training the

1:Just as full sunlight completely dispels all darkness but even a few rays provide a measure of light, so, if we complete the practice of training the mind, we will totally dispel the darkness of our ignorance, but if we engage in only some parts of the practice, this will still help to reduce our ignorance and self-cherishing . ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso,

2:Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. But absorption does not mean unconsciousness. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness. ~ Anonymous, The Upanishads,

3:The Magician should devise for himself a definite technique for destroying 'evil.' The essence of such a practice will consist in training the mind and the body to confront things which cause fear, pain, disgust, shame and the like. He must learn to endure them, then to become indifferent to them, then to analyze them until they give pleasure and instruction, and finally to appreciate them for their own sake, as aspects of Truth. When this has been done, he should abandon them, if they are really harmful in relation to health and comfort.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, APPENDIX VI: A FEW PRINCIPAL RITUALS, [311-312],

4:THE WAND
THE Magical Will is in its essence twofold, for it presupposes a beginning and an end; to will to be a thing is to admit that you are not that thing.
Hence to will anything but the supreme thing, is to wander still further from it - any will but that to give up the self to the Beloved is Black Magick - yet this surrender is so simple an act that to our complex minds it is the most difficult of all acts; and hence training is necessary. Further, the Self surrendered must not be less than the All-Self; one must not come before the altar of the Most High with an impure or an imperfect offering. As it is written in Liber LXV, "To await Thee is the end, not the beginning."
This training may lead through all sorts of complications, varying according to the nature of the student, and hence it may be necessary for him at any moment to will all sorts of things which to others might seem unconnected with the goal. Thus it is not "a priori" obvious why a billiard player should need a file.
Since, then, we may want "anything," let us see to it that our will is strong enough to obtain anything we want without loss of time.
It is therefore necessary to develop the will to its highest point, even though the last task but one is the total surrender of this will. Partial surrender of an imperfect will is of no account in Magick.
The will being a lever, a fulcrum is necessary; this fulcrum is the main aspiration of the student to attain. All wills which are not dependent upon this principal will are so many leakages; they are like fat to the athlete.
The majority of the people in this world are ataxic; they cannot coordinate their mental muscles to make a purposed movement. They have no real will, only a set of wishes, many of which contradict others. The victim wobbles from one to the other (and it is no less wobbling because the movements may occasionally be very violent) and at the end of life the movements cancel each other out. Nothing has been achieved; except the one thing of which the victim is not conscious: the destruction of his own character, the confirming of indecision. Such an one is torn limb from limb by Choronzon.
How then is the will to be trained? All these wishes, whims, caprices, inclinations, tendencies, appetites, must be detected, examined, judged by the standard of whether they help or hinder the main purpose, and treated accordingly.
Vigilance and courage are obviously required. I was about to add self-denial, in deference to conventional speech; but how could I call that self-denial which is merely denial of those things which hamper the self? It is not suicide to kill the germs of malaria in one's blood.
Now there are very great difficulties to be overcome in the training of the mind. Perhaps the greatest is forgetfulness, which is probably the worst form of what the Buddhists call ignorance. Special practices for training the memory may be of some use as a preliminary for persons whose memory is naturally poor. In any case the Magical Record prescribed for Probationers of the A.'.A.'. is useful and necessary.
Above all the practices of Liber III must be done again and again, for these practices develop not only vigilance but those inhibiting centres in the brain which are, according to some psychologists, the mainspring of the mechanism by which civilized man has raised himself above the savage.
So far it has been spoken, as it were, in the negative. Aaron's rod has become a serpent, and swallowed the serpents of the other Magicians; it is now necessary to turn it once more into a rod.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, The Wand,

* WISDOM TROVE *

1:Breathing is central to every aspect of meditation training. It's a wonderful place to focus in training the mind to be calm and concentrated. ~ jon-kabat-zinn, @wisdomtrove

2:Training the intellect does not result in intelligence. Intelligence comes into being when one acts in perfect harmony, both intellectually and emotionally. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove

3:There is the path of karma, selfless action, the path of love and devotion, the path of training the mind and the path of Yoga, mantra and tantra this is what the various saints advocated. ~ mata-amritanandamayi, @wisdomtrove

