Blocking Negativity Quotes

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

If life throws you a few bad notes or vibrations, don't let them interrupt or alter your song.

Amazing. You were so attached to it, and it still disappeared for you." “Attached! I was whocking that cloud with everything I had! Fireballs, laser beams, vacuum cleaner a block high...” “Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.

At first we raced through space, like shadows and light; her rants, my raves; her dark hair, my blonde; black dresses, white. She's a purple-black African-violet-dark butterfly and I a white moth. We were two wild ponies, Dawn and Midnight, the wind electrifying our manes and our hooves quaking the city; we were photo negatives of each other, together making the perfect image of a girl.

Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.

That’s why your primary goal is not to get rid of negative feelings and feel better, but to block them from controlling your behavior while you continue to act like a decent person.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season.

Stay positive. Sometimes you don't even realize you're blocking your own blessings by thinking negatively and holding on to the past. Learn to let go.

In other words, it requires deliberate self-deception, including a constant effort to repress or block out unpleasant possibilities and 'negative' thoughts. The truly self-confident, or those who have in some way made their peace with the world and their destiny within it, do not need to expend effort censoring or otherwise controlling their thoughts.

A lot of people make money off of fear and negativity and any way they can feed it to you is to their benefit in a lot of ways. You can't avoid it completely; you have to be open enough that shit doesn't stick on you, it goes through, because you are gonna be hit and bombarded all the time with negativity... You just let things go on through without trying to stop them or block them.

I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. "Have you thought of a story?" I was asked every morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative

There certainly are some women who treat their male partners badly, berating them, calling them names, attempting to control them. The negative impact on these men’s lives can be considerable. But do we see men whose self-esteem is gradually destroyed through this process? Do we see men whose progress in school or in their careers grinds to a halt because of the constant criticism and undermining? Where are the men whose partners are forcing them to have unwanted sex? Where are the men who are fleeing to shelters in fear for their lives? How about the ones who try to get to a phone to call for help, but the women block their way or cut the line? The reason we don’t generally see these men is simple: They’re rare. I don’t question how embarrassing it would be for a man to come forward and admit that a woman is abusing him. But don’t underestimate how humiliated a woman feels when she reveals abuse; women crave dignity just as much as men do. If shame stopped people from coming forward, no one would tell.

In the West, and among some in the Indian elite, this word, corruption, had purely negative connotations; it was seen as blocking India’s modern, global ambitions. But for the poor of a country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained.

If you don’t see the images on a screen because people block your view, it is easier to adjust your sitting position than to call for an adjustment of the screen! You need to change yourself!

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

No matter what, the most powerful thing in the world is the human mind and prayer. Believe in yourself, have confidence and perseverance. No matter how many times you do it, you do it again, until it's right. Whatever you believe you become. Block out negative energy. I don't care if the whole world is against you, tease you, or say you're not going to make it, believe in yourself, no matter what.

With determination, it is possible to block out the negative things and enjoy the positive ones, despite the cons. Most importantly, it is possible to dance through everything pernicious.

these negative emotions are not simply something to endure and erase. They are purposeful. Beneficial. They tell us what we need. Anger inspires action. Sadness is necessary to process grief. Fear helps keep us safe. Completely eradicating these emotions is not just impossible—it’s unhealthy. These negative emotions only become toxic when they block out all the other emotions. When we feel so much sadness that we can’t let any joy in. When we feel so much anger that we cannot soften around others. True mental health looks like a balance of these good and bad feelings. As Lori Gottlieb says in her book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, “Many people come to therapy seeking closure. Help me not to feel. What they eventually discover is that you can’t mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You’ll also mute the joy.

Dissociation (being split-off from one’s deepest truth) mimics enlightenment – but it isn’t enlightenment. People who are dissociated live in great peace. But this is only because they have blocked their negative feelings. The enlightened person resolves his negatives feelings, and thus his peace is not false. People who are dissociated do not suffer. But this is only because they have abandoned their healing process and numbed their pain. Enlightenment grows from the fertilized soil of suffering. People who are dissociated call themselves enlightened. But this is only because they have they have no conception of what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is the polar opposite of dissociation. People who are dissociated feel they have mastered forgiveness. But this is only because they completely deny the harm done to them – and the damage remaining. The enlightened forgive spontaneously and without effort because they have fully embraced their damaged parts and grieved every honest ounce of their misery.

The establishment’s reply is that dissenting students are bent, not on positive innovation, but on negative disruption. Against this, however, it can be argued that these two processes are very closely related and that the former only degenerates into the latter when it finds itself blocked.

Barriers to full engagement: Negative habits that block, distort, waste, diminish, deplete and contaminate stored energy.

The term dissociation is ordinarily used to describe the phenomenon of compartmentalization or fragmentation of mental contents. It does not ascribe any particular mechanism by which the dissociative process occurs. Does dissociation occur as a result of automatic, nonconscious processes, or are there other specific mechanisms by which it occurs? Especially in the context of describing amnesia, the term repression is widely used in connection with several different mechanisms. As it is commonly used, it often implies how individuals may block our memories of uncomfortable or conflictual experiences. If done consciously, the mechanism is more accurately called suppression, which results from actively trying not to think about negative experiences.

fear...is THE underlying emotion behind anger, anxiety, sadness, jealousy, judgement, and other such negative emotions, all of which are energetic blocks to our awareness and ongoing awakening.

The more you condemn yourself for being unattractive, untalented, unintelligent, unsuccessful, etc., the more you block your flow of energy and impose negative synchronicities or “bad luck” upon yourselves.

In therapy, when pathological defenses start to crumble, the patient lets in more material from their background that they've been defending against. Suddenly, memories emerge that were unavailable at the beginning of the therapy. When Laura had been intent on defending her father, she'd blocked many of her negative memories of him; but now, after two years of therapy, those painful memories began to flow like hot lava.

Does it get better when you're older?" "It did for me," Connor said. "How?" Bolt asked. "Someone lese believed in me," Connor said. "All it took was one person's approval and suddenly I believed in myself, too. It gave me a shield to block out all the doubt and negativity. It made me realize I was just as capable and deserving as the people I compared myself to. But you know what? I was wrong." "You were?" Bolt asked. "Totally," Conner said. "I didn't NEED someone else. I had confidence in myself, deep down inside, the whole time. Approval is just a shortcut to self-worth, but sometimes we have to find things out on our own. Sometimes if we want something bad enough, we have to inspire ourselves to get it. Sometimes we have to be our own superhero.

