Different Pathways Quotes

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.

Taking the easy way out or telling the truth—those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing.

Sadie walked under the gates, one by one by one. At first, she felt nothing, but as she kept moving ahead, she began to feel an opening and a new spaciousness in her chest. She realized what a gate was: it was an indication that you had left one space and were entering another. She walked through another gate. It occurred to Sadie: She had thought after Ichigo that she would never fail again. She had thought she arrived. But life was always arriving. There was always another gate to pass through. (Until, of course, there wasn't.) She walked through another gate. What was a gate, anyway? A doorway, she thought. A portal. The possibility of a different world. The possibility that you might walk through the door and reinvent yourself as something better than you had been before. By the time she reached the end of the torii gate pathway, she felt resolved. Both Sides had failed, but it didn't have to be the end. The game was one in a long line of spaces between gates.

It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction.

We can tell much by what we have already willing discarded along the pathway of discipleship. It is the only pathway where littering is permissible, even encouraged. In the early stages, the debris left behind includes the grosser sins of commission. Later debris differs; things begin to be discarded which have caused the misuse or underuse of our time and talent.

If the item of stolen property had been anything other than a book, it would have been confiscated. But a book is different—it is not just a material possession but the pathway to an enlightened mind, and thence to a well-ordered society,

In those days," continued Ishvar, "it seemed to me that that was all one could expect in life. A harsh road strewn with sharp stones and, if you were lucky, a little grain." "And later?" "Later I discovered there were different types of roads. And a different way of walking on each.

There are multiple roads. You alone choose the ones you take. Some lead to the same destination via different pathways. Others lead to similar or dissimilar outcomes, depending on where you turn.

Intuition is an essential part of the whole experience of living. Although it will not help predict the future or how people will behave, using intuition as a guide makes life more rewarding. It helps you follow what seems to be the right path, even when social convention or common sense appears to tell differently

We who were not so pathologically far out on the spectrum of self-involvement, we dwellers of the visible spectrum who could imagine how it felt to go beyond violet but were not ourselves beyond it, could see that David was wrong not to believe in his lovability and could imagine the pain of not believing in it. How easy and natural love is if you are well! And how gruesomely difficult--what a philosophically daunting contraption of self-interest and self-delusion love appears to be--if you are not! And yet ... the difference between well and not well is in more respects a difference of degree than of kind. Even though David laughed at my much milder addictions and liked to tell me that I couldn't even conceive of how moderate I was, I can still extrapolate from these addictions, and from the secretiveness and solipsism and radical isolation and raw animal craving that accompany them, to the extremity of his. I can imagine the sick mental pathways by which suicide comes to seem like the one consciousness-quenching substance that nobody can take away from you.

The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. This project is ambitious but technically feasible. It is also instrumentally rational and ethically mandatory. The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved only because they once served the fitness of our genes. They will be replaced by a different sort of neural architecture. States of sublime well-being are destined to become the genetically pre-programmed norm of mental health. The world's last aversive experience will be a precisely dateable event.

There are different paths to your destination. Choose your own path.

Experiencing empathy, the freedom to explore, trust, and insight can reset your default reactions to a more curious, tolerant, and confident stance. Because our brains are plastic, consistently positive experiences do stimulate existing neurons to adapt and connect in different pathways. Nurturing relationships help us grow psychologically and neurally in ways that are not possible in nonnurturing relationships. As adults, our most important opportunity for a nurturing relationship comes through committed partnership. It’s a breakthrough to realize that the purpose of committed relationship is not to be happy, but to heal. And then you will be happy!

People who were abused as children tend to get angry and strike out at the world. People who were neglected tend to feel defeated and withdraw from the world. People who were not given guidance tend to lack confidence and self-reliance. Each pathway leads to different forms of self-defeat.

Thomas stared in horror at the monstrous thing making its way down the long corridor of the Maze. It looked like an experiment gone terribly wrong—something from a nightmare. Part animal, part machine, the Griever rolled and clicked along the stone pathway. Its body resembled a gigantic slug, sparsely covered in hair and glistening with slime, grotesquely pulsating in and out as it breathed. It had no distinguishable head or tail, but front to end it was at least six feet long, four feet thick. Every ten to fifteen seconds, sharp metal spikes popped through its bulbous flesh and the whole creature abruptly curled into a ball and spun forward. Then it would settle, seeming to gather its bearings, the spikes receding back through the moist skin with a sick slurping sound. It did this over and over, traveling just a few feet at a time. But hair and spikes were not the only things protruding from the Griever’s body. Several randomly placed mechanical arms stuck out here and there, each one with a different purpose. A few had bright lights attached to them. Others had long, menacing needles. One had a three-fingered claw that clasped and unclasped for no apparent reason. When the creature rolled, these arms folded and maneuvered to avoid being crushed. Thomas wondered what—or who—could create such frightening, disgusting creatures.

Self-parenting exercises taught me to slowly rebuild healthy self-talk. But it must be said: Even though I know reparenting had helped dozens of my friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has told me it’s exhausting. Reparenting takes time, and concentration, and calmness. It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction. And even though that effort comes with joyous rewards, sometimes it also comes with sadness. Because expressing the kindness to yourself that you deserve often reminds you of the kindness you didn’t get.

like abstract mathematics. Scientists have studied “brain plasticity,” the ability of the brain to reorganize neural pathways based on new experiences. It appears that different types of plasticity are dominant at different ages.

For some young artists, it can take a bit of time to discover which tools (which medium, or genre, or career pathway) will truly suit them best. For me, although many different art forms attract me, the tools that I find most natural and comfortable are language and oil paint; I've also learned that as someone with a limited number of spoons it's best to keep my toolbox clean and simple. My husband, by contrast, thrives with a toolbox absolutely crowded to bursting, working with language, voice, musical instruments, puppets, masks animated on a theater stage, computer and video imagery, and half a dozen other things besides, no one of these tools more important than the others, and all somehow working together. For other artists, the tools at hand might be needles and thread; or a jeweller's torch; or a rack of cooking spices; or the time to shape a young child's day.... To me, it's all art, inside the studio and out. At least it is if we approach our lives that way.

You don’t know anything about me.” “No, I know not everything about you. But I sense enough to know you have mistaken obsession with drive, guilt with injustice. I know you want to escape what you are, cabbage fairy,” he said, reaching for his hood and gloves and tucking them into the waistband of his trousers. “Your desires are no different from my own, I simply have the courage to face them.

Good spiritual directors understand that people have different spiritual temperaments, that what feeds one doesn’t feed all. Giving the same spiritual prescription to every struggling Christian is no less irresponsible than a doctor prescribing penicillin to every patient.

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

After he had sailed around the Mediterranean in 1869, Mark Twain said that travel was “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Neuroscientists have been trying for years to pin down what it is about travel that alters us, how it effects mental change. Neural pathways become ingrained, automatic, if they operate only by habit. They are highly attuned to alterations, to novelty. New sights, sounds, languages, tastes, smells stimulate different synapses in the brain, different message routes, different webs of connection, increasing our neuroplasticity. Our brains have evolved to notice differences in our environment: it’s how we’re alerted to predators, to potential danger. To be sensitive to change, then, is to ensure survival.

requirement of healing, becoming whole, is circuitry in the brain that can carry different messages and a different, nonhelpless image of the self. There is strong evidence that such circuits can develop at any time in life, as can neural pathways to help the cortex to do its job of inhibition and regulation.

You need to understand something, boy. The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you. If you are one of those people how only sees problems and darkness and despair, then that is all there is ever going to be for you. But if you are one of those people how sees hope, opportunity, and love, then you can make a difference

Letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it.

Introverts often prefer writing to speaking, because writing uses a different neurological pathway in the brain than speaking does.

I never dreamed this day would come, or imagined this would manifest, but now that this is my reality, that we can change a world, I embrace the dream.

Were you there?” She shook her head. “No. I was here in Nain having a child.” “Then why do you weep as though you had part in his crucifixion? You had no part in it.” “I’d like nothing better than to think I would have remained faithful. But if those closest to him—his disciples, his own brothers—turned away, who am I to think I’m better than they and would have done differently? No, Marcus. We all wanted what we wanted, and when the Lord fulfilled his purpose rather than ours, we struck out against him. Like you. In anger. Like you. In disappointment. Yet, it is God’s will that prevails.” He looked away. “I don’t understand any of this.” “I know you don’t. I see it in your face, Marcus. You don’t want to see. You’ve hardened your heart against him.” She started to walk again. “As should all who value their lives,” he said, thinking of Hadassah’s death. “It is God who has driven you here.” He gave a derisive laugh. “I came here of my own accord and for my own purposes.” “Did you?” Marcus’ face became stony. Deborah pressed on. “We were all created incomplete and will find no rest until we satisfy the deepest hunger and thirst within us. You’ve tried to satisfy it in your own way. I see that in your eyes, too, as I’ve seen it in so many others. And yet, though you deny it with your last breath, your soul yearns for God, Marcus Lucianus Valerian.” Her words angered him. “Gods aside, Rome shows the world that life is what man makes of it.” “If that’s so, what are you making of yours?” “I own a fleet of ships, as well as emporiums and houses. I have wealth.” Yet, even as he told her, he knew it all meant nothing. His father had come to that realization just before he died. Vanity. It was all vanity. Meaningless. Empty. Old Deborah paused on the pathway. “Rome points the way to wealth and pleasure, power and knowledge. But Rome remains hungry. Just as you are hungry now. Search all you will for retribution or meaning to your life, but until you find God, you live in vain.

Scientists now understand that there is a specific “contentment pathway” that is completely separate from the pleasure or reward pathway in the brain and under completely different regulation. Pleasure (reward) is the emotional state where your brain says, This feels good—I want more, while happiness (contentment) is the emotional state where your brain says, This feels good—I don’t want or need any more.

