Core Beliefs Quotes

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.

I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

yearning, n. and adj. At the core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect.

At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.

At the core of your heart, you are perfect and pure. No one and nothing can alter that.

It is not until you change your identity to match your life blueprint that you will understand why everything in the past never worked.

Chemistry is change and change is the core of your belief system. Which is good because that’s what we need more of—people who refuse to accept the status quo, who aren’t afraid to take on the unacceptable.

In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.

Sam’s grandfather had two core beliefs: (1) all things were knowable by anyone, and (2) anything was fixable if you took the time to figure out what was broken. Sam believed these things as well.

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core. Rome'll decline and fall again, Cortés'll lay Tenochtitlán to waste again, and later, Ewing will sail again, Adrian'll be blown to pieces again, you and I'll sleep under the Corsican stars again, I'll come to Bruges again, fall in and out of love with Eva again, you'll read this letter again, the sun'll grow cold again. Nietzsche's gramophone record. When it ends, the Old One plays it again, for an eternity of eternities.

Be loved for who you are, for everything that constitutes you. Be loved for your core beliefs, your strengths and weaknesses, your admirable traits and troublesome baggage. Be loved for you, because anything less is not love at all.

Your core beliefs are the central part of your internal belief system.

The core belief in having to be strong enough, characteristic of many people who develop chronic illness, is a defence. The child who perceives that her parents cannot support her emotionally had better develop an attitude of “I can handle everything myself.” Otherwise, she may feel rejected. One way not to feel rejected is never to ask for help, never to admit “weakness” — to believe that I am strong enough to withstand all my vicissitudes alone.

Pan-Species Communism. It’s an ideology I invented. Or maybe you can call it a faith. Its core belief is that all species on Earth are created equal.

All people cross the line from childhood to adulthood with a secondhand opinion of who they are. Without any questioning, we take as truth whatever our parents and other influentials have said about us during our childhood, whether these messages are communicated verbally, physically, or silently.

Because most religions offer no valid mechanism by which their core beliefs can be tested and revised, each new generation of believers is condemned to inherit the superstitions and tribal hatreds of its predecessors.

All the external adoration, respect and adulation in the word, can't drown out the internal voices that tell us, we are not good enough and unworthy of; happiness, love and an abundant life. When we need others to tell us were amazing, worthy and lovable, in order to feel good about ourselves, it is never enough. It goes into the bottomless pit where our inherent self-worth should be. It may feel like we are reaching out to receive love, but in actuality, we are seeking external noise to help drown out our negative core beliefs. Love blossoms from the inside out. That is why it is so important to do the work necessary to heal our emotional wounds, to love ourselves and stand strong in who we are. Only then, are we truly free to give and receive love, unconditionally and in abundance.

Your inability to move forward or make changes isn’t about you, it’s an extension of the conditioned patterns and core beliefs you developed in your childhood.

And libertarianism is good because it helps conservatives pass off a patently pro-business political agenda as a noble bid for human freedom. Whatever we may think of libertarianism as a set of ideas, practically speaking, it is a doctrine that owes its visibility to the obvious charms it holds for the wealthy and the powerful. The reason we have so many well-funded libertarians in America these days is not because libertarianism has acquired an enormous grassroots following, but because it appeals to those who are able to fund ideas. Like social Darwinism and Christian Science before it, libertarianism flatters the successful and rationalizes their core beliefs about the world. They warm to the libertarian idea that taxation is theft because they themselves don’t like to pay taxes. They fancy the libertarian notion that regulation is communist because they themselves find regulation intrusive and annoying. Libertarianism is a politics born to be subsidized. In the “free market of ideas,” it is a sure winner.

yearning n. and adj. At te core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect.

Overcome the prideful need to measure your worth by how much more successful you are than others, by operating from a core belief grounded in abundance.

Before you embark upon this journey of your business’ vision and mission discovery, there are a few questions that you need to answer: Why are you in this business? How big do you want your business to be one day? Who is going to benefit from your product or service? What is the core purpose of the existence of your business?

Remember: we all get what we tolerate. So stop tolerating excuses within yourself, limiting beliefs of the past, or half-assed or fearful states. Use your body as a tool to snap yourself into a place of sheer will, determination, and commitment. Face your challenges head on with the core belief that problems are just speed bumps on the road to your dreams. And from that place, when you take massive action—with an effective and proven strategy—you will rewrite your history.

All the external adoration, respect and adulation in the world, can't drown out the internal voices that tell us, we are not good enough and unworthy of; happiness, love and an abundant life. When we need others to tell us we're amazing, worthy and lovable, in order to feel good about ourselves, it is never enough. It goes into the bottomless pit where our inherent self-worth should be. It may feel like we are reaching out to receive love, but in actuality, we are seeking external noise to help drown out our negative core beliefs.

My lifelong and core belief, right after the conviction that I was defective, mildly annoying, and better than everyone else was that my help was helpful.

We are all born with infinite wisdom at our fingertips. All you have to do is approach every disagreement, debate, and alternative view of your core beliefs with the sincere and soul honest desire of being proved partially or completely incorrect

Express your life as a demonstration of your highest beliefs, rather than as a denial of them.

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core.

We live in an extremely anxious age in which the core of our beliefs has been undermined to a great extent by scientific thinking. People have a hunger for answers but an inability to formulate the questions, partly because of the short-term view of things that’s encouraged by the media and partly because there seems to be no centre to which people can turn in order to see what the heart of the discussion is. I think this is a failure of philosophy in our days – and also of the culture that our English-speaking world has generated – around the idea of an abstract question.

Building resilience depends on the opportunities children have and the relationships they form with parents, caregivers, teachers, and friends. We can start by helping children develop four core beliefs: (1) they have some control over their lives; (2) they can learn from failure; (3) they matter as human beings; and (4) they have real strengths to rely on and share. These

Alcohol does not a change a person’s fundamental value system. People’s personalities when intoxicated, even though somewhat altered, still bear some relationship to who they are when sober. When you are drunk you may behave in ways that are silly or embarrassing; you might be overly familiar or tactlessly honest, or perhaps careless or forgetful. But do you knock over little old ladies for a laugh? Probably not. Do you sexually assault the clerk at the convenience store? Unlikely. People’s conduct while intoxicated continues to be governed by their core foundation of beliefs and attitudes, even though there is some loosening of the structure. Alcohol encourages people to let loose what they have simmering below the surface. ABUSERS MAKE CONSCIOUS CHOICES EVEN WHILE INTOXICATED

Our core beliefs need to be seen for what they are: deeply held assumptions about reality that our particular life circumstances have conditioned us to accept as absolute truth.

Knowledge (curriculum) and behavior (pedagogy) are embedded in everyone’s core beliefs about the nature of God, humanity, and the world.

Most reject the more repugnant or indefensible dogmas while still holding onto some core belief. Many believers will proudly describe themselves as "reasonable" or "rational" based on how little of their religion they still embrace versus how much they now reject. I think it's funny when people realize that the less you believe the more reasonable you are, but they stop before they reach the logical conclusion.

The more central the belief is to our thinking, the harder it is to give up. These core beliefs anchor our understanding. We use them to make sense of events, to inquire, and to arrive at judgments about other ideas. And so we are much more likely to explain away any anomalies rather than revise our beliefs in the face of them.

Toxic shame is the belief that one is inherently bad, defective, different, or unlovable. Toxic shame is not just a belief that one does bad things, it is a deeply held core belief that one is bad. Survival

Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen.

For the most part, people strenuously resist any redefinition of morality, because it shakes them to the very core of their being to think that in pursuing virtue they may have been feeding vice, or in fighting vice they may have in fact been fighting virtue.

Our enemy within are our Core Negative Beliefs. Negative beliefs hide from the Consciousness and they get exposed by the Magic of Mindfulness and Awareness. Explore Your Core Beliefs, Challenge Existing, Train Mindfulness, Understand Beauty, Work with Emptiness, Meditate

I read the newspapers with lively interest. It is seldom that they are absolutely, point-blank wrong. That is the popular belief, but those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo of truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl, round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.

To truly strip a man of everything, one must take away his money, community, and the core of his beliefs until he is bathed in the agony of isolation.

Many of our core beliefs, unfortunately, are shaped by traumas.

Things have a way of turning out for the best: That's my core belief.

You don’t need to change your core beliefs or your deepest held positions. All you’re doing is expanding your mind and opening your heart to new ideas.

He’s never been close to a tragedy that barbaric, never experienced a shock so primitive that it shakes him to the very core of his beliefs. In short, Nicolás has never had a fundamental change of heart. So he’s unaware of the way Newton’s third law can resonate in a place like this: for every wickedness, there is an equal and opposite possibility of redemption.

Behind our damaged perceptions there is usually a fear that pertains to a core belief. This core belief is a key line in the code of our personal misery: if we expose, address and alter it, we can be free.

Determine your core beliefs – Write them out and look at them often. If someone is violating them, evaluate and remove offenders quickly. Take control. Heal the PTSD and live the life you deserve. Be a SurThriver.

Good marriages are built upon a combination of emotional love and a common commitment to a core of beliefs about what is important in life and what we wish to do with our lives. Speaking each other's primary love language creates the emotional climate where these beliefs can be fleshed out in daily life.

It is very difficult to go through life when your core belief about yourself is that you are incompetent and do not count. When you have no sense of your own value, you are like a leaf in the wind, dependent on what others think of you to know who you are. In order to attain a better quality of life, it is imperative that your loved one develop a sense of mastery, competency, and respect for himself.

People find it quite easy to have beliefs and to hold on to them and to let their whole world be a product of their belief system. They also find it quite easy to attack those who disagree. The harder, more courageous thing, which the hero and the heroine, the warrior, and the mystic do, is continually to look one’s beliefs straight in the face, honestly and clearly, and then step beyond them. That requires a lot of heart and kindness. It requires being able to touch and know completely, to the core, your own experience, without harshness, without making any judgment.

My reverence for all life has become my guiding principle. It informs every aspect of my existence, including my choices about work, entertainment, home decor, healthcare, fashion, and, of course, diet. I have found my core belief surprisingly simple to adhere to. They are not sacrifices. If compassion is my religion, these are the actions I use to celebrate it. These are my rituals. For me, living fully awake means embracing all species with the same level of respect and kindness. Being a joyful vegan doesn't take willpower - just a willingness to try new things and choose mercy over misery.

sometimes, in pursuit of a greater peace, a man must stand by and lets those he loves suffer the injustices of men ho cares only about their own beliefs and nothing about the faith or feelings of others-- even when it pains him to the very core of his spirit

The leader-leader structure is fundamentally different from the leader-follower structure. At its core is the belief that we can all be leaders and, in fact, it’s best when we all are leaders. Leadership is not some mystical quality that some possess and others do not. As humans, we all have what it takes, and we all need to use our leadership

At our core there is silence and stillness…that is truly who we are when you peel away the titles, the ego, the thoughts, the beliefs, the intellect….once you get REALLY naked –you will see that who you are has nothing to do with all that we have given meaning to.

