“
I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.
”
”
Martin Buber
“
The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous and absolutely liberating.
”
”
Aaron Lauritsen (100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip)
“
Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.
”
”
Salman Rushdie
“
No, the true face is wretchedly simple and empty. The absolute joy in life, in friendship, in love, is learning about a person, deciphering them, taking each and every mask off to find a new one, waiting to be explored and understood.
”
”
Tarun Shanker (These Vicious Masks (These Vicious Masks, #1))
“
Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution...Who can give us the certainty that, in the confession and the forgiveness of our sins, we are not dealing with ourselves but with the living God? God gives us this certainty through our brother. Our brother breaks the circle of self-deception. A man who confesses his sins in the presence of a brother knows that he is no longer alone with himself; he experiences the presence of God in the reality of the other person.
”
”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community)
“
[...]we must ask ourselves whether we have not often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. And is not the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the fact that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness.
”
”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community)
“
But one must remember that they were all men with systems. Freud, monumentally hipped on sex (for which he personally had little use) and almost ignorant of Nature: Adler, reducing almost everything to the will to power: and Jung, certainly the most humane and gentlest of them, and possibly the greatest, but nevertheless the descendant of parsons and professors, and himself a super-parson and a super-professor. all men of extraordinary character, and they devised systems that are forever stamped with that character.… Davey, did you ever think that these three men who were so splendid at understanding others had first to understand themselves? It was from their self-knowledge they spoke. They did not go trustingly to some doctor and follow his lead because they were too lazy or too scared to make the inward journey alone. They dared heroically. And it should never be forgotten that they made the inward journey while they were working like galley-slaves at their daily tasks, considering other people's troubles, raising families, living full lives. They were heroes, in a sense that no space-explorer can be a hero, because they went into the unknown absolutely alone. Was their heroism simply meant to raise a whole new crop of invalids? Why don't you go home and shoulder your yoke, and be a hero too?
”
”
Robertson Davies (The Manticore (The Deptford Trilogy, #2))
“
We humans are explorers and pioneers, and we find our inner strength when the end state is the absolute unknown.
”
”
Zak Bagans (I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead)
“
Look at any randomly selected piece of your world. Encoded deep in the biology of every cell in every blade of grass, in every insect’s wing, in every bacterium cell, is the history of the third planet from the Sun in a Solar System making its way lethargically around a galaxy called the Milky Way. Its shape, form, function, colour, smell, taste, molecular structure, arrangement of atoms, sequence of bases, and possibilities for the future are all absolutely unique. There is nowhere else in the observable Universe where you will see precisely that little clump of emergent, living complexity. It is wonderful.
”
”
Brian Cox (Wonders of Life: Exploring the Most Extraordinary Phenomenon in the Universe)
“
Most people in this country are looking for literature that is useful. They feel that just exploring their feelings is good enough - they should be reading about leveraged buy-outs or how to get thin. We live in a culture that is so absolutely, madly focused on commercialism and on creating money and completely turned away from any other kind of creative value. People don't generally turn to poetry unless they're bereaved or have fallen in love. Or in adolescence, when their feelings are very strong and turbulent. I think most of us are dying for lack of spirit in this culture.
”
”
Erica Jong
“
These include the need to express one’s gifts and do meaningful work, the need to love and be loved, the need to be truly seen and heard, and to see and hear other people, the need for connection to nature, the need to play, explore, and have adventures, the need for emotional intimacy, the need to serve something larger than oneself, and the need sometimes to do absolutely nothing and just be.
”
”
Charles Eisenstein (The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible (Sacred Activism Book 2))
“
no one can absolutely control the direction of his life; but each person can certainly influence it. The armchair explorers who complain that they never got their “one lucky shot” were never really infected by the incurable drive to explore. Those who have the bug—go.
”
”
Jacques-Yves Cousteau (The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World)
“
Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination, and of the heart.
”
”
Salman Rushdie
“
We'd fought and fucked, but I'd never kissed Rip before. At first he froze, completely astonished, and then his arms were synching around me, pulling me close. His lips were warm, firm, and sweetly exploring. It felt absolutely, totally right. I sank into that kiss, feeling as if I'd come home.
