“
Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.
”
”
Deepak Chopra
“
I am struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
“
Some people take energy; some people give energy . . . Occasionally, you get lucky and find someone whose energy balances your own and brings you into neutral.
”
”
Abbi Waxman (The Bookish Life of Nina Hill)
“
Crippled in the mind, some can no longer bring home their soul in the mosaic of their thinking pattern. By changing the logic model of our mindset, becoming an apprentice of new matters, and turning our emotional approach upside down, we can bring dormant energy to life and restore mental balance. (The freedom of new thinking)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and
farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your
thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.
”
”
Brian Tracy (Focal Point: A Proven System to Simplify Your Life, Double Your Productivity, and Achieve All Your Goals)
“
But, if we consider, as physicists now claim, that everything is energy—everything we see, everything we think, everything we do—then it is just possible that this same law of conservation of energy applies to questions of morality. A conservation of moral energy, a maintenance of equilibrium… a balance exists and must be preserved. If an action is taken that disrupts that balance, then an action similar in kind and degree is required to restore equilibrium.
”
”
J.K. Franko (Eye for Eye (Talion #1))
“
The reason as to why we are attracted to our opposites is because they are our salvation from the burden of being ourselves.
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
Nature may reach the same result in many ways. Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present. A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature. In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.
”
”
Nikola Tesla
“
How can we finally unplug in a hustling world? We often notice we simply do not have the knack for unwinding and finding moments of stillness. Learning to align our commitments to our needs or values and keeping our time budget under surveillance can be incredibly grounding and energizing. If we put boundaries around our time and energy patterns, we can succeed in leading a balanced and inspiring life without regret. (“Finally unwind”)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
Aligning the 114 chakras with the divine universal healing energy is the key to activate the healing power within.
”
”
Amit Ray (72000 Nadis and 114 Chakras in Human Body for Healing and Meditation)
“
I’m struck by how, except when you’re young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
“
What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape.
”
”
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
“
At issue here is the question: "To whom do I belong? God or to the world?" 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.
As long as I keep running about asking: "Do you love me? Do you really love me?" I give all power to the voices of the world and put myself in bondage because the world is filled with "ifs." The world says: "Yes, I love you if you are good-looking, intelligent, and wealthy. I love you if you have a good education, a good job, and good connections. I love you if you produce much, sell much, and buy much." There are endless "ifs" hidden in the world's love. These "ifs" enslave me, since it is impossible to respond adequately to all of them. The world's love is and always will be conditional. As long as I keep looking for my true self in the world of conditional love, I will remain "hooked" to the world-trying, failing,and trying again. It is a world that fosters addictions because what it offers cannot satisfy the deepest craving of my heart.
”
”
Henri J.M. Nouwen
“
There is a dualism inherent in democracy--opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balance takes a great deal of energy.
”
”
Libba Bray (The Diviners (The Diviners, #1))
“
Each one of us needs to discover the proper balance between the masculine and feminine energies, between the active and the receptive. (104)
”
”
Ravi Ravindra (The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide)
“
The 114 chakras are the quantum energy vortexes connected with the Akashic Records.
”
”
Amit Ray (72000 Nadis and 114 Chakras in Human Body for Healing and Meditation)
“
You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value."--Nimit in "Thailand
”
”
Haruki Murakami (After the Quake)
“
When we practice sacred sexuality we are working with cosmologically rooted principles, balancing the heavenly yang (male energy) of the universe with the all-knowing, life-giving yin (feminine energy) of the earth within ourselves.
”
”
John Maxwell Taylor (Eros Ascending: The Life-Transforming Power of Sacred Sexuality)
“
When you use your energy and resources to punish people, you run out of energy and resources to protect people.
”
”
Kelly Bryson (Don't Be Nice, Be Real: Balancing Passion for Self with Compassion for Others)
“
it has been one of the greatest and most difficult years of my life. i learned everything is temporary. moments. feelings. people. flowers. i learned love is about giving. everything. and letting it hurt. i learned vulnerability is always the right choice because it is easy to be cold in a world that makes it so very difficult to remain soft. i learned all things come in twos. life and death. pain and joy. salt and sugar. me and you. it is the balance of the universe. it has been the year of hurting so bad but living so good. making friends out of strangers. making strangers out of friends. learning mint chocolate chip ice cream will fix just about everything. and for the pains it can’t there will always be my mother’s arms. we must learn to focus on warm energy. always. soak our limbs in it and become better lovers to the world. for if we can’t learn to be kind to each other how will we ever learn to be kind to the most desperate parts of ourselves.
”
”
Rupi Kaur (The Sun and Her Flowers)
“
The 114 Chakras are not just the junction points but the divine hidden dimensions of higher consciousness. Body and mind are just the manifestation of those energy centers.
”
”
Amit Ray (The Science of 114 Chakras in Human Body)
“
The key function of the Sanjivani chakra is to restore the life energy in the body cells. It enhances the power of the T Cells and the Natural killer cells in the body.
”
”
Amit Ray (Ray 114 Chakra System Names, Locations and Functions)
“
Baby, I don’t feel pain. Ever. (Talon)
Really? Not even a little? (Sunshine)
It’s a waste of time and energy. It also drains the mind and makes it weary. (Talon)
But without pain, you can’t have joy. It’s the balance that makes us appreciate the extreme. (Sunshine)
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Night Embrace (Dark-Hunter, #2))
“
I discovered when I went all out, when I put 100 percent of my energy into some intense, impossible task - when my heart was jack-hammering, when lactic acid was sizzling through my muscles - that's when I felt good, normal, balanced.
”
”
Tyler Hamilton (The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs)
“
Nature is not dumb. Humanity is dumb when we can't hear or when we forget how to communicate with nature. Nature is very much alive. Intelligent living beings and vibrant energies are all over the planet.
”
”
Sun Bear (Walk in Balance: The Path to Healthy, Happy, Harmonious Living)
“
Your hardest time can be your greatest opportunity. Mobilize and harmonize your life-energy and balance the 114 chakras in your body.
”
”
Amit Ray (72000 Nadis and 114 Chakras in Human Body for Healing and Meditation)
“
The whole of the human body is a energy vibration of certain frequencies, the 114 chakras meditation to transcend the memories of the 84 lakh yonis or 8.4 million past lives.