If Ediacara survivors had been able to evolve internal complexity later on, then the pathways from this radically different starting point would have produced a world worthy of science fiction at its best.

There're many ways to inspire others but the goal is the same. The pathways are different and must be; because we're diverse. The destination must be the same; to inspire them, so they too can inspire others.

But life was always arriving. There was always another gate to pass through. (Until, of course, there wasn’t.) She walked through another gate. What was a gate anyway? A doorway, she thought. A portal. The possibility of a different world. The possibility that you might walk through the door and reinvent yourself as something better than you had been before. By the time she reached the end of the torii gate pathway, she felt resolved.

When you felt like you missed an opportunity, a pathway, a finish line on your journey—clarity bloomed within you, and you learned how to give yourself permission to change, you learned how to give yourself permission to make mistakes and overcome them, permission to take a different path, to dream a different dream. See, at the end of the day, all that you have lost is all that you have gained. The universe does not leave you empty; it always balances the scales within you. For all that it takes, it gives. For all that it destroys, it creates. Reassess all that you think is damaged and defeated within you. Every breakdown was just a step forward into your becoming.

In my negotiating course, I tell my students that empathy is “the ability to recognize the perspective of a counterpart, and the vocalization of that recognition.” That’s an academic way of saying that empathy is paying attention to another human being, asking what they are feeling, and making a commitment to understanding their world. Notice I didn’t say anything about agreeing with the other person’s values and beliefs or giving out hugs. That’s sympathy. What I’m talking about is trying to understand a situation from another person’s perspective. One step beyond that is tactical empathy. Tactical empathy is understanding the feelings and mindset of another in the moment and also hearing what is behind those feelings so you increase your influence in all the moments that follow. It’s bringing our attention to both the emotional obstacles and the potential pathways to getting an agreement done. It’s emotional intelligence on steroids.

Suicide. This is the exact opposite of last time, for this time I'm experiencing a kind of pleasure in life, in being alive, a pleasure in living that I've never experienced before, and I'm hopeful and confident that I can become someone with dignity. I know now why I couldn't change certain characteristics and certain things about myself, but it's not a problem anymore. Certain pathways I failed to open in the past have now opened. My whole self is radiating light. I see with clarity. I understand the cause and effect of the last year. What I had imagined I've now attained. It's as if I can see my life right in front of my eyes, and all I have to do is reach out and draw it in... Now I don't feel the acute pain I felt before; I feel enlightened, at peace. It's as if I've instantly found the secret of "Suffering", how to bear it and how to endure it... Yes, this time I've decided to kill myself not because I can't live with suffering and not because I don't enjoy being alive. I love life passionately, and my wish to die is a wish to live... Yes, I've chosen suicide. The endpoint of this process of "Forgiveness". Not to punish anyone or to protest a wrong. I've chosen suicide with a clarity I've never possessed before, with a rational resolve and sense of calm, in order to pursue the ultimate meaning of my life, act on my belief about the beauty between two people... I take complete responsibility for my life, and even if my physical body disappears upon death, I don't believe my spirit will disappear. As long as I have loved people fully, then I can be content fading into "Nothingness". If I'm using death to express my passion for life, then I still don't love her enough, don't love life enough. and I will reincarnate in a different form to love her and to be part of her life... So the death of my flesh really doesn't mean anything. Doesn't solve anything. Is this a tragedy? Will there be tragedy?

From an evolutionary standpoint, food that you don’t have is critically different from food that you do have. It’s the same for water, shelter, and tools. The division is so fundamental that separate pathways and chemicals evolved in the brain to handle peripersonal and extrapersonal space. When you look down, you look into the peripersonal space, and for that the brain is controlled by a host of chemicals concerned with experience in the here and now. But when the brain is engaged with the extrapersonal space, one chemical exercises more control than all the others, the chemical associated with anticipation and possibility: dopamine. Things in the distance, things we don’t have yet, cannot be used or consumed, only desired. Dopamine has a very specific job: maximizing resources that will be available to us in the future; the pursuit of better things.

Our lives are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race. And the single most important aspect of personality—the “north and south of temperament,” as one scientist puts it—is where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum. Our place on this continuum influences our choice of friends and mates, and how we make conversation, resolve differences, and show love. It affects the careers we choose and whether or not we succeed at them. It governs how likely we are to exercise, commit adultery, function well without sleep, learn from our mistakes, place big bets in the stock market, delay gratification, be a good leader, and ask “what if.”* It’s reflected in our brain pathways, neurotransmitters, and remote corners of our nervous systems. Today introversion and extroversion are two of the most exhaustively researched subjects in personality psychology, arousing the curiosity of hundreds of scientists.

Tactical empathy is understanding the feelings and mindset of another in the moment and also hearing what is behind those feelings so you increase your influence in all the moments that follow. It’s bringing our attention to both the emotional obstacles and the potential pathways to getting an agreement done.

My fight isn’t so simple, it has very deep roots, from long ago, from earlier generations. Life weighs on me with the weight of my family history, my genes drag along a race of sons of plenty and sons of bitches who with a blade of a machete cleared the pathways of life. They’re still doing it. They ate with the machete, they worked, they shaved, killed, and settled differences with their wives with machete. Today the machete is a shotgun, a nine-millimeter, a chopper. The weapon has changed but not its use. The story has changed, too, has become terrifying. Once proud, we are now ashamed, without understanding how, why, and when it all happened. We don’t know how long our history is, but we can feel its weight.

He who by progress has grown from the darkness, lifted himself from the night into light, free is he made of the Halls of Amenti, free of the Flower of Light and of Life. Guided he then, by wisdom and knowledge, passes from men, to the Master of Life. There he may dwell as one with the Masters, free from the bonds of the darkness of night. Seated within the flower of radiance sit seven Lords from the Space-Times above us, helping and guiding through infinite Wisdom, the pathway through time of the children of men. Mighty and strange, they, veiled with their power, silent, all-knowing, drawing the Life force, different yet one with the children of men. Different, and yet One with the Children of Light. Custodians and watchers of the force of man’s bondage, ready to loose when the light has been reached. First and most mighty, sits the Veiled Presence, Lord of Lords, the infinite Nine, over the other from each the Lords of the Cycles; Three, Four, Five, and Six, Seven, Eight, each with his mission, each with his powers, guiding, directing the destiny of man. There sit they, mighty and potent, free of all time and space.

Far more than a quest for pleasure, chronic substance use is the addict’s attempt to escape distress. From a medical point of view, addicts are self-medicating conditions like depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress or even ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Addictions always originate in pain, whether felt openly or hidden in the unconscious. They are emotional anaesthetics. Heroin and cocaine, both powerful physical painkillers, also ease psychological discomfort. Infant animals separated from their mothers can be soothed readily by low doses of narcotics, just as if it was actual physical pain they were enduring. The pain pathways in humans are no different. The very same brain centres that interpret and “feel” physical pain also become activated during the experience of emotional rejection: on brain scans they “light up” in response to social ostracism just as they would when triggered by physically harmful stimuli. When people speak of feeling “hurt” or of having emotional “pain,” they are not being abstract or poetic but scientifically quite precise. The hard-drug addict’s life has been marked by a surfeit of pain. No wonder she desperately craves relief.

shocking conclusion. It suggested that there appears to be one common pathway to all mental illnesses. Caspi and Moffitt called it the p-factor, in which the p stands for general psychopathology. They argued that this factor appears to predict a person’s liability to develop a mental disorder, to have more than one disorder, to have a chronic disorder, and it can even predict the severity of symptoms. This p-factor is common to hundreds of different psychiatric symptoms and every psychiatric diagnosis. Subsequent research using different sets of people and different methods confirmed the existence of this p-factor.25 However, this research was not designed to tell us what the p-factor is. It only suggests that it exists—that there is an unidentified variable that plays a role in all mental disorders.

  Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;  courage to change the things I can;  and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time;  enjoying one moment at a time;  accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;  taking this world as it is, not as I would have it;  trusting that all things will be made right if I surrender;  that I may be reasonably happy in this life; and supremely happy forever in the next. 

other words, our genitals and our gender identity are not the same. Sexual anatomy and gender identity are the products of two different processes, occurring at distinctly different times and along different neural pathways before we are even born. Both are functions of genes as well as hormones, and while sexual anatomy and gender identity usually match, there are dozens of biological events that can affect the outcome of the latter and

Last night, I spoke at one of the Circle Meetings of the Baptist Church. Afterward, a Kenyan friend, Wangari Waigwa-Stone, and I spoke about darkness and stars. “I was raised under an African sky,” she said. “Darkness was never something I was afraid of. The clarity, definition, and profusion of stars became maps as to how one navigates at night. I always knew where I was simply by looking up.” She paused. “My sons do not have these guides. They have no relationship to darkness, nothing in their imagination tells them there are pathways in the night they can move through.” “I have a Norwegian friend who says, ‘City lights are a conspiracy against higher thought,’ ” I added. “Indeed,” Wangari said, smiling, her rich, deep voice resonating. “I am Kikuyu. My people believe if you are close to the Earth, you are close to people.” “How so?” I asked. “What an African woman nurtures in the soil will eventually feed her family. Likewise, what she nurtures in her relations will ultimately nurture her community. It is a matter of living the circle. “Because we have forgotten our kinship with the land,” she continued, “our kinship with each other has become pale. We shy away from accountability and involvement. We choose to be occupied, which is quite different from being engaged. In America, time is money. In Kenya, time is relationship. We look at investments differently.

Gravity,” said Dirk with a slightly dismissive shrug, “yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered.” He took a penny out of his pocket and tossed it casually onto the pebbles that ran alongside the paved pathway. “You see?” he said. “They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap . . . ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention.

