Concentrate On Your Own Life Quotes

Don’t concern yourself with being right in others’ eyes. And don’t secretly hope that their lives will fall apart so that your opinion will be vindicated. Instead, concentrate on obeying God in your own life and, when possible, helping others to obey Him as well. You don’t have to prove others wrong to continue on the course you know God has shown you.

believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it. I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That’s the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don’t even see it, because I’m too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting. The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven. That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before it. I believe that if we cultivate a true attention, a deep ability to see what has been there all along, we will find worlds within us and between us, dreams and stories and memories spilling over. The nuances and shades and secrets and intimations of love and friendship and marriage an parenting are action-packed and multicolored, if you know where to look. Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull of the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted. Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is. You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural. You are more than dust and bones. You are spirit and power and image of God. And you have been given Today.

I believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without even realizing it.

We were outside the world, we didn't even own things -- some clothes. . . . This arrangement resembles the prehistoric way to live, and it therefore feels right to us, because our brains recognize it from 3 millions of years practicing it. In essence our brains grew to their current configuration in response to the realities of that life. So as a result people grow powerfully attached to that kind of life, when they get the chance to live it. It allows you to concentrate your attention on the real work, which means everything that is done to stay alive, to make things, or satisfy one's curiosity, or play. That is utopia.

First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done. I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye. But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face. “Is it?...is it?” I whispered to my guide. “Not at all,” said he. “It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.” “She seems to be...well, a person of particular importance?” “Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.” “And who are these gigantic people...look! They're like emeralds...who are dancing and throwing flowers before here?” “Haven't ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.” “And who are all these young men and women on each side?” “They are her sons and daughters.” “She must have had a very large family, Sir.” “Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.” “Isn't that a bit hard on their own parents?” “No. There are those that steal other people's children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.” “And how...but hullo! What are all these animals? A cat-two cats-dozens of cats. And all those dogs...why, I can't count them. And the birds. And the horses.” “They are her beasts.” “Did she keep a sort of zoo? I mean, this is a bit too much.” “Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.” I looked at my Teacher in amazement. “Yes,” he said. “It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough int the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.

When you ignore your belly, you become homeless. You spend your life trying to erase your own existence. Apologizing for yourself. Feeling like a ghost. Eating to take up space, eating to give yourself the feeling that you have weight here, you belong here, you are allowed to be yourself -- but never quite believing it because you don't sense yourself directly. . . . I started teaching a simple belly meditation in which I asked people to become aware of sensations in their belly (numbness and emptiness count as sensations). Every time their mind wandered . . . I asked them to begin counting their breaths so they could anchor their concentration. Starting with the number one and saying it on the out breath, they'd count to seven and begin again. If they were able to stay concentrated on the sensations in their belly centers, they didn't need to use counting as a concentration anchor. . . . you begin the process of bringing yourself back to your body, to your belly, to your breath because they -- not the mind medleys -- are here now. And it is only here, only now that you can make a decision to eat or not eat. To occupy your own body or to vacate your arms and your legs while still breathing and go through your days as a walking head. . . . Meditation is a tool to shake yourself awake. A way to discover what you love. A practice to return yourself to your body when the mind medleys threaten to usurp your sanity.

Jesus opens his arms to his needy children and says, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NASB). The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy. What does it feel like to be weary? You have trouble concentrating. The problems of the day are like claws in your brain. You feel pummeled by life. What does heavy-laden feel like? Same thing. You have so many problems you don’t even know where to start. You can’t do life on your own anymore. Jesus wants you to come to him...

There is nothing left for you to try. It is time for you to walk away, to concentrate on your healing (of which more below) and to create your own life in your own way, to create the life you deserve. It is time for you to put your energy into finding and creating healthy mutually-empowering relationships and not to waste time banging on a door that will never open.

If you can cut yourself—your mind—free of what other people do and say, of what you’ve said or done, of the things that you’re afraid will happen, the impositions of the body that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance —doing what’s right, accepting what happens, and speaking the truth— If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, free of the future and the past—can make yourself, as Empedocles says, “a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness,” and concentrate on living what can be lived (which means the present) . . . then you can spend the time you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you.

Trying to fix the shortcoming of others while ignoring your own flaws results in little if no improvement―not to mention bitter feelings. Concentrating on personal growth sets a good example and results in the improvement of one life if not more.

One time on an island I swam in a green lagoon and saw through the clearness of the water the simple fact of my limbs. I watched the purple, red, and blue fish moving around my body and I paddled to keep myself afloat for a long time. Afterward, I lay down on the sand and concentrated on the warming my kneecaps and my shoulders. I can count moments like that on my hands. My dream is for you to have many such moments, so many that you notice only the times you slip into your own brain and recognize those instances for the traps that they are.

you cease to utter falsehoods and live according to the dictates of your conscience, you can maintain your nobility, even when facing the ultimate threat; if you abide, truthfully and courageously, by the highest of ideals, you will be provided with more security and strength than will be offered by any short-sighted concentration on your own safety; if you live properly, fully, you can discover meaning so profound that it protects you even from the fear of death.

If one lives where all suffer and starve, one acts on one's own impulse to help. But where plenty abounds, we surrender our generosity, believing that our country replaces us each and several. This is not so, and indeed a delusion. On the contrary the power of maintaining life in others, lives within each of us, and from each of us does it recede when unused. It is a concentrated power. If you are not acquainted with it, your Majesty can have no inkling of what it is like, what it portends, or the ways in which it slips from one.

Don’t strive to be a well-rounded leader. Instead, discover your zone and stay there. Then delegate everything else. Admitting a weakness is a sign of strength. Acknowledging weakness doesn’t make a leader less effective. Everybody in your organization benefits when you delegate responsibilities that fall outside your core competency. Thoughtful delegation will allow someone else in your organization to shine. Your weakness is someone’s opportunity. Leadership is not always about getting things done “right.” Leadership is about getting things done through other people. The people who follow us are exactly where we have led them. If there is no one to whom we can delegate, it is our own fault. As a leader, gifted by God to do a few things well, it is not right for you to attempt to do everything. Upgrade your performance by playing to your strengths and delegating your weaknesses. There are many things I can do, but I have to narrow it down to the one thing I must do. The secret of concentration is elimination. Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing. My competence in these areas defines my success as a pastor. A sixty-hour workweek will not compensate for a poorly delivered sermon. People don’t show up on Sunday morning because I am a good pastor (leader, shepherd, counselor). In my world, it is my communication skills that make the difference. So that is where I focus my time. To develop a competent team, help the leaders in your organization discover their leadership competencies and delegate accordingly. Once you step outside your zone, don’t attempt to lead. Follow. The less you do, the more you will accomplish. Only those leaders who act boldly in times of crisis and change are willingly followed. Accepting the status quo is the equivalent of accepting a death sentence. Where there’s no progress, there’s no growth. If there’s no growth, there’s no life. Environments void of change are eventually void of life. So leaders find themselves in the precarious and often career-jeopardizing position of being the one to draw attention to the need for change. Consequently, courage is a nonnegotiable quality for the next generation leader. The leader is the one who has the courage to act on what he sees. A leader is someone who has the courage to say publicly what everybody else is whispering privately. It is not his insight that sets the leader apart from the crowd. It is his courage to act on what he sees, to speak up when everyone else is silent. Next generation leaders are those who would rather challenge what needs to change and pay the price than remain silent and die on the inside. The first person to step out in a new direction is viewed as the leader. And being the first to step out requires courage. In this way, courage establishes leadership. Leadership requires the courage to walk in the dark. The darkness is the uncertainty that always accompanies change. The mystery of whether or not a new enterprise will pan out. The reservation everyone initially feels when a new idea is introduced. The risk of being wrong. Many who lack the courage to forge ahead alone yearn for someone to take the first step, to go first, to show the way. It could be argued that the dark provides the optimal context for leadership. After all, if the pathway to the future were well lit, it would be crowded. Fear has kept many would-be leaders on the sidelines, while good opportunities paraded by. They didn’t lack insight. They lacked courage. Leaders are not always the first to see the need for change, but they are the first to act. Leadership is about moving boldly into the future in spite of uncertainty and risk. You can’t lead without taking risk. You won’t take risk without courage. Courage is essential to leadership.

It’s not the drug that causes the junkie it’s the laws that causes the junkie because of course the drug laws means that he can’t go and get help because he is afraid of being arrested. He also can’t have a normal life because the war on drugs has made drugs so expensive and has made drug contracts unenforceable which means they can only be enforced through criminal violence. It becomes so profitable to sell drugs to addicts that the drug dealers have every incentive to get people addicted by offering free samples and to concentrate their drug to the highest possible dose to provoke the greatest amount of addiction as possible. Overall it is a completely staggering and completely satanic human calamity. It is the new gulag and in some ways much more brutal than the soviet gulag. In the soviet gulags there was not a huge prison rape problem and in this situation your life could be destroyed through no fault of your own through sometimes, no involvement of your own and the people who end up in the drug culture are walled off and separated as a whole and thrown into this demonic, incredibly dangerous, underworld were the quality of the drugs can’t be verified. Were contracts can’t be enforced except through breaking peoples kneecaps and the price of drugs would often led them to a life of crime. People say “well, I became a drug addict and I lost my house, family, and my job and all that.” It’s not because you became a drug addict but, because there is a war on drugs which meant that you had to pay so much for the drugs that you lost your house because you couldn't go and find help or substitutes and ended up losing your job. It’s all nonsense. The government can’t keep drugs out of prisons for heaven’s sakes. The war on drugs is not designed to be won. Its designed to continue so that the government can get the profits of drug running both directly through the CIA and other drug runners that are affiliated or through bribes and having the power of terrorizing the population. To frame someone for murder is pretty hard but to palm a packet of cocaine and say that you found it in their car is pretty damn easy and the government loves having that power." -Stefan Molyneux

Your three components: body, breath, mind. Two are yours in trust; to the third alone you have clear title. If you can cut yourself—your mind—free of what other people do and say, of what you’ve said or done, of the things that you’re afraid will happen, the impositions of the body that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance—doing what’s right, accepting what happens, and speaking the truth— If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind, free of the future and the past—can make yourself, as Empedocles says, “a sphere rejoicing in its perfect stillness,” and concentrate on living what can be lived (which means the present) . . . then you can spend the time you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace with the spirit within you.

In existence, no human being is perfect. Every person has his own unique nature and individual field of expertise. Even those, whom we know as gods were unaware of the knowledge of science all their life. So, instead of paying attention to your shortcomings, concentrate on your talents and harness your potential.

...each day I sit down in purposeful concentration to write in a notebook, some sentences on a buried truth, an unnamed reality, things that happened but are denied. It is hard to describe the stillness it takes, the difficulty of this act. It requires an almost perfect concentration which I am trying to learn and there is no way to learn it that is spelled out anywhere or so I can understand it but I have a sense that it's completely simply, on the order of being able to sit still and keep your mind dead center in you without apology or fear. I squirm after some time but it ain't boredom, it's fear of what's possible, how much you can know if you can be quiet enough and simple enough. I move around, my mind wanders, I lose the ability to take words and roll them through my brain, move with them into their interiors, feel their colors, touch what's under them, where they come from long ago and way back. I get frightened seeing what's in my own mind if words get put to it. There's a light there, it's bright, it's wide, it could make you blind if you look direct into it and so I turn away, afraid; I get frightened and I run and the only way to run is to abandon the process altogether or compromise it beyond recognition. I think about Celine sitting with his shit, for instance; I don't know why he didn't run, he should've. It's a quality you have to have of being near mad and at the same time so quiet in your heart that you could pass for a spiritual warrior; you could probably break things with the power in your mind. You got to be able to stand it, because it's a powerful and disturbing light, not something easy and kind, it comes through your head to make its way onto the page and you get fucking scared so your mind runs away, it wanders, it gets distracted, it buckles, it deserts, it takes a Goddamn freight train if it can find one, it wants calming agents and sporifics, and you mask that you are betraying the brightest and the best light you will ever see, you are betraying the mind that can be host to it... ...Your mind does stupid tricks to mask that you are betraying something of grave importance. It wanders so you won't notice that you are deserting your own life, abandoning it to triviality and garbage, how you are too fucking afraid to use your own brain for what it's for, which is to be a host to the light, to use it, to focus it; let it shine and carry the burden of what is illuminated, everything buried there; the light's scarier than anything it shows, the pure, direct experience of it in you as if your mind ain't the vegetable thing it's generally conceived to be or the nightmare thing you know it to be but a capacity you barely imagined, real; overwhelming and real, pushing you out to the edge of ecstasy and knowing and then do you fall or do you jump or do you fly?

Most of us in our thinking are wandering from this to that to the other thing, and are constantly distracted. And Zen is the opposite of that. It’s being completely here, fully in the present. And you know when you’re completely concentrated, you’re not really aware of your own existence. It’s rather the same as the sense of sight. If you see your eyes, that is to say if you see spots in front of your eyes, or something on the lens of the eye, then you’re not seeing properly. To the degree to which you’re seeing properly, you’re unaware of your eyes. In the same way, if your clothes fit well, you’re unaware of them on your body. And if you’re completely concentrated on what you’re doing, you’re unaware of yourself.

All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes—characters even—caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you. Well, it was like that. All day I had been prey to distractions. Thoughts, memories, feelings, irrelevant fragments of my own life, playing havoc with my concentration.

If you can be happy for the joy in the lives of others, you will find more joy in your own life. Isn’t that neat? That means that instead of telling you that you first need to work on finding joy in your own life so that you can be happy for others, I’m saying, concentrate on the reverse. Be so incredibly happy for others! Things are going well for them! They are happy! You want them to be happy. You want to contribute to their happiness. It’s much easier this way. Trying to wring joy out of your own life right now might feel a bit like trying to wring sweet Napa Valley wine out of a rotten turnip.

