Calendars With Positive Quotes

Who says you cannot hold the moon in your hand? Tonight when the stars come out and the moon rises in the velvet sky, look outside your window, then raise your hand and position your fingers around the disk of light. There you go . . . That was easy!

And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!

I have often been asked whether one should believe in something like numerology, or feng shui, or horoscopes and almanacs. The truth is that NONE of these matter when you are trying to create your own reality. The spiritual masters have told us, time and time again, that the power is WITHIN us. It is not in something that is outside of us. Even positive psychology says this: That when we ascribe power to something that is outside of us (such as what an ancient book says, or what an ancient calendar says), then in essence we are “giving our power away”.

But we would do well to meditate daily, rather as the religious do on their God, on the 9.5 trillion kilometres which comprise a single light year, or perhaps on the luminosity of the largest known star in our galaxy, Eta Carinae, 7,500 light years distant, 400 times the size of the sun and 4 million times as bright. We should punctuate our calendars with celebrations in honour of VY Canis Majoris, a red hypergiant in the constellation Canis Major, 5,000 light years from earth and 2,100 times bigger than our sun. Nightly – perhaps after the main news bulletin – we might observe a moment of silence in order to contemplate the 200 to 400 billion stars in our galaxy, the 100 billion galaxies and the 3 septillion stars in the universe. Whatever their value may be to science, the stars are in the end no less valuable to mankind as solutions to our megalomania, self-pity and anxiety. To answer our need to be repeatedly connected through our senses to ideas of transcendence, we should insist that a percentage of all prominently positioned television screens on public view be hooked up to live feeds from the transponders of our extraplanetary telescopes. We would then be able to ensure that our frustrations, our broken hearts, our hatred of those who haven’t called us and our regrets over opportunities that have passed us by would continuously be rubbed up against, and salved by, images of galaxies such as Messier 101, a spiral structure which sits towards the bottom left corner of the constellation Ursa Major, 23 million light years away, majestically unaware of everything we are and consolingly unaffected by all that tears us apart.

On the conversion of the European tribes to Christianity the ancient pagan worship was by no means incontinently abandoned. So wholesale had been the conversion of many peoples, whose chiefs or rulers had accepted the new faith on their behalf in a summary manner, that it would be absurd to suppose that any, general acquiescence in the new gospel immediately took place. Indeed, the old beliefs lurked in many neighbourhoods, and even a renaissance of some of them occurred in more than one area. Little by little, however, the Church succeeded in rooting out the public worship of the old pagan deities, but it found it quite impossible to effect an entire reversion of pagan ways, and in the end compromised by exalting the ancient deities to the position of saints in its calendar, either officially, or by usage. In the popular mind, however, these remained as the fairies of woodland and stream, whose worship in a broken-down form still flourished at wayside wells and forest shrines. The Matres, or Mother gods, particularly those of Celtic France and Ireland, the former of which had come to be Romanized, became the bonnes dames of folklore, while the dusii and pilosi, or hairy house-sprites, were so commonly paid tribute that the Church introduced a special question concerning them into its catechism of persons suspected of pagan practice. Nevertheless, the Roman Church, at a somewhat later era, reversed its older and more catholic policy, and sternly set its face against the cultus of paganism in Europe, stigmatizing the several kinds of spirits and derelict gods who were the objects of its worship as demons and devils, whom mankind must eschew with the most pious care if it were to avoid damnation.

Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself—as though that were so necessary—that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object—that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated—chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be by cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don’t know?

Write out your ideal schedule as if you are doing what you love, so you visualize exactly how your day will go. Find times and ways to do whatever activities you can that actively pursue your purpose. Set calendar or phone alerts to help you stay on track. Looking back, it will surprise you at how quickly your ideal schedule became your reality.