We cannot go back to the lost oral world, any more than we can turn the clock back to a time before the clock existed.40 “Writing and print and the computer,” writes Walter Ong, “are all ways of technologizing the word” and once technologized, the word cannot be de-technologized.41 But the world of the screen, as we’re already coming to understand, is a very different place from the world of the page. A new intellectual ethic is taking hold. The pathways in our brains are once again being rerouted.

This movement to which he had dedicated his life could not be snuffed out by a few opportunists, a sackful of dollars and a cunt in the Kremlin. It was as old and as strong as the human spirit itself. It would come back, with fresh vigour, soon, very soon. It might have a different name, a different banner. But men and women would always want to walk that path, that tricky uphill path across the river of stones and through the damp cloud, because they knew that at the end they would burst into the bright sunshine and see the mountain top clear above them. Men and women dreamed of that moment. They would link arms again. They would have a new song – no longer ‘Stepping the Red Pathway’ as it had been on Rykosha Mountain. But they would sing this new song to the old tune. And they would gather themselves to make that mighty second jump. Then the ground would shake and all the capitalists and imperialists and plant-loving Fascists and filth and scum and renegades and fucking intellectuals and boy prosecutors and Judases with birdshit on their skulls would shit themselves one final, mighty time.

The artist especially, in whom the power of imitation is particularly strong, must fall prey to the feeble manysidedness of modern life as to a serious childhood illness; in his youth and childhood he will look more like an adult than his real self. The marvellously accurate archetypal youth who is the Siegfried of the Ring des Nibelungen could have been produced only by a man, and by a man moreover who had found his own youth late in life. And as Wagner's youth came late, so did his full maturity; so that in this respect at least he is the opposite of an anticipatory nature. As soon as his spiritual and moral maturity arrives, the drama of his life also begins. And how different he looks now! Below there rages the precipitate current of a vehement will which as it were strives to reach up to the light through every runway, cave and crevice, and desires power. Only a force wholly pure and free could direct this will on to the pathway to the good and benevolent; had it been united with a narrow spirit, such an unbridled tyrannical will could have become a fatality and a way out into the open, into air and sunlight, was in any event bound to be found soon.

this is what Jesus meant when he said to love our neighbor—to get outside of our tribal pathways and listen to the lives of the ones whose pathways have been so “different” from ours and whom Jesus defines as our neighbor. They are the test of loving our neighbor—not merely the people we meet on our narrow pathways every day. That biblical and spiritual reality has never been more true in my lifetime than it is right now. We need to reclaim Jesus’s message here, by seeking and finding our true neighbors, if we are going to have any integrity for our faith or any health in our democracy.

Richard Lewontin describes it like this . . . Much of the uncertainty of evolution arises from the existence of multiple possible pathways even when external conditions are fixed. It is a prejudice of evolutionists who give adaptive explanations of the features of organisms that every difference between species must be a consequence of different selective forces that operated on them. . . . Populations subject to identical selective conditions may arrive at quite different evolutionary endpoints, so that the observation that two species differ is not prima facie evidence that they were adaptively differentiated.

We saw that four different voices respond to this crisis by suggesting differing pathways forward: the first three are the retro-voices, which suggest returning to the global field structure of Field 1 (autocratic and state-driven: regulation, law and order), Field 2 (market-driven: deregulation), or Field 3 (stakeholder negotiation-driven: dialogue), respectively. The fourth voice, however, suggests that there is no way back. Retreat is impossible because circumstances have changed. This is why we need to go forward to the next evolutionary stage of the global economy (ecosystem-driven: seeing and acting from the emerging whole).

Raising Nedda was painful in ways he hadn’t anticipated, as though a cord connected them, its pull as strong as any chemical bond. One day, it would break and she would leave. Eleven was a spectacular age. Her brain was blooming, her mind ripe for learning. She was building new cells to contain everything she learned, forging new neural pathways, and each day she was different, a little more, a little brighter. All the while, his brain was wearing down; every brain over twenty-five was. Nedda was at the point of infinite potential, the moment where genius was born. What an incredible thing it would be to hold on to that precise moment.

Hyperbolic Suggestion is—as one might infer from the term’s literal interpretation—a method of suggestion induced upon the subject (or subjects), in question, through the blatant and immoderate invocation of hyperbole. Simply stated, excessive exaggeration induces a trance upon the recipient, rendering him or her remarkably susceptible to suggestion. Thus, through the use of a multitude of descriptive adjectives and superlatives, neural mechanisms and pathways are overloaded, as canals and bypasses are burrowed into the thick of the gray matter. The dendrites are, through this process, tuned to a predetermined frequency by which the seeds of suggestion can be sown. When this occurs, the subject becomes incredibly compliant to any orders given at a certain tone of voice. In some cases, orders need not be given. The subject’s attitudes might well be so affected by the hyperbole as to affect his natural tendencies...Emmanuel silently wondered if there existed a perfect combination of words or phrases that could somehow—as in the case of Hyperbolic Suggestion—subvert even the most stubborn of wills. Then again, maybe it wasn’t so much the words as it was how they were spoken: if he achieved exactly the most desirable intonation, rhythm, timing, pitch and pronunciation in his speaking, would his verbal appeals somehow make greater inroads in garnering their consent? There had to be some optimal combination of aspirated consonants, diphthongs, facial expressions and inflection he could somehow affect in order to persuade them effectively. But it seemed that to search for this elusive mixture of ingredients would only prove an onerous task, conceivably of little benefit. In view of this sobering reality, he decided instead to try out a completely different approach from those previous: it occurred to him that his attempts at persuasion might be slightly more effective if he carried them out as dialogues, rather than as monologues.

This is a Pathway of Sacred Tears, tears shed for the beauty, the pain and the breaking down of self in devastatingly real moments of humbly accepted personal ‘truth.’ Embracing and sticking with Divine Truth at all costs means all else pales into insignificance besides the Only Thing that really matters. There is a big difference between tears cried about the effects of a wound, and tears sobbed and released from the primal place within the soul where the causes of its deepest pains, suffering and heartbreaks dwell. The tears of crying on the surface of an emotion have little emotional impact, and are not felt by those more sensitive to truth and the deeper reality of the soul.

My mind winding down a pathway thinking only that I had screwed it all up, the chance at love, the chance for something real, that I didn't deserve any of it, that I sang all these songs about love but it was all bullshit because what did I know? What could I know, when right at the center of my heart there was only an empty pit, that I had never cared enough about myself to put anything else there instead? I remembered there was a decision at the center of it, one made long ago in a a tiny trailer at the edge of the world, reeling and confused and angry and hopeless, to just reject these things: love and closeness and faith in another, in favor of a different life. To give up and try to make the pain useful.

Neural pathways become ingrained, automatic, if they operate only by habit. They are highly attuned to alterations, to novelty. New sights, sounds, languages, tastes, smells stimulate different synapses in the brain, different message routes, different webs of connection, increasing our neuroplasticity. Our brains have evolved to notice differences in our environment: it’s how we’re alerted to predators, to potential danger. To be sensitive to change, then, is to ensure survival. Professor Adam Galinsky, an American social psychologist who has studied the connection between creativity and international travel, says that ‘Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought, the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms.

Those who are quieting a guilty conscience with the thought that they can change a course of evil when they choose, that they can trifle with the invitations of mercy, and yet be again and again impressed, take this course at their peril. They think that after casting all their influence on the side of the great rebel, in a moment of utmost extremity, when danger compasses them about, they will change leaders. But this is not so easily done. The experience, the education, the discipline of a life of sinful indulgence, has so thoroughly molded the character that they cannot then receive the image of Jesus. Had no light shone upon their pathway, the case would have been different. Mercy might interpose, and give them an opportunity to accept her overtures; but after light has been long rejected and despised, it will be finally withdrawn.

Letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it. It means simply to let the feeling be there and to focus on letting out the energy behind it. The first step is to allow yourself to have the feeling without resisting it, venting it, fearing it, condemning it, or moralizing about it. It means to drop judgment and to see that it is just a feeling. The technique is to be with the feeling and surrender all efforts to modify it in any way. Let go of wanting to resist the feeling. It is resistance that keeps the feeling going. When you give up resisting or trying to modify the feeling, it will shift to the next feeling and be accompanied by a lighter sensation. A feeling that is not resisted will disappear as the energy behind it dissipates.

WAY OF THE SEAL DRILL Making Variety a Habit Make a list of all the routines in your daily and weekly life. What time do you wake? Do you brush your teeth before or after taking a shower? Do you check your e-mail before brushing your teeth? What ritual patterns of thought can you detect? We are good self-deceivers, so why don’t you ask your best friend or spouse what your routine habits and thoughts are? Armed with the list, make a parallel list of ways you will break these routines. Get up at a different time every day. Take a different route to work. Do not check e-mail first thing, but only twice a day. Fast for a day or do a juice cleanse. Make a new routine out of shaking things up. This will forge new pathways in your brain, help you to avoid blind spots and rutted thinking, and spice up your life in general. You can easily apply this drill at a team level, also.

In any sizable park or green space, you’ll likely find two kinds of paths: the formal kind, paved with brick or concrete, and the informal kind, the paths made by people walking over and over a stretch of grass, wearing away the green and carving a scruffy emergent line in its place. These are paths made by sheer repetitive use; they’re not anyone’s executive decision but arise one choice at a time, collected in aggregate. Most of us know them as friendly disobedience: they’re shortcuts, maybe, or just the most commonsense pathway from one frequented site to another. Urban planners call these paths “desire lines,” or sometimes “cow paths,” “pirate paths,” or the slightly stuffier “counter-grid trajectories.” They indicate yearning, some planners say—either to have formal paved lines where there are none or to actively carve out a different path where one had been prescribed.