4:I always believe in going hard at everything, whether it is Latin or mathematics, boxing or football, but at the same time I want to keep the sense of proportion. It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object. I want you to keep in training the faculties which would make you, if the need arose, able to put your last ounce of pluck and strength into a contest. But I do not want you to squander these qualities. ~ theodore-roosevelt, @wisdomtrove

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *

1:Happiness can be achieved through training the mind. ~ Dalai Lama,

2:The point of training the mind is to become more aware. ~ Andy Puddicombe,

3:EDUCATION IS NOT THE LEARNING OF FACTS, BUT TRAINING THE MIND TO THINK ~ Albert Einstein,

4:Success in training the boy depends largely on the Scoutmaster's own personal example. ~ Robert Baden Powell,

5:What greater work is there than training the mind and forming the habits of the young? ~ Saint John Chrysostom,

6:Thus, little by little, through training the mind, you can change your habitual way of being. ~ Matthieu Ricard,

7:The Root Text of the Seven Points of Training the Mind, and on the commentary by Jamgön Kongtrül. ~ Ch gyam Trungpa,

8:...sound Bible study transforms the heart by training the mind and it places God at the center of the story. ~ Jen Wilkin,

9:Sice Karate exists for cultivating the spirit and training the body, it must be a moral way surpassing mere techniques. ~ Mas Oyama,

10:We are not only celebrating International Yoga day, we are training the human mind to begin a new era of peace, Sadbhavana. ~ Narendra Modi,

11:He needed to know it, see it, smell it, and survive it. I was training the boy not just to be a warrior, but to be a king. ~ Bernard Cornwell,

12:Training the body to obey the mind as I have done differs from the more conventional method of getting the mind to obey the body. ~ Chris Evert,

13:The essence of Druidry is training the mind to both handle contradictory input and construct contradictory output.'

What? Oh. Well--,

14:Training the will in trivial and grave matters increases its strength and flexibility, and enables man to constantly strive and persevere. ~ Ameen Rihani,

15:Training the workforce of tomorrow with today's high schools is like trying to teach kids about today's computers on a 50-year-old mainframe. ~ Bill Gates,

16:Breathing is central to every aspect of meditation training. It's a wonderful place to focus in training the mind to be calm and concentrated. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn,

17:It seems we all agree that training the body through exercise, diet, and relaxation is a good idea, but why don't we think about training our mind? ~ Sakyong Mipham,

18:By disciplining and training the mind to focus on one thing, we gain control of perception; we learn to grab it and put it someplace we want it to be. ~ Frederick Lenz,

19:Training the intellect does not result in intelligence. Intelligence comes into being when one acts in perfect harmony, both intellectually and emotionally. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,

20:Removing old conditionings from the mind and training the mind to be more equaimous with every experience is the first step toward enabling one to experience true happiness. ~ S N Goenka,

21:When you are not willing to fully receive, you are training the universe not to give to you! It's simple: if you aren't willing to receive your share, it will go to someone else who is. ~ T Harv Eker,

22:Introduction Part I - Recruitment Death War The White Knight Pestilence Part II – The Academy Hellenica Training The Pledge The Banshee The First Class The Legged Snake The Amazon Demon ~ Jonathan Maas,

23:All human beings have an innate desire to overcome suffering, to find happiness. Training the mind to think differently, through meditation, is one important way to avoid suffering and be happy. ~ Dalai Lama,

24:There is the path of karma, selfless action, the path of love and devotion, the path of training the mind and the path of Yoga, mantra and tantra this is what the various saints advocated. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi,

25:When most Christians think apologetics training, they think philosophy, logic, and debate. However, the key tools for training the expository apologist are creeds, confessions and catechisms. ~ Voddie T Baucham Jr,

26:achieving durable happiness as a way of being is a skill. It requires sustained effort in training the mind and developing a set of human qualities, such as inner peace, mindfulness, and altruistic love. ~ Matthieu Ricard,

27:"True peace cannot be achieved by force or by merely invoking the word 'peace.' It can only be attained by training the mind and learning to cultivate inner peace. Peace is a calm and gentle state of mind." ~ 17th Karmapa,

28:ostensive teaching helped to bring this about; but only together with a particular training. With different training the same ostensive teaching of these words would have effected a quite different understanding. ~ Anonymous,