”
”
A.J. Adams (Dark Hunter (Zeta Cartel #4))
“
He checked her over while mentally checking himself. “Environment suits sealed up. Breather masks in hand. Daemons. Blades. Transmitters. Healthy respect for the adversary—you’ve got that, right?”
One corner of her mouth curled up. “Absolutely.
”
”
G.S. Jennsen (Sidespace (Aurora Renegades, #1))
“
Luckily, the world is absolutely full of interesting things to do. Only lack of imagination, or lack of energy, stand in the way. Otherwise each of us could be a poet or musician, an inventor or explorer, an amateur scholar, scientist, artist, or collector.
”
”
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life)
“
Being indifferent about sexual abuse is an absolute assault on the truth of who the victim is!
”
”
Lorraine Nilon (Breaking Free From the Chains of Silence: A respectful exploration into the ramifications of abuse hidden behind closed doors)
“
Multiplicity is what allows two people to get along and feel close—they each know that their experience will be accepted as true and explored as important, even if those experiences are different. Building strong connections relies on the assumption that no one is right in the absolute, because understanding, not convincing, is what makes people feel secure in a relationship.
”
”
Becky Kennedy (Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction)
“
Self-defense isn’t a one-stop shop that will make her invincible, but I’m hoping I can light a fire inside her to maybe explore this further. It doesn’t hurt that I’ll have to touch her while we do it. While I think that may make me an asshole, I can live with that fact. I would never hurt her, but I wouldn’t mind making her come a time or twelve. Yeah, that absolutely makes me an asshole, but I’m still okay with it.
”
”
Aly Martinez (Among the Echoes (Wrecked and Ruined, #2.5))
“
I hold the hands of people I never touch.
I provide comfort to people I never embrace.
I watch people walk into brick walls, the same ones over and over again, and I coax them to turn around and try to walk in a different direction.
People rarely see me gladly. As a rule, I catch the residue of their despair. I see people who are broken, and people who only think they are broken. I see people who have had their faces rubbed in their failures. I see weak people wanting anesthesia and strong people who wonder what they have done to make such an enemy of fate. I am often the final pit stop people take before they crawl across the finish line that is marked: I give up.
Some people beg me to help.
Some people dare me to help.
Sometimes the beggars and the dare-ers look the same. Absolutely the same. I'm supposed to know how to tell them apart.
Some people who visit me need scar tissue to cover their wounds.
Some people who visit me need their wounds opened further, explored for signs of infection and contamination. I make those calls, too.
Some days I'm invigorated by it all. Some days I'm numbed.
Always, I'm humbled by the role of helper.
And, occasionally, I'm ambushed.
~ Stephen White "Critical Conditions
”
”
Stephen White (Critical Conditions (Alan Gregory, #6))
“
It is a special blessing to belong among those who can and may devote their best energies to the contemplation and exploration of objective and timeless things. How happy and grateful I am for having been granted this blessing, which bestows upon one a large measure of independence from one's personal fate and from the attitude of one's contemporaries. Yet this independence must not inure us to the awareness of the duties that constantly bind us to the past, present and future of humankind at large.
Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here, involuntarily and uninvited, for a short stay, without knowing the why and the wherefore. In our daily lives we feel only that man is here for the sake of others, for those whom we love and for many other beings whose fate is connected with our own.
I am often troubled by the thought that my life is based to such a large extent on the work of my fellow human beings, and I am aware of my great indebtedness to them.
I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.
I have never coveted affluence and luxury and even despise them a good deal. My passion for social justice has often brought me into conflict with people, as has my aversion to any obligation and dependence I did not regard as absolutely necessary.
[Part 2]
I have a high regard for the individual and an insuperable distaste for violence and fanaticism. All these motives have made me a passionate pacifist and antimilitarist. I am against any chauvinism, even in the guise of mere patriotism.
Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as does any exaggerated personality cult. I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I know well the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual have always seemed to me the important communal aims of the state.
Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice keeps me from feeling isolated.
The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all there is.
