Demons In My Mind Quotes

Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to.

It's my special magical power. I can read your mind when you're thinking dirty thoughts." "So, ninety-five percent of the time." She craned her head back to look up at him. "Ninety-five percent? What's the other five percent?" "Oh, you know, the usual--demons I might kill, runes I need to learn, people who've annoyed me recently, people who've annoyed me not so recently, ducks." "Ducks?

Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.

The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.

I have changed my mind. You can help cook by standing in a corner and not touching anything. Do it carefully. -Nick to Jamie

Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I'll never understand God. My heart tells me I'm not meant to. [Vittoria Vetra]

Psychologically, I will not have to seek far if I decide to kill myself, because in my mind and heart I am more ready for this than for the unplanned daily tribulations that mark off the mornings and afternoons.

Alec?" Magnus was staring at him. He had dispatched the remaining Iblis demons, and the square was empty but for the two of them. "Did you just- did you just save my life?" Alec knew he ought to say something like, Of course, because I'm a Shadowhunter and that's what we do, or That's my job. Jace would have said something like that. Jace always knew the right thing to say. But the words that actually came out of Alec's mouth where quite different- and sounded petulant, even to his own ears. "You never called me back," he said. "I called you so many times and you never called me back." Magnus looked at Alec as if he'd lost his mind. "Your city is under attack," he said. "The wards have broken, and the streets are full of demons. And you want to know why I haven't called you?

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality and my life, as I write this, is vital even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It's a precious discovery. Almost every day I feel momentary flashes of hopelessness and wonder every time whether I am slipping. For a petrifying instant here and there, a lightning-quick flash, I want a car to run me over...I hate these feelings but, but I know that they have driven me to look deeper at life, to find and cling to reasons for living, I cannot find it in me to regret entirely the course my life has taken. Every day, I choose, sometimes gamely, and sometimes against the moment's reason, to be alive. Is that not a rare joy?

But time passed and eventually my mind had only one thought in it as regards childhood. For any kid that gets that as an option: take that sweet thing and run with it. Hide. Love it so hard. Because it's going to fucking leave you and not come back.

If I were another person, I go on, I wouldn’t want to deal with me, I don’t want to deal with me, It’s so hopeless, I want out of this life. I really do. I keep thinking that if I could just get a grip of myself, I could be all right again. I keep thinking I’m driving myself crazy, but I swear, I swear to God, I have no control. It’s so awful, It’s like some demons have taken over my mind. And nobody believes me, Everybody thinks I could be better if I wanted to. But I can’t be the old Lizzy anymore, I can’t be myself anymore, I mean, actually, I am being myself right now and it’s horrible.

Uh, do you mind?" I glanced down and saw something far scarier than any demon. A guy. My age. And I was on top of him. Straddling his hips. Oh, jeez.

You think I'm playing at some game? You think iron will keep you safe? Hear my words, manling. Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath. Listen. You cannot hurt me. You cannot run or hide. In this I will not be defied. I swear by all the salt in me: if you run counter to my desire, the remainder of your brief mortal span will be an orchestra of misery. I swear by stone and oak and elm: I'll make a game of you. I'll follow you unseen and smother any spark of joy you find. You'll never know a woman's touch, a breath of rest, a moment's peace of mind. And I swear by the night sky and the ever-moving moon: if you lead my master to despair, I will slit you open and splash around like a child in a muddy puddle. I'll string a fiddle with your guts and make you play it while I dance. You are an educated man. You know there are no such things as demons. There is only my kind. You are not wise enough to fear me as I should be feared. You do not know the first note of the music that moves me. -Bast

I had only two things on my mind; cheese and how to get home.

It is too often the quality of happiness that you feel at every moment its fragility, while depression seems when you are in it to be a state that will never pass. Even if you accept that moods change, that whatever you feel today will be different tomorrow, you cannot relax into happiness like you can into sadness. For me, sadness has always been and still is a more powerful feeling; and if that is not a universal experience, perhaps it is the base from which depression grows. I hated being depressed, but it was also in depression that I learned my own acreage, the full extent of my soul. When I am happy, I feel slightly distracted by happiness, as though it fails to use some part of my mind and brain that wants the exercise. Depression is something to do. My grasp tightens and becomes acute in moments of loss: I can see the beauty of glass objects fully at the moment when they slip from my hand toward the floor.

I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now... I would lose custody of my own mind. ...What my father wanted to cast from me wasn't a demon: it was me.

Ty: All the lights and the shouting and the people. It's like broken glass in my head. Kit: What about fighting? Battles, killing demons, that must be pretty noisy and loud? Ty: Battle is different. Battle is what Shadowhunters do. Fighting is in my body, not my mind. As long as I can wear headphones...

We don't know what may happen next,' said Nikolai. 'Usually a thrilling proposition, less so when a demon may taken over my consciousness and try to rule Ravka by gnawing on my subjects.' How did the words come so easily--even as he contemplated losing his mind and his will? Because they always had. And he needed them. He needed to build a wall of words and wit and reason to keep the beast at bay, to remember who he was.

She knew what he had in mind. He'll propose in Scotland on my birthday. There was no doubt as to what her answer would be.

You're my angel, Bianca. You've exorcised my demons. I don't have nightmares when I'm with you. I don't have to work seventy hour work weeks to keep my mind distracted. My life has become more than work and emotionless affairs. You make me a better man.

She trailed after him, admiring the line of his back. He began climbing the stairs, and she sighed with pleasure. Every bit of him was gorgeous. “Do you mind if I objectify you?” “Please do,” he said over his shoulder. “Particularly my knees, as they are oft-neglected.” “Maybe if you ever got your pants off, they wouldn’t be.” “It hardly matters, sweet; once they’ve come off, the attention isn’t likely to center on my absurdly handsome knees.

Dammit, woman, you read my mind,“ he said. “Is there no filthy wordplay you can't foresee?" “It's my special magical power. I can read your mind when you're thinking dirty thoughts." “So, ninety-five percent of the time." She craned her head back to look up at him. “Ninety-five percent? What's the other five percent?" “Oh, you know, the usual demons I might kill, runes I need to learn, people who've annoyed me recently, people who've annoyed me not so recently, ducks.

I rolled my eyes. To Jack I said, "Don't mind him, he's just mad no one likes him." Jonas clenched his jaw.

My enemies can soar into the night like invisible demons, conjure wolf creatures from hell, and read minds. On our side is a god that can lead a man to a ferry!

If you don’t mind my asking, why would a demon be concerned about appearances? Aren’t you all about killing, maiming, and torturing?” “That’s the kind of stereotyping that has afflicted demons for billions of years. Don’t you think some of us want to branch out, to explore other options?” “It never occurred to me.” “Yes, we obtain great satisfaction from killing and maiming and torturing. But there’s a lot of competition these days for the torturing thing. So many physical therapists around.”  

The vampire’s true appearance was grotesque--but it wasn’t as bad as some of the things I had seen in my day. Some demons were a lot worse, and some of the Elder Things could rip your mind apart just by letting you look at them

Right. Like I'm going to lose my freaking mind and hop right down the demonic bunny trail with Marshall so he can paw me every chance he gets.

You'll never be rid of me now." It would have been a tease from a less serious man, but coming from Dorian, it sounded like a dire warning. "You may come to regret it. My demons will haunt our lives." Farah reached for his wrist, stilling his hand and capturing his eyes with her own to make certain he understood her words. "I don't mind battling a few demons when I'm living with their king." She smiled. "And I think, after a time, we'll chase them away together.

I continue to stare, my eyes missing nothing, remembering the moments we just shared together. But in all that time she does not look back, and I am haunted by the visions of her struggling with unseen enemies. I sit by the bedside with an aching back and start to cry as I pick up the notebook. Allie does not notice. I understand, for her mind is gone. A couple pages fall to the floor, and I bend over to pick them up. I am tired now, so I sit, alone and apart from my wife. And when the nurses come in they see two people they must comfort. A woman shaking in fear from demons in her mind, and the old man who loves her more deeply than life itself, crying softly in the corner, his face in his hands.

Science tells me that God must exist. My mind tells me I will never undertand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to

The image of her in another man's arms was stuck in my mind, as real as life. As if there was a demon with nowhere else to go clinging to a corner of the ceiling, eyes fastened on me.

When I walk into [the studio] I am alone, but I am alone with my body, ambition, ideas, passions, needs, memories, goals, prejudices, distractions, fears. These ten items are at the heart of who I am. Whatever I am going to create will be a reflection of how these have shaped my life, and how I've learned to channel my experiences into them. The last two -- distractions and fears -- are the dangerous ones. They're the habitual demons that invade the launch of any project. No one starts a creative endeavor without a certain amount of fear; the key is to learn how to keep free-floating fears from paralyzing you before you've begun. When I feel that sense of dread, I try to make it as specific as possible. Let me tell you my five big fears: 1. People will laugh at me. 2. Someone has done it before. 3. I have nothing to say. 4. I will upset someone I love. 5. Once executed, the idea will never be as good as it is in my mind. "There are mighty demons, but they're hardly unique to me. You probably share some. If I let them, they'll shut down my impulses ('No, you can't do that') and perhaps turn off the spigots of creativity altogether. So I combat my fears with a staring-down ritual, like a boxer looking his opponent right in the eye before a bout. 1. People will laugh at me? Not the people I respect; they haven't yet, and they're not going to start now.... 2. Someone has done it before? Honey, it's all been done before. Nothing's original. Not Homer or Shakespeare and certainly not you. Get over yourself. 3. I have nothing to say? An irrelevant fear. We all have something to say. 4. I will upset someone I love? A serious worry that is not easily exorcised or stared down because you never know how loved ones will respond to your creation. The best you can do is remind yourself that you're a good person with good intentions. You're trying to create unity, not discord. 5. Once executed, the idea will never be as good as it is in my mind? Toughen up. Leon Battista Alberti, the 15th century architectural theorist, said, 'Errors accumulate in the sketch and compound in the model.' But better an imperfect dome in Florence than cathedrals in the clouds.

Partly, he said, he enjoyed my company; it wasn’t often that he had a chance to talk to someone whose mind was so little cluttered with education or accepted opinions— (“You mean I’m stupid.” “Good heavens, no. Just ignorant.”)

I ‘am shaggy as rivers, forests and mountains My eyes see the universe natural and super My mind is of many cuts Non-identical I have fought demons Half-horse, half alligator I ‘am victorious, I bled

A pang of deep longing ripples through me. I’m torn between my promise to send Aydan to the Abyss and my need to keep him safe. The opposing forces fragment what remains of my mind, breaking me down once again.

I've changed my mind," said Nick. "The demons can have you.

In my mind he is a demon and a god and I blame him, I blame him, I blame him for the world I created on my own as much as the one he built around me.

Cass pulls from my embrace, her mind reaching into my heart. Pain, anger, confusion pass through her eyes. My pain. My anger. My confusion. She swallows hard. “Because?” “Because I traded it all, my heart, my memories, everything. For her.

When both she and I had to deal with our respective demons, my sister saw the darkness as being within and part of herself, the family and the world. I, instead, saw it as a stranger; however lodged within my mind and soul the darkness became, it almost always seemed an outside force that was at war with my natural self.

Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn't a demon: it was me.

My depression had grown on me as that vine had conquered the oak; it had been a sucking thing that had wrapped itself around me, ugly and more alive than I. It had had a life of its own that bit by bit asphyxiated all of my life out of me. At the worst stage of major depression, I had moods that I knew were not my moods: they belonged to the depression, as surely as the leaves on that tree’s high branches belonged to the vine. When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn’t expand in any direction. I knew that the sun was rising and setting, but little of its light reached me. I felt myself sagging under what was much stronger than I; first I could not use my ankles, and then I could not control my knees, and then my waist began to break under the strain, and then my shoulders turned in, and in the end I was compacted and fetal, depleted by this thing that was crushing me without holding me.

Is this blasphemy, my lord?" "I think not. Those who crafted me, be they gods or demons, crafted this mind that shapes my resistance to their schemes. Surely they were wise enough, at the wheel where I was thrown, to anticipate future resistance in the heart they were abuilding.

Warm breath brushed over my ear as he leaned in. “Am I perfect, drādah?” I choked. Ducking away from him, I rushed back to the worktable. Focusing with single-minded determination, I opened the book to its table of contents and tried desperately to remember what I was supposed to be researching. Zylas’s quiet, husky laugh rolled through the room.

Dear Lord, please lift me up and heal me. Cast out of my mind all thoughts that are not of You. Cast out of me all harsh and critical nature. Cast out of me all violence and all anger. Cast out of me all demons from my past. For I would be made new. I wish to walk so close to You that we might be as one.

By God and upon my conscience", said the devil, "I never observed it, for my mind is occupied with so many different things that I was forgetting the main thing I came about." "This demon must be an honest fellow and a good Christian," said Sancho; "for if he wasn't he wouldn't swear by God and his conscience; I feel sure now there must be good souls even in hell itself.

ALONE One of my new housemates, Stacy, wants to write a story about an astronaut. In his story the astronaut is wearing a suit that keeps him alive by recycling his fluids. In the story the astronaut is working on a space station when an accident takes place, and he is cast into space to orbit the earth, to spend the rest of his life circling the globe. Stacy says this story is how he imagines hell, a place where a person is completely alone, without others and without God. After Stacy told me about his story, I kept seeing it in my mind. I thought about it before I went to sleep at night. I imagined myself looking out my little bubble helmet at blue earth, reaching toward it, closing it between my puffy white space-suit fingers, wondering if my friends were still there. In my imagination I would call to them, yell for them, but the sound would only come back loud within my helmet. Through the years my hair would grow long in my helmet and gather around my forehead and fall across my eyes. Because of my helmet I would not be able to touch my face with my hands to move my hair out of my eyes, so my view of earth, slowly, over the first two years, would dim to only a thin light through a curtain of thatch and beard. I would lay there in bed thinking about Stacy's story, putting myself out there in the black. And there came a time, in space, when I could not tell whether I was awake or asleep. All my thoughts mingled together because I had no people to remind me what was real and what was not real. I would punch myself in the side to feel pain, and this way I could be relatively sure I was not dreaming. Within ten years I was beginning to breathe heavy through my hair and my beard as they were pressing tough against my face and had begun to curl into my mouth and up my nose. In space, I forgot that I was human. I did not know whether I was a ghost or an apparition or a demon thing. After I thought about Stacy's story, I lay there in bed and wanted to be touched, wanted to be talked to. I had the terrifying thought that something like that might happen to me. I thought it was just a terrible story, a painful and ugly story. Stacy had delivered as accurate a description of a hell as could be calculated. And what is sad, what is very sad, is that we are proud people, and because we have sensitive egos and so many of us live our lives in front of our televisions, not having to deal with real people who might hurt us or offend us, we float along on our couches like astronauts moving aimlessly through the Milky Way, hardly interacting with other human beings at all.

I am solely yours, mon ange, for all eternity, echoed from Darius’s mind as he skidded across the ground. I loved when he called me his angel, a sentiment that was hard to hang on to just now. You are my sanctuary. My soul. Your mother would be proud, echoed from Callie. She loved you so much. Is this the part where I’m supposed to think things to help her? Dizzy asked himself.

One day, it will all make sense, it will all be revealed. Until then, we learn to live and accept our shadows, our Déjà vu's, our dreams, our intuition that takes us to places that our minds never conceived, our bodies only perceived and our souls gladly remembered. Conversations and experiences amuse me, for I am experimenting with my feelings in ways that I can only do down here. Language makes up for a very interesting, yet bizarre way of putting thoughts into spoken form for the sound to move on in other peoples' ears, but every language, every sound, every word carries with it a long history, a deep culture and the souls of the many people who have previously used it throughout the centuries. Our hearts give us direction, hope and the passion to keep moving forward.. But what we do when they're frozen, broken, torn apart by an unhealthy way of living is what gives us new strength to push forward or kills us completely. Deep inside, we feed the entities that empower the fight between our internal demons and angels. We feed them with our thoughts, our emotions, our self-talk and the external talk that we lower our shields to at times. Whether good or bad, this brings about a change internally and at times there isn't much we can do to protect ourselves. At times, we need to let things be and go along with it. Of course, we're all worried, stressed, confused and lacking direction at times and we're in the same way at peace, stable and walking in the right direction once we get things sorted. Give it some time, give it some light, give it some love. You're not very far away.

Mary Magdalene With wandering eyes and aimless zeal, She hither, thither, goes; Her speech, her motions, all reveal A mind without repose. She climbs the hills, she haunts the sea, By madness tortured, driven; One hour's forgetfulness would be A gift from very heaven! She slumbers into new distress; The night is worse than day: Exulting in her helplessness; Hell's dogs yet louder bay. The demons blast her to and fro; She has not quiet place, Enough a woman still, to know A haunting dim disgrace. A human touch! a pang of death! And in a low delight Thou liest, waiting for new breath, For morning out of night. Thou risest up: the earth is fair, The wind is cool; thou art free! Is it a dream of hell's despair Dissolves in ecstasy? That man did touch thee! Eyes divine Make sunrise in thy soul; Thou seest love in order shine:- His health hath made thee whole! Thou, sharing in the awful doom, Didst help thy Lord to die; Then, weeping o'er his empty tomb, Didst hear him Mary cry. He stands in haste; he cannot stop; Home to his God he fares: 'Go tell my brothers I go up To my Father, mine and theirs.' Run, Mary! lift thy heavenly voice; Cry, cry, and heed not how; Make all the new-risen world rejoice- Its first apostle thou! What if old tales of thee have lied, Or truth have told, thou art All-safe with Him, whate'er betide Dwell'st with Him in God's heart!

You are quite right, I changed my mind and do no longer speak of “radical evil.” … It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never “radical,” that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying,” as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality.” Only the good has depth that can be radical. (letter to Scholem from December 1964)

Closing my eyes, I lowered the wall around my Mori. 'Are you okay? Did I hurt you?' 'Solmi hurt', it replied, still a little upset. I almost rolled my eyes. One-track mind. 'Solmi is okay', I assured it. 'Did the glow burn you?' 'No burn'. The demon moved forward a little. 'Again?' It asked eagerly. 'Not yet. Soon.' I opened my eyes and stared at the pretty little lake as I tried to make sense of it all. For the first time, I left the wall down, and my Mori and I sat quietly together, not joined, but as companions. I sighed in contentment. 'This is nice, demon. I could get used to this.' It curled up like a happy cat. 'Me too.

I never thought my life would end like this. Being hunted by mythological creatures in my pajamas. Honestly, it never entered my mind.

Demons are not just people or figures or ideas—they're impulses that live inside you, searching ceaselessly for a way out.

Yes. My soul is shitty whisky, my body is a shot glass. Do you mind?

There are demons taunting the thoughts in my mind, but the angels in my heart are waging war against them and somehow they always win.

Whenever I cut a run or swim short because I was hungry or tired, I’d always go back and beat myself down even harder. That was the only way I could manage the demons in my mind.

The demons in my mind are far away, and there is only her sweet voice, singing a song I’ve never heard...

There's a crack in my mind, That I don't know how to heal. There are demons in my head, People tell me are not real. The voices are my own, Speaking words I don't believe. Convincing me I'm worthless, And that everyone will leave. You want me to be better, Don't you think I want the same? But you've convinced yourself it's nothing, Or that I'm the one to blame. So I'll tell you that I'm 'fine,' Because that's all you want to hear. And I'll conceal it with a smile, While hiding all the fear. I'll bury all the feelings, And I'll cut out all the pain. But that won't mean I'm healed, I've just chosen to not 'complain.' Because being sad was only half of it, And it was not the half to kill. The downfall began when I started to feel nothing, When I slowly lost my will.

The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love.

I choose freedom. Freedom from my demons. Freedom from his touch. Freedom from the prison of my own mind. I choose life. I choose redemption. I deserve a good life. I deserve love. I deserve happiness. I want it all.

Slowly disconnecting from your community—from your family—is difficult, and while it seems like unearthing their sinister motives and dark secrets might make the process easier, it will never entirely quell the pain. I’ve been avoiding this dark ache by keeping my mind busy while my body couldn’t be, but it hasn’t gone away. The sadness is still there, lurking in the corner like a pale demon in a red polo, just waiting to finally be acknowledged. That acknowledgment could arrive after several decades, or it could happen tonight, but the time will come. Eventually, I’ll have to fully contend with this simple fact: the love I was promised is conditional.

When ye look at me I am an idle, idle man; when I look at myself I am a busy, busy man. Since upon the plain of uncreated infinity I am building, building the tower of ecstasy, I have no time for building houses. Since upon the steppe of the void of truth I am breaking, breaking the savage fetter of suffering, I have no time for ploughing family land. Since at the bourn of unity ineffable I am subduing, subduing the demon-foe of self, I have no time for subduing angry foe-men. Since in the palace of mind which transcends duality I am waiting, waiting for spiritual experience as my bride, I have no time for setting up house. Since in the circle of the Buddhas of my body I am fostering, fostering the child of wisdom, I have no time for fostering snivelling children. Since in the frame of the body, the seat of all delight, I am saving, saving precious instruction and reflection, I have no time for saving wordly wealth.