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance. Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule-following, people-pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it.

It’s not an intellectual exercise. It’s not an academic pursuit—it sort of masquerades as one, but at its core it’s a test of trust in each other. Are you or aren’t you one of us? And woe to the one who doesn’t toe the line.

yearning, n. and adj. At the core of this desire is the belief that everything can be perfect.

I don't have to be safe to feel safe, I always feel safe at my core.

Humanism is not a science, but religion. . . . Humanists like to think they have a rational view of the world; but their core belief in progress is a superstition, further from the truth about the human animal than any of the world’s religions. —John Gray, Straw Dogs In

Our core beliefs serve as the primary framework for shaping our perception and the construction of our reality.

I have one core belief: don’t be an asshole; be kind to others. That one’s written in pen. The rest of my beliefs are all in pencil.

A lifetime of disappointment had made him cynical, but you don’t stay an activist without a core of stubborn belief that things can get better – it’s a bit like being a Spurs supporter really.

Today liberal humanism has the pervasive power that was once possessed by revealed religion. Humanists like to think they have a rational view of the world; but their core belief in progress is a superstition, further from the truth about the human animal than any of the world’s religions.

Freedom, true freedom has nothing to do with how we spend our time on the material plane. True freedom is not an effect. It is a kind of ever-expanding spaciousness that arises spontaneously inside you as you come to understand how deeply victimised you really are by your own core beliefs.

Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core. Rome'll decline and fall again, Cortes'll lay Tenochtitlan to waste again, and later...the sun'll grow cold again. When it ends, the Old One plays it again, for an eternity of eternities.

Magic was at its core, she said, a kind of madness. It was a willingness to look at the corporeal world and to see it only as the story up to that point. That everything that followed could be changed. Rocks fell because the belief that they would fall was so strong. But that belief wasn’t binding. It didn’t have to be binding anyway. For a price.

But my core belief—that no matter what happens, God is with me—never wavers. And it’s a great comfort to know that once you turn your life over to him, you never have to face anything alone again.” He

In fundamentalist families, there is a core belief that people are basically bad. Therefore, human errors are interpreted as sins instead of as innocent mistakes. Children are seen as small adults, with the same sinful tendencies and the same need to be saved. There is little recognition of child development, that children are different from adults and that they progress through various stages of cognitive, emotional, and moral development. From a fundamentalist point of view, issues such as egocentrism, aggression, sexuality, and teenage rebellion are treated as problems instead of natural processes.

Living authentically means that your choices and actions align with your core beliefs, values, and true self. It means that you choose that path even when there are consequences from the world around you.

Understand your purpose and the belief-energy. Belief energy is the core of leadership and success. Design your belief energy for higher purpose and values. Belief energy can inspire and motivate you and others. Articulate, communicate and radiate your positive belief energy.

This is among the oldest, deepest, most primal truths: the facts of life may be, at times, unbearably painful. But the core, the bones of life are generous beyond all reason or belief. Those things that ought to kill us do not.

Your site isn't static. It's dynamically generated. Do you know what that means ?" "No." "It means the site looks different to different people. Let's say you chose the poll option that said you're in favor of tax cuts. Well there's a cookie on your machine now, and when you look at the site again, the articles are about how the government is wasting your money. The site is dynamically selecting content based on what you want. I mean, not what you want. What will piss you off. What will engage your attention and reinforce your beliefs, make you trust the site. And if you said you were against tax cuts, we'll show you stories of Republicans blocking social programs or whatever. It works every which way. Your site is made of mirrors, reflecting everyone's thoughts back at them..." "And we haven't even started talking about keywords. This is just the beginning. Third major advantage: People who use a site like this tend to ramp up their dependence on it. Suddenly all those other news sources, the ones that aren't framing every story in terms of the user's core beliefs, they start to seem confusing and strange. They start to seem biased, actually, which is kind of funny. So now you've got a user who not only trusts you, you're his major source of information on what's happening in the world. Boom, you own that guy. You can tell him whatever you like and no one's contradicting you.

Design your belief for higher purpose and values. Articulate and communicate your belief energy. Belief energy is the core of leadership and success. 

You have to create your self-belief by going to your core to find the probable reasons for the negativity in you, and then demolish them.

As you recover, you will find yourself letting go of many of your negative beliefs. You will discover that many of the so-called truths you were raised with and forced to believe are not truths at all. With this perspective, you will come to see, for example, that the names you were called as a child are simply not true. You are not ‘stupid,’ ‘lazy,’ ‘ugly,’ or a ‘liar’. You can discover just who you really are. You can let go of your pretenses and masks and discover who the real person is underneath.

It turns out that how you think about stress is also one of those core beliefs that can affect your health, happiness, and success. As we’ll see, your stress mindset shapes everything from the emotions you feel during a stressful situation to the way you cope with stressful events. That, in turn, can determine whether you thrive under stress or end up burned out and depressed. The good news is, even if you are firmly convinced that stress is harmful, you can still cultivate a mindset that helps you thrive.

We Are Lovable Even if the most important person in your world rejects you, you are still real, and you are still okay. —Codependent No More Do you ever find yourself thinking: How could anyone possibly love me? For many of us, this is a deeply ingrained belief that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thinking we are unlovable can sabotage our relationships with co-workers, friends, family members, and other loved ones. This belief can cause us to choose, or stay in, relationships that are less than we deserve because we don’t believe we deserve better. We may become desperate and cling as if a particular person was our last chance at love. We may become defensive and push people away. We may withdraw or constantly overreact. While growing up, many of us did not receive the unconditional love we deserved. Many of us were abandoned or neglected by important people in our life. We may have concluded that the reason we weren’t loved was because we were unlovable. Blaming ourselves is an understandable reaction, but an inappropriate one. If others couldn’t love us, or love us in ways that worked, that’s not our fault. In recovery, we’re learning to separate ourselves from the behavior of others. And we’re learning to take responsibility for our healing, regardless of the people around us. Just as we may have believed that we’re unlovable, we can become skilled at practicing the belief that we are lovable. This new belief will improve the quality of our relationships. It will improve our most important relationship: our relationship with our self. We will be able to let others love us and become open to the love and friendship we deserve. Today, help me be aware of and release any self-defeating beliefs I have about being unlovable. Help me begin, today, to tell myself that I am lovable. Help me practice this belief until it gets into my core and manifests itself in my relationships.

To avoid experiencing the anxious quiver at the core of our being, where we might feel the chaos of uncertainty or the pain of unhealed wounds, we weave a protective cocoon of beliefs and identities.

Young Tchitcherine was the one who brought up political narcotics. Opiates of the people. Wimpe smiled back. An old, old smile to chill even the living fire in Earth’s core. "Marxist dialectics? That’s not an opiate, eh?" "It’s the antidote." "No." It can go either way. The dope salesman may know everything that’s ever going to happen to Tchitcherine, and decide it’s no use—or, out of the moment’s velleity, lay it right out for the young fool. "The basic problem," he proposes, "has always been getting other people to die for you. What’s worth enough for a man to give up his life? That’s where religion had the edge, for centuries. Religion was always about death. It was used not as an opiate so much as a technique—it got people to die for one particular set of beliefs about death. Perverse, natürlich, but who are you to judge? It was a good pitch while it worked. But ever since it became impossible to die for death, we have had a secular version—yours. Die to help History grow to its predestined shape. Die knowing your act will bring will bring a good end a bit closer. Revolutionary suicide, fine. But look: if History’s changes are inevitable, why not not die? Vaslav? If it’s going to happen anyway, what does it matter?" "But you haven’t ever had the choice to make, have you." "If I ever did, you can be sure—" "You don’t know. Not till you’re there, Wimpe. You can’t say." "That doesn’t sound very dialectical." "I don’t know what it is." "Then, right up to the point of decision," Wimpe curious but careful, "a man could still be perfectly pure . . ." "He could be anything. I don’t care. But he’s only real at the points of decision. The time between doesn’t matter." "Real to a Marxist." "No. Real to himself." Wimpe looks doubtful. "I've been there. You haven't.

The hardest thing in life may be to learn to truly trust that there is something noble and generative in ourselves. This is a greater sense of the notion of believing in our self; to truly believe in oneself means to uncover the inner core of imagination and authenticity that can also be called the genius within us. When we connect to the inner resident of the soul, we also learn how we are woven to the Soul of the World.

Unfortunately a religious group defines itself foremost by its creation story, the supernatural narrative that explains how humans came into existence. And this story is also the heart of tribalism. No matter how gentle and high-minded, or subtly explained, the core belief assures its members that God favors them above all others. It teaches that members of other religions worship the wrong gods, use wrong rituals, follow false prophets, and believe fantastic creation stories. There is no way around the soul-satisfying but cruel discrimination that organized religions by definition must practice among themselves. I doubt there ever has been an imam who suggested that his followers try Roman Catholicism or a priest who urged the reverse.

If theology means knowledge of God, every woman, serious about her faith, young or old, must be a theologian, must move beyond that 'simple spirit of worship' to the 'complexities of dogma,' dogma being the principles and beliefs forming the core of biblical faith, the only reliable guides for life.

Here is the true secret of the Law of Attraction: You have a core vibrational frequency. It is purely uniquely you. It's a beacon. It's like a lighthouse. It shines. It radiates purely that signature frequency of your unique being. It never stops radiating that light, that frequency, that energy - never stops. Everything that is in alignment with that frequency is doing its utmost to come to you. Everything that is not aligned with that frequency is doing its utmost to get as far away from you as it possibly can. If the things that are aligned with that beacon aren't reaching you, it's not because "you're not vibrating at the resonance that you need to attract it". It's because your definitions and beliefs are holding it away. If the things that are trying to get away from you can't get away from you, it's not because they're not trying - it's because you're holding onto them. So the true Secret of the Law of Attraction is not "how to learn to attract what you prefer", it's how to learn to let go of what you don't, so that you can let in what is trying to get to you automatically - by definition. That's the true Secret and that's why it's effortless. It's just about letting go and letting in. It's not about having to learn to do something you're not already doing.

Our search for the Master Algorithm is complicated, but also enlivened, by the rival schools of thought that exist within machine learning. The main ones are the symbolists, connectionists, evolutionaries, Bayesians, and analogizers. Each tribe has a set of core beliefs, and a particular problem that it cares most about. It has found a solution to that problem, based on ideas from its allied fields of science, and it has a master algorithm that embodies it.