YOU WISH TO KNOW ME? POSIT YOURSELF AS THE PINPOINT CENTER OF ONE OF YOUR KALEIDOSCOPES, AND GRASP TIME AS THE COLORFUL FRAGMENTS ERUPTING FROM YOU IN A MULTITUDE OF DIMENSIONS THAT CONSTANTLY EXPAND OUTWARD IN AN EVER-WIDENING, EVER-SHIFTING, INFINITE ARRAY. SEE THAT YOU CAN CHOOSE AND EXPAND FROM ANY OF THOSE UNCOUNTABLE DIMENSIONS AND THAT, WITH EACH CHOICE, THOSE DIMENSIONS WIDEN AND SHIFT AGAIN. INFINITY COMPOUNDED EXPONENTIALLY. UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS REALITY: THE FALSE GOD YOUR RACE WORSHIPS WITH SUCH BLIND DEVOTION. REALITY IMPLIES A SINGLE POSSIBLE. YOU ACCUSE ME OF ILLUSION. YOU—WITH YOUR ABSURD CONSTRUCT OF LINEAR TIME. YOU FASHION FOR YOURSELF A PRISON OF WATCHES, CLOCKS, AND CALENDARS. YOU RATTLE BARS FORGED OF HOURS AND DAYS, BUT YOU’VE PADLOCKED THE DOOR WITH PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. PUNY MINDS NEED PUNY CAVES. YOU CANNOT GAZE UPON TIME’S TRUE FACE ANY MORE THAN YOU CAN BEHOLD MINE. TO APPREHEND YOURSELF AS THE CENTER, TO SIMULTANEOUSLY PERCEIVE ALL COMBINATIONS OF ALL POSSIBLES, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO MOVE IN ANY DIRECTION—“DIRECTION” BEING A VERY LIMITED METHOD OF ATTEMPTING TO CONVEY A CONCEPT FOR WHICH YOUR RACE HAS NO WORD—THAT IS WHAT IT IS TO BE ME.

Profane had got into this way of thinking, and along with parties in the daytime and a rotating shift system devised by Bung the foreman whereby you didn’t know till the day before which hours you would be working the next, it put him on a weird calendar which was not ruled off into neat squares at all but more a mosaic of tilted street-surfaces that changed position according to sunlight, streetlight, moonlight, nightlight… He wasn’t comfortable in this street. The people mobbing the pavement between the stalls seemed no more logical than the objects in his dream. “They don’t have faces,” he said to Angel.

Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself—as though that were so necessary—that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object—that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated—chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!

But what David has learned is not so much his own nature—which he frequently calls a “mystery” in the Psalms—as the nature of God. He does not offer a detailed résumé-style argument as to how the skills of his previous position as a shepherd are applicable to his desired position as a warrior. He says that over the course of his life he has learned something about the character of God and thus something about the nature of the universe in which he lives. Through hard experience, David has come to realize that God can be trusted. David can throw himself into a series of impossibly difficult situations not because he has a tremendous amount of self-confidence but because he realizes the outcome is out of his hands and is, in fact, in better hands than his own. He is an analyst not of his own character but of God’s.

In 1846 Easter fell on the same date in the Latin and Greek Orthodox calendars, so the holy shrines were much more crowded than usual, and the mood was very tense. The two religious communities had long been arguing about who should have first right to carry out their Good Friday rituals on the altar of Calvary inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the spot where the cross of Jesus was supposed to have been inserted in the rock. During recent years the rivalry between the Latins and the Greeks had reached such fever pitch that Mehmet Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem, had been forced to position soldiers inside and outside the church to preserve order. But even this had not prevented fights from breaking out. On this Good Friday the Latin priests arrived with their white linen altar-cloth to find that the Greeks had got there first with their silk embroidered cloth. The Catholics demanded to see the Greeks’ firman, their decree from the Sultan in Constantinople, empowering them to place their silk cloth on the altar first. The Greeks demanded to see the Latins’ firman allowing them to remove it. A fight broke out between the priests, who were quickly joined by monks and pilgrims on either side. Soon the whole church was a battlefield. The rival groups of worshippers fought not only with their fists, but with crucifixes, candlesticks, chalices, lamps and incense-burners, and even bits of wood which they tore from the sacred shrines. The fighting continued with knives and pistols smuggled into the Holy Sepulchre by worshippers of either side. By the time the church was cleared by Mehmet Pasha’s guards, more than forty people lay dead on the floor.1

Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you. PSALM 9:10 SEPTEMBER 29 A missionary’s wife in central China during World War II knew the Japanese were approaching her city. She was with her baby girl, two months old, and her son, just over a year old. Her husband had been taken to a hospital, himself ill. He was one hundred and fifteen miles away and would not be back for perhaps a month. The poor woman was filled with fear—she was alone and unprotected, in bitter January weather. When morning came, she realized that she was without food for her children. She pulled off the calendar page. That day’s verse stated simply: “So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children” (Genesis 50:21). There was a rap at the door. “We knew you would be hungry,” said a longtime neighbor, “and you didn’t know how to milk the goats. So I have milked your goats. Here is milk for your children.” Will you try to explain this away, handle it on an intellectual basis as just pure coincidence? When you come right down to it, what is coincidence? It is an act of God in the midst of time.