”
”
Amit Ray (Ray 114 Chakra System Names, Locations and Functions)
“
It's hard to describe the feeling. And I knew from Horus's memory that this kind of union was very rare-like the one time when the coin doesn't land heads or tails, but stands on it's edge, perfectly balanced. He did not control me. I did not use him for power. We acted as one.
Our voices spoke in harmony. "Now."
And the magic bonds that held us shattered.
My combat avatar formed around me, lifting me off the floor and encasing me with golden energy. I stepped forward and raised my sword. The falcon warrior mimicked the movement, perfectly attuned to my wishes.
Set turned and regarded me with cold eyes.
"So, Horus," he said. "You managed to find the pedals of your little bike, eh? That does not mean you can ride."
"I am Carter Kane," I said. "Blood of the Pharaohs, Eye of Horus. And now, Set-brother,uncle,traitor-I'm going to crush you like a gnat.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
“
Like the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that in closed energy systems things tend to run down and get less orderly, the same seems to be true of closed relationships like marriages. My guess is that if you do nothing to make things get better in your marriage but do not do anything wrong, the marriage will still tend to get worse over time. To maintain a balanced emotional ecology you need to make an effort—think about your spouse during the day, think about how to make a good thing even better, and act.
”
”
John M. Gottman (Why Marriages Succeed or Fail: And How You Can Make Yours Last)
“
There are three types of Kundalini energies: one-hood serpent power, seven-hood serpent power, and thousand-hood serpent power.
”
”
Amit Ray (Ray 114 Chakra System Names, Locations and Functions)
“
Vapini nadi and the Sanjivani chakra are the two key energy systems in the body that boost immunity, healing and longevity. Regulates T-Cells, B-Cells and telomerase activities.
”
”
Amit Ray (72000 Nadis and 114 Chakras in Human Body for Healing and Meditation)
“
Rajas is activity and Tamas inertia. Sattva is the balance of these two, for only consciousness can balance kinetic energy with potential energy.
”
”
Robert E. Svoboda (Prakriti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution (Your Ayurvedic Constitution Revised Enlarged Second Edition))
“
Introverted people who balance their energy have perseverance and the ability to think independently, focus deeply, and work creatively.
”
”
Marti Olsen Laney (The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World)
“
The 114 chakras exchange information within the body and with the higher realms. They are like quantum information processing centers. When they are blocked, difficulties arise. When they are open and balanced, the joy of awakening arises.
”
”
Amit Ray (Ray 114 Chakra System Names, Locations and Functions)
“
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 (The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming)
“
Removing toxicity from your life is essential to maintaining a peaceful state of mind and an overall quality of health. This purging can and should include any detrimental habits, including negative, controlling, and abusive people. Once you start living an empowered lifestyle that supports your own higher balance, you will find it to be an easy transition from the negative to the positive in every aspect of your life
”
”
Gary Hopkins
“
If you’re going to eat something sweet or starchy, use your muscles afterward. Your muscles will happily uptake excess glucose as it arrives in your blood, and you’ll lessen the glucose spike, reduce the likelihood of weight gain, and avoid an energy slump.
”
”
Jessie Inchauspé (Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar)
“
Harmony is our natural state of being, and so, when our energies become too stagnant, chaos is thrown into the mix to stimulate what will eventually result in balance and invite flow. The trick is to not let chaos trap or define you… simply allow it to create movement in the vehicle of your life so that you can snap your eyes open and take back control of the wheel. Do not lose yourself in the storm, instead, be the calm in the storm.
”
”
Alaric Hutchinson (Living Peace: Essential Teachings For Enriching Life)
“
You can’t be in constant states of stress and improve your health at the same time.
”
”
Mindy Pelz (Fast Like a Girl: A Woman's Guide to Using the Healing Power of Fasting to Burn Fat, Boost Energy, and Balance Hormones)
“
The higher self knows there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, and accepts that both light and dark must exist to maintain the balance of the whole.
”
”
Heidi DuPree (Awaken Your Greater Health: How Energy Medicine Opens the Way to Healing)
“
Are you managing your energy well and using it for things that matter? Do you stop to recharge before you push yourself to critically low levels? Unplug to recharge.
”
”
Susan C. Young
“
She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement—for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. A rich and living peace.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
“
Dedicate each day to living relaxed and worry-free. Consciously open your heart to the flow of Creation and Creation's energy. By doing so you have the power to create each day, one day at a time.
”
”
Janet Gallagher Nestor (Nurturing Wellness Through Radical Self-Care: A Living in Balance Guide and Workbook)
“
When all your energies are brought into harmony, your body flourishes. And when your body flourishes, your soul has a soil in which it can blossom in the world. These are the ultimate reasons for energy medicine—to prepare the soil and nurture the blossom.
”
”
Donna Eden (Energy Medicine: Balancing Your Body's Energies for Optimal Health, Joy, and Vitality)
“
The darkness wasn’t negative energy, it was healing—it balanced my soul. It helped me to trust whatever unfolded and to believe and have faith in what I couldn’t see. It prepared me for the battles that I wasn’t prepared for. They sneaked up on me and revealed themselves without notice. When obstacles jumped out at me without warning, I knew I wasn’t alone. My faith was improving during the darkest hours of my life.
”
”
Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)
“
Fire: the heat in your blood in the midst of a fight, the kinetic energy that makes your heart beat faster.” Jiang tapped his chest. “Water: the flowing of force from your muscles to your target, from the earth up through your waist, into your arms. Air: the breath you draw that keeps you alive. Earth: how you stay rooted to the ground, how you derive energy from the way you position yourself against the floor. And metal, for the weapons you wield. A good martial artist will possess all five of these in balance. If you can control each of these with equal skill, you will be unstoppable
”
”
R.F. Kuang (The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1))
“
Infectious diseases happen because of external organisms, but chronic diseases are manufactured daily by human beings. When your energy body is in full vibrancy and proper balance, chronic diseases cannot exist in the body. I could introduce you to thousands of people who have gotten rid of their physical and psychological ailments just by doing certain simple yogic practices. These practices are not aimed at the disease. They are just aimed at bringing a certain harmony and vitality to the energy body.
”
”
Sadhguru (Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy)
“
And remember: if your exhalation is not deep, your inhalation cannot be deep. If your inhalation is poor, your exhalation will be poor. They keep balancing each other. The deeper you go out, the deeper you will go in, and vice versa.
