“
CHORONZON: I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler.
MORPHEUS: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing.
CHORONZON: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing.
MORPHEUS: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged.
CHORONZON: I am a snake, spider-devouring, posion-toothed.
MORPHEUS: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy-footed.
CHORONZON: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying.
MORPHEUS: I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing.
CHORONZON: I am a nova, all-exploding... planet-cremating.
MORPHEUS: I am the Universe -- all things encompassing, all life embracing.
CHORONZON: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?
MORPHEUS: I am hope.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes)
“
I love reading true crime, but I’ve always been aware of the fact that, as a reader, I am actively choosing to be a consumer of someone else’s tragedy. So like any responsible consumer, I try to be careful in the choices I make. I read only the best: writers who are dogged, insightful, and humane.
”
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Michelle McNamara (I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer)
“
The world economy would collapse if a significant number of people were to realize and then act on the realization that it is possible to enjoy many if not most of the things that they enjoy without first having to own them.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
“
Death devours not only those who have been cooked by old age; it also feasts on those who are half-cooked and even those who are raw.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
“
Allah gives us gifts, but then we come to love them as we should only love Him. We take those gifts and inject them into our hearts, until they take over. Soon we cannot live without them. Every waking moment is spent in contemplation of them, in submission and worship to them. The mind and the heart that was created by Allah, for Allah, becomes the property of someone or something else. And then the fear comes. The fear of loss begins to cripple us. The gift—that should have remained in our hands—takes over our heart, so the fear of losing it consumes us. Soon, what was once a gift becomes a weapon of torture and a prison of our own making. How can we be freed of this? At times, in His infinite mercy, Allah frees us…by taking it away.
As a result of it being taken, we turn to Allah wholeheartedly. In that desperation and need, we ask, we beg, we pray. Through the loss, we reach a level of sincerity and humility and dependence on Him which we would otherwise not reach—had it not been taken from us. Through the loss, our hearts turn entirely to face Him.
”
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Yasmin Mogahed (Reclaim Your Heart: Personal Insights on Breaking Free from Life's Shackles)
“
Unlike other commodities, however, fast food isn’t viewed, read, played, or worn. It enters the body and becomes part of the consumer. No other industry offers, both literally and figuratively, so much insight into the nature of mass consumption.
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Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal)
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For their never-ending endeavours to obtain or retain wealth, countries desperately need companies, because they—unlike most human beings—have the means of production, and human beings, because they—unlike all companies—have the means of reproduction.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
“
In today's consumer-driven economy, a strong marketing strategy is essential for success. Board members with marketing expertise can provide valuable insights into consumer behavior, brand positioning, and digital marketing strategies. This is especially crucial for companies in consumer goods, retail, and technology sectors.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Board Room Blitz: Mastering the Art of Corporate Governance)
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The world will burn for a hundred years. Fire will consume the things we made from wood and plastic and rubber and cloth, then water and wind and time will chew the stone and steel into dust. How baffling it is that we imagined cities incinerated by alien bombs and death rays when all they needed was Mother Nature and time.
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Rick Yancey
“
In another timely insight, Frankl saw that a materialistic view, in which people end up mindlessly consuming and fixating on what they can buy next, epitomizes a meaningless life, as he put it, where we are “guzzling away” without any thought of morality.
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Viktor E. Frankl (Yes To Life In Spite of Everything)
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In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” Simon’s insight is often reduced to “In a world of abundance, the only scarcity is human attention.” Our
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Kevin Kelly (The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future)
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We become blinded by arrogance when we’re utterly convinced of our strengths and our strategies. We get paralyzed by doubt when we lack conviction in both. We can be consumed by an inferiority complex when we know the right method but feel uncertain about our ability to execute it. What we want to attain is confident humility: having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem. That gives us enough doubt to reexamine our old knowledge and enough confidence to pursue new insights.