29:If there is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention. It’s training the mind to recognize when you’re making a choice, rather than running on autopilot. ~ Kelly McGonigal,

30:There are three kinds of violence: one, through our deeds; two, through our words; and three, through our thoughts. …The root of all violence is in the world of thoughts, and that is why training the mind is so important. ~ Eknath Easwaran,

31:Developing inner values is much like physical exercise. The more we train our abilities, the stronger they become. The difference is that, unlike the body, when it comes to training the mind, there is no limit to how far we can go. ~ Dalai Lama,

32:Contemplative traditions on the whole have historically emphasized subjective, first-person investigation of the nature and functions of consciousness, by training the mind to focus in a disciplined way on its own internal states. ~ Dalai Lama XIV,

33:Left to itself, the mind goes on repeating the same old habitual patterns of personality. By training the mind, however, anyone can learn to step in and change old ways of thinking; that is the central principle of yoga: ~ Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa,

34:A baby is such a blank slate, like training the understudy fo a role you're planning to leave.You truly hope your replacement will do the play justice, but in secret, you want future critics to say you played the character better. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,

35:A baby is such a blank slate, like training the understudy for a role you're planning to leave. You truly hope your replacement will do the play justice, but in secret you want future critics to say you played the character better. ~ Chuck Palahniuk,

36:"Developing inner values is much like physical exercise. The more we train our abilities, the stronger they become. The difference is that, unlike the body, when it comes to training the mind, there is no limit to how far we can go." ~ Dalai Lama XIV,

37:the starting point is to acknowledge that it’s the mind itself that defines your experience. This is why training the mind is so important. By changing the way in which you see the world, you effectively change the world around you. ~ Andy Puddicombe,

38:I think it was in Moscow last year and I got changed for training the day before we played Moscow, but the fact is they actually wanted to do John's, me and John were next to each other and they did mine by mistake. John had done them I think. So yeah it is true. ~ Frank Lampard,

39:I remember talking to Alex Ferguson about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown], and he said: "Why doesn't Tony just get rid of him?" But if you sack someone in football, they can't turn up to training the next day. In politics they're still on the pitch. Gordon would still have been a big player. ~ Alastair Campbell,

40:I exercise about 40 minutes a day, and I'll run one day and do circuit training the next day. I live in an area where there are brilliant hills and mountains, so I get a good hill run with my dog. At home, I'll do the circuit training with old weights, along with pull-ups in the trees and that sort of stuff. ~ Bear Grylls,

41:All the Apostles abound in exhortations, admonitions and rebukes, for the purpose of training the man of God to every good work, and that without any mention of merit. Nay, rather their chief exhortations are founded on the fact, that without any merit of ours, our salvation depends entirely on the mercy of God. ~ John Calvin,

42:Happiness is not the endless pursuit of pleasant experiences - that sounds more like a recipe for exhaustion - but a way of being that results from cultivating a benevolent mind, emotional balance, inner freedom, inner peace, and wisdom. Each of these qualities is a skill that can be enhanced through training the mind. ~ Matthieu Ricard,

43:Studies using meditative interventions had found that training the mind in these ways of focused attention, open awareness, and kind intention could have many benefits, among them not only the reduction of the subjective experience of pain but also an objective diminishment of the representation of pain within the brain. ~ Daniel J Siegel,

44:Resnick and Siegel both agreed that learning to code wasn’t just about training the computer engineers of the future. It was a terrifically efficient method to learn how to learn. “Learning to code helps you organize, express, and share your ideas—just like learning to write,” says Resnick. “That’s important for everyone.” Siegel ~ Joichi Ito,

45:You heard about the waterfall incident."

"No Protector hasn't."

Robin sighed. "One skinny-dipping session and a woman's branded a troublemaker for life."

"It wasn't the skinny dipping that got you in trouble."