”
”
Osho (Emotional Wellness: Transforming Fear, Anger, and Jealousy into Creative Energy)
“
Now we are beginning to come to a point where human consciousness is moving back to female energy. The Earth is crying out very loudly, and the herbalists are springing up. Women are becoming healers again. That energy is coming back.
”
”
Sun Bear (Walk in Balance: The Path to Healthy, Happy, Harmonious Living)
“
Your life is a reflection of how effectively you balance potential and kinetic energy.
”
”
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
“
Every cause that has not yet produced its effect is an event that has not yet come to completion. It is an imbalance of energy that is in the process of becoming balanced.
”
”
Gary Zukav (The Seat of the Soul)
“
I clap my hands together. (Where do I get the strength, the burst of energy?) To chase away the ghosts. Dispel my fears. Arrange the dream. Maintain a kind of balance
”
”
Anne Hébert (Kamouraska)
“
High quality sleep fortifies your immune system, balances your hormones, boosts your metabolism, increases physical energy, and improves the function of your brain.
”
”
Shawn Stevenson (Sleep Smarter: 21 Proven Tips to Sleep Your Way To a Better Body, Better Health and Bigger Success)
“
Karma and manifestation work 24/7 to balance the scales. Do justice, in due time.
”
”
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
“
When I am in balance with the vibration of the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets I am ultimately connected to the Universe.
”
”
Debbie A. Anderson
“
When you care deeply about someone or something, repairs are worth your investment of time, energy, effort, heart, and resources. Whether it is to repair a broken trust or a damaged relationship, take the initiative to make it right and make it better.
”
”
Susan C. Young
“
We don't want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorant of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashioned in order to live securely and serenely. Augustine was a master analyst of this, as were Kierkegaard, Scheler, and Tillich in our day. They saw that man could strut and boast all he wanted, but that he really drew his "courage to be" from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat, and the fetish of money and the size of a bank balance.
”
”
Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death)
“
Self-Empowerment is free to anyone who chooses to use it. It comes from within and nowhere else. You cannot buy it, borrow it, steal it or sell it. It is always available to you and never wears out. The only choice you have to make is whether or not you will use it.
”
”
Gary Hopkins
“
The way towards the peace and the balance is love… love and respect of everything. Knowing that there is a place for your neighbour, and there is a place for power, and there’s a place for trees and there’s a place for birds and plants. Once you start loving all these things, you leave them be. You respect them. Then there is balance.
”
”
Reena Kumarasingham (The Magdalene Lineage: Past Life Journeys Into the Sacred Feminine Mysteries)
“
Regarding the need to pray, the anarch is again no different from anyone else. But he does not like to attach himself. He does not squander his best energies. He accepts no substitute for his gold. He knows his freedom, and also what it is worth its weight in. The equation balances when he is offered something credible. The result is ONE.
There can be no doubt that gods have appeared, not only in ancient times but even late in history; they feasted with us and fought at our sides. But what good is the splendor of bygone banquets to a starving man? What good is the clinking of gold that a poor man hears through the wall of time? The gods must be called.
The anarch lets all this be; he can bide his time. He has his ethos, but not morals. He recognizes lawfulness, but not the law; he despises rules. Whenever ethos goes into shalts and shalt-nots, it is already corrupted. Still, it can harmonize with them, depending on location and circumstances, briefly or at length, just as I harmonize here with the tyrant for as long as I like.
One error of the anarchists is their belief that human nature is intrinsically good. They thereby castrate society, just as the theologians ("God is goodness") castrate the Good Lord.
”
”
Ernst Jünger (Eumeswil)
“
You should stay away from your potential. I mean, that is something you should leave absolutely alone! You’ll mess it up! It’s potential, leave it! And anyway, it’s like your bank balance, you know – you always have much less than you think. Leave it as the locked door within yourself and then at least, in your mind, the interior will always be palatial. Wonderful gleaming marble floors, brocaded drapes. Mullioned windows, covered in mullions, whatever they are. Flamingos serving drinks. Pianos shooting out canapés into the mouths of elegant men and women who are exchanging witticisms… “Oh yes, this reminds me of the time I was in BudaPESHT with Binky… We were trying to steal a goose from the casino, muahahaha…” But it won’t be like that. You don’t want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve, if you gave it your all, if you harvested every screed of energy within you, and devoted yourself to improving yourself, that all you would get to would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks.
”
”
Dylan Moran
“
It's easier said than done but when you feel yourself out of balance within, stop in that present moment and catch your breathe.
Remind yourself of 5 things, that help you feel most alive and re-centre your own energy frequency so you can continue living out of your intentions not the world's distractions.
”
”
Nikki Rowe
“
According to Richard Gerber, M.D.: “The ultimate approach to healing will be to remove the abnormalities at the subtle-energy level which led to the manifestation of illness in the first place.”2 Norm Shealy, M.D., founding president of the American Holistic Medical Association, has flatly stated that “energy medicine is the future of all medicine.”3 This emerging approach is actually both contemporary and ancient. According to Albert Szent-Györgyi, Nobel laureate in Medicine: “In every culture and in every medical tradition before ours, healing was accomplished by moving energy.
”
”
Donna Eden (Energy Medicine: Balancing Your Body's Energies for Optimal Health, Joy, and Vitality)
“
Even viewed conservatively, trees are worth far more than they cost to
plant and maintain. The U.S. Forest Service's Center for Urban Forest
Research found a ten-degree difference between the cool of a shaded
park in Tucson and the open Sonoran desert. A tree planted in the
right place, the center estimates, reduces the demand for air
conditioning and can save 100 kilowatt hours in annual electrical use,
about 2 to 8 percent of total use. Strategically planted trees can
also shelter homes from wind, and in cold weather they can reduce
heating fuel costs by 10 to 12 percent. A million strategically
planted trees, the center figures, can save $10 million in energy
costs. And trees increase property values, as much as 1 percent for
each mature tree. These savings are offset somewhat by the cost of
planting and maintaining trees, but on balance, if we had to pay for
the services that trees provide, we couldn't afford them. Because
trees offer their services in silence, and for free, we take them for
granted.
”
”
Jim Robbins (The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet)
“
A voice from the dark called out,
"The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war."
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can't be imagined before it is made,
can't be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light--facets
of the forming crystal.
