Countless Emotions Quotes

Elinor had read countless stories in which the main characters fell sick at some point because they were so unhappy. She had always thought that a very romantic idea, but she’d dismissed it as a pure invention of the world of books. All those wilting heroes and heroines who suddenly gave up the ghost just because of unrequited love or longing for something they’d lost! Elinor had always enjoyed their sufferings—as a reader will. After all, that was what you wanted from books: great emotions you’d never felt yourself, pain you could leave behind by closing the book if it got too bad. Death and destruction felt deliciously real conjured up with the right words, and you could leave them behind between the pages as you pleased, at no cost or risk to yourself.

Racial oppression should always be an emotional topic to discuss. It should always be anger-inducing. As long as racism exists to ruin the lives of countless people of color, it should be something that upsets us. But it upsets us because it exists, not because we talk about it.

All of us carry around countless bags of dusty old knickknacks dated from childhood: collected resentments, long list of wounds of greater or lesser significance, glorified memories, absolute certainties that later turn out to be wrong. Humans are emotional pack rats. These bags define us.

Countless emotions could be masked by the sexual act, but a kiss, the most intimate and passionate of exchanges, concealed nothing.

All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is—marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity.

It rained today. You sat with me. We listened to the pit-patter, felt the cold breeze and got drenched in countless emotions. We didn't say a word to each other. Today, 'words' were mute spectators of our growing love.

Every day, I am grateful for your love and the countless ways you lift me up.

In other words, the market is not a weighing machine, on which the value of each issue is recorded by an exact and impersonal mechanism, in accordance with its specific qualities. Rather should we say that the market is a voting machine, whereon countless individuals register choices which are the product partly of reason and partly of emotion.

In the age of Facebook and Instagram you can observe this myth-making process more clearly than ever before, because some of it has been outsourced from the mind to the computer. It is fascinating and terrifying to behold people who spend countless hours constructing and embellishing a perfect self online, becoming attached to their own creation, and mistaking it for the truth about themselves.20 That’s how a family holiday fraught with traffic jams, petty squabbles and tense silences becomes a collection of beautiful panoramas, perfect dinners and smiling faces; 99 per cent of what we experience never becomes part of the story of the self. It is particularly noteworthy that our fantasy self tends to be very visual, whereas our actual experiences are corporeal. In the fantasy, you observe a scene in your mind’s eye or on the computer screen. You see yourself standing on a tropical beach, the blue sea behind you, a big smile on your face, one hand holding a cocktail, the other arm around your lover’s waist. Paradise. What the picture does not show is the annoying fly that bites your leg, the cramped feeling in your stomach from eating that rotten fish soup, the tension in your jaw as you fake a big smile, and the ugly fight the happy couple had five minutes ago. If we could only feel what the people in the photos felt while taking them! Hence if you really want to understand yourself, you should not identify with your Facebook account or with the inner story of the self. Instead, you should observe the actual flow of body and mind. You will see thoughts, emotions and desires appear and disappear without much reason and without any command from you, just as different winds blow from this or that direction and mess up your hair. And just as you are not the winds, so also you are not the jumble of thoughts, emotions and desires you experience, and you are certainly not the sanitised story you tell about them with hindsight. You experience all of them, but you don’t control them, you don’t own them, and you are not them. People ask ‘Who am I?’ and expect to be told a story. The first thing you need to know about yourself, is that you are not a story.

One of the most profound changes in my life happened when I got my head around the relationship between gratitude and joy. I always thought that joyful people were grateful people. I mean, why wouldn’t they be? They have all of that goodness to be grateful for. But after spending countless hours collecting stories about joy and gratitude, three powerful patterns emerged: Without exception, every person I interviewed who described living a joyful life or who described themselves as joyful, actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice. Both joy and gratitude were described as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human interconnectedness and a power greater than us. People were quick to point out the differences between happiness and joy as the difference between a human emotion that’s connected to circumstances and a spiritual way of engaging with the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude.

Everyone freaks out. Sometimes the best we can do with fear is befriend it. Expect it and understand that fear will always reappear. Eventually it subsides. It will return. The real culprits are our knee jerk responses to fear and the way we try to avoid feeling fear, anxiety and shame. Don't get me wrong, wanting to feel better fast is a perfectly natural human impulse. It is healthy to seek relief when you feel hopelessly mired in the emotional soup. Calming down is an essential first step to accurately perceiving a problem and deciding what to do about it but the last thing you need to do is shut yourself off from fear and pain - either your own or the worlds. If there is one over riding reason why our world and relationships are in such a mess, is that we try to get rid of our anxiety, fear and shame as fast as possible, regardless of the long term consequences. In doing so, we blame and shame others and in countless ways, we unwittingly act against ourselves. We confuse our fear driven thoughts with what is right, best, necessary or true.

When our brains constantly scan for and focus on the positive, we profit from three of the most important tools available to us: happiness, gratitude, and optimism. The role happiness plays should be obvious—the more you pick up on the positive around you, the better you’ll feel—and we’ve already seen the advantages to performance that brings. The second mechanism at work here is gratitude, because the more opportunities for positivity we see, the more grateful we become. Psychologist Robert Emmons, who has spent nearly his entire career studying gratitude, has found that few things in life are as integral to our well-being.11 Countless other studies have shown that consistently grateful people are more energetic, emotionally intelligent, forgiving, and less likely to be depressed, anxious, or lonely. And it’s not that people are only grateful because they are happier, either; gratitude has proven to be a significant cause of positive outcomes. When researchers pick random volunteers and train them to be more grateful over a period of a few weeks, they become happier and more optimistic, feel more socially connected, enjoy better quality sleep, and even experience fewer headaches than control groups.

There is a third form of possession or madness, of which the Muses are the source. This seizes a tender, virgin soul and stimulates it to rapt passionate expression, especially in lyric poetry, glorifying the countless mighty deeds of ancient times for the instruction of posterity. But if any man comes to the gates of poetry without the madness of the Muses, persuaded that skill alone will make him a good poet, then shall he and his works of sanity with him be brought to nought by the poetry of madness, and behold, their place is nowhere to be found.

Nothing among all human emotions is more beautiful and more hopeless than the wish to be loved for oneself alone. Who are you anyway, next to countless others, to deserve such preference ? We do not want to be interchangeable; let no one be able to pinch-it for us. A figurative unmistakability claiming to be spatial and siritual. As though the earth had only one heaven, and heaven only one earth, we lay claim to the validity of both and, if we have one, we want to be the other. In reality, however, we are filled with planets, and countless heavens open their doors to us.

"Turn my back on the world..." the historian repeated softly and slowly, his head moving to face the mage. "Turn my back on the world!" Emotion rarely marred the surface of Astinus's cold voice, but now anger struck the placid calm of his soul like a rock hurled into still water. "I? Turn my back on the world?" Astinus's voice rolled around the library as the thunder had rolled previously. "I am the world, as you well know, old friend! Countless times I have been born! Countless deaths I have died! Every tear shed - mine have flowed! Every drop of blood spilled - mine has drained! Every agony, every joy ever felt has been mine to share! "I sit with my hand on the Sphere of Time, the sphere you made for me, old friend, and I travel the length and breadth of this world chronicling its history. I have committed the blackest deeds! I have made the noblest sacrifices. I am human, elf, and ogre. I am male and female. I have borne children. I have murdered children. I saw you as you were. I see you as you are. If I seem cold and unfeeling, it is because that is how I survive without losing my sanity! My passion goes into my words.

We commonly confuse love with the strong emotions most often associated with it, such as joy, attachment, lust, infatuation, pleasure, pain, fear, and hope, to name a few. But, love is not a feeling; love itself is an action. There are countless emotions and beliefs that can cause us to love. Love is the willing giving of self to another living being. Love is giving the life, time, energy, and resources that we would normally give or use for our self to someone else. Love is an action that enhances the well-being of another living being.