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Adam M. Grant (Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know)
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Consumers with otaku are the sneezers you seek. They’re the ones who will take the time to learn about your product, take the risk to try your product, and take their friends’ time to tell them about it. The flash of insight is that some markets have more otaku-stricken consumers than others. The task of the remarkable marketer is to identify these markets and focus on them to the exclusion of lesser markets – regardless of relative size.
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Seth Godin (Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable)
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It's great to bask in a well-deserved victory, but the true test of your emotional stability is when you can move past it and not get consumed by the need for more.
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Shubham Kumar Singh (You Become What You think: Insights to Level Up Your Happiness, Personal Growth, Relationships, and Mental Health (Life Changing Insights Book 1))
“
The average person walks into their doctor's office ready to accept whatever is said and handed to them. Without taking time to research or gain more insight, they accept pills and treatment
without looking into other options.
Our nation overeats. We put toxic fake food into our bodies, but wonder why we're sick. We continue a vicious cycle of consuming the wrong foods and drinks along with a stressful lifestyle, yet
question why cancer is so rampant. Most of our society live in fear and believe they have no control.
My positive message is that we do have control. We need to take back ownership of our bodies and minds. Don't blindly fill prescriptions without first checking into potential side effects, adverse reactions, and long-term damage to your body and mind. Be conscious of what you are consuming. Be informed. Take the initiative to gain more knowledge. Understand your options so you may be in a better position to make an informed choice.
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Dana Arcuri (Harvest of Hope: Living Victoriously Through Adversity)
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*And to keep her immune system strong she followed Dr. Goodhue's advice to abstain from alcohol, get plenty of fresh air and exercise, and consume a nourishing diet, low in salt. Page 144
"Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master.". Page 204
"I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death ... Is the true measure of the Divine within us." . . . "I used to wonder, why did God give children leprosy? Now I believe: God doesn't give anyone leprosy. He gives us, if we choose to use it, the spirit to live with leprosy, and with the imminence of death. Because it is in our own mortality that we are most Divine.". Page 307
**"With wonder and a growing absence of fear she realized, I am more than I was an hour ago.". Page 372
**my favorite!
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Alan Brennert
“
Democratic citizenship requires a degree of empathy, insight, and kindness that demands a great deal of all of us. There are easier ways to live.
For example, we can reduce our public engagement to consumption, viewing our labour as whatever we need do to enter the consumer marketplace with money in our pockets, free to choose our widgets, to shape an identity based upon consumption.
Or we can go global and expand our understanding of “us” by wandering the world and appreciating its cultures and wonders, considering both the people living in the refugee camps of the world and the residents of small towns of Iowa to be our neighbours, while maintaining a connection with our own local traditions and duties.
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Jason Stanley
“
Chapter 4,‘Organised abuse and the pleasures of disbelief’, uses Zizek’s (1991) insights into cite political role of enjoyment to analyse the hyperbole and scorn that has characterised the sceptical account of organised and ritualistic abuse. The central argument of this chapter is that organised abuse has come to public attention primarily as a subject of ridicule within the highly partisan writings of journalists, academics and activists aligned with advocacy groups for people accused of sexual abuse. Whilst highlighting the pervasive misrepresentations that characterise these accounts, the chapter also implicates media consumers in the production of ignorance and disdain in relation to organised abuse and women’s and children’s accounts of sexual abuse more generally.
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Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
“
Given an area of law that legislators were happy to hand over to the affected industries and a technology that was both unfamiliar and threatening, the prospects for legislative insight were poor. Lawmakers were assured by lobbyists
a) that this was business as usual, that no dramatic changes were being made by the Green or White papers; or
b) that the technology presented a terrible menace to the American cultural industries, but that prompt and statesmanlike action would save the day; or
c) that layers of new property rights, new private enforcers of those rights, and technological control and surveillance measures were all needed in order to benefit consumers, who would now be able to “purchase culture by the sip rather than by the glass” in a pervasively monitored digital environment.