"There was no way to know Donovan would be training the new soldiers over there that night. ~ Sarah McCarty,

46:Just as full sunlight completely dispels all darkness but even a few rays provide a measure of light, so, if we complete the practice of training the mind, we will totally dispel the darkness of our ignorance, but if we engage in only some parts of the practice, this will still help to reduce our ignorance and self-cherishing . ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso,

47:Just as full sunlight completely dispels all darkness but even a few rays provide a measure of light, so, if we complete the practice of training the mind, we will totally dispel the darkness of our ignorance, but if we engage in only some parts of the practice, this will still help to reduce our ignorance and self-cherishing . ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso,

48:MYSTIC THEORIES AND SPIRITUAL TRAINING THE religious world in Tibet, generally speaking, is divided into two sections. The first includes those who advocate the strict observance of moral precepts and monastic rules as the means of salvation, the second is formed of those who prefer an intellectual method which frees its followers from ~ Alexandra David N el,

49:No matter how many possessions we acquire, they will not provide us with any lasting happiness and freedom. On the contrary, it is often our pursuit of material possessions that causes our problems. If we want ultimate happiness and freedom from suffering, we must engage in the supreme practices of training the mind. There is no other way. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso,

50:I have also come to understand that although some people are naturally happier than others, their happiness is still vulnerable and incomplete, and that achieving durable happiness as a way of being is a skill. It requires sustained effort in training the mind and developing a set of human qualities, such as inner peace, mindfulness, and altruistic love. ~ Matthieu Ricard,

51:The authentic and pure values, truth, beauty, and goodness, in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object. Teaching should have no aim but to prepare, by training the attention, for the possibility of such an act. All the other advantages of instruction are without interest. ~ Simone Weil,

52:Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. But absorption does not mean unconsciousness. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness. ~ Anonymous,

53:Whether we consider the individual, family, local, national or international level, peace must arise from inner peace. For example, making prayers for peace while continuing to harbor anger is futile. Training the mind and overcoming your anger is much more effective than mere prayer. Anger, hatred and jealousy never solve problems, only affection, concern and respect can do that. ~ Dalai Lama,

54:Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. But absorption does not mean unconsciousness. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness. ~ Anonymous, The Upanishads,

55:pursuing virtuous activities in the pure realms. Therefore, those capable of training the mind are not vulnerable to the proliferation of the five degenerations and remain contented. If you know how to train the mind, even your body, the body of a mind training yogi, is known as the “city that is a source of joy.” For all happiness—of this and future lives, of self and others—comes ~ Thupten Jinpa,

56:. . . God is too busy making the sun come up and go down and watching so the moon floats just right in the sky to be concerned with color . . . only man wants always God should be there to condemn this one and save that one. Always it is man who wants to make heaven and hell. God is too busy training the bees to make honey and every morning opening up all the new flowers for business. ~ Bryce Courtenay,

57:Deep knowledge is to be aware of disturbance before disturbance, to be aware of danger before danger, to be aware of destruction before destruction, to be aware of calamity before calamity. Strong action is training the body without being burdened by the body, exercising the mind without being used by the mind, working in the world without being affected by the world, carrying out tasks without being obstructed by tasks. ~ Sun Tzu,

58:At first it was assumed that it was simply the activity of the brain that changed during meditation, but multiple studies have shown that the structure of the brain itself can change, in a process known as neuroplasticity. So, in the same way that training the body can make a particular muscle thicker and stronger, so training the mind with meditation can make the area of the brain associated with happiness and well-being thicker and stronger. ~ Andy Puddicombe,

59:Working an integral or performing a linear regression is something a computer can do quite effectively. Understanding whether the result makes sense—or deciding whether the method is the right one to use in the first place—requires a guiding human hand. When we teach mathematics we are supposed to be explaining how to be that guide. A math course that fails to do so is essentially training the student to be a very slow, buggy version of Microsoft Excel. ~ Jordan Ellenberg,

60:I always believe in going hard at everything, whether it is Latin or mathematics, boxing or football, but at the same time I want to keep the sense of proportion. It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object. I want you to keep in training the faculties which would make you, if the need arose, able to put your last ounce of pluck and strength into a contest. But I do not want you to squander these qualities. ~ Theodore Roosevelt,

61:you’ve learned to align your consciousness with your inner Watcher and perch there, observing your physical and emotional feelings. Just one step remains in your contemplation training—the step that’s most profoundly healing and most difficult for a person raised in the rationalist tradition. You must learn to watch any or all of your thoughts without believing them. This is a skill that allows you to break away from any psychological conditioning that predisposes you to weight gain. ~ Martha N Beck,