Even as I wrote my note to Fern, for instance, expressing sentiments and regrets that were real, a part of me was noticing what a fine and sincere note it was, and anticipating the effect on Fern of this or that heartfelt phrase, while yet another part was observing the whole scene of a man in a dress shirt and no tie sitting at his breakfast nook writing a heartfelt note on his last afternoon alive, the blondwood table's surface trembling with sunlight and the man's hand steady and face both haunted by regret and ennobled by resolve, this part of me sort of hovering above and just to the left of myself, evaluating the scene, and thinking what a fine and genuine-seeming performance in a drama it would make if only we all had not already been subject to countless scenes just like it in dramas ever since we first saw a movie or read a book, which somehow entailed that real scenes like the one of my suicide note were now compelling and genuine only to their participants, and to anyone else would come off as banal and even somewhat cheesy or maudlin, which is somewhat paradoxical when you consider – as I did, setting there at the breakfast nook – that the reason scenes like this will seem stale or manipulative to an audience is that we’ve already seen so many of them in dramas, and yet the reason we’ve seen so many of them in dramas is that the scenes really are dramatic and compelling and let people communicate very deep, complicated emotional realities that are almost impossible to articulate in any other way, and at the same time still another facet or part of me realizing that from this perspective my own basic problem was that at an early age I’d somehow chosen to cast my lot with my life’s drama’s supposed audience instead of with the drama itself, and that I even now was watching and gauging my supposed performance’s quality and probable effects, and thus was in the final analysis the very same manipulative fraud writing the note to Fern that I had been throughout the life that had brought me to this climactic scene of writing and signing it and addressing the envelope and affixing postage and putting the envelope in my shirt pocket (totally conscious of the resonance of its resting there, next to my heart, in the scene), planning to drop it in a mailbox on the way out to Lily Cache Rd. and the bridge abutment into which I planned to drive my car at speeds sufficient to displace the whole front end and impale me on the steering wheel and instantly kill me. Self-loathing is not the same thing as being into pain or a lingering death, if I was going to do it I wanted it instant’ (175-176)

Countless people live their whole lives without ever knowing this...this unnameable thing that we share. This exclusive and secret club that we are so blessed to be a part of. I suppose that by many people's definition, it would simply be called 'Love'. And yet, this is unlike any other love or feeling or emotion that I have ever felt. Simply calling it 'Love' would be an injustice...it would do a massive disservice to this feeling that seems to envelop me with every breath I take. It's as if wherever I go, it goes; and whichever direction I look, it sees. It moves with me as if we've been doing this dance forever...like we are one being and of one mind. It has to uncanny ability to affect change by just existing; it speaks to me and with me and through me and every time it says my name, it cloaks my entire being with a warm comforting familiar glow...like it's only ever meant to be said that way and no different. It's not just simply love...it's everything.

It was as if the press in America, for all its vaunted independence, were a great colonial animal, an animal made up of countless clustered organisms responding to a central nervous system. In the late 1950's (as in the late 1970's) the animal seemed determined that in all matters of national importance the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone, should be established and should prevail; and all information that muddied the tone and weakened the feeling should simply be thrown down the memory hole. In a later period this impulse of the animal would take the form of blazing indignation about corruption, abuses of power, and even minor ethical lapses, among public officials; here, in April of 1959, it took the form of a blazing patriotic passion for the seven test pilots who had volunteered to go into space. In either case, the animal's fundamental concern remained the same: the public, the populace, the citizenry, must be provided with the correct feelings! One might regard this animal as the consummate hypocritical Victorian gent. Sentiments that one scarcely gives a second thought to in one's private life are nevertheless insisted upon in all public utterances. (And this grave gent lives on in excellent health.)

The events that may befall you tomorrow are not new or novel, and the emotions that you will experience have been felt by countless others throughout the crashing torrent of time. They survived. Why can’t you?

Outside of your relationship with God, the most important relationship you can have is with yourself. I don’t mean that we are to spend all our time focused on me, me, me to the exclusion of others. Instead, I mean that we must be healthy internally—emotionally and spiritually—in order to create healthy relationships with others. Motivational pep talks and techniques for achieving success are useless if a person is weighed down by guilt, shame, depression, rejection, bitterness, or crushed self-esteem. Countless marriages land on the rocks of divorce because unhealthy people marry thinking that marriage, or their spouse, will make them whole. Wrong. If you’re not a healthy single person you won’t be a healthy married person. Part of God’s purpose for every human life is wholeness and health. I love the words of Jesus in John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” God knows we are the walking wounded in this world and He wants the opportunity to remove everything that limits us and heal every wound from which we suffer. Some wonder why God doesn’t just “fix” us automatically so we can get on with life. It’s because He wants our wounds to be our tutors to lead us to Him. Pain is a wonderful motivator and teacher! When the great Russian intellectual Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was released from the horrible Siberian work camp to which he was sent by Joseph Stalin, he said, “Thank you, prison!” It was the pain and suffering he endured that caused his eyes to be opened to the reality of the God of his childhood, to embrace his God anew in a personal way. When we are able to say thank you to the pain we have endured, we know we are ready to fulfill our purpose in life. When we resist the pain life brings us, all of our energy goes into resistance and we have none left for the pursuit of our purpose. It is the better part of wisdom to let pain do its work and shape us as it will. We will be wiser, deeper, and more productive in the long run. There is a great promise in the New Testament that says God comes to us to comfort us so we can turn around and comfort those who are hurting with the comfort we have received from Him (see 2 Corinthians 1:3–4). Make yourself available to God and to those who suffer. A large part of our own healing comes when we reach out with compassion to others.

Social networking has brought out a lot of things in us including our ability to deflect from our own lives while we spend countless hours becoming emotionally aroused by the lives of others, often people we don't even know. 

him). She plays by her rules and doesn’t let them get clouded by her emotions.   Your emotions are never to be trusted. Countless times you’ve had fear, anger, or other negative emotions when they were not needed. I come from a background of panic attacks (I had them for fourteen years while growing up), so I know from firsthand experience how untrustworthy our emotions can be. If you let them rule your life, you’ll be living a severely limited life.   Her

These people hadn’t just lost a job; they’d lost an identity. They’d spent countless hours demonstrating loyalty to the business, knowing, of course, that they were only as valuable as their last deal. But this is the trick that a job can sometimes play on us: we know we’re working at the pleasure of a manager, an owner, a corporation, but we’re human and can’t help but develop emotional attachments to the work we do. We begin to identify ourselves with our employers and believe that a business can return our loyalty. Sometimes businesses do. But when it comes down to it, a corporation’s first allegiance is to its own survival. Everyone benefits from the idea that we’re all in it together—until suddenly we’re not.

My paintings are the result of countless small brushstrokes, each one shaded with a different blend of colors, each one with a single, deliberate purpose. Every moment, every day, we are all making something - whether it's science or art, a relationship or a destiny - building it choice by choice, moment by moment. Our decisions shape other people's worlds as well as our own. We are all the center of our own universe and all of use in someone else's orbit. It's a paradox, but sometimes paradoxes are where truth begins. My father would point out that the Beatles told us all of this decades ago. They one sang that in the end, the love we take is equal to the love we make. No, we can never be in complete control of our fates - we're all vulnerable to accidents, to cruelty, and to the random misfortune of life. But I try to think about how much of it is up to us. We decide what emotions serve as our building blocks, which feelings we'll use to shape our universe.

Through the ages, countless yogis, spiritual masters, and enlightened beings such as Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Mahavira, Ramakrishna, and modern mystics such as Amma, Adyashanti, Eckhart Tolle, and Sadhguru, among many others, have all spoken about Oneness.

Death to the attacker was a yardstick of success, to the media person and the government, was a mere statistic. But to her, and countless other people, death had a name, a face and a story, and a countless number of emotions. And to each, theirs was the most painful.

In life, most people say they want to fall in love. By that they mean a few things, none of which is actually part of the emotion. What people mean (ticking off on fingers): 1) They want to find someone who solves—or makes otherwise irrelevant through the delirious happiness they inspire—the umbrella problem of life: What is the meaning of it?; 2) They want to find someone who makes them want no one else, someone they feel totally confident that they are in love with, with no doubts; 3) They want to find someone who they feel totally confident is in love with them, so that instead of going through the painful process of looking deep inside themselves for worth they can outsource the task of identifying it; 4) Later, when such things become worrisome, pangs in the night, at the grocery store, while cooking, countless sad dinners for one, they want someone who will take care of them when they die. This vision of love is totally unrealistic, it just doesn’t happen, but there’s always the sense that it could, and that imagined possibility drives the whole system of despair and broken dreams that has everyone settling for that guy from high school, or whatever, he concluded.

How admirable is the Western method of submitting all theory to scrupulous experimental verification! That empirical procedure has gone hand in hand with the gift for introspection which is my Eastern heritage. Together they have enabled me to sunder the silences of natural realms long uncommunicative. The telltale charts of my crescograph 49 are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, stupor, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals.