”
”
Denise Levertov (Making Peace: Poetry (New Directions Bibelot))
“
What is a fanatic? One who believes passionately and acts desperately upon what he believes. I was always believing in something and so getting into trouble. The more my hands were slapped the more firmly I believed. I believed- and the rest of the world did not! If it were only a question of enduring punishment one could go on believing till the end; but the way of the world is more insidious than that. Instead of being punished you are undermined, hollowed out, the ground taken from under your feet. It isn't even treachery, what I have in mind. Treachery is understandable and combatable. No, it is something worse, something less than treachery. It's a negativism that causes you to overreach yourself. you are perpetually spending your energy in the act of balancing yourself. You are seized with a sort of spiritual vertigo, you totter on the brink, your hair stands on end, you can't believe that beneath your feet lies an immeasurable abyss. It comes about through excess of enthusiasm, through a passionate desire to embrace people, to show them your love. The more you reach out toward the world the more the world retreats. Nobody wants real love, real hatred. Nobody wants you to put your hand in his sacred entrails- that's only for the priest in the hour of sacrifice. While you live, while the blood's still warm, you are to pretend that there is no such thing as blood and no such thing as a skeleton beneath the covering of flesh. "Keep off the grass!" That's the motto by which people live.
”
”
Henry Miller (Tropic of Capricorn (Tropic, #2))
“
It's all about yin and yang," she said, stroking my hair in her slow calming way, her voice as sweet and delicate as summer rain. "Balancing your energy. When you're angry or upset, stop for a moment and close your eyes. Breath in slowly. Imagine as you do that the air you take in is bright and golden, as lovely and light as your eyes. Let that brightness fill your belly. Then, when you exhale, picture the darkness that had been within you--whatever it was that upset you -- and visualize it leaving your body as you release your breath.
”
”
Natasha Ngan (Girls of Paper and Fire (Girls of Paper and Fire, #1))
“
Love is like a match to a wick. It takes that right combination to strike a flame. But once the flame is there, it can either give warmth, die out or burn your world to ashes. Even kill you. It’s how you sustain the flame, feed it, and moderate the amount of energy in balance.
”
”
Anthony Liccione
“
Many people use the energy of their nostalgia for paradise trying to get back to a previous state of grace, back to childhood. This is not possible, and people are wiser to use their energy to progress to the Heavenly Jerusalem. Regression is deadly; progression wins one’s soul.
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Robert A. Johnson (Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir of Visions, Dreams, and Realizations)
“
As the drummer, I know that drums fully support the band. Their rhythm keeps things within the pulse and contributes to the overall energy of each performance. I am a very balanced person and I realize that through my personal level of balance, I also outwardly balance Stjepan and Luka.
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Dušan Kranjc
“
What appears most disquieting to me in isolation is the dilemma of how to use time. There is either too much or too little of it; we either live inside painfully contracting horizons, or feel ourselves isolated in the vastness of space. I seem to have lived with the palm of my hand balanced on the tip of a knife, writing what in theory I would call the Preface to a Future Book. And the relation of time to creation should always appear like that, a ratio that describes the fullness of energy brought to a particular stage of one's life, so that each work is a preface to a stage at which one has still to arrive, the logical extension of which is death.
I live for the blaze of metaphor that unites incongruities. The red wine-stain on my page is like an intoxicant to the dance of words. It is a little ritual I undertake, this sprinkling of wine-spots on paper.
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Jeremy Reed
“
Because gravity shapes space and time, it allows space time to be locally stable but globally unstable. On the scale of the entire universe, the positive energy of the matter can be balanced by the negative gravitational energy, and so there is no restriction on the creation of whole universes. Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing in the manner described in Chapter 6.
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Stephen Hawking (The Grand Design)
“
Your mind is yours—and yours alone. If you focus on healthy thoughts and develop balanced opinions about your situation, you will cultivate positive emotions and find lasting enthusiasm to live your best life. You will see negativity for what it is: a waste of energy. You will learn to stop allowing fear, anger, and other anxieties to grow. You will discover not only that you can weather challenges, but you often find them enjoyable.
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Matthew Van Natta (The Beginner's Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity)
“
I was near-delirious. Gazing up at the pillared skyline, I knew that I was surveying a tremendous work of man. Buying myself a drink in the smaller warrens below, in all their ethnic variety (and willingness to keep odd and late hours, and provide plentiful ice cubes, and free matchbooks in contrast to English parsimony in these matters), I felt the same thing in a different way. The balance between the macro and the micro, the heroic scale and the human scale, has never since ceased to fascinate and charm me. Evelyn Waugh was in error when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy. There was, rather, a tensile excitement in that air which made one think—made me think for many years—that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted. Whether this thought has lengthened or shortened my life I shall never know, but it has certainly colored it.
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Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
She folded her arms and said, "No. We're done with the truth game. Ask me what you want to ask me, and I'll answer or not if I like. I'll ask you anything I want, and you'll answer or not if you like. No forfeit, no control, no balance. No more favors or deals or measuring shit. We'll either have a real, messy conversation, or you can get the hell out."
He grew angry. She could feel it shifting through his energy, slow and sulfurous like slow-moving lava.
She liked it. His anger felt satisfying. It meant he wasn't indifferent to her. So she pushed him harder. "Go on, go.
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Thea Harrison (Oracle's Moon (Elder Races, #4))
“
Wewene, I say to myself: in a good time, in a good way. There are no shortcuts. It must unfold in the right way, when all the elements are present, mind and body harnessed in unison. When all the tools have been properly made and all the parts united in purpose, it is so easy. But if they’re not, it will be futile. Until there is balance and perfect reciprocity between the forces, you can try and fail and try and fail again. I know. And yet, despite the need, you must swallow your sense of urgency, calm your breathing so that the energy goes not to frustration, but to fire.
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Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
“
All art involves conscious discipline. If one is going to paint, do sculpture, design a building or write a book, it will involve discipline in time and energy — or there would never be any production at all to be seen, felt or enjoyed by ourselves or others. To develop ‘Hidden Art’ will also, of course, take time and energy – and the balance of the use of time is a constant individual problem for all of us: what to do, and what to leave undone. One is always having to neglect one thing in order to give precedence to something else. The question is one of priorities” (p. 32).