In conjunction with his colleagues, Frantisek Baluska from the Institute of Cellular and Molecular Botany at the University of Bonn is of the opinion that brain-like structures can be found at root tips. In addition to signaling pathways, there are also numerous systems and molecules similar to those found in animals. When a root feels its way forward in the ground, it is aware of stimuli. The researchers measured electrical signals that led to changes in behavior after they were processed in a "transition zone." If the root encounters toxic substances, impenetrable stones, or saturated soil, it analyzes the situation and transmits the necessary adjustments to the growing tip. The root tip changes direction as a result of this communication and steers the growing root around the critical areas. Right now, the majority of plant researchers are skeptical about whether such behavior points to a repository for intelligence, the faculty of memory, and emotions. Among other things, they get worked up about carrying over findings in similar situations with animals and, at the end of the day, about how this threatens to blur the boundary between plants and animals. And so what? What would be so awful about that? The distinction between plant and animal is, after all, arbitrary and depends on the way an organism feeds itself: the former photosynthesizes and the latter eats other living beings. Finally, the only other big difference is in the amount of time it takes to process information and translate it into action. Does that mean that beings that live life in the slow lane are automatically worth less than ones on the fast track? Sometimes I suspect we would pay more attention to trees and other vegetation if we could establish beyond a doubt just how similar they are in many ways to animals.

So which theory did Lagos believe in? The relativist or the universalist?" "He did not seem to think there was much of a difference. In the end, they are both somewhat mystical. Lagos believed that both schools of thought had essentially arrived at the same place by different lines of reasoning." "But it seems to me there is a key difference," Hiro says. "The universalists think that we are determined by the prepatterned structure of our brains -- the pathways in the cortex. The relativists don't believe that we have any limits." "Lagos modified the strict Chomskyan theory by supposing that learning a language is like blowing code into PROMs -- an analogy that I cannot interpret." "The analogy is clear. PROMs are Programmable Read-Only Memory chips," Hiro says. "When they come from the factory, they have no content. Once and only once, you can place information into those chips and then freeze it -- the information, the software, becomes frozen into the chip -- it transmutes into hardware. After you have blown the code into the PROMs, you can read it out, but you can't write to them anymore. So Lagos was trying to say that the newborn human brain has no structure -- as the relativists would have it -- and that as the child learns a language, the developing brain structures itself accordingly, the language gets 'blown into the hardware and becomes a permanent part of the brain's deep structure -- as the universalists would have it." "Yes. This was his interpretation." "Okay. So when he talked about Enki being a real person with magical powers, what he meant was that Enki somehow understood the connection between language and the brain, knew how to manipulate it. The same way that a hacker, knowing the secrets of a computer system, can write code to control it -- digital namshubs?" "Lagos said that Enki had the ability to ascend into the universe of language and see it before his eyes. Much as humans go into the Metaverse. That gave him power to create nam-shubs. And nam-shubs had the power to alter the functioning of the brain and of the body." "Why isn't anyone doing this kind of thing nowadays? Why aren't there any namshubs in English?" "Not all languages are the same, as Steiner points out. Some languages are better at metaphor than others. Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Chinese lend themselves to word play and have achieved a lasting grip on reality: Palestine had Qiryat Sefer, the 'City of the Letter,' and Syria had Byblos, the 'Town of the Book.' By contrast other civilizations seem 'speechless' or at least, as may have been the case in Egypt, not entirely cognizant of the creative and transformational powers of language. Lagos believed that Sumerian was an extraordinarily powerful language -- at least it was in Sumer five thousand years ago." "A language that lent itself to Enki's neurolinguistic hacking." "Early linguists, as well as the Kabbalists, believed in a fictional language called the tongue of Eden, the language of Adam. It enabled all men to understand each other, to communicate without misunderstanding. It was the language of the Logos, the moment when God created the world by speaking a word. In the tongue of Eden, naming a thing was the same as creating it. To quote Steiner again, 'Our speech interposes itself between apprehension and truth like a dusty pane or warped mirror. The tongue of Eden was like a flawless glass; a light of total understanding streamed through it. Thus Babel was a second Fall.' And Isaac the Blind, an early Kabbalist, said that, to quote Gershom Scholem's translation, 'The speech of men is connected with divine speech and all language whether heavenly or human derives from one source: the Divine Name.' The practical Kabbalists, the sorcerers, bore the title Ba'al Shem, meaning 'master of the divine name.'" "The machine language of the world," Hiro says.

Having a TV—which gives you the ability to receive information—fails to establish any capacity for sending information in the opposite direction. And the odd one-way nature of the primary connection Americans now have to our national conversation has a profound impact on their basic attitude toward democracy itself. If you can receive but not send, what does that do to your basic feelings about the nature of your connection to American self-government? “Attachment theory” is an interesting new branch of developmental psychology that sheds light on the importance of consistent, appropriate, and responsive two-way communication—and why it is essential for an individual’s feeling empowered. First developed by John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, in 1958, attachment theory was further developed by his protégée Mary Ainsworth and other experts studying the psychological development of infants. Although it applies to individuals, attachment theory is, in my view, a metaphor that illuminates the significance of authentic free-flowing communication in any relationship that requires trust. By using this new approach, psychologists were able to discover that every infant learns a crucial and existential lesson during the first year of life about his or her fundamental relationship to the rest of the world. An infant develops an attachment pathway based on different patterns of care and, according to this theory, learns to adopt one of three basic postures toward the universe: In the best case, the infant learns that he or she has the inherent ability to exert a powerful influence on the world and evoke consistent, appropriate responses by communicating signals of hunger or discomfort, happiness or distress. If the caregiver—more often than not the mother—responds to most signals from the infant consistently and appropriately, the infant begins to assume that he or she has inherent power to affect the world. If the primary caregiver responds inappropriately and/or inconsistently, the infant learns to assume that he or she is powerless to affect the larger world and that his or her signals have no intrinsic significance where the universe is concerned. A child who receives really erratic and inconsistent responses from a primary caregiver, even if those responses are occasionally warm and sensitive, develops “anxious resistant attachment.” This pathway creates children who feature anxiety, dependence, and easy victimization. They are easily manipulated and exploited later in life. In the worst case, infants who receive no emotional response from the person or persons responsible for them are at high risk of learning a deep existential rage that makes them prone to violence and antisocial behavior as they grow up. Chronic unresponsiveness leads to what is called “anxious avoidance attachment,” a life pattern that features unquenchable anger, frustration, and aggressive, violent behavior.

For years, exercise scientists have been convinced that the only way to increase mitochondrial density is with aerobic endurance training, but recent studies have proved otherwise. Not only is an increase in the size and number of mitochondria a proven adaptation to HIIT, but the mitochondrial benefit of HIIT goes way beyond size and number. For example, all your mitochondria contain oxidative enzymes, such as citrate synthase, malate dehydrogenase, and succinate dehydrogenase. These oxidative enzymes lead to improved metabolic function of your skeletal muscles—particularly by causing more effective fat and carbohydrate breakdown for fuel and also by accelerating energy formation from ATP. So more oxidative enzymes means that you have a higher capacity for going longer and harder. And it turns out that, according to an initial study on the effect of HIIT on oxidative enzymes, there were enormous increases in skeletal muscle oxidative enzymes in seven weeks in subjects who did four to ten thirty-second maximal cycling sprints followed by four minutes of recovery just three days a week. But what about HIIT as opposed to aerobic cardio? Another six-week training study compared the increase in oxidative enzymes that resulted from either: 1. Four to six thirty-second maximal-effort cycling sprints, each followed by four-and-a-half minutes of recovery, performed three days a week (classic HIIT training) or 2. Forty to sixty minutes of steady cycling at 65 percent VO2 max (an easy aerobic intensity) five days a week The levels of oxidative enzymes in the mitochondria in subjects who performed the HIIT program were significantly higher—even though they were training at a fraction of the volume of the aerobic group. How could this favorable endurance adaptation happen with such short periods of exercise? It turns out that the increased mitochondrial density and oxidative-enzyme activity from HIIT are caused by completely different message-signaling pathways than those created by traditional endurance training.

Opiates don't only relieve physical pain, they also relieve emotional pain. It turns out that the same part of the brain that experiences the suffering of physical pain also experiences the suffering of social rejection, for example. The sources and pathways of the pain are different, but the suffering is experienced in the same part of the brain, where opiate receptors are abudantly present. And if you look at alcohol, it's a pain-reliever. In fact, you know, the old saying, when someone drank too much they used to say "he's feeling no pain". Cocaine.. is a local anesthetic it numbs nerve endings. Cannabis has pain-relieving qualities. All the behaviors of addiction, whether they are substance-related or not, either directly soothe pain, emotional pain, or they distract from it. So my mantra and the first question in addiction is not "why the addiction?", but "why the pain?" And if want to understand why people have pain, you got to look at their lives, not at their genes, not at their choices, but what actually happened to them.