”
”
Albert Einstein
“
He was an aimless kite in search of a string to ground him to the world, but instead, he’d found Wren, a great, strong wind who supported his exploration of the sky. “You make everything better than when you found it, especially me. Thank you for a wonderful marriage. I would change nothing, not for anything. And you deserve much more than the idea of me. It would stifle your possibility. When Someone Else comes your way, you have my blessing, my absolute blessing, to begin again. You will be a wonderful mother and wife.
”
”
Emily Habeck (Shark Heart)
“
For they knew nothing, absolutely nothing—nothing, nothing, nothing, like the Dadaists.
”
”
George Orwell (A Clergyman's Daughter: A Thought-Provoking Exploration of Identity and Morality)
“
We are merely explorers of infinity in the pursuit of absolute perfection.
”
”
G.H. Hardy
“
We will honor the controversy, and explore possibilities rather than assert absolutes.
”
”
Daniel J. Siegel (Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence--A Complete Guide to the Groundbreaking Wheel of Awareness Meditation Practice)
“
I soak him all in, exploring, feasting, absolutely drowning in his fucking mouth. He tastes of honey, mint, and pending fucking addiction.
”
”
Rina Kent (God of Fury (Legacy of Gods, #5))
“
Anomalies manifest themselves on the border between chaos and order, so to speak, and have a threatening and promising aspect. The promising aspect dominates, when the contact is voluntary, when the exploring agent is up-to-date – when the individual has explored all previous anomalies, released the “information” they contained, and built a strong personality and steady “world” from that information.
The threatening aspect dominates, when the contact is involuntary, when the exploring agent is not up-to-date – when the individual has run away from evidence of his previous errors, failed to extract the information “lurking behind” his mistakes, weakened his personality, and destabilised his “world.”
The phenomenon of interest – that precursor to exploratory behaviour – signals the presence of a potentially “beneficial” anomaly. Interest manifests itself where an assimilable but novel phenomenon exists: where something new “hides,” in a partially comprehensible form. Devout adherence to the dictates of interest – assuming a suitably disciplined character – therefore insures stabilisation and renewal of personality and world.
Interest is a spirit beckoning from the unknown – a spirit calling from outside the “walls” of society. Pursuit of individual interest means hearkening to this spirit’s call – means journeying outside the protective walls of childhood dependence and adolescent group identification; means also return to and rejuvenation of society.
This means that pursuit of individual interest – development of true individuality – is equivalent to identification with the hero. Such identification renders the world bearable, despite its tragedies – and reduces unnecessary suffering, which most effectively destroys, to an absolute minimum.
This is the message that everyone wants to hear. Risk your security. Face the unknown. Quit lying to yourself, and do what your heart truly tells you to do. You will be better for it, and so will the world.
”
”
Jordan B. Peterson (Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief)
“
No, we absolutely should do it. If we can capture such a motherlode, it could make a pivotal difference in the coming war. We need it. AEGIS needs it, my mother needs it. This is why we’re here.
“I’m merely pausing at the precipice of the cliff, peeking down into the chasm and asking, ‘Are we sure?’ So…” Alex eyed him wearing an uneasy grimace “…are we sure?
”
”
G.S. Jennsen (Relativity (Aurora Resonant, #1))
“
All Renaissance drama, especially the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, is profoundly concerned with shifting power relations within society. The individual was a new force in relation to the state. The threat of rebellion, of the overturning of established order, was forcefully brought home to the Elizabethan public by the revolt of the Earl of Essex, once the Queen's favourite. The contemporary debate questioned the relationship between individual life, the power and authority of the state, and the establishing of moral absolutes. Where mediaeval drama was largely used as a means of showing God's designs, drama in Renaissance England focuses on man, and becomes a way of exploring his weaknesses, depravities, flaws - and qualities.
”
”
Ronald Carter (The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland)
“
What strange hesitancy, fear, or apathy stops us from looking within ourselves, from trying to grasp the true essence of joy and sadness, desire and hatred? Fear of the unknown prevails, and the courage to explore that inner world fails at the frontier of our mind. A Japanese astronomer once confided to me: “It takes a lot of daring to look within.” This remark—made by a scientist at the height of his powers, a steady and open-minded man—intrigued me. Recently I also met a Californian teenager who told me: “I don’t want to look inside myself. I’m afraid of what I’d find there.” Why should he falter before what promised to be an absolutely fascinating research project? As Marcus Aurelius wrote: “Look within; within is the fountain of all good.