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Edith Schaeffer (The Hidden Art of Homemaking)
“
In Asia, we say that there are three sources of energy--sexual, breath, and spirit...You need to know how to reestablish the balance, or you may act irresponsibly. According to Taoism and buddhism, there are practices to help reestablish that balance, such as meditation or martial arts. You can learn the ways to channel your sexual energy into deep realizations in the domains of art and meditation. The second source of energy is khi, breath energy. Life can be described as a process of burning. In order to burn, every cell in our body needs nutrition and oxygen...Some people cultivate their khi by refraining from smoking and talking, or by practicing conscious breathing after talking a lot...The third soruce of energy is than, spirit energy. When you don't sleep at night, you lose some of this kind of energy. Your nervous system becomes exhausted and you cannot sutdy or practice meditation well, or make good decisions. You don't have a clear mind because of lack of sleep or from worrying too much. Worry and anxiety drain this source of energy. So don't worry. Don't stay up too late. Keep your nervous system healthy. Prevent anxiety. These kinds of practices cultivate the third source of energy. You need this source of energy to practice meditation well. A spritual breakthrough requires the power of your spirit energy, which comes about through concentration and knowing how to preserve this source of energy. When you have strong spirit energy, you only have to focus it on an object, and you will have a breakthrough. If you don't have than, the light of your concentration will not shine brightly, because the light emitted is very weak," (35-36).
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Thich Nhat Hanh
“
But love and hate, he thought now, good and evil, lived side by side in the human heart, and not merely in differing proportions in one man and the next, but all good and all evil. One had merely to look for a little of either to find it all, one had merely to scratch the surface. All things had opposites close by, every decision a reason against it, every animal an animal that destroys it, the male the female, the positive the negative... Nothing could be without its opposite bound up with it. Could space exist in a building without objects that stopped it? Could energy exist without matter, or matter without energy? Matter and energy, the inert and the active, once considered opposites, were now known to be one.
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Patricia Highsmith
“
Everything is balanced. Everything physical (matter/energy) goes back and forth in balanced circles, cycles, or the equivalent. Birth-death, old-young, big-small, strong-weak, start-stop, up-down, rich-poor, beginning-end, fast-slow, hot-cold, pain-pleasure, win-lose, day-night, full-empty, high-low, in-out, success-failure, united-divided, give-receive, creation-destruction, on-off, positive-negative, etc.
Positive and negative forces moving in balance are the physical universe.
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Michael Smith (The Present)
“
All art involves conscious discipline. If one is going to paint, do sculpture, design a building or write a book, it will involve discipline in time and energy- or there would never be any production at all to be seen, felt or enjoyed by ourselves or others...
the balance of the use of time is a constant individual problem for all of us: what to do, what to leave undone. One is always having to neglect one thing in order to give precedence to something else. The question is one of priorities.
”
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Edith Schaeffer (The Hidden Art of Homemaking)
“
He watches,he is clear."
The only thing that he has to learn is to be watchful. Watch! Watch every act you do. Watch every thought that passes in your mind. Watch every desire that takes possession of you. Watch even small gestures--walking,talking,eating,taking a bath. Go on watching everything. Let everything become an opportunity to watch.
And when you watch,a clarity arises. Why does clarity arise out of watchfulness? Because the more watchful you become the more all your hastiness slows down. You become more graceful. As you watch, your chattering mind chatters less, because the energy that was becoming chattering is truning and becoming watchfulness -- it is the same energy! Now more and more energy will be transformed into watchfulness, and the mind will not get its noursihment. Thoughts will start becoming thinner, they will start losing weight. Slowly,slowly they will start dying. And as thoughts start dying, clarity arises. Now your mind becomes a mirror.
And when one is clear,one is blissful. Confusion is the root cause of misery; it is clarity that is the foundation of blissfulness.
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Osho (Awareness: The Key to Living in Balance (Insights for a New Way of Living))
“
Do not confuse the 'subconscious' with the 'unconscious', whose attributes include courage as well as true knowledge. A great deal of confusion has resulted from the use of these two terms as synonymous. I am using the term 'subconscious' here to stand for material -desires, anxieties, fears, hopes - repressed by the conscious mind as it deals with the outer realities of life. 'Unconscious' means the absic energy of life, that area of being beyond the ego. The subconscious, despite its hidden qualities, is really an extension of the ego. In a sense, it embodies the ego's absolute domain, that realm where it makes no compromises with reality. Because it does not concern itself with consequences the subconscious will walk you in front of a truck to avoid an unpleasant conversation. The unconscious on the other hand, balances and supports us by joining us to the great surge of life beyond our individual selves. The Hanged Man in the Major Arcana gives us a powerful image of this vital connection.
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Rachel Pollack (Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot)
“
There are 2.5 quintillion bits of information added to the Internet every day. As a result, each time we access the Web, we are offered something new, a shot of dopamine: a like! a share! an email! a purchase! Our egos are bolstered, our nervous energy absorbed. While ideas can spark online, it’s more often through face-to-face conversations, sketches in our source books, extended hours lost in a project or even in sleep, that ideas grow legs.
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Christina Crook (The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World)
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It is very easy to grow tired at collecting; the period of a low tide is about all men can endure. At first the rocks are bright and every moving animal makes his mark on the attention. The picture is wide and colored and beautiful. But after an hour and a half the attention centers weary, the color fades, and the field is likely to narrow to an individual animal. Here one may observe his own world narrowed down until interest and, with it, observation, flicker and go out. And what if with age this weariness becomes permanent and observation dim out and not recover? Can this be what happens to so many men of science? Enthusiasm, interest, sharpness, dulled with a weariness until finally they retire into easy didacticism? With this weariness, this stultification of attention centers, perhaps there comes the pained and sad memory of what the old excitement was like, and regret might turn to envy of the men who still have it. Then out of the shell of didacticism, such a used-up man might attack the unwearied, and he would have in his hands proper weapons of attack. It does seem certain that to a wearied man an error in a mass of correct data wipes out all the correctness and is a focus for attack; whereas the unwearied man, in his energy and receptivity, might consider the little dross of error a by-product of his effort. These two may balance and produce a purer thing than either in the end. These two may be the stresses which hold up the structure, but it is a sad thing to see the interest in interested men thin out and weaken and die. We have known so many professors who once carried their listeners high on their single enthusiasm, and have seen these same men finally settle back comfortably into lectures prepared years before and never vary them again. Perhaps this is the same narrowing we observe in relation to ourselves and the tide pool—a man looking at reality brings his own limitations to the world. If he has strength and energy of mind the tide pool stretches both ways, digs back to electrons and leaps space into the universe and fights out of the moment into non-conceptual time. Then ecology has a synonym which is ALL.