Scientific reasoning is useful to anyone in any job because it makes us face the possibility, even the dire reality, that we were mistaken. It forces us to confront our self-justifications and put them on public display for others to puncture. At its core, therefore, science is a form of arrogance control.   The

There has been a recent rash of authors and individuals fudging evidence in an attempt to argue that women have a higher sex drive than men. We find it bizarre that someone would want to misrepresent data merely to assert that women are hornier than men. Do those concerned with this difference equate low sex drives with disempowerment? Are their missions to somehow prove that women are super frisky carried out in an effort to empower women? This would be odd, as the belief that women’s sex drives were higher than men’s sex drives used to be a mainstream opinion in Western society—during the Victorian period, an age in which women were clearly disempowered. At this time, women were seen as dominated by their sexuality as they were supposedly more irrational and sensitive—this was such a mainstream opinion that when Freud suggested a core drive behind female self-identity, he settled on a desire to have a penis, and that somehow seemed reasonable to people. (See Sex and Suffrage in Britain by Susan Kent for more information on this.) If the data doesn’t suggest that women have a higher sex drive, and if arguing that women have a higher sex drive doesn’t serve an ideological agenda, why are people so dead set on this idea that women are just as keen on sex—if not more—as male counterparts? In the abovementioned study, female variability in sex drive was found to be much greater than male variability. Hidden by the claim, “men have higher sex drives in general” is the fun reality that, in general, those with the very highest sex drives are women. We suppose we can understand this sentiment. It would be very hard to live in a world in which few people believe that someone like you exists and people always prefer to assume that everyone is secretly like them rather than think that they are atypical.

I fell in love with the idea that a story could have places of origin and its own lineage, not entirely unlike a person. A fairy tale could move from one region to another, and it would change clothes. It could adopt the customs and beliefs of its new home, and it would still retain much of its core. The notion that a story could adjust to suit a new home was such a hopeful one for an immigrant kid who grew up knowing that he and his parents didn't come from the same places.

When the question arises – why retell greek myths with women at their core? – it is loaded with a strange assumption. The underpinning belief is that women are and always have been on the margins of these stories. That the myths have always focused on men and that women have only ever been minor figures. This involves ignoring the fact that there is no ‘real’ or ‘true’ version of any myth, because they arise from multiple authors across multiple locations over a long period.

Being a champion for all students means just that: all students. Not just ones who are likeable and want help but also the ones who might resist your efforts. Even then, your core values drive you to stay true to this belief. This unwavering hope and faith can be the model to inspire others to do the same for all students.

There has been a recent rash of authors and individuals fudging evidence in an attempt to argue that women have a higher sex drive than men. We find it bizarre that someone would want to misrepresent data merely to assert that women are hornier than men. Do those concerned with this difference equate low sex drives with disempowerment? Are their missions to somehow prove that women are super frisky carried out in an effort to empower women? This would be odd, as the belief that women’s sex drives were higher than men’s sex drives used to be a mainstream opinion in Western society—during the Victorian period, an age in which women were clearly disempowered. At this time, women were seen as dominated by their sexuality as they were supposedly more irrational and sensitive—this was such a mainstream opinion that when Freud suggested a core drive behind female self-identity, he settled on a desire to have a penis, and that somehow seemed reasonable to people. (See Sex and Suffrage in Britain by Susan Kent for more information on this.) If the data doesn’t suggest that women have a higher sex drive, and if arguing that women have a higher sex drive doesn’t serve an ideological agenda, why are people so dead set on this idea that women are just as keen on sex—if not more—as male counterparts? In the abovementioned study, female variability in sex drive was found to be much greater than male variability. Hidden by the claim, “men have higher sex drives in general” is the fun reality that, in general, those with the very highest sex drives are women. To put it simply, some studies show that while the average woman has a much lower sex drive than the average man, a woman with a high sex drive has a much higher sex drive than a man with a high sex drive. Perhaps women who exist in the outlier group on this spectrum become so incensed by the normalization of the idea that women have low sex drives they feel driven to twist the facts to argue that all women have higher sex drives than men. “If I feel this high sex drive,” we imagine them reasoning, “it must mean most women secretly feel this high sex drive as well, but are socialized to hide it—I just need the data to show this to the world so they don’t have to be ashamed anymore.” We suppose we can understand this sentiment. It would be very hard to live in a world in which few people believe that someone like you exists and people always prefer to assume that everyone is secretly like them rather than think that they are atypical.

The nature of conspiracy, which among those who both feared and named it, seemed to always possess at its core a misguided belief in the competence of others, as weighed against the incapacities, real or imagined, of the believer. Therefore, he concluded, the belief in conspiracy was an announcement of the believer's own sense of utter helplessness in the face of forces both mysterious and fatally efficient.

Of all the horrid ramifications of child abuse, the self-beliefs formed by the child reap the greatest destruction. Abuse is the most penetrating and permanent communication possible, and it always conveys to the child one or more of several messages: ‘I caused it to happen. It’s my fault because I am bad. I don’t deserve any better.

I was lost a long time, without knowing it. Without the Faith, one is free, and that is a pleasant feeling at first. There are no questions of conscience, no constraints, except the constraints of custom, convention and the law, and these are flexible enough for most purposes. It is only later that terror comes. One is free - but free in chaos, in an unexplained and unexplainable world. One is free in a desert, from which there is no retreat but inward, toward the hollow core of oneself. There is nothing to build on but the small rock of one's own pride, and this is a nothing, based on nothing... I think, therefore I am. But what am I? An accident of disorder, going no place.

As long as people think poverty is the problem,” Ganz explained, “they’re missing the whole point. Poverty is evidence of a problem; it’s not the source of the problem. They’re all based on the weakening of collective institutions—the decline of labor, of common interests. The core question is not about poverty, it’s really about democracy. The galloping poverty in the United States is evidence of a retreat from democratic beliefs and practices.

Acknowledging how little we know is, I think, at the core of mature faith. What we boast of as great faith may merely be a boatload of indoctrination and overconfidence.

Mathematical truth is immutable; it lies outside physical reality... This is our belief; this is our core motivating force.

Our brains are our command centers. Every thought and belief pattern we hold to be true within our core is accepted and implemented by our bodies.

They say it is more important that his core beliefs were steel-wrapped and his moral compass was locked on true North, that he never misspent his gifts.

Whatever our fears are, reflect on our deep core beliefs and insecurities.

A core belief is how we choose to define and believe in our person and life.

The core belief of the [Day of the Dead] is so poetic and simple: as long as we remember those who have passed away, as long as we tell their stories, sing their songs, tell their jokes, cook their favorite meals, THEN they are with us, around us, and in our hearts. The moment we forget them, [...] then they are truly gone. (The Art of the Book of Life, Introduction)

Instead, view the time of trouble as an opportunity to uncover the deepest roots of your problem—which perhaps arise from unexamined core beliefs or ingrained habits that consistently hinder you.

One [project of Teddy Cruz's] is titled Living Rooms at the Border. it takes a piece of land with an unused church zoned for three units and carefully arrays on it twelve affordable housing units, a community center (the converted church), offices for Casa in the church's attic, and a garden that can accommodate street markets and kiosks. 'In a place where current regulation allows only one use,' [Cruz} crows, ' we propose five different uses that support each other. This suggests a model of social sustainability for San Diego, one that conveys density not as bulk but as social choreography.' For both architect and patron, it's an exciting opportunity to prove that breaking the zoning codes can be for the best. Another one of Cruz's core beliefs is that if architects are going to achieve anything of social distinction, they will have to become developers' collaborators or developers themselves, rather than hirelings brought in after a project's parameters are laid out.

For example, in order to identify these schemas or clarify faulty relational expectations, therapists working from an object relations, attachment, or cognitive behavioral framework often ask themselves (and their clients) questions like these: 1. What does the client tend to want from me or others? (For example, clients who repeatedly were ignored, dismissed, or even rejected might wish to be responded to emotionally, reached out to when they have a problem, or to be taken seriously when they express a concern.) 2. What does the client usually expect from others? (Different clients might expect others to diminish or compete with them, to take advantage and try to exploit them, or to admire and idealize them as special.) 3. What is the client’s experience of self in relationship to others? (For example, they might think of themselves as being unimportant or unwanted, burdensome to others, or responsible for handling everything.) 4. What are the emotional reactions that keep recurring? (In relationships, the client may repeatedly find himself feeling insecure or worried, self-conscious or ashamed, or—for those who have enjoyed better developmental experiences—perhaps confident and appreciated.) 5. As a result of these core beliefs, what are the client’s interpersonal strategies for coping with his relational problems? (Common strategies include seeking approval or trying to please others, complying and going along with what others want them to do, emotionally disengaging or physically withdrawing from others, or trying to dominate others through intimidation or control others via criticism and disapproval.) 6. Finally, what kind of reactions do these interpersonal styles tend to elicit from the therapist and others? (For example, when interacting together, others often may feel boredom, disinterest, or irritation; a press to rescue or take care of them in some way; or a helpless feeling that no matter how hard we try, whatever we do to help disappoints them and fails to meet their need.)

He’s never been close to a tragedy that barbaric, never experienced a shock so primitive that it shakes him to the very core of his beliefs. In short, Nicolás has never had a fundamental change of heart.

You are here, now, because you have been loved forward. If not by fellow humans, then surely by Grace itself. That we are here means we are wanted here. It means we belong here. It is our life’s work to uncover why. At the heart of this book is the belief that every individual came into this life with a sacred purpose at the core of their birth. We are not random concentrations of stardust, nor are we accidental tourists. We are divinely inspired, purposeful, and essential to this wondrous human tapestry.

I've inherited a core belief, to wit: don't rely on some other sod for your emotional sustenance. Find something absorbing to do—something so absorbing that you don't have time to dwell on the woe-is-me stuff.

Charlie Munger gave me a great quotation on this subject, from Demosthenes: “Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.” The belief that some fundamental limiter is no longer valid—and thus historic notions of fair value no longer matter—is invariably at the core of every bubble and consequent crash. In fiction, willing suspension of disbelief adds to our enjoyment.

When you can no longer know what your nation or your government stands for, or even where it is, you need a set of beliefs you can carry with you and cling to. You need a core in your heart that will never change.

this book. One of the core beliefs I hold is the importance of compounding. Compounding takes place when you attempt One More Try, time and time again. When you're successful in implementing a One More Try mentality, you'll create and compound more wins for yourself. Each of those wins creates an incremental advancement toward your goals. You stack them on top of each other to produce significant long‐term changes in your life.

Because most religions offer no valid mechanism by which their core beliefs can be tested and revised, each new generation of believers is condemned to inherit the superstitions and tribal hatreds of its predecessors.

It did not care about your belief system, your grasp on reality, the excellence of your analysis or your senses, for the anti-story of the story-creature became story by retelling effortlessly what lived at the core of you.

When employees hold the same core beliefs and values, you need fewer policies to control or manage work. Instead, your employees have an innate ability to deliver solutions and customer service that match your desired culture.

The movie Mr. Nobody examines the core belief that we can find happiness if we make the right choices in life. We can’t; it’s impossible. But the belief that we have real choices that can bring us what we want is cherished by the ego because it keeps us locked into a never-ending quest of looking for happiness where it can’t be found. Mr. Nobody demonstrates that all the choices of this world are made because we have forgotten God and therefore believe in an illusory world of duality. None of our choices are real because they are a choice between the images of this made-up world; that is, a choice between illusions. They are nothing more than hypotheticals, which serve as meaningless distractions.

