just gave up, we'd all be crawling around. ~ John Rzeznik, #NFDB
728:Often men's impulses to coerce and degrade women seem to express not a confident assumption of dominance but a desire to retaliate for feelings of rejection, humiliation, and impotence: as many men see it, they need women sexually more than women need them, an intolerable balance of power. ~ Ellen Willis, #NFDB
729:What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
730:How can one know when he is stabilized in love? First, he is able to pour out his love upon others without demanding reciprocation. He can love without being loved. Second, he can meet recurrences of rejection with forgiveness. He will not react wrongly by anger, resentment or self-pity. Be ~ Frank Hammond, #NFDB
731:I know there's a lot of talk about self-publishing right now. Everyone's giddy with the possibilities. And I'll admit that it looks good on paper: sell your books directly and keep a bigger chunk of the profit for yourself. No rejection letters. No hassle with agents. Sounds good, right? ~ Patrick Rothfuss, #NFDB
732:My whole life so far, my whole experience has been that our failure has been not to love enough. This conviction brought me to a rejection of the radical movement after my early membership in the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist affiliates I worked with. ~ Dorothy Day, #NFDB
733:Regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. "What if..." "If only... " "I wonder what would have..."
You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. ~ Trevor Noah,#NFDB
734:So many people will tell you ”no”, and you need to find something you believe in so hard that you just smile and tell them ”watch me”. Learn to take rejection as motivation to prove people wrong. Be unstoppable. Refuse to give up, no matter what. It’s the best skill you can ever learn. ~ Charlotte Eriksson, #NFDB
735:The cross is not the suffering tied to natural existence, but the suffering tied to being Christians. The cross is never simply a matter of suffering, but a matter of suffering and rejection for the sake of Jesus Christ, not for the sake of some other arbitrary behavior or confession. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
736:The search for liberation is a rejection of the responsibilities of freedom in favor of a release into the irresponsibility of rights. And a right is irresponsible because it is a legally entrenched liberty that does not contain within itself the limitations instinctive in a free society. ~ Kenneth Minogue, #NFDB
737:Those people that have hardened to rejection or hardened to life in general, it's pretty hard to feel them. You know, to look at their eyes on screen and feel them. I guess that's specifically talking about actors, but I think that's probably [true] in general. You want to keep your skin thin. ~ Emma Stone, #NFDB
738:I know that when a door closes, it can feel like all doors are closing. A rejection letter can feel like everyone will reject us. But a closed door leads to clarity. It's really an arrow. Because we cannot go through that door, we will go somewhere else. That somewhere else is your true life. ~ Tama J Kieves, #NFDB
739:Some of these walls had been of my own making; my rebellion, my resistance; my arrogance, my need for control. Some had been built around me by the misfortunes of life; my loneliness; my orphaned heart; my fear of rejection. I had kept God at bay, and cheated myself of the warmth of His mercy. ~ Tessa Afshar, #NFDB
740:The American experiment was frequently shaped by a rejection of old ways and openness to the new. In religious terms, this rejection created over time a nation unique in its ability to absorb and be built by those of different beliefs; people who believed there were many gods, or none at all. ~ Peter Manseau, #NFDB
741:You don’t have to know what you want to be. That comes later. But I want you to know what you want to be. That comes later. But I want you to want more than just having a job and muddling through life. I want you to find a passion you believe in strongly enough to risk humiliation and rejection. ~ Kate Klise, #NFDB
742:You must learn how to handle rejection. To succeed, you must learn how to cope with a little word 'no', learn how to strip that rejection of all its power. The best salesmen are those who are rejected most. They are the ones who can take any 'no' and use it as a prod to go onto the next 'yes'. ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
743:not prohibit an appropriate quest for literary sources or even oral sources that may be discerned through source criticism, but it draws a line as to the extent to which such critical analysis can go. When the quest for sources produces a dehistoricizing of the Bible, a rejection of its teaching, ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
744:The nature of motivation is a widely contested topic in psychology, but Fogg argues that three Core Motivators drive our desire to act. Fogg states that all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain; to seek hope and avoid fear; and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
745:a bitch is what they call a woman when she no longer has the patience to deal with the bull shit. a bitch is what they call a woman who serves a hot a plate of rejection to any man who isn't worthy of her attention. men who call women bitches for calling them out on their shit are bitches themselves. ~ R H Sin, #NFDB
746:Gentlemen, as sure as I'm sitting here now, the result of continuation of a non-system, the ostrich-like head-in-the-sand attitude, the constant rejection of any efforts to solve this problem, will produce an Armageddon in the American population in those states where there is a big problem. ~ Dianne Feinstein, #NFDB
747:Have you fallen in love with the wrong person yet?' Jace said, "Unfortunately, Lady of the Haven, my one true love remains myself." ..."At least," she said, "you don't have to worry about rejection, Jace Wayland." "Not necessarily. I turn myself down occasionally, just to keep it interesting. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
748:Methodologically speaking, the rejection by [John] Boswell of the categorical opposition between homosexual and heterosexual, which plays such a significant role in the way our culture conceives of homosexuality, represents an advance not only in scholarship but in cultural criticism as well. ~ Michel Foucault, #NFDB
749:There are times, beloved, when God will place you in the middle of trials—a hospital stay, rejection, a financial blow. He lets you hurt as others hurt, knowing that the way you handle it will be a testimony, that your response will show others that there’s something awesomely different about you. ~ Kay Arthur, #NFDB
750:Winning or losing an argument, receiving an acceptance or rejection, is no proof of the validity or value of personal identity. One may be wrong, mistaken, or a poor craftsman, or just ignorant - but this is no indication of the true worth of one's total human identity: past, present and future! ~ Sylvia Plath, #NFDB
751:And we are coming to see that this repentance and conversion do not express infidelity to Christ, but fidelity, because we are coming to see in the life and teaching of Christ, and especially in the cross and resurrection of Christ, a radical rejection of dominating supremacy in all its forms. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
752:The English social anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, in his 1965 Death, Grief, and Mourning, had described this rejection of public mourning as a result of the increasing pressure of a new “ethical duty to enjoy oneself,” a novel “imperative to do nothing which might diminish the enjoyment of others. ~ Joan Didion, #NFDB
753:There’s a similar effect in the job market. If you are applying for a job and don’t get a call back, you have every reason to be disappointed. However, if you make it to the final stages of the selection process and then receive the rejection, the disappointment can be much bigger – irrationally. ~ Rolf Dobelli, #NFDB
754:What Cathy took from her rejection experience was self-doubt. Until this current traumatic hospitalization, Cathy hadn’t realized the fear she was carrying around, how burdened she was by it, and how that fear kept her in a mode where she had to continuously prove her value to others and herself. ~ Robert Kegan, #NFDB
755:Your greatest creation is your creative life. It's all in your hands. Rejection can't take it away; reviews can't take it away. The life you create for yourself as an artist, may be the only thing that's really yours. Create a life you can center yourself in calmly as you wait for your work to grow. ~ Sara Zarr, #NFDB
756:He took a moment to get over the shock, and to remind himself that this had surely been difficult for her and she was probably bracing herself for a rejection.
At least he hoped she was. If she wasn’t, she needed to do that straight away, because it was coming. God damn right it was coming. ~ Julianne MacLean,#NFDB
757:Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre, #NFDB
758:Modern systematic politics, whether liberal, conservative, radical, or socialist, simply has to be rejected from a standpoint that owes genuine allegiance to the tradition of the virtues; for modern politics itself expresses in its institutional forms a systematic rejection of that tradition ~ Alasdair MacIntyre, #NFDB
759:Older dogs are special because they have had more rejection. Their hope is gone and, even though no one seems to know exactly how old any rescue dog is, when you adopt an older dog you are cramming their last years with love and giving them the security that comes with knowing they have a home. ~ Chelsea Handler, #NFDB
760:I'm a flaming faggot, Irving. I was sure you were on to that. I don't go around waving the flag, of course, and I definitely do not proselytize. Homosexuality is, to me, an inner satisfaction, a pride in a heritage of greatness. To marry a woman would be an inadmissible rejection of my identity. ~ Paddy Chayefsky, #NFDB
761:People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
762:She was not aware of loneliness so much as of endeavour: her future career as a writer, of which there was as yet no sign, would, she thought, in time validate her entire existence. Until then she would adopt—had already adopted—a regime which would steel her against rejection and disappointment. ~ Anita Brookner, #NFDB
763:You have to dream, you have to have a vision, and you have to set a goal for yourself that might even scare you a little because sometimes that seems far beyond your reach. Then I think you have to develop a kind of resistance to rejection, and to the disappointments that are sure to come your way. ~ Gregory Peck, #NFDB
764:Therefore, (and the difficult thing was not to lose sight of all the reasoning that went into this “therefore”), I had to accept the rejection of my appeal. Then and only then would I have to the right, so to speak – would I give myself permission, as it were – to consider the alternative hypothesis ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
765:One of the common traits of outstanding performers-coaches, athletes, managers, sales representatives, executives, and others who face a daily up/down, win/lose accounting system-is that a rejection, that is, defeat, is quickly forgotten, replaced eagerly by pursuit of a new order, client, or opponent. ~ Bill Walsh, #NFDB
766:Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength. ~ Michael Shermer, #NFDB
767:Guilt is the sum total of: All the negative feelings we have ever had about ourselves! Any form of self-hatred, self-rejection, feelings of worthlessness, sinfulness, inferiority, incompetence, failure, or emptiness. The feeling that there are things in us that are lacking or missing or incomplete. ~ Kenneth Wapnick, #NFDB
768:...the vital point to remember is that the swine who just sent your pearl of a story back with nothing but a coffee-stain and a printed rejection slip can be wrong. You cannot take it for granted that he is wrong, but you have an all-important margin of hope that might be enough to keep you going. ~ Brian Stableford, #NFDB
769:We can be the one to take the first courageous step toward the other and to do something or to try to do something other than rejection or attack. We can do this with our siblings and our mates and our friends and our colleagues. We can do this with the disconnection and the discord all around us. ~ Elizabeth Lesser, #NFDB
770:Bad luck with women is a determined man's road to success. For every affliction, he makes, out of indignation, yet another advancement in order to exceed the man that the woman chose over him. This goes to show that great men are made great because they once learned how to fight the feeling of rejection. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
771:We camouflage our true being before others to protect ourselves against criticism or rejection. This protection comes at a steep price... we are misunderstood. When we are misunderstood, especially by family and friends, we join the 'lonely crowd.' Worse... we tend to lose touch with our real selves. ~ Sidney Jourard, #NFDB
772:We want to avoid pain and have pleasure, so if our early attempts to achieve our dreams fail, we want to avoid the pain of future failure and rejection, so we stop trying and write it off with a broadbrush, "I'm just not driven enough, not well educated enough, not attractive enough, not smart enough." ~ Tony Robbins, #NFDB
773:During that long terrible ride to Munich, I finally swallowed the bitter pill of my lover's rejection and poisoned myself with it. I murdered the personality I was born with and transformed myself from a butterfly back in into a caterpillar. That night I learned to seek the shadows, to prefer silence ~ Edith Hahn Beer, #NFDB
774:Have you fallen in love with the wrong person yet?'
Jace said, "Unfortunately, Lady of the Haven, my one true love remains myself."
..."At least," she said, "you don't have to worry about rejection, Jace Wayland."
"Not necessarily. I turn myself down occasionally, just to keep it interesting. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
775:my love wants to change the world
she thinks she has so much to give
not realizing how much she takes from others
my love is loyal until she senses rejection of any kind
then she flies like a bird but has less memory
of where she came from
i would like to protect you from my love ~ Francesca Lia Block,#NFDB
776:Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night at least, I would be her guest-as I was her child; my mother would lodge me without money and without price. ~ Charlotte Bront, #NFDB
777:Modern “secularization” can be seen from one angle as the rejection of higher times, and the positing of time as purely profane. Events now exist only in this one dimension, in which they stand at greater and lesser temporal distance, and in relations of causality with other events of the same kind. The ~ Charles Taylor, #NFDB
778:Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night at least, I would be her guest-as I was her child; my mother would lodge me without money and without price. ~ Charlotte Bronte, #NFDB
779:The emotions that feel so intense today will ease up over time as long as we let them. We just have to watch how we think and talk about this rejection. If we give it the power to define us, it will haunt us long-term. But if we only allow it enough power to refine us, the hurt will give way to healing. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
780:To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
781:Deep down behind those hostile eyes was a very little girl who had already learned that life really isn't much fun for anybody; and the best way to avoid further rejection was to made herself as objectionable as possible. Then it would never come as a surprise to find herself unloved. Only a simple fact. ~ Torey L Hayden, #NFDB
782:Deep down behind those hostile eyes was a very little girl who had already learned that life really isn't much fun for anybody; and the best way to avoid further rejection was to make herself as objectionable as possible. Then it would never come as a surprise to find herself unloved. Only a simple fact. ~ Torey L Hayden, #NFDB
783:People were being so mean as a result of my ability - a gift, really. So I think that's what makes me fight harder to provide an option to aspiring kids or artists. I wouldn't want anyone to go through what I went through... to see a little girl or a little dancer experience such unnecessary rejection. ~ Laurieann Gibson, #NFDB
784:Keep this in mind, my friends: don’t expect life to love you always! In life, you shall sometimes see true rejection and know the real meaning of rejection, but the more life and the people in your life reject you, all the more, get closer to God, and you shall see and know His real and true love! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
785:Cruelty is easy, and it breeds only misery. Kindness is harder, and you have to be brave to give it. To be cruel, you can stay closed off from everyone, wear a mask, but to be kind, in essence, to show love, you have to make yourself vulnerable, show your true self to someone and open yourself up to rejection. ~ L H Cosway, #NFDB
786:From his first memory Cal had craved warmth and affection, just as everyone does...And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist--or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it...Not being noticed at all was better than being noticed adversely. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
787:[Single or lesbian motherhood] can be seen as [one] of the most violent forms taken by the rejection of the symbolic ... as well as one of the most fervent divinizations of maternal power - all of which cannot help but trouble an entire moral and legal order without, however, proposing an alternative to it ~ Julia Kristeva, #NFDB
788:Suicide wore the mask of self-rejection; but in reality nobody took their personality more seriously than the person who was planning to kill himself on its instructions. Nobody was more determined to stay in charge at any cost, to force the most mysterious aspect of life into their own imperious schedule. ~ Edward St Aubyn, #NFDB
789:there was no awareness, just a habitual connection between an attitude of rejection or acceptance and its common physical expression. You can see why the common admonition to “act calm and kind regardless of how you feel” is very good advice: you are likely to be rewarded by actually feeling calm and kind. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
790:Too much openness and you accept every notion, idea, and hypothesis-which is tantamount to knowing nothing. Too much skepticism-especially rejection of new ideas before they are adequately tested-and you're not only unpleasantly grumpy, but also closed to the advance of science. A judicious mix is what we need. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
791:But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist-or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
792:But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist—or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
793:When I was twenty-two, and all I wanted was to blend in, that rejection was crushing and hopeless and lonely. Years later, when I was finally ready to stand out, the realization that the mainstream didn't want me was freeing and galvanizing. It gave me something to fight for. It taught me that women are an army. ~ Lindy West, #NFDB
794:Whenever I got those rejection letters, then, I would permit my ego to say aloud to whoever had signed it: “You think you can scare me off? I’ve got another eighty years to wear you down! There are people who haven’t even been born yet who are gonna reject me someday—that’s how long I plan to stick around. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
795:Lately, I've been getting too much attention with the Met Gala and work going so well that I try to find rejection in my day. I'll seek out someone on the street or at the farmers' market and ask for something where I know they'll say no. No one likes rejection, but it's real. And I don't want to lose that feeling. ~ Brie Larson, #NFDB
796:The key to understanding why many Germans supported him lies in the Nazis’ rejection of a rational, factual world. Hitler himself, in the words of his biographer Joachim Fest, was “always thinking the unthinkable,” and “in his statements an element of bitter refusal to submit to reality invariably emerged. ~ Benjamin Carter Hett, #NFDB
797:Fill in the blank: This rejection doesn’t mean I’m [whatever negative label or shame-filled feeling you are having]. It makes this [opportunity] [person] [desire] a wrong fit for me right now. Instead of letting the feelings from this situation label me, I’m going to focus on God and His promises for good things. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
798:My first job out of college was as an editorial assistant in a New York publishing house. Being an editorial assistant is the purgatory would-be editors must endure before they can ascend the ladder and begin acquiring books on their own. I spent a year filing paperwork, writing copy, and typing rejection letters. ~ Lincoln Child, #NFDB
799:Work almost always has a double aspect: it is a bondage, a wearisome drudgery; but it is also a source of interest, a steadying element, a factor that helps to integrate the worker with society. Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
800:And worst of all, I did not feel held safe. Girls who have the lingering whispers of rejection still echoing in the hollows of their soul rarely feel completely held safe. So they look at gaps of the unknown and hesitate at best. Run away at worst. They crave for life to make sense. They cringe when it doesn’t. It ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
801:Therefore, (and the difficult thing was not to lose sight of all the reasoning that went into this “therefore”), I had to accept the rejection of my appeal. Then and only then would I have to the right, so to speak – would I give myself permission, as it were – to consider the alternative hypothesis: I was pardoned. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
802:As we become more mature we will learn to master the interplay between the past and the present and not be so self-conscious of our rejection or acceptance of tradition. We will not make the mistake that both rigid modernists and conservatives make, of confusing the quality of form with the specific forms themselves. ~ Alvin Lustig, #NFDB
803:For every successful actor or actress, there are countless numbers who don't make it. The name of the game is rejection. You go to an audition and you're told you're too tall or you're too Irish or your nose is not quite right. You're rejected for your education, you're rejected for this or that and it's really tough. ~ Liam Neeson, #NFDB
804:Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter. Longchenpa Let's stuff our eyes with wonder, let's live as if we'd drop dead in ten seconds. Let's see the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
805:I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved". Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
806:The failing was that it was so easily won, and therefore became a thing of little worth for the recipient. Could no one see the hurt she felt, each and every time she was cast aside, sorely used, battered by rejection? Did they think she welcomed such feelings, the crushing despond of seeing the paucity of her worth? ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
807:What are the top-three activities that I use to fill time to feel as though I’ve been productive? These are usually used to postpone more important actions (often uncomfortable because there is a chance of failure or rejection). Be honest with yourself, as we all do this on occasion. What are your crutch activities? ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
808:At the heart of the pain created by sexual rejection is our habit of interpreting it as a moral judgement, when it might more accurately be categorized as a mere accident. We can start to break free from this torture by recognizing that the evenings that don’t work out are really just a minor species of bad luck. The ~ Alain de Botton, #NFDB
809:I certainly didn't want to fight with him. I did, however, want to shout, "Listen, you son of a bitch, life isn't all a goddam football game! You won't always get the girl! Life is rejection and pain and loss" -- all those things I so cherishly cuddled in my slef-pitying bosom. I didn't, of course, say any such thing ~ Frederick Exley, #NFDB
810:Peter's dad, Joe, had prepared his son to know that a certain amount of hazing is the price of admission for acceptance, not rejection. The trading of wit-covered put-downs is boys and men training each other to handle criticism, unconsciously knowing that the ability to handle criticism is a prerequisite for success. ~ Warren Farrell, #NFDB
811:What allowed me to take that first step, to choose growth and risk rejection? In the fixed mindset, I had needed my blame and bitterness. It made me feel more righteous, powerful, and whole than thinking I was at fault. The growth mindset allowed me to give up the blame and move on. The growth mindset gave me a mother. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
812:I am tired of the cult of youth. The cultural rejection of old age, the stigmatization of wrinkles, grey hair, of bodies furrowed by the years. I am fascinated by Diana Vreeland, Georgia O’Keeffe and Louise Bourgeois, women who have let time embrace them without ever cheating. Society today condemns this, me, I celebrate it. ~ Tom Ford, #NFDB
813:Therefore, (and the difficult thing was not to lose sight of all the reasoning that went into this "therefore"), I had to accept the rejection of my appeal.
Then and only then would I have the right, so to speak - would I give myself permission, as it were - to consider the alternative hypothesis: I was pardoned. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
814:You judged your own attractiveness - physically, psychologically and in terms of status - then you knew your level and could either raise or lower your sights accordingly, risking rejection but with the possibility of advancement, or settling for a more reliably stable life but never knowing what you might have achieved. ~ Iain M Banks, #NFDB
815:The professional cannot take rejection personally because to do so reinforces Resistance. Editors are not the enemy; critics are not the enemy. Resistance is the enemy. The battle is inside our own heads. We cannot let external criticism, even if it's true, fortify our internal foe. That foe is strong enough already. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
816:When love doesn't work, we hurt. Indeed, “hurt feelings” is a precisely accurate phrase, according to psychologist Naomi Eisenberger of the University of California. Her brain imaging studies show that rejection and exclusion trigger the same circuits in the same part of the brain, the anterior cingulate, as physical pain. ~ Sue Johnson, #NFDB
817:When love doesn’t work, we hurt. Indeed, “hurt feelings” is a precisely accurate phrase, according to psychologist Naomi Eisenberger of the University of California. Her brain imaging studies show that rejection and exclusion trigger the same circuits in the same part of the brain, the anterior cingulate, as physical pain. ~ Sue Johnson, #NFDB
818:Jesus knew what being rejected felt like. Jesus knew. He knew the feelings. He knew the struggles. And in an earth-shattering moment, Jesus exposed the way of escape for us. He matched every feeling—the emptiness, the deprivation, and the rejection—with truths straight from God’s Word. Lies flee in the presence of truth. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
819:Some beliefs may be subject to such instant, brutal and unambiguous rejection. For example: no left-coiling periwinkle has ever been found among millions of snails examined. If I happen to find one during my walk on Nobska beach tomorrow morning, a century of well nurtured negative evidence will collapse in an instant. ~ Stephen Jay Gould, #NFDB
820:The triggering event and resulting shame is worse than being rejected because rejection assumes a path by which to return to acceptability. The fear involved in shame is of permanent abandonment, or exile. Those who see our reprehensible core will be so disgusted and sickened that we will be a leper and an outcast forever. ~ Dan B Allender, #NFDB
821:When new pages are sent to editors and see rejection, we should ask for the reasons. We must study the reasons for failure and learn. It's not about struggle with our limitations or with public or the publishers. It's more about treating it like in aikido; the strength of the attack is used to defeat him with the same effort. ~ Jean Giraud, #NFDB
822:And after all, it’s the words that matter, the fact that the Rejection was sent and accepted and the Assemblies established, and just by being on display in the System Lareum that copy has become important. It’s a real vestige now, even if it’s not the one everyone thinks it is. So why should it matter if it’s really a forgery? ~ Ann Leckie, #NFDB
823:Mother Nature has given us some defense mechanisms: as in Aesop’s fable, one of these is our ability to consider that the grapes we cannot (or did not) reach are sour. But an aggressively stoic prior disdain and rejection of the grapes is even more rewarding. Be aggressive; be the one to resign, if you have the guts. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, #NFDB
824:The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace... We must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into self-rejection. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
825:What would happen if people practiced openness and honesty? If people talked about their real challenges without shame or fear of rejection? My guess is that people would feel less alone and isolated. People would be willing to share more, and as a result, society would feel more connected to each other and their experiences. ~ Deborah Reber, #NFDB
826:I can no longer take war or promotion or big income or a large house seriously. I reject empire and Vietnam and placing a man on the moon. I deny time payments and looking like the girl next door and church weddings and a great deal more. If you want to blame such rejection on grass, you can do so. I charge it to awakening. ~ James A Michener, #NFDB
827:Openness to paradox allows both the understanding and the acceptance
of our human condition as “both/and" (both a saint and a sinner) rather
than "either/or" (either a saint or a sinner). The demand for "either—or,”
for one—or—the—other, signals the rejection of paradox and therefore the
denial of spirituality. ~ Katherine Ketcham,#NFDB
828:The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity and held safe in an everlasting embrace...We must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotions, feelings, or passions to seduce us into self-rejection ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
829:I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness.
Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved". Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence. ~ Henri J M Nouwen,#NFDB
830:some time ago I rejected magic in all its forms. This rejection was a gift from your grandparents, who never tried to console me with ideas of an afterlife and were skeptical of preordained American glory. In accepting both the chaos of history and the fact of my total end, I was freed to truly consider how I wished to live— ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
831:The preceding criticism justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of "unmotivated" celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality. ~ Georges Bataille, #NFDB
832:There's very little dislike of Americans in the world, shown by repeated polls, and the dissatisfaction - that is, the hatred and the anger - they come from acceptance of American values, not a rejection of them, and recognition that they're rejected by the U.S. government and by U.S. elites, which does lead to hatred and anger. ~ Noam Chomsky, #NFDB
833:This life is complex that we rarely get to be the people we are truly meant to be. Instead, we wear masks and put up walls to keep from dealing with the fear of rejection, the feeling of regret, the very idea that someone may not love us for who we are deep in our core, that they might not understand the things that drive us, ~ Catherine Doyle, #NFDB
834:She’d been in love with the way Todd made her feel about herself. Evan had been her best friend, but his treatment of her, in a way, had been a rejection. Every single day for two damn years, she’d felt rejected by him. It was no wonder her self-esteem had been so beaten down she’d fal en for the first sweet-talker to come along. ~ Cherrie Lynn, #NFDB
835:The egalitarian agenda will not stop simply with the rejection of male headship in marriage and the establishment of women as pastors and elders in churches. There is something much deeper at stake. At the foundation of egalitarianism is a dislike and a rejection of anything uniquely masculine.1 It is a dislike of manhood itself. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
836:This latter about the analytic smokescreen, which Jung also calls the “medical persona,” is a direct reference to the Big Three of classic Freudian technique—anonymity, abstinence, and neutrality—and to Jung’s pretty much categorical rejection of them, which matches up, of course, with the core position of Relational psychoanalysis. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
837:As believers, how can we fail to see that abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide are a terrible rejection of God's gift of life and love? And as believers, how can we fail to feel the duty to surround the sick and those in distress with the warmth of our affection and the support that will help them always to embrace life? ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
838:His rejection of the church was not entirely funded by his paternal feud; church people had a strange way about them. They smiled too much, were quick to compliment and support, but behind the stretched lips and soft words was a judgment. No one was ever good enough—at least not until they were dead. The dead were exemplary. ~ Michael J Sullivan, #NFDB
839:Our sense of well-being depends to some extent on others regarding us as a You; our yearning for connection is a primal human need, minimally for a cushion for survival. Today the neural echo of that need heightens our sensitivity to the difference between It and You—and makes us feel social rejection as deeply as physical pain. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
840:The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
841:Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it. Ultimately, the only way to achieve meaning and a sense of importance in one’s life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one place, one belief, or (gulp) one person. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
842:He tore desire up from its bleeding roots
And offered to the gods the vacant place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation
Desire (Rejection)
Blinded are human hearts by desire and fear and possession,
Darkened is knowledge on earth by hope the helper of mortals. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems, Ilion,#NFDB
843:In the 1980s a small group of individuals became concerned about the Earth's temperature and what it might do in the future. I hesitate to call them scientists because they have abandoned their scientific principals by which their guess about temperature increases and the cause could achieve scientific acceptance or rejection. ~ Walter Cunningham, #NFDB
844:This life is so complex that we rarely get to be the people we are truly meant to be. Instead, we wear masks and put up walls to keep from dealing with the fear of rejection, the feeling of regret, the very idea that someone may not love us for who we are deep in our core, that they might not understand the things that drive us. ~ Catherine Doyle, #NFDB
845:I think my instinctive rejection of judgment comes from meeting too many people who say on the one hand that their chosen deity shall judge us all but then they judge me anyway, rather than leaving it up to the deity they profess to believe in and trust. That’s using religion to cudgel people into conformity, and it grinds my gears. ~ Kevin Hearne, #NFDB
846:The biggest hurdle is rejection. Any business you start, be ready for it. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is the successful people do all the things the unsuccessful people don't want to do. When 10 doors are slammed in your face, go to door number 11 enthusiastically, with a smile on your face. ~ John Paul DeJoria, #NFDB
847:The wounded inner child contaminates intimacy in relationships because he has no sense of his authentic self. The greatest wound a child can receive is the rejection of his authentic self. When a parent cannot affirm his child’s feelings, needs, and desires, he rejects that child’s authentic self. Then, a false self must be set up. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
848:All the rejection that I've been through only made me stronger, and it's part of being an entrepreneur. You kind of have to take the kid gloves off and let them feel it because it's not going to be the first time that someone's going to say "no" or close a door in your face. You're going to have to figure out how to burst through it. ~ Jessica Alba, #NFDB
849:A lot of what people call nice behavior is really fear, cowardice, and even sin in disguise. Many women are nice not because they truly care about other people, but because they fear conflict and rejection. That’s not peacemaking. That’s peace-faking, and their God-given consciences have been telling them this truth for a long time. ~ Paul Coughlin, #NFDB
850:I had so many beliefs against being a singer or what it takes. There was a lot of pain associated with that. The rejection of it all. I lived in a rejection state of mind. Not because of my voice; the mike never rejected me. It was harboring all those bad memories of being broke. It teaches you your worth. Nothing good comes from that. ~ Ester Dean, #NFDB
851:Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is he only thing in this world that does not hurt. ~ Me a Selimovi, #NFDB
852:If all else fails,’ I would say to Noelia in the periodic moments when it seemed that this time I wasn’t going to finish an article, let alone get through the protracted process of revision, sending, editing, rejection, guaranteed humiliation, etc., etc., that academic life implies, ‘let’s go and live by the sea and I’ll grow papayas. ~ Laia Jufresa, #NFDB
853:Loss of someone we love cannot be adequately expressed with words. Grappling with loss, struggling with disconnection and despair, fills us with a sense of anguish and actual pain. Indeed, the parts of our brain that process physical pain overlap with the neural centers that record social ruptures and rejection. Loss rips us apart. ~ Daniel J Siegel, #NFDB
854:Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt. ~ Me a Selimovi, #NFDB
855:I sent a lot of publishing ideas to my publisher, about 30 of them. Each time except 3, i got a "rejection letter". This is basically what a rejection letter is like: Hello Pathetic Moron, We read your book. It sucked. Don't send us another one. If you do, we will run over your grandmother with a bus. Don't Do It. From, Your Publisher ~ James Dashner, #NFDB
856:Whereas the will is made of titanium and steel, the human spirit is a million times more delicate. It reflects the self-concept or the sense of worthiness that a child feels. It is the most fragile characteristic in human nature and is especially vulnerable to rejection, ridicule, and failure. It must be handled with great care. How, ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
857:Everyone says love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts. Rejection hurts. Losing someone hurts. Envy hurts. Everyone gets these things confused with love, but in reality love is the only thing in this world that covers up all pain and makes someone feel wonderful again. Love is the only thing in this world that does not hurt. ~ Mesa Selimovic, #NFDB
858:It is not unlikely, too, that the rejection of God is a kind of punishment: we may well believe that those who knew the Gods and neglected them in one life may in another life be deprived of the knowledge of them altogether. Also those who have worshipped their own kings as gods have deserved as their punishment to lose all knowledge of God. ~ Sallust, #NFDB
859:My parents' deportation gave me so much strength to keep on moving forward, because any type of failure - whether in school or with jobs or rejection from a casting office - nothing could be as bad as what I had already gone through. Nothing could be worse than coming home expecting to see your loving parents and them not being there. ~ Diane Guerrero, #NFDB
860:The cross is not the suffering tied to being natural existence, but the suffering tied to being Christians. The cross is never simply a matter of suffering, but a matter of suffering and rejection, and even, strictly speaking, rejection for the sake of Jesus Christ, not for the sake of some other arbitrary behavior or confession. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
861:Here is a list of the PINS: Alcohol and drug abuse; Addiction to media products; Aimlessness; Fascination with weapons and violence; Experience with guns; Access to guns; Sullen, Angry, Depressed (SAD); Seeking status and worth through violence; Threats (of violence or suicide); Chronic anger; Rejection/humiliation; Media provocation. ~ Gavin de Becker, #NFDB
862:If life were merely a habit, I should commit suicide; but even now, more or less desperate, I cannot but think, ‘Something wonderful may happen.’ It is not optimism, it is a rejection of self-pity (I hope) which leaves a loophole for life… I merely choose to remain living out of respect for possibility. And possibility is the great good. ~ Frank O Hara, #NFDB
863:The largest fear in the world is to speak in public. We fear of stumbling, or public humiliation, and so we're fearing a face-to-face rejection. So, we'll say things in a text or e-mail that we would never say face-to-face. So, relationships are coming together faster and breaking apart faster, and they're a little bit more disposable. ~ Ashton Kutcher, #NFDB
864:...there are times to teach and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. But to take the child alone, quietly, when the relationship is good and to discuss the teaching or the value seems to have much greater impact. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
865:Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it. Ultimately, the only way to achieve meaning and a sense of importance in one’s life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one place, one belief, or (gulp) one person. (p.166) ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
866:If one denies that, when the meaning is true, then the meant is what is so, one rejects propositional truth. If the rejection is universal, then it is the self-destructive proposition that there are no true propositions. If the rejection is limited to the dogmas, then it is just a roundabout way of saying that all the dogmas are false. ~ Bernard Lonergan, #NFDB
867:It is useless for me to say that those who maintain the doctrine that men have a right to command and women are under an obligation to obey, or that men are fit for government and women unfit, are on the affirmative side of the question, and that they are bound to show positive evidence for the assertions, or submit to their rejection. ~ John Stuart Mill, #NFDB
868:You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” she says, and for the first time in all our lives, I feel a pain in her that is too beautiful for words. It’s not the pain of rejection, like I’ve made her feel so many times. It’s not the pain of loss. It’s the pain of having, and realizing this world can gift us in ways that touch our soul. ~ Sarah Noffke, #NFDB
869:That there is something in advice very useful and salutary, seems to be equally confessed on all hands; since even those that reject it, allow for the most part that rejection to be wrong, but charge the fault upon the unskilful manner in which it is given; they admit the efficacy of the medicine, but abhor the nauseousness of the vehicle. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
870:From what I've seen, it isn't so much the act of asking that paralyzes us--it's what lies beneath: the fear of being vulnerable, the fear of rejection, the fear of looking needy or weak. The fear of being seen as a burdensome member of the community instead of a productive one.
It points, fundamentally, to our separation from one another. ~ Amanda Palmer,#NFDB
871:…It's breadth, and the strength between us to know that we're ready for the next step. I want to do it this way so it lasts, and I need you to understand that for me."
"I understand."
"Do you?" Hunter asked him closely. "Then why do I still hear rejection in your voice?"
"Because I'm impulsive, and immature, and…in love with you. ~ Brandon Shire,#NFDB
872:... my century.. is unique in the history of men for two reasons. It is the first century since life began when a decisive part of the most articulate section of mankind has not merely ceased to believe in God, but has deliberately rejected God. And it is the century in which this religious rejection has taken a specifically political form. ~ Whittaker Chambers, #NFDB
873:anxiety is just groundless and pointless. It occurs only as a hangover of bad habits established when we were trusting things—like human approval and wealth—that were certain to let us down. Now our strategy should be one of resolute rejection of worry, while we concentrate on the future in hope and with prayer and on the past with thanksgiving. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
874:God is indeed angry at everything that has so horribly spoiled his wonderful world. His gaze from the throne is a deep, inexpressible mixture of sorrow and anger. But the lamb’s anger is the utter rejection, by Love incarnate, of all that is unloving. The only people who should be afraid of it are those who are determined to resist the call of love. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
875:He concluded in the last scene that we are given two choices in life. We can allow ourselves to love and care for others, which makes us vulnerable to their sickness, death, or rejection. Or we can protect ourselves by refusing to love. Lewis decided that it is better to feel and to suffer than to go through life isolated, insulated, and lonely. ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
876:In the end, the Declaration was not a rejection of government power in general but rather a condemnation of the British crown for depriving the colonists of the government they needed. In order to reframe the Declaration as something rather different, the Committee to Proclaim Liberty had to edit out much of the document they claimed to champion. ~ Kevin M Kruse, #NFDB
877:Self-rejection is simply seen as the neurotic expression of an insecure person. But neurosis is often the psychic manifestation of a much deeper human darkness: the darkness of not feeling truly welcome in human existence. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voics that calls us the "Beloved. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
878:The passage from the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga; and this passage may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the higher, - the ordinary view-point, - or by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. it is this, rather, that must be the aim of an integral Yoga.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
879:Jesus never encouraged His friends to cover over the pain in their lives, but to bring it into the light, where healing is found. Sometimes we don't do that because we fear being rejected by others. Yes, rejection may well happen, but bringing the pain to the light is still the best way to live. It will take much courage, but it will bring freedom. ~ Sheila Walsh, #NFDB
880:turns out that experiences of social exclusion or rejection—such as being shunned in a game, receiving negative social feedback, or viewing images of deceased loved ones—activate exactly the same regions of the brain as when we are in physical pain.12 When we’re socially rejected or isolated, we don’t just feel sad. We feel injured and under threat. ~ Jo Marchant, #NFDB
881:The left can't accept rejection, they can't accept defeat, and they're gonna spend the next four years [2017-2020] telling themselves they didn't lose, that Trump is illegitimate, and they're gonna have the media just dumping all over the Republicans each and every day, and who knows what role Obama's gonna play in that, but he will be playing one. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
882:theory, defines motivation as “the energy for action.”2 The nature of motivation is a widely contested topic in psychology, but Fogg argues that three Core Motivators drive our desire to act. Fogg states that all humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain; to seek hope and avoid fear; and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
883:But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of goodwill which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
884:We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if …” “If only …” “I wonder what would have …” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
885:It is a very small core; not at all reflective (they are too ignorant) nor defiant (their emotional and imaginative poverty excludes that); almost, in its own way, prim and demure; like a pebble, or a very young cancer. But it will serve our turn. Here at last is a real and deliberate, though not fully articulate, rejection of what the Enemy calls Grace. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
886:Early reading is serendipitous, and rightly so. Gloriously so. Libraries favor serendipity, invite it; the roaming along a shelf, eyeing an unfamiliar name, taking this down, then that--oh, who's this? Never heard of her--give her a go? That is where, and how, you learn affinity and rejection. You find out what you like by exploring what you do not. ~ Penelope Lively, #NFDB
887:The worst aspect of dating from the perspective of many men is how dating can feel to a man like robbery by social custom - the social custom of him taking money out of his pocket, giving it to her, and calling it a date. To a young man, the worst dates feel like being robbed and rejected. Boys risk death to avoid rejection (e.g., by joining the Army ~ Warren Farrell, #NFDB
888:All I was responsible to do was share Christ with the person. It’s not my job to save him or her. The failure lies in being one who never shares his or her faith with others. Fear of rejection, mistakes, and failure causes people to make the worst mistake of all—that of doing nothing. When you make a mistake, you can resolve never to make another one. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
889:I am interested in the creativity of the criminal attitude because I recognize in it the existence of a special condition of crazy creativity. A creativity without morals fired only by the energy of freedom and the rejection of all codes and laws. For freedom rejects the dictated roles of the law and of the imposed order and for this reason is isolated. ~ Joseph Beuys, #NFDB
890:it is easy for parents to pass on unnecessary guilt, shame, and insecurity to their children because we fear the rejection of critical and judgmental people in our lives. So if I can help other parents understand the profound importance of accepting children as they are, perhaps I can save those children from some of the anguish I felt for many years. ~ Sally Clarkson, #NFDB
891:They are the responses of a wounded person, cut off from the intimate connections that form a robust identity, and conditioned through conditional acceptance and rejection at a tender age to adopt a deep-seated self-rejection that leaves him ever hungry for approval. All of the habits of separation are symptoms, and only secondarily causes, of our ~ Charles Eisenstein, #NFDB
892:We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. "What if..." "If only..." "I wonder what would have..." You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
893:Everyone uses that awful cliché that love hurts, but that’s not true. Real love doesn’t hurt. Real love is wonderful. Its loneliness that hurts. And rejection. And losing someone close to you hurts. Everyone confuses these things with love, but in reality, love is the only thing in this world that covers up all the pain and makes us feel wonderful again. ~ Christina Ross, #NFDB
894:felt stuck with a suffocating sense of wanting to feel better but not knowing how. My brain has such a hard time overriding my heart sometimes. One rejection after another did quite a number on my heart. And each new rejection didn’t just add hurt; it multiplied the pain that was already there. That accumulation created a dark feeling of hopeless defeat. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
895:All that rejection from Republicans has a bit of a racist element. It was very necessary to have a black president, and it's been a great thing. It will help, in the end, to ease the trauma of slavery and civil war. The war against slavery cost almost 800,000 American lives - that's how strongly they felt about it. And it's not going to go away in a century. ~ Martin Amis, #NFDB
896:In its essence, entitlement goes deeper than a person thinking, It’s okay if I want to be lazy because someone else will bear my burdens, or I’m so special that the rules don’t apply to me. In fact, entitlement goes so deep that it rejects the very foundations on which God constructed the universe. At its heart, entitlement is a rejection of reality itself. ~ John Townsend, #NFDB
897:In the present age, man proves his separation from his Creator by his spirit of self-sufficienc y and positive rejection of God. The present issue between God and man is one of whether man will accept God's estimate of him, abandon his hopeless self-struggle, and cast himself only on God who alone is sufficient to accomplish his needed transformation. ~ Lewis Sperry Chafer, #NFDB
898:My view of addiction, whether it's drugs, food, alcohol or any list of other things, is the same reason I asked my mother why I wasn't a drug addict or alcoholic, which is because when you're not loved, often people become an addict and self destructive. Now the opposite of love is indifference and even worse is rejection and abuse, and I meet those people. ~ Bernie Siegel, #NFDB
899:What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
900:The people who are good in the long run fail a lot, especially at the beginning. So, when you fail early, it might be worth realizing that this is part of the deal, the price you pay for being good in the long run. Every rejection is a gift. A chance to learn and to do it better next time. An opportunity to figure out how to bounce, not break. Don't waste them. ~ Seth Godin, #NFDB
901:Mr. Milton set out in his great poem to justify the ways of God to men, as he says. He has not considered one question, however: perhaps God has forbidden men to know His ways, for if they did know the full extent of His goodness, and the magnitude of our rejection of it, they would be so disheartened they would abandon all hope of redemption, and die of grief. I ~ Iain Pears, #NFDB
902:Much of the violence that humanity suffers in our times is rooted inmisunderstanding as well as in the rejection of the values and identityof foreign cultures. Tourism improves relationships between individualsand peoples; when they are cordial, respectful, and based on solidarity theyconstitute, as it were, an open door to peace and harmonious coexistence ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
903:I conceive that the leading characteristic of the nineteenth century has been the rapid growth of the scientific spirit, the consequent application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems with which the human mind is occupied, and the correlative rejection of traditional beliefs which have proved their incompetence to bear such investigation. ~ Thomas Huxley, #NFDB
904:The goal lies away from the sensual world. It is not a rejection of the sensual world, but understanding it so well that we no longer seek it as an end in itself. We no longer expect the sensory world to satisfy us. We no longer demand that sensory consciousness be anything other than an existing condition that we can use skillfully according to time and place. ~ Ajahn Sumedho, #NFDB
905:People call love sickness heartache, but that's not where you feel rejection. Your heart only responds to excitement and fear - racing, pounding, skipping beats. You feel rejection in the pit of your stomach. It's like the moment you realise you've eaten bad food, and you know that all you've got to look forward to is a night of twisted torment and twisted sheets. ~ Paul Cornell, #NFDB
906:physical pain and intense experiences of social rejection hurt in the same way… Neuroscience advances confirm what we’ve known all along: emotions can hurt and cause pain. And just as we often struggle to define physical pain, describing emotional pain is difficult. Shame is particularly hard because it hates having words wrapped around it. It hates being spoken. ~ Amanda Palmer, #NFDB
907:We’re damned if we do stay home and we’re damned if we don’t. We’re damned because we conservative moms drive the Left and its feminist shills mad with our mere existence, our exercise of free will, our fierce belief in protecting our families from the Nanny State, our embrace of free-market principles, and our rejection of the perpetual victim/grievance mentality. ~ Ben Shapiro, #NFDB
908:Despite all the types of rejection, the most important part is to keep on moving forward and to not give up. If things are getting bad, take a break and seek out people for their opinion on what you may do to improve your presentation. In the end, it is all a numbers game and it does become a lot easier. It stops becoming this big ordeal and is just part of the job. ~ Mark Edward, #NFDB
909:My art school rejection letter arrived as a cold manila fist that closed around my fragile hopes ... The fear was practically edible. Nothing would happen unless I get out and make it happen. Then, as if handling me the keys to the jet pack, my dad bought me a typewriter and a taped message to the inside of its case: "Son - the world is waiting to hear from you". ~ Grant Morrison, #NFDB
910:Sales and theater have much in common. Both take guts. Salespeople pick up the phone and call strangers; actors walk onto the stage in front of them. Both invite rejection—for salespeople, slammed doors, ignored calls, and a pile of nos; for actors, a failed audition, an unresponsive audience, a scathing review. And both have evolved along comparable trajectories. ~ Daniel H Pink, #NFDB
911:deep fears I held about rejection and abandonment from past wounds. These self-sabotaging acts also made it difficult to stick with school, a job, or meaningful relationships with others, for any length of time. I would seem to do well for short periods, only to find myself back in crisis survival “rescue me” mode again and again, essentially fitting the description ~ Debbie Corso, #NFDB
912:...grit grows as we figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and disappointment, and learn to tell the difference between low-level goals that should be abandoned quickly and higher-level goals that demand more tenacity. The maturation story is that we develop the capacity for long-term passion and perseverance as we get older. ~ Angela Duckworth, #NFDB
913:I choose to love you in silence, for in silence I find no rejection.
I choose to love you in loneliness, for in loneliness no one owns you but me.
I choose to adore you from a distance, for distance will shield me from pain.
I chose to kiss you in the wind, for the wind is gentler than my lips.
I choose to hold you in my dreams, for in my dreams you have no end. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
914:It’s a rare opportunity when a person removes all the layers and allows you to see who they are at the core. Sometimes we don’t even get that chance with our own family or friends, and maybe it’s easier to let someone you don’t have any emotional connection with see that side of you. There’s no fear of rejection, ridicule, or withholding love. We had nothing to lose. ~ Dannika Dark, #NFDB
915:I think it's good if a man gives a woman some time to herself because I think we all need that and we can all benefit from that. It doesn't imply a rejection of the other person, just a sense that because we do have our separate identities, sometimes you have to be less involved in another person's life or need to have that other person be less involved in your life. ~ Jack Nicholson, #NFDB
916:Rejection is good. Putting others ahead of self, giving things away. Success, money, power, fame, happiness, friends; any kind of pleasure - giving it all away, in the pyramid scheme of life, with the knowledge that everything will be returned, and being satisfied with that knowledge; not with the actual return of things, but the idea of the return of things. There is death. ~ Tao Lin, #NFDB
917:So many of our sins begin with fear—fear of disappointment, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of death, fear of obscurity. Cynicism may seem a mild transgression, but it is a patient predator that suffocates hope, slowly, over many years, like the honey mushroom which forces itself between the bark and sapwood of a tree and over decades is strangled to death. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
918:My art school rejection letter arrived as a cold manila fist that closed around my fragile hopes [...] The fear was practically edible. Nothing would happen unless I get out and make it happen.
Then, as if handing me the keys to the jet pack, my dad bought me a typewriter and a taped message to the inside of its case: 'Son- the world is waiting to hear from you'. ~ Grant Morrison,#NFDB
919:The concept of equal pay for equal work is not only an impossible task, it can only be accomplished with the total rejection of the idea of the voluntary contract... The idea that a businessman must hire anyone and is prevented from firing anyone for any reason he chooses, and in the name of rights, is a clear indication that the basic concept of a free society has been lost. ~ Ron Paul, #NFDB
920:This absolute lack of objectivity might be said to resemble nothing so much as the lack of objectivity these same people had shown during Stalin's life, when they had been so supremely worshipful of his mind and strength of will, of his foresight and genius. Their hysterical worship of Stalin and their total and unconditional rejection of him sprang from the same soil. ~ Vasily Grossman, #NFDB
921:Melanin is the black pigment which permits skins to appear other than white (black, brown, red and yellow). Melanin pigment coloration is the norm for the hue-man family. If there are non-white readers who disagree with this presentation of white rejection of the white-skinned self, may I refer you to the literature on the currently developing sun-tanning parlors. ~ Frances Cress Welsing, #NFDB
922:By the time of his death, his implicit rejection of many traditional Roman values and a commitment to and admiration for the older culture had imposed a lasting Greek renaissance on the greater part of the empire. To Hadrian, it was the ultimate imperial triumph: a fine and realistic use of the resources of a conquered power and a glorious fusion of two great cultures. ~ Elizabeth Speller, #NFDB
923:absolute freedom, by itself, means nothing. Freedom grants the opportunity for greater meaning, but by itself there is nothing necessarily meaningful about it. Ultimately, the only way to achieve meaning and a sense of importance in one’s life is through a rejection of alternatives, a narrowing of freedom, a choice of commitment to one place, one belief, or (gulp) one person. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
924:But even these talents cannot fully explain Hitler’s success. The key to understanding why many Germans supported him lies in the Nazis’ rejection of a rational, factual world. Hitler himself, in the words of his biographer Joachim Fest, was “always thinking the unthinkable,” and “in his statements an element of bitter refusal to submit to reality invariably emerged. ~ Benjamin Carter Hett, #NFDB
925:Do I look that bad?’ I said, my voice quavering with the rejection that I was ashamed for even caring about. ‘Is that what this is all about? How ugly I look?’
Patrick kept his eyes on the back wall of the cave.
‘If you really have to know, it’s the opposite of that,’ he said, his voice taking on a tender tone. ‘I think you are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. ~ Vanessa Garden,#NFDB
926:wasn’t built for heavy doses of rejection. I’d known this about myself since high school, freshman year, when I got cut from the baseball team. A small setback, in the grand scheme, but it knocked me sideways. It was my first real awareness that not everyone in this world will like us, or accept us, that we’re often cast aside at the very moment we most need to be included. I ~ Phil Knight, #NFDB
927:Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It IS education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching. There are no uneducated people; only most people are educated wrong. The true task of culture today is not a task of expansion, but of selection-and-rejection. The educationist must find a creed and teach it. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
928:I had to make friends whenever Mom moved us to our newest shitty apartment, and it was painful to put myself out there for rejection again and again. Eventually, you pretend you don't need friends and, whether you want them to or not, people take the cue. After a while, you start to believe it yourself. I know how difficult it is to admit you're lonely the way Indy has. ~ Sarah Lyons Fleming, #NFDB
929:Remember how hard it is for people with the fixed mindset to forgive? Part of it is that they feel branded by a rejection or breakup. But another part is that if they forgive the partner, if they see him or her as a decent person, then they have to shoulder more of the blame themselves: If my partner’s a good guy, then I must be a bad guy. I must be the person who was at fault. ~ Carol S Dweck, #NFDB
930:Shame is not a mirage. It is very real. A sexually violated woman feels contaminated by what has been done to her, and she really is contaminated. A person who has lived with rejection can’t neutralize it with happy thoughts. Shame is like dirt. No matter how it happened, you are a mess and something has to be done about it. When you are dirty, there is no feel-as-if about it. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
931:I need a place to confess that I don't have everything figured out. Christianity is not a program for avoiding mistakes; it is a faith of the guilty. There is no "right" or perfect way to be. We learn from our mistakes; we extend grace to others and ourselves. In the same way a lover who loves your body allows you to have grace for it, so is grace the antithesis of rejection. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
932:I winked and locked my arm in Carter's, and we stood there, watching Dean stroll away.
"You know the guy's never gonna give up," Carter nudged me, letting out a sigh.
"We'd have really pretty babies, huh?"
"Yup. They'd be rad little Brangelinas, running around tearing the place up."
"Yeah, you're right. My rejection is such a disservice to the world... ~ Rachael Wade,#NFDB
933:Dimple could see, flush from the endorphins of a great performance, why actors and performers got addicted to this kind of thing. It had always seemed unfathomable to her, choosing a career where all you did was put yourself out in front of hundreds or thousands of people and risked rejection in real time. But if they felt even half of what she was feeling now when it went well... ~ Sandhya Menon, #NFDB
934:One may not always know his purpose until his only option is to monopolize in what he truly excels at. He grows weary of hearing the answer 'no' time and time again, so he turns to and cultivates, monopolizes in his one talent which others cannot possibly subdue. Then, beyond the crowds of criticism and rejection, the right people recognize his talent - among them he finds his stage. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
935:The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity. ~ Thomas Szasz, #NFDB
936:I tell the girls in our student ministry, “You don’t really want sex. What you want is intimacy. You want to meet a guy, fall in love, and know you can trust him completely. You want somebody with whom you can share everything there is to know about you without fear of betrayal or rejection. You want to be fully known and to know him fully. Purity now paves the way to intimacy later. ~ Andy Stanley, #NFDB
937:In many inner cities, there are issues of less economic stability, poorer education, community centers being stripped away, arts being removed from the school system leaving many children imbalanced, isolated from their most powerful self... the independent thinker, the creator, the dreamer often leaving children more susceptible to other harmful things out of boredom or feelings of rejection. ~ Mya, #NFDB
938:The Anarchists' uncompromising rejection of the State, the subject of Marxian sneers for its "absolutist" and "Utopian" character, makes much better sense in the present era than the Marxist relativist and historical approach. The pacifists also seem to be more realistic than the Marxist both in their understanding of modern war and also in their attempts to do something about it. ~ Dwight Macdonald, #NFDB
939:You must not be afraid of rejection, or of how you would feel if you got sick, or if someone died, or if something else went wrong. You cannot spend your life avoiding things that are not actually happening, or everything will become negative. All you will end up seeing is how much can potentially go wrong. Do you have any idea how many things can cause inner pain and disturbance? ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
940:But some time ago I rejected magic in all its forms. This rejection was a gift from your grandparents, who never tried to console me with ideas of an afterlife and were skeptical of preordained American glory. In accepting both the chaos of history and the fact of my total end, I was freed to truly consider how I wished to live-- specifically, how do I live free in this black body? ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
941:Every rejection, failure, heartache- may dahilan lahat. Hindi mo man maintindihan ngayon kasi nasaktan ka. Kasi masama ang loob mo. Kasi umasa ka, tapos hindi mo nakuha. Pero balang araw, malalaman mo rin ang dahilan. Makikita mo rin kung saan pupunta ang sakit na nararamdaman mo ngayon. Maaaring hindi pa panahon. Maaaring hindi lang ukol. O maaaring may mas magandang nakalaan para sa iyo. ~ Noringai, #NFDB
942:It’s a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so at the end of a lot of years, you would have something to show besides a wheelbarrow of rejection slips. Instead you could have enough bricks to build a house. ~ Jerry Spinelli, #NFDB
943:there are some broad strokes that can be fairly applied to most of us: We seek connection with others; We are saddened by loss, and try to avoid it; We dislike rejection; We like recognition and attention; We will do more to avoid pain than we will do to seek pleasure; We dislike ridicule and embarrassment; We care what others think of us; We seek a degree of control over our lives; ~ Gavin de Becker, #NFDB
944:Another tendency leading toward rejection of the supreme authority of Scripture is the claim of Cindy Jacobs and other charismatics and Pentecostals that many contemporary prophecies are saying that God wants women to teach and preach to both sexes, or to be in pastoral leadership roles. When this claim is made, the contemporary prophecies take precedence over the teaching of Scripture. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
945:conditions of the psychic opening :::
The realisation of the psychic being, its awakening and the bringing of it in front depend mainly on the extent to which one can develop a personal relation with the Divine, a relation of Bhakti, love, reliance, self-giving, rejection of the insistences of the separating and self-asserting mental, vital and physical ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - III,#NFDB
946:Debunking the myth of the ‘mean girl,’ new research has found that boys use relational aggression — malicious rumors, social exclusion and rejection — to harm or manipulate others more often than girls. The longitudinal study followed a cohort of students from middle to high school and found that, at every grade level, boys engaged in relationally aggressive behavior more often than girls. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
947:Every child who, rather than being born, is condemned unjustly to being aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who even before he was born, and then just after birth, experienced the world’s rejection. And every elderly person…even if he is ill or at the end of his days, bears the face of Christ. They cannot be discarded, as the ‘culture of waste’ suggests! ~ Pope Francis, #NFDB
948:Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation is in the self, or rather the rejection of the self. Dedication in the obverse side of self-rejection. Man alone is a religious animal because, as Montaigne points out, it is a malady confined to man, and not seen in any other creature, to hate and despise ourselves. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
949:Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world. ~ Robert McKee, #NFDB
950:You see, the pitfalls of the audition room and the airport interrogation room are the same. They are places where the threat of rejection is real. They’re also places where you’re reduced to your marketability or threat-level, where the length of your facial hair can be a deal breaker, where you are seen, and hence see yourself, in reductive labels –never as ‘just a bloke called Dave’. ~ Nikesh Shukla, #NFDB
951:we all are sinners by nature and choice, and no one actually deserves any of God’s grace or deserves any opportunity to hear the gospel of Christ—those come only because of God’s unmerited favor. Condemnation comes not only because of a willful rejection of Christ, but also because of the sins that we have committed and the rebellion against God that those sins represent (see John 3:18). ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
952:In life, the path of least resistance is always silence. If you don’t express your feelings and thoughts to others, you don’t have to deal with their reactions to it. You don’t have to feel vulnerable. You don’t risk rejection. But I’ll tell you what: the path of least resistance leads exactly where that ride leads to.” He pointed again to the carts looping around the track. “Nowhere. ~ Brendon Burchard, #NFDB
953:To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking. It's akin to letting your palm open to unhand something you have been holding on to. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
954:First, we need to forgive our parents, our brothers, our sisters, our friends, and God. Once you forgive God, you can finally forgive yourself. Once you forgive yourself, the self-rejection in your mind is over. Self-acceptance begins, and the self-love will grow so strong that you will finally accept yourself just the way you are. That's the beginning of the free human. Forgiveness is key. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
955:Love is a constant negotiation, a constant conversation; to love someone is to lay yourself open to rejection and abandonment; love is something you can earn but not extort. It is an arena in which you are not in control, because someone else also has rights and decisions; it is a collaborative process; making love is at its best a process in which those negotiations become joy and play. ~ Rebecca Solnit, #NFDB
956:Rejection isn’t just an emotion we feel. It’s a message that’s sent to the core of who we are, causing us to believe lies about ourselves, others, and God. We connect an event from today to something harsh someone once said. That person’s line becomes a label. The label becomes a lie. And the lie becomes a liability in how we think about ourselves and interact in every future relationship. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
957:The very same brain centers that interpret and feel physical pain also become activated during experiences of emotional rejection. In brain scans, they light up in response to social ostracism, just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli. When people speak of feeling hurt or of having emotional pain, they are not being abstract or poetic, but scientifically quite precise. ~ Gabor Mate, #NFDB
958:Waiting was a tragicomedy. There was this whole absurdist, endless, excruciating quality to it. We distract ourselves in a million different ways to delude ourselves into thinking that we're not "waiting", because waiting is unendurable. Waiting has demands. It percolates with fear and potential rejection, and threatens you with despair... There's always a wisp of hope in the hopelessness... ~ Teresa Toten, #NFDB
959:The very same brain centers that interpret and feel physical pain also become activated during experiences of emotional rejection. In brain scans, they light up in response to social ostracism, just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli. When people speak of feeling hurt or of having emotional pain, they are not being abstract or poetic, but scientifically quite precise. ~ Gabor Mate, #NFDB
960:My family spent many years sleeping side by side in the same room. It's important for me to not separate myself from them or to say that I've suffered more than they have because I'm gay. We all suffered from the same political rejection, and from poverty. When you're starving with eleven other people in the same room, you become connected to them forever. We were all hungry at the same time. ~ Abdellah Taia, #NFDB
961:Ultimately, the war on science comes down to the rise of authoritarianism—corporate authoritarianism, antigovernment authoritarianism, religious authoritarianism, and, in its rejection of objectivity, a rejection of the idea that we could all work together with a common view from both nowhere and everywhere to make life better for everyone while preserving and improving our shared home. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB
962:And a strong man", she said. "Strong enough to be vulnerable, to take risks, to be honest even when honesty might expose him to ridicule or rejection. And someone who would put himself at the center of my world even before knowing that I would be willing to do the same for him. A man foolish and brave enough to tell me that he loves me even when I have hidden all signs that I love him in return. ~ Mary Balogh, #NFDB
963:When we heard about the hippies, the barely more than boys and girls who decided to try something different ... we laughed at them. We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives ~ June Jordan, #NFDB
964:Self-rejection paves the landing strip for the rejection of others to arrive and pull on up to the gates of our hearts. Think about why it hurts so much when other people say or do things that make you feel rejected. Isn’t it in part due to the fact they just voiced some vulnerability you’ve already berated yourself for? It hurts exponentially more when you’re kicked in an already bruised shin. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
965:What came first the music or the misery?People worry about kids playing with guns,or watching violent videos,that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about the kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak,rejection,pain,misery and loss.Did i listen to pop music because i was miserable?Or was i miserable because i listened to pop music? ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
966:A struggling writer, 'I get hundreds of rejection letters each day. I am depressed with this life, Can you please help?' The Wise-man, 'No, I can’t help. It is good that you are being rejected. The more you get rejection letters, the better your writing will become. Always remember, first they will reject you, then they... ignore you, then they will laugh at you and finally, they may accept you. ~ Santosh Kalwar, #NFDB
967:I choose to love you in silence…
For in silence I find no rejection,
I choose to love you in loneliness…
For in loneliness no one owns you but me,
I choose to adore you from a distance…
For distance will shield me from pain,
I choose to kiss you in the wind…
For the wind is gentler than my lips,
I choose to hold you in my dreams…
For in my dreams, you have no end. ~ Rumi,#NFDB
968:I cannot imagine a greater motivation to pray than that God enjoys having me in His presence. He enjoys my company. He delights in listening to me! He doesn't get bored with my repeated requests. He doesn't moralize me if I get it wrong in what I ask for. He doesn't laugh at me if I put out silly, even impertinent, requests. He never makes me feel stupid. There is no rejection, only total acceptance. ~ R T Kendall, #NFDB
969:Those whom we find most difficult to love are those who need our love the most. The reason others seem unlovable is usually because they have already been hurt, and they are reacting to those hurts. They are suffering in their personalities the wounds of rejection. They need others who will love them with a God kind of love. Each additional rejection intensifies the wounds of previous rejections. 1 ~ Frank Hammond, #NFDB
970:We are not called to fear what following the Way of Jesus may require of us, but that doesn’t mean those fears won’t crop up. A life of following Christ requires relinquishing those fears when they do come. It means refusing to let your fears of what others think, your fears of rejection, keep you from pursuing the truth about the Holy Spirit and whatever else God is teaching you and calling you to. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
971:Female monsters take things as personally as they really are. They study facts. Even if rejection makes them feel like the girl who's not invited to the party, they have to understand the reasons why.
... Every question, once it's formulated, is a paradigm, contains its own internal truth. We have to stop diverting ourselves with false questions. And I told Warren: I aim to be a female monster too. ~ Chris Kraus,#NFDB
972:As grand and glorious as love is, it is not without its perils. Anyone who has felt the cruel pangs of rejection knows that love is best approached cautiously, as one would approach an angry, cornered brush-tailed possum. Yes, before throwing yourself into a relationship, it's wise to buy a sturdy pair of leather gloves, and to be extra careful of love's front claws and rows of needle-sharp teeth. ~ Michael J Nelson, #NFDB
973:What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
974:You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.' It certainly is not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: 'You are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless; you are despicable, you are nobody- unless you can demonstrate the opposite.' These negative voices are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them. That's the great trap. It is the trap of self-rejection. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
975:God’s love sets us free from the need to seek approval. Knowing that we are loved by God, accepted by God, approved by God, and that we are new creations in Christ empowers us to reject self-rejection and embrace a healthy self-love. Being secure in God’s love for us, our love for Him, and our love for ourselves, prepares us to fulfill the second greatest commandment: To love our neighbor as ourselves. ~ Myles Munroe, #NFDB
976:Men who as boys felt neglected by their dads often remain distant from their children. The sins of fathers are passed on to children, often through the dynamic of self-protection. It hurts to be neglected, and it creates questions about our value to others. So to avoid feeling the sting of further rejection, we refuse to give that part of ourselves we fear might once again be received with indifference. ~ Larry Crabb, #NFDB
977:Strauss admits to being obsessed by his mother's rejection, and with the resultant rents in self-esteem. The Game echoes with disturbingly abusive comments leveled at his adolescent self, a self he feels was unacceptable. With bravado, he expresses regret that he didn't rack up more sexual conquests in his teens; in person, he expresses a truer regret that he was intimidated by life itself. ~ Antonella Gambotto Burke, #NFDB
978:I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
979:It is not OK in this culture to talk to friends about causes you believe in, much less to ask them to join in. It's OK to blast perfect strangers with crass messages every hour of the day, but it's a tinge embarrassing, it brings up some shyness, it seems an intrusion, it risks rejection to share real heartfelt commitments. It's easier to share our cynicism with strangers than our dreams with friends. ~ Donella Meadows, #NFDB
980:The first book ever written in an alphabet was the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. And the most important passage was the Ten Commandments. The first commandment is the most revolutionary sentence ever written. It states: "I am the Lord thy God there is no other." The second prohibits us from making images. Thus, there is a profound rejection of any goddess influence and a ban of representative art. ~ Leonard Shlain, #NFDB
981:Shame lives in the community, though the community can feel like a courtroom. It says, “You don’t belong—you are unacceptable, unclean, and disgraced” because “You are wrong, you have sinned” (guilt), or “Wrong has been done to you” or “You are associated with those who are disgraced or outcast.” The shamed person feels worthless, expects rejection, and needs cleansing, fellowship, love, and acceptance. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
982:I wanted to do the comic strip. I tried to get it syndicated, and I sent some examples to a syndication company, and they sent me a rejection letter! I wasn't smart enough at the time to realize you shouldn't let rejection letters stop you. I thought that rejection letter meant I was not allowed to be a cartoonist in this world, so I put the rejection letter down and said, well, I'll be a stand-up comedian. ~ Brian Regan, #NFDB
983:Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of science. In other words, religion has become a matter of the heart and science has become a matter of the mind. This regrettable state of affairs does not reflect the fact that physiologically , one cannot exist without the other. Mind and heart are only different aspects of us. ~ Gary Zukav, #NFDB
984:The world we live in is a house of pain, and we cannot live in it without it touching us. You will never be smart enough to escape its grasp. From the violence of childbirth to cut fingers and scraped knees, from sibling mockery and peer rejection to familial brokenness, suffering is part of every phase of human existence. We enter life through suffering’s door and we exit life through suffering’s door. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
985:What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"- Rob ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
986:Besides, to be fair to him, his viciousness was perhaps not innate. From his earliest steps among men he had felt, then seen himself the object of jeers, condemnation, rejection. Human speech for him always meant mockery and curses. As he grew older he had found nothing but hatred around him. He had caught it. He had acquired the general viciousness. He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded. ~ Victor Hugo, #NFDB
987:The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
988:Acting is a difficult profession, it really is. It's different than singing. With singing you may have one song and four people to record it - but they'll all do it differently and they'll all have that option. Whereas with actors there might be one part, and five hundred actors all want the same role - it's so much more competitive. It's an incredibly painful profession because you get so much rejection. ~ Olivia Newton John, #NFDB
989:--As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females."
--"I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. ~ Jane Austen,#NFDB
990:Another way to put an end to self-rejection is ask yourself whether what you're telling yourself is what a friend would say, or what an enemy would. Friends are supportive. Enemies put us down and undermine our confidence. So if you say something that an enemy would say, stop. Answer back, 'I'm going to be supportive of myself. As a friend, what I have to say to myself is . . .' Then say something supportive. ~ Mira Kirshenbaum, #NFDB
991:Blay said yet again, that old, familiar voice cutting through all of those years of rejection and judgment, giving him not just a rope of acceptance to hang on to, but a flesh-and-blood hand to lead him out of the darkness of his past… And into a future that didn’t require lies or excuses, because what he was, and what they were, was both extraordinary—and not hing out of the ordinary. Love, after all, was universal. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
992:Ethical veganism results in a profound revolution within the individual; a complete rejection of the paradigm of oppression and violence that she has been taught from childhood to accept as the natural order. It changes her life and the lives of those with whom she shares this vision of nonviolence. Ethical veganism is anything but passive; on the contrary, it is the active refusal to cooperate with injustice ~ Gary L Francione, #NFDB
993:It's obsequious little nicety-nice girls like me who allow assholes to run the world: Miss Harlot O'Harlots, billionaire phony tree huggers, hypocrite drug-snorting, weed-puffing peace activists who fund the mass-murdering drug cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in dirt-poor banana republics. It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities. ~ Chuck Palahniuk, #NFDB
994:where rejection is present with neurotic anxiety, we found a certain constellation always present: The rejection was never accepted as an objective fact, but was held in juxtaposition with idealized expectations about the parent. The young woman was unable to appraise the parent realistically, but always confused the reality situation with expectations of what the parent should have been or might yet become. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
995:In a recluse, the most irrevocable, lifelong rejection of the world often has as its basis an uncontrolled passion for the crowd, of such force that, finding when he does go out that he cannot win the admiration of a concierge, passers-by or even the coachman halted at the corner, he prefers to spend his life out of their sight, and gives up all activities which would make it necessary for him to leave the house. ~ Marcel Proust, #NFDB
996:Micro-regulation is micro-tyranny, a slithering, serpentine network of insinuating Ceaucescu and Kim Jong-Il mini-me's. It's time for the mass rejection of their diktats. A political order that subjects you to the caprices of faceless bureaucrats or crusading "judges" merits no respect. To counter the Bureau of Compliance, we need an Alliance of Non-Compliance to help once free people roll back the regulatory state. ~ Mark Steyn, #NFDB
997:Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the stateof victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, "they" don't want me, "they" accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, "they" don't deserve me. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
998:Columbine had one of the best academic reputations in the state; 80 percent of graduates headed on to degree programs. College dominated the conversation now: big fat acceptance packets and paper-thin rejection envelopes; last-minute campus visits to narrow down the finalists. It was time to commit to a university, write the deposit check, and start selecting first-semester classes. High school was essentially over. ~ Dave Cullen, #NFDB
999:Suicide creates his own society: to shut yourself off from other people in some dingy, rented box and stare, like Melville's Bartleby, day in and day out at the dead wall outside your window is in itself a rejection of the world which is said to be rejecting you. It is a way of saying, like Bartleby, 'I prefer not to' to every offer and every possibility, which is a condition no amount of social engineering will cure. ~ Al lvarez, #NFDB
1000:Take the time you need to learn the craft. Then sit down and write. When you hand over your completed manuscript to a trusted reader, keep an open mind. Edit, edit, and edit again. After you have written a great query letter, go to AgentQuery.com. This site is an invaluable resource that lists agents in your genre. Submit, accept rejection as part of the process, and submit again. And, of course, never give up. ~ Kathleen Grissom, #NFDB
1001:Talking about painful events doesn’t necessarily establish community – often quite the contrary. Families and organizations may reject members who air the dirty laundry; friends and family can lost patience with people who get stuck in their grief or hurt. This is one reason why trauma victims often withdraw and why their stories become rote narratives, edited into a form least likely to provoke rejection. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
1002:And as a few strokes on the nose will make a puppy head shy, so a few rebuffs will make a boy shy all over. But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist—or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1003:How you handle rejection is very similar to how you’ll handle success. If you’re strong enough to handle rejection without taking it personally, without holding a grudge, and without losing your passion and drive, then you’ll be strong enough to reap the rewards. But if you’re too weak to handle failure and disappointment, then you’re too weak to handle success, which will only end up damaging your life and happiness. ~ Kevin Hart, #NFDB
1004:In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,#NFDB
1005:The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1006:The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash! ~ Alan Watts, #NFDB
1007:We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil. ~ Philip Zimbardo, #NFDB
1008:At the same time, the truth is that we are beloved, even in our current condition, by someone; we have loved and been loved. We have also known the abyss of love lost to death or rejection, and that it somehow leads to new life. We have been redeemed and saved by love, even as a few times we have been nearly destroyed, and worse, seen our children nearly destroyed. We are who we love, we are one, and we are autonomous. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
1009:Insistence on security is incompatible with the way of the cross. What daring adventures the incarnation and the atonement were! What a breach of convention and decorum that Almighty God should renounce his privileges in order to take human flesh and bear human sin! Jesus had no security except in his Father. So to follow Jesus is always to accept at least a measure of uncertainty, danger and rejection for his sake. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
1010:The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail-not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime. ~ Dani Shapiro, #NFDB
1011:(Raphael) "I know why you refuse me, Daylighter, and it is not out of some pretended sense of rejection. You are so involved with the Shadowhunters, you think you are one of them. We have seen you with them. Instead of spending your nights in the hunt, as you should, you spend them with Valentine's daughter. You live with a werewolf. You are a disgrace."
(Simon) "Do you act like this with every job interview? ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
1012:We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil. ~ Philip G Zimbardo, #NFDB
1013:Energy is the fuel that enables you to maintain clarity, focus, and action so that you can generate results day after day. Energy is contagious. It spreads from you to your clients and prospects like a positive virus, creating symptoms of enthusiasm and affirmative responses everywhere. Energy is a vaccine against rejection and disappointment. Have enough of it, and you’re almost permanently inoculated against negativity. ~ Hal Elrod, #NFDB
1014:Nobody worries about kids listening
to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and
loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most;
and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been
listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives. ~ Nick Hornby,#NFDB
1015:The law demands good works and uses its terror--rejection, shame, fear of punishment, unanswered prayer, personal tragedy, etc.--as motivation. Here performance is a necessity to secure the blessings and avoid the curses. Grace, on the other hand, allows us to serve on a different basis--not from fear but on the basis of love and gratitude, from appreciation and gladness for blessings freely given and freely received. ~ Richard Jordan, #NFDB
1016:Are you trying to live a safe life? The word safe is both an adjective and a noun. As an adjective it means “being free from danger.” As a noun it’s “an enclosed storage container with a lock.” If you’re living the adjective, you’re living the noun. Don’t trap yourself in a cage of false security by trying to avoid rejection. In the long run, building your courage is a smarter choice than running from imaginary dangers. ~ Steve Pavlina, #NFDB
1017:In my experience, white people are the only ones who purport to advance equality through the erasure or rejection of marginalized people’s identities, which signals to me that they have fooled themselves into believing that they are “unraced.” This belief is false, because it is based on the idea that whiteness is the human standard and that furthermore, by virtue of them being white, they are the arbiters of humanity. ~ Morgan Jerkins, #NFDB
1018:The problem here is pain. Filling out the appropriate paperwork to drop out of med school is a straightforward and obvious action; breaking your parents’ hearts is not. Asking a tutor out on a date is as simple as saying the words; risking intense embarrassment and rejection feels far more complicated. Asking someone to move out of your house is a clear decision; feeling as if you’re abandoning your own children is not. I ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1019:There prevails among men of letters, an opinion, that all appearance of science is particularly hateful to Women; and that therefore whoever desires to be well received in female assemblies, must qualify himself by a total rejection of all that is serious, rational, or important; must consider argument or criticism as perpetually interdicted; and devote all his attention to trifles, and all his eloquence to compliment. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1020:When we first listen to depression, we find that the misery is consuming. It doesn’t point anywhere or say anything. It just is. But when we keep listening, it tells stories of loss, rejection, or other events that happened to the person. It speaks of identifiable physiological problems. It points to a culture of irony: the culture with the most peace, money, and leisure is also the one with the most malignant sadness. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
1021:I know perception is reality in politics and I know how it looks, but the reality is Democrats lost the election and what they thought it was gonna be, a landslide with the best candidate they could have ever nominated, Hillary Clinton, look at the rejection. The rejection is real. They're creating a Fantasy Island world in which none of this happened. And that's where they're choosing to live. That's not healthy, folks. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1022:resistance often lacks an overt political project and frequently reflects social practices that are informal, disorganised, apolitical, and atheoretical in nature. In some instances it can reduce itself to an unreflective and defeatist refusal to acquiesce to different forms of domination; on some occasions it can be seen as a cynical, arrogant, or even naive rejection of oppressive forms of moral and political regulation ~ Henry A Giroux, #NFDB
1023:Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here. ~ Nick Cave, #NFDB
1024:Institutionalized rejection of differences is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
1025:The subjects range from the pastoral (sniffing of the butt of a melon to tell if it's ripe. and almost romantically lush descriptions of lightening storms sweeping across fields on summer nights) to elaborations on the value of man's having a life of his own, apart from whatever life he has with his family, a private life that no one knows anything about, "a place he can be himself without concern of disappointment or rejection". ~ A M Homes, #NFDB
1026:Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men. ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
1027:what is significant about rejection, as a source of neurotic anxiety, is how it is interpreted by the child. In impact upon the child, there is radical difference between rejection as an objective experience (which does not necessarily result in subjective conflict for the child), and rejection as a subjective experience. The important question psychologically is whether the child felt himself or herself rejected. ~ Rollo May, #NFDB
1028:My research suggests that when people get rebuffed they become frustrated and angry, but they would do better to become curious about the reason for the rejection. I also found that people assume that others are like them, operating under the same knowledge, beliefs, constraints and priorities. This mirror assumption makes it easier to speculate about why others act in the way they do, but sometimes the mirror assumption is wrong. ~ Gary A Klein, #NFDB
1029:Failure of the attempt to extinguish the newly declared State of Israel did not lead to a political settlement and the opening of state-to-state relations, as happened in most other postcolonial conflicts in Asia and Africa. Instead, it ushered in a protracted period of political rejection and reluctant armistice agreement against the background of radical groups seeking to force Israel into submission through terrorist campaigns. ~ Henry Kissinger, #NFDB
1030:If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering . ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1031:If this is what you suffered, you then grew up feeling that no one likes you. No one ever listened to you or seemed to want you around. No one had empathy for you, showed you warmth, or invited closeness. No one cared about what you thought, felt, did, wanted or dreamed of. You learned early that, no matter how hurt, alienated, or terrified you were, turning to a parent would do nothing more than exacerbate your experience of rejection. ~ Pete Walker, #NFDB
1032:I wasn't thinking about history. I was thinking about how we were going to end segregation at lunch counters in Atlanta, Georgia.We would have never thought about making history, we just thought: Here is our chance to get out our sense of rejection at this kind of racial discrimination. I don't know that there was a time that anybody growing up in the South wasn't enraged about being segregated and being discriminated against. ~ Marian Wright Edelman, #NFDB
1033:Jesus says that every Christian has his own cross waiting for him, a cross destined and appointed by God. Each must endure his allotted share of suffering and rejection. But each has a different share: some God deems worthy of the highest form of suffering, and gives them the grace of martyrdom, while others he does not allow to be tempted above that which they are able to bear. But it is the one and the same cross in every case. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1034:All violation of established practice implies in its own nature a rejection of the common opinion, a defiance of common censure, and an appeal from general laws to private judgment: he, therefore, who differs form others without apparent advantage, ought not to be angry if his arrogance is punished with ridicule; if those whose example he superciliously overlooks, point him out to derision, and hoot him back again into the common road. ~ Samuel Johnson, #NFDB
1035:In the performing arts you have to have thick, thick, thick skin, because of all the rejection you face on a daily basis, and the fact that work never lasts for very long. But you need thin, thin, thin skin in order to access all of your emotions and your creativity so that you can express it. You can't be dead inside. Otherwise you've got nothing to give. So it's a paradox, that we have to exist in both planes in order to do what we do. ~ Audra McDonald, #NFDB
1036:Justice George Sutherland had led the Supreme Court in a sweeping rejection of the minimum wage in the District of Columbia. In his opinion—the case was called Adkins—Sutherland said that the minimum wage infringed on the individual’s liberty to contract with his employer. The Sutherland opinion fit in with Coolidge’s own general attitude, that the individual should have primacy—“All liberty is individual,” he had said in a speech in 1924. ~ Amity Shlaes, #NFDB
1037:To develop an empiricist account of science is to depict it as involving a search for truth only about the empirical world, aboutwhat is actual and observable.... It must involve throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature, by means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise. ~ Bas van Fraassen, #NFDB
1038:What happened to the Soviet Union happened mainly for domestic reasons. It was a failure of the model based on a command economy and dictatorship. The rejection of freedom and democracy, the decisionmaking monopoly of one party, and the monopoly of one ideology all had a chilling effect on the country. That model turned out to be incapable of making structural changes. It did not open up ways for initiative and was overly centralized. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev, #NFDB
1039:was something different about his genetic structure. His ex-lover Megan Reed had once told him he was a ‘super-compatible’, a rare human anomaly who could accept augs without the yoke of the anti-rejection drug to keep him whole. Jensen was still undecided if that was a gift or a curse, and he couldn’t stop himself from wondering if this unique quality was some loose thread left behind by other unanswered questions from his past. Questions ~ James Swallow, #NFDB
1040:You know, I've wondered if it's more painful to lose someone you love to death or to lose someone you love because she no longer loves you back." "I don't know," I said. "On the surface, it seems an easy question. It should be so much easier to lose someone who doesn't love you, because why would you want to be with someone who doesn't want you? But rejection's not an east road. A part of you always wonders what makes you so unlovable. ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
1041:being to ever do so (Heb 4:15). At the end of his life, he deserved blessing and acceptance; at the end of our lives, because every one of us lives in sin, we deserve rejection and condemnation (Rom 3:9–10). Yet when the time had fully come, Jesus received in our place, on the cross, the rejection and condemnation we deserve (1 Pet 3:18), so that, when we believe in him, we can receive the blessing and acceptance he deserves (2 Cor 5:21). ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1042:Some might argue that the current generation seems uninterested in Christianity because they want to avoid issues like sin and repentance, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think people are hungry for Jesus, but they are starting to realize they have been fed a cheap American version, and they are rightly rejecting this counterfeit. Their rejection should be seen not as a rejection of Jesus, but a rejection of obscured versions of him. ~ Benjamin L Corey, #NFDB
1043:the breaking of the interest slavery of productive work in all professional fields will grant it the primary position due to it. Money will once again be returned to its sole appropriate role of being a servant in the enormous enterprise of our national economy. It will become once again what it is, an indication of performed work and therewith the way will be paved to a higher goal, the rejection of the frenzied financial greed of our age. ~ Gottfried Feder, #NFDB
1044:You have always been alone, always self-centered and fearful of opening yourself to other persons, for to do so is to risk rejection and pain. But it is a risk we are born to take, we humans. We cannot live alone, cannot find happiness or peace alone, cannot love alone. The person alone must always be fleeing, always searching. He flees from the loneliness without end. He searches, whether he will or not, for another who will fill his emptiness. ~ Julian May, #NFDB
1045:"You know, I've wondered if it's more painful to lose someone you love to death or to lose someone you love because she no longer loves you back." "I don't know," I said. "On the surface, it seems an easy question. It should be so much easier to lose someone who doesn't love you, because why would you want to be with someone who doesn't want you? But rejection's not an east road. A part of you always wonders what makes you so unlovable." ~ Richard Paul Evans, #NFDB
1046:To be severed and alienated within oneself also creates a sense of unreality. One may have an all-pervasive sense of never quite belonging, of being on the outside looking in. The condition of inner alienation and isolation is also pervaded by a low-grade chronic depression. This has to do with the sadness of losing one’s authentic self. Perhaps the deepest and most devastating aspect of neurotic shame is the rejection of the self by the self. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
1047:We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves the way we are, and why we don't accept others the way they are. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz, #NFDB
1048:When most of us think about food and health, we think in fairly narrow nutritionist terms—about our personal physical health and how the ingestion of this particular nutrient or rejection of that affects it. But I no longer think it’s possible to separate our bodily health from the health of the environment from which we eat or the environment in which we eat or, for that matter, from the health of our general outlook about food (and health). ~ Michael Pollan, #NFDB
1049:Deep work is at a severe disadvantage in a technopoly because it builds on values like quality, craftsmanship, and mastery that are decidedly old-fashioned and nontechnological. Even worse, to support deep work often requires the rejection of much of what is new and high-tech. Deep work is exiled in favor of more distracting high-tech behaviors, like the professional use of social media, not because the former is empirically inferior to the latter. ~ Cal Newport, #NFDB
1050:Well I don’t know about you, but when I recall childhood pain, I don’t recall the pains of toothache, a thrashed backside, broken bones, stubbed toes, gashed knees or twisted ankles – I recall the pains of loneliness, boredom, abandonment, humiliation, rejection and fear. Those are the pains on which I might and, still sometimes do, dwell, and those pains, almost without exception, were inflicted on me by other children and by myself. ~ Stephen Fry, #NFDB
1051:It seems to me, then, that vulnerability and and self-disclosure are at the heart of what we understand about the nature of God. And the reason I believe gay and lesbian people are spiritual people is that we too have participated in vulnerability and self-disclosure, especially in the process of coming-out. When someone shares with you who they really, really are, it is a special offering. To do so when it risks rejection is a profound, holy gift. ~ Gene Robinson, #NFDB
1052:Because he was so, so wrong about hearts and buildings being different. They are the same. They are structures that keep us safe, that shield us from the elements. And the minute they start to falter, everything else is at risk. A heart can be condemned, just as a building can be. A heart can be destroyed by a sledgehammer disguised as rejection, by a bulldozer masquerading as a careless word. A heart can be blasted to pieces and ruined to the ground. ~ Karina Halle, #NFDB
1053:Kathleen is not heartless, you see," Helen murmured. "She feels very deep sorrow. It's only that she can't show it."
Devon wasn't certain whether to thank or curse Helen for the revelations. He didn't want to feel any compassion for Kathleen. But the rejection by her parents at such a tender age would have been devastating. He understood all about the desire to avoid painful memories and emotions... the compelling need to keep certain doors closed. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1054:For indeed Christianity was complicit in the death of antiquity, and in the birth of modernity, not because it was an accomplice of the latter, but because it, alone in the history of the West, constituted a rejection of and alternative to nihilism's despair, violence, and idolatry of power; as such, Christianity shattered the imposing and enchanting facade behind which nihilism once hid, and thereby, inadvertently, called it forth into the open. ~ David Bentley Hart, #NFDB
1055:I'm proud of you, and I love you," Blay said yet again, that old, familiar voice cutting through all of those years of rejection and judgement, giving him not just a rope of acceptance to hang onto, but a flesh-and-blood hand to lead him out of the darkness of his past... And into a future that didn't require lies or excises, because of what he was, and what they were, was both extraordinary--and nothing out of the ordinary. Love, after all, was universal. ~ J R Ward, #NFDB
1056:The music certainly plays a major role. You can be free enough to comfort each other, to touch each other, to embrace each other, to engage each other, to not be afraid of each other. The music certainly has that very strong element. Go back to folk songs, gospel, jazz, and spirituals. See, all of that came out of tremendous pain and hurt, rejection, loss, alienation, and abandonment. What I'm doing is I'm expressing my pain and hope at the same time. ~ Cecil Williams, #NFDB
1057:Well, it might have been if I'd had success earlier in life, but having success that much later meant I was far more grounded when it came. The last few years of my life have just been surreal and after a lifetime of disappointment and heartache and rejection, I still don't believe this is all actually happening. I'm extremely grateful for my success - I just never expect it to last and my motto, if I have one, is just put your head down and do the job. ~ Steve Carell, #NFDB
1058:Elder brothers have an undercurrent of anger toward life circumstances, hold grudges long and bitterly, look down at people of other races, religions, and lifestyles, experience life as a joyless, crushing drudgery, have little intimacy and joy in their prayer lives, and have a deep insecurity that makes them overly sensitive to criticism and rejection yet fierce and merciless in condemning others. What a terrible picture! And yet the rebellious path ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1059:Of course, intersectionality theory is a confused muddle. It fights racism and sexism by classifying everyone according to race and sex. It views race and gender privilege as the root of all evil, while ignoring the role played by dogmatic ideologies held by all genders. And it is unfalsifiable - to its adherents, criticism and rejection of the theory actually demonstrate its truth, by showing how deeply we all have internalized our oppression. ~ Christina Hoff Sommers, #NFDB
1060:The women's liberation movement of today in America, in its most oceanic sense, is a wish by women to be liked for something other than their reproductive abilities, especially since the planet is harrowingly overpopulated. And the rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment by male state legislators is this clear statement by men, in my opinion: "We're sorry, girls, but your reproductive abilities are about all we can really like you for."
The truth. ~ Kurt Vonnegut,#NFDB
1061:The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X. That rejection is an inherent and necessary part of maintaining our values, and therefore our identity. We are defined by what we choose to reject. And if we reject nothing (perhaps in fear of being rejected by something ourselves), we essentially have no identity at all. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1062:Anyway, one of the few useful things I learned while I was getting my head shrunk is that when you get rejected a lot, you start to hear rejection all the time, everywhere, even when there hasn't been any rejection. And here's something else she told me that you need to remember. . .after the rejection comes shame. Like how thunder always follows lightning. You don't always hear it, but it's always there, so deal with it or it'll build up and destroy you. ~ Stephanie Tromly, #NFDB
1063:Don't be afraid. There is no more to fear. Do not fear rejection. If you fear rejection by another you do not love the other, though you may profess it. You are only being anxious for his love of you. The free man does not seek the love of others, nor fear that his love will be rejected, for rejection - as is known from the night Christ was betrayed - does not destroy love, and it does not destroy the one who loves. Don't be afraid, you are not alone. ~ William Stringfellow, #NFDB
1064:Not being perfect, we reject ourselves. And the level of self-rejection depends upon how effective the adults were in breaking our integrity. After domestication it is no longer about being good enough for anybody else. We are not good enough for ourselves because we don't fit with our own image of perfection. We cannot forgive ourselves for not being what we wish to be, or rather what we believe we should be. We cannot forgive ourselves for not being perfect. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
1065:Spiritual but not religious” is an expression of a very human yearning for an opening of mind and heart—a sense of soul and spirit that enhances day-to-day experience instead of tamping it down and channeling it into the narrow confines of stick-and-carrot orthodoxy. It’s a rejection of traditional tenets and pieties, of doctrine and dogma and judgment. It resists the usual attempts to pigeonhole, saying, “Spare me your labels.” It is, at heart, agnostic. — ~ Lesley Hazleton, #NFDB
1066:That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut. ~ Woody Allen, #NFDB
1067:To aspiring writers, I would tell them that we live in a wonderful time where you're able to make your work visible, easily. If you think about it, even ten years ago or twenty years ago, there was a middle man, there was a publisher, there were studios, there was this world of rejection letters. Now, we're in a place where we have the technology and the ability to go shoot our own movies or to put stuff on YouTube or a blog, if you're a writer, or self-publish. ~ Diablo Cody, #NFDB
1068:Skeptics, who flatly deny the existence of any unexplained phenomenon in the name of 'rationalism,' are among the primary contributors to the rejection of science by the public. People are not stupid and they know very well when they have seen something out of the ordinary. When a so-called expert tells them the object must have been the moon or a mirage, he is really teaching the public that science is impotent or unwilling to pursue the study of the unknown. ~ Jacques Vallee, #NFDB
1069:Legs with attitude.” Kyle’s tone warmed with approval. “Why don’t you bring those beauties over here. I got a spot all ready for ‘em.” He and his buddies all chuckled when he patted his lap.
I wasn’t exactly impressed. “I think these legs are fine where they are, thank you very much.”
Kyle wasn’t deterred at all by my rejection. “I wouldn’t have expected legs like those to be quite so shy.”