Mendel Kaelen, a Dutch postdoc in the Imperial lab, proposes a more extended snow metaphor: “Think of the brain as a hill covered in snow, and thoughts as sleds gliding down that hill. As one sled after another goes down the hill, a small number of main trails will appear in the snow. And every time a new sled goes down, it will be drawn into the preexisting trails, almost like a magnet.” Those main trails represent the most well-traveled neural connections in your brain, many of them passing through the default mode network. “In time, it becomes more and more difficult to glide down the hill on any other path or in a different direction. “Think of psychedelics as temporarily flattening the snow. The deeply worn trails disappear, and suddenly the sled can go in other directions, exploring new landscapes and, literally, creating new pathways.” When the snow is freshest, the mind is most impressionable, and the slightest nudge—whether from a song or an intention or a therapist’s suggestion—can powerfully influence its future course. Robin Carhart-Harris’s theory of

Viruses, for instance, perform a really irritating function of intermingling the DNA from every species on Earth with every other. As Richard Lewontin puts it . . . It used to be thought that new functions had to arise by mutations of the genes already possessed by a species and that the only way such mutations could spread was by the normal processes of reproduction. It is now clear that genetic material has moved during evolution from species to species by means of retroviruses and other transposable particles. . . . What is so extraordinary in its implications for evolution is that transposition can occur between forms of life that are quite different, between distantly related vertebrates, for example, or even between plants and bacteria. . . . Thus, the assumption that species are on independent evolutionary pathways, once they have diverged from each other and can no longer interbreed, is incorrect. All life-forms are in potential genetic contact and genetic exchanges between them are going on. . . . The evolutionary “tree of life” seems the wrong metaphor. Perhaps we should think of it as an elaborate bit of macramé.16

Imagine having an active mind trapped inside a body that is entirely paralyzed except for the ability to move your eyes sideways and blink your eyelids. A few people are living in this nightmare, called Locked-In Syndrome. A mere millimeter makes the difference between ending up in a coma (unconscious) or in Locked-In Syndrome (conscious). Both are caused by trauma to the brain stem (located at the base of the neck and involved in regulating basic body functions). If the trauma is to the front of the brain stem, the motor pathways are destroyed but patients are alert. Since the nerves for blinking and eye movement are at the back of the brain stem, they can still move their eyes. This tragic condition has given us an intriguing clue about the connection between acetylcholine and the enjoyment introverts gain from introspection. Although it seems as if people with Locked-In Syndrome should feel claustrophobic and terrified, researchers were shocked to find they don’t. Although sad about their situation, these patients report a sense of tranquility and lack of terror about their loss of physical freedom. In these patients acetylcholine is blocked to the muscles but not to brain pathways, so their capacity to feel good about living in their internal world (the enjoyment from thinking and feeling) remains intact.

your mother about you and let her know that you are at our place. So, there will be no reason for her to worry about you.” They sat for a little time at the dinner table, trying some dainty things and telling each other interesting stories. At last the hedgehog said to his new friend: “It is time to go home! My mother won’t like the fact that I was visiting you for such a long time.” The beaver-mother decided to see the hedgehog off and the three of them proceeded to the beaver’s pathways. When they found out the hare’s pathway, the beaver said: “Go down this path and after three hundred feet, if you’ll stay on the path and not turn off of it, you will arrive at the rootstock above your house.” The hedgehog thanked him and asked in the end: “How do you manage to know the forest so well?” The beaver explained: “My mom often reads books to me about different travelers and their journeys. I have learned about our forest and the beast’s pathways from these books. Also, I’ve learned about the wolf’s wide roads and how the wolves walk along these ways. I have also learned about the paths which little foxes walk along towards the fields in the evening. There they train their eyesight in order to be able to look afar. These books also tell about the hare’s paths. The hares scamper all day long from one glade to another, where the delicious sorrel and sappy sedge grows. In these books,

Just like rain, let it all flow incessantly until the sky clears out. Sometimes a part of me asks how is it that the ones who love the most, dearly, tenderly giving their all, find their hollow end meeting with scars that they never deserved. How is it that sometimes Life turns cold for those who sprinkle the most amount of sunshine, the hand that wipes other's pain how is that parched with betrayals and misunderstandings. But I guess it is about life lessons, how a soul grows through it all, as if the soul walks across the pyre of fire to know and eventually become its own mettle. Through it all the heart becomes more open and the mind more understanding, a unique strength of peace walks inside the very fire that rages the soul. Patience flows in through perseverance and the ashes mould in the teardrop of resilience to wear the smile of kindness. I have realised that when the worst happens to us, the soul is confronted with two choices, either to become bitter with repeating the question why or to become better with understanding the way how to walk ahead. Eventually it boils down to two simple emotions, love and hate, astonishingly born out of the same part of our mind and heart. It is a selection of either vengeance or forgiveness, not an easy choice to make especially when we are at our most vulnerable self. Whatever we choose becomes our reality, as if we get soaked in it, and somehow Time runs by. And when years pass by and we look back and see the path, and reflect on our choice we understand the meaning of both the choices, to some they take the shape of peace and to some they take the shape of agony, but looking closely we can see that the agony is the pathway leading to peace, forgiveness is the destination, sooner or later we all reach that space to find it in us to forgive, some in years while some in lifetimes. And perhaps, that is why we all undergo all that happens to us, chained in our Karma. So even when Life seems unfair, give it your all. Love with all your soul and no matter what comes by, don't stop walking along this shore of Time, because no matter how long it takes, you will find your Home. And when Life puts up a question as to why some who broke your soul find pleasure so easy, remind yourself the difference between pleasure and peace and don't forget to acknowledge the fact that perhaps you have paid your Karmic debt in full while theirs might just be beginning. So break if you must, but remind yourself about the gift of Life and Love every passing moment that breathes like a dream in an illusion of Time. Let your Faith walk hand in hand with you as you tread softly towards your destination, because no matter the years or the lifetimes, someday the sky shall be clear for the rainbow of your soul to smile in the Justice of Him, who knows all, sees all, feels all and does all.

The pathway is smooth. Why do you throw rocks before you?’ Using the Pain-to-Power Chart to help, you can begin to clear the rocks in front of you. These steps will help you clear the way: 1. Draw a large copy of the Pain-to-Power Chart and stick it on your wall. Just the simple act of making it larger will make you feel a little more powerful. You are already taking action! Remember that much of the trick of moving from pain to power is taking action – action is very powerful! Once the chart is on your wall it will always remind you of where you want to go in life – from pain to power. Awareness, knowledge, is half the battle. Having the chart on your wall will also help you to keep moving forward. 2. Put a pin at the place on the chart where you see yourself at this moment in your life. Are you in the middle, where you sometimes feel depressed and stuck, and at other times more in control? Or do you find yourself on the far left side, where there is little you are able to do to pull yourself out of the rut? Or perhaps you are already on the right side, where you feel you are really moving ahead with your life, with only a few areas that need to be worked on. I doubt that anyone reading this book has reached their goal of gaining total power over the self. Even the Buddhas don’t have power over their selves all the time! There are always new events that challenge a sense of personal power. 3. Each day look at the chart and ask yourself, ‘Do I see myself at the same place, or have I moved?’ Move the pin if you have moved. 4. If you keep in mind the way you want to go, it will help you make choices about what you are doing in your life. Before you take any action in life, ask yourself: ‘Is this action moving me to a more powerful place?’ If it isn’t, think again about doing it. A word of warning – if you go ahead anyway, knowing the action will keep you in a place of pain, don’t get angry with yourself about it. Use your mistakes to learn more about yourself. 5. Make your use of the chart fun. Having it as a game keeps you relaxed about how you are getting on. If you have children, they can create their own charts, and you can make a family game out of the fun of growing. 6. You might want to make different charts for different areas of your life. To be really powerful, you need to be in charge of all aspects of your life – your work, relationships, home, body, and so on. Often people are very powerful in some parts of their lives and very weak in others. For example, I am very powerful in terms of my career, but need to work on the area of exercise. To help you on your Pain-to-Power path, it’s important that you begin to develop Pain-to-Power words. The way you use words has a huge impact on the quality of your life. Certain words make you weaker; others make you powerful. Choose to move to Pain-to-Power Words as follows: PAIN-TO-POWER VOCABULARY • ‘I can’t’ suggests you have no control over your life, but ‘I won’t’ puts an issue in the area of choice. From this moment on, stop saying, ‘I can’t’.

Just how important a close moment-to-moment connection between mother and infant can be was illustrated by a cleverly designed study, known as the “double TV experiment,” in which infants and mothers interacted via a closed-circuit television system. In separate rooms, infant and mother observed each other and, on “live feed,” communicated by means of the universal infant-mother language: gestures, sounds, smiles, facial expressions. The infants were happy during this phase of the experiment. “When the infants were unknowingly replayed the ‘happy responses’ from the mother recorded from the prior minute,” writes the UCLA child psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, “they still became as profoundly distressed as infants do in the classic ‘flat face’ experiments in which mothers-in-person gave no facial emotional response to their infant’s bid for attunement.” Why were the infants distressed despite the sight of their mothers’ happy and friendly faces? Because happy and friendly are not enough. What they needed were signals that the mother is aligned with, responsive to and participating in their mental states from moment to moment. All that was lacking in the instant video replay, during which infants saw their mother’s face unresponsive to the messages they, the infants, were sending out. This sharing of emotional spaces is called attunement. Emotional stress on the mother interferes with infant brain development because it tends to interfere with the attunement contact. Attunement is necessary for the normal development of the brain pathways and neurochemical apparatus of attention and emotional selfregulation. It is a finely calibrated process requiring that the parent remain herself in a relatively nonstressed, non-anxious, nondepressed state of mind. Its clearest expression is the rapturous mutual gaze infant and mother direct at each other, locked in a private and special emotional realm, from which, at that moment, the rest of the world is as completely excluded as from the womb. Attunement does not mean mechanically imitating the infant. It cannot be simulated, even with the best of goodwill. As we all know, there are differences between a real smile and a staged smile. The muscles of smiling are exactly the same in each case, but the signals that set the smile muscles to work do not come from the same centers in the brain. As a consequence, those muscles respond differently to the signals, depending on their origin. This is why only very good actors can mimic a genuine, heartfelt smile. The attunement process is far too subtle to be maintained by a simple act of will on the part of the parent. Infants, particularly sensitive infants, intuit the difference between a parent’s real psychological states and her attempts to soothe and protect the infant by means of feigned emotional expressions. A loving parent who is feeling depressed or anxious may try to hide that fact from the infant, but the effort is futile. In fact, it is much easier to fool an adult with forced emotion than a baby. The emotional sensory radar of the infant has not yet been scrambled. It reads feelings clearly. They cannot be hidden from the infant behind a screen of words, or camouflaged by well-meant but forced gestures. It is unfortunate but true that we grow far more stupid than that by the time we reach adulthood.