Work" I laid telephone line, then cable when it came along. I pulled T-shirts off a silk-screen press. I cleaned offices in buildings thirty-five floors high. I filed the metal edges of grease fryers hot off a welding line. I humped sod in townhouse complexes, and when it became grass I cut it. I sorted mail. I washed police cars, and then I changed their oil. I installed remotes on gas meters so a truck could simply drive down the street and get the readings. I set posts and put up fences, wood and chain link. Five a.m. at the racetrack, I walked hot horses after their exercise. I bathed them. I mopped and swept aisles in a grocery store. Eventually, I stocked shelves. I corrected errors on mortgage papers for a bank. I racked tables in a pool hall. There’s more I’m not telling you. All of this befell me as an adult. As a kid, I cut neighbors’ lawns and delivered newspapers, and I watched after little kids while their parents worked. I painted houses. I collected frogs from ponds and sold them to pet stores. And so on. At fifteen, I went for a busboy position at an all-night diner, but they told me to come back when I turned sixteen. I did. Sometimes, on top of one, I took a second job. It gave me just enough time to sleep between the two. And eat. My father worked, harder than I did, and then he died. Then I worked harder. My mother said, “You’re the man of the house now.” I was seventeen. She kept an eye on me, to make sure I worked. I did. You've just read about all that. Eventually she died, too. I watched my social security numbers grow. I have a pretty good lump. I could leave it to somebody, a spouse or dependent. But there's no one. I have no plan to spend it, but I’ve paid into it. Today I quit my job, my jobs. I had them all written down, phone numbers too, and I called them. You should have seen me, dialing and dialing, crossing names off the list as I went. Some of them I called sounded angry. Some didn’t remember me, and a few didn’t answer. Others had answering machines, but I told the machines I quit anyway. I think about my father. How he worked. I sit by the phone now, after quitting all my jobs, and wish he could see this. A blank calendar on the wall. A single bulb hanging over my head, from a single cord, like the one he wrapped around his neck just before he died.

There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those . . . we spent with a favorite book. Everything that filled them for others, so it seemed, and that we dismissed as a vulgar obstacle to a divine pleasure: the game for which a friend would come to fetch us at the most interesting passage; the troublesome bee or sun ray that forced us to lift our eyes from the page or to change position; the provisions for the afternoon snack that we had been made to take along and that we left beside us on the bench without touching, while above our head the sun was diminishing in force in the blue sky; the dinner we had to return home for, and during which we thought only of going up immediately afterward to finish the interrupted chapter, all those things with which reading should have kept us from feeling anything but annoyance, on the contrary they have engraved in us so sweet a memory (so much more precious to our present judgment than what we read then with such love), that if we still happen today to leaf through those books of another time, it is for no other reason than that they are the only calendars we have kept of days that have vanished, and we hope to see reflected on their pages the dwellings and the ponds which no longer exist.

The successful individual sales producer wins by being as selfish as possible with her time. The more often the salesperson stays away from team members and distractions, puts her phone on Do Not Disturb (DND), closes her door, or chooses to work for a few hours from the local Panera Bread café, the more productive she’ll likely be. In general, top producers in sales tend to exhibit a characteristic I’ve come to describe as being selfishly productive. The seller who best blocks out the rest of the world, who maintains obsessive control of her calendar, who masters focusing solely on her own highest-value revenue-producing activities, who isn’t known for being a “team player,” and who is not interested in playing good corporate citizen or helping everyone around her, is typically a highly effective seller who ends up on top of the sales rankings. Contrary to popular opinion, being selfish is not bad at all. In fact, for an individual contributor salesperson, it is a highly desirable trait and a survival skill, particularly in today’s crazed corporate environment where everyone is looking to put meetings on your calendar and take you away from your primary responsibilities! Now let’s switch gears and look at the sales manager’s role and responsibilities. How well would it work to have a sales manager who kept her office phone on DND and declined almost every incoming call to her mobile phone? Do we want a sales manager who closes her office door, is concerned only about herself, and is for the most part inaccessible? No, of course not. The successful sales manager doesn’t win on her own; she wins through her people by helping them succeed. Think about other key sales management responsibilities: Leading team meetings. Developing talent. Encouraging hearts. Removing obstacles. Coaching others. Challenging data, false assumptions, wrong attitudes, and complacency. Pushing for more. Putting the needs of your team members ahead of your own. Hmmm. Just reading that list again reminds me why it is often so difficult to transition from being a top producer in sales into a sales management role. Aside from the word sales, there is truly almost nothing similar about the positions. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on corporate responsibilities like participating on the executive committee, dealing with human resources compliance issues, expense management, recruiting, and all the other burdens placed on the sales manager. Again,