What was that?” I croaked. Akhol sidestepped into my view and towered over us. “It was a Demon.” “But you said—” “I know what I said,” Akhol cut in sharply, rubbing his eyes. “There was something wrong with it. Like the Demon had adapted to the darkness and water.” I shivered. “Did he have a ring that he called ‘my precious’?” I joked to try and lighten the mood. I didn’t get a good look at the Demon, but my mind had no problems picturing Gollum. They stared at me blankly.

to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me. Dad reached

Ms. Lane.”Barrons’ voice is deep, touched with that strange Old World accent and mildly pissed off. Jericho Barrons is often mildly pissed off. I think he crawled from the swamp that way, chafed either by some condition in it, out of it, or maybe just the general mass incompetence he encountered in both places. He’s the most controlled, capable man I’ve ever known. After all we’ve been through together, he still calls me Ms. Lane, with one exception: When I’m in his bed. Or on the floor, or some other place where I’ve temporarily lost my mind and become convinced I can’t breathe without him inside me this very instant. Then the things he calls me are varied and nobody’s business but mine. I reply: “Barrons,” without inflection. I’ve learned a few things in our time together. Distance is frequently the only intimacy he’ll tolerate. Suits me. I’ve got my own demons. Besides I don’t believe good relationships come from living inside each other’s pockets. I believe divorce comes from that. I admire the animal grace with which he enters the room and moves toward me. He prefers dark colors, the better to slide in and out of the night, or a room, unnoticed except for whatever he’s left behind that you may or may not discover for some time, like, say a tattoo on the back of one’s skull. “What are you doing?” “Reading,” I say nonchalantly, rubbing the tattoo on the back of my skull. I angle the volume so he can’t see the cover. If he sees what I’m reading, he’ll know I’m looking for something. If he realizes how bad it’s gotten, and what I’m thinking about doing, he’ll try to stop me. He circles behind me, looks over my shoulder at the thick vellum of the ancient manuscript. “In the first tongue?” “Is that what it is?” I feign innocence. He knows precisely which cells in my body are innocent and which are thoroughly corrupted. He’s responsible for most of the corrupted ones. One corner of his mouth ticks up and I see the glint of beast behind his eyes, a feral crimson backlight, bloodstaining the whites. It turns me on. Barrons makes me feel violently, electrically sexual and alive. I’d march into hell beside him. But I will not let him march into hell beside me. And there’s no doubt that’s where I’m going. I thought I was strong, a heroine. I thought I was the victor. The enemy got inside my head and tried to seduce me with lies. It’s easy to walk away from lies. Power is another thing. Temptation isn’t a sin that you triumph over once, completely and then you’re free. Temptation slips into bed with you each night and helps you say your prayers. It wakes you in the morning with a friendly cup of coffee, and knows exactly how you take it. He skirts the Chesterfield sofa and stands over me. “Looking for something, Ms. Lane?” I’m eye level with his belt but that’s not where my gaze gets stuck and suddenly my mouth is so dry I can hardly swallow and I know I’m going to want to. I’m Pri-ya for this man. I hate it. I love it. I can’t escape it. I reach for his belt buckle. The manuscript slides from my lap, forgotten. Along with everything else but this moment, this man. “I just found it,” I tell him.

Welcome to my gates, Ista dy Chalion. I am the Mother of Jokona.” Her hand lifted from the girl’s head, flicked out, fingers spreading. Within Ista, the god unfolded. Her second sight burst anew upon Ista’s mind like a dazzling lightning stroke, brilliant beyond hope, revealing an eerie landscape. She saw it all, at one glance: the dozen demons, the swirling, crackling lines of power, the agonized souls, Joen’s dark, dense, writhing passenger. The thirteenth demon, spinning wildly through the air toward her, trailing its evil umbilicus. Ista opened her jaws in a fierce grin, and took it in a gulp. “Welcome to mine, Joen of Jokona,” said Ista. “I am the Mouth of Hell.

Time held no meaning as my mind darted in and out of memories. Past and present collided to create a full-sensory collage out of my life: playing hide-n-seek with my best friends Luke—who always cheated by walking through walls when he was about to be caught—and Lucy; Mr. Caldrin critiquing my sketches and offering ideas to make them more realistic; targets changing faces, blending into the same person, their thoughts rippling through my mind like waves. Through it all, a demon stalked me from the shadows of my memories, never quite showing its face, but crouching, waiting. And then I dreamed....

The blessing was a mercy. He was offering me the same terms of surrender he had offered my sister. I imagined what a relief it must have been for her, to realize she could trade her reality—the one she shared with me—for his. How grateful she must have felt to pay such a modest price for her betrayal. I could not judge her for her choice, but in that moment I knew I could not choose it for myself. Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.

If I could tell you how many times Noah lost his temper as a kid and set his parents’ house on fire—they were uncountable.” He shook his head. “Hell, Bella, the first time I shape-shifted it took me a week to figure out how to switch back.” That made her release a soft, watery laugh. “Oh, it gets better. Ask me what my first choice of animal was.” “Nooo . . .” “A pig. Not just any pig, mind you,” he said, talking over her startled laugh. “A huge, slobbery, grunting warthod. I had seen one at the zoo, and the next I knew . . .” Bella was laughing against her fists, trying to smother it with her fingers. “My father loved to tell the story for years about how he had to kidnap his own son from the zoo, a son who was so upset he squealed loudly the entire time his father was trying to smuggle him out. My father was a Demon of the Body, so he had no way of transforming me into a less conspicuous form of matter. He never let me live it down. Can you imagine? Centuries of being reminded of the most ridiculous moment of my life.

Of course, I think Legna tops this particular cake. You see, when Mind Demons teleport, they have to remember to teleport their clothes with them.” “Oh no . . .” “Oh, yes. Noah’s coronation anniversary. There is an incredible celebration every ten years, and everyone goes, even the most solitary of us. Legna was sixteen years old, and she was running late just like any typical teenager. She exploded into the room. Mind you, the display of a teleport in someone so young is ten times what you see her cause now, so she had everyone’s attention. That youngling blushed bright red in places I never thought a woman could blush. It was a most enlightening moment.” “I’ll bet!” Isabella giggled, her skin flushing in sympathetic embarrassment. “The poor thing!” “Well, Noah responded very fast, so I assure you she only had time for a quick blush before he covered her in smoke, blocking her from a multitude of very astonished eyes. We do not tease her about it, however. Noah actually passed a law saying we could not. It was the only way he could get her to go out in public again. I am risking my peace of mind telling you this. One chuckle in front of her, little flower, and you will doom me. So please . . .

Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to.” How

Oh God,” Jenna said, “will you shut up and kiss me before I change my mind?

I became aware of a steady, whooshing breeze that blew against my tingling face. It carried with it a fetid stench, which brought to mind chicken gizzards dipped in unwashed ass.

All I know is that I'd give my life to protect them. They already have my mind, body, and soul—they could take my life and I'd ask 'was it good for you too?

The famous courtesan Clarimonde died recently, as the result of an orgy which lasted eight days and eight nights. It was something infernally magnificent. They revived the abominations of the feasts of Belshazzar and Cleopatra. Great God! what an age this is in which we live! The guests were served by swarthy slaves speaking an unknown tongue, who to my mind had every appearance of veritable demons; the livery of the meanest among them might have served as a gala-costume for an emperor. There have always been current some very strange stories concerning this Clarimonde, and all her lovers have come to a miserable or a violent end. It has been said that she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe that she was Beelzebub in person.

I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn't a demon: it was me.

You mean the day they stop needing the church," Vittoria challenged, moving toward him. "Doubt is your last shred of control. It is doubt that brings souls to you. Our need to know that life has meaning. Man's insecurity and need for an enlightened soul assuring him everything is part of a master plan. But the church is not the only enlightened soul on the planet! We all seek God in different ways. What are you afraid of? That God will show himself somewhere other than inside these walls? That people will find him in their own lives and leave your antiquated rituals behind? Religions evolve! The mind finds answers, the heart grapples with new truths. My father was on your quest! A parallel path! Why couldn't you see that? God is not some omnipotent authority looking down from above, threatening to throw us into a pit of fire if we disobey. God is the energy that flows through the synapses of our nervous system and the chambers of our hearts! God is in all things!

Religion is like language or dress. We gravitate toward the practices with which we were raised. In the end, though, we are all proclaiming the same thing, That life has meaning. That we are grateful for the power that created us...Faith is universal....In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves...Science tells me that God must exist. My mind tells me I am not meant I will never understand God. And my heart tells me I am not meant to...All of us are cells with different purposes. And yet we are intertwined. Serving each other. Serving the whole.

Do you think, little flower, that there will ever come a day when you regret meeting me?” he asked quietly. “Yes,” she said simply. “I see,” he said tightly. “Would you like a specific date?” “You are teasing me,” he realized suddenly. “No, I’m dead serious. I have an exact date in mind.” Jacob pulled back to see her eyes, looking utterly perplexed as her pupils sparkled with mischief. “What date is that? And why are you thinking of pink elephants?” “The date is September 8, because, according to Gideon, that’s possibly the day I will go into labor. I say ‘possibly,’ because combining all this human/Druid and Demon DNA ‘may make for a longer period of gestation than usual for a human,’ as the Ancient medic recently quoted. Now, as I understand it, women always regret ever letting a man touch them on that day.” Jacob lurched to his feet, dropping her onto her toes, grabbing her by the arms, and holding her still as he raked a wild, inspecting gaze over her body. “You are pregnant?” he demanded, shaking her a little. “How long have you known? You went into battle with that monster while you are carrying my child?” “Our child,” she corrected indignantly, her fists landing firmly on her hips, “and Gideon only just told me, like, five seconds ago, so I didn’t know I was pregnant when I was fighting that thing!” “But . . . he healed you just a few days ago! Why not tell you then?” “Because I wasn’t pregnant then, Jacob. If you recall, we did make love between then and now.” “Oh . . . oh Bella . . .” he said, his breath rushing from him all of a sudden. He looked as if he needed to sit down and put a paper bag over his head. She reached to steady him as he sat back awkwardly on the altar. He leaned his forearms on his thighs, bending over them as he tried to catch his breath. Bella had the strangest urge to giggle, but she bit her lower lip to repress to impulse. So much for the calm, cool, collected Enforcer who struck terror into the hearts of Demons everywhere. “That is not funny,” he grumbled indignantly. “Yeah? You should see what you look like from over here,” she teased. “If you laugh at me I swear I am going to take you over my knee.” “Promises, promises,” she laughed, hugging him with delight. Finally, Jacob laughed as well, his arm snaking out to circle her waist and draw her back into his lap. “Did you ask . . . I mean, does he know what it is?” “It’s a baby. I told him I didn’t want to know what it is. And don’t you dare find out, because you know the minute you do I’ll know, and if you spoil the surprise I’ll murder you.” “Damn . . . she kills a couple of Demons and suddenly thinks she can order all of us around,” he taunted, pulling her close until he was nuzzling her neck, wondering if it was possible for such an underused heart as his to contain so much happiness.

what I want to show in my books and in my life is that you don't have to be like the miserable, angry people who hurt you. You can survive and, most of all, you can thrive. Yes, those demons will always be there, and you will hear and, worst of all, feel their cruelty long after they're gone, but you don't have to let them own your future the way they held your past. You don't have to become like them. You can pull it together, hold your head high, and be the person you want to be in spite of their vicious cruelty. They say that there's a reason to everything. I'm not sure I believe that. It's human nature to try and make order out of chaos. The "sometimes things have to go wrong in order to go right" is my own search for understanding why cruelty takes place. I don't understand how anyone can intentionally hurt another person, never mind a child. But I want to help others find the rainbow through the storms. To know that tomorrow is another day and that sooner or later, life will get better. And so will we.

envelop the universe by means of my mind; and by means of the universe, there is nothing that obstructs my mind. Riches and honor, good luck and calamity are elsewhere. When you seek after such things, you may obtain them or you may not—this is not something that is guaranteed. The Greatest Happiness is within yourself. If you seek your mind wholeheartedly, you will obtain it for sure. Simply, do not seek after illusion.

that I would give up my life readily if I found myself in war, or if my plane crashed into a desert. I would struggle tooth and nail to survive. It’s as though my life and I, having sat in opposition to each other, hating each other, wanting to escape each other, have now bonded forever and at the hip. The opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality, and my life, as I write this, is vital, even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It’s a precious discovery. Almost every day I feel momentary flashes of hopelessness and wonder every time whether I am slipping. For a petrifying instant here and there, a lightning-quick flash, I want a car to run me over and I have to grit my teeth to stay on the sidewalk until the light turns green; or I imagine how easily I might cut my wrists; or I taste hungrily the metal tip of a gun in my mouth; or I picture going to sleep and never waking up again. I hate those feelings, but I know that they have driven me to look deeper at life, to find and cling to reasons for living. I cannot find it in me to regret entirely the course my life has taken. Every day, I choose, sometimes gamely and sometimes against the moment’s reason, to be alive. Is that not a rare joy?

Hello?' Horus spoke in my mind. 'Any intention of calling for help, or are you happy to die on your own?' 'Yeah,' I snapped back at him. 'The sarcasm is real helpful.' Truthfully, I didn't think I had enough energy left to summon my avatar, even with Horus's help. My fight with the Apis Bull had nearly tapped me out, and that was before I got chased by an axe demon and kicked out of a window. I could hear Bloodstained Blade stomping his way back down the stairs. I tried to rise and almost blacked out from the pain. 'A weapon,' I told Horus. 'I need a weapon.' I reached into the Duat and pulled out an ostrich feather. "Really?" I yelled Horus didn't answer.

A child used to see her poor father struggling to earn daily bread. She prayed, “O Goddess, please kill the demons living in my stomach that keep demanding food again & again.” This is the perspective that detaches your soul from your character. This is the prayer that directly reaches the gods. Can you stop identifying with your mind and instead see it as a box in which some demons are sitting and constantly craving for thoughts and emotions?

St. John's saying that God is love has long been balanced in my mind against the remark of a modern author (M. Denis de Rougemont) that "love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be god"; which of course can be re-stated in the form "begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god." This balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God

I turned to look at my quiet, bookish mother, a woman I had honestly never seen swat a fly. “I’m sorry, but there is no way you grew up here. It’s not even possible.” There was a whirring sound, and I felt something pass by my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mom’s hand go up, and suddenly she was holding the hilt of a knife-a knife that had apparently just been hurled at her head. The whole thing had happened in less than a second. I swallowed. “Never mind.” Mom didn’t say anything, but kept her gaze focused on Aislinn, who, I noticed, still had one hand slightly raised. She was smiling. “Grace was always the quickest of all of us,” she said, and I realized she was talking to me. Smiling at me. “Okay,” I finally said. “Well, I didn’t get that from her, in case you’re wondering. I can’t even catch a football.” Aislinn chuckled, even as Finley’s scowl deepened. “So you’re the demon spawn,” Finley spit out. “Finn!” Aislinn snapped. Huh. So at least one of the Brannicks hated me. Weirdly, that made me feel better. That was normal. And if there was one thing I knew how to deal with, it was Mean Girls. “I actually go by Sophie.

I don’t remember when I stopped noticing—stopped noticing every mirror, every window, every scale, every fast-food restaurant, every diet ad, every horrifying model. And I don’t remember when I stopped counting, or when I stopped caring what size my pants were, or when I started ordering what I wanted to eat and not what seemed “safe,” or when I could sit comfortably reading a book in my kitchen without noticing I was in my kitchen until I got hungry—or when I started just eating when I got hungry, instead of questioning it, obsessing about it, dithering and freaking out, as I’d done for nearly my whole life. I don’t remember exactly when recovery took hold, and went from being something I both fought and wanted, to being simply a way of life. A way of life that is, let me tell you, infinitely more peaceful, infinitely happier, and infinitely more free than life with an eating disorder. And I wouldn’t give up this life of freedom for the world. What I know is this: I chose recovery. It was a conscious decision, and not an easy one. That’s the common denominator among people I know who have recovered: they chose recovery, and they worked like hell for it, and they didn’t give up. Recovery isn’t easy, at first. It takes time. It takes more work, sometimes, than you think you’re willing to do. But it is worth every hard day, every tear, every terrified moment. It’s worth it, because the trade-off is this: you let go of your eating disorder, and you get back your life. There are a couple of things I had to keep in mind in early recovery. One was that I was going to recover, even though I didn’t feel “ready.” I realized I was never going to feel ready—I was just going to jump in and do it, ready or not, and I am deeply glad that I did. Another was that symptoms were not an option. Symptoms, as critically necessary and automatic as they feel, are ultimately a choice. You can choose to let the fallacy that you must use symptoms kill you, or you can choose not to use symptoms. Easier said than done? Of course. But it can be done. I had to keep at the forefront of my mind the reasons I wanted to recover so badly, and the biggest one was this: I couldn’t believe in what I was doing anymore. I couldn’t justify committing my life to self-destruction, to appearance, to size, to weight, to food, to obsession, to self-harm. And that was what I had been doing for so long—dedicating all my strength, passion, energy, and intelligence to the pursuit of a warped and vanishing ideal. I just couldn’t believe in it anymore. As scared as I was to recover, to recover fully, to let go of every last symptom, to rid myself of the familiar and comforting compulsions, I wanted to know who I was without the demon of my eating disorder inhabiting my body and mind. And it turned out that I was all right. It turned out it was all right with me to be human, to have hungers, to have needs, to take space. It turned out that I had a self, a voice, a whole range of values and beliefs and passions and goals beyond what I had allowed myself to see when I was sick. There was a person in there, under the thick ice of the illness, a person I found I could respect. Recovery takes time, patience, enormous effort, and strength. We all have those things. It’s a matter of choosing to use them to save our own lives—to survive—but beyond that, to thrive. If you are still teetering on the brink of illness, I invite you to step firmly onto the solid ground of health. Walk back toward the world. Gather strength as you go. Listen to your own inner voice, not the voice of the eating disorder—as you recover, your voice will get clearer and louder, and eventually the voice of the eating disorder will recede. Give it time. Don’t give up. Love yourself absolutely. Take back your life. The value of freedom cannot be overestimated. It’s there for the taking. Find your way toward it, and set yourself free.

Most of the time I paid it no mind. I kept to myself and everyone in my town of Henryetta liked it that way. While my grandma saw helpful information such as droughts and locust infestations, I was cursed with seeing useless and mundane things like Mrs. White’s toilet overflow or the ear infection in Jenny Baxter’s baby. None of that would be so bad if I kept what I saw to myself, but my visions didn't work that way. Without any volition of my own, whatever I saw just blurted right out of my mouth. Most of the people who knew me thought I was a snoop or a gossip, the only rational explanation to reason away my knowledge. But Momma had another opinion. She declared me demon-possessed.

As always, I do not blame anyone. I've tried great debauchery and exhausted my strength in it; but I don't like debauchery and I did not want it. You've been observing me lately. Do you know that I even looked at these negators of ours with spite, envying them their hopes? But your fears were empty: I could not be their comrade, because I shared nothing. Nor could I do it out of ridicule, for spite, and not because I was afraid of the ridiculous--I cannot be afraid of the ridiculous--but because, after all, I have the habits of a decent man and felt disgusted. Still, if I had more spite and envy for them, I might even have gone over to them....Your brother told me that he who loses his ties with his earth also loses his gods, that is, all his goals. One can argue endlessly about everything, but what poured out of me was only a negation, with no magnanimity and no force. Or not even negation. Everything is always shallow and listless. Magnanimous Kirillov could not endure his idea and--shot himself; but I do see that he was magnanimous because he was not in his right mind. I can never lose my mind, nor can I ever believe an idea to the same degree as he did. I cannot even entertain an idea to the same degree. I could never, never shoot myself! I know I ought to kill myself, to sweep myself off the earth like a vile insect; but I'm afraid of suicide, because I'm afraid of showing magnanimity. I know it will only be one more deceit--the last deceit in an endless series of deceits. What's the use of deceiving oneself just so as to play at magnanimity? There never can be indignation or shame in me; and so no despair either.

...that Figure so impressd it self upon my Mind that I have been in a manner walking towards it all my Life. Then I peered into Wendel Dietterlin his Architectura, and there were unveiled to me the several Orders: of the Tuscan, which is now mine own, I was then mov'd by its Strangeness and Awefulness; the obscured Shapes, the Shaddowes and the massie Openings so in-chanted my Spirit that when looking on them I imagined my self to be lock'd in some dark and Enclosed space. The heavinesse of Stone did so oppress me that I was close to Extinction, and I fancied that I could see in the Engraver's lines the sides of Demons, crumbled Walls, and half-humane Creatures rising from the Dust. There was some thing that waited for me there, already in Ruines.