You fling the book on the floor, you would hurl it out of the window, even out of the closed window, through the slats of the Venetian blinds; let them shred its incongruous quires, let sentences, words, morphemes, phonemes gush forth, beyond recomposition into discourse; through the panes, and if they are of unbreakable glass so much the better, hurl the book and reduce it to photons, undulatory vibrations, polarized spectra; through the wall, let the book crumble into molecules and atoms passing between atom and atom of the reinforced concrete, breaking up into electrons, neutrons, neutrinos, elementary particles more and more minute; through the telephone wires, let it be reduced to electronic impulses, into flow of information, shaken by redundancies and noises, and let it be degraded into a swirling entropy. You would like to throw it out of the house, out of the block, beyond the neighborhood, beyond the city limits, beyond the state confines, beyond the regional administration, beyond the national community, beyond the Common Market, beyond Western culture, beyond the continental shelf, beyond the atmosphere, the biosphere, the stratosphere, the field of gravity, the solar system, the galaxy, the cumulus of galaxies, to succeed in hurling it beyond the point the galaxies have reached in their expansion, where space-time has not yet arrived, where it would be received by nonbeing, or, rather, the not-being which has never been and will never be, to be lost in the most absolutely guaranteed undeniable negativity.

It is not only negative feelings that become blocked. The repression extends to more and more of his emotional capacity.When one is given an anesthetic in preparation for surgery, it is not merely the capacity to experience pain that is suspended; the capacity to experience pleasure goes also - because what is blocked is the capacity to experience *feeling*. The same principle applies to the repression of emotions." Chapter 1: Discovering the Unknown Self, pg. 9, Bantam Edition, 1984

For a person with ADD, tuning out is an automatic brain activity that originated during the period of rapid brain development in infancy when there was emotional hurt combined with helplessness. At one time or another, every infant or young child feels frustration and psychological pain. Episodic experiences of a distressing nature do not induce dissociation, but chronic distress does—the distress of the sensitive infant with unsatisfied attunement needs, for example. The infant has to dissociate chronic emotional pain from consciousness for two reasons. First, it is too overwhelming for his fragile nervous system. He simply cannot exist in what we might call a state of chronic negative arousal, with adrenaline and other stress hormones pumping through his veins all the time. It is physiologically too toxic. He has to block it out. Second, if the parent’s anxiety is the source of the infant’s distress, the infant unconsciously senses that fully expressing his own emotional turmoil will only heighten that anxiety. His distress would then be aggravated—a vicious cycle he can escape by tuning out.

But Dr. Ham told me, these negative emotions are not simply something to endure and erase. They are purposeful. Beneficial. They tell us what we need. Anger inspired action. Sadness is necessary to process grief. Fear helps keep us safe. Completely eradicating these emotions is not just impossible—it’s unhealthy. These negative emotions only become toxic when they block out all the other emotions. When we feel so much sadness that we can’t let any joy in. When we feel so much anger that we cannot soften around others. True mental health looks like a balance of these good and bad feelings.

Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice;

Owing to the shape of a bell curve, the education system is geared to the mean. Unfortunately, that kind of education is virtually calculated to bore and alienate gifted minds. But instead of making exceptions where it would do the most good, the educational bureaucracy often prefers not to be bothered. In my case, for example, much of the schooling to which I was subjected was probably worse than nothing. It consisted not of real education, but of repetition and oppressive socialization (entirely superfluous given the dose of oppression I was getting away from school). Had I been left alone, preferably with access to a good library and a minimal amount of high-quality instruction, I would at least have been free to learn without useless distractions and gratuitous indoctrination. But alas, no such luck. Let’s try to break the problem down a bit. The education system […] is committed to a warm and fuzzy but scientifically counterfactual form of egalitarianism which attributes all intellectual differences to environmental factors rather than biology, implying that the so-called 'gifted' are just pampered brats who, unless their parents can afford private schooling, should atone for their undeserved good fortune by staying behind and enriching the classroom environments of less privileged students. This approach may appear admirable, but its effects on our educational and intellectual standards, and all that depends on them, have already proven to be overwhelmingly negative. This clearly betrays an ulterior motive, suggesting that it has more to do with social engineering than education. There is an obvious difference between saying that poor students have all of the human dignity and basic rights of better students, and saying that there are no inherent educationally and socially relevant differences among students. The first statement makes sense, while the second does not. The gifted population accounts for a very large part of the world’s intellectual resources. As such, they can obviously be put to better use than smoothing the ruffled feathers of average or below-average students and their parents by decorating classroom environments which prevent the gifted from learning at their natural pace. The higher we go on the scale of intellectual brilliance – and we’re not necessarily talking just about IQ – the less support is offered by the education system, yet the more likely are conceptual syntheses and grand intellectual achievements of the kind seldom produced by any group of markedly less intelligent people. In some cases, the education system is discouraging or blocking such achievements, and thus cheating humanity of their benefits.

Negative beliefs and thoughts place a block on your concentration and memory. Unless you decide to take responsibility and change the thoughts that you are constantly feeding yourself, you will not be able to break through your negative conditioning. Every single thought we have is creative: it has the power to build and the power to destroy.

Publication bias is the tendency to not publish “negative,” or nonconfirmatory, results.

The Infinite Release statement in this case can be: “I now release all worries over whether I can afford a Mercedes Benz S500 (or insert any other item you desire) for an infinite number of times until I remain at zero. I release this worry infinitely, as many times as necessary, until I remain at zero.” You repeat this Infinite Release process for each negative block identified.

Not seeing Katarina’s swollen belly doesn’t negate the effect it’s having on me. I feel the child’s mind against mine, and instead of blocking myself from it, I let the flutter of emotions weather me. They’re dreaming.

November 27th THE PLEASURE OF TUNING OUT THE NEGATIVE “How satisfying it is to dismiss and block out any upsetting or foreign impression, and immediately to have peace in all things.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 5.2

This practice is powerful because it transforms you from the inside out. When you’re in a grateful and joyful state, you open your eyes to see and receive miracles. When you’re in a negative, stressed state it’s like putting on sunglasses that completely block out the light. How can receive a miracle when you can’t see it? Use this practice and get rid of those dark shades for good so you can see the light shining within you and around you.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens’ Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”;

It was like I had grown up with a limiter on my emotions, blocking me from feeling anything too deeply-positive or negative-but finally it had been taken off. I was feeling things profoundly and meaningfully for the first time in my life, and I loved it.