ULTIMATE BETRAYALS: [OH GOODY—ANOTHER SECTION ON MOMMY DEAREST. WE GET IT. SHE’S CREEPY. I DIDN’T FIGURE IT OUT FAST ENOUGH, AND SHE USED ME FOR A WHILE. BUT THAT’S ALL DONE NOW, AND IT’S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE I TAKE HER DOWN. LET’S MOVE ON, SHALL WE?] A FOOLISHLY DANGEROUS PLAN: [I SHOULD PROBABLY BE OFFENDED BY THAT TITLE. BUT… RUNNING OFF TO JOIN THE NEVERSEEN DEFINITELY WASN’T MY SMARTEST MOVE. I THOUGHT I COULD TAKE THEM DOWN FROM THE INSIDE. AND YEAH, IT PRETTY MUCH BACKFIRED.] [I DID LEARN SOME STUFF, THOUGH!] [SORT OF…] [I’M STILL PIECING IT ALL TOGETHER. I MEAN, I WOULDN’T DO IT AGAIN OR RECOMMEND IT TO ANYONE ELSE OR ANYTHING (HEAR THAT, BANGS BOY???), BUT IT WASN’T A TOTAL WASTE.] [OKAY, MAYBE IT WAS.] A WAY WITH ALICORNS: [IT’S TRUE. GLITTER BUTT LOVES ME.] [SAY IT WITH ME: KEEFE! KEEFE! KEEFE!] EMOTIONAL SUPPORT STUFFED ANIMAL: [YOU GUYS MADE AN OFFICIAL RECORD ABOUT MRS. STINKBOTTOM???? I CAN’T DECIDE IF THAT’S AWESOME, OR REALLY, REALLY SAD.…] [SAD FOR YOU GUYS—NOT ME. SLEEPING WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL IS THE BEST. YOU SHOULD TRY IT SOMETIME!] [ALSO: DOES THIS MEAN FITZY HAS A SECTION ON HIS SPARKLY RED DRAGON SNUGGLE BUDDY????????] A MERCADIR—WITH THE SCARS TO PROVE IT: [EESH—THANK GOODNESS I CAN REDACT THIS. I REALLY DON’T NEED ANYONE REMINDING FOSTER HOW MAD SHE WAS AT ME. THE POINT IS: I BEAT THE OGRE KING IN A SPARRING MATCH. I DOUBT EVEN GIGANTOR COULD DO THAT!] FINAL NOTE: [WHY IS THERE NOT A SECTION ON MY AMAZING HAIR????] [HERE, LET ME FIX THAT FOR YOU!] [IT’S DIFFICULT TO DESCRIBE THE ABSOLUTE PERFECTION OF KEEFE’S TRADEMARK HAIRSTYLE. COUNTLESS OTHERS HAVE TRIED TO EMULATE IT, BUT THEY’VE ALL FAILED. THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE LORD HUNKYHAIR. IT’S A RESPONSIBILITY THAT MUST BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY!] [HUNKYHAIR → OUT]

In the intricate and mutable space-time geometry at the black hole, in-falling matter and energy interacted with the virtualities of the vacuum in ways unknown to the flatter cosmos beyond it. Quasi-stable quantum states appeared, linked according to Schrodinger's wave functions and their own entanglement, more and more of them, intricacy compounding until it amounted to a set of codes. The uncertainty principle wrought mutations; variants perished or flourished; forms competed, cooperated, merged, divided, interacted; the patterns multiplied and diversified; at last, along one fork on a branch of the life tree, thought budded. That life was not organic, animal and vegetable and lesser kingdoms, growing, breathing, drinking, eating, breeding, hunting, hiding; it kindled no fires and wielded no tools; from the beginning, it was a kind of oneness. An original unity differentiated itself into countless avatars, like waves on a sea. They arose and lived individually, coalesced when they chose by twos or threes or multitudes, reemerged as other than they had been, gave themselves and their experiences back to the underlying whole. Evolution, history, lives eerily resembled memes in organic minds. Yet quantum life was not a series of shifting abstractions. Like the organic, it was in and of its environment. It acted to alter its quantum states and those around it: action that manifested itself as electronic, photonic, and nuclear events. Its domain was no more shadowy to it than ours is to us. It strove, it failed, it achieved. They were never sure aboardEnvoy whether they could suppose it loved, hated, yearned, mourned, rejoiced. The gap between was too wide for any language to bridge. Nevertheless they were convinced that it knew something they might as well call emotion, and that that included wondering.

From countless studies of MRI scans of healthy adolescents and twentysomethings, we now know that the frontal lobe does not finish wiring up until sometime between the ages of twenty and thirty. What this means is that, in our twenties, the quick, hot, impulsive, pleasure-seeking, emotional brain is ready to go, while the slow, cool, rational, forward-thinking frontal lobe is still a work in progress.

Many would be surprised to find that there is a whole world of woemen and girls who dedicate a significant portion of theri energy and emotions into the concept of story found in countless genres. These woman are often left out when you limit your definition of fangirl to geek or musik culture. This book is a tribute to my fiction-loving tribe. It's for the law student who unearths strength from the strut of a TV attorney. For the mother who unwinds with a glass of wine and a little bit of zombie apocalypse. For the teenage rwho points to a novel's heroine and says, "Yes. I'll have more of that please." To the woman and girls who get that forming online friendships isn't a symptom of isolation from reality but an opportunity to from commmon bonds that will cheer us through our victories and comfort us when life gets rough.

All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is—marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural which . . . is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity.

It is so tempting to blame those with whom we are in conflict. Who started the argument, after all, if it wasn’t the other person? Blaming makes us feel innocent. We are the ones who were wronged. We get to feel righteous and even superior. And blaming also nicely deflects any residual guilt we might feel. The emotional benefits are clear. But, as I have witnessed in countless conflicts over the years, the costs of the blame game are huge. It escalates disputes needlessly and prevents us from resolving them. It poisons relationships and wastes valuable time and energy. Perhaps most insidiously, it undermines our power: when we blame others for what is wrong in the relationship—whether it is a marital dispute, an office spat, or a superpower clash—we are dwelling on their power and our victimhood. We are overlooking whatever part we may have played in the conflict and are ignoring our freedom to choose how to respond. We are giving our power away.

Israeli intelligence, on the other hand, relied mostly on human resources—had countless spies in mosques, Islamic organizations, and leadership roles; and had no problem recruiting even the most dangerous terrorists. They knew they had to have eyes and ears on the inside, along with minds that understood motives and emotions and could connect the dots. America understood neither Islamic culture nor its ideology. That, combined with open borders and lax security made it a much softer target than Israel.

Tattooing is more than a job, more than a hobby. It is an intimate, emotional, and powerful thing to be marking someone for life. I am giving over a part of myself forever. In return, I am fully in control of my world and everything around me, if only for that small gap in time. When a piece is carefully thought out and has meaning to my customer, it has double the value to me. I am tied to the art in blood and ink, a part of my soul to be admired by countless others or hidden to be savored only by the wearer.

I have seen countless people say they want to transform themselves and their lives and tune into the new vibration. But when the challenges have come, which are necessary to make that happen, they want out immediately and go back to life as before. Yet these challenges set us free. The reason we face personal and emotional mayhem when we start this journey is because of the need to clean out our emotional cesspit of suppressed and unprocessed emotional debris that we have pushed deep into our subconscious because we don’t want to deal with it. If we don’t clear the emotional gunge of this and other physical lifetimes, we can’t reconnect with our multidimensional self. We can’t be free of the reptilian manipulation and control from the lower fourth dimension. So when we say we intend to transform, that intent draws to us the people and experiences necessary to bring that suppressed emotion to the surface where we can see it and deal with it. The same is happening collectively as the information presented in this book comes into the light of public attention, so we can see it, address it and heal it. Much of the New Age is in denial of this collective cesspit because it doesn’t want to face its own personal cesspit. It would rather sit around a candle and kid itself it is enlightened while, in fact, it is an emotional wreck with a crystal in its hand. The information in this book is part of the healing of Planet Earth and the human consciousness as the veil lifts on all that has remained hidden and denied. Hey, this is a wonderful time we’re living through here. We are tuning to the cosmic dance, the wind of change, the rhythm of reconnection with all that is, has been, or ever will be. You have come to make a difference, for yourself and for the world. You have the opportunity to do that now, now, now. Grasp it and let’s end this nonsense. A few can only control billions because the billions let it happen. We don’t have to. And we can change it just by being ourselves, allowing other people to be themselves, and enjoying the gift of life. This is not a time to fear and it’s not a time to hide. It is a time to sing and a time to dance.

As social creatures, we have a great need for belonging. The desire to foster alliances and act in a compassionate and collaborative way with other people and the world is a powerful motivator in neuroscientific terms because it activates the brain’s empathy pathways. Attachment emotions such as love and trust trigger the release of the neurochemicals oxytocin and dopamine, which contribute to feelings of bonding and pleasure as part of the brain’s reward system. Countless studies show that having a strong sense of meaning and purpose correlates with life satisfaction.4

The wu in wuxia means both “to cut” and “to stop.” It also refers to the weapon—usually a sword—carried by the assassin, the hero of the story. The genre became very popular during the Song Dynasty [960–1279]. These stories often depicted a soldier in revolt, usually against a corrupt political leader. In order to stop corruption and the killing of innocent people, the hero must become an assassin. So wuxia stories are concerned with the premise of ending violence with violence. Although their actions are motivated by political reasons, the hero’s journey is epic and transformative—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In the Tang Dynasty, a prominent poet named Li Bai wrote some verses about an assassin. This is the earliest example I know of wuxia literature. Gradually, the genre gave shape to ideas and stories that had been percolating in historical and mythological spheres. Although these stories were often inspired by real events of the past, to me they feel very contemporary and relevant. It’s one of the oldest genres in Chinese literature, and there are countless wuxia novels today. I began to immerse myself in these novels when I was in elementary school, and they quickly became my favorite things to read. I started with newer books and worked my way back to the earliest writing from the Tang Dynasty.

As countless myths and children’s stories recount, however, childlike playfulness, something we uniquely crave among primates, is eventually lost. We relish some banter with the hot dog vendor, but keep it short because we’re late for work. As adults, the childish drive to meander, examine boogers, and play becomes subordinated to productive routine. Get up, dress, commute, work, eat, sleep, repeat. This is the realm of the PFC, that center of executive control, and it is no accident that its maturation corresponds to an increased ability to stay on task, delay gratification, and subordinate emotions and desires to abstract reason and the achievement of practical goals.