You are not a small and unimportant creature confined to the form of this physical body, contrary to popular belief. At the core of your being you are pure awareness, and this awareness is the same source from which everything in the Universe arises, exists as, and returns to. Consciousness is the dimension of yourself that you have forgotten you are, and of which you long to return to.

It helps to ask ourselves why we choose to play so small when we don’t have to. Belief is powerful, and whatever we believe, we will subconsciously make manifest. So why do we hold on to core beliefs about ourselves that are so demeaning? When we ask that question, the answers emerge: “My family told me it wasn’t okay to think I was a big deal.” “I thought people wouldn’t like me if I ‘had it all.’” “I thought it might hurt my father’s feelings if I made more money than he did.” Yet whatever pain we might experience at others’ negative reactions to our spreading our wings, is nothing compared to the pain we cause ourselves by clipping them. At this time on the planet, no one can feel good about withholding their magnificence. Expressing your full potential is not just your right; it’s your responsibility. As long as you keep thinking in limited terms, disbelieving in the possibility of infinite possibility in your life, then you will never experience the miracles God has in store for you. You will deny His gifts, taking on the ego’s servitude instead. In a world such as this, fear is often the path of least resistance. If you want a miracle, you have to consciously claim it. And for everyone out there who might say, “How dare you?” there are at least two more who will say, “Thank you for showing me how.

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval. Most perfectionists grew up being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule following, people pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, they adopted this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect. Prove.

Equality is a lie,” Bane told her. “A myth to appease the masses. Simply look around and you will see the lie for what it is! There are those with power, those with the strength and will to lead. And there are those meant to follow—those incapable of anything but servitude and a meager, worthless existence. “Equality is a perversion of the natural order!” he continued, his voice rising as he shared the fundamental truth that lay at the core of his beliefs. “It binds the strong to the weak. They become anchors that drag the exceptional down to mediocrity. Individuals destined and deserving of greatness have it denied them. They suffer for the sake of keeping them even with their inferiors.

The answer to the question, 'What should I believe, and why should I believe it?' is generally a scientific one. Believe a proposition because it is well supported by theory and evidence; believe it because it has been experimentally verified; believe it because a generation of smart people have tried their best to falsify it and failed; believe it because it is true (or seems so). This is a norm of cognition as well as the core of any scientific mission statement. As far as our understanding of the world is concerned--there are no facts without values.

I really knew nothing about the dancing habits of the Scottish. But I wanted to help. "I could teach them Indian folk dances," I offered, scrounging my mind for school dances in gaudy garments. "Well, I'm not sure that they would be complex enough for competitions," she said. Pursing her lips, she blushed a dark, deep red. I knew I had said something wrong, but it took me a few days to understand the reason for Miss Manson's disapproval and discomfort. She blushed a beetroot red because I had unwittingly questioned the core belief of the school: British was Better.

If this pattern continues, the child might “toughen up” or detach, ignoring their authentic Self and presenting a false self, which emerges from a core belief that parts of their identity are unacceptable. I see this a lot with my male clients and friends. For some who grew up with the model of toxic hypermasculinity, where men are discouraged or shamed for expressing emotion, even acknowledging that they have an emotional world may be challenging. In cases like these, we’re fighting not just the conditioning of our parent-figures and family unit but society at large.

Years ago I had realized I was blaming myself for it. People and doctors would tell me it wasn't my fault, but I couldn't “BELIEVE” it! Then I was talking to my friend Kieran and he explained to me in a way that I could PERCEIVE that I was not at fault. No one else could ever do that before, though many tried. Many, many people had tried to tell me it wasn't my fault, but I was convinced it was my fault because I was trying to cheer up my dad.

In many historical texts, colonization is referred to as a settling, but it is nothing of the sort. Colonization is deeply unsettling. It disrupts the cultural identity and sense of belonging of those being colonized. It then attempts to separate them from their core values and beliefs, to break them to the will of the colonizer. The it forcible imposes its own values and ideologies onto those being colonized. When those subjected to colonization begin to assimilate to the ways of the oppressor they begin to oppress others, both within and outside of their group. This expands the influence of the oppressor and further erodes the will of the people to fight for their own freedom. ~ Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change.

The books diverge and radiate, as fluid as finches on isolated islands. But they share a core so obvious it passes for given. Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive—character—is all that matters in the end. It’s a child’s creed, of course, just one small step up from the belief that the Creator of the Universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court. To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.

Trans liberation is not a threat to any lesbian woman or gay man or bisexual person. Yes, trans liberation is shaking up old patterns of thoughts or beliefs. Good! Because most of those thoughts and beliefs that we are challenging were imposed on us from above, were rotten to the core and were backed up by bigoted laws. But we're not taking away your identity. No one's sex reassignment or fluidity of gender threatens your right to self-identify and self-expression. On the contrary, our struggle bolsters your right to your identity. My right to be me is tied with a thousand threads to your right to be you.

But speaking of decisions and choices, I want to turn to a question that baffles so many of us. Why is it that people who are victims of trauma are so often drawn to abusive relationships? Let me broaden the question, because it is so important in understanding not just abuse but all behavior. The key point is that all of us tend to gravitate to the familiar, even when the familiar is unhealthy or destructive. We are drawn to what we were raised with. As I’ve said before, when we are young and our brain is beginning to make sense of our experiences, it creates our ‘working model’ of the world. The brain organizes around the tone and tension of our first experiences. So if, early on, you have safe, nurturing care, you think that people are essentially good….But if a child experienced chaos, threat, or trauma, your brain organizes according to a view that the world is not safe and people cannot be trusted. Think about James. He didn’t feel ‘safe’ when he was close to people. Intimacy made him feel threatened. Here is the confusing part: James felt most comfortable when the world was in line with his worldview. Being rejected or treated poorly validated this view. The most destabilizing thing for anyone is to have their core beliefs challenged….Good or bad, we are attracted to things that are familiar.

We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious’; otherwise, they are likely to be called ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’ or ‘delusional’... Clearly there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are.

Chemistry is change and change is the core of your belief system. Which is good because that’s what we need more of—people who refuse to accept the status quo, who aren’t afraid to take on the unacceptable. But sometimes the unacceptable—your brother’s suicide, Calvin’s death—is, in fact, permanent, Elizabeth. Things happen. They just do.

As a recovering perfectionist and an aspiring good-enoughist, I’ve found it extremely helpful to bust some of the myths about perfectionism so that we can develop a definition that accurately captures what it is and what it does to our lives. Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be your best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. It’s a shield. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from taking flight. Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance. Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (grades, manners, rule-following, people-pleasing, appearance, sports). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect. Healthy striving is self-focused—How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused—What will they think?

I call these ingredients “fascination badges” because they’re emblematic of what you represent. So how, exactly, are you fascinating? Seven potential areas:   1. Purpose: Your reason for being; your function as a brand.   2. Core beliefs: The code of values and principles that guide you; what you stand for.   3. Heritage: Your reputation and history; the “backstory” of how you came to be.   4. Products: The goods, services, or information you produce.   5. Benefits: The promises of reward for purchasing the product, both tangible and abstract, overt and implied.   6. Actions: How you conduct yourself.   7. Culture: All the characteristics of your identity, including personality, executional style, and mind-set.

In my mind, beliefs bind tight. Distorting truth, day and night.

He was always on the lookout for the secret core of primitive ritual and magical belief hidden within the seemingly “rational” processes of modernity.

Chemistry is change and change is the core of your belief...things happen. They just do.

Your Core Values are the "glue" that holds your business together.

stood at the window at four a.m. and told myself: You, too, have a core of precious salt. The human core of inner salt, like this salt of Cardona, comes from the deepest part. Human salt, like this salt, is everlasting. Mine it, use it, and it will not deplete. In my own salt, my own core, this is what I knew: Life goes on a while. Then it ends. There is no fairness. Bad people are honored, and good ones are punished. The reverse is also true. Good people are honored, and bad people are punished, and some will call this grace, or the hand of God, instead of luck. But deep down, even if they lack the courage to admit it, inside each person, they know that the world is lawless and chaotic and random. This truth is stored in their salt. Some have access. Others don’t. A gift or a curse, that my salt is right here, with me all the time? A gift. I’d rather be driven by immutable truths than the winds of some opinion, whose real function is to underscore a person’s social position in a group, a belief without depth. These boys in the library would profess to share beliefs.

Censorship and the suppression of reading materials are rarely about family values and almost always about control--about who is snapping the whip, who is saying no, and who is saying go. Censorship's bottom line is this: if the novel Christine offends me, I don't want just to make sure it's kept from my kid; I want to make sure it's kept from your kid, as well, and all the kids. This bit of intellectual arrogance, undemocratic and as old as time, is best expressed this way: "If it's bad for me and my family, it's bad for everyone's family.

Whatever mainstream Western liberalism is--and I have no useful definition of it beyond something at its core transactional, centered on the magnanimous, enlightened image of the self and the dissonant belief that empathizing with the plight of the faraway oppressed is compatible with benefiting from the systems that oppress them--it subscribes to this calculus.

Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance. Most perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (good grades, good manners, nice appearance, sports prowess, rule following, people pleasing). Somewhere along the way, we adopt this dangerous and debilitating belief system: I am what I accomplish and how well I accomplish it. Please. Perform. Perfect. Healthy striving is self-focused—How can I improve? Perfectionism is other-focused—What will they think?

Building resilience depends on the opportunities children have and the relationships they form with parents, caregivers, teachers, and friends. We can start by helping children develop four core beliefs: (1) they have some control over their lives; (2) they can learn from failure; (3) they matter as human beings; and (4) they have real strengths to rely on and share.

A complementary death-denying strategy is the belief in a personal and personified savior. From a child’s perspective, parents are gigantic and seemingly all-powerful beings with a knack for showing up whenever bodily or emotional needs arise. It’s natural, therefore, for a young mind to also believe in stories about omnipotent beings interceding in matters of life and death.

People might claim to believe in this or that, but in the four a.m. version of themselves, most possess no fixed idea on how society should be organized. When people face themselves, alone, the passions they have been busy performing all day, and that they rely on to reassure themselves that they are who they claim to be, to reassure their milieu of the same, those things fall away. What is it people encounter in their stark and solitary four a.m. self? What is inside them? Not politics. There are no politics inside of people. The truth of a person, under all the layers and guises, the significations of group and type, the quiet truth, underneath the noise of opinions and “beliefs,” is a substance that is pure and stubborn and consistent. It is a hard, white salt. This salt is the core. The four a.m. reality of being.