In practice, somewhat confusingly, these three arguments would often be combined. Legislators’ statements seemed to suggest that this was a routine Armageddon in which firm, decisive statesmanship was needed to preserve the digital status quo in a profoundly transformative and proconsumer way. Reading the congressional debates was likely to give one conceptual whiplash.
To make things worse, the press was—in 1995, at least—clueless about these issues. It was not that the newspapers were ignoring the Internet. They were paying attention—obsessive attention in some cases. But as far as the mainstream press was concerned, the story line on the Internet was sex: pornography, online predation, more pornography. The lowbrow press stopped there. To be fair, the highbrow press was also interested in Internet legal issues (the regulation of pornography, the regulation of online predation) and constitutional questions (the First Amendment protection of Internet pornography). Reporters were also asking questions about the social effect of the network (including, among other things, the threats posed by pornography and online predators).
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James Boyle (The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind)
“
Faith and love will accompany you. Courage and strength will sit on your shoulders and inspiration and divine insight will lead your way to allow you to make the best choices in your life. Life will no longer be a mystery; doubt will no longer consume much of your attention. Problems will still exist, but they will not blur your vision of life. Problems will no longer define your life and the force of goodness coupled with the love for the spirit will find its way into every area of your life and influence and correct it as needed.
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Vishwanath (The Special Skills To Getting Things Done: A Practical Guide To Think Less, Achieve More)
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We often confuse love for a warm glow we sense in our bellies and as something we can offer and withdraw, like a cat who comes and goes at its pleasure. It’s easy for us to extend love toward those who are lovable, but loving people and situations that are not to our liking isn’t so easy. We give our love “unconditionally,” but when we don’t receive what we feel we deserve, we withdraw it. We then reinvest our love in a new person or situation that we think will give us a better return, but we find it difficult to maintain when we don’t feel recognized or acknowledged. If things don’t work out the way we want them to, we too readily exchange our loving feelings for hatred and resentment. Our initial excitement over a new job, for instance, may sour and become disappointment and bitterness. When we’ve been jilted by a lover, the intense, starry-eyed passion of infatuation can turn into loathing so great that it consumes us. To an Earthkeeper, love is not a feeling or something you barter with. Love is the essence of who you are, and it radiates from you as a brilliant aura: You become love, practice fearlessness, and attain enlightenment.
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Alberto Villoldo (The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power and Grace of the Earthkeepers)
“
In a seminal 1981 paper, the economist Sherwin Rosen worked out the mathematics behind these “winner-take-all” markets. One of his key insights was to explicitly model talent—labeled, innocuously, with the variable q in his formulas—as a factor with “imperfect substitution,” which Rosen explains as follows: “Hearing a succession of mediocre singers does not add up to a single outstanding performance.” In other words, talent is not a commodity you can buy in bulk and combine to reach the needed levels: There’s a premium to being the best. Therefore, if you’re in a marketplace where the consumer has access to all performers, and everyone’s q value is clear, the consumer will choose the very best. Even if the talent advantage of the best is small compared to the next rung down on the skill ladder, the superstars still win the bulk of the market.