My cold-weather gear left a lot to be desired: black maternity leggings under boot-cut maternity jeans, and a couple of Marlboro Man’s white T-shirts under an extra-large ASU sweatshirt. I was so happy to have something warm to wear that I didn’t even care that I was wearing the letters of my Pac-10 rival. Add Marlboro Man’s old lumberjack cap and mud boots that were four sizes too big and I was on my way to being a complete beauty queen. I seriously didn’t know how Marlboro Man would be able to keep his hands off of me. If I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the feed truck, I’d shiver violently. But really, when it came right down to it, I didn’t care. No matter what I looked like, it just didn’t feel right sending Marlboro Man into the cold, lonely world day after day. Even though I was new at marriage, I still sensed that somehow--whether because of biology or societal conditioning or religious mandate or the position of the moon--it was I who was to be the cushion between Marlboro Man and the cruel, hard world. That it was I who’d needed to dust off his shoulders every day. And though he didn’t say it, I could tell that he felt better when I was bouncing along, chubby and carrying his child, in his feed truck next to him. Occasionally I’d hop out of the pickup and open gates. Other times he’d hop out and open them. Sometimes I’d drive while he threw hay off the back of the vehicles. Sometimes I’d get stuck and he’d say shit. Sometimes we’d just sit in silence, shivering as the vehicle doors opened and closed. Other times we’d engage in serious conversation or stop and make out in the snow. All the while, our gestating baby rested in the warmth of my body, blissfully unaware of all the work that awaited him on this ranch where his dad had grown up. As I accompanied Marlboro Man on those long, frigid mornings of work, I wondered if our child would ever know the fun of sledding on a golf course hill…or any hill, for that matter. I’d lived on the ranch for five months and didn’t remember ever hearing about anyone sledding…or playing golf…or participating in any recreational activities at all. I was just beginning to wrap my mind around the way daily life unfolded here: wake up early, get your work done, eat, relax, and go to bed. Repeat daily. There wasn’t a calendar of events or dinner dates with friends in town or really much room for recreation--because that just meant double the work when you got back to work. It was hard for me not to wonder when any of these people ever went out and had a good time, or built a snowman. Or slept past 5:00 A.M.

When faced with a problem that looks too daunting to get through, try to remember you don’t have to do it all at once. Create a calendar or timeline and cross off the milestones as you progress toward your goal.

Becoming aware of her presence in the doorway, the men looked up. Westcliff rose from his half-seated position on the desk. “My lord,” Daisy said, “if I might have a word with you?” Although she spoke calmly, something in her expression must have alerted him. He didn’t waste a second in coming to her. “Yes, Daisy?” “It’s about my sister,” she whispered. “It seems her labor has started.” She had never seen the earl look so utterly taken aback. “It’s too early,” he said. “Apparently the baby doesn’t think so.” “But…this is off-schedule.” The earl seemed genuinely baffled that his child would have failed to consult the calendar before arriving. “Not necessarily,” Daisy replied reasonably. “It’s possible the doctor misjudged the date of the baby’s birth. Ultimately it’s only a matter of guesswork.” Westcliff scowled. “I expected far more accuracy than this! It’s nearly a month before the projected…” A new thought occurred to him, and he turned skull-white. “Is the baby premature?” Although Daisy had entertained a few private concerns about that, she shook her head immediately. “Some women show more than others, some less. And my sister is very slender. I’m sure the baby is fine.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “Lillian has had pains for the past four or five hours, and now they’re coming every ten minutes or so, which Annabelle says—” “She’s been in labor for hours and no one told me?” Westcliff demanded in outrage. “Well, it’s not technically labor unless the intervals between the pains are regular, and she said she didn’t want to bother you until—” Westcliff let out a curse that startled Daisy. He turned to point a commanding but unsteady finger at Simon Hunt. “Doctor,” he barked, and took off at a dead run. Simon Hunt appeared unsurprised by Westcliff’s primitive behavior. “Poor fellow,” he said with a slight smile, reaching over the desk to slide a pen back into its holder.