62:Scientists have found that when test monkeys spent five minutes learning how to use a rake, some of the neurons that responded to touching their hands began behaving in a new way. They began to fire in response to stimuli at the end of the rake, not on the monkey’s hand. Other neurons in the brain respond to things that appear to lie within arm’s reach. Training the monkeys to use the rakes caused these neurons to change—reacting to objects lying within rake’s reach rather than arm’s reach. ~ Carl Zimmer,

63:Fourteen weeks before the Mendes fight I tore 80 per cent of my ACL [anterior cruciate ligament]. That is the main ligament for stability. Every day in that training camp when I was working my way back, I was saying "real champions fight through any adversity". That is why I am a real champion and he is not. Look at my eye [he had seven stitches put in an old wound after an injury in training the night before we met]. Fighters fight on. Aldo got scared, he went running and I worry he will run again. ~ Conor McGregor,

64:Nothing fires the warrior’s heart more with courage than to find himself and his comrades at the point of annihilation, at the brink of being routed and overrun, and then to dredge not merely from one’s own bowels or guts but from one’s discipline and training the presence of mind not to panic, not to yield to the possession of despair, but instead to complete those homely acts of order which Dienekes had ever declared the supreme accomplishment of the warrior: to perform the commonplace under far-from-commonplace conditions. ~ Steven Pressfield,

65:Anything which begins new and fresh will finally become old and silly. The educational institution is certainly no exception to this, although training the young is by implication an art for old people exclusively, and novelty in education is allied to mutiny. Moreover, the mere process of learning is allied to mutiny. Moreover, the mere process of learning is so excruciating and so bewildering that no conceivable phraseology or combination of philosophies can make it practical as a method of marking time during what might be called the formative years. ~ Shirley Jackson,

66:Loving-kindness is the experience of having a friendly and loving relationship toward ourselves as well as all others. The experience of sending loving-kindness toward ourselves is perhaps as simple as bringing a friendly attitude to our minds and bodies. Typically, we tend to judge ourselves and be quite critical and harsh in our self-assessments, identifying with the negative thoughts and feelings that arise in our minds. Being loving and kind isn’t our normal habit, so training the heart/mind to be kind is a great task. Mindfulness brings the mind’s negative habits into awareness. ~ Noah Levine,

67:Training the intellect does not result in intelligence. Rather, intelligence comes into being when one acts in perfect harmony, both intellectually and emotionally. There is a vast distinction between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is merely thought functioning independently of emotion. When intellect, irrespective of emotion, is trained in any particular direction, one may have great intellect, but one does not have intelligence, because in intelligence there is the inherent capacity to feel as well as to reason; in intelligence both capacities are equally present, intensely and harmoniously. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,

68:The Magician should devise for himself a definite technique for destroying 'evil.' The essence of such a practice will consist in training the mind and the body to confront things which cause fear, pain, disgust, shame and the like. He must learn to endure them, then to become indifferent to them, then to analyze them until they give pleasure and instruction, and finally to appreciate them for their own sake, as aspects of Truth. When this has been done, he should abandon them, if they are really harmful in relation to health and comfort.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, Magick, APPENDIX VI: A FEW PRINCIPAL RITUALS, [311-312],

69:If athletes include as part of their training the visualization of their sport and mentally picturing themselves going through all the steps required for success, how then can believers fail to visualize what is more important and consequential than sport? People of spiritual elevation prepare themselves psychologically for the ultimate journey. Although death is a sudden severance from this life, one remains conscious in a different way. In fact, the deceased is in a hyperconscious state that makes this life appear like a dream. ʿAlī ibn AbīṬālib, may God be pleased with him, said, “People are asleep. When they die, they wake up. ~ Hamza Yusuf,

70:Many of us are slaves to our minds. Our own mind is our worst enemy. We try to focus, and our mind wanders off. We try to keep stress at bay, but anxiety keeps us awake at night. We try to be good to the people we love, but then we forget them and put ourselves first. And when we want to change our life, we dive into spiritual practice and expect quick results, only to lose focus after the honeymoon has worn off. We return to our state of bewilderment. We're left feeling helpless and discouraged. It seems we all agree that training the body through exercise, diet, and relaxation is a good idea, but why don't we think about training our minds? ~ Sakyong Mipham,