posttraumatic growth. Many people who suffer shattering experiences are scarred for life, with little hope of recovery. But for others, shattering experiences prompt them to face their fears, transcend the horrors of the past, and become resilient. PTSD is not a life sentence. POSTTRAUMATIC GROWTH While PTSD grabs the headlines, news stories about posttraumatic growth are rare. Up to two thirds of those who experience traumatic events do not develop PTSD. This estimate is based on studies of the mental health of people who have undergone similar experiences. Studies of US veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan show this two-thirds to one-third split. What’s the difference between the two groups? Research reveals a correlation between negative childhood events and the development of adult PTSD. Yet some people emerge from miserable childhoods stronger and more resilient than their peers. Adversity can sometimes make us even stronger than we might have been had we not suffered it. Research shows that people who experience a traumatic event but are then able to process and integrate the experience are more resilient than those who don’t experience such an event. Such people are even better prepared for future adversity. When you’re exposed to a stressor and successfully regulate your brain’s fight-or-flight response, you increase the neural connections associated with handling trauma, as we saw in Chapter 6. Neural plasticity works in your favor. You increase the size of the signaling pathways in your nervous system that handle recovery from stress. These larger and improved signaling pathways equip you to handle future stress better, making you more resilient in the face of life’s upsets and problems.

Life is pretty short yet magnanimous if we know just how to live right. It isn't that easy, it takes a lot of our soul, sometimes too many broken pieces to finally come together in binding a masterpiece that smiles like a solitary star forever gazing around at the music of an eternal cosmos. The most brutal yet beautiful truth about Life is that It is marked, marked with Time where every moment takes us closer to death, it doesn't have to sound or feel bad or scary because death is the most inevitable truth in this mortal world. While the knowledge of death jolts our mind with the uncertainty of Life, clutches us in the emotion of fear to think of pain or the loss of bonds, when we acknowledge that as a part of our souls' journey and take every moment as our precious gift, a blessing to experience this Life with its beautiful garden of emotions blossoming with wonderful smiles that we can paint on others, then we make our Life magnanimous, then we make even the very face of death as that of an angel coming to take us to a different voyage, soaked in a lot of memories and experiences beautifully binding our soul. I have realised that when we live each day as if it's the last day of our life, we become more loving and gentle to everyone around and especially to our own selves. We forgive and love more openly, we grace and embrace every opportunity we get to be kind, to stay in touch with everything that truly matters. I have realised that when we rise every morning with gratitude knowing that the breath of air still passes through our body, just in the mere understanding that we have one more day to experience Life once again, we stay more compassionate towards everything and everyone around and invest more of our selves into everything and everyone that truly connect and resonate with our soul. I have realised that when we consciously try to be good and kind, no matter however bad or suffocating a situation is we always end up taking everything at its best holding on to the firm grip of goodness, accepting everything as a part of our souls' lesson or just a turn of Time or Fate and that shapes into our strength and roots our core with the truest understanding of Life, the simple act of going on and letting go. Letting go of anything and everything that chains our Soul while going on with a Heart open to Love and a Soul ready to absorb all that falls along the pathway of this adventure called Life. I have realised that when we are kind and do anything good for another person, that gives us the most special happiness, something so pure that even our hearts don't know how deep that joy permeates inside our soul. I have realised that at the end of the day we do good not because of others but because of our own selves, for if tomorrow death comes to grace me I hope to smile and say I have Lived, loved unconditionally and embraced forgiveness, kindness and goodness and all the other colours of Love with every breath I caught, I have lived a Life magnanimous. So each time someone's unkind towards you, hold back and smile, and try to give your warmth to that person. Because Kindness is not a declaration of who deserves it, it's a statement of who you are. So each time some pieces of your heart lay scattered, hold them up and embrace everyone of them with Love. Because Love is not a magic potion that is spilled from a hollow space, it's a breath of eternity that flows through the tunnel of your soul. So each time Life puts up a question of your Happiness, answer back with a Smile of Peace. Because Happiness is not what you look for in others, it's what you create in every passing moment, with the power of Life, that is pretty short when we see how counted it stands in days but actually turns out absolutely incredibly magnanimous when loved and lived in moments.

The realization that there were electrical pathways connecting the brain to the body wasn’t systematically analyzed until the 1930s, when Dr. Wilder Penfield began working with epilepsy patients, who often suffered from debilitating convulsions and seizures that were potentially life-threatening. For them, the last option was to have brain surgery, which involved removing parts of the skull and exposing the brain. (Since the brain has no pain sensors, a person can be conscious during this entire procedure, so Dr. Penfield used only a local anesthetic during the operation.) Dr. Penfield noticed that when he stimulated certain parts of the cortex with an electrode, different parts of the body would respond. He suddenly realized that he could draw a rough one-to-one correspondence between specific regions of the cortex and the human body. His drawings were so accurate that they are still used today in almost unaltered form. They had an immediate impact on both the scientific community and the general public. In one diagram, you could see which region of the brain roughly controlled which function, and how important each function was. For example, because our hands and mouth are so vital for survival, a considerable amount of brain power is devoted to controlling them, while the sensors in our back hardly register at all. Furthermore, Penfield found that by stimulating parts of the temporal lobe, his patients suddenly relived long-forgotten memories in a crystal-clear fashion. He was shocked when a patient, in the middle of brain surgery, suddenly blurted out, “It was like … standing in the doorway at [my] high school.… I heard my mother talking on the phone, telling my aunt to come over that night.” Penfield realized that he was tapping into memories buried deep inside the brain. When he published his results in 1951, they created another transformation in our understanding of the brain.

Similarly, the brains of mice that have learned many tasks are slightly different from the brains of other mice that have not learned these tasks. It is not so much that the number of neurons has changed, but rather that the nature of the neural connections has been altered by the learning process. In other words, learning actually changes the structure of the brain. This raises the old adage “practice makes perfect.” Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald Hebb discovered an important fact about the wiring of the brain: the more we exercise certain skills, the more certain pathways in our brains become reinforced, so the task becomes easier. Unlike a digital computer, which is just as dumb today as it was yesterday, the brain is a learning machine with the ability to rewire its neural pathways every time it learns something. This is a fundamental difference between a digital computer and the brain. This lesson applies not only to London taxicab drivers, but also to accomplished concert musicians as well. According to psychologist Dr. K. Anders Ericsson and colleagues, who studied master violinists at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music, top concert violinists could easily rack up ten thousand hours of grueling practice by the time they were twenty years old, practicing more than thirty hours per week. By contrast, he found that students who were merely exceptional studied only eight thousand hours or fewer, and future music teachers practiced only a total of four thousand hours. Neurologist Daniel Levitin says, “The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything.… In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.” Malcolm Gladwell, writing in the book Outliers, calls this the “10,000-hour rule.

The feelings of powerlessness are an adaptive function. The child adopts behavior that sets himself or herself up for more of the same. He or she becomes antisocial and stops evoking a feeling of warmth in other people, thus reinforcing the notion of powerlessness. Children then stay on the same pathway. These courses are not set in stone, but the longer a child stays on one course, the harder it is to move on to another. By studying the behavior of adults in later life who had shared this experience of learning powerlessness during infancy, the psychologists who specialize in attachment theory have found that an assumption of powerlessness, once lodged in the brains of infants, turns out to be difficult—though not impossible—to unlearn. Those who grow into adulthood carrying this existential assumption of powerlessness were found to be quick to assume in later life that impulsive and hostile reactions to unmet needs were the only sensible response. Indeed, longitudinal studies conducted by the University of Minnesota over more than thirty years have found that America’s prison population is heavily overrepresented by people who fell into this category as infants. The key difference determining which lesson is learned and which posture is adopted rests with the pattern of communication between the infant and his or her primary caregiver or caregivers, not with the specific information conveyed by the caregiver. What matters is the openness, responsiveness, and reliability, and two-way nature of the communication environment. I believe that the viability of democracy depends upon the openness, reliability, appropriateness, responsiveness, and two-way nature of the communication environment. After all, democracy depends upon the regular sending and receiving of signals—not only between the people and those who aspire to be their elected representatives but also among the people themselves. It is the connection of each individual to the national conversation that is the key. I believe that the citizens of any democracy learn, over time, to adopt a basic posture toward the possibilities of self-government.

Ellen Braun, an accomplished agile manager, noticed that different behaviors emerge over time as telltale signs of a team’s emotional maturity, a key component in their ability to adjust as things happen to them and to get to the tipping point when “an individual’s self interest shifts to alignment with the behaviors that support team achievement” (Braun 2010). It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. —James Thurber Team Dynamics Survey Ellen created a list of survey questions she first used as personal reflection while she observed teams in action. Using these questions the same way, as a pathway to reflection, an agile coach can gain insight into potential team problems or areas for emotional growth. Using them with the team will be more insightful, perhaps as material for a retrospective where the team has the time and space to chew on the ideas that come up. While the team sprints, though, mull them over on your own, and notice what they tell you about team dynamics (Braun 2010). • How much does humor come into day-to-day interaction within the team? • What are the initial behaviors that the team shows in times of difficulty and stress? • How often are contradictory views raised by team members (including junior team members)? • When contradictory views are raised by team members, how often are they fully discussed? • Based on the norms of the team, how often do team members compromise in the course of usual team interactions (when not forced by circumstances)? • To what extent can any team member provide feedback to any other team member (think about negative and positive feedback)? • To what extent does any team member actually provide feedback to any other team member? • How likely would it be that a team member would discuss issues with your performance or behavior with another team member without giving feedback to you directly (triangulating)? • To what extent do you as an individual get support from your team on your personal career goals (such as learning a new skill from a team member)? • How likely would you be to ask team members for help if it required your admission that you were struggling with a work issue? • How likely would you be to share personal information with the team that made you feel vulnerable? • To what extent is the team likely to bring into team discussions an issue that may create conflict or disagreement within the team? • How likely or willing are you to bring into a team discussion an issue that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view? • If you bring an item into a team discussion that is likely to have many different conflicting points of view, how often does the team reach a consensus that takes into consideration all points of view and feels workable to you? • Can you identify an instance in the past two work days when you felt a sense of warmth or inclusion within the context of your team? • Can you identify an instance in the past two days when you felt a sense of disdain or exclusion within the context of your team? • How much does the team make you feel accountable for your work? Mulling over these questions solo or posing them to the team will likely generate a lot of raw material to consider. When you step back from the many answers, perhaps one or two themes jump out at you, signaling the “big things” to address.