That’s why it’s crucial to remind people that an important part of Radically Candid relationships is opening yourself to the possibility of connecting with people who have different worldviews or whose lives involve behavior that you don’t understand or that may even conflict with a core belief of yours. It’s possible to care personally about a person who disagrees with your views on abortion or guns or God. The

I thought about the core tools we EHMs used in my day: false economics that included distorted financial analyses, inflated projections, and rigged accounting books; secrecy, deception, threats, bribes, and extortion; false promises that we never intended to honor; and enslavement through debt and fear. These same tools are used today. Now, as then, many elements are present in each “hit,” although that likely is evident only to someone willing to delve deeply into the story behind the story. Now, as then, the glue that holds all of this together is the belief that any means are justified to achieve the desired ends. A

Dysphoria is that bitch who visits the family and wreaks havoc. Sometimes she plucks away, needling and poking, whispering doubts and lies and pulling at the threads of resolve. Sometimes she is in full-on assault mode, attacking the very core of belief, ego and confidence. Sometimes she lingers. Sometimes she disappears as rapidly as she appears, but not before she has darkened things, unsettled all and left a tumultuous mess.

Smith and Denton reporting on the spiritual lives of American teenagers found a common belief that, as they wryly put it, God was 'something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist', who was availabe on demand but undemanding. This has been popularly characterised as 'benign whateverism'. Its core is that we should try to be nice, kind, respectful and responsible, and by doing so achieve a state of 'feeling good, happy, secure, at peace.' Worse things might certainly be believed; but this is not enough to support a civilisation, inspire great art, induce fidelity, inculcate sanctity, motivate self-sacrifice, or lead us to insights into the nature of existence.

This is a chapter on God, I guess. Truth be told, the whole book is. Not much in my life makes any sense outside of God. Certainly, a place like Homeboy Industries is all folly and bad business unless the core of the endeavor seeks to imitate the kind of God one ought to believe in. In the end, I am helpless to explain why anyone would accompany those on the margins were it not for some anchored belief that the Ground of all Being thought this was a good idea.

It is said that 70,000 veils separate the human being from Perfect Freedom. These veils are not evil, below us or filthy. They are complexes that need to be dissolved, beliefs that need changing and doorways to existential core issues. God has said, 'There are seventy thousand veils between you and Me, but there are no veils between Me and you.' This is why we so greatly stress the importance of the Murid involving him or her self in some kind of psychological and body work.

Switches among identities occur in response to changes in emotional state or to environmental demands, resulting in another identity emerging to assume control. Because different identities have different roles, experiences, emotions, memories, and beliefs, the therapist is constantly contending with their competing points of view. Helping the identities to be aware of one another as legitimate parts of the self and to negotiate and resolve their conflicts is at the very core of the therapeutic process. It is countertherapeutic for the therapist to treat any alternate identity as if it were more “real” or more important than any other. Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision

The biggest mistake people make when trying to be authentic is just that: they try. They see these role models of what an "authentic" person is supposed to look like or act like, and they try to emulate that. Authenticity isn't about what things appear to be. It's about allowing things to be what they are. Authenticity is about getting away from hiding, from wearing a mask, from always asking, "How should I act? What should I say? What will people think?" That includes asking, "How should an authentic person act? What would a genuine person say?" Being authentic isn't about making yourself a certain way. It's not even about finding out what you "really" enjoy as opposed to what other people enjoy, or who you "really" are as opposed to who other people are. Authenticity is allowing your likes, dislikes, personality, appearance, hobbies, and beliefs to be fluid, to change, to evolve as you learn, grow, and experience the world. At its core, authenticity is the practice of surrendering the tiresome task of keeping up appearances and taking up of the lifetime work of allowing what is already within you to come out while you remove as many internal and external obstacles as possible. And who knows what will spill out of you if you just allow it to? Who knows what is within you awaiting recognition, awaiting permission to show itself to the world? Even you don’t know—until you try. Or, rather, until you stop trying. Until you become curious.

The communities we belong to are an important part of our identity. They TEACH us what is acceptable, respectable, or tolerable, from the way we dress to the music we listen to, to the things we consider our core beliefs. None of your friends smoke? Well, you’ll be less likely to. None of your friends have a master’s degree? Where do you even start if you want to get yours? All your friends dress like members of the Addams Family? Then your seersucker shorts will probably seem out of place.

We live in the greatest time to build wealth and fulfillment in the history of the world, but that is not shared publicly. We live in a world where many voices on the news, politicians, and social media are telling you that the system is stacked against you. I completely disagree with this fatalistic perspective. It goes back to my core belief that villains and victims do not win. However, victims can become the heroes of their own stories once they embrace that negatives and hardships may have contrarian opportunities.

Humanism, he continued, leaning toward his colleagues with the zeal of his conviction even as he stumbled over his words, that holds as its core value the belief that human beings can learn and grow and change, and that art—and literature—can fuel that evolution. But

As you recall from chapter 1, people who are reminded of death typically defend their worldviews by becoming especially harsh toward critics of their culture. But when Americans who are naturally high in self-esteem or who are given a self-esteem boost are reminded of their own death, they don’t react negatively toward those who express anti-American sentiments. Self-esteem takes the edge off our hostile reactions to people and ideas that conflict with our beliefs and values. With it, we face things that would otherwise upset us with far more equanimity.

During my first few months of Facebooking, I discovered that my page had fostered a collective nostalgia for specific cultural icons. These started, unsurprisingly, within the realm of science fiction and fantasy. They commonly included a pointy-eared Vulcan from a certain groundbreaking 1960s television show. Just as often, though, I found myself sharing images of a diminutive, ancient, green and disarmingly wise Jedi Master who speaks in flip-side down English. Or, if feeling more sinister, I’d post pictures of his black-cloaked, dark-sided, heavy-breathing nemesis. As an aside, I initially received from Star Trek fans considerable “push-back,” or at least many raised Spock brows, when I began sharing images of Yoda and Darth Vader. To the purists, this bordered on sacrilege.. But as I like to remind fans, I was the only actor to work within both franchises, having also voiced the part of Lok Durd from the animated show Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It was the virality of these early posts, shared by thousands of fans without any prodding from me, that got me thinking. Why do we love Spock, Yoda and Darth Vader so much? And what is it about characters like these that causes fans to click “like” and “share” so readily? One thing was clear: Cultural icons help people define who they are today because they shaped who they were as children. We all “like” Yoda because we all loved The Empire Strikes Back, probably watched it many times, and can recite our favorite lines. Indeed, we all can quote Yoda, and we all have tried out our best impression of him. When someone posts a meme of Yoda, many immediately share it, not just because they think it is funny (though it usually is — it’s hard to go wrong with the Master), but because it says something about the sharer. It’s shorthand for saying, “This little guy made a huge impact on me, not sure what it is, but for certain a huge impact. Did it make one on you, too? I’m clicking ‘share’ to affirm something you may not know about me. I ‘like’ Yoda.” And isn’t that what sharing on Facebook is all about? It’s not simply that the sharer wants you to snortle or “LOL” as it were. That’s part of it, but not the core. At its core is a statement about one’s belief system, one that includes the wisdom of Yoda. Other eminently shareable icons included beloved Tolkien characters, particularly Gandalf (as played by the inimitable Sir Ian McKellan). Gandalf, like Yoda, is somehow always above reproach and unfailingly epic. Like Yoda, Gandalf has his darker counterpart. Gollum is a fan favorite because he is a fallen figure who could reform with the right guidance. It doesn’t hurt that his every meme is invariably read in his distinctive, blood-curdling rasp. Then there’s also Batman, who seems to have survived both Adam West and Christian Bale, but whose questionable relationship to the Boy Wonder left plenty of room for hilarious homoerotic undertones. But seriously, there is something about the brooding, misunderstood and “chaotic-good” nature of this superhero that touches all of our hearts.

To be a proper man meant to be a strong man, an outdoors man, but also a man of principle. It meant lack of bombast, a repudiation of shallowness and a core of quiet self-belief. It meant being slow to anger, but firm in conviction. Polworth, like Strike, had had to take his male role models where he could find them, because neither had a father who qualified as ‘proper’, and both boys had found in Edward Nancarrow a man worthy of admiration and emulation, whose approval meant more than any school teacher’s star and whose rebukes spurred a desire to do better,

BOWLS OF FOOD Moon and evening star do their slow tambourine dance to praise this universe. The purpose of every gathering is discovered: to recognize beauty and love what’s beautiful. “Once it was like that, now it’s like this,” the saying goes around town, and serious consequences too. Men and women turn their faces to the wall in grief. They lose appetite. Then they start eating the fire of pleasure, as camels chew pungent grass for the sake of their souls. Winter blocks the road. Flowers are taken prisoner underground. Then green justice tenders a spear. Go outside to the orchard. These visitors came a long way, past all the houses of the zodiac, learning Something new at each stop. And they’re here for such a short time, sitting at these tables set on the prow of the wind. Bowls of food are brought out as answers, but still no one knows the answer. Food for the soul stays secret. Body food gets put out in the open like us. Those who work at a bakery don’t know the taste of bread like the hungry beggars do. Because the beloved wants to know, unseen things become manifest. Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation: bury your seed and wait. After you die, All the thoughts you had will throng around like children. The heart is the secret inside the secret. Call the secret language, and never be sure what you conceal. It’s unsure people who get the blessing. Climbing cypress, opening rose, Nightingale song, fruit, these are inside the chill November wind. They are its secret. We climb and fall so often. Plants have an inner Being, and separate ways of talking and feeling. An ear of corn bends in thought. Tulip, so embarrassed. Pink rose deciding to open a competing store. A bunch of grapes sits with its feet stuck out. Narcissus gossiping about iris. Willow, what do you learn from running water? Humility. Red apple, what has the Friend taught you? To be sour. Peach tree, why so low? To let you reach. Look at the poplar, tall but without fruit or flower. Yes, if I had those, I’d be self-absorbed like you. I gave up self to watch the enlightened ones. Pomegranate questions quince, Why so pale? For the pearl you hid inside me. How did you discover my secret? Your laugh. The core of the seen and unseen universes smiles, but remember, smiles come best from those who weep. Lightning, then the rain-laughter. Dark earth receives that clear and grows a trunk. Melon and cucumber come dragging along on pilgrimage. You have to be to be blessed! Pumpkin begins climbing a rope! Where did he learn that? Grass, thorns, a hundred thousand ants and snakes, everything is looking for food. Don’t you hear the noise? Every herb cures some illness. Camels delight to eat thorns. We prefer the inside of a walnut, not the shell. The inside of an egg, the outside of a date. What about your inside and outside? The same way a branch draws water up many feet, God is pulling your soul along. Wind carries pollen from blossom to ground. Wings and Arabian stallions gallop toward the warmth of spring. They visit; they sing and tell what they think they know: so-and-so will travel to such-and-such. The hoopoe carries a letter to Solomon. The wise stork says lek-lek. Please translate. It’s time to go to the high plain, to leave the winter house. Be your own watchman as birds are. Let the remembering beads encircle you. I make promises to myself and break them. Words are coins: the vein of ore and the mine shaft, what they speak of. Now consider the sun. It’s neither oriental nor occidental. Only the soul knows what love is. This moment in time and space is an eggshell with an embryo crumpled inside, soaked in belief-yolk, under the wing of grace, until it breaks free of mind to become the song of an actual bird, and God.