“Not shy,” I informed him. “Just holding out for a better offer. ~ Kelly Oram,#NFDB
1070:The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1071:Because we accept or reject, that’s why we cannot see the true nature. Then you bring your ideas, opinions, prejudices, and then you color everything. Otherwise everything is perfect. You have to just look – pure, a look without any ideas, a look without any rejection, acceptance. A pure look, as if your eyes don’t have a mind behind, as if your eyes are just mirrors: they don’t say, "Beautiful. Ugly." A mirror simply mirrors whosoever comes before it – it has no judgment. ~ Osho, #NFDB
1072:similarities between the stories: the names of Adapa and Adam, the loss of eternal life, the rejection of a command and the trickster temptation. Yet there were such significant differences: the Shinar pantheon versus the sole Yahweh Elohim; failure to eat rather than eating; no trees, no wife. It was almost as if the Adapa story was an inversion of the Garden of Eden, a replacement narrative intended to displace loyalty from the original story onto a new paradigm. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1073:The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X. That rejection is an inherent and necessary part of maintaining our values, and therefore our identity. We are defined by what we choose to reject. And if we reject nothing (perhaps in fear of being rejected by something ourselves), we essentially have no identity at all. (p.171) ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1074:[I]f we think of spirituality less in terms of what it avoids and more in terms of what it is positively, and if we may think of it as including an intense awareness of the inner identity of subject and object, man and the universe, there is no reason whatsoever why it should require the rejection of sexuality. On the contrary, this most intimate of relationships of the self with another would naturally become on of the chief spheres of spiritual insight and growth. ~ Alan W Watts, #NFDB
1075:The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1076:Self-criticism, then, runs non-stop in a desperate attempt to avoid rejection-inducing mistakes. Drasticizing becomes obsessive to help the child foresee and avoid punishment and worsening abandonment. At the same time, it continuously fills her psyche with stories and images of catastrophe. The survivor becomes imprisoned by a jailer who will accept nothing but perfection. He is chauffeured by a hysterical driver who sees nothing but danger in every turn of the road. ~ Pete Walker, #NFDB
1077:Each one of us has to find such a relationship in the suffering that we ourselves experience, be it the loss of a job or a home, the death of someone we love, rejection by our parents or our children, the breakdown of a marriage, institutional injustice, social violence or whatever. The causes of our personal suffering are many. And when we find the living, liberating answer that gives us meaning in the midst of suffering, we realize that it is a very personal answer. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1078:In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded....He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him. ~ Oscar Wilde, #NFDB
1079:Get it 80 percent right and then correct it later." Run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes. Don't expect perfection the first time or even the first few times. Be prepared to fail over and over before you get it right. The biggest enemies we have to overcome on the road to success are not a lack of ability and a lack of opportunity but fears of failure and rejection and the doubts that they trigger. The only way to overcome your fears is to "do the thing you fear, ~ Brian Tracy, #NFDB
1080:I have walked much of my life in fear, never truly finding a place where I knew I belonged. Rejection, victimization, and divorce has left me like a beggar, seeking desperately to find my blessing somewhere, to find it anywhere. I didn’t know who I was or where I was going. I didn’t know how significant I was or what the meaning of my life was, and the saddest part of this is that I didn’t fully realize that God was holding the blessing for me that I was so desperately seeking. ~ Tim Young, #NFDB
1081:The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper. When your love is truly giving and receiving, those whom you love will not leave your heart even when they depart from you. The pain of rejection, absence, and death can become fruitful. Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
1082:The sadhana of this Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart, and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II, [T3],#NFDB
1083:We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don’t accept others the way they are. ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
1084:When Joshua and Caleb continued on, Caleb remarked, “Ardon doesn’t like that woman because she’s a harlot.” “She saved many lives. Maybe all of our lives. Your son is too hard and proud.” “I know,” Caleb said quietly. “He’s a strong man, but he hasn’t yet learned what it’s like to suffer rejection.” “He will someday—and when he has experienced such pain, perhaps he will be kinder to others who have suffered,” Joshua said grimly. “Now. We’ve got to think about other things. ~ Gilbert Morris, #NFDB
1085:Don't hang a dismal picture on the wall, and do not daub with sables and glooms in your conversation. Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. When that is spoken which has a right to be spoken, the chatter and the criticism will stop. Set down nothing that will not help somebody. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
1086:It seemed to me that a solution must be found. Here, my natural optimism was to my advantage. For when I read Sartre or Camus or Graham Greene, I experienced a temperamental rejection of their pessimism. I suspected that their ultimate picture might be distorted by a certain self-pity or lack of discipline—or, in the case of Greene, by a certain congenital lack of vitality. I suspected that if the problem left them defeated, it was because they had not attacked it hard enough. ~ Colin Wilson, #NFDB
1087:Jackson’s awareness that her mother had never loved her unconditionally—if at all—would be a source of sadness well into adulthood. Aside from a single angry letter that she did not send, she never gave voice to her feelings of rejection. But she expressed them in other ways. All the heroines of her novels are essentially motherless—if not lacking a mother entirely, then victims of loveless mothering. Many of her books include acts of matricide, either unconscious or deliberate. ~ Ruth Franklin, #NFDB
1088:The newly emerging ideal was solitude, purity, perfect waves far from civilization. Robinson Crusoe, Endless Summer. This was a track that led away from citizenship, in the ancients sense of the word, toward a scratched-out frontier where we would live as latter-day barbarians. It went deeper that that. Chasing waves in a dedicated way was both profoundly egocentric and selfless, dynamic and ascetic, radical in its rejection of the values of duty and conventional achievement. ~ William Finnegan, #NFDB
1089:This life is so complex that we rarely get to be the people we are truly meant to be. Instead, we wear masks and put up walls to keep from dealing with the fear of rejection, the feeling of regret, the very idea that someone may not love us for who we are deep in our core, that they might not understand the things that drive us. I want to study the realness of life, not the gloss. There is beauty everywhere; even in the dark, there is light, and that is the rarest kind of all. ~ Catherine Doyle, #NFDB
1090:I began researching and writing what I intended as a book-length essay entitled Fascination and Liberation, exploring the question of whether there is a conflict between creativity and the Eastern form of enlightenment. I don't know if I'll ever finish that essay, because I had an experience, after I'd written two or three chapters, in which it seemed to me that my psychic antibodies decisively rejected Buddhism. Interestingly, the rejection felt as if it happened in Zen terms. ~ Quentin S Crisp, #NFDB
1091:What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
1092:What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots, and wandered into a far country. Yet they kept coming back to Jesus. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
1093:My experience has been that there are times to teach and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. But to take the child alone, quietly, when the relationship is good and to discuss the teaching or the value seems to have much greater impact. It may have been that the emotional maturity to do that was beyond my level of patience and internal control at the time. ~ Stephen R Covey, #NFDB
1094:Of one thing I am sure. Complaining is self-perpetuating and counterproductive. Whenever I express my complaints in the hope of evoking pity and receiving the satisfaction I so much desire, the result is always the opposite of what I tried to get. A complainer is hard to live with, and very few people know how to respond to the complaints made by a self-rejecting person. The tragedy is that, often, the complaint, once expressed, leads to that which is most feared: further rejection. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
1095:The act of choosing a value for yourself requires rejecting alternative values. If I choose to make my marriage the most important part of my life, that means I’m (probably) choosing not to make cocaine-fueled hooker orgies an important part of my life. If I’m choosing to judge myself based on my ability to have open and accepting friendships, that means I’m rejecting trashing my friends behind their backs. These are all healthy decisions, yet they require rejection at every turn. The ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1096:It is true that in the classical world the irreligious and the atheist were feared and thought dangerous when their rejection of civic pieties was openly flaunted. This was because the Greeks thought such conduct showed that they were untrustworthy and not reliable civic friends on whom one could count. People who made fun of the gods invited rejection, but this was a matter not so much of their unbelief as such as of their manifest unwillingness to participate in shared civic practice. ~ John Rawls, #NFDB
1097:What would you know about it?” he said. “Love, I mean.” Dorothea folded her soft white hands in her lap. “More than you might think,” she said. “Didn’t I read your tea leaves, Shadowhunter? Have you fallen in love with the wrong person yet?” Jace said, “Unfortunately, my one true love remains myself.” Dorothea roared at that. “At least,” she said, “you don’t have to worry about rejection, Jace Wayland.” “Not necessarily. I turn myself down occasionally, just to keep it interesting. ~ Cassandra Clare, #NFDB
1098:That's critical to me, the community. When I was 12 years old, I had a mental breakdown; I went berserk for a long time. I felt rejection from the white community. Couldn't understand why the pigmentation of my skin kept me from doing. Everybody always told me "You're going to be something." And of course, I began to raise questions about why it is that white folks treat us the way they do. The breakdown was very vivid. I just all of a sudden felt like I had been overcome by a train. ~ Cecil Williams, #NFDB
1099:Of one thing I am sure. Complaining is self-perpetuating and counterproductive. Whenever I express my complaints in the hope of evoking pity and receiving the satisfaction I so much desire, the result is always the opposite of what I tried to get. A complainer is hard to live with, and very few people know how to respond to the complaints made by a self-rejecting person. The tragedy is that, often, the complaint, once expressed, leads to that which is most feared: further rejection. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1100:To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ. When it comes, it is not an accident, but a necessity. It is not the sort of suffering which is inseparable from this mortal life, but the suffering which is an essential part of the specifically Christian life. It is not suffering per se but suffering-and-rejection, and not rejection for any cause or conviction of our own, but rejection for the sake of Christ. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1101:According to Shakespeare, the Roman populace had made no advance in cleanliness in the centuries between Coriolanus and Cæsar. Casca gives a vivid picture of the offer of the crown to Julius, and his rejection of it: “And still as he refused it the rabblement shouted, and clapped their chapped hands, and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath, because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Cæsar, for he swooned and fell down at it. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
1102:What came first--the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands-- literally thousands-- of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
1103:• What unites them is an almost reckless desire to test themselves in the most extreme circumstances. In many respects the life they have chosen is a complete rejection of the hyped, consumerist American dream as it is dished out in reality TV shows and pop-song lyrics. They've chosen asceticism over consumption. Instead of celebrating their individualism, theyíve subjugated theirs to the collective will of an institution. Their highest aspiration is self-sacrifice over self-preservation. ~ Evan Wright, #NFDB
1104:• What unites them is an almost reckless desire to test themselves in the most extreme circumstances. In many respects the life they have chosen is a complete rejection of the hyped, consumerist American dream as it is dished out in reality TV shows and pop-song lyrics. They've chosen asceticism over consumption. Instead of celebrating their individualism, theyíve subjugated theirs to the collective will of an institution. Their highest aspiration is self-sacrifice over self-preservation. ~ Evan Wright, #NFDB
1105:Not until my fourteenth or fifteenth year did I begin to come across the word 'Jew,' with any frequency, partly in connection with political discussions.... For the Jew was still characterized for me by nothing but his religion, and therefore, on grounds of human tolerance, I maintained my rejection of religious attacks in this case as in others. Consequently, the tone, particularly that of the Viennese anti-Semitic press, seemed to me unworthy of the cultural tradition of a great nation. ~ Adolf Hitler, #NFDB
1106:Way down deep the American people are afraid of an entangling relationship between formal religions - or whole bodies of religious belief - and government. Apart from constitutional law and religious doctrine, there is a sense that tells us it's wrong to presume to speak for God or to claim God's sanction of our particular legislation and his rejection of all other positions. Most of us are offended when we see religion being trivialized by its appearance in political throw-away pamphlets. ~ Mario Cuomo, #NFDB
1107:Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea. ~ Primo Levi, #NFDB
1108:I choose to love you in silence...
For in silence I find no rejection.
I choose to love you in loneliness...
For in loneliness no one owns you but me.
I choose to adore you from a distance...
For distance will shield me from pain.
I choose to kiss you in the wind...
For the wind is gentler than my lips.
I choose to hold you in my dreams...
For in my dreams, you have no end.
JALAL AL-DIN RUMI.
Persia, 13th century.
"I choose to love you". ~ Rumi,#NFDB
1109:The neo-conservatives, who are closely linked to the neo-corporatists, are rather different. They claim to be conservatives, when everything they stand for is a rejection of conservatism. They claim to present an alternate social model, when they are little more than the courtiers of the corporatist movement. Their agitation is filled with the bitterness and cynicism typical of courtiers who scramble for crumbs at the banquet tables of real power, but are always denied a proper chair. ~ John Ralston Saul, #NFDB
1110:Art is the activity that exalts and denies simultaneously. "No artist tolerates reality," says Nietzsche. That
is true, but no artist can get along without reality. Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of
the world. But it rejects the world on account of what it lacks and in the name of what it sometimes is.
Rebellion can be observed here in its pure state and in its original complexities. Thus art should give us a
final perspective on the content of rebellion. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1111:If I had simply agreed to serve out my time in prison, doing whatever I could to shorten the sentence, it would have been the smartest thing I could do in terms of the future of my own life. It would however have meant lending my endorsement to the legitimacy of the verdict and sentence issued against me. Instead, I opted for a gesture of complete rejection—flight, escape—to make an unmistakable distinction between truth and lie, justice and injustice, the law and blatant abuse of power. ~ Massimo Carlotto, #NFDB
1112:I’m not perfect. I never identified with the way I look; I was just born this way. I don’t feel rejection if I’m not the right person for a job, because that’s not where I find my self-worth. I’m a beautiful person, and that’s not because of my modeling career. There are good shots, and there are bad shots, but it’s just like playing a character. If you think of the top five people that you care about the most in your life, you probably don’t care if they look good in every angle or photo. ~ Erin Heatherton, #NFDB
1113:Jesus Christ lived a perfect life — the only human being to ever do so (Heb 4:15). At the end of his life, he deserved blessing and acceptance; at the end of our lives, because every one of us lives in sin, we deserve rejection and condemnation (Rom 3:9–10). Yet when the time had fully come, Jesus received in our place, on the cross, the rejection and condemnation we deserve (1 Pet 3:18), so that, when we believe in him, we can receive the blessing and acceptance he deserves (2 Cor 5:21). ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1114:Obama is hardly the first president to seek rapprochement with our adversaries and reconciliation with our enemies, of course. But his determination to make nice - even in the face of clear and repeated rejection from the other side - is unparalleled. For Obama and his team, diplomacy with rogue regimes is an end in itself, and any deal, however one-sided, is a win, especially one that the White House communications mavens think that friendly media will call a 'breakthrough' or 'historic.' ~ Stephen F Hayes, #NFDB
1115:Putnam’s pragmatic strategy is to soften rigid dichotomies by showing that they turn out to be flexible differences related to human interests. This strategy is closely related to his attack on metaphysical realism, his relentless critique of relativism, his rejection of scientism, his rejection of the God’s-eye point of view, his critique of absolutes, and his defense of pluralism. Putnam’s claims about the entanglement of fact and value stand at the heart of his philosophical vision. ~ Richard J Bernstein, #NFDB
1116:The dismaying truth is that birtherism is part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality that has taken hold of intimidating segments of one of the two political parties that alternate in power in our governing institutions. It is akin to the view that global warming is a hoax, or that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, or that contraception causes abortion, or that evolution is just another theory, on a par with the theory that the earth is six thousand years old. ~ Hendrik Hertzberg, #NFDB
1117:Fear keeps us rooted in the past. Fear of the unknown, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of not having enough, fear of not being enough, fear of the future-all these fears and more keep us trapped, repeating the same old patterns and making the same choices over and over again. Fear prevents us from moving outside the comfort-or even the familiar discomfort-of what we know. It's nearly impossible to achieve our highest vision for our lives as long as we are being guided by our fears. ~ Debbie Ford, #NFDB
1118:For despite his confidence, and his apparent maturity, I suspected that there was in him a deep and childish need to elevate, and idealize, the love object. This is not uncommon in artists. The very nature of their work, the long periods of isolation followed by public self-display, and the associated risk of rejection all conspire to create unnaturally intense relationships with their sexual partners. Then, when disillusion occurs, as of course it must, the sense of betrayal is profound... ~ Patrick McGrath, #NFDB
1119:Historically, the idea that you take something novel and you break it has been seen as the ultimate rejection of Enlightenment values, of progress, of civilization - because how could you possibly move forward if you break technology? I think that that misses the point, that if you introduce any kind of technology, what you're introducing is a new way of living and the consequences of that new way of living for people who were enmeshed in a different way of living need to be thought through. ~ Sheila Jasanoff, #NFDB
1120:Well, if that’s the case, then it’s not silly to see rejection as a gift whose contents and character may not be known until a later time. But that doesn’t mean that the gift isn’t real. It doesn’t mean that the gift isn’t precious. And it doesn’t mean that the gift isn’t helping us to subtly shift our thinking from willful expectation to grateful acceptance. We want our journey to be directed by God, not our adamant insistence that things go our way.” “I may be guilty of that very tendency,” I ~ Tavis Smiley, #NFDB
1121:Well, you know, I've been in so many writing workshops, writing classes, and to the right of me and to the left of me, there's always somebody much more talented than I am. And what I figured out is they're not willing to go through the rejection, which is enormous, and then the compromise that comes with, you know, editing your work. And so I decided a long time ago that I didn't have to be 'talented'; I just had to be persistent, and that that was something I could control. The persistence. ~ Kate DiCamillo, #NFDB
1122:Women stuff' is the hidden energy behind almost all the justice issues. The movement toward nonviolence and disarmament, the movements that deal with homelessness and refugee problems, with the raping of the earth and its resources, with sexual and physical abuse issues, with the idolatry of profit and the corporation, and with the rejection of the poor will not move beyond the present impasse until the underlying issues of power, prestige, and possessions are exposed for the lie that they are. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1123:To the warriors of light, there is no such thing as impossible love. They don’t allow themselves to be intimidated by silence, or by rejection. They know that – behind the icy mask people wear – there is a heart of fire. That is why the warriors risk more than others. They tirelessly seek love – even if this means hearing, many times over, the word ‘no’, returning home defeated, feeling rejected in body and soul. Warriors don’t allow themselves to be discouraged. Without love, live has no meaning. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1124:While she might outwardly portray a self-confident, assured, independent woman who wasn’t interested in the opposite sex—she’d been called a dyke on more than one occasion—the reality was that she’d simply repressed her sexual feelings because she was scared of rejection. It’d become second nature to act macho and tough, but deep down she yearned for a true relationship just like the next woman. The vibrator in her bedside drawer got quite the hefty workout, not that she’d ever admit it to anyone. ~ Susan Stoker, #NFDB
1125:The cross always simultaneously means rejection, and that the disgrace of suffering is part of the cross. Being expelled, despised, and abandoned by people in one's suffering is part of the cross. Being expelled, despised, and abandoned by people in one's suffering, as we find in the unending lament of the psalmist, is an essential feature of the suffering of the cross, yet one no longer comprehensible to a form of Christian life unable to distinguish between bourgeois and Christian existence. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1126:Brené Brown writes: In a 2011 study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, researchers found that, as far as the brain is concerned, physical pain and intense experiences of social rejection hurt in the same way…Neuroscience advances confirm what we’ve known all along: emotions can hurt and cause pain. And just as we often struggle to define physical pain, describing emotional pain is difficult. Shame is particularly hard because it hates having words wrapped around it. It hates being spoken. ~ Amanda Palmer, #NFDB
1127:It is so easy to lose sight of the fact that these are God’s children. They do not belong to us. They are given not to bring us glory, but him. Our teenagers are from him, they exist through him, and the glory of their lives points to him. We are but agents to accomplish his plan. We are but instruments in his hands. Our identity is rooted in him and his call to us, not in our children and their performance. The ultimate rejection that should make us weep is not that they have rejected us, but him. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1128:We are all masters of our own destiny, my mother used to tell me. Even though we can’t always choose what happens to us, we can choose how we respond. In the end, she said, the way we handle the tough things life throws at us—adversity, loss, hardship, rejection—is what defines each of us as a human being. Whether we face them with courage and grace and honesty or choose to feel sorry for ourselves, blame someone else, lash out at life’s injustices with anger and cruelty—that’s what makes us who we are. ~ Ellen Crosby, #NFDB
1129:Masturbation is a way for all of us to learn about sexual response. It’s an opportunity for us to explore our bodies and minds for all those sexual secrets we’ve been taught to hide, even from ourselves. What better way to learn about pleasure and being sexually creative? We don’t have to perform or meet anyone else’s standards, to satisfy the needs of a partner, or to fear criticism or rejection for failure. Sexual skills are like any other skills; they’re not magically inherited, they have to be learned. ~ Betty Dodson, #NFDB
1130:Because they lacked the experience of their own childhoods, they allowed rejection by their peers to divert them from their goal. Had they found their way back to their own childhoods, they would not have needed this confirmation from outside. To live with one's own truth is to be at home with one self. That is the opposite of isolation. We only need confirmation when we are alienated from ourselves in the flight from the truth. All the friends and devoted admirers in the world cannot make up for that loss. ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
1131:my appeal to you. Examine the evidence. Learn the facts. As Paul wrote to young Timothy, “Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things” (2 Timothy 2:7). Tragically, prophecy predicts dark days ahead for our beloved country. God’s Word foretells the rise of “big government,” its increasing rejection of basic human rights and liberties, and finally, the legislating of a damnable “mark of the beast” in a furious, satanic effort to control the world. Now let me clarify something. ~ Steve Wohlberg, #NFDB
1132:The alpha male, on the other hand, lives much differently. First and foremost, he does what he wants to do. He doesn’t concern himself with personal rejection or social failure. His needs, wants, and feelings come before anyone else’s. No one’s judgment, dirty looks, opinions, or laughter is going to stop him from getting what he wants. He doesn’t ask for permission. If he wants to have sex with a girl, he uses his knowledge and skills to try to make it happen. His actions stem from desire instead of insecurity. ~ Roosh V, #NFDB
1133:You believe in a loving God. Then along comes criticism, or rejection (say, a relationship breaks up), or some failure that’s a blow to your reputation in some realm. Anyone in such a situation will feel quite crestfallen and downcast. But there is a difference between being discouraged and being devastated, between sliding into despondency and not being able to function. If God’s love is an abstraction, it is of no consolation. But if it is a felt and lived reality through prayer, then it buoys you up. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1134:Today, whether it is a student who holds a sit-in to get the army recruiters off his campus, or the mother of a dead soldier who refuses to leave the front gate of the president's ranch, we continue to be saved by brave people who risk ridicule and rejection but end up turning huge tides of public opinion in the direction of righteousness. We owe them enormous debts of gratitude. It is not easy to stand up for what is right, especially when everyone else is afraid to leave the comfortable path of conformity. ~ Michael Moore, #NFDB
1135:...the Conservative party found him an embarrassment because he was apt to criticize the party leader in public, the Liberals naturally wanted to defeat him, and the newspapers were out to get him. It was a dreadful campaign on his part, for he lost his head, bullied his electors when he should have wooed them, and got into a wrangle with a large newspaper, which he threatened to sue for libel. He was defeated on election day so decisively that it was obviously a personal rather than a political rejection. ~ Robertson Davies, #NFDB
1136:Christianity without the cross is nothing. The cross was the fitting close of a life of rejection, scorn and defeat. But in no true sense have these things ceased or changed. Jesus is still He whom man despiseth, and the rejected of men. The world has never admired Jesus, for moral courage is yet needed in every one of its high places by him who would "confess" Christ. The "offense" of the cross, therefore, has led men in all ages to endeavor to be rid of it, and to deny that it is the power of God in the world. ~ Lord Kelvin, #NFDB
1137:There is a resentment and rejection of liberal culture. That culture is not available to many people in America. And the liberal coastal elite, who may never have been to rural America, just think everyone there is racist and homophobic and judge them to be terrible people. They think there is nothing wrong to be making jokes about 'meth heads', who are actually a group of people with poverty-related drug issues. They don't see their own hypocrisy. I think this is a huge issue and one that cannot be ignored. ~ Erika M Anderson, #NFDB
1138:The result is an attitude on the part of many scientists of not only skepticism but outright rejection of what cannot be measured. It is as if they were to say, “What we cannot measure, we cannot know; there is no point in worrying about what we cannot know; therefore, what cannot be measured is unimportant and unworthy of our observation.” Because of this attitude many scientists exclude from their serious consideration all matters that are—or seem to be—intangible. Including, of course, the matter of God. This ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
1139:Does their rejection of your idea or proposal mean that you aren’t good? No. It’s possible your idea isn’t great, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t good or that you don’t have good ideas — maybe this is just not the right idea right now. But it’s also likely that it’s a good idea but that this person doesn’t appreciate it, or their interests don’t align with this idea right now, or maybe they have other priorities and can’t deal with this idea. Instead, thank them and move on to someone else who might be interested. ~ Leo Babauta, #NFDB
1140:The rejection of all abstract formalism. Materialism reminds every science of its real source: the world men transform. No science can, whether in its history or its object, grasp its own origins within itself or constitute itself as a closed world, exhaustively defined by internal rules. Materialism refers every science and every activity to the reality they depend on, even if this dependence is masked by a great many abstract mediations: mathematics as well as logic, aesthetics as well as ethics and politics. ~ Louis Althusser, #NFDB
1141:What would you know about it?" he said. "Love, I mean."
Dorothea folded her soft white hands in her lap. "More than you might think," she said. "Didn't I read your tea leaves, Shadowhunter? Have you fallen in love with the wrong person yet?"
Jace said, "Unfortunately, Lady of the Haven, my one true love remains myself."
Dorothea roared at that. "At least," she said, "you don't have to worry about rejection, Jace Wayland."
"Not necessarily. I turn myself down occasionally, just to keep it interesting. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
1142:Intimidation, humiliation, isolation, feeling dumb, feeling useless and rejection are all stresses we try to avoid inside the organization. But the danger inside is controllable and it should be the goal of leadership to set a culture free of danger from each other. And the way to do that is by giving people a sense of belonging. By offering them a strong culture based on a clear set of human values and beliefs. By giving them the power to make decisions. By offering trust and empathy. By creating a Circle of Safety. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
1143:Oh, Nolan, he’s nothing like the sweet young man I loved before he went to war!” “Ssssh, sweetheart,” he soothed, still holding her and resting his face against her hair. “War has a way of changing men, and frequently not for the better. But it’s over now. You’re safe.” “But you heard him! He didn’t just threaten me, he threatened the whole town!” she wailed. “What are we going to do?” “We won’t have to do anything,” Nolan assured her. “Those were empty threats. Some men don’t take rejection very well, that’s all. ~ Laurie Kingery, #NFDB
1144:Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon then from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins the journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of the crowd, and by choosing knowledge over veils of ignorance. ~ Henri Bergson, #NFDB
1145:The expanding balloon in your chest requires a few things. Time, for instance. Creating takes minutes and hours. Living a creative life means making room to dream, craft, compose, produce. It often requires a firm rejection of martyrdom, and I mean that sincerely. The narrative we accept sometimes includes prioritizing all other humans, tasks, and line items to the exclusion of creativity. How dare I? we ask. There are more pressing needs in my life than this artistic expression. I am here to tell you with certainty: ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
1146:A novel or a poem or a play, or a theoretical essay for that matter, is an attempt to make others see something that really matters to the writer. In this gesture, there is hope – not certainty – that perhaps others may come to share her vision, without any guarantee that she will be understood. To write is to risk rejection and misunderstanding. To create a work of art, Sartre writes, is to give the world a gift nobody has asked for. But if we don't dare to share with others what we see, the world will be poorer for it. ~ Toril Moi, #NFDB
1147:Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity. ~ Eric Hoffer, #NFDB
1148:He believed that all people existed behind varying layers of armor which, like the archaeological layers of earth itself, reflected the historical events and turbulence of a lifetime. An individual's armor that had been developed to resist pain and rejection might also block a capacity for pleasure and achievement, and feelings too deeply trapped might be released only by acts of self-destruction or harm to others. Reich was convinced that sexual deprivation and frustration motivated much of the world's chaos and warfare. ~ Gay Talese, #NFDB
1149:He believed that all people existed behind varying layers of armor which, like the archaeological layers of earth itself, reflected the historical events and turbulence of a lifetime. An individual’s armor that had been developed to resist pain and rejection might also block a capacity for pleasure and achievement, and feelings too deeply trapped might be released only by acts of self-destruction or harm to others. Reich was convinced that sexual deprivation and frustration motivated much of the world’s chaos and warfare. ~ Gay Talese, #NFDB
1150:It seemed as though he gave way all at once; he was so languid that he could not control his thoughts; they would wander to her; they would bring back the scene,- not of his repulse and rejection the day before but the looks, the actions of the day before that. He went along the crowded streets mechanically, winding in and out among the people, but never seeing them, -almost sick with longing for that one half-hour-that one brief space of time when she clung to him, and her heart beat against his-to come once again. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
1151:They were more than colleagues. Triumphs of discovery, promotion, and publication were celebrated, but so were weddings and births and the accomplishments of their children and grandchildren. They traveled together to conferences all over the world, and many meetings were piggybacked with family vacations. And like in any family, it wasn’t always good times and yummy cheesecake. They supported one another through slumps of negative data and grant rejection, through waves of crippling self-doubt, through illness and divorce. ~ Lisa Genova, #NFDB
1152:I actually quit music and I thought maybe I chose the wrong career. But, I isolated myself in a cabin in the woods for a while and that's where I fell back in love with music. Just being isolated out there, eliminating all these opinions that I endured during my time in LA and the music industry, all the rejection, it was really hard on me and my creativity. So by isolating myself in the wilderness, I was able to fall back in love with music. It was always ingrained in me, always in my blood, but I just lost it for a minute. ~ Skylar Grey, #NFDB
1153:This seemed an obvious sign from heaven. I should stop trying to write...So the rejection on the fortieth birthday seemed an unmistakable command: Stop this foolishness and learn to make cherry pie. I covered up the typewriter in a great gesture of renunciation. Then I walked around and around the room, bawling my head off. I was totally, unutterably miserable. Suddenly I stopped, because I realized what my subconscious mind was doing while I was sobbing: my subconscious mind was busy working out a novel about failure. ~ Madeleine L Engle, #NFDB
1154:don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if…” “If only…” “I wonder what would have…” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
1155:Soberly, when our trust is in things that are absolutely beyond any risk or threat, and we have learned from good sources, including our own experience, that those things are there, anxiety is just groundless and pointless. It occurs only as a hangover of bad habits established when we were trusting things—like human approval and wealth—that were certain to let us down. Now our strategy should be one of resolute rejection of worry, while we concentrate on the future in hope and with prayer and on the past with thanksgiving. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1156:For the warrior there is no such thing as an impossible love. He is not intimidated by silence, indifference or rejection. He knows that, behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire. This is why the warrior takes more risks than other people. He is constantly seeking the love of someone, even if that means often having to hear the word ‘No’, returning home defeated and feeling rejected in body and soul. A warrior never gives in to fear when he is searching for what he needs. Without love, he is nothing. ~ Paulo Coelho, #NFDB
1157:I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if…” “If only…” “I wonder what would have…” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
1158:Unless you have been inside a sanitarium you do not know that madmen are made there, just as criminals are made in our reformatories. Is there anything more detestable than these systems of so-called social conservation which, for a peccadillo, some initial and exterior rejection of respectability or common sense, hurl an individual among others whose association can only be harmful to him and, above all, systematically deprive him of relations with everyone whose moral or practical sense is more firmly established than his own? ~ Andr Breton, #NFDB
1159:It is unwise to equate scientific activity with what we call reason, poetic activity with what we call imagination. Without the imaginative leap from facts to generalisation, no theoretic discovery in science is made. The poet, on the other hand, must not imagine but reason--that is to say, he must exercise a great deal of consciously directed thought in the selection and rejection of his data: there is a technical logic, a poetic reasoning in his choice of the words, rhythms and images by which a poem's coherence is achieved. ~ Cecil Day Lewis, #NFDB
1160:Grand marronage refers to the mass flight of individuals from slavery to form an autonomous community of freedom emphasizing physical escape, geographic isolation, rejection of property relations associated with a slavery regime, and avoidance of sustained states of war through compacts, treaties, and negotiations for political recognition. These “maroon societies,” as Richard Price notably calls them, work against a fleeting temporality. They are forged through flight intended to sustain an ongoing community with defined borders. ~ Neil Roberts, #NFDB
1161:I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if …” “If only …” “I wonder what would have …” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
1162:Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance. ~ Henri Bergson, #NFDB
1163:I don't regret anything I've ever done in life, any choice that I've made. But I'm consumed with regret for the things I didn't do, the choices I didn't make, the things I didn't say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have to answer to. "What if..." "If only...""I wonder what would have..." You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
1164:I was feeling overwhelmed. Meeting Bianca, dancing, rejection by Bianca, social overload, discussion of personal matters—now, just when I thought the ordeal was over, Rosie seemed to be proposing more conversation. I was not sure I could cope.
‘It’s extremely late,’ I said. I was sure this was a socially acceptable way of saying that I wanted to go home.
‘The taxi fares go down again in the morning.’
If I understood correctly, I was now definitely far out of my depth. I needed to be sure that I wasn’t misinterpreting her. ~ Graeme Simsion,#NFDB
1165:With stand-up you meet almost constant rejection. You put yourself out there with your thoughts and your ideas, and you think they're funny, and you hope other people think they're funny too. The only way you're going to find out is when you do it and what the reaction is going to be. So if you're not prepared for that, if you're not willing to go along with that, it's going to be a rough road. But beyond stand-up, in terms of auditioning for acting roles, you don't get most of the roles you audition for - you get a precious few. ~ Paul F Tompkins, #NFDB
1166:Faced with mounting stress, the body enters an alarmed state. Capillaries dilate, heart beats faster, breathing increases skin flushes, muscles tense. With each social rejection, pathways are reinforced in the brain which links social rejection with physiological anxiety. Thus reinforced, you are more likely to experience a physical reaction to even slight social discomfort thus making you more uncomfortable, thus reinforcing the physical and so on and so on. All thought is feedback: sometimes that feedback can be too loud.
Pg170 ~ Claire North,#NFDB
1167:There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1168:After I got back to Texas, Anna sent me another letter. Her voice did not have the hop-skip this time. I read it with a thunderstorm rolling in my belly, the words of rejection leaping out as if a yellow highlighter had been dragged across them: "worried about you" "can no longer watch" "please understand" She did not demand that I quit drinking, but she told me she couldn't be the safe place for my confessions anymore. It was a love letter, the hardest kind to write, but I did not see it that way. It felt like a door slammed in my face. ~ Sarah Hepola, #NFDB
1169:At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics. ~ John Paul Stevens, #NFDB
1170:But some time ago I rejected magic in all its forms. This rejection was a gift from your grandparents, who never tried to console me with ideas of an afterlife and were skeptical of preordained American glory. In accepting both the chaos of history and the fact of my total end, I was freed to truly consider how I wished to live—specifically, how do I live free in this black body? It is a profound question because America understands itself as God’s handiwork, but the black body is the clearest evidence that America is the work of men. ~ Ta Nehisi Coates, #NFDB
1171:In politics, the definition of a real man is different from, I would say, outside Washington or outside the establishment. I don't think that's even arguable. But human nature is what it is, and men (straight men) want women. And it's always a challenge. It's never a piece of cake. You're rejected. You know Woody Allen? One funny thing he really said. Somebody said, "Woody, what has success meant?" He said, "It means being rejected by a higher class of woman." Life is filled with rejection. Men - nobody - women, they don't like rejection. ~ Rush Limbaugh, #NFDB
1172:We may believe that anxiety and fear don't concern us because we avoid experiencing them. We may keep the scope of our lives narrow and familiar, opting for sameness and safety. We may not even know that we are scared of success, failure, rejection, criticism, conflict, competition, intimacy, or adventure, because we rarely test the limits of our competence and creativity. We avoid anxiety by avoiding risk and change. Our challenge: To be willing to become more anxious, via embracing new situations and stepping more fully into our lives. ~ Harriet Lerner, #NFDB
1173:I don’t know one thing about the future. I don’t know what the next hour will hold. There may be sickness, accident, personal or world catastrophe. Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection. I don’t know what the future holds for me, for those I love, for my nation, for this world. Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will, and I cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing will separate me from Christ’s love. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1174:I have been told by the third grade teacher that my daughter Poppet is reading at middle school level. Yet if I leave Poppet a note in block letters telling her to feed the dogs I will come home to find the dogs have been ... given a swim in the above-ground pool, dressed in tutus, provided with hair weaves. What I will not find is that the dogs have been fed. 'I thought you wanted me to free the dogs,' says Poppet whose school district is not spending quite what D.C.'s is, thanks to voter rejection of the last school bond referendum. ~ P J O Rourke, #NFDB
1175:Ilsa Hermann was dying now herself—to get rid of her. Liesel could see it somewhere in the way she hugged the robe a little tighter. The clumsiness of sorrow still kept her at close proximity, but clearly, she wanted this to be over. “Tell your mama,” she spoke again. Her voice was adjusting now, as one sentence turned into two. “That we’re sorry.” She started shepherding the girl toward the door.
Liesel felt it now in the shoulders. The pain, the impact of final rejection.
That’s it? she asked internally. You just boot me out? ~ Markus Zusak,#NFDB
1176:I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree. ~ Karl Popper, #NFDB
1177:If loneliness is to be defined as a desire for intimacy, then included within that is the need to express oneself and to be heard, to share thoughts, experiences and feelings. Intimacy can't exist if the participants aren't willing to make themselves known, to be revealed. But gauging the levels is tricky. Either you don't communicate enough and remain concealed from other people, or you risk rejection by exposing too much altogether: the minor and major hurts, the tedious obsessions, the abscesses and cataracts of need and shame and longing. ~ Olivia Laing, #NFDB
1178:We need this help from the outside because we don't know how to to do this for ourselves. We start with a deep deficit—a chasm really—when it comes to understanding and being tolerant of ourselves, and that's even before we go forth to do battle with the rest of the world. As soon as someone judges, criticizes, dismisses, or ignores, the cycle of pain and reactivity ramps up, compounded by shame, remorse, and rejection. The act of validation, simply saying, 'I can see things from your perspective,' can short-circuit that emotional detour. ~ Kiera Van Gelder, #NFDB
1179:although she had so little to say she nevertheless wanted to be interrogated, interviewed, or at least subjected to searching questioning. She wanted a witness to herself, as she existed in this place, at this time. Someone should make it their business to find out how she was, how she felt, whether this or that pleased or displeased her. Her opinion should be sought on many subjects, and in an ideal state she would feel free to express distaste, rejection, as in fact she had never done in the course of her real but increasingly nebulous life. ~ Anita Brookner, #NFDB
1180:Jesus was willing to be despised. He was willing to face rejection. He was willing to subject himself to hatred and violence. He was even willing to have the Father turn his back on him. Why was he willing to do all this? He did it willingly so that, as his children, you and I would be able to live in the hope and peace of knowing that no matter what we face in the human community, we are perfectly and eternally loved by him. He endured rejection so that we would know God’s accepting love forever and ever and ever. How amazing is this grace! ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1181:I don't regret anything that I've ever done in my life, any choice that I've made. But I'm consumed with regret for the things I didn't do, the choices I didn't make, the things I didn't say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear the most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. "What if...", "If only...", "I wonder what would have..." You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days. ~ Trevor Noah, #NFDB
1182:Perfection... is clearly not achieved simply by being naked, by the lack of wealth or by the rejection of honors, unless there is also that love whose ingredients the apostle described (cf. I Cor. 13) and which is to be found solely in purity of heart. Not to be jealous, not to be puffed up, not to act heedlessly, not to seek what does not belong to one, not to rejoice over some injustice, not to plan evil - what is this and its like if not the continuous offering to God of the heart that is perfect and truly pure, a heart kept free of all disturbance? ~ John Cassian, #NFDB
1183:Christianity does the opposite of Plato. The rejection of reality by philosophy today is the most astonishing thing imaginable. Perhaps it is the proximity of revelation, the ever greater pressure it exerts, that feeds this impulse. But I think that revelation is going to become obvious in the “end times,” precisely because the Apocalypse marks the end, the pulling down of the mythological and philosophical screen that was erected against the truth. And since most people do not want to know the truth, this end can come about only in a violent fashion. The ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1184:They’re told that they’re afraid of failure, of rejection, of someone saying no. But that’s not it. Sure, rejection hurts. Failure sucks. But there are particular certainties that we hold on to—certainties that we’re afraid to question or let go of, values that have given our lives meaning over the years. That woman doesn’t get out there and date because she would be forced to confront her beliefs about her own desirability. That man doesn’t ask for the promotion because he would have to confront his beliefs about what his skills are actually worth. It’s ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1185:Emotionally mature people are usually flexible and try to be fair and objective. An important trait to keep an eye on is how others respond if you have to change your plans. Can they distinguish between personal rejection and something unexpected coming up? Are they able to let you know they’re disappointed without holding it against you? If you unavoidably have to let them down, emotionally mature people generally will give you the benefit of the doubt—especially if you’re empathetic and suggest trade-offs or compromises to ease their disappointment. ~ Lindsay C Gibson, #NFDB
1186:In a democracy, we should be reluctant to take any action that amounts to an attempt to coerce the majority, for such attempts imply the rejection of majority rule, to which there is no acceptable alternative. There may, of course, be cases where the majority decision is so appalling that coercion is justified, whatever the risk. The obligation to obey a genuine majority decision is not absolute. We show our respect for the principle, not by blind obedience to the majority, but by regarding ourselves as justified in disobeying only in extreme circumstances. ~ Peter Singer, #NFDB
1187:Rejection has value. It teaches us when our work or our skillset is not good enough and must be made better. This is a powerful revelation, like the burning UFO wheel seen by the prophet Ezekiel, or like the McRib sandwich shaped like the Virgin Mary seen by the prophet Steve Jenkins. Rejection refines us. Those who fall prey to its enervating soul-sucking tentacles are doomed. Those who persist past it are survivors. Best ask yourself the question: what kind of writer are you? The kind who survives? Or the kind who gets asphyxiated by the tentacles of woe? ~ Chuck Wendig, #NFDB
1188:The Gnostic is a born revolutionary because total rejection is the perfect proclamation of his divine autonomy.
The Greek roots of the Gnosticism of late antiquity are not to be found in Platonic dualism, but rather in Stoic monism.
Christianity and Gnosticism shared the question. Feeling “allogenous” was a common characteristic. The state of “alienation” is an historical constant, but becomes more acute in times of social crisis. “Alienation” is the ground in which either a Romantic Christian or a democratic Gnostic answer germinates. ~ Nicol s G mez D vila,#NFDB
1189:People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands—literally thousands—of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
1190:There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man
stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will.
Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer
he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising
water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh
as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire
the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter,
you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
1191:When disclosure occurs for a trans woman, whether by choice or by another person, she is often accused of deception because, as the widely accepted misconception goes, trans women are not 'real' women (meaning cis women); therefore, the behavior (whether rejection, verbal abuse, or sever violence) is warranted. The violence that trans women face at the hands of heterosexual cis men can go unchecked and uncharted because society blames trans women for the brutality they face. Similar to arguments around rape, the argument goes that 'she brought it upon herself. ~ Janet Mock, #NFDB
1192:Feminism died in 1998 when Hillary allowed henchlings and Democrats to demonize Monica as an unbalanced stalker, and when Gloria Steinem defended Mr. Clinton against Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones by saying he had merely made clumsy passes, then accepted rejection, so there was no sexual harassment involved. As to his dallying with an emotionally immature 21-year-old, Ms. Steinem noted, 'Welcome sexual behavior is about as relevant to sexual harassment as borrowing a car is to stealing one.' Surely what's good for the Comeback Kid is good for the Terminator. ~ Maureen Dowd, #NFDB
1193:I will continue to work for the advancement of freedoms in Egypt and the Arab world until I drop dead... Education itself - which can and should play an important role in the apprenticeship of tolerance and respect for other people -sometimes encourages identitarian closure, or even extremist behaviour... It is therefore vital to ensure that education does not encourage rejection of other people or identitarian closure, but that on the contrary it encourages knowledge and respect for other cultures, other religions and other ways of being and living. ~ Boutros Boutros Ghali, #NFDB
1194:In the sixties, the Commune emerged as a riposte to the nuclear family. This was an autonomic re-creation of not only preindustrial, but pre-agrarian life; it was the Return to Nature, but the Commune, like the colleges from which the idea reemerged, only functioned if Daddy was paying the bills, for the rejection of property can work only in subvention or in slavery. It is only in a summer camp (College or the hippie commune) that the enlightened live on the American Plan—room and board included prepaid—and one is free to frolic all day in the unspoiled woods. ~ David Mamet, #NFDB
1195:Today, reality is created mainly by television and movies. The media producers have become a priest-caste who guide, direct, and manage reality.
"I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more . . . "
"Don't follow leaders! Watch your parking meters!"
When Bob Dylan sang these lines in the 1960s, he was performing philosophy, transmitting powerful new ideas for which his mass audience was ready. Dylan thus triggered off heretical, sinful acts of resistance to authority, rejection of militarism, refusal to join the mechanical factory culture. ~ Timothy Leary,#NFDB
1196:A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves. All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me. ~ Henri Nouwen, #NFDB
1197:People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
1198:Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes'. ~ Stephen Colbert, #NFDB
1199:...and justice itself became a commodity, mutable in imbalance. Truth was lost, a chimera reshaped to match agenda, prejudices, thus cosigning the entire political process to a mummer's charade of false indignation, hypocritical posturing and a perverse contempt for the commonry. Once subsumed, ideals and the honor created by their avowal can never be regained, except by outright, unconstrained rejection, invariably instigated by the commonry, at the juncture of one particular moment of such brazen injustice that revolution becomes the only reasonable response. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1200:Nihilism is the rejection of the principles of civilisation as such . . . I said civilisation, and not: culture. For I have noticed that many nihilists are great lovers of culture, as distinguished from, and opposed to, civilisation. Besides, the term culture leaves it undetermined what the thing is which is to be cultivated (blood and soil or the mind), whereas the term civilisation designates at once the process of making man a citizen, and not a slave; an inhabitant of cities, and not a rustic; a lover of peace, and not of war; a polite being, and not a ruffian. ~ Leo Strauss, #NFDB
1201:Instead, we must forgo emotional manipulation and tell the truth about God’s character. The truth is that God is kind and long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish,17 and it is precisely His kindness that makes us run to Him. The truth is that God has waited so long for us, despite our rejection of Him, that we can’t help but love Him. And suddenly it is the love of Christ constraining us, not guilt or fear or pressure. Suddenly the Holy Spirit is doing His own work of testifying to the glory of Christ. Suddenly the gospel is changing a person. ~ Hannah Anderson, #NFDB
1202:Social rejection—or fearing it—is one of the most common causes of anxiety. Feelings of inclusion depend not so much on having frequent social contacts or numerous relationships as on how accepted we feel, even in just a few key relationships.20 Small wonder that we have a hardwired system that is alert to the threat of abandonment, separation, or rejection: these were once actual threats to life itself, though they are only symbolically so today. Still, when we hope to be a You, being treated like an It, as though we do not matter, carries a particularly harsh sting. ~ Daniel Goleman, #NFDB
1203:It's not true that you were the good child. Not a good child at all. You were scared of rejection, so you made yourself a convenient child for your parents to have around."
"And your good parents - well, that is a lie as well. Not good parents at all, always looking over their shoulders, afraid of what people might be saying behind their backs. You think that liars who flock together never betray each other? Oh, you will betray your parents. And your parents will betray you. It is the way of all flesh. We tell each other our lies and the betrayed betrays the betrayer. ~ Fuyumi Ono,#NFDB
1204:Caring About The applications for “result apathy” are numerous: Improve your test-taking ability by not caring so much about your grade Be more relaxed in social situations by not caring so much about rejection Deliver a better speech by not caring about mistakes or imperfect delivery Become less anxious by not caring so much about your anxious thoughts and feelings (let them be and don’t fight them) Reduce your depression by caring less about how many negative thoughts you think Improve your productivity by caring less about how much (or what quality of) work you get done ~ Stephen Guise, #NFDB
1205:Dreams require down payments. Dreams are free, but the journey isn't. There is a price to pay. First, you must pay the price of dealing with criticism from people who matter. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, 'Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.' Second, you must pay the price of overcoming your fears. Failure, rejection, and looking foolish are common fears - but they are just feelings that can be conquered and removed from your thoughts. Finally, you must be willing to pay the price of hard work in order to realize your dream. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1206:Some might argue that the current generation seems uninterested in Christianity because they want to avoid issues like sin and repentance, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think people are hungry for Jesus, but they are starting to realize they have been fed a cheap American version, and they are rightly rejecting this counterfeit. Their rejection should be seen not as a rejection of Jesus, but a rejection of obscured versions of him. People are tired of being fed a watered-down version of Jesus. People are tired of an American Jesus. They want something that’s more… ~ Benjamin L Corey, #NFDB
1207:Eschatology is one of the great and fundamental options of the human spirit. It is a profoundly explicit no to the profoundly implicit yes by which we usually accept life’s normalcies, culture’s presuppositions, and civilization’s discontents. It is a basic and unusual world-negation or rejection as opposed to an equally basic but more usual world-affirmation or acceptance. For myself, left to myself, I would prefer to bury the term eschatological and use instead a term such as world-negation. But I presume that eschatological is here to stay, so I continue to use it. ~ John Dominic Crossan, #NFDB
1208:Nothing in all history,” William Lloyd Garrison wrote, equaled “this wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of human beings from . . . the auction-block to the ballot box.”92 Grant termed it “the most important event that has occurred, since the nation came into life.”93 George Boutwell, who had introduced the proposed amendment in the House, said Grant had thrown his immense prestige behind it and that “its ratification was due, probably, to his advice . . . Had he advised its rejection, or had he been indifferent to its fate, the amendment would have failed. ~ Ron Chernow, #NFDB
1209:The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
1210:You keep listening to those who seem to reject you. But they never speak about you. They speak about their own limitations. They confess their poverty in the face of your needs and desires. They simply ask for your compassion. They do not say that you are bad, ugly, or despicable. They say only that you are asking for something they cannot give and that they need to get some distance from you to survive emotionally. The sadness is that you perceive their necessary withdrawal as a rejection of you instead of as a call to return home and discover there your true belovedness. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1211:Honest rejection of Christ, however mistaken, will be forgiven and healed ... but to evade the Son of Man, to look the other way, to pretend you haven't noticed, to become suddenly absorbed in something on the other side of the street, to leave the receiver off the telephone because it might be He who was ringing up, to leave unopened certain letters in a strange handwriting because they might be from Him -- this is a different matter. You may not be certain yet whether you ought to be a Christian; but you do know you ought to be a Man, not an ostrich, hiding its head in the sand. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1212:The world doesn’t fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than life….every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood…. Your job is to marshal the talent you do have and find people who believe in your work. What’s important, finally, is that you create, and that those creations define for you what matters most, that which cannot be extinguished even in the face of silence, solitude, and rejection. ~ Betsy Lerner, #NFDB
1213:When I was growing up, I didn't really know much about being popular or cliques or anything like that. In elementary school and middle school, you start to kind of realize what it's all about. There are cool kids, and then there's you, and you're just trying to figure out where you fit in.I learned a lot about acceptance and rejection,Those are the themes that you'll find spread throughout my music and weaved in throughout all of the lyrics. I really know what it's like to be accepted, and I also know what it's like to be rejected. And those are lessons I learned in Wyomissing. ~ Taylor Swift, #NFDB
1214:For the Christian, this second journey usually occurs between the ages of thirty and sixty and is often accompanied by a second call from the Lord Jesus. The second call invites us to serious reflection on the nature and quality of our faith in the gospel of grace, our hope in the new and not yet, and our love for God and people. The second call is a summons to a deeper, more mature commitment of faith where the naiveté, first fervor, and untested idealism of the morning and the first commitment have been seasoned with pain, rejection, failure, loneliness, and self-knowledge. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
1215:For while religion prescribes brotherly love in the relations among the individuals and groups, the actual spectacle more resembles a battlefield than an orchestra. Everywhere, in economic as well as in political life, the guiding principle is one of ruthless striving for success at the expense of one's fellow. men. This competitive spirit prevails even in school and, destroying all feelings of human fraternity and cooperation, conceives of achievement not as derived from the love for productive and thoughtful work, but as springing from personal ambition and fear of rejection. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
1216:When a man neglects to honor a woman’s hurt feelings he invalidates them and increases her hurt. It is hard for him to understand her hurt because he is not as vulnerable to uncaring comments and tones. Consequently, a man may not even realize how much he is hurting his partner and thus provoking her resistance. Similarly, women don’t realize how they are hurtful to men. Unlike a man, when a woman feels challenged the tone of her speech automatically becomes increasingly mistrusting and rejecting. This kind of rejection is more hurtful to a man, especially when he is emotionally involved. ~ John Gray, #NFDB
1217:Pius X was well aware that his rejection of the “cult associations” would result in expulsions, confiscations and a more precarious existence for the Church. He did not look forward to it, but we can imagine that he saw it as a salutary trial for the Church, an opportunity for her to detach herself further from material goods. To someone who asked him how the Archbishop of Paris could exercise his office without a church, a house and an income, the Pope replied: —“In that case I could give the office to a Franciscan who is bound by his Rule to live on alms and to exercise absolute poverty. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1218:Dressed and dirty and vulgar; and Lust, slipping him the money for his whoring; Dishonesty, to make him pretend to talent and thought he did not have; Laziness and Gluttony arm in arm. Tom felt comforted by these because they screened the great Gray One in the back seat, waiting—the gray and dreadful crime. He dredged up lesser things, used small sins almost like virtues to save himself. There were Covetousness of Will’s money, Treason toward his mother’s God, Theft of time and hope, sick Rejection of love. Samuel spoke softly but his voice filled the room. “Be good, be pure, be great, ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1219:The lesson that I would hope everyone would learn quite early in their career is don't take it personally. Whatever it is that happens, you're accepted for a role or rejected for a role of whatever, don't take it personally. It's part of the business and the person that is either hiring or firing-that's their business. That's what they are there for and it has nothing to do with how you feel about ... It has to do with someone else's perception of should you do this particular part, so just don't take it personally,. The business is really about rejection, so don't take it personally. ~ Diahann Carroll, #NFDB
1220:Following this rejection, and Sagan’s failure to secure tenure at Harvard, scientists developed a new term: the Sagan effect. One’s popularity with the general public was considered inversely proportional to the quantity and quality of one’s scientific work, a perception that, in Sagan’s case at least, was false. He published, on average, once monthly in peer-reviewed publications over the course of his thirty-nine-year career—a total of five hundred scientific papers. More recent research suggests that scientists who engage the public tend to be better academic performers as well. ~ Shawn Lawrence Otto, #NFDB
1221:This is common in both business and personal lives. It is just one of the truths about life: sometimes we need to do something for ourselves or our business that is not good for someone else, at least not in the short term. Our decisions might take business away from others or force them to deal with some rejection or loss. But ultimately they are responsible for their own lives, as adults have to be. But if your map says that you are responsible for other adults as if they were your children, then something is wrong with your map, and no doubt some well-needed endings are not taking place. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
1222:To serve means to minister, to love and care for others, and to recognize in them the heart of God. A true disciple of Jesus will always go to where people are feeling weak, broken, sick, in pain, poor, lonely, forgotten, anxious, and lost. It is often hard to go to places of weakness and rejection to offer consolation and comfort. It is possible only when we discover the presence of Jesus among the poor and weak and realize the many gifts they have to offer. Therefore, spiritual formation always includes responding from the heart to the needs of the poor in a spirit of true compassion. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1223:The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted. ~ Marcel Duchamp, #NFDB
1224:To cope with this overwhelming feeling, the young child builds a fantasy of omnipotence, imagining that it has a permanent connection to its mother, that it is at one with her. This illusion of self-sufficiency, of being its own mother, of being able to meet its own needs without going outside itself, is a desperate attempt on the child’s part to deny its true state of vulnerability. As we noted earlier, children who suffer from rejection and emotional deprivation in their early development come to prefer this solution over reality testing and an active mastery of their expanding world. ~ Robert W Firestone, #NFDB
1225:When we feel dread, when we feel discomfort of any kind, it can connect us at the heart with all the other people feeling dread and discomfort. We can pause and touch into dread. We can touch bitterness of rejection and the rawness of being slighted. Whether we are at home or in a public spot or caught in a traffic jam or walking into a movie, we can stop and look at the other people there and realize that in pain and in joy they are just like me. Just like me they don’t want to feel physical pain or insecurity or rejection. Just like me they want to feel respected and physically comfortable. ~ Pema Ch dr n, #NFDB
1226:Half the participants were told to nod their head up and down while others were told to shake it side to side. The messages they heard were radio editorials. Those who nodded (a yes gesture) tended to accept the message they heard, but those who shook their head tended to reject it. Again, there was no awareness, just a habitual connection between an attitude of rejection or acceptance and its common physical expression. You can see why the common admonition to “act calm and kind regardless of how you feel” is very good advice: you are likely to be rewarded by actually feeling calm and kind. ~ Daniel Kahneman, #NFDB
1227:No sin is committed merely because a thought enters the mind, provided it is not made welcome. Perhaps we may use the figure that the thought first passes into an anteroom, where it stands before the mind acting as a judge. No matter how sordid or evil, it has not touched the personality with its infamy nor in any way laid guilt upon the soul unless and until the mind acting as judge admits it with a welcome. If the mind decides against it and dismisses it, the personality is not only unsullied but is, on the contrary, by this act of rejection stimulated and strengthened in moral power. ~ Norman Vincent Peale, #NFDB
1228:If a group of atoms in the presence of energy falls into a stable pattern it will tend to stay that way. The earliest form of natural selection was simply a selection of stable forms and a rejection of unstable ones. There is no mystery about this. It had to happen by definition. From this, of course, it does not follow that you can explain the existence of entities as complex as man by exactly the same principles on their own. It is no good taking the right number of atoms and shaking them together with some external energy till they happen to fall into the right pattern, and out drops Adam! ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1229:On one side it seems there is faith in a Creator-God - and at the same time, the rejection of his creation; and on the other side there is an affirmation of the world, yet a world that is horrible in its meaninglessness, for the one who alone has the possibility of using and enjoying this world - man- is in this world an accidental guest, destined for total annihilation. And so this horrible and frightening dilemma brings us to the one question that each of us must pose: in the final analysis, how do *I* personally relate to this inescapable, universal, and relentless question about death? ~ Alexander Schmemann, #NFDB
1230:We began our life together at a moment of natural self-pity and defeat that left an inimitable impression on both of us. The rejection chastened me and let me know my proper place in the grand scheme of things. It was the last time I would ever make a move that required boldness or a leap of the imagination. I became tentative, suspicious, and dull. I learned to hold my tongue and mark my trail behind me and to look to the future with a wary eye. Finally, I was robbed of a certain optimism, that reckless acceptance of the world and all it could hand my way that had been my strength and deliverance. ~ Pat Conroy, #NFDB
1231:From Martin Eden on submitting manuscripts: "There was no human editor at the other end, but a mere cunning arrangement of cogs that changed the manuscript from one envelope to another and stuck on the stamps. It was like the slot machines wherein one dropped pennies, and, with a metallic whirl of machinery had delivered to him a stick of chewing-gum or a tablet of chocolate. It depended upon which slot one dropped the penny in, whether he got chocolate or gum. And so with the editorial machine. One slot brought checks and the other brought rejection slips. So far he had found only the latter slot. ~ Jack London, #NFDB
1232:I hear people testify about their search for the deeper Christian life and it sounds as though they would like to be able to get it in pill form. It seems that it would have been much more convenient for them if God had arranged religion so they could take it like a pill with a glass of water. They buy books, hoping to get their religion by prescription. But there isn’t any such thing. There is a cross. There is a gallows. There is a man with bleeding stripes on his back. There is an apostle with no property, with a tradition of loneliness and weariness and rejection and glory—but there are no pills! ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
1233:Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
1234:But Rita was relentless. For her, there was always one more house to look at, and every single Next One was going to be the One, the ideal location for Total Domestic Felicity, and so we would all race grumpily on to another perfectly serviceable home, only to discover that a leak in the sprinkler system in the backyard was almost certainly causing a sinkhole under the turf, or there was a lien on the second mortgage, or killer bees had been seen nesting only two blocks away. It was always something, and Rita seemed unaware that she had spun off alone into a deep neurotic fugue of perpetual rejection. And ~ Jeff Lindsay, #NFDB
1235:How different this was, she thought, from the way Ethan had been with her. Ethan had said exactly what he felt; he hadn't tried to hide any of it. He had presented himself before her, letting her know that he was offering himself up, and did she want him? And when she'd said no, he hadn't pretended that this wasn't what he'd meant at all; he'd simply said, let's try again. So they had tried. And though at the end of the failed experiment there were no hard feelings, he'd finally admitted he would always be a little wounded by her rejection. "Just a tiny amount," he'd said. "But it will last my whole life. ~ Meg Wolitzer, #NFDB
1236:my own experiences of personal rejection and my years of theological education, countless prayers, an ordination, and a life centered on serving the church, I still have the same personality I was born with. I am often impatient and cranky. And my first response to almost everything is “fuck you.” I don’t often stay there, but I almost always start there. I’m still me. Yet the fact that I manage to now move from “fuck you” to something less hostile, and the fact that I am often able to make that move quickly, well, once again, all of it makes me believe in God. And every time, it feels like repentance. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
1237:Why, if you were not interested in me as anything more than a"-she stumbled, trying to find the right terminology-"momentary plaything, you might at least have just told me outright afterward." She crossed her arms and sneered at him. "Why didn't you? You think I was not strong enough to take it without causing a scene? I assure you, no one is better used to rejection than I, my lord. I think it very churlish of you not to inform me to my face that your breach in manners was an unfortunate impulse of the moment. I deserve some respect. We have known each other long enough for that at the very least. ~ Gail Carriger, #NFDB
1238:Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people. As members of such an economy, we have all been programmed to respond to the human difference between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate. But we have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion. ~ Audre Lorde, #NFDB
1239:Here is revelation bright as the evening star: Jesus comes for sinners, for those as outcast as tax collectors and for those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams. He comes for corporate executives, street people, superstars, farmers, hookers, addicts, IRS agents, AIDS victims, and even used-car salesmen. Jesus not only talks with these people but dines with them—fully aware that His table fellowship with sinners will raise the eyebrows of religious bureaucrats who hold up the robes and insignia of their authority to justify their condemnation of the truth and their rejection of the gospel of grace. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
1240:The spiritual energy of our time, as I've come to understand it, is not a rejection of the rational disciplines by which we've ordered our common life for many decades - law, politics, economics, science. It is, rather, a realization that these disciplines have a limited scope. They can't ask ultimate questions...they don't begin to tell us how to order our astonishments, what matters in life, what matters in a death, how to love, how we can be of service to each other. These are the kinds of questions religion arose to address and religions traditions are keepers of conversation across generations about them. ~ Krista Tippett, #NFDB
1241:May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and the exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, and starvation, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. ~ Craig Groeschel, #NFDB
1242:When a woman explains why she is rejecting, this type of man will challenge each reason she offers. I suggest that women never explain why they don’t want a relationship but simply make clear that they have thought it over, that this is their decision, and that they expect the man to respect it. Why would a woman explain intimate aspects of her life, plans, and romantic choices to someone she doesn’t want a relationship with? A rejection based on any condition, say, that she wants to move to another city, just gives him something to challenge. Conditional rejections are not rejections—they are discussions. The ~ Gavin de Becker, #NFDB
1243:If this is so, why should any man bother about moral rules and regulations? Why should any man conform to laws formulated by a people whose outlook on the universe probably differed diametrically from his own? Why should any man obey a regulation which is denounced, by his common-sense, as a hodge-podge of absurdities, and why should he model his whole life upon ideals invented to serve the temporary needs of a forgotten race of some past age? These questions Nietzsche asked himself. His conclusion was a complete rejection of all fixed codes of morality, and with them of all gods, messiahs, prophets, saints, popes, ~ H L Mencken, #NFDB
1244:As time went on, I would grasp how deep such wounds go. For we carry not only our own wounding experiences, but the inherited wounds of our mothers and grandmothers, if we are women, Virginia Woolf said. This statement is not mere poetry. We carry something ancient inside us, an aspect of the psyche that Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. Containing river beds of collective experience. the collective unconscious is the place where preexisting traces of ancestral experience are encoded. Thousands of years of feminine rejection reside there, and it can rise up to do a dark dance with our conscious beliefs. ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
1245:When several patients committed suicide in the days leading up to their eviction, a group of psychiatrists published a letter in Psychiatric Services, identifying eviction as a “significant precursor of suicide.” The letter emphasized that none of the patients were facing homelessness, leading the psychiatrists to attribute the suicides to eviction itself. “Eviction must be considered a traumatic rejection,” they wrote, “a denial of one’s most basic human needs, and an exquisitely shameful experience.” Suicides attributed to evictions and foreclosures doubled between 2005 and 2010, years when housing costs soared.18 ~ Matthew Desmond, #NFDB
1246:In order to be free for the outcasts, the sinners, the marginals in his social world, Jesus had to keep his distance from the expectations and the moralizing judgments of the authorities and the respectable. When he walked with the notorious sinner Zacchaeus through the streets of Jericho, he was not fazed by the scandalized murmurs of the crowd. He wasn't looking around anxiously, fearing what people might say. He was neither afraid of their rejection nor concerned about stepping on toes. He was going to the home of Zacchaeus because this sinner was a child of his Father, that was all. And that's the name of that tune. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
1247:And this doesn’t just mean taking physical risks. The science shows that other risks—emotional, intellectual, creative, social—work just as well. “To reach flow,” explains psychiatrist Ned Hallowell,22 “one must be willing to take risks. The lover must be willing to risk rejection to enter this state. The athlete must be willing to risk physical harm, even loss of life, to enter this state. The artist must be willing to be scorned and despised by critics and the public and still push on. And the average person—you and me—must be willing to fail, look foolish, and fall flat on our faces should we wish to enter this state. ~ Peter H Diamandis, #NFDB
1248:In a forceful rejection of the public service themes of the Social Gospel, they argued that the central tenet of Christianity remained the salvation of the individual. If any political and economic system fit with the religious teachings of Christ, it would have to be rooted in a similarly individualistic ethos. Nothing better exemplified such values, they insisted, than the capitalist system of free enterprise. Thus, throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Fifield and like-minded religious leaders advanced a new blend of conservative religion, economics, and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism. ~ Kevin M Kruse, #NFDB
1249:Liberty may be granted but freedom cannot be conferred. Freedom is from within. Notwithstanding all the abuses to which freedom is now subject--marking man down as a commercial item and cutting him off from his birthright by senseless
excess and the demoralization of the profit-system--yet man may still be in love with life and find life less and less abundant for this very reason. Truth is of freedom, always safe and affirmative, therefore conservative. Truth proclaims rejection of dated minor traditions, doomed by the great Tradition of The Law of Change is truth's great "eternal." Freedom is this "great becoming. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright,#NFDB
1250:The constant struggle to feel accepted and worthy is unrelenting. We put so much of our time and energy into making sure that we meet everyone’s expectations and into caring about what other people think of us, that we are often left feeling angry, resentful and fearful. Sometimes we turn these emotions inward and convince ourselves that we are bad and that maybe we deserve the rejection that we so desperately fear. Other times we lash out—we scream at our partners and children for no apparent reason, or we make a cutting comment to a friend or colleague. Either way, in the end, we are left feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and alone. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1251:In my old easy-going theism, I had regarded Christianity as a sort of fairy tale; and I had neither accepted nor rejected Jesus, since I had never, in fact, encountered him. Now I had. The position was not, as I had been comfortably thinking all these months, merely a question of whether I was to accept the Messiah or not. It was a question of whether I was to accept Him--or reject>. My God! There was a gap behind me too. Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble-but what of the leap to rejection? There might be no certainty that Christ was God-but, by God, there was no certainty that He was not. ~ Sheldon Vanauken, #NFDB
1252:My image of others has gone through a thousand transformations, from idealization to total rejection, to re-creation and rescue of a totally new self. As I changed, my perspective changed. The theme of images. How one must struggle against this creation and invention of others, listen to them attentively, let them state their own case, weigh and balance the impressions. Otherwise this invention takes over, or projection. We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire. Often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment because it does not fit them. ~ Ana s Nin, #NFDB
1253:The psyche is built upon avoiding this pain, and as a result, it has fear of pain as its foundation. That is what caused the psyche to be. To understand this, notice that if the feeling of rejection is a major problem for you, you will fear experiences that cause rejection. That fear will become part of your psyche. Even though the actual events causing rejection are infrequent, you will have to deal with the fear of rejection all the time. That is how we create a pain that is always there. If you are doing something to avoid pain, then pain is running your life. All of your thoughts and feelings will be affected by your fears. ~ Michael A Singer, #NFDB
1254:The breakdown of mummies and daddies was an important part of lesbian relationships in the Bagatelle...For some of us, however, role-playing reflected all the depreciating attitudes toward women which we loathed in straight society. It was the rejection of these roles that had drawn us to 'the life' in the first place. Instinctively, without particular theory or political position or dialectic, we recognized oppression as oppression, no matter where it came from.
But those lesbians who had carved some niche in the pretend world of dominance/subordination rejected what they called our 'confused' lifestyle, and they were in the majority. ~ Audre Lorde,#NFDB
1255:The desire to avoid rejection at all costs, to avoid confrontation and conflict, the desire to attempt to accept everything equally and to make everything cohere and harmonize, is a deep and subtle form of entitlement. Entitled people, because they feel as though they deserve to feel great all the time, avoid rejecting anything because doing so might make them or someone else feel bad. And because they refuse to reject anything, they live a valueless, pleasure-driven, and self-absorbed life. All they give a fuck about is sustaining the high a little bit longer, to avoid the inevitable failures of their life, to pretend the suffering away. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1256:He turned to me and, with a mockingly courteous gesture, said, “I fault no one for ambition. If you wish, you may gracefully exit now and save yourself some regrettably painful experience. I like you. Your ignorance is refreshing, and your passions amusing. For a time we could keep each other company.”
I opened my mouth, trying to find an insult cosmic enough to express my rejection, but I realized just in time that resistance would only encourage him. He would enjoy my being angry and helpless, and I knew then what he would not enjoy. “Unfortunately,” I said, striving to mimic Vidanric’s most annoying Court drawl, “I find you boring. ~ Sherwood Smith,#NFDB
1257:I must have made a pitiful, indeed pitiable impression on an observer, though there was none – unless I'm going to say that I am an observer of myself, which is stupid, since I am my own observer anyway: I've actually been observing myself for years, if not for decades; my life now consists only of self-observation and self-contemplation, which naturally leads to self-condemnation, self-rejection and self-mockery. For years I have lived in this state of self-condemnation, self-abnegation and self mockery, in which ultimately I always have to take refuge in order to save myself. But all the time I ask myself what I have to save myself from? ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
1258:The fact that earth is not our ultimate home explains why, as followers of Jesus, we experience difficulty, sorrow, and rejection in this world.11 It also explains why some of God’s promises seem unfulfilled, some prayers seem unanswered, and some circumstances seem unfair. This is not the end of the story. In order to keep us from becoming too attached to earth, God allows us to feel a significant amount of discontent and dissatisfaction in life — longings that will never be fulfilled on this side of eternity. We’re not completely happy here because we’re not supposed to be! Earth is not our final home; we were created for something much better. ~ Rick Warren, #NFDB
1259:if you do not share the universities' values, it could be a big mistake to send your children to college before they are intellectually and morally prepared for the indoctrination-rather-than-education they will receive there. Therefore, prepare them morally and intellectually and, if possible, do not send them to college right after high school. Let them work for a year, or perhaps travel (for example, given the antipathy to Israel on campuses, a trip to Israel would be both morally clarifying and maturing). The younger the student, the less life experience and maturity they have, the more they are likely to embrace the rejection of your values. ~ Dennis Prager, #NFDB
1260:Similar things happen in so many diseases – the insulin-secreting cells that are lost when teenagers develop type 1 diabetes, the brain cells that are lost in Alzheimer’s disease, the cartilage producing cells that disappear during osteoarthritis – the list goes on and on. It would be great if we could replace these with new cells, identical to our own. This way we wouldn’t have to deal with all the rejection issues that make organ transplants such a challenge, or with the lack of availability of donors. Using stem cells in this way is referred to as therapeutic cloning; creating cells identical to a specific individual in order to treat a disease. ~ Nessa Carey, #NFDB
1261:I see every rejection simply as some form of incompatibility. Whether she thinks I’m a total creep, or she’s crazy about me but we live on different continents, or she’s in a horrible mood when I ask her out, or she thinks I’m cute but has different values and interests than me — whatever the reason, if a woman ever rejects me, it’s because she’s not compatible with me. It may be a permanent incompatibility. It may be a temporary incompatibility. But the point is that if she liked me enough, she’d be willing to work at making it happen with me. And if she doesn’t, then that just means it’s wrong person — or right person, wrong time. And that’s fine. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1262:It wouldn’t seem at all odd if I were to take in a boarder.” I drew back in surprise. “Oh?” “Yes.” He still didn’t quite meet my gaze, as if half-afraid of rejection. “I’m very particular, though. This boarder will be tall, handsome, and speak precisely thirteen languages. But read more. He must be willing to put up with a roommate prone to nightmares, occasional fits of brooding, and a fondness for chess. Must love cats, keeping odd hours, and sword canes. Do you…do you know anyone who might fit the description?” I caught his chin gently, tilting his head back so he had to look at me. “You know,” I said, bending to kiss him, “I rather think I do. ~ Jordan L Hawk, #NFDB
1263:To laugh is to risk appearing a fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk involvement. To expose feelings is to risk rejection. To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure. But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow, or love. Chained by his certitudes, he is a slave. Only a person who takes risks is free. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1264:The second man hunches over, his eyes dart around and he is unable to look someone in the eye without getting uncomfortable. He puts on a cool persona that is always aloof. He performs. He avoids saying things that may upset others, and sometimes even lies to avoid conflict. He’s always trying to impress people. When he makes a mistake, he tries to blame others or pretend like it didn’t happen. He hides his emotions and will smile and tell everyone he’s fine even when he’s not. He’s scared to death of rejection. And when he is rejected, it sends him reeling, angry, and desperate to find a way to win back the affection of the person who doesn’t like him. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1265:When you find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will stand in front of you when other’s cast stones, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who will hold your hand when your sick, who thinks your pretty without makeup, the one who turns to his friends and say, ‘that’s her’, the one that would bear your rejection because losing you means losing his will to live, who kisses you when you screw up, watches the stars and names one for you and will hold and rock that baby for hours so you can sleep…..you marry him all over again. ~ Shannon L Alder, #NFDB
1266:My father came home changed from the Great War...Angry. Mean. He started drinking too much. While Maman was alive, he was different...After her death, there was no pretense anymore. He sent Isabelle and me away to live with a stranger. We were both just girls, and heartbroken. The difference between us was that I accepted the rejection. I closed him out of my life and found someone else to love me. But Isabelle...she doesn't know how to concede defeat. She hurled herself at the cold wall of our father's disinterest for years, trying desperately to gain his love...Isabelle seems unbreakable. She has a steel exterior, but it protects a candyfloss heart. ~ Kristin Hannah, #NFDB
1267:Asking someone out on a date is a simple task that frequently becomes a terrifying conundrum of fear, self-doubt, and anxiety. It’s full of tough decisions: How do I ask? In person? Phone call? Text? What do I say? Could this person be the person I end up spending the rest of my life with? What if this is the only person for me? What if I fuck it all up with the wrong message? Though technology has added a few new, modern quirks to this dilemma, asking a new person to go on a romantic outing has never been easy. It means declaring your attraction to someone and putting yourself out there in a huge way, while risking the brutal possibility of rejection—or, ~ Aziz Ansari, #NFDB
1268:Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves. All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1269:I lay down my need to understand why things happen the way they do. I lay down my fears about others walking away and taking their love with them. I lay down my desire to prove my worth. I lay down my resistance to fully trust Your thoughts, Your ways, and Your plans, Lord. I lay down being so self-consumed in an attempt to protect myself. I lay down my anger, unforgiveness, and stubborn ways that beg me to build walls when I sense hints of rejection. I lay all these things down with my broken boards and ask that Your holy fire consume them until they become weightless ashes. And as I walk away, my soul feels safe. Held. And truly free to finally be me. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
1270:Thus the whole death is not the biological phenomenon of death but the spiritual reality whose "sting... is sin" (1 Cor. 15:56) - the rejection by man of the only true life given to him by God. "Sin entered the world and death by sin " (Rom. 5:12): there is no other life but God's life; the one who rejects it dies because life without God is death. This is the spiritual death, the one that fill the entire life with "dying" and, being separation from God, makes man's life solitude and suffering, fear and illusion, enslavement to sin and enmity, meaninglessness, lust and emptiness. It is this spiritual death that makes man's physical death truly death... ~ Alexander Schmemann, #NFDB
1271:...most of us build prisons for ourselves and after we occupy them for a period of time we become accustomed to their walls and accept the false premise that we are incarcerated for life. As soon as that belief takes hold of us we abandon hope of ever doing more with our lives and of ever giving our dreams a chance to be fulfilled. We become puppets and begin to suffer living deaths. It may be praiseworthy and noble to sacrifice your life to a cause or a business or the happiness of others, but if you are miserable and unfulfilled in that lifestyle, and know it, then to remain in it is a hypocrisy, a lie, and a rejection of the faith placed in you by your creator. ~ Og Mandino, #NFDB
1272:Crowfeather nodded, feeling the pain of rejection. He was glad that he had spoken, but he accepted that he could not control how his son responded. I guess Lionblaze and Jayfeather will always resent me. “I’m not angry with you,” Lionblaze added. “I accept your apology, and I’m grateful for the way it all turned out.” A little reassured, Crowfeather dipped his head again in acceptance. He began reaching out his tail to touch Lionblaze on the shoulder, then hastily drew it back again as he realized that would never be their relationship. This cordial agreement, with the air cleared between them, was the best he could hope for. And I have to learn to be okay with that. ~ Erin Hunter, #NFDB
1273:I am not in pursuit of wealth, neither am I in want of fame! I am not after applauds that shall turn into slaps after a least slip. I do not need absolute acceptance or absolute rejection; neither am I after a total approval nor disapproval! I am in pursuit of wisdom! I am in pursuit of a true and a solemn dignity; I am in pursuit of nurturing a true and a great destiny in my journey to the final destination! I do not seek for carnal reward, but if the world will reward me, it shall be for good; If the world will accept who I am as I am and what I stand for, fine, if not, I only look up to my Heavenly Father to accomplish a solemn duty for a solemn reward! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah, #NFDB
1274:Letting go means just what it says. It’s an invitation to cease clinging to anything—whether it be an idea, a thing, an event, a particular time, or view, or desire. It is a conscious decision to release with full acceptance into the stream of present moments as they are unfolding. To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking. It’s akin to letting your palm open to unhand something you have been holding on to. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn, #NFDB
1275:The second most common misconception about love is the idea that dependency is love...Its effect is seen most dramatically in an individual who makes an attempt or gesture or threat to commit suicide or who becomes incapacitatingly depressed in response to a rejection or separation from spouse or lover......
When you require another individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual. There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship. It is a matter of necessity rather than love, love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other. ~ M Scott Peck,#NFDB
1276:It has just been discovered that women carry fetal cells from all the babies they have carried. Crossing the defensive boundaries of our immune system and mixing with our own cells, the fetal cells circulate in the mother’s bloodstream for decades after each birth. The body does not tolerate foreign cells, which trigger illness and rejection. But a mother’s body incorporates into her own the cells of her children as if they recognize each other, belong to each other. This fantastic melding of two selves, mother and child, is called human microchimerism. My three children are carried in my bloodstream still….
How did we not know this? How can this be a surprise? ~ Meredith Hall,#NFDB
1277:The act of choosing a value for yourself requires rejecting alternative values. If I choose to make my marriage the most important part of my life, that means I’m (probably) choosing not to make cocaine-fueled hooker orgies an important part of my life. If I’m choosing to judge myself based on my ability to have open and accepting friendships, that means I’m rejecting trashing my friends behind their backs. These are all healthy decisions, yet they require rejection at every turn. The point is this: we all must give a fuck about something, in order to value something. And to value something, we must reject what is not that something. To value X, we must reject non-X. That ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1278:Before this, the Cherokees had, like Indian tribes in general, done without formal government. As Van Every puts it: The foundation principle of Indian government had always been the rejection of government. The freedom of the individual was regarded by practically all Indians north of Mexico as a canon infinitely more precious than the individual’s duty to his community or nation. This anarchistic attitude ruled all behavior, beginning with the smallest social unit, the family. The Indian parent was constitutionally reluctant to discipline his children. Their every exhibition of self-will was accepted as a favorable indication of the development of maturing character. . . . ~ Howard Zinn, #NFDB
1279:It is an inertia of the physical consciousness which allows these desires to come and does not react against the suggestions; it is that also which responds to the pains and suggestion of illness. But you must not accept the suggestion that you cannot react and be free, - the physical consciousness itself cannot as yet, but the will can if it is called on to act and made accustomed to act always. Not the struggling will, but a quiet will insisting on the quietude of the mind and vital and insisting on the rejection of these adverse things. That would soon prove sufficient to hold the ground for the Peace and Force to act and they would do the rest.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,#NFDB
1280:It was not simply that I frenziedly desired what I could not have. That was but a blunt and unrefined kind of suffering. I was condemned to be with her even in her very rejection of me. And how long and how slow and how long-drawn-out that rejection would be. Still temptation would follow where she was. Endlessly she would give herself to others taking me with her. Like an obscene puny familiar I would sit in the corners of bedrooms where she kissed and loved. She would make consort with my foes, she would adore those that mocked me, she would drink contempt for me from alien lips. And all the time my very soul would travel with her, invisible and crying soundlessly with pain. ~ Iris Murdoch, #NFDB
1281:Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even understands who he is... One of the deepest forms of poverty a person can experience is isolation... Poverty is often produced by a rejection of God's love, by man's basic and tragic tendency to close in on himself, thinking himself to be self-sufficient or merely an insignificant and ephemeral fact, a "stranger" in a random universe...The human being develops when ... his soul comes to know itself and the truths that God has implanted deep within, when he enters into dialogue with himself and his Creator... It is not by isolation that man establishes his worth, but by placing himself in relation with others and with God. ~ Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1282:Until the last day of the war, MacArthur and his staff continued to
plan for Olympic [the invasion of the Japanese home islands]. Yet nobody, with the possible exception of the general, wanted to launch the operation. A British infantryman, gazing at bloated corpses on a
Burman battlefield, vented the anger and frustration common to almost
every Allied soldier in those days, about the enemy's rejection of
reason: "Ye stupid sods! Ye stupid Japanni sods! Look at the fookin' state of ye! Ye wadn't listen--and yer all fookin' dead! Tojo's way! Ye dumb bastards! Ye coulda bin suppin' chah an' screwin' geeshas in yer fookin' lal paper 'ooses--an' look at ye! Ah doan't knaw! ~ Max Hastings,#NFDB
1283:Consuelo's appearance set her apart from the others, and the nuns, sure that this was not accidental but a sign of benevolent divine will, spared no effort in cultivating her faith, in the hope she would decide to take her vows and serve the Church; al their efforts, however, came to naught before the girl's instinctive rejection. She made the attempt in good faith, but never succeeded in accepting the tyrannical god the nuns preached to her about; she preferred a more joyful, maternal, and compassionated god.
"That is the Most Holy Virgin Mary," the nuns explained to her.
"She is God?"
"No, she is the Mother of God."
"Yes, but who has the say in heaven, God or his Mama? ~ Isabel Allende,#NFDB
1284:I know, somewhere in me, that it's not her that's being stupid. I understand, on one level, that she doesn't know, that everything's up in the air. But that's no use to me. You know the worst thing about being rejected? The lack of control. If you could only control the when and how of being dumped by somebody, then it wouldn't seem as bad. But then, of course, it wouldn't be rejection, would it? It would be by mutual consent. It would be musical differences. I would be leaving to pursue a solo career. I know how unbelievably and pathetically childish it is to push and push like this for some degree of probability, but it's the only thing I can do to grab any sort of control back from her. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
1285:The witch grunted. "Love gone wrong. The worst."
Jace made a soft, almost inaudible noise at that—a chuckle. Dorothea's ears pricked like a cat's. "What's so funny, boy?"
"What would you know about it?" he said. "Love, I mean."
Dorothea folded her soft white hands in her lap. "More than you might think," she said.
"Didn't I read your tea leaves, Shadowhunter? Have you fallen in love with the wrong person yet?"
Jace said, "Unfortunately, Lady of the Haven, my one true love remains myself."
Dorothea roared at that. "At least," she said, "you don't have to worry about rejection, Jace Wayland."
"Not necessarily. I turn myself down occasionally, just to keep it interesting. ~ Cassandra Clare,#NFDB
1286:There is no 'this'. This is nothing."
"And I am nothing," Neil prompted. When Andrew gestured confirmation, Neil said, "And as you've always said, you want nothing."
Andrew stared stone-faced back at him. Neil would have assumed it a silent rejection of Neil's veiled accusation if Andrew's hand hadn't frozen midair between them. Neil took the bottle from Andrew's other hand and set it off to one side where they couldn't knock it over.
"That's a first," Neil said. "Do I get a prize for shutting you up?"
"A quick death," Andrew said. "I've already decided where to hide your body."
"Six feet under?" Neil guessed.
"Stop talking," Andrew said, and kissed him. ~ Nora Sakavic,#NFDB
1287:Over the years I suffered poverty and rejection and came to believe that my mother had formed me for a freedom that was unattainable, a delusion. Then ... I was ... confined to this small apartment in this alien city of Rochester. ... Looking about, I saw millions of old people in my situation, wailing like lost puppies because they were alone and had no one to talk to. But they had become enslaved by habits which bound their lives to warm bodies that talked. I was free! Although my mother had ceased to be a warm body in 1944, she had not forsaken me. She comforts me with every book I read. Once again I am five, leaning on her shoulder, learning the words as she reads aloud ‘Alice in Wonderland’. ~ Louise Brooks, #NFDB
1288:The only possible explanation for the absence of a proactive word to express nonviolence is that not only the political establishments but the cultural and intellectual establishments of all societies have viewed nonviolence as a marginal point of view, a fanciful rejection of one of society's key components, a repudiation of something important but not a serious force in itself. It is not an authentic concept but simply the abnegation of something else. It has been marginalized because it is one of the rare truly revolutionary ideas, an idea that seeks to completely change the nature of society, a threat to the established order. And it has always been treated as something profoundly dangerous. ~ Mark Kurlansky, #NFDB
1289:Time of course has showed the question up in all its young illogic. We can justify any apologia simply by calling life a successive rejection of personalities. No apologia I s any more than a romance—half a fiction—in which all the successive identities are taken on and rejected by the writer as a function of linear time are treated as separate characters. The writing itself even constitutes another rejection, another “character” added to the past. So we do sell our souls: paying them away to history in little installments. It isn’t so much to pay for eyes clear enough to see past the fiction of continuity, the fiction of cause and effect, the fiction of a humanized history endowed with “reason. ~ Thomas Pynchon, #NFDB
1290:All I was responsible to do was share Christ with the person. It’s not my job to save him or her. The failure lies in being one who never shares his or her faith with others. Fear of rejection, mistakes, and failure causes people to make the worst mistake of all—that of doing nothing. When you make a mistake, you can resolve never to make another one. But that’s an impossible resolution. You can decide that mistakes are too costly and become fearful of them, but that fear will keep you from fulfilling your potential. You can constantly think about your mistakes and live with regret, but that’s self-torture. Finally, you can learn from your mistakes and become a better person, and that’s progress. ~ John C Maxwell, #NFDB
1291:Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.
To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take…If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person…When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected. ~ Madeleine L Engle,#NFDB
1292:But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude. -- Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister. ~ Jane Austen, #NFDB
1293:Before the power system had made plenitude possible, the great objection to vocational diversification would have been that it would decrease the necessary supply of goods, lower profits, and slow down the pace of production. But this slowdown would apply mainly to superficial and meretricious goods; this is precisely what an economy of plenitude demands if it is to foster a selective use of goods, and due rejection of 'bads.' A slowdown in many areas of production has become imperative, so as to curtail the over-stimulation of the profit-pleasure centers. But a slow-down, sometimes even a stoppage, is no less imperative in order to provide the leisure necessary for fostering more intimate human relations. ~ Lewis Mumford, #NFDB
1294:May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
Amen. ~ Craig Groeschel,#NFDB
1295:Asking someone out on a date is a simple task that frequently becomes a terrifying conundrum of fear, self-doubt, and anxiety. It’s full of tough decisions: How do I ask? In person? Phone call? Text? What do I say? Could this person be the person I end up spending the rest of my life with? What if this is the only person for me? What if I fuck it all up with the wrong message? Though technology has added a few new, modern quirks to this dilemma, asking a new person to go on a romantic outing has never been easy. It means declaring your attraction to someone and putting yourself out there in a huge way, while risking the brutal possibility of rejection—or, in the modern era, even an unexplained, icy-cold silence. ~ Aziz Ansari, #NFDB
1296:It is true that freedom, when it is made up principally of privileges, insults labor and separates it from culture. But freedom is not made up principally of privileges; it is made up especially of duties. And the moment each of us tries to give freedom's duties precedence over its privileges, freedom joins together labor and culture and sets in motion the only force that can effectively serve justice. The rule of our action, the secret of our resistance can be easily stated: everything that humiliates labor also humiliates the intelligence, and vice versa. And the revolutionary struggle, the centuries-old straining toward liberation can be defined first of all as a double and constant rejection of humiliation. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1297:In my work with hundreds of women over the past few years a theme has emerged: women’s desperate, unquenchable desire to step into their power, countered by the fear of what will happen if they do. The longing to express the riches inside them, wrestling with the deep terror of being burned by the judgement, hatred or rejection of strangers or loved ones if they do.
This fear of being burned is an oddly female one. It is a fear which keeps us small and scared… but seemingly safe. From the outside this can seem like an overreaction. Both the need, and the fear. But women, it seems, have an innate knowing of what it means to burn… and be burned. They know the dangers in their bones. And it makes them wary. ~ Lucy H Pearce,#NFDB
1298:and by a militant rejection of all later accretions, which included medieval fiqh, mysticism and Falsafah, which most Muslims now regarded as normative. Because the Ottoman sultans did not conform to his vision of true Islam, Abd al-Wahhab declared that they were apostates and worthy of death. Instead, he tried to create an enclave of pure faith, based on his view of the first ummah of the seventh century. His aggressive techniques would be used by some fundamentalists in the twentieth century, a period of even greater change and unrest. Wahhabism is the form of Islam that is still practised today in Saudi Arabia, a puritan religion based on a strictly literal interpretation of scripture and early Islamic tradition. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1299:Shaftesbury criticized Locke and Descartes for failing to appreciate the natural teleology of our emotional constitution, and dismissed all physiological accounts as beside the point. Many other British philosophers showed less interest in the metaphysics of explanation and more in defending an empiricist account of the origins of our ideas. But the rejection of innate ideas often drove them to focus explanations of the emotions on the hydraulics by which pains and pleasures push our ideas. This naturalistic approach was particularly marked in eighteenth-century associationist psychology, often hand in hand with ‘Newtonian’ ambitions to produce a “science of man:” examples include Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1300:Since there are always two parties in a relationship, the need for space may vary, as each would come with their own set of beliefs about how to spend time together and how much togetherness is too much and how much exclusive time one can claim from their partner. The conflicts arise when one partner feels neglected or left out due to the other’s need for space. If a partner expresses their need for space, it might feel like rejection or abandonment to the other. The clingy partner becomes clingier and the partner who is trying to get some space resents it, tries harder to break away, or if that isn’t possible, lies about that late office meeting when they have actually been at the pub, having a drink with their friends. ~ Preeti Shenoy, #NFDB
1301:We don’t like to hurt. And there is no worse pain for fallen people than facing an emptiness we cannot fill. To enter into pain seems rather foolish when we can run from it through denial. We simply cannot get it through our head that, with a nature twisted by sin, the route to joy always involves the very worst sort of internal suffering we can imagine. We rebel at that thought. We weren’t designed to hurt. The physical and personal capacities to feel that God built into us were intended to provide pleasures, like good health and close relationships. When they don’t, when our head throbs with tension and our heart is broken by rejection, we want relief. With deep passion, we long to experience what we were designed to enjoy. ~ Larry Crabb, #NFDB
1302:When we take rejection as proof of our inadequacies, it's hard to allow ourselves to risk being truly seen again. How can we open ourselves to another person if we fear that he or she will discover what we're trying desperately to hide—that we are stupid, boring, incompetent, needy, or in some way deeply inadequate? Obviously we won't meet many people's standards or win their affection, respect, or approval. So what? The problem arises when shame kicks in and we aren't able to view our flaws, limitations, and vulnerabilities in a patient, self-loving way. The fear of rejection becomes understandably intense when it taps into our own belief that we are lesser than others—or lesser than the image we feel compelled to project. ~ Harriet Lerner, #NFDB
1303:There’s a technique we use in our local rationalist cluster called “Is That
Your True Rejection?”, and it works like this: Before you stake your
argument on a point, ask yourself in advance what you would say if that
point were decisively refuted. Would you relinquish your previous
conclusion? Would you actually change your mind? If not, maybe that point
isn’t really the key issue. You should search instead for a sufficiently
important point, or collection of points, such that you would change your
mind about the conclusion if you changed your mind about the arguments.
It is, in our patois, “logically rude,” to ask someone else to painstakingly
refute points you don’t really care about yourself. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky,#NFDB
1304:Thinking, even when thinking is difficult, versus nonthinking Awareness, even when awareness is challenging, versus unawareness Clarity, whether or not it comes easily, versus obscurity or vagueness Respect for reality, whether pleasant or painful, versus avoidance of reality Respect for truth versus rejection of truth Independence versus dependence Active orientation versus passive orientation Willingness to take appropriate risks, even in the face of fear, versus unwillingness Honesty with self versus dishonesty Living in and being responsible to the present versus retreating into fantasy Self-confrontation versus self-avoidance Willingness to see and correct mistakes versus perseverance in error Reason versus irrationalism ~ Nathaniel Branden, #NFDB
1305:At such times, it is particularly important to return to fundamentals. Many assumptions about leadership in the political realm are superficial and unsubstantiated ; there is no need to guide one’s policies by the results of the latest poll or to force every complex idea into a sound bite. Here one can take inspiration from those individuals who have not accepted the conventional wisdom, who have risked defeat, rejection, obscurity, even their lives, in order to pursue ideas in which they (and perhaps a few followers) believe. To put it simply: Leaders can actually lead. One of the important roles that elders can provide in a society is to call attention to those figures from whom one may learn, and by whose lives one may be guided. ~ Howard Gardner, #NFDB
1306:Modernity has abandoned the household gods, not because we have rejected the idolatry as all Christians must, but because we have rejected the very idea of the household. We no longer worship Vesta, but have only turned away from her because our homes no longer have any hearths. Now we worship Motor Oil. If our rejection of the old idols were Christian repentance, God would bless it, but what is actually happening is that we are sinking below the level of the ancient pagans. But when we turn to Christ in truth, we find that He has ordained every day of marriage as a proclamation of his covenant with the church. A man who embraces what is expected of him will find a good wife and a welcoming hearth. He who loves his wife loves himself. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1307:Talking so much you horrify yourself and those around you; talking so little that you almost refuse your own existence: a demonstrates that speech is by no means a straightforward route to connection. If loneliness is to be defined as a desire for intimacy, then included within that is the need to express oneself and to be heard, to share thoughts, experiences and feelings. Intimacy can’t exist if the participants aren’t willing to make themselves known, to be revealed. But gauging the levels is tricky. Either you don’t communicate enough and remain concealed from other people, or you risk rejection by exposing too much altogether: the minor and major hurts, the tedious obsessions, the abscesses and cataracts of need and shame and longing. ~ Olivia Laing, #NFDB
1308:Rejection of the unknown is tantamount to “identification with the devil,” the mythological counterpart and eternal adversary of the world-creating exploratory hero. Such rejection and identification is a consequence of Luciferian pride, which states: all that I know is all that is necessary to know. This pride is totalitarian assumption of omniscience – is adoption of “God’s place” by “reason” – is something that inevitably generates a state of personal and social being indistinguishable from hell. This hell develops because creative exploration – impossible, without (humble) acknowledgment of the unknown – constitutes the process that constructs and maintains the protective adaptive structure that gives life much of its acceptable meaning ~ Jordan Peterson, #NFDB
1309:Rejection of the unknown is tantamount to “identification with the devil,” the mythological counterpart and eternal adversary of the world-creating exploratory hero. Such rejection and identification is a consequence of Luciferian pride, which states: all that I know is all that is necessary to know. This pride is totalitarian assumption of omniscience – is adoption of “God’s place” by “reason” – is something that inevitably generates a state of personal and social being indistinguishable from hell. This hell develops because creative exploration – impossible, without (humble) acknowledgment of the unknown – constitutes the process that constructs and maintains the protective adaptive structure that gives life much of its acceptable meaning ~ Jordan B Peterson, #NFDB
1310:You were poor So that I might enjoy The wealth of Your creation. You were punished For all my mistakes So I’d be declared not guilty By association. You took all that I am heir to And gave me all that belonged to You. What more could anyone do? When I accepted You I never realized That I’d be accepted, too. It took awhile to see That You bore God’s rejection So He’d never turn away from me. I never knew I would receive so much When I accepted You. You met death So that I might know life And eternal restoration. You took on the world So the likeness of God Could be drawn on my being Like a blood relation. The deepest needs my lifetime through Were all met on the cross by You. What more could anyone do? You are the adopted son or daughter of God, who is ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
1311:What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands – literally thousands – of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives. Anyway. ~ Nick Hornby, #NFDB
1312:If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1313:Blood is thicker than water—and many see something ridiculous, or worse, about anyone who doesn’t know this. In his discussion of Gandhi’s autobiography, George Orwell expresses admiration for Gandhi’s courage but is repelled by Gandhi’s rejection of special relationships—of friends and family, of sexual and romantic love. Orwell describes this as “inhuman,” and goes on to say: “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.” To ~ Paul Bloom, #NFDB
1314:Some of us face the very real threat of losing our livelihoods if we try something new and lose the company some money. Politics also present a constant threat—the fear that others are trying to keep us down so that they may advance their own careers. Intimidation, humiliation, isolation, feeling dumb, feeling useless and rejection are all stresses we try to avoid inside the organization. But the danger inside is controllable and it should be the goal of leadership to set a culture free of danger from each other. And the way to do that is by giving people a sense of belonging. By offering them a strong culture based on a clear set of human values and beliefs. By giving them the power to make decisions. By offering trust and empathy. By creating a Circle of Safety. ~ Simon Sinek, #NFDB
1315:Apart from the light brought by the Messiah, the incarnate Word, people love darkness because their deeds are evil (3:19), and when the light does put in an appearance, they hate it, because they do not want their deeds to be exposed (3:20). In fact, wherever it is true that the light shines in the darkness, it is also true that the darkness has not understood it (taking katelaben as in the NIV). Reading v. 5 this way anticipates the rejection theme that becomes explicit in vv. 10–11. Alternatively, even if katelaben means something like ‘did not overcome it’ (see Additional Note), it is quite possible that John, subtle writer that he is, wants his readers to see in the Word both the light of creation and the light of the redemption the Word brings in his incarnation. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1316:Muslims must be warned that plagiarists and pretenders as well as ignorant imitators affect great mischief by debasing values, imposing upon the ignorant, and encouraging the rise of mediocrity. The appropriate original ideas for hasty implementation and make false claims for themselves. Original ideas cannot be implemented when vulgarized; on the contrary, what is praiseworthy in them will turn out to become blameworthy, and their rejection will follow with the dissatisfaction that will emerge. So in this way authentic and creative intellectual effort will continually be sabotaged. It is not surprising that the situation arising out of the loss of adab also provides the breeding ground for the emergence of extremists who make ignorance their capital. ~ Syed Muhammad Naquib al Attas, #NFDB
1317:Ignorance makes us look for acceptance where it cannot be expected, and makes us hope for changes where they cannot be found. Illusion makes us fight for a new world as if we could create and control it ourselves; it makes us judge our neighbors as if we had the final word. Ignorance and illusion keep us entangled in the world and cause suffering and sorrow. But the way of the heart leads to freedom. The spiritual life is a life in which we are set free by the Spirit of God to enjoy life in all its fullness. By this Spirit we can indeed “be in the world without being of it” we can move freely without being bound by false attachments; we can speak freely without fear of human rejection; and we can live with peace and joy even when surrounded by conflict and sadness. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1318:It’s like taking a photograph containing all the people you love and suddenly some of those people purposely cut themselves out of the picture. And the gaping hole left behind is in some ways worse than death. If their absence was caused by death, you would grieve their loss. But when their absence is caused by rejection, you not only grieve their loss but you also have to wrestle through the fact that they wanted this. They chose to cut themselves out. Though you are devastated, they are possibly walking away feeling relieved. Or worse, they might even feel happy. And there you sit, staring at a jacked-up photograph that no glue in the world can fix. Normal has been taken. Not by accident. But very much on purpose by someone you never expected could be such a thief. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
1319:As long as your idea of faith requires you to make payments in order to receive the love of God, you are not an owner but a renter. God doesn’t want your payments; He doesn’t need them. All He wants is for you to accept His payment, the one and only payment ever needed. The payment for your life was His Son’s life. And to say that additional monthly checks must be cut to save you is to say that His Son’s death was a waste of a perfectly good life. Rather than endear you to God, this way of thinking cuts you off from Him, as you take His most valuable gift and hand it back to Him in rejection of its value and necessity in your life. Such arrogance then, makes you the only salvation acceptable, makes you your own Messiah, your own perfect lamb worthy of the name Savior. ~ Hayley DiMarco, #NFDB
1320:my heart is overwhelmed, but I’m seeing it now; this is the opposite of everything we in the West have been taught about the cross . . . I am seeing not God’s wrath, but ours, the wrath of the human race, our anger, scorn, bitterness, hostility, and enmity toward God—O Lord Jesus! This is awful!” “All of Ophis’s madness,” John said, picking up where all thought failed me. “His madness, as it had poisoned the mind of Adam’s race, gathered into one act of terrible iniquity, the complete rejection of the Father’s Son. The deepest darkness, the last broken fragment. Isaiah saw it: ‘He was despised and forsaken by men, and the Lord caused the iniquity of us all to encounter him.’” “Sir!” I fell to the ground in tears. “We cursed and damned and crucified the Word of God!” “And ~ C Baxter Kruger, #NFDB
1321:...nor have I found occasion to depart from the plan... the rejection of the whole doctrine of series in the establishment of the fundamental parts both of the Differential and Integral Calculus. The method of Lagrange... had taken deep root in elementary works; it was the sacrifice of the clear and indubitable principle of limits to a phantom, the idea that an algebra without limits was purer than one in which that notion was introduced. But, independently of the idea of limits being absolutely necessary even to the proper conception of a convergent series, it must have been obvious enough to Lagrange himself, that all application of the science to concrete magnitude, even in his own system, required the theory of limits. ~ Augustus De Morgan, The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836), #NFDB
1322:Roth grinned then. Anyway, back to me. I'm all better and I am back. He slid me a sly look that made me want to punch him instead of cry into my pillow like a baby. I'm sure I was missed. He took a big bite of the hamburger and grinned around the mouthful. A lot.