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John Steinbeck (The Log from the Sea of Cortez)
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Nature may reach the same result in many ways. Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present. A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature. In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.” Nikola Tesla
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Nikola Tesla (Quotations by Nikola Tesla)
“
I tried to hold fire once...see from a distance it mesmerized me
captivated me
for hours at a time
The more it danced with the wind,
I felt my body sway to its rhythm
I tried to hold fire once
It's glow drew me in closer
And although I know full well the damage that fire can do...
Staring directly at it,
I know it's beauty too
It's warmth was now on my face and
I couldn't imagine being in any other place
I reached out with my bare hands &
it danced even more
And suddenly I felt it's heat deep within my core
Rising like a volcano ready to erupt
But somehow balanced & purposeful
I tried to hold fire once
until I realized that fire held me Passionately and
I was it's guiding force.
If you look close enough, you'll see it dancing in my eyes,
feel it in my touch,
even hear it in my voice...but don't ever forget that fire consumes and cannot be contained so I must master my energetic output to control the flames.
”
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Sanjo Jendayi
“
God and Goddess, I greet you at the start of another day and ask that you send me the best day possible. Help me to feel my best so I might do my best for myself and for others. Send me the strength and energy to do the things I need to do, and the focus and creativity to do them well. Help me to let go of all those things that no longer work for my benefit so I might move in the direction of perfect health and perfect balance. Help the world move in a better direction, and watch over me and those I love. Please send me prosperity and healing, patience and wisdom, serenity and faith. ... So mote it be.
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Deborah Blake (Everyday Witchcraft: Making Time for Spirit in a Too-Busy World (Everyday Witchcraft, 4))
“
The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth. Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them. To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standards by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy. All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity. To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive. To honor the sacred is to make love possible. To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences, and our voices. To this we dedicate our lives.
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Starhawk (The Fifth Sacred Thing (Maya Greenwood #1))
“
maintain muscle and other protein-containing tissues. But when you observe a human over a number of weeks of adaptation to a low carbohydrate diet, most of this initial inefficiency in protein use goes away[27]. Thus, once you are keto-adapted, your body’s need for protein isn’t much higher than during a ‘balanced diet’. This is a key fact in our understanding that low carbohydrate diets used in the long term do not need to be particularly high in protein. All the protein we eat (with the exception of stuff that is rubbed or cut off, like skin, hair, and nails) eventually gets burned for energy, yielding 4 Calories per gram. And you can’t “push” your body to build muscle by eating extra protein – muscle is built up under the stimulus of exercise (or illicit pharmaceuticals) as long as adequate protein is available at the time. No one has ever shown
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Jeff S. Volek (The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable)
“
BORN TO RUN In his book Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us about Running and Life, biologist Bernd Heinrich describes the human species as an endurance predator. The genes that govern our bodies today evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, when we were in constant motion, either foraging for food or chasing antelope for hours and days across the plains. Heinrich describes how, even though antelope are among the fastest mammals, our ancestors were able to hunt them down by driving them to exhaustion—keeping on their tails until they had no energy left to escape. Antelope are sprinters, but their metabolism doesn’t allow them to go and go and go. Ours does. And we have a fairly balanced distribution of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers, so even after ranging miles over the landscape we retain the metabolic capacity to sprint in short bursts to make the kill.
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John J. Ratey (Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain)
“
There have been ample opportunities since 1945 to show that material superiority in war is not enough if the will to fight is lacking. In Algeria, Vietnam and Afghanistan the balance of economic and military strength lay overwhelmingly on the side of France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, but the will to win was slowly eroded. Troops became demoralised and brutalised. Even a political solution was abandoned. In all three cases the greater power withdrew. The Second World War was an altogether different conflict, but the will to win was every bit as important - indeed it was more so. The contest was popularly perceived to be about issues of life and death of whole communities rather than for their fighting forces alone. They were issues, wrote one American observer in 1939, 'worth dying for'. If, he continued, 'the will-to-destruction triumphs, our resolution to preserve civilisation must become more implacable...our courage must mount'.
Words like 'will' and 'courage' are difficult for historians to use as instruments of cold analysis. They cannot be quantified; they are elusive of definition; they are products of a moral language that is regarded sceptically today, even tainted by its association with fascist rhetoric. German and Japanese leaders believed that the spiritual strength of their soldiers and workers in some indefinable way compensate for their technical inferiority. When asked after the war why Japan lost, one senior naval officer replied that the Japanese 'were short on spirit, the military spirit was weak...' and put this explanation ahead of any material cause. Within Germany, belief that spiritual strength or willpower was worth more than generous supplies of weapons was not confined to Hitler by any means, though it was certainly a central element in the way he looked at the world.
The irony was that Hitler's ambition to impose his will on others did perhaps more than anything to ensure that his enemies' will to win burned brighter still. The Allies were united by nothing so much as a fundamental desire to smash Hitlerism and Japanese militarism and to use any weapon to achieve it. The primal drive for victory at all costs nourished Allied fighting power and assuaged the thirst for vengeance. They fought not only because the sum of their resources added up to victory, but because they wanted to win and were certain that their cause was just.
The Allies won the Second World War because they turned their economic strength into effective fighting power, and turned the moral energies of their people into an effective will to win. The mobilisation of national resources in this broad sense never worked perfectly, but worked well enough to prevail. Materially rich, but divided, demoralised, and poorly led, the Allied coalition would have lost the war, however exaggerated Axis ambitions, however flawed their moral outlook. The war made exceptional demands on the Allied peoples. Half a century later the level of cruelty, destruction and sacrifice that it engendered is hard to comprehend, let alone recapture. Fifty years of security and prosperity have opened up a gulf between our own age and the age of crisis and violence that propelled the world into war. Though from today's perspective Allied victory might seem somehow inevitable, the conflict was poised on a knife-edge in the middle years of the war. This period must surely rank as the most significant turning point in the history of the modern age.