”
”
Matthieu Ricard (Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill)
“
When it comes to relationships, Maximizers—like Steven— mistakenly believe that with the right amount of exploration, they can find the perfect person and have absolute confidence in their decision. But this perfect person (and complete certainty) doesn’t exist. That’s why maximizing leads to anguish, delays in decision-making, and missed opportunities. In other words, it’s better to be a Satisficer.
”
”
Logan Ury (How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love)
“
The wild is an integral part of who we are as children. Without pausing to consider what or where or how, we gather herbs and flowers, old apples and rose hips, shiny pebbles and dead spiders, poems, tears and raindrops, putting each treasured thing into the cauldron of our souls. We stir our bucket of mud as if it were, every one, a bucket of chocolate cake to be mixed for the baking. Little witches, hag children, we dance our wildness, not afraid of not knowing.
But there comes a time when the kiss of acceptance is delayed until the mud is washed from our knees, the chocolate from our faces. Putting down our wooden spoon with a new uncertainty, setting aside our magical wand, we learn another system of values based on familiarity, on avoiding threat and rejection. We are told it is all in the nature of growing up. But it isn't so.
Walking forward and facing the shadows, stumbling on fears like litter in the alleyways of our minds, we can find the confidence again. We can let go of the clutter of our creative stagnation, abandoning the chaos of misplaced and outdated assumptions that have been our protection. Then beyond the half light and shadows, we can slip into the dark and find ourselves in a world where horizons stretch forever. Once more we can acknowledge a reality that is unlimited finding our true self, a wild spirit, free and eager to explore the extent of our potential, free to dance like fireflies, free to be the drum, free to love absolutely with every cell of our being, or lie in the grass watching stars and bats and dreams wander by.
We can live inspired, stirring the darkness of the cauldron within our souls, the source, the womb temple of our true creativity, brilliant, untamed
”
”
Emma Restall Orr
“
Life is wonderful and strange...and it’s also absolutely mundane and tiresome. It’s hilarious and it’s deadening. It’s a big, screwed-up morass of beauty and change and fear and all our lives we oscillate between awe and tedium. I think stories are the place to explore that inherent weirdness; that movement from the fantastic to the prosaic that is life....
What interests me—and interests me totally—is how we as living human beings can balance the brief, warm, intensely complicated fingersnap of our lives against the colossal, indifferent, and desolate scales of the universe. Earth is four-and-a-half billion years old. Rocks in your backyard are moving if you could only stand still enough to watch. You get hernias because, eons ago, you used to be a fish. So how in the world are we supposed to measure our lives—which involve things like opening birthday cards, stepping on our kids’ LEGOs, and buying toilet paper at Safeway—against the absolutely incomprehensible vastness of the universe?
How? We stare into the fire. We turn to friends, bartenders, lovers, priests, drug-dealers, painters, writers. Isn’t that why we seek each other out, why people go to churches and temples, why we read books? So that we can find out if life occasionally sets other people trembling, too?
”
”
Anthony Doerr
“
Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river's edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna, waited for the dawn.About the orchids of that place we knew very little. About flies and beetles almost nothing, fungi nothing, most kinds of organisms nothing. Five thousand kinds of bacteria might be found in a pinch of soil, and about them we knew absolutely nothing. This was wilderness in the sixteenth-century sense, as it must have formed in the minds of the Portuguese explorers, its interior still largely unexplored and filled with strange, myth-engendering plants and animals. From such a place the pious naturalist would send long respectful letters to royal patrons about the wonders of the new world as testament to the glory of God. And I thought: there is still time to see this land in such a manner.
”
”
Edward O. Wilson (The Diversity of Life (Questions of Science))
“
A neurosurgeon once told me about operating on the brain of a young man with epilepsy. As is customary in this kind of operation, the patient was wide awake, under
only local anesthesia, while the surgeon delicately explored his exposed cortex, makingsure that the parts tentatively to be removed were not absolutely vital by stimulating
them electrically and asking the patient what he experienced. Some stimulations provoked visual flashes or hand-raisings, others a sort of buzzing sensation, but one spot
produced a delighted response from the patient: "It's 'Outta Get Me' by Guns N' Roses.
my favorite heavy metal band!"