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Cal Newport (Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
“
EAGLE The East direction is represented by eagle and condor, who bring vision, clarity, and foresight. Eagle perceives the entire panorama of life without becoming bogged down in its details. The energies of eagle assist us in finding the guiding vision of our lives. The eyes of condor see into the past and the future, helping to know where we come from, and who we are becoming. When I work with a client who is stuck in the traumas of the past, I help her to connect with the spirit of eagle or condor. As this energy infuses the healing space, my client is often able to attain new clarity and insight into her life. This is not an intellectual insight, but rather a call, faint at first, hardly consciously heard. Her possibilities beckon to her and propel her out of her grief and into her destiny. I believe that while everyone has a future, only certain people have a destiny. Having a destiny means living to your fullest human potential. You don’t need to become a famous politician or poet, but your destiny has to be endowed with meaning and purpose. You could be a street sweeper and be living a destiny. You could be the president of a large corporation and be living a life bereft of meaning. One can make oneself available to destiny, but it requires a great deal of courage to do so. Otherwise our destiny bypasses us, leaving us deprived of a fulfillment known by those who choose to take the road less traveled. Eagle allows us to rise above the mundane battles that occupy our lives and consume our energy and attention. Eagle gives us wings to soar above trivial day-to-day struggles into the high peaks close to Heaven. Eagle and condor represent the self-transcending principle in nature. Biologists have identified the self-transcending principle as one of the prime agendas of evolution. Living molecules seek to transcend their selfhood to become cells, then simple organisms, which then form tissues, then organs, and then evolve into complex beings such as humans and whales. Every transcending jump is inclusive of all of the levels beneath it. Cells are inclusive of molecules, yet transcend them; organs are inclusive of cells, yet go far beyond them; whales are inclusive of organs yet cannot be described by them, as the whole transcends the sum of its parts. The transcending principle represented by eagle states that problems at a certain level are best solved by going up one step. The problems of cells are best resolved by organs, while the needs of organs are best addressed by an organism such as a butterfly or a human. The same principle operates in our lives. Think of nested Russian dolls. Material needs are the tiny doll in the center. The larger emotional doll encompasses them, and both are contained within the outermost spiritual doll. In this way, we cannot satisfy emotional needs with material things, but we can satisfy them spiritually. When we go one step up, our emotional needs are addressed in the solution. We rise above our life dilemmas on the wings of eagle and see our lives in perspective.
”
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Alberto Villoldo (Shaman, Healer, Sage: How to Heal Yourself and Others with the Energy Medicine of the Americas)
“
We must become what we wish to teach.
As an aside to parents, teachers, psychotherapists, and managers who may be reading this book to gain insight on how to support the self-esteem of others, I want to say that the place to begin is still with oneself. If one does not understand how the dynamics of self-esteem work internally—if one does not know by direct experience what lowers or raises one’s own self-esteem—one will not have that intimate understanding of the subject necessary to make an optimal contribution to others. Also, the unresolved issues within oneself set the limits of one’s effectiveness in helping others. It may be tempting, but it is self-deceiving to believe that what one says can communicate more powerfully than what one manifests in one’s person. We must become what we wish to teach.
There is a story I like to tell psychotherapy students. In India, when a family encounters a problem, they are not likely to consult a psychotherapist (hardly any are available); they consult the local guru. In one village there was a wise man who had helped this family more than once. One day the father and mother came to him, bringing their nine-year-old son, and the father said, “Master, our son is a wonderful boy and we love him very much. But he has a terrible problem, a weakness for sweets that is ruining his teeth and health. We have reasoned with him, argued with him, pleaded with him, chastised him—nothing works. He goes on consuming ungodly quantities of sweets. Can you help us?” To the father’s surprise, the guru answered, “Go away and come back in two weeks.” One does not argue with a guru, so the family obeyed. Two weeks later they faced him again, and the guru said, “Good. Now we can proceed.” The father asked, “Won’t you tell us, please, why you sent us away for two weeks. You have never done that before.” And the guru answered, “I needed the two weeks because I, too, have had a lifelong weakness for sweets. Until I had confronted and resolved that issue within myself, I was not ready to deal with your son.”
Not all psychotherapists like this story.
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Nathaniel Branden (Six Pillars of Self-Esteem)
“
The violence exercised in the service of human commodification relied on a scientific empiricism always seeking to find the limits of human capacity for suffering, that point where material and social poverty threatened to consume entirely the lives it was meant to garner for sale in the Americas. In this regard, the economic enterprise of human trafficking marked a watershed in what would become an enduring project in the modern Western world: probing the limits up to which it is possible to discipline the body without extinguishing the life within.