Is there a small habit that can support a major habit?” (For example, packing your exercise clothes in the morning so they’ll be ready for the gym in the evening.) “Do I often end the day frustrated because I didn’t complete the most important tasks?” (Identify the most important tasks for the next day and then schedule them into your calendar.) “What quick activities make me feel inspired or happy?” (For example, watching a short motivational video each morning.) “What five goals are the most important to me right now?” (What can you do daily to support all five of these goals?) “What are the activities that I love to do?” (Think of tasks that can support hobbies, like running, knitting, traveling, or reading.) “What areas of my financial life do I need to improve?” (If you’re in debt, then address this first. But if you have money in the bank, then you should build a habit that focuses on building up your investment portfolio.) “Can I improve the quality of my interpersonal relationships?” (Think about your interactions with your parents, children, significant other, and closest friends. Is there anything you can do daily to make these interactions better?) “What makes me feel great about myself?” (If something brings you enjoyment, then you should either do it every day or schedule time for it each week.) “How can I become more spiritual in my daily life?” (For example, read from a book of prayers, practice a bit of yoga, or recite positive affirmations.) “What is a new skill I’ve always wanted to master?” (For example, make a habit of researching and learning about talents like home brewing, playing a musical instrument, learning a new language, or anything that sounds fun.) “Is there anything I can do to support my local community or an important cause?” (We all believe in something. So if you schedule time daily for this activity, then it’s not hard to consistently help others.) “Is there something that I can do to improve my job performance and get a raise?” (For example, build a skill that will become valuable to the company.)

bearing in mind that although Japan is in the southern hemisphere the emphasis on the agrarian calendar nevertheless gels with Western (northern hemisphere) pagan traditions.

Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself—as though that were so necessary—that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object—that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated—chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be

The ritual of uniting the Ka and Ba together is termed: se-akh 'to awaken', which is resembled by Seb who gets embraced by the Children of Horus (aka the Embracers of the Akh) who form a great celestial ladder for the revived Osiris to ascend. Seb (being one of the gods who watch the weighing of the heart of the deceased in the Judgment Hall) has the secret gates which he guards and are close by the Balance of Ra. The righteous were enabled to escape Earth wherein their hearts were laid, but the heavy-hearted were held fast by Seb. Seb (aka great Cackler) produces the great Egg whence the Sungod sprang in the form of a Phoenix, which flies and eventually lands on the Great Pyramid Benben stone; just like the Ba, but instead of being for a king, it is stemming right from the heart of a god. Seb was the god of Earth where the work of creation began from his Egg and as soon as the Sungod appeared in the sky, he sent forth his rays onto Earth where Seb occupies his position. The dead receives Horus' ba to his North and to the West is Thoth and his ka is now behind him and his soul looks upon the spirit of flame and passes through the lake of fire and takes his seat in the sky with his back towards Seb. In the Pyramid Texts, we read that Unas and his Ka are taken to the Great House for judgement; which alludes to the Great Pyramid and to his movement direction away from Ba.

The Great Pyramid of Giza does not only utter the numerical number of the speed of light through its latitudinal positioning, it even explicitly expresses the physical velocity per seas I have demonstrated.