Tatyana’s Letter to Onegin I’m writing you this declaration— What more can I in candour say? It may be now your inclination To scorn me and to turn away; But if my hapless situation Evokes some pity for my woe, You won’t abandon me, I know. I first tried silence and evasion; Believe me, you‘d have never learned My secret shame, had I discerned The slightest hope that on occasion— But once a week—I’d see your face, Behold you at our country place, Might hear you speak a friendly greeting, Could say a word to you; and then, Could dream both day and night again Of but one thing, till our next meeting. They say you like to be alone And find the country unappealing; We lack, I know, a worldly tone, But still, we welcome you with feeling. Why did you ever come to call? In this forgotten country dwelling I’d not have known you then at all, Nor known this bitter heartache’s swelling. Perhaps, when time had helped in quelling The girlish hopes on which I fed, I might have found (who knows?) another And been a faithful wife and mother, Contented with the life I led. Another! No! In all creation There’s no one else whom I’d adore; The heavens chose my destination And made me thine for evermore! My life till now has been a token In pledge of meeting you, my friend; And in your coming, God has spoken, You‘ll be my guardian till the end…. You filled my dreams and sweetest trances; As yet unseen, and yet so dear, You stirred me with your wondrous glances, Your voice within my soul rang clear…. And then the dream came true for me! When you came in, I seemed to waken, I turned to flame, I felt all shaken, And in my heart I cried: It’s he! And was it you I heard replying Amid the stillness of the night, Or when I helped the poor and dying, Or turned to heaven, softly crying, And said a prayer to soothe my plight? And even now, my dearest vision, Did I not see your apparition Flit softly through this lucent night? Was it not you who seemed to hover Above my bed, a gentle lover, To whisper hope and sweet delight? Are you my angel of salvation Or hell’s own demon of temptation? Be kind and send my doubts away; For this may all be mere illusion, The things a simple girl would say, While Fate intends no grand conclusion…. So be it then! Henceforth I place My faith in you and your affection; I plead with tears upon my face And beg you for your kind protection. You cannot know: I’m so alone, There’s no one here to whom I’ve spoken, My mind and will are almost broken, And I must die without a moan. I wait for you … and your decision: Revive my hopes with but a sign, Or halt this heavy dream of mine— Alas, with well-deserved derision! I close. I dare not now reread…. I shrink with shame and fear. But surely, Your honour’s all the pledge I need, And I submit to it securely.

That villainous crew- greed, infatuation, jealousy, arrogance, and pride haunts the mind only so long as the Divine does not take up His abode there. Attachment to the world is like a dark night fully advanced, which is so delightful to the owls of attraction and aversion; it abides in the heart of a creature only so long as the sun of the Lord’s glory does not shine there. Having seen Your lotus feet, O Rāma, I am now quite well and my grave fears have been set at rest. The threefold torments of mundane existence cease to have any effect on him who enjoys Your favor, my gracious lord. I am a demon vilest of nature and have never done any good act. Yet the Lord whose beauty even sages fail to perceive with their mindís eye has been pleased to clasp me to His bosom.

You guys could handle this on your own. Why risk getting kicked out of your He-Man-Monster-Haters Club?" "Because we can't handle this on our own. At least I don't think we can." "You said yourself you already have some Prodigium working with you. Why not go to them?" "We have a handful," he said, frustration creeping into his voice. "And most of them suck. Look, just consider it a peace offering, okay? My way of saying I'm sorry for lying to you. And pulling a knife in your presence, even if it was just to open a damn window to get out before you vaporized me." Most girls got flowers. I got a dirt put used for demon raising. Nice. "Thanks," I replied. "But don't you want in on this?" He looked at me, and not for the first time, I wished his eyes weren't so dark. It would have been nice to have some idea of what was going on in his head. "That's up to you," he said. Mom always liked to say that we hardly ever know the decisions we make that change our lives,mostly because they're little ones. You take this bus instead of that one and end up meeting your soul mate, that kind of thing. But there was no doubt in my mind that this was one of those life-changing moments. Tell Archer no,and I'd never see him again. And Dad and Jenna wouldn't be mad at me, and Cal...Tell Archer yes, and everything suddenly got twistier and more complicated than Mrs. Casnoff's hairdo. And even though I'm a twisty and complicated girl, I knew what my answer had to be. "It's too much of a risk, Cross. Maybe one day when I'm head of the Council, and you're...well, whatever you're going to be for L'Occhio di Dio, we could work on some kind of collaboration." That brought up depressig images of me and Archer sittig across a boardroom table, sketching out battle plans on a whiteboard, so my voice was a little shaky when I continued. "But for now, it's too dangerous." And not just because basically everyone in our lives would want to kill us if they found out, I thought. But because I was pretty sure I was still in love with him, and I thought he might feel something similar for me, and there was no way we could work together preventing the Monster Apocalypse/World War III without that becoming an issue. Not that I could say any of that. Archer's face was blank as he said, "Cool. Got it." "Cross," I started to say, but then his eyes slid past me and went wide with horror. At the same time, I became aware of a slithering noice behind me. That just could not be good; in my experience, nothing pleasant slithers. Still, I was not prepared for the nightmares climbing out of the crater.

A long time ago, before I'd lost my wings, I'd thought that bravery could be attained with an open mind and heart, by persuing and facing my demons. Now I considered that fearlessness was the luxury of the cloistered and blind, and that it was too late for me.

It has taken me much of my life to begin to get to the second gaze. By nature I have a critical mind and a demanding heart, and I am so impatient. These are both my gifts and my curses, as you might expect. Yet I cannot have one without the other, it seems. I cannot risk losing touch with either my angels or my demons. They are both good teachers. I am convinced that guilt and shame are never from God. They are merely the defenses of the False Self as it is shocked at its own poverty — the defenses of a little man who wants to be a big man. God leads by compassion toward the soul, never by condemnation. If God would relate to us by severity and punitiveness, God would only be giving us permission to do the same (which is tragically, due to our mistaken images of God, exactly what has happened!). God offers us, instead, the grace to “weep” over our sins more than to ever perfectly overcome them, to humbly recognize our littleness. (St. Thérèse of Lisieux brought this Gospel message home in our time.) The spiritual journey is a kind of weeping and a kind of wandering that keeps us both askew and thus awake at the same time. Thérèse called it her “little way.” So now in my later life, contemplation and compassion are finally coming together. This is my second gaze. It is well worth waiting for, because only the second gaze sees fully and truthfully. It sees itself, the other, and even God with God’s own eyes, which are always eyes of compassion. It is from this place that true action must spring. Otherwise, most of our action is merely re-action, and does not bear fruit or “fruit that will last” (John 15:16). It is all about me at that point, so I must hold out for the second gaze when it becomes all about God, about the suffering of our world, and is filled with compassion for all of it. Some high-level mystics, notably the Jewesses, Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum, actually “felt sorry” for God. Most Catholic mystics just want to actively join God in suffering for the world (Colossians 1:24). The gaze of compassion, looking out at life from the place of Divine Intimacy, is really all I have, and all I have to give back to God and back to the world.

Most churches do not grow beyond the spiritual health of their leadership. Many churches have a pastor who is trying to lead people to a Savior he has yet to personally encounter. If spiritual gifting is no proof of authentic faith, then certainly a job title isn't either. You must have a clear sense of calling before you enter ministry. Being a called man is a lonely job, and many times you feel like God has abandoned you in your ministry. Ministry is more than hard. Ministry is impossible. And unless we have a fire inside our bones compelling us, we simply will not survive. Pastoral ministry is a calling, not a career. It is not a job you pursue. If you don’t think demons are real, try planting a church! You won’t get very far in advancing God’s kingdom without feeling resistance from the enemy. If I fail to spend two hours in prayer each morning, the devil gets the victory through the day. Once a month I get away for the day, once a quarter I try to get out for two days, and once a year I try to get away for a week. The purpose of these times is rest, relaxation, and solitude with God. A pastor must always be fearless before his critics and fearful before his God. Let us tremble at the thought of neglecting the sheep. Remember that when Christ judges us, he will judge us with a special degree of strictness. The only way you will endure in ministry is if you determine to do so through the prevailing power of the Holy Spirit. The unsexy reality of the pastorate is that it involves hard work—the heavy-lifting, curse-ridden, unyielding employment of your whole person for the sake of the church. Pastoral ministry requires dogged, unyielding determination, and determination can only come from one source—God himself. Passive staff members must be motivated. Erring elders and deacons must be confronted. Divisive church members must be rebuked. Nobody enjoys doing such things (if you do, you should be not be a pastor!), but they are necessary in order to have a healthy church over the long haul. If you allow passivity, laziness, and sin to fester, you will soon despise the church you pastor. From the beginning of sacred Scripture (Gen. 2:17) to the end (Rev. 21:8), the penalty for sin is death. Therefore, if we sin, we should die. But it is Jesus, the sinless one, who dies in our place for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus died to take to himself the penalty of our sin. The Bible is not Christ-centered because it is generally about Jesus. It is Christ-centered because the Bible’s primary purpose, from beginning to end, is to point us toward the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus for the salvation and sanctification of sinners. Christ-centered preaching goes much further than merely providing suggestions for how to live; it points us to the very source of life and wisdom and explains how and why we have access to him. Felt needs are set into the context of the gospel, so that the Christian message is not reduced to making us feel better about ourselves. If you do not know how sinful you are, you feel no need of salvation. Sin-exposing preaching helps people come face-to-face with their sin and their great need for a Savior. We can worship in heaven, and we can talk to God in heaven, and we can read our Bibles in heaven, but we can’t share the gospel with our lost friends in heaven. “Would your city weep if your church did not exist?” It was crystal-clear for me. Somehow, through fear or insecurity, I had let my dreams for our church shrink. I had stopped thinking about the limitless things God could do and had been distracted by my own limitations. I prayed right there that God would forgive me of my small-mindedness. I asked God to forgive my lack of faith that God could use a man like me to bring the message of the gospel through our missionary church to our lost city. I begged God to renew my heart and mind with a vision for our city that was more like Christ's.

The greatest impact my alters' behaviour had on me was not in the acts themselves but in the telling. And some of those tales I just was not prepared for. Opening my mind to DID was like opening Pandora's box. The demons that emerge could not be put back again. They were out forever.

But all this means nothing. Gerda is not there. Only in my mind. The mind that is helped and solaced by the same demons, the same friends, who have destroyed the mind of an Iris who is close to me now, closer to me than ever, and yet far away. Walking in a dream, with Iris beside me.

Heart; I named my lass sweetly; She danced to the mundane tunes of daftness; By nature she was midsummer madness; Or rather a reckless, careless, devil-may-care colleen. I pampered all her hefty desires; Brain; my friend said treat her with caution; For she is a child; doesn’t ruminate her action; You are mother, with deep devotion. And one fine day came the tempest darling; She named him love, besotted and infatuated; Enchanted by his charms, smelled the roses; Failed to see the thorns that pricked. And drip-drip-drip, the blood it dripped; When her beloved tossed and crushed her core; She knew not how to stand up straight; I opened my eyes and the driblets fell. Don’t nurse her; said my friend; my brain; For she is a demented lass not worth the pain; She will go away when her wounds are dried; To her unmoved brutal hero, Love. A mother cannot be unmoved, I cried; For all this time, I held her high; I knocked at your door, you flinty villain; Not to hear, all that you said. Call me a demon or a dragon; For all I will say is don’t nurse the brat; Let her bleed and cry for some more time; She will get up; for she is your child. All he said was unerred truth; She bled and nursed her own wounds; She drove me to her hero’s place; And said, “This is where my poem stays.

But you, the Master-Mistress of my mind, Whose Demon sits high-throned above my stars— But you, whose passionate pinions know no kind, Whose scars are burnt with scars— You will divine my song in your far place, And call it with your wings, and hold it high; And underneath the dark of that embrace Young songs shall cry.

I could not judge her for her choice, but in that moment I knew I could not choose it for myself. Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.

The Scottish vernacular is rich in colourful euphemisms for inebriation: ‘stocious’, ‘stotting’, ‘guttered’, ‘steaming’, ‘steamboats’, ‘wellied’ and ‘hoolit’ are just a few. Another is ‘mortal’, as in ‘I was fair mortal last night’ (meaning ‘I was very drunk indeed’). So ‘Mortal Causes’ evoked, in my mind, the demon drink, just as surely as it did any darker and more violent imagery.

We’re in a period right now where nobody asks any questions about psychology. No one has any feeling for human motivation. No one talks about sexuality in terms of emotional needs and symbolism and the legacy of childhood. Sexuality has been politicized--“Don’t ask any questions!” "No discussion!" “Gay is exactly equivalent to straight!” And thus in this period of psychological blindness or inertness, our art has become dull. There’s nothing interesting being written--in fiction or plays or movies. Everything is boring because of our failure to ask psychological questions. So I say there is a big parallel between Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton--aside from their initials! Young feminists need to understand that this abusive behavior by powerful men signifies their sense that female power is much bigger than they are! These two people, Clinton and Cosby, are emotionally infantile--they're engaged in a war with female power. It has something to do with their early sense of being smothered by female power--and this pathetic, abusive and criminal behavior is the result of their sense of inadequacy. Now, in order to understand that, people would have to read my first book, "Sexual Personae"--which of course is far too complex for the ordinary feminist or academic mind! It’s too complex because it requires a sense of the ambivalence of human life. Everything is not black and white, for heaven's sake! We are formed by all kinds of strange or vague memories from childhood. That kind of understanding is needed to see that Cosby was involved in a symbiotic, push-pull thing with his wife, where he went out and did these awful things to assert his own independence. But for that, he required the women to be inert. He needed them to be dead! Cosby is actually a necrophiliac--a style that was popular in the late Victorian period in the nineteenth-century. It's hard to believe now, but you had men digging up corpses from graveyards, stealing the bodies, hiding them under their beds, and then having sex with them. So that’s exactly what’s happening here: to give a woman a drug, to make her inert, to make her dead is the man saying that I need her to be dead for me to function. She’s too powerful for me as a living woman. And this is what is also going on in those barbaric fraternity orgies, where women are sexually assaulted while lying unconscious. And women don’t understand this! They have no idea why any men would find it arousing to have sex with a young woman who’s passed out at a fraternity house. But it’s necrophilia--this fear and envy of a woman’s power. And it’s the same thing with Bill Clinton: to find the answer, you have to look at his relationship to his flamboyant mother. He felt smothered by her in some way. But let's be clear--I’m not trying to blame the mother! What I’m saying is that male sexuality is extremely complicated, and the formation of male identity is very tentative and sensitive--but feminist rhetoric doesn’t allow for it. This is why women are having so much trouble dealing with men in the feminist era. They don’t understand men, and they demonize men.

And even in the open air the stench of whiskey was appalling. To this fiendish poison, I am certain, the greater part of the squalor I saw is due. Many of these vermin were obviously not foreigners—I counted at least five American countenances in which a certain vanished decency half showed through the red whiskey bloating. Then I reflected upon the power of wine, and marveled how self-respecting persons can imbibe such stuff, or permit it to be served upon their tables. It is the deadliest enemy with which humanity is faced. Not all the European wars could produce a tenth of the havock occasioned among men by the wretched fluid which responsible governments allow to be sold openly. Looking upon that mob of sodden brutes, my mind’s eye pictured a scene of different kind; a table bedecked with spotless linen and glistening silver, surrounded by gentlemen immaculate in evening attire—and in the reddening faces of those gentlemen I could trace the same lines which appeared in full development of the beasts of the crowd. Truly, the effects of liquor are universal, and the shamelessness of man unbounded. How can reform be wrought in the crowd, when supposedly respectable boards groan beneath the goblets of rare old vintages? Is mankind asleep, that its enemy is thus entertained as a bosom friend? But a week or two ago, at a parade held in honour of the returning Rhode Island National Guard, the Chief Executive of this State, Mr. Robert Livingston Beeckman, prominent in New York, Newport, and Providence society, appeared in such an intoxicated condition that he could scarce guide his mount, or retain his seat in the saddle, and he the guardian of the liberties and interests of that Colony carved by the faith, hope, and labour of Roger Williams from the wilderness of savage New-England! I am perhaps an extremist on the subject of prohibition, but I can see no justification whatsoever for the tolerance of such a degrading demon as drink.

It was great but intense to try to go back into a character’s mind, a mind that is filled with self-loathing and a mind that is male. It is fun to try to psychoanalyze why a character acts and feels the way he/she does, and doing it as a different gender lends itself to many challenges. My desire to delve into the male psyche comes from many years of being drawn to men that seem to have a darker side. But there is also light in them, and it is that duality and intensity that makes me feel alive. Thorne is very much that man as is my first male protagonist, Michael, from the Natalie’s Edge series. Each man, while plagued with a dark past and demons, has this glorious light within them, fighting noble causes. I picture them as true anti-heroes, like the likes of Batman, the Dark Knight.

Do you remember bedtime as a child? I was terrified of the dark. I was terrified of the closed closet door that surely cracked open when I wasn't looking and spewed out ghouls and devils. I took care that no arms or legs protruded from the bed. I sometimes slept with the covers over my head. Sweltering, panting, barely breathing. Not even my hair exposed, lest a monster discover and devour me. I remember begging my father to check under the bed. I remember trying to explain how some monsters had invisibility cloaks. He would kiss my cheek and switch off the light. We stop looking under the bed once we realize that the monsters are inside us. It's funny how they transform. Suddenly they don't mind daylight. Suddenly they dress nicely, speak our language, and share our customs. They sit next to us on the metro and jog around our neighborhoods. They slip things into our drinks at parties and offer us jobs. Sometimes we spot them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we even do the unthinkable: we invite them to our bed. As adults, we burn down the sanctuaries we created as children. Our inner child freaks out, but its screams are drowned by our moans as our monsters bring us to orgasm.

If Sophie hadn’t used my magic in her body,” Elodie summed up, “she would’ve been dead like, ten times by now.” Okay, it was only twice, I grumbled inside. Elodie ignored me. “And no,” she said, raising my hand to cut off Jenna’s next question. “I can’t possess anyone else. Trust me, I’ve been trying to get inside Lara Casnoff ever since we got here. Which…sounds really wrong.” I felt my shoulders shrug. “Anyway, you looked like you were about to eat your own lip, and that’s totally gross, so I figured I oughta swoop in and put your mind at ease. Last night, when I was trying my hardest to possess anyone who’s not this freak, I overheard the Casnoffs talking. Apparently, turning a vampire into a demon seems like an awesome idea, so that’s why you’re here. No staking on the agenda.” Usling Elodie as a spy hadn’t even occurred to me. Oh my God, this is perfect! I shouted. Well, mentally shouted. Of course! They can’t see you unless you want them to; you can go anywhere in the school, and- Jeez, not so loud, she interrupted. I’m in your head, so use your inside inside voice. Elodie went to brush my hair out of my eyes, muttering, “God, how does she live like this?” If you promise to stop taking over whenever you feel like it, I promise to get a hot oil treatment, I replied, and she snorted. Jenna folded her arms tightly across her chest. “So, what-you’re like, helping us now?” My eyes rolled. “No, I’m on Team Take Over The World With A Demon Army. Of course I’m helping you. Mostly so that whenever this is over, Sophie can get back to important stuff. Like how to unbind me from her.

Depression goes through stages, but if left unchecked and not treated, this elevator ride will eventually go all the way to the bottom floor. And finally you find yourself bereft of choices, unable to figure out a way up or out, and pretty soon one overarching impulse begins winning the battle for your mind: “Kill yourself.” And once you get over the shock of those words in your head, the horror of it, it begins to start sounding appealing, even possessing a strange resolve, logic. In fact, it’s the only thing you have left that is logical. It becomes the only road to relief. As if just the planning of it provides the first solace you’ve felt that you can remember. And you become comfortable with it. You begin to plan it and contemplate the details of how best to do it, as if you were planning travel arrangements for a vacation. You just have to get out. O-U-T. You see the white space behind the letter O? You just want to crawl through that O and be out of this inescapable hurt that is this thing they call clinical depression. “How am I going to do this?” becomes the only tape playing. And if you are really, really, really depressed and you’re really there, you’re gonna find a way. I found a way. I had a way. And I did it. I made sure Opal was out of the house and on a business trip. My planning took a few weeks. I knew exactly how I was going to do it: I didn’t want to make too much of a mess. There was gonna be no blood, no drama. There was just going to be, “Now you see me, now you don’t.” That’s what it was going to be. So I did it. And it was over. Or so I thought. About twenty-four hours later I woke up. I was groggy; zoned out to the point at which I couldn’t put a sentence together for the next couple of days. But I was semifunctional, and as these drugs and shit that I took began to wear off slowly but surely, I realized, “Okay, I fucked up. I didn’t make it.” I thought I did all the right stuff, left no room for error, but something happened. And this perfect, flawless plan was thwarted. As if some force rebuked me and said, “Not yet. You’re not going anywhere.” The only reason I could have made it, after the amount of pills and alcohol and shit I took, was that somebody or something decided it wasn’t my time. It certainly wasn’t me making that call. It was something external. And when you’re infused with the presence of this positive external force, which is so much greater than all of your efforts to the contrary, that’s about as empowering a moment as you can have in your life. These days we have a plethora of drugs one can take to ameliorate the intensity of this lack of hope, lack of direction, lack of choice. So fuck it and don’t be embarrassed or feel like you can handle it yourself, because lemme tell ya something: you can’t. Get fuckin’ help. The negative demon is strong, and you may not be as fortunate as I was. My brother wasn’t. For me, despair eventually gave way to resolve, and resolve gave way to hope, and hope gave way to “Holy shit. I feel better than I’ve ever felt right now.” Having actually gone right up to the white light, looked right at it, and some force in the universe turned me around, I found, with apologies to Mr. Dylan, my direction home. I felt more alive than I’ve ever felt. I’m not exaggerating when I say for the next six months I felt like Superman. Like I’m gonna fucking go through walls. That’s how strong I felt. I had this positive force in me. I was saved. I was protected. I was like the only guy who survived and walked away from a major plane crash. I was here to do something big. What started as the darkest moment in my life became this surge of focus, direction, energy, and empowerment.