I asked the neurosurgeon If he had asked the patient to sing or hum along with the music, since it would be fascinating to learn how "high fidelity" the provoked memory
was, would it be in exactly the same key and tempo as the record?
Such a song (unliken"Silent Night") has one canonical version. so we could simply have superimposed a recording of the patients humming with the standard record and compared the results.
Unfortunately, even though a tape recorder had been running during the operation, thesurgeon hadn't asked the patient to sing along. ''Why not?" I asked, and he replied: "I hate rock music!'
Later in the conversation the neurosurgeon happened to remark that he was going to have to operate again on the same young man. and I expressed the hope that he would
just check to see if he could restimulate the rock music, and this time ask the fellow to sing along. "I can't do it." replied the neurosurgeon. "since I cut out that part."
"It was part of the epileptic focus?" I asked.
"No,'' the surgeon replied, ''I already told you — I hate rock music.
”
”
Wilder Penfield
“
It isn’t always a matter, we should note, of identifying with the protagonist. No one I know, regardless of how much they love his novel, wants to be Humbert Humbert or Victor Frankenstein, although perhaps for different reasons. Or Heathcliff. Ever want to be Heathcliff? I didn’t think so. They are not the stuff of our fantasy lives, yet we may revel in their world, even while reviling their personalities. Consider Humbert. The narrative strategy Nabokov employs is very daring, since it demands that we identify with someone who is breaking what nearly everyone will consider the most absolute taboo. …Sympathy is out of the question. What the novel requires, however, is that we continue reading, something it audaciously gives us reason to do. The word games and intellectual brilliance helps, certainly; he’s detestable but charming and brilliant. The other element is that we watch him with a sort of appalled fascination: can he really intend that; does he really do this; would he really attempt even that; has he lost all sense of proportion? The answers are, in order, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Pretty clearly, then, there are pleasures in the text that are not inherent in the personality of the main character.
”
”
Thomas C. Foster (How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form)
“
What do you want me to do? Arrest them all?”
“When you can, absolutely.”
“And when I can’t?”
“Do whatever is necessary to remove their ability to act against us—against humanity.”
“You mean kill them.”
Her expression darkened in what he sensed was sorrow, but her shoulders rose. “If that’s what it takes.
”
”
G.S. Jennsen (Transcendence: Aurora Rising Book Three (Aurora Rhapsody, #3))
“
As we advance in the spiritual life and in the practice of systematic self-examination we are often surprised by the discovery of vast unknown tracts of the inner life of the soul. They seem like great plains stretching out in mystery and wrapt in mists that sometimes for a moment lift, or sweep off and leave one looking for one brief instant upon great reaches of one’s own life, unknown, unmeasured, unexplored. Men stand at such moments breathless in wonder and in awe gazing upon these great tracts upon which they have never looked before, with kindling eyes and beating hearts; and while they look the mists steal back till all is lost to sight once more and they are left wondering if what they saw was reality, or the creation of their fancy. Or sometimes they see, not far-stretching plains which fill the soul with an awestruck sense of its expansiveness and of how much has been left absolutely uncultivated, not these plains but mountain peaks climbing and reaching upwards till lost in the heavens, echoing it may be with the voice of many streams whose waters fertilize and enrich those small tracts of the soul’s life which have been reclaimed and cultivated and which many a man has thought to be his whole inner self, though he never asked himself whence those rich streams had their source. Now he sees how their source lay in unmeasured heights of his own inner being whose existence he never dreamed of before. In one brief instant they have unveiled themselves. He looks again, and they are shut out from his eyes, there is no token visible that he possesses such reaches, such heights of life. The commonplaces of his existence gather in and crowd upon him, the ordinary routine of life settles down upon him, limiting and confining him on all sides, the same unbroken line measures his horizon, such as he has always known it, the same round of interests and occupations crowd in upon his hours and fill them, the pressure of the hard facts of life upon him are as unmistakable and as leveling as ever, bidding him forget his dreams and meet and obey the requirements of the world in which he lives. And yet the man who has caught but a momentary glimpse of that vast unknown inner life can never be the same as he was before; he must be better or worse, trying to explore and possess and cultivate that unknown world within him, or trying—oh, would that he could succeed!—to forget it. He has seen that alongside of, or far out beyond the reach of, the commonplace life of routine, another life stretches away whither he knows not, he feels that he has greater capacities for good or evil than he ever imagined. He has, in a word, awakened with tremulous awe to the discovery that his life which he has hitherto believed limited and confined to what he knew, reaches infinitely beyond his knowledge and is far greater than he ever dreamed.