Thanks again to Alan Butler's work, this time I was able to inspect the work of Hesiod in connection with the Phaistos Disc for being calendrical, and now I view it through the lens of ancient Egypt by projecting it directly onto the circular zodiac of Dendera. Hesiod has used three different references to the days in his work: (the first ..); (the middle ..); and (.. of the month). With this system which he had used, I linked the "first" references to the zodiac's portals on the East; the "middle" references to the Fullmoon days of the month which are located on the zodiac's western portals; and the "of the month" references to the zodiac's days which are located right after passing by and finishing the rotation beyond the eastern portals. Therefore, Hesiod has recognized Egypt's month's count of days (And tell your slaves the thirtieth is the month's best-suited day). He has also explicitly identified the beginning of the Equinox and Solstice portals on the zodiac based on the zodiac's anticlockwise orientation while emphasizing the more prominent role of the Summer Solstice in the calendar system (The first and fourth and seventh days are holy days to men, the eighth and ninth as well). Hesiod has also issued a warning against, Apophis, the snake demon (But shun the fifth day, fifth days are both difficult and dread). Hesiod has recognized Egypt's royal-cosmic copulation event that takes place at the culmination of the Summer Solstice (The first ninth, though, for human beings, is harmless, quite benign for planting and for being born; indeed, it's very fine For men and women both; this day is never bad all through) Hesiod has identified the exact position of the newly born infant boy on the zodiac (For planting vines the middle sixth is uncongenial but good for the birth of males) and also established the Minoan bull's head rhyton connection with Egypt (The middle fourth, which is a day to soothe and gently tame the sheep and curved-horned), (Open a jar on the middle fourth),(And on the fourth the long and narrow boats can be begun). Hesiod gave Osiris' role in the ancient Egyptian agrarian Theology to men (two Days of the waxing month stand out for tasks men have to do, the eleventh and the twelfth) and pointed out the right location of the boar on the zodiac (Geld your boar on the eighth of the month) and counted on top of these days the days of the mule which comes afterward (on the twelfth day of the month [geld] the long-laboring mule) - since the reference to the mule in the historical text comes right after that of the boar's and both are grouped together conceptually with the act of gelding. He has also identified the role of Isis for resurrecting Osiris after the Summer Solstice event (On the fourth day of the month bring back a wife to your abode) and even referred to the two female figures on the zodiac and identified them as, Demeter and Persephone, the two mythical Greek queens (Upon the middle seventh throw Demeter's holy grain) where we see them along with the reference to Poseidon (i.e. fishes and water) right next to them as the account exists in the Greek mythology. Even more, Hesiod knows when the sequence of the boats' appearances begins on the zodiac (And on the fourth the long and narrow boats can be begun). Astonishingly enough, he mentions the solar eclipse when the Moon fully blocks the Sun (the third ninth's best of all, though this is known by few) and also glorifies sunrise and warns from sunset on that same day (Again, few know the after-twentieth day of the month is best ..) and identifies the event's dangerous location on the west (.. at dawn and that it worsens when the sun sinks in the west).

Happiness Habits I have a series of tricks I use to try and be happier in the moment. At first, they were silly and difficult and required a lot of attention, but now some of them have become second nature. By doing them religiously, I’ve managed to increase my happiness level quite a bit. The obvious one is meditation—insight meditation. Working toward a specific purpose on it, which is to try and understand how my mind works. [7] Just being very aware in every moment. If I catch myself judging somebody, I can stop myself and say, “What’s the positive interpretation of this?” I used to get annoyed about things. Now I always look for the positive side of it. It used to take a rational effort. It used to take a few seconds for me to come up with a positive. Now I can do it sub-second. [7] I try to get more sunlight on my skin. I look up and smile. [7] Every time you catch yourself desiring something, say, “Is it so important to me I’ll be unhappy unless this goes my way?” You’re going to find with the vast majority of things it’s just not true. [7] I think dropping caffeine made me happier. It makes me more of a stable person. [7] I think working out every day made me happier. If you have peace of body, it’s easier to have peace of mind. [7] The more you judge, the more you separate yourself. You’ll feel good for an instant, because you feel good about yourself, thinking you’re better than someone. Later, you’re going to feel lonely. Then, you see negativity everywhere. The world just reflects your own feelings back at you. [77] Tell your friends you’re a happy person. Then, you’ll be forced to conform to it. You’ll have a consistency bias. You have to live up to it. Your friends will expect you to be a happy person. [5] Recover time and happiness by minimizing your use of these three smartphone apps: phone, calendar, and alarm clock. [11] The more secrets you have, the less happy you’re going to be. [11] Caught in a funk? Use meditation, music, and exercise to reset your mood. Then choose a new path to commit emotional energy for rest of day. [11] Hedonic adaptation is more powerful for man-made things (cars, houses, clothes, money) than for natural things (food, sex, exercise). [11] No exceptions—all screen activities linked to less happiness, all non-screen activities linked to more happiness. [11] A personal metric: how much of the day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest? [11] It’s the news’ job to make you anxious and angry. But its underlying scientific, economic, education, and conflict trends are positive. Stay optimistic. [11] Politics, academia, and social status are all zero-sum games. Positive-sum games create positive people. [11] Increase serotonin in the brain without drugs: Sunlight, exercise, positive thinking, and tryptophan.