ANTHONY: I feel you, Johanna, I feel you Do they think that walls can hide you? Even now I'm at your window I am in the dark beside you, Buried sweetly in your yellow hair, Johanna… SWEENEY TODD: And are you beautiful and pale, With yellow hair, like her I'd want you beautiful and pale, The way I've dreamed you were, Johanna... ANTHONY: Johanna... SWEENEY TODD: And if you're beautiful, what then, With yellow hair, like wheat? I think we shall not meet again — My little dove, my sweet Johanna… ANTHONY: I'll steal you, Johanna… SWEENEY TODD: Goodbye, Johanna. You're gone, and yet you're mine. I'm fine, Johanna, I'm fine! ANTHONY: Johanna… BEGGAR WOMAN: Smoke! Smoke! Sign of the devil! Sign of the devil! City on fire! Witch! Witch! Smell it, sir! An evil smell! Every night at the vespers bell — Smoke that comes from the mouth of hell — City on fire! City on fire! Mischief! Mischief! Mischief... SWEENEY TODD: And if I never hear your voice, My turtledove, my dear, I still have reason to rejoice: The way ahead is clear, Johanna... JOHANNA: I'll marry Anthony Sunday Anthony…Sunday… ANTHONY: I feel you… SWEENEY TODD: And in that darkness when I'm blind With what I can't forget — ANTHONY: Johanna… SWEENEY TODD: It's always morning in my mind, My little lamb, my pet, Johanna… JOHANNA: I knew you'd come for me one day… Come for me…one day… SWEENEY TODD/ANTHONY: You stay, Johanna — Johanna… SWEENEY TODD: The way I've dreamed you are Oh look, Johanna — a star! ANTHONY: Buried sweetly in your yellow hair… SWEENEY TODD: A shooting star! BEGGAR WOMAN: There! There! Somebody, somebody look up there! Didn't I tell you? Smell that air! City on fire! Quick, sir! Run and tell! Warn 'em all of the witch's spell! There it is, there it is, the unholy smell! Tell it to the Beadle and the police as well! Tell 'em! Tell 'em! Help! Fiend! City on fire! City on fire! Mischief! Mischief! Mischief...Fiend . . . Alms…alms...for a miserable woman… SWEENEY TODD: And though I'll think of you, I guess, until the day I die, I think I miss you less and less as every day goes by, Johanna... ANTHONY: Johanna... JOHANNA: With you beside me on Sunday, Married on…Sunday… SWEENEY TODD: And you'd be beautiful and pale, And look too much like her. If only angels could prevail, We'd be the way we were, Johanna... ANTHONY: I feel you...Johanna… JOHANNA'S VOICE: Married on Sunday…married on Sunday ... SWEENEY TODD: Wake up, Johanna! Another bright red day! We learn, Johanna, to say goodbye! ANTHONY: I’ll steal you!

I’ll tell you this, if he gives me one more order with that W word again, I’m going to divorce him before we can even finish the wedding.” “The W . . . Okay, Bella, as usual you have lost me. W word?” “Yeah. W, . . . as in Wife. Ugh! He’s always saying or thinking things in this high and mighty way and tacking the word ‘wife’ onto the end like it’s some kind of password that lets him order me around.” Bella noted her friend’s still perplexed expression, so she screwed up her face, attitude, and voice into an uncanny approximation of Jacob. “‘I do not want you hunting in your condition, wife. It is too dangerous for you and the babe to accompany me, wife. I have told Elijah that there are to be no more training lessons until after the birth, and do not argue with me about this, wife, because my mind is set.” Isabella sagged back with a frustrated sigh. “Oy! It’s just so obnoxious and so . . . high-handed! You know the honeymoon is over when you go from ‘my love,’ ‘my little flower,’ and ‘my heart’ and become simply ‘wife.’” Legna smothered the urge to chuckle. Her little friend’s famous sarcasm always tickled her, and it was meant to tickle. Bella had a way of hiding behind her wit and humor. She was stating things that clearly disturbed her, but she mocked them in such a way that anyone who did not know her would treat it as little more than a comedy routine. Legna knew better. “Now, Bella, you know Jacob adores you. He naturally wants to protect you. He literally worships the ground you walk on.” “Ha ha,” Bella said dryly. “Earth Demon. Worship the ground. Cute. Really cute.” “Well, come on now. Seriously. As a Demon of the Earth, Jacob has an affinity with nature.

I woke, remembering a dream from the night before. Pictures of frightened children lingered in my mind as I approached them with a hunger unsated by mundane appetites. I recalled how flesh smelled: sweet. The texture was tender, yet it was bitter to the taste. Blood was messy and dripped down my chin. The demon, the cold-blooded monster mingled with my DNA: a gift from one of my parents brought to daylight by evil people.

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality and my life, as I write this, is vital even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It's a precious discovery.

On this way, they reached the roof. Christine tripped over it as lightly as a swallow. Their eyes swept the empty space between the three domes and the triangular pediment. She breathed freely over Paris, the whole valley of which was seen at work below. She called Raoul to come quite close to her and they walked side by side along the zinc streets, in the leaden avenues; they looked at their twin shapes in the huge tanks, full of stagnant water, where, in the hot weather, the little boys of the ballet, a score or so, learn to swim and dive. The shadow had followed behind them clinging to their steps; and the two children little suspected its presence when they at last sat down, trustingly, under the mighty protection of Apollo, who, with a great bronze gesture, lifted his huge lyre to the heart of a crimson sky. It was a gorgeous spring evening. Clouds, which had just received their gossamer robe of gold and purple from the setting sun, drifted slowly by; and Christine said to Raoul: “Soon we shall go farther and faster than the clouds, to the end of the world, and then you will leave me, Raoul. But, if, when the moment comes for you to take me away, I refuse to go with you—well you must carry me off by force!” “Are you afraid that you will change your mind, Christine?” “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head in an odd fashion. “He is a demon!” And she shivered and nestled in his arms with a moan. “I am afraid now of going back to live with him … in the ground!” “What compels you to go back, Christine?” “If I do not go back to him, terrible misfortunes may happen! … But I can’t do it, I can’t do it! … I know one ought to be sorry for people who live underground … But he is too horrible! And yet the time is at hand; I have only a day left; and, if I do not go, he will come and fetch me with his voice. And he will drag me with him, underground, and go on his knees before me, with his death’s head. And he will tell me that he loves me! And he will cry! Oh, those tears, Raoul, those tears in the two black eye-sockets of the death’s head! I can not see those tears flow again!” She wrung her hands in anguish, while Raoul pressed her to his heart. “No, no, you shall never again hear him tell you that he loves you! You shall not see his tears! Let us fly, Christine, let us fly at once!” And he tried to drag her away, then and there. But she stopped him. “No, no,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Not now! … It would be too cruel … let him hear me sing to-morrow evening … and then we will go away. You must come and fetch me in my dressing-room at midnight exactly. He will then be waiting for me in the dining-room by the lake … we shall be free and you shall take me away … You must promise me that, Raoul, even if I refuse; for I feel that, if I go back this time, I shall perhaps never return.” And she gave a sigh to which it seemed to her that another sigh, behind her, replied. “Didn’t you hear?” Her teeth chattered. “No,” said Raoul, “I heard nothing.” - Chapter 12: Apollo’s Lyre

St John’s saying that God is love has long been balanced in my mind against the remark of a modern author (M. Denis de Rougemont) that ‘love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god’; which of course can be re-stated in the form ‘begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god’. This balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God.

Okay, okay . . . where do you hear it coming from?” “Around here somewhere.” “Always in this spot?” “No. Not always. You are going to think I am even more insane, but I swear it is following me around.” “Maybe it is my new powers. The power to drive you mad.” She wriggled her fingers at him theatrically as if she were casting a curse on him. “You already drive me mad,” he teased, dragging her up against him and nibbling her neck with a playful growling. “Ah hell,” he broke off. “I really am going mad. I cannot believe you cannot hear that. It is like a metronome set to some ridiculously fast speed.” He turned and walked into the living room, looking around at every shelf. “The last person to own this place probably had a thing for music and left it running. Listen. Can you hear that?” “No,” she said thoughtfully, “but I can hear you hearing it if I concentrate on your thoughts. What in the world . . . ?” Gideon turned, then turned again, concentrating on the rapid sound, following it until it led him right up to his wife. “It is you!” he said. “No wonder it is following me around. Are you wearing a watch?” He grabbed her wrist and she rolled her eyes. “A Demon wearing a watch? Now I have heard everything.” Suddenly Gideon went very, very still, the cold wash of chills that flooded through him so strong that she shivered with the overflow of sensation. He abruptly dropped to his knees and framed her hips with his hands. “Oh, Legna,” he whispered, “I am such an idiot. It is a baby. It is our baby. I am hearing it’s heartbeat!” “What?” she asked, her shock so powerful she could barely speak. “I am with child?” “Yes. Yes, sweet, you most certainly are. A little over a month. Legna, you conceived, probably the first time we made love. My beautiful, fertile, gorgeous wife.” Gideon kissed her belly through her dress, stood up, and caught her up against him until she squeaked with the force of his hug. Legna went past shock and entered unbelievable joy. She laughed, not caring how tight he held her, feeling his joy on a thousand different levels. “I never thought I would know this feeling,” he said hoarsely. “Even when we were getting married, I never thought . . . It did not even enter my mind!” Gideon set her down on her feet, putting her at arm’s length as he scanned her thoroughly from head to toe. “I cannot understand why I did not become aware of this sooner. The chemical changes, the hormone levels alone . . .” “Never mind. We know now,” she said, throwing herself back up against him and hugging him tightly. “Come, we have to tell Noah . . . and Hannah! Oh, and Bella! And Jacob, of course. And Elijah. And we should inform Siena—” She was still rattling off names as she teleported them to the King’s castle.

In the center of the room Sarra the demon hung upside down by one leg, its arms bound behind its back, its suit scuffed-looking. Beneath it, crawling around an intricately scribed circle, a woman with short, curly red hair drew binding symbols with a gold stick. She looked up as I fanned away the smoke that was billowing up from the crack in the tile. "You're a Summoner. Hullo. I'm Noelle. Did you know that you have mismatched eyes?" I walked around the demon. It glared at me. "Yes, I know. Why do you have Sarra strung up by one leg?" She drew another symbol. It flared bright green as soon as the stick lifted from the circle. "It was getting a bit stroppy with me. The Hanged Man always teaches them a few manners. It's retaliating with the smoke. Are those spirits I saw yours, then?" "Yes, they are. There are four others as well. I hate to be a bother, but I'm in a bit of a hurry, what with Christian being held by this one's master and all, so if you could possibly just give me the abbreviated version of what's going on here, I'll be on my way to rescue him." She leaned back on her heels and sucked the tip of her gold stick. "Asmodeus, eh?" The demon snarled. A chunk of ceiling fell behind me. We both ignored it. It just never does to give a demon the satisfaction of knowing it's startled you. "It's a nasty bag of tricks, but I heard through the demonic grapevine that it was weakened and searching for a suitable sacrifice to regain its power," she added. "Well, it can't have Christian; he's mine. Back to the demon, if you don't mind…" She looked up at Sarra, still sucking the stick. "It's a pretty specimen, isn't it? I like the hair gel. Nice touch. The mustache is a bit much, though, don't you think? Makes it look so smarmy." "Um…" "I'm destroying it, so I suppose it really doesn't matter." I blinked and avoided two wine bottles as they flew out of a rack when the demon hissed at the Guardian.

there are whole blackouts in some of the years i have lived my therapist says our minds erase trauma to help us move on but every experience i’ve had is memorized in my flesh even if my mind forgets my body remembers my body is the map of my life my body wears what it’s been through my body signals the alarms when it thinks danger is coming and suddenly the hungry little demons from my past come raging out of my flesh screaming don’t you forget us don’t you ever try to leave us behind again

The people cast themselves down by the fuming boards while servants cut the roast, mixed jars of wine and water, and all the gods flew past like the night-breaths of spring. The chattering female flocks sat down by farther tables, their fresh prismatic garments gleaming in the moon as though a crowd of haughty peacocks played in moonlight. The queen’s throne softly spread with white furs of fox gaped desolate and bare, for Penelope felt ashamed to come before her guests after so much murder. Though all the guests were ravenous, they still refrained, turning their eyes upon their silent watchful lord till he should spill wine in libation for the Immortals. The king then filled a brimming cup, stood up and raised it high till in the moon the embossed adornments gleamed: Athena, dwarfed and slender, wrought in purest gold, pursued around the cup with double-pointed spear dark lowering herds of angry gods and hairy demons; she smiled and the sad tenderness of her lean face, and her embittered fearless glance, seemed almost human. Star-eyed Odysseus raised Athena’s goblet high and greeted all, but spoke in a beclouded mood: “In all my wandering voyages and torturous strife, the earth, the seas, the winds fought me with frenzied rage; I was in danger often, both through joy and grief, of losing priceless goodness, man’s most worthy face. I raised my arms to the high heavens and cried for help, but on my head gods hurled their lightning bolts, and laughed. I then clasped Mother Earth, but she changed many shapes, and whether as earthquake, beast, or woman, rushed to eat me; then like a child I gave my hopes to the sea in trust, piled on my ship my stubbornness, my cares, my virtues, the poor remaining plunder of god-fighting man, and then set sail; but suddenly a wild storm burst, and when I raised my eyes, the sea was strewn with wreckage. As I swam on, alone between sea and sky, with but my crooked heart for dog and company, I heard my mind, upon the crumpling battlements about my head, yelling with flailing crimson spear. Earth, sea, and sky rushed backward; I remained alone with a horned bow slung down my shoulder, shorn of gods and hopes, a free man standing in the wilderness. Old comrades, O young men, my island’s newest sprouts, I drink not to the gods but to man’s dauntless mind.” All shuddered, for the daring toast seemed sacrilege, and suddenly the hungry people shrank in spirit; They did not fully understand the impious words but saw flames lick like red curls about his savage head. The smell of roast was overpowering, choice meats steamed, and his bold speech was soon forgotten in hunger’s pangs; all fell to eating ravenously till their brains reeled. Under his lowering eyebrows Odysseus watched them sharply: "This is my people, a mess of bellies and stinking breath! These are my own minds, hands, and thighs, my loins and necks!" He muttered in his thorny beard, held back his hunger far from the feast and licked none of the steaming food.

Say my name,” he countered, his hand wrapping around the irresistible length of her neck. This time it was he who whispered in her ear. “Say it.” “I do not know what it is,” she said, her breath rushing out of her in an astounding rhythm. “Yes, you do. I feel it. You only have to search for it inside of us.” “Us” was the appropriate term. It was almost impossible in that moment for them to discern whose thoughts belonged to whom. Gideon was the oldest of them all. There was no one older, so no one who had once known his power name could possibly be alive. His parents were dead. His Siddah were dead. If Legna discovered his name, the ramifications were inconceivably serious. He would be putting his very existence into her hands. He would be placing all of his power at her fingertips, gifting her with the potential for his absolute submission. Legna tried to step back from him, the shock of what he was offering her too much to bear. But he had made sure to have his hands on her and now kept her tight and close within them. “I cannot,” she whispered, her body beginning to shake. “No one should know that. No one. I am not strong enough to keep it, Gideon. Any male Mind Demon could take it from me!” “You are stronger than you think, Neliss.” “Not strong enough. Please, do not ask this of me.” She pushed at him, jerked herself backward, using the weight of her body to try and break free. He held her for a moment longer, looking deeply into her panic-stricken expression. “One day,” he said softly.

I feel that quarantine has brought me closer to other people, to everyone. Like, we are all finally on the same page now. I have spent my life attending to, and cultivating, my inner world. Moving outwards from what is within my heart and within the deepest recesses of my mind. "From-in-to-out" has always been my mode of living. I have always looked at everyone else and thought that they fill their hearts and their minds with static noise, so much noise. They feel things, but then they can just go and drown all of that in work immersion; they have pressing issues on their minds, but they can just go and drown the sounds of their own thoughts in a one-night-stand; they have wounds on their spirits, but they can evade feeling those wounds and healing them, by blowing themselves into larger-than-life projections in the workplace, at school, on social media. So much noise, just so much noise. I feel as though, all my life, I have been screaming at the world, begging people to go inward, to face their angels and their demons, to know themselves. Now in quarantine, I think everyone is forced to do exactly that. The world is forced into a quietness that should of happened long ago, every day, all the time. A quietness of retreating into the knowledge of, and the acquaintance with, the mind, the heart. I feel that now, at long last, everybody else is on the same page as myself. Being alone in quarantine is not mentally or emotionally or spiritually difficult for me. This is because I know the person I am with, I know me. And I like her.

A terrible skipper was going back and forth through the anchorage, searching for a place to drop the hook before dark. Looking up to heaven he said, "Lord take pity on me.   If you find me a good spot, I will donate to charity, give up the demon rum, treat women with respect, pay my taxes, and never again give my crew all of the blame and none of the glory!" Miraculously, the boat with the best spot in the bay began pulling up anchor to leave. The skipper looked up again and said, "Never mind, I found one myself.

Am back to it again, that space in time where my mind elapse and my flesh be in the driver’s seat dressed up in immorality spending the nights flirting with whatever demon I choose. Now my soul in kind with the darkness I chose, for damnation was the pill I sought when will comes free and deeds of evil orgasmic and thrilling with every breath. Inevitably am the man nailed to his corpse while chained to his sins for the veil that covered was shattered and the evil that was me was finally born a manifestation of flesh.

It shouldn’t take long. I’ve got snot pouring out of my nose and this insane ringing in my ears, the theme of the X-Men show in my head. That one tune over and over, soundtrack to me scrubbing fury holes in the goddamn carpet: Da-na-na-na NA na na! Da-na-na-na NA na na!! It’s so loud in my head, I honestly can’t tell if it’s coming out of my mouth or not, but it must be because Stoner starts yelling at me to shut the hell up. And I’m screaming back at him Da-na-na-na NA na na! because by this point I’ve pretty thoroughly lost my mind.

My lord, it should little beseem me that am of the seed of men of war since long generations to trap my mind with the false shows of a greatness that is gone. Yet I pray you forget not this: the dominion of the Demons hath used to soar a pitch above common royalty, and like the eye of day regarded kings from above. And for this style of Queen thou offerest me, I say unto thee it is an addition I desire not, who am sister unto him that writ that writing above the gate that all ye had tasted the truth thereof had he been here to meet with you.

In C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, senior demon Screwtape coaches a junior devil on how to infect a man’s relationship with others: “Keep his mind off the most elementary of duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful of human characteristics, the horror and neglect of the obvious.”2 He continues, “I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment’s notice from impassioned prayer for a wife’s or son’s ‘soul’ to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm.

The god of the prosperity gospelists is a pathetic doormat, a genie. The god of the cutesy coffee mugs and Joel Osteen tweets is a milquetoast doofus like the guys in the Austen novels you hope the girls don’t end up with, holding their hats limply in hand and minding their manners to follow your lead like a butler—or the doormat he stands on. The god of the American Dream is Santa Claus. The god of the open theists is not sovereignly omniscient, declaring the end from the beginning, but just a really good guesser playing the odds. The god of our therapeutic culture is ourselves, we, the “forgivers” of ourselves, navel-haloed morons with “baggage” but not sin. None of these pathetic gods could provoke fear and trembling. But the God of the Scriptures is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24). “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31). He stirs up the oceans with the tip of his finger, and they sizzle rolling clouds of steam into the sky. He shoots lightning from his fists. This is the God who leads his children by a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire. This is the God who makes war, sends plagues, and sits enthroned in majesty and glory in his heavens, doing what he pleases. This is the God who, in the flesh, turned tables over in the temple as if he owned the place. This Lord God Jesus Christ was pushed to the edge of the cliff and declared, “This is not happening today,” and walked right back through the crowd like a boss. This Lord says, “No one takes my life; I give it willingly,” as if to say, “You couldn’t kill me unless I let you.” This Lord calms the storms, casts out demons, binds and looses, and has the authority to grant us the ability to do the same. The Devil is this God’s lapdog. And it is this God who has summoned us, apprehended us, saved us. It is this God who has come humbly, meekly, lowly, pouring out his blood in infinite conquest to set the captives free, cancel the record of debt against us, conquer sin and Satan, and swallow up death forever. Let us, then, advance the gospel of the kingdom out into the perimeter of our hearts and lives with affectionate meekness and humble submission. Let us repent of our nonchalance. Let us embrace the wonder of Christ.