Toxic positivity in spirituality is often called "spiritual bypassing." John Welwood coined the term and defined it as "using spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal, emotional 'unfinished business,' to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings, and developmental asks." Welwood noticed that many people were using spirituality as a way to avoid painful emotions and experiences. This continues today in many spiritual practices or communities worldwide that offer countless ways to create "unlimited" happiness and manifest everything you've ever wanted without ever acknowledging the internal and systemic barriers that may get in the way.

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.

But after spending countless hours collecting stories about joy and gratitude, three powerful patterns emerged: Without exception, every person I interviewed who described living a joyful life or who described themselves as joyful, actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice. Both joy and gratitude were described as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human interconnectedness and a power greater than us. People were quick to point out the differences between happiness and joy as the difference between a human emotion that’s connected to circumstances and a spiritual way of engaging with the world that’s connected to practicing gratitude.

Moreover, as long as you are identified with your mind, the ego runs your life, as I pointed out earlier. Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident. Now remember that an emotion is the body’s reaction to your mind. What message is the body receiving continuously from the ego, the false, mind-made self? Danger, I am under threat. And what is the emotion generated by this continuous message? Fear, of course. Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego’s fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. For example, even such a seemingly trivial and “normal” thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong — defending the mental position with which you have identified — is due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.

If one more person tells me that “all gender is performance,” I think I am going to strangle them. Perhaps most annoying about that sound-bite is the somewhat snooty “I-took-a-gender-studies-class-and-youdidn’t” sort of way in which it is most often recited, a magnificent irony given the way that phrase dumbs down gender. It is a crass oversimplification, as ridiculous as saying all gender is genitals, all gender is chromosomes, or all gender is socialization. In reality, gender is all of these things and more. In fact, if there’s one thing that all of us should be able to agree on, it’s that gender is a confusing and complicated mess. It’s like a junior high school mixer, where our bodies and our internal desires awkwardly dance with one another, and with all the external expectations that other people place on us. Sure, I can perform gender: I can curtsy, or throw like a girl, or bat my eyelashes. But performance doesn’t explain why certain behaviors and ways of being come to me more naturally than others. It offers no insight into the countless restless nights I spent as a pre-teen wrestling with the inexplicable feeling that I should be female. It doesn’t capture the very real physical and emotional changes that I experienced when I hormonally transitioned from testosterone to estrogen. Performance doesn’t even begin to address the fact that, during my transition, I acted the same, wore the same T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers that I always had, yet once other people started reading me as female, they began treating me very differently. When we talk about my gender as though it were a performance, we let the audience—with all their expectations, prejudices, and presumptions—completely off the hook.

All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is - marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity.

Yet sadly we hear little about compassion these days. I have lost count of the number of times I have jumped into a London taxi and, when the cabbie asks how I make a living, have been informed categorically that religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history. In fact, the causes of conflict are usually greed, envy, and ambition, but in an effort to sanitize them, these self-serving emotions have often been cloaked in religious rhetoric. There has been much flagrant abuse of religion in recent years. Terrorists have used their faith to justify atrocities that violate its most sacred values. In the Roman Catholic Church, popes and bishops have ignored the suffering of countless women and children by turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse committed by their priests. Some religious leaders seem to behave like secular politicians, singing the praises of their own denomination and decrying their rivals with scant regard for charity. In their public pronouncements, they rarely speak of compassion but focus instead on such secondary matters as sexual practices, the ordination of women, or abstruse doctrinal formulations, implying that a correct stance on these issues — rather than the Golden Rule — is the criterion of true faith.

THOUGHTS WHICH ARE MIXED WITH ANY OF THE FEELINGS OF EMOTIONS, CONSTITUTE A "MAGNETIC" FORCE WHICH ATTRACTS, FROM THE VIBRATIONS OF THE ETHER, OTHER SIMILAR, OR RELATED THOUGHTS. A thought thus "magnetized" with emotion may be compared to a seed which, when planted in fertile soil, germinates, grows, and multiplies itself over and over again, until that which was originally one small seed, becomes countless millions of seeds of the SAME BRAND! The ether is a great cosmic mass of eternal forces of vibration. It is made up of both destructive vibrations and constructive vibrations. It carries, at all times, vibrations of fear, poverty, disease, failure, misery; and vibrations of prosperity, health, success, and happiness, just as surely as it carries the sound of hundreds of orchestrations of music, and hundreds of human voices, all of which maintain their own individuality, and means of identification, through the medium of radio. From the great storehouse of the ether, the human mind is constantly attracting vibrations which harmonize with that which DOMINATES the human mind. Any thought, idea, plan, or purpose which one holds in one's mind attracts, from the vibrations of the ether, a host of its relatives, adds these "relatives" to its own force, and grows until it becomes the dominating, MOTIVATING MASTER of the individual in whose mind it has been housed.

On cue, Sarah Palin’s voice pops into my head. She’s always doing this, showing up when my spirits are lowest. It’s like I have a fairy godmother who hates me. “So,” she asks, “how’s that whole hopey, changey thing workin’ out for ya?” It’s a line she started using in 2010, when President Obama’s approval ratings were plummeting and the Tea Party was on the rise. And here’s the thing: if you ignore her mocking tone and that annoying dropped G, it’s a good question. I spent the lion’s share of my twenties in Obamaworld. Career-wise, it went well. But more broadly? Like so many people who fell in love with a candidate and then a president, the last eight years have been an emotional roller coaster. Groundbreaking elections marred by midterm shellackings. The exhilaration of passing a health care law followed by the exhaustion of defending it. Our first black president made our union more perfect simply by entering the White House, but a year from now he’ll vacate it for Donald Trump, America’s imperfections personified. The motorcade keeps skidding and sliding. For twenty miles we veer left and right, one close call after another, until we finally reach the South Lawn. Here, too, I have a routine: get out of the van, walk through the West Wing, head to my office across the street. It’s a trip I’ve made countless times before. It’s also one I will never make again. And as I walk past the Rose Garden, the flagstones of the colonnade pressing against the soles of my leather shoes, Sarah Palin’s question lingers in the January air. How has it all worked out?

perished.1 Andrea’s story, of parents whose last heroic act is to ensure their child’s survival, captures a moment of almost mythic courage. Without doubt such incidents of parental sacrifice for their progeny have been repeated countless times in human history and prehistory, and countless more in the larger course of evolution of our species.2 Seen from the perspective of evolutionary biologists, such parental self-sacrifice is in the service of “reproductive success” in passing on one’s genes to future generations. But from the perspective of a parent making a desperate decision in a moment of crisis, it is about nothing other than love. As an insight into the purpose and potency of emotions, this exemplary act of parental heroism testifies to the role of altruistic love—and every other emotion we feel—in human life.3 It suggests that our deepest feelings, our passions and longings, are essential guides, and that our species owes much of its existence to their power in human affairs. That power is extraordinary: Only a potent love—the urgency of saving a cherished child—could lead a parent to override the impulse for personal survival. Seen from the intellect, their self-sacrifice was arguably irrational; seen from the heart, it was the only choice to make. Sociobiologists point to the preeminence of heart over head at such crucial moments when they conjecture about why evolution has given emotion such a central role in the human psyche. Our emotions, they say, guide us in facing predicaments

This process repeats itself countless times over the course of your day. You have a thought that triggers an emotion that drives an action that creates a result. Now, here is where things get a little tricky. As it turns out, your emotions and actions (which create your results) are a reflection of your thoughts—even if your thought is wrong or inaccurate.

Even assuming that a mantra's shabdic ["sacred sound"] quality is an important component of its effectiveness, that quality can come into play only when the mantra is uttered by one properly instructed in the art of yogic visualization; for mantras have not only sound, but also form and color; the form or the archetypal image or symbol with which it is associated must be evoked at the moment of utterance, since that image is the repository of all the psychic, emotional and spiritual energy drawn from all the adepts who have ever concentrated upon that particular image or symbol since it first came into being. (That the energy generated by a succession of yogins throughout the centuries is present in such symbols is a concept that will not surprise those acquainted with C.G. Jung's teaching about archetypes.) […T]he lamas teach that the mantra appropriate to each of the divine forms contemplated embodies the psychic energy of that 'being'. In other words, the yogically visualized image of the deity or the mantric syllable that symbolizes it is a centre for the powerful through-associations built around it by countless yogins during past centuries and by the adept himself in his meditations; however, it also constitutes a particular embodiment of the energies streaming from the Source and it is to this aspect that the shabdic quality of the appropriate mantra probably pertains. As the sound is no more than a symbol of the mantra's latent power, mispronunciation of the syllables is no grave matter; for it is the adept's intention that unlocks the powers of his mind. Though the mantra may consist of syllables to which no conceptual meaning is attached, pronouncing them nevertheless enables him to conjure up instantly in his mind the psychic qualities he has learnt to associate with them.