The aim in the case being economic efficiency rather than punishment, this was a regime whose intent was not to torture but rather to manage the depletion of life that resulted from the conditions of saltwater slavery. But for the Africans who were starved, sorted, and warped to make them into saltwater slaves, torture was the result. It takes no great insight to point to the role of violence in the Atlantic slave trade. But to understand what happened to Africans in this system of human trafficking requires us to ask precisely what kind of violence it requires to achieve its end, the transformation of African captives into Atlantic commodities.
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Stephanie E. Smallwood (Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora)
“
Your story isn’t powerful enough if all it does is lead the horse to water; it has to inspire the horse to drink, too. On social media, the only story that can achieve that goal is one told with native content. Native content amps up your story’s power. It is crafted to mimic everything that makes a platform attractive and valuable to a consumer—the aesthetics, the design, and the tone. It also offers the same value as the other content that people come to the platform to consume. Email marketing was a form of native content. It worked well during the 1990s because people were already on email; if you told your story natively and provided consumers with something they valued on that platform, you got their attention. And if you jabbed enough to put them in a purchasing mind-set, you converted. The rules are the same now that people spend their time on social media. It can’t tell you what story to tell, but it can inform you how your consumer wants to hear it, when he wants to hear it, and what will most make him want to buy from you. For example, supermarkets or fast-casual restaurants know from radio data that one of the ideal times to run an ad on the radio is around 5:00 P.M., when moms are picking up the kids and deciding what to make for dinner, and even whether they have the energy to cook. Social gives you the same kind of insight. Maybe the data tells you that you should post on Facebook early in the morning before people settle
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Gary Vaynerchuk (Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World)
“
Along the way to Seattle, he wrote his business plan. He identified several reasons why the book category was underserved and well suited to online commerce. He outlined how he could create a new and compelling experience for book-buying customers. To begin with, books were relatively lightweight and came in fairly uniform sizes, meaning they would be easy and inexpensive to warehouse, pack, and ship. Second, while more than 100 million books had been written and more than a million titles were in print in 1994, even a Barnes & Noble mega-bookstore could stock only tens of thousands of titles. An online bookstore, on the other hand, could offer not just the books that could fit in a brick-and-mortar store but any book in print. Third, there were two large book-distribution companies, Ingram and Baker & Taylor, that acted as intermediaries between publishers and retailers and maintained huge inventories in vast warehouses. They kept detailed electronic catalogs of books in print to make it easy for bookstores and libraries to order from them. Jeff realized that he could combine the infrastructure that Ingram and Baker & Taylor had created—warehouses full of books ready to be shipped, plus an electronic catalog of those books—with the growing infrastructure of the Web, making it possible for consumers to find and buy any book in print and get it shipped directly to their homes. Finally, the site could use technology to analyze the behavior of customers and create a unique, personalized experience for each one of them.
”
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Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
“
It describes a significantly different way of life. For instance, the Manuscript predicts that we humans will voluntarily decrease our population so that we all may live in the most powerful and beautiful places on the Earth. But remarkably, many more of these areas will exist in the future, because we will intentionally let the forests go uncut so that they can mature and build energy. “According to the Ninth Insight, by the middle of the next millennium,” he continued, “humans will typically live among five hundred year old trees and carefully tended gardens, yet within easy travel distance of an urban area of incredible technological wizardry. By then, the means of survival—foodstuffs and clothing and transportation—will all be totally automated and at everyone’s disposal. Our needs will be completely met without the exchange of any currency, yet also without any overindulgence or laziness. “Guided by their intuitions, everyone will know precisely what to do and when to do it, and this will fit harmoniously with the actions of others. No one will consume excessively because we will have let go of the need to possess and to control for security. In the next millennium, life will have become about something else. “According to the Manuscript,” he went on, “our sense of purpose will be satisfied by the thrill of our own evolution—by the elation of receiving intuitions and then watching closely as our destinies unfold. The Ninth depicts a human world where everyone has slowed down and become more alert, ever vigilant for the next meaningful encounter that comes along. We will know that it could occur anywhere: on a path that winds through a forest, for instance, or on a bridge that traverses some canyon. “Can you visualize human encounters that have this much meaning and significance? Think how it would be for two people meeting for the first time. Each will first observe the other’s energy field, exposing any manipulations. Once clear, they will consciously share life stories until, elatedly, messages are discovered. Afterward, each will go forward again on their individual journey, but they will be significantly altered. They will vibrate at a new level and will thereafter touch others in a way not possible before their meeting.