Rowing a race is an art, not a frantic scramble. It must be rowed with head power as well as hand power. From the first stroke all thoughts of the other crew must be blocked out. Your thoughts must be directed to you and your own boat, always positive, never negative.

Those who ignore or belittle karmic cause and result are followers of the nihilist heretics. Those who base their confidence only upon the view of emptiness will plunge lower and lower toward the extreme view of nihilism. Those who catapult into this negative direction will never find freedom from the lower states of existence and will be far removed from the higher realms. They say that doctrines emphasizing conventional meanings such as cause and result, compassion, and meritorious accumulations will not bring buddhahood, whereas the uncontrived definitive meaning that resembles the sky is what the great yogis must meditate upon. Among nihilistic views, that is the epitome; and among lower paths, that is the lowest of all. How amazing to claim that, by blocking the cause, a result can be accomplished.

When we are told what is healthy we are being told what is right to think and feel. When we are told what is mentally ill we are being told what ideas, behaviour, and fantasies are wrong. [...] The avenues of escape are blocked by the professioal abuse of pathologizing. To refuse the mental health approach confirms one's 'sickness'. One needs 'therapy', [...] How can we take back therapy [...] from a system which must find illness in order to promote health and which, in order to increase the range of its helping, is obliged to extend the area of sickness. Ever deeper pockets of pathology to be analyzed, ever earlier traumata: primal, prenatal, into my astral body; ever more people into the ritual: the family, the office force, community mental health, analysis for everyone. [...] Its practice may differ [...] but the premise is the same. The work of making soul requires professional help. Soul-making has become restricted by therapy and to therapy. And psychopathology has become restricted to therapy's negative definition of it, reduced to its role in the therapy game.

In addition, experiences that facilitate addiction offer people a sense of power or control, of security or calm, of intimacy or of being valued by others; on the other hand, such experiences succeed in blocking out sensations of pain, discomfort, or other negative sensations.

We must conclude, in the light of this evidence, that governments now enjoy an unmerited reputation for solving the problems of human rights and discrimination. On the contrary, affirmative action, EPFEW, and various anti‑discrimination initiatives have backfired, harming the very minorities they were supposed to protect. Government programs such as minimum wage laws, anti‑usury codes, rent controls, and zoning legislation have had unforeseen and negative consequences for the minority peoples, who have been among the greatest victims of discrimination.

...published in the June 1963 issue of Liberation Magazine and written from a prison cell in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr also mused: 'First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season". Shallow understanding from people of goodwill ismore frustrating than absolute misunderstandingfrom people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Many people are blocked from self-knowledge and personal growth by the myth they feel compelled to hold on to, of having had a “happy childhood.” A little negative thinking would empower them to see through the self-delusion that helps keep them stuck in self-harming behavioural patterns.

Bilbo and Frodo overcome the objections of the Baggins side of themselves in order to embrace the Quests that await them. Sometimes we have the same struggles as they do. The Took in us wants to pursue dreams, and the Baggins part wants to stay safe and conventional. Too often we heed the negative thinking that convinces us that we do not have the time, money, energy, or opportunity to make our desires come true. We think we have too many other obligations blocking our way. Sometimes we also saddle ourselves with the false guilt that tells us it is not right to do anything for ourselves, especially if we have a family to take care of first. We must not abandon our true responsibilities, of course, but would it not be better if we could fulfill them in a way that fed our soul and not just our pocketbook and got us excited about going to work rather than dreading the drudgery?

Hasira ni Shetani. Hekima ni Mungu. Kila kitu kimo ndani yetu. Hasira imo ndani yetu. Hekima imo ndani yetu. Atomu ni matofali ya ujenzi wa kila kitu ulimwenguni likiwemo jua na miili ya wanadamu. Ndani ya atomu kuna nguvu ya chanya na kuna nguvu ya hasi. Kama miili yetu imetengenezwa na atomu na katika kila atomu kuna nguvu ya chanya na kuna nguvu ya hasi, hivyo basi, tuna uwezo mkubwa wa kufanya mambo mazuri na tuna uwezo mkubwa wa kufanya mambo mabaya. Mtu akikutukana mwambie asante. Akikupiga mwambie asante. Akiendelea kukupiga, pigana. Geuza hasira yako kuwa hekima kwa faida yako na kwa faida ya wengine.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a 'more convenient season.

According to an article in the Washington Post: The Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly urged antidepressant manufacturers not to disclose to physicians and the public that some clinical trials of the medications in children found that drugs were no better than sugar pills, according to documents and testimony released at a congressional hearing yesterday. Regulators supressed the negative information on the grounds that it might scare families and physicians away from the drugs, according to testimony by drug company executives. For at least three medications, they said, the FDA blocked the companies' plans to reveal the negative studies in drug labels.

For what it's worth, I know how you feel," Conner told him. "I used to doubt myself a lot. When people told me I wasn't good enough, I believed them. It's hard not to when you're young." "Tell me about it," Bold said. "Does it get better when you're older?" "It did for me," Conner said. "How?" Bolt asked. "Someone else believed in me," Conner said. "All it took was one person's approval and suddenly I believed myself, too. It gave me a shield to block out all the doubt and negativity. It made me realize I was just as capable and deserving as the people I compared myself to. But you know what? I was wrong." "You were?" Bolt asked. "Totally," Conner said. "I didn't need someone else. I had confidence in myself, deep down inside, the whole time. Approval is just a shortcut to self-worth, but sometimes we have to find things out on your own. Sometimes if we want something bad enough, we have to inspire ourselves to get it. Sometimes we have to be our own superhero." Out of everything Conner said, he could tell this resonated with the boy the most. If he wanted to help people, maybe he had to start with himself. "But what if I fail?" Bolt asked. "What if the Snake Lord wins and I don't save anyone? Then I'll never be a superhero." "A very wise man once told me that 'courage is what makes a superhero super,'" Conner said. "He never sad anything about succeeding.

Psychological well-being is not determined by the presence of one type of emotion but by a diversity of emotions, both positive and negative. Whether or not an emotion is “good” or “bad” seems to have surprisingly little to do with the emotion itself but rather with how mindfully we ride the ebbing and flowing tides of our rich emotional life.