I began to realize something fundamental about field-work: that it is useless to concentrate exclusively on one's 'research project.' One has to be endlessly curious about everything, sharpen one's eyes and ears, and take notes about everything. The experience of strangeness makes all your senses more sensitive than normal, and your attachment to comparison grows deeper. This is why fieldwork is also so useful when you return home. You will have developed habits of observation and comparison that encourage or force you to start noticing that your own culture is just as strange.

Taking the clutter out of your home can also help you to think more clearly. Living in a tidy home, where everything has its own place, actually gives you room in your mind to concentrate on more important things. It creates a home environment that is peaceful and harmonious for everyone that lives there. Having

Dr. Mary Atwater's story was so inspiring. Growing up, Dr. Atwater had a dream to one day be a teacher. But as a black person in the American South during the 1950s, she didn't have many great educational opportunities. It didn't help that she was also a girl, and a girl who loved science, since many believed that science was a subject only for men. Well, like me, she didn't listen to what others said. And also like me, Dr. Atwater had a father, Mr. John C. Monroe, who believed in her dreams and saved money to send her and her siblings to college. She eventually got a PhD in science education with a concentration in chemistry. She was an associate director at New Mexico State University and then taught physical science and chemistry at Fayetteville State University. She later joined the University of Georgia, where she still works as a science education researcher. Along the way, she began writing science books, never knowing that, many years down the road, one of those books would end up in Wimbe, Malawi, and change my life forever. I'd informed Dr. Atwater that the copy of Using Energy I'd borrowed so many times had been stolen (probably by another student hoping to get the same magic), so that day in Washington, she presented me with my own copy, along with the teacher's edition and a special notebook to record my experiments. "Your story confirms my belief in human beings and their abilities to make the world a better place by using science," she told me. "I'm happy that I lived long enough to see that something I wrote could change someone's life. I'm glad I found you." And for sure, I'm also happy to have found Dr. Atwater.

But mostly it was pills. I wasn't strong enough to get through life without being able to go to sleep on command. Maybe you won't need to take pills. I dream that you'll be so much stronger. One time on an island I swam in a green lagoon and saw through the clearness of the water the simple fact of my limbs. I watched the purple, red, and blue fish moving around my body and I paddled to keep myself afloat for a long time. Afterward, I lay down on the sand and concentrated on the warming my kneecaps and my shoulders. I can count moments like that on my hands. My dream is for you to have many such moments, so many that you notice only the times you slip into your own brain and recognize those instances for the traps that they are

What I’m trying to say is, you can’t change a guy. Concentrate on your own life. Someone whose hobbies include trying to break his neck on a motorcycle and slipping into a girl’s bedroom first thing in the morning isn’t worth bothering about.” “He’s actually been here since last night.” Dad’s fingers tightened on the doorknob even though his voice stayed light. “I really need to buy that shotgun.” “He was sick and needed to lie down,” said Kami. “Uh-huh,” said Dad. “He was literally unconscious, and Mum and I had to carry him up the stairs.” “Oldest trick in the book,” grumbled Dad, but his brow cleared. “Claire didn’t mention anything about this.” “Maybe because she thought you’d go out and buy a shotgun?” “Maybe,” Dad conceded. 

It is not just the different plants and animals that define the environment. There are all sorts of physical factors as well. Take the atmosphere, for instance. The oxygen levels became usable to us about 400 million years ago, but since then there has been a great variation in the oxygen levels. In the late Jurassic it is possible that the oxygen levels were about 35%, as opposed to 20% at the present day. Indeed this figure has been put forward to explain the survival of the very big dinosaurs, high oxygen concentrations in the breathing air being able to keep the great volumes of tissue oxygenated. On the other hand the proportion of carbon dioxide was also high. This may account for the prolific plant life at the time, carbon dioxide being essential for the good growth of plants. The difference between the composition of the Jurassic atmosphere and that of your own time may make it difficult for you to breathe when you first arrive, but your body will probably adapt to it before long.

Simplify. Streamline everything. Become a purist. Less really is more. Concentrate on just a few work projects so you make them amazing versus diluting your attention on too many. And socially, have fewer friends but go deep with them so the relationship is rich. Accept fewer invitations, major in fewer leisure activities and study, then master, a smaller number of books versus skimming many. An intense concentration only on what matters most is how the pros realize victory. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

Man is the highest expression of individual life, because he thinks. We sometimes blame God for our misfortune, but the fact remains that we are entirely responsible for our success or failure, happiness or misery. Man makes himself, creates his own personality, character and circumstances. Destiny is fixed by subconscious action; you are not the slave of circumstance, but the creator of your own destiny. We attract to ourselves only that which corresponds to our subconscious impressions, and you can always make a new start and create new conditions by changing your subconscious impressions. If you have thought failure, think success; replace sick thoughts with thoughts of health. If there is any reason for unhappiness, resolutely put it out of your mind, for LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE, and the more you think of discordant conditions, the more such conditions will manifest for you. CONCENTRATE ON WHAT YOU WANT. When you do think you are impressing that desire on your subconscious mind; NEVER let your thoughts dwell on what you DO NOT WANT.

Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick. The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous. -George Leonard Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it…the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way…To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so–and this is the inexorable–fact of the journey–you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. (Mastery, p. 14-15). Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed…Be aware of the way homeostasis works…Expect resistance and backlash. Realize that when the alarm bells start ringing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sick or crazy or lazy or that you’ve made a bad decision in embarking on the journey of mastery. In fact, you might take these signals as an indication that your life is definitely changing–just what you’ve wanted….Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change. Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences…there are all of those chores that most of us can’t avoid: cleaning, straightening, raking leaves, shopping for groceries, driving the children to various activities, preparing food, washing dishes, washing the car, commuting, performing the routine, repetitive aspects of our jobs….Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between-time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness…Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires…Open the door and get in the driver’s seat, performing the next series of actions as a ritual: fastening the seatbelt, adjusting the seat and the rearview mirror…As you begin moving, make a silent affirmation that you’ll take responsibility for the space all around your vehicle at all times…We tend to downgrade driving as a skill simply because it’s so common. Actually maneuvering a car through varying conditions of weather, traffic, and road surface calls for an extremely high level of perception, concentration, coordination, and judgement…Driving can be high art…Ultimately, nothing in this life is “commonplace,” nothing is “in between.” The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge. [Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own. We are the architects of creation and all things are connected through us. The Universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level . . . The intention of the universe is evolution. We exist as a locus of waves that spreads its influence to the ends of space and time. The whole of a thing is contained in each of its parts. We are completely, firmly, absolutely connected with all of existence. We are indeed in relationship to all that is.

As you are all aware, in the course of life we experience many kinds of pain. Pains of the body and pains of the heart. I know i have experienced pain in many different forms, and I'm sure you have too. In most cases, though, im sure you've found it very difficult to convey the truth of that pain to another person: to explain it in words. People say that only they themselves can understand the pain they are feeling. But is it true? I for one do not believe that it is. If, before our eyes, we see someone who is truly suffering , we do sometimes feel his suffering and pain as our own. This is the power of empathy. Am I making myself clear?'' He broke off and looked around the room once again. ''The reason that people sing songs for other people is because they want to have the power to arouse empathy, to break free of the narrow shell of the self and share their pain and joy with others. This is not an easy thing to do, of course. And so tonight, as kind of experiment, I want you to experience a simpler, more physical kind of empathy. Lights please.'' Everyone in the place was hushed now, all eyes fixed on stage. Amid the silence, the man stared off into space, as if to insert a pause or to reach a state of mental concentration. Then, without a word, he held his hand over the lighted candle. Little by little, he brought the palm closer and closer to the flame. Someone in the audience made a sound like a sigh or a moan. You could see the tip of the flame burning the man's palm. You could almost hear the sizzle of the flesh. A woman let out a hard little scream. Everyone else just watched in frozen horror. The man endured the pain, his face distorted in agony. What the hell was this? Why did he have to do such a stupid, senseless thing? I felt my mouth going dry. After five or six seconds of this, he slowly removed his hand from the flame and set the dish with the candle in it on the floor. Then he clasped his hands together, the right and left palms pressed against each other. ''As you have seen tonight, ladies and gentleman, pain can actually burn a person's flesh,'' said the man. His voice sounded exactly as it had earlier: quiet, steady, cool. No trace of suffering remained on his face. Indeed, it had been replaced by a faint smile. ''And the pain that must have been there, you have been able to feel as if it were your own. That is the power of empathy.

You must see now that your incapacity of being alone: your nature so exigent in its persistent claim on the attention and time of others: your lack of any power of sustained intellectual concentration: the unfortunate accident—for I like to think it was no more—that you had not yet been able to acquire the “Oxford temper” in intellectual matters, never, I mean, been one who could play gracefully with ideas but had arrived at violence of opinion merely—that all these things, combined with the fact that your desires and interests were in Life not in Art, were as destructive to your own progress in culture as they were to my work as an artist?

But what Liberty would remember best was the feel of his own small hand gathered in the warm, comforting grip of the man, those times alone when all of Thatcher’s potent attention was concentrated on his son, as something inside Liberty always insisted, occasionally to contrary evidence that it should be, their trips together, their talks, the information about the sorry state of the world Thatcher shared reluctantly, almost sadly, with his son and heir out of a conviction that I do not enjoy having to tell you these things, but it is important you hear this news, no matter how distasteful, because, unfortunately, it is the truth, whereas it is lies and the promulgation of lies that will make you and the people in your life sick.

Once again this unspeakable man had caused her to make a complete fool of herself, and the realization made her eyes blaze with renewed fury as she turned her head and looked at him. Despite Ian’s apparent nonchalance he had been watching her closely, and he stiffened, sensing instinctively that she was suddenly and inexplicably angrier than before. He nodded to the gun, and when he spoke there was no more mockery in his voice; instead it was carefully neutral. “I think there are a few things you ought to consider before you use that.” Though she had no intention of using it, Elizabeth listened attentively as he continued in that same helpful voice. “First of all, you’ll have to be very fast and very calm if you intend to shoot me and reload before Jake there gets to you. Second, I think it’s only fair to warn you that there’s going to be a great deal of blood all over the place. I’m not complaining, you understand, but I think it’s only right to warn you that you’re never again going to be able to wear that charming gown you have on.” Elizabeth felt her stomach lurch. “You’ll hang, of course,” he continued conversationally, “but that won’t be nearly as distressing as the scandal you’ll have to face first.” Too disgusted with herself and with him to react to that last mocking remark, Elizabeth put her chin up and managed to say with great dignity, “I’ve had enough of this, Mr. Thornton. I did not think anything could equal your swinish behavior at our prior meetings, but you’ve managed to do it. Unfortunately, I am not so ill-bred as you and therefore have scruples against assaulting someone who is weaker than I, which is what I would be doing if I were to shoot an unarmed man. Lucinda, we are leaving,” she said, then she glanced back at her silent adversary, who’d taken a threatening step, and she shook her head, saying with extreme, mocking civility, “No, please-do not bother to see us out, sir, there’s no need. Besides, I wish to remember you just as you are at this moment-helpless and thwarted.” It was odd, but now, at the low point of her life, Elizabeth felt almost exhilarated because she was finally doing something to avenge her pride instead of meekly accepting her fate. Lucinda had marched out onto the porch already, and Elizabeth tried to think of something to dissuade him from retrieving his gun when she threw it away outside. She decided to repeat his own advice, which she began to do as she backed away toward the door. “I know you’re loath to see us leave like this,” she said, her voice and her hand betraying a slight, fearful tremor. “However, before you consider coming after us, I beg you will take your own excellent advice and pause to consider if killing me is worth hanging for.” Whirling on her heel, Elizabeth took one running step, then cried out in pained surprise as she was jerked off her feet and a hard blow to her forearm sent the gun flying to the floor at the same time her arm was yanked up and twisted behind her back. “Yes,” he said in an awful voice near her ear, “I actually think it would be worth it.” Just when she thought her arm would surely snap, her captor gave her a hard shove that sent her stumbling headlong out into the yard, and the door slammed shut behind her. “Well! I never,” Lucinda said, her bosom heaving with rage as she glowered at the closed door. “Neither have I,” said Elizabeth, shaking dirt off her hem and deciding to retreat with as much dignity as possible. “We can talk about what a madman he is once we’re down the path, out of sight of the house. So if you’ll please take that end of the trunk?” With a black look Lucinda complied, and they marched down the path, both of them concentrating on keeping their backs as straight as possible.

Though all the brilliant intellects of the ages were to concentrate upon this one theme, never could they adequately express their wonder at this dense darkness of the human mind. Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their lands, yet they allow others to trespass upon their life—nay, they themselves even lead in those who will eventually possess it. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal. And so I should like to lay hold upon someone from the company of older men and say: "I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a moneylender, how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how much with a client, how much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing about the city on social duties. Add the diseases which we have caused by our own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count. Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!"7 What, then, is the reason of this? You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals. You will hear many men saying: "After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties." And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live! What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained!

Facebook’s own North American marketing director, Michelle Klein, who told an audience in 2016 that while the average adult checks his or her phone 30 times a day, the average millennial, she enthusiastically reported, checks more than 157 times daily. Generation Z, we now know, exceeds this pace. Klein described Facebook’s engineering feat: “a sensory experience of communication that helps us connect to others, without having to look away,” noting with satisfaction that this condition is a boon to marketers. She underscored the design characteristics that produce this mesmerizing effect: design is narrative, engrossing, immediate, expressive, immersive, adaptive, and dynamic.11 If you are over the age of thirty, you know that Klein is not describing your adolescence, or that of your parents, and certainly not that of your grandparents. Adolescence and emerging adulthood in the hive are a human first, meticulously crafted by the science of behavioral engineering; institutionalized in the vast and complex architectures of computer-mediated means of behavior modification; overseen by Big Other; directed toward economies of scale, scope, and action in the capture of behavioral surplus; and funded by the surveillance capital that accrues from unprecedented concentrations of knowledge and power. Our children endeavor to come of age in a hive that is owned and operated by the applied utopianists of surveillance capitalism and is continuously monitored and shaped by the gathering force of instrumentarian power. Is this the life that we want for the most open, pliable, eager, self-conscious, and promising members of our society?

Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust, or lose your sense of shame, or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill will, or hypocrisy, or a desire for things best done behind closed doors. If you can privilege your own mind, your guiding spirit and your reverence for its powers, that should keep you clear of dramatics, of wailing and gnashing of teeth. You won’t need solitude—or a cast of thousands, either. Above all, you’ll be free of fear and desire. And how long your body will contain the soul that inhabits it will cause you not a moment’s worry. If it’s time for you to go, leave willingly—as you would to accomplish anything that can be done with grace and honor. And concentrate on this, your whole life long: for your mind to be in the right state—the state a rational, civic mind should be in.

Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love . . . In a concentration camp, the guards possess almost unlimited power. By applying force, they can make you renounce your God, curse your family, work without pay, eat human excrement, kill and then bury your closest friend or even your own mother. All this is within their power. Only one thing is not: they cannot force you to love them. This fact may help explain why God sometimes seems shy to use his power. He created us to love him, but his most impressive displays of miracle—the kind we may secretly long for—do nothing to foster that love. As Douglas John Hall has put it, “God’s problem is not that God is not able to do certain things. God’s problem is that God loves. Love complicates the life of God as it complicates every life.” (Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God)

Our primary emphasis isn’t on physics and chemistry; it’s on the sciences of life.” “Is that a matter of principle?” “Not entirely. It’s also a matter of convenience and economic necessity. We don’t have the money for large-scale research in physics and chemistry, and we don’t really have any practical need for that kind of research—no heavy industries to be made more competitive, no armaments to be made more diabolical, not the faintest desire to land on the backside of the moon. Only the modest ambition to live as fully human beings in harmony with the rest of life on this island at this latitude on this planet. We can take the results of your researches in physics and chemistry and apply them, if we want to or can afford it, to our own purposes. Meanwhile we’ll concentrate on the research which promises to do us the greatest good—in the sciences of life and mind.

And in many other cities which for him were all identical - hotel, taxi. a hall in a cafe or club. These cities, these regular rows of blurry lamps marching past and suddenly advancing and encircling a stone horse in a square, were as much a habitual and unnecessary integument as the wooden pieces and the black and white board, and he accepted this external life as something inevitable but completely uninteresting. Similarly, in his way of dressing and in the manner of his everyday life, he was prompted by extremely dim motives, stopping to think about nothing, rarely changing his linens, automatically winding his watch at night, shaving with the same safety blade until it ceased to cut altogether, and feeding haphazardly and plainly. From some kind of melancholy inertia he continued to order at dinner the same mineral water, which effervesced slightly in the sinuses and evoked a tickling sensation in the corner of his eyes, like tears for the vanished Valentinov. Only rarely did he notice his own existence, when for example lack of breath - the revenge of a heavy body - forced him to halt with open mouth on a staircase, or when he had a toothache, or when at a late hour during his chess cogitations an outstretched hand shaking a matchbox failed to evoke in it the rattle of matches, and the cigarette that seemed to have been thrust unnoticed into his mouth by someone else suddenly grew and asserted itself, solid, soulless, and static, and his whole life became concentrated in the single desire to smoke, although goodness knows how many cigarettes had already been unconsciously consumed, In general, life around him was so opaque and demanded so little effort of him that it sometimes seemed someone - a mysterious, invisible manager - continued to take him from tournament to tournament; but occasionally there were odd moments, such quietness all around, and when you looked out into the corridor - shoes, shoes, shoes, standing at all the door, and in your ears the roar of loneliness.

So I explained to him what the Old One had told me. The process of braiding hair is like a prayer, he said. Each of the three strands in a single braid represents many things. In one instance they might represent faith, honesty and kindness. In another they might be mind, body and spirit, or love, respect and tolerance. The important thing, he explained, was that each strand be taken as representative of one essential human quality. As the men, or the women, braided their hair they concentrated or meditated on those three qualities. Once the braid was completed the process was repeated on the other side. Then as they walked through their day they had visible daily reminders of the human qualities they needed to carry through life with them. The Old One said they had at least about twenty minutes out of their day when they focused themselves entirely on spiritual principles. In this way, the people they came in contact with were the direct beneficiaries of that inward process. So braids, he said, reflected the true nature of Aboriginal people. They reflected a people who were humble enough to ask the Creator for help and guidance on a daily basis. They reflected truly human qualities within the people themselves: ideals they sought to live by. And they reflected a deep and abiding concern for the planet, for life, their people and themselves. Each time you braid your hair, he told me, you become another in a long line of spiritually based people and your prayer joins the countless others that have been offered up to the Creator since time began. You become a part of a rich and vibrant tradition. As the young boy listened I could see the same things going on in his face that must have gone on in my own. Suddenly, a braid became so much more than a hairstyle or a cultural signature. It became a connection to something internal as well as external - a signpost to identity, tradition and self-esteem. The words Indian, Native and Aboriginal took on new meaning and new impact.

The miracle of mindfulness is, first of all, that you are here. Being truly here is very important—being here for yourself, and for the one you love. How can you love if you are not here? A fundamental condition for love is your own presence. In order to love, you must be here. That is certain. Fortunately, being here is not a difficult thing to accomplish. It is enough to breathe and let go of thinking or planning. Just come back to yourself, concentrate on your breath, and smile. You are here, body and mind together. You are here, alive, completely alive. That is a miracle. Some people live as though they are already dead. There are people moving around us who are consumed by their past, terrified of their future, and stuck in their anger and jealousy. They are not alive; they are just walking corpses. If you look around yourself with mindfulness, you will see people going around like zombies. Have a great deal of compassion for the people around you who are living like this. They do not know that life is accessible only in the here and now.

Well, a man’s life is divided into two parts: there is his work and there is his own private life. Two small worlds which he has to make for himself. And it is only when he is old, and the time for decision is over, that he may realize he did not need to neglect one for the other. For if he concentrated too much on one of them, then he really confused their purposes. He had thought that either a successful career was life, or life itself was a career. He hadn’t realized that his work and his own private life should be given the same amount of thought, that they should grow along with each other, each influencing the other, each developing the other. Without that balance, he will find himself an incomplete man. That’s the tragic thing about age: to realize you have somehow never seen what is happiness until it was too late to start building it up. For it has to be built. Pleasure is a simple thing: you can choose it, buy it, even have it as a gift. It only depends on your taste. But happiness is much more complicated; you have to build it yourself.

As you are all aware, in the course of life we experience many kinds of pain. Pains of the body and pains of the heart. I know I have experienced pain in many different forms, and I'm sure you have too. In most cases, though, I'm sure you've found it very difficult to convey the truth of that pain to another person: to explain it in words. People say that only they themselves can understand the pain they are feeling. But is it true? I for one do not believe that it is. If, before our eyes, we see someone who is truly suffering, we do sometimes feel his suffering and pain as our own. This is the power of empathy. Am I making myself clear?'' He broke off and looked around the room once again. ''The reason that people sing songs for other people is because they want to have the power to arouse empathy, to break free of the narrow shell of the self and share their pain and joy with others. This is not an easy thing to do, of course. And so tonight, as kind of experiment, I want you to experience a simpler, more physical kind of empathy. Lights please.'' Everyone in the place was hushed now, all eyes fixed on stage. Amid the silence, the man stared off into space, as if to insert a pause or to reach a state of mental concentration. Then, without a word, he held his hand over the lighted candle. Little by little, he brought the palm closer and closer to the flame. Someone in the audience made a sound like a sigh or a moan. You could see the tip of the flame burning the man's palm. You could almost hear the sizzle of the flesh. A woman let out a hard little scream. Everyone else just watched in frozen horror. The man endured the pain, his face distorted in agony. What the hell was this? Why did he have to do such a stupid, senseless thing? I felt my mouth going dry. After five or six seconds of this, he slowly removed his hand from the flame and set the dish with the candle in it on the floor. Then he clasped his hands together, the right and left palms pressed against each other. ''As you have seen tonight, ladies and gentleman, pain can actually burn a person's flesh,'' said the man. His voice sounded exactly as it had earlier: quiet, steady, cool. No trace of suffering remained on his face. Indeed, it had been replaced by a faint smile. ''And the pain that must have been there, you have been able to feel as if it were your own. That is the power of empathy.

God, Jane, you’re exactly as I imagined. Only better.” “You’re exactly…as I imagined,” she said in a strained tone. “Only bigger.” That got his attention. He drew back to stare at her. “Are you all right?” She forced a smile. “Now I’m rethinking the seduction.” He brushed a kiss to her forehead. “Let’s see what I can do about that.” He grabbed her beneath her thighs. “Hook your legs around mine if you can.” When she did, the pressure eased some, and she let out a breath. “Better?” he rasped. She nodded. Covering her breast with his hand, he kneaded it gently as he pushed farther into her below. “It will feel even better if you can relax.” Relax? Might as well ask a tree to ignore the ax biting into it. “I’ll try,” she murmured. She forced herself to concentrate on other things than his very thick thing--like how he was touching her, how he was fondling her…how amazing it felt to be joined so intimately to the man she’d been waiting nearly half her life for. Then it got easier. She actually seemed to adjust to his size. And when he slid his hand down from her breast to stroke that special spot between her legs that sent her flying, it was most effective. She wasn’t quite flying, exactly, but she was definitely leaping a bit. A giggle escaped her at that thought, and he bit out, “Something strike you as funny, sweeting?” “I never guessed that…this would feel…so odd.” “You’ll get used to it.” The hint of a future for them melted her even more than his hand down there. And that’s when he began to move, sliding out and then back in. Heavens. That was intriguing. Rather nice, actually. The more he did it, the better it felt. Then he removed his hand so he could better grip her hips, and he plunged harder into her. Oh, now that was quite…oh my. Very, very nice. His gaze burned into her as he drove deep. “Less odd now?” he managed. “Definitely…less odd.” She kissed the taut line of his jaw. “Quite…enjoyable, in fact.” He grunted and buried his face in her hair the way he was burying his…thing inside her, and it was deliciously sinful. Now she really was flying, up toward the sun. As if he realized it, he dug his hands into her hips and thrust fiercely, repeatedly, and she met his rhythm with a pushing of her own that sent her soaring. “Dom…oh, Dom…oh my…” “Jane,” he rasped as his strokes grew frenzied. “It’s always…been you. Only you.” “Only you,” she echoed. She’d been fooling herself about Edwin. There had only ever been one man in her heart. And as he drove himself deep inside her, he sent her vaulting into the sun. When he followed her into the bliss, she clutched him close to her chest and prayed that he would let her inside his heart as deeply as she’d let him into hers. That she wasn’t making a mistake by taking up with him again. Because it was too late to go back now. This time, he had her for better or worse.

First experiences in life are very important. I never analyzed you, I always saw you. I never judged you, I always grasped you. When I left, I became lost. I was working, living, performing but you were missing, I don’t know why? I seriously don't understand why you are impacting so much on me? Can you clear in future if you have answer? We never talked too much but why this pain of departure is there? I have tried to forget you a lot, tried to delete the contact, tried to full concentrate on my life, sometime cried but there was not a single day when I didn't think about you. Am I really over thinker? I failed in your case, I failed. I have to accept the reality that to be good with you is the only solution which can make me happy & stable. Wherever I'll be in life, but this connectivity is necessary now. It is a part of life. I have so many questions for you. Have you ever missed me like I do? Everyday? I felt it, was that true? Do you really like to hear me? Or you are also in me? Or you are trying to suggest me some future planning? Are you shy? Less talker? You always tried to be open up with me? I always maintained safe distance? Was I too reserved? Was I egoistic? Yes, I was, but only in your case. Whatever you did for me that all was unsaid, pure, clear, fair. You were always nice to me? You never scold me, is this your part of nature? I heard so many cases of your temper? I never asked about you to people, they used to tell me about you by their own. Can I suggest you something? You are smart thinker but be careful from the people. Never be too kind to anyone, not all people have value of it. People never learn from the mistakes; they don’t want to create; they want to copy. I would say, don’t kind to me too, I have said so many things to you. I never seen so calm person. How? Do you have emotions? neutral? You never think on the things? Are you so productive? Are you innocent (in case of people)? Why can’t you understand that people makes show off in front of you only? Why are you giving so much importance to commerce people? Are they intelligent than engineers? Do you think so? Am I asking you so many questions? I really care for you & your selection of people. What are you actually see in the people? Obviously it’s your choice to answer it or not? At least I can ask my questions. Did I make a mistake according to you? For me, I was right, but I never asked you about you. As you said, I never gave you chance. For me, you are the chance giver & I am chance taker. I was scared by you. Did I hurt you? Hope I never made loss of you in any manner. I want to clear you one thing that apart from all my shit thinking, if you need any kind of assistance then please feel free to share. So what I have confess my love to you? It’s fine? Right? It’s natural, I had tried to control it a lot. Now I am more transparent, shameless & confident. I can face you in any condition. This change has changed my life.