71:Free-Play Training The next step that you, the commander, take is to make virtually all training free-play. The best way to train your unit is to replicate the conditions of combat as closely as possible. The best method for doing so is free-play training. One of the salient features of war is that it is a clash of opposing wills. Training that does not incorporate this will not be effective in preparing units for combat. On the rare occasions that troops get the opportunity to act freely as “aggressors” during current training exercises, they unleash their creativity and often cause great difficulty for their opponents. The philosophical goal for training light infantry is to make this “aggressor” mindset the mindset of your men all the time. ~ William S Lind,

72:The major idea of jnana yoga is to gain greater knowledge of who you really are. What does that mean? Take the first two steps of jnana yoga—shama and dama. They talk about training the mind to internalize and the sensory organs to ‘centre’ themselves so that they can determine what one truly feels or is experiencing. The next natural step in this process is called uparati, which is the practice of not thinking about the senses and going deeper into the consciousness. This is followed by titiksha, which if you think about it, would follow from not being a slave to your senses; it is the idea that no matter whether faced with happiness or sorrow, adulation or insult, one accepts and embraces it without reaction. The mind is consistently calm as if nothing happened. Then comes shraddha or faith, followed by samadhana or the exercise to constantly focus the mind on divinity and finally mumukshutva, the desire to be free from the ties of the world. ~ Hindol Sengupta,

73:Dagon brushed a couple flies away from his face angrily. “These flies are truly annoying. If their presence persists, I may have to call you, Ba’alzebub.” Ba’alzebub meant “Lord of the Flies.” Dagon said, “Now let us call upon the Sons of Rapha.” • • • • • Goliath and Ishbi came alone to the sanctuary later that night. Dagon limited his presence to the highest officials of the warrior cult. And Dagon alone of the gods was present. He felt that including the other deities would only dilute his authority in the eyes of his devotees. Goliath and Ishbi knelt before Dagon, eager for duty. He had told them of Israel’s new institution of monarchy, and their first king, Saul of Benjamin. Goliath said, “A king would unite their tribes and make their military formidable.” “Indeed,” pondered Dagon. “What is your command, my god?” “Continue organizing and training the Sons of Rapha. But begin gathering intelligence on this Saul. He is a mighty warrior king and you will be fighting battles against him. You will need to know how he thinks, his weaknesses, his strengths. ~ Brian Godawa,

74:This [sand-dollar hunting] had become one of our rituals together, and though she would search for other varieties of shells when I was out of town or unable to see her, she would wait until I appeared on her front porch before setting off to extract these mute delicate coins from their settings in the sand. At first, we had collected only the larger specimens, but gradually as we learned what was rare and to be truly prized, we began to gather only the smallest sand dollars for our collection. Our trophies were sometimes as small as thumbnails and as fragile as contact lenses. Annie Kate collected the tiniest relics, round and cruciform and white as bone china when dried of sea water, and placed them in a glass-and-copper cricket box in her bedroom. Often we would sit together and admire the modest splendor of our accumulation. At times it looked like the coinage of a shy, diminutive species of angel. Our quest to find the smallest sand dollar became a competition between us, and as the months passed and Annie Kate grew larger with the child, the brittle, desiccated animals we unearthed from the sand became smaller and smaller. It was all a matter of training the eye to expect less. ~ Pat Conroy,

75:A man spent hours watching a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. It managed to make a small hole, but its body was too large to get through it. After a long struggle, it appeared to be exhausted and remained absolutely still.

The man decided to help the butterfly and, with a pair of scissors, he cut open the cocoon, thus releasing the butterfly. However, the butterfly’s body was very small and wrinkled and its wings were all crumpled.

The man continued to watch, hoping that, at any moment, the butterfly would open its wings and fly away. Nothing happened; in fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its brief life dragging around its shrunken body and shrivelled wings, incapable of flight.

What the man – out of kindness and his eagerness to help – had failed to understand was that the tight cocoon and the efforts that the butterfly had to make in order to squeeze out of that tiny hole were Nature’s way of training the butterfly and of strengthening its wings.