You’re gay, but you talk about screwing countless women, many at the same time,” Ryan said. “Wouldn’t that make you bi?” “I don’t like labels,” Dagger said. “Sex is sex. I can get off with women, but I prefer being with a man, and the only emotional connections I’ve ever felt are with men. I think that makes me very gay.

During the antiglobalization years at the turn of twenty-first century, I frequently found myself in baffling arguments about the use of "violence" in demonstrations with pacifists or others who self-described as adhering to a strict code of nonviolence. Many of the same folks who argued that we shouldn't do anything that could hurt someone else's property consistently yelled at their companions until they felt threatened, and engaged in intensely damaging emotional manipulations and passive-aggressive maneuvers in meetings and during demonstrations. Countless times, I saw "nonviolent" demonstrators physically hurt other protestors by attempting to drag them out of the streets for spray painting a wall or breaking a window. Why do people feel justified in trying to pacify others--often with little context for one another? Such vehement attempts to try to contain other's rage and rebellion leads to an unnecessary escalation of conflict between those of us who should be able to struggle together instead of against one another. (Original Zine: Ain't no PC Gonna Fix it, Baby. 2013. Featured in: A Critique of Ally Politics. Taking Sides.)

One by one, he lifts the blankets to take a peek. Curious I halt and silent stand, Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket; Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray’d hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes? Who are you my dear comrade? Then to the second I step—and who are you my child and darling? Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming? Whitman had compassion. He understood these were unique lives that had been extinguished, three examples among countless others. Empathy is one of the strongest things in Whitman from the very beginning. And as I read this, I really feel sorry for that old man. And of course, for the kid—young guy, who goes to war to be a hero and gets killed. The whole poem is a live wire vibrating with feelings. It manages to be both restrained and emotional as the speaker uncovers those bodies and looks in horror at their faces.

She had made the observation several years before to a startled Waldo Emerson that “women are Slaves.” Married women in particular—and that meant most American women—were, in countless legal and emotional respects, the property of their husbands. Their liberation, however, was not to be found in a political movement, Margaret believed, but in reform of themselves as individuals,

I had found somebody who lived a life as unconventional as my own. She above anybody would understand that monogamy had nothing to do with my feelings for her. I could go to work and have sex with countless beautiful women, and at the end of the day I'd come home to her and be as devoted as ever. And when she made porn films, it worked the same way. I would call it emotional monogamy...physical nonmonogamy.

I’d thought that this place would be the center of my world. Standing on the sidewalk after my emotional rollercoaster of a day, I could see how cold and empty that existence would have been. Countless hours spent worshipping at the altar of the almighty dollar. Superficial friendships based on social capital and influence. And probably a loveless marriage born of parental and societal pressure.

Most things we learn are easier to apply in a material form, as when following a certain decision or task, when thinking rationally about ourselves and our life. Everything becomes messed up when are trying to understand what makes us who we are, and that's why love exists, to pushes us there. Emotions are very powerful, I believe up to five thousand times more than the mind - there are actual scientific studies on the topic. In other words, our brain is nothing compared to the heart. The heart has an intelligence of its own. But it is indeed connected to the rest of us, including our mind. So what this means is that our emotions are far more powerful than our reason. You know, like when a grasshopper gets his head chopped off by a female after sex - he knows he is going to die, but he sill can't help himself. A large majority of us is like that. We think we are superior to animals, but only in the amount of problems. Nonetheless, when you look at someone very smart doing something very stupid, you wonder what the hell is happening, and that's when we enter the fields of spirituality and psychology. Psychology can answer pretty much most of our behaviors - as we either move towards pleasure or pain, to avoid one and obtain more of the other. When both get mixed it all becomes complicated, but it does happen, in families, relationships, and so on. The extreme of this is altruism, when a person literally sacrifices his life to save another. You can start by Jesus, but you don't need to go so far. There are many examples everywhere, like the fireman that tries to save a guy that attempted to commit suicide by setting his house on fire. The fireman may know the other man did it on purpose, but he still risks his life to save him. The same with the exorcist, who faces the devil to save someone who actually accepted to be possessed or did some crazy ritual to get more knowledge, power, sex, and whatsoever; the exorcist knows he is risking his life and mental health to save an ignorant soul, and yet he still does it. The same with the father who runs after the son who is consuming drugs. He knows that his son or one of his companions may kill him out of anger but he still can't help himself. The same occurs with the police officer, when risking getting a bullet from the person to whom he is pointing a gun with no desire to shoot it. So what about love? It's a similar relation. Many times we are programmed to behave in a certain way and we can't help ourselves. Life, however, is more complex than that, which can be a good thing, like when we are cheated by someone who was already no good in our life. He or she did us a very good favor, even if we can't see it right then. The same when someone dies. Well, yeah, this one sounds bad, but people don't just die for no reason, even though it may seem so, not when they are texting while driving or drunk or high on weed. And what about when we lose our job and our partner starts fighting about money? That's also a blessing, as otherwise we would never know that that's all he or she cared about. There are countless ways to look at it. And yet, many times we have strong feelings for someone who is simply mentally sick. Is this love or insanity? I don't really know. I know as much as the grasshopper that gets his head chopped by a female for thousands of years and is not yet extinct by reason.

Most things we learn are easier to apply in a material form, as when following a certain decision or task, when thinking rationally about ourselves and our life. Everything becomes messed up when are trying to understand what makes us who we are, and that's why love exists, to pushes us there. Emotions are very powerful, I believe up to five thousand times more than the mind - there are actual scientific studies on the topic. In other words, our brain is nothing compared to the heart. The heart has an intelligence of its own. But it is indeed connected to the rest of us, including our mind. So what this means is that our emotions are far more powerful than our reason. You know, like when a praying mantis gets his head chopped off by a female after sex - he knows he is going to die, but he sill can't help himself. A large majority of us is like that. We think we are superior to animals, but only in the amount of problems. Nonetheless, when you look at someone very smart doing something very stupid, you wonder what the hell is happening, and that's when we enter the fields of spirituality and psychology. Psychology can answer pretty much most of our behaviors - as we either move towards pleasure or pain, to avoid one and obtain more of the other. When both get mixed it all becomes complicated, but it does happen, in families, relationships, and so on. The extreme of this is altruism, when a person literally sacrifices his life to save another. You can start by Jesus, but you don't need to go so far. There are many examples everywhere, like the fireman that tries to save a guy that attempted to commit suicide by setting his house on fire. The fireman may know the other man did it on purpose, but he still risks his life to save him. The same with the exorcist, who faces the devil to save someone who actually accepted to be possessed or did some crazy ritual to get more knowledge, power, sex, and whatsoever; the exorcist knows he is risking his life and mental health to save an ignorant soul, and yet he still does it. The same with the father who runs after the son who is consuming drugs. He knows that his son or one of his companions may kill him out of anger but he still can't help himself. The same occurs with the police officer, when risking getting a bullet from the person to whom he is pointing a gun with no desire to shoot it. So what about love? It's a similar relation. Many times we are programmed to behave in a certain way and we can't help ourselves. Life, however, is more complex than that, which can be a good thing, like when we are cheated by someone who was already no good in our life. He or she did us a very good favor, even if we can't see it right then. The same when someone dies. Well, yeah, this one sounds bad, but people don't just die for no reason, even though it may seem so, not when they are texting while driving or drunk or high on weed. And what about when we lose our job and our partner starts fighting about money? That's also a blessing, as otherwise we would never know that that's all he or she cared about. There are countless ways to look at it. And yet, many times we have strong feelings for someone who is simply mentally sick. Is this love or insanity? I don't really know. I know as much as the praying mantis that gets his head chopped by a female for thousands of years and is not yet extinct by reason.

l will live a life where, at the end of each day, I won’t even have a single smile in my soul because I will have smiled them all, nor a single celebration because I will have celebrated them all, I won’t have a single kindness in my soul because I will have shared them all with the people around me, or a single hope, because I will have turned it into a deed. I will live a life where, at the end of each day, I won’t have a single moment of meanness, injustice, humiliation, sarcasm, verbal, or physical violence in my soul, not because I have never been mean or unjust, or have never contrived countless humiliations, emotional storms, sarcasms, swearwords, and punches during it, but because, by explaining them to myself, I managed to disarm them before they became the vengeful missionaries of my ugliness.

I was educated at Cambridge. How admirable is the Western method of submitting all theory to scrupulous experimental verification! That empirical procedure has gone hand in hand with the gift for introspection which is my Eastern heritage. Together they have enabled me to sunder the silences of natural realms long uncommunicative. The telltale charts of my crescograph2 are evidence for the most skeptical that plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, stupor, and countless appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals. - Jagadis Chandra Bose

He saw people. He felt the heat and cold of uncounted probabilities. He knew names and places, experienced emotions without number, reviewed data of innumerable unexplored crannies. There was time to probe and test and taste, but no time to shape. The thing was a spectrum of possibilities from the most remote past to the most remote future—from the most probable to the most improbable. He saw his own death in countless ways. He saw new planets, new cultures. People. People.