”
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James Redfield (The Celestine Prophecy (Celestine Prophecy, #1))
“
Aurobindo’s orientation has yielded important new insights into the thought of the Vedic seers (rishi), who “saw” the truth. He showed a way out of the uninspiring scholarly perspective, with its insistence that the Vedic seers were “primitive” poets obsessed with natural phenomena like thunder, lightning, and rain. The one-dimensional “naturalistic” interpretations proffered by other translators missed out on the depth of the Vedic teachings. Thus Sūrya is not only the visible material Sun but also the psychological-spiritual principle of inner luminosity. Agni is not merely the physical fire that consumes the sacrificial offerings but the spiritual principle of purifying transformation. Parjanya does not only stand for rain but also the inner “irrigation” of grace. Soma is not merely the concoction the sacrificial priests poured into the fire but also (as in the later Tantric tradition) the magical inner substance that transmutes the body and the mind. The wealth prayed for in many hymns is not just material prosperity but spiritual riches. The cows mentioned over and over again in the hymns are not so much the biological animals but spiritual light. The Panis are not just human merchants but various forces of darkness. When Indra slew Vritra and released the floods, he not merely inaugurated the monsoon season but also unleashed the powers of life (or higher energies) within the psyche of the priest. For Indra also stands for the mind and Vritra for psychological restriction, or energetic blockage. Aurobindo contributed in a major way to a thorough reappraisal of the meaning of the Vedic hymns, and his work encouraged a number of scholars to follow suit, including Jeanine Miller and David Frawley.2 There is also plenty of deliberate, artificial symbolism in the hymns. In fact, the figurative language of the Rig-Veda is extraordinarily rich, as Willard Johnson has demonstrated.3 In special sacrificial symposia, the hymn composers met to share their poetic creations and stimulate each other’s creativity and comprehension of the subtle realities of life. Thus many hymns are deliberately enigmatic, and often we can only guess at the solutions to their enigmas and allegorical riddles. Heinrich Zimmer reminded us: The myths and symbols of India resist intellectualization and reduction to fixed significations. Such treatments would only sterilize them of their magic.
”
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Georg Feuerstein (The Deeper Dimension of Yoga: Theory and Practice)
“
Stopping, calming and resting are preconditions for healing. If we cannot stop, we will continue on the course of destruction caused by unmindful consumption.
To attain well-being, we need to take care not only of our bodies but also of our minds. Mindfulness practice is central to seeing the interdependence of mind and body.
Learning to mindfully consume sensory impressions can help us reduce our craving, anger, fear, sadness and stress.
Desire is a kind of food that nourishes us and gives us energy. If we have a healthy desire, such as a wish to save or protect life, care for our environment or live a simple, balanced life with time to take care of ourselves and our loved ones, our desire will bring us happiness.
If we allow anger to come up in our mind consciousness and stay for a whole hour, for that whole hour we are eating anger. The more we eat anger, the more the seed of anger in our store consciousness grows. If you have a friend who understands you well and offers you words of comfort and kindness, the seed of loving-kindness will arise in your mind consciousness.
We must learn to nurture wholesome seeds and to tame unwholesome ones with mindfulness, because when they return to the store consciousness, they become stronger regardless of their nature.
When we water seeds of forgiveness, acceptance and happiness in the people we love, we are giving them very healthy food for their consciousness. But if we constantly water the seeds of hatred, craving and anger in our loved ones, we are poisoning them.