A woman cannot give a man his sense of maleness. He can desire her, but not identify with her. At best, she can give him a negative identification: I am the opposite of her. This can be very thrilling, but still leaves him deprived of an object of positive identification. (..) other men are brought in to fill the void. They provide contact with an element the inventor, consciously or not, knows he needs to assert himself as fully male. (..) By joining in their sexual games, the woman grants absolution and permission. It isn’t so much that these men use women to get to other men as that they need the woman to help break through the guilt barrier that blocks them from their feelings about other men.

Hello, dreamers and doers! Always cut off your connection with negative shits, blocked head, cynic trivia. They all are energy sucker and plaguy mess. They callously murder (you) badass, plug your spirit into their evil workshop and equalize you. Always keep you safe distance from this malignant cancer to rescue your life from the complete annihilation.

Divine creator, father, mother, son as one . . . If I, my family, relatives, and ancestors have offended you, your family, relatives, and ancestors in thoughts, words, deeds, and actions from the beginning of our creation to the present, we ask your forgiveness. . . . Let this cleanse, purify, release, cut all the negative memories, blocks, energies, and vibrations and transmute these unwanted energies to pure light. . . . And it is done.

SHIVA IS EVERYWHERE: DHARANA 91 Dharana 91: Wherever the mind goes whether towards the exterior or towards the interior, everywhere there is the state of Shiva. Since Shiva is omnipresent, where can the mind go (to avoid Him)? No dharana is more useful to the meditator than this one. When confronted by a restless mind, negative thoughts or impenetrable blocks, reflecting that even these things are nothing but Shiva, is the most effective method.

Giving an A is a fundamental, paradigmatic shift toward the realization that it is all invented—the A is invented and the Number 68 is invented, and so are all the judgments in between. Some readers might conclude that our practice is merely an exercise in “putting a positive spin” on a negative opinion, or “thinking the best of someone,” and “letting bygones be bygones.” But that is not it at all. No behavior of the person to whom you assign an A need be whitewashed by that grade, and no action is so bad that behind it you cannot recognize a human being to whom you can speak the truth. You can grant the proverbial ax murderer an A by addressing him as a person who knows he has forfeited his humanity and lost all control, and you can give your sullen, lazy, secretive teenager an A, and she will still at that moment be sleeping the morning away. When she awakes, however, the conversation between you and her will go a little differently because she will have become for you a person whose true nature is to participate—however blocked she may be. And you will know you are communicating with her, even if you see that she is tongue-tied or too confused to answer you just then. When we give an A we can be open to a perspective different from our own. For after all, it is only to a person to whom you have granted an A that you will really listen, and it is in that rare instance when you have ears for another person that you can truly appreciate a fresh point of view.

I bump into a group of girls congregating around a locker. Jessica, Willow (who is notably the only Willow enrolled in our 397-student class and in our 1,579-student school), and Abby. Miney has labeled them in my notebook, in block letters and underlined with a Sharpie:THE POPULAR BITCHES. When she first used this designation, Miney had to give me a long lecture about how this wasn’t an oxymoron, how someone could be both popular, which I presumed meant that lots of people liked you, and at the same time also be a bitch, which I presumed would have the opposite outcome. Apparently popularity in the context of high school has a negative correlation with people actually liking you but a high correlation with people wanting to be your friend. After careful consideration, this makes sense, though in my case, I am both an outlier and a great example of the fact that correlation does not imply causation. I am nice to everyone but without any upside: People neither like me nor want to be my friend.

(Hidden) resistance towards negative experiences may result in postponing, feeling overwhelmed, perfectionism, anger, laziness, or feeling tired. Resistance is a warning that you are doing something (something that you used to do, but that no longer is needed) that blocks the flow of your authentic you, of your vitality, and happiness. Sometimes the best solution is to relax, and allow everything to rearrange itself naturally. In my case, when things get sluggish and stagnate, it’s because I’m not following my priorities, or because I’m doing too much, trying to make things better than perfect.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom,” King wrote, “is not the White Citizens’ Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.

and confused if someone does not appreciate their niceness. Others often sense this and avoid giving them feedback not only, effectively blocking the nice person’s emotional growth, but preventing risks from being taken. You never know with a nice person if the relationship would survive a conflict or angry confrontation. This greatly limits the depths of intimacy. And would you really trust a nice person to back you up if confrontation were needed? 3. With nice people you never know where you really stand. The nice person allows others to accidentally oppress him. The “nice” person might be resenting you just for talking to him, because really he is needing to pee. But instead of saying so he stands there nodding and smiling, with legs tightly crossed, pretending to listen. 4. Often people in relationship with nice people turn their irritation toward themselves, because they are puzzled as to how they could be so upset with someone so nice. In intimate relationships this leads to guilt, self-hate and depression. 5. Nice people frequently keep all their anger inside until they find a safe place to dump it. This might be by screaming at a child, blowing up a federal building, or hitting a helpless, dependent mate. (Timothy McVeigh, executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, was described by acquaintances as a very, very nice guy, one who would give you the shirt off his back.) Success in keeping the anger in will often manifest as psychosomatic illnesses, including arthritis, ulcers, back problems, and heart disease. Proper Peachy Parents In my work as a psychotherapist, I have found that those who had peachy keen “Nice Parents” or proper “Rigidly Religious Parents” (as opposed to spiritual parents), are often the most stuck in chronic, lowgrade depression. They have a difficult time accessing or expressing any negative feelings towards their parents. They sometimes say to me “After all my parents did for me, seldom saying a harsh word to me, I would feel terribly guilty complaining. Besides, it would break their hearts.” Psychologist Rollo May suggested that it is less crazy-making to a child to cope with overt withdrawal or harshness than to try to understand the facade of the always-nice parent. When everyone agrees that your parents are so nice and giving, and you still feel dissatisfied, then a child may conclude that there must be something wrong with his or her ability to receive love. -§ Emotionally starving children are easier to control, well fed children don’t need to be. -§ I remember a family of fundamentalists who came to my office to help little Matthew with his anger problem. The parents wanted me to teach little Matthew how to “express his anger nicely.” Now if that is not a formula making someone crazy I do not know what would be. Another woman told me that after her stinking drunk husband tore the house up after a Christmas party, breaking most of the dishes in the kitchen, she meekly told him, “Dear, I think you need a breath mint.” Many families I work with go through great anxiety around the holidays because they are going to be forced to be with each other and are scared of resuming their covert war. They are scared that they might not keep the nice garbage can lid on, and all the rotting resentments and hopeless hurts will be exposed. In the words to the following song, artist David Wilcox explains to his parents why he will not be coming home this Thanksgiving: Covert War by David Wilcox