I didn't know what happened that switched my emotions so fast. The hurt his rejection had left behind exploded into rage- like the head-spinning, spraying-green-vomit kind of rage. My brain kicked off. I wasn't thinking as I reached over and plucked the hamburger right out of his hand.
Twisting at the waist, I threw the hamburger on the floor behind Roth as hard as I could. The satisfactory splat it made as ketchup and mayo splattered like a gruesome burger massacre brought a wide smile to my face. ~ Jennifer L Armentrout,#NFDB
1323:I was born to atheism and raised in it, by people who had derived their own atheism from a proud tradition of working-class rejection of authority in all its forms, whether vested in bosses or priests, gods or demons. This is what defined my people, my tribe: We did not believe, and what this meant, when I started on the path of metaphysical questioning, was that there were no ready answers at hand. My religious friends—and my friends were almost all Catholics or Protestants or occasionally something more exotic like Jewish or Greek Orthodox—were convinced that God had a “plan” for us, and since God was good, it was a good plan, which we were required to endorse even without having any idea what it was. Just sign the paperwork; in other words, don’t overintellectualize. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich, #NFDB
1324:Christ’s work on your behalf is true, whether you know it or not, feel it or not – even if you don’t believe it! Facts are facts, whether they are believed or not. The believer is a man who, by faith, recognizes what has happened and therefore enjoys his participation in it. But our acceptance or rejection of Christ’s loving sacrifice does not nullify its cosmic scope. No matter how much you reject Christ, He never fails to love and include you. You are free to reject Him – but your rejection does not nullify His inclusion. You cannot dictate His character that way. You cannot make Him cease being Love. At the height of Israel’s rejection of their own Messiah, they reached the point of crucifying Him – and yet this was the very act by which He chose to forgive, include and save them. ~ John Crowder, #NFDB
1325:We don’t have to take rejection as a reflection of our self-worth. If somebody who is important (or even someone unimportant) to you rejects you or your choices, you are still real, and you are still worth every bit as much as you would be if you had not been rejected. Feel any feelings that go with rejection; talk about your thoughts; but don’t forfeit your self-esteem to another’s disapproval or rejection of who you are or what you have done. Even if the most important person in your world rejects you, you are still real, and you are still okay. If you have done something inappropriate or you need to solve a problem or change a behavior, then take appropriate steps to take care of yourself. But don’t reject yourself, and don’t give so much power to other people’s rejection of you. ~ Melody Beattie, #NFDB
1326:My eye is still used to searching for her in a crowd. My breath is still used to catching when I see her and the light is angled just right. My body is still used to hers moving next to mine. So the distance—anything short of contact—is a constant rejection. We were together for six months, and in each of those months my desire found new ways to be fueled by her. It’s over can’t kill that. All of the songs I wrote in my head were for her, and now I can’t stop them from playing. This null soundtrack. I’m tired, she’d said, and I told her that I was tired, too, and that I wanted to take some time for us, too. And then she’d said, No, I’m tired of you, and I slipped into the surreal-but-true universe where we were over and I wasn’t over it. She was no longer any kind of here that I could get to ~ David Levithan, #NFDB
1327:Why would anyone who is deeply satisfied with reality, with real life as it is lived, dedicate himself to something as insubstantial and fanciful as the creation of fictional realities? Naturally, those who rebel against lie as it is, using their ability to invent different lives and different people, may do so for any number of reasons, honorable or dishonorable, generous or selfish, complex or banal. The nature of this basic questioning of reality, which to my mind lies at the heart of every literary calling, doesn't matter at all. What matters is that the rejection be strong enough to fuel the enthusiasm for a task as quixotic as tilting at windmills – the slight-of-hand replacement of the concrete, objective world of life as it is lived with the subtle and ephemeral world of fiction. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa, #NFDB
1328:Every time I have seen families embrace and accept their homosexual family members, nothing bad had happened! The association has always been positive and loving, caring "family" experience has only grown and flourished. They are available to each other for that family support that is so valued in our culture. Families are strengthened not weakened. When families have rejected their homosexual family members it has not turned out well, even when that rejection was done 'lovingly.' You know, love the sinner...hate the sin? I've known homosexuals rejected by their families who looked for acceptance in all the wrong places. Bright, promising lives lost to drugs, disease, and death. I've seen families who reject those they should love, depriving themselves of that valuable relationship. (120) ~ Carol Lynn Pearson, #NFDB
1329:He knelt down, and put a flower under her nose. She turned away. He tickled her under the chin with it. “Stop it.” “It is for you.” “I don't want it.” “Ah, Maeve, you wound me. It’s just a poor, innocent flower. To think that its very existence, its very life, was ordained so that it could be presented to you . . . that its very life was cut short so that it could bring a smile of delight to your lovely lips—and now, you don’t want it.” He put his hand to his heart and affected a hurt look. “Dear God, if I were that flower I would be sorely crushed, and go to my death drowning in tears of bitterness and rejection and hurt and abandonment—” “Oh, give me the blasted thing!” she cried, and snatching it away from him, held it protectively against her breast. Sir Graham smiled, his eyes twinkling. ~ Danelle Harmon, #NFDB
1330:Many depressed people have been hurt and rejected by others. They feel as though basic relational needs have not been met, and they will be stuck in depression until they are. Rejection from parents, spouses, or friends has left a profound emptiness that feels like an emotional handicap. What does this have to do with the heart? Consider first the example of Jesus. He is God, but he was truly human. If anything is clear from his life, he didn’t get love from people, he never prayed that he would know the love of other people, and he didn’t seem emotionally undone by rejection and misunderstanding. Rather, his deepest needs, as noted in his prayers, were for the glory of his Father to be revealed and for his spiritual children to be protected from the evil one and united in love (John 17). The ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
1331:You care. You can lie to yourself, Brother, but you can’t lie to me. I can feel the need inside you—you want her as much as I do.” “And if I do? What good would it do me?” Deep growled. “What good would it do either one of us? She’s made up her mind, Lock—she doesn’t want us.” “Well maybe we can change her mind—did that ever occur to you?” Lock ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Maybe if you could get over your grief for Miranda for one second, you could see the possibilities.” “There are no possibilities. Not with Kat. Not with any Earth female.” Deep pounded one fist on the food prep counter. “Can’t you see that by now?” Lock took a deep breath. It wouldn’t do any good to get into a shouting match. Deep had been hurt—deeply hurt —by Kat’s rejection of them after their joining. ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB
1332:An abolitionist is, as I have developed that notion, one who (1) maintains that we cannot justify animal use, however “humane” it may be; (2) rejects welfare campaigns that seek more “humane” exploitation, or single-issue campaigns that seek to portray one form of animal exploitation as morally worse than other forms of animal exploitation (e.g., a campaign that seeks to distinguish fur from wool or leather); and (3) regards veganism, or the complete rejection of the consumption or use of any animal products, as a moral baseline. An abolitionist regards creative, nonviolent vegan education as the primary form of activism, because she understands that the paradigm will not shift until we address demand and educate people to stop thinking of animals as things we eat, wear, or use as our resources. ~ Gary L Francione, #NFDB
1333:We don’t have to take rejection as a reflection of our self-worth. If somebody who is important (or even someone unimportant) to you rejects you or your choices, you are still real, and you are still worth every bit as much as you would be if you had not been rejected. Feel any feelings that go with rejection; talk about your thoughts; but don’t forfeit your self-esteem to another’s disapproval or rejection of who you are or what you have done. Even if the most important person in your world rejects you, you are still real, and you are still okay. If you have done something inappropriate or you need to solve a problem or change a behavior, then take appropriate steps to take care of yourself. But don’t reject yourself, and don’t give so much power to other people’s rejection of you. It isn’t necessary ~ Melody Beattie, #NFDB
1334:About the only value the story of my life may have is to show that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to face the fact that they must be overcome; that, in spite of timidity and fear, in spite of a lack of special talents, one can find a way to live widely and fully. Perhaps the most important thing that has come out of my life is the discovery that if you prepare yourself at every point as well as you can, with whatever means you may have, however meager they may seem, you will be able to grasp opportunity for broader experience when it appears. Without preparation you cannot do it. The fatal thing is the rejection. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, #NFDB
1335:When someone else has more privileges, they see that as a benefit to that person, rather than as a reason for being unhappy. When playing an opponent they want him to do well, rather than wishing a poor performance in order to win by default. They want to be victorious and effective on their own, rather than gaining through the shortcomings of others. They do not insist that everyone be equally endowed, but look inward for their happiness. They are not critics, nor do they take pleasure in other people’s misfortunes. They are too busy being, to notice what their neighbors are doing.
Most significantly, these are individuals who love themselves. They are motivated by a desire to grow, and they always treat themselves well when given the option. They have no room for self-pity, self-rejection, or self-hate. ~ Wayne W Dyer,#NFDB
1336:Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial. All this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil. But I have that the nature of good is what is right, and the nature of evil what is wrong; and I reflected that the nature of the offender himself is akin to my own -- not a kinship of blood or seed, but a sharing in the same mind, the same fragment of divinity. Therefore I cannot be harmed by any of them, as none will infect me with their wrong. Nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him. We were born for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. So to work in opposition to one another is against nature: and anger or rejection is opposition. ~ Marcus Aurelius, #NFDB
1337:This is not an easy thing to admit, but until that moment I had held out some craven speck of hope that this had all been a hideous misunderstanding. A boy who would say anything he thought you wanted to hear, a girl made vicious by trauma and grief and my rejection on top of it all; we could have misinterpreted in any one of a hundred ways. It was only in that moment, in the ease of that gratuitous lie, that I understood that Rosalind—the Rosalind I had known, the bruised, captivating, unpredictable girl with whom I had laughed in the Central and held hands on a bench—had never existed. Everything she had ever shown me had been constructed for effect, with the absorbed, calculating care that goes into an actor's costume. Underneath the myriad shimmering veils, this was something as simple and deadly as razor wire. ~ Tana French, #NFDB
1338:Community, a place of healing and growth . . .
When people enter community, especially from a place of loneliness in a big city or from a place of aggression and rejection, they find the warmth and the love exhilarating. This permits them to start lifting their masks and barriers and to become vulnerable. They may enter into a time of communion and great joy.
But then too, as they lift their masks and become vulnerable, they discover that community can be a terrible place, because it is a place of relationship; it is the revelation of our wounded emotions and of how painful it can be to live with others, especially with some people. It is so much easier to live with books and objects, television, or dogs and cats! It is so much easier to live alone and just do things for others, when one feels like it. ~ Jean Vanier,#NFDB
1339:Marisa replied: If you sit on the couch all day and do nothing, it is precisely because you don’t think you’re enough. You’re afraid. You’re afraid of failure. You’re afraid of rejection. You’re afraid that those things will be proof positive that you indeed are not enough. So you do nothing. Marisa continued: But if you believe that you’re enough, that’s when you take action. That’s when you go out and try something new. That’s when you apply for that job you really want. That’s when you ask for that raise. Because you’re enough. And even if you fail, you won’t take rejection personally because it’s not you—you ARE enough—so it must be your methods or your approach or skill or whatever—and because you know you’re enough, you know you can then improve those methods and skills and your approaches and then try again. ~ Vishen Lakhiani, #NFDB
1340:Community as belonging . . .
Each person with his or her history of being accepted or rejected, with his or her past history of inner pain and difficulties in relationships with parents, is different. But in each one there is a yearning for communion and belonging, but at the same time a fear of it. Love is what we want, yet it is what we fear the most. Love makes us vulnerable and open, but then we can be hurt through rejection and separation. We may crave for love, but then be frightened of losing our liberty and creativity. We want to belong to a group, but we fear a certain death in the group because we may not be seen as unique. We want love, but fear the dependence and commitment it implies; we fear being used, manipulated, smothered and spoiled. We are all so ambivalent toward love, communion and belonging. ~ Jean Vanier,#NFDB
1341:His dark eyes were on the road ahead, thoughtful. “No. I was hoping to go back to Tucson and see if I could get this hot chick I know to go out with me. I hear she’s in demand, though. She keeps putting me off each time I try to plan something romantic.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if you come up with a good itinerary, you could lure her out.”
“I was thinking dinner at Joe’s.”
I made a face. “If that’s the case, maybe you’d better brace yourself for rejection.”
“Red Pepper Bistro?”
“Okay. Now you’re in the zone.”
“Followed by a long massage in the sauna.”
“That’s pretty good too.”
“And then indecent things in the sauna.”
“I hope you mean you’ll be doing the indecent things—because I more than did my share last night.”
Kiyo glanced over at me with a mischievous grin. “Who says I’m talking about you? ~ Richelle Mead,#NFDB
1342:Sometimes I wondered if my mother's unconventional choices were her billboard to a cruel world: I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK OF ME. Had she chosen to walk away, or did she withdraw early to avoid failure? Were my mother's eccentricities a strength or just the way she covered up her own vulnerabilities? I knew from my own life that it's easier to pretend you don't want the thing you cannot have.
I feared rejection as well. The isolation and lack of communication I had been raised with made me feel—not that I was doing things wrong, but that I was wrong. I feared opening up by home would reveal all my messy, broken bits, all the ways I continually failed. If anyone got close enough to see, I was sure they wouldn't want to know me.
After years of shutting people out, how could I possibly let them in? ~ Tara Austen Weaver,#NFDB
1343:Community as belonging . . .
Each person with his or her history of being accepted or rejected, with his or her past history of inner pain and difficulties in relationships with parents, is different. But in each one there is a yearning for communion and belonging, but at the same time a fear of it. Love is what we most want, yet it is what we fear the most. Love makes us vulnerable and open, but then we can be hurt through rejection and separation. We may crave for love, but then be frightened of losing our liberty and creativity. We want to belong to a group, but we fear a certain death in the group because we may not be seen as unique. We want love, but fear the dependence and commitment it implies; we fear being used, manipulated, smothered and spoiled. We are all so ambivalent toward love, communion and belonging. ~ Jean Vanier,#NFDB
1344:Because he knows better than us plebes how to run our lives, clearly, and he’s going to prove that point. We’re dumb, he’s smart. We’re unsophisticated, know-nothing idiots, and he’s got all the answers to what ails us. He’s going to fix the world, and all we have to do is stand back and let him rope us into the solution. No more dissonance,” I said, “no more disagreement, no more argument. We will march in lockstep, like a hive-mind, with no rejection of thought tolerated. He won’t even allow us to have our own minds to rebel, don’t you see? No chance of thoughtcrime when he controls your thoughts.” “That’s a grim picture,” Steven said. “It’s the death of self,” I said, “in pursuit of forced selflessness. Except it’s not selfless when you’re forced to do it any more than it’s charity if I steal from you and give to the poor. ~ Robert J Crane, #NFDB
1345:At least we must know how to recognize the ignoble ends it achieves. Each time that it deifies the total rejection, the absolute negation, of what exists, it destroys. Each time that it blindly accepts what exists and gives voice to absolute assent, it destroys again. Hatred of the creator can turn to hatred of creation or to exclusive and defiant love of what exists. But in both cases it ends in murder and loses the right to be called rebellion. One can be nihilist in two ways, in both by having an intemperate recourse to absolutes. Apparently there are rebels who want to die and those who want to cause death. But they are identical, consumed with desire for the true life, frustrated by their desire for existence and therefore preferring generalized injustice to mutilated justice. At this pitch of indignation, reason becomes madness. ~ Albert Camus, #NFDB
1346:Falling in love was as much about receiving as it was giving, was it? It seemed selfish. It was not, though. It was the opposite. Keeping oneself from being loved was to refuse the ultimate gift.
He had thought himself done with romantic love. He had thought himself an incurable cynic.
He was not, though.
He was only someone whose heart and mind, and very soul, had been battered and bruised. It was still - and always - safe to give since there was a certain deal of control to be exerted over giving. Taking, or allowing oneself to receive, was an altogether more risky business.
For receiving meant opening up the heart again.
Perhaps to rejection.
Or disillusionment.
Or pain.
Or even heart break.
It was all terribly risky.
And all terribly necessary.
And of course, there was the whole issue of trust... ~ Mary Balogh,#NFDB
1347:If the spirits of the dead are either in heaven or hell, then appearances in Mormon Temples, as in seances, can only be demons impersonating the dead to foster belief in Satan's denial of death." This is why attempted communication with the dead, which is called necromancy, is absolutely forbidden in the Bible." Here again, in open rejection of the Word of God, Mormonism not only encourages but boasts of alleged contact with the spirits of the dead. At the same 1982 General Conference mentioned above, Elder A.Theodore Tuttle, another General Authority, proudly declared:
On the third of April 1836, one week after the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, the monumental event occurred-the Savior appeared and accepted the Temple!
Moses and Elias also came. Then, Malachi's prophecy was fulfilled, for Elijah the prophet stood before them...? ~ Ed Decker,#NFDB
1348:The proximity of these two cultures over the course of many generations presented both sides with a stark choice about how to live. By the end of the nineteenth century, factories were being built in Chicago and slums were taking root in New York while Indians fought with spears and tomahawks a thousand miles away. It may say something about human nature that a surprising number of Americans—mostly men—wound up joining Indian society rather than staying in their own. They emulated Indians, married them, were adopted by them, and on some occasions even fought alongside them. And the opposite almost never happened: Indians almost never ran away to join white society. Emigration always seemed to go from the civilized to the tribal, and it left Western thinkers flummoxed about how to explain such an apparent rejection of their society. “When ~ Sebastian Junger, #NFDB
1349:You imposed a slim majority decision on the entire nation because you have formally rejected the explicit teaching of our text. In other words, with regard to the substance of the case before you, you rejected the doctrine of mankind as created male and female, serving in this way as God’s created image-bearer. Your decision is therefore morally outrageous and is an implicit rejection of the doctrine that we have God-given rights at all. This is why your decision affirming same-sex mirage is simultaneously a decision rejecting, in principle, the very concept of religious liberty. If we have human rights, it is because we are created in God’s image. There is no other possible foundation for them. But if you have functionally denied that this image has any standing in law, then you have implicitly determined that we have no standing in law. But ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1350:if you are going to try, go all the way.. Otherwise, don’t even start.. If you are going to try, go all the way.. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. Go all the way.. It could mean not eating for three or four days.. It could mean freezing on a park bench.. It could mean jail, derision, mockery, isolation.. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test for endurance, of how much you really want to do it.. And you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.. if you are going to try, go all the way.. there’s no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire. Do it, do it , do it.. all the way .. all the way.. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is …. ~ Charles Bukowski, #NFDB
1351:The meanings of words lost their precision –and no-one bothered taking to task those who cynically abused those words to serve their own ambitions, their own evasion of personal responsibility. Lies went unchallenged, lawful pursuit became a sham, vulnerable to graft, and justice itself became a commodity, mutable in imbalance. Truth was lost, a chimera reshaped to match agenda, prejudices, thus consigning the entire political process to a mummer’s charade of false indignation, hypocritical posturing and a pervasive contempt for the commonry. Once subsumed, ideals and the honour created by their avowal can never be regained, except, alas, by outright, unconstrained rejection, invariably instigated by the commonry, at the juncture of one particular moment, one single event, of such brazen injustice that revolution becomes the only reasonable response. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1352:It is my opinion that religious experience may be a unique combination of Child (a feeling of intimacy) and Adult (a reflection on ultimacy) with the total exclusion of the Parent. I believe the total exclusion of the Parent is what happens in kenosis, or self-emptying. . . . I believe that what is emptied is the Parent. How can one experience joy, or ecstasy, in the presence of those recordings in the Parent with produced NOT OK originally? How can I feel acceptance in the presence of the earliest felt rejection? It is true that Mother was a participant in intimacy in the beginning, but it was an intimacy which did not last, was conditional, and was "never enough." I believe the Adult's function in the religious experience is to block out the Parent in order that the Natural Child may reawaken to its own worth and beauty as a part of God's creation. ~ Thomas A Harris, #NFDB
1353:Lizzy, you are lovely and have a sharp mind that has always impressed me and made me admire you. But you are also a hasty judge of people’s characters—and a little vain. Only consider your opinion of Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham. You like Mr. Wickham, but for what positive reasons? Do you know him to be generous, kind, loyal? Or do you declare him to be your friend only because he has a handsome appearance, pleasant manners, and favoured you from the beginning? On the other hand, Mr. Darcy refused to dance with you, and I know your vanity was hurt by his rejection, though you did not admit it. Consequently, you declared him as possessing the worst qualities and retaliated by being rude to him. What if Mr. Darcy had danced with you that first night at the Meryton assembly and declared his admiration for you? Would you have been so disposed to disapprove of him? ~ Lory Lilian, #NFDB
1354:In the chapters on the biology of trauma we saw how trauma and abandonment disconnect people from their body as a source of pleasure and comfort, or even as a part of themselves that needs care and nurturance. When we cannot rely on our body to signal safety or warning and instead feel chronically overwhelmed by physical stirrings, we lose the capacity to feel at home in our own skin and, by extension, in the world. As long as their map of the world is based on trauma, abuse, and neglect, people are likely to seek shortcuts to oblivion. Anticipating rejection, ridicule, and deprivation, they are reluctant to try out new options, certain that these will lead to failure. This lack of experimentation traps people in a matrix of fear, isolation, and scarcity where it is impossible to welcome the very experiences that might change their basic worldview. ~ Bessel A van der Kolk, #NFDB
1355:The good news about that long ago rejection, though, at least according to Edgar, is that he claims it helped turn him into a man—a role he fills rather nicely.” “He does indeed,” Miss Griswold agreed. Wilhelmina’s smile widened. “Do you know that one of the reasons I turned down his proposal all those years ago was because I didn’t think he was measuring up very well against the older gentlemen who were seeking my favor?” Her smile faded straightaway as the truth of what she’d actually done that night settled into her very soul. “I was so foolish, you see, having my head turned by those other gentlemen, all of whom were certainly more sophisticated than Edgar, but none of whom, in hindsight, were prepared to give me what I truly needed—affection of the most genuine sort, something Edgar had always made available to me from the time we were mere children.” Miss ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB
1356:The justification I hear more often than any other for leaving the Bible behind is that “everyone knows” it is antiquated and full of scientific nonsense, if not blatant errors and contradictions. Amazingly, when I ask people to cite examples, many cannot bring to mind even one. Apparently, they base their opinion on hearsay and repeat a widespread misconception. Among those who do answer my question, one Bible portion draws more vigorous attack than all others combined: the first few chapters of Genesis. This attack opens a wonderful door of opportunity for me—and for every believer who knows something about the scientific discoveries of the past few decades. Instead of offering an excuse for disbelief and rejection, these chapters present some of the most persuasive evidences ever assembled for the supernatural authorship, accuracy, and authority of the Bible. ~ Hugh Ross, #NFDB
1357:Different groups in the [Middle East] drew two lessons from [return of the shah in Iran] - one, that Americans were willing to use both force and intrigue to install or restore their puppet rulers in Middle Eastern countries; the other, that they were not reliable patrons when these puppets were seriously attacked by their own people, and would simply abandon them. The one evoked hatred, the other contempt - a dangerous combination.
Clearly, something deeper is involved than these specific grievances, numerous and important as they may be, something deeper which turns every disagreement into a problem and makes every problem insoluble. What we confront now is not just a complaint about one or another American policy but rather a rejection and condemnation, at once angry and contemptuous, of all that America is seen to represent in the modern world. (76) ~ Bernard Lewis,#NFDB
1358:The assumption that humans exist within an essentially impermanent universe, taken as an operational precept, demands that the intellect become a totally aware balancing instrument. But the intellect cannot react thus without involving the entire organism. Such an organism may be recognized by its burning, driving behavior. And thus it is with a society treated as organism. But here we encounter an old inertia. Societies move to the goading of ancient, reactive impulses. They demand permanence. Any attempt to display the universe of impermanence arouses rejection patterns, fear, anger, and despair. Then how do we explain the acceptance of prescience? Simply: the giver of prescient visions, because he speaks of an absolute (permanent) realization, may be greeted with joy by humankind even while predicting the most dire events. —THE BOOK OF LETO AFTER HARQ AL-ADA ~ Frank Herbert, #NFDB
1359:As we conclude, look at three simple words from Luke 10:42: “Mary has chosen.” That’s how it will always be. Right priorities will never choose us. They are a choice—in the midst of many other good ones. The word chosen comes from the Greek word eklego, meaning “to choose, select, choose for oneself.” We can’t choose what is necessary for anyone else, but we can certainly set an example. The remainder of the definition reads: “not necessarily implying the rejection of what is not chosen, but giving favor to the chosen subject, keeping in view a relationship to be established between the one choosing and the object chosen. It involves preference and selection from among many choices.” That’s what I love most about Mary and Martha. Their story started us laughing but ended with us really thinking. Shall we allow good to become the enemy of our best? The choice is ours. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1360:The Jackal was perfectly aware that in 1963 General de Gaulle was not only the President of France; he was also the most closely and skilfully guarded figure in the Western world. To assassinate him, as was later proved, was considerably more difficult than to kill President John F. Kennedy of the United States. Although the English killer did not know it, French security experts who had through American courtesy been given an opportunity to study the precautions taken to guard the life of President Kennedy had returned somewhat disdainful of those precautions as exercised by the American Secret Service. The French experts rejection of the American methods was later justified when in November 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas by a half-crazed and security-slack amateur while Charles de Gaulle lived on, to retire in peace and eventually to die in his own home. ~ Frederick Forsyth, #NFDB
1361:These five values are both unconventional and uncomfortable. But, to me, they are life-changing. The first, which we’ll look at in the next chapter, is a radical form of responsibility: taking responsibility for everything that occurs in your life, regardless of who’s at fault. The second is uncertainty: the acknowledgement of your own ignorance and the cultivation of constant doubt in your own beliefs. The next is failure: the willingness to discover your own flaws and mistakes so that they may be improved upon. The fourth is rejection: the ability to both say and hear no, thus clearly defining what you will and will not accept in your life. The final value is the contemplation of one’s own mortality; this one is crucial, because paying vigilant attention to one’s own death is perhaps the only thing capable of helping us keep all our other values in proper perspective. ~ Mark Manson, #NFDB
1362:One in two recently evicted mothers reports multiple symptoms of clinical depression, double the rate of similar mothers who were not forced from their homes. Even after years pass, evicted mothers are less happy, energetic, and optimistic than their peers. When several patients committed suicide in the days leading up to their eviction, a group of psychiatrists published a letter in Psychiatric Services, identifying eviction as a “significant precursor of suicide.” The letter emphasized that none of the patients were facing homelessness, leading the psychiatrists to attribute the suicides to eviction itself. “Eviction must be considered a traumatic rejection,” they wrote, “a denial of one’s most basic human needs, and an exquisitely shameful experience.” Suicides attributed to evictions and foreclosures doubled between 2005 and 2010, years when housing costs soared. ~ Matthew Desmond, #NFDB
1363:*Vladimir had been interested in changing religions for some time. According to legend, he sent ambassadors to the major surrounding religions to help him decide. Islam was rejected for being without joy (especially in its rejection of alcohol and pork!), and Judaism was rejected since the Jews had lost their homeland and therefore seemed abandoned by God. Settling on Christianity, he sent his men to discover if the Latin or the Greek rite was better. It was hardly a fair fight. The ambassadors to the West found rather squat, dark churches, while their compatriots in Constantinople were treated to all the pageantry of a Divine Liturgy in the Hagia Sophia. “We no longer knew,” they breathlessly reported back to Vladimir, “whether we were in heaven or on earth.” The Russian prince was convinced. Within a year, he had been baptized, and Russia officially became Orthodox. ~ Lars Brownworth, #NFDB
1364:At this stage though, with the greatest will in the world, I wasn’t going to be climbing anything, not unless I could raise the sponsorship.
And little did I know quite how hard that could be.
I had no idea how to put a proposal for sponsorship together; I had no idea how to turn my dream into one company’s opportunity; and I certainly didn’t know how to open the doors of a big corporation just to get heard.
On top of that, I had no suit, no track record, and certainly no promise of any media coverage.
I was, in effect, taking on Goliath with a plastic fork. And I was about to get a crash course in dealing with rejection.
This is summed up so well by that great Churchill quote: “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
It was time to get out there with all of my enthusiasm, and commit to fail…until I succeeded. ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB
1365:And if the child feels loved, the body is relaxed, the eyes are bright, there is a smile on the face; in some way the flesh becomes “transparent.” A child that is loved is beautiful. But what happens when children feel they are not loved? There is tension, fear, loneliness and terrible anguish, which we can call “inner pain,” the opposite of “inner peace.” Children are too small and weak to be able to fend for themselves; they have no defense mechanisms. If a child feels unloved and unwanted, he or she will develop a broken self-image. I have never heard any of the men or women whom we have welcomed into our community criticize their parents, even though many of them have suffered a great deal from rejection or abandonment in their families. Rather than blaming their parents, they blame themselves. “If I am not loved, it is because I am not lovable, I am no good. I am evil. ~ Jean Vanier, #NFDB
1366:This is extremely significant. Knowing something of when the Pentateuch came to be, even generally, affects our understanding of why it was produced in the first place—which is the entire reason why we are dipping our toes into this otherwise esoteric pool of Old Testament studies. The final form of the creation story in Genesis (along with the rest of the Pentateuch) reflects the concerns of the community that produced it: postexilic Israelites who had experienced God’s rejection in Babylon. The Genesis creation narrative we have in our Bibles today, although surely rooted in much older material, was shaped as a theological response to Israel’s national crisis of exile. These stories were not written to speak of “origins” as we might think of them today (in a natural-science sense). They were written to say something of God and Israel’s place in the world as God’s chosen people. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1367:When God becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth, he not only enters into the finitude of man, but in his death on the cross also enters into the situation of man's godforsakenness. In Jesus he does not die the natural death of a finite being, but the violent death of the criminal on the cross, the death of complete abandonment by God. The suffering in the passion of Jesus is abandonment, rejection by God, his Father. God does not become a religion, so that man participates in him by corresponding religious thoughts and feelings. God does not become a law, so that man participates in him through obedience to a law. God does not become an ideal, so that man achieves community with him through constant striving. He humbles himself and takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so that all the godless and the godforsaken can experience communion with him. ~ J rgen Moltmann, #NFDB
1368:At last I could see. “Jesus’s submission to our hostile rejection of him was his way into our . . .” “Flesh,” the apostle finished. “The great darkness. Sarx! Where Ophis had his hold,” he shouted, lifting his hands and jumping to his feet. “Oh! Lord Jesus, yes! Amen! Union with us in our sin!” I thought his heart would burst in joy, as he let out a mighty sigh of relief. I think he believed he had lost me at this critical moment. He drew in a deep breath, then stared dramatically into my heart. “Listen carefully. The Son in whom all things are, who dwells face-to-face with Abba in Ruach HaKodesh, now dwells face-to-face with Adam’s race inside Ophis’s madness. Heaven’s gate,” he called out, raising his hands in worship. “The great ‘I Am’ inside the violent world of ‘I am not.’ All will see! This I know. In that day you will know that I am in My Father, you in Me, and I in you. ~ C Baxter Kruger, #NFDB
1369:After opposition parties won control of the Venezuelan congress in a landslide election in December 2015, they hoped to use the legislature to check the power of autocratic president Nicolás Maduro. Thus, the new congress passed an amnesty law that would free 120 political prisoners, and it voted to block Maduro’s declaration of a state of economic emergency (which granted him vast power to govern by decree). To fend off this challenge, Maduro turned to the supreme court, which was packed with loyalists. The chavista court effectively incapacitated the legislature by ruling nearly all of its bills—including the amnesty law, efforts to revise the national budget, and the rejection of the state of emergency—unconstitutional. According to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo, the court ruled against congress twenty-four times in six months, striking down “all the laws it has approved. ~ Steven Levitsky, #NFDB
1370:We domesticate humans the same way we domesticate a dog or any other animal: with punishment and reward. This is perfectly normal. What we call education is nothing but domestication of the human being. We are afraid to be punished, but later we are also afraid of not getting the rewards, of not being good enough for Mom or Dad, sibling or teacher. The need to be accepted is born. Before that, we don't care whether we are accepted or not. People's opinions are not important. They are not important because we just want to play and we live in the present. The fear of not getting the reward becomes the fear of rejection. The fear of not being good enough for someone else is what makes us try to change, what makes us create an image. Then we try to project that image according to what they want us to be, just to be accepted, just to have the reward. We learn to pretend to be what we are not... ~ Miguel Ruiz, #NFDB
1371:I know the effect insecurity can have on lives because I experienced it myself. I know what it does to a person. Those who have been hurt badly through abuse or severe rejection, as I have, often seek the approval of others to try to overcome their feelings of rejection and low self-esteem. They suffer from those feelings and use the addiction of approval to try to remove the pain. They are miserable if anyone seems to not approve of them in any way or for any reason and they are anxious about the disapproval until they feel they are once again accepted. They may do almost anything to gain the approval they feel they have lost—even things their conscience tells them are wrong. For example, if a person is met with disapproval when she declines an invitation, she might change her plans and accept the invitation just to gain approval. She compromises herself for the sake of feeling approved. An ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
1372:Well, I'm going to try. Better to practice on somebody else's kid first."
"Before what?" he asked, cautiously.
"I was just joking." Suddenly, I felt very defensive.
"You're sure your pill is working, right?"
"Yes! Don't worry, If I ever wanted to have a baby it doesn't have to be with you," I said, sensing rejection and fighting back.
"Well, who in the hell would it be with?" he asked, sounding irate.
"I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball."
"I've got news for you, Lilith. If you're going to be bearing anyone's children, they'll be mine," he said heatedly. Suddenly, the baby started crying.
"Now look what you did," I chastised. "You made him cry."
"I didn't make him cry. A shitty diaper made him cry. Now you want to take this on, I'll take it on with you. Bring him over here," Adam demanded, storming off with the diaper bag. ~ N M Silber,#NFDB
1373:The marine corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swabjockies, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candyasses don't know how to be miserable.
The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not, he will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier, or swabbie, or desk jockey, because this is war, baby, and war is hell. ~ Steven Pressfield,#NFDB
1374:As for woman, her inferiority complex manifests itself in a rejection out of shame of her femininity: it is not the absence of a penis that unleashes this complex but the total situation; the girl envies the phallus only as a symbol of the privileges granted to boys; the father’s place in the family, the universal predominance of males, and upbringing all confirm her idea of masculine superiority. Later, in the course of sexual relations, even the coital posture that places the woman underneath the man is an added humiliation. She reacts by a “masculine protest”; she either tries to masculinize herself or uses her feminine wiles to go into battle against man. Through motherhood she can find in her child the equivalent of the penis. But this supposes that she must first accept herself completely as woman, and thus accept her inferiority. She is far more deeply divided against herself than is man. ~ Simone de Beauvoir, #NFDB
1375:He was fairly certain that the reason behind his forgetfulness had something to do with the fact that he’d been wallowing in a rather large vat of self-pity for years, or at least the first year or two after he’d left town. That wallowing had been a direct result of Wilhelmina—the lady he’d assumed he’d spend the rest of his life with from the time he’d been about ten—turning down his earnest offer of marriage. That rejection had sent him reeling and caused him to try his very best to forget her over the ensuing years. In hindsight, brought about by time and the wisdom that time brings a person, his offer of marriage to her had been beyond ill-advised and beyond ill-timed. It was that very hindsight that had him entering New York society again, but only in order to seek Wilhelmina out and finally try to put matters right between them, something he had no idea if she’d even be willing to entertain, or— “If ~ Jen Turano, #NFDB
1376:Smith considered her, interpreting anew the temper and the bitten lip, the grinding teeth, the contempt for stories of courtship or adventure: which, he could now see, might be pre-emptive, rejection before there was a chance of being rejected. He had been warned, with teeth, away from pity; but he could not afford it anyway. It could not be his concern what the effect on her might be, if payment of the bill should damage or ruin Lovell, if it should in some wise undermine the room in which she sat. This was – it was doubly plain now – not the place for him to play, beyond the necessary play to support the business that had brought him. Not the place for any expenditure of sentiment, beyond the general appetite for life it had seemed fitting for a Mr Smith to show. Yet an unwelcome compunction was moving in him, sharp-pointed, stitching him through to the spot where he sat, attaching him by thin threads. ~ Francis Spufford, #NFDB
1377:In 1972, the psychologist Irving Janis defined groupthink as, “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.” Groupthink most commonly affects homogenous, close-knit communities that are overly insulated from internal and external criticism, and that perceive themselves as different from or under attack by outsiders. Its symptoms include censorship of dissent, rejection or rationalization of criticisms, the conviction of moral superiority, and the demonization of those who hold opposing beliefs. It typically leads to the incomplete or inaccurate assessment of information, the failure to seriously consider other possible options, a tendency to make rash decisions, and the refusal to reevaluate or alter those decisions once they’ve been made. ~ Kathryn Schulz, #NFDB
1378:In the book’s index, she found an entry for Borderline Personality Disorder, with several sub-categories, including: Borderline Personality, Borderline Narcissism, Common Symptoms, Dissociative Symptoms, Self-Mutilation. Barbara turned to page seventy-two. The text listed an array of borderline personality disorder symptoms. It didn’t take Barbara long to begin to really sympathize with Maxwell Comstock. Life with Victoria must have been impossible at times: Mood swings, sudden irrational anger, depressive episodes, and impulsivity. Other borderline hallmarks were sexual confusion and promiscuity, manipulation and obsession of others, and a skewed, paranoid view of reality. On page seventy-five, Barbara learned that borderlines were indifferent to others’ needs, couldn’t handle rejection, continually sought approval, and had an exaggerated sense of self-importance. The ominous part of the diagnosis: No known cure. ~ Joseph Badal, #NFDB
1379:They forget that those tiny little hands in the manger, those tiny little hands embraced by Simeon, those hands were made so that nails might be driven through them. Those baby feet, not yet able to walk, they were made to walk up Golgotha to be nailed to the cross. The head of baby Jesus was made so that someday wicked men would press down a crown of thorns into it, drawing his precious blood. This baby’s soft tummy would someday be violently ripped open by a spear. So many forget that the manger leads to the cross. Jesus was born to die and when we speak about that, we find rejection by so many. When we speak about why he had to die, when we speak about our sin and the wrath of God, people turn off and tune out. When you see the Messiah in the big picture of our salvation, he is a divisive figure. He divides people into two groups: unbelievers and believers. It was that way in his day and still is today. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1380:A Cathedral Façade at Midnight
Along the sculptures of the western wall
I watched the moonlight creeping:
It moved as if it hardly moved at all
Inch by inch thinly peeping
Round on the pious figures of freestone, brought
And poised there when the Universe was wrought
To serve its centre, Earth, in mankind’s thought.
The lunar look skimmed scantly toe, breast, arm,
Then edged on slowly, slightly,
To shoulder, hand, face; till each austere form
Was blanched its whole length brightly
Of prophet, king, queen, cardinal in state,
That dead men’s tools had striven to simulate;
And the stiff images stood irradiate.
A frail moan from the martyred saints there set
Mid others of the erection
Against the breeze, seemed sighings of regret
At the ancient faith’s rejection
Under the sure, unhasting, steady stress
Of Reason’s movement, making meaningless. ~ Thomas Hardy,#NFDB
1381:Vianne had been so helpless after Maman’s death. When Papa had sent them away, to live in this small town, beneath the cold, stern eyes of a woman who had shown the girls no love, Vianne had … wilted. In another time, she might have shared with Isabelle what they had in common, how undone she’d been by Maman’s death, how Papa’s rejection had broken her heart. Or how he treated her at sixteen when she’d come to him, pregnant and in love … and been slapped across the face and called a disgrace. How Antoine had pushed Papa back, hard, and said, I’m going to marry her. And Papa’s answer: Fine, she’s all yours. You can have the house. But you’ll take her squalling sister, too. Vianne closed her eyes. She hated to think about all of that; for years, she’d practically forgotten it. Now, how could she push it aside? She had done to Isabelle exactly what their father had done to them. It was the greatest regret of Vianne’s life. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1382:APRIL 15 Peculiar Treasure Now therefore, if you will obey My voice in truth and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own peculiar possession and treasure from among and above all peoples; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation [consecrated, set apart to the worship of God]. EXODUS 19:5-6 Self-rejection and self-hatred can almost seem pious in a sense. They can become a way of punishing yourself for your mistakes, failures, and inabilities. People cannot be perfect, so they sometimes reject and despise themselves. Do you lack appreciation for your own worth and value? You may not feel treasured or even acceptable, but you are. In Ephesians 1:6, Paul says that all who believe in Christ have been “accepted in the beloved.” What joyous and amazing affirmation! Surely you are valuable; otherwise your heavenly Father would not have paid such a heavy price for your redemption. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
1383:If you’re going to try, go all the way.
Otherwise, don’t even start.
If you're going to try, go all the way.
This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe even your mind.
It could mean not eating for three or four days.
It could mean freezing on a park bench.
It could mean jail.
It could mean derision, mockery, isolation.
Isolation is the gift.
All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it.
And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds.
And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.
If you’re going to try, go all the way.
There is no other feeling like that.
You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire.
Do it. All the way
You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
1384:The critical spirit rises up against itself and consumes its form. But instead of coming out of this process greater and purified, it devours itself in a kind of self-cannibalism and takes a morose pleasure in annihilating itself. Hyper-criticism eventuates in self-hatred, leaving behind it only ruins. A new dogma of demolition is born out of the rejection of dogmas. Thus we euro-americans are supposed to have only one obligation: endlessly atoning for what we have inflicted on other parts of humanity. How can we fail to see that this leads us to live off self-denunciation while taking a strange pride in being the worst? Self-denigration is all too clearly a form of indirect self-glorification. Evil can come only from us; other people are motivated by sympathy, good will, candor. This is the paternalism of the guilty conscience: seeing ourselves as the kings of infamy is still a way of staying on the crest of history. ~ Pascal Bruckner, #NFDB
1385:Lawrence probes the sensitivity and psychological detachment that man often feels towards his penis -- it does indeed seem to have a will of its own, an ego beyond its size, and is frequently embarrassing because of its needs, infatuations, and unpredictable nature. Men sometimes feel that their penis controls *them*, leads them astray, causes them to beg favors at night from women whose names they prefer to forget in the morning. Whether insatiable or insecure, it demands constant proof of its potency, introducing into a man's life unwanted complications and frequent rejection. Sensitive but resilient, equally available during the day or night with a minimum of coaxing, it has performed purposefully if not always skillfully for an eternity of centuries, endlessly searching, sensing, expanding, probing, penetrating, throbbing, wilting, and wanting more. Never concealing its prurient interest, it is a man's most honest organ. ~ Gay Talese, #NFDB
1386:I couldn't stop thinking about that hand, gone mottled seemingly overnight. Even at ninety, his nails were clean and square. Though I'd never watched his hands purposefully, I realized I knew their habitual gestures better than my own: the way the shelf of his pinkie moved crumbs around on the tablecloth while he spoke on the phone; the way he kept his palm on his forehead as he slept, occasionally opening it as if reasoning with someone, or calculating the make on a deal; the way he spat on his fingertips when he was counting money. Sometimes he dismissed things by pushing air away with four fingers, as if hey weren't worth the trouble of an impassioned rejection. Sometimes by smacking the air left to right with the back of his hand. And sometimes, he ridged his hand as if he was about to shake someone else's but then rotated it and opened the fingers slightly in a Yiddish-like gesture that meant Just look at that a*****e. ~ Boris Fishman, #NFDB
1387:Balzac once
terminated a long conversation about politics and the fate of the world by saying: "And now let us get
back to serious matters," meaning that he wanted to talk about his novels. The incontestable importance
of the world of the novel, our insistence, in fact, on taking seriously the innumerable myths with which
we have been provided for the last two centuries by the genius of writers, is not fully explained by the
desire to escape. Romantic activities undoubtedly imply a rejection of reality. But this rejection is not a
mere escapist flight, and might be interpreted as the retreat of the soul which, according to Hegel, creates
for itself, in its disappointment, a fictitious world in which ethics reigns alone. The edifying novel,
however, is far from being great literature; and the best of all romantic novels, Paul et Virginie, a really
heartbreaking book, makes no concessions to consolation. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1388:55: A similar rejection is a necessary self-restraint and a spiritual discipline for the immature seeker, since such powers may be a great, even a deadly peril; for their supernormality may easily feed in him an abnormal exaggeration of the ego. Power in itself may be dreaded as a temptation by the aspirant to perfection, because power can abase as well as elevate; nothing is more liable to misuse. But when new capacities come as an inevitable result of the growth into a greater consciousness and a greater life and that growth is part of the very aim of the spiritual being within us, this bar does not operate; for a growth of the being into supernature and its life in supernature cannot take place or cannot be complete without bringing with it a greater power of consciousness and a greater power of life and the spontaneous development of an instrumentation of knowledge and force normal to that supernature. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 2.08, #NFDB
1389:Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for a moment on a correct metaphysics....
Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary: it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence—some supernatural realm—you must do it by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly, “To Hell with argument, I have faith.” That, of course, is a willful rejection of reason.
Objectivism advocates reason as man’s sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, it is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and that’s all. ~ Leonard Peikoff,#NFDB
1390:Instead of simply working for the money and security, which I admit are important, I suggest they take a second job that will teach them a second skill. Often I recommend joining a network-marketing company, also called multilevel marketing, if they want to learn sales skills. Some of these companies have excellent training programs that help people get over their fear of failure and rejection, which are the main reasons people are unsuccessful. Education is more valuable than money, in the long run. When I offer this suggestion, I often hear in response, “Oh that is too much hassle,” or “I only want to do what I am interested in.” If they say, “It’s too much of a hassle,” I ask, “So you would rather work all your life giving 50 percent of what you earn to the government?” If they tell me, “I only do what I am interested in,” I say, “I’m not interested in going to the gym, but I go because I want to feel better and live longer. ~ Robert T Kiyosaki, #NFDB
1391:Coming of queer age in the 1990s, to love queers was to love damage. To love damage was a path to loving yourself. ...Queers do not come out of the minefield of homophobia without scars. We do not live through out families' rejection of us, our stunted life options, the violence we've faced, the ways in which we've violated ourselves for survival, our harmful coping mechanisms, our lifesaving delusions, the altered brain chemistry we have sustained as a result of this, the low income and survival states we've endured as a result of society's loathing, unharmed. Whatever of theses wounds I didn't experience firsthand, my lovers did, and so I say that, for a time, it was not possible to have queer love that was not ins some way damaged or defined by damage sustained, even as it desperately fought through that damage to access, hopefully, increasingly frequent moments of sustaining, lifesaving love, true love, and loyalty, and electric sex. ~ Michelle Tea, #NFDB
1392:What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth bound up in things which seemed grave and weighty because they looked so busy, and because one had no idea what they were up to.
And when one day you realise that their preoccupations are meagre, their professions barren and no longer connected to life, why not continue to look on them like a child, as if on something alien, drawing on the depths of your own world, on the expanse of your own solitude, which itself is work and achievement and a vocation? Why wish to exchange a child’s wise incomprehension for rejection and contempt, when incomprehension is solitude, whereas rejection and contempt are ways of participating in what, by precisely these means, you want to sever yourself from? ~ Rainer Maria Rilke,#NFDB
1393:If you love somebody deeply and you lose that relationship - whether through death, rejection or separation - you will feel pain. That pain is called grief. Grief is a normal emotional reaction to any significant loss, whether a loved one, a job or a limb. There's no way to avoid or get rid of it - it's just there. And, once accepted, it will pass in its own time.
Unfortunately, many of us refuse to accept grief. We will do anything rather than feel it. We may bury ourselves in work, drink heavily, throw ourselves into a new relationship 'on the rebound' or numb ourselves with prescribed medications. But no matter how hard we try to push grief away, deep down inside it's still there. And eventually it will be back.
It's like holding a football underwater. As long as you keep holding it down, it stays beneath the surface. But eventually your arm gets tired and the moment you release your grip, the ball leaps straight up out of the water. ~ Russ Harris,#NFDB
1394:A singular confusion exists about the notions of 'culture' and 'civilization'.
Culture began with the 'prologue in heaven.' With its religion, art, ethics, and philosophy, it will always be dealing with man's relation to that heaven from whence he came. Everything within culture means a confirmation or a rejection, a doubt or a reminiscence of the heavenly origin of man. Culture is characterized by this enigma and goes on through all time with the steady striving to solve it.
On the other hand, civilization is a continuation of the zoological, one-dimensional life, the material exchange between man and nature. This aspect of life differs from other animals' lives, but only in its degree, level, and organization. Here, one does not find man embarrassed by evangelical, Hamletian, or Karamasovian problems. The anonymous member of society functions here only by adopting the goods nature and changing the world by his work according to his needs. ~ Alija Izetbegovi,#NFDB
1395:In America the gay world touched my life at the margins, though references and images and occasional conversations with men and women who celebrated their homosexuality with pride. As far as I could see there was nothing to be proud about. There was only pain, humiliation and shame. If I were to join this group, I would have to act proud and hide my feelings of rejection and loneliness. If I were to show these men and women that I was terrified for my future, I would be regarded as misguided or a victim of Islam or Arabness. But if there was one thing I wsa certain of it was that there was nothing misguided about my feelings, and I did not feel that Islam or my Arabness was to blame. If I were to join this group, I would simply go from the repressiveness of secrecy to the repressiveness of pride. I didn't despise my shame. I had no reason to do so. My shame illuminated my intense attachment to the world, my desire to be connected with others." [p. 210] ~ Saleem Haddad, #NFDB
1396:It is one thing to die. It is another thing for an innocent person to die for a guilty one. It is something much more that Jesus would take on himself all the curses the world deserved in concentrated form. This meant that his relationship with his Father, the one thing that had sustained him throughout all the previous insults and rejection, was about to be removed. Moses knew he could not lead the people through the wilderness unless God was present. Without his Father’s grace and mercy, Jesus had to wonder if he would be able to take one more step, let alone make it all the way to the cross. So he prayed. The result was that he was strengthened. His mission came into full view (John 18:11), and he was able to see the divine plan to the end. From that point on, the gospel accounts communicate two unmistakable points. They press these points until we are undone by them: Jesus experienced incomparable shame, and he experienced it at the hands of everyone. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
1397:But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.
To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected. ~ Madeleine L Engle,#NFDB
1398:Within a few moments he was immersed in his work. The evening before, he had caught up with the routine of his classwork; papers had been graded and lectures prepared for the whole week that was to follow. He saw the evening before hm, and several evenings more, in which he would be free to work on his book. What he wanted to do in this new book was not yet precisely clear to him; in general, he wished to extend himself beyond his first study, in both time and scope. He wanted to work in the period of the English Renaissance and to extend his study of classical and medieval Latin influences into that area. He was in the stage of planning his study, and it was that stage which gave him the most pleasure—the selection among alternative approaches, the rejection of certain strategies, the mysteries and uncertainties that lay in unexplored possibilities, the consequences of choice…. The possibilities he could see so exhilarated him that he could not keep still. ~ John Williams, #NFDB
1399:From my insufficiency to my perfection, and from my deviation to my equilibrium
From my sublimity to my beauty, and from my splendor to my majesty
From my scattering to my gathering, and from my rejection to my communion
From my baseness to my preciousness, and from my stones to my pearls
From my rising to my setting, and from my days to my nights
From my luminosity to my darkness, and from my guidance to my straying
From my perigee to my apogee, and from the base of my lance to its tip
From my waxing to my waning, and from the void of my moon to its crescent
From my pursuit to my flight, and from my steed to my gazelle
From my breeze to my boughs, and from my boughs to my shade
From my shade to my delight, and from my delight to my torment
From my torment to my likeness, and from my likeness to my impossibility
From my impossibility to my validity, and from my validity to my deficiency.
I am no one in existence but myself, ~ Ibn Arabi,#NFDB
1400:Social radicals have therefore always faced the need to distinguish. There is a vital distinction between concern for women's rights (or liberty), founded on the aspiration for human freedom, and rejection of all restrictions on sexuality imposed by current social mores. This distinction is clearer in our day than ever before. Precisely because so many veils have been lifted, we plainly see the contemporary phenomenon of “sexual freedom” advocates who are only a new type of oppressors and exploiters of women. Many of the latter deserve the Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year award — from the Henry Miller type, whose anti-establishment rebellion masks the fact that he regards women as sexual objects only, to the Playboy Club sexploiter. To these champions of sexual freedom, women's emancipation operationally means their emancipation from sexual inhibitions the better to make them available to “emancipated” men for purposes that have nothing to do with social equality. ~ Hal Draper, #NFDB
1401:But these ideas were no more than abstractions because, despite his intellectual rejection of conventional morality, his emotional allegiance to the code of conduct it prescribed was unswerving. Self-disgust was legitimate, but detesting his mother was unthinkable. He could not pay heed to the painful messages of his childhood memories without destroying the hopes that had helped him to survive as a child. Time and again, Rimbaud tells us that he had no one to rely on except himself. This was surely the fruit of his experience with a mother who had nothing to offer him but her own derangement and hypocrisy, rather than true love. His entire life was a magnificent but vain attempt to save himself from destruction at the hands of his mother, with all the means at his disposal. Young people who have gone through much the same kind of childhood as Rimbaud are often fascinated by his poetry because they can vaguely sense the presence of a kindred spirit in it. Rimbaud ~ Alice Miller, #NFDB
1402:I slowly became aware, but only in my head, of something about “the first love” and “the second love.” Let me explain. I became more and more intellectually clear that the first love comes from the ultimate life force we call God, who has loved me unconditionally before others knew or loved me. “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” And I saw that the second love, the love of parents, family, and friends, was only a modified expression of the first love. I reasoned that the source of my suffering was the fact that I expected from the second love what only the first love could give. When I hoped for total self- giving and unconditional love from another human being who was imperfect and limited in ability to love, I was asking for the impossible. I knew from experience that the more I demanded, the more others moved away, cut loose, got angry, or left me, and the more I experienced anguish and the pain of rejection. But I felt helpless to change my behavior. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1403:As if the social imbalances and fear maintained by police violence are peace! Those who argue that the police sometimes do good things bear the burden of proving that those same good things could not be accomplished at least as well by other means. In any case, it’s not as if a police-free society is suddenly going to appear overnight just because someone spray-paints “Fuck the Police” on a wall. The protracted struggle it will take to free our communities from police repression will probably go on as long as it takes us to learn to coexist peacefully; a community that can’t sort out its own conflicts can’t expect to triumph against a more powerful occupying force. In the meantime, opposition to police should be seen as a rejection of one of the most egregious sources of oppressive violence, not an assertion that without police there would be none. But if we can ever defeat and disband the police, we will surely be able to defend ourselves against less organized threats. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1404:If you're going to fight for love, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing that love, money, friends, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean embarrassment. It could mean mockery-- but they are all simply a test of your endurance, of how much you really want it. Her. Him. There are no safety nets in the fight for love.
And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can ever imagine. If you're going to try to fight for love, go all the way. There is no other better feeling than that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will burn with fire. You will ride life like a horse straight down a path of flaming beautiful insanity. It's the only good fight there is left in this world. The fight for love.
There are no losers in the fight for love. Only cowards. ~ Jos N Harris,#NFDB
1405:I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1406:I know," she said, "rejection's not easy. But you reject words, whole pages, long impossible stories, and it feels good once it's done. It's no different rejecting pictures, a picture's right to hang on a wall. And most of these have hung here too long; you don't even see them any more. The best stuff you have, you don't see any more. And they kill each other because they're badly hung. Look, here's a thing of mine and here's your drawing, and they clash. We need distance, it's essential. And different periods need distance to set them apart - unless you're just cramming them together for the shock effect! You simply have to feel it… There should be an element of surprise when people's eyes move across a wall covered with pictures. We don't want to make it too easy for them. Let them catch their breath and look again because they can't help it. Make them think, make them mad, even… Now we'll give our colleagues here better light. Why did you leave so much space right here? ~ Tove Jansson, #NFDB
1407: First we saw only our own shame. Now we see that Jesus’ shame was deeper than our own, and we were among the scorners. First we saw only our own alienation and rejection. Now we see that Jesus’ alienation and rejection was at the hands of the entire world, ourselves included. First we saw only contempt and self-contempt. Now we see that all human contempt was focused on Jesus—and we participated. No matter how stubbornly resistant to change your shame might be, witnessing extreme shame like this will move your shame to second place in your thoughts. This doesn’t mean it disappears, but it makes a difference when your shame is number two on your list rather than number one. It makes a huge difference. When Jesus and his shame occupy our attention, our own shame becomes less controlling. Let us “fix our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2 NIV). Fix your eyes on the one who absorbed shame and then announced that its reign was over. At least you will no longer feel alone. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
1408:Think with me for a moment. It is only when you understand the completeness of your justification (that your penalty has been paid and you have been made eternally right with God by the life and death of Jesus) that you are able to rest in the ongoing discipline of your sanctification. That discipline is not to make you right with God, but an expression of the fact that you have been made right with God, and because you have, you are now the object of his fatherly love. You can expect his discipline, but you do not have to fear his anger. You will experience his correction, but you will never face his rejection. He disciplines all his children in order to produce a harvest of righteousness, but he will never punish you for your sin. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18). Amen and amen! For further study and encouragement: Psalm 106 ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1409:Damn Radnor," he said raspy, going to pour her another brandy. "I'm going to tear his throat out."
"I know something that would hurt him far more than that." Carefully Lottie raised a folded handkerchief to blot his damp brow.
"Oh?" His brows arched in sardonic inquiry.
Her fingers closed around the handkerchief, compressing it into a ball. She paused for a long moment before replying, while a wave of hope rose in her throat and nearly threatened to choke her. Taking the brandy from him, she took a bracing swallow. "We could try to be happy together," she said. "That is something he could never understand... something he'll never have."
She could not bring herself to look at him, afraid that she might see mockery or rejection in his eyes. But her heart slammed heavily in her chest as she felt his mouth drift along the top of her head, his lips playing wit white rose petals as they fluttered against the pinned-up silk of her braid.
"We could try," he agreed softly. ~ Lisa Kleypas,#NFDB
1410:Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly. ~ Theodore J Kaczynski, #NFDB
1411:Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1412:O God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. O God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You, and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being, because our being is Your being, our spirit is rooted in Your spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen. ~ Thomas Merton, in his closing prayer to an informal address delivered in Calcutta, India (October 1968), from The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton (1975); quoted in Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master : The Essential Writings (1992), p. 237, #NFDB
1413: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
1414:The winning candidate, now the president elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible.
Trump has already taken steps to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by placing in charge of the EPA transition a notorious (and proud) climate change denier, Myron Ebell. Trump's top adviser on energy, billionaire oil executive Harold Hamm, announced his expectations, which were predictable: dismantling regulations, tax cuts for the industry (and the wealthy and corporate sector generally), more fossil fuel production, lifting Obama's temporary block on the Dakota Access pipeline. The market reacted quickly. Shares in energy corporations boomed, including the world's largest coal miner, Peabody Energy, which had filed for bankruptcy, but after Trump's victory, registered a 50 percent gain. ~ Noam Chomsky,#NFDB
1415:Abram.” Strange. The voice was in his head, not in the crowd around him. But he looked around anyway. He spotted Mikael, already upon him. “What on earth are you doing here?” hissed Mikael. It startled Abram, who was not expecting such rejection. “I wanted to see what you were going to do.” Mikael was incredulous. “And you were going to watch God’s wrath standing right in the midst of it all, were you?” “I guess I had not thought of it that way,” said Abram. He saw the huge form of the Destroyer standing in the distance, scanning the masses. He suddenly realized what a completely stupid, mule-headed thing he had done. If the Destroyer was the instrument of mass destruction, of course that would mean a kind of leveling that would not be selective in a crowd. Once again, Abram’s overconfidence in his protected status dulled his thinking. “I am sorry,” said Abram. “Have I thwarted any of El Shaddai’s plans?” “Of course not,” said Mikael. “But that does not justify your moronic irresponsibility. Follow me. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1416:But while the evolutionary escalator is an incredibly common expression of a belief in human exceptionalism, it doesn’t have any real basis in ecological reality. The view is one Darwin specifically rejected, which makes it all the more ironic that it is the neo-Darwinians that have spread it about so much. Darwin’s own perspective, as the English philosopher Mary Midgley comments, is much different, he did . . . not see evolution as an escalator, but as a sinuous, branching radiating pattern—not a staircase, but perhaps a bush or seaweed. Life-forms diverge from each other to meet particular needs in their various environments. Our own species figures then only as one among the many, with no special status or guarantee of supremacy. This notion has, however, always been found far less exciting than the escalator model, which has been enormously popular ever since it was promoted by Herbert Spencer, in spite of Darwin’s own rejection of it and its evident complete irrelevance to this theory.13 ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner, #NFDB
1417:Human insurrection, in its exalted and tragic forms, is only, and can only be, a prolonged protest against
death, a violent accusation against the universal death penalty. In every case that we have come across,
the protest is always directed at everything in creation which is dissonant,
opaque, or promises the solution of continuity. Essentially, then, we are dealing with a perpetual demand for unity.
The rejection of death, the desire for immortality and for clarity, are the mainsprings of all these extravagances, whether sublime or puerile. Is it only a cowardly and personal refusal to die? No, for many of these rebels have paid the ultimate price in order to live up to their own demands. The rebel does not ask for life, but for reasons for living.
He rejects the consequences implied by death. If nothing lasts, then nothing is justified; everything that dies is
deprived of meaning. To fight against death amounts to claiming that life has a meaning, to fighting for order and for unity. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1418:I argue that three key doctrines of postmodernist
thought have conspired to discredit the classical concept of ideology. The first of these doctrines turns on a rejection of the notion of representation--in fact, a rejection of an empiricist model of representation, in which the representational baby has been nonchalantly slung out with, the empiricist
bathwater. The second revolves on an epistemological skepticism which would hold that the very act of identifying a form of consciousness as ideological entails some untenable notion of absolute truth. Since the latter idea attracts few devotees these days, the former is thought to crumble in its wake. We cannot brand Pol Pot a Stalinist bigot since this would imply some metaphysical certitude about what not being a Stalinist bigot would involve. The third doctrine concerns a reformulation of the relations between rationality, interests and power, along roughly neo-Nietzschean lines, which is thought to render the whole concept of ideology redundant. ~ Terry Eagleton,#NFDB
1419:Jesus didn’t live an easy life or die an easy death. The glory of Easter was preceded by the sorrow of absolute rejection. Our Redeemer knows what it feels like to be stripped of all comfort and ease. He experienced the betrayal of best friends. He sobbed alone, without a single person offering support. Yet, instead of trying to drown His sorrows with a margarita or spilling His guts to a sympathetic stranger on a plane, He endured. He shouldered the greatest possible anguish, being completely abandoned by everyone, including God, so we would never have to carry that burden ourselves. I didn’t used to believe Jesus was enough for me. . . . It wasn’t until I hit the bottom that I found the love of Christ really is enough to sustain me, no matter what. Buckling under the weight of my own life is what helped me fall into the arms of God. I didn’t just stumble into His grace; I collapsed there in a messy heap! And you know what? It’s by far the best thing that’s ever happened to me. LISA HARPER Stumbling into Grace ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1420:r o l l t h e d i c e
if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.
if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.
go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.
if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.
do it, do it, do it.
do it.
all the way
all the way.
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is. ~ Charles Bukowski,#NFDB
1421:George Matheson was only a teenager when he learned that his poor eyesight was deteriorating further. Not to be denied, he continued straightaway with his plans to enroll in Glasgow University, and his determination led to his graduating at age nineteen. But as he pursued graduate studies for Christian ministry he became totally blind. His sisters joined ranks beside him, learning Greek and Hebrew to assist him in his studies, and he pressed faithfully on. But his spirit collapsed when his fiance´e, unwilling to be married to a blind man, broke their engagement and returned his ring. George never married, and the pain of that rejection never totally left him. Years later, his sister came to him, announcing her engagement. He rejoiced with her, but his mind went back to his own heartache.He consoled himself in thinking of God’s love which is never limited, never conditional, never withdrawn, and never uncertain. Out of this experience it is said he wrote the hymn, O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go, on June 6, 1882. ~ Robert J Morgan, #NFDB
1422:Clearly, there exists an entire class of people who gain immense profit, prestige and power from the existence of the government. It is equally true that, as a collective, these people have enormous control and influence over the minds of children, since it is that same government that educates virtually every child for six or more hours a day, five days a week, for almost a decade and a half of their formative years. To analogize this situation, can we imagine that we would be at all surprised that children who came out of 14 years of religious indoctrination would in general believe in the existence and virtue of God? Would we be at all surprised if the strong arguments for atheism were left off a curriculum expressly designed by the priests, who directly profit from the maintenance of religious belief? In fact, we would fully expect such children to be actively trained in the rejection of arguments for atheism – inoculated against it, so to speak, so that they would react with scorn or hostility to such arguments. ~ Stefan Molyneux, #NFDB
1423: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. ~ Nir Eyal, #NFDB
1424:THINK OF HARDY AS A MAN WHO WAS ALMOST RELIGIOUS, AS A MAN WHO CAME SO CLOSE TO BELIEVING IN GOD THAT WHEN HE REJECTED GOD, HIS REJECTION MADE HIM FEROCIOUSLY BITTER. THE KIND OF FATE HARDY BELIEVES IN IS ALMOST LIKE BELIEVING IN GOD - AT LEAST IN THAT TERRIBLE, JUDGMENTAL GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. HARDY HATES INSTITUTIONS: THE CHURCH - MORE THAN FAITH OR BELIEF - AND CERTAINLY MARRIAGE (THE INSTITUTION OF IT), AND THE INSTITUTION OF EDUCATION. PEOPLE ARE HELPLESS TO FATE, VICTIMS OF TIME - THEIR OWN EMOTIONS UNDO THEM, AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS OF ALL KINDS FAIL THEM.
DON'T YOU SEE HOW A BELIEF IN SUCH A BITTER UNIVERSE IS NOT UNLIKE RELIGIOUS FAITH? LIKE FAITH, WHAT HARDY BELIEVED WAS NAKED, PLAIN, VULNERABLE. BELIEF IN GOD, OR A BELIEF THAT - EVENTUALLY - EVERYTHING HAS TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES... EITHER WAY, YOU DON'T LEAVE YOURSELF ANY ROOM FOR PHILOSOPHICAL DETACHMENT. EITHER WAY, YOU'RE NOT BEING VERY CLEVER. NEVER THINK OF HARDY AS CLEVER; NEVER CONFUSE FAITH, OR BELIEF - OF ANY KIND - WITH SOMETHING EVEN REMOTELY INTELLECTUAL. ~ John Irving,#NFDB
1425:One look at the officials in the American Consulate where we went for dreary paper routines was enough to make you realize what was wrong with American 'diplomacy' throughout the Fellaheen world: - stiff offcious squares with contempt even for their own Americans who happened not to wear neckties, as tho a necktie or whatever it stands for meant anything to the hungry Berbers who came into Tangiers every Saturday morning on meek asses, like Christ, carrying baskets of pitiful fruit or dates, and returned at dusk to silhouetted parades along the hill by the railroad track. The railroad track where barefooted prophets still walked and taught the Koran to children along the way. Why didn't the American consul ever walk into the urchin hall where Mohammed Maye sat smoking? or squat in behind empty buildings with old Arabs who talked with their hands? or any thing? Instead it's all private limousines, hotel restaurants, parties in the suburbs, an endless phoney rejection in the name of 'democracy' of all that's pith and moment of every land. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
1426:When a thing happened that had not happened before, a confusion often descended upon people, a fog that fuddled the clearest minds; and often the consequence of such confusion was rejection, and even anger. A fish crawled out of a swamp onto dry land and the other fish were bewildered, perhaps even annoyed that a forbidden frontier had been crossed. A meteorite struck the earth and the dust blocked out the sun but the dinosaurs went on fighting and eating, not understanding that they had been rendered extinct. The birth of language angered the dumb. The shah of Persia, facing the Ottoman guns, refused to accept the end of the age of the sword and sent his calvary to gallop suicidally against the blazing cannons of the Turk. A scientist observed tortoises and mockingbirds and wrote about "random mutation" and "natural selection" and the adherents of the Book of Genesis cursed his name. A revolution in painting was derided and dismissed as mere "Impressionism." A folksinger plugged his guitar into an amp and a voice in the crowd shouted "Judas! ~ Salman Rushdie, #NFDB
1427:You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that your refusal of my addresses is merely words of course. My reasons for believing it are briefly these: -- It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable. My situation in life, my connections with the family of De Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are circumstances highly in its favor; and you should take it into farther consideration that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made you. Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications. As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall chuse to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females.
(Mr. Collins, after proposing to Elizabeth Bennet and being refused, in Pride and Prejudice.) ~ Jane Austen,#NFDB
1428:Does Fee’s solution to 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 then constitute evidence of a liberal tendency to reject the authority of the Bible? It should trouble evangelicals that Fee says these verses are not part of the Bible and therefore “certainly not binding for Christians.” It seems to me that Fee’s recommendation that we should remove some hard verses from the Bible rather than seeking to understand them in a way that does not contradict other verses establishes a dangerous precedent. When the verses that he throws out of the Bible are missing from no manuscript, and also happen to be the very verses that show Paul’s insistence on male governance of the church meetings “in all the churches of the saints” (v. 33), then it seems to me to be another example of a pattern in many egalitarian writings, a pattern of using sophisticated scholarly procedures in order to evade the requirement of submitting to the authority of the Word of God. Fee’s rejection of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 as not belonging to the Bible seems to me another step on the path toward liberalism. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1429:I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. ~ Martin Luther King Jr, #NFDB
1430:I can't think of anything that anyone has ever accomplished without having some sort of self-discipline. Without knowing how to work for it. Without learning how to earn it. I talk to my friends who are writers. I say, "Well, how do you do it?" Most all of them will say, "I sit down. I force myself every day to sit down and write for at least two hours. Whether something comes out of it or doesn't come out of it, whether I finish my fifty pages or two, I sit down and I do that because I have to make myself do it."
That's what a work ethic is. Any person I know who is successful in my business or any other business is so because they work their asses off for it, because nothing is for free. If you want something, if you want to achieve success in any area of life, you must apply your discipline and your work ethic. Because discipline is what helps you consciously do things in order to reach a desired goal. Discipline is a rejection of entitlement and expectation. Discipline is having a strong awareness that your choices have impact and that your actions make a difference. ~ Cameron D az,#NFDB
1431:There is no one human individual or group who can fully bear or manifest all that is involved in the image of God, so that there is a sense in which that image is collectively possessed. The image of God is, as it were, parceled out among the peoples of the Earth. By looking at different individuals and groups we get glimpses of different aspects of the full image of God.”30 If this is true, and I believe it may be, then racism is not only an injustice toward people but also a rejection of God’s very nature. On the New Earth we’ll never celebrate sin, but we’ll celebrate diversity in the biblical sense. We’ll never try to keep people out. We’ll welcome them in, exercising hospitality to every traveler. Peace on Earth will be rooted in our common ruler, Christ the King, who alone is the source of peace: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased” (Luke 2:14, NASB). Peace on Earth will be accomplished not by the abolition of our differences but by a unifying loyalty to the King, a loyalty that transcends differences—and is enriched by them. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1432:Feminists have fought to remove the definition of what a woman is from... masculine institutions and develop their own understandings. Claims to the ‘right’ to self define ‘gender’, subject womanhood to men’s power to define once again.The major task of feminist theory was to bring women out from under the weight of men’s definitions and theories. Feminists developed what has been called ‘feminist standpoint theory’ to describe a new form of knowledge about women, that which is formed out of women’s experience as an oppressed group and refined through struggle and collective process (Harding (ed.), 2004). The very basis of feminism is this declaration of independence, the rejection of men’s ‘knowledge’ about women and the privileging of our own. Men’s ideas about what women are have been formed from their ruling caste position, and have assigned women characteristics that would most advantage their masters, as well as justify men’s rule over them. They do not represent ‘truth’ but have been promoted as if they were, with the backing of science and patriarchal views of biology. ~ Sheila Jeffreys, #NFDB
1433:Through constant self-sacrifice I had thoroughly ruined life in Desselbrunn for myself, one day it suddenly became unbearable, I thought. The beginning of this self-sacrifice had been the rejection of my Steinway, the triggering moment so to speak for my subsequent inability to tolerate life in Deselbrunn. All at once I could no longer breathe the Desselbrunn air and the walls in Desselbrunn made me sick and the rooms threatened to choke me, one has to remember how cavernous the rooms are there, nine-by-six meter or eight-by-eight meter rooms, I thought. I hated those rooms and I hated what was in those rooms and when I left my house I hated the people outside my house, all at once I was being unjust to all those people, who only wanted the best for me, but precisely that drove me crazy after a while, their constant willingness to be helpful, which I suddenly found profoundly revolting. I barricaded myself and stared out the window, without seeing anything but my own unhappiness. I ran outdoors and cursed at everybody. I ran into the woods and huddled beneath a tree, exhausted. ~ Thomas Bernhard, #NFDB
1434:In my younger days dodging the draft, I somehow wound up in the Marine Corps. There's a myth that Marine training turns baby-faced recruits into bloodthirsty killers. Trust me, the Marine Corps is not that efficient. What it does teach, however, is a lot more useful. The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction from having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swab jockeys or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because these candy-asses don't know how to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell. ~ Steven Pressfield, #NFDB
1435:Derangement - reasoned derangement: that was the key. To break the mould, the chains, the bars that held the flesh and the spirit; to throw off the blinds, the slings, the splints and trusses with which life binds us; to derange and twist and destroy the whole fabric of the prison, and to emerge whole and free. He was not afraid to be free - nor to find his own way to freedom. He was not afraid of "queerness" and "different," of apartness and aloneness, of ranging beyond the bounds which men set for themselves - into a fantasy and hallucination, rapture, and ecstasy. As a voyou (for this was part of it - the seen, the outward) he must pledge himself to the rejection of all forms, all rules and customs, all mindless conformity and acquiescence. And as a voyant he must push on for ever outward, for ever expanding his experience and consciousness; seeing clearly, with fresh eyes; seeing beyond the veils, beyond the shams and effigies, beyond illusion and lie, to the truth. "Yea, verily, verily, I say unto you -" (sayeth God) "- ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. ~ James Ramsey Ullman, #NFDB
1436:Logic and morality made it impossible to accept an illogical and immoral reality; they engendered a rejection of reality which as a rule led the cultivated man rapidly to despair. But the varieties of the man-animal are innumerable, and I saw and have described men of refined culture, especially if young, throw all this overboard, simplify and barbarize themselves, and survive. A simple man, accustomed not to ask questions of himself, was beyond the reach of the useless torment of asking himself why.
The harsher the oppression, the more widespread among the oppressed is the willingness, with all its infinite nuances and motivations, to collaborate: terror, ideological seduction, servile imitation of the victor, myopic desire for any power whatsoever… Certainly, the greatest responsibility lies with the system, the very structure of the totalitarian state; the concurrent guilt on the part of individual big and small collaborators is always difficult to evaluate… they are the vectors and instruments of the system’s guilt… the room for choices (especially moral choices) was reduced to zero ~ Primo Levi,#NFDB
1437:Think of it this way, there are two men. One stands tall, looks straight ahead. Looks people in the eye when he speaks to them. Says what he thinks and is unconcerned with what others think of him. When he makes a mistake, he shrugs it off and maybe apologizes. When he sucks at something, he admits it. He’s unafraid to express his emotions, even if that means he gets rejected. He has no problem moving on to people who don’t reject him, but like him for who he is. Now, the second man hunches over, eyes dart around and is unable to look someone in the eye without getting uncomfortable. He puts on a cool persona that is always aloof. He avoids saying things that may upset others, and sometimes even lies to avoid conflict. He’s always trying to impress people. When he makes a mistake, he tries to blame others or pretend like it didn’t happen. He hides his emotions and will smile and tell everyone he’s fine even when he’s not. He’s scared to death of rejection. And when he is rejected, it sends him reeling, angry, and desperate to find a way to win back the affection of the person who doesn’t like him. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1438:In the following pages, I attempt to show several things: (1) that liberal Protestant denominations were the pioneers of evangelical feminism, and that evangelical feminists today have adopted many of the arguments earlier used by theological liberals to advocate the ordination of women and to reject male headship in marriage (2) that many prominent evangelical feminist writers today advocate positions that deny or undermine the authority of Scripture, and many other egalitarian leaders endorse their books and take no public stance against those who deny the authority of Scripture (3) that recent trends now show that evangelical feminists are heading toward the denial of anything uniquely masculine, and some already endorse calling God “our Mother in heaven” (4) that the history of others who have adopted these positions shows that the next step is the endorsement of the moral legitimacy of homosexuality (5) that the common thread running through all of these trends is a rejection of the effective authority of Scripture in people’s lives, and that this is the bedrock principle of theological liberalism ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1439:Radical feminist work around the world daily strengthens political solidarity between women beyond the boundaries of race/ethnicity and nationality. Mainstream mass media rarely calls attention to these positive interventions. In Hatreds: Radicalized and Sexualized Conflicts in the 21st Century, Zillah Eisenstein shares the insight:
Feminism(s) as transnational - imagined as the rejection of false race/gender borders and falsely constructed 'other' - is a major challenge to masculinist nationalism, the distortions of statist communism and 'free'-market globalism. It is a feminism that recognizes individual diversity, and freedom, and equality, defined through and beyond north/west and south/east dialogues.
No one who has studied the growth of global feminism can deny the important work women are doing to ensure our freedom. No one can deny that Western women, particularly women in the United States, have contributed much that is needed to this struggle and need to contribute more. The goal of global feminism is to reach out and join global struggles to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. ~ bell hooks,#NFDB
1440:He was an old man, wore old man’s clothes, a flannel shirt and old man’s trousers, slippers and a hat, and had an old man’s gait, yet there was nothing old mannish about him, such as there was with my grandfather or my father’s uncle, Alf; on the contrary, when he suddenly opened up to us and wanted to show us things, it was in a kind of artless, childlike way, infinitely friendly, but also infinitely vulnerable, the way a boy without friends might behave when someone showed some interest in him, one might imagine, unthinkable in the case of my grandfather or Alf, it must have been at least sixty years since they had opened up to anyone like that, if indeed they ever had. But no, Hauge hadn’t really opened himself to us, it was more as if it had been his natural self which his rejection had been protecting when we arrived. I saw something I didn’t want to see because the person showing us was unaware of how it looked. He was more than eighty years old, but nothing in him had died or calcified, which actually makes life far too painful to live, that’s what I think now. At the time it just made me uneasy. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd, #NFDB
1441:For the most part, food plays a very functional role in American culture. We eat to work. If Aini was visiting in my home, I'd tell her, “Don't eat anything you don't like. We don't care.” And we really wouldn't for the most part. But in many parts of the world, food is deeply rooted in the life of people. Sometimes I've had Indian hosts prepare meals for me that used spices grown on their homestead for hundreds of years. The best Indian meals take days to prepare. So to pass on eating dishes prepared for you in that context could be far more insulting than passing on a dish you just don't care for. It can be seen as an all-out rejection. And as for eating with utensils versus eating with our hands, one of my Indian friends puts it this way: “Eating with utensils is like making love through an interpreter!” That says it all when it comes to the affection most Indians have for their cuisine. To reject the food of an Indian colleague can be extremely disrespectful and can erode any possibility of a business partnership. Who would have thought food could play such a strong role in successful global performance? Edwin, ~ David Livermore, #NFDB
1442:In my younger days dodging the draft, I somehow wound up in the Marine Corps. There's a myth that Marine training turns baby-faced recruits into bloodthirsty killers. Trust me, the Marine Corps is not that efficient. What it does teach, however, is a lot more useful.
The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable.
This is invaluable for an artist.
Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swab jockeys, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because these candy-asses don't know how to be miserable.
The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.
The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell."
Page 68 ~ Steven Pressfield,#NFDB
1443:In the past few decades quite a few people have suggested -- citing most often the offence of impossible proportions -- that Barbie dolls teach young girls to hate themselves. But the opposite may be true. British researchers recently found that girls between the ages of seven and eleven harbor surprisingly strong feelings of dislike for their Barbie dolls, with no other toy or brand name inspiring such a negative response from the children. The dolls "provoked rejection, hatred, and violence" and many girls preferred Barbie torture -- by cutting, burning, decapitating, or microwaving -- over other ways of playing with the doll. Reasons that the girls hated their Barbies included, somewhat poetically, the fact that they were 'plastic.' The researchers also noted that the girls never spoke of one single, special Barbie, but tended to talk about having a box full of anonymous Barbies. 'On a deeper level Barbie has become inanimate,' one of the researchers remarked. 'She has lost any individual warmth that she might have possessed if she were perceived as a singular person. This may go some way towards explaining the violence and torture. ~ Eula Biss, #NFDB
1444:Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device. It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result, of course, may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne); but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost superhuman degree of self-consciousness and masterful control. This is a basic principle of the Indian disciplines of yoga. It has been the way, also, of many creative spirits in the West.25 It cannot be described, quite, as an answer to any specific call. Rather, it is a deliberate, terrific refusal to respond to anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the as yet unknown demand of some waiting void within: a kind of total strike, or rejection of the offered terms of life, as a result of which some power of transformation carries the problem to a plane of new magnitudes, where it is suddenly and finally resolved. ~ Joseph Campbell, #NFDB
1445:sodoyouthinkyoucouldtrustmetogotothedancetonight?" she blurted before losing her nerve.
Viktor and Viveka exchanged a quick glance.
Are they considering it? They are! They trust -
"No," they said together.
Frankie resisted the urge to spark. Or scream. Or threaten to go on a charging strike. She had prepared herself for this. It had always been a possibility. That's why she'd read 'Acting For Young Actors: The Ultimate Teenage Guide' by Mary Lou Belli and Dihah Lenney. So she could act like she understood their rejection. Act like she accepted it. And act like she would return to her room with grace. "Well, thanks for hearing me out," she said, kissing them on the cheeks and skipping off to bed. "Good night."
"Good night?" Viktor responded. "That's it? No argument?"
"No argument," Frankie said with a sweet smile. "You have to see this punishment through or you're not teaching me anything. I get it."
"O-kay." Viktor returned to his medical journal, shaking his head as if he couldn't quite believe what he was hearing.
"We love you." Viveka blew another kiss.
"I love you, too." Frankie blew two back.
Time for Plan B. ~ Lisi Harrison,#NFDB
1446:Other impacts it meets, but finds them too strong for it or too dissimilar and discordant or too weak to give it satisfaction; these are things which it cannot bear or cannot equate with itself or cannot assimilate, and it is obliged to give to them reactions of grief, pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction, disliking, disapproval, rejection, inability to understand or know, refusal of admission. Against them it seeks to protect itself, to escape from them, to avoid or minimise their recurrence; it has with regard to them movements of fear, anger, shrinking, horror, aversion, disgust, shame, would gladly be delivered from them, but it cannot get away from them, for it is bound to and even invites their causes and therefore the results; for these impacts are part of life, tangled up with the things we desire, and the inability to deal with them is part of the imperfection of our nature. Other impacts again the normal mind succeeds in holding at bay or neutralising and to these it has a natural reaction of indifference, insensibility or tolerance which is neither positive acceptance and enjoymentnor rejection or suffering.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, 730,#NFDB
1447:The second most common misconception about love is the idea that dependency is love. This is a misconception with which psychotherapists must deal on a daily basis. Its effect is seen most dramatically in an individual who makes an attempt or gesture or threat to commit suicide or who becomes incapacitatingly depressed in response to a rejection or separation from spouse or lover. Such a person says, “I do not want to live, I cannot live without my husband [wife, girl friend, boyfriend], I love him [or her] so much.” And when I respond, as I frequently do, “You are mistaken; you do not love your husband [wife, girl friend, boyfriend].” “What do you mean?” is the angry question. “I just told you I can’t live without him [or her].” I try to explain. “What you describe is parasitism, not love. When you require another individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual. There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship. It is a matter of necessity rather than love. Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other. ~ M Scott Peck, #NFDB
1448:But Jacobs does not seem to have any awareness of how severely the Kroegers’ arguments have been criticized by competent New Testament scholars. Compare Jacobs’s trust in the Kroegers’ writings to the scholarly analyses of Thomas Schreiner, Robert W. Yarbrough, Albert Wolters, and S. M. Baugh mentioned above. (Schreiner is professor of New Testament at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky; Yarbrough is chairman of the New Testament department at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois; Wolters is professor of religion and theology/classical languages at Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada; and Baugh is professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, California.) These New Testament scholars do not simply say they disagree with the Kroegers (for scholars will always differ in their interpretation of data), but they say that again and again the Kroegers are not even telling the truth about much of the historical data that they claim. But in spite of this widespread rejection of the Kroegers’ argument, evangelical leaders like Cindy Jacobs accept it as true. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1449:The fear and rejection of doubt as a legitimate part of faith can be seen at its most stark in the twentieth-century Church’s obsession with the area of apologetics (a term which refers to a formal justification or defence of doctrine). Legal terminology is often employed within this apologetic discourse so as to give the impression that Christianity can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt by a cold and objective analysis of the empirical evidence for its claims. Broadly speaking, we can identify two types of apologetic procedure employed by the Church: word and wonder. The first of these builds an apologetic case via the use of reason so as to logically convince the other that Christianity is compelling and must be accepted by anyone who wishes to be rational. The second builds an apologetic case via the use of the miraculous in order to demonstrate to the other that they ought to believe. Because of their compelling nature, these apologetic strategies can be termed ‘power discourses’. Yet it is precisely against these power discourses that the emerging community must take its stand, offering instead a genuinely Christlike and effective alternative. ~ Peter Rollins, #NFDB
1450:Growing numbers of us are acknowledging with grief that many forms of supremacy—Christian, white, male, heterosexual, and human—are deeply embedded not just in Christian history, but also in Christian theology. We are coming to see that in hallowed words like almighty, sovereignty, kingdom, dominion, supreme, elect, chosen, clean, remnant, sacrifice, lord, and even God, dangerous vices often lie hidden. . . . We are coming to see in the life and teaching of Christ, and especially in the cross and resurrection of Christ, a radical rejection of dominating supremacy in all its forms.
The theological term for [this] is kenosis, which means self-emptying. . . . Rather than seizing, hoarding, and exercising power in the domineering ways of typical kings, conquistadors, and religious leaders, Jesus was consistently empowering others. He descended the ladders and pyramids of influence instead of climbing them upwards, released power instead of grasping at it, and served instead of dominating. He ultimately overturned all conventional understandings of . . . power by purging [it] of violence—to the point where he himself chose to be killed rather than kill. ~ Brian D McLaren,#NFDB
1451:I had never seen her naked, I was embarrassed. Today I can say that it was the embarrassment of gazing with pleasure at her body, of being the not impartial witness of her sixteen-year-old's beauty a few hours before Stefano touched her, penetrated her, disfigured her, perhaps, by making her pregnant. At the time it was just a tumultuous sensation of necessary awkwardness, a state in which you cannot avert the gaze or take away the hand without recognizing your own turmoil, without, by that retreat, declaring it, hence without coming into conflict with the undisturbed innocence of the one who is the cause of the turmoil, without expressing by that rejection the violent emotion that overwhelms you, so that it forces you to stay, to rest your gaze on the childish shoulders, on the breasts and stiffly cold nipples, on the narrow hips and the tense buttocks, on the black sex, on the long legs, on the tender knees, on the curved ankles, on the elegant feet; and to act as if it's nothing, when instead everything is there, present, in the poor dim room, amid the worn furniture, on the uneven, water-stained floor, and your heart is agitated, your veins inflamed. ~ Elena Ferrante, #NFDB
1452:In order for Claudia to grow peacefully towards womanhood, she needed to gradually accept not only her physical blindness but also her inner depression and anger, the scars, even open wounds, that flowed from her experience of rejection and lack of love and understanding during the years in the asylum. It was important that Claudia discover her shadow areas, even if she could not name them, and that she learn that it was acceptable to be less than perfect. It was for Nadine to show Claudia that we are all subject to a higher, more profound law, one that we do not make but which is given to us, hidden in the heart of every human being, to reveal that life is all about growth and that it is possible for each one of us to evolve out of darkness and chaos into light and into a new order of love. Claudia’s growth was subject then to Nadine’s growth. How could Nadine accept Claudia in all her chaos or madness if Nadine refused to accept the chaotic aspects and shadow areas in her own life? How could she trust in Claudia’s growth if she did not trust in her own growth? In the case of Claudia, there was a place where much of this spiritual struggle and growth occured: in prayer. ~ Jean Vanier, #NFDB
1453:Sylvan heard her stumbling along behind him as they made their way down the side of the mountain and every instinct he possessed shouted that he needed to go back and help her. Needed to hold her in his arms and carry her to safety. But he forced himself to go on. She doesn’t want me, doesn’t want my help or my touch. It was true and he knew it. The rejection he could handle. But the fear in her eyes… Sylvan clenched his jaw. Goddess, that she could ever think I would hurt her. The very idea was like a fist in his gut. He would rather be hurt himself, would rather be wounded a thousand times over than allow her to get a single scratch. Should have left her alone. Shouldn’t have healed her. That was what scared her the most, waking up and seeing me bending over her with my fangs out. But he had been so worried. And besides, it was impossible for him to see her hurt and not want to heal her. He had told her once, the second time they met, that as a doctor he had no emotional attachment to his patients. But it was different with her—so very different. And those few moments before she’d woken up completely, before she’d started fearing him, had been beyond compare. He ~ Evangeline Anderson, #NFDB
1454:I have blogged previously about the dangerous and deadly effects of science denialism, from the innocent babies unnecessarily exposed to deadly diseases by other kids whose parents are anti-vaxxers, to the frequent examples of how acceptance of evolution helps us stop diseases and pests (and in the case of Baby Fae, rejection of evolution was fatal), to the long-term effects of climate denial to the future of the planet we all depend upon. But one of the strangest forms of denialism is the weird coalition of people who refuse to accept the medical fact that the HIV virus causes AIDS. What the heck? Didn’t we resolve this issue in the 1980s when the AIDS condition first became epidemic and the HIV virus was discovered and linked to AIDS? Yes, we did—but for people who want to deny scientific reality, it doesn’t matter how many studies have been done, or how strong the scientific consensus is. There are a significant number of people out there (especially among countries and communities with high rates of AIDS infections) that refuse to accept medical reality. I described all of these at greater length in my new book Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future. ~ Donald R Prothero, #NFDB
1455:If I show you, that you lack just what is most important and necessary to happiness, that hitherto your attention has been bestowed on everything rather than that which claims it most; and, to crown all, that you know neither what God nor Man is—neither what Good or Evil is: why, that you are ignorant of everything else, perhaps you may bear to be told; but to hear that you know nothing of yourself, how could you submit to that? How could you stand your ground and suffer that to be proved? Clearly not at all. You instantly turn away in wrath. Yet what harm have I done to you? Unless indeed the mirror harms the ill-favoured man by showing him to himself just as he is; unless the physician can be thought to insult his patient, when he tells him:—"Friend, do you suppose there is nothing wrong with you? why, you have a fever. Eat nothing to-day, and drink only water." Yet no one says, "What an insufferable insult!" Whereas if you say to a man, "Your desires are inflamed, your instincts of rejection are weak and low, your aims are inconsistent, your impulses are not in harmony with Nature, your opinions are rash and false," he forthwith goes away and complains that you have insulted him. ~ Epictetus, #NFDB
1456:Exuberance, Cheng makes clear, is an indispensable part of his scientific life. "It keeps me alive. I like to have fun, I don't like boredom. Exuberance is necessary, you have to have enthusiasm. Any kind of work involves a lot of tedium, menial tasks, boring tasks. Exuberance allows you to see beyond, to see the goal. You need that kind of emotional makeup to push through the work, to pursue really difficult things. Exuberance stops you from getting discouraged, or not starting in the first place. Science is working out ideas. The majority of ideas don't work out, there are a lot of dead ends. You need to have an exuberant makeup to prevent getting discouraged. Exuberance reduces stress levels." Exuberance also allows you to handle rejection, Cheng points out. "For example, if you put in a big proposal to NASA and it gets rejected, you need resiliency to pick yourself up after that. I have a natural tendency toward exuberance, I am naturally inclined to plunge into things. But rough times always come." Work, he emphasizes, is inherently stressful. "Stepping back, relaxing, enjoying, not getting all wound up or spinning your wheels, this keeps you from wearing yourself out. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison, #NFDB
1457:Lord, I pray that You would enable (husband’s name) to let go of his past completely. Deliver him from any hold it has on him. Help him to put off his former conduct and habitual ways of thinking about it and be renewed in his mind (Ephesians 4:22-23). Enlarge his understanding to know that You make all things new (Revelation 21:5). Show him a fresh, Holy Spirit–inspired way of relating to negative things that have happened. Give him the mind of Christ so that he can clearly discern Your voice from the voices of the past. When he hears those old voices, enable him to rise up and shut them down with the truth of Your Word. Where he has formerly experienced rejection or pain, I pray he not allow them to color what he sees and hears now. Pour forgiveness into his heart so that bitterness, resentment, revenge, and unforgiveness will have no place there. May he regard the past as only a history lesson and not a guide for his daily life. Wherever his past has become an unpleasant memory, I pray You would redeem it and bring life out of it. Bind up his wounds (Psalm 147:3). Restore his soul (Psalm 23:3). Help him to release the past so that he will not live in it, but learn from it, break out of ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
1458:500In Smart Girls, Gifted Women, Barbara Kerr explores the common experiences of girls who grew into strong women. She studied the adolescent years of Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead, Georgia O’Keeffe, Maya Angelou and Beverly Sills, and she found that they had in common time by themselves, the ability to fall in love with an idea, a refusal to acknowledge gender limitations and what she called “protective coating.” None of them were popular as adolescents and most stayed separate from their peers, not by choice, but because they were rejected. Ironically, this very rejection gave them a protected space in which they could develop their uniqueness. Many strong girls have similar stories: They were socially isolated and lonely in adolescence. Smart girls are often the girls most rejected by peers. Their strength is a threat and they are punished for being different. Girls who are unattractive or who don’t worry about their appearance are scorned. This isolation is often a blessing because it allows girls to develop a strong sense of self. Girls who are isolated emerge from adolescence more independent and self- sufficient than girls who have been accepted by others. ~ Mary Pipher, #NFDB
1459:Anyway, this part of the discussion isn’t up for discussion.”
“Maybe it should be,” Cordero offers. “Maybe you should consider that she might’ve shown up to see you and left because she wasn’t ready.”
Marcus crosses his arms. “She could’ve seen your prosthetic.”
“You mean this?” I raise my robohand. It’s capable of fifty distinct gestures, but the bird’s one of my top-used ones.
Marcus is already smiling. He knew it was coming.
“It might have taken even less,” Jode adds. “One look at you could’ve sent her running.”
An image flashes through my mind. Daryn seeing me, then doing an about-face and hauling ass like she’s in a B horror film.