You said to step on the brake to put us into drive, then to step on the right one to-" "Not at the same time!" "Well, you should have told me that. How was I supposed to know?" I snort. "You acted like the freaking Dalai Lama when I tried to tell you how to shift gears. I told you, one was for go and one was for stop. You can't stop and go at the same time! You have to make up your mind." From the expression on her face, she's either about to punch me or call me something really bad. She opens her mouth, but the really bad something doesn't come out; she shuts it again. Then she giggles. Now I've seen everything. "Galen tells me that all the time," she chortles. "That I can never make up my mind." Then she bursts out laughing so hard she spits all over the steering wheel. She keeps laughing until I'm convinced an unknown force is tickling her senseless. What? As far as I can tell, her indecisiveness almost got us killed. Killed isn't funny. "You should have seen your face," she says, between gulps of breaths. "You were all, like-" And she makes the face of a drunk clown. "I bet you wet yourself, didn't you?" She cracks herself up so much she clutches her side as if she's holding in her own guts. I feel my lips fracture into a smile before I can stop them. "You were more scared than me. You swallowed like ten flies while you were screaming." She spits all over the steering wheel again. And I spew laughter onto the dash. It takes a good five minutes for us to sober up enough for another driving lesson. My throat is dry, and my eyes are wet when I say, "Okay, now. Let's concentrate. The sun is going down. These woods probably get pretty creepy at night." She clears her throat, still giggling a little. "Okay. Concentrate. Right." "So, this time, when you take your foot off the brake, the car will go on its own. There, see?" We slink along the road at an idle two miles per hour. She huffs up at her bangs. "This is boring. I want to go faster." I start to say, "Not too fast," but she squashes the gas under her foot, and my words are snatched away by the wind. She gives a startled shout, which I find hypocritical because after all, I'm the one helpless in the passenger seat, and she's the one screaming like a teapot, turning the wheel back and forth like the road isn't straight as a pencil. "Brake, brake, brake!" I shout, hoping repetition will somehow penetrate the small part of her brain that actually thinks. Everything happens fast. We stop. There's a crunching sound. My face slams into the dash. No wait, the dash becomes an airbag. Rayna's scream is cut off by her airbag. I open my eyes. A tree. A freaking tree. The metal frame groans, and something under the hood lets out a mechanical hiss. Smoke billows up from the front, the universal symbol for "you're screwed." I turn to the rustling sound beside me. Rayna is wrestling with the airbag like it has attacked her instead of saved her life. "What is this thing?" she wails, pushing it out of her way and opening the door. One Mississippi...two Mississippi... "Well, are you just going to sit there? We have a long walk home. You're not hurt are you? Because I can't carry you." Three Mississippi...four Mississippi... "What are those flashing blue lights down there?

That is exactly what I did once, for instance, when a rabbi from Eastern Europe turned to me and told me his story. He had lost his first wife and their six children in the concentration camp of Auschwitz where they were gassed, and now it turned out that his second wife was sterile. I observed that procreation is not the only meaning of life, for then life in itself would become meaningless, and something which in itself is meaningless cannot be rendered meaningful merely by its perpetuation. However, the rabbi evaluated his plight as an orthodox Jew in terms of despair that there was no son of his own who would ever say Kaddish6 for him after his death. But I would not give up. I made a last attempt to help him by inquiring whether he did not hope to see his children again in Heaven. However, my question was followed by an outburst of tears, and now the true reason for his despair came to the fore: he explained that his children, since they died as innocent martyrs,7 were thus found worthy of the highest place in Heaven, but as for himself he could not expect, as an old, sinful man, to be assigned the same place. I did not give up but retorted, “Is it not conceivable, Rabbi, that precisely this was the meaning of your surviving your children: that you may be purified through these years of suffering, so that finally you, too, though not innocent like your children, may become worthy of joining them in Heaven? Is it not written in the Psalms that God preserves all your tears?8 So perhaps none of your sufferings were in vain.” For the first time in many years he found relief from his suffering through the new point of view which I was able to open up to him.

The Manifestation Manifesto Meditation” "Right now, I find a quiet and comfortable space where I can easily concentrate on these words as I gently read them aloud. "With the sound of my voice I soothe my nervous system … calm my entire body and relax my thoughts. I speak slowly … with a gentle but resonant tone. And as I do, I start to relax now. "I keep my eyes open and let them blink naturally when they want to … and they might start to feel slightly heavy and droopy … as they would feel when I read a book before going to sleep. “I use my imagination so that with every word I become more relaxed and drowsier. (Imagine feeling drowsy.). I keep my eyes open just enough to take in the following words. "I turn my attention to my breathing, and use this opportunity to relax my mind and body more deeply. "As I count my exhalations backwards from five to one, I let each number represent a gradually deeper level of relaxation and heightened focus. (Draw a breath before reading each number, and count as you exhale.) "Five … I double my relaxation and increase my concentration. "Four … With every number and every breath, I relax. "Three … I count slowly as I meditate deeper … deeper still. "Two … I use my imagination to double this meditative state. "One … My body is relaxed as my mind remains focused. (Pause for five seconds and breathe normally.) "At this level of meditation, people experience different things. Some notice interesting body sensations … such as a warmth or tingling in their fingers. I might also have that experience. (Pause five seconds.) "Some people feel a floating sensation … with a dreamy quality. I may experience that. (Pause five seconds.) "Whatever sensations I experience are exactly right for me at this moment. Whether I feel something unusual now or at some other time, I let that process happen on its own as I focus on the following manifesto. “I allow my subconscious to absorb the manifesto as I read each affirmation with purpose and conviction. (Pause for five seconds.) “The power to manifest is fully mine, here and now. “I acknowledge and embrace my power to manifest. “All human beings have this power, yet I choose to use it consciously and purposefully. “From the unlimited energy of the Universe, I attract all that I need to experience joy and abundance. “I recognize and consider the consequences of all that I manifest. I take full responsibility. “With awareness and intention, I apply my power for my highest good and for the welfare of others. “All of my manifestations reflect my inner state of being. Therefore, I ever seek to grow in wisdom and to become a better person. “With relaxed confidence, I employ the powers of Thought, Emotion and Vital Energy to manifest my desires.  “I let go of beliefs and ideas that suppress or encumber me and I cultivate those which empower me. “I accept what I manifest with appreciation and satisfaction. I am thankful. “I go forth with great enthusiasm with the realization that I manifest my life and circumstances. “I am ready to take charge of my manifestations from this moment onward.” “Day by day, I grow in awareness of my power to manifest my desires with speed and accuracy.” RECOMMENDED READING * Mastering Manifestation: A Practical System for Rapidly Creating Your Dream Reality - Adam James * Banned Manifestation Secrets - Richard Dotts * Manifesting: The Secret behind the Law of Attraction - Alexander Janzer * The Secret Science Behind Miracles - Max Freedom Long * The Kybalion - Three Initiates

Eventually the term ended and I was on the windy mountain road to camp, still slightly worried that I’d made a wrong turn in life. My doubt, however, was short-lived. The camp delivered on its promise, concentrating all the idylls of youth: beauty manifest in lakes, mountains, people; richness in experience, conversation, friendships. Nights during a full moon, the light flooded the wilderness, so it was possible to hike without a headlamp. We would hit the trail at two A.M., summiting the nearest peak, Mount Tallac, just before sunrise, the clear, starry night reflected in the flat, still lakes spread below us. Snuggled together in sleeping bags at the peak, nearly ten thousand feet up, we weathered frigid blasts of wind with coffee someone had been thoughtful enough to bring. And then we would sit and watch as the first hint of sunlight, a light tinge of day blue, would leak out of the eastern horizon, slowly erasing the stars. The day sky would spread wide and high, until the first ray of the sun made an appearance. The morning commuters began to animate the distant South Lake Tahoe roads. But craning your head back, you could see the day’s blue darken halfway across the sky, and to the west, the night remained yet unconquered—pitch-black, stars in full glimmer, the full moon still pinned in the sky. To the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night. It was as if this were the moment God said, “Let there be light!” You could not help but feel your specklike existence against the immensity of the mountain, the earth, the universe, and yet still feel your own two feet on the talus, reaffirming your presence amid the grandeur.

Mr. Rudolph reaches out and lifts the flower out of its vase. "To a flower, this photograph means nothing. So when you ask what is the meaning of life, there can be no answer that will apply to everyone and everything. What is a photograph, or a sunset, to a flower? We all bring our own perceptions, needs, and experiences to everything we do. We will all interpret an event, or a sunset, differently." He pauses, and I am trying to keep up with him. "Basically," I (Jeremy) say slowly, concentrating on my words. "What you're saying is that it's all relative. The meaning of the sunset, or of life itself, is different for everyone?" Exactly," he says. ... As we head slowly into the big room, I turn to him and ask, "But even if the sunset has different meanings for everyone, it still has meaning, right?" "That's a tricky question to answer," Mr. Rudolph says, stopping to replace the frame back on the wall. "That sunset will still shine just as surely, just as colorfully, whether it is shining on a wedding or a war. So it would seem that the sunset itself doesn't have inherent meaning; it is just doing its job. If the sunset doesn't have meaning apart from what we give it, does a rock? Or a fish? Or life itself? But just because a park bench, for instance, doesn't have meaning, that doesn't mean it doesn't have worth." ... We have reached the door now, and I'm not sure I'm any closer to understanding what's in the box. My shoulders sag. "Maybe this will help clear things up," Mr. Rudolph says. "You need to be sure of the question you are asking. Sometimes people think they are looking for the meaning of life, when really they are looking for an understanding of why they are here. What their purpose is, the purpose of life in general. And that is a much easier question to answer that the meaning of life." Lizzy is already halfway out the door. "It is?" I ask, pulling her back in by the sleeve. ... "You are the same as the lamp, the chair, the flower," Mr. Rudolph explains. "All you have to do is be the most authentic you that you can be. Find out who you really are, find out why you are here, and you will find your purpose. And with it, the meaning of life.

I’m sorry, I should have realized you’d be hungry. If you let me give you intravenous fluids, it would help.” The moment she put the glass down, she retreated to her computer desk. He ignored her comment. Why do you not feed? The question was asked casually, curiously. His black eyes were thoughtful as he studied her. From her position of safety across the room, Shea watched him. The weight of his gaze alone broke her concentration, took her breath away. She was feeling far too possessive of this patient. She had no right to tangle her life around his. It was frightening that she was reacting so uncharacteristically to him. She had always felt aloof, remote, detached from people and things around her. Her analytical mind simply computed facts. But right now, she could think only of him, his pain and suffering, the way his eyes watched her, half-closed, sexy. Shea nearly jumped out of her skin. Where had that thought come from? Knowing she wouldn’t want to think he was reading her mind at that precise moment, Jacques did the gentlemanly thing and pretended merely a casual interest. It was nice to know she found him sexy. Smugly he lay back with his eyes closed, long lashes dark against his washed-out complexion. Despite the fact that his eyes were closed, Shea felt as though he witnessed every move she made. “You rest while I shower and change my clothes.” Her hands went to her hair in a futile effort to tidy the wild thickness of it. His eyes remained closed, his breathing relaxed. I can feel your hunger, your need for blood nearly as great as my own. Why would you attempt to hide this from me? With sudden insight he let out his breath. Or is it that you are hiding from your own needs? That is it--you do not realize it is your hunger, your need. The gentleness in his flooded her body with unexpected heat. Furious that he could be right, she stalked into the bathroom, shrugged off her robe, and allowed the warm shower to cascade over her head. His laughter was low and taunting. You think to escape me, little red hair? I live in you as you live in me. Shea gasped, whirled around, grabbed frantically for a towel. It took a moment to realize he was still in the other room.

Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies. It is the glimpse of oneself in a storefront window, the unbidden awareness of reactions on the faces of other people- the novelist’s world, not the poet’s. I’ve lived there. I remember what the city has to offer; human companionship, major league baseball, and a clatter of quickening stimulus like a rush from strong drugs that leaves you drained. I remember how you bide your time in the city, and think, if you stop to think, “next year, I’ll start living…next year I’ll start my life.” Innocence is a better world. Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough, and time. Innocence is not the prerogative of infants and puppies, and far less of mountains and fixed stars, which have no prerogatives at all. It is not lost to us; the world is a better place than that. Like any other of the spirit’s good gifts, it is there if you want it, free for the asking, as has been stressed by stronger words than mine. It is possible to pursue innocence as hounds pursue hares; singlemindledly, driven by a kind of love, crashing over creeks, keening and lost in fields and forests, circling, vaulting over hedges and hills wide-eyed, giving loud tongue all unawares to the deepest, most incomprehensible longing, a root-flame in the heart, and that warbling chorus resounding back from the mountains, hurling itself from ridge to ridge over the valley, now faint, now clear ringing the air through which the hounds tear, open-mouthed, the echoes of their own wails dimly knocking in their lungs. What I call innocence is the spirit’s unselfconscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration. One needn’t be, shouldn’t be reduced to a puppy. If you wish to tell me that the city offers galleries, I’ll pour you a drink and enjoy your company while it lasts; but I’ll bear with me to my grave those pure moments at the Tate (was it the Tate?) where I stood planted, open-mouthed, born, before that one particular canvas, that river, up to my neck, gasping, lost, receding into watercolor depth and depth to the vanishing point, buoyant, awed, and had to be literally hauled away. These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present.

As you are all aware, in the course of life we experience many kinds of pain. Pains of the body and pains of the heart. I know I have experienced pain in many different forms, and I'm sure you have too. In most cases, though, I'm sure you've found it very difficult to convey the truth of that pain to another person: to explain it in words. People say that only they themselves can understand the pain they are feeling. But is it true? I for one do not believe that it is. If, before our eyes, we see someone who is truly suffering, we do sometimes feel his suffering and pain as our own. This is the power of empathy. Am I making myself clear?'' He broke off and looked around the room once again. ''The reason that people sing songs for other people is because they want to have the power to arouse empathy, to break free of the narrow shell of the self and share their pain and joy with others. This is not an easy thing to do, of course. And so tonight, as a kind of experiment, I want you to experience a simpler, more physical kind of empathy. Lights please.'' Everyone in the place was hushed now, all eyes fixed on stage. Amid the silence, the man stared off into space, as if to insert a pause or to reach a state of mental concentration. Then, without a word, he held his hand over the lighted candle. Little by little, he brought the palm closer and closer to the flame. Someone in the audience made a sound like a sigh or a moan. You could see the tip of the flame burning the man's palm. You could almost hear the sizzle of the flesh. A woman let out a hard little scream. Everyone else just watched in frozen horror. The man endured the pain, his face distorted in agony. What the hell was this? Why did he have to do such a stupid, senseless thing? I felt my mouth going dry. After five or six seconds of this, he slowly removed his hand from the flame and set the dish with the candle in it on the floor. Then he clasped his hands together, the right and left palms pressed against each other. ''As you have seen tonight, ladies and gentleman, pain can actually burn a person's flesh,'' said the man. His voice sounded exactly as it had earlier: quiet, steady, cool. No trace of suffering remained on his face. Indeed, it had been replaced by a faint smile. ''And the pain that must have been there, you have been able to feel as if it were your own. That is the power of empathy.