Thought Control * Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth * Adopt the group’s “map of reality” as reality * Instill black and white thinking * Decide between good versus evil * Organize people into us versus them (insiders versus outsiders) * Change a person’s name and identity * Use loaded language and clichés to constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts, and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzzwords * Encourage only “good and proper” thoughts * Use hypnotic techniques to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking, and even to age-regress the member to childhood states * Manipulate memories to create false ones * Teach thought stopping techniques that shut down reality testing by stopping negative thoughts and allowing only positive thoughts. These techniques include: * Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking * Chanting * Meditating * Praying * Speaking in tongues * Singing or humming * Reject rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism * Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy * Label alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful * Instill new “map of reality” Emotional Control * Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings—some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong, or selfish * Teach emotion stopping techniques to block feelings of hopelessness, anger, or doubt * Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault * Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness, such as: * Identity guilt * You are not living up to your potential * Your family is deficient * Your past is suspect * Your affiliations are unwise * Your thoughts, feelings, actions are irrelevant or selfish * Social guilt * Historical guilt * Instill fear, such as fear of: * Thinking independently * The outside world * Enemies * Losing one’s salvation * Leaving * Orchestrate emotional highs and lows through love bombing and by offering praise one moment, and then declaring a person is a horrible sinner * Ritualistic and sometimes public confession of sins * Phobia indoctrination: inculcate irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority * No happiness or fulfillment possible outside the group * Terrible consequences if you leave: hell, demon possession, incurable diseases, accidents, suicide, insanity, 10,000 reincarnations, etc. * Shun those who leave and inspire fear of being rejected by friends and family * Never a legitimate reason to leave; those who leave are weak, undisciplined, unspiritual, worldly, brainwashed by family or counselor, or seduced by money, sex, or rock and roll * Threaten harm to ex-member and family (threats of cutting off friends/family)

It is not only negative feelings that become blocked. The repression extends to more and more of his emotional capacity. When one is given an anesthetic in preparation for surgery, it is not merely the capacity to experience pain that is suspended; the capacity to experience pleasure goes also — because what is blocked is the capacity to experience feeling. The same principle applies to the repression of emotions. It must be recognized, of course, that emotional repression is a matter of degree; in some individuals it is far more profound and pervasive than in others. But what remains true for everyone is that to diminish one's capacity to experience pain is to diminish also one's capacity to experience pleasure.

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.

Late one night, during a toss-and-turn fretful sleep, I pondered my crisis. No solutions were on the horizon. I, again, wasted my psychic energy with prayer. Nothing. No angel on a white cloud. No rainbow’s pot of gold. No way to control the people I loved. As I rolled over and put the pillow over my head attempting to block all that was negative, I silently screamed for rescue. Then, in a far away and distinct part of my brain, a small voice said, “You have to do this on your own.” I thought, “Was that the best You can do?” This god, to whom I was desperately sending burnt offerings of my own humiliation, couldn’t send an avenging angel or a wise man imparting wisdom? All You can give me is this feeble message of abandonment? At that moment, I quit believing in that god.

From the Birmingham jail, King, who had been arrested on Good Friday 1963, wrote an epistle to a group of ministers that illuminated the forces in play. "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom," King wrote, "is not the White Citizens' Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to `order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.

Our entrenched cultural ideas associate men with leadership qualities and women with nurturing qualities and put women in a double bind,” she said. “We believe not only that women are nurturing, but that they should be nurturing above all else. When a woman does anything that signals she might not be nice first and foremost, it creates a negative impression and makes us uncomfortable.”7 If a woman is competent, she does not seem nice enough. If a woman seems really nice, she is considered more nice than competent. Since people want to hire and promote those who are both competent and nice, this creates a huge stumbling block for women. Acting in stereotypically feminine ways makes it difficult for women to reach for the same opportunities as men, but defying expectations and reaching for those opportunities leads to being judged as undeserving and selfish.

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

. . .In a heartbeat, you will fall right into that novel, that poem, the story that you are most in love with right now. When you learn to be able to decide in the moment to take breaks from your internal voices—even though it’s only for a split second—you will be taking your first baby steps toward the full-out exhilaration of living in the midst of the wholly realized writer’s life. Then all the negatives—yes, even your cherished writer’s block ego trip—will fade into background noise, then you will find silence, and your story will take over. Before you know it, you will be working calmly and clearly for hours, rather than for a couple minutes. 1 hour, not 1 second, 2 hours, not 2 seconds, 3 hours, 4 hours, 5 hours of allowing your mind to come to rest from the horrid, every day, mental chatter we lock ourselves up with—a time to anchor within the natural spaciousness that you already know instinctively, know from deep within will make you feel full inside. . . .

First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens' Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Initially, the internet was celebrated as a medium of boundless liberty.... As it turned out, such euphoria was an illusion. Today, unbounded freedom and communication are switching over into total control and surveillance. More and more, social media resemble digital panoptic.... Secrets, foreigners, and otherness represent impediments to unbounded communication. Communication goes faster when it is smoothed out--that is when thresholds, walls, and gaps are removed. This also means stripping people of interiority, which blocks and slows down communication.... The negativity of otherness or foreignness is de-interiorized and transformed into the positivity of communicable and consumable difference: "diversity".... The dispositive of transparency has the further consequence of promoting total conformity.... It is as if everyone were watching over everyone else--even before intelligent agencies or secret services have stepped in to supervise and steer. Invisible moderators smooth out communication and calibrate it to what is generally understood and accepted. Such primary, intrinsic surveillance proves much more problematic than the secondary, extrinsic surveillance undertaken by secret services and spying agencies.