We must find the source of our desire to eat too much of the wrong foods. Perhaps we eat out of sadness; perhaps we eat out of our fears for the future. If we cut the sources of nutriment for our sadness and fear, sadness and fear will wither and weaken and with them the urge to overeat. The Buddha said that if we know how to look deeply into our suffering and recognize its source of food, we are already on the path of emancipation. The way out of our suffering if through mindfulness of consumption - all forms of consumption and not just edible foods and drinks.
When we pause with mindfulness, we recognize that our family member must be suffering somehow. If one is happy and peaceful, one would not behave with such anger. Mindfulness practice can help reveal this kind of insight.
We should avoid associating with individuals and groups of people who do not know how to recognize, embrace and transform their energy of hate, discrimination or anger.
In order to have the strength and energy to embrace painful feelings, we must nourish our positive feelings regularly.
We should learn to treat our unpleasant feelings as friends who can teach us a great deal. Just like a mindfulness bell, unpleasant feelings draw our attention to issues and situations in our lives that ar enot working and that need our care. Proceeding with mindful observation, we will gain insight and understanding into what needs to be changed and how to change it.
”
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Thich Nhat Hanh (Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life)
“
A BIG, BURLY SAMURAI comes to a Zen master and says, “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell.” The Zen master looks him in the face and says, “Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you? A worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?” Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword and raises it to cut off the master’s head. The Zen master says, “That’s hell.” Instantly, the samurai understands that he has just created his own hell—black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment. He sees that he was so deep in hell that he was ready to kill someone. Tears fill his eyes as he puts his palms together to bow in gratitude for this insight. The Zen master says, “That’s heaven.
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Pema Chödrön (Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion)
“
He explained to Steve that there was an important difference in the digital media value chain as well. In physical retail, Amazon operated at the middle of the value chain. We added value by sourcing and aggregating a vast selection of goods, tens of millions of them, on a single website and delivering them quickly and cheaply to customers. To win in digital, because those physical retail value adds were not advantages, we needed to identify other parts of the value chain where we could differentiate and serve customers well. Jeff told Steve that this meant moving out of the middle and venturing to either end of the value chain. On one end was content, where the value creators were book authors, filmmakers, TV producers, publishers, musicians, record companies, and movie studios. On the other end was distribution and consumption of content. In digital, that meant focusing on applications and devices consumers used to read, watch, or listen to content, as Apple had already done with iTunes and the iPod. We all took note of what Apple had achieved in digital music in a short period of time and sought to apply those learnings to our long-term product vision.
”
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Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
“
The great revelation of this process was not any one of the product ideas. As we’ve described in chapter four, the breakthrough was the document itself. We had freed ourselves of the quantitative demands of Excel, the visual seduction of PowerPoint, and the distracting effect of personal performance. The idea had to be in the writing. Writing up our ideas was hard work. It required us to be thorough and precise. We had to describe features, pricing, how the service would work, why consumers would want it. Half-baked thinking was harder to disguise on the written page than in PowerPoint slides. It could not be glossed over through personal charm in the presentation.
”
”
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
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Nations do not exist in isolation. Peoples have always roamed the globe in search of different opportunities. Nations principally trade to expand their consumption possibilities. In a world where we produce to consume, receiving goods and services is better in material terms than sending them elsewhere.
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William F. Mitchell (Modern Monetary Theory: Key Insights, Leading Thinkers (The Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies))
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Best Tips for a Stress-Free Pregnancy – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital
Bringing a new life into the world is an extraordinary journey, one filled with anticipation and joy.
Yet, the path to motherhood can also be fraught with stress and anxiety. The good news is that there
are ways to navigate this period with greater ease. From seeking support through childbirth and
parenting classes in Chandigarh to embracing the serenity of Pre-Natal Yoga Classes for Pregnant
Mothers in Chandigarh, let’s explore some of the best tips for a stress-free pregnancy.