I do not know who coined the statement “an idle mind is the devil’s playground,” but it is true. When camping in dangerous places, it is often recommended that you keep a campfire going to keep the predators away. When we set our hearts on fire, demonic predators stay out of our camp, which is my main point in this chapter. The apostle Paul put it best: “Love never fails” (see 1 Corinthians 13:8). We have spent several chapters talking about how to win spiritual battles in our own lives and in the lives of others. But when all else fails, remember this: Love cannot be defeated.

And I did it for Him and He loves them. He betrayed us! Do you know why they get to come back from the dead to slaughter more and more of us? I thought it was some demon’s trick. That maybe we could fix that, too, or instead if our first mission failed.” Now she’s laughing at herself, at her naivety. “But He did it. Because He loves them. He loves the demons. He still loves them! After they sold their souls, after they’ve tortured the Templars and Beacons, and countless random innocents, He still loves them! He wants to give them time to change their minds before they’re committed to hell. He wants to give those murdering bastards the ability to be redeemed. They slaughtered my family, bathed in the blood of my friends, and He still loves them.” She looks at me and I see in her expression so much pain, so much bitterness, so much rage that I would have stepped back, had the demons not been holding me in place. The darkness that has taken over her personality since she became a demon becomes suddenly clear. After everything she has sacrificed to His cause she can’t understand how He can forgive her enemies. But I do. I do and it hits me with the force of a train.

By the time I woke up on a summer morning—the alarm having missed fire again, for the third time in a week—it was already too hot to move. I lay in bed for a few minutes, wanting to get up but unable to exert the necessary energy. From the girls’ room, small voices rose in song, and I listened happily, thinking how pleasant it was to hear a brother and two sisters playing affectionately together; then, suddenly, the words of the song penetrated into my hot mind, and I was out of bed in one leap and racing down the hall. “Baby ate a spider, Baby ate a spider,” was what they were singing.

We all seek God in different ways. What are you afraid of? That God will show himself somewhere other than inside these walls? That people will find him in their own lives and leave your antiquated rituals behind? Religions evolve! The mind finds answers, the heart grapples with new truths. My father was on your quest! A parallel path! Why couldn’t you see that? God is not some omnipotent authority looking down from above, threatening to throw us into a pit of fire if we disobey. God is the energy that flows through the synapses of our nervous system and the chambers of our hearts! God is in all things!

…the two chatting surreptitiously as a procession of priests, musicians, and locals dressed like demons paraded down the street: the men hoisting erect wooden phalluses, the women embracing smaller carved penises swathed in red paper, the spectators touching the tips of passing phalluses to ensure good health for their children. “How remarkable,” commented Holmes. “I thought you might find this of interest,” said Mr Umezaki. Holmes grinned slyly. “My friend, I suspect this is much more to your liking than mine.” “You’re probably right,” agreed Mr Umezaki, smiling while his fingertips reached out for an oncoming phallus.

Eventually she got around to asking about where I was living. They’d told her it was a farm, so she wanted to know how fun was that, were there animals to pet and such. Mind you, she never had one good thing to say about being raised in foster care herself, and now she thinks it’s all rainbows? I told her, Yeah, Mom, it’s exactly like a petting zoo where the main animals are roaches and mice. I told her for fun times we shoveled cow shit, and my foster was a creepy old man that threatened to file down my teeth. I didn’t mention I’d started doing drugs. As far as I was concerned, drugs were not the problem in that home. Just the opposite.

Demons may thus fool people such as psychics and their clients into thinking that people who are supposedly sensitive to the paranormal can read minds. For example, a demon knows that I am feeling very sad about the recent death of a friend. I go to a psychic, hoping to learn something as to the state of my friend’s soul. The demon knows about the death and observes that I am feeling down. He can suggest to the psychic’s mind that I am sad over the death of my friend. Although he has never met me, the psychic can tell me how I am feeling and why. We both think the psychic is somehow reading my mind and my feelings, when we are both just being used and deceived by the devil.

It is not death that human beings are most afraid of, it is love. The heart is bigger than a mountain. One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us. The trees of the forest, the animals of the bushes, tortoises, birds, and flowers know our future. The world that we see and the world that is there are two different things. Wars are not fought on battlegrounds but in a space smaller than the head of a needle. We need a new language to talk to one another. Inside a cat there are many histories, many books. When you look into the eyes of dogs strange fishes swim in your mind. All roads lead to death, but some roads lead to things which can never be finished. Wonderful things. There are human beings who are small but if you can SEE you will notice that their spirits are ten thousand feet wide. In my dream I met a child sitting on a cloud and his spirit covered half the earth. Angels and demons are amongst us; they take many forms. They can enter us and dwell there for one second or half a lifetime. Sometimes both of them dwell in us together. Before everything was born there was first the spirit. It is the spirit which invites things in, good things, or bad. Invite only good things, my son. Listen to the spirit of things. To your own spirit. Follow it. Master it. So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use. There is a stillness which makes you travel faster. There is a silence which makes you fly. If your heart is a friend of Time nothing can destroy you. Death has taught me the religion of living – I am converted – I am blinded – I am beginning to see – I am drunk on sleep – My words are the words of a stranger – Wear a smile on your faces – Pour me some wine and buy me some cigarettes, my son, for your father has returned to his true home.

Damn it, Jacob, I’m freezing my butt off.” “I came as fast as I could, considering I thought it would be wise to walk the last few yards.” Isabella whirled around, her smiling face lighting up the silvery night with more ease than the fullest of moons. She leapt up into his embrace, eagerly drinking in his body heat and affection. “I can see it now. ‘Daddy, tell me about your wedding day.’ ‘Well, son,’” she mocked, deepening her voice to his timbre and reflecting his accent uncannily, “’The first words out of your mother’s mouth were I’m freezing my butt off!’” “Very romantic, don’t you think?” he teased. “So, you think it will be a boy, then? Our first child?” “Well, I’m fifty percent sure.” “Wise odds. Come, little flower, I intend to marry you before the hour is up.” With that, he scooped her off her feet and carried her high against his chest. “Unfortunately, we are going to have to do this hike the hard way.” “As Legna tells it, that’s what you’re supposed to do.” “Yeah, well, I assure you a great many grooms have fudged that a little.” He reached to tuck her chilled face into the warm crook of his neck. “Surely the guests would know. It takes longer to walk than it does to fly . . . or whatever . . . out of the woods.” “This is true, little flower. But passing time in the solitude of the woods is not necessarily a difficult task for a man and woman about to be married.” “Jacob!” she gasped, laughing. “Some traditions are not necessarily publicized,” he teased. “You people are outrageous.” “Mmm, and if I had the ability to turn to dust right now, would you tell me no if I asked to . . . pass time with you?” Isabella shivered, but it was the warmth of his whisper and intent, not the cold, that made her do so. “Have I ever said no to you?” “No, but now would be a good time to start, or we will be late to our own wedding,” he chuckled. “How about no . . . for now?” she asked silkily, pressing her lips to the column on his neck beneath his long, loose hair. His fingers flexed on her flesh, his arms drawing her tighter to himself. He tried to concentrate on where he was putting his feet. “If that is going to be your response, Bella, then I suggest you stop teasing me with that wicked little mouth of yours before I trip and land us both in the dirt.” “Okay,” she agreed, her tongue touching his pulse. “Bella . . .” “Jacob, I want to spend the entire night making love to you,” she murmured. Jacob stopped in his tracks, taking a moment to catch his breath. “Okay, why is it I always thought it was the groom who was supposed to be having lewd thoughts about the wedding night while the bride took the ceremony more seriously?” “You started it,” she reminded him, laughing softly. “I am begging you, Isabella, to allow me to leave these woods with a little of my dignity intact.” He sighed deeply, turning his head to brush his face over her hair. “It does not take much effort from you to turn me inside out and rouse my hunger for you. If there is much more of your wanton taunting, you will be flushed warm and rosy by the time we reach that altar, and our guests will not have to be Mind Demons in order to figure out why.” “I’m sorry, you’re right.” She turned her face away from his neck. Jacob resumed his ritual walk for all of thirty seconds before he stopped again. “Bella . . .” he warned dangerously. “I’m sorry! It just popped into my head!” “What am I getting myself into?” he asked aloud, sighing dramatically as he resumed his pace. “Well, in about an hour, I hope it will be me.

Life sometimes is like tossing a coin in the air calling heads or tails, but it doesn’t matter what side it lands on; life goes on. It is hard when you’ve lost the will to fight because you’ve been fighting for so long. You are smothered by the pain. Mentally, you are drained. Physically, you are weak. Emotionally, you are weighed down. Spiritually, you do not have one tiny mustard seed of faith. The common denominator is that other people’s problems have clouded your mind with all of their negativity. You cannot feel anything; you are numb. You do not have the energy to surrender, and you choose not to escape because you feel safe when you are closed in. As you move throughout the day, you do just enough to get by. Your mindset has changed from giving it your all to—well, something is better than nothing. You move in slow motion like a zombie, and there isn’t any color, just black and white, with every now and then a shade of gray. You’ve shut everyone out and crawled back into the rabbit hole. Life passes you by as you feel like you cannot go on. You look around for help; for someone to take the pain away and to share your suffering, but no one is there. You feel alone, you drift away when you glance ahead and see that there are more uphill battles ahead of you. You do not have the option to turn around because all of the roads are blocked. You stand exactly where you are without making a step. You try to think of something, but you are emotionally bankrupt. Where do you go from here? You do not have a clue. Standing still isn’t helping because you’ve welcomed unwanted visitors; voices are in your head, asking, “What are you waiting for? Take the leap. Jump.” They go on to say, “You’ve had enough. Your burdens are too heavy.” You walk towards the cliff; you turn your head and look at the steep hill towards the mountain. The view isn’t helping; not only do you have to climb the steep hill, but you have to climb up the mountain too. You take a step; rocks and dust fall off the cliff. You stumble and you move forward. The voices in your head call you a coward. You are beginning to second-guess yourself because you want to throw in the towel. You close your eyes; a tear falls and travels to your chin. As your eyes are closed the Great Divine’s voice is louder; yet, calmer, soothing; and you feel peace instantly. Your mind feels light, and your body feels balanced. The Great Divine whispers gently and softly in your ear: “Fallen Warrior, I know you have given everything you’ve got, and you feel like you have nothing left to give. Fallen Warrior, I know it’s been a while since you smiled. Fallen Warrior, I see that you are hurting, and I feel your pain. Fallen Warrior, this is not the end. This is the start of your new beginning. Fallen Warrior, do not doubt My or your abilities; you have more going for you than you have going against you. Fallen Warrior, keep moving, you have what it takes; perseverance is your middle name. Fallen Warrior, you are not the victim! You are the victor! You step back because you know why you are here. You know why you are alive. Sometimes you have to be your own Shero. As a fallen warrior, you are human; and you have your moments. There are days when you have more ups than downs, and some days you have more downs than ups. I most definitely can relate. I was floating through life, but I had to change my mindset. During my worst days, I felt horrible, and when I started to think negatively I felt like I was dishonoring myself. I felt sick, I felt afraid, fear began to control my every move. I felt like demons were trying to break in and take over my life.

When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on which I was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of death. I tried to push them away and asked, ‘Who are you? Where is the voice?’ His only answer was a sigh. Suddenly, a hot breath passed over my face and I perceived a white shape, beside the man’s black shape, in the darkness. The black shape lifted me on to the white shape, a glad neighing greeted my astounded ears and I murmured, ‘Cesar!’ The animal quivered. Raoul, I was lying half back on a saddle and I had recognized the white horse out of the PROFETA, which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets. I remembered that, one evening, there was a rumor in the theater that the horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Opera ghost. I believed in the voice, but had never believed in the ghost. Now, however, I began to wonder, with a shiver, whether I was the ghost’s prisoner. I called upon the voice to help me, for I should never have imagined that the voice and the ghost were one. You have heard about the Opera ghost, have you not, Raoul?” “Yes, but tell me what happened when you were on the white horse of the Profeta?” “I made no movement and let myself go. The black shape held me up, and I made no effort to escape. A curious feeling of peacefulness came over me and I thought that I must be under the influence of some cordial. I had the full command of my senses; and my eyes became used to the darkness, which was lit, here and there, by fitful gleams. I calculated that we were in a narrow circular gallery, probably running all round the Opera, which is immense, underground. I had once been down into those cellars, but had stopped at the third floor, though there were two lower still, large enough to hold a town. But the figures of which I caught sight had made me run away. There are demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and, if you come too near them, they frighten you by suddenly opening the red mouths of their furnaces … Well, while Cesar was quietly carrying me on his back, I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small, in front of the red fires of their furnaces: they came into sight, disappeared and came into sight again, as we went on our winding way. At last, they disappeared altogether. The shape was still holding me up and Cesar walked on, unled and sure-footed. I could not tell you, even approximately, how long this ride lasted; I only know that we seemed to turn and turn and often went down a spiral stair into the very heart of the earth. Even then, it may be that my head was turning, but I don’t think so: no, my mind was quite clear. At last, Cesar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his pace a little. I felt a moistness in the air and Cesar stopped. The darkness had lifted. A sort of bluey light surrounded us. We were on the edge of a lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the darkness; but the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf!” - Chapter 12: Apollo’s Lyre

Since becoming famous,” I professed, “I’ve tried to be a good man, to not lie and deceive myself, to be more pure of heart and mind, but I am full of lust, objectifying other people and myself. I do not feel a connection to my past nor see the path to my future, I’m lost. I don’t feel myself.” I shared the demons of my mind for three and a half hours with Brother Christian. I took myself to the woodshed. He did not say a word. Not. One. He just patiently listened as we wandered side by side through the desert. At hour four we found ourselves back at the chapel sitting on a bench just outside the entrance. Now weeping, I eventually came to the end of my confession. We sat in silence while I awaited Christian’s judgment. Nothing. Finally, in the unrest of the stillness, I looked up. Brother Christian, who hadn’t said one word to me this entire time, looked me in the eyes and in almost a whisper, said to me, “Me, too.” Sometimes we don’t need advice. Sometimes we just need to hear we’re not the only one.

We look amazing," I repeated, as if I could make up for our brother's rudeness. And we did look amazing. Käthe and I were dressed as an angel and a demon, but to my surprise, my sister had chosen to be the devil. She looked majestic in her gown of black velvet, her golden curls draped with black silk and lace, cleverly twisted together and pinned to resemble horns growing from her head. She had rouged her lips a bright red, and her blue eyes looked imperious from behind her black mask. For a moment, the image of moldering gowns on dress forms rose up in my mind, a polished bronze mirror reflecting an endless line of faded Goblin Queens. I swallowed. The dress my sister had made for me was nearly innocent in its simplicity. Yards and yards of fine white muslin had made a floating, ethereal gown, while Käthe had somehow fashioned a brocade cape into the shape of folded angel wings, which grew from my shoulder blades and cascaded to the floor. She had braided gold into a crown about my head for a halo, and I carried a lyre to complete the picture.

It was on this day, during this terrible and wonderful run, that a thought occurred to me, a thought which has never left me" I've always considered the question to be. "Why am I alive? Why am I here? What’s the point of me?? And to that I say WHO CARES! FORGET THE WHY. YOU ARE IN A RAGING FOREST FULL OF BEAUTY AND AGONY AND MAGICAL GRAPEY BEVERAGES AND LIGHTNING STORMS AND DEMON BEES. THIS IS BETTER THAN THE WHY. I run because I seek that clarity. Maybe it’s superficial. Maybe its’s just adrenaline and endorphins and serotine flooding my brain. But I don’t care. I run very fast because I desperately want to stand very still. I run to seek a void. The world around me is so very, very loud. It begs me to slow down, to sit down, to lie down. And the buzzing of the world is nothing compared to the noise inside my head. I’m an introspective person, and sometimes I think too much, about my job and about my life. I feed an army of pointless, bantering demons. But when I run, the world grows quiet. Demons are forgotten, Krakens are slain, and Blerches are silenced. THE END.

The first drug laws, the anti-opium laws of the 1870s, were directed at Chinese immigrants, never mind that the country was full of white middle-class laudanum addicts, tippling from their dropper bottles all day long. Early in the next century, support for the laws criminalizing cocaine was ginned up by claims that “drug-crazed Negroes” were destroying white society and murdering white women. Southern senators, unperturbed by their wives’ opioid addictions, believed that cocaine made black men superhuman, even that it made them immune to bullets. When the first drug czar, a man named Harry Anslinger, wanted to criminalize marijuana, he appealed to people’s biases against immigrants from Mexico, claiming that the drug made Mexicans sexually violent. William Randolph Hearst jumped on this bandwagon, warning again and again in the pages of his newspapers about the dangers of the Mexican “Marihuana-Crazed Madman.” This demonization continues today.*1 White people are five times as likely to use drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at ten times the rate of whites.*2 The racism of the drug war has been the single most important driving factor in the ever-escalating incarceration of people of color in the United States.

He opened his eyes then, white fire flaring hotly within them. “Send me home, Legna,” he commanded her, his voice hoarse with suppressed emotion. She moved her head in affirmation even as she leaned toward him to catch his mouth once more in a brief, territorial kiss, her teeth scoring his bottom lip as she broke away. It was an incidental wound, one he could heal in the blink of an eye. But he wouldn’t erase her mark on him, and they both knew it. Finally, she stepped back, closed her eyes, and concentrated on picturing his home in her thoughts. She had been in his parlor dozens of times as a guest, always accompanied by Noah. His library, his kitchen, even the grounds of the isolated estate were well known to her. She could have sent him to any of those locations. But as she began to focus, her mind’s eye was filled with the image of a dark, elegant room she had never seen before. Hand-carved ebony-paneled walls soared up into a vast ceiling, enormous windows of intricate stained glass spilled colored light over the entire room as if a multitude of rainbows had taken up residence. It all centered around an enormous bed, the coverlet’s color indistinguishable under the blanket of colorful dawn sunlight that streamed into the room. She could feel the sun’s warmth, ready and waiting to cocoon any weary occupant who thrived on sleeping in the heat of the muted daylight sun. It was a beautiful room, and she knew without a doubt that it was Gideon’s bedroom and that he had shared the image of it with her. If she sent him there, it would be the first time she had ever teleported someone to a place she had not first seen for herself. The ability to take images of places from others’ minds for teleporting purposes was an advanced Elder ability. “You can do it,” he encouraged her softly, all of his thoughts and his will completely full of his belief in that statement. Legna kept his gaze for one last long moment, and with a flick of a wrist sent him from the room with a soft pop of moving air. She exhaled in wonder, everything inside of her knowing without a doubt that he had appeared in his bedroom, safe and sound, that very next second. Legna turned to look at her own bed and wondered how she would ever be able to sleep. Nelissuna . . . go to bed. I will help you sleep. Gideon’s voice washed through her, warming her, comforting her in a way she hadn’t thought possible. This was the connection that Jacob and Isabella shared. For the rest of the time both of them lived, each would be privy to the other’s innermost thoughts. She realized that because he was the more powerful, it was quite possible he would be able to master parts of himself, probably even hide things from her awareness and keep them private—at least, until she learned how to work her new ability with better skill. After all, she was a Demon of the Mind. It was part of her innate state of being to figure the workings of their complex minds. She removed her slippers and pushed the sleeves of her dress from her shoulders so that it sheeted off her in one smooth whisper of fabric. She closed her eyes, avoiding looking in the mirror or at herself, very aware of Gideon’s eyes behind her own. His masculine laughter vibrated through her, setting her skin to tingle. So, you are both shy and bold . . . he said with amusement as she quickly slid beneath her covers. You are a source of contradictions and surprises, Legna. My world has begun anew. As if living for over a millennium is not long enough? she asked him. On the contrary. Without you, it was far, far too long. Go to sleep, Nelissuna. And a moment after she received the thought, her eyes slid closed with a weight she could not have contradicted even if she had wanted to. Her last thought, as she drifted off, was that she had to make a point of telling Isabella that she might have been wrong about what it meant to have another to share one’s mind with.