Situation awareness means possessing an explorer mentality A general never knows anything with certainty, never sees his enemy clearly, and never knows positively where he is. When armies are face to face, the least accident in the ground, the smallest wood, may conceal part of the enemy army. The most experienced eye cannot be sure whether it sees the whole of the enemy’s army or only three-fourths. It is by the mind’s eye, by the integration of all reasoning, by a kind of inspiration that the general sees, knows, and judges. ~Napoleon 5   In order to effectively gather the appropriate information as it’s unfolding we must possess the explorer mentality.  We must be able to recognize patterns of behavior. Then we must recognize that which is outside that normal pattern. Then, you take the initiative so we maintain control. Every call, every incident we respond to possesses novelty. Car stops, domestic violence calls, robberies, suspicious persons etc.  These individual types of incidents show similar patterns in many ways. For example, a car stopped normally pulls over to the side of the road when signaled to do so.  The officer when ready, approaches the operator, a conversation ensues, paperwork exchanges, and the pulled over car drives away. A domestic violence call has its own normal patterns; police arrive, separate involved parties, take statements and arrest aggressor and advise the victim of abuse prevention rights. We could go on like this for all the types of calls we handle as each type of incident on its own merits, does possess very similar patterns. Yet they always, and I mean always possess something different be it the location, the time of day, the person you are dealing with. Even if it’s the same person, location, time and day, the person you’re dealing who may now be in a different emotional state and his/her motives and intent may be very different. This breaks that normal expected pattern.  Hence, there is a need to always be open-minded, alert and aware, exploring for the signs and signals of positive or negative change in conditions. In his Small Wars journal article “Thinking and Acting like an Early Explorer” Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege (US Army Ret.) describes the explorer mentality:   While tactical and strategic thinking are fundamentally different, both kinds of thinking must take place in the explorer’s brain, but in separate compartments. To appreciate this, think of the metaphor of an early American explorer trying to cross a large expanse of unknown terrain long before the days of the modern conveniences. The explorer knows that somewhere to the west lies an ocean he wants to reach. He has only a sketch-map of a narrow corridor drawn by a previously unsuccessful explorer. He also knows that highly variable weather and frequent geologic activity can block mountain passes, flood rivers, and dry up desert water sources. He also knows that some native tribes are hostile to all strangers, some are friendly and others are fickle, but that warring and peace-making among them makes estimating their whereabouts and attitudes difficult.6

Imagine the following experiment, performed by the developmental psychologist Grazyna Kochanska. A kind woman hands a toy to a toddler, explaining that the child should be very careful because it’s one of the woman’s favorites. The child solemnly nods assent and begins to play with the toy. Soon afterward, it breaks dramatically in two, having been rigged to do so. The woman looks upset and cries, “Oh my!” Then she waits to see what the child does next. Some children, it turns out, feel a lot more guilty about their (supposed) transgression than others. They look away, hug themselves, stammer out confessions, hide their faces. And it’s the kids we might call the most sensitive, the most high-reactive, the ones who are likely to be introverts who feel the guiltiest. Being unusually sensitive to all experience, both positive and negative, they seem to feel both the sorrow of the woman whose toy is broken and the anxiety of having done something bad. (In case you’re wondering, the woman in the experiments quickly returned to the room with the toy “fixed” and reassurances that the child had done nothing wrong.) In our culture, guilt is a tainted word, but it’s probably one of the building blocks of conscience. The anxiety these highly sensitive toddlers feel upon apparently breaking the toy gives them the motivation to avoid harming someone’s plaything the next time. By age four, according to Kochanska, these same kids are less likely than their peers to cheat or break rules, even when they think they can’t be caught. And by six or seven, they’re more likely to be described by their parents as having high levels of moral traits such as empathy. They also have fewer behavioral problems in general.

How to Perform Visualization To practice visualization, sit in a comfortable position and relax any muscle tension. Once you feel relaxed, begin to visualize a pleasant scene. Imagine every aspect of the scene, using all of your senses. For instance, if you visualize sitting on a beach watching the ocean waves lapping against the shore, imagine first what the scene looks like, then imagine how the sand feels on your bare feet. Take a deep breath and imagine how the clean ocean air smells and tastes. Next, listen for the sounds of the waves and seagulls. As you become more involved with your mental picture, your body will relax and you will be able to let go of your worrisome thoughts. It often helps to make positive, affirmative statements, such as “I feel calm and relaxed,” while practicing to block negative thoughts more effectively. You could picture also an image that represents the tension you feel when you begin, such as a kite that is stuck in a tree getting more and more tangled. As you become relaxed, imagine the string loosening and the kite becoming free and soaring in the sky. With practice, you will be able to use this technique to help yourself relax whenever you feel distressed. Lori spent last Thanksgiving at her best friend Haley’s house. Most of the members of Haley’s large, extended family were there. Everyone was talking at once, the children were running around, and Lori felt completely overwhelmed. It was so different from her quiet house. As she felt herself getting more agitated and anxious, she went upstairs to the bathroom and began to visualize herself at her family’s quiet cabin. She heard the wind rustling through the leaves and the chirping of birds. She smelled the soil and felt the coolness of the air. Soon, she felt calm and relaxed and was able to return downstairs.

These questions are closely related to one of the Buddha’s main interests: how to lead a virtuous life. Every spiritual tradition is concerned with virtue, but what does virtue mean? Is it the same as following a list of dos and don’ts? Does a virtuous person have to be a goody-goody? Is it necessary to be dogmatic, rigid, and smug? Or is there room to be playful, spontaneous, and relaxed? Is it possible to enjoy life while at the same time being virtuous? Like many spiritual traditions, the Dharma has lists of positive and negative actions. Buddhists are encouraged to commit to some basic precepts, such as not to kill, steal, or lie. Members of the monastic community, such as myself, have much longer lists of rules to follow. But the Buddha didn’t establish these rules merely for people to conform to outer codes of behavior. The Buddha’s main concern was always to help people become free of suffering. With the understanding that our suffering originates from confusion in our mind, his objective was to help us wake up out of that confused state. He therefore encouraged or discouraged certain forms of behavior based on whether they promoted or hindered that process of awakening. When we ask ourselves, “Does it matter?” we can first look at the outer, more obvious results of our actions. But then we can go deeper by examining how we are affecting our own mind: Am I making an old habit more habitual? Am I strengthening propensities I’d like to weaken? When I’m on the verge of lying to save face, or manipulating a situation to go my way, where will that lead? Am I going in the direction of becoming a more deceitful person or a more guilty, self-denigrating person? How about when I experiment with practicing patience or generosity? How are my actions affecting my process of awakening? Where will they lead? By questioning ourselves in these ways, we start to see “virtue” in a new light. Virtuous behavior is not about doing “good” because we feel we’re “bad” and need to shape up. Instead of guilt or dogma, how we choose to act can be guided by wisdom and kindness. Seen in this light, our question then boils down to “What awakens my heart, and what blocks that process from happening?” In the language of Buddhism, we use the word “karma.” This is a way of talking about the workings of cause and effect, action and reaction.