He took a breath. He could feel his anxiety fade; he could feel himself returning to who he was. 'But would you sing with me?' Every morning for the past two months, they had been singing with each other in preparation for Duets. In the film, his character and the character's wife led an annual Christmas pageant, and both he and the actress playing his wife would be performing their own vocals. The director had sent him a list of songs to work on, and Jude had been practicing with him: Jude took the melody, and he took the harmony. 'Sure,' Jude said. 'Our usual?' For the past week, they'd been working on 'Adeste Fideles,' which he would have to sing a cappella, and for the past week, he'd been pitching sharp at the exact same point, at 'Venite adoremus,' right in the first stanza. He'd wince every time he did it, hearing the error, and Jude would shake his head at him and keep going, and he'd follow him until the end. 'You're overthinking it,' Jude would say. 'When you go sharp, its because you're concentrating too hard on staying on key; just don't think about it, Willem, and you'll get it.' That morning, though, he felt certain he'd get it right. He gave Jude the bunch of herbs, which he was still holding, and Jude thanked him, pinching its little purple flowers between his fingers to release its perfume. 'I think it's a kind of perilla,' he said, and held his fingers up for Willem to smell. 'Nice,' he said, and they smiled at each other. And so Jude began, and he followed, and he made it through without going sharp. And at the end of the song, just after the last note, Jude immediately began singing the next song on the list, 'For Unto Us a Child Is Born,' and after that, 'Good King Wenceslas,' and again and again, Willem followed. His voice wasn't as full as Jude's, but he could tell in those moments that it was good enough, that it was maybe better than good enough: he could tell it sounded better with Jude's, and he closed his eyes and let himself appreciate it. They were still singing when the doorbell chimed with their breakfast, but as he was standing, Jude put his hand on his wrist, and they remained there, Jude sitting, he standing, until they had sung the last words of the song, and only after they had finished did he go to answer the door. Around him, the room was redolent of the unknown herb he'd found, green and fresh and yet somehow familiar, like something he hadn't known he had liked until it had appeared, suddenly and unexpectedly, in his life.

It’s like you jump out of your own skin at the slightest sound because you’re just waiting around for something else to happen. I wish I could tell you that was never going to be the case…but I’ve learned the hard way…and I’m sure you have to, that life doesn’t work that way. There’s no “fair share” as we as humans like to believe…if there was, everyone in this room would be exempt from anything bad ever happening again. So, in my humble opinion…and bear with me, I’m new at this…We need to concentrate on the positives. We found each other. We’re all alive and well, getting stronger every day…

Over time, the life of a productive artist becomes filled with useful conventions and practical methods, so that a string of finished pieces continues to appear at the surface. And in truly happy moments those artistic gestures move beyond simple procedure, and acquire an inherent aesthetic all their own. They are your artistic hearth and home, the working-places-to-be that link form and feeling. They become — like the dark colors and asymmetrical lilt of the Mazurka — inseparable from the life of their maker. They are canons. They allow confidence and concentration. They allow not knowing. They allow the automatic and unarticulated to remain so. Once you have found the work you are meant to do, the particulars of any single piece don’t matter all that much.

You can gaze over the fence and covet another person’s life or tell yourself that God has blessed you in ways you never could have earned. Do you ever battle with envy? Have you ever wondered why someone else’s life seems easier than yours? Have you ever struggled to celebrate the blessings of someone else who had what you thought you needed? Have you ever wished you could just switch lives with someone? Perhaps there are ways in which envy haunts us all, so it’s worth examining the heart of envy. What things prepare the heart for envy? Envy is forgetful. In concentrating on what we don’t have that we think we should have, we fail to keep in mind the huge catalog of blessings that are ours simply because God has chosen to place his bountiful love on us. This forgetfulness causes us to do more comparing and complaining than praising and resting. Envy misunderstands blessing. So often envy is fueled by misunderstanding what God’s care looks like. It is not always the care of provision, relief, or release. Sometimes God’s blessing comes in the form of trials that are his means of giving us things we could get no other way. Envy is selfish. Envy tends to put us in the center of our own worlds. It tends to make everything about our comfort and ease, our wants, needs, and feelings, and not about the plan and the glory of the God we serve. Envy is self-righteous. Envy has an “I deserve _____ more than they do” posture to it. It forgets that we all deserve immediate and eternal punishment, and that any good thing we have is an undeserved gift of God’s amazing grace. Envy is shortsighted. Envy has a right here, right now aspect to it that overlooks the fact that this moment is not all there is. Envy cannot see that this moment isn’t meant to be a destination, but a preparation for a final destination that will be beautiful beyond our wildest imagination. Envy questions God’s wisdom. When you and I envy, we tend to buy into the thought that we are smarter than God. In envy, we tend to think we know more and better, and if our hands were on the joystick, we would be handling things a different way. Envy is impatient. Envy doesn’t like to wait. Envy complains quickly and tires easily. Envy doesn’t just cry for blessings; it cries for blessings now. What is devastating about envy is that it questions God’s goodness, and when you do that, you quit running to him for help. So cry out for rescue—that God would give you a thankful, humble, and patient heart. His transforming grace is your only defense against envy. For further study and encouragement: Psalm 34

When you sit, you are not allowing your impulses to translate into action. For the time being, at least, you are just watching them. Looking at them, you quickly see that all impulses in the mind arise and pass away, that they have a life of their own, that they are not you but just thinking, and that you do not have to be ruled by them. Not feeding or reacting to impulses, you come to understand their nature as thoughts directly. This process actually burns up destructive impulses in the fires of concentration and equanimity and non-doing. At the same time, creative insights and creative impulses are no longer squeezed out so much by the more turbulent, destructive ones. They are nourished as they are perceived and held in awareness. Mindfulness can thereby refashion the links in the chain of actions and consequences, and in doing so it unchains us, frees us, and opens up new directions for us through the moments we call life. Without mindfulness, we are all too easily stuck in the momentum coming out of the past, with no clue to our own imprisonment, and no way out. Our dilemma always seems to be the other person’s fault, or the world’s fault, so our own views and feelings are always justified. The present moment is never a new beginning because we keep it from becoming one.

✽  Throughout the day, practise bringing your attention back to the present moment, rather than allowing it to wander off into daydreams, rumination about the past, or worry about the future. ✽  If you have to think about something else, that’s okay, but try to keep one eye on the present moment, by noticing how you’re using your body and mind – try to be aware of each second that passes. ✽  If it helps, imagine that you’re seeing the world for the first time, or that this is your last day of life, and concentrate your attention on how you actually think and act, from moment to moment. ✽  Remind yourself that the past and future are ‘indifferent’ to you, and that the supreme good, and eudaimonia, can only exist within you, right now, in the present moment. Start by making the effort to spend more of your day being aware of the ‘here and now’, particularly your own thoughts and actions. Evaluate this process, though. What are the ‘pros and cons’ of doing this? How could you make more of the advantages and deal with or prevent any perceived disadvantages?

Be there truly. Be there with 100% of yourself, in every moment of your daily life. That is the essence of true Buddhist meditation. Mindfulness is the energy that helps us to be there 100%. It is the energy of your true presence. Mindfulness brings concentration. Concentration brings insight. Insight liberates you from your ignorance, your anger, your craving. When you are free from your afflictions, happiness becomes possible. Mindfulness and concentration and such sources of happiness. That's why a good practitioner knows how to create a moment of joy, a feeling of happiness, at any time. Handling the present moment with all your attention, all your intelligence, is already building a future. Silence is something that comes from your heart, not your outside. In Buddhism we cultivate aimlessness and in fact in Buddhist tradition the ideal person, an arhat or a bodhisattva, is a businessless person - someone with nowhere to go and nothing to do. People should learn how to just be there, doing nothing. Often it is our own knowledge that is the biggest obstacle to us touching suchness. That is why it's very important to learn how to release our own views. Knowledge is the obstacle to knowledge. If you are dogmatic in your way of thinking, it is very difficult to receive new insights, to conceive of new theories and understanding about the world. Real happiness cannot exist when we ar enot free. Burdened by so many ambitions, we are not able to be free. A human being is like a television set with millions of channels. If we turn the Buddha on, we are the Buddha. If we turn sorrow on, we are sorrow. If we turn a smile on, we really are the smile. We can't let just one channel dominate us. We have the seeds of everything in us. If we aren't doing something with joy, that moment is wasted. There's a natural tendency in us to seek pleasure and to avoid suffering. We have to instruct our mind that suffering can sometimes be very helpful. Thanks to suffering, we begin to understand. And because we understand, we can accept, we can love. According to the Buddha, the birth of a human being is not a beginning but a continuation and when we are born, all the different kinds of seeds - seeds of goodness, of cruelty, of awakening - are already inside us. Whether the goodness of cruelty in us is revealed depends on what seeds we cultivate, our actions and our way of life. Life is both dreadful and wonderful. To practice meditation is to be in touch with both aspects. Please do not think we must be solemn in order to meditate. In fact, to meditate well, we have to smile a lot. Do not be a prisoner of any doctrine or ideology, even Buddhist ones.

The key, he wrote, is to “concentrate on this for your whole life long: for your mind to be in the right state.” That includes “welcoming wholeheartedly whatever comes,” “trusting that all is for the best,” and “not worrying too often, or with any selfish motive, about what other people say. Or do, or think.” Marcus Aurelius considered it futile to fret or complain about anything beyond his control. He focused instead on mastering his own thoughts and behaving virtuously so he would meet his moral obligations. “Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions,” he argued. “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been. It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you.” He sought “to be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.

people are making more mistakes in their work than ever before because they aren’t present to what they’re doing. Their precious concentration has been hijacked by a foolish use of technology and their priceless focus has been kidnapped, costing them their chance to create their best work and calibrate their finest lives.

Self-Analysis Questionnaire for Personal Inventory. 1.   Have I attained the goal which I established as my objective for this year? (You should work with a definite yearly objective to be attained as a part of your major life objective.) 2.   Have I delivered service of the best possible quality of which I was capable, or could I have improved any part of this service? 3. Have I delivered service in the greatest possible quantity of which I was capable? 4. Has the spirit of my conduct been harmonious and cooperative at all times? 5. Have I permitted the habit of procrastination to decrease my efficiency, and if so, to what extent? 6. Have I improved my personality, and if so, in what ways? 7. Have I been persistent in following my plans through to completion? 8. Have I reached decisions promptly and definitely on all occasions? 9. Have I permitted any one or more of the six basic fears to decrease my efficiency? 10. Have I been either over-cautious, or under-cautious? 11. Has my relationship with my associates in work been pleasant, or unpleasant? If it has been unpleasant, has the fault been partly, or wholly mine? 12. Have I dissipated any of my energy through lack of concentration of effort? 13. Have I been open-minded and tolerant in connection with all subjects? 14. In what way have I improved my ability to render service? 15. Have I been intemperate in any of my habits? 16. Have I expressed, either openly or secretly, any form of egotism? 17. Has my conduct toward my associates been such that it has induced them to respect me? 18. Have my opinions and decisions been based upon guesswork, or accuracy of analysis and thought? 19. Have I followed the habit of budgeting my time, my expenses, and my income, and have I been conservative in these budgets? 20. How much time have I devoted to unprofitable effort which I might have used to better advantage? 21. How may I re-budget my time, and change my habits so I will be more efficient during the coming year? 22. Have I been guilty of any conduct which was not approved by my conscience? 23. In what ways have I rendered more service and better service than I was paid to render? 24. Have I been unfair to anyone, and if so, in what way? 25. If I had been the purchaser of my own services for the year, would I be satisfied with my purchase? 26. Am I in the right vocation, and if not, why not? 27. Has the purchaser of my services been satisfied with the service I have rendered, and if not, why not? 28. What is my present rating on the fundamental principles of success? (Make this rating fairly and frankly, and have it checked by someone who is courageous enough to do it accurately.)

I would ask you to expand on what the goal of meditation is from your perspective. HH Dalai Lama: The objective of spiritual practice in the traditional context of Buddhism was well summarized by Ajahn Amaro in the framework of the three trainings: ethical discipline, cultivating concentration, which is the meditation practice, and, based upon that, cultivating insight. At the initial stage, because some of our impulsive behavior is destructive and damaging, we need to find a way to restrain ourselves from engaging in these impulsive, destructive actions. This first stage of training is where we deliberately adopt a set of precepts or a code of life, which is the training in ethical discipline. Since these impulsive, destructive behaviors really stem from a restless, undisciplined state of mind, we need to find a way of dealing with them directly. But our normal state of mind is so dissipated and unfocused that the mind cannot deal with mental problems immediately. Therefore one must first cultivate a degree of mental stability, an ability to focus. This is where the second training in concentration or meditation comes in. On that basis, once we have a certain degree of stability, then we are able to use our mind, empowered with a focused attention, to deal with destructive emotions and habitual thought patterns. The antidote that overcomes the negative and destructive tendencies of the mind is insight.