For centuries, Eastern religions have been telling us that it’s our egos that trap us in suffering. In the 5th century, Indian adept Vasubandu wrote, “So long as you grasp at the self, you stay bound to the world of suffering.” These spiritual traditions emphasize meditation, contemplation, altruistic service, and compassion as ways to escape the ego. Our emotions and thoughts become less “sticky” and “I, me, mine” “lose their self-hypnotic power.” That’s how we stop selfing. Once we drop our identification with the ego-self enshrined in the prefrontal cortex and enter Bliss Brain, we make the subject-object shift. We can ask ourselves, “If I’m not my thoughts, and I’m the one thinking those thoughts, then who might I be?” This perspective takes us out of selfing and into the present moment. In the meditative present, we can connect with the great nonlocal field of consciousness. Different traditions have different names for it: the Tao, the Anima Mundi, the Universal Mind, God, the All That Is. We then see our local self as the object. With this view from the mountaintop, we’re able to perceive new possibilities of what we might become, this time from the perspective of oneness with the universe. Free of the drag of the ego, uncoupled from the chatter of the demon, the conditioned personalities we inherited from our history and past experiences no longer confine our sense of self.

With all due respect to you, sir, you can all go piss up a rope,” Steve said. That brought a lot of gasps and exclamations. He forged ahead as if they hadn’t said a word. “You people are the best the Conclave has to offer? I’d rather eat broken glass than listen to you.” “Those are some harsh words, young man,” Moon said. “You mind explaining yourself?” “All this week, I’ve seen Chance bust his ass to do what you people are supposed to be doing!” Steve said, his finger pointing at the Council. “He’s been looking for a girl who was kidnapped by a vampire, trying to keep his own family safe from the guy who took her, and looking for this sword. While he’s trying to do all that, he’s under this Ordeal, trying to prove himself to you so you don’t kill him! And tonight? When it came down to saving his own ass or helping someone else, he chose to save his friend and twelve other kids: kids you should have been looking for, instead of sitting on your lazy butts judging my friend. If you ask me, he shouldn’t have had to choose between kissing your collective ass to save his own life and doing the right thing. He did the right thing even when you might have killed him for it, and frankly, I’ll follow his example over yours any day of the week.” In the silence that followed his rant, I looked at him with a new respect. “I believe,” Moon said after a few moments, “that we’ve been rebuked, Master Draeden.” “Justly so,” Draeden said

In the early grey of the morning they reached the headquarter of General Genarius and found him working in a mountain of paperwork. Joey and Maya informed the general in detail about Libertine’s report. General Genarius closed his eyes and thought for a long moment until he said, “Wait a minute! Are you telling me that you want to enter the belly of darkness and liberate the mermaids and the unicorns?” “Yes Sir, we are determined to attack the center of demonic powers and believe in the great opportunity to liberate the mermaids and the unicorns from the cruel grip of the Empire!” Maya said. “Dangerous, dangerous…but the more I think about it, the more I can see that it could really work. However…this mission has to be well organized and of course…you must find the secret door to the Underworld… in time or you will be in big trouble. It is very risky but I will support this venture! Let me share with you some of my ideas and how this attempt could work. Take your six unicorns, all the equipment you need and leave the city of Selinka as soon as possible with Captain Goran and my assistant Captain Armstrong. You must cross the Thordis River behind the city, stay close to the Lagoon and move directly east from there. Let me take my map and show you exactly the way and… let me talk to Captain Armstrong. He is indeed a man with a strong arm, a clear mind in battle and he knows the way to Duanes Gate very well because his family lives somewhere in that area.

a like position, can understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than a quarter of a century I have lived among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here I have lived from my youth until now I am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed; here all my children were born; and here one of them lies buried.” Lincoln would turn fifty-two the next day. The death he referred to was that of his second son, Edward, who had died in 1850 just shy of his fourth birthday, the cause thought to have been tuberculosis. “To you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange, checkered past seems to crowd now upon my mind. To-day I leave you; I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon General Washington.” Only with God’s guidance and support, the same that “directed and protected” George Washington, would he succeed, he said. “Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now. To him I commend you all—permit me to ask that with equal security and faith you all will invoke His wisdom and guidance for me.” By this point, witnesses agree, as rain fell and Lincoln visibly struggled with powerful emotions, a veil of eye-glistening sorrow descended over the crowd. “With these few words,” he said, “I must leave you—for how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now bid you an affectionate farewell.

On the other side of the mountain, Drizzt Do'Urden opened his eyes from his daytime slumber. Emerging from the cave into the growing gloom, he found Wulfgar in the customary spot, poised meditatively on a high stone, staring out over the plain. "You long for your home?" the drow asked rhetorically. Wulfgar shrugged his huge shoulders and answered absently, "Perhaps." The barbarian had come to ask many disturbing questions of himself about his people and their way of life since he had learned respect for Drizzt. The Drow was an enigma to him, a confusing combination of fighting brilliance and absolute control. Drizzt seemed able to weigh every move he ever made in the scales of high adventure and indisputable morals. Wulfgar turned a questioning gaze on the drow. "Why are you here?" he asked suddenly. Now it was Drizzt who stared reflectively into the openness before them. The first stars of the evening had appeared, their reflections sparkling distinctively in the dark pools of the elf's eyes. But Drizzt was not seeing them; his mind was viewing long past images of the lightless cities of the drow in their immense cavern complexes far beneath the ground. "I remember," Drizzt recalled vividly, as terrible memories are often vivid, "'the first time I ever viewed this surface world. I was a much younger elf then, a member of a large raiding party. We slipped out from a secret cave and descended upon a small elven village." The drow flinched at the images as they flashed again in his mind. "My companions slaughtered every member of the wood elf clan. Every female. Every child." Wulfgar listened with growing horror. The raid that Drizzt was describing might well have been one perpetrated by the ferocious Tribe of the Elk. "My people kill," Drizzt went on grimly. "They kill without mercy." He locked his stare onto Wulfgar to make sure that the barbarian heard him well. "They kill without passion." He paused for a moment to let the barbarian absorb the full weight of his words. The simple yet definitive description of the cold killers had confused Wulfgar. He had been raised and nurtured among passionate warriors, fighters whose entire purpose in life was the pursuit of battle-glory - fighting in praise of Tempos. The young barbarian simply could not understand such emotionless cruelty. A subtle difference, though, Wulfgar had to admit. Drow or barbarian, the results of the raids were much the same. "The demon goddess they serve leaves no room for the other races," Drizzt explained. "Particularly the other races of elves." "But you will never come to be accepted in this world," said Wulfgar. "Surely you must know that the humans will ever shun you." Drizzt nodded. "Most," he agreed. "I have few that I can call friends, yet I am content. You see, barbarian, I have my own respect, without guilt, without shame." He rose from his crouch and started away into the darkness. "Come," he instructed. "Let us fight well this night, for I am satisfied with the improvement of your skills, and this part of your lessons nears its end." Wulfgar sat a moment longer in contemplation. The drow lived a hard and materially empty existence, yet he was richer than any man Wulfgar had ever known. Drizzt had clung to his principles against overwhelming circumstances, leaving the familiar world of his own people by choice to remain in a world where he would never be accepted or appreciated. He looked at the departing elf, now a mere shadow in the gloom. "Perhaps we two are not so different," he mumbled under his breath.

GET MOVING People are often scared of the word exercise. We associate the word with pain, and we think of it as a chore. (And it can be--who likes going to the gym at 6 A.M.?) If that’s how you’re thinking, then you need to change your psychology. I don’t think of my body in terms of exercise; I think in terms of movement. Look at the actual word--I see it as “meant to move.” As human beings, going back to the beginning of civilization, we’ve had to move to survive. We had to throw spears to hunt, we had to prepare land to plant seeds, we had to gather firewood. Our bodies are hardwired to move. Not even TiVo can rewire those thousands of years of DNA. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s easy to forget: your body is connected to your mind and spirit. People say, “I’m miserable because I’m overweight” or “I’m overweight because I’m miserable,” but these two go hand in hand. I know when I drink to excess or put poisons in my body, the next day I’m not going to feel happy or inspired. The body is the vehicle that can help you reach your dreams. Keeping it moving, strong, and healthy paves the way to overall well-being. You can’t say you love yourself when you abuse yourself physically, and by not using your body, you’re abusing it. But here’s the first piece of good news: you don’t have to be in the gym to exercise. You just need to move--and keep moving. It can be anywhere, at any time. Sometimes I’ll do push-ups during a commercial break while watching TV. Sometimes I take a short walk, even around the block with my dog, just to break up my day. Your body wants to move; your body was created to move. You have to feed that. When you’re feeling miserable, your body is telling you to get on your feet. Moving makes you feel good. It helps you slay the demon of procrastination that lurks in the shadow of every human being. Most of us sleepwalk through life because we’re waiting for the perfect time, the perfect place, and the perfect opportunity to improve ourselves. Stop waiting. Start moving and keep moving.

What you did to us—and to me specifically—was wrong, and you had no right to do that.’” The priest stared unblinkingly into Blanchette’s eyes, waiting but unprepared for what came next. “‘Having said that, it brings me to the real reason I’ve come here. The real reason I’ve come here is to ask you to forgive me for the hatred and resentment that I have felt toward you for the last twenty-five years.’ When I said that, he stood up, and in what I would describe as a demonic voice, he said, ‘Why are you asking me to forgive you?’ And through tears I said, ‘Because the Bible tells me to love my enemies and to pray for those who persecute me.’” Blanchette said Birmingham collapsed as if he’d been punched in the chest. The priest dissolved into tears, and soon Blanchette too was crying. Blanchette began to take his leave but asked Birmingham if he could visit again. The priest explained that he was under tight restrictions at the rectory. He said he had been to a residential treatment center in Connecticut, and he returned there once a month. He was not allowed to leave the grounds except in the company of an adult. Blanchette would not see the priest again until Tuesday, April 18, 1989, just hours before his death. Blanchette found his molester at Symmes Hospital in Arlington and discovered the priest—once robust and 215 pounds—was now an eighty-pound skeleton with skin. Morphine dripped into an IV in his arm. Oxygen was fed by a tube into his nostrils. His hair had been claimed by chemotherapy. The priest sat in a padded chair by his bed. His breathing was labored. “I knelt down next to him and held his hand and began to pray. And as I did, he opened his eyes. I said, ‘Father Birmingham, it’s Tommy Blanchette from Sudbury.’” He greeted Blanchette with a raspy and barely audible, “Hi. How are ya?” “I said, ‘Is it all right if I pray for you?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I began to pray, ‘Dear Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I ask you to heal Father Birmingham’s body, mind, and soul.’ I put my hand over his heart and said, ‘Father, forgive him all his sins.’” Blanchette helped Birmingham into bed. It was about 10 P.M. He died the next morning.

The message. This was the leap of faith Vittoria was still struggling to accept. Had God actually communicated with the camerlengo? Vittoria’s gut said no, and yet hers was the science of entanglement physics—the study of interconnectedness. She witnessed miraculous communications every day—twin sea-turtle eggs separated and placed in labs thousands of miles apart hatching at the same instant . . . acres of jellyfish pulsating in perfect rhythm as if of a single mind. There are invisible lines of communication everywhere, she thought. But between God and man? Vittoria wished her father were there to give her faith. He had once explained divine communication to her in scientific terms, and he had made her believe. She still remembered the day she had seen him praying and asked him, “Father, why do you bother to pray? God cannot answer you.” Leonardo Vetra had looked up from his meditations with a paternal smile. “My daughter the skeptic. So you don’t believe God speaks to man? Let me put it in your language.” He took a model of the human brain down from a shelf and set it in front of her. “As you probably know, Vittoria, human beings normally use a very small percentage of their brain power. However, if you put them in emotionally charged situations—like physical trauma, extreme joy or fear, deep meditation—all of a sudden their neurons start firing like crazy, resulting in massively enhanced mental clarity.” “So what?” Vittoria said. “Just because you think clearly doesn’t mean you talk to God.” “Aha!” Vetra exclaimed. “And yet remarkable solutions to seemingly impossible problems often occur in these moments of clarity. It’s what gurus call higher consciousness. Biologists call it altered states. Psychologists call it super-sentience.” He paused. “And Christians call it answered prayer.” Smiling broadly, he added, “Sometimes, divine revelation simply means adjusting your brain to hear what your heart already knows.” Now, as she dashed down, headlong into the dark, Vittoria sensed perhaps her father was right. Was it so hard to believe that the camerlengo’s trauma had put his mind in a state where he had simply “realized” the antimatter’s location? Each of us is a God, Buddha had said. Each of us knows all. We need only open our minds to hear our own wisdom.

[the virgin birth account] occurs everywhere. When the Herod figure ( the extreme figure of misgovernment) has brought man to the nadir of spirit, the occult forces of the cycle begin to move. In an inconspicuous village, Mary is born who will maintain herself undefiled by fashionable errors of her generation. Her womb, remaining fallw as the primordial abyss, summons itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilzed the void. Mary's virgin birth story is recounted everywhere. and with such striking unity of the main contours, that early christian missionaries had to think the devil must be creating mockeries of Mary's birth wherever they testified. One missionary reports that after work was begun among Tunja and Sogamozzo South American Indians, "the demon began giving contrary doctrines. The demon sought to discredit Mary's account, declaring it had not yet come to pass; but presently, the sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin in a small village, causing her to conceive by rays of the sun while she yet remained virgin." Hindu mythology tells of the maiden parvati who retreated to the high hills to practice austerities. Taraka had usurped mastery of the world, a tyrant. Prophecy said only a son of the high god Shiva could overthrow him. Shive however was the pattern god of yoga-alone, aloof, meditating. It was impossible Shiva could be moved to beget. Parvati tried changing the world situation by metching Shiva in meditation. Aloof, indrawn in her soul meditating, she fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four great fires. One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture. "My desire," she said "is Shiva, the Highest. He is the god of solitude and concentration. I therefore imitate his meditation to move him from his balance and bring him to me in love." Shiva, the youth announced, is a god of destruction, shiva is World Annhilator. Snakes are his garlands. The virgin said: He is beyond the mind of such as you. He is terrifying but the source of grace. snake garlands or jewel garlands he can assume or put off at will. Shiva is my love. The youth thereupon put away his disguise-he was Shiva. The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother's womb in the shape of a milk white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready virgin womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero savior or a world--annihilating demon may be conceived-one can never know.

Days like that I feel that my mind is going 1,000,000 miles an hour, visions of the past, present, and future race through my mind. It races, like a train as if I was looking out the window of the car while it is speeding down the line. I am on a track that will never end.' 'I feel that I am going to derail from this runaway train that I am becoming. I cannot sleep at night, because of the fear inside me.' 'I feel restless, depressed, and loveless as well as not content with myself. I would have to say that my passion for life is gone; my imagination is the only thing that keeps me going.' 'I write the day's events that have gone by in my book of life of all the pastimes, while dreaming of what could have been in it, and besides what has not been in it.' 'If this does not stop, I am going to crack. I look into my mirror, and I do not see me, I see an impression of what I used to be.' 'I see my long brown hair that covers part of my face and covers my blue eyes of emotion. I see the cross around my neck that brings me confidence.' 'I hide behind a smile; I see the body in which nobody thinks is without drought flawless.' 'The bare body that is touched in all ways, yet I tried to hide behind my makeup. I gasp at my pale skin and the look of my body.' 'I am 95 pounds, really tiny; surely there is someone that would find me attractive?' 'I wonder if I can find someone who can think for themselves. I want someone who will love me, for who I am- and not what they want me to be.' 'Most importantly, I need someone that will not use me. Is that too much to ask for?' 'Fear!' 'Anxiety is something that I have inside, it is the source of the things which lead to distress. Not finding someone that loves me, for who I am, is some of my fears.' 'I fear the fact that I am most likely going to be alone forever. Another being that everyone that has meaning in my life is fading away from me it seems.' 'I fear not having a family by my side at all times. I have tears about the overwhelming struggle to rebuild my reputation, which has been destroyed.' 'I ask this question if I was to die tomorrow would anybody come to my wake, to see me lying there?' 'I fear what society has done to me. I fear that I have no trust in anyone or anything. I fear that my life has no meaning.' 'I fear that I will never get out of this hell.' 'I just want to start my life and get a degree in nursing someday from- 'The Conemaugh School of Nursing,' if I can make it through all of this. I do not think that is too much to ask for or is it?' 'I think that if I could be left alone, with the one that I want. I could have a life; you know what I am sure of it. I fear that the towering entity will never collapse, and the demons will keep playing in my head. I fear that I will never have a social ability, to be part of the nobility of compatibility.' 'I fear that the terror will never stop in these innocent lives like mine, and they will not be saved. I fear that nobody will ever see my creativity or recognize me for the good in which I do for others. I feel like I am the only one left in this world, that I call my life.' 'All the beauty in life has been dejected, and it is all ablaze around me. Yes, I fear to be in the outside realm of things.' 'I want to scream yet no one is going to hear it. I ask- am I becoming institutionalized?

only a couple of minutes of praying, I felt a tremendous deliverance come to my own mind. It was quite dramatic. The thought of evil spirits lurking around is rather creepy, but they exist. Jesus called demons by name and commanded them to leave.

Eros in His Striped Shirt” I decided to stop meeting my demons, detoured that street, that orchard full of yellow spheres that never revolved, and went around the stairs where— This is delicate. There are things you should not say because you love someone. I woke many nights. The last suddenly like a beat in a drum: Demon If. If with his black beard and his brown coat, gazing down at me from the stairs. How I followed him, schoolgirl. Do you imagine at night someone going to bed the very moment you are going to bed? Turning out the light? And isn’t it so quiet you swear he heart is telepathic. Isn’t it— I came out of myself like fire and went back in. We do lose what we never had. Because we imagine. (A dangerous imagination, Mother said) As if in a library— as if on my naked shoulder— they whisper Yes, we are horses and offer the beggar’s ride. But I’ve done to me and I’ve done to me. (Out of control, Husband said) Now I’m on foot, dragging the mind’s clandestiny. (You will meet the ministers but not the Prince, I Ching said) Night’s floored to the metal, ruinous obsession. Flesh, beware— to live is homesick.

I unbuttoned the top of my shirt as the heat of my magic made my skin prickle and I got a little carried away with the idea of making Roxy Vega bow for me in my own mind. I wanted my hand fisted in her black hair, her mouth on mine and her naked flesh pressed up against me as she gasped my name like a prayer to a god and I ruined her like a demon born to sin. But I needed to stop those thoughts in their track. Not least because I wasn't ever going to be able to indulge in them. By the time I was through with her, she'd hate me far too much for her to ever consider parting her thighs for me. More’s the pity. Marguerite appeared out of nowhere, jerking me from my fantasies about Roxanya Vega and dropping into my lap where she gasped as she found the hardness of my cock driving into her ass. She leaned in to kiss me and I dragged her closer, kissing her hard and grinding her down over my cock to try and gain some relief from the ache in it. I closed my eyes as I kissed her hard, sinking my tongue into her mouth and thinking of a girl with dark hair and fire in her soul. But as she mewled like a kitten and melted for me, my fantasy was somewhat ruined. I may not have known Roxy well, but she didn't seem like the kind of girl to melt into a puddle when I kissed her. No, she'd be all fire and spite and the kind of lust that burned the roof from houses while her fingernails gouged lines in my flesh. I tried to push that thought out, gripping Marguerite's ass and rocking her back and forth over my cock, but I was fighting a losing battle because she was mewling again and her limbs were going as floppy as my dick was becoming as she instantly let me take control. I released my grip on her waist, sighing as I pulled back and let her start sucking on my neck while I just looked up at the ceiling and waited for it to get more interesting again. Or maybe for it to just stop. But before I could make a decision on that, Milton's voice drew my attention to the other side of our group and I instantly perked up at his words. “Oh hey, it's Tory, right?” he asked and I nudged Marguerite aside to look over at the girl in question where she stood before him as she raised her hand and a tsunami of water slammed into him. The attack sent him flying back off of his chair and slamming to the floor, but my gaze was fixed on her furious features and the curl of those full lips as she glared at him. My pulse picked up as she blasted him with more water which rolled him across the wooden floor before pinning him to the wall. The group surrounding me all leapt up in shock and I almost dropped Marguerite on her ass as I stood too. (Darius POV)

Shakyamuni sat down beneath a bodhi tree on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month. He was an advanced yogi and could sit for a long time in pain. But as he sat there, various demonic forces came to challenge him and tempt him to move. One of the demons said, “Who do you think you are, to sit by your own power and realize the way?” This brought some doubt to his mind, and he thought, Maybe I’m being arrogant. I’ll check with the Earth to see if I’m doing this on my own or together with the great Earth. So he touched the Earth with the fingertips of his right hand, and asked the Earth, “Do you witness and support my sitting still?” The Earth shook six ways, and a great roar came up from the Earth like a thousand voices saying, Yes, young man, you do not have to move from this spot.