”
”
Basil W. Maturin (Self-Knowledge and Self-Discipline)
“
As a special branch of general philosophy, pathogenesis had never been explored. In my opinion it had never been approached in a strictly scientific fashion--that is to say, objectively, amorally, intellectually.
All those who have written on the subject are filled with prejudice. Before searching out and examining the mechanism of causes of disease, they treat of 'disease as such', condemn it as an exceptional and harmful condition, and start out by detailing the thousand and one ways of combating it, disturbing it, destroying it; they define health, for this purpose, as a 'normal' condition that is absolute and immutable.
Diseases ARE. We do not make or unmake them at will. We are not their masters. They make us, they form us. They may even have created us. They belong to this state of activity which we call life. They may be its main activity. They are one of the many manifestations of universal matter. They may be the principal manifestation of that matter which we will never be able to study except through the phenomena of relationships and analogies. Diseases are a transitory, intermediary, future state of health. It may be that they are health itself.
Coming to a diagnosis is, in a way, casting a physiological horoscope.
What convention calls health is, after all, no more than this or that passing aspect of a morbid condition, frozen into an abstraction, a special case already experienced, recognized, defined, finite, extracted and generalized for everybody's use. Just as a word only finds its way into the Dictionary Of The French Academy when it is well worn stripped of the freshness of its popular origin or of the elegance of its poetic value, often more than fifty years after its creation (the last edition of the learned Dictionary is dated 1878), just as the definition given preserves a word, embalms it in its decrepitude, but in a pose which is noble, hypocritical and arbitrary--a pose it never assumed in the days of its vogue, while it was still topical, living and meaningful--so it is that health, recognized as a public Good, is only the sad mimic of some illness which has grown unfashionable, ridiculous and static, a solemnly doddering phenomenon which manages somehow to stand on its feet between the helping hands of its admirers, smiling at them with its false teeth. A commonplace, a physiological cliche, it is a dead thing. And it may be that health is death itself.
Epidemics, and even more diseases of the will or collective neuroses, mark off the different epochs of human evolution, just as tellurian cataclysms mark the history of our planet.
”
”
Blaise Cendrars (Moravagine)
“
There again was the delight, the courage, that is most admirable in the Karhidish spirit - and in the human spirit - and though I could not share it with him, to deny it would be a detestable act. I said, without sincerity, but with absolute truth, "It is a marvelous thing indeed for them as well, the coming to a new world, a new mankind.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Left Hand of Darkness)
“
. . . I'm not sure we always respect the mysteries of the locked door and the dangers of the storytelling problem. There are times when we demand an explanation when an explanation really isn't possible, and, as we'll explore in the upcoming chapters of this book, doing so can have serious consequences. 'After the O.J. Simpson verdict, one of the jurors appeared on TV and said with absolute conviction, "Race had absolutely nothing to do with my decision,"' psychologist Joshua Aronson says. 'But how on earth could she know that? What my [and others] research . . . show[s] is that people are ignorant of the things that affect their actions, yet they rarely feel ignorant. We need to accept our ignorance and say "I don't know" more often.