Sometimes, a little extra effort is precisely what prepares us for the next obstacle to be faced. Anyone who refuses to make that effort, or gets the wrong sort of help, is left unprepared to fight the next battle and never manages to fly off to their destiny. ~ Paulo Coelho,

76:So we begin with a very simple object of attention, like the breath, and train ourselves to return to it even as we get distracted over and over again. This first insight into the habit of distraction leads us to understand the value and importance of steadying our attention, because the worlds we create in ourselves and around us all have their origins in our own minds. How many different mind-worlds do we inhabit in our thoughts, even between one breath and the next? And how many actions do we take because of these unnoticed thoughts? By first taking a particular object of concentration and then training the mind to stay focused on it, we can develop calmness and tranquillity. The object may be the breath, a sound or mantra, a visual image, or certain reflections, all of which serve to concentrate the mind. At first, this requires the effort of continually returning each time the mind wanders off. With practice, though, the mind becomes trained, and then rests quite easily in the chosen object. In addition to the feelings of restfulness and peace, the state of concentration also becomes the basis for deepening insight and wisdom. We find ourselves opening to the world’s suffering as well as to its great beauty. Through the power of increased awareness, simple experience often becomes magically alive: the silhouette of a branch against the night sky or trees swaying in the invisible wind. The way that we sense the world becomes purified, our perception of the world transformed. Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes. ~ Joseph Goldstein,

77:THE WAND
THE Magical Will is in its essence twofold, for it presupposes a beginning and an end; to will to be a thing is to admit that you are not that thing.
Hence to will anything but the supreme thing, is to wander still further from it - any will but that to give up the self to the Beloved is Black Magick - yet this surrender is so simple an act that to our complex minds it is the most difficult of all acts; and hence training is necessary. Further, the Self surrendered must not be less than the All-Self; one must not come before the altar of the Most High with an impure or an imperfect offering. As it is written in Liber LXV, "To await Thee is the end, not the beginning."
This training may lead through all sorts of complications, varying according to the nature of the student, and hence it may be necessary for him at any moment to will all sorts of things which to others might seem unconnected with the goal. Thus it is not "a priori" obvious why a billiard player should need a file.
Since, then, we may want "anything," let us see to it that our will is strong enough to obtain anything we want without loss of time.
It is therefore necessary to develop the will to its highest point, even though the last task but one is the total surrender of this will. Partial surrender of an imperfect will is of no account in Magick.
The will being a lever, a fulcrum is necessary; this fulcrum is the main aspiration of the student to attain. All wills which are not dependent upon this principal will are so many leakages; they are like fat to the athlete.
The majority of the people in this world are ataxic; they cannot coordinate their mental muscles to make a purposed movement. They have no real will, only a set of wishes, many of which contradict others. The victim wobbles from one to the other (and it is no less wobbling because the movements may occasionally be very violent) and at the end of life the movements cancel each other out. Nothing has been achieved; except the one thing of which the victim is not conscious: the destruction of his own character, the confirming of indecision. Such an one is torn limb from limb by Choronzon.
How then is the will to be trained? All these wishes, whims, caprices, inclinations, tendencies, appetites, must be detected, examined, judged by the standard of whether they help or hinder the main purpose, and treated accordingly.
Vigilance and courage are obviously required. I was about to add self-denial, in deference to conventional speech; but how could I call that self-denial which is merely denial of those things which hamper the self? It is not suicide to kill the germs of malaria in one's blood.
Now there are very great difficulties to be overcome in the training of the mind. Perhaps the greatest is forgetfulness, which is probably the worst form of what the Buddhists call ignorance. Special practices for training the memory may be of some use as a preliminary for persons whose memory is naturally poor. In any case the Magical Record prescribed for Probationers of the A.'.A.'. is useful and necessary.
Above all the practices of Liber III must be done again and again, for these practices develop not only vigilance but those inhibiting centres in the brain which are, according to some psychologists, the mainspring of the mechanism by which civilized man has raised himself above the savage.
So far it has been spoken, as it were, in the negative. Aaron's rod has become a serpent, and swallowed the serpents of the other Magicians; it is now necessary to turn it once more into a rod.
~ Aleister Crowley, Liber ABA, Book 4, The Wand,

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