Imagine the problem is not physical. Imagine the problem has never been physical, that it is not biodiversity, it is not the ozone layer, it is not the greenhouse effect, the whales, the old-growth forest, the loss of jobs, the crack in the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue in the mouth, the diseases stalking everywhere as love goes on unconcerned. Imagine the problem is not some syndrome of our society that can be solved by commissions or laws or a redistribution of what we call wealth. Imagine that it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can effect real change, that our civilization, our governments are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness. Imagine the problem is not physical and no amount of driving, no amount of road will deal with the problem. Imagine that the problem is not that we are powerless or that we are victims but that we have lost the fire and belief and courage to act. We hear whispers of the future but we slap our hands against our ears, we catch glimpses but turn our faces swiftly aside.

We now realize that behind each person’s gridlocked position lies something deep and meaningful—something core to that person’s belief system, needs, history, or personality. It might be a strongly held value or perhaps a dream not yet lived. These people can no more yield and compromise on this issue than they can give up “the bones” of who they are and what they value about themselves. Compromise seems like selling themselves out, which is unthinkable.       But when a relationship achieves a certain level of safety and one partner clearly communicates that he or she wants to know about the underlying meaning of the other partner’s position, the other partner can finally open up and talk about his or her feelings, dreams, and needs. Persuasion and problem solving are postposed. The goal is for each partner to understand the other’s dreams behind the position on the issue.

During our nighttime conversations, we spoke at great length about spirituality and belief. Steve’s faith had been tremendously tested. At times he would lash out and blame God, and sometimes he would proclaim that he did not believe in God at all. I knew he was just lashing out, and I’d try to use humor to get him back on track. “You can’t have it both ways,” I would gently remind him. When bad things happened to good people, or when innocent animals experienced human cruelty, it shook Steve to the core. His strong feelings demanded deep spiritual answers, and he searched for them all his life.

In 2010, the Priesthood quorums and Relief Society used the same manual (Gospel Principles)… Most lessons consist of a few pages of exposition on various themes… studded with scriptural citations and quotations from leaders of the church. These are followed by points of discussion like “Think about what you can do to keep the purpose of the Sabbath in mind as you prepare for the day each week.” Gospel Principles instructs teachers not to substitute outside materials, however interesting they may be. In practice this ensures that a common set of ideas are taught in all Mormon chapels every Sunday. That these ideas are the basic principles of the faith mean that Mormon Sunday schools and other church lessons function quite intentionally as devotional exercises rather than instruction in new concepts. The curriculum encourages teachers to ask questions that encourage catechistic reaffirmation of core beliefs. Further, lessons focus to a great extent on the importance of basic practices like prayer, paying tithing, and reading scripture rather than on doctrinal content… Correlated materials are designed not to promote theological reflection, but to produce Mormons dedicated to living the tenants of their faith.

Perhaps one of the most challenging notions for us to accept at the beginning of transformational work is that the personality—the ego and its structures—is an artificial construct. But it only seems real because up until now it has been our entire reality. Identifying with our personality has been how we have lived and gotten by in life. Insofar as it has enabled us to do so, the personality has been a useful, even highly valuable, friend. As our insights deepen, however, we come to accept the hard truth that our personality is largely a collection of internal defenses and reactions, deeply ingrained beliefs and habits about the self and the world that have come from the past, particularly from our childhood. To put this more simply, our personality is a mechanism from the past, perhaps one that has helped us survive until now, but one whose limitations can now be seen. We all suffer from a case of mistaken identity: we have forgotten our True Nature and have come to believe that we are the personality. The reason we must explore the defenses of the personality and the vulnerabilities it is protecting is so that we can reexperience our Essential nature—our spiritual core—and know directly who we really are.

When you give me art—give me something that reaches inside of my core and twists, taking the very breath that sustains me away. Give me something that wakens me from my lethargy. Give me something that causes me to ponder and question all that I have come to know; due to my circumstances that I have been allotted in this life. Give me something that causes me to question my pride and arrogance of knowing that I am right in my thoughts, beliefs and perceptions. Shake me: as if you had grabbed me and pushed me against the wall—shattering all of my preconceived notions; causing me to break out of the box that I have put others in. Give me something that scraped over the scar tissue of wounds that you carry within, opening them afresh and causing you pain—real core pain—pain that you had pushed down; pain that now resides in your closet of skeletons. When you give me art, give me you, or give me nothing at all… ©2014 Suzanne Steele

Underlying our least effective and most harmful behavior is a philosophical or idealogical core that is irrational but is so central to our views of ourself and the world that often we aren't aware that it is only a belief, nor are we aware of how persistently we repeat this belief to ourselves in our daily lives.

At its core, hatred is the desire to annihilate that which is causing us pain, in the misguided belief that if we could only incinerate what seems to be causing the pain, we would finally be at peace. All feuds, all wars, all acts of revenge are built on this principle, including our inner war with food and weight.

Through comedy, we can touch core societal beliefs and transform them completely. I believe we can get to the truth of some deep societal ideologies, and begin to transform them into a new understanding. Far too many promote hateful ideologies, and we must do much more to bring our cultures together, in love and peace.

Women make these calls based on so many things that men can only begin to speculate about. Every situation is unique and every woman is right when she decides what is right for herself. At the core of a belief in reproductive freedom is an affirmation of diversity. The right to our human diversity, more than the right to privacy, is what we’re really talking about when we talk about the freedom of choice. Like religious freedom and the freedom of speech, reproductive freedom in America should be understood as a fundamental right of reasonable people to be different from one another and to understand things differently. Our freedom to have differences of

If we want to follow the signs of the times, we have to look at how our core economic beliefs have produced a culture that makes poverty, violence, ill health, and fragile economic systems seem inevitable. Economic systems based on competition, scarcity, and acquisitiveness have become more than a question of economics; they have become the kingdom within which we dwell. That way of thinking invades our social order, our ways of being together, and what we value. It replicates the kingdom of ancient Egypt, Pharaoh’s kingdom. It produces a consumer culture that centralizes wealth and power and leaves the rest wanting what the beneficiaries of the system have.

There is a well-intentioned pious belief that they are all fundamentally identical. In terms of an underlying psychological resonance, there may indeed be important similarities at the cores of many religions, but in the details of ritual and doctrine, and the apologias considered to be authenticating, the diversity of organized religions is striking. Human religions are mutually exclusive on such fundamental issues as one god versus many; the origin of evil; reincarnation; idolatry; magic and witchcraft; the role of women; dietary proscriptions; rites of passage; ritual sacrifice; direct or mediated access to deities; slavery; intolerance of other religions; and the community of beings to whom special ethical considerations are due. We

Much like humans, opinions come in all shapes and forms, but in the end, they are just what they are; and may yet still be categorized in nature. The first you might say is the Indoctrinal, which is, of course, dictated by community and necessity, by the human need for acceptance; secondly, there is the Personal, and this is often dictated by individuality, by the yearning to seem interesting and intelligent, or free, or special; and lastly comes the Emotional. This is most commonly dictated by circumstance and bitterness and excitement. However, rarely do we find the case in which any of these are dictated by reason in the pure state: it is by this we see that at the core of a number of false opinions lies not always misinformation but quite often some issue of the human self.

The misconception about enlightenment stems from, or is at least compounded by, the fact that most of the world’s recognized experts on the subject of enlightenment are not enlightened. Some are great mystics, some are great scholars, some are both, and most are neither, but very few are awake. This core misconception will be a big theme in this book because it’s the primary obstacle in the quest for enlightenment. Nobody’s getting there because nobody knows where there is, and those who are entrusted to point the way are, for a variety of reasons, pointing the wrong way. At the very heart of this confusion lies the belief that abiding non-dual awareness—enlightenment—and the non-abiding experience of cosmic consciousness—mystic union—are synonymous when, in fact, they’re completely unrelated.

Republican strategist Peter Wehner says, “Trumpism is not a political philosophy; it is a purposeful effort, led by a demagogue, to incite ugly passions, stoke resentments and divisions, and create fear of those who are not like ‘us’—Mexicans, Muslims, and Syrian refugees. But it will not end there. There will always be fresh targets.” Conservative evangelical Wehner contrasts that with the principles of Jesus, saying, “[A] carpenter from Nazareth offered a very different philosophy. When you see a wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, Jesus taught, you should not pass him by. ‘Truly I say to you,’ he said in Matthew, ‘to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.’ . . . At its core, Christianity teaches that everyone, no matter at what station or in what season in life, has inherent dignity and worth.”15 Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter and top policy adviser to George W. Bush, and an originator of “compassionate conservatism,” says, [O]ur faith involves a common belief with unavoidably public consequences: Christians are to love their neighbor, and everyone is their neighbor. All the appearances of difference—in race, ethnicity, nationality and accomplishment

When it comes to identity we are all constructs. Who we think we are is the result of our upbringing, memories, skill set, knowledge, experiences and personal belief system. Of all the onion layers that make us who we are, our belief system is what powers our core. It’s what creates the essence of a human being and makes it possible for each of us to exceed our limits, confound expectations and do the impossible.

White people today, particularly outside the South, often distance themselves from slavery and Jim Crow by insisting that their immigrant ancestors had nothing to do with these atrocities and, in fact, themselves faced discrimination but were able to overcome it. (In fact, this popular belief is one of the core ideas contributing to white racial resentment against Black people and newer immigrants of color.) But the Irish, Germans, Poles, Slavs, Russians, Italians, and other Europeans who came to the United States underwent a process of attaining whiteness, an identity created in contrast to the Blackness of unfree and degraded labor. As immigrants, these groups had an opportunity to ally themselves with abolition and, later, equal rights and to fight for better social and economic conditions for all workers. They chose instead, with few exceptions, the wages of whiteness.

Albert Ellis, who founded Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, a precursor to cognitive behavior therapy, taught me the extent to which we teach ourselves negative feelings about ourselves—and the negative and self-defeating behaviors that follow from these feelings. He showed that underlying our least effective and most harmful behaviors is a philosophical or ideological core that is irrational but is so central to our views of our self and the world that often we aren’t aware that it is only a belief, nor are we aware of how persistently we repeat this belief to ourselves in our daily lives. The belief determines our feelings (sadness, anger, anxiety, etc.), and our feelings in turn influence our behavior (acting out, shutting down, self-medicating to ease the discomfort). To change our behavior, Ellis taught, we must change our feelings, and to change our feelings, we change our thoughts.