Your delinquency inverse gets decimated only when you do not debauch yourself through iron-handed and undemolished energy in your output. It is not raving your functional style. Today the world is becoming dilapidated and abase to nature and this climate, which has a direct effect in depolarizing and unbracing the life of man. To put it plainly, man is ferocious, vitriolic, devilish, and stoneyhearted. This is happening, and nature is depreciating, rotting, and perishing. This is an unusable, barbarous, grisly, and spiteful comprehension. This is an exceptional aspersion for this environment; this is your own debacle. If you do not want eradication, then you will have to do everything benign, placable, and mild in a conviction state. In the detraction method, there is a heteroclite of things that calumniate anyone's socialist moves by which people take out-turns of malediction and mudslinging in actions. If there is slander in the power of subjects, then it triggers an exclusionary state of concentration where fierce denigration is fixed in functionality, where there is a gathering of dire, satanic, and highhanded and cruel people with extirpation. Here lives have neither amiable nor placid mentality without healing of wellness; there is only collision of competition, which gives adverse and splash dilemmas in unconventional states.

Set the table: Decide exactly what you want. Clarity is essential. Write out your goals and objectives before you begin. Plan every day in advance: Think on paper. Every minute you spend in planning can save you five or ten minutes in execution. Apply the 80/20 Rule to everything: Twenty percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results. Always concentrate your efforts on that top 20 percent. Consider the consequences: Your most important tasks and priorities are those that can have the most serious consequences, positive or negative, on your life or work. Focus on these above all else. Practice creative procrastination: Since you can't do everything, you must learn to deliberately put off those tasks that are of low value so that you have enough time to do the few things that really count. Use the ABCDE Method continually: Before you begin work on a list of tasks, take a few moments to organize them by value and priority so you can be sure of working on your most important activities. Focus on key result areas: Identify and determine those results that you absolutely, positively have to get to do your job well, and work on them all day long. The Law of Three: Identify the three things you do in your work that account for 90 percent of your contribution, and focus on getting them done before anything else. You will then have more time for your family and personal life. Prepare thoroughly before you begin: Have everything you need at hand before you start. Assemble all the papers, information, tools, work materials, and numbers you might require so that you can get started and keep going. Take it one oil barrel at a time: You can accomplish the biggest and most complicated job if you just complete it one step at a time. Upgrade your key skills: The more knowledgeable and skilled you become at your key tasks, the faster you start them and the sooner you get them done. Leverage your special talents: Determine exactly what it is that you are very good at doing, or could be very good at, and throw your whole heart into doing those specific things very, very well. Identify your key constraints: Determine the bottlenecks or choke points, internal or external, that set the speed at which you achieve your most important goals, and focus on alleviating them. Put the pressure on yourself: Imagine that you have to leave town for a month, and work as if you had to get all your major tasks completed before you left. Maximize your personal power: Identify your periods of highest mental and physical energy each day, and structure your most important and demanding tasks around these times. Get lots of rest so you can perform at your best. Motivate yourself into action: Be your own cheerleader. Look for the good in every situation. Focus on the solution rather than the problem. Always be optimistic and constructive. Get out of the technological time sinks: Use technology to improve the quality of your communications, but do not allow yourself to become a slave to it. Learn to occasionally turn things off and leave them off. Slice and dice the task: Break large, complex tasks down into bite-sized pieces, and then do just one small part of the task to get started. Create large chunks of time: Organize your days around large blocks of time where you can concentrate for extended periods on your most important tasks. Develop a sense of urgency: Make a habit of moving fast on your key tasks. Become known as a person who does things quickly and well. Single handle every task: Set clear priorities, start immediately on your most important task, and then work without stopping until the job is 100 percent complete. This is the real key to high performance and maximum personal productivity.

I must concentrate all of my energies on the enfranchisement of my own sex! She had named and claimed her calling. Here is concentration of purpose. This declaration, as we shall see, unified her energy in extraordinary ways.

It was in her garden that whatever physical grace Abigail St. Croix possessed asserted itself. She moved among her flowers with consummate natural fluidity, enjoying the incommunicable pleasures of growing things with the patience and concentration of a watchmaker. In this, her small, green country, surrounded by an embrasure of old Charleston brick, there were camellias of distinction, eight discrete varieties of azaleas, and a host of other flowers, but she directed her prime attention to the growing of roses. She had taught me to love flowers since I had known her; I had learned that each variety had its own special personality, its own distinctive and individual way of presenting itself to the world. She told me of the shyness of columbine, the aggression of ivy, and the diseases that affected gardenias. Some flowers were arrogant invaders and would overrun the entire garden if allowed too much freedom. Some were so diffident and fearful that in their fragile reticence often lived the truest, most infinitely prized beauty. She spoke to her flowers unconsciously as we made our way to the roses in the rear of the garden. “You can learn a lot from raising roses, Will. I’ve always told you that.” “I’ve never raised a good weed, Abigail. I could kill kudzu.” “Then one part of your life is empty,” she declared. “There’s a part of the spirit that’s not being fed.

I had not yet gotten around to the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson’s Consilience. When I did read it, I discovered on page 286 that people follow religion because it is “easier” than empiricism. That struck a nerve, and provoked a response I shall be candid enough to report. Mr. Wilson: When you have endured an eight-day O-sesshin in a Zen monastery, sitting cross-legged and motionless for twelve hours a day and allowed only three and one-half hours of sleep each night until sleep and dream deprivation bring on a temporary psychosis (my own nondescript self); When you have attended four “rains retreats” at the Insight Buddhist Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts, for a total of one complete year of no reading, no writing, no speaking, and eyes always downcast (my wife); When you have almost died from the austerities you underwent before you attained enlightenment under a bo tree in India; When you have been crucified on Golgatha; When you have been thrown to lions in the Roman coliseum; When you have been in a concentration camp and held on to some measure of dignity through your faith; When you have given your life to providing a dignified death for homeless, destitute women gathered from the streets of Calcutta (Mother Teresa), or played out her counterpart with the poor in New York City (Dorothy Day); When, Mr. Wilson, you have undergone any one of these trials, it will then be time to talk about the ease of religion as compared with the ardors of empiricism.

Rooms For Rent Atlanta That Cater To Your Personal Growth Are you looking for just the right room to rent? Maybe you have the resources you need to find it yourself. After all, this is the age of the search engine, and plenty of information is available to anyone who seriously looks for it. There is a wide variety of choice, so you can concentrate only on those homes that might potentially be for you. There are plenty of advantages to occupying rooms for rent atlanta. You save a lot of money paying only part of the expenses you would normally pay for when you have a house of your own. This is because you only have to pay your share of the rent, water, electricity and heat bills. But there are disadvantages to house share too. Conflicts can arise when you live in house that is not yours, especially if you rent a room in a house where the other residents are from a different background than yours. Having a nice place to stay can even help your physical health, and it surely affects your mental health. You may find a place also that comes with furniture already in it. This would allow you to get by with spending less on not only the furniture but the transportation too. Sometimes you can actually save money finding rooms for rent atlanta in the country. This depends on how often you plan to visit the city. If you have a job you can do from home, or if you are retired and collecting benefits, then there is no real reason for you to pay the extra money to live in the city. Of course there are many choices you need to make while you are searching for a room. Some people just do not enjoy living alone. Renting an entire apartment to oneself can, indeed, be a lonely experience. For those who want an easy opportunity to socialize, then, renting a room is a great option. It is little wonder that so many houses on campuses around the country are full of young students renting rooms - its partly for convenience, and definitely partly for the chance to be among others their own age. Renting a room provides the chance to be among one’s peers. There are many more benefits, but perhaps the biggest and best is the advantage of not being locked into something for life. Room rentals can be very appealing, and they can complement the kind of lifestyle you want and deserve. If you want to find the spirit or soul of a city, move right in with its inhabitants. You may benefit socially by taking a couple of classes at the local college. You might try looking for rooms for rent atlanta where there are games, indoor or outdoor. This is a great way to meet people and get started in your new life. Depending on the weather, you might want a pool or access to a gym or tennis courts. Maybe you are attracted to the kind of community that has stunning architecture and green trees and plants. There may be a certain type of street design that appeals to you.

Part 1. My Life Story. - If I can do it, so can you- I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. for 23 years I lived under the communist regime, where everyone was poor, there was no rich people beside the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down, for instance I remember when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "When I get older I want to be a beautician." With a smire on her face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" At that time I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolate myself from all the negative people until one day I asked my uncle to help me to get in a beauty college, he knew people in town that's why, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his words whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for poor children, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "No one can tell me what I can and can't do" They just motivated me to prove them wrong. Poor children can go to college. So I decided to make a very big move my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of that hell place, communist regime and all the negative people.I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape the communist and followed my dreams. I was also escaped from army who was chasing to kill us, but mighty God was with us. We made the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" but I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months there in concentration camp. There I meet the love of my life also, we dated for five months, until his visa was approved to come in US, two months later I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united, neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable, at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face. We were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement. Yes we were sharing a single / twin size bed, we had to saved money so we can get our own apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet, I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it, we can sleep on the carpet" later on a co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with. Later that year our 1st child /daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was getting way better than living under the communist regime, later on we have two more children. We decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, I can get back to work or go to school . On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania" By that time have I learning enough English to continued my education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, remember I told you I always wanted to be a beautician. I found a job in a local salon, couple months later I was promoted to a salon manager. I did it for me and not for them who did not believed on me, As I said " I never cared

Part 1. My Life Story. - If I can do it, so can you- I was born and lived in one of the most oldest and most beautiful cities in Albania. for 23 years I lived under the communist regime, where everyone was poor, there was no rich people beside the Elite group who dictate the country. Since I was little girl I dreamed of fairy tale life. But for some reason no one was supportive of my dreams. It looked like they were enjoying watching us living in poverty and keep our heads down, for instance I remember when I was in 5th grade I told my literature teacher "When I get older I want to be a beautician." With a smire on her face she said "You are going to be just like your mother, keep having kids in a row" At that time I did not understood what she meant, but I did not expected that answer from an "educated" person, especially your teacher. As I got older I started to isolate myself from all the negative people until one day I asked my uncle to help me to get in a beauty college, he knew people in town that's why, I did not wanted to believe he respond. Even today I can hear his words whisper in my ears, telling me "Beauty college is not for poor children, education is only for rich kids" But that did not stopped me either, I told myself "No one can tell me what I can and can't do" They just motivated me to prove them wrong. Poor children can go to college. So I decided to make a very big move my that would either end it my life or could change my life for ever. Sep 2, 1990 I had it enough of that hell place, communist regime and all the negative people.I decided to leave everyone behind me and move forward in life, I decided to escape the communist and followed my dreams. I was also escaped from army who was chasing to kill us, but mighty God was with us. We made the local news saying "Two young girls were killed today by army forces escaping the borders" but I made it alive to Yugoslavia, I spend almost seven months there in concentration camp. There I meet the love of my life also, we dated for five months, until his visa was approved to come in US, two months later I come to state on March of 1991. New place, new chapter in my life, two weeks later got united, neither of us spoke English, it was very hard to find jobs, we manage to get a job in a local restaurant as a dishwasher and me as a bustable, at that time I was very I found a happy, so I did it with smile on my face. We were living at my husband's cousins unfinished basement. Yes we were sharing a single / twin size bed, we had to saved money so we can get our own apartment, we had nothing insite site. I remember when the manager showed us the appartment, it was green shaggy carpet, I told my husband. "Honey the carpet is thick enough, we don't need mattress to sleep on it, we can sleep on the carpet" later on a co-worker give us some household stuff to start our life with. Later that year our 1st child /daughter was born, two months later we get married in a local Albania church. Life was getting way better than living under the communist regime, later on we have two more children. We decided to bring my parents here so they can help us, I can get back to work or go to school . On April 1, 1998 my father come, we picked him at airport, with tears on his eye he was looking the street lights outside of the car window and said, "America is beautiful country, is land of dreams,....when I die please bury me here and not in Albania" By that time have I learning enough English to continued my education. I went to beauty school. two years later I graduated and got the state license. Yahhhh my dreams start coming true, remember I told you I always wanted to be a beautician. I found a job in a local salon, couple months later I was promoted to a salon manager. I did it for me and not for them who did not believed on me, As I said " I never cared

Would you grant me the honor of your first dance, Lady Rose?” Can you manage it? he seemed to be asking. She looked around the ballroom once more, trying to decide what was best. She supposed she could either dance with Lord Ashton and show everyone that she was no longer an invalid . . . or she could remain in a chair beside the wall. “Only if you dance with Miss Sinclair next,” she countered with a smile of her own. It was a reasonable enough request. “If Miss Sinclair is willing, I should be very glad of her company.” He sent her a charming smile, which made Evangeline’s fan flutter faster. “Of course, I would be happy to dance with you, Lord Ashton,” the young woman agreed. Her expression turned worried, and she continued, “But as for Lady Rose, I fear that—” She stopped abruptly, and looked perplexed, as if to remind them both, She cannot walk. But the moment Iain extended his hand, Rose took it and stood slowly. He gave her a moment to steady her balance, and then she leaned against him when she took her first step. Her eyes fixed upon his with a silent plea, Keep it slow. At least then she could hide her heavy limp. She heard Evangeline give a soft gasp, and there were murmurs all around them. It took all her concentration to walk, but Rose leaned against Iain, determined to keep her balance. “There’s a lass.” He smiled at her, allowing her to set the pace. Her heart hammered faster, and she felt the eyes of every guest staring at her. Never in her life had she felt so self-conscious. Though she had longed to take her first steps with Lord Burkham at her side, now she was beginning to reconsider. Iain was the man who had helped her to walk again, and of anyone here, she trusted him not to let her stumble. He knew the limits of her endurance, and she could confess when she needed to stop and rest. “You look grand this night.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze as they moved closer to the dancing. “Thank you.” She had worn a sky-blue gown with a full skirt and a lace shawl to cover her bare shoulders. It wasn’t the most fashionable gown, but her grandmother had deemed it quite appropriate for the evening. Because she expected me to remain in a chair, Rose thought. No one expected me to dance. “Do you think you can manage this?” Iain asked. His expression revealed the sincerity of a man who didn’t want her to be embarrassed. “Only if it’s a waltz.” A quick-paced dance would be quite beyond her balance. But right now, this was about proving herself to others. She wanted everyone to see that she had overcome her illness and could walk again. She took one step that was too heavy, and stumbled forward. Iain caught her immediately and halted, waiting for her to regain her balance. Her cheeks burned, and she blurted out, “I am sorry.” “Don’t be.” He brought her to the edge of the dancers, nearest to the wall. They would be away from the others, and yet, she could join in. The music shifted into a lilting waltz, and he rested his hand against her waist. “If you begin to tire, step on my feet. Your skirts will hide it, and no one will notice,” he advised. He’d