I have to laugh. It’s just so sad. “How is this relevant to anything?” I’m sweating and I can’t sit any longer. I stand and brace my hands on the back of the chair. “Hey, Ben,” I call into the warehouse. “How’s your personal life? You got any rejections you want to dissect with our psychologist-boss?”
Ben jumps up and rounds his desk. “Definitely. I’m the king of rejection.”
“Dude, then I’m your co-monarch.”
“Blake,” Cordero warns.
“We’ll talk later, Ben. Keep after it. You’re doing great. ~ Veronica Rossi,#NFDB
1460:What sort of man could you love for a lifetime?" he asked her.
She was silent for a while. He guessed that she was considering her answer.
"A kind man," she said. "When we are young and foolish we do not realize how essential a component of love kindness is. It is perhaps the most important quality. And an honorable man. Always doing the right thing no matter what."
His heart sank-on both account.
"And a strong man," she said. "Strong enough to be vulnerable, to take risks, to be honest even when honesty might expose him to ridicule or rejection. And someone who would put himself at the center of my world even before knowing that I would be willing to do the same for him. A man foolish and brave enough to tell me that he loves me even when I have hidden all signs that I love him in return."
"Eve-" he said.
"He would have to be tall and broad and dark and hook-nosed," she said. "And frowning much of the time, pretending he is tough and impervious to all the finer emotions. And then smiling occasionally to light up my heart and my life."
Good God!
"He would have to be you," she said. "no one else would do. Which is just as well, considering the fact that I am married to you... ~ Mary Balogh,#NFDB
1461:(..) it is quite common for those with a history of emotional abuse to feel they are being victimized, even when they are the ones who are being abusive. (..) First, many who were emotionally abused in childhood (especially those who were physically or emotionally rejected or abandoned by one or both parents) are extremely sensitive to any perceived rejection or abandonment from others. (..)
Second, those who were emotionally abused in childhood or in a previous relationship—especially those who were overly controlled or emotionally smothered—are often extremely sensitive to anything that seems remotely like control, even when they themselves are controlling. To these people, even commitment can feel like emotional suffocation. Therefore, if they constantly create chaos in the relationship, it gives them a sense of freedom from the stifling confinement of intimacy.
Third, one of the most common effects of a history of abuse is hypersensitivity. Those with an abusive past often develop a radar system tuned to pick up any comment or action from others that could be interpreted as being negative. (..) Victims of childhood emotional abuse are notorious for flying off the handle at the least provocation. ~ Beverly Engel,#NFDB
1462:Catherine had to treat the church hierarchy carefully. She had always exercised a rational flexibility in matters of religious dogma and policy. Brought up in an atmosphere of strict Lutheranism, she had as a child expressed enough skepticism about religion to worry her deeply conventional father. As a fourteen-year-old in Russia, she had been required to change her religion to Orthodoxy. In public, she scrupulously observed all forms of this faith, attending church services, observing religious holidays, and making pilgrimages. Throughout her reign, she never underestimated the importance of religion. She knew that the name of the autocrat and the power of the throne were embodied in the daily prayers of the faithful, and that the views of the clergy and the piety of the masses were a power to be reckoned with. She understood that the sovereign, whatever his or her private views of religion, must find a way to make this work. When Voltaire was asked how he, who denied God, could take Holy Communion, he replied that he “breakfasted according to the custom of the country.” Having observed the disastrous effect of her husband’s contemptuous public rejection of the Orthodox Church, Catherine chose to emulate Voltaire. ~ Robert K Massie, #NFDB
1463:Although every true believer knows it is a serious sin to be ashamed of his Savior and Lord, he also knows the difficulty of avoiding that sin. When we have opportunity to speak for Christ, we often do not. We know the gospel is unattractive, intimidating, and repulsive to the natural, unsaved person and to the ungodly spiritual system that now dominates the world. The gospel exposes man’s sin, wickedness, depravity, and lostness, and it declares pride to be despicable and works righteousness to be worthless in God’s sight. To the sinful heart of unbelievers, the gospel does not appear to be good news but bad (cf. my comments in chapter 1), and when they first hear it they often react with disdain against the one presenting it or throw out arguments and theories against it. For that reason, fear of men and of not being able to handle their arguments is doubtlessly the single greatest snare in witnessing. It is said that if a circle of white chalk is traced on the floor around a goose that it will not leave the circle for fear of crossing the white mark. In a similar way, the chalk marks of criticism, ridicule, tradition, and rejection prevent many believers from leaving the security of Christian fellowship to witness to the unsaved. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1464:We were already in school by then. Your friends had made fun of me. I was twelve. My higher brain functions weren’t fully developed. I was so in love with you.”
The cold had woven its way into the fabric of my jeans and settled like a coating of ice in the folds of my jacket. Now I warmed again, puzzling through Hunter’s words. I didn’t know whether to take him seriously. “Your love for me was a symptom that your brain hadn’t developed, or-“
“Shut up.” He turned to face me. “I am drunk and I am trying to confess, so just let me do it, okay? I had fallen in love with you over the summer. Then this horrible thing happened to you and you stopped talking t me. I thought you blamed me, or my dad. Which he deserved.”
“No,” I protested. “It was an acc-“
“I took it as a rejection.” He put his hand on my knee and looked me straight in the eyes. “It’s taken me all this time to figure that out. But I regretted it every day. And I’m truly sorry.” He sat back against the bench and faced the stars. The place where his hand had rested on my knee felt colder than ever.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said, “so we’re even. I didn’t visit you in the hospital when you got crushed by a horse. For much the same reasons regarding love and rejection and being young. ~ Jennifer Echols,#NFDB
1465:He thought dawdling, protective thoughts, sitting under the lamp, but he knew that pretty soon his
name would be called and he would have to go up before the bench with himself as judge and his own
crimes as jurors.
And his name was called, shrilly in his ears. His mind walked in to face the accusers: Vanity, which charged him with being ill dressed and dirty and vulgar; and Lust, slipping him the money for his whoring; Dishonesty, to make him pretend to talent and thought he did not have; Laziness and Gluttony arm in arm. Tom felt comforted by these because they screened the great Gray One in the back seat, waiting—the gray and dreadful crime. He dredged up lesser things, used small sins almost like virtues to save himself. There were Covetousness of Will’s money, Treason toward his mother’s God, Theft of time and hope, sick Rejection of love.
Samuel spoke softly but his voice filled the room. “Be good, be pure, be great, be Tom Hamilton.”
Tom ignored his father. He said, “I’m busy greeting my friends,” and he nodded to Discourtesy and Ugliness and Unfilial Conduct and Unkempt Fingernails. Then he started with Vanity again. The
Gray One shouldered up in front. It was too late to stall with baby sins. This Gray One was Murder. ~ John Steinbeck,#NFDB
1466:LAST DAYS’ LAWLESSNESS There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. . . . 2 Timothy 3:1–4 It’s certainly hard to argue we’re not living in the last days as described in the Bible. Everything in these verses matches up with our current circumstances; there’s a never-ending road of examples lately. Our culture, and Western civilization as a whole, has been declining for a long while—but things can look especially grim today. We do seem to live in evil times when evil is celebrated—whether it’s in the brazen rejection of the Gospel or in the unashamed brutality of terrorist groups like ISIS. A surprising number of our fellow Americans don’t like the word “evil.” They’re always voicing the need for “tolerance” or “understanding”—or what you and I would call “moral relativism.” But these same people sure are keen on trying to legislate “evil” away when it comes to issues like guns, as if gun control laws (that only the good guys will follow) are a solution rather than an added problem. ~ Sarah Palin, #NFDB
1467:Most people think (or at least I think most people think) that when you get to be—I dunno, 30, 35, 40, or something—you have jumped all the hurdles. You got your college degree, you had some children, you made some money, you lost some money, maybe you had a marriage, maybe you had several, and anyway, people sort of get the feeling: well, I’ve done it. Actually, the major adventure still lies ahead. And the major adventure is to claim your authentic true being, which is not culturally given to you. The culture will not explain to you how to be a real human being. It will tell you how to be banker, politician, Indian chief, masseuse, actress, whatever. But it will not give you true being. And maybe this is the voice of somebody who just turned fifty talking, but I thought it would get simpler. It doesn’t. Because this rejection of culture thing is the last and hardest step to take. And there are all kinds of impediments to taking it. The fact that in middle age, if you’ve played the game right, you get a lot of money—that’s totally stultifying in most cases in terms of going forward to the next level. It’s almost as though culture is an enterprise self-organized to buy you off at the moment when you might be most dangerous to its values and goals. ~ Terence McKenna, Appreciating Imagination, #NFDB
1468:That’s not why I’m here. I’ve got a mission. I made a promise.” His chest expanded with a deep, ragged breath. “Ah, hell. Quit looking at me like you either want to shoot me or eat me up. I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
Max’s rejection instantly sent her back to the times in her relationship with Richard when he’d rebuffed her advances. “I wasn’t very good, was I? I’m sor—”
“Do not let that man come between us.” Max swiped his hand over his mouth and jaw and spun away.
Just as quickly he faced her again and grabbed her wrist.
“You call me whatever crass SOB you want to.”
He pulled her hand to the front of his jeans and cupped it over the unmistakable warm bulge behind his zipper.
“This is what you do to me. I don’t know why you and me fit together this good. If I could take you to bed right now and finish this, I would.”
He released her and backed away, raising his hands in apology. “But that’s not what I’m here for. Neither one of us needs that kind of complication in our lives. I have to keep the mission in mind. I’m a cop. I have to think like a cop, not a...”
“Not a what?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
But he didn’t fill in the blank. “It’s not your job to deal with me. I’m damaged goods, Rosie. You can do better than me. ~ Julie Miller,#NFDB
1469:It is the heavy reality of the writing life which makes the “why” so easy to forget: Gutless rejection letters, denigrating revision letters, incompetent copy edits, insulting reviews, late checks, disappointing sales, down-trending print-runs, shrinking advances, royalties paid in a geological timeframe, imprints folding, publishers downsizing their lists and conglomerating their overhead.
One day your editor expresses all the enthusiasm of an overtired undertaker. The next day your agent demonstrates all the faith and commitment of a diseased streetwalker. Your book is packaged with a cover that would embarrass anyone who wasn’t raised in a Red Light district. You give a thoughtful interview only to discover the resultant article describes you as churning out potboilers. Three people show up at your book signing, two of them because they thought you were someone else; the third person came because you owe him money. When you make the New York Times list, a neighbor asks you “which” NYT list you’re on, because there must be a separate one for the trash you write. Though you’ve been publishing regularly for years, you know people who ask, every single time they see you, if you still write. (No, I fell back on my independent wealth when the going got tough.) ~ Laura Resnick,#NFDB
1470:When it comes to specifying the values particular to paganism, people have generally listed features such as these: an eminently aristocratic conception of the human individual; an ethics founded on honor (“shame” rather than “sin”); an heroic attitude toward life’s challenges; the exaltation and sacralization of the world, beauty, the body, strength, health; the rejection of any “worlds beyond”; the inseparability of morality and aesthetics; and so on. From this perspective, the highest value is undoubtedly not a form of “justice” whose purpose is essentially interpreted as flattening the social order in the name of equality, but everything that can allow a man to surpass himself. To paganism, it is pure absurdity to consider the results of the workings of life’s basic framework as unjust. In the pagan ethic of honor, the classic antithesis noble vs. base, courageous vs. cowardly, honorable vs. dishonorable, beautiful vs. deformed, sick vs. healthy, and so forth, replace the antithesis operative in a morality based on the concept of sin: good vs. evil, humble vs. vainglorious, submissive vs. proud, weak vs. arrogant, modest vs. boastful, and so on. However, while all this appears to be accurate, the fundamental feature in my opinion is something else entirely. It lies in the denial of dualism. ~ Alain de Benoist, #NFDB
1471:You don’t want to be my friend anymore?” He shook his head. Sadie looked down, blinking back tears. His rejection hurt more than she could understand. “Oh.” He wheeled on the seat of his pants, taking her chin in his hand and lifting her face. His eyes smoldered with deep emotion. “I wanna be more.” Sadie sucked in a sharp breath. “M-more?” Sid gazed directly into her face, his fingers possessive on her jaw. “I wanna be your beau, Sadie.” “Sid!” Sadie pulled back, out of his reach, but his hand hovered in the air in front of her face. She inched sideways, putting a little more space between them. “You can’t be my beau.” The dark scowl of days past returned, giving him a stern appearance. “Why not?” She held out her hands. “We’re cousins!” “Not by blood.” He rolled to his knees, anchoring her skirts to the ground with his weight. Then he leaned in, like a cat cornering a mouse. “You ain’t really a Wagner. Oh, sure, you call Uncle Len Papa, but he’s not your real pa. So that means we aren’t real cousins.” Sadie’s heart raced so fast, she could hardly draw a breath. “But . . . but . . .” “I tried to tell you how I feel by takin’ you to dinner. An’ givin’ you those flowers.” His familiar face, so close his breath touched her cheek, lit with fervor. “Those’re things a beau would do. Didn’t you understand? ~ Kim Vogel Sawyer, #NFDB
1472:Only non-involvement and the ability to remain extraneous, to refuse any identification with one’s job and with one’s working condition, only a radical rejection of the ethics of responsibility, might offer workers the possibility of navigating a way out from this productivity blackmail. Unfortunately, the ethics of responsibility, the phoney discourse on participation and collaboration, are prevailing in today’s political and cultural life. We invest our psychic energies and our expectations into work because our intellectual and affective life is poor, because we are depressed, anxious and insecure. So we are trapped. The industrial worker who was obliged to repeat the same gesture a thousand times every day had no reason to identify with her work – so she invested her psychological energies into solidarity with colleagues, and her mind was free to hate the assembly line, and to entertain thoughts that had nothing to do with her daily slavery. Conversely, cognitive workers have been lured into the trap of creativity: their expectations are submitted to the productivity blackmail because they are obliged to identify their soul (the linguistic and emotional core of their activity) with their work. Social conflicts and dissatisfaction are perceived as psychological failures whose effect is the destruction of self-esteem. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1473:Perhaps it is time to question goals that run counter to near-universal behavior. There may be lessons for us in the failure of Soviet-style Communism. It is our era's foremost example of a system that made mesmerizing promises of an earthly paradise but betrayed those promises. Millions of people were inspired by an ideology that would do away with capitalist exploitation. Marxists believed that the working class would seize the means of production, the state would wither away, selfishness would disappear, and man would live 'from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.' In the name of this ideology millions gave their lives and took the lives of millions of others.
Communism failed. It failed for many reasons, not least because it was a misreading of human nature. Selfishness cannot be abolished. People do not work just as hard on collective farms as they do on their own land. The almost universal rejection of Communism today marks the acceptance of people as they are, not as Communism wished them to be.
Is it possible that our racial ideals assume that people should become something they cannot? If most people prefer the company of people like themselves, what do we achieve by insisting that they deny that preference? If diversity is a weakness rather than a strength, why work to increase diversity? ~ Jared Taylor,#NFDB
1474:I tell the truth,” he says. “E la cosa più importante nel mondo. The most important thing.”
“You can know what you think is the truth,” I snap, “but no one’s making you say it out loud.”
Like that Italian boys won’t fancy me, I think bitterly. He couldn’t have told me more clearly that he isn’t interested in me if he’d written it on a big sign and held it above his head.
Luca leans toward me, an expression of intense interest on his face.
“So,” he starts slowly, “if I am thinking that I want to kiss you, I should not say it out loud?”
Oh, he’s completely messing with me now. Taunting me. I feel tears of shame and rejection rise to my eyes.
“Please,” I manage to say in as withering a tone as I can manage, “I thought you were all about telling the truth. And now you’re nothing but a big liar.”
His lashes lift as his eyes widen. His lips part and I watch, hypnotized now, as he says softly, so softly that I find myself tilting toward him to catch every word:
“Violetta, cara mia, you are wrong. I am not a liar.”
He doesn’t reach out to take hold of my shoulders, or take my hand to pull me in. He’s so sure of himself that he simply leans down, so close I can feel his breath scented with Prosecco warm on my face, for a split second, and then his lips meet mine. ~ Lauren Henderson,#NFDB
1475:In my long life, Ryadd, I have seen many variations—configurations—of behaviour and attitude, and I have seen a person change from one to the other—when experience has proved damaging enough, or when the inherent weaknesses of one are recognized, leading to a wholesale rejection of it. Though, in turn, weaknesses of different sorts exist in the other, and often these prove fatal pitfalls. We are complex creatures, to be sure. The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words. ~ Steven Erikson, #NFDB
1476:Reich would soon back a request from Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide’s white-haired, unnaturally tanned CEO. Mozilo wanted an exemption from the Section 23A rules that prevented Countrywide’s holding company from tapping the discount window through a savings institution it owned. Sheila and the FDIC were justifiably skeptical, as was Janet Yellen at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, in whose district Countrywide’s headquarters were located. Lending indirectly to Countrywide would be risky. It might well already be insolvent and unable to pay us back. The day after the discount rate cut, Don Kohn relayed word that Janet was recommending a swift rejection of Mozilo’s request for a 23A exemption. She believed, Don said, that Mozilo “is in denial about the prospects for his company and it needs to be sold.” Countrywide found its reprieve in the form of a confidence-boosting $2 billion equity investment from Bank of America on August 22—not quite the sale that Janet thought was needed, but the first step toward an eventual acquisition by Bank of America. Countrywide formally withdrew its request for a 23A exemption on Thursday August 30 as I was flying to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to speak at the Kansas City Fed’s annual economic symposium. The theme of the conference, chosen long before, was “Housing, Housing Finance, and Monetary Policy. ~ Ben S Bernanke, #NFDB
1477:THREE BIG MISTAKES. But, of course, it’s never that simple. Before we even got to the third one, we were down and done. As much as our willingness to believe in the constant rise felled us, as much as our eagerness to conquer risk opened us up to more risk, as much as Greenspan stood by as Wall Street turned itself into Las Vegas, there was also Greece, and Iceland, and Nick Leeson, who took down Barings, and Brian Hunter, who tanked Amaranth, and Jérôme Kerviel and every other rogue trader who thought he—and it was always a he—could reverse his gut-churning, self-induced free fall with one swift, lucky strike; it was rising oil prices, global inflation, easy credit, the cowardice of Moody’s, the growing chasm of income inequality, the dot com boom and bust, the Fed’s rejection of regulation, the acceptance of “too big to fail,” the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the feast of subprime debt; it was Clinton and Bush the second and senators vacationing with banking industry lobbyists, the Kobe earthquake, an infatuation with financial innovation, the forgettable Hank Paulson, the delicious hubris of ten, twenty, thirty times leverage, and, at the bottom of it, our own vicious, lingering self-doubt. Or was it our own willful, unbridled self-delusion? Doubt vs. delusion. The flip sides of our last lucky coin. We toss it in the fountain and pray. ~ Jade Chang, #NFDB
1478:Masters: Situation appears dire. Look around. Do you see any adults?
Me: My ball size indicates I’m the adultest thing here.
Me: I haven’t been rejected this hard since I tried to block the punt in that game against OSU last semester.
Masters: My wife says rejection is good for you. Makes you mentally tough.
Me: You love saying that phrase “my wife.”
Masters: You bet your fat ass I do.
Me: You don’t think it’s completely strange that you’re 21 and acting like a Taylor Swift song?
Masters: Bro, sorry you feel left out. Stop by later and I’ll give you a hug.
Me: Fuck off.
Masters: I have MY WIFE to do that for me. Thanks, though. Hug still stands. I’ll even let you smell me. MY WIFE says I smell delicious.
Me: I’ve smelled you before, which is why I’m not sure how you convinced Ellie to marry you. She must have defective olfactory senses.
Masters: Me and MY defective WIFE will be getting it on tonight. While u have only Rosie Palm.
Me: Don’t worry. I get plenty of variety. Left-hand Laura sometimes steps in.
Masters: Heard you were out with Josie Weeks. Be careful. She eats little linebackers like you for breakfast.
And the fact that I don’t even want to make a sexually charged comeback tells me exactly how I feel about Josie. Hope she doesn’t mind being just study partners. ~ Jen Frederick,#NFDB
1479:I explained to the father that he needed to develop a connection to his son, he bemoaned, “But he won’t even let me in his room. If he won’t say a word to me, how am I supposed to connect?” “You start from the ‘as is’ of the situation,” I explained. “What does he do on his computer?” “He studies and plays video games.” “Then this is how you connect—by showing an interest in a video game he really enjoys and inviting him to play with you.” This is how you witness a child’s reality. “But I hate video games. They bore me.” “It’s not about what excites you, but how to engage with your child. When he sees you are genuinely interested in interacting with him and not just looking for a way to change him, he’ll begin to open up. But let me warn you, it will take time. You’ll have to build trust one brick at a time. To do this, you can’t let his rejection of you trigger you. See it as part of the process. It will help if you stay in touch with the fact he’s only showing you how he has felt for many years.” Children aren’t naturally closed off. On the contrary, they are open and willing to share themselves as long as it feels safe to do so. Children want us to see their inherent goodness, regardless of their external behavior at a particular moment. They delight in assurance their misbehavior won’t faze us. To accept them unconditionally is what it means to witness our children. ~ Shefali Tsabary, #NFDB
1480:Just as life is made up of day and night, and song is made up of music and silence, friendships, because they are of this world, are also made up of times of being in touch and spaces in-between. Being human, we sometimes fill these spaces with worry, or we imagine the silence is some form of punishment, or we internalize the time we are not in touch with a loved one as some unexpressed change of heart. Our minds work very hard to make something out of nothing. We can perceive silence as rejection in an instant, and then build a cold castle on that tiny imagined brick. The only release from the tensions we weave around nothing is to remain a creature of the heart. By giving voice to the river of feelings as they flow through and through, we can stay clear and open. In daily terms, we call this checking in with each other, though most of us reduce this to a grocery list: How are you today? Do you need any milk? Eggs? Juice? Toilet paper? Though we can help each other survive with such outer kindnesses, we help each other thrive when the checking in with each other comes from a list of inner kindnesses: How are you today? Do you need any affirmation? Clarity? Support? Understanding? When we ask these deeper questions directly, we wipe the mind clean of its misperceptions. Just as we must dust our belongings from time to time, we must wipe away what covers us when we are apart. ~ Mark Nepo, #NFDB
1481:The New Testament teaches that Jesus was God come in the flesh- "in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwelled bodily" (Col 2:9). He was God yet he suffered. He experienced weakness, a life filled "with fervent cries and tears" (Heb 5:7). He knew firsthand rejection and betrayal, poverty and abuse, disappointment and despair, bereavement, torture, and death. And so he is "able to empathize with our weaknesses" for he "has been tempted in every way, just as we are- yet without sin" (Heb 4:15). On the cross, he went beyond even the worse human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and a pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours. There is no greater inner agony than the loss of a love relationship. We cannot imagine, however, what it would be like to lose not just a human relationship that has lasted for some years but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity. The separation would have been infinitely unbearable. And so Jesus experienced Godforsakenness itself on the cross when he cried out, "My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?"
Here we see the ultimate strength- a God who is strong enough to voluntarily become weak and plunge himself into vulnerability and darkness out of love for us. And here we see the greatest possible glory- the willingness to lay aside all his glory out of his love for us. ~ Timothy J Keller,#NFDB
1482:So I got lucky. But then again, it took me many hundreds of rejections to manage to find that luck.
I am sure there is a lesson n that somewhere.
Someone had taken a punt and had faith in me. I wouldn’t let them down, and I would be eternally grateful to them for giving me that chance to shine.
Once DLE were on board, a few other companies joined them. It’s funny how, once one person backs you, somehow other people feel more comfortable doing the same.
I guess most people don’t like to trailblaze.
So before I knew it, suddenly, from nothing, I had the required funds for a place on the team. (In fact I was about £600 short, but Dad helped me out on that one, and refused to hear anything about ever being paid back. Great man.)
The dream of an attempt on Everest was now about to become a reality.
So many people over the years have asked me how to get sponsorship, but there is only one magic ingredient. Action. You just have to keep going.
Then keep going some more.
Our dreams are just wishes, if we never follow them through with action. And in life, you have got to be able to light your own fire.
The reality of planning big expeditions is often tedious and frustrating. There is no glamour in yet another potential sponsor’s rejection letter, and I have often felt my own internal fire flickering close to snuff point.
Action is what keeps it alight. ~ Bear Grylls,#NFDB
1483:Years later, when Dostoevsky was reading the book of Job once again, he wrote his wife that it put him into such a state of "unhealthy rapture" that he almost cried. "It's a strange thing, Anya, this books is one of the first in my life which made an impression on me; I was then still almost a child." There is an allusion to this revelatory experience of the young boy in The Brothers Karamazov, where Zosima recalls being struck by a reading of the book of Job at the age of eight and feeling that "for the first time in my life I consciously received the seed of God's word in my heart" (9:287). This seed was one day to flower into the magnificent growth of Ivan Karamazov's passionate protest against God's injustice and the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, but it also grew into Alyosha's submission to the awesomeness of the infinite before which Job too had once bowed his head, and into Zosima's teaching of the necessity for an ultimate faith in the goodness of God's mysterious wisdom. It is Dostoevsky's genius as a writer to have been able to feel (and to express) both these extremes of rejection and acceptance. While the tension of this polarity may have developed out of the ambivalence of Dostoevsky's psychodynamic relationship with his father, what is important is to see how early it was transposed and projected into the religious symbolism of the eternal problem of theodicy. ~ Joseph Frank, #NFDB
1484:You see what I am driving at. The mentally handicapped do not have a consciousness of power. Because of this perhaps their capacity for love is more immediate, lively and developed than that of other men. They cannot be men of ambition and action in society and so develop a capacity for friendship rather than for efficiency. They are indeed weak and easily influenced, because they confidently give themselves to others; they are simple certainly, but often with a very attractive simplicity. Their first reaction is often one of welcome and not of rejection or criticism. Full of trust, they commit themselves deeply. Who amongst us has not been moved when met by the warm welcome of our boys and girls, by their smiles, their confidence and their outstretched arms. Free from the bonds of conventional society, and of ambition, they are free, not with the ambitious freedom of reason, but with an interior freedom, that of friendship. Who has not been struck by the rightness of their judgments upon the goodness or evil of men, by their profound intuition on certain human truths, by the truth and simplicity of their nature which seeks not so much to appear to be, as to be. Living in a society where simplicity has been submerged by criticism and sometimes by hypocrisy, is it not comforting to find people who can be aware, who can marvel? Their open natures are made for communion and love. ~ Jean Vanier, #NFDB
1485:It is a successful inward voyage of reconciliation of a sort that he was to make much more readily and regularly in his fiction than in his life. His own experience had made the child figure central to his imagination, the sensitive youth whose sense of his worth is assaulted by a hostile world from infancy onward. The assault precedes adolescence, and adolescent experience is a late stage of the reenactment of early-childhood loss. The most powerful expression in his fiction of such loss and deprivation is to be born an orphan or near orphan, as are Oliver, Pip, Little Nell, David Copperfield, and Esther Summerson, or to have lost one parent, like Nicholas Nickleby, Florence Dombey, and Amy Dorrit. In the first of his fictional child heroes, he contrasts the emotional impact of his own mother’s distance and rejection with the absence of Oliver’s, as if to say that a dead mother is preferable to a deadening one. Unlike his own, Oliver’s mother dies while giving birth to her son. It is a tragic sacrifice that Dickens provides as an expression of the unqualified love of the perfect mother for her only son. Like Mary, she dies “Young Beautiful And Good,” and her angelic presence at crucial moments in the novel provides Oliver with both an assurance of his self-worth and, since it is she he resembles, a visible connection with the world of love, benevolence, and innate moral values.15 ~ Fred Kaplan, #NFDB
1486:This novel humbled me in a number of ways. I was reading manuscripts for a magazine called Accent, and had in front of my prose-bleary eyes a piece called “A Horse in a London Flat.” And I was in a doze. More dreariness. More pretension. When will it all end? How shall I phrase my polite rejection? Something, I don’t remember what it was now, but something ten pages along woke me up, as if I had nearly fallen asleep and toppled from my chair. Perhaps it was the startle of an image or the rasp of a line. I went back to the beginning, and soon realized that I had let my eyes slide over paragraphs of astonishing prose without responding to them or recognizing their quality. That was my first humiliation. I then carried the manuscript to my fellow editors, as if I were bringing the original “good news,” only to learn that they were perfectly familiar with the work of John Hawkes and admired it extravagantly. Hadn’t I read The Cannibal, or The Goose on the Grave? Where had I been! What a dummy! (Though my humiliation would have been worse if I had written that rejection.)
A number of years had to erode my embarrassment before I could confess that I had not spotted him at once (as I initially pretended). What a dummy indeed. The Lime Twig is a beautiful and brutal book, and when it comes to the engravement of the sentence, no one now writing can match him. ~ William H Gass,#NFDB
1487:It wasn't, [Nancy] grasped, so much that he was a dirty little man as that he probably felt she was inaccessible to him and was therefore determined to find fault with her. Being a singularly lovely girl, she was in fact used the the type, having suffered considerably at their hands at university. And Jake, more than anything, reminded her of those insufferably bright boys on campus, self-declared intellectuals, usually Jewish, charged with bombast and abominable poetry in lower-case letters, who were aroused by her presence, and yet were too gauche (and terrified) to speak out and actually ask for a date. Instead they sat at the table next to her in the student union, aggressively calling attention to themselves. Speculating loudly on what they took to be her icy manner. Or they slid belligerently into the seat next to her at lectures, trying to bedazzle with their questions. They also ridiculed her to girls less happily endowed, wreaking vengeance for a rejection they anticipated, but were too cowardly to risk, and bandied suggestions about her secret sexual life sufficiently coarse to make her dry. No matter that she took immense pains not to be provocative, swimming in sloppy joe sweaters, sensible skirts, and flat shoes. Going out of her way to discourage boys the other girls coveted. For this only proved that Nancy Croft was remote; splendidly made, yest, but glacier-like. ~ Mordecai Richler, #NFDB
1488:The anti-Semitic interpretation fails to discern the real intention of the Gospels. It is clearly mimetic contagion that explains the hatred of the masses for exceptional persons, such as Jesus and all the prophets; it is not a matter of ethnic or religious identity. The Gospels suggest that a mimetic process of rejection exists in all communities and not only among the Jews. The prophets are the preferential victims of this process, a little like all exceptional persons, individuals who are different. The reasons for exceptional status are diverse. The victims can be those who limp, the disabled, the poor, the disadvantaged, individuals who are mentally retarded, and also great religious figures who are inspired, like Jesus or the Jewish prophets or now, in our day, great artists or thinkers. All peoples have a tendency to reject, under some pretext or another, the individuals who don't fit their conception of what is normal and acceptable. If we compare the Passion to the narratives of the violence suffered by the prophets, we confirm that in both cases the episodes of violence are definitely either directly collective in character or of collective inspiration. The resemblance of Jesus to the prophets is perfectly real, and we will soon see that these resemblances are not restricted to the victims of collective violence in the Bible. In myths as well, the victims are or seem different. So ~ Ren Girard, #NFDB
1489:I think I can,” Lee answered Samuel. “I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody’s story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I’m feeling my way now—don’t jump on me if I’m not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails. It is all there—the start, the beginning. One child, refused the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides his secret guilt; and another steals so that money will make him loved; and a third conquers the world—and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt. The human is the only guilty animal. Now wait! Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul—the secret, rejected, guilty soul. Mr. Trask, you said you did not kill your brother and then you remembered something. I don’t want to know what it was, but was it very far apart from Cain and Abel? And what do you think of my Oriental patter, Mr. Hamilton? You know I am no more Oriental than you are. ~ John Steinbeck, #NFDB
1490:here’s my 8-step process for maximizing efficacy (doing the right things): Wake up at least 1 hour before you have to be at a computer screen. Email is the mind-killer. Make a cup of tea (I like pu-erh) and sit down with a pen/pencil and paper. Write down the 3 to 5 things—and no more—that are making you the most anxious or uncomfortable. They’re often things that have been punted from one day’s to-do list to the next, to the next, to the next, and so on. Most important usually equals most uncomfortable, with some chance of rejection or conflict. For each item, ask yourself: “If this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day?” “Will moving this forward make all the other to-dos unimportant or easier to knock off later?” Put another way: “What, if done, will make all of the rest easier or irrelevant?” Look only at the items you’ve answered “yes” to for at least one of these questions. Block out at 2 to 3 hours to focus on ONE of them for today. Let the rest of the urgent but less important stuff slide. It will still be there tomorrow. TO BE CLEAR: Block out at 2 to 3 HOURS to focus on ONE of them for today. This is ONE BLOCK OF TIME. Cobbling together 10 minutes here and there to add up to 120 minutes does not work. No phone calls or social media allowed. If you get distracted or start procrastinating, don’t freak out and downward-spiral; just gently come back to your ONE to-do. ~ Timothy Ferriss, #NFDB
1491:Mr. Thornton stood by one of the windows, with his back to the door, apparently absorbed in watching something in the street. But, in truth, he was afraid of himself. His heart beat thick at the thought of her coming. He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through,—to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire. He dreaded lest he should go forwards to meet her, with his arms held out in mute entreaty that she would come and nestle there, as she had done, all unheeded, the day before, but never unheeded again. His heart throbbed loud and quick Strong man as he was, he trembled at the anticipation of what he had to say, and how it might be received. She might droop, and flush, and flutter to his arms, as to her natural home and resting-place. One moment, he glowed with impatience at the thought that she might do this, the next, he feared a passionate rejection, the very idea of which withered up his future with so deadly a blight that he refused to think of it. He was startled by the sense of the presence of some one else in the room. He turned round. She had come in so gently, that he had never heard her; the street noises had been more distinct to his inattentive ear than her slow movements, in her soft muslin gown. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell, #NFDB
1492:I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last.—But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the same thing.
The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,#NFDB
1493:Of all the texts in which Jesus contrasts the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of God, the most succinct is in Luke 6. There, Jesus gives us two lists: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you. . . . (Luke 6:20–22) But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you. (Luke 6:24–26) Biblical scholar Michael Wilcock, in his study of this text, observes that in the life of God’s people there will be a remarkable reversal of values: “Christians will prize what the world calls pitiable and suspect what the world calls desirable.”66 The things the world puts at the bottom of its list are at the top of the kingdom of God’s list. And the things that are suspect in the kingdom of God are prized by the kingdom of this world. What’s at the top of the list of the kingdom of this world? Power and money (“you who are rich”); success and recognition (“when all men speak well of you”). But what’s at the top of God’s list? Weakness and poverty (“you who are poor”); suffering and rejection (“when men hate you”). The list is inverted in the kingdom of God. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1494:13. Fear Fear can be real or imaginary. Fear makes people do strange things. It primarily comes from a lack of understanding. To live in fear is to live in an emotional prison. Fear paralyses and immobilises people. Fear results in insecurity, lack of confidence and procrastination. Fear destroys our potential and ability. We cannot think straight. Fear ruins relationships and health. Some common fears are: • Fear of failing • Fear of the unknown • Fear of being unprepared • Fear of making the wrong decision • Fear of rejection Some fears can be described, others can only be felt. Fear leads to anxiety which in turn leads to irrational thinking and this actually sabotages our ability to solve the problem. The normal response to fear is escape. Escape puts us in a comfort zone and reduces the impact of fear temporarily while the cause remains. Imaginary fears magnify the problem. Fear can get out of hand and destroy happiness and relationships. Think of fear as meaning: F A L S E E V I D E N C E A P P E A R I N G R E A L Fear of failure is often worse than failure itself. Failure is not the worst thing that can happen to someone. People who don’t try have failed even before attempting. When infants learn to walk, they keep falling; but to them it is not failing, it is learning. If they became disheartened, they would never walk. ~ Shiv Khera, #NFDB
1495:As for Proust, his contribution has been to create, from an obstinate contemplation of reality, a closed
world that belonged only to him and that indicated his victory over the transitoriness of things and over
death. But he uses absolutely the opposite means. He upholds, above everything, by a deliberate choice, a
careful selection of unique experience, which the writer chooses from the most secret recesses of his past.
Immense empty spaces are thus discarded from life because they have left no trace in the memory. If the
American novel is the novel of men without memory, the world of Proust is nothing but memory. It is
concerned only with the most difficult and most exacting of memories, the memory that rejects the
dispersion of the actual world and derives, from the trace of a lingering perfume, the secret of a new and
ancient universe. Proust chooses the interior life and, of the interior life, that which is more interior than
life itself in preference to what is forgotten in the world of reality— in other words, the purely mechanical
and blind aspects of the world. But by his rejection of reality he does not deny reality. He does not
commit the error, which would counterbalance the error of American fiction, of suppressing
the mechanical. He unites, on the contrary, into a superior form of unity, the memory of the past and the
immediate sensation, the twisted foot and the happy days of times past. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1496:It is difficult to return to the places of one's early happiness. The young girls in the flower of their youth
still laugh and chatter on the seashore, but he who watches them gradually loses his right to love them,
just as those he has loved lose the power to be loved. This melancholy is the melancholy of Proust. It was
powerful enough in him to cause a violent rejection of all existence. But his passion for faces and for the
light attached him at the same time to life. He never admitted that the happy days of his youth were lost
forever. He undertook the task of re-creating them and of demonstrating, in the face of death, that the past
could be regained at the end of time in the form of an imperishable present, both truer and richer than it
was at the beginning. The psychological analysis of Remembrance of Things Past is nothing but a potent
means to an end. The real greatness of Proust lies in having written Time Regained, which resembles the
world of dispersion and which gives it a meaning on the very level of integration. His difficult victory, on
the eve of his death, is to have been able to extract from the incessant flight of forms, by means of
memory and intelligence alone, the tentative trembling symbols of human unity. The most definite
challenge that a work of this kind can give to creation is to present itself as an entirety, as a closed and
unified world. This defines an unrepentant work of art. ~ Albert Camus,#NFDB
1497:What the postmodern world celebrates in its rejection of all absolutes and in its assumed right to define all reality privately is a sign of God's wrath (cf. Rom. 1:22). People may plead ignorance in this situation, but Paul says they are "without excuse" (Rom. 1:20). Later, he develops this in terms of internal consciousness. Even the Gentiles who are without the written moral law still show that what it requires "is written on their hearts" because their conscience is actively at work within them (Rom. 2:14- 15; cf. 1 Cor. 9:21). It is no small scandal what Paul has to say here. What is revealed to all people everywhere? It is not that God is loving, though he is. It is not that he is accepting, though sinners may find acceptance with him. It is not that we can find him on our own terms, though he should be sought (Acts 17:27). No, what is revealed is the fact that he is wrathful. It is true that this disclosure comes alongside the fact that the creation also bespeaks his glory and the greatness of his power. Yet the greatness of his power and his glory do not obscure the fact that God is alienated from human beings. Indeed, his glory is precisely the reason that he is alienated! There is, as a result, already a faint foretaste of final judgment as the consequences of sin visit their retribution upon the sinner. This is scandalous to a postmodern ear, but locked in that scandal is the key to meaning in the world, and in that meaning there is hope. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1498:Many social and political changes have swept the world clean of the apprehension of sacred things: the rejection of custom and ceremony; the conversion of marriage into a defeasible contract; the relaxing of the laws governing, sexual conduct and obscenity; the decline of faith and saintliness. As those changes take their effect, the experience of erotic love becomes darigerous and uncertain in its outcome. Our responsibility retreats further from the confused terrain of sexual experience, and threatens even to void it of desire.
Hence, it might be said, my ability to reflect, in so neutral and philosophical a fashion, on the nature of this phenomenon is perhaps already an index of its decline: of the fact that desire does not, now, have the importance for us that formerly caused men to conceal it in poetry or overcome it through prayer. What we understand of our condition may also pass from us in the act of understanding. For we were never meant to have knowledge of this thing; we were meant only to be subject to its command. No phenomenon, perhaps, illustrates more profoundly the great poetical utterance of Hegel; that
When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood.
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the gathering of the dusk.
On the other hand, it is a century and a half since Hegel wrote those words, and life goes on. ~ Roger Scruton,#NFDB
1499:The severed parts of the self are projected in relationships. They are often the basis of hatred and prejudice. The severed parts of the self may be experienced as a split personality or even multiple personalities. This happens often with victims who have been through traumatic physical and sexual violation. To be severed and alienated within oneself also creates a sense of unreality. One may have an all-pervasive sense of never quite belonging, of being on the outside looking in. The condition of inner alienation and isolation is also pervaded by a low-grade chronic depression. This has to do with the sadness of losing one’s authentic self. Perhaps the deepest and most devastating aspect of neurotic shame is the rejection of the self by the self. SHAME AS FALSE SELF Because the exposure of self to self lies at the heart of neurotic shame, escape from the self is necessary. The escape from self is accomplished by creating a false self. The false self is always more or less than human. The false self may be a perfectionist or a slob, a family Hero or a family Scapegoat. As the false self is formed, the authentic self goes into hiding. Years later the layers of defense and pretense are so intense that one loses all conscious awareness of who one really is. However, as we’ll discuss in Chapter Twelve, the true self never gets away. It is crucial to see that the false self may be as polar opposite as a super-achieving perfectionist or an addict in an alley. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
1500:When, then, the Social Democrat worker found himself in the economic crisis which degraded him to the status of a coolie, the development of his revolutionary sentiments was severely retarded by the conservative structuralization that had been taking shape in him for decades. Either he remained in the camp of the Social Democrats, notwithstanding his criticism and rejection of their policies, or he went over to the NSDAP [Nazi party] in search of a better replacement. Irresolute and indecisive, owing to the deep contradiction between revolutionary and conservative sentiments, disappointed by his own leadership, he followed the line of least resistance. Whether he would give up his conservative tendencies and arrive at a complete consciousness of his actual responsibility in the production process, i.e., at a revolutionary consciousness, depended solely on the correct or incorrect leadership of the revolutionary party. Thus the communist assertion that it was the Social Democrat policies that put fascism in the saddle was correct from a psychological viewpoint. Disappointment in Social Democracy, accompanied by the contradiction between wretchedness and conservative thinking, must lead to fascism if there are no revolutionary organizations. For example, following the fiasco of the Labor party's policies in England, in 1930–31, fascism began to infiltrate the workers who, then, in the election of 1931, cut away to the Right, instead of going over to communism. ~ Wilhelm Reich, #NFDB
143 Integral Yoga
12 Christianity
7 Poetry
5 Yoga
5 Psychology
4 Philosophy
3 Islam
2 Science
2 Occultism
2 Hinduism
2 Fiction
1 Theosophy
1 Mythology
1 Integral Theory
1 Education
1 Baha i Faith
186 Sri Aurobindo
39 The Mother
26 Satprem
24 Nolini Kanta Gupta
6 Saint Augustine of Hippo
4 Jordan Peterson
4 A B Purani
3 Walt Whitman
3 Saint John of Climacus
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
3 Muhammad
2 Swami Vivekananda
2 Swami Krishnananda
2 Nirodbaran
2 H P Lovecraft
2 Aldous Huxley
39 The Synthesis Of Yoga
26 The Life Divine
26 Letters On Yoga IV
24 Record of Yoga
20 Letters On Yoga II
8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
7 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
5 Letters On Yoga III
5 Essays On The Gita
5 City of God
4 The Secret Doctrine
4 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
4 Maps of Meaning
4 Letters On Yoga I
4 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
4 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
4 Agenda Vol 09
3 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
3 Quran
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
3 Agenda Vol 04
3 Agenda Vol 02
2 Whitman - Poems
2 Vedic and Philological Studies
2 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
2 The Perennial Philosophy
2 The Human Cycle
2 The Future of Man
2 The Bible
2 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
2 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
2 Questions And Answers 1956
2 Questions And Answers 1955
2 Questions And Answers 1954
2 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
2 Lovecraft - Poems
2 Isha Upanishad
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Essays Divine And Human
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
2 Agenda Vol 12
2 Agenda Vol 07
2 Agenda Vol 06
2 Agenda Vol 05
2 Agenda Vol 03
0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
If, then, this inferior equilibrium is the basis and first means of the higher movements which the universal Power contemplates and if it constitutes the vehicle in which the Divine here seeks to reveal Itself, if the Indian saying is true that the body is the instrument provided for the fulfilment of the right law of our nature, then any final recoil from the physical life must be a turning away from the completeness of the divine Wisdom and a renunciation of its aim in earthly manifestation. Such a refusal may be, owing to some secret law of their development, the right attitude for certain individuals, but never the aim intended for mankind. It can be, therefore, no integral Yoga which ignores the body or makes its annulment or its Rejection indispensable to a perfect spirituality. Rather, the perfecting of the body also should be the last triumph of the Spirit and to make the bodily life also divine must be God's final seal upon His work in the universe. The obstacle which the physical presents to the spiritual is no argument for the Rejection of the physical; for in the unseen providence of things our greatest difficulties are our best opportunities. A supreme difficulty is Nature's indication to us of a supreme conquest to be won and an ultimate problem to be solved; it is not a warning of an inextricable snare to be shunned or of an enemy too strong for us from whom we must flee.
Equally, the vital and nervous energies in us are there for a great utility; they too demand the divine realisation of their possibilities in our ultimate fulfilment. The great part assigned to this element in the universal scheme is powerfully emphasised by the catholic wisdom of the Upanishads. "As the spokes of a wheel in its nave, so in the Life-Energy is all established, the triple knowledge and the Sacrifice and the power of the strong and the purity of the wise. Under the control of the LifeEnergy is all this that is established in the triple heaven."2 It is therefore no integral Yoga that kills these vital energies, forces them into a nerveless quiescence or roots them out as the source
--
It is not mental incapacity, but the long Rejection or seclusion from opportunity and withdrawal of the awakening impulse that creates the savage. Barbarism is an intermediate sleep, not an original darkness.
Moreover the whole trend of modern thought and modern endeavour reveals itself to the observant eye as a large conscious effort of Nature in man to effect a general level of intellectual equipment, capacity and farther possibility by universalising the opportunities which modern civilisation affords for the mental life. Even the preoccupation of the European intellect, the protagonist of this tendency, with material Nature and the externalities of existence is a necessary part of the effort. It seeks to prepare a sufficient basis in man's physical being and vital energies and in his material environment for his full mental possibilities. By the spread of education, by the advance of the backward races, by the elevation of depressed classes, by the multiplication of labour-saving appliances, by the movement
0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Maya, the phenomenal consciousness. So it is able to arrive at its right identification with the pure and unique Self which is not mutable or perishable, not determinable by any phenomenon or combination of phenomena. From this point the path, as ordinarily followed, leads to the Rejection of the phenomenal worlds from the consciousness as an illusion and the final immergence without return of the individual soul in the Supreme.
But this exclusive consummation is not the sole or inevitable result of the Path of Knowledge. For, followed more largely and with a less individual aim, the method of Knowledge may lead to an active conquest of the cosmic existence for the Divine no less than to a transcendence. The point of this departure is the realisation of the supreme Self not only in one's own being but in all beings and, finally, the realisation of even the phenomenal aspects of the world as a play of the divine consciousness and not something entirely alien to its true nature. And on the basis of this realisation a yet further enlargement is possible, the conversion of all forms of knowledge, however mundane, into activities of the divine consciousness utilisable for the perception of the one and unique Object of knowledge both in itself and through the play of its forms and symbols. Such a method might well lead to the elevation of the whole range of human intellect
0.05 - The Synthesis of the Systems, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
may effect itself by the Rejection of the lower and escape into the higher, - the ordinary view-point, - or by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature. It is this, rather, that must be the aim of an integral Yoga.
But in either case it is always through something in the lower that we must rise into the higher existence, and the schools of
01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed, it would be interesting to compare and contrast the Eastern and Western approach to Divine Love, the Christian and the Vaishnava, for example. Indian spirituality, whatever its outer form or credal formulation, has always a background of utter unity. This unity, again, is threefold or triune and is expressed in those great Upanishadic phrases,mahvkyas,(1) the transcendental unity: the One alone exists, there is nothing else than theOneekamevdvityam; (2) the cosmic unity: all existence is one, whatever exists is that One, thereare no separate existences:sarvam khalvidam brahma neha nnsti kincaa; (3) That One is I, you too are that One:so' ham, tattvamasi; this may be called the individual unity. As I have said, all spiritual experiences in India, of whatever school or line, take for granted or are fundamentally based upon this sense of absolute unity or identity. Schools of dualism or pluralism, who do not apparently admit in their tenets this extreme monism, are still permeated in many ways with that sense and in some form or other take cognizance of the truth of it. The Christian doctrine too says indeed, 'I and my Father in Heaven are one', but this is not identity, but union; besides, the human soul is not admitted into this identity, nor the world soul. The world, we have seen, according to the Christian discipline has to be altogether abandoned, negatived, as we go inward and upward towards our spiritual status reflecting the divine image in the divine company. It is a complete Rejection, a cutting off and casting away of world and life. One extreme Vedantic path seems to follow a similar line, but there it is not really Rejection, but a resolution, not the Rejection of what is totally foreign and extraneous, but a resolution of the external into its inner and inmost substance, of the effect into its original cause. Brahman is in the world, Brahman is the world: the world has unrolled itself out of the Brahmansi, pravttiit has to be rolled back into its, cause and substance if it is to regain its pure nature (that is the process of nivitti). Likewise, the individual being in the world, "I", is the transcendent being itself and when it withdraws, it withdraws itself and the whole world with it and merges into the Absolute. Even the Maya of the Mayavadin, although it is viewed as something not inherent in Brahman but superimposed upon Brahman, still, has been accepted as a peculiar power of Brahman itself. The Christian doctrine keeps the individual being separate practically, as an associate or at the most as an image of God. The love for one's neighbour, charity, which the Christian discipline enjoins is one's love for one's kind, because of affinity of nature and quality: it does not dissolve the two into an integral unity and absolute identity, where we love because we are one, because we are the One. The highest culmination of love, the very basis of love, according to the Indian conception, is a transcendence of love, love trans-muted into Bliss. The Upanishad says, where one has become the utter unity, who loves whom? To explain further our point, we take two examples referred to in the book we are considering. The true Christian, it is said, loves the sinner too, he is permitted to dislike sin, for he has to reject it, but he must separate from sin the sinner and love him. Why? Because the sinner too can change and become his brother in spirit, one loves the sinner because there is the possibility of his changing and becoming a true Christian. It is why the orthodox Christian, even such an enlightened and holy person as this mediaeval Canon, considers the non-Christian, the non-baptised as impure and potentially and fundamentally sinners. That is also why the Church, the physical organisation, is worshipped as Christ's very body and outside the Church lies the pagan world which has neither religion nor true spirituality nor salvation. Of course, all this may be symbolic and it is symbolic in a sense. If Christianity is taken to mean true spirituality, and the Church is equated with the collective embodiment of that spirituality, all that is claimed on their behalf stands justified. But that is an ideal, a hypothetical standpoint and can hardly be borne out by facts. However, to come back to our subject, let us ow take the second example. Of Christ himself, it is said, he not only did not dislike or had any aversion for Judas, but that he positively loved the traitor with a true and sincere love. He knew that the man would betray him and even when he was betraying and had betrayed, the Son of Man continued to love him. It was no make-believe or sham or pretence. It was genuine, as genuine as anything can be. Now, why did he love his enemy? Because, it is said, the enemy is suffered by God to do the misdeed: he has been allowed to test the faith of the faithful, he too has his utility, he too is God's servant. And who knows even a Judas would not change in the end? Many who come to scoff do remain to pray. But it can be asked, 'Does God love Satan too in the same way?' The Indian conception which is basically Vedantic is different. There is only one reality, one truth which is viewed differently. Whether a thing is considered good or evil or neutral, essentially and truly, it is that One and nothing else. God's own self is everywhere and the sage makes no difference between the Brahmin and the cow and the elephant. It is his own self he finds in every person and every objectsarvabhtsthitam yo mm bhajati ekatvamsthitah"he has taken his stand upon oneness and loves Me in all beings."2
This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.
01.09 - William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The ideal was Blake's. It will not sound so revolting if we understand what the poet meant by Hell. Hell, he explains, is simply the body, the Energy of Lifehell, because body and life on earth were so considered by the orthodox Christianity. The Christian ideal demands an absolute denial and Rejection of life. Fulfilment is elsewhere, in heaven alone. That is, as we know, the ideal of the ascetic. The life of the spirit (in heaven) is a thing away from and stands against the life of the flesh (on earth). In the face of this discipline, countering it, Blake posited a union, a marriage of the two, considered incompatibles and incommensurables. Enfant terrible that he was, he took an infinite delight in a spirit of contradiction and went on expatiating on the glory of the misalliance. He declared a new apocalypse and said that Lucifer, the one called Satan, was the real God, the so-called Messiah the fake one: the apparent Milton spoke in praise of God and in dispraise of Satan, but the real, the esoteric Milton glorified Satan, who is the true God and minimised or caricatured the counterfeit or shadow God. Here is Blakean Bible in a nutshell:
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged.. . . If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
0 1961-03-21, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then I woke up (I always wake up three or four times during the night) and when I went back to bed I had an attack of what the doctor and I have taken to be filariasis but a strange type of filariasis, for as soon as I master it in one spot it appears in another, and when I master it there it reappears somewhere else. Last night it was in the arms (it lasted quite a while, between 2:30 and 4 a.m.); but I was fully conscious, and each time the attack came, I went like this (gestures over the arms, to drive away the attack) and my arms were not affected at all. When it was over, I consciously entered the most material subtle physical, just beyond the body. I was sitting in my room there (an immense, cubic room) reading or writing something, when I heard the door open and close, but I was busy and didnt pay attention, presuming it was one of the people usually around me. Then suddenly I had such an unpleasant sensation in my body that I raised my head and looked, and I saw someone there. Do you know how the magicians in Europe dress, in short satin breeches and a shirt? He was wearing something like that. He was Indian, tall and rather dark, with slicked-down hairwhat you would normally call a handsome young man. He seemed to have been drawn1 there becausehe was standing in front of me staring into space, not looking at me. And the moment I saw him, there was the same sensation in all my cells as I have with what Ive been calling filariasis (its a special, minute kind of pain) and simultaneously all the cells felt disgusta tremendous will of Rejection. Then I sat up straight (I didnt stand up) and said to him as forcefully as possible, How do you dare to come in here! I said it so loudly that the noise woke me up! I dont know what happened then, but things went much better afterwards.
The moment I saw this person I knew he was only an instrument, but a well-paid instrumentsomeone paid a great deal to have him do that! I would recognize him again among hundreds I can still see him I see him more clearly than with physical eyes. He is an unintelligent man with no personal animosity, merely a very well-paid instrumentsomeone is hiding behind him, using him as a screen.
0 1961-07-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo also had to struggle against this because he too received a Christian education. And these Aphorisms are the result the floweringof the necessity to struggle against the subconscious formation which has produced such questions (Mother takes on a scandalized tone): How can God be weak? How can God be foolish? How. But there is nothing but God! He alone exists, there is nothing outside of Him. And whatever seems repugnant to us is something He no longer wishes to existHe is preparing the world so that this no longer manifests, so that the manifestation can pass beyond this state to something else. So of course we violently reject everything in us that is destined to leave the active manifestation. There is a movement of Rejection.
Yet it is He. There is nothing other than He! This should be repeated from morning to night, from night to morning, because we forget it every minute.
0 1961-08-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The moments of forgetting are briefplunk! A knock from someone or something the shock of the ordinary vibration. Its unimportant, you turn your head and push it away. But I dont want that either, it [the movement of Rejection] must go away entirely.
From a practical, concrete, effective standpoint, there are some results. Even when they dont write, people are beginning to receive my response very clearly, very precisely. People I dont know at all have written, and they receive my reply even before I write back (they tell this to intermediaries). I had another example only today. Its having results.
0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once and for all it has swept away all these notionsnot merely ordinary moral notions, but everything people here in India consider necessary for the spiritual life. In that respect, it was very instructive. And first and foremost, this so-called ascetic purity. Ascetic purity is merely the Rejection of all vital movements. Instead of taking these movements and turning them towards the Divine, instead of seeing, that is, the supreme Presence in them (and so letting the Supreme deal with them freely), He is told (laughing): Noits none of Your business! You have no say in it.
As for the physical, its an old and well-known storyascetics have always rejected it; but they also reject the vital. And theyre all like that here, even X may have changed somewhat by now, but at the beginning he was no different either. Only things classically recognized as holy or admitted by religious tradition were accepted the sanctity of marriage, for example, and things like that. But a free life? Not a chance! It was wholly incompatible with religious life.
0 1962-01-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The system of getting rid of things by anubhava [experience] can also be a dangerous one; for on this way one can easily become more entangled instead of arriving at freedom. This method has behind it two well-known psychological motives. One, the motive of purposeful exhaustion, is valid only in some cases, especially when some natural tendency has too strong a hold or too strong a drive in it to be got rid of by vicra [intellectual reflection] or by the process of Rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place; when that happens in excess, the sadhak has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence is always dangerous, though sometimes inevitable. It succeeds only when there is a very strong will in the being towards realisation; for then indulgence brings a strong dissatisfaction and reaction, vairagya, and the will towards perfection can be carried down into the recalcitrant part of the nature.
The other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability; for in order to reject anything from the being one has first to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is an entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement. It is this or something like it that is attempted crudely and improperly with a rudimentary and insufficient knowledge in the system of psycho-analysis. The process of raising up the lower movements into the full light of consciousness in order to know and deal with them is inevitable; for there can be no complete change without it. But it can truly succeed only when a higher light and force are sufficiently at work to overcome, sooner or later, the force of the tendency that is held up for change. Many, under the pretext of anubhava, not only raise up the adverse movement, but support it with their consent instead of rejecting it, find justifications for continuing or repeating it and so go on playing with it, indulging its return, eternising it; afterwards when they want to get rid of it, it has got such a hold that they find themselves helpless in its clutch and only a terrible struggle or an intervention of divine grace can liberate them.Some do this out of a vital twist or perversity, others out of sheer ignorance; but in yoga, as in life, ignorance is not accepted by Nature as a justifying excuse. This danger is there in all improper dealings with the ignorant parts of the nature; but none is more ignorant, more perilous, more unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely or improperly for anubhava is to risk suffusing the conscious parts also with its dark and dirty stuff and thus poisoning the whole vital and even the mental nature. Always therefore one should begin by a positive, not a negative experience, by bringing down something of the divine nature, calm, light, equanimity, purity, divine strength into the parts of the conscious being that have to be changed; only when that has been sufficiently done and there is a firm positive basis, is it safe to raise up the concealed subconscious adverse elements in order to destroy and eliminate them by the strength of the divine calm, light, force and knowledge. Even so, there will be enough of the lower stuff rising up of itself to give you as much of the anubhava as you will need for getting rid of the obstacles; but then they can be dealt with with much less danger and under a higher internal guidance.
0 1963-02-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A total surrender, an exclusive self-opening to the divine influence, a constant and integral choice of the Truth and Rejection of the falsehood, these are the only conditions made. But these must be fulfilled entirely, without reserve, without any evasion or presence, simply and sincerely down to the most physical consciousness and its workings.
Sri Aurobindo
0 1963-06-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And there is too an obscure mind of the body, of the very cells, molecules, corpuscles. Haeckel, the German materialist, spoke somewhere of the will in the atom, and recent science, dealing with the incalculable individual variation in the activity of the electrons, comes near to perceiving that this is not a figure but the shadow thrown by a secret reality. This body-mind is a very tangible truth; owing to its obscurity and mechanical clinging to past movements and facile oblivion and Rejection of the new, we find in it one of the chief obstacles to permeation by the supermind Force and the transformation of the functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of the most precious instruments for the stabilisation of the supramental Light and Force in material Nature.
(XXII.340)
0 1963-12-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Which means there are movements of elimination, of Rejection, movements (for a second) of transformation, and also movements of constructionit seems the time has come to step into the movement of construction.
The body consciousness is still very timid, very timid in the sense that it doesnt have confidence in itself. It feels that if it isnt constantly vigilant, watching, watching, observing, discerning, some things (gesture below) may get through that shouldnt get through. Thats what hinders. And that is why this certainty comes more and more: no criticism, no criticism at all, none at all, dont see what shouldnt besee only WHAT SHOULD BE.
0 1964-01-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her Rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace.
All this passage. I am sorry, my eyes have become When theres plenty of light I can see very well.
--
Imperial MAHESHWARI is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to the supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mothers eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient and unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their Force and the truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away from her into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother. For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha6 and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her Rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
Ganapati, or Ganesh: the son of the supreme Mother, god of material knowledge and wealth. He is represented with an elephant's head.
0 1964-10-14, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the realm of ideas, there arent any problems, everything was resolved long ago the problem is in the fact, in the material fact of the body. It is beginning to learn its lesson. Its beginning to learn. And then, instead of the selfish answer that consists in saying, Ah, no! I dont want that, I dont want any of it! (Laughing) I am above that weakness and disorder, let it come, accept it and see what the solution is. In other words, instead of the old problem Rejection of life, Rejection of the difficulty, Rejection of the disorder and the flight into Nirvanaits the acceptance of everything and Victory.
This is really (as far as I know) the new thing Sri Aurobindo has brought. Not only the idea that its possible, but that its the true solution, and the idea that we can start now. I am not saying well reach the end now, I dont know, but the idea is that we can begin right now, the time has come when we can begin, and its the only true solution, the other solution is no solutionwell, it was a necessary experiment in the universal march, but flight is no solution: the solution is Victory. And the time has come when we can try.
0 1965-03-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let us assume you have a pain somewhere; the instinct (the instinct of the body, of the cells) is to tense up and try to rejectwhich is the worst thing to do: it invariably increases the pain. So the first thing that must be taught to the body is to stay stillnot to have any reactions. Above all no tensing up, and not even a movement of Rejectiona perfect stillness. Thats corporeal equanimity.
A perfect stillness.
0 1965-08-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It followed a long curve. It began with a deep disgust for its [the material minds] habitual activity; I started catching (not now: its been going on for weeks), catching all its routine and almost automatic activities I have said it several times: this material mind is defeatist, always pessimistic, meddlesome, grumbling, disgruntled, lacking in faith, lacking in trust. Even when it tends to be joyful and content, something comes and says, Ah, stop it, because youll get another knock. That sort of thing. It went on for weeks, and a continuous, constant work. It always ended in the offering. There was a beginning of progress when No, first I should tell all that happened before. To begin with, the japa, the mantra, for instance, was taken as a discipline; then from the state of discipline it changed into a state of satisfaction (but still with the sense of a duty to be done); then from that it changed into a sort of state of constant satisfaction, with the desire (not desire, but a will or an aspiration) for it to be more frequent, more constant, more exclusive. Then there was a sort of repugnance to and Rejection of all that comes and disturbs, mixed with a sense of duty towards work, people and so on, and all that made a muddle and a great confusion. And it always ended in the transfer to the Supreme along with the aspiration for things to change. A long process of development.
Recently there was a sort of will for equality towards activities that had been tolerated or accepted only as an effect of the consecration and in obedience to the supreme Will. And then, all of a sudden they became something very positive, with a sense of freedom and a spontaneity of state, and a beginning of understanding of the attitude with which the action must be done. All this came very, very progressively. And then this morning, there was the experience.
--
And it gave the exact meaning of the purpose of this material mind; because there was always, in the background of the consciousness, that sentence of Sri Aurobindos which said it was an impossible instrument and would probably have to be got rid of. It had remained. And I saw there was something wrong: in spite of all the criticism, all the offering, all the disgust, even all the Rejection, this material mind was preserved. Only, it has been transformed slowly, slowly, and now the first step has been made, a step on the road to transformation, with the experience of the cessation of its automatic activity.
That was the experience of this morning.
0 1966-09-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There was, yesterday afternoon and this morning, a long demonstration of how the Mind brought about and permitted a certain change in the evolution of Matter for the Divines play, how Rejection of the Mind is useful ONLY as a means of progress and evolution, and how it will be fully used when the new being the complete, divine beingmanifests. It was very interesting. A demonstration.
Its the continuation of the demonstration [of August 31] which showed that ALL that has happened is necessary.
0 1966-12-21, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I think the sadhana would consist in sifting it out, or rather in developing a sensitivity such that the difference would become clear, quite perceptible, so it would no longer be the mind that chose and said, This is all right, that isnt. There would be a spontaneous adherence to what is clothed in this light from above and a Rejection of what isnt. The sadhana would consist in developing this sensitivity by separating yourself from the old movement, by taking the old movement outside you.
I understand quite well, your letter was a grace for me in the sense that I saw clearly. The only thing is, its the whole book that I find inadequate.
0 1967-02-08, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, how interesting it is, if you knew how interesting. Take coughing, for instance (not in the chest, in the throat). So, the first vibration: an irritation that draws your attention in order to make you cough. It has a certain kind of vibration which we may call pointed, but its not violent: its light, annoying. Its the first little vibration. So with that vibration: awakening of the attention in the surrounding consciousness (of the throat cells); then a refusal to accept the cough, a Rejection here (in the throat), which at first almost causes nausea (all this is seen through a microscope, you understand, they are very tiny things). The attention is focused. Then, at that point, there are several possible factors, which are sometimes simultaneous and sometimes one drives away the other; one is anxiety: something goes wrong and there is apprehension at whats going to happen; the other is a will that nothing should be disturbed by the irritation; and then all of a sudden, the faith that the Force is capable of restoring order everywhere immediately (none of this is intellectual: its vibrations).
Then, sometime yesterday morning, something very interesting occurred: a clear perception that the vast majority of the cells (in THIS CASE: Im not talking about the whole body, I am talking about this particular spotthroat, nose, etc.), the vast majority of the cells still have a sort of feelingwhich seems to be the result of innumerable experiences or of habits (its both; not clearly one or the other, but both)that Natures force, that is to say, the nature governing the body, knows what needs to be done better than the divine Power: its used to it, it knows better. Thats how it is. And then, when this new consciousness which is being worked out in the physical being (the mind of the cells) has caught hold of that, oh, it was as if it had caught hold of an extraordinary revelation; it said, Ah, Ive got you, you culprit! You are the one who is preventing the transformation.
0 1968-03-16, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Rejection of the one and acceptance of the other is childishness. Its ignorance. All mental translations, like that of an Evil eternally evil, giving birth to the idea of hell, or that of a Good eternally good all that, all of it is childishness.
(silence)
0 1968-04-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Hes clinging to her as if to dear life. When he is here, he wont leave her, he wants to stay with her and clings to her as much as he can. As for Sri Aurobindo and Mother, who are the deeper reason, he only sees them through J. Thats the whole thing. So J. has a reaction of Rejection, she says, I dont want any more of that.
Is he asking to come back or not?
0 1968-05-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The concluding state (after having written this note): first there was that completely spontaneous, natural, evident perception of the Consciousness using a thing and then leaving it, letting it fall apart when it can no longer be used but it wasnt that: it wasnt even taking a thing, utilizing it, making use of it until it becomes unusable; it was a CONTINUOUS movement (supple gesture like an immense wave) within a single substance, with, as it were, moments of concentration and utilization of something to its utmost possibility, and then, moments not of Rejection but of expansion, of immensity of peaceof return to a state of immensity of peace so as to take a new shape. A continuous thing, like this (same gesture like an immense wave), but then without real loss, without real waste: death is a mere appearance, you no longer even understand how one can live in this illusion. And THE Consciousness, ONE Consciousness not this and that and this (gesture showing an addition of separate individualities), no, no: ONE consciousness playing.
(silence)
0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What I dont know yet, whats not very clear, is what will be the fate of this residue? To peoples ordinary thought, its what they call death, that is to say, the Rejection of the cells that werent able to enter this plastic state of consciousness. But the way the work is being done, there is no categorical division [into groups of conscious or unconscious cells in Mothers body]: there are imperceptible (almost) states of variations between the different parts of the being. So you wonder, Where? What? When? How? Whats going to happen? Its increasingly becoming a problem.
The whole inner functioning is becoming more and more the result of that conscious action and conscious will; with, even, in part (at least in part) clearly the true functioning already. You understand, the impression is of a remnant, but the remnant isnt something thats rejected: its something which hesitates, lags behind, has difficulty and triesit would be only too pleased: if, for instance, there is in one spot a perceptible disorder, a pain, the body no longer starts fidgeting, worrying, wanting medicine or doctors or interventions, no, not at all; it asks it goes, O Lord, like that. Thats all. And it waits. And generally, in the space of a few seconds, the pain goes away.
0 1969-04-16, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its clearly a complete Rejection of all mental rules, and thats the first step needed to go beyond. There are two or three minutes when suddenlyhop! (gesture of piercing through) you feel it contacts something above.
Is there something else?
0 1970-06-06, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
534The Rejection of falsehood by the mind seeking after truth is one of the chief causes why mind cannot attain to the settled, rounded and perfect truth; not to escape falsehood is the effort of divine mind, but to seize the truth which lies masked behind even the most grotesque or far-wandering error.
(Mother comments:) Sri Aurobindo calls divine mind the prototype of the mental function that is totally and perfectly surrendered to the Divine and functions under the divine inspiration alone.
0 1971-06-12, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a certain truth in what you say about the empty cupa certain emptying of the consciousness of old things is necessary before anything positive can settle itself. It is what is happening in your physical consciousness, the old movements are being emptied out and you fall quiet, but they press in again and the cup has to be repeatedly emptied. If there is a firm and persistent Rejection, then this repeated return of the old movements will cease to be so persistent; the periods of quiet can be established and permanent.
It is not however a fact that the whole nature has to be emptied of the old things before there can be the Light and Grace. It is done usually in different parts of the nature at different times. You had your former experiences because the mind and higher vital were sufficiently emptied and quiet to receive some experiences of a new consciousness. Now it is the physical mind, physical vital and body that have to be emptied these always take longer than the others because the physical is more full of old habits, more slow to receive anything new or to change. But by the detachment and steady Rejection and reliance on the Mothers force, this obstinacy can be overcome and the cup emptied for filling with the Divine Light.
January 15, 1937
0 1971-12-18, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Perhaps Mother is referring to this text of Sri Aurobindo: "And there is too an obscure mind of the body, of the very cells, molecules, corpuscles. Haeckel, the German materialist, spoke somewhere of the will in the atom, and recent science, dealing with the incalculable individual variation in the activity of the electrons, comes near to perceiving that this is a very tangible truth; owing to its obscurity and mechanical clinging to past movements and facile oblivion and Rejection of the new, we find in it one of the chief obstacles to permeation by the supermind Force and the transformation of the functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of the most precious instruments for the stabilisation of the supramental Light and Force in the material Nature."
XXII.340
03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The stubborn mute Rejection in life's depths,
The ignorant No in the origin of things.
03.08 - The Spiritual Outlook, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The spiritual consciousness dawns precisely with the Rejection of this monomania, this obsession of one-track mentality. It means, in other words, nothing les than coming out of the shell of one's egoism. To be able thus to come out of oneself, enter into others' consciousness, see things as others see them, that is the great initiation, the true beginning of the life of the spirit. For the Spirit is the truth of all things: all things, even what appears evil and reprehensible, exist and have their play because of a core of truth and force of truth in each. Mind and mind's external consciousness and practical drive compel one to take to a single line of perception and action and that which is more or less superficial and immediately necessary. But it is only when one withdraws from the drive' of Maya and gets behind, gets behind all opposing views and standpoints and tries to see what is the underlying truth that seeks to manifest in each that one enters the gateway of the spiritual consciousness.
The spiritual consciousness is global, not in the sense that it is eclectic, that is to say, the sum-total of all the superficial views, but in the sense that it experiences the one dynamic truth that underlies all and which manifests its varying powers and potentials in various objects and forces, expressing itself in multiple standpoints and modes and angles of vision.
03.09 - Sectarianism or Loyalty, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A spiritual interest is nothing if it is not in this way a question that touches life to its core. That means a definite goal and appropriate means to reach that goal, and that again necessarily involves a choice, a process of acceptance and Rejection. The goal is also called the ista, the godhead that one seeks, the Divine that is fulfilled in oneself. Being a personality, an individual, one has to choose, one can best follow the line of evolution and growth and fulfilment of that personality and individuality that is the call of the Psyche, the direction of the Jiva. In other words, one has to be loyal and faithful to one's nature and being. That is why it is said: Better to perish while fulfilling one's own law of life than to flourish by fulfilling another's law. By being curious about another's Dharmait is this kind of curiosity that led to the original fall of man, according to the Bible that is to say, if one is vitally curious, allows oneself to be influenced and so affected and diverted by what is an outside and foreign force, because not in the line of one's own truth and development, one asks for a mixture and intervention which bring confusion, thwart the growth and fulfilment, as that falsifies the nature.
It is not only bad influences that affect you badly, even good influences do solike medicines that depend upon the particular constitution for their action. In ancient times this was called varasankara or dharmasakara, as for example, when a Kshatriya sought to follow the rule of life of a Brahmin or vice versa. This kind of admixture or msalliance was not favoured, as it was likely to bring about an obscurity in the consciousness and in the end frustration in the spiritual life. That was the original psychological reason why heresy was considered such a dangerous thing in all religions.
03.14 - Mater Dolorosa, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet the solution need not be a total Rejection and transcendence of Nature. For what is ignored in this view is Nature's dual reality. In one form, the inferior (apar), Nature means the Law of Ignoranceof pain and misery and death; but in another form, the superior (par), Nature's is the Law of Knowledge, that is to say, of happiness, immunity and immortality, not elsewhere in another world and in a transcendent consciousness, but here below on the physical earth in a physical body.
The whole question then is thishow far has this Higher Nature been a reality with us, to what extent do we live and move and have our being in it. It is when the normal existence, our body, our life and our mentality have all adopted and absorbed the substance of the Higher Prakriti and become it, when all the modes of Inferior Prakriti have been discarded and annihilated, or rather, have been purified and made to grow into the modes of the Higher Prakriti, that our terrestrial life can become a thing of absolute beauty and perfect perfection.
04.03 - To the Heights III, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Yet human life is but a blind Rejection, a heartless denial
Of this one thing that makes life living.
05.04 - The Immortal Person, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the process of making the body personal and divine and immortal, death or what appears as such may be a needed operation. It is no longer an ineluctable destiny forced upon you, but an instrument which you use consciously for a definite purpose. It is a mystic or occult work (kriy:) which we can try to understand by an analogy. The evolution of the ideal or divine man, the assumption of the mortal by the immortal involves a twofold operation: Rejection and integration. Rejection means throwing out the elements that belong exclusively to the lower grade and cannot be taken up and incorporated into the higher; while integration means taking up and absorbing utilisable elements of the lower into the higher. This double process goes on on all the levels, on the mental, on the vital, on the subtle physical and even on the physical level. At a certain stage or in a concentrated process of alchemy the process of Rejection may demand a mode of reshuffling and redisposition which physically appears like death, but it is inevitably followed or accompanied by the process of integration or recreation.
Perhaps this supreme and dangerous gesture only the Master can makeas the pioneer and pathfinder and he has made it.
05.18 - Man to be Surpassed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The limitation of such a human ideal is for us evident. We demand a total surpassing of man, although that does not mean a Rejection of man. Unless human life is built upon foundations quite other than what they are now, we say there can be no permanent or radical remedy to the ills it suffers from. Hence we are for utter transcendence; for, the highest height it is possible for the consciousness to reach and the being to dwell in, even the experience of Brahman or un-mitigated Absolute of the Mayavadin or the Zero, Shunyam of the Buddhist not excluded. Since it is there that the true foundations of creation lie hidden and it is from there that a new world has to be recreated, a new humanity reshaped. The very stuff of human nature has to be changed, not only what is considered as bad in it but what is valued as good also. For beyond good and evil is Nature Divine. Man has to find out this divine nature and dissolve his human nature into that, remould it, reshape it in that pattern. So long as human consciousness remains too human, it will be always branded with the bar sinister of all earthly things. Man has to grow into the immortal seated within mortality, into the light that shines inviolate on the other side of the darkness we live in. That immortality, that light one has to bring down here on earth and in ourselves, and out of it build a new earth and a new human self and life.
***
06.03 - Types of Meditation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The first is to think on one subject in a continuous logical order. When, for example, you have to find the solution of a problem, you go step by step from one operation to another in a chain till you finally arrive at the conclusion. The thought is withdrawn from all other objects and is canalised along a single line. This is a kind of meditation, although it may not be usually known by that name. It marks a progress in the make-up of the human consciousness. For normally the mind moves at random, thoughts run about on many subjects, various, contrary and contradictory, from moment to moment. There is neither direction, consistency nor organisation: it is a confused mass of incomplete, inchoate thoughts. The control and organisation of this mass, to start with, in a limited sphere and in a definite direction, the Rejection of the unnecessary and the irrelevant and the marshalling and ordering of the required elements form the first exercise towards mental growth. All high intelligence, all effective wielding of thought power needs this discipline. Under the present circumstances of the world the school-life gives the best opportunity for this development. This is a meditation that should be obligatory and universal.
The next type we may call concentration, instead of meditation. Here we do not pursue a thought-line, but fix the thought upon one object unmoved. It means a further process of withdrawing the consciousness from its habitual outgoing and dispersive movement. The thought is held at a point and attention is focussed upon it: it is continuous and unbroken attention, for example, upon an idea, a phrase (mantra) or an image. One can concentrate also upon a physical point, say, fixing the gaze upon the tip of one's nose, or on a luminous point outside etc. In this discipline the whole mind is gathered together and focussed: or, everything else is shut out leaving only one thing upon which all the light of the consciousness is directed. It is a standstill consciousness, like a flame erect and immobile in a windless place.
06.06 - Earth a Symbol, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Story of Creation Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SixEarth a Symbol
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The Story of Creation Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection
06.07 - Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
object:06.07 - Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection
author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
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Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SixTotal Transformation Demands Total Rejection
Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection
To a positive side in the sadhana, there must also be a negative one. Realisation or experience, on one side, must be accompanied by Rejection of things that oppose it, on the other. People wonder' why a beautiful experience fades away too soon or does not repeat itself easily, why a happy condition does not continue long but is followed almost inevitably by a condition of despond.
The reason is very simple. The experience or realisation is not a total one, that is to say, it belongs to a part only of the nature and is not shared by other parts. The sadhak is not of one piece: the whole of his nature is not worked to the same pitch and amplitude, it is not equally responsive everywhere. Thus, when the psychic brings forward an experience and the inner consciousness is full of the light and energy and joy and faith, even then, in the background or by the side, if you are vigilant and observe carefully, you will see that the mind, the external mind, has its reservations or continues to move in its accustomed way. It looks askance at the experience, criticises or doubts; or it tries to understand or explain in its own terms, seize it within its frame of comprehension. Or else, the vital rises up and tries to get hold of the experience and utilise it for its own purposes; it is enjoyed as a tasty food, made to serve the vital's ambition or vanity, some lower ignorant egoistic urge. Or again, the physical, the body consciousness may not at all participate in the experience; it may remain indifferent, listless, lethargic with no impulse or enthusiasm to carry out in practice the experience of the inner consciousness. Any of these drags or cross-currents is sufficient to maim and diminish and even wipe out the experience: and usually all the three are finally there to combine and reinforce each other's effects to do the mischief.
06.08 - The Individual and the Collective, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection How to Wait
Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta Part SixThe Individual and the Collective
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Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection How to Wait
07.18 - How to get rid of Troublesome Thoughts, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There are several ways and also it depends upon the case. The first and the easiest way is to think of something else. Concentrate your attention upon a subject which has nothing to do with what troubles you. You can read something interesting or take up a work that demands care and consideration. Something creative would be more effective; writers and artists, for example, when they are engaged in their particular occupation forget everything else, their whole mind is engrossed in that one matter. But, of course, once the work is done, the trouble begins again, if one has not learnt to control the thoughts in the meanwhile. So there is the second method which is a little more difficult. You have to learn a movement of Rejection. As you reject or throwaway a physical object, even so you must throwaway and reject the thought. It is more difficult, but if you succeed, it is more effective. You have to practise and continue the endeavour, repeat and persevere and there is no reason why you should not succeed, if you are thoroughly sincere and serious.
There is a third method. It is to bring down from above a greater light which is in its nature the very opposite of the thoughts you are dealing with, opposite in a very radical and deep sense; that is to say, if the thoughts that trouble you are obscure and ignorant, especially if they happen to rise from the subconscient or the inconscient, supported by the mere instincts, then, by calling down the light from above and turning it upon the dark thoughts you can simply dissolve them or transform them, wherever possible. It is the supreme means, but perhaps not within the easy reach of all. But if you succeed in it, not only the thoughts do not come, their very cause is removed. The first method is to turn aside, the second to face and fight, the third to rise above and transform. In the third you are not only cured, but you make a progressa true progress.
1.006 - Livestock, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
34. Other messengers before you were rejected, but they endured Rejection and persecution until Our help came to them. There can be no change to God’s words. News of the Messengers has already reached you.
35. If you find their Rejection hard to bear, then if you can, seek a tunnel into the earth, or a stairway into the heaven, and bring them a sign. Had God willed, He could have gathered them to guidance. So do not be of the ignorant.
36. Only those who listen will respond. As for the dead, God will resurrect them; then to Him they will be returned.
1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
Evolution on the Path. Again the separation of spirit from matter, its identification with the One, and the ultimate Rejection of form. The senses then are synthesised into acquired faculty, and the Self has no [200] further use for the not-self. It blends with the All-Self. This is under the Law of Synthesis.
If this is borne in mind it leads to a realisation that the separation of the Spirit from the material vehicle involves two aspects of the One great All; herein is seen the work of the Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer.
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In all these perfections is seen the awareness of the Self, and the graded process of identification, utilisation, manipulation and final Rejection of the not-self by that Self who is now consciously aware. He hears the note of nature and that of his monad; he recognises their identity, utilises their vibration, and passes rapidly through the three stages of Creator, Preserver and Destroyer.
[201]
He touches or feels the vibration of the form or not-self in all its various grades, recognises his identity in time and space, and for purposes of existence or being and by means of the three Laws of Economy, Attraction and Synthesis utilises, blends and eventually dissociates himself. He sees the threefold evolutionary process and by means of the development of the inner vision, sees within the heart of the system macrocosmic and microcosmic, the one SELF in many forms, and finally identifies himself with that one Self by the conscious Rejection of the not-self after its complete subjugation and utilisation.
d. Tasting. He tastes then finally and discriminates, for taste is the great sense that begins to hold sway during the discriminating process that takes place when the illusory nature of matter is in process of realisation. Discrimination is the educatory process to which the Self subjects itself in the process of developing intuition that faculty whereby the Self recognises its own essence in and under all forms. Discrimination concerns the duality of nature, the Self and the not-self, and is the means of their differentiation in the process of abstraction; the intuition concerns unity and is the capacity of the Self to contact other selves, and is not a faculty whereby the not-self is contacted. Hence, its rarity these days owing to the intense individualisation of the Ego, and its identification with the forma necessary identification at this particular time. As the sense of taste on the higher planes is developed, it leads one to ever finer distinctions till one is finally led through the form, right to the heart of one's nature.
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Third. The awakening upon the mental plane, and the gradually increasing activity of the centres and the senses. The effect in both cases tends to identification of the Self with its own essence in all groups and the Rejection of the sheaths and the forms.
This development is paralleled on the two higher planes simultaneously as in the lower, and as the astral senses come into perfected activity, the corresponding centres of force on the buddhic plane begin to function until the vibratory interplay between the two is consummated, and the force of the Triad can be felt definitely in the Personality via the astral.
1.00 - PREFACE - DESCENSUS AD INFERNOS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
and eternal adversary of the world-creating exploratory hero. Such Rejection and identification is a
consequence of Luciferian pride, which states: all that I know is all that is necessary to know. This pride is
1.012 - Sublimation - A Way to Reshuffle Thought, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We have been discussing a very important principle in the practice of yoga namely, self-restraint. I would like to touch upon another aspect of it which is an essential in the practice. Self-restraint or self-control is not a pressure of will exerted upon oneself, but a spontaneous growth inwardly experienced on account of transcendence and not by way of Rejection. The term 'vairagya' also has some relevance to the meaning of the term 'self-control'. Vairagya is renunciation, self-abandonment, relinquishment, etc. which is mostly interpreted as an abandonment of certain things in the world.
But vairagya is not an abandonment of things in the world. It is an abandonment of false values, the wrong interpretation of things, and a misconstruing of one's relationship with everything around oneself. It is this erroneous notion about things around oneself that is the reason for attachments, aversions, likes, dislikes, and what not. So also is the principle of self-control. A Rejection of an existent value is impossible. This is very important to remember. Anything that is real cannot be rejected. If we think that the world is real, we cannot abandon it - the question of abandoning it does not arise. Anything which has already been declared to be real cannot be abandoned. How can we abandon real things? So, also, if self-control or self-restraint implies a withdrawal of consciousness from those things or values which are real and external to oneself, then it is impossible, because the consciousness or the mind which is expected to withdraw itself from externals will insist that abandonment of real values is impracticable and unadvisable.
Here we have not merely an effort of the will, but an educative process of the understanding. Understanding plays a very serious role in every walk of life. When the understanding is clear, the will can be applied in its implementation. But, the will is not to be applied bereft of understanding. Otherwise, that which the understanding has not accepted as correct will react upon us it will have a deleterious effect upon the entire system. That which the understanding or the reason cannot accept, our whole personality will not accept, and that which we cannot accept cannot become part of our nature; and thus, a new difficulty will be created.
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The culture of yoga does not tell us to reject, abandon, or to cut off anything if it is real, because the whole question is an assessment of values, and reality is, of course, the background of every value. What is achieved in spiritual education is a rise of consciousness from a lower degree of reality to a higher degree of reality, and in no degree is there a Rejection of reality. It is only a growth from a lower level to a higher one. So when we go to the higher degree of reality, we are not rejecting the lower degree of reality, but rather we have overcome it. We have transcended it, just as when a student goes to a higher class in an educational career, that higher class transcends the lower degrees of kindergarten, first standard, second standard and third standard, but it does not reject them. Rejection is not what is implied; rather it is an absorption of values into a higher inclusive condition of understanding, insight and education.
Yoga is a process of education. The principles of dharma, artha and kama are preparatory processes for the readiness of the soul to catch the spirit of salvation. How can we get salvation from bondage if bondage is really there? A real bondage cannot be escaped; if bondage is real, we have to remain in it forever. We already take for granted that bondage is real, which is why we want to run away from it; but running away from real bondage is impossible. There is no escapism in yoga that is impossible. There is always a conditioning of the mind to the states of understanding. Again it must be emphasised that where we have not understood a principle, we will not be able to master it.
1.01 - Two Powers Alone, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:These are the conditions of the Light and Truth, the sole conditions under which the highest Force will descend; and it is only the very highest supramental Force descending from above and opening from below that can victoriously handle the physical Nature and annihilate its difficulties . . . There must be a total and sincere surrender; there must be an exclusive self-opening to the divine Power; there must be a constant and integral choice of the Truth that is descending, a constant and integral Rejection of the falsehood of the mental, vital and physical Powers and Appearances that still rule the earth-Nature.
4:The surrender must be total and seize all the parts of the being. It is not enough that the psychic should respond and the higher mental accept or even the inner vital submit and the inner physical consciousness feel the influence. There must be in no part of the being, even the most external, anything that makes a reserve, anything that hides behind doubts, confusions and subterfuges, anything that revolts or refuses.
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10:Do not imagine that truth and falsehood, light and darkness, surrender and selfishness can be allowed to dwell together in the house consecrated to the Divine. The transformation must be integral, and integral therefore the Rejection of all that withstands it.
11:Reject the false notion that the divine Power will do and is bound to do everything for you at your demand and even though you do not satisfy the conditions laid down by the Supreme. Make your surrender true and complete, then only will all else be done for you.
1.02.1 - The Inhabiting Godhead - Life and Action, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
The renunciation demanded is not a moral constraint of self-denial or a physical Rejection, but an entire liberation of the spirit from any craving after the forms of things.
The terms of this liberation are freedom from egoism and, consequently, freedom from personal desire. Practically, this renunciation implies that one should not regard anything in the universe as a necessary object of possession, nor as possessed by another and not by oneself, nor as an object of greed in the heart or the senses.
1.022 - The Pilgrimage, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
44. And the inhabitants of Median. And Moses was denied. Then I reprieved those who disbelieved, but then I seized them. So how was My Rejection?
45. How many a town have We destroyed while it was doing wrong? They lie in ruins; with stilled wells, and lofty mansions.
1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
playing out conflict, cathartically, offering ritual models for emulation or Rejection. Dramatic personae
embody the behavioral wisdom of history. In an analogous fashion, in a less abstract, less ritualized
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things are more likely to adopt a positive face. Rejection of the unknown, conversely, increases the
likelihood that it will wear a terrifying visage, when it inevitably manifests itself. It seems to me that this is
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The intimate relationship between clinging to the past, Rejection of heroism, and denial of the
unknown is most frequently explicated in narrative form (perhaps because the association is so complex
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in social Rejection (or other interpersonally-mediated punishment). Thus it could be said that the structure
of the internal motivational state reflects the consequences of behavior undertaken in the nature and social
1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
25:For here, there are two movements with a transitional stage between them, two periods of this Yoga, -- one of the process of surrender, the other of its crown and consequence. In the first the individual prepares himself for the reception o? the Divine into his members. For all this first period he has to work by means of the instruments of the lower Nature, but aided more and more from above. But in the later transitional stage of this movement our personal and necessarily ignorant effort more and more dwindles and a higher Nature acts; the eternal shakti descends into this limited form of mortality and progressively possesses and transmutes it. In the second period the greater movement wholly replaces the lesser, formerly indispensable first action; but this can be done only when our self-surrender is complete. The ego person in us cannot transform itself by its own force or will or knowledge or by any virtue of its own into the nature of the Divine; all it can do is to fit itself for the transformation and make more and more its surrender to that which it seeks to become. As long as the ego is at work in us, our personal action is and must always be in its nature a part of the lower grades of existence; it is obscure or half-enlightened, limited in its field, very partially effective in its power. If a spiritual transformation, not a mere illumining modification of our nature, is to be done at all, we must call in the Divine shakti to effect that miraculous work in the individual; for she alone has the needed force, decisive, all-wise and illimitable. But the entire substitution of the divine for the human personal action is not at once entirely possible. All interference from below that would falsify the truth of the superior action must first be inhibited or rendered impotent, and it must be done by our own free choice. A continual and always repeated refusal of the impulsions and falsehoods of the lower nature is asked from us and an insistent support to the Truth as it grows in our parts: for the progressive settling into our nature and final perfection of the incoming informing Light, Purity and Power needs for its development and sustenance our free acceptance of it and our stubborn Rejection of all that is contrary to it, inferior or incompatible.
26:In the first movement of self-preparation, the period of personal effort, the method we have to use is this concentration of the whole being on the Divine that it seeks and, as its corollary, this constant Rejection, throwing out, katharsis, of all that is not the true Truth of the Divine. An entire consecration of all that we are, think, feel and do will be the result of this persistence. This consecration in its turn must culminate in an integral self-giving to the Highest; for its crown and sign of completion is the whole nature's all-comprehending absolute surrender. In the second stage of the Yoga, transitional between the human and the divine working, there will supervene an increasing purified and vigilant passivity, a more and more luminous divine response to the Divine Force, -- but not to any other; and there will be as a result the growing inrush of a great and conscious miraculous working from above. In the last period there is no effort at all, no set method, no fixed sadhana; the place of endeavour and Tapasya will be taken by a natural, simple, powerful and happy disclosing of the flower of the Divine out of the bud of a purified and perfected terrestrial nature. These are the natural successions of the action of the Yoga.
27:These movements are indeed not always or absolutely arranged in a strict succession to each other. The second stage begins in part before the first is completed; the first continues in part until the second is perfected; the last divine working can manifest from time to time as a promise before it is finally settled and normal to the nature. Always too there is something higher and greater than the individual which leads him even in his personal labour and endeavour. Often he may become, and remain for a time, wholly conscious, even in parts of his being permanently conscious, of this greater leading behind the veil, and that may happen long before his whole nature has been purified in all its parts from the lower indirect control. Even, he may be thus conscious from the beginning; his mind and heart, if not his other members, may respond to its seizing and penetrating guidance with a certain initial completeness from the very first steps of the Yoga. But it is the constant and complete and uniform action of the great direct control that more and more distinguishes the transitional stage as it proceeds and draws to its close. This predominance of a greater diviner leading, not personal to ourselves, indicates the nature's increasing ripeness for a total spiritual transformation. It is the unmistakable sign that the self-consecration has not only been accepted in principle but is fulfilled in act and power. The Supreme has laid his luminous hand upon a chosen human vessel of his miraculous Light and Power and Ananda.
1.02 - Shakti and Personal Effort, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:The personal effort required is a triple labour of aspiration, Rejection and surrender, -
3.1: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;
3.2: Rejection of the movements of the lower nature - Rejection of the mind's ideas, opinions, preferences, habits, constructions, so that the true knowledge may find free room in a silent mind, - Rejection of the vital nature's desires, demands, cravings, sensations, passions, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, greed, jealousy, envy, hostility to the Truth, so that the true power and joy may pour from above into a calm, large, strong and consecrated vital being, - Rejection of the physical nature's stupidity, doubt, disbelief, obscurity, obstinacy, pettiness, laziness, unwillingness to change, tamas, so that the true stability of Light, Power, Ananda may establish itself in a body growing always more divine;
3.3:surrender of oneself and all one is and has and every plane of the consciousness and every movement to the Divine and the Shakti.
1.02 - The Refusal of the Call, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
This is a basic principle of the Indian disciplines of yoga. It has been the way, also, of many creative spirits in the West. It can not be described, quite, as an answer to any specific call. Rather, it is a deliberate, terrific refusal to respond to anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the as yet unknown demand of some waiting void within: a kind of total strike, or Rejection of the offered terms of life, as a result of which some power of trans formation carries the problem to a plane of new magnitudes, where it is suddenly and finally resolved.
This is the aspect of the hero-problem illustrated in the won drous Arabian Nights adventure of the Prince Kamar al-Zaman and the Princess Budur. The young and handsome prince, the only son of King Shahriman of Persia, persistently refused the repeated suggestions, requests, demands, and finally injunctions, of his father, that he should do the normal thing and take to himself a wife. The first time the subject was broached to him, the lad responded: "O my father, know that I have no lust to marry nor doth my soul incline to women; for that concerning their craft and perfidy I have read many books and heard much talk, even as saith the poet:
1.035 - Originator, #Quran, #unset, #Zen
26. Then I seized those who disbelieved—so how was My Rejection?
27. Have you not seen that God sends down water from the sky? With it We produce fruits of various colors. And in the mountains are streaks of white and red—varying in their hue—and pitch-black.
10.35 - The Moral and the Spiritual, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The moral impulse is towards a self-exceeding but this self-exceeding, I have said, is to be done in perfect equanimity, in absolute detachment and indifference. To rise in consciousness, from the physical and animal to the divine, means, of course, abandoning the inferior, reaching the higher: but 'inferior' does not mean something low, something to be despised and reviled, but simply something to be passed over, transcended. And the ideal would be not only to surpass but to find out a secret parallelism between the two, discover the seed of the higher embedded even in the lower. The Indian discipline, including the school that advocates total Rejection of the lower and enjoins simple detachment and separation, does not approve of any feeling of contempt or disgust.
The states of being or consciousness from the animal, or down from Matter itself up to the Supremebrahmastambaconstitute what is called a hierarchy. Hierarchy means a structure rising upward tier upon tier, step by step: it is a scale, as it were, of increasing values, only the values are not moral, they indicate only a measure, a neutral measure respecting position or a kind of mass content. As in a building where brick is laid upon brick, or stone upon stone, the one laid above is not superior to the one laid below; the terms inferior and superior indicate only the simple position of the objects. Even the system of the four social orders in ancient" India was originally such a hierarchy. The higher and lower orders did not carry any moral appreciation or depreciation. The four orders placed one above the other schematically denote only the respective social functions classified according to the nature of each, even as the human body represents such a hierarchy, rising from the feet at the bottom towards the head at the top. This is to say all objects and movements in nature are right when they are confined each to its own domain, following its own dharma of that domain. Thus one can be perfectly calm and at ease witnessing the catastrophes and cataclysms in nature, for one knows it is the dharma of material nature. Man terms them disasters for he judges them according to his own convenience. Even so, one should not be perturbed at the wild behaviourman calls it wildof wild animals. Likewise the gods in their sovereign tranquillity smile at the crudeness and stupidities of human beings. One has to lift oneself up, withdraw and stand high above all that one wishes to surpass and look at it, with a benign godly smile.