Quit allowing negativity to block the positive gifts which are meant for you along with the hard lessons and tribulations.

When you violate the law of growth, your influence winds down, your progress gets arrested, and many more negative consequences...

Most of the time I feel like a regular person, but at times of heightened emotions, I feel as if I’m two people: one experiencing the emotion and the other weighing its validity. Having this newfound ability to detach from emotional situations not only allows me to retain a low level of negative emotions, it also helps me to dampen anger, block fear, and remain keenly alert in chaotic and frightening situations.

The next time you are feeling bad or feeling any negative emotion, listen to the signal you are receiving from the Universe. In that moment you are blocking your own good from coming to you because you are on a negative frequency. Change your thoughts and think about something good, and when the good feelings start to come you will know it was because

The next time you are feeling bad or feeling any negative emotion, listen to the signal you are receiving from the Universe. In that moment you are blocking your own good from coming to you because you are on a negative frequency. Change your thoughts and think about something good, and when the good feelings start to come you will know it was because You shifted yourself on to a new frequency, and the Universe has confirmed it with better feelings.

If you allow all of your negative emotions to be expressed behind an angry façade, you will never know yourself. You will never know your potential because it will be blocked by anger. Anger solves very little, but keeps in a lot. You strike out at others when you have been hit. Anger needs to be released if appropriate, but more importantly, it needs to be resolved. As a silent son, where do you stand today? Do you know what you stand for as a man? You will not know what you stand for until you can see yourself clearly. Nothing will block your vision more than anger. The healthy silent son sees more than a type. He sees more than anger. He sees his potential and all of his emotions. He sees himself and he likes what he sees. AFTERTHOUGHTS If we are strong, our strength will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be no help. JOHN F. KENNEDY He was one of those men who possesses almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them. CHARLES KINGSLEY Fall seven times, stand up eight. JAPANESE PROVERB Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him. ALDOUS HUXLEY What matters is not the size of the dog in fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. COACH PAUL BRYANT

People who are dependent live accordingly to the lives and needs of others, and are emotionally blocked from journeying down the road of self-actualisation, non-conformity and independence

It is never too late As people begin to learn the principles of Kabbalah, they often feel that they have done too many bad things in their lives to be able to transform and bond with the Creator. In fact, this is what they want to believe. It frees them from accepting the need for positive change. It allows them to abdicate the responsibility for transformation, which is nothing less than the true purpose of our lives. Recognizing this process is one of Kabbalah’s most profound psychological insights. It calls attention to the fact that apparent self-loathing is really just egotism with a reverse spin. The spark of the Creator is always within us, and it is always pure. If you take a penny and hold it up in front of your eye in just the right way, you can easily block out the sun. But is the penny bigger or more powerful than the sun just because it can hide the sun’s light? The penny does not extinguish the sun, but only conceals it. In the same way, our negative actions only conceal the Light within us—but we may begin to feel that the Light has gone out forever. No darkness that we bring upon ourselves, however, is greater than the Light of the Creator that is at our core. As long as we are alive, we have this divine Light within us, burning as brightly as on the day we were born. No matter how deeply hidden, the Light remains there waiting for us to reveal it. And it is never too late. Higher

An empty mind can become an angel’s paradise! Only if you block negativity.

Attract Abundance The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts. Every negative thought, feeling, or emotion is blocking your good from coming to you, and that includes money. It is not that the money is being kept from you by the Universe, because all the money you require exists right now in the invisible. If you do not have enough, it is because you are stopping the flow of money coming to you, and you are doing that with your thoughts. You must tip the balance of your thoughts from lack-of-money to more-than-enough-money. Think more thoughts of abundance than of lack, and you have tipped the balance

You may be quite surprised that the most potential causes of energy blockage are overthinking and negative emotions. These don’t only block your energy channels but also weaken your energy level.

Phantom Ex One of the consequences of devaluing your romantic relationship is that you often wake up long after the relationship has gone stale, having forgotten all those negative things that annoyed you about your partner, wondering what went wrong and reminiscing longingly about your long-lost love. We call it the phantom-ex phenomenon. Often, as happened with Carole who “rediscovered” her feelings for Bob only after she’d broken up with him, once the avoidant person has put time and distance between herself and the partner whom she’s lost interest in, something strange happens: The feelings of love and admiration return! Once at a safe distance, the threat of intimacy is gone and you no longer feel the need to suppress your true feelings. You can then recall all of your ex’s great qualities, convincing yourself that he or she was the best partner you ever had. Of course, you can’t articulate why this person wasn’t right for you, or remember clearly why you ended things in the first place (or perhaps behaved so miserably that he or she had no choice but to leave). In essence, you put your past partner on a pedestal and pay tribute to “the love of your life,” now forever lost. Sometimes you do try to resume the relationship, starting a vicious cycle of getting closer and withdrawing. Other times, even if the other person is available, you don’t make an attempt to get back together but continue all the same to think about him or her incessantly. This fixation with a past partner affects budding new relationships, because it acts as a deactivating strategy, blocking you from getting close to someone else. Even though you’ll probably never get back together with your phantom ex, just the knowledge that they’re out there is enough to make any new partner seem insignificant by comparison. THE POWER OF “THE ONE” Have you ever gone out with someone who you think is amazing, but as you start to get closer, you become overwhelmed with the feeling that s/he isn’t actually so hot after all?

You have to immediately ask yourself, ‘Do I admire this person?’ If the answer is no, then you mentally block their negativity out.