Understand Your Body
Pregnancy is a unique and transformative experience, but it also brings a host of physical changes.
Understanding these changes can alleviate anxiety. Remember, your body is doing something
miraculous. It’s nurturing and growing a new life. Embrace the journey with wonder and gratitude.
Stay Active with Pre-Natal Yoga
Pre-Natal Yoga Classes in Chandigarh provide an exceptional avenue to connect with your body and
your baby. Yoga helps maintain flexibility, ease discomfort, and reduce stress. The gentle stretches
and mindful breathing techniques impart a sense of calm and inner peace.
Educate Yourself
Knowledge is power, and when it comes to pregnancy, it’s empowering. Enroll in childbirth and
parenting classes in Chandigarh to gain insight into what to expect during labor, delivery, and early
parenthood. Knowing what lies ahead can significantly reduce apprehension.
Nurture Emotional Well-being
Pregnancy is not just about physical health; emotional well-being is equally vital. Seek emotional
support from your partner, friends, or a counselor if needed. Express your feelings and allow
yourself to experience a range of emotions without judgment.
Eat Mindfully
Nutrition is crucial for both you and your baby. Consume a balanced diet rich in essential nutrients.
Remember, you’re not eating for two adults; you’re providing the building blocks for a new life.
Consult with a healthcare professional for dietary guidance.
Stay Hydrated
Hydration is key to a healthy pregnancy. It helps prevent common issues like constipation and
urinary tract infections. Aim for at least eight glasses of water a day, and adjust your intake as
needed to accommodate your changing body.
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Dr. Poonam Kumar
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Humility is often misunderstood. It’s not a matter of having low self-confidence. One of the Latin roots of humility means “from the earth.” It’s about being grounded—recognizing that we’re flawed and fallible. Confidence is a measure of how much you believe in yourself. Evidence shows that’s distinct from how much you believe in your methods. You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. That’s the sweet spot of confidence. We become blinded by arrogance when we’re utterly convinced of our strengths and our strategies. We get paralyzed by doubt when we lack conviction in both. We can be consumed by an inferiority complex when we know the right method but feel uncertain about our ability to execute it. What we want to attain is confident humility: having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution or even be addressing the right problem. That gives us enough doubt to reexamine our old knowledge and enough confidence to pursue new insights.
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Adam M. Grant (Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know)
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When one thinks about the last mile and listens to stories from consumers and citizens who have not had a great experience there, one realizes that it is not the big things that matter. It is the small things that matter. At the last mile, little things like the manner in which a decision was presented, the ambiance of the room, the phrasing of the question that people were asked, the color of the paper on which a form was printed, or the pleasantness of the agent with whom the consumer interacted are all determinants of the decision to buy products, open accounts, or, more generally, consume services. As
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Dilip Soman (The Last Mile: Creating Social and Economic Value from Behavioral Insights (Rotman-UTP Publishing))
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Democratic citizenship requires a degree of empathy, insight, and kindness that demands a great deal of all of us. There are easier ways to live.
For example, we can reduce our public engagement to consumption, viewing our labour as whatever we need do to enter the consumer marketplace with money in our pockets, free to choose our widgets, to shape an identity based upon consumption.
Or we can go global and expand our understanding of “us” by wandering the world and appreciating its cultures and wonders, considering both the people living in the refugee camps of the world and the residents of small towns of Iowa to be our neighbours, while maintaining a connection with our own local traditions and duties.
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Jason F. Stanley (How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them)
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Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton—well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function. If man is to be able to love, he must be put in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serves it. He must be enabled to share experience, to share work, rather than, at best, share in profits. Society must be organized in such a way that man’s social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature. Indeed, to speak of love is not “preaching,” for the simple reason that it means to speak of the ultimate and real need in every human being. That this need has been obscured does not mean that it does not exist. To analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence today and to criticize the social conditions which are responsible for this absence. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man.
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Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)