Trust His Perfect Plan You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11 NKJV God has a plan for your life. He understands that plan as thoroughly and completely as He knows you. And, if you seek God’s will earnestly and prayerfully, He will make His plans known to you in His own time and in His own way. If you sincerely seek to live in accordance with God’s will for your life, you will live in accordance with His commandments. You will study God’s Word, and you will be watchful for His signs. Sometimes, God’s plans seem unmistakably clear to you. But other times, He may lead you through the wilderness before He directs you to the Promised Land. So be patient and keep seeking His will for your life. When you do, you’ll be amazed at the marvelous things that an all-powerful, all-knowing God can do. God in Christ is the author and finisher of my faith. He knows exactly what needs to happen in my life for my faith to grow. He designs the perfect program for me. Mary Morrison Suggs Obedience to God is our job. The results of that obedience are God’s. Elisabeth Elliot When the dream of our heart is one that God has planted there, a strange happiness flows into us. At that moment, all of the spiritual resources of the universe are released to help us. Our praying is then at one with the will of God and becomes a channel for the Creator’s purposes for us and our world. Catherine Marshall God has plans—not problems—for our lives. Before she died in the concentration camp in Ravensbruck, my sister Betsie said to me, “Corrie, your whole life has been a training for the work you are doing here in prison—and for the work you will do afterward.” Corrie ten Boom I’m convinced that there is nothing that can happen to me in this life that is not precisely designed by a sovereign Lord to give me the opportunity to learn to know Him. Elisabeth Elliot God has His reasons. He has His purposes. Ours is an intentional God, brimming over with motive and mission. He never does things capriciously or decides with the flip of a coin. Joni Eareckson Tada

I always slow down, focus, and concentrate on these critical numbers, so that I don’t get myself or my company into a serious problem.

Crazy, insane, gorgeous human. I can’t believe Melody is here. It’s like something out of a dream. She looks amazing, too. The last time I saw her, she was skin and bones, all ribs and bruises. Now she’s filled out and she looks healthy and lovely…all the more reason she doesn’t need to get tangled up with me. I’m not a good male. She deserves better. I stalk away from the edge of the platform, my thoughts whirling, all of them focused around curling hair and a cheery smile. The way she lifted my hand to her mouth and kissed my knuckles as if she were paying homage to me… “Hey, Brux!” Jonnas jogs up to my side as I storm back to the crane I was working on. “Go away.” “You know that female?” He lifts his chin at me, a smirk on his face. “You buy a couple nights with her in some cantina or something? You think she’s still taking clients⁠—” I turn on him so quickly that he stumbles backward. “You do not speak to her,” I snarl. “You do not make eye contact. You do not even look in her direction.” He puts his hands up. “Okay, so she’s yours. I got it.” She’s not mine. She deserves better. She deserves a life without someone like me bothering her, weighing her down… “But we all heard her ask you for dinner. Why’d you turn her down if she’s your female?” “Go back to work,” I tell him, voice flat. And I go back to work myself, trying to concentrate on the dock plans and knowing that I’m going to fail miserably at everything today. I’m going to think about Melody, and that night five years ago. I’m going to think about how sweet her mouth was against mine, and how good her body felt, how soft and fragile she was… And what a mistake it was for us to end up in bed together. So yeah, I turned her down today. Melody deserves better than an ugly alien with no good family name, no credits to speak of, and a criminal history. She deserves better than someone who’s an outcast amongst his own, whose blood isn’t pure mesakkah but might have a bit of moden in it. She deserves better than a broken-horned laborer.

Alvarenga began to look forward to his strolls to the store—it not only calmed Córdoba but also allowed him to imagine life on land. Dr. John Leach, senior research fellow in survival psychology at the Extreme Environments Laboratory at the University of Portsmouth, England, suggests that by nurturing his sick mate, Alvarenga was building a foundation to maintain his own mental health. “If you’ve got a task to do, then you’re concentrating on that task, which provides a degree of meaning in your life. That’s one of the reasons that people like doctors and nurses have quite a high survival rate in concentration camps during wars,” says Leach. “If you’re a doctor or nurse in camp, you’ve got an automatic task, you’ve got a job that gives meaning to your existence, which is looking after others.

I will NOT be loyally to no party before my freedom! Any party that attack my 1st and 2nd amendments right is a dangers party to vote for! I lived in a communist country and I defected from them because they did what Democrats are trying to do! Remember Communism don't come in one day, it starts with socialism. Than they move forward censoring and seizing guns than they move forward seizing your properties than the dictate over people with IRON FIST! Vladimir Lenin said " Socialisms is the road to the communism" I can tell you from my own personal life experience living under communist IRON FIST! You are free to vote for communism in a free country. But try to be free, and vote out of the communism! You have to shot yourself out like I did! Through bullets I defected communist regime after after being screened and backwound check. I spending few months in a concentration camp waiting to be approved to come legally to America, and today Democrats are opening the borders and letting illegal's come straight into America, cutting in front of the line of the other immigrants/refugees who are waiting for months and years to come legally to the USA! This is what I call undermining the democracy! Country with our a borders is not a country just how a house with out walls is not a house! They say fences makes a good neighbors!

I will NOT be loyally to no party before my freedom! Any party that attack my 1st and 2nd amendments right is a dangers party to vote for! I lived in a communist country and I defected from them because they did what Democrats are trying to do! Remember Communism don't come in one day, it starts with socialism. Than they move forward censoring and seizing guns than they move forward seizing your properties than the dictate over people with IRON FIST! Vladimir Lenin said " Socialisms is the road to the communism" I can tell you from my own personal life experience living under communist IRON FIST! You are free to vote for communism in a free country. But try to be free, and vote out of the communism! You have to shot yourself out like I did! I was only 23 years old when through bullets I defected communist regime and landed to the neighbor country before I immigrated to the USA! After being screened and back round check. I spending few months in a concentration camp waiting to be approved to come legally to America, Today Democrats are opening the borders, and letting illegal's come straight into America, cutting in front of the line of the other immigrants/refugees who are waiting for months and years on line to come legally to the USA! it is not cool! This cheating and undermining our democracy! A country with our a borders it is not a country, just how a house with out walls it is not a house! They say fences makes a good neighbors!

An intense concentration only on what matters most is how the pros realize victory. Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

The level of our happiness is said to decrease when we have more than seven free hours in a day. Serotonin is inert in the brains of people who suffer from depression. A person with strong willpower isn't tempted in the first place. Your willpower will be lost if you give in to negative emotions like uncertainty or doubt. When that happens, the brain takes instinctive action and tells you to try to grab the reward in front of you. As a result you may eat or drink too much or lose the motivation to do anything. Then, later, you regret those actions and feel more stress. 45% of our actions are habits rather than decisions made on the spot. To dye a dirty cloth, you must first wash it. ( a teaching of Ayurveda ) There is value to anything if you take it seriously. You often become susceptible to addictions if the rewards come quickly. People who are unable to clean up or part with their things will sometimes feel anger towards minimalists and I believe it's because some part of them is anxious about their own actions. Our present identities shouldn't constrain our future actions. The time after you get up is the time when you can concentrate the best. As the day goes by, unexpected things and distractions will happen and build up so it's best to do what you want to do in the morning. Waking up early is a must and if you lose that first battle, you will lose in all the battles. Realize that enthusiasm won't occur before you do something. You won't feel motivated unless you start acting. Amazon rules over the buying habits of so many people because its hurdles are extremely low. People's motivation will easily go away when faced with a simple hurdle. When you quit something, it's easier to quit it completely. With acquiring a habit, it's the opposite, easier to do it every day. A plan relieves you of the torment of choice. Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. The result will be burnout if you only have a target. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure. Mark Twain To have a sense of self-efficacy is to believe "I can do this!". It's the belief that you can change, grow, learn and overcome new challenges. Talking about someone's talent can wait until you've exceeded the effort that that person has made. If we changed houses periodically, we would have the joy of exploring our new environment each time and there would also be the joy of gaining control over each new environment, This instinct is probably what drives curiosity and the desire for self-development. If we don't cultivate our own opportunities for development, we'll only be able to find joy in modern society's "ready-made" fun. Activities structured so that we have to "Enjoy this in this way", where the way to have fun is already decided, will eventually bore us. And then, someday, we'll be bored with ourselves. Making it a habit to seek unique opportunities for development and gaining the sense that we're always doing something new: these are things that satisfy human instinct. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. The Dhammapada, The Sayings of the Buddha Something that you thought was your personality can change with a simple habit. People are instinctively inclined to get bored of what they have now and pursue new things. So no matter how successful they become, they will worry and find reasons to feel uncertain. They will get used to any environment and they will get bored with it. Training in Buddhism: when cleaning is part of the training, you're taught to thoroughly eliminate rationalizations such as " this is already clean, so it doesn't have to be cleaned.

If you cease to utter falsehoods and live according to the dictates of your conscience, you can maintain your nobility, even when facing the ultimate threat; if you abide, truthfully and courageously, by the highest of ideals, you will be provided with more security and strength than will be offered by any short-sighted concentration on your own safety; if you live properly, fully, you can discover meaning so profound that it protects you even from the fear of death. Could all that possibly be true?

Twenty-five hundred years later, we remember his decision and take comfort from it. What can we learn from this? If you cease to utter falsehoods and live according to the dictates of your conscience, you can maintain your nobility, even when facing the ultimate threat; if you abide, truthfully and courageously, by the highest of ideals, you will be provided with more security and strength than will be offered by any short-sighted concentration on your own safety; if you live properly, fully, you can discover meaning so profound that it protects you even from the fear of death.

Observe your wandering mind It is likely, sooner or later, that we learn that the mind has a life of its own. A very active, energetic, inquisitive, and sometimes obsessed life. And so even with the best intentions to hold our focus on the breath and keep it breath by breath, after a while it's hard not to notice the purpose may get sidetracked, stolen, distracted, and we get involved in some other mind operation. The many infinite scenarios and storylines played out in the mind: perhaps it's dreaming and thinking about future events, or planning or fantasizing about some possibility. Or perhaps it's about recollecting past events and getting carried away by past memories and emotions. Or perhaps it's talking about this or that with ourselves, or with someone else for that matter, and objecting to this or that. It could be practically anything, and this very air will quickly disappear from our consciousness in the process of the breath that we were paying attention to, even though it is always flowing in and out of the body, of course. Note when your mind has wandered And although we made the commitment to just be with a healthy sense. But in any moment you realize the focus is no longer with the air, or on the breath, not making that into a question, or blaming yourself for this lack in concentration in any way. Clearly, and freely and affectionately remember what is in your mind at this moment. If the breath in the field of consciousness is no longer center stage, what is it? In the note, see, hear, smell what's in your head. Clearly, and freely and affectionately mention what is in your mind at this moment. If the breath in the field of consciousness is no longer center stage, what is it? Allow yourself to be aware of the breath again And then encouraging the air to be part of it right now, because it's here right now and just allowing wherever the consciousness is pushed to be, however it is, and returning the primacy of concentration once more to the heart, to the nostrils, to the flood of breath stimuli in the body, right now. So when you realize that the mind has slipped or diverted, it is already back to understanding purpose. That is consciousness, which is life itself. They just pick up on what the wind is like at this moment. Ride the waves of the breath So focusing, if you will, the concentration on the body, and then as well you can maintain the focus on the breath by floating on the waves of the air sensations, and when you know that the mind has wandered and is no longer breathing again and again, softly, compassionately only realizing what the mind is up to now. Allowing it to be just as it is, and just in reconnecting with the spirit that is also already here, once again presenting it as the center stage in the area of consciousness and thus exercising with the consistency of open and affectionate devotion to the unfolding of your life as it unfolds right here, breath by breath and moment by moment.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” 7.2. In recent years, record numbers have visited Auschwitz. The ironic sign above the front gate means “Work sets you free.

Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl The story of Viktor Frankl (1905–1997), an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist imprisoned in concentration camps during the Nazi Holocaust of WWII, inspired the world after the war. By 1997, when Frankl died of heart failure, his book Man’s Search for Meaning, which related his experiences in the death camps and the conclusions he drew from them, had sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages. The book’s original title (translated from the German) reveals Frankl’s amazing outlook on life: Saying Yes to Life in Spite of Everything: A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp. In 1942, Frankl and his wife and parents were sent to the Nazi Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, which was one of the show camps used to deceive Red Cross inspectors as to the true purpose and conditions of the concentration camps. In October 1944, Frankl and his wife were moved to Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million people would meet their deaths. Later that month, he was transported to one of the Kaufering labor camps (subcamps of Dachau), and then, after contracting typhoid, to the Türkheim camp where he remained until American troops liberated the camp on April 27, 1945. Frankl and his sister, Stella, were the only ones in his immediate family to survive the Holocaust. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl observed that a sense of meaning is what makes the difference in being able to survive painful and even horrific experiences. He wrote, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.” Frankl maintained that while we cannot avoid suffering in life, we can choose the way we deal with it. We can find meaning in our suffering and proceed with our lives with our purpose renewed. As he states it, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” In this beautiful elaboration, Frankl wrote, “Between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. The last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” 7.2. In recent years, record numbers have visited Auschwitz. The ironic sign above the front gate means “Work sets you free.” TRAUMA IS EVERYWHERE It’s not just veterans, crime victims, abused children, and accident survivors who come face-to-face with trauma. About 75% of Americans will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives. Women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence than they are to get breast cancer.