You have unfairly tasked me with three very difficult questions. I was very interested in your comments about Christ’s atheism on the cross. That final moment of atheism, that’s something I have never thought about in that way. It’s a very interesting thought because what it really ….it’s an unbelievably merciful idea in some sense. That the burden of life is so unbearable and you see in the Christian passion, of course, torture, unfair judgement by society, betrayal by friends and then a low death. That’s about …as bad as it gets. Right? Which is why it is an archetypal story. It’s about as bad as it gets. And the story that you describe points out that it’s so bad that even God himself might despair about the essential quality of being. Right? Right. So that is merciful in some sense because it does say that there is something that’s built into the fabric of existence, that tests us so severely in our faith about being itself that even God himself falls prey to the temptation to doubt. So that’s…ok now… There is a very large critical literature that suggests that if you want to develop optimal resilience, what you do is lay out a pathway towards somewhere better, someone comes in, they have a problem, you try to figure out what the problem is and then you try to figure out what might constitute a solution. So you have a map. And it’s a tentative map of how you get from where things aren’t so good to where they are better. And then you have the person go out in the world and confront those things that they are avoiding, that are stopping them from moving to that higher place. And there’s an archetypal reality to that, you’re in a fallen state, you are attempting to redeem yourself and there is a process by which that has to occur. And that process involves voluntary confrontation with what you’re afraid of, disgusted by and inclined to avoid. And that’s works. Every psychological school agrees upon that exposure therapy, psychoanalysts expose you to the tragedies of your past, and redeem you in that manner, the behaviourists expose you to the terrors of the present and redeem you in that manner, but there is a broad agreement between psychological schools that that works. My sense is that we are called upon as individuals precisely to do that in our life. We are faced by this unbearable reality, that you made reference to when you talked about the situation on the cross, life itself is fundamentally - and this is a pessimism that we might share - it’s fundamentally suffering and malevolence. But this is I think where we differ, I believe that the evidence suggests that the light that you discover in your life is proportionate to the amount of darkness that you are willing to forthrightly confront and that there is no necessarily upper limit to that. So I think that the good that people are capable of it’s a higher good than the evil that people are capable of. And believe me that I do not say that lightly, given that I know about the evil that people are capable of. And I believe that the central psychological message of the biblical corpus fundamentally it’s that. That’s why it culminates in some sense with the idea that it is necessary to confront the devil and to accept the unjustness of your tortured mortality. If you can do that, and that’s a challenge sufficient to challenge even God himself, you have the best chance of transcending it, and living the kind of life that would set your house in order and everyone’s house in order at the same time. And I think that’s true even in states like North Korea...

Are you seeing Jesus yet? Eric the ayahuasca virgin asks me this morning over a late brunch at the Yellow Rose... We're trading visions like trading card stats, comparing our different curanderos and gossiping like schoolgirls while the street vendors and fabric hustlers stand around by the dozen... 'Am I becoming like Jesus would probably be a better way to explain it,' I respond, and it's true. I feel like I'm walking on water. The aftermath of the ayahuasca experience is glorious: I feel lighter, clearner, like a hard drive that's been defragged and all my pathways are re-linked up to each other, whole, and able to express joy once again. This is what it fees like to be healed, my whole body radiates from the inside-out.

Marriage is one salvation pathway among many, although it contains different possibilities.

And yet what a potentially dangerous device, what a terrible opportunity to bury valuable, even vital sensory information beneath the fears and prejudices and suppressions of the higher brain! We absolutely must exercise constant discrimination upon the steady barrage of sensations if they are to take on any meaningful form and direct sequential activities; but what bizarre, even ghastly shapes this discrimination is free to invent. Attitudes, moods, neuroses, fixations, and avoidances of all kinds contribute to the sensitivity of the ascending sensory pathways themselves, so that minor irritations can be magnified to overwhelming proportions, pleasures can be erased or actually turned into torments, serious internal difficulties can be blotted completely out of consciousness. The principle of selectivity is crucial to organized behavior, but the possibilities for its abuse are enormous. The mind is capable of distorting incoming information to almost any degree, and it can actually construct a body image that has very little to do with the bulk of sensory data which the body is providing. These two directions of sensory transmission are both occurring all the time, and we cannot say that our idea of reality is more clearly established by one than by the other. Or, if we have to make a choice, we must admit that it is the descending, centrifugal sensory current that is the more important one: We all receive stimulation from the same external world through identical sensory devices, but it is the process of selection and interpretation which makes us respond differently, makes each of us the unique individuals that we are. In this process, discriminating mind descends into and is active in every synapse of the sensory system. The two processes of transmitting data through the nervous system and of interpreting it cannot be separated. Information is processed at each synaptic level of the afferent pathways. There is no one point along the afferent pathways or one particular level beneath the central nervous system below which activity cannot be a conscious sensation and above which it is a recognizable, defineable sensory experience. Perception has many levels, and it seems that the many separate stages are arranged in a hierarchy, with the more complex stages receiving input only after they are processed by the more elementary systems.13 And the more elementary systems are in turn facilitated or inhibited by the higher, more complex ones. The conclusions towards which these observations push us seems unequivocal. The cognitive, associational processes of the higher brain have just as much to do with our construction of physical reality—both within us and outside of us—as do our sensory devices and their specific stimulations. And remember, it is the perception of this sensory reality which initiates and directs our motor responses, our postures, and our behavior.

The pathways with axons pointed towards the core, and which carry impulses inward, are called the afferent pathways. They originate in the various sensory endings of the body—the exteroceptors on the surface, the proprioceptors in the connective tissues (especially the joints), and the interoceptors in the the internal organs. Their final axons terminate in the sensory cortex. They are often referred to as the sensory pathways. Their job is to carry to all the levels of the nervous system information about everything that is affecting the organism—that is, all sensory stimulation. Four of these afferent pathways are short and distinct, arising from the highly localized and specialized areas of the “special senses”—sight, hearing, taste, and smell. The fifth kind of sensory information, that wide array of sensations we refer to collectively as “touch,” converges on the cortex from virtually every surface and cranny of the body. These are the “somatic senses,” and they include all of the pathways and endings which inform us of our internal state of affairs and our relationship to the outside world. The afferent, inflowing pathways of the nervous system constitute one of the principal tools of bodywork. It is by their means that surface contact and pressure enter into the deeper strata of the mind, where genetic potential and sensory experience are fused into behavior and character. Each successive afferent neuron is a finger reaching deeper and deeper into the interior, making its influence felt on all levels which influence behavior. It is sensory input which has conditioned our reflexes, postures, and habits into the patterns in which we find ourselves living. Nothing would seem to be more reasonable than the expectation that different sensory input can recondition these habits and patterns, alter them, improve them. This input can be different both in the sense of being more, giving additional nutritive contact to the various subtle degrees of “deprivation dwarfism,” and in the sense of being more pleasurable, more caring, softening and dissolving compulsive patterns that have been created by pain and stress.

Because the efferent pathways lead directly to muscle cells, it is tempting to regard their activities as the cause of our motor behavior. But they are nothing of the kind until they are themselves stimulated by their numerous connections with the spinal cord and the brain (remember that an estimated fifteen thousand axons can converge upon a single terminal motor neuron). And these deeper, more central activities are in turn initiated and directed to a large degree by afferent, sensory stimulation. In bodywork, it is often problematical aberrations of motor response that we want to change, but sensory affects are our only means of doing so. We know we are doing our job when our hands feel jumpy reflexes smoothing out, high levels of tone decreasing, pliability returning to stiffened areas, range of motion increasing. These are all quantitative and qualitative shifts in motor activity. But we also must know that it is only our skilled manipulation of sensory stimulation which can accomplish these things, because it is primarily sensory associations which have conditioned the muscular patterns in the first place. Until the body feels something different, it cannot act differently. Only when contact with the world is perceived as something other than jabs and buffets can the organism respond with something other than aggression and defense.

Those that form the nucleus of our friendships and family bonds, at any given point in our lives, do not necessarily remain with us through time. There may be a variety of reasons for this. The relationships themselves may be fragile or their world may only ever have been intended to collide with ours for a short span of time. Ambition and love draw people in different directions, work lives can create nomadic pathways and loves journeys can take us on geographically diverse paths. Death may also arrive to cause its ultimate diversion or, as so often is the case these days, our mental health may become mental illness.

Making that possible involved creating relationships with several partners who helped Medtronic accomplish customers’ jobs. “Through the assessment of Healthy Heart for All, Medtronic understood the need for partners in different stages of the patient care pathway who can be a strong support in removing the barriers to treatment access,” says Dasgupta. “In this case, partners with capabilities in financing, administration of loans, screening and counselling of patients played a major role. With programs like Healthy Heart for All, Medtronic is delivering greater value to patients, healthcare professionals and hospitals. And it is this value which brings true differentiation where product differentiation may not be easy to demonstrate.