10.36 - Cling to Truth, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Beware, this is the voice of the adversary trying to tempt you by confusing your mind. The path is straight and narrow, it is not wide and comfortable and strewn with roses. To find the Truth, to live the Truth we must begin by finding it in its purity and living it. As is the start, so is the end. Our steadfastness, our faithfulness must be unalloyed, our sincerity of utmost purity. It is Truth alone that leads to Truth, a compromise or semblance leads only to the untruth. Your diplomacy or duplicity may bring you the coveted result or it may not; but surely it will put a layer of soot upon your soul, push you back one step more into your inconscience. And if you continue you may become the biggest success in the eyes of the world, but your soul will be nowhere, leaving behind perhaps only a hopeless sob in a wilderness. Has not the Mother said, "Even if there is a particle of falsehood in your expression In your word or in your acthow can you hope to express the Supreme Truth?" Remember also the words of Sri Aurobindo: "Do not imagine that truth and falsehood, light and darkness, surrender and selfishness can be allowed to dwell together in a house consecrated to the Divine. The transformation must be integral, and integral therefore the Rejection of all that withstands it."1
You cannot elude falsehood or cajole or conjure it. You must stand face to face, gaze with unwinking eyes, the flame of Truth within you constantly ablaze.
1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
fine: the Rejection of Being, which returns us to dust, or the ac-
ceptance of Being, which leads us, by way of socialization, to faith
1.03 - The Human Disciple, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
hell and Rejection of "blood-stained enjoyments"; practically, the sense that the standards of action have led to a result which destroys the practical aims of action. But the whole upshot is that all-embracing inner bankruptcy which Arjuna expresses when he says that his whole conscious being, not the thought alone but heart and vital desires and all, are utterly bewildered and can find nowhere the dharma, nowhere any valid law of action.
For this alone he takes refuge as a disciple with Krishna; give me, he practically asks, that which I have lost, a true law, a clear rule of action, a path by which I can again confidently walk. He does not ask for the secret of life or of the world, the meaning and purpose of it all, but for a dharma.
1.03 - The Two Negations 2 - The Refusal of the Ascetic, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
15:But this conscious Being which is the truth of the infinite supermind, is more than the universe and lives independently in Its own inexpressible infinity as well as in the cosmic harmonies. World lives by That; That does not live by the world. And as we can enter into the cosmic consciousness and be one with all cosmic existence, so we can enter into the world-transcending consciousness and become superior to all cosmic existence. And then arises the question which first occurred to us, whether this transcendence is necessarily also a Rejection. What relation has this universe to the Beyond?
16:For at the gates of the Transcendent stands that mere and perfect Spirit described in the Upanishads, luminous, pure, sustaining the world but inactive in it, without sinews of energy, without flaw of duality, without scar of division, unique, identical, free from all appearance of relation and of multiplicity, - the pure Self of the Adwaitins,3 the inactive Brahman, the transcendent Silence. And the mind when it passes those gates suddenly, without intermediate transitions, receives a sense of the unreality of the world and the sole reality of the Silence which is one of the most powerful and convincing experiences of which the human mind is capable. Here, in the perception of this pure Self or of the Non-Being behind it, we have the startingpoint for a second negation, - parallel at the other pole to the materialistic, but more complete, more final, more perilous in its effects on the individuals or collectivities that hear its potent call to the wilderness, - the refusal of the ascetic.
1.03 - YIBHOOTI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
omniscience, there will be entire Rejection of enjoyment, of
the temptations from celestial beings. When the Yogi has seen
1.040 - Re-Educating the Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We may not be openly conscious of this activity going on in the mind, but subtly it will be going on. We know very well that the very idea of sitting for meditation implies that we should not think certain things. Otherwise, we can be thinking anything in our minds and call that meditation but it is not so. We have an idea that what we are doing through the mind at present is not meditation. The idea of meditation present in the minds of people is such that it calls for a Rejection of certain thoughts. Otherwise, why should we sit somewhere? We can be anywhere and do anything we like. The idea of Rejection of certain thoughts becomes a difficulty for many people to implement, because the mind feels pain whenever it is asked to give up something with which it has been friendly up to this time, and which it has been regarding as valuable. The mind will say, "Why should I reject these things?" We will have a simple answer, "Because they are unspiritual, unreligious and anti-divine, unsuited to meditation, etc." But these glib answers will not be accepted by the mind easily, because the mind is shrewd and requires a very satisfactory answer.
Most people cannot succeed in meditation because a satisfactory answer cannot be given to this question. Why should we reject something when the mind feels that there is a great point in thinking about it? Unless there is some meaning in it, why should we think of it? It sees something; some meaning, some significance, some purpose, some wish-fulfilment is practicable, and we are doing contrary work by saying, "It should not be thought. It is not good. It is untraditional, unreligious." Merely making a statement of this kind is not going to be acceptable to the mind, because the mind cannot be terrified by orders of this nature. It is a very terrible thing by itself, and so it requires a gradual training from inside, rather than an order issued from outside.
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
These phrases about the unmoving first mover remind one of Aristotle. But between Aristotle and the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy within the great religious traditions there is this vast difference: Aristotle is primarily concerned with cosmology, the Perennial Philosophers are primarily concerned with liberation and enlightenment: Aristotle is content to know about the unmoving mover, from the outside and theoretically; the aim of the Perennial Philosophers is to become directly aware of it, to know it unitively, so that they and others may actually become the unmoving One. This unitive knowledge can be knowledge in the heights, or knowledge in the fulness, or knowledge simultaneously in the heights and the fulness. Spiritual knowledge exclusively in the heights of the soul was rejected by Mahayana Buddhism as inadequate. The similar Rejection of quietism within the Christian tradition will be touched upon in the section, Contemplation and Action. Meanwhile it is interesting to find that the problem which aroused such acrimonious debate throughout seventeenth-century Europe had arisen for the Buddhists at a considerably earlier epoch. But whereas in Catholic Europe the outcome of the battle over Molinos, Mme. Guyon and Fnelon was to all intents and purposes the extinction of mysticism for the best part of two centuries, in Asia the two parties were tolerant enough to agree to differ. Hinayana spirituality continued to explore the heights within, while the Mahayanist masters held up the ideal not of the Arhat, but of the Bodhisattva, and pointed the way to spiritual knowledge in its fulness as well as in its heights. What follows is a poetical account, by a Zen saint of the eighteenth century, of the state of those who have realized the Zen ideal.
Abiding with the non-particular which is in particulars,
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That Nirvana and Samsara are one is a fact about the nature of the universe; but it is a fact which cannot be fully realized or directly experienced, except by souls far advanced in spirituality. For ordinary, nice, unregenerate people to accept this truth by hearsay, and to act upon it in practice, is merely to court disaster. All the dismal story of antinomianism is there to warn us of what happens when men and women make practical applications of a merely intellectual and unrealized theory that all is God and God is all. And hardly less depressing than the spectacle of antinomianism is that of the earnestly respectable well-rounded life of good citizens who do their best to live sacramentally, but dont in fact have any direct acquaintance with that for which the sacramental activity really stands. Dr. Oman, in his The Natural and the Supernatural, writes at length on the theme that reconciliation to the evanescent is revelation of the eternal; and in a recent volume, Science, Religion and the Future, Canon Raven applauds Dr. Oman for having stated the principles of a theology, in which there could be no ultimate antithesis between nature and grace, science and religion, in which, indeed, the worlds of the scientist and the theologian are seen to be one and the same. All this is in full accord with Taoism and Zen Buddhism and with such Christian teachings as St. Augustines Ama et fac quod vis and Father Lallemants advice to theocentric contemplatives to go out and act in the world, since their actions are the only ones capable of doing any real good to the world. But what neither Dr. Oman nor Canon Raven makes sufficiently clear is that nature and grace, Samsara and Nirvana, perpetual perishing and eternity, are really and experientially one only to persons who have fulfilled certain conditions. Fac quod vis in the temporal world but only when you have learnt the infinitely difficult art of loving God with all your mind and heart and your neighbor as yourself. If you havent learnt this lesson, you will either be an antinomian eccentric or criminal or else a respectable well-rounded-lifer, who has left himself no time to understand either nature or grace. The Gospels are perfectly clear about the process by which, and by which alone, a man may gain the right to live in the world as though he were at home in it: he must make a total denial of selfhood, submit to a complete and absolute mortification. At one period of his career, Jesus himself seems to have undertaken austerities, not merely of the mind, but of the body. There is the record of his forty days fast and his statement, evidently drawn from personal experience, that some demons cannot be cast out except by those who have fasted much as well as prayed. (The Cur dArs, whose knowledge of miracles and corporal penance was based on personal experience, insists on the close correlation between severe bodily austerities and the power to get petitionary prayer answered in ways that are sometimes supernormal.) The Pharisees reproached Jesus because he came eating and drinking, and associated with publicans and sinners; they ignored, or were unaware of, the fact that this apparently worldly prophet had at one time rivalled the physical austerities of John the Baptist and was practising the spiritual mortifications which he consistently preached. The pattern of Jesus life is essentially similar to that of the ideal sage, whose career is traced in the Oxherding Pictures, so popular among Zen Buddhists. The wild ox, symbolizing the unregenerate self, is caught, made to change its direction, then tamed and gradually transformed from black to white. Regeneration goes so far that for a time the ox is completely lost, so that nothing remains to be pictured but the full-orbed moon, symbolizing Mind, Suchness, the Ground. But this is not the final stage. In the end, the herdsman comes back to the world of men, riding on the back of his ox. Because he now loves, loves to the extent of being identified with the divine object of his love, he can do what he likes; for what he likes is what the Nature of Things likes. He is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers; he and they are all converted into Buddhas. For him, there is complete reconciliation to the evanescent and, through that reconciliation, revelation of the eternal. But for nice ordinary unregenerate people the only reconciliation to the evanescent is that of indulged passions, of distractions submitted to and enjoyed. To tell such persons that evanescence and eternity are the same, and not immediately to qualify the statement, is positively fatalfor, in practice, they are not the same except to the saint; and there is no record that anybody ever came to sanctity, who did not, at the outset of his or her career, behave as if evanescence and eternity, nature and grace, were profoundly different and in many respects incompatible. As always, the path of spirituality is a knife-edge between abysses. On one side is the danger of mere Rejection and escape, on the other the danger of mere acceptance and the enjoyment of things which should only be used as instruments or symbols. The versified caption which accompanies the last of the Oxherding Pictures runs as follows.
Even beyond the ultimate limits there extends a passageway,
1.04 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
If you have bound yourself by obligations and notice that your souls eye is making no progress, do not get leave to quit. The genuine are genuine everywhere, and the reverse is equally true. In the world slander has caused many separations; but in communities greed produces all the falls and Rejections. If you rule over your mistress (i.e. your stomach), every place of residence will give you dispassion; but if she rules over you, then outside the tomb you will be in danger everywhere.
The Lord who makes wise the blind2 opens the eyes of the obedient to the virtues of their guide, and He blinds them to his defects. But the hater of good does the opposite.
1.04 - Reality Omnipresent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:Man, too, becomes perfect only when he has found within himself that absolute calm and passivity of the Brahman and supports by it with the same divine tolerance and the same divine bliss a free and inexhaustible activity. Those who have thus possessed the Calm within can perceive always welling out from its silence the perennial supply of the energies that work in the universe. It is not, therefore, the truth of the Silence to say that it is in its nature a Rejection of the cosmic activity. The apparent incompatibility of the two states is an error of the limited Mind which, accustomed to trenchant oppositions of affirmation and denial and passing suddenly from one pole to the other, is unable to conceive of a comprehensive consciousness vast and strong enough to include both in a simultaneous embrace. The Silence does not reject the world; it sustains it. Or rather it supports with an equal impartiality the activity and the withdrawal from the activity and approves also the reconciliation by which the soul remains free and still even while it lends itself to all action.
6:But, still, there is the absolute withdrawal, there is the NonBeing. Out of the Non-Being, says the ancient Scripture, Being appeared.2 Then into the Non-Being it must surely sink again. If the infinite indiscriminate Existence permits all possibilities of discrimination and multiple realisation, does not the NonBeing at least, as primal state and sole constant reality, negate and reject all possibility of a real universe? The Nihil of certain Buddhist schools would then be the true ascetic solution; the Self, like the ego, would be only an ideative formation by an illusory phenomenal consciousness.
1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
revolutionary hero therefore faces the anger and Rejection of his peers, as well as the terrors of the
absolutely unknown. He is nonetheless the best friend of the state.
1.04 - The Core of the Teaching, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
"Arise, slay thy enemies, enjoy a prosperous kingdom," has not the ring of an uncompromising altruism or of a white, dispassionate abnegation; it is a state of inner poise and wideness which is the foundation of spiritual freedom. With that poise, in that freedom we have to do the "work that is to be done," a phrase which the Gita uses with the greatest wideness including in it all works, sarvakarman.i, and which far exceeds, though it may include, social duties or ethical obligations. What is the work to be done is not to be determined by the individual choice; nor is the right to the action and the Rejection of claim to the fruit the great word of the Gita, but only a preliminary word governing the first state of the disciple when he begins ascending the hill of Yoga. It is practically superseded at a subsequent stage. For the Gita goes on to affirm emphatically that the man is not the doer of the action; it is Prakriti, it is Nature, it is the great Force with its three modes of action that works through him, and he must learn to see that it is not he who does the work. Therefore the "right to action" is an idea which is only valid so long as we are still under the illusion of being the doer; it must necessarily disappear from the mind like the claim to the fruit, as soon as we cease to be to our own consciousness the doer of our works.
All pragmatic egoism, whether of the claim to fruits or of the right to action, is then at an end.
--
Gita. The equality of the will and the Rejection of fruits are only means for entering with the mind and the heart and the understanding into the divine consciousness and living in it; and the Gita expressly says that they are to be employed as a means as long as the disciple is unable so to live or even to seek by practice the gradual development of this higher state. And
The Core of the Teaching
1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
9 The word Suvrikti corresponds to the Katharsis of the Greek mystics - the clearance, riddance or Rejection of all perilous and impure stuff from the consciousness. It is Agni Pavaka, the purifying Fire who brings to us this riddance or purification, "Suvrikti".
10 Here we have the clue to the symbol of the "clarified butter" in the sacrifice; like the others it is used in its double meaning, "clarified butter" or, as we may say, "the light-offering".
1.05 - Mental Education, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(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.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
Evil is Rejection of and sworn opposition to the process of creative exploration. Evil is proud repudiation
of the unknown, and willful failure to understand, transcend, and transform the social world. Evil is, in
--
The Devil is willful Rejection of the process that makes life bearable, out of spite for the tragic
conditions of existence. This Rejection is intellectually arrogant, because the conditions are interpreted
which is to say: development of self-consciousness tainted everything with death, but self-consciousness is
--
knowledge, which is the cardinal sin of the rational spirit, is therefore prima facie equivalent to Rejection of
the hero to Rejection of Christ, of the Word of God, of the (divine) process that mediates between order
and chaos. The arrogance of the totalitarian stance is ineradicably opposed to the humility of creative
--
established belief, with the process of Rejection of that experience. This lack of discrimination is both
comprehensible, and motivated: comprehensible, because the strange/stranger/strange idea/revolutionary
--
in practice, imagination, and philosophy of the spirit of denial is eternal Rejection of the redeeming
unknown, and the adoption of rigid self-identification. Myths of the hostile brothers like those of the
--
Evil is voluntary Rejection of the process that makes life tolerable, justified by observation of lifes
terrible difficulty. This Rejection is presumptious, premature, because it is based on acceptance of a
provisional judgment, as final: everything is insufficient, and is therefore without worth, and nothing
--
away, however: Rejection of the process that constantly renews the positive aspect of the constituent
elements of experience merely ensures that their negative counterparts gain the upper hand. Such
--
twin, fear of Rejection by the protective social world, which leads to pathological subjugation of unique
individual personality; which leads to Rejection of the totality of personal being (which, when manifested,
has truly redemptive capability). The Great Father hates innovation and will kill to prevent it; the Great
--
of the group requires its pound of flesh. Absolute identification with a group means Rejection of individual
difference: means Rejection of deviation, even weakness, from the group viewpoint; means repression
of individuality, sacrifice of the mythic fool abandonment of the simple and insufficient younger
--
stupidity by means of the lie. The lie is straightforward, voluntary Rejection of what is currently known to
be true. Nobody knows what is finally true, by definition, but honest people make the best possible use of
--
new desire, which cannot find fulfillment within that previous framework. The lie is willful Rejection of
information apprehended as anomalous on terms defined and valued by the individual doing the Rejection.
That is to say: the liar chooses his own game, sets his own rules, and then cheats. This cheating is failure to
grow, to mature; is Rejection of the process of consciousness itself.
The lie is therefore not so much a sin of commission, in most cases, as a sin of omission (although it
--
will remain unmanifest at least temporarily. This Rejection of the process of creative exploration means
lack of effortful update of procedural and declarative memory; means adaptation to the present, as if it still
--
that makes cosmos out of chaos. Rejection of the process whereby the endlessly negative and terrifying is
transformed into the acceptable and beneficial means, by definition, the end of all hope:
--
possibility of participation in the process of creation and renewal. Rejection of insufficiency produces, by
contrast, identification with the adversary, whose eternal dwelling place is hell. This hell is something
--
Denial of the heroic promotes decadence, equally absolute Rejection of the order of tradition; absolute
Rejection of order itself. This pattern of apprehension and behavior seems far removed from that of the
--
The habitual act of avoidance of Rejection weakens the personality, in a direct causal manner. The
strength of a personality might be defined, in part, as its breadth of explored territory, its capacity to act
--
manner as in the camp situation: through absolute identification with the system, and consequent Rejection
of the self; through acceptance of ideological promise, offer of material security and guarantee of
--
or avoidance of (heretical) imagination and thought is Rejection of possibility for transformation, which
provides the precondition for successful adaptation to the tragic conditions of human existence. Rejection
of behavioral possibility, unique imagination and thought is denial of the heroic, the better part of the self,
--
meaning of the anomaly by which meaning itself, truth itself is rejected. This Rejection means,
necessarily, life rendered unbearable, hellish:
--
existence in the hellish abyss. Rejection of fact means alienation from God, from meaning, from truth and
life without meaning is suffering without recourse, worthy of nothing but destruction, in accordance with
--
fundamentally to its Rejection.
Jung essentially discovered, in the course of his analysis of alchemy, the nature of the general human
--
brings terror and possibility, revolution and transformation. Rejection of unbearable fact stifles adaptation,
and strangles life. We choose one path or another at every decision point in our lives, and emerge as the
--
knowledge, meant Rejection or denial of anomalous sensory/emotional experience, and therefore of the
value contained in those experiences. Alchemical preoccupation with matter arose as a consequence of this
--
necessary when the land is no longer fruitful. Such a sacrifice which was once a ritual means Rejection
of reliance on a particular pattern of behavioral adaptation and representational presumption; means
--
and his redemption. The essential message of alchemy is that individual Rejection of tyranny, voluntary
pursuit of the unknown and terrifying predicated upon faith in the ideal may engender a individual
--
This is one of the most potent attractions of such Rejection, and constitutes primary motivation for the lie.
The lie, above all else, threatens the individual and the interpersonal. The lie is predicated upon the
1.05 - War And Politics, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Similarly, when France, after the fall of Dunkirk, rejected Churchill's proposal of a common citizenship for Britain and France so that they might carry on the fight as one country, the Mother seems to have considered it a Rejection of the Divine Grace itself that had come to the help of France at the most opportune moment. The entire speech of Churchill was dictated in the occult way by the Mother, we were told.
To resume our talk:
--
Along with the European war, India's political problem naturally played a prominent part in our discussion, Mahatma Gandhi's attitude, the Congress policy, the Hindu-Muslim problem, Jinnah's intransigence and the Viceroy's role as the peace-maker, all this complicated politics and our Himalayan blunders leading to the Rejection of the famous Cripps' Proposals, were within our constant purview.... The upshot of the whole discussion till the arrival of the Cripps' Mission can be put in a few words; the Congress made a big mistake by resigning from the Ministry. The Government was ready to offer us Dominion Status which we should have accepted, for it was virtually a step towards independence. We should have joined the war-effort. That would have created an opportunity to enter into all military departments and operations in air, on sea and land; hold positions, become efficient and thus enforce our natural right for freedom.
When Gandhi complained that the Viceroy did not say anything in reply to all his questions, Sri Aurobindo said to us in one of our talks on October 7th, 1940: "What will he say?It is very plain why he did not. First of all, the Government doesn't want to concede the demand for independence. What it is willing to give is Dominion Status after the War, expecting that India will settle down into a common relationship with the Empire. But just now a national government will virtually mean Dominion Status with the Viceroy only as a constitutional head. Nobody knows what the Congress will do after it gets power. It may be occupied only with India's defence and give such help as it can spare to England. And if things go wrong with the British, it may even make a separate peace leaving them in the lurch. There are Left Wingers, Socialists, Communists whom the Congress won't be able to bring to its side, neither will it dare to offend them and if their influence is sufficiently strong, the Congress may stand against the British. Thus it is quite natural for them not to part with power just now as it is also natural for us to make our claims. But since we haven't got enough strength to back us, we have to see if we have any common meeting ground with the Government. If there is, a compromise is the only practical step. There was such an opportunity, but the Congress spoiled it. Now you have to accept what you get or I don't know what is going to happen. Of course, if we had the strength and power to make a revolution and get what we want, it would be a different matter. Amery and others did offer Dominion Status at one time. Now they have changed their position because they have come to know the spirit of our people. Our politicians have some fixed ideas and they always go by them. Politicians and statesmen have to take account of situations and act as demanded by them. They must have insight."
--
We may remind ourselves of Talthybius's mission to Troy in Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Ilion: Achilles made an offer by which Troy would be saved and the honour of the Greeks would be preserved, a harmonising offer, but it was rejected. Similarly, Duraiswamy went with India's soul in his "frail" hands and brought it back, downhearted, rewarded with ungracious remarks for the gratuitous advice. Sri Aurobindo even sent a telegram to Rajagopalachari and Dr. Munje urging them to accept the Proposals. Dr. Indra Sen writes, "We met the members individually and the sense of the reactions were more or less to this effect: Sri Aurobindo has created difficulties for us by his message to Cripps. He doesn't know the actual situation, we are in it, we know' better... and so on." Cripps flew back a disappointed man but with the consolation and gratified recognition that at least one great man had welcomed the idea. When the Rejection was announced, Sri Aurobindo said in a quiet tone, "I knew it would fail." We at once pounced on it and asked him, "Why did you then send Duraiswamy at all?" "For a bit of niskama karma,"[3]was his calm reply, without any bitterness or resentment. The full spirit of the kind of "disinterested work" he meant comes out in an early letter of his (December 1933), which refers to his spiritual work: "I am sure of the results of my work. But even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing (which is impossible), I would go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do, and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe."
After the War, the Labour Government of U.K. sent a Cabinet Mission to India in 1946 for fresh talks. Asked to give his views on the mission by Amrita Bazar Patrika, a leading daily in the country, Sri Aurobindo said:
--
We know the aftermath of the Rejection of the Cripps' Proposals as well as the failure of the Cabinet Mission: confusion, calamity, partition, blood-bath, etc., and the belated recognition of the colossal blunder. Then when the partition had been accepted as a settled fact, Sri Aurobindo's "bardic" voice was heard once again, "But by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved, for it is necessary for the greatness of India's future." Past events have justified Sri Aurobindo's solemn warning and recent events point to the way to liquidation of that division.[4]
Let me again draw upon the fellow-sadhak from whom I have already quoted. He brings out the Mother's stand on the Cripps-question:
1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is not and cannot be here any ascetic or contemplative or mystic abandonment of works and life altogether, any gospel of an absorbed meditation and inactivity, any cutting away or condemnation of the Life-Force and its activities, any Rejection of the manifestation in the earth-nature. It may be necessary for the seeker at any period to withdraw into himself, to remain plunged in his inner being, to shut out from him the noise and turmoil of the life of the Ignorance until a certain inner change has been accomplished or something achieved without which a further effective action on life has become difficult or impossible.
But this can only be a period or an episode, a temporary necessity or a preparatory spiritual manoeuvre; it cannot be the rule of his Yoga or its principle.
1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:Imperial MAHESHWARI is seated in the wideness above the thinking mind and will and sublimates and greatens them into wisdom and largeness or floods with a splendour beyond them. For she is the mighty and wise One who opens us to the supramental infinities and the cosmic vastness, to the grandeur of the supreme Light, to a treasure-house of miraculous knowledge, to the measureless movement of the Mother s eternal forces. Tranquil is she and wonderful, great and calm for ever. Nothing can move her because all wisdom is in her; nothing is hidden from her that she chooses to know; she comprehends all things and all beings and their nature and what moves them and the law of the world and its times and how all was and is and must be. A strength is in her that meets everything and masters and none can prevail in the end against her vast intangible wisdom and high tranquil power. Equal, patient and unalterable in her will she deals with men according to their nature and with things and happenings according to their force and the truth that is in them. Partiality she has none, but she follows the decrees of the Supreme and some she raises up and some she casts down or puts away from her into the darkness. To the wise she gives a greater and more luminous wisdom; those that have vision she admits to her counsels; on the hostile she imposes the consequence of their hostility; the ignorant and foolish she leads according to their blindness. In each man she answers and handles the different elements of his nature according to their need and their urge and the return they call for, puts on them the required pressure or leaves them to their cherished liberty to prosper in the ways of the Ignorance or to perish. For she is above all, bound by nothing, attached to nothing in the universe. Yet has she more than any other the heart of the universal Mother For her compassion is endless and inexhaustible; all are to her eyes her children and portions of the One, even the Asura and Rakshasa and Pisacha and those that are revolted and hostile. Even her Rejections are only a postponement, even her punishments are a grace. But her compassion does not blind her wisdom or turn her action from the course decreed; for the Truth of things is her one concern, knowledge her centre of power and to build our soul and our nature into the divine Truth her mission and her labour.
9:MAHAKALI is of another nature. Not wideness but height, not wisdom but force and strength are her peculiar power. There is in her an overwhelming intensity, a mighty passion of force to achieve, a divine violence rushing to shatter every limit and obstacle. All her divinity leaps out in a splendour of tempestuous action; she is there for swiftness, for the immediately effective process, the rapid and direct stroke, the frontal assault that carries everything before it. Terrible is her face to the Asura, dangerous and ruthless her mood against the haters of the Divine; for she is the Warrior of the Worlds who never shrinks from the battle. Intolerant of imperfection, she deals roughly with all in man that is unwilling and she is severe to all that is obstinately ignorant and obscure; her wrath is immediate and dire against treachery and falsehood and malignity, ill-will is smitten at once by her scourge. Indifference, negligence and sloth in the divine work she cannot bear and she smites awake at once with sharp pain, if need be, the untimely slumberer and the loiterer. The impulses that are swift and straight and frank, the movements that are unreserved and absolute, the aspiration that mounts in flame are the motion of Mahakali. Her spirit is tameless, her vision and will are high and far-reaching like the flight of an eagle, her feet are rapid on the upward way and her hands are outstretched to strike and to succour. For she too is the Mother and her love is as intense as her wrath and she has a deep and passionate kindness. When she is allowed to intervene in her strength, then in one moment are broken like things without consistence the obstacles that immobilise or the enemies that assail the seeker. If her anger is dreadful to the hostile and the vehemence of her pressure painful to the weak and timid, she is loved and worshipped by the great, the strong and the noble; for they feel that her blows beat what is rebellious in their material into strength and perfect truth, hammer straight what is wry and perverse and expel what is impure or defective. But for her what is done in a day might have taken centuries; without her Ananda might be wide and grave or soft and sweet and beautiful but would lose the flaming joy of its most absolute intensities. To knowledge she gives a conquering might, brings to beauty and harmony a high and mounting movement and imparts to the slow and difficult labour after perfection an impetus that multiplies the power and shortens the long way. Nothing can satisfy her that falls short of the supreme ecstasies, the highest heights, the noblest aims, the largest vistas. Therefore with her is the victorious force of the Divine and it is by grace of her fire and passion and speed if the great achievement can be done now rather than hereafter.
1.07 - The Ego and the Dualities, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
9:Yet in the principle of reason itself there is the assertion of a Transcendence. For reason is in its whole aim and essence the pursuit of Knowledge, the pursuit, that is to say, of Truth by the elimination of error. Its view, its aim is not that of a passage from a greater to a lesser error, but it supposes a positive, pre-existent Truth towards which through the dualities of right knowledge and wrong knowledge we can progressively move. If our reason has not the same instinctive certitude with regard to the other aspirations of humanity, it is because it lacks the same essential illumination inherent in its own positive activity. We can just conceive of a positive or absolute realisation of happiness, because the heart to which that instinct for happiness belongs has its own form of certitude, is capable of faith, and because our minds can envisage the elimination of unsatisfied want which is the apparent cause of suffering. But how shall we conceive of the elimination of pain from nervous sensation or of death from the life of the body? Yet the Rejection of pain is a sovereign instinct of the sensations, the Rejection of death a dominant claim inherent in the essence of our vitality. But these things present themselves to our reason as instinctive aspirations, not as realisable potentialities.
10:Yet the same law should hold throughout. The error of the practical reason is an excessive subjection to the apparent fact which it can immediately feel as real and an insufficient courage in carrying profounder facts of potentiality to their logical conclusion. What is, is the realisation of an anterior potentiality; present potentiality is a clue to future realisation. And here potentiality exists; for the mastery of phenomena depends upon a knowledge of their causes and processes and if we know the causes of error, sorrow, pain, death, we may labour with some hope towards their elimination. For knowledge is power and mastery.
1.07 - The Process of Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The end of a stage of evolution is usually marked by a powerful recrudescence of all that has to go out of the evolution. It is a principle of Nature that in order to get rid of any powerful tendency or deep-seated association in humanity, whether in the mass or in the individual, it has first to be exhausted by bhoga or enjoyment, afterwards to be dominated and weakened by nigraha or control and, finally, when it is weak, to be got rid of by sayama, Rejection or self dissociation. The difference between nigraha and sayama is that in the first process there is a violent struggle to put down, coerce and, if possible, crush the tendency, the reality of which is not questioned, but in the second process it is envisaged as a dead or dying force, its occasional return marked with disgust, then with impatience, finally with indifference as a mere ghost, vestige or faint echo of that which was once real but is now void of significance. Such a return is part of the process of Nature for getting rid of this undesirable and disappearing quantity.
Sayama is unseasonable and would be fruitless when a force, quality or tendency is in its infancy or vigour, before it has had the enjoyment and full activity which is its due. When once a thing is born it must have its youth, growth, enjoyment, life and final decay and death; when once an impetus has been given by Prakriti to her creation, she insists that the velocity shall spend itself by natural exhaustion before it shall cease. To arrest the growth or speed unseasonably by force is nigraha, which can be effective for a time but not in perpetuity. It is said in the Gita that all things are ruled by their nature, to their nature they return and nigraha or repression is fruitless. What happens then is that the thing untimely slain by violence is not really dead, but withdraws for a time into the Prakriti which sent it forth, gathers an immense force and returns with extraordinary violence ravening for the rightful enjoyment which it was denied. We see this in the attempts we make to get rid of our evil saskras or associations when we first tread the path of Yoga. If anger is a powerful element in our nature, we may put it down for a time by sheer force and call it self-control, but eventually unsatisfied Nature will get the better of us and the passion return upon us with astonishing force at an unexpected moment. There are only two ways by which we can effectively get the better of the passion which seeks to enslave us. One is by substitution, replacing it whenever it rises by the opposite quality, anger by thoughts of forgiveness, love or forbearance, lust by meditation on purity, pride by thoughts of humility and our own defects or nothingness; this is the method of Rajayoga, but it is a difficult, slow and uncertain method; for both the ancient traditions and the modern experience of Yoga show that men who had attained for long years the highest self-mastery have been suddenly surprised by a violent return of the thing they thought dead or for ever subject. Still this substitution, slow though it be, is one of the commonest methods of Nature and it is largely by this means, often unconsciously or half-consciously used, that the character of a man changes and develops from life to life or even in the bounds of a single lifetime. It does not destroy things in their seed and the seed which is not reduced to ashes by Yoga is always capable of sprouting again and growing into the complete and mighty tree. The second method is to give bhoga or enjoyment to the passion so as to get rid of it quickly. When it is satiated and surfeited by excessive enjoyment, it becomes weak and spent and a reaction ensues which establishes for a time the opposite force, tendency or quality. If that moment is seized by the Yogin for nigraha, the nigraha so repeated at every suitable opportunity becomes so far effective as to reduce the strength and vitality of the vtti sufficiently for the application of the final sayama. This method of enjoyment and reaction is also a favourite and universal method of Nature, but it is never complete in itself and, if applied to permanent forces or qualities, tends to establish a see-saw of opposite tendencies, extremely useful to the operations of Prakriti but from the point of view of self-mastery useless and inconclusive. It is only when this method is followed up by the use of sayama that it becomes effective. The Yogin regards the vtti merely as a play of Nature with which he is not concerned and of which he is merely the spectator; the anger, lust or pride is not his, it is the universal Mothers and she works it and stills it for her own purposes. When, however, the vtti is strong, mastering and unspent, this attitude cannot be maintained in sincerity and to try to hold it intellectually without sincerely feeling it is mithycra, false discipline or hypocrisy. It is only when it is somewhat exhausted by repeated enjoyment and coercion that Prakriti or Nature at the comm and of the soul or Purusha can really deal with her own creation. She deals with it first by vairgya in its crudest form of disgust, but this is too violent a feeling to be permanent; yet it leaves its mark behind in a deep-seated wish to be rid of its cause, which survives the return and temporary reign of the passion. Afterwards its return is viewed with impatience but without any acute feeling of intolerance. Finally supreme indifference or udsnat is gained and the final going out of the tendency by the ordinary process of Nature is watched in the true spirit of the sayam who has the knowledge that he is the witnessing soul and has only to dissociate himself from a phenomenon for it to cease. The highest stage leads either to mukti in the form of laya or disappearance, the vtti vanishing altogether and for good, or else to another kind of freedom when the soul knows that it is Gods ll and leaves it to Him whether He shall throw out the tendency or use it for His own purposes. This is the attitude of the Karmayogin who puts himself in Gods hands and does work for His sake only, knowing that it is Gods force that works in him. The result of that attitude of self-surrender is that the Lord of all takes charge and according to the promise of the Gita delivers His servant and lover from all sin and evil, the vttis working in the bodily machine without affecting the soul and working only when He raises them up for His purposes. This is nirliptat, the state of absolute freedom within the ll.
1.08 - The Change of Vision, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
From then on, each thing is, simply and absolutely. We are at that meeting point of being, and we look at the great world, brand new. There is no hope for anything else, no expectation, no regret or desire if it is not there at that moment, it will never be there! Everything is there, the total totality of all possible futures. Water may flow, and the faces and thunder of the world, the costume of the moment, the cry of the passerby, the flying seed. The great kaleidoscope turns and strews beings, events, countries and their kings, and this fleeting second, colors them blue, red or gold, but there is still the same look at the meeting point, the same second and the same thing in different colors, the same beings with their sorrows, with white skin or dark, in this century or another. There is nothing new under the sun, nothing to expect! There is that one little second to delve into, delve into and deepen, to live totally, as if forever and ever; there is that unique thing that passes, that unique being, that speck of pollen or dust, that unique happening in the world. Then everything begins to be filled with such total meaning, to extend and branch out to the four corners of the world, to vibrate with total significance, as if this face, that chance encounter, that passing blue or black hue, this unexpected stumbling or bird feather floating in the wind brought us a message each thing is a message, a sign of our position and the position of the whole. Nothing exists in relation to this little shadow anymore, to its needs, its desires, its expectation of things or people everything is without plus or minus, good or evil, Rejection or choice or preference or will of any kind. What could we possibly want? We already have everything, forever. What else is there! Each passing circumstance divulges its keynote, its pure music, its innermost meaning, without addition or subtraction, without false visual color through things and beings we watch one and the same tranquil eternity unfolding. We are in our point of eternity, in a look of truth. We are at that crossroads of being, which, for a moment, seems to open innumerably upon everything. One full little second. Where is the lack, the vain, the missing? Where is the big, the infinite, the useful or useless? We have arrived; we are right in the Thing. There is no more quest for rosewood in the forest of the great world; everything is rosewood and each thing is the one essence. A kind of warm gold begins to glow everywhere.
And the seeker has put his finger on the fourth golden rule of the passage: Each second totally and clearly.
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
On the strength of Sayanas commentary these lines would have to bear in English the following astounding significance. Let the purifying goddess of Speech, equipped by means of food offerings with a ritual full of food, desire (that is to say, up-bear) the sacrifice, she who is the cause of wealth as a result of the ritual. Sender of pleasant & true sayings and explainer (of this sacrifice) to the performers of the ritual who have a good intelligence, the goddess of Speech upholds the sacrifice. The river Saraswati makes known by her action (that is, her stream) much water, she (the Muse) illumines all the ideas of the sacrificer. Truly, whatever Saraswati may do for the sacrificer,who does not appear at all in the lines except to the second sight of Sayana,the great scholar does not succeed in illumining our ideas about the sense of the Sukta. The astonishing transition from the Muse to the river & the river to the Muse in a single rik is flagrantly impossible. How does Saraswatis thoughtful provision of much water lead to her illumination of the sacrificers evidently confused intellect?Why should dhiy in dhiyvasu mean ritual act, and dhiyo in dhiyo vsv ideas? How can desire mean upbear, ritual act mean wealth or action mean a stream of water? What sense can we extract from arnah prachetayati in Sayanas extraordinary combination? If s nritnm expresses speech or thought, why should the parallel expression sumatnm in defiance of rhythm of sound & rhythm of sense, refer to the sacrificers? I have offered these criticisms not for any pleasure in carping at the great Southern scholar, but to establish by a clear, decisive & typical instance the defects which justify my total Rejection of his once supreme authority in Vedic scholarship. Sayana is learned in ritualism, loaded with grammatical lore, a scholar of vast diligence and enormous erudition, but in his mentality literary perception & taste seem either to have been non-existent or else oppressed under the heavy weight of his learning. This and other defects common enough in men of vast learning whose very curiosity of erudition only lead them to prefer a strained to a simple explanation, the isolated suggestions of single words to a regard for the total form & coherence, & recondite, antiquarian or ceremonial allusions to a plain meaning, render his guidance less than useful in the higher matters of interpretation and far from safe in questions of verbal rendering.
The effectual motive for Sayanas admission of Saraswatis double rle in this Sukta is the expression maho arnas, the great water, of the third rik. Only in her capacity as a river-goddess has Saraswati anything to do with material water; an abundance of liquid matter is entirely irrelevant to her intellectual functions. If therefore we accept arnah in a material sense, the entrance of the river into the total physiognomy of Saraswati is imposed upon us by hard necessity in spite of the resultant incoherence. But if on the other hand, arnah can be shown to bear other than a material significance or intention, then no other necessity exists for the introduction of a deified Aryan river. On the contrary, there is an extraordinary accumulation of expressions clearly intellectual in sense. Pvak, dhiyvasuh, chodayitr snritnm, chetant sumatnm, prachetayati ketun, dhiyo vsv vi rjati are all expressions of this stamp; for they mean respectively purifying, rich in understanding, impeller of truths, awakening to good thoughts, perceives or makes conscious by perception, governs variously all the ideas or mental activities. Even yajnam vashtu and yajnam dadhe refer, plainly, to a figurative moral upholding,if, indeed, upholding be at all the Rishis intention in vashtu. What is left? Only the name Saraswati thrice repeated, the pronoun nah, and the two expressions vjebhir vjinvat and maho arnah. The rest is clearly the substance of a passage full of strong intellectual and moral conceptions. I shall suggest that these two expressions vjebhir vjin vat and maho arnah are no exception to the intellectuality of the rest of the passage. They, too, are words expressing moral or intellectual qualities or entities.
1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3:Whoever sincerely enters the path of works, must leave behind him the stage in which need and desire are the first law of our acts. For whatever desires still trouble his being, he must, if he accepts the high aim of Yoga, put them away from him into the hands of the Lord within us. The supreme Power will deal with them for the good of the sadhaka and for the good of all. In effect, we find that once this surrender is done, - always provided the Rejection is sincere, - egoistic indulgence of desire may for some time recur under the continued impulse of past nature but only in order to exhaust its acquired momentum and to teach the embodied being in his most unteachable part, his nervous, vital, emotional nature, by the reactions of desire, by its grief and unrest bitterly contrasted with calm periods of the higher peace or marvellous movements of divine Ananda, that egoistic desire is not a law for the soul that seeks liberation or aspires to its own original god-nature. Afterwards the element of desire in those impulsions will be thrown away or persistently eliminated by a constant denying and transforming pressure. Only the pure force of action in them (pravr.tti) justified by an equal delight in all work and result that is inspired or imposed from above will be preserved in the happy harmony of a final perfection. To act, to enjoy is the normal law and right of the nervous being; but to choose by personal desire its action and enjoyment is only its ignorant will, not its right. Alone the supreme and universal Will must choose; action must change into a dynamic movement of that Will; enjoyment must be replaced by the play of a pure spiritual Ananda. All personal will is either a temporary delegation from on high or a usurpation by the ignorant Asura.
4:The social law, that second term of our progress, is a means to which the ego is subjected in order that it may learn discipline by subordination to a wider collective ego. This law may be quite empty of any moral content and may express only the needs or the practical good of the society as each society conceives it. Or it may express those needs and that good, but modified and coloured and supplemented by a higher moral or ideal law. It is binding on the developing but not yet perfectly developed individual in the shape of social duty, family obligation, communal or national demand, so long as it is not in conflict with his growing sense of the higher Right. But the sadhaka of the Karmayoga will abandon this also to the Lord of works. After he has made this surrender, his social impulses and judgments will, like his desires, only be used for their exhaustion or, it may be, so far as they are still necessary for a time to enable him to identify his lower mental nature with mankind in general or with any grouping of mankind in its works and hopes and aspirations. But after that brief time is over, they will be withdrawn and a divine government will alone abide. He will be identified with the Divine and with others only through the divine consciousness and not through the mental nature.
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14:If this is the truth of works, the first thing the sadhaka has to do is to recoil from the egoistic forms of activity and get rid of the sense of an "I" that acts. He has to see and feel that everything happens in him by the plastic conscious or subcon- scious or sometimes superconscious automatism of his mental and bodily instruments moved by the forces of spiritual, mental, vital and physical Nature. There is a personality on his surface that chooses and wills, submits and struggles, tries to make good in Nature or prevail over Nature, but this personality is itself a construction of Nature and so dominated, driven, determined by her that it cannot be free. It is a formation or expression of the Self in her, - it is a self of Nature rather than a self of Self, his natural and processive, not his spiritual and permanent being, a temporary constructed personality, not the true immortal Person. It is that Person that he must become. He must succeed in being inwardly quiescent, detach himself as the observer from the outer active personality and learn the play of the cosmic forces in him by standing back from all blinding absorption in its turns and movements. Thus calm, detached, a student of himself and a witness of his nature, he realises that he is the individual soul who observes the works of Nature, accepts tranquilly her results and sanctions or withholds his sanction from the impulse to her acts. At present this soul or Purusha is little more than an acquiescent spectator, influencing perhaps the action and development of the being by the pressure of its veiled consciousness, but for the most part delegating its powers or a fragment of them to the outer personality, - in fact to Nature, for this outer self is not lord but subject to her, ansa; but, once unveiled, it can make its sanction or refusal effective, become the master of the action, dictate sovereignly a change of Nature. Even if for a long time, as the result of fixed association and past storage of energy, the habitual movement takes place independent of the Purusha's assent and even if the sanctioned movement is persistently refused by Nature for want of past habit, still he will discover that in the end his assent or refusal prevails, - slowly with much resistance or quickly with a rapid accommodation of her means and tendencies she modifies herself and her workings in the direction indicated by his inner sight or volition. Thus he learns in place of mental control or egoistic will an inner spiritual control which makes him master of the Nature-forces that work in him and not their unconscious instrument or mechanic slave. Above and around him is the Shakti, the universal Mother and from her he can get all his inmost soul needs and wills if only he has a true knowledge of her ways and a true surrender to the divine Will in her. Finally, he becomes aware of that highest dynamic Self within him and within Nature which is the source of all his seeing and knowing, the source of the sanction, the source of the acceptance, the source of the Rejection. This is the Lord, the Supreme, the One-in-all, Ishwara-Shakti, of whom his soul is a portion, a being of that Being and a power of that Power. The rest of our progress depends on our knowledge of the ways in which the Lord of works manifests his Will in the world and in us and executes them through the transcendent and universal Shakti.
15:The Lord sees in his omniscience the thing that has to be done. This seeing is his Will, it is a form of creative Power, and that which he sees the all-conscious Mother one with him, takes into her dynamic self and embodies, and executive Nature-Force carries it out as the mechanism of their omnipotent omniscience. But this vision of what is to be and therefore of what is to be done arises out of the very being, pours directly out of the consciousness and delight of existence of the Lord, spontaneously, like light from the Sun. It is not our mortal attempt to see, our difficult arrival at truth of action and motive or just demand of Nature. When the individual soul is entirely at one in its being and knowledge with the Lord and directly in touch with the original Shakti, the transcendent Mother the supreme Will can then arise in us too in the high divine manner as a thing that must be and is achieved by the spontaneous action of Nature. There is then no desire, no responsibility, no reaction; all takes place in the peace, calm, light, power of the supporting and enveloping and inhabiting Divine.
1.09 - Equality and the Annihilation of Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4:The renunciation of attachment to the work and its fruit is the beginning of a wide movement towards an absolute equality in the mind and soul which must become all-enveloping if we are to be perfect in the spirit. For the worship of the Master of works demands a clear recognition and glad acknowledgment of him in ourselves, in all things and in all happenings. Equality is the sign of this adoration; it is the soul's ground on which true sacrifice and worship can be done. The Lord is there equally in all beings, we have to make no essential distinctions between ourselves and others, the wise and the ignorant, friend and enemy, man and animal, the saint and the sinner. We must hate none, despise none, be repelled by none; for in all we have to see the One disguised or manifested at his pleasure. He is a little revealed in one or more revealed in another or concealed and wholly distorted in others according to his will and his knowledge of what is best for that which he intends to become in form in them and to do in works in their nature. All is ourself, one self that has taken many shapes. Hatred and disliking and scorn and repulsion, clinging and attachment and preference are natural, necessary, inevitable at a certain stage: they attend upon or they help to make and maintain Nature's choice in us. But to the Karmayogin they are a survival, a stumbling-block, a process of the Ignorance and, as he progresses, they fall away from his nature. The child-soul needs them for its growth; but they drop from an adult in the divine culture. In the God-nature to which we have to rise there can be an adamantine, even a destructive severity but not hatred, a divine irony but not scorn, a calm, clear-seeing and forceful Rejection but not repulsion and dislike. Even what we have to destroy, we must not abhor or fail to recognise as a disguised and temporary movement of the Eternal.
5:And since all things are the one Self in its manifestation, we shall have equality of soul towards the ugly and the beautiful, the maimed and the perfect, the noble and the vulgar, the pleasant and the unpleasant, the good and the evil. Here also there will be no hatred, scorn and repulsion, but instead the equal eye that sees all things in their real character and their appointed place. For we shall know that all things express or disguise, develop or distort, as best they can or with whatever defect they must, under the circumstances intended for them, in the way possible to the immediate status or function or evolution of their nature, some truth or fact, some energy or potential of the Divine necessary by its presence in the progressive manifestation both to the whole of the present sum of things and for the perfection of the ultimate result. That truth is what we must seek and discover behind the transitory expression; undeterred by appearances, by the deficiencies or the disfigurements of the expression, we can then worship the Divine for ever unsullied, pure, beautiful and perfect behind his masks. All indeed has to be changed, not ugliness accepted but divine beauty, not imperfection taken as our resting-place but perfection striven after, the supreme good made the universal aim and not evil. But what we do has to be done with a spiritual understanding and knowledge, and it is a divine good, beauty, perfection, pleasure that has to be followed after, not the human standards of these things. If we have not equality, it is a sign that we are still pursued by the Ignorance, we shall truly understand nothing and it is more than likely that we shall destroy the old imperfection only to create another: for we are substituting the appreciations of our human mind and desire-soul for the divine values.
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9:There is next a period of high-seated impartiality and indifference in which the soul becomes free from exultation and depression and escapes from the snare of the eagerness of joy as from the dark net of the pangs of grief and suffering. All things and persons and forces, all thoughts and feelings and sensations and actions, one's own no less than those of others, are regarded from above by a spirit that remains intact and immutable and is not disturbed by these things. This is the philosophic period of the preparation of equality, a wide and august movement. But indifference must not settle into an inert turning away from action and experience; it must not be an aversion born of weariness, disgust and distaste, a recoil of disappointed or satiated desire, the sullenness of a baffled and dissatisfied egoism forced back from its passionate aims. These recoils come inevitably in the unripe soul and may in some way help the progress by a discouragement of the eager desire-driven vital nature, but they are not the perfection towards which we labour. The indifference or the impartiality that we must seek after is a calm superiority of the high-seated soul above the contacts of things;1 it regards and accepts or rejects them but is not moved in the Rejection and is not subjected by the acceptance. It begins to feel itself near, kin to, one with a silent Self and Spirit self-existent and separate from the workings of Nature which it supports and makes possible, part of or merged in the motionless calm Reality that transcends the motion and action of the universe. The gain of this period of high transcendence is the soul's peace unrocked and unshaken by the pleasant ripplings or by the tempestuous waves and billows of the world's movement.
10:If we can pass through these two stages of the inner change without being arrested or fixed in either, we are admitted to a greater divine equality which is capable of a spiritual ardour and tranquil passion of delight, a rapturous, all-understanding and all-possessing equality of the perfected soul, an intense and even wideness and fullness of its being embracing all things. This is the supreme period and the passage to it is through the joy of a total self-giving to the Divine and to the universal Mother For strength is then crowned by a happy mastery, peace deepens into bliss, the possession of the divine calm is uplifted and made the ground for the possession of the divine movement. But if this greater perfection is to arrive, the soul's impartial high-seatedness looking down from above on the flux of forms and personalities and movements and forces must be modified and change into a new sense of strong and calm submission and a powerful and intense surrender. This submission will be no longer a resigned acquiescence but a glad acceptance: for there will be no sense of suffering or of the bearing of a burden or cross; love and delight and the joy of self-giving will be its brilliant texture. And this surrender will be not only to a divine Will which we perceive and accept and obey, but to a divine Wisdom in the Will which we recognise and a divine Love in it which we feel and rapturously suffer, the wisdom and love of a supreme Spirit and Self of ourselves and all with which we can achieve a happy and perfect unity. A lonely power, peace and stillness is the last word of the philosophic equality of the sage; but the soul in its integral experience liberates itself from this self-created status and enters into the sea of a supreme and allembracing ecstasy of the beginningless and endless beatitude of the Eternal. Then we are at last capable of receiving all contacts with a blissful equality, because we feel in them the touch of the imperishable Love and Delight, the happiness absolute that hides ever in the heart of things. The gain of this culmination in a universal and equal rapture is the soul's delight and the opening gates of the Bliss that is infinite, the Joy that surpasses all understanding.
1.1.01 - Seeking the Divine, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Being proceeds a Rejection of all that is to be rejected, an acceptance only of what can be kept and transformed, an inmost Will to perfection or a call to the Divine Power to do at each step what is necessary for the change of the Nature. It can also open mind, life and body to the inmost psychic entity and its guiding influence or its direct guidance. In most cases these two methods emerge and work together and finally fuse into one. But one can begin with either, the one that one feels most natural and easy to follow.
Finally, in all difficulties where personal effort is hampered, the help of the Teacher can intervene and bring about what is needed for the realisation or for the immediate step that is necessary.
1.1.02 - The Aim of the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The sadhana of this Yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation, mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart, and by the Rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come.
The aim of the Yoga is to open the consciousness to the Divine, to live in the inner consciousness more and more while acting from it on the external life, to bring the inmost psychic into the front and by the power of the psychic to purify and change the being so that it may become ready for transformation and in union with the Divine Knowledge, Will and Love. Secondly, to develop the Yogic consciousness - i.e. to universalise the being on all the planes, become aware of the cosmic being and cosmic forces and be in union with the Divine on all the planes up to the Overmind. Thirdly, to come into contact with the transcendent Divine, beyond the Overmind, through the supramental consciousness, supramentalise the consciousness and the nature and make oneself an instrument for the realisation of the dynamic Divine Truth and its transforming descent into the earth-nature.
11.02 - The Golden Life-line, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Naturally, the transference of the consciousness and being from the lower or surface line to the line that lies in a higher and deeper level does not mean, we must note, the Rejection or annihilation of the lower in favour of the higher. The consciousness of the soul or self does not negate the consciousness of the body and the life and the mind. It only purifies, elevates, and transmutes them into its true and divine expression and embodiment.
To live in the soul is to live in eternity with the vision and inspiration of the eternal. It is living in the mind and the vital and the body that turns and binds one to the past renders one a slave to mortality.
11.03 - Cosmonautics, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As we know, Nature has pushed up its secret consciousness to the human level and is still pushing it up, upward to levels of the higher man, towards the Superman. She has moulded the body for the jelly-fish and moved up through all the intermediaries to the human body. Man's body like his consciousness has to be remoulded in such a way as to be able to enclose and express the superman-consciousness. The rigid natural laws that bind down the body the so-called natural laws of temperature and pressure, of respiration and circulation, of assimilation and Rejectionhave to be turned, obviated, neutralised so that man may be actually, physically a citizen of the world.
Now, the discipline that the physical body is made to undergo at present, in order to accustom itself to high flying, may one day point to the way for a new adaptation and disposition for the body. As it is, the disruption that has been made in the earth atmosphere because of Science's new adventure is also a way to acclimatising the human body to new conditions. The new conditions are becoming even more and more new and the body is being forced to follow suit. At the beginning the result is a rupture but that is the way towards a new disposition, a new dispensation.
1.10 - Laughter Of The Gods, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo: Eucharistic injection from above, purgative Rejection below; liquid diet, psychic fruit juice, milk of the spirit,
Myself: For this yoga one must have the heart of a lion, the mind of a Sri Aurobindo, the vital of a Napoleon.
1.11 - Powers, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
He attains aloneness, independence, and becomes free. When one gives up even the ideas of omnipotence and omniscience, there comes entire Rejection of enjoyment, of the temptations from celestial beings. When the Yogi has seen all these wonderful powers, and rejected them, he reaches the goal. What are all these powers? Simply manifestations. They are no better than dreams. Even omnipotence is a dream. It depends on the mind. So long as there is a mind it can be understood, but the goal is beyond even the mind.
1.1.1 - The Mind and Other Levels of Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is the thoughts of the outer mind that have to be refused, the suggestions and ideas that end by disturbing the sadhana. There are also a number of thoughts of all kinds that have no interest, but which the mind is accustomed to allow to come as a habit, mechanically,these sometimes come up when one tries to be quiet. They must be allowed to pass away without attending to them until they run down and the mind becomes still; to struggle with them and try to stop them is no use, there must be only a quiet Rejection. On the other hand if thoughts come up from within, from the psychic, thoughts of the Mother, of divine love and joy, perceptions of truth etc., these of course must be permitted, as they help to make the psychic active.
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1.11 - Works and Sacrifice, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HE YOGA of the intelligent will and its culmination in the Brahmic status, which occupies all the close of the second chapter, contains the seed of much of the teaching of the Gita, - its doctrine of desireless works, of equality, of the Rejection of outward renunciation, of devotion to the Divine; but as yet all this is slight and obscure. What is most strongly emphasised as yet is the withdrawal of the will from the ordinary motive of human activities, desire, from man's normal temperament of the sense-seeking thought and will with its passions and ignorance, and from its customary habit of troubled manybranching ideas and wishes to the desireless calm unity and passionless serenity of the Brahmic poise. So much Arjuna has understood. He is not unfamiliar with all this; it is the substance of the current teaching which points man to the path of knowledge and to the renunciation of life and works as his way of perfection. The intelligence withdrawing from sense and desire and human action and turning to the Highest, to the One, to the actionless Purusha, to the immobile, to the featureless Brahman, that surely is the eternal seed of knowledge. There is no room here for works, since works belong to the Ignorance; action is the very opposite of knowledge; its seed is desire and its fruit is bondage. That is the orthodox philosophical doctrine, and
Krishna seems quite to admit it when he says that works are far inferior to the Yoga of the intelligence. And yet works are insisted upon as part of the Yoga; so that there seems to be in this teaching a radical inconsistency. Not only so; for some kind of work no doubt may persist for a while, the minimum, the most inoffensive; but here is a work wholly inconsistent with knowledge, with serenity and with the motionless peace of the self-delighted soul, - a work terrible, even monstrous, a bloody strife, a ruthless battle, a giant massacre. Yet it is this that is
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
All other foundations for the Rejection of this ancient wisdom have disappeared or are disappearing before the increasing
light of modern knowledge.
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goal. And this would seem to imply a Rejection of the life of the
cosmos. Well then may we ask, we the modern humanity more
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salvation of the individual, on his Rejection of the lower cosmic
life. This note increases in them as they become later in date, it
swells afterwards into the Rejection of all cosmic life whatever
and that becomes finally in later Hinduism almost the one dominant and all-challenging cry. It does not exist in the earlier Vedic
1.12 - The Divine Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
necessary for the complete Rejection of this basis of ego. If we
seek the Divine, it should be for the sake of the Divine and for
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rebirth is not the Rejection of terrestrial life or the individual's
escape by a spiritual self-annihilation, even as the true renunciation is not the mere physical abandonment of family and society;
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Such was the conclusion to which the most celebrated of Indian converts was forced after some years of association with his fellow Christians. There are many honourable exceptions, of course; but the rule even among learned Protestants and Catholics is a certain blandly bumptious provincialism which, if it did not constitute such a grave offence against charity and truth, would be just uproariously funny. A hundred years ago, hardly anything was known of Sanskrit, Pali or Chinese. The ignorance of European scholars was sufficient reason for their provincialism. Today, when more or less adequate translations are available in plenty, there is not only no reason for it, there is no excuse. And yet most European and American authors of books about religion and metaphysics write as though nobody had ever thought about these subjects, except the Jews, the Greeks and the Christians of the Mediterranean basin and western Europe. This display of what, in the twentieth century, is an entirely voluntary and deliberate ignorance is not only absurd and discreditable; it is also socially dangerous. Like any other form of imperialism, theological imperialism is a menace to permanent world peace. The reign of violence will never come to an end until, first, most human beings accept the same, true philosophy of life; until, second, this Perennial Philosophy is recognized as the highest factor common to all the world religions; until, third, the adherents of every religion renounce the idolatrous time-philosophies, with which, in their own particular faith, the Perennial Philosophy of eternity has been overlaid; until, fourth, there is a world-wide Rejection of all the political pseudo-religions, which place mans supreme good in future time and therefore justify and commend the commission of every sort of present iniquity as a means to that end. If these conditions are not fulfilled, no amount of political planning, no economic blue-prints however ingeniously drawn, can prevent the recrudescence of war and revolution.
next chapter: 1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT
1.1.3 - Mental Difficulties and the Need of Quietude, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is no possibility of doing this Yoga, if one cannot give himself to the Divine Power and trust to its workings. If one lives only in the mind and its questioning and ideas, it is not possible. The test of capacity is to be able to quiet the mind, to feel a greater Divine Power at work in one, the Power of the Mother, and to be able to trust to it and aid its workings by the Rejection of all that contradicts them in the nature.
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1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
If we want to find the Goal, we must set aside our Manichaeism and come to a realistic appreciation of what Sri Aurobindo called "the dark half of truth."233 Human knowledge, he wrote, throws a shadow that conceals half the globe of truth from its own sunlight. . . . The Rejection of falsehood by the mind seeking utter truth is one of the chief causes why mind cannot attain to the settled, rounded and perfect truth.234 If we eliminate everything that is wrong and God knows this world is full of mistakes and impurities we may well arrive at some truth, but it will be an empty truth. The practical approach to the Secret is, first of all, to realize, and then to see that each thing in this world, even the most grotesque or far-wandering error,235 contains a spark of truth beneath its mask, because everything here is God advancing toward Himself; there is nothing outside Him.
For error is really a half truth that stumbles because of its limitations; often it is Truth that wears a disguise in order to arrive unobserved near to its goal.236 If a single thing in this world were totally wrong, the whole world would be totally wrong. Thus, if the seeker sets out with this premise a positive premise and ascends step by step, each time accepting to take the corresponding step downward in order to free the same light237 hidden under every mask, in every element, even in the darkest mud, the most grotesque mistake or sordid evil, he will gradually see everything becoming clearer before his eyes, not only in theory but tangibly, and he will discover not only summits but abysses of Truth.238 He will realize that his Foe was a most diligent helper, most concerned with ensuring the perfect effectiveness of his realization, first, because each battle has increased his strength, and then because each fall has compelled him to free the truth below instead of escaping alone to empty summits. Ultimately, he will understand that his particular burden was the very burden of our Mother the Earth, also striving toward her share of light. The Princes of Darkness are already saved! They are at work, the scrupulous exactors of an all-inclusive Truth, rather than a truth that excludes everything:
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The stubborn mute Rejection in Life's depths,
The ignorant No in the origin of things.242
1.1.5 - Thought and Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What you say is true.The power to open is there in your mind and vital and psychic being, but this recurrence of the external thoughts and feelings is making a strong obstruction and a persistent Rejection is needed in order to get rid of it. There are some difficulties in the nature that fall away rapidly by the repeated touch of the inner Force, but those which are obstinately recurrent, especially in the physical field, need an equal persistence in the Rejection before they will consent to fall away from the nature.
The correspondent said that his mind found it hard to believe that a vacancy in the mind could suddenly be filled with an intuition without one's thinking about it.Ed.
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Assuredly, Rejection means control of ones thoughts, and why should not one be master of ones own mind and thoughts and not only master of ones vital passions and bodily movements? If it is the right thing to control the body and not allow it to make a stupid, wrong or injurious movement, if it is the right thing to reject from the vital an ignorant passion or low desire, it must be equally the right thing to reject from the mind a thought that ought not to be there or that for good reasons one does not want to be there. As for possibility, I suppose when a thought that is manifestly stupid or false presents itself to the mind one can and usually does reject and throw it out and bid it not recur again. If one can do that with a given thought, it follows that one can do it with any thoughts that need for any reason to be excluded. If a scientist goes into his laboratory to work out a problem, he shuts out from his mind for the time being all thoughts of his wife, his family or his financial affairs, and if they come he repels them and says, This is not your time. If he has resolved to carry out a line of investigation to the end or a method of invention and, if doubts assail him, he will certainly throw them aside and say, I mean to see this through to the end and till I have reached the end, I have no intention of listening to you. At every step a man of any mental calibre has to exercise some power over his mind, otherwise he would be as much in a state of restless mental confusion or of mechanical incoherence as one who had no control over his impulses and desires.
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1.16 - The Suprarational Ultimate of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
No doubt all is still moving, however touched by dim lights from above, on a lower half rational half infrarational level, clumsily, coarsely, in ignorance of itself and as yet with little nobility of motive. All is being worked out very crudely by the confused clash of life-forces and the guidance of ideas that are half-lights of the intellect, and the means proposed are too mechanical and the aims too material; they miss the truth that the outer life-result can only endure if it is founded on inner realities. But so life in the past has moved always and must at first move. For life organises itself at first round the ego-motive and the instinct of ego-expansion is the earliest means by which men have come into contact with each other; the struggle for possession has been the first crude means towards union, the aggressive assertion of the smaller self the first step towards a growth into the larger self. All has been therefore a half-ordered confusion of the struggle for life corrected by the need and instinct of association, a struggle of individuals, clans, tribes, parties, nations, ideas, civilisations, cultures, ideals, religions, each affirming itself, each compelled into contact, association, strife with the others. For while Nature imposes the ego as a veil behind which she labours out the individual manifestation of the spirit, she also puts a compulsion on it to grow in being until it can at last expand or merge into a larger self in which it meets, harmonises with itself, comprehends in its own consciousness, becomes one with the rest of existence. To assist in this growth Life-Nature throws up in itself ego-enlarging, ego-exceeding, even ego-destroying instincts and movements which combat and correct the smaller self-affirming instincts and movements,she enforces on her human instrument impulses of love, sympathy, self-denial, self-effacement, self-sacrifice, altruism, the drive towards universality in mind and heart and life, glimmerings of an obscure unanimism that has not yet found thoroughly its own true light and motive-power. Because of this obscurity these powers, unable to affirm their own absolute, to take the lead or dominate, obliged to compromise with the demands of the ego, even to become themselves a form of egoism, are impotent also to bring harmony and transformation to life. Instead of peace they seem to bring rather a sword; for they increase the number and tension of conflict of the unreconciled forces, ideas, impulses of which the individual human consciousness and the life of the collectivity are the arena. The ideal and practical reason of man labours to find amidst all this the right law of life and action; it strives by a rule of moderation and accommodation, by selection and Rejection or by the dominance of some chosen ideas or powers to reduce things to harmony, to do consciously what Nature through natural selection and instinct has achieved in her animal kinds, an automatically ordered and settled form and norm of their existence. But the order, the structure arrived at by the reason is always partial, precarious and temporary. It is disturbed by a pull from below and a pull from above. For these powers that life throws up to help towards the growth into a larger self, a wider being, are already reflections of something that is beyond reason, seeds of the spiritual, the absolute. There is the pressure on human life of an Infinite which will not allow it to rest too long in any formulation,not at least until it has delivered out of itself that which shall be its own self-exceeding and self-fulfilment.
This process of life through a first obscure and confused effort of self-finding is the inevitable result of its beginnings; for life has begun from an involution of the spiritual truth of things in what seems to be its opposite. Spiritual experience tells us that there is a Reality which supports and pervades all things as the Cosmic Self and Spirit, can be discovered by the individual even here in the terrestrial embodiment as his own self and spirit, and is, at its summits and in its essence, an infinite and eternal self-existent Being, Consciousness and Bliss of existence. But what we seem to see as the source and beginning of the material universe is just the contraryit wears to us the aspect of a Void, an infinite of Non-Existence, an indeterminate Inconscient, an insensitive blissless Zero out of which everything has yet to come. When it begins to move, evolve, create, it puts on the appearance of an inconscient Energy which delivers existence out of the Void in the form of an infinitesimal fragmentation, the electronor perhaps some still more impalpable minute unit, a not yet discovered, hardly discoverable infinitesimal,then the atom, the molecule, and out of this fragmentation builds up a formed and concrete universe in the void of its Infinite. Yet we see that this unconscious Energy does at every step the works of a vast and minute Intelligence fixing and combining every possible device to prepare, manage and work out the paradox and miracle of Matter and the awakening of a life and a spirit in Matter; existence grows out of the Void, consciousness emerges and increases out of the Inconscient, an ascending urge towards pleasure, happiness, delight, divine bliss and ecstasy is inexplicably born out of an insensitive Nihil. These phenomena already betray the truth, which we discover when we grow aware in our depths, that the Inconscient is only a mask and within it is the Upanishads Conscient in unconscious things. In the beginning, says the Veda, was the ocean of inconscience and out of it That One arose into birth by his greatness,by the might of his self-manifesting Energy.
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
owing to its obscurity and mechanical clinging to past movements and facile oblivion and Rejection of the new, we find in it one of the chief obstacles to permeation by the supermind Force and the transformation of the functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of the most precious instruments of the stabilisation of the supramental Light and Force in material Nature.370
This work is so minute that it is hard to describe. The only way of working is not to go into deep meditations, which affect only the summits of our being, or to attain an extraordinary concentration or ecstasies, but to remain right in the midst of things, to work at the level of the body, at the very lowest rungs of the ladder, so to speak,
1.19 - Equality, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Where then is the difference between this and the larger equality taught by the Gita? It lies in the difference between the intellectual and philosophic discernment and the spiritual, the Vedantic knowledge of unity on which the Gita founds its teaching. The philosopher maintains his equality by the power of the buddhi, the discerning mind; but even that by itself is a doubtful foundation. For, though master of himself on the whole by a constant attention or an acquired habit of mind, in reality he is not free from his lower nature, and it does actually assert itself in many ways and may at any moment take a violent revenge for its Rejection and suppression. For, always, the play of the lower nature is a triple play, and the rajasic and tamasic qualities are ever lying in wait for the sattwic man. "Even the mind of the
Equality
1.19 - ON THE PROBABLE EXISTENCE AHEAD OF US OF AN ULTRA-HUMAN, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
sibility of Man's withdrawal or Rejection of whatever does not ap-
pear to satisfy his heart or his reason. Which is to say that, given a
1.2.02 - Qualities Needed for Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The hours of meditation should be devoted to the formation of these two conditions in you, by aspiration and by selfobservation and Rejection of all that disturbs the nature or keeps it troubled, confused and impure. Aspiration if rightly done, quietly, earnestly and sincerely, brings the divine help from above to effect this object.
As to the hours devoted to work, needs, family, etc., hey can be made an aid only on the following conditions.
1.2.04 - Sincerity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
One cannot be perfect in discrimination at once or in Rejection either. The one indispensable thing is to go on trying sincerely till there comes the full success. So long as there is complete sincerity, the Divine Grace will be there and assist at every moment on the way.
If he [the sadhak] is sincere, there is bound to be devotion.
1.2.05 - Aspiration, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Activity in aspiration, tapasya, Rejection of the wrong forces, passivity to the true working, the working of the Mother s force are the right things in sadhana.
One has to aspire to the Divine and surrender and leave it to the Divine to do what is true and right with the Adhar once it is perfected.
1.2.06 - Rejection, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.2.06 - Rejection
author class:Sri Aurobindo
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I do not know what you mean by dissolution [of desires]. The principle of the Yoga is Rejection - throwing out of the being.
It is true that rejected from the mind it often goes to the vital, rejected by the vital, to the physical, rejected by the physical to the subconscient. Rejected from the subconscient also, it can still linger in the environmental consciousness - but there it has no longer any possession of the being and can be thrown away altogether.
That is a known fact that everything comes from outside, from universal Nature. But the individual is not bound to accept everything that comes; he can accept and he can reject. The Rejection may not succeed at once, if there is a strong habit of past acceptance; but if it is steadily persisted in, the Rejection will succeed in the end.
What you should do, is always to reject the lower experiences and concentrate on a fixed and quiet aspiration towards the one thing needed, the Light, the Calm, the Peace, the Devotion that you felt for two or three days. It is because you get interested in the lower vital experiences and in observing and thinking about them that they take hold, and then comes the absence of the Contact and the confusion. You have surely had enough of this kind of experience already and should make up your mind to steadily reject it when it comes.
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What do you mean by active means [to overcome inertia]? The power to refuse, to reject is always there in the being and to go on rejecting till the Rejection is effective. Nothing can obstruct a quiet aspiration except one's own acquiescence in the inertia.
The practice of Rejection prevails in the end; but with personal effort only, it may take a long time. If you can feel the Divine
Power working in you, then it should become easier.
1.2.07 - Surrender, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Force, a constant Rejection of any lower mixture - that is very important.
At present to give up personal effort is not what is wanted, but to call in more and more the Divine Power and govern and guide by it the personal endeavour.
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Power are necessary and indispensable. But reliance upon God must not be made an excuse for indolence, weakness and surrender to the impulses of the lower nature; it must go along with untiring aspiration and a persistent Rejection of all that comes in the way of the Divine Truth. The surrender to the Divine must not be turned into an excuse, a cloak or an occasion for surrender to one's own desires and lower movements or to one's ego or to some Force of the ignorance and darkness that puts on a false appearance of the Divine.
It is always better to make an effort in the right direction; even if one fails the effort bears some result and is never lost.
1.2.10 - Opening, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the practice of Yoga, what you aim at can only come by the opening of the being to the Mother s force and the persistent Rejection of all egoism and demand and desire, all motives except the aspiration for the Divine Truth. If this is rightly done, the
Divine Power and Light will begin to work and bring in the peace and equanimity, the inner strength, the purified devotion and the increasing consciousness and self-knowledge which are the necessary foundation for the siddhi of the Yoga.
1.21 - The Spiritual Aim and Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The spiritual aim will recognise that man as he grows in his being must have as much free space as possible for all its members to grow in their own strength, to find out themselves and their potentialities. In their freedom they will err, because experience comes through many errors, but each has in itself a divine principle and they will find it out, disengage its presence, significance and law as their experience of themselves deepens and increases. Thus true spirituality will not lay a yoke upon science and philosophy or compel them to square their conclusions with any statement of dogmatic religious or even of assured spiritual truth, as some of the old religions attempted, vainly, ignorantly, with an unspiritual obstinacy and arrogance. Each part of mans being has its own dharma which it must follow and will follow in the end, put on it what fetters you please. The dharma of science, thought and philosophy is to seek for truth by the intellect dispassionately, without prepossession and prejudgment, with no other first propositions than the law of thought and observation itself imposes. Science and philosophy are not bound to square their observations and conclusions with any current ideas of religious dogma or ethical rule or aesthetic prejudice. In the end, if left free in their action, they will find the unity of Truth with Good and Beauty and God and give these a greater meaning than any dogmatic religion or any formal ethics or any narrower aesthetic idea can give us. But meanwhile they must be left free even to deny God and good and beauty if they will, if their sincere observation of things so points them. For all these Rejections must come round in the end of their circling and return to a larger truth of the things they refuse. Often we find atheism both in individual and society a necessary passage to deeper religious and spiritual truth: one has sometimes to deny God in order to find him; the finding is inevitable at the end of all earnest scepticism and denial.
The same law holds good in Art; the aesthetic being of man rises similarly on its own curve towards its diviner possibilities. The highest aim of the aesthetic being is to find the Divine through beauty; the highest Art is that which by an inspired use of significant and interpretative form unseals the doors of the spirit. But in order that it may come to do this greatest thing largely and sincerely, it must first endeavour to see and depict man and Nature and life for their own sake, in their own characteristic truth and beauty; for behind these first characters lies always the beauty of the Divine in life and man and Nature and it is through their just transformation that what was at first veiled by them has to be revealed. The dogma that Art must be religious or not be at all, is a false dogma, just as is the claim that it must be subservient to ethics or utility or scientific truth or philosophic ideas. Art may make use of these things as elements, but it has its own svadharma, essential law, and it will rise to the widest spirituality by following out its own natural lines with no other yoke than the intimate law of its own being.
1.22 - Dominion over different provinces of creation assigned to different beings, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
That, Maitreya, which is the cause of a thing is called the means of effecting it; and that which it is the desire of the soul to accomplish is the thing to be effected. The operations of the Yogi who is desirous of liberation, as suppression of breath and the like, are his means: the end is the supreme Brahma, whence he returns to the world no more. Essentially connected with, and dependant upon, the means employed for emancipation by the Yogi, is discriminative knowledge; and this is the first variety of the condition of Brahma[5]. The second sort is the knowledge that is to be acquired by the Yogi whose end is escape from suffering, or eternal felicity. The third kind is the ascertainment of the identity of the end and the means, the Rejection of the notion of duality. The last kind is the removal of whatever differences may have been conceived by the three first varieties of knowledge, and the consequent contemplation of the true essence of soul. The supreme condition of Viṣṇu, who is one with wisdom, is the knowledge of truth; which requires no exercise; which is not to be taught; which is internally diffused; which is unequalled; the object of which is self-illumination; which is simply existent, and is not to be defined; which is tranquil, fearless, pure; which is not the theme of reasoning; which stands in need of no support[6]. Those Yogis who, by the annihilation of ignorance, are resolved into this fourfold Brahma, lose the seminal property, and can no longer germinate in the ploughed field of worldly existence. This is the supreme condition, that is called Viṣṇu, perfect, perpetual, universal, undecaying, entire, and uniform: and the Yogi who attains this supreme spirit (Brahma) returns not to life again; for there he is freed from the distinction of virtue and vice, from suffering, and from soil.
There are two states of this Brahma; one with, and one without shape; one perishable, and one imperishable; which are inherent in all beings. The imperishable is the supreme being; the perishable is all the world. The blaze of fire burning on one spot diffuses light and heat around; so the world is nothing more than the manifested energy of the supreme Brahma: and inasmuch, Maitreya, as the light and heat are stronger or feebler as we are near to the fire, or far off from it, so the energy of the supreme is more or less intense in the beings that are less or more remote from him. Brahma, Viṣṇu, and Śiva are the most powerful energies of god; next to them are the inferior deities, then the attendant spirits, then men, then animals, birds, insects, vegetables; each becoming more and more feeble as they are farther from their primitive source. In this way, illustrious Brahman, this whole world, although in essence imperishable and eternal, appears and disappears, as if it was subject to birth and death.
1.22 - The Problem of Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
10:The third difficulty is the division between force and consciousness in the evolutionary existence. There is, first, the division which has been created by the evolution itself in its three successive formations of Matter, Life and Mind, each with its own law of working. The Life is at war with the body; it attempts to force it to satisfy life's desires, impulses, satisfactions and demands from its limited capacity what could only be possible to an immortal and divine body; and the body, enslaved and tyrannised over, suffers and is in constant dumb revolt against the demands made upon it by the Life. The Mind is at war with both: sometimes it helps the Life against the Body, sometimes restrains the vital urge and seeks to protect the corporeal frame from life's desires, passions and over-driving energies; it also seeks to possess the Life and turn its energy to the mind's own ends, to the utmost joys of the mind's own activity, to the satisfaction of mental, aesthetic, emotional aims and their fulfilment in human existence; and the Life too finds itself enslaved and misused and is in frequent insurrection against the ignorant, half-wise tyrant seated above it. This is the war of our members which the mind cannot satisfactorily resolve because it has to deal with a problem insoluble to it, the aspiration of an immortal being in a mortal life and body. It can only arrive at a long succession of compromises or end in an abandonment of the problem either by submission with the materialist to the mortality of our apparent being or with the ascetic and the religionist by the Rejection and condemnation of the earthly life and withdrawal to happier and easier fields of existence. But the true solution lies in finding the principle beyond Mind of which Immortality is the law and in conquering by it the mortality of our existence.
11:But there is also that fundamental division within between force of Nature and the conscious being which is the original cause of this incapacity. Not only is there a division between the mental, the vital and the physical being, but each of them is also divided against itself. The capacity of the body is less than the capacity of the instinctive soul or conscious being, the physical Purusha within it, the capacity of the vital force less than the capacity of the impulsive soul, the vital conscious being or Purusha within it, the capacity of the mental energy less than the capacity of the intellectual and emotional soul, the mental Purusha within it. For the soul is the inner consciousness which aspires to its own complete self-realisation and therefore always exceeds the individual formation of the moment, and the Force which has taken its poise in the formation is always pushed by its soul to that which is abnormal to the poise, transcendent of it; thus constantly pushed it has much trouble in answering, more in evolving from the present to a greater capacity. In trying to fulfil the demands of this triple soul it is distracted and driven to set instinct against instinct, impulse against impulse, emotion against emotion, idea against idea, satisfying this, denying that, then repenting and returning on what it has done, adjusting, compensating, readjusting ad infinitum, but not arriving at any principle of unity. And in the mind again the consciouspower that should harmonise and unite is not only limited in its knowledge and in its will, but the knowledge and the will are disparate and often at discord. The principle of unity is above in the supermind: for there alone is the conscious unity of all diversities; there alone will and knowledge are equal and in perfect harmony; there alone Consciousness and Force arrive at their divine equation.
1.23 - On mad price, and, in the same Step, on unclean and blasphemous thoughts., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
1. Pride is denial of God, an invention of the devil, the despising of men, the mother of condemnation, the offspring of praise, a sign of sterility, flight from divine assistance, the precursor of madness, the herald of falls, a foothold for satanic possession, source of anger, door of hypocrisy, the support of demons, the guardian of sins, the patron of unsympathy, the Rejection of compassion, a bitter inquisitor, an inhuman judge, an opponent of God, a root of blasphemy.
2. The beginning of pride is the consummation of vainglory; the middle is the humiliation of our neighbour, the shameless parade of our labours, complacency in the heart, hatred of exposure; and the end is denial of Gods help, the extolling of ones own exertions, fiendish character.
1.24 - Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
discord deepens with the appearance of Mind; for Mind has its own quarrel with both Life and Matter: it is at constant war with their limitations, in constant subjection to and revolt against the grossness and inertia of the one and the passions and sufferings of the other; and the battle seems to turn eventually, though not very surely, towards a partial and costly victory for the Mind in which it conquers, represses or even slays the vital cravings, impairs the physical force and disturbs the balance of the body in the interests of a greater mental activity and a higher moral being. It is in this struggle that the impatience of Life, the disgust of the body and the recoil from both towards a pure mental and moral existence take their rise. When man awakens to an existence beyond Mind, he carries yet farther this principle of discord. Mind, Body and Life are condemned as the trinity of the world, the flesh and the devil. Mind too is banned as the source of all our malady; war is declared between the spirit and its instruments and the victory of the spiritual Inhabitant is sought for in an evasion from its narrow residence, a Rejection of mind, life and body and a withdrawal into its own infinitudes.
The world is a discord and we shall best solve its perplexities by carrying the principle of discord itself to its extreme possibility, a cutting away and a final severance.
1.2.4 - Speech and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Yes, obviously, the power to say No is indispensable in life and still more so in sadhana. It is the power of Rejection put into speech.
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1.25 - The Knot of Matter, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4:But still there is this conceptive difference and practical distinction, and in that, even if Matter is not really cut off from Spirit, yet it seems with such a practical definiteness to be so cut off, it is so different, even so contrary in its law, the material life seems so much to be the negation of all spiritual existence that its Rejection might well appear to be the one short cut out of the difficulty, - as undoubtedly it is; but a short cut or any cut is no solution. Still, there, in Matter undoubtedly lies the crux; that raises the obstacle: for because of Matter Life is gross and limited and stricken with death and pain, because of Matter Mind is more than half blind, its wings clipped, its feet tied to a narrow perch and held back from the vastness and freedom above of which it is conscious. Therefore the exclusive spiritual seeker is justified from his view-point if, disgusted with the mud of Matter, revolted by the animal grossness of Life or impatient of the self-imprisoned narrowness and downward vision of Mind, he determines to break from it all and return by inaction and silence to the Spirit's immobile liberty. But that is not the sole view-point, nor, because it has been sublimely held or glorified by shining and golden examples, need we consider it the integral and ultimate wisdom. Rather, liberating ourselves from all passion and revolt, let us see what this divine order of the universe means, and, as for this great knot and tangle of Matter denying the Spirit, let us seek to find out and separate its strands so as to loosen it by a solution and not cut through it by a violence. We must state the difficulty, the opposition first, entirely, trenchantly, with exaggeration, if need be, rather than with diminution, and then look for the issue.
5:First, then, the fundamental opposition Matter presents to Spirit is this that it is the culmination of the principle of Ignorance. Here Consciousness has lost and forgotten itself in a form of its works, as a man might forget in extreme absorption not only who he is but that he is at all and become momentarily only the work that is being done and the force that is doing it. The Spirit self-luminous, infinitely aware of itself behind all workings of force and their master, seems here to have disappeared and not to be at all; somewhere He is perhaps, but here He seems to have left only a brute and inconscient material Force which creates and destroys eternally without knowing itself or what it creates or why it creates at all or why it destroys what once it has created: it does not know, for it has no mind; it does not care, for it has no heart. And if that is not the real truth even of the material universe, if behind all this false phenomenon there is a Mind, a Will and something greater than Mind or mental Will, yet it is this dark semblance that the material universe itself presents as a truth to the consciousness which emerges in it out of its night; and if it be no truth but a lie, yet is it a most effective lie, for it determines the conditions of our phenomenal existence and besieges all our aspiration and effort.
1.27 - On holy solitude of body and soul., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
51. A small hair disturbs the eye, and a small care ruins solitude; because solitude is the banishment of thoughts and ideas, and the Rejection of even laudable cares.
52. He who has really attained to solitude does not give a thought to his flesh; for He who has promised1 will not prove false.
1.27 - The Sevenfold Chord of Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6:The Divine descends from pure existence through the play of Consciousness-Force and Bliss and the creative medium of Supermind into cosmic being; we ascend from Matter through a developing life, soul and mind and the illuminating medium of supermind towards the divine being. The knot of the two, the higher and the lower hemisphere,3 is where mind and supermind meet with a veil between them. The rending of the veil is the condition of the divine life in humanity; for by that rending, by the illumining descent of the higher into the nature of the lower being and the forceful ascent of the lower being into the nature of the higher, mind can recover its divine light in the allcomprehending supermind, the soul realise its divine self in the all-possessing all-blissful Ananda, life repossess its divine power in the play of omnipotent Conscious-Force and Matter open to its divine liberty as a form of the divine Existence. And if there be any goal to the evolution which finds here its present crown and head in the human being, other than an aimless circling and an individual escape from the circling, if the infinite potentiality of this creature, who alone here stands between Spirit and Matter with the power to mediate between them, has any meaning other than an ultimate awakening from the delusion of life by despair and disgust of the cosmic effort and its complete Rejection, then even such a luminous and puissant transfiguration and emergence of the Divine in the creature must be that high-uplifted goal and that supreme significance.
7:But before we can turn to the psychological and practical conditions under which such a transfiguration may be changed from an essential possibility into a dynamic potentiality, we have much to consider; for we must discern not only the essential principles of the descent of Sachchidananda into cosmic existence, which we have already done, but the large plan of its order here and the nature and action of the manifested power of ConsciousForce which reigns over the conditions under which we now exist. At present, what we have first to see is that the seven or the eight principles we have examined are essential to all cosmic creation and are there, manifested or as yet unmanifested, in ourselves, in this "Infant of a year" which we still are, - for we are far yet from being the adults of evolutionary Nature. The higher Trinity is the source and basis of all existence and play of existence, and all cosmos must be an expression and action of its essential reality. No universe can be merely a form of being which has sprung up and outlined itself in an absolute nullity and void and remains standing out against a non-existent emptiness. It must be either a figure of existence within the infinite Existence who is beyond all figure or it must be itself the All-Existence. In fact, when we unify our self with cosmic being, we see that it is really both of these things at once; that is to say, it is the All-Existent figuring Himself out in an infinite series of rhythms in His own conceptive extension of Himself as Time and Space. Moreover we see that this cosmic action or any cosmic action is impossible without the play of an infinite Force of Existence which produces and regulates all these forms and movements; and that Force equally presupposes or is the action of an infinite Consciousness, because it is in its nature a cosmic Will determining all relations and apprehending them by its own mode of awareness, and it could not so determine and apprehend them if there were no comprehensive Consciousness behind that mode of cosmic awareness to originate as well as to hold, fix and reflect through it the relations of Being in the developing formation or becoming of itself which we call a universe.
1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
8:In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by Rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
9:If we regard the Powers of the Reality as so many Godheads, we can say that the Overmind releases a million Godheads into action, each empowered to create its own world, each world capable of relation, communication and interplay with the others. There are in the Veda different formulations of the nature of the Gods: it is said they are all one Existence to which the sages give different names; yet each God is worshipped as if he by himself is that Existence, one who is all the other Gods together or contains them in his being; and yet again each is a separate Deity acting sometimes in unison with companion deities, sometimes separately, sometimes even in apparent opposition to other Godheads of the same Existence. In the Supermind all this would be held together as a harmonised play of the one Existence; in the Overmind each of these three conditions could be a separate action or basis of action and have its own principle of development and consequences and yet each keep the power to combine with the others in a more composite harmony. As with the One Existence, so with its Consciousness and Force. The One Consciousness is separated into many independent forms of consciousness and knowledge; each follows out its own line of truth which it has to realise. The one total and manysided Real-Idea is split up into its many sides; each becomes an independent Idea-Force with the power to realise itself. The one Consciousness-Force is liberated into its million forces, and each of these forces has the right to fulfil itself or to assume, if needed, a hegemony and take up for its own utility the other forces. So too the Delight of Existence is loosed out into all manner of delights and each can carry in itself its independent fullness or sovereign extreme. Overmind thus gives to the One Existence-Consciousness-Bliss the character of a teeming of infinite possibilities which can be developed into a multitude of worlds or thrown together into one world in which the endlessly variable outcome of their play is the determinant of the creation, of its process, its course and its consequence.
13.01 - A Centurys Salutation to Sri Aurobindo The Greatness of the Great, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It was this secret ultimate truth that overshadowed, brooded over all these stages and steps and occupations he passed through: they only led up to that transcendent reality, but it was the sense, constant sense of that reality that lent a special character to all his karma. This urge towards the supreme reality, this transcendence, did not mean for him a Rejection of the domains passed through: it is a subsuming, that is to say, uplifting the narrower, the lower status, integrating them into the higher: even as the soil at the root of the plant is subsumed and transmuted into the living sap that mounts high up the plant towards its very top, to the light and energy above.
In the scheme and pattern of human existence in the hierarchy that is collective life, Sri Aurobindo sought to express the play of the supreme Truth, express materially that which works always in secret and behind the veil. The Supreme Reality is not merely the supreme awareness and consciousness, but it is a power and a force; and it holds still a secret source that has not yet been touched,touched consciously by the human consciousness and utilised for world existence. Man's genius has contacted today in the material world material forces which are almost immaterial the extra-galactic radiation, the laser beams and other energies of that category which are powerful in an unbelievable unheard of 'degree. Even so in the consciousness, there is a mode of force which is not only a force that knows but creates, not only creates but transforms. That force at its intrinsic optimum can enter into dull matter and transforming it, transform into radiant matter, radiant not only with the physical, the solar light but the light of the supreme Spirit.
1.3.02 - Equality The Chief Support, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Complete samata takes long to establish and it is dependent on three things - the soul's self-giving to the Divine by an inner surrender, the descent of the spiritual calm and peace from above and the steady, long and persistent Rejection of all egoistic, rajasic and other feelings that contradict samata.
The first thing to do is to make the full consecration and offering in the heart - the increase of the spiritual calm and the surrender are the condition for making the Rejection of ego, rajoguna etc. effective.
Samata and Loyalty to Truth
13.05 - A Dream Of Surreal Science, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Things went on well, at least one thought like that, for sometime, but then it was realised soon enough that something was missing in this rationalistic frame of life, for it was almost lifeless, dry: it does not evoke enthusiasm, does not drive man spontaneously towards higher hights and deeper depths. Man remains a groundling. God need not be there: but the feeling that is associated with God and the conception of Godwhich is usually called the religious feeling is a genuine human feeling and with the Rejection of God, the feeling does not go, it persists. So a new religion is proposed, a Godless religion, a Natural Religion and it came to be called the Religion of Humanity. God was replaced by Humanity. Humanity is a collective reality: to serve it became the ideal, the summum bonum. And to serve is to worship and adore. Thus a new deity was installed. To give yourself wholly, to work for the welfare of humanity, body and mind, to love one and all human beings, particularly those who deserve love and care the poor, the needy, the lowlyto work so that they may be comforted, is to bring comfort to yourself, to your own soul. It is nothing short of the purest and deepest religious feeling.
Is it so? The Age of Reason made its momentous declaration long ago: it is now almost two hundred years, but actually we find man refuses to forget God. Churches and temples, communities and corporations have been cropping up always demanding that God is to be called God, He cannot be called by any other name. He is to be worshipped as God. No lesser gods but the Supreme God Himself. Does not the Bible say: "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God" ?2
1.4.01 - The Divine Grace and Guidance, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are three main possibilities for the sadhak - (1) To wait on the Grace and rely on the Divine. (2) To do everything himself like the full Adwaitin and the Buddhist. (3) To take the middle path, go forward by aspiration and Rejection etc. helped by the
Force.
1.4.03 - The Guru, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But with all the kr.pa is there working in one way or another and it can only abandon the disciple if the disciple himself abandons or rejects it - by decisive and definitive revolt, by Rejection of the Guru, by cutting the painter and declaring his independence, or by an act or course of betrayal that severs him from his own psychic being. Even then, except perhaps in the last case if it goes to an extreme, a return to grace is not impossible.
That is my own knowledge and experience of the matter.
1.83 - Epistola Ultima, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
With Yoga you might easily slip into saying that it was identical, with the exception that the new worlds are from the start recognised as already existing within the human cosmos, but nobody is asked to extend these worlds in any way; on the contrary the object is to analyse ever more minutely, and the control to which one approaches is not external but internal. At all times one is concentrated on the idea of simpli- cation. The recognition of any new idea or form of ideas, is invariably the signal for its Rejection: "not that, not that."
One might simplify this explanation by constructing some sort of apophthegm; Magick is the journey from 0 to 2, Yoga from 2 to 0. It is a very good rule for the Yogi to keep this mind constantly fixed on the fact that any idea soever is false. There is actually a Hindu proverb "That which can be thought is not true." Consequently the existence of any idea in the mind is an immediate refutation of it, but equally the contraries as well as contradictory of that idea are false, and the result of this is to knock the second law of formal logic to pieces.
1915 03 07p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is past, the time of sweet mental silence, so peaceful, so pure, through which could be felt the profound will expressing itself in its all-powerful truth. Now the will is no longer perceived; and the mind once more necessarily active, analyses, classifies, judges, chooses, constantly reacts as a transforming agent upon everything that is imposed on the individuality, grown wide enough to be in contact with a world infinitely vast and complex, a world of mingled light and shadow like all that belongs to the earth. [I am exiled from every spiritual happiness, and of all ordeals this, O Lord, is surely the most painful that Thou canst impose: but most of all the withdrawal of Thy will which seems to be a sign of total disapprobation. Strong is the growing sense of Rejection, and it needs all the ardour of an untiring faith to keep the external consciousness thus abandoned to itself from being invaded by an irremediable sorrow.
[But it refuses to despair, it refuses to believe that the misfortune is irreparable; it waits with humility in an obscure and hidden effort and struggle for the breath of Thy perfect joy to penetrate it again. And perhaps each of its modest and secret victories is a true help brought to the earth.
1951-04-26 - Irrevocable transformation - The divine Shakti - glad submission - Rejection, integral - Consecration - total self-forgetfulness - work, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1951-04-26 - Irrevocable transformation - The divine Shakti - glad submission - Rejection, integral - Consecration - total self-forgetfulness - work
author class:The Mother
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The transformation must be integral, and integral therefore the Rejection of all that withstands it.
Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, p. 4
That is well understood. It is not enough to have a positive movement, there must also be the negative movement of Rejection. For you cannot attain a stable transformation as long as you harbour in your being elements which oppose it. If you keep obscurities within you, they may for a time remain silent and immobile, so well that you attach no importance to them, and one day they will wake up again and your transformation wont be able to resist them. Not only is the positive movement of self-giving necessary but also the negative movement of Rejection of everything in you that opposes this giving. You must not leave things like that, buried somewhere, in such a way that at the first opportunity they wake up and undo all your work. There are parts of the being which know very well how to do this, there are elements of the vital which are extraordinary from this point of view: they keep quiet, hide in a corner, remain so absolutely silent and motionless that you think they dont exist; so you are no longer on your guard, you are satisfied with your transformation and your surrender, you think everything is going well, and then, suddenly, one fine day, without warning, the thing jumps up like a jack-in-the-box and makes you commit all the stupidities in the world. And it is the stronger for having remained repressedrepressed and closed tight in a cornerit has remained as though buried so as not to draw your attention, it has kept very, very quiet, and the moment you are not expecting it, it springs up and you tell yourself, Oh! What was the good of all my transformation? That thing was there, and so it happened. It is just like that, these things remain there and hide themselves so well, that if you do not go looking for them with a well-lit lantern, you will not know they are there till the day they come out and demolish all your work in one minute.
Does this happen even if one has a great aspiration?
1951-04-28 - Personal effort - tamas, laziness - Static and dynamic power - Stupidity - psychic and intelligence - Philosophies- different languages - Theories of Creation - Surrender of ones being and ones work, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo speaks of the Rejection of stupidity, doubt, disbelief.4 If one rejects stupidity does one become intelligent?
Do you mean whether one can get rid of stupidity? Yes, there is a way. It is not easy, but there is a way. I have known people who were extremely stupid, truly stupid; well, these people succeeded through aspirationan aspiration which was not formulated, had not even the power to express itself in wordssucceeded in coming into contact with their psychic being. It was not a constant contact, it was momentary, at times very fugitive. But while they were in contact with their psychic being, they became remarkably intelligent, they said wonderful things. I knew a girl who had no education, nothing, truly stupid; people said, There is nothing to be done about it, it is not possible. Well, when she was in contact with her psychic being, she understood the profoundest things and made astounding remarks. But when the contact stopped she became stupid once again. It was not something permanent, it was only the contact that took away her stupidity. So, it is a difficult cure, that is, one must establish the contact with ones psychic being and keep it always.