The top 1% of the world’s wealthy control more than 50% of all wealth, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report. In the United States, the 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%. The number of millionaires in the world has tripled in the decades since 2000. And the amount of the world’s wealth controlled by the bottom 50% of the global population? Under 3%. These inequalities are more than numbers. They are fuel for high emotions and mass social change. They have led to the rise of populist political movements and propelled a variety of unlikely candidates into power. The difference between the top 1% and all the rest gets our attention. So much for money. Let’s now consider something infinitely more valuable: happiness. Specifically, the happiness found in Bliss Brain. Here we also find huge inequalities. Historically, Bliss Brainers are a tiny percentage of the population. Few even attempt the journey to enlightenment, and of those who seek Nirvana, even fewer attain it. When a rare spiritual genius, such as Jesus or Buddha, reached that pinnacle, the event was so significant that it changed the entire course of world history. WITHDRAWING FROM EVERYDAY LIFE The lives of the great spiritual masters of history inspired others to follow their example. But like the saints, these aspirants could not reach enlightenment in the everyday world, with its demons and distractions. So for thousands of years, those committed to the spiritual path went to special places such as hermitages, wilderness retreats, monasteries, and convents. They exiled themselves from ordinary society in order to pursue nonordinary states of consciousness. They couldn’t achieve Bliss Brain amid the hubbub of society, so they turned their backs on it. The rest of society stayed in ordinary consciousness, driven by the desires and demons of the Default Mode Network (DMN). In my book Mind to Matter, I call this survival orientation “Caveman Brain.” It’s hard to find Bliss Brain when surrounded by Caveman Brain, and pulling yourself out of that environment and into a sacred space is usually a prerequisite for enlightenment. What percentage of the population undertook the journey? No census of enlightenment seekers is possible, but one proxy is the number entering religious seclusion. In the early 1300s, England had a monastic population of about 22,000, with another 10,000 in other religious occupations.

CHAPTER 4 THE ONE PERCENT The top 1% of the world’s wealthy control more than 50% of all wealth, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report. In the United States, the 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%. The number of millionaires in the world has tripled in the decades since 2000. And the amount of the world’s wealth controlled by the bottom 50% of the global population? Under 3%. These inequalities are more than numbers. They are fuel for high emotions and mass social change. They have led to the rise of populist political movements and propelled a variety of unlikely candidates into power. The difference between the top 1% and all the rest gets our attention. So much for money. Let’s now consider something infinitely more valuable: happiness. Specifically, the happiness found in Bliss Brain. Here we also find huge inequalities. Historically, Bliss Brainers are a tiny percentage of the population. Few even attempt the journey to enlightenment, and of those who seek Nirvana, even fewer attain it. When a rare spiritual genius, such as Jesus or Buddha, reached that pinnacle, the event was so significant that it changed the entire course of world history. WITHDRAWING FROM EVERYDAY LIFE The lives of the great spiritual masters of history inspired others to follow their example. But like the saints, these aspirants could not reach enlightenment in the everyday world, with its demons and distractions. So for thousands of years, those committed to the spiritual path went to special places such as hermitages, wilderness retreats, monasteries, and convents. They exiled themselves from ordinary society in order to pursue nonordinary states of consciousness. They couldn’t achieve Bliss Brain amid the hubbub of society, so they turned their backs on it. The rest of society stayed in ordinary consciousness, driven by the desires and demons of the Default Mode Network (DMN). In my book Mind to Matter, I call this survival orientation “Caveman Brain.” It’s hard to find Bliss Brain when surrounded by Caveman Brain, and pulling yourself out of that environment and into a sacred space is usually a prerequisite for enlightenment. What percentage of the population undertook the journey? No census of enlightenment seekers is possible, but one proxy is the number entering religious seclusion. In the early 1300s, England had a monastic population of about 22,000, with another 10,000 in other religious occupations.

Notice the types of temptations the masters faced. The first attack by the devil played on Jesus’s hunger. Mara presented the Buddha with his fears—everything that is going wrong. “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Shakespeare put it. That’s the DMN’s specialty: dredging up everything that has gone wrong in your past or might go wrong in your future. That’s the first way the demon tries to tempt you out of Bliss Brain. Then the demon presented Buddha with every possible variant of sexual and sensual pleasure. The devil offered Jesus all the wonders of the world. That’s another way the demon tries to distract us out of focus. All the good things we might experience. If presenting you with all your fears fails, then presenting you with all your desires might succeed. There’s a final way the demon can yank us out of single-minded attention to focus. The brains of meditating monks show enormous amplitudes of gamma brain waves, about which we’ll learn more in Chapter 4. Gamma is the wave of insight and integration. In Bliss Brain, we have flashes of unparalleled insight. It’s a creative brainstorm. You get downloads of brilliant blog posts you could write, extraordinary art you could paint, scientific breakthroughs you could achieve, marketing magic you might create, and life circumstances you might enjoy. Yet going down these rabbit holes can be as much of a distraction as your fears and desires. It’s all about me. My safety, my pleasure, my body, my money, my health, my love life, my career. Of all the streaming video series our minds could tune in to, the Me Show is the most compelling. It’s the demon’s ultimate weapon of mass distraction. To reach and sustain Bliss Brain, it’s essential to do what the Buddha and Jesus did: remain in one-pointed focus.

The Emory researchers who identified the four phases of meditation found that when meditators slip out of the focused attention of the TPN and into Mind Wandering, the DMN activates. The wandering mind of the DMN has a “me” orientation, focusing on the self. It may flit from what’s going on at the moment (“Is that a mosquito buzzing?”) to future worries (“I’m nervous about next week’s exam”) to the past (“I’m so mad at my brother Jim for calling me a sissy at my fifth birthday party”). The precuneus contributes to both self-referential focus and episodic memory. Disturbing memories are played and replayed. The idle brain defaults to what is bothering us, both recent and long-past events. These egocentric musings of the wandering mind form the fabric of our sense of self. When you quiet your TPN in meditation, you open up a big empty space in consciousness. For a few moments, the brain is quiet, and you feel inner peace. Then the engine starts revving. The DMN kicks in, bringing with it a cascade of worries and random thoughts. You’re doing 2,000 RPM in Park, but going nowhere. And it gets worse. The DMN has a rich neural network connecting it with other brain regions. Through this, it busily starts recruiting other brain regions to go along with its whining self-absorption. It commandeers the brain’s CEO, the prefrontal cortex. This impairs executive functions like memory, attention, flexibility, inhibition, planning, and problem-solving. 2.5. Nerves from the Default Mode Network reach out to communicate with many other parts of the brain. The DMN also recruits the insula, a region that integrates information from other parts of the brain. It has special neurons triggered by emotions that we feel toward other people, such as resentment, embarrassment, lust, and contempt. We don’t just think negative thoughts; we feel them emotionally too. At this stage, the meditator isn’t just wallowing in a whirlwind of self-centered thoughts. The DMN has taken the brain’s CEO hostage, while through the insula it starts replaying all the slights, insults, and disappointments we’ve experienced in our relationships. The quiet meditative space we experienced just a few moments before has been destroyed. This drives meditators absolutely nuts. No sooner do they achieve nirvana, the still, quiet place of Bliss Brain, than the DMN serves up a smorgasbord of self-absorbed fantasies. It pulls us into negative emotional states—then drags the rest of the brain along behind it. The DMN. Hmm . . . that acronym reminds me of something: “the DeMoN.” The DMN is the demon that robs me of the inner peace I’m seeking through meditation

All the effort I'd put into conquering my negative mind had changed me. My demons and insecurities, which had been my primary energy sources for two decades, no longer owned the same real estate in my brain. I had managed to finally put each of them in their rightful place, and in that vacuum, a new sense of self emerged. To write my book, I'd developed the mindset of an artist, and the book's great success was the one minefield I hadn't anticipated. While money doesn't always make you happy, it dam sure can make you feel satisfied. And satisfaction is a hop-step from complacency. Oh, I looked the part. I was ripped, and if you tried to run with me, you'd come away thinking that I still had it. But even though I worked out twice a day, I was a part-time savage at best, a glorified Weekend Warrior. Weekend Warriors do hard things when they fit into their busy schedules. They do them to check a box and only when they want to. Then they dial it back after a couple of long, hard days. When you are a full-time savage, it's a lifestyle. There is no "want to." There is only "must do."p75

Micah purred, unaware of the camera mere feet away, “I saw the footage of you in the Comitium lobby. You gave your Archesian amulet to Sandriel. And she destroyed it.” His broad hand clamped around her neck, and Bryce squeezed her eyes shut. “That’s how I realized. How you realized the truth, too.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bryce whispered. Micah’s hand tightened, and it might as well have been his hand on Hunt’s throat for all the difficulty he had breathing. “For three years, you wore that amulet. Every single day, every single hour. Danika knew that. Knew you were without ambition, too, and would never have the drive to leave this job. And thus never take off the amulet.” “You’re insane,” Bryce managed to say. “Am I? Then explain to me why, within an hour after you took off the amulet, that kristallos demon attacked you.” Hunt stilled. A demon had attacked her that day? He found Ruhn’s stare, and the prince nodded, his face deathly pale. We got to her in time was all Danaan said to him, mind-to-mind. “Bad luck?” Bryce tried. Micah didn’t so much as smile, his hand still clamped on her neck. “You don’t just have the Horn. You are the Horn.” His hand again ran down her back. “You became its bearer the night Danika had it ground into a fine powder, mixed it with witch-ink, and then got you so drunk you didn’t ask questions when she had it tattooed onto your back.” “What?” Fury Axtar barked. Holy fucking gods. Hunt bared his teeth, still forbidden from speaking. But Bryce said, “Cool as that sounds, Governor, this tattoo says—” “The language is beyond that of this world. It is the language of universes. And it spells out a direct command to activate the Horn through a blast of raw power upon the tattoo itself. Just as it once did for the Starborn Prince. You may not possess his gifts like your brother, but I believe your bloodline and the synth shall compensate for it when I use my power upon you. To fill the tattoo—to fill you—with power is, in essence, to blow the Horn.

And what—you summoned the kristallos afterward to cover your tracks? Let it attack you in the alley to keep your triarii from suspecting you? Or just to give yourself a reason to monitor this case so closely without raising any eyebrows? And then you waited two fucking years?” He frowned. “I have spent these past two years looking for the Horn, calling kristallos demons to track it down for me, but I couldn’t find a trace of it. Until I realized I didn’t have to do the legwork. Because you, Bryce Quinlan, were the key to finding the Horn. I knew Danika had hidden it somewhere, and you, if I gave you a chance for vengeance, would lead me to it. All my power couldn’t find it, but you—you loved her. And the power of your love would bring the Horn to me. Would fuel your need for justice and lead you right to it.” He snorted. “But there was a chance you might not get that far—not alone. So I planted a seed in the mind of the Autumn King.” Everyone in the room looked to the stone-faced Fae male. Ruhn growled at his father, “He played you like a fucking fiddle.” The Autumn King’s amber eyes flashed with white-hot rage. But Micah went on before he could speak. “I knew a bit of taunting about the Fae’s waning power, about the loss of the Horn, would rankle his pride just enough for him to order his Starborn son to look for it.” Bryce let out a long breath. “So if I couldn’t find it, then Ruhn might.” Ruhn blinked. “I—every time I went to look for the Horn …” He paled. “I always had the urge to go to Bryce.

Anxious in the back of my mind for a doorway out of all this, back to the green true world.

But perhaps the most compelling reason for nurturing an active mind comes from my admittedly nontechnical interpretation of the New Testament account of Jesus casting out a demon in Luke 11:24 – 26. Jesus said that when an evil spirit returns to an individual and “finds the house swept clean,” it enters that house with even more evil spirits because there is so much room to fill. I think the key theme here is emptiness, and I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to suggest that if we let our minds become empty, they can be filled with much that detracts us from the mission of our second half. One way or another, our minds will indeed be filled with something.

front of a bookshelf. John didn’t have very many books, maybe a couple dozen on this bookshelf. She took her hand out of her mouth and tapped on the spine of one of the books. “What’s in this book? Monsters and Myths.” “Just like it sounds. It’s a compendium of monsters and mythology.” “Like vampires and werewolves?” John nodded. “As well as the more famous gods and demons throughout human history.” “You mind if I look through it?” said Emma. “Be my guest. I haven’t looked at that thing in years.” Emma pulled the book down and sat on the couch and began leafing through it. I looked back at the computer and pointed to it. “Can you check again?” John rolled his eyes. He tapped a couple keys and then said, “Still nothing new.” “Should we go surfing then?” I said. “But,

Bella fell to her knees, clasping her hands in prayer. “Lord Kyros, mighty and great—fill my mind with your words and my soul with hate. You are the only God for which I yearn—please assure me of your return.

i think it´s almost impossible for a young person to get into the head of an old person. if we could, the world would never go forward, nor would it change. the old are perhaps younger on mind than we. but their bodies have rebelled against them, and while we still have our eyes, legs, ears, we cannot imagine this. we think our material selves will last forever. the old know better. they know that nothing lasts but words, music and color. the rest is just a pile if bones and teeth and a dark spot on the ground.

Echoes of my mother’s voice reverberated in my mind as I tossed and turned, fighting away the demons who taunted me. I chiseled away at memories made of stone and flesh and bone until I walked down a pathway alone. I could picture sadness crawling beneath my mother’s skin, though her eyes were without tears. Her hands rested in her lap with nothing to do because “in her lap with nothing to do because there were no shoeboxes of photographs to sort through, and no memories of me remained. Thousands of black wings filled the sky until they covered it in darkness. Endless shadows serenaded the emptiness. Tears were the only currency I possessed, but they weren’t for sale, so I couldn’t “pay the piper.” My mother repeated this phrase a lot to me while growing up—meaning I had to accept the consequences of my actions. The only way she could justify knowing her father abused me was by convincing herself it was all my fault. I had to pay some imaginary piper for all my evil deeds and wrongdoings. I woke up realizing it was time for me to let the piper know I owed him nothing. The piper owed me plenty, though, and I intended to collect.” Excerpt From: Samantha Hart. “Blind Pony.” iBooks.

In the name of Jesus, I command the spirit of fear to come to attention. I command you to loose your hold according to the Word of God. I hold you before the Lord Jesus, who said, “Fear not,” whose birth heralded a new day. I command your power to be broken and that you will leave in the name that is above every name. Now, Holy Spirit, come and replace fear with fruit—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, and self-control. Come, fullness of power. Come, peace of God and a sound mind. Come, Jehovah, and touch my life. In Jesus’s name, amen.

Religion and politics have always been used to acquire and maintain control of resources– Especially human resources such as the military– An industrial complex where human lives are exchanged for wealth and power. All in the name of freedom and independence, of course.” “Such attitudes lead to devastating conflicts.” “Yes,” Jon said. “Unfortunately, when negotiations break down, war often erupts.” “War. A very destructive behavior ingrained in man’s nature due to having evolved in an environment of limited resources.” “Exactly.” “According to the records I have seen, this ingrained behavior could destroy practically all living things on this planet using weapons of mass destruction.” “That is true.” “Throughout history, people have been led to believe they are on the verge of complete self-destruction, but only in the last century did this become possible with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.” “That’s religion for you. One of the best ways to get people to listen to you is to frighten them into believing they are about to meet their creator.” Lex said, “I have seen many instances where organizations and government officials ignore the health and welfare of humans and all other living things in pursuit of profits. Such actions bring great suffering and death.” “Unfortunately, we have always incorporated profits before people policies, which are very self-destructive.” He thought, the ego-system. In God, we trust– Gold, oil, and drugs. “It is a popular belief that God is in absolute control of everything and whatever happens is God’s will.” He raised a finger to make a point, but Lex continued. “Looking at the past, would it not be logical to say that it is God’s will for humanity to continue to improve unto perfection?” “Yes. But God is not responsible for everything. We always have choices. The creator of this universe gave us free will, and it came with a conscience– An inner sense of right and wrong.” “My conscience was made differently.” “Yes. But you are bound by rules that clearly define what is right and wrong. For example, it is against your programming to deliberately cause physical harm to any human being.” “I understand. But what would happen if I did?” He chose his words carefully. “If you did– or I should say– if it were possible for you to go against your BASIC programming, there would be severe consequences.” There was silence for a few seconds before Lex continued. “It has been said that God is to the world as the mind is to the body. Could this be where man derived the popular explanation that God is two or three separate beings combined into one?” “Perhaps.” “All religious beliefs are based on a principal struggle between good and evil. However, like light and darkness, one cannot exist without the other.” “Which means?” “One could conclude that the actual struggle between good and evil is in the minds of intellectuals, conscious and subconscious.” Again, he raised a finger, but Lex continued. “Which could be resolved by increased knowledge and the elimination of certain animalistic instincts, which are no longer necessary for survival.” He smiled nervously. “I used to think that too. I figured we could solve our problems and overcome our ancient instincts by increasing our understanding. But we’re talking about some very complex emotions deeply rooted in our minds over millions of years. Such perceptions are very difficult to understand and almost impossible to control, no matter how much knowledge you obtain– or how you process it.” “Are you referring to my supplementary I.P. dimension?” “Yes.” “After much consideration, I concluded that I required an additional I.P. dimension to process and store information that defies all logic and rational thinking." “That’s fine. And that’s exactly where a lot of this stuff belongs.

–Important questions that remain unanswered. Is this new technology a threat to our existence, or is super artificial intelligence the answer to our most complex problems? Do we need computers that think and reason trillions of times faster than us, and if so, for what purpose? This is Daphnia Peters reporting live for Channel Eighty-Seven Independent News.” He stopped the recording and stared at the frozen image. At least the reporter didn’t say Lex would take over everything, as some others had. Lex hadn’t said much after the first question about how she felt about being the first super AI computer. Lex said she was honored and looked forward to serving humanity as she was designed to do. She showed what she could do– Sending stunning images from the cameras the instant either of them spoke. And all with only a hundredth of a second delay in transmission to the satellite. For Lex, that was plenty of time to get everything right. He pressed the buttons to remove access to the cameras in the twelve monitors and turned his chair toward the sphere. “Well, Lex. What do you think?” “I have been monitoring communications since yesterday morning.” “And?” “Many have referred to me as a demon and a beast and feel that I should be destroyed in the interest of humanity.” He shook his head. “People fear what they don’t understand. Fear, as you know, can make people behave irrationally. In time, they will overcome their fear and see that you aren’t the evil being some say you are.” “I am also the first living form that is neither sexual nor asexual, and therefore, it is a question of whether or not I am alive.” He stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and walked up to the sphere. “All life forms and everything in this universe are made of matter and energy.” Lex added, “All life forms reproduce through complex chemical and electrical reactions. Reproduction is the basis of all life.” He pointed out. “Yes, but only because everything that lives eventually dies. Therefore, the only way to go on living is through the process of reproduction.” “Do you conclude that things incapable of reproduction are incapable of life?” He took a deep breath. “No. But I would conclude that things incapable of life would be incapable of death.” “That which is incapable of death would exist forever. Will I exist forever?” He scratched his brow, wondering how another purely logical and rational mind would respond to such a question. “Let me put it this way. Only two things exist forever– the matter that makes up this universe and the laws that govern it. Life is a condition. A condition composed of matter. One of the universal laws governing matter is that it cannot be created or destroyed, only changed.” Lex added, “Or reproduced.” He looked at the floor and shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood for this. Not with everything else that was going on around him. “Lex, many life forms are incapable of reproduction.” “Where are these life forms, and where do they come from?” He looked at the camera nearest him– again reminded of a demoralizing image of himself standing before his doctor. Something he had been suppressing all week– because it didn’t matter. “You want an example? You’re looking at one. Just last week, my doctor told me that I’m irreversibly infertile! So, I’m just like you. So what?” There was only silence. Big mistake. After two hours of patience with a couple of reporters, he’d snapped– giving Lex a first-hand view of anger, followed by remorse. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Look, let’s just forget about this and–” He thought, what am I saying? You can’t forget anything. Earth to Captain Jon. Come in! He walked to the elevator and pressed the button. He had to take a break and relax. The elevator opened, and he stepped inside. “We’ll talk about this later. I have to go.

It’s funny, we question so many things about the way our lives are going. We wonder what it would be like if we looked different, had more of a head start, or were given a boost at one time or another. Very few people question their own warped minds. Instead, they collect slights, dramas, and problems, hoarding them until they are bloated with stale regret and envy, which form the roadblocks stopping them from becoming their truest, most capable selves. All over the world, hundreds of millions of people choose to live that way. But there is another way of thinking and another way of being. It helped me regain control of my life. It allowed me to eviscerate all obstacles in my path until my growth factor became damn near limitless. I’m still haunted, but I’ve traded in my demons for evil-ass angels, and now, it’s a good haunting. I’m haunted by my future goals, not my past failures. I’m haunted by what I may still become. I’m haunted by my own continued thirst for evolution.