In an awakened family, parents are aware that every relationship in their family exists to help each person grow. Parents view their children as mirrors through which they are able to see how they themselves need to mature and develop. Instead of fixing what they see as faults in their children, these parents seek to work on themselves, raising their own levels of maturity and presence. The focus is always on the parent’s awareness rather than the child’s behavior. This is the core insight of the book. When parents are aware in the present moment, learning and growing alongside their children, the entire family thrives. Free to actualize their individual destiny, each family member lives unencumbered and unafraid. Empowered with self-awareness, boundless in self-belief, liberated in self-expression, each feels free to explore, discover, and manifest their authentic being. This is the mandate of the awakened family.

The goal of all principled people is to recognize truth. Simple or complex thoughts and feelings standing alone rarely express any universal truths. Thoughts and feelings combine to create profound truths and compose extravagant falsities. Truth making exposes certain falsehoods, and lies shed light upon irrefutable truths. Art reveals the pageantry of nature along with the unmitigated grotesqueness that accompanies an earthly life. The search for truth begins with an intellectual journey into darkness whereas the search for beauty requires an imaginative act trussed with the classical beauty of Apollonian lightness. Aesthetic appreciation represents the perfect reconciliation of the sensual and rational parts of humankind’s animalistic nature. Similar to aesthetic experience – contemplation of beauty without imposition of a worldly agenda – love depends upon human sensory-emotional values, a judgement of values and sentiments.

Knowing yourself goes far deeper than the adoption of a set of ideas or beliefs. Spiritual ideas and beliefs may at best be helpful pointers, but in themselves they rarely have the power to dislodge the more firmly established core concepts of who you think you are, which are part of the conditioning of the human mind. Knowing yourself deeply has nothing to do with whatever ideas are floating around in your mind. Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.

What Are You Made of: Your belief system in regards to where you stand within the world are at the Core of everything you've done, was able to do, and will do. If you believe you don't have any control of your well-being, then what you will do and are capable of doing are based on this assumption. If you believe that you are at the center of all that has and will take place in your life, then you will make all possible effort to think and do that which will produce the results that you seek.

Christians like yourself invariably declare that monsters like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Kim Il Sung spring from the womb of atheism. ... The problem with such tyrants is not that they reject the dogma of religion, but that they embrace other life-destroying myths. Most become the center of a quasi-religious personality cult, requiring the continual use of propaganda for its maintenance. There is a difference between propaganda and the honest dissemination of information that we (generally) expect from a liberal democracy. ... Consider the Holocaust: the anti-Semitism that built the Nazi death camps was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries, Christian Europeans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominately secular way, its roots were religious, and the explicitly religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued throughout the period. The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its newspapers as late as 1914. And both Catholic and Protestant churches have a shameful record of complicity with the Nazi genocide. Auschwitz, the Soviet gulags, and the killing fields of Cambodia are not examples of what happens to people when they become too reasonable. To the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of political and racial dogmatism. It is time that Christians like yourself stop pretending that a rational rejection of your faith entails the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. One need not accept anything on insufficient evidence to find the virgin birth of Jesus to be a preposterous idea. The problem with religion—as with Nazism, Stalinism, or any other totalitarian mythology—is the problem of dogma itself. I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

Clear Awareness is not a magical state to be attained by secret rituals, chants, pleading to some external source or emergence into astral planes, nor a status bestowed by a certified master. Nor is it a capability of yours that needs to be developed, strengthened or discovered. Awareness is the core attribute of your existence; it only needs to be freed from all the synthetic definitions, beliefs, misconceptions, fears and other hindering fallacies your mind has absorbed through the course of your life.

If we sold a business opportunity: * Most people hate their job. * Most people need more money. * Most people would like to be their own boss. * Most people want to be rich. * Most people would like to work three weeks out of the month but get paid for four. * Most people want more time with their children. * Most mothers hate warehousing their babies in daycare. * Most jobs don’t pay enough. * Most people start with this package. * Most people want to pay fewer taxes. * Most new distributors get their convention ticket right away.

In the darkness of my soul, I have wondered if God enjoys watching despair, the way voyeurs watch sex. That would explain a great deal of human history! My faith in the meaning of Jesus's life and in Christian doctrine has been shaken to its core ...if I am to sustain my belief in a good and loving God who is not arbitrary and capricious and vicious, I must believe that some higher purpose is served by all this...and the greatest service I can do Emilio Sandoz is to make it possible for him to discover what that purpose may have been.

In this book, I have selected seven quantum movies that carry direct healing messages. These movies are powerful because they clearly depict the truth of Jesus’ spiritual teachings from A Course in Miracles; they contain the same deep wisdom, light, and love that Jesus demonstrated. Quantum movies propel us into a direct experience that is aligned with the world-changing perspective of quantum physics. The profound lessons from these movies are directly relevant to the core concerns of life; they are helping us to see all of the ego’s myriad tricks—the belief in history, ambitions, goals, outcomes, and so forth. The Holy Spirit is now using Hollywood to reach the sleeping mind! Holy Spirit has infiltrated Hollywood! This book is our prayer to Spirit: Make everything new! Show us the world anew—fresh, clean, and clear! Then we have nothing to worry about. When we trust, listen to, and follow Spirit, it is game over for the ego. Game over for worry, sadness, and anxiety. As Jesus says in the Course, “Trust would settle every problem now!” Happiness is Who We Are Now!

When I was in the other realm, where the layers upon layers of my values and beliefs were stripped away and I was left facing the truth of who I am at my core, I learned that two primary forces—love and fear—had been driving all my behaviors. One or the other of these two forces was behind every single action I ever took, and I could clearly see that I’d in fact spent most of my life being driven by fear, not love. I understood with a sudden stunning clarity that to transform my life, whatever I said or did from that point on would need to come from a place of love instead of fear.

To a child, abandonment is death. In order to meet my two most basic survival needs (my parents are okay and I matter), I became Mom’s emotional husband and my younger brother’s parent. To help her and others made me feel that I was okay. I was told and believed that Dad loved me but was too sick to show it and that Mom was a saint. All of this covered up my sense of being worth-less than my parents’ time (toxic shame). My core material was composed of selected perceptions, repressed feelings, and false beliefs. This became the filter through which I interpreted all new experiences in my life.

If we sold insurance or financial products: * Most families need insurance. * Most insurance is too expensive. * Most people don’t have extra money to invest. * Most people want their money to work hard for them. * Most people hate risky investments. * Most people would love to have their savings pay for their insurance. * Most families don’t have time to become investment experts. * Most company retirement plans aren’t enough. * Most people want a financial counselor to help them with their finances. * Most people need insurance, but can’t afford it. * Most people want to protect themselves from emergencies.

Somewhere in all the looking around at others for validation, we’ve stopped looking up. If we are living honest lives that honor God, we must not forget that people not liking our boundary does not mean we aren’t living right before God. When someone says something that hurts or offends us when we draw a boundary, it can be good to check ourselves. Is any part of this an attempt on our part to do harm, control, retaliate, check out, or give ourselves permission to be irresponsible? While checking ourselves is healthy, questioning our identity is not. Checking ourselves means looking at a current attitude or behavior to see if it is in line with God’s instructions and wisdom. Questioning our identity is doubting who we are because we have given too much power to other people by letting their opinions define us. I don’t know any other way to say this except to be absolutely direct: If our identity, the foundational belief we hold of who we are, is tied to an opinion someone has of us, we need to reassess. We must be honest with how much access to our heart we’ve given to this person. It’s not bad to give someone access to our heart but when we give an unhealthy person too much access, it can shake us to our core. When their opinion of us starts to affect how we see ourselves, we can lose sight of the best parts of who we are because we get entangled in the exhausting pursuit of trying to keep that relationship intact no matter the cost. And when this is the cycle we are caught in, sometimes we would rather manage people’s perceptions of us than care for ourselves and the relationship by putting appropriate boundaries in place. Remember, we talked about personal access and responsibility in previous chapters. When we give people personal access to us, those people must be responsible with it. And emotional access to our hearts is especially important.

... as Herman (1992b) cogently noted two decades ago, these personality disorders can be iatrogenic, causing harm to individuals as an inadvertent result of the social stigma they carry and the widespread (but not entirely accurate) belief among professionals and insurers that those with Cluster B personality disorders (especially borderline personality disorder[BPD]) cannot be treated successfully, cannot recover, and are a headache to practitioners. For example, the BPD diagnosis continues to be applied predominantly to women often, but not always, in a negative way, usually signifying that they are irrational and beyond help. Describing posttraumatic symptoms as a personality disorder not only can be demoralizing for the client due to its connotation that something is defective with his or her core self (i.e., personality) but also may misdirect the therapist by implying that the patient's core personality should be the focus of treatment rather than trauma-related adaptations that affect but are distinct from the core self. In this way, both therapists and their clients may overlook personality strengths and capacities that are healthy and sources of resilience that can be a basis for building on and enhancing (rather than "fixing" or remaking) the patient's core self and personality.

If you sold a business opportunity: * Well, you know how a five-day weekend is better than a two-day weekend? * Well, you know how great it would be to work out of our homes? * Well, you know how commuting takes up so much time? * Well, you know how we will never get rich working a job? * Well, you know how we would love to sell our alarm clock to our neighbor? * Well, you know how we would all like to earn more money? * Well, you know how smart people all have a second income? * Well, you know how we would love to set our own hours? * Well, you know how we want to pick up our children from school? * Well, you know how great it would be to never to go to work again?

It was good to be gay on Top of the Pops years before it was good to be gay in Parliament, or gay in church, or gay on the rugby pitch. And it’s not just gay progress that happens in this way: 24 had a black president before America did. Jane Eyre was a feminist before Germaine Greer was born. A Trip to the Moon put humans on the Moon in 1902. This is why recent debates about the importance of the arts contain, at core, an unhappy error of judgment. In both the arts cuts—29 percent of the Arts Council’s funding has now gone—and the presumption that the new, “slimmed down” National Curriculum will “squeeze out” art, drama and music, there lies a subconscious belief that the arts are some kind of . . . social luxury: the national equivalent of buying some overpriced throw pillows and big candle from John Lewis. Policing and defense, of course, remain very much “essentials”—the fridge and duvets in our country’s putative semi-detached house. But art—painting, poetry, film, TV, music, books, magazines—is a world that runs constant and parallel to ours, where we imagine different futures—millions of them—and try them out for size. Fantasy characters can kiss, and we, as a nation, can all work out how we feel about it, without having to involve real shy teenage lesbians in awful sweaters, to the benefit of everyone’s notion of civility.