1954-02-10 - Study a variety of subjects - Memory -Memory of past lives - Getting rid of unpleasant thoughts, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are several methods. Generally but it depends on peoplegenerally, the easiest way is to think of something else. That is, to concentrate ones attention upon something that has nothing to do with that thought has no connection with that thought, like reading or some workgenerally something creative, some creative work. For instance, those who write, while they are writing (let us take simply a novelist), while he is writing, all other thoughts are gone, for he is concentrated on what he is doing. When he finishes writing, if he has no control, the other thoughts will return. But precisely when one is attacked by a thought, one can try to do some creative work; for example, the scientist could do some research work, a special study to discover something, something that is very absorbing; that is the easiest way. Naturally, those who have begun to control their thought can make a movement of Rejection; push aside the thought as one would a physical object. But that is more difficult and asks for a much greater mastery. If one can manage it, it is more active, in the see that if you reject that movement, that thought, if you chase it off effectively and constantly or almost repeatedly, finally it does not come any more. But in the other case, it can always return. That makes two methods.
The third means is to be able to bring down a sufficiently great light from above which will be the denial in the deeper see; that is, if the thought which comes is something dark (and especially if it comes from the subconscient or inconscient and is sustained by instinct), if one can bring down from above the light of a true knowledge, a higher power, and put that light upon the thought, one can manage to dissolve it or enlighten or transform itthis is the supreme method. This is still a little more difficult. But it can be done, and if one does it, one is curednot only does the thought not come back but the very cause is removed.
1954-09-22 - The supramental creation - Rajasic eagerness - Silence from above - Aspiration and rejection - Effort, individuality and ego - Aspiration and desire, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1954-09-22 - The supramental creation - Rajasic eagerness - Silence from above - Aspiration and Rejection - Effort, individuality and ego - Aspiration and desire
class:chapter
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By aspiration, the Rejection of the lower movements, a call to a higher force. If you do not accept certain movements, then naturally, when they find that they cant manifest, gradually they diminish in force and stop occurring. If you refuse to express everything that is of a lower kind, little by little the very thing disappears, and the consciousness is emptied of lower things. It is by refusing to give expression I mean not only in action but also in thought, in feeling. When impulses, thoughts, emotion come, if you refuse to express them, if you push them aside and remain in a state of inner aspiration and calm, then gradually they lose their force and stop coming. So the consciousness is emptied of its lower movements.
But for instance, when undesirable thoughts come, if you look at them, observe them, if you take pleasure in following them in their movements, they will never stop coming. It is the same thing when you have undesirable feelings or sensation: if you pay attention to them, concentrate on them or even look at them with a certain indulgence, they will never stop. But if you absolutely refuse to receive and express them, after some time they stop. You must be patient and very persistent.
1955-03-23 - Procedure for rejection and transformation - Learning by heart, true understanding - Vibrations, movements of the species - A cat and a Russian peasant woman - A cat doing yoga, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1955-03-23 - Procedure for Rejection and transformation - Learning by heart, true understanding - Vibrations, movements of the species - A cat and a Russian peasant woman - A cat doing yoga
class:chapter
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Here Sri Aurobindo says: As for the things in our nature that are thrown away from us by Rejection but come back, it depends on where you throw them. Very often there is a sort of procedure about it. What is this procedure, Sweet Mother?
It is what he describes later. He explains afterwards that what is in the mind is thrown out into the vital, what is in the higher vital is thrown out into the lower vital, and what is in the lower vital is thrown out into the physical, and what is in the physical is thrown out into the subconscient. He says itall this.
But I thought there was a procedure for Rejection?
No, this is the procedure, to reject always into a lower part of the being, and finally the last refuge, he says, is in the inconscient; and in order to get rid of something, to tell the truth, you must go right into the inconscient; if one pursues it there, it cannot go lower down. So there is only one solution for it, to transform itself.
1955-12-14 - Rejection of life as illusion in the old Yogas - Fighting the adverse forces - Universal and individual being - Three stages in Integral Yoga - How to feel the Divine Presence constantly, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1955-12-14 - Rejection of life as illusion in the old Yogas - Fighting the adverse forces - Universal and individual being - Three stages in Integral Yoga - How to feel the Divine Presence constantly
class:chapter
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It is a certain attitude which produces this. He says it earlier, doesnt he? He explains it. There is an attitude in which all material things appear to be not only not the expression of the Divine but incapable of becoming that and essentially opposed to the spiritual life. And so there is only one solutionit was that of the old Yogas, you know the total Rejection of life as not being able to participate in the spiritual life at all, the Rejection of material life. This is what he explains. He says that with this attitude, thats how one looks at life. He does not say that it is like that; he says that one looks at it, considers it like that; that it is the attitude of those who have completely separated life from the spirit, and who say that life is an illusion, a falsification, and that it is incapable of expressing the Divine.
Thats all?
1956-03-07 - Sacrifice, Animals, hostile forces, receive in proportion to consciousness - To be luminously open - Integral transformation - Pain of rejection, delight of progress - Spirit behind intention - Spirit, matter, over-simplified, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
object:1956-03-07 - Sacrifice, Animals, hostile forces, receive in proportion to consciousness - To be luminously open - Integral transformation - Pain of Rejection, delight of progress - Spirit behind intention - Spirit, matter, over-simplified
author class:The Mother
1956-09-19 - Power, predominant quality of vital being - The Divine, the psychic being, the Supermind - How to come out of the physical consciousness - Look life in the face - Ordinary love and Divine love, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For most aspirants the way of meditation, concentration, withdrawal from physical life, Rejection of physical activities is certainly easier than the way of action. But they leave the physical consciousness just as it is, without ever changing it, and unless one becomes like a sadhu or an ascetic who leaves behind all active life and remains in constant concentration or meditation, one achieves nothing at all. That is to say, an entire part of the being is never transformed. And for them the solution is not at all to transform it, it is simply to reject it, to get out of their body as quickly as possible. That is how yoga was conceived of formerly, for, obviously, it is much easier. But this is not what we want.
What we want is the transformation of the physical consciousness, not its Rejection.
And so, in this case, what Sri Aurobindo has recommended as the most direct and most total way is surrender to the Divinea surrender made more and more integral, progressively, comprising the physical consciousness and physical activities. And if one succeeds in this, then the physical, instead of being an obstacle, becomes a help.
1957-01-09 - God is essentially Delight - God and Nature play at hide-and-seek - Why, and when, are you grave?, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All those who have had the inner experience have had this experience, that the moment one re-establishes the union with the divine source, all suffering disappears. But there has been a very persistent movement, about which I spoke to you last week, which put at the source of creation not this essential divine Delight but desire. This delight of creation, self-manifestation, self-expression there is an entire line of seekers and sages who have considered it not as a delight but as a desire; the whole line of Buddhism is of this kind. And instead of seeing the solution in a Oneness which restores to us the essential Delight of the manifestation and the becoming, they consider that the goal and also the way are a total Rejection of all desire to be and a return to annihilation.
This conception amounts to an essential misunderstanding. The methods recommended for self-liberation are methods of development which can be very useful, but this conception of a world thats essentially bad, for it is the result of desire, and from which one must escape at all costs and as quickly as possible, has been the greatest and most serious distortion of all spiritual life in the history of mankind.
1958-03-26 - Mental anxiety and trust in spiritual power, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And yet, consciousness has been given to man so that he can progress, can discover what he doesnt know, develop into what he has not yet become; and so it may be said that there is a higher state than that of an immobile and static peace: it is a trust total enough for one to keep the will to progress, to preserve the effort for progress while ridding it of all anxiety, all care for results and consequences. This is one step ahead of the methods which may be called quietist, which are founded on the Rejection of all activity and a plunging into an immobility and inner silence, which forsake all life because it has been suddenly felt that without peace one cant have any inner realisation and, quite naturally, one thought that one couldnt have peace so long as one was living in outer conditions, in the state of anxiety in which problems are set and cannot be solved, for one does not have the knowledge to do so.
The next step is to face the problem, but with the calm and certitude of an absolute trust in the supreme Power which knows, and can make you act. And then, instead of abandoning action, one can act in a higher peace that is strong and dynamic.
1960 11 13? - 50, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is not a single sin that is not our sin. You have this experience when for some reason or otherdepending on the caseyou come into contact with the universal state of consciousness not in its limitless essence, but on any level of Matter. There is an atomic consciousness; there is a purely material consciousness; and there is, even more, a general psychological consciousness. When by going within, by a kind of withdrawal from the ego, you come into contact with this zone of consciousness, let us say, a terrestrial or collective human psychological zonethere is a difference, collective human is restrictive, whereas terrestrial includes many animal movements, even plant movements; but as in the present case the moral notion of guilt, sin, evil belongs exclusively to the human consciousness, we will say simply the collective human psychological consciousness when you come into contact with that through this identification, naturally you feel or see or know that you are capable of any human movement anywhere. It is to some extent a truth-consciousness this egoistic sense of what belongs and does not belong to you, of what you can do and cannot do, disappears at that time; you become aware that the fundamental structure of the human consciousness is such that any human being is capable of doing anything at all. And since you are in a truth-consciousness, at the same time you have the feeling that judgments or aversions, or Rejection, are absurd. Everything is potentially there. And if certain currents of forcewhich you usually cannot trace; you see them come and go, but as a rule their origin and direction are unknownif any one of these currents enters into you, it can make you do anything.
If you could always remain in this state of consciousness, after some timeprovided you maintained within you the flame of Agni, the flame of purification and progressyou would be able not only to prevent these movements from taking an active form in you and expressing themselves materially, but also to act on the very nature of the movement and transform it. But, of course, unless you have attained a very high degree of realisation, it will be practically impossible to maintain this state of consciousness for long. Almost immediately you fall back into the egoistic consciousness of the separate self. And then all the difficulties come back: the disgust, the revolt against certain things, the horror they arouse in you, etc.
1961 05 22?, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this is what Sri Aurobindo is fighting, for he too had this Christian education, he too had to struggle; and these Aphorisms are the result the flowering, as it wereof this necessity of fighting a subconscious formation. For that is what makes you ask such questions: How can God be weak? How can God be foolish? How? But there is nothing other than God, only He exists, there is nothing outside Him. And if something seems ugly to us, it is simply because He no longer wants it to exist. He is preparing the world so that this thing may no longer be manifested, so that the manifestation can move from that state to something else. So naturally, within us, we violently repulse everything that is about to go out of the active manifestation there is a movement of Rejection.
But it is Him. There is nothing but Him. This is what we should repeat to ourselves from morning to evening and from evening to morning, because we forget it at each moment.
1962 01 12, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Once and for all it swept away not only all the ordinary notions of morality, but everything that is considered here in India as necessary for the spiritual life. From this point of view it was very instructive First of all this kind of so-called ascetic purity. Ascetic purity is simply the Rejection of all vital movements; instead of taking up these movements and turning them towards the Divine, that is to say, instead of seeing the supreme Presence in them and letting the Supreme act freely on them, you tell Him, No, that is not your concern. He is not allowed to interfere with them.
As for the physical, it is an old story, everyone knows: the ascetics have always rejected it, but then they added the vital. Only the things that were classically recognised as sacred or permitted by religious tradition, as for example, the sanctity of marriage and things like that, were accepted, but to live freelyoh! that was incompatible with any religious life.
1970 06 04, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
535The Rejection of falsehood by the mind seeking after truth is one of the chief causes why mind cannot attain to the settled, rounded and perfect truth; not to escape falsehood is the effort of divine mind, but to seize the truth which lies masked behind even the most grotesque or far-wandering error.
What is the divine mind?
1f.lovecraft - The Battle that Ended the Century, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
fungi), was printed after repeated Rejections by the discriminating
editor of the Windy City Grab-Bagas a broadside by W. Peter Chef[,
1f.lovecraft - The Diary of Alonzo Typer, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
phenomena were privately printed after Rejection by many publishers. He
resigned from the Society for Psychical Research in 1902 after a series
1.jk - Otho The Great - Act II, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
Than your Rejection of Erminia.
To my appalling, I saw too good proof
1.ml - Realisation of Dreams and Mind, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
Lord Paindapa, you who practice yogic discipline! Your name has been prophesied by the devas; what a great wonder! Under the hand of glorious Advayalalita Are the vajra brothers and sisters whose minds do not differ. Headed by Sri Gunamati, Dakas who are sitting in the right hand row, listen to me! After them, the secret yoginis, Headed by the consort Sukhavajri, Dakinis who are sitting in the left hand row, listen to me! Generally, all Dharmas are illusion. Dreams are exalted as special illusion. Early in the night, dreams arise born from habitual patterns. There is nothing whatsoever to rely on there. At midnight, the deceptions of Mara appear. One should not trust in these. At dawn, there are prophecies by the devas. How wondrous, how great indeed! At the break of dawn this morning, The great lord master appeared And taught the Dharma which revealed the ultimate. This is the unforgettable memory of what Maitripa said: "In general, all Dharmas are mind. The Guru arises from mind. The Guru is nothing other than mind. Everything that appears is the nature of mind. This mind itself is primordially non-existent. In the natural state, unborn and innate, There is nothing to abandon by discursive effort. Rest at ease, naturally, without restriction. This can be shown by signs: A human corpse, an outcast, a dog, a pig, An infant, a madman, an elephant, A precious jewel, a blue lotus, Quicksilver, a deer, a lion, A Brahman, and a black antelope; did you see them?" Maitripa asked. The realization of the truth was shown by these signs: Not fixated on either samsara or Nirvana, Not holding acceptance or Rejection in one's being, Not hoping for fruition from others, Mind free from occupation and complexity, Not falling into the four extremes, Nonmeditation and nonwandering, Free from thought and speech, Beyond any analogy whatsoever. Through the kindness of the Guru, I realised these. Since the experience of these realisations has dawned, Mind and mental events have ceased, And space and insight are inseparable. Faults and virtues neither increase nor decrease. Bliss, emptiness, and luminosity are unceasing. Therefore, luminosity dawns beyond coming or going. This transmission of the innate, the pith of the view Through the sign meanings which reveal the unborn, I heard from the great lord master. The reason why I sing these words Is the insistent request of the honourable lords. I could not refuse the Dharma brothers and sisters. Dakinis, do not be jealous! Thus, this song was sung for the Dharma brothers and sisters headed by Paindapa at the Rinchen Tsul monastery in Nepal to show the meaning of the signs of mahamudra as revealed by Maitripa's appearance in a dream.
1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
The radical assumptions of this Discourse suggest to me, and in fact imply, certain important modifications of the Nebular Theory as given by Laplace. The efforts of the repulsive power I have considered as made for the purpose of preventing contact among the atoms, and thus as made in the ratio of the approach to contact -that is to say, in the ratio of condensation. In other words, Electricity, with its involute phaenomena, heat, light and magnetism, is to be understood as proceeding as condensation proceeds, and, of course, inversely as density proceeds, or the cessation to condense. Thus the Sun, in the process of its aggregation, must soon, in developing repulsion, have become excessively heated -perhaps incandescent: and we can perceive how the operation of discarding its rings must have been materially assisted by the slight incrustation of its surface consequent on cooling. Any common experiment shows us how readily a crust of the character suggested, is separated, through heterogeneity, from the interior mass. But, on every successive Rejection of the crust, the new surface would appear incandescent as before; and the period at which it would again become so far encrusted as to be readily loosened and discharged, may well be imagined as exactly coincident with that at which a new effort would be needed, by the whole mass, to restore the equilibrium of its two forces, disarranged through condensation. In other words: -by the time the electric influence (Repulsion) has prepared the surface for Rejection, we are to understand that the gravitating influence (Attraction) is precisely ready to reject it. Here, then, as everywhere, the Body and the Soul walk hand in hand.
See previous paragraph, "With the understanding of a sphere of atoms"
--
Let us now fancy, for the moment, that the ring first thrown off by the Sun -that is to say, the ring whose breaking-up constituted Neptune -did not, in fact, break up until the throwing-off of the ring out of which Uranus arose; that this latter ring, again, remained perfect until the discharge of that out of which sprang Saturn; that this latter, again, remained entire until the discharge of that from which originated Jupiter -and so on. Let us imagine, in a word, that no dissolution occurred among the rings until the final Rejection of that which gave birth to Mercury. We thus paint to the eye of the mind a series of coexistent concentric circles; and looking as well at them as at the processes by which, according to Laplace's hypothesis, they were constructed, we perceive at once a very singular analogy with the atomic strata and the process of the original irradiation as I have described it. Is it impossible that, on measuring the forces, respectively, by which each successive planetary circle was thrown off -that is to say, on measuring the successive excesses of rotation over gravitation which occasioned the successive discharges -we should find the analogy in question more decidedly confirmed? Is it improbable that we should discover these forces to have varied -as in the original radiation -proportional to the squares of the distances?
Our solar system, consisting, in chief, of one sun, with sixteen planets certainly, and possibly a few more, revolving about it at various distances, and attended by seventeen moons assuredly, but very probably by several others -is now to be considered as an example of the innumerable agglomerations which proceeded to take place throughout the Universal Sphere of atoms on withdrawal of the Divine Volition. I mean to say that our solar system is to be understood as affording a generic instance of these agglomerations, or, more correctly, of the ulterior conditions at which they arrived. If we keep our attention fixed on the idea of the utmost possible Relation as the Omnipotent design, and on the precautions taken to accomplish it through difference of form, among the original atoms, and particular inequidistance, we shall find it impossible to suppose for a moment that even any two of the incipient agglomerations reached precisely the same result in the end. We shall rather be inclined to think that no two stellar bodies in the Universe -whether suns, planets or moons -are particularly, while are generally, similar. Still less, then, can we imagine any two assemblages of such bodies -any two "systems" -as having more than a general resemblance. Our telescopes, at this point, thoroughly confirm our deductions. Taking our own solar system, then, as merely a loose or general type of all, we have so far proceeded in our subject as to survey the Universe under the aspect of a spherical space, throughout which, dispersed with merely general equability, exist a number of but generally similar systems.
1.rb - A Pretty Woman, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
Whence, Rejection
Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps?
1.whitman - Song of Myself, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, Rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them I come and I depart.
1.whitman - Song Of Myself- VIII, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, Rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of themI come and I depart.
1.ww - 8 - The little one sleeps in its cradle, #Song of Myself, #unset, #Zen
Original Language English The little one sleeps in its cradle, I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies with my hand. The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, I peeringly view them from the top. The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom, I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen. The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot soles, talk of the promenaders, The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor, The snow sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snowballs, The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of roused mobs, The flap of the curtained litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital, The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall, The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the center of the crowd, The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes, What groans of overfed or half-starved who fall sunstruck or in fits, What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes, What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls restrained by decorum, Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, Rejections with convex lips, I mind them or the show or resonance of them -- I come and I depart. [2333.jpg] -- from Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman <
2.01 - Habit 1 Be Proactive, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
Psychic determinism basically says your parents did it to you. Your upbringing, your childhood experience essentially laid out your personal tendencies and your character structure. That's why you're afraid to be in front of a group. It's the way your parents brought you up. You feel terribly guilty if you make a mistake because you "remember" deep inside the emotional scripting when you were very vulnerable and tender and dependent. You "remember" the emotional punishment, the Rejection, the comparison with somebody else when you didn't perform as well as expected.
Environmental determinism basically says your boss is doing to you -- or your spouse, or that bratty teenager, or your economic situation, or national policies. Someone or something in your environment is responsible for your situation.
2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, there is no Rejection of life; you can say, life is accepted in this Yoga. But we regard the inner life as more important, the outer only as an expression, a form, of it.
Disciple: Can one not take up the outer action say, political in the Yoga?
--
(After a pause) In this matter, you must resort to simple thinking and simple action, leaving all mental complications and Shastric injunctions. You must not allow the intellect to play with them. Your ideas about Shastric injunctions are nothing else but justifications. Really it is the lower play of the vital being. In this Rejection of the lower nature you ought to be ever alert, vigilant.
The ideal relation between man and woman in this Yoga you cannot at present understand. You have, first, to make yourself fit for it. Your own ideas of married life and Shastra etc., are dangerous and if you follow these ideas there is every chance of your fall from the Yoga. All of them are mental constructions. The first thing in a case where both man and woman are aspirants is to help each other in Sadhana. They must exchange their forces and help each other to rise into the Higher Consciousness.
--
You write about passivity and activity: you have to understand and know what they are. When one begins Yoga, naturally, all the forces on the mental, and especially on the vital plane, that are hostile to the Siddhi of this Yoga, are bound to rise and one must be active in rejecting them what the Gita calls apramatta because the Purusha is not only sk but anumant, one who gives consent. This activity of Rejection must be always there. Even if you fall you must rise up again and again and fight.
Passivity merely means a calm inactive attitude of mind keeping it open to the higher influence and ready to accept the light, power, knowledge, Ananda that come from Above. It must be a prayerful mood so that the knowledge may come down. When the higher knowledge comes one ought not to allow the mind to get active with it, but must allow that knowledge to come more and more by keeping the mind passive.
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
With the Rejection of this theory of an originally perfect
humanity, the tradition of an infallible inner conscience which
2.03 - The Eternal and the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We have the perfect union in His being and can absorb ourselves in it at any time, but we have also this other differentiated unity and can emerge into it and act freely in it at any time without losing oneness: for we have merged the ego and are absolved from the exclusive stresses of our mentality. Then for peace and rest? But we have the peace and rest by virtue of our unity with Him, even as the Divine possesses for ever His eternal calm in the midst of His eternal action. Then for the mere joy of getting rid of all differentiation? But that differentiation has its divine purpose: it is a means of greater unity, not as in the egoistic life a means of division; for we enjoy by it our unity with our other selves and with God in all, which we exclude by our Rejection of His multiple being. In either experience it is the Divine in the individual possessing and enjoying in one case the Divine in His pure unity or in the other the Divine in that and in the unity of the cosmos; it is not the absolute Divine recovering after having lost His unity. Certainly, we may prefer the absorption in a pure exclusive unity or a departure into a supracosmic transcendence, but there is in the spiritual truth of the Divine Existence no compelling reason why we should not participate in this large possession and bliss of His universal being which is the fulfilment of our individuality.
But we see farther that it is not solely and ultimately the cosmic being into which our individual being enters but something in which both are unified. As our individualisation in the world is a becoming of that Self, so is the world too a becoming of that Self. The world-being includes always the individual being; therefore these two becomings, the cosmic and the individual, are always related to each other and in their practical relation mutually dependent. But we find that the individual being also comes in the end to include the world in its consciousness, and since this is not by an abolition of the spiritual individual, but by his coming to his full, large and perfect self-consciousness, we must suppose that the individual always included the cosmos, and it is only the surface consciousness which by ignorance failed to possess that inclusion because of its self-limitation in ego. But when we speak of the mutual inclusion of the cosmic and the individual, the world in me, I in the world, all in me, I in all,
2.03 - THE MASTER IN VARIOUS MOODS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Lakshminarayan Mrwri, a Vedantist, used to come here very often. One day he saw a dirty sheet on my bed and said: 'I shall invest ten thousand rupees in your name. The interest will enable you to pay your expenses.' The moment he uttered these words, I fell unconscious, as if struck by a stick. Regaining consciousness I said to him: 'If you utter such words again, you had better not come here. It is impossible for me to touch money. It is also impossible for me to keep it near me.' He was a very clever fellow. He said: 'Then you too have the idea of acceptance and Rejection. In that case you haven't attained Perfect Knowledge.' 'My dear sir, I said, 'I haven't yet gone that far.' (All laugh.) Lakshminarayan then wanted to leave the money with Hriday. I said to him: 'That will not do. If you leave it with Hriday, then I shall instruct him to spend it as I wish. If he does not comply, I shall be angry. The very contact of money is bad. No, you can't leave it with Hriday.' Won't an object kept near a mirror be reflected in it?"
Liberation
2.04 - The Divine and the Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
conscious nature, even when rejected by the parts of us which these things torture, an attachment to this experience of division, a clinging to the divided way of being which prevents the excision of these unhappinesses or their Rejection and removal.
For since the principle of Consciousness-Force and Ananda is at the root of all manifestation, nothing can endure if it has not a will in our nature, a sanction of the Purusha, a sustained pleasure in some part of the being, even though it be a secret or a perverse pleasure, to keep it in continuance.
--
Rejection of them or acceptance; it extracts a divine meaning and use from our most poignant sufferings, difficulties, misfortunes.
Nothing but this All-Delight could dare or bear to impose such experiences on itself or on us; nothing else could turn them thus to its own utility and our spiritual profit. So too nothing but an inalienable harmony of being inherent in an inalienable unity of being would throw out so many harshest apparent discords and yet force them to its purpose so that in the end they are unable to do anything else but to serve and secure, and even themselves change into elements that constitute, a growing universal rhythm and ultimate harmony. At every turn it is the divine Reality which we can discover behind that which we are yet compelled by the nature of the superficial consciousness in which we dwell to call undivine and in a sense are right in using that appellation; for these appearances are a veil over the Divine Perfection, a veil necessary for the present, but not at all the true and complete figure.
2.05 - Renunciation, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
How far shall this renunciation go ? what shall be its nature ? and in what way shall it be applied? There is an established tradition long favoured by great religious teachings and by men of profound spiritual experience that renunciation must not only be complete as a discipline but definite and final as an end and that it shall fall nothing short of the renunciation of life itself and of our mundane existence. Many causes have contri buted to the growth of this pure, lofty and august tradition. There is first the profounder cause of the radical opposition between the sullied and imperfect nature of life in the world as it now is in the present stage of our human evolution and the nature of spiritual living; and this opposition has led to the entire Rejection of world-existence as a lie, an insanity of the soul, a troubled and unhappy dream or at best a flawed, specious and almost worthless good, or to its characterisation as a kingdom of the world, the flesh and the devil, and therefore for the divinely led and divinely attracted soul only a place of ordeal and preparation or at best a play of the All-existence, a game of cross-purposes which He tires of and abandons. A second cause is the soul's hunger for personal salvation, for escape into some farther or farthest height of unalloyed bliss and peace untroubled by the labour and the struggle; or else it is its unwillingness to return from the ecstasy of the divine embrace into the lower field of work and service. But there are other slighter causes incidental to spiritual experience, -- strong feeling and practical proof of the great difficulty, which we willingly exaggerate into an impossibility, of combining the life of works and action with spiritual peace and the life of realisation; or else the joy which the mind comes to take in the mere act and state of renunciation, -- as it comes indeed to take joy in anything that it has attained or to which it has inured itself, -- and the sense of peace and deliverance which is gained by indifference to the world and to the objects of man's desire. Lowest causes of all are the weakness that shrinks from the struggle, the disgust and disappointment of the soul baffied by the great cosmic labour, the selfishness that cares not what becomes of those left behind us so long as we personally can be free from the monstrous ever-circling wheel of death and rebirth, the indifference to the cry that rises up from a labouring humanity.
For the Sadhaka of an integral Yoga none of these reasons are valid. With weakness and selfishness, however spiritual in their guise or trend, he can have no dealings; a divine strength and courage and a divine compassion and helpfulness are the very stuff of that which he would be, they are that very nature of the Divine which he would take upon himself as a robe of spiritual light and beauty. The revolvings of the great wheel bring to him no sense of terror or giddiness; he rises above it in hia soul and knows from above their divine law and their divine purpose. The difficulty of harmonising the divine life with human living, of being in God and yet living in man is the very difficulty that he is set here to solve and not to shun. He has learned that the joy, the peace and the deliverance are an imperfect crown and no real possession if they do not form a state secure in itself, inalienable to the soul, not dependent on aloofness and inaction but firm in the storm and the race and the battle, unsullied whether by the joy of the world or by its suffering. The ecstasy of the divine embrace will not abandon him because he obeys the impulse of divine love for God in humanity; or if it seems to draw back from him for a while, he knows by experience that it is to try and test him still farther so that some imperfection in his own way of meeting it may fall away from him. Personal salvation he does not seek except as a necessity for the human fulfilment and because he who is himself in bonds cannot easily free others, -- though to God nothing is impossible; for a heaven of personal joys he has no hankerings even as a hell of personal sufferings has for him no terrors. If there is an opposition between the spiritual life and that of the world, it is that gulf which he is here to bridge, that opposition which he is here to change into a harmony. If the world is ruled by the flesh and the devil, all the more reason that the children of Immortality should be here to conquer it for God and the Spirit. If life is an insanity, then there are so many million souls to whom there must be brought the light of divine reason; if a dream, yet is it real within itself to so many dreamers who must be brought either to dream nobler dreams or to awaken; or if a lie, then the truth has to be given to the deluded. Nor, if it be said that only by the luminous example of escape from the world can we help the world, shall we accept that dogma, since the contrary example of great Avataras is there to show that not only by rejecting the life of the world as it is can we help, but also and more by accepting and uplifting it. And if it is a play of the All-Existence, then we may well consent to play out our part in it with grace and courage, well take delight in the game along with our divine Playmate.
But, most of all, the view we have taken of the world forbids the renunciation of world-existence so long as we can be anything to God and man in their working-out of its purposes. We regard the world not as an invention of the devil or a self-delusion of the soul, but as a manifestation of the Divine, although as yet a partial because a progressive and evolutionary manifestation. Therefore for us renunciation of life cannot be the goal of life nor Rejection of the world the object for which the world was created. We seek to realise our unity with God, but for us that realisation involves a complete and absolute recognition of our unity with man and we cannot cut the two asunder. To use Christian language, the Son of God is also the Son of Man and both elements are necessary to the complete Christhood; or to use an Indian form of thought, the divine Narayana of whom the universe is only one ray is revealed and fulfilled in man; the complete man is Nara-Narayana and in that completeness he symbolises the supreme mystery of existence.
Therefore renunciation must be for us merely an instrument and not an object; nor can it be the only or the chief instrument since our object is the fulfilment of the Divine in the human being, a positive aim which cannot be reached by negative means. The negative means can only be for the removal of that which stands in the way of the positive fulfilment. It must be a renunciation, a complete renunciation of all that is other than and opposed to the divine self-fulfilment and a progressive renunciation of all that is a lesser or only a partial achievement. We shall have no attachment to our life in, the world; if that attachment exists, we must renounce it and renounce utterly; but neither shall we have any attachment to the escape from the world, to salvation, to the great self-annihilation; if that attachment exists, that also we must renounce and renounce it utterly.
--
It will be seen that the scope we give to the idea of renunciation is different from the meaning currently attached to it. Currently its meaning is self-denial, inhibition of pleasure, Rejection of the objects of pleasure. Self-denial is a necessary discipline for the soul of man, because his heart is ignorantly attached; inhibition of pleasure is necessary because his sense is caught and clogged in the mud-honey of sensuous satisfactions; Rejection of the objects of pleasure is imposed because the mind fixes on the object and will not leave it to go beyond it and within itself. If the mind of man were not thus ignorant, attached, bound even in its restless inconstancy, deluded by the forms of things, renunciation would not have been needed; the soul could have travelled on the path of delight, from the lesser to the greater, from joy to diviner joy. At present that is not practicable. It must give up from within everything to which it is attached in order that it may gain that which they are in their reality. The external renunciation is not the essential, but even that is necessary for a time, indispensable in many things and sometimes useful in all; we may even, say that a complete external renunciation is a stage through which the soul must pass at some period of its progress, -- though always it should be without those self-willed violences and fierce self-torturings which are an offence to the Divine seated within us. But in the end this renunciation or self-denial is always an instrument and the period for its use passes. The Rejection of the object ceases to be necessary when the object can no longer ensnare us because what the soul enjoys is no longer the object as an object but the Divine which it expresses; the inhibition of pleasure is no longer needed when the soul no longer seeks pleasure but possesses the delight of the Divine in all things equally without the need of a personal or physical possession of the thing itself; self-denial loses its field when the soul no longer claims anything, but obeys consciously the will of the one Self in all beings. It is then that we are freed from the Law and released into the liberty of the Spirit.
We must be prepared to leave behind on the path not only that which we stigmatise as evil, but that which seems to us to be good, yet is not the one good. There are things which were beneficial, helpful, which seemed perhaps at one time the one thing desirable, and yet once their work is done, once they are attained, they become obstacles and even hostile forces when we are called to advance beyond them. There are desirable states of the soul which it is dangerous to rest in after they have been mastered, because then we do not march on to the wider kingdoms of God beyond. Even divine realisations must not be clung to, if they are not the divine realisation in its utter essentiality and completeness. We must rest at nothing less than the All, nothing short of the utter transcendence. And if we can thus be free in the spirit, we shall find out all the wonder of God's workings; we .shall find that in inwardly renouncing everything we have lost nothing. "By all this abandoned thou shalt come to enjoy the All." For everything is kept for us and restored to us but with a wonderful change and transfiguration into the All-Good and the All-Beautiful, the All-Light and the All-Delight of Him who is for ever pure and infinite and the mystery and the miracle that ceases not through the ages.
2.06 - The Synthesis of the Disciplines of Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Still, the Self goes on with its imperishable aspect of immanence, its immutable aspect of divine envelopment, its endless trick of becoming each thing and all things; our detection of the cheat and our withdrawal do not seem to affect one tittle either the Self or the universe. Must we not then know also what it is that thus persists superior to our acceptance and Rejection and too great, too eternal to be affected by it? Here too there must be some invincible reality at work and the integrality of Knowledge demands that we shall see and realise it; otherwise it may prove that our own knowledge and not the Lord in the universe was the cheat and the illusion. Therefore we must concentrate again and see and realise also this which persists so sovereignly and must know the Self as no other than the Supreme Soul which is the Lord of Nature, the upholder of cosmic existence by whose sanction it proceeds, whose will compels its multitudinous actions and determines its perpetual cycles. And we must yet concentrate once again and see and realise and must know the Self as the one Existence who is both the Soul of all and the Nature . of all, at once Purusha and prakriti and so able both to express himself in all these forms of things and to be all these formations. Otherwise we have excluded what the Self does not exclude and made a wilful choice in our knowledge.
The old ascetic Path of Knowledge admitted the unity of things and the concentration on all these aspects of the one Existence, but it made a distinction and a hierarchy. The Self that becomes all these forms of thing is the Virat or universal Soul; the Self that creates all these forms is Hiranyagarbha, the luminous pr creatively perceptive Soul; the Self that contains all these things involved in it is Prajna, the conscious Cause or originally determining Soul; beyond all these is the Absolute who permits all this unreality, but has no dealings with it. Into That we must withdraw and have no farther dealings with the universe, since Knowledge means the final Knowledge, and therefore these lesser realisations must fall away from us or be lost in That. But evidently from our point of view these are practical distinctions made by the mind which have a value for certain purposes, but no ultimate value. Our view of the world insists on unity; the universal Self is not different from the perceptive and creative, nor the perceptive from the causal, nor the causal from the Absolute, but it is one "Self-being which has become all becomings," and which is not any other than the Lord who manifests Himself as all these individual existences nor the Lord any other than the sole-existing Brahman who verily is all this that we can see, sense, live or mentalise. That Self, Lord, Brahman we would know that we may realise our unity with it and with all that it manifests and in that unity we would live. For we demand of knowledge that it shall unite; the knowledge that divides must always be a partial knowing good for certain practical purposes; the knowledge that unites is the knowledge.
2.08 - Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For it would be irrational to suppose that the superconscient Knowledge is so aloof and separate as to be incapable of knowing Time and Space and Causality and their works; for then it would be only another kind of Ignorance, the blindness of the absolute being answering to the blindness of the temporal being as positive pole and negative pole of a conscious existence which is incapable of knowing all itself, but either knows only itself and does not know its works or knows only its works and does not know itself, - an absurdly symmetrical equipollence in mutual Rejection. From the larger point of view, the ancient
Vedantic, we must conceive of ourselves not as a dual being, but as one conscious existence with a double phase of consciousness: one of them is conscient or partly conscient in our mind, the other superconscient to mind; one, a knowledge situated in
2.09 - Memory, Ego and Self-Experience, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Time. The surface consciousness is constantly adding to its experience or rejecting from its experience, and by every addition it is modified and by every Rejection also it is modified; although that deeper self which supports and contains this mutation remains unmodified, the outer or superficial self is constantly developing its experience so that it can never say of itself absolutely, "I am the same that I was a moment ago." Those who live in this surface Time-self and have not the habit of drawing back inward towards the immutable or the capacity of dwelling in it, are even incapable of thinking of themselves apart from this ever selfmodifying mental experience. That is for them their self and it is easy for them, if they look with detachment at its happenings, to agree with the conclusion of the Buddhist Nihilists that this self is in fact nothing but a stream of idea and experience and mental action, the persistent flame which is yet never the same flame, and to conclude that there is no such thing as a real self, but only a flow of experience and behind it Nihil: there is experience of knowledge without a Knower, experience of being without an Existent; there are simply a number of elements, parts of a flux without a real whole, which combine to create the illusion of a Knower and Knowledge and the Known, the illusion of an Existent and existence and the experience of existence.
Or they can conclude that Time is the only real existence and
2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: But the idea in India is that Yoga is a work of abhysa constant practice. How can one man do Sadhana for another? Whatever may be the idea in other yogas, in our Yoga, at any rate, to leave the burden to the Guru would defeat its own aim. Each must work out his way by himself. What the Guru can do at the most is that he can put the Power. But the Rejection and the transformation are to be done by the sadhak himself. He can get the help when he needs. And when the Guru can put the Power one may not be able to hold it, or one may even spend it away uselessly. Everyone has to work out his way.
A suggestion was made to the newcomer to stick to his Vaishnava Guru from whom he had got the temporary experience of peace. His objections to the Guru were: 1. That he was a Vaishnava. 2. That he did not generally speak and explain. 3. That he was not impressive-looking. This was reported to Sri Aurobindo.
2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
is a great disturber of science!--Incredible! Knowledge, _the Rejection
of the sacerdotal yoke,_ nevertheless increases.--So the old God
2.1.02 - Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Works done in this spirit are quite as effective as bhakti or contemplation. One gets by the Rejection of desire, rajas and ego a quietude and purity into which the Peace ineffable can descend; one gets by the dedication of ones will to the Divine, by the merging of ones will in the Divine Will the death of ego and the enlarging into the cosmic consciousness or else the uplifting into what is above the cosmic; one experiences the separation of Purusha from Prakriti and is liberated from the shackles of the outer nature; one becomes aware of ones inner being and feels the outer as an instrument; one feels the universal Force doing ones works and the Self or Purusha watching or witness but free; one feels all ones works taken from one and done by the universal or the supreme Mother or by the Divine Power controlling and acting from behind the heart. By constant reference of all ones will and works to the Divine, love and adoration grow, the psychic being comes forward. By the reference to the Power above we can come to feel it above and its descent and the opening to an increasing consciousness and knowledge. Finally works, bhakti and knowledge join together and self-perfection becomes possiblewhat we call the transformation of the nature.
These results certainly do not come all at once; they come more or less slowly, more or less completely according to the condition and growth of the being. There is no royal road to the divine realisation.
2.10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
feels and acts upon life through us, the subtle-physical being that secretly receives and responds to the contacts of things through our body and its organs. Our surface thought, feeling, emotion is a complexity and confusion of impulsions from within and impacts from outside us; our reason, our organising intelligence can impose on it only an imperfect order: but here within we find the separate sources of our mental, our vital and our physical energisms and can see clearly the pure operations, the distinct powers, the composing elements of each and their interplay in a clear light of self-vision. We find that the contradictions and the struggles of our surface consciousness are largely due to the contrary or mutually discordant tendencies of our mental, vital and physical parts opposing and unreconciled with each other and these again to the discord of many different inner possibilities of our being and even of different personalities on each level in us which are behind the intermixed disposition and differing tendencies of our surface nature. But while on the surface their action is mixed together, confused and conflicting, here in our depths they can be seen and worked upon in their independent and separate nature and action and a harmonisation of them by the mental being in us, leader of the life and body,5 - or, better, by the central psychic entity, - is not so difficult, provided we have the right psychic and mental will in the endeavour: for if it is with the vital-ego motive that we make the entry into the subliminal being, it may result in serious dangers and disaster or at the least an exaggeration of ego, self-affirmation and desire, an enlarged and more powerful ignorance instead of an enlarged and more powerful knowledge. Moreover, we find in this inner or subliminal being the means of directly distinguishing between what rises from within and what comes to us from outside, from others or from universal Nature, and it becomes possible to exercise a control, a choice, a power of willed reception, Rejection and selection, a clear power of self-building and harmonisation which we do not possess or can operate very imperfectly in our composed surface personality but which is the prerogative of
5 manomayah pranasarraneta - Mundaka Upanishad, 2. 2. 7.
2.11 - The Boundaries of the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
We fasten only upon a very limited number of the mental sensations and perceptions of self and things which come up into our surface consciousness in our continual present: of these again memory saves up only a scanty part from the oblivious gulf of the past; of the storings of memory our intelligence utilises only a small portion for co-ordinated knowledge, will utilises a still smaller percentage for action. A narrow selection, a large Rejection or reservation, a miserly-spendthrift system of waste of material and unemployment of resources and a scanty and disorderly modicum of useful spending and utilisable balance seems to be the method of Nature in our conscious becoming even as it is in the field of the material universe. But this is only in appearance, for it would be a wholly untrue account to say that all that is not thus saved up and utilised is destroyed, becomes null and has passed away ineffectually and in vain. A great part of it has been quietly used by Nature herself to form us and actuates that sufficiently large mass of our growth and becoming and action for which our conscious memory, will and intelligence are not responsible. A still greater part is used by her as a store from which she draws and which she utilises, while we ourselves have utterly forgotten the origin and provenance of this material which we find ourselves employing with a deceptive sense of creation; for we imagine we are creating this new material of our work, when we are only combining results out of that which we have forgotten but Nature in us has remembered. If we admit rebirth as part of her system, we shall realise that all experience has its use; for all experience counts in this prolonged building and nothing is rejected except what has exhausted its utility and would be a burden on the future.
A judgment from what appears now in our conscious surface is fallacious: for when we study and understand, we perceive that
2.11 - The Modes of the Self, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And if we regard existence from the standpoint of the possible eternal and infinite relations of this One from whom all things proceed, these Many of whom the One is the essence and the origin and this Energy, Power, or Nature through which the relations of the One and the Many are maintained, we shall see a certain justification even for the dualist philosophies and religions which seem to deny most energetically the unity of beings and to make an unbridgeable differentiation between the Lord and His creatures. If in their grosser forms these religions aim only at the ignorant joys of the lower heavens, yet there is a far higher and profounder sense in which we may appreciate the cry of the devotee poet when in a homely and vigorous metaphor he claimed the right of the soul to enjoy for ever the ecstasy of its embrace of the Supreme. "I do not want to become sugar," he wrote, "I want to eat sugar." However strongly we found ourselves on the essential identity of the one Self in all, we need not regard that cry as the mere aspiration of a certain kind of spiritual sensuousness or the Rejection by an attached and ignorant soul of the pure and high austerity of the supreme Truth. On the contrary, it aims in its positive part at a deep and mysterious truth of Being which no human language can utter, of which human reason can give no adequate account, to which the heart has the key and which no pride of the soul of knowledge insisting on its own pure austerity can abolish. But that belongs properly to the summit of the path of Devotion and there we shall have again to return to it.
The Sadhaka of an integral Yoga will take an integral view of his goal and seek its integral realisation. The Divine has many essential modes of His eternal self-manifestation, possesses and finds Himself on many planes and through many poles of His being; to each mode its purpose, to each plane or pole its fulfilment both in the apex and the supreme scope of the eternal Unity. It is necessarily through the individual Self that we must arrive at the One, for that is the basis of all our experience. By Knowledge we arrive at identity with the One; for there is, m spite of the Dualist, an essential identity by which we can plunge into our Source and free ourselves from all bondage to individuality and even from all bondage to universality. Nor is the experience of that identity a gain for knowledge only or for the pure state of abstract being. The height of all our action also, we have seen, is the immersion of ourselves in the Lord through unity with the divine Will or Conscious-Power by the way of works; the height of love is the rapturous immersion of ourselves in unity of ecstatic delight with the object of our love and adoration. But again for divine works in the world the individual Self converts itself into a centre of consciousness through which the divine Will, one with the divine Love and Light, pours itself out in the multiplicity of the universe. We arrive in the same way at our unity with all our fellow-beings through the identity of this self with the Supreme and with the self in all others. At the same time in the action of Nature we preserve by it as soul-form of the One a differentiation which enables us to preserve relations of difference in Oneness with other beings and with the Supreme Himself. The relations will necessarily be very different in essence and spirit from those which we had when we lived entirely in the Ignorance and Oneness was a mere name or a struggling aspiration of imperfect love, sympathy or yearning. Unity will be the law, difference will be simply for the various enjoyment of that unity. Neither descending again into that plane of division which clings to the separation of the ego-sense nor attached to an exclusive seeking for pure identity which cannot have to do with any play of difference, we shall embrace and reconcile the two poles of being where they meet in the infinity of the Highest.
2.1.2 - The Vital and Other Levels of Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
You may have all the mental knowledge in the world and yet be impotent to face vital difficulties. Courage, faith, sincerity towards the Light, Rejection of opposite suggestions and adverse voices are there the true help. Then only can knowledge itself be at all effective.
Not mental control but some descent of a control from above the mind is the power demanded in the realisation. This control derived eventually from the supermind is a control by the Divine Power.
2.13 - On Psychology, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, of course. Even when there is the Rejection, something very obscure in the vital and the physical being takes pleasure in it.
Disciple: Why should I accept one movement of the Infinite and reject another? What is the criterion?
2.1.3 - Wrong Movements of the Vital, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is mostly when the sadhana condition is interrupted that the vital becomes agitated or impatient and restless. Instead of remaining quiet and waiting or calling down the real push from above, it begins to get vexed and restless and begins to ask questions: Why this? why that? These things do not mean that you are going astrayit means only that these defects are still not worked out, that is all. Also the old vital mental egoism rises up and if the answers do not please it, it becomes challenging, disputatious, insistent on its own point of view. These are old defects which are part of the external nature and therefore difficult to root out. You must learn to recognise them and get rid of them by a quiet Rejection and disuse.
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For the dissatisfaction of the vital, the only remedy is Rejection and refusal to identify yourself with it. For the inertia the remedy is not to absorb yourself in thoughts about it, but to turn upwards and call the Light and Force to come into it.
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The outward revolt is the refusal of discipline and obedience the inward revolt is of many kinds, it may take many forms, e.g. a revolt of the vital against the Mother, a revolt of the mind against the Truth, a Rejection of the spiritual life, a demand to enthrone the ego as the Divine or to serve something that flatters the vital ego and supports its demands and call that the Divine, a response to vital suggestions of distrust, despair, self-destruction or departure and many others.
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These wrong movements [doubt, depression, sadness, hostility towards the Mother] belong to the universal vital Nature, but the vital of man also shares in them, makes itself a centre and field of the play of these wrong forces: in that sense they are in you. But by constant Rejection they are pushed out; you feel them no longer rising in you but coming from outside. The vital still admits them because it is not yet pure of the old habit of response. You have to persist till they are entirely foreign to your nature and no longer get admittance.
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After each crisis there is something gained, if there has been a victory and Rejection. The gain is to externalise the vital disturbance, so that even if it returns it will be felt so much an outside force that the observing consciousness (mental, higher vital) cannot be disturbed. If you keep that, it will be an immense advance.
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Return of Vital Movements after Rejection
It was evidently not the action of something that is rooted still within, but an old movement returning from outside (from the universal Nature) to which something in the vital still responds by force of habit, force of accustomed recurrence. This is shown by the fact that you felt nothing at the timeonly afterwards; also by the alternations of quiet and unrest after calling the Force, as if of something losing its hold and then trying to get it back and hold on still. Things thrown out always come back like that relying on the old habit of response in the stuff of the nature,the old vibration. By throwing it out whenever it comes, in the end the part which responds begins to understand that it must not and is gradually or quickly liberated from the habit.
2.1.4 - The Lower Vital Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The lower vital in most human beings is full of grave defects and of movements that respond to hostile forces. A constant psychic opening, a persistent Rejection of these influences, a separation of oneself from all hostile suggestions and the inflow of the calm, light, peace, purity of the Mothers power would eventually free the system from the siege.
What is needed is to be quiet and more and more quiet, to look on these influences as something not yourself which has intruded, to separate yourself from it and deny it and to abide in a quiet confidence in the Divine Power. If your psychic being asks for the Divine and your mind is sincere and calls for liberation from the lower nature and from all hostile forces and if you can call the Mothers power into your heart and rely upon it more than on your own strength, this siege will in the end be driven away from you and strength and peace take its place.
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There is only one way of escape from this siege of the lower vital nature. It is the entire Rejection of all egoistic vital demand, claim and desire and the replacement of the dissatisfied vital urge by the purity of psychic aspiration. Not the satisfaction of these vital clamours nor, either, an ascetic retirement is the true solution, but the surrender of the vital being to the Divine and a single-minded consecration to the supreme Truth into which desire and demand cannot enter. For the nature of the supreme Truth is Light and Ananda, and where desire and demand are there can be no Ananda.
It is not the vital demand but the psychic urge that alone can bring the nature towards the supramental transformation; for it alone can change the mental and vital and show them their own true movement. But constantly the vital demand is being taken for the psychic aspiration; and yet the difference is clear. In the psychic aspiration there are none of these reactions; there is no revolt, no justification of revolt: for the psychic aspires through inner union with the Divine and surrender. It does not question and challenge, but seeks to understand through unity with the Divine Will. It does not ask for small personal satisfactions, but finds its satisfaction in the growth of the Truth within the being; what it seeks and finds is not any indulgence of a vital and physical claim, but the true nearness which consists in the constant presence of the Divine in the heart and the rule of the Divine in all the nature. The cry of the psychic is always, Let the Truth prevail, let Thy will be done and not mine. But the clamour of the vital is the very opposite: it calls to the Divine, Let my will be Thine; obey my insistences, satisfy my desires, then only will I seek and accept Thee, for then only will I consent to see the Divine in Thee. It is hardly necessary to say which is the way to the Truth or which the right solution of any struggle in the nature.
2.14 - The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Consciousness in its acquisition of knowledge proceeds from the known to the unknown; it builds a structure of acquired experience, memories, impressions, judgments, a composite mental plan of things which is of the nature of a shifting and ever modifiable fixity. In the reception of new knowledge, what comes in to be received is judged in the light of past knowledge and fitted into the structure; if it cannot properly fit, it is either dovetailed in anyhow or rejected: but the existing knowledge and its structures or standards may not be applicable to the new object or new field of knowledge, the fitting may be a misfitting or the Rejection may be an erroneous response. To misprision and wrong interpretation of facts, there is added misapplication of knowledge, miscombination, misconstruction, misrepresentation, a complicated machinery of mental error. In all this enlightened obscurity of our mental parts a secret intuition is at work, a truth-urge that corrects or pushes the intelligence to correct what is erroneous, to labour towards a true picture of things and a true interpretative knowledge. But intuition itself is limited in the human mind by mental misprision of its intimations and is unable to act in its own right; for whether it be physical, vital or mental intuition, it has to present itself in order to be received, not nude and pure, but garbed with a mental coating or entirely enveloped in an ample mental vesture;
The Origin of Falsehood and Evil
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But how is this evolutionary intention in Nature to fulfil itself, by what power, means, impulsion, what principle and process of selection and harmonisation? The method adopted by the mind of man through the ages has been always a principle of selection and Rejection, and this has taken the forms of a religious sanction, a social or moral rule of life or an ethical ideal. But this is an empirical means which does not touch the root of the problem because it has no vision of the cause and origin of the malady it attempts to cure; it deals with the symptoms, but deals with them perfunctorily, not knowing what function they serve in the purpose of Nature and what it is in the mind and life that supports them and keeps them in being. Moreover, human good and evil are relative and the standards erected by ethics are uncertain as well as relative: what is forbidden by one religion or another, what is regarded as good or bad by social opinion, what is thought useful to society or noxious to it, what some temporary law of man allows or disallows, what is or is considered helpful or harmful to self or others, what accords with this or that ideal, what is prompted or discouraged by an instinct which we call conscience, - an amalgam of all these view-points is the determining heterogeneous idea, constitutes the complex substance, of morality; in all of them there is the constant mixture of truth and half-truth and error which pursues all the activities of our limiting mental Knowledge-Ignorance. A mental control over our vital and physical desires and instincts, over our personal and social action, over our dealings with others is indispensable to us as human beings, and morality creates a standard by which we can guide ourselves and establish a customary control; but the control is always imperfect and it is an expedient, not a solution: man remains always what he is and has ever been, a mixture of good and evil, sin and virtue, a mental ego with an imperfect comm and over his mental, vital and physical nature.
The endeavour to select, to retain from our consciousness and action all that seems to us good and reject all that seems to
2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is, then, in the conception or the realisation of the truth of the Absolute no inherent inevitable consequence of a Rejection or a dissolution of the truth of the universe. The idea of an essentially unreal universe manifested somehow by an inexplicable Power of illusion, the Absolute Brahman regarding it not or aloof and not affecting it even as it is unaffected by it, is at bottom a carrying over, an imposing or imputation, adhyaropa, of an incapacity of our mental consciousness to That so as to limit it. Our mental consciousness, when it passes beyond its limits, loses its own way and means of knowledge and tends towards inactivity or cessation; it loses at the same time or tends to have no further hold on its former contents, no continuing conception of the reality of that which once was to it all that was real: we impute to absolute Parabrahman, conceived as non-manifest for ever, a corresponding inability or separation or aloofness from what has become or seems now to us unreal; it must, like our mind in its cessation or self-extinction, be by its very nature of pure absoluteness void of all connection with this world of apparent manifestation, incapable of any supporting cognition or dynamic maintenance of it that gives it a reality - or, if there is such a cognition, it must be of the nature of an Is that is not, a magical Maya. But there is no binding reason to suppose that this chasm must exist; what our relative human consciousness is or is not capable of, is no test or standard of an absolute capacity; its conceptions cannot be applied to an absolute self-awareness: what is necessary for our mental ignorance in order to escape from itself cannot be the necessity of the Absolute which has no need of self-escape and no reason for refusing to cognise whatever is to it cognisable.
There is that unmanifest Unknowable; there is this manifest knowable, partly manifest to our ignorance, manifest entirely to the divine Knowledge which holds it in its own infinity. If it is true that neither our ignorance nor our utmost and widest mental knowledge can give us a hold of the Unknowable, still it is also true that, whether through our knowledge or through our ignorance, That variously manifests itself; for it cannot be manifesting something other than itself, since nothing else can exist: in this variety of manifestation there is that Oneness and through the diversity we can touch the Oneness. But even so, even accepting this coexistence, it is still possible to pass a final verdict and sentence of condemnation on the Becoming and decide on the necessity of a renunciation of it and a return into the absolute Being. This verdict can be based on the distinction between the real reality of the Absolute and the partial and misleading reality of the relative universe.
For we have in this unfolding of knowledge the two terms of the One and the Many, as we have the two terms of the finite and the infinite, of that which becomes and of that which does not become but for ever is, of that which takes form and of that which does not take form, of Spirit and Matter, of the supreme Superconscient and the nethermost Inconscience; in this dualism, and to get away from it, it is open to us to define Knowledge as the possession of one term and the possession of the other as Ignorance. The ultimate of our life would then be a drawing away from the lower reality of the Becoming to the greater reality of the Being, a leap from the Ignorance to the Knowledge and a Rejection of the Ignorance, a departure from the many into the One, from the finite into the infinite, from form into the formless, from the life of the material universe into the Spirit, from the hold of the inconscient upon us into the superconscient Existence. In this solution there is supposed to be a fixed opposition, an ultimate irreconcilability in each case between the two terms of our being. Or else, if both are a means of the manifestation of the Brahman, the lower is a false or imperfect clue, a means that must fail, a system of values that cannot ultimately satisfy us. Dissatisfied with the confusions of the multiplicity, disdainful of even the highest light and power and joy that it can reveal, we must drive beyond to the absolute one-pointedness and one-standingness in which all self-variation ceases. Unable by the claim of the Infinite upon us to dwell for ever in the bonds of the finite or to find there satisfaction and largeness and peace, we have to break all the bonds of individual and universal Nature, destroy all values, symbols, images, selfdefinitions, limitations of the illimitable and lose all littleness and division in the Self that is for ever satisfied with its own infinity. Disgusted with forms, disillusioned of their false and transient attractions, wearied and discouraged by their fleeting impermanence and vain round of recurrence, we must escape from the cycles of Nature into the formlessness and featurelessness of permanent Being. Ashamed of Matter and its grossness, impatient of the purposeless stir and trouble of Life, tired out by the goalless running of Mind or convinced of the vanity of all its aims and objects, we have to release ourselves into the eternal repose and purity of the Spirit. The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal. The Eternal is our refuge; all the rest are false values, the Ignorance and its mazes, a self-bewilderment of the soul in phenomenal Nature.
Our conception of the Knowledge and the Ignorance rejects this negation and the oppositions on which it is founded: it points to a larger if more difficult issue of reconciliation. For we see that these apparently opposite terms of One and Many, Form and the Formless, Finite and Infinite, are not so much opposites as complements of each other; not alternating values of the Brahman which in its creation perpetually loses oneness to find itself in multiplicity and, unable to discover itself in multiplicity, loses it again to recover oneness, but double and concurrent values which explain each other; not hopelessly incompatible alternatives, but two faces of the one Reality which can lead us to it by our realisation of both together and not only by testing each separately, - even though such separate testing may be a legitimate or even an inevitable step or part of the process of knowledge. Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One, the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being, the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: but this is cured by the soul in the Becoming growing into knowledge, into awareness of the Being which becomes in the multiplicity all these existences and can so become because their truth is already there in its timeless existence. The integral knowledge of Brahman is a consciousness in possession of both together, and the exclusive pursuit of either closes the vision to one side of the truth of the omnipresent Reality. The possession of the Being who is beyond all becomings, brings to us freedom from the bonds of attachment and ignorance in the cosmic existence and brings by that freedom a free possession of the Becoming and of the cosmic existence. The knowledge of the Becoming is a part of knowledge; it acts as an Ignorance only because we dwell imprisoned in it, avidyayam antare, without possessing the Oneness of the Being, which is its base, its stuff, its spirit, its cause of manifestation and without which it could not be possible.
2.16 - Oneness, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The soul thus possesses itself in the unity of Sachchidananda upon all the manifest planes of its own being. This is the characteristic of the integral knowledge that it unifies all in Sachchidananda because not only is Being one in itself, but it is one everywhere, in all its poises and in every aspect, in its utmost appearance of mutiplicity as in its utmost appearance of oneness. The traditional knowledge while it admits this truth in theory, yet reasons practically as if the oneness were not equal everywhere or could not be equally realised in all. It finds it in the unmamfest Absolute, but not so much in the manifestation, finds it purer in the Impersonal than in the Personal, complete in the Nirguna, not so complete in the Saguna, satisfyingly present in the silent and inactive Brahman, not so satisfyingly present in the active. Therefore it places all these other terms of the Absolute below their opposites in the scale of ascent and urges their final Rejection as if it were indispensable to the utter realisation. The integral knowledge makes no such division; it arrives at a different kind of absoluteness in its vision of the unity. It finds the same oneness in the Unmanifest and the Manifest, in the Impersonal and the Personal, in Nirguna and Saguna, in the infinite depths of the universal silence and the infinite largeness of the universal action. It finds the same absolute oneness in the Purusha and the prakriti, in the divine Presence and the works of the divine Power and Knowledge, in the eternal manifestness of the one Purusha and the constant manifestation of the many Purushas; in the inalienable unity of Sachchidananda keeping constantly real to itself its own manifold oneness and in the apparent divisions of mind, life and body in which oneness is constantly, if secretly real and constantly seeks to be realised. All unity is to it an intense, pure and infinite realisation, all difference an abundant, rich and boundless realisation of the same divine and eternal Being.
The complete realisation of unity is therefore the essence of the integral knowledge and of the integral Yoga. To know Sachchidananda one in Himself and one in all His manifestation is the basis of knowledge; to make that vision of oneness real to the consciousness in its status and in its action, and to become that by merging the sense of separate individuality in the sense of unity with the Being and with all beings is its effectuation in Yoga of knowledge; to live, think, feel, will and act in that sense of unity is its effectuation in the individual being and the individual life. This realisation of oneness and this practice of oneness in difference is the whole of the Yoga.
2.16 - The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A spiritual evolution, an unfolding here of the Being within from birth to birth, of which man becomes the central instrument and human life at its highest offers the critical turning-point, is the link needed for the reconciliation of life and spirit; for it allows us to take into account the total nature of man and to recognise the legitimate place of his triple attraction, to earth, to heaven and to the supreme Reality. But a complete solution of its oppositions can be arrived at only on this basis that the lower consciousness of mind, life and body cannot arrive at its full meaning until it is taken up, restated, transformed by the light and power and joy of the higher spiritual consciousness, while the higher too does not stand in its full right relation to the lower by mere Rejection, but by this assumption and domination, this taking up of its unfulfilled values, this restatement and transformation, - a spiritualising and supramentalising of the mental, vital and physical nature.
The terrestrial ideal, which has been so powerful in the modern mind, restored man and his life on earth and the collective hope of the race to a prominent position and created an insistent demand for a solution; this is the good it has accomplished. But by overdoing and exclusiveness it unduly limited man's scope, it ignored that which is the highest and in the end the largest thing in him, and by this limitation it missed the full pursuit of its own object. If mind were the highest thing in man and Nature, then indeed this frustration might not result; still, the limitation of scope would be there, a narrow possibility, a circumscribed prospect. But if mind is only a partial unfolding of consciousness and there are powers beyond of which Nature in our race is capable, then not only does our hope upon earth, let alone what is beyond it, depend upon their development, but this becomes the one proper road of our evolution.
2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
Sri Aurobindo: To detach oneself from all these things. To think as if all these things belong to the outer being, or someone else. As one goes on doing this the Purusha gradually withdraws its sanction from the Prakriti and Prakriti loosens its hold over nature till a spiritual control takes place. But if one associates oneself with the Prakriti then the Purusha becomes a slave to it. Rejection, of course, is the stronger way. One has to reject these things before they enter, as I did the thoughts. It is more powerful and the result also is quick.
There is also a mental control; but there too it is the nature of Mind trying to control the nature of the Vital. It has only a temporary and partial control. The thing is rather suppressed within and can come out at any opportunity.
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Sri Aurobindo: By constant remembrance, consecration of ourselves to the Divine, Rejection of all that stands in the way of the psychic influence. Generally, it is the vital that stands in the way with its desires and demands. And once the psychic opens it shows at every step what is to be done.
At the later stage of the conversation Mother came and soon after we all went into meditation with her. After her departure at about 7 p.m. Sri Aurobindo resumed.
2.17 - The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
An acceptance, a perception of the unity of these three categories is essential to the Knowledge; it is towards their unity as well as their integrality that the growing self-consciousness of the individual opens out and at which it must arrive if it is to be satisfied of itself and complete. For without the realisation of unity the knowledge of none of the three can be entire; their unity is for each the condition of its own integrality. It is, again, by knowing each in its completeness that all three meet in our consciousness and become one; it is in a total knowledge that all knowing becomes one and indivisible. Otherwise it is only by division and Rejection of two of them from the third that we could get at any kind of oneness. Man therefore has to enlarge his knowledge of himself, his knowledge of the world and his knowledge of God until in their totality he becomes aware of their mutual indwelling and oneness. For so long as he knows them only in part, there will be an incompleteness resulting in division, and so long as he has not realised them in a reconciling unity, he will not have found their total truth or the fundamental significances of existence.
This is not to say that the Supreme is not self-existent and self-sufficient; God exists in Himself and not by virtue of the cosmos or of man, while man and cosmos exist by virtue of God and not in themselves except in so far as their being is one with the being of God. But still they are a manifestation of the power of God and even in His eternal existence their spiritual reality must in some way be present or implied, since otherwise there would be no possibility of their manifestation or, manifested, they would have no significance. What appears here as man is an individual being of the Divine; the Divine extended in multiplicity is the Self of all individual existences.6 Moreover, it is through the knowledge of self and the world that man arrives at the knowledge of God and he cannot attain to it otherwise.
2.18 - The Evolutionary Process - Ascent and Integration, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This downward eye of knowledge and will with a view to an all-round heightening, deepening and subtler, finer and richer intensification is the secret Spirit's way from the beginning. The plant soul takes, as we may say, a nervous-material view of its whole physical existence so as to get out of it all the vital-physical intensity possible; for it seems to have some intense excitations of a mute life-vibration in it, - perhaps, though that is difficult for us to imagine, more intense relatively to its lower rudimentary scale than the animal mind and body in its higher and more powerful scale could tolerate. The animal being takes a mentalised sense-view of its vital and physical existence so as to get out of it all the sense value possible, much acuter in many respects than man's as mere sensation or sense-emotion or satisfaction of vital desire and pleasure. Man, looking downward from the plane of will and intelligence, abandons these lower intensities, but in order to get out of mind and life and sense a higher intensity in other values, intellectual, aesthetic, moral, spiritual, mentally dynamic or practical - as he terms it; by these higher elements he enlarges, subtilises and elevates his use of life-values. He does not abandon the animal reactions and enjoyments, but more lucidly, finely and sensitively mentalises them. This he does even on his normal and his lower levels, but, as he develops, he puts his lower being to a severer test, begins to demand from it on pain of Rejection something like a transformation: that is the mind's way of preparing for a spiritual life still beyond it.
But man not only turns his gaze downward and around him, when he has reached his higher level, but upward towards what is above him and inward towards what is occult within him.
2.18 - The Soul and Its Liberation, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Here there comes in the complication of the idea that immortality is only possible after death in other worlds, upon higher planes of existence or that liberation must destroy all possibility of mental or bodily living and annihilate the individual existence for ever in an impersonal infinity. These ideas derive their strength from a certain justification in experience and a sort of necessity or upward attraction felt by the soul when it shakes off the compelling ties of mind and matter. It is felt that these ties are inseparable from all earthly living or from all mental existence. Death is the king of the material world, for life seems to exist here only by submission to death, by a constant dying; immortality has to be conquered here with difficulty and seems to be in its nature a Rejection of all death and therefore of all birth into the material world. The field of immortality must be in some immaterial plane, in some heaven where either the body does not exist or else is different and only a form of the soul or a secondary circumstance. On the other hand, it is felt by those who would go beyond immortality even, that all planes and heavens are circumstances of the finite existence and the infinite self is void of all these things. They are dominated by a necessity to disappear into the impersonal and infinite and an inability to equate in any way the bliss of impersonal being with the soul's delight in its becoming. Philosophies have been invented which justify to the intellect this need of immersion and disappearance; but what is really important and decisive is the call of the Beyond, the need of the soul, its delight -- in this case -- in a sort of impersonal existence or non-existence. For what decides is the determining delight of the Purusha, the relation which it wills to establish with its prakriti, the experience at which it arrives as the result of the line it has followed in the development of its individual self-experience among all the various possibilities of its nature. Our intellectual justifications are only the account of that experience which we give to the reason and the devices by which we help the mind to assent to the direction in which the soul is moving.
The cause of our world-existence is not, as our present experience induces us to believe, the ego; for the ego is only a result and a circumstance of our mode of world-existence. It is a relation which the many-souled Purusha has set up between individualised minds and bodies, a relation of self-defence and mutual exclusion and aggression in order to have among all the dependences of things in the world upon each other a possibility of independent mental and physical experience. But there can be no absolute independence upon these planes; impersonality which rejects all mental and physical becoming is therefore the only possible culmination of this exclusive movement: so only can an absolutely independent self-experience be achieved. The soul then seems to exist absolutely, independently in itself; it is free in the sense of the Indian word, svadhina, dependent only on itself, not dependent upon God and other beings. Therefore in this experience God, personal self and other beings are all denied, cast away as distinctions of the ignorance. It is the ego recognising its own insufficiency and abolishing both itself and its contraries that its own essential instinct of independent self-experience may be accomplished; for it finds that its effort to achieve it by relations with God and others is afflicted throughout with a sentence of illusion, vanity and nullity. It ceases to admit them because by admitting them it becomes dependent on them; it ceases to admit its own persistence, because the persistence of ego means the admission of that which it tries to exclude as not self, of the cosmos and other beings. The self-annihilation of the Buddhist is in its nature absolute exclusion of all that the mental being perceives; the self-immersion of the Adwaitin in his absolute being is the self-same aim differently conceived: both are a supreme self-assertion of the soul of its exclusive independence of prakriti.
The experience which we first arrive at by the sort of shortcut to liberation which we have described as the movement of withdrawal, assists this tendency. For it is a breaking of the ego and a Rejection of the habits of the mentality we now possess; for that is subject to matter and the physical senses and conceives of things only as forms, objects, external phenomena and as names which we attach to those forms. We are not aware directly of the subjective life of other beings except by analogy from our own and by inference or derivative perception based upon their external signs of speech, action, etc., which our minds translate into the terms of our own subjectivity. When we break out from ego and physical mind into the infinity of the spirit, we still see the world and others as the mind has accustomed us to see them, as names and forms; only in our new experience of the direct and superior reality of spirit, they lose that direct objective reality and that indirect subjective reality of their own which they had to the mind. They seem to be quite the opposite of the truer reality we now experience; our mentality, stilled and indifferent, no longer strives to know and make real to itself those intermediate terms which exist in them as in us and the knowledge of which has for its utility to bridge over the gulf between the spiritual self and the objective phenomena of the world. We are satisfied with the blissful infinite impersonality of a pure spiritual existence; nothing else and nobody else any longer matters to us. What the physical senses show to us and what the mind perceives and conceives about them and so imperfectly and transiently delights in, seems now unreal and worthless; we are not and do not care to be in possession of the intermediate truths of being through which these things are enjoyed by the One and possess for Him that value of His being and delight which makes, as we might say, cosmic existence a thing beautiful to Him and worth manifesting. We can no longer share in God's delight in the world; on the contrary, it looks to us as if the Eternal had degraded itself by admitting into the purity of its being the gross nature of Matter or had falsified the truth of its being by imagining vain names and unreal forms. Or else if we perceive at all that delight, it is with a far-off detachment which prevents us from participating in it with any sense of intimate possession, or it is with an attraction to the superior delight of an absorbed and exclusive self-experience which does not allow us to stay any longer in these lower terms than we are compelled to stay by the continuance of our physical life and body.
But if either in the course of our Yoga or as the result of a free return of our realised Self upon the world and a free repossession of its prakriti by the Purusha in us, we become conscious not only of the bodies and outward self-expression of others, but intimately of their inner being, their minds, their souls and that in them of which their own surface minds are not aware, then we see the real Being in them also and we see them as selves of our Self and not as mere names and forms. They become to us realities of the Eternal. Our minds are no longer subject to the delusion of trivial unworthiness or the illusion of unreality. The material life loses indeed for us its old absorbing value, but finds the greater value which it has for the divine Purusha; regarded no longer as the sole term of our becoming, but as merely having a subordinate value in relation to the higher terms of mind and spirit, it increases by that diminution instead of losing in value. We see that our material being, life, nature are only one poise of the Purusha in relation to its prakriti and that their true purpose and importance can only be appreciated when they are seen not as a thing in itself, but as dependent on higher poises by which they are supported; from those superior relations they derive their meaning and, therefore, by conscious union with them they can fulfil all their valid tendencies and aims. Life then becomes justified to us and no longer stultified by the possession of liberated self-knowledge.
2.19 - Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There must be achieved a new spiritual height, wideness, depth, subtlety, intensity of our consciousness, of its substance, its force, its sensibility, an elevation, expansion, plasticity, integral capacity of our being, and an assumption of mind and all that is below mind into that larger existence. In a future transformation the character of the evolution, the principle of evolutionary process, although modified, will not fundamentally change but, on a vaster scale and in a liberated movement, royally continue. A change into a higher consciousness or state of being is not only the whole aim and process of religion, of all higher askesis, of Yoga, but it is also the very trend of our life itself, the secret purpose found in the sum of its labour. The principle of life in us seeks constantly to confirm and perfect itself on the planes of mind, vitality and body which it already possesses; but it is selfdriven also to go beyond and transform these gains into means for the conscious spirit to unfold in Nature. If it is merely some part of ourselves, intellect, heart, will or vital desire-self, which, dissatisfied with its own imperfection and with the world, strives to get away from it to a greater height of existence, content to leave the rest of the nature to take care of itself or to perish, then such a result of total transformation would not eventuate - or, at least, would not eventuate here. But this is not the integral trend of our existence; there is a labour of Nature in us to ascend with all ourself into a higher principle of being than it has yet evolved here, but it is not her whole will in this ascension to destroy herself in order that that higher principle may be exclusively affirmed by the Rejection and extinction of Nature.
To heighten the force of consciousness until it passes from a mental, vital and physical instrumentation into the essence and power of the spirit is the indispensable thing, but that is not the sole object or all the thing to be done.
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Any such evolutionary change must necessarily be associated with a Rejection of our present narrowing temporal ignorance. For not only do we now live from moment to moment of time, but our whole view is limited to our life in the present body between a single birth and death. As our regard does not go farther back in the past, so it does not extend farther out into the future; thus we are limited by our physical memory and awareness of the present life in a transient corporeal formation.
But this limitation of our temporal consciousness is intimately dependent upon the preoccupation of our mentality with the material plane and life in which it is at present acting; the limitation is not a law of the spirit but a temporary provision for an intended first working of our manifested nature. If the preoccupation is relaxed or put aside, an extension of the mind effected, an opening into the subliminal and superconscient, into the inner and higher being created, it is possible to realise our persistent existence in time as well as our eternal existence beyond it. This is essential if we are to get our self-knowledge into the right focus; for at present our whole consciousness and action are vitiated by an error of spiritual perspective which prevents us from seeing in right proportion and relation the nature, purpose and conditions of our being. A belief in immortality is made so vital a point in most religions because it is a self-evident necessity if we are to rise above the identity with the body and its preoccupation with the material level.
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For immortality in its fundamental sense does not mean merely some kind of personal survival of the bodily death; we are immortal by the eternity of our self-existence without beginning or end, beyond the whole succession of physical births and deaths through which we pass, beyond the alternations of our existence in this and other worlds: the spirit's timeless existence is the true immortality. There is, no doubt, a secondary meaning of the word which has its truth; for, corollary to this true immortality, there exists a perpetual continuity of our temporal existence and experience from life to life, from world to world after the dissolution of the physical body: but this is a natural consequence of our timelessness which expresses itself here as a perpetuity in eternal Time. The realisation of timeless immortality comes by the knowledge of self in the Non-birth and Non-becoming and of the changeless spirit within us: the realisation of time-immortality comes by the knowledge of self in the Birth and Becoming and is translated into a sense of the persistent identity of the soul through all changes of mind and life and body; this too is not a mere survival, it is timelessness translated into the Time manifestation. By the first realisation we become free from obscuring subjection to the chain of birth and death, that supreme object of so many Indian disciplines; by the second realisation added to the first we are able to possess freely, with right knowledge, without ignorance, without bondage by the chain of our actions, the experiences of the spirit in its successions of time-eternity. A realisation of timeless existence by itself might not include the truth of that experience of persistent self in eternal Time; a realisation of survival of death by itself might still give room for a beginning or end to our existence. But, in either realisation truly envisaged as side and other side of one truth, to exist consciously in eternity and not in the bondage of the hour and the succession of the moments is the substance of the change: so to exist is a first condition of the divine consciousness and the divine life. To possess and govern from that inner eternity of being the course and process of the becoming is the second, the dynamic condition with, as its practical outcome, a spiritual self-possession and self-mastery. These changes are possible only by a withdrawal from our absorbing material preoccupation, - that does not necessitate a Rejection or neglect of the life in the body, - and a constant living on the inner and higher planes of the mind and the spirit. For the heightening of our consciousness into its spiritual principle is effectuated by an ascent and a stepping back inward - both these movements are essential - out of our transient life from moment to moment into the eternal life of our immortal consciousness; but with it there comes also a widening of our range of consciousness and field of action in time and a taking up and a higher use of our mental, our vital, our corporeal existence. There arises a knowledge of our being, no longer as a consciousness dependent on the body, but as an eternal spirit which uses all the worlds and all lives for various self-experience; we see it to be a spiritual entity possessed of a continuous soul-life perpetually developing its activities through successive physical existences, a being determining its own becoming. In that knowledge, not ideative but felt in our very substance, it becomes possible to live, not as slaves of a blind Karmic impulsion, but as masters - subject only to the Divine within us - of our being and nature.
At the same time we get rid of the egoistic ignorance; for so long as we are at any point bound by that, the divine life must either be unattainable or imperfect in its self-expression. For the ego is a falsification of our true individuality by a limiting selfidentification of it with this life, this mind, this body: it is a separation from other souls which shuts us up in our own individual experience and prevents us from living as the universal individual: it is a separation from God, our highest Self, who is the one Self in all existences and the divine Inhabitant within us. As our consciousness changes into the height and depth and wideness of the spirit, the ego can no longer survive there: it is too small and feeble to subsist in that vastness and dissolves into it; for it exists by its limits and perishes by the loss of its limits. The being breaks out of its imprisonment in a separated individuality, becomes universal, assumes a cosmic consciousness in which it identifies itself with the self and spirit, the life, the mind, the body of all beings. Or it breaks out upward into a supreme pinnacle and infinity and eternity of self-existence independent of its cosmic or its individual existence. The ego collapses, losing its wall of separation, into the cosmic immensity; or it falls into nothingness, unable to brea the in the heights of the spiritual ether. If something of its movements remains by habit of Nature, yet these also fall away and are replaced by a new impersonalpersonal seeing, feeling, action. This disappearance of the ego does not bring with it the destruction of our true individuality, our spiritual existence, for that was always universal and one with the Transcendence; but there is a transformation which replaces the separative ego by the Purusha, a conscious face and figure of the universal being and a self and power of the transcendent Divine in cosmic Nature.
2.2.01 - Work and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The overcoming of all attachments must necessarily be difficult and cannot come except as the fruit of a long sdhanunless there is a rapid general growth in the inner spiritual experience which is the substance of the Gitas teaching. The cessation of desire of the fruit, of the attachment to the work itself, the growth of equality to all beings, to all happenings, to good repute or ill repute, praise or blame, to good fortune or ill fortune, the dropping of the ego which are necessary for the loss of all attachments can come completely only when all work becomes a spontaneous sacrifice to the Divine, the heart is offered up to Him and one has the settled experience of the Divine in all things and all beings. This consciousness or experience must come in all parts and movements of the being, sarvabhvena, not only in the mind and idea; then the falling away of all attachments becomes easy. I speak of the Gitas way of yoga, for in the ascetic life one obtains the same object differently, by cutting away from the objects of attachment and the consequent atrophy of the attachment itself through Rejection and disuse.
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2.2.03 - The Psychic Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
to the Divine Truth, Good, Beauty, Rejection of all that is false, evil, ugly, discordant, union through love and sympathy with all existence, openness to the Truth of the Self and the Divine.
The psychic is a spark of the Divine - but I do not know that it can be called a portion of the Jivatma - it is the same put forward in a different way.
2.22 - The Supreme Secret, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
sorrow and the Rejection of these opposites, through his physical and vital, intellectual, emotional, ethical and spiritual forms and rules and standards, yet the Spirit and Godhead transcends all these things, and if we too can cast away all dependence on dharmas, surrender ourselves to this free and eternal Spirit and, taking care only to keep ourselves absolutely and exclusively open to him, trust to the light and power and delight of the
Divine in us and, unafraid and ungrieving, accept only his guidance, then that is the truest, the greatest release and that brings the absolute and inevitable perfection of our self and nature. This is the way offered to the chosen of the Spirit, - to those only in whom he takes the greatest delight because they are nearest to him and most capable of oneness and of being even as he, freely consenting and concordant with Nature in her highest power and movement, universal in soul consciousness, transcendent in the spirit.
2.2.3 - Depression and Despondency, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is incorrect to say that the wrong key with which you were trying to open the faery palace has been taken away from you and you are left with none at all. The true key has been given to you in the right kind or condition of meditationa state of inner rest, not of straining, of quiet opening, not of eager or desperate pulling, a harmonious giving of oneself to the Divine Force for its working, and in that quietude a sense of the Force working and a restful confidence allowing it to act without any unquiet interference. Now that condition is the beginning of the psychic opening; there is of course much more that afterwards comes to complete it but this is the fundamental condition into which all the rest can most easily come. In this condition there may and will be call, prayer, aspiration. Intensity, concentration will come of themselves, not by a hard effort or tense strain on the nature. Rejection of wrong movements, frank confession of defects are not only not incompatible, but helpful to it; but this attitude makes the Rejection, the confession easy, spontaneous, entirely complete and sincere and effective. That is the experience of all who have consented to take this attitude.
Now as to the tension and stiffness. I may say in passing that consciousness and receptivity are not the same thing; one may be receptive, yet externally unaware of how things are being done and of what is being done. But for such an external unconsciousness there must be a reason, and in you it was the stiffness created by a tension and a straining which made the consciousness thus rigid and closed it up. Not that it closed you to the Force or that it took away the inner receptivity, but it did close you to the surface consciousness of what is being done. When that happens, the Force works, as I have repeatedly written, behind the veil; the results remain packed behind and come out afterwards, often slowly, little by little, until there is so much pressure that it breaks through somehow and forces open the external nature. There lies the difference between a mental and vital straining and pulling and a spontaneous psychic openness, and it is not at all the first time that we have spoken of the difference. It is not really a question of the right or the wrong key, but of putting the key in the lock in the right or the wrong way, whether because of some difficulty you try to force the lock turning the key this way and that with violence or confidently and quietly give it the right turn and the door opens.
2.23 - Man and the Evolution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is tempting and not illogical to regard rebirth as the potential means of a spiritual evolution, the factor that makes it possible, but still it is not certain, granting rebirth to be a fact, that this is its significance. All the ancient theories about reincarnation supposed it to be a constant transmigration of the soul from animal to human, but also from human to animal bodies: the Indian idea added the explanation of Karma, of a return for good or evil done, of a result of past will and effort; but there was no suggestion of a progressive evolution from type to higher type, still less of birth into a kind of being that has never yet existed but has still to evolve in the future. If evolution there is, then man is the last stage, because through him there can be the Rejection of terrestrial or embodied life and an escape into some heaven or Nirvana. That was the end envisaged by the ancient theories and, since this is fundamentally and unchangeably a world of Ignorance, - even if all cosmic existence is not in its nature a state of Ignorance, - that escape is likely to be the true end of the cycle.
This is a line of reasoning that has a considerable cogency and importance, and it was necessary to state it, even if too briefly for its importance, in order to meet it. For although some of its propositions are valid, its view of things is not complete and its cogency is not conclusive. And first we may without much difficulty get rid of the objection to the teleological element which the idea of a predetermined evolution from inconscience to superconscience, the development of a rising order of beings with a culminating transition from the life of the Ignorance to a life in the Knowledge, brings into the structure of the terrestrial existence. The objection to a teleological cosmos can be based on two very different grounds, - a scientific reasoning proceeding on the assumption that all is the work of an inconscient Energy which acts automatically by mechanical processes and can have no element of purpose in it, and a metaphysical reasoning which proceeds on the perception that the Infinite and Universal has everything in it already, that it cannot have something unaccomplished to accomplish, something to add to itself, to work out, to realise, and there can therefore be in it no element of progress, no original or emergent purpose.
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Man's urge towards spirituality is the inner driving of the spirit within him towards emergence, the insistence of the Consciousness-Force of the being towards the next step of its manifestation. It is true that the spiritual urge has been largely other-worldly or turned at its extreme towards a spiritual negation and self-annihilation of the mental individual; but this is only one side of its tendency maintained and made dominant by the necessity of passing out of the kingdom of the fundamental Inconscience, overcoming the obstacle of the body, casting away the obscure vital, getting rid of the ignorant mentality, the necessity to attain first and foremost, by a Rejection of all these impediments to spiritual being, to a spiritual status. The other, the dynamic side of the spiritual urge has not been absent, - the aspiration to a spiritual mastery and mutation of Nature, to a spiritual perfection of the being, a divinisation of the mind, the heart and the very body: there has even been the dream or a psychic prevision of a fulfilment exceeding the individual transformation, a new earth and heaven, a city of God, a divine descent upon earth, a reign of the spiritually perfect, a kingdom of God not only within us but outside, in a collective human life. However obscure may have been some of the forms taken by this aspiration, the indication they contain of the urge of the occult spiritual being within to emergence in earth-nature is unmistakable.
If a spiritual unfolding on earth is the hidden truth of our birth into Matter, if it is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place in Nature, then man as he is cannot be the last term of that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why man himself should not arrive at supermind and supermanhood or at least lend his mentality, life and body to an evolution of that greater term of the Spirit manifesting in Nature.
2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This, however, imposes a difficult and slow spiritual advance: for, first, the spiritual emergence has to wait at each step for the instruments to be ready; next, as the spiritual formation emerges, it is mixed inextricably with the powers, motives, impulses of an imperfect mind, life and body, - there is a pull on it to accept and serve these powers, motives and impulses, a downward gravitation and perilous mixture, a constant temptation to fall or deviation, at least a fettering, a weight, a retardation; there is a necessity to return upon a step gained in order to bring up something of the nature which hangs back and prevents a farther step; finally, there is, by the very character of mind in which it has to work, a limitation of the emerging spiritual light and power and a compulsion on it to move by segments, to follow one line or another and leave altogether or leave till later on the achievement of its own totality. This hampering, this obstacle of the mind, life and body, - the heavy inertia and persistence of the body, the turbid passions of the life-part, the obscurity and doubting incertitudes, denials, other-formulations of the mind, - is an impediment so great and intolerable that the spiritual urge becomes impatient and tries rigorously to quell these opponents, to reject the life, to mortify the body, to silence the mind and achieve its own separate salvation, spirit departing into pure spirit and rejecting from it altogether an undivine and obscure Nature. Apart from the supreme call, the natural push of the spiritual part in us to return to its own highest element and status, this aspect of vital and physical Nature as an impediment to pure spirituality is a compelling reason for asceticism, for illusionism, for the tendency to other-worldliness, the urge towards withdrawal from life, the passion for a pure and unmixed Absolute. A pure spiritual absolutism is a movement of the self towards its own supreme selfhood, but it is also indispensable for Nature's own purpose; for without it the mixture, the downward gravitation would make the spiritual emergence impossible. The extremist of this absolutism, the solitary, the ascetic, is the standard-bearer of the spirit, his ochre robe is its flag, the sign of a refusal of all compromise, - as indeed the struggle of emergence cannot end by a compromise, but only by an entire spiritual victory and the complete surrender of the lower nature. If that is impossible here, then indeed it must be achieved elsewhere; if Nature refuses submission to the emerging spirit, then the soul must withdraw from her. There is thus a dual tendency in the spiritual emergence, on one side a drive towards the establishment at all cost of the spiritual consciousness in the being, even to the Rejection of Nature, on the other side a push towards the extension of spirituality to our parts of nature. But until the first is fully achieved, the second can only be imperfect and halting.
It is the foundation of the pure spiritual consciousness that is the first object in the evolution of the spiritual man, and it is this and the urge of that consciousness towards contact with the Reality, the Self or the Divine Being that must be the first and foremost or even, till it is perfectly accomplished, the sole preoccupation of the spiritual seeker. It is the one thing needful that has to be done by each on whatever line is possible to him, by each according to the spiritual capacity developed in his nature.
2.25 - The Triple Transformation, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
One effective way often used to facilitate this entry into the inner self is the separation of the Purusha, the conscious being, from the Prakriti, the formulated nature. If one stands back from the mind and its activities so that they fall silent at will or go on as a surface movement of which one is the detached and disinterested witness, it becomes possible eventually to realise oneself as the inner Self of mind, the true and pure mental being, the Purusha; by similarly standing back from the life activities, it is possible to realise oneself as the inner Self of life, the true and pure vital being, the Purusha; there is even a Self of body of which, by standing back from the body and its demands and activities and entering into a silence of the physical consciousness watching the action of its energy, it is possible to become aware, a true and pure physical being, the Purusha. So too, by standing back from all these activities of nature successively or together, it becomes possible to realise one's inner being as the silent impersonal self, the witness Purusha. This will lead to a spiritual realisation and liberation, but will not necessarily bring about a transformation; for the Purusha, satisfied to be free and himself, may leave the Nature, the Prakriti, to exhaust its accumulated impetus by an unsupported action, a mechanical continuance not renewed and reinforced or vivified and prolonged by his consent, and use this Rejection as a means of withdrawing from all nature. The Purusha has to become not only the witness but the knower and source, the master of all the thought and action, and this can only be partially done so long as one remains on the mental level or has still to use the ordinary instrumentation of mind, life and body. A certain mastery can indeed be achieved, but mastery is not transformation; the change made by it cannot be sufficient to be integral: for that it is essential to get back, beyond mind-being, life-being, body-being, still more deeply inward to the psychic entity inmost and profoundest within us - or else to open to the superconscient highest domains. For this penetration into the luminous crypt of the soul one has to get through all the intervening vital stuff to the psychic centre within us, however long, tedious or difficult may be the process. The method of detachment from the insistence of all mental and vital and physical claims and calls and impulsions, a concentration in the heart, austerity, self-purification and Rejection of the old mind movements and life movements, Rejection of the ego of desire, Rejection of false needs and false habits, are all useful aids to this difficult passage: but the strongest, most central way is to found all such or other methods on a self-offering and surrender of ourselves and of our parts of nature to the Divine Being, the Ishwara. A strict obedience to the wise and intuitive leading of a Guide is also normal and necessary for all but a few specially gifted seekers.
As the crust of the outer nature cracks, as the walls of inner separation break down, the inner light gets through, the inner fire burns in the heart, the substance of the nature and the stuff of consciousness refine to a greater subtlety and purity, and the deeper psychic experiences, those which are not solely of an inner mental or inner vital character, become possible in this subtler, purer, finer substance; the soul begins to unveil itself, the psychic personality reaches its full stature. The soul, the psychic entity, then manifests itself as the central being which upholds mind and life and body and supports all the other powers and functions of the Spirit; it takes up its greater function as the guide and ruler of the nature. A guidance, a governance begins from within which exposes every movement to the light of Truth, repels what is false, obscure, opposed to the divine realisation: every region of the being, every nook and corner of it, every movement, formation, direction, inclination of thought, will, emotion, sensation, action, reaction, motive, disposition, propensity, desire, habit of the conscious or subconscious physical, even the most concealed, camouflaged, mute, recondite, is lighted up with the unerring psychic light, their confusions dissipated, their tangles disentangled, their obscurities, deceptions, self-deceptions precisely indicated and removed; all is purified, set right, the whole nature harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual order. This process may be rapid or tardy according to the amount of obscurity and resistance still left in the nature, but it goes on unfalteringly so long as it is not complete. As a final result the whole conscious being is made perfectly apt for spiritual experience of every kind, turned towards spiritual truth of thought, feeling, sense, action, tuned to the right responses, delivered from the darkness and stubbornness of the tamasic inertia, the turbidities and turbulences and impurities of the rajasic passion and restless unharmonised kinetism, the enlightened rigidities and sattwic limitations or poised balancements of constructed equilibrium which are the character of the Ignorance.
2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Thus the higher Idea descending into the developed mental intelligence has even there to overcome the barrage of a mass or system of formed ideas which belong to the Knowledge Ignorance and the will to persistence and self-realisation of force; that is the rationale of the Indian use of the mantra. these ideas; for all ideas are forces and have a formative or selfeffective faculty greater or less according to the conditions, - even reducible to nil in practice when they have to deal with inconscient Matter, but still potential. There is thus ready-formed a power of resistance which opposes or minimises the effects of the descending Light, a resistance which may amount to a refusal, a Rejection of the Light, or take the shape of an attempt to impair, subdue, ingeniously modify or adapt or perversely deform the light in order to suit it to the preconceived ideas of the Ignorance. If the preconceived or already formed ideas are dismissed and deprived of their right to persistence, they have still the right of recurrence, from outside, from their prevalence in universal Mind, or they may retire downwards into the vital, physical or subconscient parts and from thence resurge at the least opportunity to repossess their lost domain: for evolutionary Nature has to give this right of persistence to things once established by her in order to bring a sufficient steadiness and solidity to her steps. It is, moreover, the nature and claim of any Force in the manifestation to be, to survive, to effectuate itself wherever possible and as long as possible, and it is therefore that in a world of Ignorance all is achieved not only through a complexus but through a collision and struggle and intermixture of Forces. But for this highest evolution it is essential that all mixture of Ignorance with Knowledge should be abolished; an action and evolution through strife of forces must be replaced by an action and evolution through a harmony of forces: but this stage can only be reached by a last strife and an overcoming of the powers of Ignorance by the powers of Light and Knowledge.
In the lower levels of the being, in the heart and life and body, the same phenomenon recurs and on a more intense scale; for here it is not ideas that have to be met but emotions, desires, impulses, sensations, vital needs and habits of the lower Nature; these, since they are less conscious than ideas, are blinder in their response and are more obstinately self-assertive: all have the same or a greater power of resistance and recurrence, or take refuge in the circumconscient universal Nature or in our own lower levels or in a seed-state in the subconscient and from there have the power of new invasion or resurgence. This power of persistence, recurrence, resistance of established things in Nature is always the great obstacle which the evolutionary Force has to meet, which it has indeed itself created in order to prevent a too rapid transmutation even when that transmutation is its own eventual intention in things.
2.2.7.01 - Some General Remarks, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I look at these things from a more impersonal or, if you like, a personal-impersonal point of view. There is on one side my effort at perfection, for myself and others and for the possibility of a greater perfection in a changed humanity: on the other side there is a play of forces some favouring it but more trying to prevent it. The challenge I speak of comes from these forces. On one side it is a pressure from the pro-forces saying Your work is not good enough; learn to do better; on the other it is a pressure from the contrary forces saying Your work? It is a delusion and error,a poor mediocre thing, and we will trample and break it to pieces. Part of the work was an attempt to inspire a poetry which would express first the aspiration and labour towards the spiritual or divine and afterwards its realisation and manifestation. There are many who write poetry in the Ashram under this impulse but in the languages which I know best (English perfectlyat least I hope soBengali a little), there were four here whose work seemed to me to contain already in a fairly ample way the ripe possibility of the thing I wantedyourself [Dilip Kumar Roy], Arjava, Amal, Harin. (I do not speak of Nishikanta and others because they are new or emergent only). There are some Gujarati poets but I do not know the poetic language and technique in that tongue well enough to form an indubitable judgment. These four then I have encouraged and tried to push on towards a greater and richer expression: I have praised but there was nothing insincere in my praise. For some time however I have received intimations from many quarters that my judgment was mistaken, ignorant, partial and perhaps not wholly sincere. It began with your poetry even at the time of Anami and the forces at play spoke through some literary coteries of Bengal and reached here through reviews, letters etc. There has been much inability to appreciate Arjavas poetry, Yeats observing that he had evidently something to say but struggled to say it with too much obscurity and roughness. Amals work is less criticised, but A. E.s attitude towards it was rather condescending as to an Indian who writes unexpectedly well in English. Finally, there is the ignoring or Rejection of Harins work by this array of authorities there are as good authorities on the other side, but that is irrelevant. That makes the issue complete and clear. If I have made so big a mistake, then the whole thing is a hallucination I am an incompetent critic of poetry, at least of contemporary poetry, and my pretension to inspire cannot stand for a moment. Personally that would not matter to me, for personally I have my own feeling of these things and what it may be in the eyes of others makes no differencejust as it makes no difference to me if my own poetry is really no poetry, as Anandashanker and so many others think and may from their own viewpoint there are a million possible viewpoints in the worldbe justified in thinking. But for my work it does matter. I recognise in it the challenge of the forces and, once I recognise that in whatever field, I never think myself entitled to ignore it. If it is a challenge to do better (from the favourable forces), I must see that and get it done. If it is a challenge from the other forces, I must see that too and know how far it is justifiable or else what can be put against it. That is what I have always done both in my own Yoga looking carefully to see what was imperfect in the instrumentation of my own consciousness as a vehicle of the manifestation and working to set it right or else maintaining what was right against all challenge. So I began to do it here. Instead of reading rapidly through Harins poems every day, I began to weigh and consider looking to see what could be justly said from Krishnaprems viewpoint and what could be fairly said from mine. I took Krishnaprems criticism because it is the only thing I have that is definite and, though his technical strictures are obviously mistaken, the general ones have to be weighed even though they are far from conclusive. But this is a work for my personal use,its main object is not a weighing of Harins work but of my own capacity and judgment and that is too personal in scope for me to lay before others. That is why I said I was not writing it to circulate.