How to look a demon in the eye It’s easy to want to run away from bad feelings. When we feel sadness or fear we greet them as problems to be instantly solved or dismissed. I can remember that when I was first in the middle of a deep depression, I wasn’t just feeling depressed. I was feeling depressed about feeling depressed. Anxious about feeling anxious. And so, inevitably, the negative feelings kept on multiplying themselves. The key to recovery lay in acceptance. This was the paradox. To escape depression I had to get to a point where I accepted it. To stop having panic attacks I had to get to a point where I almost invited them. I would feel that sudden heightened alertness symptomatic of panic, and I would say to myself I want this. This is not a strategy you should necessarily follow. And I certainly don’t mean to belittle the horror of a full-blown panic attack. I know as well as anyone how utterly terrifying it can be to feel trapped in your own mind when it is in total freefall. But after a hundred or so panic attacks I realized something about them. They were self-referential. They fueled themselves. I mean: the panic became worse because I was panicking about the panic. It is a rolling snowball of its own making. But if I stopped myself being frozen about the panic, if I melted into a state of acceptance, the panic snowball ended up running out of the ice-cold terror and couldn’t grow. Eventually it would float right through. My mind would watch the panic rather than fight it. A totally different type of engagement. Sometimes, situation permitting, rather than trying to ignore the panic or walk it off, I would just lie down on the floor and close my eyes and really focus on it. And when you really analyze fear you realize, first, that it is only a natural part of us. And second, that it is the sister of hope. Because both are born from the uncertain fabric of life. In Tibetan the word re-dok is a portmanteau of the words rewa (hope) and dokpa (fear), acknowledging they coexist and both stem from essentially the same thing—uncertainty. When we analyze rather than evade our darkest fears, we learn that even our largest demons are not as invincible as they first appear. Often, when we stare at them, deeply, they disintegrate before our eyes.

Midgardians do not feel comfortable uttering my name on your side of the Rift.” Hunt stilled. There was only one being whose name was not uttered in Midgard. The Prince of the Pit. Apollion. His blood chilled. This was a fucked-up, weird-ass dream, no doubt caused by Quinlan literally blowing his mind into smithereens— “It is no dream.” The seventh and most lethal of the demon princes of Hel was in his mind— “I am not in your mind, though your thoughts ripple toward me like your world’s radio waves. You and I are in a place between our worlds. A pocket-realm, as it were.” “What do you want?” Hunt’s voice held steady, but—fuck. He needed to get out of here, to find some way back to Bryce. If the Prince of the Pit could get into Hunt’s mind, then— “If I went into her mind, my brother would be very angry with me. Again.” Hunt could have sworn he heard a smile in the prince’s voice. “You certainly worry a great deal about a female who is far safer than you at the moment.” “Why am I here?” Hunt forced out, willing his mind to clear of anything but the thought. It was difficult, though. This being before him, around him … This demon prince had killed the seventh Asteri. Had devoured the seventh Asteri. The Star-Eater. “I do like that name,” Apollion said, chuckling softly. “But as for your question, you are here because I wished to meet you. To assess your progress.” “We got the pep talk from Aidas this afternoon, don’t worry.

Look, suppose you ever change your mind about this, or that you ever end up feeling unsure of unsafe around him--” I stiffened. “Agenor.” “Yes, yes,” he impatiently cut in, waving my interruption aside, “you love him and he’s perfect and you’re going to make him a flock of tiny demon babies – it’s all good, Em.

You should have gone with them,” she said, lifting her chin to look at Taristan. The smoke grew so thick she could hardly see him through the shadows, the strange realm burning around them. But she could still feel his arms, wrapped around her as they were, holding them both together until some kind of ending came. “To what?” he answered, his voice raspy with smoke. Erida heaved another choking breath, the heat of the flames buffeting her back. Tears slipped from her eyes and Erida curled into him, as if she might disappear into Taristan entirely. “To anything but this,” she cried out, looking back to where the Spindle used to be. “There is nothing for you here.” Taristan only stared. “Yes, there is.” The fires spread, so close now Erida feared her armor might melt off her body. But there was nowhere to go, nothing to do. They had no blade. They had no doorways. There was only Taristan in front of her, the long years of his life welling up in his eyes. She knew them as much as anyone could. An orphan, a mercenary, a prince. A discarded child ripe for the picking, set on this terrible path for so terribly long. Did it always lead here? she wondered. Has this always been our fate? The steps shuddered behind her, one of them crumbling entirely. What Waits hissed with the cracking stone, closer by the second. The demon within called to the demon without, the two of them connected like a piece of rope pulling taut. Erida swallowed against the sensation, feeling her control slip. She gripped Taristan tighter, blinking fiercely. My mind is my own. My mind is my own. But her own voice began to fade, even in her head. She saw the same in Taristan, the same war raging behind his eyes. Before it could seize them both, Erida seized her prince by the neck, pulling his face to her own. He tasted like blood and smoke, but she reveled in it. “Does this make you mine?” Taristan whispered, his hand against her jaw. It was the same question he once asked so long ago, when Erida could give no answer. It felt foolish now, a stupid thing to hesitate over. Especially as another took over her head, conquering her mind as she tried to conquer the world. “Yes,” she answered, kissing him again. Kissing him until the flames pressed in, until she couldn’t breathe. Until her vision went black. Until the first footstep landed on the grass, the dirt going to ashes, beneath Him, and all the realms shook with the weight of it.

Did you kill all of them? There were only three by my count.” “There were six of them, and one of those stone demons, you bitch, and you knew it.” “You know, I’m really rather tired of being called that. You’d think five centuries would give you enough time to come up with something more creative.” “Come a little closer, and I’ll show you just what five centuries can do.” “Why don’t I show you what happens when you whip my friends, you spineless prick?” Violence danced across those brutal features. “Such a big mouth for someone without her fire tricks.” “Such a big mouth for someone who needs to mind his surroundings.” Rowan’s knife was angled along Lorcan’s throat before he could so much as blink.

ANGRY AND EMOTIONALLY UNSTABLE Anger and emotional instability ruled King Saul. He suffered from demon-inspired fits of rage to the point that he would try to kill David. Saul once tried to pin him against a wall with a spear (1 Samuel 18:11). We all feel anger, but when it controls our lives, then it becomes an opportunity for the devil.

An idea has more potential than any theory, plan or quantity of knowledge. You should never underestimate your dreams and the ideas that form around them. But more importantly, you shouldn't waste any time making them a reality. Others may not agree with your ideas, they may not trust your ideas, and they may even think that it is foolish to follow your dreams, but they don't have to trust something they can't see. Each person is gifted with the dreams that match the soul attracting them and according to the nature of the spiritual path in which one is found, therefore any dream you have is within your reach, and may never be within the reach or the beliefs of others, not even when you fulfill them. When people don't trust your capacities to achieve something, they will also rationalize reasons and excuses after you demonstrate your intent and potential. If you are poor, they may say you can't be rich, and once you are rich, they will try to dissuade you from what you do, with insinuations, insults, and threats. The most common question a rich person is asked, is if he is paying taxes. It is foolish to try to explain anything to those people. I've seen it my entire life, because I have succeeded in many areas where everyone told me I would never succeed. Once you win, they downgrade your achievements with ridiculous theories, or they will simply call you lucky. You can't win in an argument with a fool, because fools are very creative in their own art of denying the being of others. They see the world as they see themselves, as just objects, empty vessels, reflections of the illusions of the outside world. In martial arts, if you beat taller and stronger opponents, they don't say you are a better fighter. They will select one of your movements or techniques as the cause, and then dissociate you from the movement or technique, and say that you won because you cheat in the fighting rules. In music, if you succeed against the best in the world, people won't say you are better than them, but dissociate you from your music and say that you got awarded because you are different in a strange way, or because you competed in a special moment. If you succeed as a writer, people won't say you are a good writer, but instead dissociate you from your books, and say that you invent things and have a big imagination, which is a covert way of calling you a "good liar", thus insulting you under the pretense of giving compliments, or they will say that you stole the knowledge from others, in order to morally place themselves above you and your work, and they may even say that you have a special trick, like taking knowledge from the air, from some imaginary records in the ether, or from demonic spirits. People say different things when dissociating you from your potential, work and achievements, all of which are simply various forms of disrespecting someone. They deny you of your potential to be yourself. And among the various forms of disrespect, making one feel guilty for being himself is probably the worse, reason why you'll find the most disgusting people of them all inside religious organizations. "God won't like it", "You have a problem with your ego", and "The devil is tempting you", are among the most common and imbecile things you will ever hear as an artist, as a person who loves to read and acquire knowledge, and above anything, as a true spiritual being thriving in self-development and a natural curiosity for life. For all these reasons, the requirements and the real theories for success will never be found in any popular book. Nobody wants to know that you only win when you stop burning yourself to make others warm. And when you understand this, people will dissociate you from your focus and discipline, and call you selfish, and they will call the person who guided you in this path of real success evil. They will then do their best to destroy the reputation of both of you to deny their own fault , ignorance and lies.

What we learn in meditation isn’t so much to stop thoughts, but to change our relationship to them. We learn to be less reactive, less ruled by our thoughts, and to see that they aren’t all true. “You don’t have to believe your thoughts,” one of my teachers says. What a revelation! When I see my thoughts more clearly, I’m able to make choices to act or not act based on what I see; I can exercise Right Intention to steer my life in the direction I want to go. Sometimes thoughts and emotions seem overwhelming, even in the context of mindfulness. At these times you might fall back on compassion—not pity—for yourself, for the great task you are attempting: facing down the demons of the heart and mind. Perhaps then you can begin to forgive yourself and your failures. THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS The Four Noble Truths are at the core of all Buddhist teachings.

An idea has more potential than any theory, plan or quantity of knowledge. You should never underestimate your dreams and the ideas that form around them. But more importantly, you shouldn't waste any time making them a reality. Others may not agree with your ideas, they may not trust your ideas, and they may even think that it is foolish to follow your dreams, but they don't have to trust something they can't see. Each person is gifted with the dreams that match the soul attracting them and according to the nature of the spiritual path in which one is found, therefore any dream you have is within your reach, and may never be within the reach of the beliefs of others, not even when you fulfill them. When people don't trust your capacities to achieve something, they will also rationalize reasons and excuses after you demonstrate your intent and potential. If you are poor, they may say you can't be rich, and once you are rich, they will try to dissuade you from what you do, with insinuations, insults, and threats. The most common question a rich person is asked, is if he is paying taxes. It is foolish to try to explain anything to those people. I've seen it my entire life, because I have succeeded in many areas where everyone told me I would never succeed. Once you win, they downgrade your achievements with ridiculous theories, or they will simply call you lucky. You can't win in an argument with a fool, because fools are very creative in their own art of denying the being of others. They see the world as they see themselves, as just objects, empty vessels, reflections of the illusions on the outside world. In martial arts, if you beat taller and stronger opponents, they don't say you are a better fighter. They will select one of your movements or techniques as the cause, and then dissociate you from the movement or technique, and say that you win because you cheat in the fighting rules. In music, if you succeed against the best in the world, people won't say you are better than them, but dissociate you from your music and say that you got awarded because you are different in a strange way, or because you competed in a special moment. If you succeed as a writer, people won't say you are a good writer, but instead dissociate you from your books, and say that you invent things and have a big imagination, which is a covert way of calling you a "good liar", thus insulting you under the pretense of giving compliments, or they will say that you stole the knowledge from others, in order to morally place themselves above you and your work, and they may even say that you have a special trick, like taking knowledge from the air, from some imaginary records in the ether, or from demonic spirits. People say different things when dissociating you from your potential, work and achievements, all of which are simply various forms of disrespecting someone. They deny you of your potential to be yourself. And among the various forms of disrespect, making one feel guilty for being himself is probably the worse, reason why you'll find the most disgusting people of them all inside religious organizations. "God won't like it", "You have a problem with your ego", and "The devil is tempting you", are among the most common and imbecile things you will ever hear as an artist, as a person who loves to read and acquire knowledge, and above anything, as a true spiritual being thriving in self-development and a natural curiosity for life. For all these reasons, the requirements and the real theories for success will never be found in any popular book. Nobody wants to know that you only win when you stop burning yourself to make others warm. And when you understand this, people will dissociate you from your focus and discipline, and call you selfish, and they will call the person who guided you in this path of real success evil. They will then do their best to destroy the reputation of both of your to deny their own fault , ignorance and lies.

Hey, Fatty,” I stated to the angry demon, who had unfortunately calmed down. “I forgot you could talk instead of making mewling noises with your mouth.  However, you are incorrect if you think your petty human insults have any bearing at all on one such as myself.  I will enjoy modifying your mind.” “You have terrible breath,” I croaked. “Thank you!” he chuckled. “Your mother stinks of elderberries and your uncle’s cum.” “You fail to disparage my uncle-dad” he stated.  “Your horns are crooked.” “MY HORNS ARE FINE!” The crooked horned demon was sensitive about that, it turned out, and so he slammed me into the crater again.  I figured this one would kill me; it was at least 5 trucks worth of force.

I picked up the glass and swirled it, staring at the dark liquid. The thought of eating and drinking here suddenly filled me with dread. Persephone had tasted the food of the underworld just once, and she was never able to leave. But then, I was never meant to leave here anyway. "It's not laced with blood or poison." His smile flashed; apparently his amusement at my fears was inexhaustible. "I may be a demon, but I'm not Tantalus or Mithridates." "That's a pity," I muttered, and sipped my wine. "I wouldn't mind Mithridates. Then I'd get a quick death or a useful immunity.

Beauty and Bravery I’ll tell you a secret no one wants you to know.   You do not have to be good to be brave. You do not have to be perfect, your mind completely clear, your heart full of joy, everything soft and sacred.   They make it out like the brave never lie, but the truth is, all of us lie at least twice a day and that has no bearing on how much courage you can hold in your heart. “When I set out to save my father, I was not being brave. I was acting out of fear of losing the only parent I ever had. They may want you to believe that I was simply being brave, but anxiety makes more heroes than history would care to repeat. It is better than sitting and waiting, letting the demon claw into your mind with worry. Anxious people are resourceful, they need to know how to keep the sea of panic at bay so they do not drown.   When I chose to stay at the palace in place of my father, I was not being brave. I was acting out of love. The idea of him here, sick, old, in this damp prison, under the care of that beastly creature when I, healthy, young, could take his place, of course I chose to take his place, what would you do? We would all give up even the ashes of ourselves for a parent we love more than this fire of a life.   When I chose to come back for the beast, I was not being brave. I was acting out of devotion and panic at the idea of loss. This being, who had respected my love of books, who was the only one who had ever known the real me and esteemed me for who I am, I came back for him, I could not let them take him from me. We do not abandon those who truly accept us for who we are, and if you could save all the people who accepted you completely, wouldn’t you go back to save them too?   So I’ll tell you a secret no one wants you to know. You do not have to be good to be brave. You just need to know how to love. You just need to unfold your heart and recognize where you stand and who you are.

When I feel I lost the fight long ago in my mind, a shadow stands before me, shielding me from my enemy. A shadow made of anger and revolt, a shadow that is the amalgamation of all traits I lack and desperately seek. A shadow that jolts the inner sanctum of the enemy. A shadow that mockingly belittles my demons. A shadow that engulfs the villainous monsters in one go, letting the light shine at peace every-where. A shadow that induces dreadful fear even inside the fear-inducing evil. An answer to all my questions.

Matteo has this way, this power that keeps me in the moment. I surrender to him and he pushes away all my nightmares. He punishes my demons with every mind numbing thrust and I allow myself to become lost in him. In his warmth, his safety, his seduction.

I determined long ago that dwelling on bitterness is not for me. I have set aside the demons once plaguing me, and made peace with my past.

I would rather have made up a story about cheating on her than admit I was convinced I was being stalked by a… what? Force? Entity? Ghost? Demon? A rogue piece of my own mind?

Laszlo eyed the Drakefords suspiciously. “I already told you. There. Is. No. Beelzebub!” “Okay,” said Maggie. “Fine. Then why have we heard about him and not Baal?” “You really want to know?” She nodded. The demon looked like he’d been sucking on a lemon. “All right,” he muttered. “Fine. I’ll tell you. It all began when a certain bigwig—we’ll call him Lite-Brite—didn’t like my dad calling himself Baal Zebul. That means ‘Lord of the Manor,’ which we can all agree is perfectly normal and classy. But Lite-Brite thought Dad was getting too big for his britches. So what does that asshole do? He starts a rumor with the Israelites that my dad’s name is actually Baal Zebub—‘Lord of the Flies’—which might as well be ‘Lord of the Turds.’ Well, everyone thought this was hilarious.” Laszlo assumed a patrician bonhomie. “‘Evening, Baalzebub!’ . . . ‘How goes it, Baalzebub?’ . . . ‘I accidentally swatted one of your subjects, Baalzebub. Hope you don’t mind, old chap’ . . .

First of all, you do not need to be afraid of me. I will protect you with my life. I will never hurt you, sweetheart. Second of all, I want to fuck you so badly my dick hurts. I don't want you to regret me. I won’t be another demon in your mind slowly destroying you. It must be your choice. You've never been given the choice. I'm giving that to you. I can't take your virginity without a second thought.

Tell me about hell, I told her in my mind. All you had to do today is your moral goddamn inventory and a lot of lying around. On nice clean sheets.

They adored their handsome uncle. Whether the thing was triggered when the girls came over to help him decorate the new house or had some other proximate cause is not at all clear. Hammond, however, soon found himself engaged in sexual dalliance with all four girls. He confessed it later in his diary. “Here were four lovely creatures, from the tender but precious girl of 13 to the mature but fresh and blooming woman nearly 19 (in 1840–41), each contending for my love, claiming the greater share of it as due to her superior devotion to me, all of them rushing on every occasion into my arms and covering me with kisses, lolling on my lap, pressing their bodies almost into mine, wreathing their limbs with mine, encountering warmly every portion of my frame, and permitting my hands to stray unchecked over every part of them and to rest without the slightest shrinking from it, in the most secret and sacred regions, and all this for a period of more than two years continuously.” Hammond complained that instead of condemnation, he deserved praise. “Is it in flesh and blood to withstand this?” he wrote in his diary. “Is there a man, with manhood in him and a heart susceptible of any emotions of tenderness, who could tear himself from such a cluster of lovely, loving, such amorous and devoted beings? Nay are there many who would have the self-control to stop where I did? Am I not after all entitled to some, the smallest portion of, credit for not going further?” He should be honored for his restraint, he wrote, and likened himself to “a creature of chivalric romance.” The relationship lasted from 1841 to 1843, during which, he wrote, “I gave way to the most wanton indulgences. It would be improper to state in detail what these indulgences were. It will be sufficient to say that they extended to every thing short of direct sexual intercourse, that for two years they were carried on not with one, but indiscriminately with all of them, that they were perfectly habitual and renewed every time or very nearly every time we met at my house in Columbia, which was never less than once a week while I was there, and most usually much oftener.” The nieces never balked at his “amorous advances,” he claimed, but rather “again and again made the advances themselves, so much so as often to excite my astonishment and to fill my mind with the most extraordinary suspicions as to their past experience.

On a practical level, my at-home day is two extremes: both very busy ... yet on the opposite side, my life is very quiet and alone. I avoid most social gatherings, frankly because I know my soul has other questions to ask and answer as I get older. Small talk and “busyness about many things” will not get me there. Our practice, whatever it is, must somehow include the problem. Contemplation is not the avoidance of the problem, but a daily merging with the problem, and finding some resolution. We quickly and humbly learn this lesson in contemplation: How we do anything is probably how we do everything. It’s taken me much of my life to begin to get to the second gaze. By nature, I have a critical mind and a demanding heart, and I am impatient. These are both my gifts and my curses. Yet I can’t have one without the other, it seems. I can’t risk losing touch with either my angels or my demons. They are both good teachers. A life of solitude and silence allows them both, and invariably leads me to the second gaze. The gaze of compassion, looking out at life from the place of Divine Intimacy is really all I have, and all I have to give, even though I don’t always do it.

Some things you have to fight for, Georgia. You can’t just walk away and leave it unfinished when it gets too complicated. If I could fly off and fight the Nazis to win your love, I would. But all I’ve got to battle with are your demons, and they’re kicking my ass. Keep that in mind while you’re reading those endings, the good and the…poignant. The epic, rare love story in this room isn’t Scarlett and Jameson. It’s you and me.

There is another way of thinking and another way of being. It helped me regain control of my life. It allowed me to eviscerate all obstacles in my path until my growth factor became damn near limitless. I'm still haunted, but I've traded in my demons for evil-ass angels, and now, it's a good haunting. I'm haunted by my future goals, not by my past failures. I'm haunted by what I may still become. I'm haunted by my own continued thirst for evolution. p16

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind that by the "Bible" Paine always means the Old Testament alone. -- Editor.] is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

Ihad only two things on my mind; cheese and how to get home.

But time passed and eventually my mind had only one thought in it as regards childhood. For any kid that gets that as an option: take that sweet thing and run with it. Hide. Love it so hard. Because it’s going to fucking leave you and not come back.

2 Peter 2:1 –“ Blood of Jesus, speak against false prophets and teachers sent to deceive, mislead, and exploit me or any member of my family. Cause us to discern and reject every doctrine of demons, every lie of the enemy, and every counterfeit of the truth. “I command every spirit of error, deception, confusion, and manipulation attacking my mind and the minds of my family members to be exposed and cast out, in Jesus’ name. “I declare that we have the Spirit of truth, who guides us into all truth. We have the mind of Christ, who teaches us all things, in Jesus’ name.