These descending sensory pathways originate in the cortex, and their influence can either inhibit or facilitate the sensory input from any area of the body, greatly amplify or suppress altogether any given sensation. Sensory activity within the central nervous system is a Janus head, a two-way stream; signals originating in the brain have just as much to do with conscious sensation as do actual stimulations of the peripheral nerve endings. In fact, it is the descending paths which determine the sensitivity of any particular ascending pathway. The wide varieties of sexual response—among different individuals and within the same individual at different times—provide us with a clear example of this centrifugal influence upon incoming sensations: Depending upon past experiences and the present situation, the same stimulation of the genitals can produce intense ecstasy, bland and neutral sensations, or extreme discomfort. Orgasm can be immediate, or deferred indefinitely. And the imagination alone can produce constant engorgement, utter impotence, and all the degrees of arousal in between. The descending paths can color all kinds of sensory input to this degree. These pathways allow the mind to determine the active threshold for different sensory signals, and make it possible to focus attention upon a single source of input in the midst of many. It is difficult to imagine what practical use our sensory apparatus would be to us without such a mechanism. We would have no way of selecting a voice from all the other sounds around us, of locating specific objects within the swirl of visual impressions, or of retiring from our senses for contemplation and sleep. This centrifugal principle of selectivity is as vital to our appropriate responses to the world as is stimulation itself.

Like the spinal cord, many of the brain stem’s interconnections are “hard-wired,” and their stimulation initiates obligatory responses that are not unlike those of the spinal reflex arcs. It is these relatively fixed pathways and responses which control the range of behavior and style of movement that are so characteristic of each species; a cat and a small dog have pretty much the same skeletal and muscular structure, yet each moves this structure about in ways which clearly identify it as canine or feline. These distinctly different styles of moving similar physical frames are the result of different patterns of integrating sensory information and of organizing motor commands, primarily in the spinal cord and in the older, “reptilian” portion of the brain—that is, the centers of gamma motor control.

I can bring a glass of water smoothly to my lips because practice has taught me just how much contractile effort and speed is necessary to lift it and carry it through the air without either dropping it or throwing the water towards the ceiling. This familiar feel for the resistance of the glass of water, and for the appropriate muscular effort to both overcome that resistance and remain in constant control, are functions of the variable settings of the inhibitory response of the Golgi tendon organs. And I use this reflex mechanism every time I use a screwdriver or a wrench, row a boat, push a car, do a push-up or a deep knee bend, pick up an object—in short, every time I need a specific amount of effort delivered in order to accomplish a specific task—any time “too much” is just as mistaken as “too little.” This includes, of course, almost all the controlled uses to which I put my muscles. Now in order to be helpful in all situations, this variable setting of the tension values which trigger the reflex must be capable of both a wide range of adjustment and rapid shifts. Objects that we need to manipulate with carefully controlled efforts may be small or large, light or heavy. Building a rock wall can require just as much finesse and balance as building a house of playing cards, but the levels of tension which require equally sensitive monitoring are very different in each case. Since these relative tension values can be altered rapidly at will, and are refined with practice, it seems evident that they can be controlled by higher brain centers. This is presumably done through descending neural pathways which can generate impulses that either facilitate or inhibit the action of the Golgi/motor neuron synapses. In this way, control signals from higher nervous centers could automatically set the level of tension at which the muscle would be maintained. If the required tension is high, then the muscle tension would be set by the servo-feedback mechanism to this high level of tension. On the other hand, if the desired tension level is low, the muscle tension would be set this level.9

There is another way of separating the whole system into major divisions, divisions which are not as visually obvious as peripheral and central, but which in some ways more accurately represent actual functional distinctions. Roughly half of our neurons have their dendrites reaching out towards the surfaces of our organisms, and their axons reaching in towards the core. This means that they propagate their action potentials in an inward—centripetal—direction. The other half are arranged with their dendrites reaching in towards the core and their axons reaching out towards the periphery; these neurons send their action potentials in an outward—centrifugal—direction. The pathways created by these differently oriented neurons do not stop at the threshold of the central nervous system; both can be traced from the periphery to the spinal cord, throughout the cord’s length, through the brainstem and the hypothalamus, and finally to the literal summit of the brain, the sensory and motor cortexes. This division is based, then, not on the separation of these different anatomical structures, but upon the direction of action potential flow through those structures and the specific pathways they take.

We cannot receive, however, unless we set aside time for God to speak—and then let him set the agenda for our discussion. I’ve found that my agenda is frequently different from God’s. He must be the initiator in my spiritual walk. He knows what I need to hear. When I’m consumed with my temporal problems, I miss the blessing of being out of doors.

One of the most powerful antidotes to addiction is participating in different activities, lifting the addicts out of themselves and into positive, constructive acts of creation.

Not miscalculation, bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy. One common reason for choosing avoidance is the pain or difficulty of choice. When leaders are unwilling or unable to make choices among competing values and parties, bad strategy is the consequence. A second pathway to bad strategy is the siren song of template-style strategy—filling in the blanks with vision, mission, values, and strategies. This path offers a one-size-fits-all substitute for the hard work of analysis and coordinated action. A third pathway to bad strategy is New Thought—the belief that all you need to succeed is a positive mental attitude. There are other pathways to bad strategy, but these three are the most common. Understanding how and why they are taken should help you guide your footsteps elsewhere. THE

While it is possible for us to destroy our lives through a single, enormous blunder, what King Solomon describes here is a more subtle path to ruin. The mess is achieved through apathy. Not a single huge mistake, but slow and steady neglect. It’s like Ant Power in reverse. I want to pause for a moment and give a word of encouragement to those of you who are suffering the “sudden” effects of prolonged neglect. Often our gracious Lord is pleased to use a financial, emotional, or marital earthquake as a wake-up call. Don’t let your pain be wasted. Use this challenging, humbling experience to begin building your life in a new and different way. The pathway to a renewed life often passes through seasons of disorienting failure. Don’t lose hope. Today is a new day.

God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference; living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that you will make all things right if I surrender to your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy

Your productivity goals are, or at least should be, different from others’. If they are aligned with your stage in life, your values, your particular skillset, the measure is really yourself. Only you can determine if you are successful or not.

One reason why fundamentalists have such high ACR scores may be due to church doctrine. Many of the fundamentalist theologians who espouse supernatural interpretations of scripture are often the same ones who advocate strict child-rearing practices.20 For example, Rev. James Dobson’s best-selling book, Dare to Discipline, explicitly links its fundamentalist beliefs to having obedient and well-mannered children. And upon reflection, this connection between strict child rearing and fundamentalism is not at all surprising. Many fundamentalist sects demand submission and obedience to the strict will of God. It’s no surprise, then, that obedience and respect are regarded as desirable traits among people who see them as pathways to salvation. That noted, it’s also important to recognize that not all authoritarians are fundamentalists. Indeed, 45 percent of strong authoritarians do not hold fundamentalist beliefs. And some of this difference may have to do with another factor emphasized by the original authors of The Authoritarian Personality: childhood experience. By their account, being raised in an overly harsh or punitive social environment contributes to authoritarianism. These same factors might also contribute to magical thinking. Our research suggests that this is plausible. In our surveys, we asked respondents to describe their childhood in very general terms. Did they grow up in a •  very strict house where all rules had to be followed (31 percent); •  moderate house where only some rules were strictly enforced (59 percent); •  relaxed house where my parents largely let me alone (10 percent). Not surprisingly, these items are correlated with ACR scores. Authoritarians are far more likely to report being raised in strict homes; for example, 42 percent of people raised in strict homes are strong authoritarians, compared with only 23 percent of people from relaxed homes. More important, however, is that the type of home you were raised in is also a big predictor of your Intuitionism score. People from strict homes score four points higher on our Intuitionism scale than people from either moderate or relaxed homes, even when we take their ACR scores into account.

Although a few enzymes (e.g. carbonic anhydrase) catalyse a single isolated reaction, most are part of a team that catalyses a series of reactions in which each enzyme picks up its predecessor’s product, taking it a step further to create a metabolic pathway. This pathway may be to build up, say, an amino acid from simpler starting molecules, or conversely to break down food molecules to yield new chemical building blocks and sometimes also to trap useable energy. Life is the combined outcome of this seemingly logical enzyme teamwork. Like most things in the living world, this gives the appearance of purposeful planning down to the last detail. Such meticulous perfection would in past eras have been confidently attributed to the attentive skill of an all-powerful Creator. Since Charles Darwin, however, we have an alternative way of explaining how things in the living world come to be the way they are. Darwin led us to understand that natural selection could bring about stepwise beneficial adaptation over thousands or even millions of years, and, in the 150 years since the Origin of Species, we have learnt far more about the genetic mechanisms that can bring about such change. Does this kind of thinking work at the molecular level when we come to look at metabolic pathways and individual enzymes? In fact the study of enzymes and other proteins allows us to be a great deal more certain than Victorian biologists could be. Many of the distinctive biological characteristics studied in comparing animals and plants, like eye colour or wing shape, have turned out to be controlled by multiple genes, whereas, in looking at individual proteins, we are looking at the products of individual genes, and latterly we can even examine those genes directly. The possibility of determining protein amino acid sequences, and, more recently, the corresponding DNA sequences, allows comparison of the same enzyme from many species and also of enzymes catalysing different but similar reactions from a single species.

Self-parenting exercises taught me to slowly rebuild healthy self-talk. But it must be said: Even though I know reparenting has helped dozens of my friends and acquaintances, almost everyone has told me it’s exhausting. Reparenting takes time, and concentration, and calmness. It takes an intellectual and physical effort to shove aside the comfortably worn neural pathways and go in a different direction.