I have written all this to explain to you that you have not pained or hurt or displeased me, nor has Krishnaprem either. It would be childish to be displeased with someone because his opinions on literature or a particular piece of literature are not identical with my own at every point. I may also say that I was not displeased with you for your letter. I was a little disappointed that you should have gone back to mental doubts or to vital feelings after you had started so well for something else. But these temporary reversions are too common on the path to the Divine for me to be displeased or discouraged. The work I have to do for myself or for the world or for you or others can only be achieved if I have love for all and faith for all and go firmly on till it is done. It is why I urge you to do the same, because I know that if one does not give up, one is sure to arrive. That is the attitude you had started to take, to go quietly on and give time for the right development however slow. I want you to return to that and keep to it.
2.27 - The Gnostic Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
AS WE reach in our thought the line at which the evolution of mind into overmind passes over into an evolution of overmind into supermind, we are faced with a difficulty which amounts almost to an impossibility. For we are moved to seek for some precise idea, some clear mental description of the supramental or gnostic existence of which evolutionary Nature in the Ignorance is in travail; but by crossing this extreme line of sublimated mind the consciousness passes out of the sphere, exceeds the characteristic action and escapes from the grasp, of mental perception and knowledge. It is evident indeed that supramental nature must be a perfect integration and consummation of spiritual nature and experience: it would also contain in itself, by the very character of the evolutionary principle, though it would not be limited to that change, a total spiritualisation of mundane Nature; our world-experience would be taken up in this step of our evolution and, by a transformation of its parts of divinity, a creative Rejection of its imperfections and disguises, reach some divine truth and plenitude. But these are general formulas and give us no precise idea of the change.
Our normal perception or imagination or formulation of things spiritual and things mundane is mental, but in the gnostic change the evolution crosses a line beyond which there is a supreme and radical reversal of consciousness and the standards and forms of mental cognition are no longer sufficient: it is difficult for mental thought to understand or describe supramental nature.
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An evolution of gnostic consciousness brings with it a transformation of our world-consciousness and world-action: for it takes up into the new power of awareness not only the inner existence but our outer being and our world-being; there is a remaking of both, an integration of them in the sense and power of the spiritual existence. There must come upon us in the change at once a reversal and Rejection of our present way of existence and a fulfilment of its inner trend and tendency. For we stand The Gnostic Being now between these two terms, an outer world of Life and Matter that has made us and a remaking of the world by ourselves in the sense of the evolving Spirit. Our present way of living is at once a subjection to Life-Force and Matter and a struggle with Life and Matter. In its first appearance an outer existence creates by our reactions to it an inner or mental existence; if we shape ourselves at all, it is in most men less by the conscious pressure of a free soul or intelligence from within than by a response to our environment and the world-Nature acting upon us: but what we move towards in the development of our conscious being is an inner existence creating by its knowledge and power its own outer form of living and self-expressive environment of living. In the gnostic nature this movement will have consummated itself; the nature of living will be an accomplished inner existence whose light and power will take perfect body in the outer life.
The gnostic being will take up the world of Life and Matter, but he will turn and adapt it to his own truth and purpose of existence; he will mould life itself into his own spiritual image, and this he will be able to do because he has the secret of a spiritual creation and is in communion and oneness with the Creator within him. This will be first effective in the shaping of his own inner and outer individual existence, but the same power and principle will operate in any common gnostic life; the relations of gnostic being with gnostic being will be the expression of their one gnostic self and supernature shaping into a significant power and form of itself the whole common existence.
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This new relation of the spirit and the body assumes - and makes possible - a free acceptance of the whole of material Nature in place of a Rejection; the drawing back from her, the refusal of all identification or acceptance, which is the first normal necessity of the spiritual consciousness for its liberation, is no longer imperative. To cease to be identified with the body, to separate oneself from the body-consciousness, is a recognised and necessary step whether towards spiritual liberation or towards spiritual perfection and mastery over Nature. But, this redemption once effected, the descent of the spiritual light and force can invade and take up the body also and there can be a new liberated and sovereign acceptance of material Nature. That is possible, indeed, only if there is a changed communion of the Spirit with Matter, a control, a reversal of the present balance of interaction which allows physical Nature to veil the Spirit and affirm her own dominance. In the light of a larger knowledge Matter also can be seen to be the Brahman, a self-energy put forth by the Brahman, a form and substance of Brahman; aware of the secret consciousness within material substance, secure in this larger knowledge, the gnostic light and power can unite itself with Matter, so seen, and accept it as an instrument of a spiritual manifestation. A certain reverence, even, for Matter and a sacramental attitude in all dealings with it is possible. As in the Gita the act of the taking of food is spoken of as a material sacrament, a sacrifice, an offering of Brahman to Brahman by Brahman, so also the gnostic consciousness and sense can view all the operations of Spirit with Matter. The Spirit has made itself Matter in order to place itself there as an instrument for the well-being and joy, yogaks.ema, of created beings, for a selfoffering of universal physical utility and service. The gnostic being, using Matter but using it without material or vital attachment or desire, will feel that he is using the Spirit in this form of itself with its consent and sanction for its own purpose.
There will be in him a certain respect for physical things, an The Gnostic Being awareness of the occult consciousness in them, of its dumb will of utility and service, a worship of the Divine, the Brahman in what he uses, a care for a perfect and faultless use of his divine material, for a true rhythm, ordered harmony, beauty in the life of Matter, in the utilisation of Matter.
2.28 - The Divine Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
54: In mystic experience, - when there is an opening of the inner centres, or in other ways, spontaneously or by will or endeavour or in the very course of the spiritual growth, - new powers of consciousness have been known to develop; they present themselves as if an automatic consequence of some inner opening or in answer to a call in the being, so much so that it has been found necessary to recommend to the seeker not to hunt after these powers, not to accept or use them. This Rejection is logical for those who seek to withdraw from life; for all acceptance of greater power would bind to life or be a burden on the bare and pure urge towards liberation. An indifference to all other aims and issues is natural for the Godlover who seeks God for His own sake and not for power or any other inferior attraction; the pursuit of these alluring but often dangerous forces would be a deviation from his purpose.
55: A similar Rejection is a necessary self-restraint and a spiritual discipline for the immature seeker, since such powers may be a great, even a deadly peril; for their supernormality may easily feed in him an abnormal exaggeration of the ego. Power in itself may be dreaded as a temptation by the aspirant to perfection, because power can abase as well as elevate; nothing is more liable to misuse. But when new capacities come as an inevitable result of the growth into a greater consciousness and a greater life and that growth is part of the very aim of the spiritual being within us, this bar does not operate; for a growth of the being into supernature and its life in supernature cannot take place or cannot be complete without bringing with it a greater power of consciousness and a greater power of life and the spontaneous development of an instrumentation of knowledge and force normal to that supernature. There is nothing in this future evolution of the being which could be regarded as irrational or incredible; there is nothing in it abnormal or miraculous: it would be the necessary course of the evolution of consciousness and its forces in the passage from the mental to the gnostic or supramental formulation of our existence. This action of the forces of supernature would be a natural, normal and spontaneously simple working of the new higher or greater consciousness into which the being enters in the course of his self-evolution; the gnostic being accepting the gnostic life would develop and use the powers of this greater consciousness, even as man develops and uses the powers of his mental nature.
56: It is evident that such an increase of the power or powers of consciousness would be not only normal but indispensable to a greater and more perfect life. Human life with its partial harmony, in so far as that is not maintained by the imposition of a settled law and order on the constituent individuals through a partly willing, partly induced, partly forced or unavoidable acceptance, reposes on the agreement of the enlightened or interested elements in their mind, heart, life-sense, an assent to a composite body of common ideas, desires, vital satisfactions, aims of existence. But there is in the mass of constituting individuals an imperfect understanding and knowledge of the ideas, life-aims, life-motives which they have accepted, an imperfect power in their execution, an imperfect will to maintain them always unimpaired, to carry them out fully or to bring the life to a greater perfection: there is an element of struggle and discord, a mass of repressed or unfulfilled desires and frustrated wills, a simmering suppressed unsatisfaction or an awakened or eruptive discontent of unequally satisfied interests; there are new ideas, life-motives that break in and cannot be correlated without upheaval and disturbance; there are life-forces at work in human beings and their environment that are at variance with the harmony that has been constructed, and there is not the full power to overcome the discord and dislocations created by a clashing diversity of mind and life and by the attack of disrupting forces in universal Nature. What is lacking is a spiritual knowledge and spiritual power, a power over self, a power born of inner unification with others, a power over the surrounding or invading world-forces, a full-visioned and fully equipped power of effectuation of knowledge; it is these capacities missing or defective in us that belong to the very substance of gnostic being, for they are inherent in the light and dynamis of the gnostic nature.
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81: The reasoning mind with its logical practicality has no other way of getting the better of Nature's ambiguous and complex movements than a regulation and mechanisation of mind and life. If that is done, the soul of humanity will either have to recover its freedom and growth by a revolt and a destruction of the machine into whose grip it has been cast or escape by a withdrawal into itself and a Rejection of life. Man's true way out is to discover his soul and its self-force and instrumentation and replace by it both the mechanisation of mind and the ignorance and disorder of life-nature. But there would be little room and freedom for such a movement of self-discovery and self-effectuation in a closely regulated and mechanised social existence.
82: There is the possibility that in the swing back from a mechanistic idea of life and society the human mind may seek refuge in a return to the religious idea and a society governed or sanctioned by religion. But organised religion, though it can provide a means of inner uplift for the individual and preserve in it or behind it a way for his opening to spiritual experience, has not changed human life and society; it could not do so because, in governing society, it had to compromise with the lower parts of life and could not insist on the inner change of the whole being; it could insist only on a credal adherence, a formal acceptance of its ethical standards and a conformity to institution, ceremony and ritual. Religion so conceived can give a religio-ethical colour or surface tinge, - sometimes, if it maintains a strong kernel of inner experience, it can generalise to some extent an incomplete spiritual tendency; but it does not transform the race, it cannot create a new principle of the human existence. A total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself. Another possible conception akin to the religious solution is the guidance of society by men of spiritual attainment, the brotherhood or unity of all in the faith or in the discipline, the spiritualisation of life and society by the taking up of the old machinery of life into such a unification or inventing a new machinery. This too has been attempted before without success; it was the original founding idea of more than one religion: but the human ego and vital nature were too strong for a religious idea working on the mind and by the mind to overcome its resistance. It is only the full emergence of the soul, the full descent of the native light and power of the Spirit and the consequent replacement or transformation and uplifting of our insufficient mental and vital nature by a spiritual and supramental supernature that can effect this evolutionary miracle.
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94: It is almost universally supposed that spiritual life must necessarily be a life of ascetic spareness, a pushing away of all that is not absolutely needed for the bare maintenance of the body; and this is valid for a spiritual life which is in its nature and intention a life of withdrawal from life. Even apart from that ideal, it might be thought that the spiritual turn must always make for an extreme simplicity, because all else would be a life of vital desire and physical self-indulgence. But from a wider standpoint this is a mental standard based on the law of the Ignorance of which desire is the motive; to overcome the Ignorance, to delete the ego, a total Rejection not only of desire but of all the things that can satisfy desire may intervene as a valid principle. But this standard or any mental standard cannot be absolute nor can it be binding as a law on the consciousness that has arisen above desire; a complete purity and self-mastery would be in the very grain of its nature and that would remain the same in poverty or in riches: for if it could be shaken or sullied by either, it would not be real or would not be complete. The one rule of the gnostic life would be the self-expression of the Spirit, the will of the Divine Being; that will, that self-expression could manifest through extreme simplicity or through extreme complexity and opulence or in their natural balance, - for beauty and plenitude, a hidden sweetness and laughter in things, a sunshine and gladness of life are also powers and expressions of the Spirit. In all directions the Spirit within determining the law of the nature would determine the frame of the life and its detail and circumstance. In all there would be the same plastic principle; a rigid standardisation, however necessary for the mind's arrangement of things, could not be the law of the spiritual life. A great diversity and liberty of self-expression based on an underlying unity might well become manifest; but everywhere there would be harmony and truth of order.
95: A life of gnostic beings carrying the evolution to a higher supramental status might fitly be characterised as a divine life; for it would be a life in the Divine, a life of the beginnings of a spiritual divine light and power and joy manifested in material Nature. That might be described, since it surpasses the mental human level, as a life of spiritual and supramental supermanhood. But this must not be confused with past and present ideas of supermanhood; for supermanhood in the mental idea consists of an overtopping of the normal human level, not in kind but in degree of the same kind, by an enlarged personality, a magnified and exaggerated ego, an increased power of mind, an increased power of vital force, a refined or dense and massive exaggeration of the forces of the human Ignorance; it carries also, commonly implied in it, the idea of a forceful domination over humanity by the superman. That would mean a supermanhood of the Nietzschean type; it might be at its worst the reign of the "blonde beast" or the dark beast or of any and every beast, a return to barbaric strength and ruthlessness and force: but this would be no evolution, it would be a reversion to an old strenuous barbarism. Or it might signify the emergence of the Rakshasa or Asura out of a tense effort of humanity to surpass and transcend itself, but in the wrong direction. A violent and turbulent exaggerated vital ego satisfying itself with a supreme tyrannous or anarchic strength of self-fulfilment would be the type of a Rakshasic supermanhood: but the giant, the ogre or devourer of the world, the Rakshasa, though he still survives, belongs in spirit to the past; a larger emergence of that type would be also a retrograde evolution. A mighty exhibition of an overpowering force, a self-possessed, self-held, even, it may be, an ascetically self-restrained mind-capacity and life-power, strong, calm or cold or formidable in collected vehemence, subtle, dominating, a sublimation at once of the mental and vital ego, is the type of the Asura. But earth has had enough of this kind in her past and its repetition can only prolong the old lines; she can get no true profit for her future, no power of self-exceeding, from the Titan, the Asura: even a great or supernormal power in it could only carry her on larger circles of her old orbit. But what has to emerge is something much more difficult and much more simple; it is a self-realised being, a building of the spiritual self, an intensity and urge of the soul and the deliverance and sovereignty of its light and power and beauty, - not an egoistic supermanhood seizing on a mental and vital domination over humanity, but the sovereignty of the Spirit over its own instruments, its possession of itself and its possession of life in the power of the spirit, a new consciousness in which humanity itself shall find its own self-exceeding and self-fulfilment by the revelation of the divinity that is striving for birth within it. This is the sole true supermanhood and the one real possibility of a step forward in evolutionary Nature.
2.3.01 - Aspiration and Surrender to the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Aspiration, Rejection, Surrender
What you say of sadhana is true. Sadhana is necessary and the
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Mother's workings, his Rejection of all that comes in the way is
25 September 1936 very necessary - indispensable.
It is quite true that aspiration, Rejection and the remembrance of the Mother and surrender to her and union with her consciousness are the main means of the sadhana. It is also true that to seek the supramental for oneself by one's own means is a folly; that I have said from the beginning and emphasised it recently more and more. It is true also that to make the union with the Divine the cardinal aim and all the rest subsidiary
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The theory that once you remember the Mother always, everything you do flows from the Divine and therefore it does not matter what you do is rather a dangerous one. It may end by giving sanction instead of Rejection to many things that ought to go out of the nature.
As for living a free outer life it cannot be said that that is good for everybody at every stage any more than living a retired life is good for everybody or at every stage. The disadvantage of a free jolly outward social life without restrictions is that one becomes entirely or mostly externalised and that all sorts of vital interchanges are part of it which can hamper the inner growth or the total self-consecration to the Divine. The disadvantage of too complete a retirement is that it makes the person one-sided and shut up in himself, subjective, without the stabilising contact with earth and consequently with the danger of morbidity and self-delusion. A middle path with the rule of living more and more within, standing back from outward things but not throwing them aside, looking at them with a new consciousness, a new view and acting on them from this inner consciousness is the best way. But there is need for some at some stages to minimise outward contacts without abolishing them during part of the process of this shifting of the consciousness. No absolute
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What things? I find only a small minority doing anything at all except gossiping, discussing, quarrelling, complaining etc. etc. A certain number do the aspiration, Rejection, Motherward turn - but nothing more. They have enough difficulty with that even.
Even when strenuous measures are adopted for practising the nearest approximation to real Yoga, ought not there to be a question of a triple fitness first?
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The effort demanded of the sadhak is that of aspiration, Rejection and surrender. If these three are done the rest is to come of itself by the Grace of the Mother and the working of her force in you.
But of the three the most important is surrender of which the first necessary form is trust and confidence and patience in difficulty.
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"I won't do anything; let Mother do everything. Aspiration, Rejection, surrender even are not necessary. Let her do all that in me." There is a great difference between the two attitudes.
One is that of the shirker who won't do anything, the other is that of the sadhak who does his best, but when he is reduced to quiescence for a time and things are adverse, keeps always his trust in the Mother's force and presence behind all and by that trust baffles the opposition force and calls back the activity of
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conscious mind, more even than by the thinking part) and Rejection are necessary accompaniments and helps to consecration and surrender.
Naturally, with this wrong turn, the first result was that certain things in you to which the mind had refused free outward play but of which you had not been sufficiently conscious or else not able to reject from your nature got their chance and manifested in a very extravagant manner.
2.3.01 - Concentration and Meditation, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is of course because of the old habit of the mental consciousness that it goes on receiving the thoughts from outside in spite of its being a fatigue - not that it wants them, but that they are accustomed to come and the mind mechanically lets them in and attends to them by force of habit. This is always one of the chief difficulties in Yoga when the experiences have begun and the mind wants to be always either concentrated or quiet. Some do what you propose [direct Rejection of thoughts] and after a time succeed in quieting the mind altogether or the silence comes down from above and does it. But often when one tries this, the thoughts become very active and resist the silencing process and that is very troublesome. Therefore many prefer to go on slowly letting the mind quiet down little by little, the quietness spreading and remaining for longer periods until the unwanted thoughts fall away or recede and the mind is left free for knowledge from within and above.
What you might do is to try and see what results - if the thoughts attack too much and trouble, you could stop - if the mind quiets down quickly or more and more, then continue.
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The next thing is to exercise a control and reject the thoughts - though sometimes by the very act of detachment the thoughthabit falls away or diminishes during the meditation and there is a sufficient silence or at any rate a quietude which makes it easy to reject the thoughts that come and fix oneself on the object of meditation. If one becomes aware of the thoughts as coming from outside, from the universal Nature, then one can throw them away before they reach the mind; in that way the mind finally falls silent. If neither of these things happens, a persistent practice of Rejection becomes necessary - there should be no struggle or wrestling with the thoughts, but only a quiet selfseparation and refusal. Success does not come at first, but if consent is constantly withheld, the mechanical whirl eventually lessens and begins to die away and one can then have at will an inner quietude or silence.
It should be noted that the result of the Yogic processes is not, except in rare cases, immediate and one must apply them with patience till they give a result which is sometimes long in coming if there is much resistance in the outer nature.
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For the buzz of the physical mind, reject it quietly, without getting disturbed, till it feels discouraged and retires shaking its head and saying, "This fellow is too calm and strong for me." There are always two things that can rise up and assail the silence, - vital suggestions, the physical mind's mechanical recurrences. Calm Rejection for both is the cure. There is a Purusha within who can dictate to the nature what it shall admit or exclude, but its will is a strong, quiet will; if one gets perturbed or agitated over the difficulties, then the will of the Purusha cannot act effectively as it would otherwise.
The dynamic realisation will probably take place when the higher consciousness comes fully down into the vital. When it comes into the mental it brings the peace of the Purusha and liberation and it may bring also knowledge. It is when it comes into the vital that the dynamic realisation becomes present and living.
2.3.02 - Mantra and Japa, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The idea of your friend that it is necessary to receive a mantra from here and for that he must come is altogether wrong. There is no mantra given in this Yoga. It is the opening of the consciousness to the Mother from within that is the true initiation and that can only come by aspiration and Rejection of restlessness in the mind and vital.
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2.3.02 - Opening, Sincerity and the Mother's Grace, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Aspiration, quietude, widening of oneself to receive, Rejection of all that tries to shut you to the Divine.
How shall I know that I am opening to the Mother and not to other forces?
2.3.03 - Integral Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Our Yoga is a Yoga of transformation, but a transformation of the whole consciousness and the whole nature from the top to the bottom, from its hidden inward parts to its most tangible external movements. It is neither an ethical change nor a religious conversion, neither sainthood nor ascetic control, neither a sublimation nor a suppression of the life and vital movements that we envisage, nor is it either a glorification or a coercive control or Rejection of the physical existence. What is envisaged is a change from a lesser to a greater, from a lower to a higher, from a surface to a deeper consciousness - indeed to the largest, highest, deepest possible and a total change and revolution of the whole being in its stuff and mass and every detail into that yet unrealised diviner nature of existence. It means a bringing forward of what is now hidden and subliminal, a growing conscious in what is now superconscient to us, an illumination of the subconscient and subphysical. It implies a substitution of the control of the nature by the soul for its present control by the mind; a transference of the instrumentation of the nature from the outer to the now more than half-veiled inner mind, from the outer to the inner vital or life-self, from the outer to an inner subtler vaster physical consciousness and by this transference a direct and conscious instead of an indirect and unconscious or half conscious contact with the secret cosmic forces that move us; a breaking out from the narrow limited individual into a wide cosmic consciousness; an ascension from mental to spiritual nature; a still farther ascension from the spirit in mind or overspreading mind to the supramental spirit and a descent of that into the embodied being. All that has not only to be achieved but organised before the transformation is complete.
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A total surrender, an exclusive self-opening to the divine influence, a constant and integral choice of the Truth and Rejection of the falsehood, these are the only conditions made. But these must be fulfilled entirely, without reserve, without any evasion or pretence, simply and sincerely down to the most physical consciousness and its workings[.]
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2.3.04 - The Mother's Force, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That is the fundamental rationale of the Sadhana. It will be evident that the two most important things here are the opening of the heart centre and the opening of the mind centres to all that is behind and above them. For the heart opens to the psychic being and the mind centres open to the higher consciousness and the nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness is the principal means of the Siddhi. The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the Sadhana - accompanied by a Rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being
- the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of Knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them
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In this process of the descent from above and the working it is most important not to rely entirely on oneself, but to rely on the guidance of the Guru and to refer all that happens to his judgment and arbitration and decision. For it often happens that the forces of the lower nature are stimulated and excited by the descent and want to mix with it and turn it to their profit. It often happens too that some Power or Powers undivine in their nature present themselves as the Supreme Lord or as the Divine Mother and claim the being's service and surrender. If these things are accepted, there will be an extremely disastrous consequence. If indeed there is the assent of the sadhak to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all can go smoothly. This assent and a Rejection of all egoistic forces or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana. But the ways of Nature are full of snares, the disguises of the ego are innumerable, the illusions of the Powers of Darkness, Rakshasi Maya, are extraordinarily skilful; the reason is an insufficient guide and often turns traitor; vital desire is always
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Rejection of wrong movements, frank confession of defects are not only not incompatible, but helpful to it; but this attitude makes the Rejection, the confession easy, spontaneous, entirely complete and sincere and effective. That is the experience of all who have consented to take this attitude.
I may say in passing that consciousness and receptivity are not the same thing; one may be receptive, yet externally unaware of how things are being done and of what is being done. The
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All these questions are met by my answer. One cannot be perfect in discrimination at once or in Rejection either. The one indispensable thing is to go on trying sincerely till there comes the full success. So long as there is complete sincerity, the Divine
Grace will be there and assist at every moment on the way.
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Mother's Force and the divine Truth, and keep too the power of Rejection that will throw away all mixture.
Keep faith in your spiritual destiny, draw back from error and open more the psychic being to the direct guidance of the
2.3.06 - The Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Afterwards when the higher consciousness descends it begins to be transformed and capable of an automatic Rejection of what is not true or right or divine or helpful to the growth of the divine in the being.
The Chitta does not receive desires and sensations from the
2.3.07 - The Vital Being and Vital Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This body-mind is a very tangible truth; owing to its obscurity and mechanical clinging to past movements and facile oblivion and Rejection of the new, we find in it one of the chief obstacles to permeation by the supermind force and the transformation of the functioning of the body. On the other hand, once effectively converted, it will be one of the most precious instruments for the stabilisation of the supramental light and force in material Nature.
The Mental Vital or Vital Mind
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The heart is part of the vital - it has to be controlled in the same way as the rest, by Rejection of the wrong movements, by acceptance of the true psychic surrender which prevents all demand and clamour, by calling in the higher light and knowledge. It is not usually however the heart that bothers about mental questions and the answer to them.
Pure and true thoughts and emotions and impulsions can rise from the human mind, heart and vital, because all is not evil there. The heart may be unpurified, but that does not mean that everything in it is impure.
2.3.08 - The Mother's Help in Difficulties, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Equality, Rejection, calling in of the Mother's force.
1 August 1933
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Plenty of people have this condition (it is human nature) and there is naturally a way of coming out of it - having full faith in the Mother to quiet the inner mind (even if the outer continues to be troublesome) and call in it the Mother's Peace and Force, which is always there above you, into the Adhar. Once that is there, consciously, to keep yourself open to it and let it go on working with a full adhesion, with a constant support of your consent, with a constant Rejection of all that is not that, till all the inner being is tranquillised and filled with the Mother's Force,
Peace, Joy, Presence - then the outer nature will be obliged to
2.3.10 - The Subconscient and the Inconscient, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As for the things in our nature that are thrown away from us by Rejection but come back, it depends on where you throw them. Very often there is a sort of procedure about it. The mind rejects its mentalities, the vital its vitalities, the physical its physicalities - these usually go back into the corresponding domain of general Nature. It all stays at first, when that happens, in the environmental consciousness which we carry about with us, by which we communicate with the outside Nature, and often it persistently rushes back from there - until it is so absolutely rejected, or thrown far away as it were, that it cannot return upon us any more. But when what the thinking and willing mind rejects is strongly supported by the vital, it leaves the mind indeed but sinks down into the vital, rages there and tries to rush up again and reoccupy the mind and compel or capture our mental acceptance. When the higher vital too - the heart or the larger vital dynamis rejects it, it sinks from there and takes refuge in the lower vital with its mass of small current movements that make up our daily littleness. When the lower vital too rejects it, it sinks into the physical consciousness and tries to stick by inertia or mechanical repetition. Rejected even from there it goes into the subconscient and comes up in dreams, in passivity, in extreme tamas. The Inconscient is the last resort of the Ignorance.
As for the waves that recur from the general Nature, it is the natural tendency of the inferior forces there to try and perpetuate their action in the individual, to rebuild what he has unbuilt of their deposits in him, so they return on him, often with an increased force, even with a stupendous violence, when they
2.3.1 - Ego and Its Forms, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is not possible to get rid of the ego-movements all at once. They have to be worked out of the nature by a constant consciousness and Rejection. Even when the central ego has gone, the habitual movements stick for a long time.
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These things [little expressions of egoism] either fade slowly out by constant Rejection or else they drop off when the higher consciousness gets steadily down into the lower vital and, as it were, swallows it up. A sudden extinction is perhaps possibleat least there are reported cases of it but usually they linger and go slowly, losing gradually force as if worn out.
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I think you still give an exaggerated importance and attention to the ego and other elements that are interwoven in the nature of humanity and cannot be entirely got rid of except by the coming of a new consciousness which replaces them by higher movements. If one rejects centrally and with all sincerity the ego and rajas, their roots get loosened and sattwa can prevail in the nature, but the expulsion of all ego and rajas cannot be done by the will and its effort. After a certain stage of preparation therefore one must stress more on the positive side of the sadhana than on the negative side of Rejection,though this of course must remain to help the other. Still what is important is to develop the psychic within and bring down the higher consciousness from above. The psychic as it grows and manifests detects immediately all wrong movements or elements and at the same time supplies almost automatically the true element or movement which will replace themthis psychic process is much easier and more effective than that of a severe tapasya of purification. The higher consciousness in descending brings peace and purity into all the inner parts; the inner being separates itself from the imperfect outer consciousness and at the same time the peace that comes carries in it a power which can throw out what contradicts the peace and purity. Ego can then slowly or swiftly but surely disappearrajas and tamas change into their divine substitutes.
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Without persistent Rejection it [liberation from movements of the ego] cannot be done. Going up into the self liberates the higher parts but the ego remains in the lower parts. The most effective force for this liberation is the psychic control along with steady Rejection.
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The sense of ego can disappear into that of the Self or the Purusha but that of itself does not bring about the disappearance of the old ego reactions in the Prakriti. The Purusha has to get rid of these by a process of constant Rejection and remoulding. The remoulding consists in throwing everything into a consecration to the Mother and doing all for her without regard to oneself, ones desires, opinions, vital reactions as if they were the things to be fulfilled. This is most easily done if the psychic being becomes quite awake.
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2.3.2 - Desire, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
About the attachment to things, the physical Rejection of them is not the best way to get rid of it. Accept what is given you, ask for what is needed and think no more of itattaching no importance, using them when you have, not troubled if you have not. That is the best way of getting rid of the attachment.
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The Rejection of desire is essentially the Rejection of the element of craving, putting that out from the consciousness itself as a foreign element not belonging to the true self and the inner nature. But refusal to indulge the suggestions of desire is also a part of the Rejection; to abstain from the action suggested, if it is not the right action, must be included in the Yogic discipline. It is only when this is done in the wrong way, by a mental ascetic principle or a hard moral rule, that it can be called suppression. The difference between suppression and an inward essential Rejection is the difference between mental or moral control and a spiritual purification.
When one lives in the true consciousness one feels the desires outside oneself, entering from outside, from the universal lower Prakriti, into the mind and the vital parts. In the ordinary human condition this is not felt; men become aware of the desire only when it is there, when it has come inside and found a lodging or a habitual harbourage and so they think it is their own and a part of themselves. The first condition for getting rid of desire is, therefore, to become conscious with the true consciousness; for then it becomes much easier to dismiss it than when one has to struggle with it as if it were a constituent part of oneself to be thrown out from the being. It is easier to cast off an accretion than to excise what is felt as a parcel of our substance.
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Your theory is a mistaken one. The free expression of a passion may relieve the vital for a time, but at the same time it gives it a right to return always. It is not reduced at all. Suppression with inner indulgence in subtle forms is not a cure, but expression in outer indulgence is still less a cure. It is perfectly possible to go on without manifestation if one is resolute to arrive at a complete control, the control being not a mere suppression but an inner and outer Rejection.
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2.3.3 - Anger and Violence, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is indeed a very good sign that the anger when it comes is brief and subdued and no longer expressed in the outward for that is one very marked stage always of the Rejection of something not wanted by the nature. It comes still but it has no longer the old force, duration, intensity, completeness. The externalised condition is often used to show or test the progress made in the outer nature itself, for when one is entirely within these outward movements remain quiescent, so the extent to which they are changed cannot be so easily measured. But of course it is the going inward that most helps to deliver the nature.
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It [ Rejection] is the way to get rid of these things [anger and sex desire]when rejected they either sink into the subconscient or pass out into the surrounding (environmental) consciousness through which one is connected with the universal forces. They may try to rise up from the subconscient or come in again from outside; but if one always rejects them, calling in the aid of the Mother and does not allow them to take hold, their force of recurrence dies away and finally they come no more. Sometimes a very decisive Rejection gets rid of them at a stroke once for all.
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2.4.1 - Human Relations and the Spiritual Life, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Absence of love and fellow-feeling is not necessary for nearness to the Divine; on the contrary, a sense of closeness and oneness with others is a part of the divine consciousness into which the sadhak enters by nearness to the Divine and the feeling of oneness with the Divine. An entire Rejection of all relations is indeed the final aim of the Mayavadin, and in the ascetic Yoga an entire loss of all relations of friendship and affection and attachment to the world and its living beings would be regarded as a promising sign of advance towards liberation, Moksha; but even there, I think, a feeling of oneness and unattached spiritual sympathy for all is at least a penultimate stage, like the compassion of the Buddhist, before the turning to Moksha or Nirvana. In this Yoga the feeling of unity with others, love, universal joy and Ananda are an essential part of the liberation and perfection which are the aim of the sadhana.
On the other hand, human society, human friendship, love, affection, fellow-feeling are mostly and usuallynot entirely or in all casesfounded on a vital basis and are ego-held at their centre. It is because of the pleasure of being loved, the pleasure of enlarging the ego by contact, mutual penetration of spirit, with another, the exhilaration of the vital interchange which feeds their personality that men usually love and there are also other and still more selfish motives that mix with this essential movement. There are of course higher spiritual, psychic, mental, vital elements that come in or can come in; but the whole thing is very mixed, even at its best. This is the reason why at a certain stage with or without apparent reason the world and life and human society and relations and philanthropy (which is as ego-ridden as the rest) begin to pall. There is sometimes an ostensible reasona disappointment of the surface vital, the withdrawal of affection by others, the perception that those loved or men generally are not what one thought them to be and a host of other causes; but often the cause is a secret disappointment of some part of the inner being, not translated or not well translated into the mind, because it expected from these things something which they cannot give. It is the case with many who turn or are pushed to the spiritual life. For some it takes the form of a vairgya which drives them towards ascetic indifference and gives the urge towards Moksha. For us, what we hold to be necessary is that the mixture should disappear and that the consciousness should be established on a purer level (not only spiritual and psychic but a purer and higher mental, vital, physical consciousness) in which there is not this mixture. There one would feel the true Ananda of oneness and love and sympathy and fellowship, spiritual and self-existent in its basis but expressing itself through the other parts of the nature. If that is to happen, there must obviously be a change; the old form of these movements must drop off and leave room for a new and higher self to disclose its own way of expression and realisation of itself and of the Divine through these things that is the inner truth of the matter.
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The movement [of Rejection] of which you speak is not psychic but emotive. It is a vital emotive force that you put out and waste. It is also harmful because, while on the one side you try to reject a past vital relation or tie with these people, you by this movement re-establish in another way a vital relation with them. If there was anything wrong in your first movement, this is quite a false way of remedying the defect.
Certainly, it would be better to reject without any violent feeling against any person, because the violence is a sign of a certain weakness in the vital which must be correctednot for any other reason. The Rejection should be quiet, firm, self-assured, decisive; it will then be more radical and effective.
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So long as the whole consciousness is not clear of doubtful stuff and the realisation of oneness confirmed in the supreme purity, the expression of the all-love is not advisable. It is by holding it in oneself that it becomes a real part of the nature, established and purified by joining with it the other realisations still to come. At present it is only a first touch and to dissipate it by expression would be very imprudent. The sex and vital might easily become active I have known cases of very good Yogis in whom the vivaprema became the vivakma, all-love becoming all-lust. This has happened with many both in Europe and the East. Even apart from that it is always best to solidify and to confirm rather than to throw out and disperse. When the sadhana has progressed and the knowledge from above comes to enlighten and guide the love, then it will be another matter. My insistence on Rejection of all untransformed vital movements is based on experience, mine and others and that of past Yogas like the Vaishnava movement of Chaitanya (not to speak of the old Buddhist Sahaja dharma) which ended in much corruption. A wide movement such as that of all-love can only take place when the ground of Nature has been solidly prepared for it. I have no objection to your mixing with others, but only under a continual guard and control by a vigilant mind and will.
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2.4.2 - Interactions with Others and the Practice of Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To become entirely indifferent to the good and bad opinion of others, especially those who are or were near, and stand on the Truth alone is very difficult; some reaction of the old nature can easily come across; but if one remains calm and firm within, these surface reactions quickly disappear and their Rejection helps the remnants of the old nature to disappear.
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2.4.3 - Problems in Human Relations, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is true that the habit of gossip and fault-finding with others does interfere because it brings down the consciousness from a higher to a lower level. But I do not think a retirement such as you propose is the way to cure it. It would only be suspended and the tendency come up again when you resumed free intercourse with others. It is on its field itself that it has to be first observed, then cured by detachment from it and Rejection of it when it comes. A partial retirement may sometimes be helpful for concentration,but not for these things; there the only cure is what I suggest or else the descent of a higher consciousness to replace the present imperfect nature.
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28.01 - Observations, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Vedantin seeks to cut away the vital urge - the Purusha separating itself and keeping apart and aloof from the movements of Prakriti, - to push them away from or outside your field of consciousness. It is the path after all of Rejection and forgetfulness.
The Tantric is a hero, he does not avoid or bypass the difficulty, he faces the vital urge but not in his own strength, his own individual capacity but invokes the Mother's help; he calls the Mother; the Divine Prakriti into himself so that she fights the battle for him; he simply lies quiet behind, perhaps like the Lord Shiva at her feet. The battle is fought by the Divine herself, the victory he enjoys - even like the victory of the gods given to them by the Divine U ma.
3.06 - The Delight of the Divine, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
By knowledge we seek unity with the Divine in his conscious being: by works we seek also unity with the Divine in his conscious being, not statically, but dynamically, through conscious union with the divine Will; but by love we seek unity with him in all the delight of his being. For that reason the way of love, however narrow it may seem in some of its first movements, is in the end more imperatively all-embracing than any other motive of Yoga. The way of knowledge tends easily towards the impersonal and the absolute, may very soon become exclusive. It is true that it need not do so; since the conscious being of the Divine is universal and individual as well as transcendent and absolute, here too there may be and should be a tendency to integral realisation of unity and we can arrive by it at a spiritual oneness with God in man and God in the universe not less complete than any transcendent union. But still this is not quite imperative. For we may plead that there is a higher and a lower knowledge, a higher self-awareness and a lower self-awareness, and that here the apex of knowledge is to be pursued to the exclusion of the mass of knowledge, the way of exclusion preferred to the integral way. Or we may discover a theory of illusion to justify our Rejection of all connection with our fellow-men and with the cosmic action. The way of works leads us to the Transcendent whose power of being manifests itself as a will in the world one in us and all, by identity with which we come, owing to the conditions of that identity, into union with him as the one self in all and as the universal self and Lord in the cosmos. And this might seem to impose a certain comprehensiveness in our realisation of the unity. But still this too is not quite imperative. For this motive also may lean towards an entire impersonality and, even if it leads to a continued participation in the activities of the universal Godhead, may be entirely detached and passive in its principle. It is only when delight intervenes that the motive of integral union becomes quite imperative.
This delight which is so entirely imperative, is the delight in the Divine for his own sake and for nothing else, for no cause or gain whatever beyond itself. It does not seek God for anything that he can give us or for any particular quality in him, but simply and purely because he is our self and our whole being and our all. It embraces the delight of the transcendence, not for the sake of transcendence, but because he is the transcendent; the delight of the universal, not for the sake of universality, but because he is the universal; the delight of the individual not for the sake of individual satisfaction, but because he is the individual. It goes behind all distinctions and appearances and makes no calculations of more or less in his being, but embraces him wherever he is and therefore everywhere, embraces him utterly in the seeming less as in the seeming more, in the apparent limitation as in the revelation of the illimitable; it has the intuition and the experience of his oneness and completeness everywhere. To seek after him for the sake of his absolute being alone is really to drive at our own individual gain, the gain of absolute peace. To possess him absolutely indeed is necessarily the aim of this delight in his being, but this comes when we possess him utterly and are utterly possessed by him and need be limited to no particular status or condition. To seek after him in some heaven of bliss is to seek him not for himself, but for the bliss of heaven; when we have all the true delight of his being, then heaven is within ourselves, and wherever he is and we are, there we have the joy of his kingdom. So too to seek him only in ourselves and for ourselves, is to limit both ourselves and our joy in him. The integral delight embraces him not only within our own individual being, but equally in all men and in all beings. And because in him we are one with all, it seeks him not only for ourselves, but for all our fellows. A perfect and complete delight in the Divine, perfect because pure and self-existent, complete because all-embracing as well as all-absorbing, is the meaning of the way of Bhakti for the seeker of the integral Yoga.
3.1.01 - Distinctive Features of the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
As for the book itself,1 I am unfortunately ignorant of the Telugu language and cannot read the original, but from the account given in English I have formed some idea of the substance. I gather that it is in the main a statement and justification of the Purna Yoga and of my message; I believe you have rightly stated the two main elements of it,first, the acceptance of the world as a manifestation of the Divine Power, not its Rejection as a mistake or an illusion, and, secondly, the character of this manifestation as a spiritual evolution with Yoga as a means for the transformation of mind, life and body into the instruments of a spiritual and supramental perfection. The universe is not only a material but a spiritual fact, life not only a play of forces or a mental experience, but a field for the evolution of the concealed spirit. Human life will receive its fulfilment and transformation into something beyond itself only when this truth is seized and made the motive force of our existence and the means of its effective realisation discovered. The means of realisation is to be found in an integral Yoga, a union in all the parts of our being with the Divine and a consequent transmutation of all their now jarring elements into the harmony of a higher divine consciousness and existence.
A book by a disciple living outside the Ashram.Ed.
3.1.02 - Asceticism and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This Yoga does not mean a Rejection of the powers of Life, but an inner transformation and a change of the spirit in the life and the use of the powers. These powers are now used in an egoistic spirit and for undivine ends; they have to be used in a spirit of surrender to the Divine and for the purposes of the divine Work. That is what is meant by conquering them back for the Mother. If anyone feels himself too weak to resist the clutch of the egoistic money-force he need not make the endeavour.
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4) Unfortunately, there is the resistance, a very obscure and obstinate resistance. That necessitates a negative element in the Yoga, an element of Rejection of things that stand in the way and of pressure upon those forms that are crude and useless to disappear, on those that are useful but imperfect or have been perverted to attain or to recover their true movement. To the vital this pressure is very painful, first, because it is obscure and does not understand and, secondly, because there are parts of it that want to be left to their crude motions and not to change. That is why the intervention of a psychic attitude is so helpful. For the psychic has the happy confidence, the ready understanding and response, the spontaneous surrender; it knows that the touch of the Guru is meant to help and not to hurt, or, like Radha in the poem, that whatever the Beloved does is meant to lead to the Divine Rapture.
5) At the same time, it is not from the negative part of the movement that you have to judge the Yoga, but from its positive side; for the negative part is temporary and transitional and will disappear, the positive alone counts for the ideal and for the future. If you take conditions which belong to the negative side and to a transitional movement as the law of the future and the indication of the character of the Yoga, you will commit a serious misjudgment, a grave mistake. This Yoga is not a Rejection of life or of closeness and intimacy between the Divine and the sadhaks. Its ideal aims at the greatest closeness and unity on the physical as well as the other planes, at the most divine largeness and fullness and joy of life.
See the letter beginning "Even if things" on pages 475-83.Ed.
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I quite acknowledge the utility of a temporary state of vairagya as an antidote to the too strong pull of the vital. But vairagya always tends to a turning away from life and a tamasic element in vairagya, despair, depression etc., often dilapidates the force of the being and may even lead in some cases to falling between two stools so that one loses earth and misses heaven. I therefore prefer to replace vairagya by a firm and quiet Rejection of what has to be rejected, sex, vanity, ego-centrism, attachment, etc. etc.; but that does not include Rejection of the activities and powers that can be made instruments of the sadhana and the divine work, such as art, music, poetry etc.Yoga can be done without the Rejection of life, without killing or impairing the life-joy and the vital force.
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3.1.04 - Transformation in the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I do not know that any except a very few great Yogis have really changed their outer nature. In all the Asrams I have seen people were just as others except for certain specific moral controls put on certain kinds of outer action (food, sex etc.), but the general nature was the human nature (as in the story of Narad and Janaka). It is even a theory of the old Yogas that the prrabdha karma and therefore necessarily the permanent elements of external character do not changeonly one gets the inner realisation and separates oneself from it so that it drops off at death like a soiled robe and leaves the spirit free to enter into Nirvana. Our object is a spiritual change and not merely an ethical control, but this can only come first by a spiritual Rejection from within and then by a supramental descent from above.
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3.1.1 - The Transformation of the Physical, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is the nature of the physical mind to be obstinate. Physical nature exists by constant repetition of the same thingonly a constant presentation of different forms of itself. This obstinate recurrence is therefore part of its nature when it is in activity; otherwise it remains in a dull inertia. When therefore we want to get rid of the old movements of physical nature, they resist by this kind of obstinate recurrence. One has to be very persistent in Rejection to get rid of it.
There are two aspects of physical Nature as of all Nature the individual and the universal. All things come into one from the universal Nature but the individual physical keeps some of them and rejects others, and to those it keeps it gives a personal form. So these things can be said to be both inside it and coming outside from within or created by it because it gives a special form and also outside and coming in from outside. But when one wants to get rid of them, one first throws out all that is within into the surrounding Naturefrom there the universal Nature tries to bring them back or bring in new and similar things of its own to replace them. One has then constantly to reject this invasion. By constant Rejection, the force of recurrence finally dwindles and the individual becomes free and able to bring the higher consciousness and its movements into the physical being.
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3.1.2 - Levels of the Physical Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is an inertia of the physical consciousness which allows these desires to come and does not react against the suggestions; it is that also which responds to the pains and suggestion of illness. But you must not accept the suggestion that you cannot react and be free,the physical consciousness itself cannot as yet, but the will can if it is called on to act and made accustomed to act always. Not the struggling will, but a quiet will insisting on the quietude of the mind and vital and insisting on the Rejection of these adverse things. That would soon prove sufficient to hold the ground for the Peace and Force to act and they would do the rest.
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As for the vital physical readmitting the forces of disturbance, it is not always because it wants; it may happen also because in spite of itself certain impacts or suggestions revive the old vibrations and the habit of responding has been so strong in it that it responds in spite of itself, and for a time it is unable to recover its balance. This happens in all parts of the being, but it is especially true of the physical partsphysical mind yielding to habitual thoughts, physical vital yielding to habitual desires and impulsions etc., body yielding to habitual sensations, illnesses etc. etc. Often sadhaks write, But I dont want these things, even my vital and body feel uncomfortable and wish them away, then why do they come? It is because of this long established habit of response which is too strong for the yet too quiescent and passive will (if it can be called will) of Rejection in the part affected. It is especially true of the physical parts because a passive quiescence, a habit of being driven by forces is their very nature, unless they are controlled from above or made to share in the idea and will of the higher parts.
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3.2.02 - The Veda and the Upanishads, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Perception is not enough to transform the nature. Payata3 in the spiritual language does not mean only perception. Perception is of the mind and a mental perception is not enougha substantial and dynamic realisation in all the being is necessary. Otherwise one of three things may happen. (1) The mind perceives oneness but the vital is not affected, it goes on with its impulses, for the vital is governed not by thought or reason but by tendency, impulse, desire-forceit uses reason only as a justification for its tendencies. Or even the vital may say, All is one so it does not matter what I do. Why should not I seek oneness with others in my own way? (2) If the mind has a realisation, but the vital does not share in it or distorts it, then also the vital can insist on its own way or even carry the mind along with it. As the Gita says, the senses (vital) carry away the mind even of the sage who sees, as the wind carries away a ship on a stormy sea. (3) The inner being may have the realisation strongly and live in the oneness, calm, peace, but the interior parts of the outer may feel the reactions of desire etc. In this case the reactions are more superficial; but even so Rejection is needed till they cease. When all the being lives in the solid realisation of calm, peace, liberation, oneness, then the desires fall away and the necessity of Rejection ceases, because there is nothing to reject any longer.
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32.06 - The Novel Alchemy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
These words of Sri Aurobindo seem to lend support to the view of the Western thinker. Both echo an almost identical feeling. But what Sri Aurobindo says here is only a fraction of all he has to say on the subject, it is not his final word, whereas in the view of the Western sage, sorrow and suffering, misery and pain appear as ultimate truths at least for the individual, and for the ordinary life of the common multitude; this manner of complete self-immolation of the individual serves a collective end, like the self-sacrifice of an army or a multitude of soldiers in a war. But in Sri Aurobindo's view, even for the individual, for any individual, this consummation in self-sacrifice is not the final end; for the individual too this is merely an episode in one or more of his lives. Through this self-sacrifice, every individual goes on developing himself along with the development of the collectivity, and this is done not by losing or abolishing oneself. No one is rejected or lost, like the dried-up leaves or flowers. For the individual too there are levels of progression. There is not merely one class of fortunate people who pass into the highest realisation as suggested by the Christian thinker and have won a seat alongside of God in a heavenly consciousness. All are coming up gradually in their footsteps and will participate in an identical realisation. It cannot be regarded as ordained of God that the upward movement .and supreme attainment of one small section should be founded involuntarily or however willingly on the self-immolation of another bigger group. If evolution has to proceed through the Rejection and sacrifice of the many, then does it not imply in the end the survival of the few? Whatever the size or the integrality of those few, it still remains only a portion of the whole.
It is true that sorrow and suffering, old age and death are facts of an earlier part, that is to say, the first stage of the evolutionary process. When in the beginning of things darkness was enveloped in darkness, tamo asit
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In the vision of Sri Aurobindo, the process of creation is not merely an ascent and upward movement, it has a movement of descent too. There is not merely a crossing of levels upon levels, not merely a progressive purification, enlargement, deepening, intensification and sharpening of the consciousness and status; the aim is to transfigure all in the image of the divine being. This process involves a going upward and a, descent with a view to reshape the lower reaches anew in the mould of the heights, not a final extinction, nirvana,in the world of Brahmanby a Rejection of all individuality and collectivity. No level of the created universe has to be bypassed or abolished, not even the lowest material plane. On the contrary, the aim is to take one's stand on this material plane itself and transmute it into a new matter, even as the secret aim of the old alchemists had been to transmute the base metal into gold.
And we know how, thanks to modern science, gross solid matter now appears before our eyes in its true form of electricity and light; but it remains matter all the same in spite of its possessing the properties of light and electricity. If we will probe a little deeper into its secrets, matter acquires the attributes of consciousness, but even then it may still remain matter. Materiality need not abolish itself in order to become consciousness. The spiritual world too need not transcend matter; the establishment of the spirit will not mean the extinction of the material world in a final dissolution.
3.2.08 - Bhakti Yoga and Vaishnavism, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is the rub that you seem all to ignore entirely, the difficulties of the physical embodiment and the divine realisation on the physical plane. For most, it seems to be a simple alternative; either the Divine comes down in full power and the thing is doneno difficulty, no necessary conditions, no law or process, only miracle and magic, or else, well, this cant be the Divine! Again you all (or almost all) insist on the Divine becoming human, remaining in the human consciousness and you protest against any attempt to make the human divine; on the other hand there is an outcry of disappointment, bewilderment, distrust, perhaps indignation, if there are human difficulties, if there is strain in the body, a swaying struggle with adverse forces, obstacles, checks, illness, and some begin to say, Oh, there is nothing divine here!as if one could remain, vitally and physically, in the untransformed undivinised human consciousness, in unchanged contact with it, satisfying its demands, and yet be immune under all circumstances and in all conditions against strain and struggle and illness. If I want to divinise the human consciousness, to bring down the supramental, the Truth-Consciousness, the Light, the Force into the physical to transform it, to create there a great fullness of Truth and Light and Power and Bliss and Love, and make these other things impossible, the response is repulsion, or fear, or unwillingnessor a doubt whether it is possible. On one side there is the claim that illness and the rest should be impossible, on the other a violent Rejection of the only condition under which these things can become impossible. I know that this is the natural inconsistency of the human vital mind wanting two inconsistent and incompatible things together; but that is one reason why it is necessary to transform the human and put something a little more luminous in its place.
But is the Divine then something so terrible, horrible or repellent that the idea of its entry into the physical, its divinising of the human should create this shrinking, refusal, revolt or fear? I can understand that the unregenerate vital attached to its own petty sufferings and pleasures, to the brief ignorant drama of life, should shrink from what will change it. But why should a God-lover, a God-seeker, a sadhak fear the divinisation of the consciousness! Why should he object to becoming one in nature with what he seeks, why should he recoil from sdya-mukti? Behind this fear there are usually two causes: first, there is the feeling of the vital that it will have to cease to be obscure, crude, muddy, egoistic, unrefined (spiritually), full of stimulating desires and small pleasures and interesting sufferings (for it shrinks even from the Ananda which will replace them); next, there is some vague ignorant idea of the mind, due, I suppose, to the ascetic tradition, that the divine nature is something cold, bare, empty, austere, aloof, without the glorious riches of the egoistic human vital life. As if there were not a divine vital and as if that divine vital is not itself and, when it gets the means to manifest, will not make the life on earth also infinitely more full of beauty, love, radiance, warmth, fire, intensity and divine passion and capacity for bliss than the present impotent, suffering, pettily and transiently excited and soon tired vitality of the still so imperfect human creation!
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It is not the heart of the devotee but the mind of the observer that questions how it is that the Gopis were called or responded at once and others the Brahmin women, for instancewere not called or did not respond at once. Once the mind puts the question, there are two possible answers, the mere will of Krishna without any reason, what the mind would call his absolute divine choice or his arbitrary divine caprice or else the readiness of the heart that is called, and that amounts to adhikri-bheda. A third reply would becircumstances, as for instance, the parking off of the spiritual ground into closed preserves. But how can circumstances prevent the Grace from acting? In spite of the parking off, it worksChristians, Mahomedans do answer to the Grace of Krishna. Tigers, ghouls must love if they see him, hear his flute? Yes, but why do some hear it and see him, others not? We are thrown back on the two alternatives, Krishnas Grace calls whom it wills to call without any determining reason for the choice or Rejection, his mercy or his withholding or at least delaying of his mercy, or else he calls the hearts that are ready to vibrate and leap up at his call and even there he waits till the moment has come. To say that it does not depend on outward merit or appearance of fitness is no doubt true; the something that was ready to wake in spite, it may be, of many hard layers in which it was enclosed, may be something visible to Krishna and not to us. It was there perhaps long before the flute began to play, but he was busy melting the hard layers so that the heart in its leap might not be pressed back by them when the awakening notes came. The Gopis heard and rushed out into the forest the others did notor did they think it was only some rustic music or some rude cowherd lover fluting to his sweetheart, not a call that learned and cultured or virtuous ears could recognise as the call of the Divine? There is something to be said for the adhikri-bheda. But of course it must be understood in a large sense,some may have the adhikra for recognising Krishnas flute, some for the call of Christ, some for the dance of Shivato each his own way and his natures answer to the Divine Call. Adhikra cannot be stated in rigid mental terms, it is something spiritual and subtle, something mystic and secret between the called and the Caller.
As for the swelled head, the theory of Grace may no doubt contri bute to it, though I should imagine that the said head never felt the Grace but only the magnanimity of its own ego. The swelling may come equally in the way of personal effort as by the craving for Grace. It is fundamentally not due to either, but to a natural predisposition to this kind of oedema.
3.2.3 - Dreams, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This is how these dreams are built and the question at once arises, what is their utility and why should they with their triviality and incoherent symbolism and the obscurity and pettiness of the world to which they belong take so large a place. The answer is that it is here between the subconscient and the petty lower vital world that there is the hidden basis of a great part of mans ordinary movements, especially the things that are hereditary, customary, imposed by education and surrounding and left strongly entrenched in the subconscious obscurity, even when suppressed and rejected and entirely contradicted by the mind and will and the higher vital: it is the field of the suppressed complexes of the Freudians, it is the basis of the herd mind, it is the support of all that is petty and obscure in the being and of many other undesirable things. In your dreamseven in your lower vitalyou are out of sympathy with this world, irritated and ill at ease and yet there is something in the subconscient nature that is tied and constantly going there as soon as the waking mind and will are quiescent. So it is with all, for one has to go there for two reasons, first either to become acquainted with its movements and work them out in the subtle experience till they go out of the system by Rejection or to clear them out by a conscious action or else to work upon this world and bring into it a real consciousness and a true Light.
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3.2.4 - Sex, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is no how to these things the sex-impulse exists for its own sake and it uses the person as an instrument and hooks him on to anotherwhenever it can throw the hook, it throws it and once the connection is there holds on for some time at least. This is the physical vital and subtle physical action for if it is the gross physical that dominates, there is no choiceany woman will serve the fun. The sensation you feel is physical vital + subtle physical, that is why it is so concrete. Naturally these sensations do not stop by enjoyment they are recurrent and so long as the pressure lasts they continue. It is only by Rejection or by the domination of a contrary force that they cease.
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The Mother has already told you the truth about this idea. The idea that by fully indulging the sex-hunger it will be finished and disappear for ever is a deceptive pretence held out by the vital to the mind in order to get a sanction for its desireit has no other raison dtre or truth or justification. If an occasional indulgence keeps the sex-desire simmering, a full indulgence would only sink you in its mire. This hunger like other hungers does not cease by temporary satiation; it renews itself after a temporary abeyance and wants again indulgence. Neither sops nor gorgings are the right treatment for it. It can only go by a radical psychic Rejection or a full spiritual opening with the increasing descent of a consciousness that does not want it and has a truer Ananda.
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For the taste, when it existssome eliminate it by Rejection and the calling down of peace and purity into the cells, others by substituting for the lower rasa the higher Anandasome like the Vaishnavas try to sublimate it by the madhura bhva taking up the sexual rasa from the sex-centre into the heart and turning it there towards the Divine, but the last is a rather risky method.
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Sex is not a rational force; it is purely irrational, a power of the inferior, animal nature; you cannot therefore be rightly astonished if it acts irrationally without any justification or reason and without any other cause than its own habit and instinct. Moreover, this force as it is now acting in you with regard to X seems to be purely vital physical and physical in its character. It is not supported by your thinking mind or your rational will, these are opposed to its continuance; it has no emotional support, for you are no longer attracted by her or in love with her; the higher vital does not seem to be concerned, for neither beauty nor passion draws or drives you. But at this level of sex none of these things are necessary. The vital physical and physical urge of sex does not ask for beauty or love or emotional gratification or anything else; desire, repetition of vital-physical habit and bodily gratification (most usually, but not necessarily by the sex-act) are its motive forces. To set it in action nothing more is needed. Moreover, by mental and other Rejections it has plunged down in the subconscient and is hidden there and rises suddenly from there. It is itself born from the Inconscient as a blind push of its dark force of Nature. It owes no allegiance. It can only be got rid of by a firm and persistent Rejection, separation, detachment, not yielding to it by any act, refusing to take joy in it in any part of the being, until it is a dead thing and has no longer any motive or power of existence.
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It is dangerous to think of giving up all barrier of discrimination and defence against what is trying to descend upon you. Have you thought what this would mean if what is descending is something not in consonance with the divine Truth, perhaps even adverse? An adverse Power could ask no better condition for getting control over the seeker. It is only the Mothers Force and the divine Truth that one should admit without barriers. And even there one must keep the power of discernment in order to detect anything false that comes masquerading as the Mothers Force and the divine Truth, and keep too the power of Rejection that will throw away all mixture.
Keep faith in your spiritual destiny, draw back from error and open more the psychic being to the direct guidance of the Mothers light and power. If the central will is sincere, each recognition of a mistake can become a stepping stone to a truer movement and a higher progress.
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As for the method of mastery, it cannot be done by physical abstinence aloneit proceeds by a process of combined detachment and Rejection. The consciousness stands back from the sex-impulse, feels it as not its own, as something alien thrown on it by Nature-force to which it refuses assent or identificationeach time a certain movement of Rejection throws it more and more outward. The mind remains unaffected; after a time the vital being which is the chief support withdraws from it in the same way, finally the physical consciousness no longer supports it. This process continues until even the subconscient can no longer rouse it up in dream and no farther movement comes from the outer Nature-force to rekindle this lower fire. This is the course when the sex-propensity sticks obstinately; but there are some who can eliminate it decisively by a swift radical dropping away from the nature. That however is more rare.
It has to be said that the total elimination of the sex-impulse is one of the most difficult things in sadhana and one must be prepared for it to take time. But its total disappearance has been achieved and a practical liberation crossed only by occasional dream-movements from the subconscient is fairly common.
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To be conscious [of the sexual movement] is the first step, but by itself it is not enough; there must come an automatic force of Rejection which the moment desire and passion arise throws it off so that it ebbs back from the mind or vital or wherever it touches. This comes either by a strong will of Rejection becoming habitual in its action on the consciousness, or by the detached inner being developing an automatic dynamic strength in itself so that it is not only not touched, but refuses these things by an active purifying power or, finally, by the full emergence of the psychic and its government of the mind, vital and body. The last is the most rapid and easy way. Till then these things recur. But probably in yourself there is still some sense of the old idea of sin or fault which makes you feel troubled. You must take it as an adjustment of the nature that is going on in which old movements which you no longer accept as yours return from force of habit and get a habitual response from some part of the being. But if that part of the being can be made to reject it, then the response begins to fade away. You must not allow yourself or your mind to feel troubled by the returns; for that only weakens the power of resistance. There should be calm dissociation of yourself from these things; then the detached inner being will become more easily dynamic and able to reject them from the vital nature.
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X seems in his letter to want only a liberation from sexual thoughts and desires by an intervention of anothers will; but this is not how it should be done. Those who practise this Yoga can escape from it by a Rejection of sexual suggestions aided by the influence of the Divine Power which acts through the Mother, but it is not instantaneous, except in the case of those who have a complete receptivity and an absolute faith. Usually it takes a steady tapasya to get rid of a lifelong habit.
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It is the entire inner Rejection of the sex-pulls and vital pulls that is necessary, a Rejection by the whole lower vital itself the outer Rejection can only be effective if this inner Rejection comes to reinforce it. Usually people adopt the outer Rejection because otherwise (if these things are indulged) the inner Rejection is not likely to come since the vital trend is always being confirmed by the outer action but if the outer is rejected, then the conflict is confined to the internal desire and fought out there. Naturally an outer renunciation by itself does not liberate.
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I meant by cutting off [the sex-impulse] a determined Rejection of the inward as well as the outward movement whenever it comes. Something in the nature accepts and lets itself go helplessly and something in the mind allows it to do so. The mind does not seem to believe in its power to say No definitely to inward movements as it would to an outer contactand yet the Purusha is there and can put its definite No, maintaining it till the Prakriti has to submitor else till the confirming touch from above makes its determination perfectly effective.
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It [sexual desire] is the habitual mechanical response to the sexforce in the physical nature. It gets this intensity in spite of the minds Rejection because something in the vital physical (nervous) being still remembers and responds to the suggestion of the craving and the pleasure. If the nervous being can be got to reject it then it becomes a purely physical wave without mental assent or vital desire that is the last stage after which it can be thrown out of even the environmental Nature through which the suggestion or denial of the general sex-force comes to the individual being.
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Apart from the total Rejection of sex-thoughts and imaginations and actions, which ends by acting in the subconscient also, I dont know any remedy for sex-dreams except the putting of a force as concrete as possible on the sex-centre and organ prohibiting this urge and its result, put when about to sleep and renewed each time one wakes and goes to sleep again. But this all cannot manage to use, for they employ a mental will instead of a concrete force (the mental will can be effective, but is not always so). This method, besides, only acts for the time, it inhibits but except in rare cases does not permanently cure; it does not get rid of the sex-impressions in the subconscient, and of course it means thinking of the sex-affair though only negatively.
I have heard it said that even very advanced Yogis get the dreams at least once in six months,I dont know how far it is true or what the Yogis themselves say about it. But the sex-impressions in the heart can be got rid of long before the end of life, and even the seed state in the subconscient which comes up in dreams, though sticky enough, is not quite so irremovable as all that.
Anyway, the dream kind is not so much to trouble about, unless it is frequentit is the waking state that must be rigorously cleared out. Sometimes, if that is done, there is automatic extension of the habit of Rejection to the subconscient, so that when the dream is coming there is an automatic prohibition that stops it. Under a regime like that I think the sex-pressure would become, if not non-existent, yet permanently quiescent in its seed state and so practically non est.
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There is one way by which it is possible for you to get rid of the perverse habit: to establish a strong mental control and so get rid of the wrong movement. It is not true that it is unconquerable; on the contrary, the fact that you were able to interrupt it for some time shows that you can conquer it. It returned because these things are a movement of certain universal life-forces that, once allowed a habitual wrong response in the individual system, tend to continue in that form and, even if evicted, try always to recur. Your mind has rejected them, but something in your vital nature the part that responds directly to the universal lifeforcesstill takes pleasure and has preserved the capacity and desire of the wrong response. A resolute and persistent effort of will can enforce in the end the Rejection of the desire and finally even of any mechanical habit of the movement upon this part of the nature also. Only you must not be discouraged by relapses; your will must be more persevering than the habit and persist till there is a complete conquest.
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33.18 - I Bow to the Mother, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
As I was saying, this capacity for an entire Rejection of the past has been one of the powers of her spiritual consciousness and realisation. It is not an easy thing for a human being to wash himself clean of all his past acquisitions, be it intellectual knowledge or the habits of the vital, not to speak of the body's needs, and step forth in his nude purity. And yet this is the first and most important step in the spiritual discipline. The Mother has given us a living example of this. That is why she decided to shed all her past, forget all about it and begin anew the a-b-c of her training and initiation with Sri Aurobindo. And it was in fact at the hands of Sri Aurobindo that she received as a token and outward symbol her first lessons in Bengali and Sanskrit, beginning with the alphabet.
But all this is simply an attempt on the part of the small to comprehend something of the Vast; it is as if a particle of sand was trying to reflect a little of the sun's rays, a dwarf trying to catch at the high tree-top with his uplifted arms, a child prattling of his mother's beauty.
3.3.1 - Illness and Health, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The suggestion of weakness comes to the subconscient part of the body consciousness and therefore the mind is most often unaware of it. If the body itself were truly conscious, then the suggestions could be detected in time and thrown off before they took effect. Also the Rejection by the central consciousness would be supported by a conscious Rejection in the body and act more immediately and promptly.
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Your theory of illness is rather a perilous creed for illness is a thing to be eliminated, not accepted or enjoyed. There is something in the being that enjoys illness, it is possible even to turn the pains of illness like any other pain into a form of pleasure; for pain and pleasure are both of them degradations of an original Ananda and can be reduced into the terms of each other or else sublimated into their original principle of Ananda. It is true also that one must be able to bear illness with calm, equanimity, endurance, even recognition of it, since it has come, as something that had to be passed through in the course of experience. But to accept and enjoy it means to help it to last and that will not do; for illness is a deformation of the physical nature just as lust, anger, jealousy etc. are deformations of the vital nature and error and prejudice and indulgence of falsehood are deformations of the mental nature. All these things have to be eliminated and Rejection is the first condition of their disappearance while acceptance has a contrary effect altogether.
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3.4.1 - The Subconscient and the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When these things [base feelings such as jealousy] are rejected and disappear for a time, some part of them may go out into the environmental consciousness and from there they can return in a wave from the general Nature. If one is conscious, one can even feel them coming in. The Rejection of such returns is an important part of the purification and it is not complete till this power of returning is no longer there. But also it may be that some part is not so much rejected as suppressed by mental control, then it sinks into the subconscient and when the subconscient is active (as in dream or in a passive state of the mind) or else when the subconscient itself is brought up for purification, then it may rise up even with much violence. There especially the sense that one has to begin all again and nothing has been done may come upon the sadhak. But it is not so really. One has to be firm and not get upset but this time detach firmly and completely so as to uproot completely from the nature.
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What is taking place, the subsiding of the surge of subconscient thoughts and movements, and their pressure on the mind, is just what ought to take place. It is not a suppression or pulling back into the subconscient, it is an expulsion from the conscious self into which it has arisen. It is true that something more may rise from the subconscient, but it will be what is still left there. What is now rejected, if it goes anywhere and is not abolished, will go not into the subconscient but into the surrounding consciousness which one carries around himonce there it no longer belongs to oneself in any way and if it tries to return it will be as foreign matter which one has not to accept or allow any longer. These are the two last stages of Rejection by which one gets rid of the old things of the nature, they go down into the subconscient and have to be got rid of from there or they go out into the environmental consciousness and are no longer ours.
The idea that one should let what rises from the subconscient go on repeating itself till it is exhausted is not the right idea. For that would needlessly prolong the troubled condition and might be harmful. When these things rise they have to be observed and then thrown out, not kept.
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The system of getting rid of things by anubhava can also be a dangerous one; for on this way one can easily become more entangled instead of arriving at freedom. This method has behind it two well-known psychological motives. One, the motive of purposeful exhaustion, is valid only in some cases, especially when some natural tendency has too strong a hold or too strong a drive in it to be got rid of by vicra or by the process of Rejection and the substitution of the true movement in its place; when that happens in excess, the sadhaka has sometimes even to go back to the ordinary action of the ordinary life, get the true experience of it with a new mind and will behind and then return to the spiritual life with the obstacle eliminated or else ready for elimination. But this method of purposive indulgence is always dangerous, though sometimes inevitable. It succeeds only when there is a very strong will in the being towards realisation; for then indulgence brings a strong dissatisfaction and reaction, vairgya, and the will towards perfection can be carried down into the recalcitrant part of the nature.
The other motive for anubhava is of a more general applicability; for in order to reject anything from the being one has first to become conscious of it, to have the clear inner experience of its action and to discover its actual place in the workings of the nature. One can then work upon it to eliminate it, if it is an entirely wrong movement, or to transform it if it is only the degradation of a higher and true movement. It is this or something like it that is attempted crudely and improperly with a rudimentary and insufficient knowledge in the system of psychoanalysis. The process of raising up the lower movements into the full light of consciousness in order to know and deal with them is inevitable; for there can be no complete change without it. But it can truly succeed only when a higher light and force are sufficiently at work to overcome, sooner or later, the force of the tendency that is held up for change. Many, under the pretext of anubhava, not only raise up the adverse movement, but support it with their consent instead of rejecting it, find justifications for continuing or repeating it and so go on playing with it, indulging its return, eternising it; afterwards when they want to get rid of it, it has got such a hold that they find themselves helpless in its clutch and only a terrible struggle or an intervention of divine grace can liberate them. Some do this out of a vital twist or perversity, others out of sheer ignorance; but in Yoga, as in life, ignorance is not accepted by Nature as a justifying excuse. This danger is there in all improper dealings with the ignorant parts of the nature; but none is more ignorant, more perilous, more unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely or improperly for anubhava is to risk suffusing the conscious parts also with its dark and dirty stuff and thus poisoning the whole vital and even the mental nature. Always therefore one should begin by a positive, not a negative experience, by bringing down something of the divine nature, calm, light, equanimity, purity, divine strength into the parts of the conscious being that have to be changed; only when that has been sufficiently done and there is a firm positive basis, is it safe to raise up the concealed subconscious adverse elements in order to destroy and eliminate them by the strength of the divine calm, light, force and knowledge. Even so, there will be enough of the lower stuff rising up of itself to give you as much of the anubhava as you will need for getting rid of the obstacles; but then they can be dealt with with much less danger and under a higher internal guidance.
37.05 - Narada - Sanatkumara (Chhandogya Upanishad), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
But beyond this second series there is a fresh turn which takes us round to the third. Here we get to the realm of the subliminal, with its silent movements behind our ordinary consciousness. This series consists of Memory, Hope, Life - force and Truth. In our language, Memory is constant remembrance, Hope is aspiration, Life-force is energy at work, and Truth means the Rejection of falsehood and the unreal and the acceptance of what is real and true. Beyond this there is yet another series, the ascent to which lies in taking a further turn from behind. The first step on this path is Knowledge, that is, knowledge of the Vast and the Particular. The second step is Contemplation, implying a concentrated one-pointedness. The third is Faith, an unwavering trust. Faith implies steadfastness and, to make the latter effective, there is need of action, its application in life, making it concrete. Finally, action, leads to joy, it is indeed the mainspring of action. We know that joy alone is the essence of creation, joy is its source, joy the ultimate end. But the Rishi says, this joy is no ordinary pleasure; its other name is the Vastness - the Vast verily is the Delight, there is no joy in the smallness, says the Text.
Starting from "Name", outermost expression and most concrete figure of gross physical substance, we have risen by stages to another Name of substance, to the Supreme Name, into the Highest Consciousness, from the uttermost division of the individualised ego to the endless infinity of Being. This progress or ascent of the consciousness or being has not been in a simple straight line, it has taken a zigzag serpentine path. First to develop were, as I have said, the parts of the externalised or manifest being; this is the stage of the waking mentality. On this level, the highest attainment is Knowledge. From Name or gross physical Word as our starting-point, we arrive in the end at its culmination as the knowledge of particulars, what we call the power of discrimination. But the, growth and cultivation of the mind alone is not enough. For its sufficient development and capacity there is needed a physical capacity that has the body as its base. That is why, in the second stage of our progress, there is a turning back from the mind down to a lower level, for the cultivation of this physical base, in order to attain mastery there. Once the base got firmly established, the consciousness had to take another turn and enter upon a new stage of its progress. This was in the realm of the inner being. In this stage, there was gained the acquaintance and control of the functions and powers that work from behind the physical mind. From here there is the ascent to the fourth step while still keeping behind the veil, on to the gates of the spiritual consciousness, crossing beyond the limits of our ordinary state. Already, as we reached the level of the life-force, the Rishi had something new to say: one who gained entry into the inner or universal life became "extraordinary", in that he had passsed the limits of his ordinary consciousness, crossed over to the other side. And one who got firmly established in the integral Truth of the final stage attained the state of superconscience.
3.7.1.09 - Karma and Freedom, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But if this extinction may be called a liberation, it is yet not a status of freedom; for that can only repose upon an affirmation, a permanence, not upon a negative and extinction of all affirmations, and needs too, one would imagine, a someone or something that is free. The Buddha himself, it may be remarked, seems to have conceived of Nirvana as a status of absolute bliss of freedom, a negation of Karmic existence in some incognisable Absolute which he refused steadfastly to describe or define by any positive or any negative,as indeed definition by any exclusive positive or widest sum of positives or any negative or complete sum of negatives would seem by the very fact of its bringing in a definition and thereby a limitation to be inapplicable to the Absolute. The Illusionists Maya is a more mystic thing and more obscure to the intelligence; but we have at least here a Self, a positive Infinite which is capable therefore of an eternal freedom, but only in inaction, by cessation from Karma. For the self as the individual, the soul in action of Karma is bound always by ignorance, and only by Rejection of individuality and of the cosmic illusion can we return to the liberty of the Absolute. What we see in both these systems is that spiritual freedom and the cosmic compulsion are equally admitted, but in a total separation and an exclusion from each others own proper field,still as absolute opposites and contraries. Compulsion of ignorance or Karma is absolute in the world of birth; freedom of the spirit is absolute in a withdrawal from birth and cosmos and Karma.
But these trenchant systems, however satisfactory to the logical reason, are suspect to a synthetic intelligence; and at any rate, as we find that knowledge and ignorance are not in their essence absolute contraries but ignorance and inconscience itself the veil of a secret knowledge, so it may be at least possible that liberty and the compulsion of Karma are not such unbridgeable opposites, but that behind and even in Karma itself there is all the time a secret liberty of the indwelling Spirit. Buddhism and Illusionism too do not assert any external or internal predestination, but only a self-imposed bondage. And very insistently they demand of man a choice between the right and the wrong way, between the will to an impermanent existence and the will to Nirvana, between a will to cosmic existence and the will to an absolute spiritual being. Nor do they demand this choice of the Absolute or of the universal Being or Power, who indeed cares nothing for their claim and goes on very tranquilly and securely with his mighty eternal action, but they ask it of the individual, of the soul of man halting perplexed between the oppositions of his mentality. It would seem then that there is something in our individual being which has some real freedom of will, some power of choice of a great consequence and magnitude, and what is it then that thus chooses, and what are the limits, where the beginning or the end of its actual or its possible liberty?
38.01 - Asceticism and Renunciation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
In the Gita, Sri Krishna has time and again directed Arjuna not to follow asceticism. Why? He admits the virtue of Sannyasa and yet, in spite of the repeated questionings of Arjuna overwhelmed as he was with the spirit of asceticism, abnegation and altruism, Sri Krishna never withdrew his injunctions with regard to the path of action. Arjuna asked, "If desireless Intelligence, founded in Yoga, is greater than karma, then why do you engage me in this terrible work of slaying my elders?" Many have repeated the question of Arjuna, some even have not hesitated to call him the worst Teacher, one who shows the wrong way. In answer, Sri Krishna has explained that renunciation is greater than asceticism, to remember God and do one's appointed work without desire is far greater than freedom to do as one likes. Renunciation means renunciation of desire, renunciation of selfishness. And to learn that renunciation one need not take refuge in solitude. That lesson has to be learnt through work in the field of work; work is the means to climb upon the path of yoga. This world of varied play has been created for the purpose .of bringing delight to its creatures. It is not God's purpose that this game of delight should cease. He wants the creatures to become his comrades and playmates, to flood the world with delight. We are in the darkness of ignorance; that is because, for the sake of the play the Lord has kept himself aloof and thus surrounded himself with obscurity. Many are the ways fixed by him which, if followed would take one out of the darkness, bring him into God's company. If anyone is not interested in the play and desires rest, God will fulfil his desire. But if one follows His way for His sake, then God chooses him, in this world or elsewhere as His fit playmate. Arjuna was Krishna's dearest comrade and playmate, therefore he received the teaching of the Gita's supreme secret. What that supreme secret is I tried to explain in a previous context. The Divine said to Arjuna, "It is harmful to the world to give up work, to give up work is the spirit of asceticism. And an asceticism without renunciation is meaningless. What one gains by asceticism one gains also by renunciation, that is to say, the freedom from Ignorance, equanimity, power, delight, union with Sri Krishna. Whatever the man worshipped by all does, people take that as the ideal and follow it. Therefore, if you give up work through asceticism, all will follow that path and bring about the confusion of social values, and the reign of the wrong law. If you give up the desire for the fruit of action and pursue man's normal law of life, inspire men to follow each his own line of activity, then you will unite with my Law of life and become my intimate friend." Sri Krishna explains furthermore that the rule is to follow the right path through works and finally at the end of the path attain quietude, that is to say, renounce all sense of being the doer. But this is not renunciation of work through asceticism, this is to give up all vital urge to action involving immense labour and effort through the Rejection of egoism and through union with the Divine - and transcending all gun as, to do works as an instrument impelled by His force. In that state it is the permanent consciousness of the soul that he is not the doer, he is the witness, part of the Divine; it is the Divine Power that works through his body created for action by his own inner law of being. The soul is the witness and enjoyer, Nature is the doer, the Divine is the giver of sanction. The being so illumined does not seek to help or hinder any work that the Divine Power undertakes. Submitted to the Shakti, the body and mind and intellect engage themselves in the work appointed by God. Even a terrible massacre like that of Kurukshetra cannot stain a soul with sin if it is sanctioned by God, if it occurs in the course of the fulfilment of one's own dharma (Inner Law), but only a few can attain to this knowledge and this goal. It cannot be the law of life for the common man. What then is the duty for the common wayfarers? Even for them the knowledge that He is the Lord, I am the instrument is to a certain extent within their reach. Through this knowledge to remember always the Divine and follow one's inner law of life is the direction that has been given.
"Better is one's own law of works, swadharma, though in itself faulty, than an alien law well wrought out; death in one's own law of being is better, perilous is it to follow an alien law."1
3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
by exhaustion of or Rejection from the latter, - it is this Yogic
fitness of the adhara or receptacle that is indicated in shakema
4.02 - The Integral Perfection, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The integral Yoga meets the religious ideal at several points, but goes beyond it in the sense of a greater wideness. The religious ideal looks, not only beyond this earth, but away from it to a heaven or even beyond all heavens to some kind of Nirvana. Its ideal of perfection is limited to whatever kind of inner or outer mutation will eventually serve the turning away of the soul from the human life to the beyond. Its ordinary idea of perfection is a religio-ethical change, a drastic purification of the active and the emotional being, often with an ascetic abrogation and Rejection of the vital impulses as its completest reaching of excellence, and in any case a supraterrestrial motive and reward or result of a life of piety and right conduct. In so far as it admits a change of knowledge, will, aesthesis, it is in the sense of the turning of them to another object than the aims of human life and eventually brings a Rejection of all earthly objects of aesthesis, will and knowledge. The method, whether it lays stress on personal effort or upon divine influence, on works and knowledge or upon grace, is not like the mundane a development, but rather a conversion; but in the end the aim is not a conversion of our mental and physical nature, but the putting on of a pure spiritual nature and being, and since that is not possible here on earth, it looks for its consummation by a transference to another world or a shuffling off of all cosmic existence.
But the integral Yoga founds itself on a conception of the spiritual being as an omnipresent existence, the fullness of which comes not essentially by a transference to other worlds or a cosmic self-extinction, but by a growth out of what we now are phenomenally into the consciousness of the omnipresent reality which we always are in the essence of our being. It substitutes for the form of religious piety its completer spiritual seeking of a divine union. It proceeds by a personal effort to a conversion through a divine influence and possession; but this divine grace, if we may so call it, is not simply a mysterious flow or touch coming from above, but the all-pervading act of a divine presence which we come to know within as the power of the highest Self and Master of our being entering into the soul and so possessing it that we not only feel it close to us and pressing upon our mortal nature, but live in its law, know that law, possess it as the whole power of our spiritualised nature. The conversion its action will effect is an integral conversion of our ethical being into the Truth and Right of the divine nature, of our intellectual into the illumination of divine knowledge, our emotional into the divine love and unity, our dynamic and volitional into a working of the divine power, our aesthetic into a plenary reception and a creative enjoyment of divine beauty, not excluding even in the end a divine conversion of the vital and physical being. It regards all the previous life as an involuntary and unconscious or half-conscious preparatory growing towards this change and Yoga as the voluntary and conscious effort and realisation of the change, by which all the aim of human existence in all its parts is fulfilled, even while it is transfigured. Admitting the supracosmic truth and life in worlds beyond, it admits too the terrestrial as a continued term of the one existence and a change of individual and communal life on earth as a strain of its divine meaning.
4.07 - Purification-Intelligence and Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To arrive then at the whole truth of our self and Spirit and the knowledge, greatness, bliss of our free and complete bring must be the object of the purification, liberation and perfection of the Buddhi. But it is a common idea that this means not the full possession of Nature by the Purusha, but a Rejection of Nature. We are to get at self by the removal of the action of prakriti. As the Buddhi, coming to the knowledge that the sense-mind only gives us appearances in which the soul is subject to Nature, discovers more real truths behind them, the soul must arrive at this knowledge that the Buddhi too, when turned upon Nature, can give us only appearances and enlarge the subjection, and must discover behind them the pure truth of the Self. The Self is something quite other than Nature and the Buddhi must purify itself of attachment to and preoccupation with natural things; so only can it discern and separate from them the pure Self and Spirit: the knowledge of the pure Self and Spirit is the only real knowledge, Ananda of the pure Self and Spirit is the only spiritual enjoyment, the consciousness and being of the pure Self and Spirit are the only real consciousness and being. Action and will must cease because all action is of the Nature; the will to be pure Self and Spirit means the cessation of all will to action.
But while the possession of the being, consciousness, delight, power of the Self is the condition of perfection, -- for it is only by knowing and possessing and living in the truth of itself that the soul can become free and perfect-we hold that Nature is an eternal action and manifestation of the Spirit, Nature is not a devil's trap, a set of misleading appearances created by desire, sense, life and mental will and intelligence, but these phenomena are hints and indications and behind all of them is a truth of Spirit which exceeds and uses them. We hold that there must be an inherent spiritual gnosis and will by which the secret Spirit in all knows its own truth, wills, manifests and governs its own being in Nature; to arrive at that, at communion with it or participation in it, must be part of our perfection. The object of the purification of the Buddhi will then be to arrive at the possession of our own truth of self-being, but also at the possession of the highest truth of our being in Nature. For that purpose we must first purify the Buddhi of all that makes it subject to the sense-mind and, that once done, purify it from its own limitations and convert its inferior mental intelligence and will into the greater action of a spiritual will and knowledge.
4.08 - The Liberation of the Spirit, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
For certain ways of thinking liberation is a throwing off of all nature, a silent state of pure being, a Nirvana or extinction, a dissolution of the natural existence into some indefinable Absolute, moksa. But an absorbed and immersed bliss, a wideness of actionless peace, a release of self-extinction or self-drowning in the Absolute is not our aim. We shall give to the idea of liberation, mukti, only the connotation of that inner change which is common to all experience of this kind, essential to perfection and indispensable to spiritual freedom. We shall find that it then implies always two things, a Rejection and an assumption, a negative and a positive side; the negative movement of freedom is a liberation from the principal bonds, the master-knots of the lower soul-nature, the positive side an opening or growth into the higher spiritual existence. But what are these master-knots-other and deeper twistings than the instrumental knots of the mind, heart, psychic life-force? We find them pointed out for us and insisted on with great force and a constant emphatic repetition in the Gita; they are four, desire, ego, the dualities and the three gunas of Nature; for to be desireless, ego-less, equal of mind and soul and spirit and nistraigunya is in the idea of the Gita to be free, mukta. We may accept this description; for everything essential is covered by its amplitude. On the other hand, the positive sense of freedom is to be universal in soul, transcendently one in spirit with God, possessed of the highest divine nature, -- as we may say, like to God, or one with him in the law of our being. This is the whole and full sense of liberation and this is the integral freedom of the spirit.
We have already had to speak of purification from the psychic desire of which the craving of the Prana is the evolutionary or, as we may put it, the practical basis. But this is in the mental and psychic nature; spiritual desirelessness has a wider and more essential meaning: for desire has a double knot, a lower knot in the Prana, which is a craving in the instruments, and a very subtle knot in the soul itself with the Buddhi as its first support or pratistha, which is the inmost origin of this mesh of our bondage. When we look from below, desire presents itself to us as a craving of the life force which subtilises in the emotions into a craving of the heart and is farther subtilised in the intelligence into a craving, preference, passion of the aesthetic, ethical, dynamic or rational turn of the Buddhi. This desire is essential to the ordinary man; he cannot live or act as an individual without knotting up all his action into the service of some kind of lower or higher craving, preference or passion. But when we are able to look at desire from above, we see that what supports this instrumental desire is a will of the spirit. There is a will, tapas, sakti, by which the secret spirit imposes on its outer members all their action and draws from it an active delight of its being, an Ananda, in which they very obscurely and imperfectly, if at all consciously, partake. This 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. It is one will, free in all these at once, comprehensive, harmonious, unified; we find it, when we live and act in the spirit, to be an effortless and desireless, a spontaneous and illumined, a self-fulfilling and self-possessing, a satisfied and blissful will of the spiritual delight of being.
4.09 - The Liberation of the Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The two sides of our being, conscious experiencing soul and executive Nature continuously and variously offering to the soul her experiences, determine in their meeting all the affections of our inner status and its responses. Nature contri butes the character of the happenings and the forms of the instruments of experience, the soul meets it by an assent to the natural determinations of the response to these happenings or by a will to other determination which it imposes upon the nature. The acceptance of the instrumental ego-consciousness and the will-to-desire are the initial consent of the self to the lapse into the lower ranges of experience in which it forgets its divine nature of being; the Rejection of these things, the return to free self and the will of the divine delight in being is the liberation of the spirit. But on the other side stand the contri butions of Nature herself to the mixed tangle, which she imposes on the soul's experience of her doings and makings when once that first initial consent has been given and made the law of the whole outward transaction. Nature's essential contri butions are two, the gunas and the dualities. This inferior action of Nature in which we live has certain essential qualitative modes which constitute the whole basis of its inferiority. The constant effect of these modes on the soul in its natural powers of mind, life and body is a discordant and divided experience, a strife of opposites, dvandva, a motion in all its experience and an oscillation between or a mixture of constant pairs of contraries, of combining positives and negatives, dualities. A complete liberation from the ego and the will of desire must bring with it a superiority to the qualitative modes of the inferior Nature, traigunyatitya, a release from this mixed and discordant experience, a cessation or solution of the dual action of Nature. But on this side too there are two kinds of freedom. A liberation from Nature in a quiescent bliss of the spirit is the first form of release. A farther liberation of the Nature into a divine quality and spiritual power of world-experience fills the supreme calm with the supreme kinetic bliss of knowledge, power, joy and mastery. A divine unity of supreme spirit and its supreme nature is the integral liberation.
Nature, because she is a power of spirit, is essentially qualitative in her action. One may almost say that Nature is only the power in being and the development in action of the infinite qualities of the spirit, anantaguna. All else belongs to her outward and more mechanical aspects; but this play of quality is the essential thing, of which the rest is the result and mechanical combination. Once we have set right the working of the essential power and quality, all the rest becomes subject to the control of the experiencing Purusha. But in the inferior nature of things the play of infinite quality is subject to a limited measure, a divided and conflicting working, a system of opposites and discords between which some practical mobile system of concords has to be found and to be kept in action; this play of concorded discords, conflicting qualities, disparate powers and ways of experience compelled to some just manageable, partial, mostly precarious agreement, an unstable, mutable equilibrium, is managed by a fundamental working in three qualitative modes which conflict and combine together in all her creations. These three modes have been given in the Sankhya system, which is generally adopted for this purpose by all the schools of philosophic thought and of Yoga 'in India, the three names, sattva, rajas and tamas.656 Tarnas is the principle and power of inertia; Rajas is the principle of kinesis, passion, endeavour, struggle, initiation (arambha); Sattwa the principle of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony. The metaphysical bearing of this classification does not concern us; but in its psychological and spiritual bearing it is of immense practical importance, because these three principles enter into all things, combine to give them their turn of active nature, result, effectuation, and their unequal working in the soul-experience is the constituent force of our active personality, our temperament, type of nature and cast of psychological response to experience.
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When this liberation of the nature comes, there is a liberation also of all the spiritual sense of the dualities of Nature. In the lower nature the dualities are the inevitable effect of the play of the gunas on the soul affected by the formations of the sattwic, rajasic and tamasic ego. The knot of this duality is an ignorance which is unable to seize on the spiritual truth of things and concentrates on the imperfect appearances, but meets them not with a mastery of their inner truth, but with a strife and a shifting balance of attraction and repulsion, capacity and incapacity, liking and disliking, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, acceptance and repugnance; all life is represented to us as a tangle of these things, of the pleasant and the unpleasant, the beautiful and the unbeautiful, truth and falsehood, fortune and misfortune, success and failure, good and evil, the inextricable double web of Nature. Attachment to its likings and repugnances keeps the soul bound in this web of good and evil, joys and sorrows. The seeker of liberation gets rid of attachment, throws away from his soul the dualities, but as the dualities appear to be the whole act, stuff and frame of life, this release would seem to be most easily compassed by a withdrawal from life, whether a physical withdrawal, so far as that is possible while in the body, or an inner retirement, a refusal of sanction, a liberating distaste, vairagya, for the whole action of Nature. There is a separation of the soul from Nature. Then the soul watches seated above and unmoved, udasina, the strife of the gunas in the natural being and regards as an impassive witness the pleasure and pain of the mind and body. Or it is able to impose its indifference even on the outer mind and watches with the impartial calm or the impartial joy of the detached spectator the universal action in which it has no longer an active inner participation. The end of this movement is the Rejection of birth and a departure into the silent self, moksa.
But this Rejection is not the last possible word of liberation. The integral liberation comes when this passion for release, mumuksutva, founded on distaste or vairagya, is itself transcended; the soul is then liberated both from attachment to the lower action of nature and from all repugnance to the cosmic action of the Divine. This liberation gets its completeness when the spiritual gnosis can act with a supramental knowledge and reception of the action of Nature and a supramental luminous will in initiation. The gnosis discovers the spiritual sense in Nature, God in things, the soul of good in all things that have the contrary appearance; that soul is delivered in them and out of them, the perversions of the imperfect or contrary forms fall away or are transformed into their higher divine truth, -- even as the gunas go back to their divine principles, -- and the spirit lives in a universal, infinite and absolute Truth, Good, Beauty, Bliss which is the supramental or ideal divine Nature. The liberation of the Nature becomes one with the liberation of the spirit, and there is founded in the integral freedom the integral perfection.
author class:Sri Aurobindo
4.10 - The Elements of Perfection, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
When the self is purified of the wrong and confused action of the instrumental Nature and liberated into its self-existent being, consciousness, power and bliss and the Nature itself liberated from the tangle of this lower action of the struggling gunas and the dualities into the high truth of the divine calm and the divine action, then spiritual perfection becomes possible. Purification and freedom are the indispensable antecedents of perfection. A spiritual self-perfection can only mean a growing into oneness with the nature of divine being, and therefore according to our conception of divine being will be the aim, effort and method of our seeking after this perfection. To the Mayavadin the highest or rather the only real truth of being is the impassive, impersonal, self-aware Absolute and therefore to grow into an impassive calm, impersonality and pure self-awareness of spirit is his idea of perfection and a Rejection of cosmic and individual being and a settling into silent self-knowledge is his way. To the Buddhist for whom the highest truth is a negation of being, a recognition of the impermanence and sorrow of being and the disastrous nullity of desire and a dissolution of egoism, of the upholding associations of the Idea and the successions of Karma are the perfect way. Other ideas of the Highest are less negative; each according to its own idea leads towards some likeness to the Divine, sadrsya, and each finds its own way, such as the love and worship of the Bhakta and the growing into the likeness of the Divine by love. But for the integral Yoga perfection will mean a divine spirit and a divine nature which will admit of a divine relation and action in the world; it will mean also in its entirety a divinising of the whole nature, a Rejection of all its wrong knots of being and action, but no Rejection of any part of our being or of any field of our action. The approach to perfection must be therefore a large and complex movement and its results and workings will have an infinite and varied scope. We must fix in order to find a clue and method on certain essential and fundamental elements and requisites of perfection, siddhi; for if these are secured, all the rest will be found to be only their natural development or particular working. We may cast these elements into six divisions, interdependent on each other to a great extent but still in a certain way naturally successive in their order of attainment. The movement will start from a basic equality of the soul and mount to an ideal action of the Divine through our perfected being in the largeness of the Brahmic unity.
The first necessity is some fundamental poise of the soul both in its essential and its natural being regarding and meeting the things, impacts and workings of Nature. This poise we shall arrive at by growing into a perfect equality, samata. The self, spirit or Brahman is one in all and therefore one to all; it is, as is said in the Gita which has developed fully this idea of equality and indicated its experience on at least one side of equality, the equal Brahman, samam brahma; the Gita even goes so far in one passage as to identify equality and yoga, samatvam yoga ucyate. That is to say, equality is the sign of unity with the Brahman, of becoming Brahman, of growing into an undisturbed spiritual poise of being in the Infinite. Its importance can hardly be exaggerated; for it is the sign of our having passed beyond the egoistic determinations of our nature, of our having conquered our enslaved response to the dualities, of our having transcended the shifting turmoil of the gunas, of our having entered into the calm and peace of liberation. Equality is a term of consciousness which brings into the whole of our being and nature the eternal tranquillity of the Infinite. Moreover, it is the condition of a securely and perfectly divine action; the security and largeness of the cosmic action of the Infinite is based upon and never breaks down or forfeits its eternal tranquillity. That too must be the character of the perfect spiritual action; to be equal and one to all things in spirit, understanding, mind, heart and natural consciousness, -- even in the most physical consciousness, -- and to make all their workings, whatever their outward adaptation to the thing to be done, always and imminuably full of the divine equality and calm must be its inmost principle. That may be said to be the passive or basic, the fundamental and receptive side of equality, but there is also an active and possessive side, an equal bliss which can only come when the peace of equality is founded and which is the beatific flower of its fullness.
4.1.1.05 - The Central Process of the Yoga, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
That is the fundamental rationale of the sadhana. It will be evident that the two most important things here are the opening of the heart centre and the opening of the mind centres to all that is behind and above them. For the heart opens to the psychic being and the mind centres open to the higher consciousness and the nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness is the principal means of the siddhi. The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature. Aspiration, prayer, bhakti, love, surrender are the main supports of this part of the sadhana - accompanied by a Rejection of all that stands in the way of what we aspire for. The second opening is effected by a concentration of the consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of the divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being
- the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. Some indeed receive Light first or Ananda first or some sudden pouring down of knowledge. With some there is first an opening which reveals to them a vast infinite Silence, Force, Light or Bliss above them and afterwards either they ascend to that or these things begin to descend into the lower nature. With others there is either the descent, first into the head, then down to the heart level, then to the navel and below and through the whole body, or else an inexplicable opening - without any sense of descent - of peace, light, wideness or power or else a horizontal opening into the cosmic consciousness or, in a suddenly widened mind, an outburst of knowledge. Whatever comes has to be welcomed
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Supreme Lord or as the Divine Mother and claim the being's service and surrender. If these things are accepted, there will be an extremely disastrous consequence. If indeed there is the assent of the sadhak to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all can go smoothly. This assent and a Rejection of all egoistic forces or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana. But the ways of Nature are full of snares, the disguises of the ego are innumerable, the illusions of the Powers of Darkness, Rakshasi
Maya, are extraordinarily skilful; the reason is an insufficient guide and often turns traitor; vital desire is always with us tempting to follow any alluring call. This is the reason why in this Yoga we insist so much on what we call samarpan.a - rather inadequately rendered by the English word surrender. If the heart centre is fully opened and the psychic is always in control, then there is no question; all is safe. But the psychic can at any moment be veiled by a lower upsurge. It is only a few who are exempt from these dangers and it is precisely those to whom surrender is easily possible. The guidance of one who is himself by identity or represents the Divine is in this difficult endeavour imperative and indispensable.