Like a painter in temperance, the brush flow with the melody on the canvas kindle light within a cadence heart a reflection of life and death. Strokes of countless ink a constellation of countless little tears, wide emotions and lengthy death. In riddance of suicidal emotions embracing serenity tone

My emotions had led me to refute logic on countless occasions and enter into idiotic feats, relationships, and situations. In some ways, emotions had not only replaced common sense, but also spirituality in my life. I had expended all concepts of balanced physical, psychological, social, and spiritual wellbeing in exchange for a fleeting pleasure.

Where did it all go wrong?' Heiner thought vacantly. At first, it was just a feeling of infatuation. All he wanted was to touch her just once. He dared not want her. So, with persistence, he became the marquis' dog. To gain a higher position, to gain more power, to become a "suitable" person. To get a little closer to her. Because there was no way she would pay attention to a soldier who was an orphan and all he knew was to kill people... Heiner looked down at his hand on the window pane. He could still smell the blood that had long since been washed away. He tightened his fists. I know that I am a dirtier and lower human being than you if I am to blame for wrongdoing. I know that I am more of a sinner, having killed countless people and sent my colleagues to their deaths. He didn't want to admit it. He wanted to put all the blame on her. You are so happy being noble while I rolled through the mud to bring you peace. You have no idea whose blood was shed and whose lives were sacrificed. The hardest and saddest thing in your life is not improving your piano skills, that's all. So... I hated you for it. A wave of every dirty, inferior emotion flooded his chest. Heiner's body slowly collapsed. She alone was the reason he struggled so much, but in the end, it turned out like this. Heiner cradled his head in his hands. His breath came in gulps. He eventually couldn't hold it in and let it out. The man crouched in the corner sobbed quietly. From far away, the sound of a piano carried on the wind. He cried for a very long time.

Countless people, and not just women, men as well, stay in emotionally and physically abusive relationships, or in relationships where they are manipulated, taken for granted and demeaned at every single step. And yet they chose to accept their circumstances because they are either afraid of being alone or because they are expected to tolerate the abuse by society OR because they are so in love with the manipulative person that they seemed to have lost their identity. They think that by choosing to accept that abuse and losing their identity, the other person will actually appreciate their loyalty and love them more, or eventually realize their mistake and change. But unfortunately, that never happens, and certainly never happens if you don’t take a stand and refuse to accept the abuse any further. On the contrary, the person starts taking them for granted and is encouraged to make thing worse, because they think that no matter what happens, you are always going to be there and silently take all the crap they give you.

Dear Voyagers, Your cameras have shown us the vastness of the universe, Our eyes too can gaze upon the heavens and revel in nature, But behind our eyes, There’s something called a mind that processes it all. What we call the mind Spins countless tales and stories, With such variety that one could say, For every human that has ever lived, there exists a different image, emotion, analysis, and worldview, and this can be beautiful and at the same time terrifying. I imagine mapping the universe completely, Discovering life in other systems and galaxies, Might be much sooner than charting the map that could explain human existence. So many questions remain for me, Like if, In the coming decades, poverty is eradicated, Freedom is universal, Mars is colonized, and people live there, Cities rise above Venus, Plant-based diets replace meat, Equality reaches every person and no one is questioned for their beliefs, orientations, or thoughts, Diseases are cured, Physical labor becomes meaningless, and robots end the hardship of human toil, Earth’s climate change is halted, Firearm possession is made free, and today’s concerns are all resolved—will everyone then live in peace? My mind, my eyes, they know the answer: “No.” Probably then, Conspiracy theorists Would say it all happened in a studio, Some would claim that veganism’s goal is to destroy chakras, Others would start revolts against order and law, criticizing even that beautiful state. This dissatisfaction doesn’t belong to any specific class or group, It’s what we all are. Environment and culture matter, but I think even if a brain chip were made To transfer every piece of knowledge on Earth, All fields of science, memories, Experiences, languages, and the stories of every civilization, every human, and everything ever experienced to our minds, We’d still harbor doubt. Our efforts to prove ourselves to each other Will be in vain. Perhaps the right path Is to continue and enjoy the unknown, Or maybe to accept and find joy in never truly experiencing joy. I play Hans Zimmer’s “Stay,” Yet my mind continues to drift, Time passes, Those around me age as I move forward towards an unknown destination. Perhaps someone, something, 4.5 billion light years away, Is staring at a point in the sky, They don’t know I’m here in an existential crisis, That Earth is in a fight for survival, How I envy them, Staring into that dark spot in the sky, They too are fortunate for not existing in this moment, Or for their light not having reached me. If Earth’s light reaches them, They would surely grieve for these restless, lost souls, For human history is tied to sorrow, pain, separation, and nothingness. Perhaps the Big Crunch, Absolute nothingness, Is the only cure for this pain— The pain of being and existing. Dear Voyagers, When your signal to Earth is lost, It will feel like the death of a loved one, Even though I know you’re alive somewhere, traversing an unknown path, Something I doubt will happen after human death, And even if it does, It wouldn’t lessen the grief of those left behind who have yet to join that unknown journey. I fear oblivion, I fear the oblivions that disappear from history and memories, as if they never were, Like the meal of a Native American grandmother a thousand years ago, Or the kiss of two lovers and the story of their union and parting, never recorded anywhere.

Voyagers, I’ve always wanted to write about you. And now, at 4:41 a.m. on an autumn morning, Words have found their way into my mind. I picture myself like you— Distant from life, Alone, Yet moving towards an unknown destination! Like you, in the early stages of my journey, I could see, I could gather knowledge and transmit it, I was useful and efficient. But sometimes, to keep connected to the world, To be able to stay on course and conserve my energy, I had to shut parts of myself down, To survive, To go blind, to be deaf, to be isolated, and just occasionally signal my existence to the world. The same thing I do, that you do, that so many others do. The boundless reaches of space Have become somewhat more comprehensible through you, Yet the depths of the human soul remain unfathomable, And its pain incurable. We live in an age surrounded by a torrent of information, Yet somehow, we remain lonely and lost. Language has advanced, There are words for nearly everything, Everyone can describe their own state of mind, yet we’re still at war with one another. Earth has turned into a vast ship, Perhaps like Noah’s Ark, With maximum diversity and multiplicity, Yet everyone on this ship plays their own tune, rallies their own cause! Someone steps forward, claiming each individual’s thoughts and personal benefit are like rare pearls to be cherished, While another insists that collective welfare takes precedence, That the needs of the masses outweigh individual desires. Some launch movements to claim their rights, While others start movements to flaunt the rights they’ve acquired. No one knows what they truly want; We’re all still lost. I don’t know how Earth looks from afar— Perhaps like a blueberry-flavored lollipop, A lollipop with a stick, But Earth’s stick is an invisible one made of sorrow. I find something common among all the passengers on this ship, All the inhabitants of this blueberry lollipop: sorrow. A fetus in its mother’s womb is also like a lollipop, But connected by an umbilical cord. As a fetus, Growing in the mother’s womb, Suffering, malnutrition, and physical ailments can be painful for us. If the mother’s state is stable, We may enjoy brief periods of security and calm, but after that, We must endure the pain of separation, Learn how to breathe, And besides the sorrow of leaving security behind, We face new emotions like fear and anger. Later in life, We each take our own path. No matter how much they try to show humans as social creatures, It’s always the individual who walks their own way, who has the freedom to choose, Even if one finds the meaning of their path in joining a group or a collective, it’s their individual choice that put them on that path. Today, people have countless options to join others who are like them, And these options themselves bring confusion, And when you join a group out of confusion, You treat the other groups with hostility. Science, philosophy, religion, politics…each of them has thousands of branches, and each branch Wants to disprove the other, cleanse itself of its shameful past. Freedom of speech has become an excuse for verbal assaults and psychological wounds, Non-violence has become a breeding ground for new and emerging dictators, For heartless sects and brutal factions. Knowledge and science alone cannot save us, Just as religion couldn’t. I don’t want to write about chaos, Life isn’t that disorganized, In some corner of the world, A lover is staring up at his beloved’s window, A child is laughing joyfully. But writing about sorrow, Speaking of chaos and Asking questions can reveal where we stand. Now, we know so much about space, And about the Sun, too. The James Webb telescope has mapped out the cosmos for us, and countless projects are underway for the future, crafted with flawless precision and extraordinary coherence, but the rift between humans remains deep.

But no organism could survive in the rarefied world that the physicist, up to the present generation, regarded as the real one, the abstract area of mass and motion-any more than man could survive without massive equipment on the life-forsaken moon. The actual world occupied by organisms is one of literally indescribable richness and complexity: a life-furthering accumulation of molecules, organisms, species, each bearing the impress of countless functional adaptations and selective transformations, the residue of billions of years of evolution. Of these vast transformations only an infinitesimal part is visible or can be reduced to any mathematical order. Form, color, odor, tactile sensations, emotions, appetites, feelings, images, dreams, words, symbolic abstractions-that plenitude of life which even the humblest being in some degree exhibits-cannot be resolved in any mathematical equation or converted into a geometric metaphor without eliminating a large part of the relevant experience.