The most important mystery of ancient Egypt was presided over by a priesthood. That mystery concerned the annual inundation of the Nile flood plain. It was this flooding which made Egyptian agriculture, and therefore civilisation, possible. It was the centre of their society in both practical and ritual terms for many centuries; it made ancient Egypt the most stable society the world has ever seen. The Egyptian calendar itself was calculated with reference to the river, and was divided into three seasons, all of them linked to the Nile and the agricultural cycle it determined: Akhet, or the inundation, Peret, the growing season, and Shemu, the harvest. The size of the flood determined the size of the harvest: too little water and there would be famine; too much and there would be catastrophe; just the right amount and the whole country would bloom and prosper. Every detail of Egyptian life was linked to the flood: even the tax system was based on the level of the water, since it was that level which determined how prosperous the farmers were going to be in the subsequent season. The priests performed complicated rituals to divine the nature of that year’s flood and the resulting harvest. The religious elite had at their disposal a rich, emotionally satisfying mythological system; a subtle, complicated language of symbols that drew on that mythology; and a position of unchallenged power at the centre of their extraordinarily stable society, one which remained in an essentially static condition for thousands of years. But the priests were cheating, because they had something else too: they had a nilometer. This was a secret device made to measure and predict the level of flood water. It consisted of a large, permanent measuring station sited on the river, with lines and markers designed to predict the level of the annual flood. The calibrations used the water level to forecast levels of harvest from Hunger up through Suffering through to Happiness, Security and Abundance, to, in a year with too much water, Disaster. Nilometers were a – perhaps the – priestly secret. They were situated in temples where only priests were allowed access; Herodotus, who wrote the first outsider’s account of Egyptian life the fifth century BC, was told of their existence, but wasn’t allowed to see one. As late as 1810, thousands of years after the nilometers had entered use, foreigners were still forbidden access to them. Added to the accurate records of flood patters dating back centuries, the nilometer was an essential tool for control of Egypt. It had to be kept secret by the ruling class and institutions, because it was a central component of their authority. The world is full of priesthoods. The nilometer offers a good paradigm for many kinds of expertise, many varieties of religious and professional mystery. Many of the words for deliberately obfuscating nonsense come from priestly ritual: mumbo jumbo from the Mandinka word maamajomboo, a masked shamanic ceremonial dancer; hocus pocus from hoc est corpus meum in the Latin Mass. On the one hand, the elaborate language and ritual, designed to bamboozle and mystify and intimidate and add value; on the other the calculations that the pros make in private. Practitioners of almost every métier, from plumbers to chefs to nurses to teachers to police, have a gap between the way they talk to each other and they way they talk to their customers or audience. Grayson Perry is very funny on this phenomenon at work in the art world, as he described it in an interview with Brian Eno. ‘As for the language of the art world – “International Art English” – I think obfuscation was part of its purpose, to protect what in fact was probably a fairly simple philosophical point, to keep some sort of mystery around it. There was a fear that if it was made understandable, it wouldn’t seem important.

The tendency to focus on the positive comes long before the customer actually makes a purchase decision. Early in the sales process, for example, when sellers are trying to get to higher levels within the account, a salesperson might say, “Mr. Customer, I would like to get a few minutes with your CFO to show him how cost-effective our products are relative to increasing productivity and maximizing the return on your investment.” Sounds like a mini elevator pitch, doesn’t it? Here’s the reverse. “Mr. Customer, would it make sense to spend a few minutes and bring your CFO up to speed, so he doesn’t have a knee-jerk reaction and torpedo the idea?” In preparation for QBS training events, I always ask for a conference call to customize the material for the intended audience. But I don’t ask for a manager’s time so I can “understand their business and deliver better training.” Although these are positive benefits, they don’t necessarily create a sense of urgency. Therefore, I am more inclined to ask a vice president of sales for time on their calendar, “so we don’t completely miss the boat at the upcoming training event.” Both of these questions refer to benefits that would come from strategizing in advance. But how you ask does make a difference.