Cash is an inefficient drag during bull markets and as valuable as oxygen during bear markets. Leverage is the most efficient way to maximize your balance sheet and the easiest way to lose everything. Concentration is the best way to maximize returns but diversification is the best way to increase the odds of owning a company capable of delivering returns. If you're honest with yourself, you'll see a little inefficiency is the best spot to be in. Same with analysis. You'll see it's better to be approximately right than to be precisely wrong.

Therefore, all your care and attention must be concentrated on keeping watch, and it is particularly necessary for you to guard against sin in the place where it usually begins, to resist temptation at once the very first time it appears and thus to eliminate the evil before it can grow and spread. When something has to be feared from its smallest beginnings and is the more easily overcome the more speedily it is resisted, one must not wait for it to grow; that is why divine scripture exclaims: Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life (Pr.4.23). 27, 1. One has to make a distinction, however, between those of one’s thoughts which the will favors and embraces affectionately, and those which are wont to flit past the mind like an insubstantial shadow and merely show a glimpse of themselves in passing - the Greeks call them typoi, ‘impressions’ - and also those, to be sure, which offer promptings to a mind which is resistant and unwilling and as glad when they are expelled as it was sad when they were admitted in the first place. In those which show themselves only fleetingly to the mind and reveal themselves as if in flight, there is no underlying sin at all and no sign of fight; but with those which the soul struggles against for some time and which the will resists, we can expect an even contest. Either we consent to them and are conquered or we reject them and conquer them and win a victory in battle. Thus sin exists only in the thought which has given the mind’s consent to a suggestion, which flatters and fosters its own evil tendency and longs for it to erupt into action. This kind of thought, even if it is prevented from reaching any outcome and so fails to fulfill the wish that lies behind it, is nevertheless condemned as a criminal act by the Lord.

The main point I’m making here is concentrate monomaniacally on creating great days—and they’ll stack into a gorgeous life.

The more the attention is trained on the present, the more we are able to break the habit of being dragged around by compulsions and distractions—the mind constantly creating scenarios for the future, rewriting the past, being lost in distracted thought, or subjected to incessant reams of thinking. Most of us here have had those times where it seems like nothing can make the mind stop. It just goes on and on and on and on and on. The capacity to focus in meditation has a lot to do with learning how to think when we choose to think, and learning how not to think when we choose not to. The second capacity, the element of investigation, supports a quality of understanding. We learn to see how the mind works: its habits of reaction, running away from the painful, chasing after the pleasurable, and becoming bored, irritated, or restless with the neutral. By recognizing those habits and knowing them fully through the capacity of focus, we learn how not to be drawn into the compulsive cycles that come with them. An analogy that comes to mind is using a camera. Picking up the camera and holding it is like the qualities of responsible behavior and virtue: wisely picking up and holding your life. Focusing the lens is like the development of concentration. Framing the precise shot that you want to make is the element of wisdom. Actually snapping the picture brings the delight that comes with having caught a fine image—that pleasing quality of catching the moment in that way: “Yes! Got it!” This is similar to the insight and transformation that occur when we see the world in a different, more emotionally balanced way.

Enhancing anything in your day, ranging from your morning routine to a thought pattern to a business skill to a personal relationship, by only 1% delivers at least a 30%—yes, 30%—elevation only a month from starting. Stay with the program and, in just one year, the pursuit you’ve been focusing on has elevated 365%, at least. The main point I’m making here is concentrate monomaniacally on creating great days—and they’ll stack into a gorgeous life.

After being together with someone for a few years, their attractions stand to become grievously familiar. We will ignore them and become experts on their most trying dimensions. But we are never without a chance to reverse the process. It might be that we watch them when they are with friends. We pick up again on their shy smile, their sympathetic look, or the purposeful way they push back the sleeves of their pullover. Or perhaps we hear that a casual acquaintance thinks that they are fascinating and elegant and – mixed in with a dose of jealous irritation – via this potential rival’s eye, we see again all that we could conceivably lose. We are adaptable creatures. Disenchantment is not a one-way street. We are capable of a second, more accurate look. We can turn to art for hints on how to perform the manoeuvre of re-enchantment. Many works of art look with particular focus at what has been ignored and taken for granted. In the 18th century, the French painter Chardin didn’t paint the grand things that other painters of the period went in for: heroic battles, majestic landscapes or dramatic scenes from history. Instead he looked around him and portrayed the quiet, ordinary objects of everyday life: kitchen utensils, a basket of fruit, a teacup. He brought to these objects a deeply loving regard. Normally you might not have given them a moment’s thought. But, encouraged by Chardin, we start to see their allure. He’s not pretending; he’s showing us their real but easily missed virtues. He isolates them, he concentrates attention, he carefully notes what is worthy of respect. He re-enchants our perception. In the 19th century, the English painter John Constable did something similar for clouds. Nothing, perhaps, sounds duller. Maybe as children we liked to watch the grey banks of cloud drift and scud across the arc of the sky. We had favourites among them; we saw how they merged and separated; how they were layered; how a blue patch could be revealed and then swiftly covered. Clouds are lovely things, we once knew. Then we forgot. Constable’s many cloud paintings remind us of the ethereal poetry unfolding above our heads at all moments, ready to delight us when we have the imagination to look up. Imagine meeting your partner through the lens of art. You would find again the allure of things about them that – through familiarity and haste – had been neglected. We could study once more the magic of a palm that we once longed to caress; we could attend again to a way of tilting the head that once seemed so suggestive. In the early days, we knew how to see. Now as artists of our lives – in our own fashion – we can rediscover, we can select, refocus, appreciate. We can become the explorers of lost continents filled with one another’s overlooked qualities.

There’s a very strong connection between the body and the mind. In Tibetan tantric yoga, we take advantage of that strong connection: by concentrating strongly on the body’s psychic channels we can affect the mind accordingly. Therefore, even in everyday life, the food you eat and the other things your body touches have an effect on your mind.

A house in the country to find out what’s true / a few linen shirts, some good art / and you.” This is intimacy: the trading of stories in the dark. Marriage has a bonsai energy: It’s a tree in a pot with trimmed roots and clipped limbs. Mind you, bonsai can live for centuries, and their unearthly beauty is a direct result of such constriction, but nobody would ever mistake a bonsai for a free-climbing vine. Marriage as an institution has always been terrifically beneficial for men. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner’s faults honestly and say, ‘I can work around that. I can make something out of that.’? Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it’s always going to be pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you.” When you become infatuated with somebody, you’re not really looking at that person; you’re just captivated by your own reflection, intoxicated by a dream of completion that you have projected on a virtual stranger. People are far more susceptible to infatuation when they are going through delicate or vulnerable times in their lives. The more unsettled and unbalanced we feel, the more quickly and recklessly we are likely fall in love. Infatuation alters your brain chemistry, as though you were dousing yourself with opiates and stimulants. And infatuation is the most perilous aspect of human desire. Infatuation leads to what psychologists call “intrusive thinking”—that famously distracted state in which you cannot concentrate on anything other than the object of your obsession. An old Polish adage warns: “Before going to war, say one prayer. Before going to sea, say two prayers. Before getting married, say three.” “Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.” We derail our life’s journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time.

I mounted the stairs to my pavilion and sank onto Hlidskjalf, the magic throne from which I can peer into the Nine Worlds. The seat cradled my posterior with its ermine-lined softness. I took a few deep breaths to focus my concentration, then turned to the worlds beyond. I usually begin with a cursory look-see of my own realm, Asgard, then circle through the remaining eight: Midgard, realm of the humans; the elf kingdom of Alfheim; Vanaheim, the Vanir gods’ domain; Jotunheim, land of the giants; Niflheim, the world of ice, fog, and mist; Helheim, realm of the dishonorable dead; Nidavellir, the gloomy world of the dwarves; and Muspellheim, home of the fire giants. This time, I didn’t make it past Asgard. Because goats. Specifically, Thor’s goats, Marvin and Otis. They were on the Bifrost, the radioactive Rainbow Bridge that connects Asgard to Midgard, wearing footy pajamas. But there was no sign of Thor, which was odd. He usually kept Marvin and Otis close. He killed and ate them every day, and they came back to life the next morning. More disturbing was Heimdall, guardian of the Bifrost. He was hopping around on all fours like a deranged lunatic. “So here’s what I want you guys to do,” he said to Otis and Marvin between hops. “Cavort. Frolic. Frisk about. Okay?” I parted the clouds. “Heimdall! What the Helheim is going on down there?” “Oh, hey, Odin!” Heimdall’s helium-squeaky voice set my teeth on edge. He waved his phablet at me. “I’m making a cute baby goat video as my Snapchat story. Cute baby goat videos are huge in Midgard. Huge!” He spread his hands out wide to demonstrate. “I’m not a baby!” Marvin snapped. “I’m cute?” Otis wondered. “Put that phablet away and return to your duties at once!” According to prophecy, giants will one day storm across the Bifrost, a signal that Ragnarok is upon us. Heimdall’s job is to sound the alarm on his horn, Gjallar—a job he would not be able to perform if he were making Snapchat stories. “Can I finish my cute baby goat video first?” Heimdall pleaded. “No.” “Aw.” He turned to Otis and Marvin. “I guess that’s a wrap, guys.” “Finally,” Marvin said. “I’m going for a graze.” He hopped off the bridge and plummeted to almost certain death and next-day resurrection. Otis sighed something about the grass being greener on the other side, then jumped after him. “Heimdall,” I said tightly, “need I remind you what could happen if even one jotun snuck into Asgard?” Heimdall hung his head. “Apologetic face emoji.” I sighed. “Yes, all right.

Gregori was an impressive figure. Shea watched him as he knelt beside Raven, his entire attention seemed to be concentrated on the woman lying so still. “Have you attended to Shea’s injuries?” The soft inquiry startled Shea. He addressed Jacques, asking the male, as was his irritating way. “The wounds are closing,” Jacques assured him. Rand drew Shea alone into the woods. He is the betrayer, healer. I walked away from him because he is linked to Shea. He could make her feel whatever I did to him. He is very dangerous. I cannot be the ne to bring him to justice. Shea would never forgive me. “Don’t do that, Jacques,” Shea said with a little bite in her voice. She was exasperated with him. “I know you’re talking to Gregori. If you have something to say, say it out loud so that I can hear you. You think Rand is the vampire, don’t you?” The thought was in her mind also, and it made her feel disloyal. She knew something was wrong with Rand; perhaps Maggie’s death had twisted his mind so he was living in the past. But something rand had said in the course of their strange conversation was niggling at her brain. Something she couldn’t put a finger on. Gregori passed a hand over Raven’s stomach, his fingers splayed wide. His touch lingered for a moment, a surprisingly tender gesture, then he turned to Shea. “Jacques knows his duty to you, Shea. This man, Rand, the one who is your birth father, was never in your life. Hold on to what is real, not to your childhood fantasies.” “You don’t know the first thing about my childhood, fantasy or not,” Shea snapped, goaded beyond endurance by his unruffled, superior attitude. Gregori definitely grated on her. She suspected it was because he was always using logic. She was the one who was supposed to do that. “I have my own mind, Gregori, and it is a perfectly good one. Perhaps the first couple of times we met gave you a false impression. I am not a hysterical woman who runs at the first sign of danger. I don’t faint at the sight of blood, and I can make my own decisions.

There is a way of looking at life called “keeping things in perspective.” This simply means “making yourself feel better by comparing the things that are happening to you right now against other things that have happened at a different time, or to different people.” For instance, if you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, “Well, at least I’m not being eaten by a bear.” You can see at once why keeping things in perspective rarely works very well, because it is hard to concentrate on somebody else being eaten by a bear when you are staring at your own ugly pimple. So it was with the Baudelaire orphans in the days that followed. In the morning, when the children joined Aunt Josephine for a breakfast of orange juice and untoasted bread, Violet thought to herself, “Well, at least we’re not being forced to cook for Count Olaf’s disgusting theater troupe.” In the afternoon, when Aunt Josephine would take them to the library and teach them all about grammar, Klaus thought to himself, “Well, at least Count Olaf isn’t about to whisk us away to Peru.” And in the evening, when the children joined Aunt Josephine for a dinner of orange juice and untoasted bread, Sunny thought to herself, “Zax!” which meant something along the lines of “Well, at least there isn’t a sign of Count Olaf anywhere.” But no matter how much the three siblings compared their life with Aunt Josephine to the miserable things that had happened to them before, they couldn’t help but be dissatisfied with their circumstances. In her free time, Violet would dismantle the gears and switches from the model train set, hoping to invent something that could prepare hot food without frightening Aunt Josephine, but she couldn’t help wishing that Aunt Josephine would simply turn on the stove. Klaus would sit in one of the chairs in the library with his feet on a footstool, reading about grammar until the sun went down, but

experiencing life “vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption”; making choices from moment to moment that foster growth rather than fear; becoming more attuned to your inner nature and acting in concert with who you are; being honest with yourself and taking responsibility for what you say and do instead of playing games or posing; identifying your ego defenses and finding the courage to give them up; developing the ability to determine your own destiny and daring to be different and non-conformist; creating an ongoing process for reaching your potential and doing the work needed to realize your vision. fostering the conditions for having peak experiences, or what Maslow calls “moments of ecstasy” in which we think, act, and feel more clearly and are more loving and accepting of others.