The causes of my uneasiness are these: 1. The lack of spiritual fruit in the lives of so many who claim to have faith. 2. The rarity of a radical change in the conduct and general outlook of persons professing their new faith in Christ as their personal Saviour. 3. The failure of our teachers to define or even describe the thing to which the word faith is supposed to refer. 4. The heartbreaking failure of multitudes of seekers, be they ever so earnest, to make anything out of the doctrine or to receive any satisfying experience through it. 5. The real danger that a doctrine that is parroted so widely and received so uncritically by so many is false as understood by them. 6. I have seen faith put forward as a substitute for obedience, an escape from reality, a refuge from the necessity of hard thinking, a hiding place for weak character. I have known people to miscall by the name of faith high animal spirits, natural optimism, emotional thrills and nervous tics. 7. Plain horse sense ought to tell us that anything that makes no change in the man who professes it makes no difference to God either, and it is an easily observable fact that for countless numbers of persons the change from no-faith to faith makes no actual difference in the life.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, anthropologists and educators have suggested in countless studies and numerous research papers that love is a “learned response, a learned emotion.” … Most of us continue to behave as though love is not learned but lies dormant in each human being and simply awaits some mystical age of awareness to emerge in full bloom. Many wait for this age forever. We seem to refuse to face the obvious fact that most of us spend our lives trying to find love, trying to live in it and dying without ever truly discovering it.

When emotional intelligence was first discovered, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with the highest levels of intelligence (IQ) outperform those with average IQs just 20 percent of the time, while people with average IQs outperform those with high IQs 70 percent of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into what many people had always assumed was the source of success—IQ. Scientists realized there must be another variable that explained success above and beyond one’s IQ, and years of research and countless studies pointed to emotional intelligence (EQ) as the critical factor. A

Ours is a technologically proficient but emotionally deficient and inconsistent medical system that is best at treating acute, not chronic, problems: for every instance of expert treatment, skilled surgery, or innovative problem-solving, there are countless cases of substandard care, overlooked diagnoses, bureaucratic bungling, and even outright antagonism between doctor and patient. For a system that invokes “patient-centered care” as a mantra, modern medicine is startlingly inattentive—at times actively indifferent—to patients’ needs.

As a pastor, I have met with countless people who struggle with church. As we talk and delve into their lives, I typically find one of two things. First, they have never truly been a part of this level of community and relationship, so they don't understand what is available and can be added to their lives. Simply put, you can't fully know what you're missing if you've never experienced it. Second, a community they've been a part of in the past tore them down and caused hurt. Even if they had contributed to the conflict, the experience created a physical and emotional avoidance, which is often difficult to overcome.

You’ll find that the more closely you embrace the art of viewing, the less you’ll be able to escape all that makes us human. You’ll eventually learn to live beyond sorrow and anguish, and countless other emotions. Of course you’ll always feel them, but you’ll understand them unconditionally, and that understanding will give you the wisdom you need to survive. So don’t be ashamed of your emotions. Release them freely. We all do around here; it’s healthy.” He was briefly silent. “Now tell me more about your friend Foley.

Note Worthy: Thought's of Victoria Short Story 3: Until Death Do Us Part. If you keep your mind busy, then you do not have time to stop and stop and feel all the pain and sadness. If you stay busy you do not think of all the countless memories that flood your mind. Because when those memories pop in your head all you wish for… all you ache for is to hold that person in your arms close. To squeeze them tight and never let go. Only you can’t. You never can ever again. No matter how bad you want too.

An Autopsy on an Old Whore Paris arouses strong emotions. ‘How different was my first sight of Paris from what I had expected,’ wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the first explorers of the modern city. ‘I had imagined a town as beautiful as it was large. I saw only dirty, stinking alleys, ugly black houses, a stench of filth and poverty. My distaste still lingers.’1 Years ago, I arrived in Paris for the first time, stepping down into the street from the metro station at Barbès and, like Rousseau and countless others arriving in the city for the first time, I did not see what I had expected to find.

Buddhi (intellect) makes one emotional. What would happen if this train were to become emotional? It will cause accident and kill many people. Similarly, when humans become emotional, countless jivas (organisms) die within. So remain in ‘motion’.

I did something stupid when I was eighteen," I told them, swallowing heavily against the rising tide of emotion. "I fucked up, and as a result Seph almost paid the price. Our father listed her for sale on a darknet site that dealt in what they considered top tier human auctions. Through some investigation, I discovered that this wasn't the first time my father had dealt in stolen girls. He and the Lockhart family had been smuggling countless children into the country for years. But the part that flipped my switch was when I discovered it'd been Chase, my fucking fiancé, who had given Garrett—or Fang as he liked to be called—the idea to sell Seph to remind Darling who really holds the power.

I’ve seen countless people’s reactions to grief. Some have mental breakdowns, others express it in any physical form possible, whether it’s screaming, crying, hitting, or sometimes, straight out murder. The emotion is so strong that reactions differ from one human to another. But the ones who suffer from it the most are those who pretend everything is fine. Those who stand tall and treat the occurrence like any ordinary day.

Grace shook her head. “I’ve spent countless hours and more than a few sleepless nights trying to figure out this emotion, but on some hard-to-explain level, I’m mad at Julian. I don’t have access to a psychiatrist in here, so I’ve had to figure these emotions out on my own. But what I’ve settled on is that I’m angry with Julian because he left me here. Because his death has brought me so much pain and heartache. His death cost me my own life. And yet, all these years later, I still love him. I know none of it is his fault. I just have nowhere else to place the blame. So poor Julian takes much of it.

If you thought your mind had a monopoly on screwing you over, you were sorely mistaken. Your body seems to be in cahoots with the boss upstairs and has its very own contributions to that lovely beast we call anxiety. Don't worry if you are one of those lucky people who seem to have anxiety that is primarily driven by physical symptoms. You're not S.O.L. We just need to approach things a little differently. Physical anxiety symptoms vary from person to person, but there are some that tend to be pretty consistent: ● Pounding heartbeat ● Shakiness ● Shortness of breath or hyperventilation ● Sour stomach ● Headache ● Dizziness ● Feeling of pressure on chest ● Sweating ● Feeling of choking ● Chills or hot flashes I bet you’ve felt a few of those suckers before. Maybe you’ve even had a panic attack, which is a sudden surge of fear that involves many of those symptoms and makes you feel out of control. Panic attacks and physical anxiety symptoms, in general, are scary as hell. I don't get to that point often, but I have been there before, and I've seen it occur in others countless times. When you have a panic attack, it feels like you are going to die. You might even WebMD yourself (never WebMD yourself) and find that your symptom profile is strikingly similar to a heart attack... I bet that realization did wonders for your anxiety. Here's the thing, though. I know it hurts, I know it sucks and it feels like you are going to die, but you will not. People don't die from panic attacks. It just doesn't happen. Your body is a dick, but it's not going to let you self-destruct like that. Even though the emotional pain and physical discomfort may be quite unbearable, anxiety will not physically hurt you.

As early as 1580, Montaigne argued that there was no honor in the emotion he called tristesse. (He used this word even though he knew himself to be a melancholic; years later, Flaubert, likewise diagnosed, would do the same.) Montaigne saw tristesse as the enemy of self-reliant rationalism and individualism. Tristesse, in his view, did not deserve to be set in capital letters alongside the great virtues, Wisdom, Virtue, and Conscience; he approved of the Italian association of tristezza with all manner of madness and injury, the source of countless evils.

Dear Hermia. I know we haven’t always connected, every second of the day. Husbands and wives seldom do. The joy between husband and wife is elusive, but it is strong. It endures countless moments of silent betrayal, navigates complicated labyrinths of emotional retreats. I know that sometimes you were somewhere else when we made love. I was, too. But in those moments of climax, when the darkness descended, and our fantasies dissolved into the air under the quickening heat of our desire—then, then, we were in that room together. And that is all that matters. Love, Gordon.

Constantly carrying around the emotional baggage of an unhappy upbringing, Simon had hoped that bombarding his brain with a plethora of foreign chemicals would somehow plaster over the cracks in his sanity. Yet the sad reality was, after countless come-downs and episodes of paranoia, drugs changed nothing. No drug had ever contained opium for the soul.

Don’t be mad.” “Mad? Why would I be mad?” “I know when you’re mad…I know when you’re trying to be mad and failing. I know when you try to hide that you’re mad. I know every single one of your countless emotions.

Literature is one of the most powerful means by which men can talk to men. Basically it is a means of transmitting experience, feeling, and emotion, so that one man can tell others, either in the present on in the future. … The need for literature is something which can be assumed as axiomatic. For centuries, artists have created a literature that has been born of blood, sweat, toil and heartache of countless writers of many lands and many centuries. Literature is the property of mankind.