4.1.2 - The Difficulties of Human Nature, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are usually in the human being two different tendencies in two parts of the being, one psychic or mental supported by the psychic which seeks the better way and higher things, the other whose main seat is in the vital part of the being which is full of the life-instincts and life-desires, which is attached to or turns towards the things of the lower nature and is subject to the passions, anger, sex etc. If the higher part is dominant, then the lower is kept under control and does not give much trouble. But often the latter is supported by outer forces and powers of the lower Nature in the universe and sometimes these intrude and give the coarse part of the being a separate personality and independence of its own. This may be the explanation of the dream of the ugly monster and of the resistance of this other personality. If it be so, then this must be regarded not as part of oneself but as a foreign element to the true being. It is only by a persistent choice of the dictates of the higher and a persistent Rejection of the other that the latter loses ground and finally recedes. This should be met as calmly as possible without allowing the mind to be troubled by any fall or failurewith a quiet constant vigilance and resolute will.
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4.12 - The Way of Equality, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The effort towards a passive or purely receptive equality may start from three different principles or attitudes which all lead to the same result and ultimate consequence, -- endurance, indifference and submission. The principle of endurance relics on the strength of the spirit within us to bear all the contacts, impacts, suggestions of this phenomenal Nature that besieges us on every side without being overborne by them and compelled to bear their emotional, sensational, dynamic, intellectual reactions. The outer mind in the lower nature has not this strength. Its strength is that of a limited force of consciousness which has to do the best it can with all that comes in upon it or besieges it from the greater whirl of consciousness and energy which environs it on this plane of existence. That it can maintain itself at all and affirm its individual being in the universe, is due indeed to the strength of the spirit within it, but it cannot bring forward the whole of that strength or the infinity of that force to meet the attacks of life; if it could, it would be at once the equal and master of its world. In fact, it has to manage as it can. It meets certain impacts and Is able to assimilate, equate or master them partially or completely, for a time or wholly, and then it has in that degree the emotional and sensational reactions of joy, pleasure, satisfaction, liking, love, etc., or the intellectual and mental reactions of acceptance, approval, understanding, knowledge, preference, and on these its will seizes with attraction, desire, the attempt to prolong, to repeat, to create, to possess, to make them the pleasurable habit of its life. Other impacts it meets, but finds them too strong for it or too dissimilar and discordant or too weak to give it satisfaction; these are things which it cannot bear or cannot equate with itself or cannot assimilate, and it is obliged to give to them reactions of grief, pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction, disliking, disapproval, Rejection, inability to understand or know, refusal of admission. Against them it seeks to protect itself, to escape from them, to avoid or minimise their recurrence; it has with regard to them movements of fear, anger, shrinking, horror, aversion, disgust, shame, would gladly be delivered from them, but it cannot get away from them, for it is bound to and even invites their causes and therefore the results; for these impacts are part of life, tangled up with the things we desire, and the inability to deal with them is part of the imperfection of our nature. Other impacts again the normal mind succeeds in holding at bay or neutralising and to these it has a natural reaction of indifference, insensibility or tolerance which is neither positive acceptance and enjoyment nor Rejection or suffering. To things, persons, happenings, ideas, workings, whatever presents itself to the mind, there are always these three kinds of reaction. At the same time, in spite of their generality, there is nothing absolute about them; they form a scheme for a habitual scale which is not precisely the same for all or even for the same mind at different times or in different conditions. The same impact may arouse in it at one time and another the pleasurable or positive, the adverse or negative or the indifferent or neutral reactions.
The soul which seeks mastery may begin by turning upon these reactions the encountering and opposing force of a strong and equal endurance. Instead of seeking to protect itself from or to shun and escape the unpleasant impacts it may confront them and teach itself to suffer and to bear them with perseverance, with fortitude, an increasing equanimity or an austere or calm acceptance. This attitude, this discipline brings out three results, three powers of the soul in relation to things. First, it is found that what was before unbearable, becomes easy to endure; the scale of the power that meets the impact rises in degree; it needs a greater and greater force of it or of its protracted incidence to cause trouble, pain, grief, aversion or any other of the notes in the gamut of the unpleasant reactions. Secondly, it is found that the conscious nature divides itself into two parts, one of the normal mental and emotional nature in which the customary reactions continue to take place, another of the higher will and reason which observes and is not troubled or affected by the passion of this lower nature, does not accept it as its own, does not approve, sanction or participate. Then the lower nature begins to lose the force and power of its reactions, to submit to the suggestions of calm and strength from the higher reason and will, and gradually that calm and strength take possession of the mental and emotional, even of the sensational, vital and physical being. This brings the third power and result, the power by this endurance and mastery, this separation and Rejection of the lower nature, to get rid of the normal reactions and even, if we will, to remould all our modes of experience by the strength of the spirit. This method is applied not only to the unpleasant, but also to the pleasant reactions; the soul refuses to give itself up to or be carried away by them; it endures with calm the impacts which bring joy and pleasure, refuses to be excited by them and replaces the joy and eager seeking of the mind after pleasant things by the calm of the spirit. It can be applied too to the thought-mind in a calm reception of knowledge and of limitations of knowledge which refuses to be carried away by the fascination of this attractive or repelled by dislike for that unaccustomed or unpalatable thought-suggestion and waits on the Truth with a detached observation which allows it to grow on the strong, disinterested, mastering will and reason. Thus the soul becomes gradually equal to all things, master of itself, adequate to meet the world with a strong front in the mind and an undisturbed serenity of the spirit.
The second way is an attitude of impartial indifference. Its method is to reject at once the attraction or the repulsion of things, to cultivate for them aluminous impassivity, an inhibiting Rejection, a habit of dissociation and desuetude. This attitude reposes less on the will, though will is always necessary, than on the knowledge. It is an attitude which regards these passions of the mind as things born of the illusion of the outward mentality or inferior movements unworthy of the calm truth of the single and equal spirit or a vital and emotional disturbance to be rejected by the tranquil observing will and dispassionate intelligence of the sage. It puts away desire from the mind, discards the ego which attributes these dual values to things, and replaces desire by an impartial and indifferent peace and ego by the pure self which is not troubled, excited or unhinged by the impacts of the world. And not only is the emotional mind quieted, but the intellectual being also rejects the thoughts of the ignorance and rises beyond the interests of an inferior knowledge to the one truth that is eternal and without change. This way too develops three results or powers by which it ascends to peace.
First, it is found that the mind is voluntarily bound by the petty joys and troubles of life and that in reality these can have no inner hold on it, if the soul simply chooses to cast off its habit of helpless determination by external and transient things. Secondly, it is found that here too a division can be made, a psychological partition between the lower or outward mind still subservient to the old habitual touches and the higher reason and will which stand back to live in the indifferent calm of the spirit. There grows on us, in other words, an inner separate calm which watches the commotion of the lower members without taking part in it or giving it any sanction. At first the higher reason and will may be often clouded, invaded, the mind carried away by the incitation of the lower members, but eventually this calm becomes inexpugnable, permanent, not to be shaken by the most violent touches, na duhkhena gurunapi vicalyate. This inner soul of calm regards the trouble of the outer mind with a detached superiority or a passing uninvolved indulgence such as might be given to the trivial joys and griefs of a child, it does not regard them as its own or as reposing on any permanent reality. And, finally, the outer mind too accepts by degrees this calm and indifferent serenity; it ceases to be attracted by the things that attracted it or troubled by the griefs and pains to which it had the habit of attaching an unreal importance. Thus the third power comes, an all-pervading power of wide tranquillity and peace, a bliss of release from the siege of our imposed fantastic self-torturing nature, the deep undisturbed exceeding happiness of the touch of the eternal and infinite replacing by its permanence the strife and turmoil of impermanent things, brahma-samsparsam atyantam sukham asnute. The soul is fixed in the delight of the self, atmaratih in the single and infinite Ananda of the spirit and hunts no more after outward touches and their griefs and pleasures. It observes the world only as the spectator of a play or action in which it is no longer compelled to participate.
The third way is that of submission, which may be the Christian resignation founded on submission to the will of God, or an unegoistic acceptance of things and happenings as a manifestation of the universal Will in time, or a complete surrender of the person to the Divine, to the supreme Purusha. As the first was a way of the will and the second a way of knowledge, of the understanding reason, so this is a way of the temperament and heart and very intimately connected with the principle of Bhakti. If it is pushed to the end, it arrives at the same result of a perfect equality. For the knot of the ego is loosened and the personal claim begins to disappear, we find that we are no longer bound to joy in things pleasant or sorrow over the unpleasant; we bear them without either eager acceptance or troubled Rejection, refer them to the Master of our being, concern ourselves less and less with their personal result to us and hold only one thing of importance, to approach God, or to be in touch and tune with the universal and infinite Existence, or to be united with the Divine, his channel, instrument, servant, lover, rejoicing in him and in our relation with him and having no other object or cause of joy or sorrow. Here too there may be for some time a division between the lower mind of habitual emotions and the higher psychical mind of love and self-giving, but eventually the former yields, changes, transforms itself, is swallowed up in the love, joy, delight of the Divine and has no other interests or attractions. Then all within is the equal peace and bliss of that union, the one silent bliss that passes understanding, the peace that abides untouched by the solicitation of lower things in the depths of our spiritual existence.
These three ways coincide in spite of their separate starting-points, first, by their inhibition of the normal reactions of the mind to the touches of outward things, bahya-sparsan, secondly, by their separation of the self or spirit from the outward action of Nature. Bat it is evident that our perfection will be greater and more ernbracingly complete, if we can have a more active equality which will enable us not only to draw back from or confront the world in a detached and separated calm, but to return upon it and possess it in the power of the calm and equal Spirit. This is possible because the world, Nature, action are not in fact a quite separate thing, but a manifestation of the Self, the All-Soul, the Divine. The reactions of the normal mind are a degradation of the divine values which would but for this degradation make this truth evident to us, --a falsification, an ignorance which alters their workings, an ignorance which starts from the involution of Self in a blind material nescience. Once we return to the full consciousness of Self, of God, we can then put a true divine value on things and receive and act on them with the calm, joy, knowledge, seeing will of the Spirit. When we begin to do that, then the soul begins to have an equal joy in the universe, an equal will dealing with all energies, an equal knowledge which takes possession of the spiritual truth behind all the phenomena of this divine manifestation. It possesses the world as the Divine possesses it, in a fullness of the infinite light, power and Ananda.
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To see how this positive method works, we may note very briefly its principle in the three great powers of knowledge, will and feeling. All emotion, feeling, sensation is a way of the soul meeting and putting effective values on the manifestations of the Self in nature. But what the self feels is a universal delight, Ananda. The soul in the lower mind on the contrary gives it, as we have seen, three varying values of pain, pleasure and neutral indifference, which tone by gradations of less and more into each other, and this gradation depends on the power of the individualised consciousness to meet, sense, assimilate, equate, master all that comes in oil it from all of the greater self which it has by separative individualisation put outside of it and made as if not-self to its experience. But all the time, because of the greater Self within us, there is a secret soul which takes delight in all these things and draws strength from and grows by all that touches it, profits as much by adverse as by favourable experience. This can make itself felt by the outer desire soul, and that in fact is why we have a delight in existing and can even take a certain kind of pleasure in struggle, suffering and the harsher colours of existence. But to get the universal Ananda all our instruments must learn to take not any partial or perverse, but the essential joy of all things. In all things there is a principle of Ananda, which the understanding can seize on and the aesthesis feel as the taste of delight in them, their rasa; but ordinarily they put upon them instead arbitrary, unequal and contrary values: they have to be led to perceive things in the light of the spirit and to transform these provisional values into the real, the equal and essential, the spiritual Rasa. The life-principle is there to give this seizing of the principle of delight, rasa-grahana, the form of a strong possessing enjoyment, bhoga, which makes the whole lifebeing vibrate with it and accept and rejoice in it; but ordinarily it is not, owing to desire, equal to its task, but turns it into the three lower forms, -- pain and pleasure, sukha-bhoga duhkha-bhoga, and that Rejection of both which we call insensibility or indifference. The Prana or vital being has to be liberated from desire and its inequalities and to accept and turn into pure enjoyment the rasa which the understanding and aesthesis perceive. Then there is no farther obstacle in the instruments to the third step by which all is changed into the full and pure ecstasy of the spiritual Ananda.
In the matter of knowledge, there are again three reactions of the mind to things, ignorance, error and true knowledge. The positive equality will accept all three of them to start with as movements of a self-manifestation which evolves out of ignorance through the partial or distorted knowledge which is the cause of error to true knowledge. It will deal with the ignorance of the mind, as what it is psychologically, a clouded, veiled or wrapped-up state of the substance of consciousness in which the knowledge of the all-knowing Self is hidden as if in a dark sheath; it will dwell on it by the mind and by the aid of related truths already known, by the intelligence or by an intuitive concentration deliver the knowledge out of the veil of the ignorance. It will not attach itself only to the known or try to force all into its little frame, but will dwell on the known and the unknown with an equal mind open to all possibility. So too it will deal with error; it will accept the tangled skein of truth and error, but attach itself to no opinion, rather seeking for the element of truth behind all opinions, the knowledge concealed within the error, -- for all error is a disfiguration of some misunderstood fragments of truth and draws its vitality from that and not from its misapprehension; it will accept, but not limit itself even by ascertained truths, but will always be ready for new knowledge and seek for a more and more integral, a more and more extended, reconciling, unifying wisdom. This can only come in its fullness by rising to the ideal supermind, and therefore the equal seeker of truth will not be attached to the intellect and its workings or think that all ends there, but be prepared to rise beyond, accepting each stage of ascent and the contri butions of each power of his being, but only to lift them into a higher truth. He must accept everything, but cling to nothing, be repelled by nothing however imperfect or however subversive of fixed notions, but also allow nothing to lay hold on him to the detriment of the free working of the Truth-Spirit. This equality of the intelligence is an essential condition for rising to the higher supramental and spiritual knowledge.
4.13 - The Action of Equality, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This calm once attained, vital and mental preference has lost its disturbing force; it only remains as a formal habit of the mind. Vital acceptance or Rejection, the greater readiness to welcome this rather than that happening, the mental acceptance or Rejection, the preference of this more congenial to that other less congenial idea or truth, the dwelling upon the will to this rather than to that other result, become a formal mechanism still necessary as an index of the direction in which the shakti is meant to turn or for the present is made to incline by the Master of our being. But it loses its disturbing aspect of strong egoistic will, intolerant desire, obstinate liking. These appearances may remain for a while in a diminished form, but as the calm of equality increases, deepens, becomes more essential and compact, ghana, they disappear, cease to colour the mental and vital substance or occur only as touches on the most external physical mind, are unable to penetrate within, and at last even that recurrence, that appearance at the outer gates of mind ceases. Then there can come the living reality of the perception that all in us is done and directed by the Master of our being, yatha prayukto'smi tatha karomi, which was before only a strong idea and faith with occasional and derivative glimpses of the divine action behind the becomings of our personal nature. Now every movement is seen to be the form given by the shakti, the divine power in us, to the indications of the Purusha, still no doubt personalised, still belittled in the inferior mental form, but not primarily egoistic, an imperfect form, not a positive deformation. We have then to get beyond this stage even. For the perfect action and experience is not to be determined by any kind of mental or vital preference, but by the revealing and inspiring spiritual will which is the shakti in her direct and real initiation. When I say that as I am appointed, I work, I still bring in a limiting personal element and mental reaction. But it is the Master who will do his own work through myself as his instrument, and there must be no mental or other preference in me to limit, to interfere, to be a source of imperfect working. The mind must become a silent luminous channel for the revelations of the supramental Truth and of the Will involved in its seeing. Then shall the action be the action of that highest Being and Truth and not a qualified translation or mistranslation in the mind. Whatever limitation, selection, relation is imposed, will be self-imposed by the Divine on himself in the individual at the moment for his own purpose, not binding, not final, not an ignorant determination of the mind. The thought and will become then an action from a luminous Infinite, a formulation not excluding other formulations, but rather putting them into their just place in relation to itself, englobing or transforming them even and proceeding to larger formations of the divine knowledge and action. The first calm that comes is of the nature of peace, the absence of all unquiet, grief and disturbance. As the equality becomes more intense, it takes on a fuller substance of positive happiness and spiritual ease. This is the joy of the spirit in itself, dependent on nothing external for its absolute existence, nirasraya, as the Gita describes it, antah-sukho'ntararamah, an exceeding inner happiness, brahmasamsparsam atyantam sukham asnute. Nothing can disturb it, and it extends itself to the soul's view of outward things, imposes on them too the law of this quiet spiritual joy. For the base of it is still calm, it is an even and tranquil neutral joy, ahaituka. And as the supramental light grows, a greater Ananda comes, the base of the abundant ecstasy of the spirit in all it is, becomes, sees, experiences and of the laughter of the shakti doing luminously the work of the Divine and taking his Ananda in all the worlds.
The perfected action of equality transforms all the values of things on the basis of the divine anandamaya power. The outward action may remain what it was or may change, that must be as the Spirit directs and according to the need of the work to be done for the world, -- but the whole inner action is of another kind. The shakti in its different powers of knowledge, action, enjoyment, creation, formulation, will direct itself to the different aims of existence, but in another spirit; they will be the aims, the fruits, the lines of working laid down by the Divine from his light above, not anything claimed by the ego for its own separate sake. The mind, the heart, the vital being, the body itself will be satisfied with whatever comes to them from the dispensation of the Master of the being and in that find a subtlest and yet fullest spiritualised satisfaction and delight; but the divine knowledge and will above will work forward towards its farther ends. Here both success and failure lose their present meanings. There can be no failure; for whatever happens is the intention of the Master of the worlds, not final, but a step on his way, and if it appears as an opposition, a defeat, a denial, even for the moment a total denial of the aim set before the instrumental being, it is so only in appearance and afterwards it will appear in its right place in the economy of his action, -- a fuller supramental vision may even see at once or beforeh and its necessity and its true relation to the eventual result to which it seems so contrary and even perhaps its definite prohibition. Or, if -- while the light is deficient, -- there has been a misinterpretation whether with regard to the aim or the course of the action and the steps of the result, the failure comes as a rectification and is calmly accepted without bringing discouragement or a fluctuation of the will. In the end it is found that there is no such thing as failure and the soul takes an equal passive or active delight in all happenings as the steps and formulations of the divine Will. The same evolution takes place with regard to good fortune and ill fortune, the pleasant and the unpleasant in every form, mangala amangala, priya apriya.
4.1.4 - Resistances, Sufferings and Falls, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is no reason to have a vague doubt about ones own future founded upon no other ground than the failure of others. That is what X and Y are always doing, and it is a great disturber of their progress. Why not instead, if one is to go by others, gather hope from the example of those who are satisfied and progressing? It is true however that these do not show their success as the others do their failure. However, that apart, failure comes by very positive errors and not by the absence of an invariable and unflagging aspiration or effort. The effort demanded of the sadhak is that of aspiration, Rejection and surrender. If these three are done, the rest is to come of itself by the grace of the Mother and the working of her force in you. But of the three the most important is surrender of which the first necessary form is trust and confidence and patience in difficulty. There is no rule that trust and confidence can only remain if aspiration is there. On the contrary when even aspiration is not there because of the pressure of inertia, trust and confidence and patience can remain. If trust and patience fail when aspiration is quiescent, that would mean that the sadhak is relying solely on his own effortit would mean, Oh my aspiration has failed, so there is no hope for me. My aspiration fails so what can Mother do? On the contrary, the sadhak should feel, Never mind, my aspiration will come back again. Meanwhile I know that the Mother is with me even when I do not feel her; she will carry me through even the darkest period. That is the fully right attitude you must have. To those who have it depression could do nothing; even if it comes, it has to return baffled. That is not tamasic surrender. Tamasic surrender is when one says, I wont do anything; let Mother do everything. Aspiration, Rejection, surrender even are not necessary. Let her do all that in me. There is a great difference between the two attitudes. One is that of the shirker who wont do anything, the other is that of the sadhak who does his best but even when he is reduced to quiescence for a time and things seem adverse, keeps always his trust in the Mothers force and presence behind all and by that trust baffles the opposition force and calls back the activity of the sadhana.
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4.16 - The Divine Shakti, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
What we shall do with this relative freedom depends on our aspiration, our idea of the relation we must have with our highest self, with God and Nature. It is possible for the Purusha to use it on the mental plane itself for a constant self-observation, self-development, self-modification, to sanction, reject, alter, bring out new formulations of the nature and establish a calm and disinterested action, a high and pure sattwic balance and rhythm of its energy, a personality perfected in the sattwic principle. This may amount only to a highly mentalised perfection of our present intelligence and the ethical and the psychic being or else, aware of the greater self in us it may impersonalise, universalise, spiritualise its self-conscious existence and the action of its nature and arrive either at a large quietude or a large perfection of the spiritualised mental energy of its being. It is possible again for the Purusha to stand back entirely and by a refusal of sanction allow the whole normal action of the mind to exhaust itself, run down, spend its remaining impetus of habitual action and fall into silence. Or else this silence may be imposed on the mental energy by Rejection of its action and a constant comm and to quietude. The soul may through the confirmation of this quietude and mental silence pass into some ineffable tranquillity of the spirit and vast cessation of the activities of Nature. But it is also possible to make this silence of the mind and ability to suspend the habits of the lower nature a first step towards the discovery of a superior formulation, a higher grade of the status and energy of our being and pass by an ascent and transformation into the supramental power of the spirit. And this may even, though with more difficulty, be done without resorting to the complete state of quietude of the normal mind by a persistent and progressive transformation of all the mental into their greater corresponding supramental powers and activities. For everything in the mind derives from and is a limited, inferior, groping, partial or perverse translation into mentality of something in the supermind. But neither of these movements can be successfully executed by the sole individual unaided power of the mental Purusha in us, but needs the help, intervention and guidance of the divine Self, the Ishwara, the Purushottama. For the supermind is the divine mind and it is on the supramental plane that the individual arrives at his right, integral, luminous and perfect relation with the supreme and universal Purusha and the supreme and universal Para prakriti.
As the mind progresses in purity, capacity of stillness or freedom from absorption in its own limited action, it becomes aware of and is able to reflect, bring into itself or enter into the conscious presence of the Self, the supreme and universal Spirit, and it becomes aware too of grades and powers of the spirit higher than its own highest ranges. It becomes aware of an infinite of the consciousness of being, an infinite ocean of all the power and energy of illimitable consciousness, an infinite ocean of Ananda, of the self-moved delight of existence. It may be aware of one or other only of these things, for the mind can separate and feel exclusively as distinct original principles what in a higher experience are inseparable powers of the One, or it may feel them in a trinity or fusion which reveals or arrives at their oneness. It may become aware of it on the side of Purusha or on the side of prakriti. On the side of Pursha it reveals itself as Self or Spirit, as Being or as the one sole existent Being, the divine Purushottama, and the individual Jiva soul can enter into entire oneness with it in its timeless self or in its universality, or enjoy nearness, immanence, difference without any gulf of separation and enjoy too inseparably and at one and the same time oneness of being and delight-giving difference of relation in active experiencing nature. On the side of prakriti the power and Ananda of the Spirit come into the front to manifest this Infinite in the beings and personalities and ideas and forms and forces of the universe and there is then present to us the divine Mahashakti, original Power, supreme Nature, holding in herself infinite existence and creating the wonders of the cosmos. The mind grows conscious of this illimitable ocean of shakti or else of her presence high above the mind and pouring something of herself into us to constitute all that we are and think and will and do and feel and experience, or it is conscious of her all around us and our personality a wave of the ocean of power of spirit, or of her presence in us and of her action there based on our present form of natural existence but originated from above and raising us towards the higher spiritual status. The mind too can rise towards and touch her infinity or merge itself in it in trance of Samadhi or can lose itself in her universality, and then our individuality disappears, our centre of action is then no longer in us, but either outside our bodied selves or nowhere; our mental activities are then no longer our own, but come into this frame of mind, life and body from the universal, work themselves out and pass leaving no impression on us, and this frame of ourselves too is only an insignificant circumstance in her cosmic vastness. But the perfection sought in the integral Yoga is not only to be one with her in her highest spiritual power and one with her in her universal action, but to realise and possess the fullness of this shakti in our individual being and nature. For the supreme Spirit is one as Purusha or as prakriti, conscious being or power of conscious being, and as the Jiva in essence of self arid spirit is one with the supreme Purusha, so on the side of Nature, in power of self and spirit it is one with shakti, para prakrtir jivabhuta. To realise this double oneness is the condition of the integral self-perfection. The Jiva is then the meeting-place of the play of oneness of the supreme Soul and Nature.
4.2.2 - Steps towards Overcoming Difficulties, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
It is an undoubted fact proved by hundreds of instances that for many the exact statement of their difficulties to us is the best and often, though not always, an immediate, even an instantaneous means of release. This has often been seen by sadhaks not only here, but far away, and not only for inner difficulties, but for illness and outer pressure of unfavourable circumstances. But for that a certain attitude is necessaryei ther a strong faith in the mind and vital or a habit of reception and response in the inner being. Where this habit has been established, I have seen it to be almost unfailingly effective, even when the faith was uncertain or the outer expression in the mind vague, ignorant or in its form mistaken or inaccurate. Moreover, this method succeeds most when the writer can write as a witness of his own movements and state them with an exact and almost impartial precision as a phenomenon of his nature or the movement of a force affecting him from which he seeks release. On the other hand if in writing his vital gets seized by the thing he is writing of, and takes up the pen for him,expressing and often supporting doubt, revolt, depression, despair, it becomes a very different matter. Even here sometimes the expression acts as a purge; but also the statement of the condition may lend energy to the attack at least for the moment and may seem to enhance and prolong it, exhausting it by its own violence perhaps for the time and so bringing in the end a relief, but at a heavy cost of upheaval and turmoil and at the risk of the recurring decimal movement, because the release has come by temporary exhaustion of the attacking force, not by Rejection and purification through the intervention of the Divine Force with the unquestioning assent and support of the sadhak. There has been a confused fight, an intervention in a hurly-burly, not a clear alignment of forcesand the intervention of the helping force is not felt in the confusion and the whirl. This is what used to happen in your crises; the vital in you was deeply affected and began supporting and expressing the reasonings of the attacking forcein place of a clear observation and expression of the difficulty by the vigilant mind laying the state of things in the Light for the higher Light and Force to act upon it, there was a vehement statement of the case for the Opposition. Many sadhaks (even advanced) had made a habit of this kind of expression of their difficulties and some still do it; they cannot even yet understand that it is not the way. At one time it was a sort of gospel in the Asram that this was the thing to be done,I dont know on what ground, for it was never part of my teaching about the Yoga,but experience has shown that it does not work; it lands one in the recurring decimal notation, an unending round of struggle. It is quite different from the movement of self-opening that succeeds, (here too not necessarily in a moment, but still sensibly and progressively) and of which those are thinking who insist on everything being opened to the Guru so that the help may be more effectively there.
It is inevitable that doubts and difficulties should arise in so arduous an undertaking as the transformation of the normal nature of man into the spiritual nature, the replacement of his system of externalised values and surface experience into profounder inner values and experience. But the doubts and difficulties cannot be overcome by giving them their full force; it can be rather done by learning to stand back from them and to refuse to be carried away; then there is a chance of the still small voice from within getting itself heard and pushing out these louder clamorous voices and movements from outside. It is the light from within that you have to make room for; the light of the outer mind is quite insufficient for the discovery of the inner values or to judge the truth of spiritual experience.
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It is simply a steady and quiet Rejection [of the lower forces] that is needed and a quiet and steady calling down of the true Force. All this emotional excitability must be quieted down; it is that that makes the vital open itself to these forces. If it were not so, all the defects of the nature could be quietly observed and quietly mended.
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If one part of you keeps its quietude the inner being then the rest can be dealt with. So not to allow the vital to be upset and the disturbance cover up the inner self, that is the most important thing. Keep up the Rejection always.
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It would be easier [to get rid of wrong movements] when you bring down a settled peace and equanimity into that part of the being. There will then be more of an automatic Rejection of such movements and less need of tapasya.
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4.2.3.03 - The Psychic and the Relation with the Divine, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The realisation of the psychic being, its awakening and the bringing of it in front depend mainly on the extent to which one can develop a personal relation with the Divine, a relation of bhakti, love, reliance, self-giving, Rejection of the insistences of the separating and self-asserting mental, vital and physical ego.
It may be either way [that the psychic comes to the front - before the realisation of the Divine or after it]. There is a touch and the realisation comes and the psychic takes its proper place as the result; or the psychic may come to the front and prepare the nature for the realisation.
4.2.3.05 - Obstacles to the Psychic's Emergence, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The conversion which keeps the consciousness turned towards the light and makes the right attitude spontaneous and natural and abiding and Rejection also spontaneous is the psychic conversion. That is to say, man usually lives in his vital and the body is its instrument and the mind its counsellor and minister
(except for the few mental men who live mostly for the things of the mind, but even they are in subjection to the vital in their ordinary movements). The spiritual conversion begins when the soul begins to insist on a deeper life and is complete when the psychic becomes the basis or the leader of the consciousness and mind and vital and body are led by it and obey it. Of course if that once happens fully, doubt, depression and despair cannot come any longer, although there may be and are difficulties still.
4.2.4.12 - The Psychic and Uneasiness, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The uneasiness created by the psychic is not depression - it is in the nature of a Rejection of the wrong movement.
If the uneasiness causes depression or vital dissatisfaction, it is not psychic.
4.2.5 - Dealing with Depression and Despondency, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The statement1 is a general one and like all general statements subject to qualification according to circumstances. What I meant was to discourage what some do which is to be always dwelling on their difficulties and shortcomings only, for that makes them turn for ever like squirrels in a cage always in the same circle of difficulties without the least breaking of light through the clouds. The sentence would be more accurate or generally applicable if it were written dwell too much or dwell solely. Naturally, without Rejection nothing can be done. And in hard periods or moments concentration on the difficulties is inevitable. Also in the early stages one has often to do a great amount of clearance work so that the road can be followed at all.
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It [the descent of the sadhana from the mind into the vital] came by being preoccupied too much with the difficulties of the nature. It is always better to dwell on the good side of things in yourself I do not mean in an egoistic way, but with faith and cheerful confidence, calling down the positive experience of which the nature is already capable so that a constant positive growth can help in the Rejection of all that has to be rejected. But in fact one gets often projected into the vital difficulties at an early stage and then instead of going from the mind into the psychic (through the heart) one has to go through the disturbed vital.
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The method you speak of is, I understand, that of raising up the difficulties in order to know and exhaust or destroy them. It is inevitable once one enters into Yoga that the difficulties should rise up and they go on rising up so long as anything of them is left in the system at all. It may be thought then that it is better to raise them oneself in a mass so as to get the thing done once for all. But though this may succeed in some cases, it is not even in the mental and vital a safe or certain method. Exhaustion, of course, is impossible; the things that create the difficulties are cosmic forces, forces of the cosmic Ignorance, and cannot be exhausted. People talk of their getting exhausted because after a time they lose strength and dwindle, but that is only by force of the constant Rejection by the Purusha and by force of a divine intervention aiding this Rejection and dissolving or destroying the difficulty each time it shows its face. Even so, the idea of getting rid of difficulties in a lump seldom works; something remains and returns until suddenly there comes a divine intervention which is final or else a change of consciousness which makes the return of the difficulty impossible. Still, in the mental and vital it can be done.
In the physical it is much more dangerous, because here it is the physical adhar itself that is attacked and a too great mass of physical difficulties may destroy or disable or permanently injure. The only thing to do here is to get the physical consciousness (down to the most material parts) open to the Power, then to make it accustomed to respond and obey and to each physical difficulty as it arises, apply or call in the divine Power to throw out the attacking force. The physical nature is a thing of habits; it is out of habit that it responds to the forces of illness; one has to get into it the contrary habit of responding to the Divine Force only. This of course so long as a highest consciousness does not descend to which illness is impossible.
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It is better [in dealing with the hostile forces] to proceed by a quiet Rejection and growth in consciousness and not invite battlethough, if a struggle is forced on you, you must meet it with calm and courage.
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4.3.1 - The Hostile Forces and the Difficulties of Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To have weaknesses of the lower nature is one thingto call in the hostile forces is quite another. Whoever does the latter, takes his risk. He is going towards the opposite camp for the marks of the hostile Force are contempt of the Divine, revolt and hatred against the Mother, disbelief in the Yoga, assertion of ego against the Divine Being, preference of falsehood to Truth, seeking after false gods and Rejection of the Eternal.
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4.3.3 - Dealing with Hostile Attacks, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
They [the vital forces] come because they were freely permitted in the pastso they want to renew and continue their action. An entire Rejection and a complete turning to the Divine are the way to meet them.
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This state which tries to come upon you and seize is not part of your true self, but a foreign influence. To yield to it and to express it would therefore be not sincerity, but the expression of something false to your true being, something that will grow more and more foreign to you as you progress. Always reject it, when it comes, even if you feel strongly its touch; open in your mind and soul to the Mother, keep your will and faith and you will find it receding. Even if it returns obstinately, be equally and more obstinate against it, firm in Rejection that will discourage and wear it out and finally it will grow weak, a shadow of itself and disappear.
Be true to your true self always that is the real sincerity. Persist and conquer.
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Wherever you are, we shall always be near to your psychic being and ready to help it to conquer. As things are with you now, that help is likely to act better at a distance than when you were near and were at every moment repelling it by your wrong inner movements and reactions and your wrong speech and acts. But to profit by our help you will have to do what you have never yet really done, at least in your external being. You will have in your physical nature itself resolutely to turn from the Asura and his ways and refuse to indulge him on any pretext in any thought, feeling, speech or action which would help him still to possess your instruments and determine or influence your attitude and your acts. To become quiet and quietly and simply to maintain this persistent and patient Rejection with our help, without rajasic struggle, sincerely and in fact and in every detail, not merely in wish and idea, is what you need to do. To be divided, to aspire in one part of your being and to indulge and justify and cherish the wrong movements with another part can lead to nothing but endless struggle and fatigue. Only by this turn and change will the struggle and fatigue pass away and purity come.
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4.3 - Bhakti, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
534. The Rejection of falsehood by the mind seeking after truth is one of the chief causes why mind cannot attain to the settled, rounded & perfect truth; not to escape falsehood is the effort of divine mind, but to seize the truth which lies masked behind even the most grotesque or far-wandering error.
535. The whole truth about any object is a rounded & allembracing globe which for ever circles around, but never touches the one & only subject & object of knowledge, God.
4.4.4.03 - The Descent of Peace, #Letters On Yoga III, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
will and a Rejection of all that is not turned towards the Divine in
those parts into which you call the peace - here the emotional
5.01 - EPILOGUE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
side (chance) while that of Rejection and error diminishes on the
other side (freedom) with the multiplication of the elements
5.02 - Perfection of the Body, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The taking up of life and Matter into what is essentially a spiritual seeking, instead of the Rejection and ultimate exclusion of them which was the attitude of a spirituality that shunned or turned away from life in the world, involves certain developments which a spiritual institution of the older kind could regard as foreign to its purpose. A divine life in the world or
Perfection of the Body
5.03 - The Divine Body, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The difficulty is dual, psychological and corporeal: the first is the effect of the unregenerated animality upon the life, especially by the insistence of the bodys gross instincts, impulses, desires; the second is the outcome of our corporeal structure and organic instrumentation imposing its restrictions on the dynamism of the higher divine nature. The first of these two difficulties is easier to deal with and conquer; for here the will can intervene and impose on the body the power of the higher nature. Certain of these impulses and instincts of the body have been found especially harmful by the spiritual aspirant and weighed considerably in favour of an ascetic Rejection of the body. Sex and sexuality and all that springs from sex and testifies to its existence had to be banned and discarded from the spiritual life, and this, though difficult, is not at all impossible and can be made a cardinal condition for the spiritual seeker. This is natural and unescapable in all ascetic practice and the satisfaction of this condition, though not easy at first to fulfil, becomes after a time quite feasible; the overcoming of the sex instinct and impulse is indeed binding on all who would attain to self-mastery and lead the spiritual life. A total mastery over it is essential for all spiritual seekers, the eradication of it for the complete ascetic. This much has to be recognised and not diminished in its obligatory importance and its principle.
But all recognition of the sex principle, as apart from the gross physical indulgence of the sex impulse, could not be excluded from a divine life upon earth; it is there in life, plays a large part and has to be dealt with, it cannot simply be ignored, merely suppressed or held down or put away out of sight. In the first place, it is in one of its aspects a cosmic and even a divine principle: it takes the spiritual form of the Ishwara and the Shakti and without it there could be no world-creation or manifestation of the world-principle of Purusha and Prakriti which are both necessary for the creation, necessary too in their association and interchange for the play of its psychological working and in their manifestation as soul and Nature fundamental to the whole process of the Lila. In the divine life itself an incarnation or at least in some form a presence of the two powers or their initiating influence through their embodiments or representatives would be indispensable for making the new creation possible. In its human action on the mental and vital level sex is not altogether an undivine principle; it has its nobler aspects and idealities and it has to be seen in what way and to what extent these can be admitted into the new and larger life. All gross animal indulgence of sex desire and impulse would have to be eliminated; it could only continue among those who are not ready for the higher life or not yet ready for a complete spiritual living. In all who aspired to it but could not yet take it up in its fullness sex will have to be refined, submit to the spiritual or psychic impulse and a control by the higher mind and the higher vital and shed all its lighter, frivolous or degraded forms and feel the touch of the purity of the ideal. Love would remain, all forms of the pure truth of love in higher and higher steps till it realised its highest nature, widened into universal love, merged into the love of the Divine. The love of man and woman would also undergo that elevation and consummation; for all that can feel a touch of the ideal and the spiritual must follow the way of ascent till it reaches the divine Reality. The body and its activities must be accepted as part of the divine life and pass under this law; but, as in the other evolutionary transitions, what cannot accept the law of the divine life cannot be accepted and must fall away from the ascending nature.
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In fact we do, however unconsciously, draw constantly upon the universal energy, the force in Matter to replenish our material existence and the mental, vital and other potencies in the body: we do it directly in the invisible processes of interchange constantly kept up by Nature and by special means devised by her; breathing is one of these, sleep also and repose. But as her basic means for maintaining and renewing the gross physical body and its workings and inner potencies Nature has selected the taking in of outside matter in the shape of food, its digestion, assimilation of what is assimilable and elimination of what cannot or ought not to be assimilated; this by itself is sufficient for mere maintenance, but for assuring health and strength in the body so maintained it has added the impulse towards physical exercise and play of many kinds, ways for the expenditure and renewal of energy, the choice or the necessity of manifold action and labour. In the new life, in its beginnings at least, it would not be necessary or advisable to make any call for an extreme or precipitate Rejection of the need of food or the established natural method for the maintenance of the still imperfectly transformed body. If or when these things have to be transcended it must come as a result of the awakened will of the spirit, a will also in Matter itself, an imperative evolutionary urge, an act of the creative transmutations of Time or a descent from the transcendence. Meanwhile the drawing in of the universal energy by a conscious action of the higher powers of the being from around or from above, by a call to what is still to us a transcending consciousness or by an invasion or descent from the Transcendence itself, may well become an occasional, a frequent or a constant phenomenon and even reduce the part played by food and its need to an incidence no longer preoccupying, a necessity minor and less and less imperative.
Meanwhile food and the ordinary process of Nature can be accepted, although its use has to be liberated from attachment and desire and the grosser undiscriminating appetites and clutch at the pleasures of the flesh which is the way of the Ignorance; the physical processes have to be subtilised and the grossest may have to be eliminated and new processes found or new instrumentalities emerge. So long as it is accepted, a refined pleasure in it may be permitted and even a desireless ananda of taste take the place of the physical relish and the human selection by likings and dislikings which is our present imperfect response to what is offered to us by Nature. It must be remembered that for the divine life on earth, earth and Matter have not to be and cannot be rejected but have only to be sublimated and to reveal in themselves the possibilities of the spirit, serve the spirits highest uses and be transformed into instruments of a greater living.
5.4.01 - Notes on Root-Sounds, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Substantive ideasLimit; limitation; close, end; confinement; closed space; movement in closed space, on fixed lines or to a goal; close or deep sound; extreme limit, superlativeness in quality; limitation off, Rejection, discharge; close contact, compactness.
Specific meanings.
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8 class. Rejection. To except, remove, reject, give up, loose, release, cast off, shoot; to renounce, give.
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7.04 - The Vital, #Words Of The Mother II, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These are vital perturbations which show themselves in the course of the Sadhana and have to be eliminated. They must not be regarded as natural movements justified by the wrong actions of others and bound to continue so long as there is an external cause. The real cause is internal and it can be got rid of by yogic discipline, vigilance, self-detachment and a quiet but strict Rejection.
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Blazing P2 - Map the Stages of Conventional Consciousness, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
One takes responsibility for others. Dependency needs are high. Fear of Rejection leads
conformists to be overly nice and to repress negative feelings. There is unquestioned
BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
Materialistic Science is, in our opinion, impolitic -- apart from the fact that it involves a total Rejection
of the Biblical cosmogony. In the presence of this display of flunkeyism before the materialism of our
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We may derive some consolation for the Rejection of our divine ancestors, in finding that the
Haeckelian speculations receive no better treatment at the hands of strictly exact Science than do our
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now become, that the most Herculean efforts will be needed to bring about its final Rejection. The
Darwinian anthropology is the incubus of the ethnologist, a sturdy child of modem Materialism, which
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"unspecialized skeleton" truly! And this mistake is due to a stubborn Rejection of the doctrine of
cycles.
BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
contemptuous Rejection of every belief, save the LAW. For how could those who invented the
stupendous scheme now known as the Bible, or their successors who knew, as all Kabalists do, that it
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Church, the Rejection from the Canon of even the Book of Jude, who, though an inspired apostle,
quotes from and thus sanctifies the Book of Enoch, which is alleged to be an apocryphal work.
BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
hobby of their own to defend. Therefore, the Rejection of these teachings may be expected, and must be
accepted beforehand. No one styling himself a "scholar," in whatever department of exact science, will
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acceptance or Rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly
rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
these gentlemen would vehemently protest in the name of 'EXACT' Science at the Rejection of his
special result." (From the Theosophist.)
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The theories built upon the Rejection of Force outside and independent of Matter pure and simple, have
been all shown fallacious. They do not, and cannot, cover the ground, and many of the scientific data
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acceptation or Rejection of the claim for a tremendous period of historical observation. Eastern
Initiates maintain that they have preserved records of the racial development and of events of
BOOK VI. - Of Varros threefold division of theology, and of the inability of the gods to contri bute anything to the happiness of the future life, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
That theology, therefore, which is fabulous, theatrical, scenic, and full of all baseness and unseemliness, is taken up into the civil theology; and part of that theology, which in its totality is deservedly judged to be worthy of reprobation and Rejection, is pronounced worthy to be cultivated and observed;not at all an incongruous part, as I have undertaken to show, and one which, being alien to the whole body, was unsuitably attached to and suspended from it, but a part entirely congruous with, and most harmoniously fitted to the rest, as a member of the same body. For what else do those images, forms, ages, sexes, characteristics of the gods show? If the poets have Jupiter with a beard, and Mercury beardless, have not the priests the same? Is the Priapus of the priests less obscene than the Priapus of the players? Does he receive the adoration of worshippers in a different form from that in which he moves about the stage for the amusement of spectators? Is not Saturn old and Apollo young in the shrines where their images stand, as well as when represented by actor's masks? Why are Forculus, who presides over doors, and Limentinus, who presides over thresholds and lintels, male gods, and Cardea between them feminine, who presides over hinges? Are not those things found in books on divine things, which grave poets have deemed unworthy of their verses? Does the Diana of the[Pg 244] theatre carry arms, whilst the Diana of the city is simply a virgin? Is the stage Apollo a lyrist, but the Delphic Apollo ignorant of this art? But these things are decent compared with the more shameful things. What was thought of Jupiter himself by those who placed his wet nurse in the Capitol? Did they not bear witness to Euhemerus, who, not with the garrulity of a fable-teller, but with the gravity of an historian who had diligently investigated the matter, wrote that all such gods had been men and mortals? And they who appointed the Epulones as parasites at the table of Jupiter, what else did they wish for but mimic sacred rites? For if any mimic had said that parasites of Jupiter were made use of at his table, he would assuredly have appeared to be seeking to call forth laughter. Varro said it,not when he was mocking, but when he was commending the gods did he say it. His books on divine, not on human, things testify that he wrote this,not where he set forth the scenic games, but where he explained the Capitoline laws. In a word, he is conquered, and confesses that, as they made the gods with a human form, so they believed that they are delighted with human pleasures.
For also malign spirits were not so wanting to their own business as not to confirm noxious opinions in the minds of men by converting them into sport. Whence also is that story about the sacristan of Hercules, which says that, having nothing to do, he took to playing at dice as a pastime, throwing them alternately with the one hand for Hercules, with the other for himself, with this understanding, that if he should win, he should from the funds of the temple prepare himself a supper, and hire a mistress; but if Hercules should win the game, he himself should, at his own expense, provide the same for the pleasure of Hercules. Then, when he had been beaten by himself, as though by Hercules, he gave to the god Hercules the supper he owed him, and also the most noble harlot Larentina. But she, having fallen asleep in the temple, dreamed that Hercules had had intercourse with her, and had said to her that she would find her payment with the youth whom she should first meet on leaving the temple, and that she was to believe this to be paid to her by Hercules. And so the first youth that met her on going out was the wealthy[Pg 245] Tarutius, who kept her a long time, and when he died left her his heir. She, having obtained a most ample fortune, that she should not seem ungrateful for the divine hire, in her turn made the Roman people her heir, which she thought to be most acceptable to the deities; and, having disappeared, the will was found. By which meritorious conduct they say that she gained divine honours.
BOOK X. - Porphyrys doctrine of redemption, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Why, then, do we not rather believe the divinity in those matters, which human talent cannot fathom? Why do we not credit the assertion of divinity, that the soul is not co-eternal with God, but is created, and once was not? For the Platonists seemed to themselves to allege an adequate reason for their Rejection of this doctrine, when they affirmed that nothing could be everlasting which had not always existed. Plato, however, in writing concerning the world and the gods in it, whom the Supreme made, most expressly states that they had a beginning and yet would have no end, but, by the sovereign will of the Creator, would endure eternally. But, by way of interpreting this, the Platonists have discovered that he meant a beginning, not of time, but of cause. "For as if a foot," they say, "had been always from eternity in dust, there would always have been a print underneath it; and yet no one would doubt that this print was made by the pressure of the foot, nor that, though the one was made by the other, neither was prior to the other; so," they say, "the world and the gods created in it have always been, their Creator always existing, and yet they were made." If, then, the soul has always existed, are we to say that its wretchedness has always existed? For if there is something in it which was not from eternity, but began in time, why is it impossible that the soul itself, though not previously existing, should begin to be in time? Its blessedness, too, which, as he owns, is to be more stable, and indeed endless, after the soul's experience of evils,this undoubtedly has a beginning in time, and yet is to be always, though previously it had no existence. This whole argumentation, therefore, to establish that nothing can be endless except that which has had no beginning, falls to the ground. For here we find the blessedness of the soul, which has a beginning, and yet has no end. And, therefore, let the incapacity of man give place to the[Pg 430] authority of God; and let us take our belief regarding the true religion from the ever-blessed spirits, who do not seek for themselves that honour which they know to be due to their God and ours, and who do not comm and us to sacrifice save only to Him, whose sacrifice, as I have often said already, and must often say again, we and they ought together to be, offered through that Priest who offered Himself to death a sacrifice for us, in that human nature which He assumed, and according to which He desired to be our Priest.
32. Of the universal way of the soul's deliverance, which Porphyry did not find because he did not rightly seek it, and which the grace of Christ has alone thrown open.
BOOK XVIII. - A parallel history of the earthly and heavenly cities from the time of Abraham to the end of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Wherefore if we read of any foreigner that is, one neither born of Israel nor received by that people into the canon of the sacred bookshaving prophesied something about Christ, if it has come or shall come to our knowledge, we can refer to it over and above; not that this is necessary, even if wanting, but because it is not incongruous to believe that even in other nations there may have been men to whom this mystery was revealed, and who were also impelled to proclaim it, whether they were partakers of the same grace or had no experience of it, but were taught by bad angels, who, as we know, even confessed the present Christ, whom the Jews did not acknowledge. Nor do I think the Jews themselves dare contend that no one has belonged to God except the Israelites, since the increase of Israel began on the Rejection of his elder brother. For in very deed there was no other people who were specially called the people of God; but they cannot deny that there have been certain men even of other nations who belonged, not by earthly but heavenly fellowship, to the true Israelites, the citizens of the country that is above. Because, if they deny this, they can be most easily confuted by the case of the holy and wonderful man Job, who was neither a native nor a proselyte, that is, a stranger joining the people of Israel, but, being bred of the Idumean race, arose there and died there too, and who is so praised by the divine oracle, that no man of his times is put on a level with him as regards justice and piety. And although we do not find his date in the chronicles, yet from his book, which for its merit the Israelites have received as of canonical authority, we gather that he was in the third generation after Israel. And I doubt not it was divinely provided, that from this one case we might know that among other nations also there might be[Pg 280] men pertaining to the spiritual Jerusalem who have lived according to God and have pleased Him. And it is not to be supposed that this was granted to any one, unless the one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,[589] was divinely revealed to him; who was pre-announced to the saints of old as yet to come in the flesh, even as He is announced to us as having come, that the selfsame faith through Him may lead all to God who are predestinated to be the city of God, the house of God, and the temple of God. But whatever prophecies concerning the grace of God through Christ Jesus are quoted, they may be thought to have been forged by the Christians. So that there is nothing of more weight for confuting all sorts of aliens, if they contend about this matter, and for supporting our friends, if they are truly wise, than to quote those divine predictions about Christ which are written in the books of the Jews, who have been torn from their native abode and dispersed over the whole world in order to bear this testimony, so that the Church of Christ has everywhere increased.
48. That Haggai's prophecy, in which he said that the glory of the house of God would be greater than that of the first had been,[590] was really fulfilled, not in the rebuilding of the temple, but in the Church of Christ.
BOOK XVII. - The history of the city of God from the times of the prophets to Christ, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
By the favour of God we have treated distinctly of His promises made to Abraham, that both the nation of Israel according to the flesh, and all nations according to faith, should be his seed, and the City of God, proceeding according to the order of time, will point[343] out how they were fulfilled. Having therefore in the previous book come down to the reign of David, we shall now treat of what remains, so far as may seem sufficient for the object of this work, beginning at the same reign. Now, from the time when holy Samuel began to prophesy, and ever onward until the people of Israel was led captive into Babylonia, and until, according to the prophecy of holy Jeremiah, on Israel's return thence after seventy years, the house of God was built anew, this whole period is the prophetic age. For although both the patriarch Noah himself, in whose days the whole earth was destroyed by the flood, and others before and after him down to this time when there began to be kings over the people of God, may not undeservedly be styled prophets, on account of certain things pertaining to the city of God and the kingdom of heaven, which they either predicted or in any way signified should come to pass, and especially since we read that some of them, as Abraham and Moses, were expressly so styled, yet those are most and chiefly called the days of the prophets from the time when Samuel began to prophesy, who at God's comm and first anointed Saul to be king, and, on his Rejection, David himself, whom others of his issue should succeed as long as it[Pg 166] was fitting they should do so. If, therefore, I wished to rehearse all that the prophets have predicted concerning Christ, while the city of God, with its members dying and being born in constant succession, ran its course through those times, this work would extend beyond all bounds. First, because the Scripture itself, even when, in treating in order of the kings and of their deeds and the events of their reigns, it seems to be occupied in narrating as with historical diligence the affairs transacted, will be found, if the things handled by it are considered with the aid of the Spirit of God, either more, or certainly not less, intent on foretelling things to come than on relating things past. And who that thinks even a little about it does not know how laborious and prolix a work it would be, and how many volumes it would require to search this out by thorough investigation and demonstrate it by argument? And then, because of that which without dispute pertains to prophecy, there are so many things concerning Christ and the kingdom of heaven, which is the city of God, that to explain these a larger discussion would be necessary than the due proportion of this work admits of. Therefore I shall, if I can, so limit myself, that in carrying through this work, I may, with God's help, neither say what is superfluous nor omit what is necessary.
2. At what time the promise of God was fulfilled concerning the land of Canaan, which even carnal Israel got in possession.
--
Therefore the advance of the city of God, where it reached the times of the kings, yielded a figure, when, on the Rejection of Saul, David first obtained the kingdom on such a footing that thenceforth his descendants should reign in the earthly Jerusalem in continual succession; for the course of affairs signified and foretold, what is not to be passed by in silence, concerning the change of things to come, what belongs to both Testaments, the Old and the New,where the priesthood and kingdom are changed by one who is a priest, and at the same time a king, new and everlasting, even Christ Jesus. For both the substitution in the ministry of God, on Eli's Rejection as priest, of Samuel, who executed at once the office of priest and judge, and the establishment of David in the kingdom, when Saul was rejected, typified this of which I speak. And Hannah herself, the mother of Samuel, who formerly was barren, and afterwards was gladdened with fertility, does not seem to prophesy anything else, when she exultingly pours forth her thanksgiving to the Lord, on yielding up to God the same boy she had born and weaned with the same piety with which she had vowed him. For she says, "My heart is made strong in the Lord, and my horn is exalted in my God; my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; I am made glad in Thy salvation. Because there is none holy as the Lord; and none is righteous as our God: there is none holy save Thee. Do not glory so proudly, and do not speak lofty things, neither let vaunting talk come out of your mouth: for a God of knowledge is the Lord, and a God preparing His curious designs. The bow of the mighty hath He made weak, and the weak are girded with strength. They that were full of bread are diminished; and the hungry have passed beyond the earth: for the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble. The Lord killeth and maketh alive: He bringeth down to hell, and bringeth up again. The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich: He bringeth low and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, that He may set him among[Pg 171] the mighty of [His] people, and maketh them inherit the throne of glory; giving the vow to him that voweth, and He hath blessed the years of the just: for man is not mighty in strength. The Lord shall make His adversary weak: the Lord is holy. Let not the prudent glory in his prudence; and let not the mighty glory in his might; and let not the rich glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, to understand and know the Lord, and to do judgment and justice in the midst of the earth. The Lord hath ascended into the heavens, and hath thundered: He shall judge the ends of the earth, for He is righteous: and He giveth strength to our kings, and shall exalt the horn of His Christ."[348]
Do you say that these are the words of a single weak woman giving thanks for the birth of a son? Can the mind of men be so much averse to the light of truth as not to perceive that the sayings this woman pours forth exceed her measure? Moreover, he who is suitably interested in these things which have already begun to be fulfilled even in this earthly pilgrimage also, does he not apply his mind, and perceive, and acknowledge, that through this womanwhose very name, which is Hannah, means "His grace"the very Christian religion, the very city of God, whose king and founder is Christ, in fine, the very grace of God, hath thus spoken by the prophetic Spirit, whereby the proud are cut off so that they fall, and the humble are filled so that they rise, which that hymn chiefly celebrates? Unless perchance any one will say that this woman prophesied nothing, but only lauded God with exulting praise on account of the son whom she had obtained in answer to prayer. What then does she mean when she says, "The bow of the mighty hath He made weak, and the weak are girded with strength; they that were full of bread are diminished, and the hungry have gone beyond the earth; for the barren hath born seven, and she that hath many children is waxed feeble?" Had she herself born seven, although she had been barren? She had only one when she said that; neither did she bear seven afterwards, nor six, with whom Samuel himself might be the seventh, but three males and two females. And then, when[Pg 172] as yet no one was king over that people, whence, if she did not prophesy, did she say what she puts at the end, "He giveth strength to our kings, and shall exalt the horn of His Christ?"
BOOK XVI. - The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
All these things were said and done in a vision from God; but it would take long, and would exceed the scope of this work, to treat of them exactly in detail. It is enough that we should know that, after it was said Abram believed in[Pg 137] God, and it was counted to him for righteousness, he did not fail in faith in saying, "Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?" for the inheritance of that land was promised to him. Now he does not say, How shall I know, as if he did not yet believe; but he says, "Whereby shall I know," meaning that some sign might be given by which he might know the manner of those things which he had believed, just as it is not for lack of faith the Virgin Mary says, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?"[275] for she inquired as to the way in which that should take place which she was certain would come to pass. And when she asked this, she was told, "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."[276] Here also, in fine, a symbol was given, consisting of three animals, a heifer, a she-goat, and a ram, and two birds, a turtle-dove and pigeon, that he might know that the things which he had not doubted should come to pass were to happen in accordance with this symbol. Whether, therefore, the heifer was a sign that the people should be put under the law, the she-goat that the same people was to become sinful, the ram that they should reign (and these animals are said to be of three years old for this reason, that there are three remarkable divisions of time, from Adam to Noah, and from him to Abraham, and from him to David, who, on the Rejection of Saul, was first established by the will of the Lord in the kingdom of the Israelite nation: in this third division, which extends from Abraham to David, that people grew up as if passing through the third age of life), or whether they had some other more suitable meaning, still I have no doubt whatever that spiritual things were prefigured by them as well as by the turtle-dove and pigeon. And it is said, "But the birds divided he not," because carnal men are divided among themselves, but the spiritual not at all, whether they seclude themselves from the busy conversation of men, like the turtle-dove, or dwell among them, like the pigeon; for both birds are simple and harmless, signifying that even in the Israelite people, to which that land was to be given, there would be individuals who were children of the promise, and[Pg 138] heirs of the kingdom that is[277] to remain in eternal felicity. But the fowls coming down on the divided carcases represent nothing good, but the spirits of this air, seeking some food for themselves in the division of carnal men. But that Abraham sat down with them, signifies that even amid these divisions of the carnal, true believers shall persevere to the end. And that about the going down of the sun great fear fell upon Abraham and a horror of great darkness, signifies that about the end of this world believers shall be in great perturbation and tribulation, of which the Lord said in the gospel, "For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning."[278]
But what is said to Abraham, "Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land not theirs, and they shall reduce them to servitude, and shall afflict them 400 years," is most clearly a prophecy about the people of Israel which was to be in servitude in Egypt. Not that this people was to be in that servitude under the oppressive Egyptians for 400 years, but it is foretold that this should take place in the course of those 400 years. For as it is written of Terah the father of Abraham, "And the days of Terah in Haran were 205 years,"[279] not because they were all spent there, but because they were completed there, so it is said here also, "And they shall reduce them to servitude, and shall afflict them 400 years," for this reason, because that number was completed, not because it was all spent in that affliction. The years are said to be 400 in round numbers, although they were a little more,whether you reckon from this time, when these things were promised to Abraham, or from the birth of Isaac, as the seed of Abraham, of which these things are predicted. For, as we have already said above, from the seventy-fifth year of Abraham, when the first promise was made to him, down to the exodus of Israel from Egypt, there are reckoned 430 years, which the apostle thus mentions: "And this I say, that the covenant confirmed by God, the law, which was made 430 years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect."[Pg 139][280] So then these 430 years might be called 400, because they are not much more, especially since part even of that number had already gone by when these things were shown and said to Abraham in vision, or when Isaac was born in his father's 100th year, twenty-five years after the first promise, when of these 430 years there now remained 405, which God was pleased to call 400. No one will doubt that the other things which follow in the prophetic words of God pertain to the people of Israel.
Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
There is the universal Purusha as there is the individual Purusha, and there is that which transcends them both. This individual Purusha is distinct, though not separate he does not feel himself separate from the whole. And when he is fully conscious, he has direct access to the transcendent. Without this individual Purusha, no organised action would be possible. For instance, there are many sadhaks who try to wipe out this action. The stage of Paramhamsa in which one is absolutely unconscious of one's activities, be it as a child or one inert, carried away as a leaf in the wind is a phase preparatory to the total cessation. When the given impulsion ceases, there is a final Rejection, at the time of the dissolution of the body. But we, we want not cessation, but the replacing of limited action circumscribed by a limited consciousness, by the true action, governed by the knowledge of the truth. Thought is a means of knowledge, but it is the lowest. When Purusha is freed from Prakriti, he has all knowledge in him, direct. He knows directly by a sort of vision, a direct contact with the truth (for example, when you are angry you don't need to think "I am angry", you know it without that. Direct knowledge is like that). Even when, later, he translates this knowledge into mental terms, it remains independent of them. Besides, only a part, fragmentary and deformed, can be translated. That is why I find it so difficult to express myself in words. If you had developed this faculty in yourself, I could have shown you the truth directly without putting it in words.
I am aware that I exist independently of my thoughts, but I am then weak and feeble, without knowledge and action.
--
In principle there are two methods. The first is to cut off everything abruptly. To make a firm resolution and by an act of will refuse the consent. When the desire comes, to withdraw from it and to let it have its play below, unless one can throw it out also. The desire becomes weaker and weaker. The other method is to give the desire when it comes a little satisfaction and then to reject it. To give it a little bhoga[1]. But one must take care to make this only a means to arrive at the Rejection. Not to indulge in it, for without that the resistance is indefinite.
These are the two methods used by yogis.
--
Exactly so. This Rejection is necessary.
Should I do some work like the study of Astrology now?
COSA - BOOK VII, #The Confessions of Saint Augustine, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
is distinguished from the falsehood of Photinus. For the Rejection of
heretics makes the tenets of Thy Church and sound doctrine to stand out
ENNEAD 06.05 - The One and Identical Being is Everywhere Present In Its Entirety.345, #Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04, #Plotinus, #Christianity
In the very next book of the same Ennead,404 we find another treatment of matter, on an entirely different basis, accented by a Rejection of intelligible matter.405 Here the whole basis of the treatment of matter is the Aristotelian category of "energeia" and "dunamis," or potentiality and actuality, Although we find the Stoic term hypostasis, the book seems to be more Numenian,1275 for matter is again a positive lie, and the divinity is described by the Numenian double name406 of Being and Essence ("ousia" and "to on").
We now come to the Escorial section.407 This is by far the most extensive treatment of matter, and as we are chiefly interested in it in connection with its bearing the name of Numenius at the Escorial, we shall analyze it for and against this Numenian authorship, merely noting that the chief purpose is to describe the impassibility of matter, a Stoic idea.
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Approaching of soul's Rejection of form, proves formlessness of the Supreme, vi. 7.34 (38-756).
Archetype of the world, the intelligible is, v. 1.4 (10-178).
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Formlessness of the Supreme shown by approaching soul's Rejection of form, vi. 7.34 (38-756).
Forms of governments, various, soul resembles, iv. 4.17 (28-464).
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Supreme formlessness shown by approaching soul's Rejection of form, vi. 7.34 (38-756).
Supreme inevitable for intelligence that is intelligible, iii. 8.9 (30-544).
Epistle to the Romans, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
15 For if their Rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?
16 If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also; and if the root is holy, the branches are too.
Liber 71 - The Voice of the Silence - The Two Paths - The Seven Portals, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
meant the withdrawal of the consciousness from them, their Rejection by
the seeker of truth. Sabhapaty Swmi has an excellent method on these
r1912 12 15, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Trikaldrishti in the evening. Return of someone, not fixed, between 7 & 7.30 (R. [Ramaswamy] returned); of N [Nolini], first, between 7.30 & 8 (N & M [Moni] returned); of S [Saurin] soon (seen at 8, S came about 8.10); of B [Bijoy] unusually late but before 8.30, (B came between 8.15 & 8.30). No exact time given; the two attempts to fix it, were rejected & the Rejection justified by the event.
Visrishti (slight) in the evening, after the pressure of Apana had been got rid of by Will. Physical activity for 12 hours as usual. Sleep 6 hours. Progress in Samadhi nil. Lipi successfully vivid & spontaneous (varnamaya) at night, thus getting rid of the difference which had been established between daytime & night, with regard to the Lipi. There is, however, this difference that at night it is usually varnamaya, by day usually chhayamaya of all kinds.
r1912 12 21, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Later in the day, a sudden revolt of impatience & unfaith, not grief or even actual anger, against the continual running after possibilities in the prana & trikaldrishti and a violent Rejection of the resulting false trikaldrishti. This resulted in a cessation of the conditions of the siddhi. Physical activity, 4.40 hours [i.e. 4 hours, 40 minutes] in the morning, 3.35 in the afternoon, & from 4.55 to 8.55 & 9.35 to 10.20 in the evening & night, 13 hours in all. Sleep, 7 hours. Slight, almost nominal visrishti after meal.
MS of the aid
r1912 12 22, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Normal conditions have not been entirely restored during the day. There is a steady Rejection of fruitless tejas & pursuit of mere possibilities. Ananda which was yesterday almost entirely suspended, is vaguely or slightly persistent today, but there is nothing else definite. Asraddha in the adeshasiddhi is strong in spite of proofs of successful action of aishwarya & ishita in all spheres except the immediate work & equipment. Physical [activity]. 6.12 to 12.12, 1 to 4 [p.m.]1
([Written] Dec 23)
r1912 12 31, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Trikaldrishti. This morning all the trikaldrishtis were correct, even when coupled in their action with aishwarya sometimes successful, sometimes unsuccessful. Formerly the aishwarya would represent itself as trikaldrishti, but this false action this morning occurred only three or four times & was immediately rejected; but in one or two cases the Rejection was questioned for a while by false tejas.
Aishwarya mixed with trikaldrishtiOn a bird alighting on a tree to move from one part of a branch to another & then from that branch to a neighbouring branch; carried out exactly; then to remain sitting where it was. This, too, was carried out. Afterwards, aiswarya on the same bird to move was resisted; but trikaldrishti came immediately that it would be resisted and that the bird would remain, not sitting quietly, but picking its feathers on the same spot until I had to go to drink tea. Also that two birds on another tree, making love, would so continue till the same moment. This was fulfilled exactly, although it was nearly ten minutes before I went away & the same birds had previously been restless, flown away once out of sight & come back, all foreseen by the drishti, except the return. Several instances of this kind happen daily.
r1913 01 02, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Trikaldrishti of the more distant future and of the far past is now taking place unhindered; it remains for the future siddhi to control its results whether for confirmation or Rejection. In its application to the immediate future and the present it is evincing an astonishing accuracy.
Primary Utthapana
r1913 01 13, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Such trikaldrishtis were constant throughout the morning and usually accurate, even when received without previous sanyama or suggested to the intellect. The exceptions resolve themselves (1) to exaggerated tapas & stress on true perceptions, & (2) unfulfilled volitions. For example, a kite flying, a particular line of change of flight was suggested & the tapas laid upon it, another occurred to the intellect, but received scant attention; the kite followed, first, the second line & then the first. Mere speculative possibility seems to have disappeared from the trikaldrishti and to be replaced by actuality & actual possibilities (eg actual intentions, tendencies) & by the volition of possibilities. The latter source of anritam has to be removed by the Rejection of volitions that are not to be fulfilled & the fulfilment of taijasa trikaldrishti and this process has already commenced. Lipi, rupa, [vyapti-prakamya]1 are being used for the trikaldrishti swiftly & abundantly as well as normally, & the fertility of the trikaldrishti & fertility of the lipi promised in lipi have commenced. The habitual correctness of the mahati trikaldrishti is now assured and error is growing exceptional.
Bhasha.
r1913 07 07, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
(2) The acceptance of every act of will, effort, impulsion, effectuating movement as a step in some process of Gods effective tapas, the perception of the final object of the process & of the immediate object effected, and the Rejection of the idea of failure, sterility & inutility as attached to anything that happens in Gods world; since all action, event & impulse proceed from the vijnana which is entirely ritam & failure & inutility would be anritam.
(3) The acceptance of every feeling & sensation as part of one divine thousand-faceted ananda without distinction of satisfaction or disappointment, right pleasure & perverse pleasure, comfort or discomfort, since all emotions & sensations proceed from the vijnana which is brihat & bhuma & duality belongs to the alpam & the bheda.
r1913 11 23, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The struggle is over the absolute & detailed correctness of the various instruments of knowledge & effectuality of the instruments of Power. This struggle will not be over today. It will begin to decide itself in favour of the siddhi from this evening. The superficial restlessness, ashanti, vexation (there is no duhkha) are the old impure form of the Rejection, the necessary Rejection of an unjustifiably repeated & prolonged asiddhi & anrita.
***
r1914 05 01, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The 1 seems to have been the prefixed date for the following results. (1) the final subjective Rejection of the intellectuality in favour of the ideality; (2) the removal of the obstacle to the constant manifestation of perceptive vijnanamaya thought, articulate vijnanamaya thought, free anandamaya vani, conversion of tapasic into luminous movements; (3) the definite faith in the power of dharma-karma; (4) the cessation of the dominance of relapse in the subjectivity, examples Br. [Biren,] Richard, X1 etc.
Trikaldrishti
r1914 06 10, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3) The principle of Affirmation to replace the principle of Rejection & denial.
4) Ritam to develop no longer only in isolated or combined details, but in the undivided brihat of the satyam with truth of detail & combination as a play of the ritam satyam brihat.
r1914 06 17, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Ananda must be positively affirmed in all activities & experiences without regard to consequences. The governing Power will arrange the necessary affirmations & Rejections.
***
r1914 07 07, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The attempt of the siddhi now is to reduce the evacuation without any reaction. Formerly it used to postpone for six, seven & up to 12 days any serious evacuation, but suffered at the end from reactions of consolidation & excessive Rejection. Now the daily evacuation has been reaccepted, but is usually slight, with occasional ephemeral reactions. A step in advance is indicated.
Utthapana
r1914 11 18, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The principle of Affirmation has been constantly growing, but has not yet entirely replaced the principle of Rejection & denial.
Ritam is developing on the lines of the brihat by the progressive Rejection of the idea of the Dwayavins.
***
r1914 11 26, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
3) The principle of Affirmation replacing the principle of Rejection and denial.
4) Ritam developing no longer in isolated or combined details, but in the undivided brihat of the satyam with truth of detail and combination as a play of the ritam satyam brihat.
r1914 12 22, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Arogya is attacked; the old affection of the eyes has revived, assimilation is put back, a copious Rejection taking its place.
Utthapana does not prevail & the Shakti is discouraged.
r1915 02 01, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is an attempt also at the primary utthapana in the shape of diminished sleep and the Rejection from the physical system of fatigue and exhaustion; but this applies at present only to brainwork, not to physical activity.
***
r1915 05 20, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
2) Affirmation has almost entirely replaced Rejection & denial, but not entirely.
3) Brihat of the satyam is affirmed as the basis of the development of the ritam, but is not yet free from attack
r1915 05 22, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Continuance of entire asamata in the evening including Rejection of nati. Resumed suspension of the progress of the siddhi.
The degree of the raudra up to which pain can be made subject to titiksha and converted into Ananda has immensely risen & is being rapidly & constantly heightened.
r1915 05 27, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The chief movement has been the emergence of the fixed Mahakali temperament with fixity in the struggle and yuddhalipsa and the Rejection of the tamasic Mahasaraswati temperament which draws back from apparently useless struggle & desires either an easy progress or acquiescence in an imposed immobility.
***
r1915 05 30, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In the second chatusthaya sraddha and consequently ishwarabhava & attahasya are still subject the first to depression, the second to Rejection from the front and non-emergence. The last two indeed are seldom present.
***
r1918 05 11, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The barrier has not yet been broken down in jagrat rupa. One definite development is the progressive elimination, by force of Rejection, of what was once most common, rupa formed painfully out of chaotic material in the akasha. Spontaneity is now the rule; vividness has also begun to predominate; but stability is only initial, except in certain crude forms and even there it is very little more. Only some incomplete forms have more stability. Completeness however is not yet perfectly established, though it is common; incomplete forms are frequent. Rapidity and fluidity increase, but are not perfect. Variety is growing strong in the type rupas, but other rupas for the most part come imperfectly and without any developed variety. Group coherence is very occasional. The two main things the will insists on, stability and variety in vivid completeness of the spontaneous developed or perfect figure only come,if at all the first,in the type forms. The main barrier remains erect.
In the afternoon much trouble of intellectual suggestion and obstruction, so that no new development came in the subsequent samadhi, except intensity and extension of lipi, speech-thought and ideation. Some mass lipi and reading, but no advance in coherent legibility. The rest was obstructed and occurred, if at all, feebly, and not often in the ideality.
r1918 05 20, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is a movement to apply finally the law of the ideality to the ideation as in the speech thought and the lipi. This is not difficult in the ideation of jnana, but it is still difficult in the ideation of T, especially of tapas. Stress of tapatya and tapata have always been the chief obstacles; whenever removed, they have returned in a modified form; they now return as suggestions from the external physicality breaking down the defences of the intuitive mind. The Shakti has once more put them in their right place and discharged the intuitive mind of tapatya and even of unduly extended tapata. Decisive trikaldrishti and effective tapas are steadily increasing even in the intuitive mind; but until all tapas becomes ideal tapas, the perfection of the ideality cannot be thoroughly accomplished. This as yet has not been done. It can only be done by the satyam brihat ritam in the decisive trikaldrishti developing into its full amplitude. For that the Rejection of the intellectual mind-stuff which clings to the ideation is a necessary preliminary.
In Samadhi still the same movement. At night a revival of dream incoherence.
r1919 08 04, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
T active in the highest ideality of the third degree. The turn here is to the Rejection of the confusion of incertitude. There is also some filling of the third with the light of the higher degrees.
Dream of connected sequences, but some fantasia. Beginning of a firmer gnosis in the dialogue.
r1920 03 06, #Record of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The endeavour today has been to get rid entirely of the lower and mediary forms, but this attempt brought an invasion of these forms, a confusion and a stressing of the difficulty of adjustment to the old proportions of a struggle. The siddhi on its positive side progresses, as has been lately more and more the rule in such crises, in the midst of the confusion. Thought-siddhi frequently manifests the highest form of the drashtri reason, T occasionally gets at some incomplete form of it. But the main movement has been the persistent increasing Rejection of the lowest forms in spite of their persistent recurrence; they cannot long hold the system and are beginning to lose power at all to put their grasp on the thought-consciousness. The mediary forms on the other hand penetrated or not by the drishti lay a strong temporary hold, persist for a long time, prevent the highest drishti, and when it manifests, rush into its place and try to do its functions and imitate its manner. This is the old method of progress. But the rule insisted on at present is that of the higher replacing and resuming the lower powers, not of the lower seizing on the higher and drawing them down to their level. This rule sometimes act[s] but cannot as yet assert its firm dominance.
Ananda continues to vary between its different formations, but now on the whole the tendency is to bare continuity of the highest condition (not its full pervasion, intensity and possession) in smarana. There is now a movement towards possession or at least pervasion in smarana.
Symposium translated by B Jowett, #Symposium, #Plato, #Philosophy
What do you suppose must have been my feelings, after this Rejection, at the thought of my own dishonour? And yet I could not help wondering at his natural temperance and self-restraint and manliness. I never imagined that I could have met with a man such as he is in wisdom and endurance. And therefore I could not be angry with him or renounce his company, any more than I could hope to win him. For I well knew that if Ajax could not be wounded by steel, much less he by money; and my only chance of captivating him by my personal attractions had failed. So I was at my wit's end; no one was ever more hopelessly enslaved by another. All this happened before he and I went on the expedition to Potidaea; there we messed together, and I had the opportunity of observing his extraordinary power of sustaining fatigue. His endurance was simply marvellous when, being cut off from our supplies, we were compelled to go without foodon such occasions, which often happen in time of war, he was superior not only to me but to everybody; there was no one to be compared to him. Yet at a festival he was the only person who had any real powers of enjoyment; though not willing to drink, he could if compelled beat us all at that,wonderful to relate! no human being had ever seen Socrates drunk; and his powers, if I am not mistaken, will be tested before long. His fortitude in enduring cold was also surprising. There was a severe frost, for the winter in that region is really tremendous, and everybody else either remained indoors, or if they went out had on an amazing quantity of clothes, and were well shod, and had their feet swathed in felt and fleeces: in the midst of this, Socrates with his bare feet on the ice and in his ordinary dress marched better than the other soldiers who had shoes, and they looked daggers at him because he seemed to despise them.
I have told you one tale, and now I must tell you another, which is worth hearing,
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 1, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
place. But if one associates oneself with the Prakriti, then the Purusha becomes a slave to it, Anish. Rejection, of course, is a stronger means. One has
to reject these things before they enter into one, as I did with the thoughts
--
SRI AUROBINDO: By constant remembrance, consecration of oneself to the Divine, Rejection of all that stands in the way of the psychic influence. Generally it is the vital being that stands in the way with its desires and demands.
But once the psychic opens, it shows at every step what is to be done.
--
NIRODBARAN: Then if Rejection is possible, why bother so much about transformation and all that?
SRI AUROBINDO: Ramakrishna is Ramakrishna. I bother because everybody is
--
or get beyond it there are conditions laid down: for example, Rejection and
surrender. You have to get rid of desires and passions to arrive at the higher
--
NIRODBARAN: Turning one's mind to the Divine would mean the Rejection of
desires at the same time.
--
the divine element in oneself and the Rejection may follow by itself.
DR. MANILAL: But the Rejection is so difficult. I have been trying to control
anger for such a long time but when the moment comes I am simply carried
Talks With Sri Aurobindo 2, #Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
written about the instrument, I have also written about effort and Rejection in
the earlier part. If he says that passivity is an intermediate stage, that is another matter. Otherwise, by simple passivity you expose yourself to various
--
the action of Rejection. He is no more an automaton. And his very calling for
the Divine Grace may be an interference.
--
SRI AUROBINDO: That is evident from C.R.'s speech. After the Rejection
of the Poona offer, they didn't know what to do. So they had to take Gandhi's
--
DR. MANILAL: By the Rejection of lower impulses, Sir, is it not the Rejection of immoral impulses that is in view?
SRI AUROBINDO: What is meant by immoral? What society does not like?
The Act of Creation text, #The Act of Creation, #Arthur Koestler, #Psychology
motivated by revulsion against society as it is, or at least by a Rejection
of its values; and since revulsion and Rejection are aggressive attitudes,
it comes more naturally to them to paint a picture of society with a
--
canon; but they were based on a knowing Rejection of certain aspects
of 'scientific realism* in painting not on naive ignorance. In this
--
art to pre-HeUenistic rigidity and 'naivety', expressed a Rejection of
worldly realism in favour of a more implicit manner of conveying its
--
siderable step further by his explicit Rejection of reinforcement theories,
by his emphasis on 'expectancy' and 'purposiveness', on latent learning
--
capitulate the evidence which has led to this Rejection. 5 'Conditioning*
is still a useful term when applied to induced changes in glandular
The Book of Certitude - P2, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
This station is also one of the signs of the Day of Revelation; even as it is said: "The abased amongst you, He shall exalt; and they that are exalted, He shall abase." And likewise, He hath revealed in the Qur'án: "And We desire to show favour to those who were brought low in the land, and to make them spiritual leaders among men, and to make of them Our heirs." 1 It hath been witnessed in this day how many of the divines, owing to their Rejection of the Truth, have fallen into, and abide within, the uttermost depths of ignorance, and whose names have been effaced from the scroll of the glorious and learned. And how many of the ignorant who, by reason of their acceptance of the Faith, have soared aloft and attained the high summit of knowledge, and whose names have been inscribed by the Pen of Power upon the Tablet of divine Knowledge. Thus, "What He pleaseth will God abrogate or confirm: for with Him is the Source of Revelation." 2 Therefore, it hath been said: "To seek evidence, when the Proof hath been established is but an unseemly act, and to be busied with the pursuit of knowledge when the Object of all learning hath been attained is truly blameworthy." Say O people of the earth! Behold this flamelike Youth that speedeth across the limitless profound of the Spirit, heralding unto you the tidings: "Lo: the Lamp of God is shining," and summoning you to heed His Cause which, though hidden beneath the veils of ancient splendour, shineth in the land of 'Iráq above the day-spring of eternal holiness. 1. Qur'án 28:5.
2. Qur'án 13:41.
--
Even as thou dost witness how the people of the Qur'án, like unto the people of old, have allowed the words "Seal of the Prophets" to veil their eyes. And yet, they themselves testify to this verse: "None knoweth the interpretation thereof but God and they that are well-grounded in knowledge." 1 And when He Who is well-grounded in all knowledge, He Who is the Mother, the Soul, the Secret, and the Essence thereof, revealeth that which is the least contrary to their desire, they bitterly oppose Him and shamelessly deny Him. These thou hast already heard and witnessed. Such deeds and words have been solely instigated by leaders of religion, they that worship no God but their own desire, who bear allegiance to naught but gold, who are wrapt in the densest veils of learning, and who, enmeshed by its obscurities, are lost in the wilds of error. Even as the Lord of being hath explicitly declared: "What thinkest thou? He who hath made a God of his passions, and whom God causeth to err through a knowledge, and whose ears and whose heart He hath sealed up, and over whose sight He hath cast a veil-who, after his Rejection by God, shall guide such a one? Will ye not then be warned?" 2 1. Qur'án 3:7.
2. Qur'án 45:22.
The Gospel According to Luke, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
St. Luke sees the life and mission of Jesus Christ as a visitation from God. Those who are hospitable to our Lord, such as the sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee (7:36-50), Zacchaeus the tax collector (19:1-10), and the thoughtful thief on the cross (23:40-42) find assurance and salvation. The prophecy of Simeon that the child Jesus was to be a sign of contradiction is fulfilled in the acceptance and Rejection experienced by Jesus throughout his ministry. A poignant moment occurs in the Gospel when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, because you did not know the time of your visitation (Luke 19:41-44).
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered the Synoptic Gospels, as the three often describe the life and teachings of Jesus in a similar pattern, although there are noticeable differences. For example, whereas Matthew 22:34f and Mark 12:28f record Jesus describing the two greatest Commandments, Luke combines them into one unified Commandment - "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself." The concepts of discipleship and mission in Luke are conveyed through the verbs I send out - and I follow -
--
The Galilean Ministry and Rejection at Nazareth
14 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and a report concerning him went out through all the surrounding country. 15 And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.
--
Salvation and Rejection
22 And he went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem. 23 Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, 24 Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. 25 When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: 26 Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. 27 But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.
The Logomachy of Zos, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
phase- criticism, revision, Rejection.
Mental activity is stimulated by sex-appeal, but passion is more easily
--- Overview of noun rejection
The noun rejection has 4 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
1. (5) rejection ::: (the act of rejecting something; "his proposals were met with rejection")
2. (1) rejection ::: (the state of being rejected)
3. rejection ::: ((medicine) an immunological response that refuses to accept substances or organisms that are recognized as foreign; "rejection of the transplanted liver")
4. rejection ::: (the speech act of rejecting)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun rejection
4 senses of rejection
Sense 1
rejection
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
rejection
=> situation, state of affairs
=> state
=> attribute
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 3
rejection
=> organic phenomenon
=> natural phenomenon
=> phenomenon
=> process, physical process
=> physical entity
=> entity
Sense 4
rejection
=> speech act
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> event
=> psychological feature
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun rejection
3 of 4 senses of rejection
Sense 1
rejection
=> brush-off
=> avoidance, turning away, shunning, dodging
=> abandonment, forsaking, desertion
=> renunciation, forgoing, forswearing
=> nonacceptance, turndown
=> banishment, proscription
=> displacement
Sense 2
rejection
=> apostasy, renunciation, defection
=> disfavor, disfavour
=> excommunication, exclusion, censure
=> reprobation
Sense 4
rejection
=> repudiation, renunciation
=> rebuff, snub, repulse
=> short shrift, summary treatment
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun rejection
4 senses of rejection
Sense 1
rejection
=> act, deed, human action, human activity
Sense 2
rejection
=> situation, state of affairs
Sense 3
rejection
=> organic phenomenon
Sense 4
rejection
=> speech act
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun rejection
4 senses of rejection
Sense 1
rejection
-> act, deed, human action, human activity
=> action
=> acquiring, getting
=> causing, causation
=> delivery, obstetrical delivery
=> departure, going, going away, leaving
=> discovery, find, uncovering
=> disposal, disposition
=> implementation, effectuation
=> egress, egression, emergence
=> equalization, equalisation, leveling
=> exhumation, disinterment, digging up
=> mitzvah, mitsvah
=> propulsion, actuation
=> recovery, retrieval
=> running away
=> touch, touching
=> nonaccomplishment, nonachievement
=> leaning
=> motivation, motivating
=> assumption
=> rejection
=> forfeit, forfeiture, sacrifice
=> derivation
=> activity
=> hire
=> wear, wearing
=> judgment, judgement, assessment
=> production
=> stay
=> residency, residence, abidance
=> inactivity
=> hindrance, hinderance, interference
=> stop, stoppage
=> group action
=> distribution
=> legitimation
=> waste, permissive waste
=> proclamation, promulgation
=> communication, communicating
=> speech act
Sense 2
rejection
-> situation, state of affairs
=> absurd, the absurd
=> acceptance
=> ballgame, new ballgame
=> challenge
=> childlessness
=> complication
=> crowding
=> disequilibrium
=> element
=> environment
=> equilibrium
=> exclusion
=> goldfish bowl, fish bowl, fishbowl
=> hotbed
=> inclusion
=> intestacy
=> picture, scene
=> prison, prison house
=> rejection
=> size, size of it
=> square one
=> status quo
=> thing
Sense 3
rejection
-> organic phenomenon
=> dominance
=> abiogenesis, autogenesis, autogeny, spontaneous generation
=> alternation of generations, heterogenesis, xenogenesis
=> annual ring, growth ring
=> bioelectricity
=> circulation
=> cyclosis, streaming
=> death
=> decay, decomposition
=> dehiscence
=> desquamation, peeling, shedding
=> exfoliation
=> diapedesis
=> facilitation
=> food chain
=> food pyramid
=> food web, food cycle
=> gene expression
=> histocompatibility
=> life
=> life cycle
=> pleomorphism
=> polymorphism
=> polymorphism
=> recognition
=> rejection
=> rejuvenation, greening
=> sex linkage
Sense 4
rejection
-> speech act
=> congratulation, felicitation
=> slander
=> proposal, proposition
=> command, bid, bidding, dictation
=> agreement
=> citation
=> disagreement
=> offer, offering
=> request, asking
=> reply, response
=> description
=> affirmation, assertion, statement
=> denial
=> rejection
=> objection
=> informing, making known
=> disclosure, revelation, revealing
=> promise
=> boast, boasting, self-praise, jactitation
=> naming
=> challenge
=> explanation
=> denunciation, denouncement
=> address, speech
=> resignation
--- Grep of noun rejection
mental rejection
rejection
Wikipedia - Apostasy in Judaism -- Rejection of Judaism and possible defection to another religion by a Jew
Wikipedia - Brine rejection -- Process by which salts are expelled from freezing water
Wikipedia - Der Blaue Reiter -- group of artists united in rejection of the Neue Kunstlervereinigung Munchen in Munich, Germany
Wikipedia - Objectivism's rejection of the primitive
Wikipedia - Old Catholic Church -- Churches that split from Roman Catholic Church due to rejection of papal infallibility & universal jurisdiction of the pope
Wikipedia - Rejection (emotion)
Wikipedia - Rejection of evolution by religious groups -- Rejection of evolution by religious groups
Wikipedia - Rejection of Jesus -- Rejection of Jesus
Wikipedia - Rejection slip -- Rejection letter to an author
Wikipedia - Social rejection -- Deliberate exclusion of an individual from social relationship or social interaction
Wikipedia - Transplant rejection -- Rejection of transplanted tissue by the recipient's immune system
Wikipedia - Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots -- Book by Deborah Feldman about rejecting her Hasidic community.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13098699-the-rejection-letter
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20960202-overcoming-rejection
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22747928-rejection-proof
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23497214-rite-of-rejection
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23736228-lethal-rejection
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243408.The_Rejection_of_Continental_Drift
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28812284-rejections-desires
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36513621-eleanor-or-the-rejection-of-the-progress-of-love
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Judaism#Rejection_of_concept_of_a_personal_god
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Eastern_Christianity#Rejection_of_Uniatism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Eastern_Orthodox_Church#Rejection_of_Uniatism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Original_sin#Clarifications_and_rejection_of_the_doctrine_of_original_sin.
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Rejection_of_Jesus
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Rejection_of_Jesus#Jewish_rejection
auromere - handling-rejection-by-the-guru
auromere - aspiration-rejection-surrender
selforum - aspiration rejection surrender
wiki.auroville - Rejection
Psychology Wiki - Rejection
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/RejectionSlips
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NotGoodWithRejection
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedemptionRejection
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RejectionAffection
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RejectionIndex
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RejectionRitual
Limitless(2011) - Out-of-work writer Eddie Morra's rejection by girlfriend Lindy confirms his belief that he has zero future. That all vanishes the day an old friend introduces him to NZT, a designer pharmaceutical that makes him laser focused and more confident than any man alive. Now on an NZT-fueled odyssey, ever...
Salesman(1968) - Four relentless door-to-door salesmen deal with constant rejection, homesickness and inevitable burnout as they go across the country selling very expensive bibles to low-income Catholic families.
Neighbour No. 13(2005) - Jz Murasaki is a boy miscast in his classroom, being frequently abused, tortured, beaten and humiliated by the bully Tru Akai and his gang of juvenile punks. After years of repression, rejection and fear without facing Akai, he develops a psychopathic dual personality with a violent alter-ego. Wh...
The Baby(1973) - A social worker Ann Gentry investigates the Wadsworth Family after finding out they have a adult son who has the mind of baby. The social worker is faced with rejection from the mother and daughters resulting in violent actions. The social worker soon becomes determined to get the son named Baby....
Quarry ::: TV-MA | 1h | Crime, Drama, Thriller | TV Series (2016) -- Quarry, a disillusioned Vietnam War vet, returns home to Memphis in 1972 only to find rejection and scrutiny at every step. A mysterious man known only as The Broker gives him an offer he can't refuse - to work for him as a hitman. Creators:
Whale Rider (2002) ::: 7.5/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 41min | Drama, Family | 29 August 2003 (USA) -- A contemporary story of love, rejection and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize. Director: Niki Caro Writers: Niki Caro, Witi Ihimaera (book)
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Academy's_Rejection_Letter
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/A_Rejection_of_Open_Borders
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Stormhaven_Bluster_Rejection_Notice
ef: A Tale of Memories. -- -- Shaft -- 12 eps -- Visual novel -- Mystery Drama Romance -- ef: A Tale of Memories. ef: A Tale of Memories. -- On Christmas Eve, Hiro Hirono runs into Miyako Miyamura, a frivolous girl who "borrows" his bicycle in order to chase down a purse thief. After Hiro finds his bicycle wrecked and Miyako unconscious, the two unexpectedly spend their Christmas Eve together, and when they discover they go to the same high school, their accidental relationship develops even further. This sparks the jealousy of Hiro's childhood friend Kei Shindou, whose pure approach to life catches the eye of Kyosuke Tsutsumi, a womanizing photographer searching for the perfect shot. -- -- Elsewhere, Renji Asou, a boy who dreams of being a girl's knight in shining armor, has a chance encounter with Kei's twin sister—the overly shy Chihiro Shindou, who spends her time reading alone—at an abandoned train station. The two quickly become friends and eventually decide to write a novel together. However, when Renji discovers Chihiro's secret, a disability that causes her to have an eternally ephemeral memory, his childish ideals will be put to the test. -- -- Guided by two mysterious adults, these youths' relationships intertwine in a heart-rending tale of love, rejection, acceptance, and memories. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 223,388 7.94
Eikoku Koi Monogatari Emma -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Slice of Life Historical Drama Romance Seinen -- Eikoku Koi Monogatari Emma Eikoku Koi Monogatari Emma -- Emma has been a maid for most of her life. Working for a retired governess—the strict but compassionate Kelly Stownar—Emma has grown to love her work and has long since accepted her place in society. Beautiful, hardworking, and exceptionally kind, Emma has captured the hearts of many of London's working men—but their feelings always remain unrequited. Emma is waiting for love, and she finds it in the most unlikely of places. -- -- William is the eldest son of the wealthy Jones household—a family that has only recently been accepted into the gentry, securing their position in high society. He is also the former ward of Mrs. Stownar, and on his first visit in years, he falls madly in love with her maid. His earnest attempts to win her affection, coupled with his good nature and warm personality, have captured Emma's heart. -- -- But the polite society of 19th century England does not take kindly to the rejection of tradition. As a result, Emma and William's relationship could not face more opposition. In a world where the class lines are as strongly defended as the borders of nations, does their love have the strength to survive? -- -- -- Licensor: -- Nozomi Entertainment -- 44,536 7.66
Isshuukan Friends. -- -- Brain's Base -- 12 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Slice of Life Comedy School Shounen -- Isshuukan Friends. Isshuukan Friends. -- Sixteen-year-old Yuuki Hase finally finds the courage to speak to his crush and ask her if she wants to become friends. The object of his affection, Kaori Fujimiya, is a quiet and reserved girl who cuts herself off from everyone and does not spare him the same blunt rejection she gives everybody else. -- -- Some time after, Yuuki finds her eating lunch on the roof where she secludes herself during break. He decides to start meeting with Kaori every day in the hopes of beginning to understand her better. The more time they spend together, the more she begins to open up to him. However, nearing the end of the week, she starts to push him away once more. It is then revealed to him the reason for Kaori's cold front: at the end of the week, her memories of those close to her, excluding her family, are forgotten, as they are reset every Monday. The result of an accident in middle school, the once popular and kind Kaori is now unable to make friends in fear of hurting the people dear to her. -- -- Determined to become more than just one week friends, Yuuki asks her the exact same question each Monday: "Would you like to be friends?" Because he knows that deep down, Kaori wishes for that more than anything. -- -- 259,203 7.56
Isshuukan Friends. -- -- Brain's Base -- 12 eps -- 4-koma manga -- Slice of Life Comedy School Shounen -- Isshuukan Friends. Isshuukan Friends. -- Sixteen-year-old Yuuki Hase finally finds the courage to speak to his crush and ask her if she wants to become friends. The object of his affection, Kaori Fujimiya, is a quiet and reserved girl who cuts herself off from everyone and does not spare him the same blunt rejection she gives everybody else. -- -- Some time after, Yuuki finds her eating lunch on the roof where she secludes herself during break. He decides to start meeting with Kaori every day in the hopes of beginning to understand her better. The more time they spend together, the more she begins to open up to him. However, nearing the end of the week, she starts to push him away once more. It is then revealed to him the reason for Kaori's cold front: at the end of the week, her memories of those close to her, excluding her family, are forgotten, as they are reset every Monday. The result of an accident in middle school, the once popular and kind Kaori is now unable to make friends in fear of hurting the people dear to her. -- -- Determined to become more than just one week friends, Yuuki asks her the exact same question each Monday: "Would you like to be friends?" Because he knows that deep down, Kaori wishes for that more than anything. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 259,203 7.56
Osomatsu-san -- -- Studio Pierrot -- 25 eps -- Original -- Comedy Parody -- Osomatsu-san Osomatsu-san -- The majority of the Matsuno household is comprised of six identical siblings: self-centered leader Osomatsu, manly Karamatsu, voice of reason Choromatsu, cynical Ichimatsu, hyperactive Juushimatsu, and lovable Todomatsu. Despite each one of them being over the age of 20, they are incredibly lazy and have absolutely no motivation to get a job, choosing to live as NEETs instead. In the rare occurrence that they try to look for employment and are somehow able to land an interview, their unique personalities generally lead to their swift rejection. -- -- From trying to pick up girlfriends to finding the perfect job, the daily activities of the Matsuno brothers are never dull as they go on all sorts of crazy, and often downright bizarre, adventures. Though they desperately search for a way to improve their social standing, it won't be possible if they can't survive the various challenges that come with being sextuplets! -- -- -- Licensor: -- VIZ Media -- 144,631 8.00
Video Girl Ai -- -- Production I.G -- 6 eps -- Manga -- Comedy Drama Ecchi Romance -- Video Girl Ai Video Girl Ai -- After a crushing rejection, the heartbroken Youta Moteuchi trudges home. On his way, a dimly lit video store catches his eye, and he ends up purchasing a "video girl" tape meant to ease the hearts of lonely men. However, when he tries to play it in his broken VCR, a beautiful girl leaps out of his TV and lands on his bed. Calling herself Ai Amano, she looks like a golden opportunity for Youta to finally experience true love—that is, until her personality, now troubling thanks to the broken VCR, shows through. Despite her flaws, however, Ai wholeheartedly promises she will ensure Youta finds happiness and true love in his life. -- -- Video Girl Ai follows the daily life of a teenage boy and his pursuit of a fulfilling romance. With the help of his virtual guardian angel, Youta sets forth to find the girl of his dreams. -- -- OVA - Mar 27, 1992 -- 23,522 7.21
11 U.S.C. 1113 Rejection of Collective Bargaining Agreements
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