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Richard Overy (Why the Allies Won)
“
The intellectual, i n my sense of the word , is neither a pacifier nor a consensus-builder,but someone whose whole being is staked on a critical sense , a sense of being unwilling to accept easy formulas,or ready-made cliches, or the smooth, ever-so accommodating confirmations of what the powerful or conventional have to say, and what they do. Not just passively unwillingly, but actively willing to say so in public. This is not always a matter of being a critic of government policy, but rather of thinking of the intellectual vocation as maintaining a state of constant alertness, of a perpetual willingness not to let half-truths or received ideas steer one along. That this involves a steady realism, an almost athletic rational energy, and a complicated struggle to balance the problems of one's own selfhood against the demands of publishing and speaking out in the public sphere is what makes it an everlasting effort, constitutively unfinished and necessarily imperfect. Yet its invigorations and complexities, for me at least, make one the richer for it, even though it doesn't make one particularly popular.
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Edward W. Said
“
So let’s consider an alternative diet, say 1200 kcal consisting of 30% protein, 15% carbs (i.e., 180 kcal or 45 grams), and 55% fat. After a week or two of getting adapted (during which you may experience some of the fuel limitation symptoms discussed above), your serum ketones rise up in the range (1-2 millimolar) where they meet at least half of the brain’s fuel supply. Now if you go for that 5 mile run, almost all of your body’s muscle fuel comes from fat, leaving your dietary carb intake plus gluconeogenesis from protein to meet the minor fraction of your brain’s energy need not provided from ketones. And, oh yes, after your run while on the low carb diet, your ketone levels actually go up a bit (not dangerously so), further improving fuel flow to your brain. So what does this mean for the rest of us who are not compulsive runners? Well, this illustrates that the keto-adapted state allows your body more flexibility in meeting its critical organ energy needs than a ‘balanced’ but energy-restricted diet. And in particular, this also means that your brain is a “carbohydrate dependent organ” (as claimed by the USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee as noted in Chapter 3) ONLY when you are eating a high carbohydrate diet. When carbohydrate is restricted as in the example above, your body’s appropriate production of ketones frees the brain from this supposed state of ‘carbohydrate dependency’. And because exercise stimulates ketone production, your brain’s fuel supply is better supported during and after intense exercise when on a low carbohydrate diet than when your carbohydrate intake is high (see below).
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Jeff S. Volek (The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable)
“
As beautiful as you are my lady,
You sick answers to why love is never by your side
Your heart wonders around trying to find your ideal love
But yet nothing is completing your need.
You’re a women of strength and resemble power within,
Filled with joy on your angelic face, yet no good man appreciates it
A laughter that one can capture for a lifetime, too bad that all the men you seem to meet erase it all
You display Emotions that one can wish to dwell in and feel the energy you hold within.
Take a stand my lady, no rose ever dies without growing back again,
You need no tears to fall for a man who sees less in you
You need no sad feeling to crush that happy self, he’ll never be worth the joy in you
Show him no sad emotions, you’re too strong to give in now.
As a flower you bloomed gracefully and a beautiful lady rose up from that seed the Lord God planted
As a pillar you balanced yourself against all negative forces of life and that was your strength
As an ocean you cried your tears out but that never hindered the ocean from being full again
As a beautiful picture frame you lit up the room and no soul will ever take that away from you.
Let yourself love you, is the greatest love one can ever behold,
I’m done seeing you cry!!!
”
”
Molemo Sylence
“
She wanted to lunge for him then. In that moment Sheila wanted to charge her whole self into his body, pull out a tibia or a femur and squeeze its proteins to dust. She felt like she had more strength concentrated in every muscle than she'd ever had in her life, and her joints were shifting around inside of her , her cells were multiplying, like the real living organism she supposed she had been all long, but also - and this was the strange thing - she felt helpless, she felt drained of every available energy, like all of this velocity building in her was a product of what he had given her and what she had done with it. She remembered Mr. Zorn, her sophomore-year physics teacher, stepping back from the chalkboard in admiration of an equation he had just written, saying how beautiful it was, how perfectly and essentially balanced, and Sheila had rolled her eyes sitting at her desk at how pathetic this had sounded, how devoid of beauty Mr. Zorn's life must have truly been for him to even think to say something so insane, but now she felt the weight of this truth sting in her somewhere. She and Peter had built this, they had built it together - that's where the velocity came from, that's where the force of the thing came from - and to remove one of the variables from the equation was to leave it unbalanced, and she was not going to let this happen.
”
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Sarah Bruni (The Night Gwen Stacy Died)
“
In theory, if some holy book misrepresented reality, its disciples would sooner or later discover this, and the text’s authority would be undermined. Abraham Lincoln said you cannot deceive everybody all the time. Well, that’s wishful thinking. In practice, the power of human cooperation networks depends on a delicate balance between truth and fiction. If you distort reality too much, it will weaken you, and you will not be able to compete against more clear-sighted rivals. On the other hand, you cannot organise masses of people effectively without relying on some fictional myths. So if you stick to unalloyed reality, without mixing any fiction with it, few people will follow you. If you used a time machine to send a modern scientist to ancient Egypt, she would not be able to seize power by exposing the fictions of the local priests and lecturing the peasants on evolution, relativity and quantum physics. Of course, if our scientist could use her knowledge in order to produce a few rifles and artillery pieces, she could gain a huge advantage over pharaoh and the crocodile god Sobek. Yet in order to mine iron ore, build blast furnaces and manufacture gunpowder the scientist would need a lot of hard-working peasants. Do you really think she could inspire them by explaining that energy divided by mass equals the speed of light squared? If you happen to think so, you are welcome to travel to present-day Afghanistan or Syria and try your luck. Really powerful human organisations – such as pharaonic Egypt, the European empires and the modern school system – are not necessarily clear-sighted. Much of their power rests on their ability to force their fictional beliefs on a submissive reality. That’s the whole idea of money, for example. The government makes worthless pieces of paper, declares them to be valuable and then uses them to compute the value of everything else. The government has the power to force citizens to pay taxes using these pieces of paper, so the citizens have no choice but to get their hands on at least some of them. Consequently, these bills really do become valuable, the government officials are vindicated in their beliefs, and since the government controls the issuing of paper money, its power grows. If somebody protests that ‘These are just worthless pieces of paper!’ and behaves as if they are only pieces of paper, he won’t get very far in life.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
My ideal was contained within the word beauty, so difficult to define despite all the evidence of our senses. I felt responsible for sustaining and increasing the beauty of the world. I wanted the cities to be splendid, spacious and airy, their streets sprayed with clean water, their inhabitants all human beings whose bodies were neither degraded by marks of misery and servitude nor bloated by vulgar riches; I desired that the schoolboys should recite correctly some useful lessons; that the women presiding in their households should move with maternal dignity, expressing both vigor and calm; that the gymnasiums should be used by youths not unversed in arts and in sports; that the orchards should bear the finest fruits and the fields the richest harvests. I desired that the might and majesty of the Roman Peace should extend to all, insensibly present like the music of the revolving skies; that the most humble traveller might wander from one country, or one continent, to another without vexatious formalities, and without danger, assured everywhere of a minimum of legal protection and culture; that our soldiers should continue their eternal pyrrhic dance on the frontiers; that everything should go smoothly, whether workshops or temples; that the sea should be furrowed by brave ships, and the roads resounding to frequent carriages; that, in a world well ordered, the philosophers should have their place, and the dancers also. This ideal, modest on the whole, would be often enough approached if men would devote to it one part of the energy which they expend on stupid or cruel activities; great good fortune has allowed me a partial realization of my aims during the last quarter of a century. Arrian of Nicomedia, one of the best minds of our time, likes to recall to me the beautiful lines of ancient Terpander, defining in three words the Spartan ideal (that perfect mode of life to which Lacedaemon aspired without ever attaining it): Strength, Justice, the Muses. Strength was the basis, discipline without which there is no beauty, and firmness without which there is no justice. Justice was the balance of the parts, that whole so harmoniously composed which no excess should be permitted to endanger. Strength and justice together were but one instrument, well tuned, in the hands of the Muses. All forms of dire poverty and brutality were things to forbid as insults to the fair body of mankind, every injustice a false note to avoid in the harmony of the spheres.