Endless miles She had walked endless miles, She had stood over countless emotional piles, Finally she had arrived there where all journeys ended, Where life nothing defended, Because here smiles emerged from the seeds of pain, Here hopes were bred by time and never slain, Life developed wings of hope and certainty, Where desires shared with reality a new fraternity, Because forlorn ceased here, pain became meaningless, It was a place with miles ceaseless, Here minds ruled with hearts, And cupid indiscriminately shot his darts, To pierce all alike, Causing raptures of smiles and only creating realities that you like, And after walking endless miles she was here now, Here, where she can forever live under the rainbow and its colourful bow, To feel everything yet feel what she wants to feel, her deeply desired sentiment, For which she walked endless miles, because to her it everything meant, And to be here you need not follow any precept or diktat, Just be true to yourself and follow your instinctive nostrum and believe in one fact, That to be there where you want to be, you will walk endless miles, Because you seek that true union with your deepest smiles.

Love offers countless reasons to embrace its charm, but can it, too, bear the weight of mortality? , Can it be Reason of Your Death

Tapas is any practice that pushes the mind against its own limits, and the key ingredient of tapas is endurance. Thus in the archaic Rig-Veda (10.136), the long-haired ascetic or keshin is said to “endure” the world, to “endure” fire, and to “endure” poison.1 The keshin is a type of renouncer, a proto-yogin, who is a “wind-girt” (naked?) companion of the wild God Rudra (Howler). He is said to “ascend” the wind in a God-intoxicated state and to fly through space, looking down upon all things. But the name keshin harbors a deeper meaning, for it also can refer to the Sun whose “long hair” is made up of the countless rays that emanate from the solar orb and reach far into the cosmos and bestow life on Earth. This is again a reminder that the archaic Yoga of the Vedas revolves around the Solar Spirit, who selflessly feeds all beings with his/her/its compassionate warmth. The early name for the yogin is tapasvin, the practitioner of tapas or voluntary self-challenge. The tapasvin lives always at the edge. He deliberately challenges his body and mind, applying formidable will power to whatever practice he vows to undertake. He may choose to stand stock-still under India’s hot sun for hours on end, surrounded by a wall of heat from four fires lit close by. Or he may resolve to sit naked in solitary meditation on a windswept mountain peak in below-zero temperatures. Or he may opt to incessantly chant a divine name, forfeiting sleep for a specified number of days. The possibilities for tapas are endless. Tapas begins with temporarily or permanently denying ourselves a particular desire—having a satisfying cup of coffee, piece of chocolate, or casual sex. Instead of instant gratification, we choose postponement. Then, gradually, postponement can be stepped up to become complete renunciation of a desire. This kind of challenge to our habit patterns causes a certain degree of frustration in us. We begin to “stew in our own juices,” and this generates psychic energy that can be used to power the process of self-transformation. As we become increasingly able to gain control over our impulses, we experience the delight behind creative self-frustration. We see that we are growing and that self-denial need not necessarily be negative. The Bhagavad-Gītā (17.14–16) speaks of three kinds of austerity or tapas: Austerity of body, speech, and mind. Austerity of the body includes purity, rectitude, chastity, nonharming, and making offerings to higher beings, sages, brahmins (the custodians of the spiritual legacy of India), and honored teachers. Austerity of speech encompasses speaking kind, truthful, and beneficial words that give no offense, as well as the regular practice of recitation (svādhyāya) of the sacred lore. Austerity of the mind consists of serenity, gentleness, silence, self-restraint, and pure emotions.

The way we field outcomes is path dependent. It doesn’t so much matter where we end up as how we got there. What has happened in the recent past drives our emotional response much more than how we are doing overall. That’s how we can win $100 and be sad, and lose $100 and be happy. The zoom lens doesn’t just magnify, it distorts. This is true whether we are in a casino, making investment decisions, in a relationship, or on the side of the road with a flat tire. If we got a big promotion last week and have a flat tire right now, we are cursing our lives, complaining about how unlucky we are. Our feelings are not a reaction to the average of how things are going. We feel sad if we are breaking even (or winning) on an investment that used to be valued much higher. In relationships, even small disagreements seem big in the midst of the disagreement. The problem in all these situations (and countless others) is that our in-the-moment emotions affect the quality of the decisions we make in those moments, and we are very willing to make decisions when we are not emotionally fit to do so.

Envy” is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify. Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves. Mankind has lived with it, has observed its manifestations and, to various extents, has been ravaged by it for countless centuries, yet has failed to grasp its meaning and to rebel against its exponents. Today, that emotion is the leitmotif, the sense of life of our culture. It is all around us, we are drowning in it, it is almost explicitly confessed by its more brazen exponents—yet men continue to evade its existence and are peculiarly afraid to name it, as primitive people were once afraid to pronounce the name of the devil. That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good. This hatred is not resentment against some prescribed view of the good with which one does not agree. For instance, if a child resents some conventional type of obedient boy who is constantly held up to him as an ideal to emulate, this is not hatred of the good: the child does not regard that boy as good, and his resentment is the product of a clash between his values and those of his elders (though he is too young to grasp the issue in such terms). Similarly, if an adult does not regard altruism as good and resents the adulation bestowed upon some “humanitarian,” this is a clash between his values and those of others, not hatred of the good. Hatred of the good for being the good means hatred of that which one regards as good by one’s own (conscious or subconscious) judgment. It means hatred of a person for possessing a value or virtue one regards as desirable.

Even what passes as heterosexual intimacy is often resented by straight women who find themselves doing the emotional heavy lifting for men who have no close friends and won’t go to therapy. Men are less likely than women to discuss mental health with friends and family, to seek out psychotherapy, or to recognize they are depressed—a pattern so common as to be termed “normative male alexithymia” by psychologists.51 For straight men in relationships, all of these needs get aimed at women partners. In 2016, the writer Erin Rodgers coined the term “emotional gold digger” to describe straight men’s reliance on women partners to “play best friend, lover, career advisor, stylist, social secretary, emotional cheerleader, mom.”52 Elaborating on this dynamic and the emotional burnout it produces in straight women, Melanie Hamlett further explains that the concept of the emotional gold digger “has gained more traction recently as women, feeling increasingly burdened by unpaid emotional labor, have wised up to the toll of toxic masculinity, which keeps men isolated and incapable of leaning on each other. . . . While [women] read countless self-help books, listen to podcasts, seek out career advisors, turn to female friends for advice and support, or spend a small fortune on therapists to deal with old wounds and current problems, the men in their lives simply rely on them.

There is no realm in samsara where we have not taken birth, no samsaric pleasure we have not enjoyed, and no form of life we have not known over our countless stream of previous lives. Yet even now as humans most of us are like blind animals, unable to discern the patterns of life unfolding within us, leaving spiritual aims behind and chasing only the biological and emotional needs of the senses. Totally unaware of the spiritual methods that produce everlasting joy, we admire the ignoble and have distaste for the noble.

plants have a sensitive nervous system and a varied emotional life. Love, hate, joy, fear, pleasure, pain, excitability, stupor, and countless other appropriate responses to stimuli are as universal in plants as in animals.

What has clearly happened in the case of many otherwise intelligent people, is that childhood crippling of their brains and emotions in favor of some dogmatic religion has for all practical purposes made their theistic views impervious to logical analysis. It is an area they simply will not investigate objectively or impartially, because it has become so deeply fused with their entire self-image that it is beyond their psychological powers to question it. My own view is that this infantile brainwashing is one of the great crimes against humanity and it has been practiced for countless millennia (well before the advent of organized religion) and continues to be practiced to this day. Religious leaders would no doubt react with horror at the recommendation that children actually be allowed to make up their own minds about the adoption of a given religion, or any religion at all, until they are intellectually and emotionally ready to do so, without the prejudicial influence of parents, clerics, and the society at large. (No exception need be made for communist societies, for in such societies the people are brainwashed into atheism just as vigorously-and perniciously-as people in other societies are brainwashed into theism.) H. P. Lovecraft laid bare the matter long ago: We all know that any emotional bias-irrespective of truth or falsity-can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value regarding the real "is-or-isn'tness" of things. Only the exceptional individual reared in the nineteenth century or before has any chance of holding any genuine opinion of value regarding the universe-except by a slow and painful process of courageous disillusionment. If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honorable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasihypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.

Every soul is madly moved by the swell of seas....the endlessness of sandy stretches....the limitless freedom of heaven....for in the immensity of grandeur, you pause in awe and there you realize your insignificance. Your eyes though catch the range of mountains and the forests so thick, and the stars strewn in a night sky....though you feel the frozen expanse and dismal heath...the wild peonies laughing on the meadows...still, there is a maze, so powerful it seems....for boundless, countless, unending it is. That which you feel within is powerful and the more you slip into your feelings...the more it has its hold over you. The layer of emotions you have in multitudes might seem in conflict at times...but remain in awe by what is yet to be seen...for what is unseen is even more powerful than what is already seen. This is called madness....an inviting, enticing, overpowering madness to which you need to surrender...for this is the pathway to freedom it seems....

Taking a solitary walk every day can be beneficial for your physical and mental health. Referred to as "savoring walks" by the Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley, this activity encourages people to take a break from their everyday life and focus on the little things that make up the world around them. During a savoring walk, consciously observe your environment as you go, taking note of sights, sounds, and smells unique to your location. At times, it might be difficult, but each step taken will help build within you a sense of greater appreciation for nature and all that is around you. Walk alone with intention and in gratitude; the world is beautiful and there are countless blessings to be thankful for.