reward system But there’s a reward system you can use to keep yourself motivated. Here are some suggestions: Buy yourself an advent calendar, and for each day you don’t look at his profile or engage with him in any capacity, enjoy the treat for that day. If you can’t afford an advent calendar or can’t find one in the shops, make yourself a journal – on each successful day, write something amazing about yourself, and on a day where you did trip up, write something that reminds you of why you started doing this thirty-day challenge. Getting into the habit of saying nice things about yourself prepares you to become so used to compliments that you aren’t dangerously swooned when others recognise your greatness. Every ten days that pass without you breaking the rule, take yourself on a really nice solo date to an upscale bar, or your favourite club or restaurant, and imagine the room is full of men who are all waiting to be picked by you, the goddess. For even spicier results, wear something red so you feel even sexier. Getting into the habit of going out to bars and social environments alone will not just put you in a position of meeting new people, it will also quell your fear of being alone. There’s nothing more powerful than a woman who knows how to hold her own in a room full of strangers. Or, if you feel ready, each time you make it to the ten-day mark, why don’t you try practising your new confidence on your dating apps and let yourself be taken out? By the time the thirty-day window ends, you will have gone on three different dates with three new guys, which will significantly lower the hype around the man you’ve been thinking of. You never know: one of these guys could end up being far more interesting, way hotter and maybe even richer. As you get closer to the end of the thirty-day period, why not have a spa booked to mark the last day? It will be a period of reflection, relaxation, and remembering how far you’ve come within just a month of leaving a situation that could have dragged your life in a completely different direction. You deserve to meet the woman you’re destined to become: take the time to do so. Set a reminder on your phone every couple of days that says ‘It’s time to finally choose yourself for once. Don’t let him win!’ When it gets hard, ask yourself: At what point will I be the victor here? When will I finally walk away with my head held high? This must end at some point – why not now?

in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary--that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point.

DEEPENING PRACTICES Here are practices you can do this week to integrate the information in this chapter into your life: Selective Attention Exercise 1: In what areas of your life do you focus on the negative rather than the positive? Write down three positive affirmations about that area of your life. Make 10 copies. Place one in your wallet. Tape others to your refrigerator, bathroom mirror, computer monitor, video screen, car dashboard, and other places you can’t avoid noticing them. Practice repeating the positive affirmations the second you catch yourself focusing on the negative. Journaling Exercise: Write down a list of personality flaws that you’d like to change. Create a reminder in your online calendar for 1 year from now, reminding you to check today’s date in your journal. Next year, you might be surprised to see how much some have shifted after a year of meditation. Emotional Contagion Practice: Put the power of emotional contagion to work for you. Make a list of the happiest people you know, and make a plan to get together with at least four of them in the coming month. Selective Attention Exercise 2: Whenever you hear a bad news story that upsets you, do a web search for contradictory evidence (e.g., “Good news about . . .”). This will put the bad news in context. Field Effects Exercise: Look at the Insight Timer app each day you meditate and notice how many other people are meditating worldwide. It’s usually hundreds of thousands. This reminds you that you are not alone.

Like all traders and investors, I periodically review the performance of my portfolios and check in on whether they are getting the job done. I say periodically, because the temptation – a dangerous one for many – is to be constantly watching and let’s face it, this is a long term game, not a get rich quick punt, right? As such, over the past few months, one of my personal favourites – the covered call, has continued to deliver the cash flow I seek from that particular portfolio. For example, this calendar year, in the Australian market, FMG being the one blot on the ledger, we have had only one loser from 13 closed positions. For those that obsess about win/loss ratios – a flawed measure in my book – that is a 92% win rate for the calendar year. Of course, this is a reflection of the underlying market conditions, which have been supportive of the strategy.

Heaven is the allowance of the Pure, Positive Energy, that is your Source, flowing fully through you in your moment in time, so that in your Now you are peceiving it fully. And Hell is your disallowance of that. Hell, as it is described by the physical man, exists only in your physical human experience. That is our absolute promise to you.

The Egyptian/Roman Judeo-Christian temples are not only oriented towards the rising Son but even express the Sun's yearly spatial positions on the horizon. This calendrical balance is not temporal but rather exclusively solar, nonetheless, bridging both calendars has ever been endeavored - yet in vain.

Heimdallr, from Norse Mythology, is present on the ancient Egyptian circular zodiac and is represented by the Ram; as the watcher and the guardian of the bridge between heaven and earth. His head measures the crossroads of the ecliptic and the vernal equinox as also expressed on the zodiac. Heimdallr was born and raised by the blood of a sacrificial boar which is portrayed on the zodiac at the exact position and right before the bridge (i.e., entrance to Asgard). The Marsian stride starts at the front leg of Capricon marking the nine realms of Asgard thereby - which are unified by the world tree: Yggdrasil. He was born by nine goddesses who turn the mill and was identified as Mars, the hopping one. He is Vindler, the turner, who is the personification of fire who twists and turns the mill.

People who assume failure tend to have the failure.

The higher the position you occupy among other people, the more humble you should be. Many people live in height and glory, but the mysteries of this world can be revealed only to those who are humble. Do not seek out complication. Treat your duty with respect. Do not study what you should not. More things have already been revealed to you than you can understand. —From APOCRYPHA