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Marguerite Yourcenar (Memoirs of Hadrian)
“
Women of the world, our time has come!
Our leaders have taken us down a road of destruction. Aggressive, masculine reflexes have created more violence and rage, have left us with little hope for remedy in the Middle East or anywhere else. Our hope of
survival lies in honoring the feminine, that which a patriarchal society has tried vehemently to squelch.
Their legacy has left us living in a deluded universe, a world that worships a fixed and righteous view. In order to feel secure, we only welcome change that men in power determine for us. Our patriarchal religions are prime examples of this, creating a one-sided world gone from static, brittle believes.
Let us remember that patriarchy is founded on division not unity. We concentrate on the differences instead of giving importance to the similarities. There is good and bad, there is black and white. We are constantly in a state of opposites. Where does unity come into the picture?
It is no wonder women have been seen as evil, an abhorrent influence that must be destroyed. Intuition, psychic energy, spiritual force, the unknown, creation itself…merely feminine mockeries of sanity—or so it has been claimed by religious men in power. Women have died at the stake for challenging such beliefs, and to this day dogmatic religious views have persisted in undermining the feminine.
Therefore it is up to us to develop a balance between the feminine and the masculine. That’s the formula for a stable democracy. Wisdom and compassion working together will swing the pendulum away from aggression and fear toward peace and conciliation. I’ll venture to say it’s already begun. We have reached a critical mass.
Now the energy of woman is being powerfully unleashed. Negative powers have reached levels where enough of us are reacting against them to instigate change. The critical mass that we have reached cannot be turned back, and the force of it will literally shift the energy of our planet, creating a new paradigm.
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Perri Birney (Pure Vision: The Magdalene Revelation)
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Life sometimes is like tossing a coin in the air calling heads or tails, but it doesn’t matter what side it lands on; life goes on.
It is hard when you’ve lost the will to fight because you’ve been fighting for so long. You are smothered by the pain. Mentally, you are drained. Physically, you are weak. Emotionally, you are weighed down. Spiritually, you do not have one tiny mustard seed of faith. The common denominator is that other people’s problems have clouded your mind with all of their negativity. You cannot feel anything; you are numb. You do not have the energy to surrender, and you choose not to escape because you feel safe when you are closed in.
As you move throughout the day, you do just enough to get by. Your mindset has changed from giving it your all to—well, something is better than nothing. You move in slow motion like a zombie, and there isn’t any color, just black and white, with every now and then a shade of gray. You’ve shut everyone out and crawled back into the rabbit hole. Life passes you by as you feel like you cannot go on.
You look around for help; for someone to take the pain away and to share your suffering, but no one is there. You feel alone, you drift away when you glance ahead and see that there are more uphill battles ahead of you. You do not have the option to turn around because all of the roads are blocked.
You stand exactly where you are without making a step. You try to think of something, but you are emotionally bankrupt.
Where do you go from here? You do not have a clue.
Standing still isn’t helping because you’ve welcomed unwanted visitors; voices are in your head, asking, “What are you waiting for? Take the leap. Jump.” They go on to say, “You’ve had enough. Your burdens are too heavy.”
You walk towards the cliff; you turn your head and look at the steep hill towards the mountain. The view isn’t helping; not only do you have to climb the steep hill, but you have to climb up the mountain too.
You take a step; rocks and dust fall off the cliff. You stumble and you move forward. The voices in your head call you a coward. You are beginning to second-guess yourself because you want to throw in the towel. You close your eyes; a tear falls and travels to your chin. As your eyes are closed the Great Divine’s voice is louder; yet, calmer, soothing; and you feel peace instantly. Your mind feels light, and your body feels balanced. The Great Divine whispers gently and softly in your ear:
“Fallen Warrior, I know you have given everything you’ve got, and you feel like you have nothing left to give.
Fallen Warrior, I know it’s been a while since you smiled.
Fallen Warrior, I see that you are hurting, and I feel your pain.
Fallen Warrior, this is not the end. This is the start of your new beginning.
Fallen Warrior, do not doubt My or your abilities; you have more going for you than you have going against you.
Fallen Warrior, keep moving, you have what it takes; perseverance is your middle name.
Fallen Warrior, you are not the victim! You are the victor!
You step back because you know why you are here. You know why you are alive. Sometimes you have to be your own Shero.
As a fallen warrior, you are human; and you have your moments. There are days when you have more ups than downs, and some days you have more downs than ups. I most definitely can relate.
I was floating through life, but I had to change my mindset. During my worst days, I felt horrible, and when I started to think negatively I felt like I was dishonoring myself. I felt sick, I felt afraid, fear began to control my every move. I felt like demons were trying to break in and take over my life.
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Charlena E. Jackson (A Woman's Love Is Never Good Enough)