By what criteria can one decide which of a person's countless beliefs are primitive? The essential factor is that they are taken for granted: a person's primitive beliefs represent the basic truths he holds about physical reality, social reality, and himself and his own nature. Like all beliefs, conscious or unconscious, they have a personal aspect: they are rooted in the individual's experience and in the evidence of his senses. Like all beliefs, they also have a social aspect: with regard to every belief a person forms, he also forms some notion of how many other people have the experience and the knowledge necessary to share it with him, and of how close the agreement is among this group. Unlike other beliefs, however, primitive beliefs are normally not open to discussion or controversy. Either they do not come up in conversation because everyone shares them and everyone takes them for granted, or, if they do come up, they are virtually unassailable by outside forces. The criterion of social support is totally rejected; it is as if the individual said: "Nobody else could possibly know or have experienced what I have." Or, to quote a popular refrain: "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen."  A person's primitive beliefs thus lie at the very core of his total system of beliefs, and they represent the subsystem in which he has the heaviest emotional commitment.

A child is born; he is already somebody. To pick one set of circumstances, let's say that he is a bright boy born into a middle-class family that demands good grades and promotes a worldview that includes playing musical instruments, playing sports, admiring nature, going to college, and getting a good job. The parents pay lip service to the idea that thinking is a good thing but do not do much thinking themselves and do not really like it when their son thinks. They pay lip service to the idea that family members should love one another but don't love much and aren't very warm or friendly. They likewise pay lip service to the ideals of freedom but present their son with the clear message that he is not free to get mediocre grades, not free to dispute their core beliefs, and not free to really be himself. Of course, this all confuses him. In this environment, he becomes sadder than he was born to be, saddened by having to perform at piano recitals that don't interest him and that make him woefully anxious, saddened by having to take his boring classes seriously, saddened by his parents' inability to love him or take an interest in him, saddened by what he learns in school about how human beings treat one another, and saddened most of all by his inability to make sense of this picture of life—a picture that everyone seems to be holding as the way to live but that to him feels odd, contradictory, empty, and meaningless.

In this book you have learned the following starter techniques to create better conversation, better selling and better belief. That’s called ... rapport! Technique #1: Tell your prospect a fact that you both can agree upon. Technique #2: Pacing your speed to match your prospect. Technique #3: Tell your prospect two facts you both can agree upon. Technique #4: Smile. Technique #5: Most people. Technique #6: Everybody knows. Technique #7: Everybody says. Technique #8: Well, you know how. Technique #9: There is an old saying. Technique #10: What would you like to know first? Technique #11: Sincere compliment. Technique #12: Get your prospect to do the talking. Technique #13: Avoid a “WHY” question your prospect has to defend.

The main ones are the symbolists, connectionists, evolutionaries, Bayesians, and analogizers. Each tribe has a set of core beliefs, and a particular problem that it cares most about. It has found a solution to that problem, based on ideas from its allied fields of science, and it has a master algorithm that embodies it. For symbolists, all intelligence can be reduced to manipulating symbols, in the same way that a mathematician solves equations by replacing expressions by other expressions. Symbolists understand that you can’t learn from scratch: you need some initial knowledge to go with the data. They’ve figured out how to incorporate preexisting knowledge into learning, and how to combine different pieces of knowledge on the fly in order to solve new problems. Their master algorithm is inverse deduction, which figures out what knowledge is missing in order to make a deduction go through, and then makes it as general as possible. For connectionists, learning is what the brain does, and so what we need to do is reverse engineer it. The brain learns by adjusting the strengths of connections between neurons, and the crucial problem is figuring out which connections are to blame for which errors and changing them accordingly. The connectionists’ master algorithm is backpropagation, which compares a system’s output with the desired one and then successively changes the connections in layer after layer of neurons so as to bring the output closer to what it should be. Evolutionaries believe that the mother of all learning is natural selection. If it made us, it can make anything, and all we need to do is simulate it on the computer. The key problem that evolutionaries solve is learning structure: not just adjusting parameters, like backpropagation does, but creating the brain that those adjustments can then fine-tune. The evolutionaries’ master algorithm is genetic programming, which mates and evolves computer programs in the same way that nature mates and evolves organisms. Bayesians are concerned above all with uncertainty. All learned knowledge is uncertain, and learning itself is a form of uncertain inference. The problem then becomes how to deal with noisy, incomplete, and even contradictory information without falling apart. The solution is probabilistic inference, and the master algorithm is Bayes’ theorem and its derivates. Bayes’ theorem tells us how to incorporate new evidence into our beliefs, and probabilistic inference algorithms do that as efficiently as possible. For analogizers, the key to learning is recognizing similarities between situations and thereby inferring other similarities. If two patients have similar symptoms, perhaps they have the same disease. The key problem is judging how similar two things are. The analogizers’ master algorithm is the support vector machine, which figures out which experiences to remember and how to combine them to make new predictions.

It is also not as simple as saying that Christians accept the moral laws offered in the Old Testament, just not the ceremonial, cultic, dietary, or civil laws—because, as Old Testament scholar Martin Noth wrote, “Here in the Old Testament … there is no question of different categories of commandment, but only of the Will of God binding on Israel, revealed in a great variety of concrete requirements.” [24] Any differentiation of authority in terms of categories of Old Testament legal materials is foreign to the materials themselves. And no clear delineation along these lines is offered in the New Testament. It is also not as simple as saying Christians may not accept all the laws offered in the Old Testament, but we do seek to practice the principles behind them, as Gordon Wenham, among others, has suggested. [25] While this move is often compelling, other times the principles are not clear, and still other times they are clear but we cannot accept them as Christians. Consider the principle of collective responsibility and therefore collective punishment of the entire population of a town for its prevailing religious practices, or the principle that the “unclean” (like menstruating women) should be excluded from community.  If we say that Christians may not accept all the laws or the principles offered in the Old Testament, but we are committed to belief in the core character of God as revealed there, such as the idea that God is holy and demands holiness, this is better. But this does not resolve the question of whether all same-sex relationships violate the character of a holy God.

Jefferson then distilled and enunciated these “essentials” in several personal works he shared with friends, his “Syllabus,” and two extracts from the Bible: “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth,” and “The Life and Morals of Jesus,” sometimes called the “Jefferson Bible.” In these works Jefferson disputed core Christian doctrines while he omitted references to miracles and Jesus’ resurrection. Although his own spirituality apparently grew later in life, he remained a religious skeptic and on the fringes of unitarianism in his beliefs. Throughout his life he opposed religious orthodoxy and intolerance, and the government’s subversion of religion for political gain. “To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed,” Jefferson wrote Benjamin Rush, “but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.”90

There is a sort of subdued pandemonium in the air, a note of repressed violence, as if the awaited explosion required the advent of some utterly minute detail, something microscopic but thoroughly unpremeditated, completely unexpected. In that sort of half-reverie which permits one to participate in an event and yet remain quite aloof, the little detail which was lacking began obscurely but insistently to coagulate, to assume a freakish, crystalline form, like the frost which gathers on the windowpane. And like those frost patterns which seem so bizarre, so utterly free and fantastic in design, but which are nevertheless determined by the most rigid laws, so this sensation which commenced to take form inside me seemed also to be giving obedience to ineluctable laws. My whole being was responding to the dictates of an ambience which it had never before experienced; that which I could call myself seemed to be contracting, condensing, shrinking from the stale, customary boundaries of the flesh whose perimeter knew only the modulations of the nerve ends. And the more substantial, the more solid the core of me became, the more delicate and extravagant appeared the close, palpable reality out of which I was being squeezed. In the measure that I became more and more metallic, in the same measure the scene before my eyes became inflated. The state of tension was so finely drawn now that the introduction of a single foreign particle, even a microscopic particle, as I say, would have shattered everything. For the fraction of a second perhaps I experienced that utter clarity which the epileptic, it is said, is given to know. In that moment I lost completely the illusion of time and space: the world unfurled its drama simultaneously along a meridian which had no axis. In this sort of hair-trigger eternity I felt that everything was justified, supremely justified; I felt the wars inside me that had left behind this pulp and wrack; I felt the crimes that were seething here to emerge tomorrow in blatant screamers; I felt the misery that was grinding itself out with pestle and mortar, the long dull misery that dribbles away in dirty handkerchiefs. On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off. All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open.

How does that happen? I’m suggesting that Christian education has, for too long, been concerned with information rather than formation; thus Christian colleges have thought it sufficient to provide a Christian perspective, an intellectual framework, because they see themselves as fostering individual “minds in the making.”[6] Hand in hand with that, such an approach reduces Christianity to a denuded intellectual framework that has diminished bite because such an intellectualized rendition of the faith doesn’t touch our core passions. This is because such intellectualization of Christianity allows it to be unhooked from the thick practices of the church. When the Christianity of “Christian education” is reduced to the intellectual elements of a Christian worldview or a Christian perspective, the result is that Christianity is turned “into a belief system available to the individual without mediation by the church.”[

All in all, Christian nation proponents commit several errors in their claims about the religious beliefs of the Founders. Their claims isolate the religious language of the Founders and other individuals from their immediate and cultural contexts. They pick statements that conform to modern confessions of faith, while they fail to acknowledge how those statements may have deviated from standards of religious orthodoxy of the time. And they draw assumptions from those isolated statements about how the speaker may have understood the basis of republican principles or the appropriate relationship between church and state matters. In the final analysis, a majority of the leading Founders were neither orthodox Protestants nor hard-core deists; yet, most leaned toward a form of rational theism, an approach that viewed Christianity, or theism generally, through the lens of Enlightenment rationalism. But more to the assumptions that underlie the Christian nation narrative, there is little evidence that the religious rhetoric of the Founders directed their understandings about the foundations of civil government.

Neoliberal ideology has radically altered our working lives, leaving us isolated and exposed. The ‘freedom and independence’ of the gig economy it celebrates, in which regular jobs are replaced by an illusion of self-employment, often translates into no job security, no unions, no health benefits, no overtime compensation, no safety net and no sense of community. In 1987, Margaret Thatcher said the following in a magazine interview: I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’, ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ And so they are casting their problems on society, and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.8 As always, Thatcher was faithfully repeating the snake-oil remedies of neoliberalism. Precious few of the ideas attributed to her were her own. They were formulated by men like Hayek and Friedman, then spun by the think tanks and academic departments of the Neoliberal International. In this short quote, we see three of the ideology’s core tenets distilled: First, everyone is responsible for their own destiny, and if you fall through the cracks, the fault is yours and yours alone. Second, the state has no responsibility for those in economic distress, even those without a home. Third, there is no legitimate form of social organization beyond the individual and the family. There is genuine belief here. There is a long philosophical tradition, dating back to Thomas Hobbes,9 which sees humankind as engaged in a war of ‘every man against every man’. Hayek believed that this frantic competition delivered social benefits, generating the wealth which would eventually enrich us all. But there is also political calculation. Together we are powerful, alone we are powerless. As individual consumers, we can do almost nothing to change social or environmental outcomes. But as citizens, combining effectively with others to form political movements, there is almost nothing we cannot do. Those who govern on behalf of the rich have an incentive to persuade us we are alone in our struggle for survival, and that any attempts to solve our problems collectively – through trade unions, protest movements or even the mutual obligations of society – are illegitimate or even immoral. The strategy of political leaders such as Thatcher