You fling the book on the floor, you would hurl it out of the window, even out of the closed window, through the slats of the Venetian blinds; let them shred its incongruous quires, let sentences, words, morphemes, phonemes gush forth, beyond recomposition into discourse; through the panes, and if they are of unbreakable glass so much the better, hurl the book and reduce it to photons, undulatory vibrations, polarized spectra; through the wall, let the book crumble into molecules and atoms passing between atom and atom of the reinforced concrete, breaking up into electrons, neutrons, neutrinos, elementary particles more and more minute; through the telephone wires, let it be reduced to electronic impulses, into flow of information, shaken by redundancies and noises, and let it be degraded into a swirling entropy. You would like to throw it out of the house, out of the block, beyond the neighborhood, beyond the city limits, beyond the state confines, beyond the regional administration, beyond the national community, beyond the Common Market, beyond Western culture, beyond the continental shelf, beyond the atmosphere, the biosphere, the stratosphere, the field of gravity, the solar system, the galaxy, the cumulus of galaxies, to succeed in hurling it beyond the point the galaxies have reached in their expansion, where space-time has not yet arrived, where it would be received by nonbeing, or, rather, the not-being which has never been and will never be, to be lost in the most absolutely guaranteed undeniable negativity. Merely what it deserves, no more nor less.

May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be safe, and may I live with ease.

Nutrient-dense real food; optimal levels of nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients; the right balance of hormones; the right types of exercise; optimal quality and duration of sleep; deep, restorative practices like meditation or breath work; the right light at the right times, honoring our circadian rhythms; clean water and air; the right mindset and mastering our mind’s negative inner dialogue, which registers in every cell in our body; meaning and purpose; community and connection and love. These are the fundamental building blocks of human health, most of which we as a culture do not prioritize.

Here's what I want for myself.’ she said with such urgency. ‘I want to be fierce and self-assured. I want to be able to love like I've never been hurt or broken. I want to get to the other side, no matter if I'm running or crawling on my knees. I want to be able to block negativity, hatred, and doubt from infesting my mind. I want to be a fighter through the pain. I want to be unable to give up until the battle is won.

But Dr. Ham told me, these negative emotions are not simply something to endure and erase. They are purposeful. Beneficial. They tell us what we need. Anger inspires action. Sadness is necessary to process grief. Fear helps keep us safe. Completely eradicating these emotions is not just impossible—it’s unhealthy. These negative emotions only become toxic when they block out all the other emotions. When we feel so much sadness that we can’t let any joy in. When we feel so much anger that we cannot soften around others. True mental health looks like a balance of these good and bad feelings.

block the blue light they emit.

In one such study, published in an Australian psychology journal, researchers noted that children of ISIS parents often displayed "intense affects, efforts to ward off recurrence, behavioural re-enactment, somatic problems, emotional and behavioural deregulation, anticipatory anxiety and fear, a schematic view of a dangerous and distrustful world, dissociation, negative self-attributions, mood disturbance, misinterpretation of events and expectation of caregiver abandonment. A traumatized child may engage in 'excessive clinging, compliance, oppositional defiance and distrustful behaviour, and they may be preoccupied with retribution and revenge.' For children exposed to ISIS-related violence, the basic building blocks of attachment and caregiver relationships will be altered. Although trauma may not arise through direct violence, it can develop through an impending sense of doom, or being a heightened state of continued arousal.

Fear is another negative emotion that blocks our productivity. It impedes our feel-good hormones and clouds our thinking and problem-solving. Procrastination is natural in the face of fear.

No revolution, in itself, intends or should last forever. The revolution arises, precisely, to cease to exist and not the other way around. The idea of a permanent revolution is the very negation of the idea of revolutionary change. Every revolutionary process tends to occur when the old State or leadership is no longer capable of keeping up with progress or social change, or even simply incapable of imposing order, ultimately being undermined by the actions of groups seeking to impose themselves and establish a new social order, as well as a new State. The revolution will be a pause between the old order and the new, and if neither can prevail, we will have anarchy in its most realistic sense. This represents both the failure of the revolution and the failure of the old order. It is what we can qualify as anomie. Revolutions happen all the time, and most of them are not armed; they simply occur through the slow passage of time, technological changes, and the advancement of ideas within the social fabric. The tendency toward violence and what we can call the “Great Revolution” occur only when the old system inexorably blocks the slow progress of small revolutions. The good revolutionary, in this sense, learns to manage and unlock small revolutions so as not to have to resort to the Great Revolution, which is almost always terrible and, in one way or another, ends up eliminating the very revolutionaries, resulting almost always in a tyranny worse than the previous one that it promised to eliminate.

The Emperor is a hardy, strong card that requires a hearty, strong spell to channel his energies. This dish, Emperor Tofu, is a spell dedicated to the powerful, fiery leadership qualities of the Emperor. Feast on it when you need to be fearless and to make a stand. •​As you prepare this meal, focus on channeling Emperor energy—intelligence, courage, masculine yang-vibes. Imagine yourself taking a stand, fighting to win, and succeeding. Continue the visualizations throughout your meal and into your cleanup process. This is best eaten the night before a big action, though leftovers can be snacked on at any point in the following days. If your need for raw, Mars energy is so powerful that you are craving some meat between your teeth, substitute the tofu for something bloodier. First, take a half-teaspoon of ground coriander (sacred to Aries, the Emperor’s ruling sign), a half-teaspoon of black pepper (same), a teaspoon of salt (purification), a pinch of cloves (to keep people from talking shit about you), a quarter-teaspoon of cinnamon (protection), a quarter-teaspoon of cardamom (sacred to Mars, the Emperor’s ruling planet), a quarter-teaspoon of cayenne (Aries), and a half-teaspoon of turmeric (good health). Mix it together and set it aside. Next, sauté an onion (Mars) and a jalapeño (protection from negativity) in coconut oil over high, fiery heat for three minutes. Then add a tablespoon of fresh grated ginger (to move your plan along), three cloves of garlic (protection), and your pile of spices; cook for another minute. Throw in a can of coconut milk and a block of tofu that you’ve drained, pressed, and cut up into chunks. Cover and simmer for twenty minutes. Before serving, add some fresh, shredded basil leaves (sacred to Aries) and a squirt of lime (to attract love and support). Voilà!

Fear is caused by blockages in the flow of your energy. When your energy is blocked, it can’t come up and feed your heart. Therefore, your heart becomes weak. When your heart is weak it becomes susceptible to lower vibrations, and one of the lowest of all vibrations is fear. Fear is the cause of every problem. It’s the root of all prejudices and the negative emotions of anger, jealousy, and possessiveness. If you had no fear, you could be perfectly happy living in this world. Nothing would bother you. You’d be willing to face everything and everyone because you wouldn’t have fear inside of you that could cause you disturbance.