”
”
Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking)
“
In order to live this way - free to create, free to explore - you must possess a fierce sense of personal entitlement. Creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that - merely by being here - you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own. The poet David Whyte calls this sense of creative entitlement 'the arrogance of belonging,' and claims that it is an absolutely vital privilege to cultivate if you wish to interact more vividly with life. Without this arrogance of belonging, you will never be able to take any creative risks whatsoever. Without it, you will never push yourself out of the suffocating insulation of personal safety and into the frontiers of the beautiful and unexpected. It is a divine force that will actually take you out of yourself and allow you to engage more fully with life. Because often what keeps you from creative living is your self-absorption (your self-doubt, your self-disgust, your self-judgment, your crushing sense of self-protection). The arrogance of belonging pulls you out of the darkest depths of self-hatred - not by saying 'I am the greatest!' but merely by saying 'I am here!
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
“
Friendship is a crucible of positive and negative feelings that are in a permanent state of ebullition. There’s an expression: with friends God is watching me, with enemies I watch myself. In the end, an enemy is the fruit of an oversimplification of human complexity: the inimical relationship is always clear, I know that I have to protect myself, I have to attack. On the other hand, God only knows what goes on in the mind of a friend. Absolute trust and strong affections harbor rancor, trickery, and betrayal. Perhaps that’s why, over time, male friendship has developed a rigorous code of conduct. The pious respect for its internal laws and the serious consequences that come from violating them have a long tradition in fiction. Our friendships, on the other hand, are a terra incognita, chiefly to ourselves, a land without fixed rules. Anything and everything can happen to you, nothing is certain. Its exploration in fiction advances arduously, it is a gamble, a strenuous undertaking. And at every step there is above all the risk that a story’s honesty will be clouded by good intentions, hypocritical calculations, or ideologies that exalt sisterhood in ways that are often nauseating.
”
”
Elena Ferrante
“
I think about the people I know with the absolutely largest hearts, people with a stunning capacity for endurance and grace and kindness against the most screaming terrors and pains. My Mom and Dad, for example, enduring the death of their first child at six months old, the boy the brother I never met, dying quietly in his stroller on the porch in the moment that my mother stepped back inside to get a pair of gloves because the crisp brilliant April wind was filled with a whistling cutting wind....
Fifty years later after five more children and two miscarriages she is standing in the kitchen with her usual eternal endless cup of tea and I ask her: How do you get over the death of your child?
And she says, in her blunt honest direct terse kind way,
You don't.
Her face harrowed like a hawk for a moment in the swirling steam of the tea.
p112-13
”
”
Brian Doyle (The Wet Engine: Exploring Mad Wild Miracle of Heart)
“
When students first encounter the reality of multiple religious worldviews, they often race to the lowest common denominator: your truth is true for you and mine is true for me. This is their peace offering, their way of living with religious difference without fighting, but it also prevents them from exploring the differences in any meaningful way. Holy envy gives those students another way forward, especially those who are inclined toward religious absolutes.
”
”
Barbara Brown Taylor (Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others)
“
To date we know only two real media that offer almost no resistance to moving bodies.
One such medium was discovered in the 1930s: If we cool down helium, a noble gas, to temperatures close to absolute zero, it will flow through the thinnest of tubes with almost no friction. This phenomenon is called superfluidity. Another substance that shows superfluidity is a rare isotope of the same element, called helium-3. It takes experience to explore all the facets nature offers us. No form of logic can replace it.
”
”
Henning Genz (Nothingness: The Science Of Empty Space)
“
What you believe to be true is relative to yourself and to others. In other words, you cannot force your belief into absolute truth. Not for other people. There will always be people who disagree and that is why people have dialectics, discussion, reasoning and logic by throwing arguments at each other. Why are there so many debates and contradictions in discussing matters related to metaphysics. Namely questions about the mind and the limitations of humanity in an effort to explore and investigate the truth itself.
”
”
Titon Rahmawan
“
The essence of religion is the feeling of absolute dependence. I repudiated rational thought in favour of a theology of feeling.”[54] One should strive to realize oneself by exploring and embracing this feeling of absolute dependence. This requires attacking reason, for reason gives one a feeling of independence and confidence. Limiting reason is thus the essence of religious piety—for it makes possible a fully-entered-into feeling of dependence and orientation toward that being upon which one is absolutely dependent. That being is of course God.[55]
”
”
Stephen R.C. Hicks (Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault)
“
Just because you feel lost doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. Feeling certain that you are correct in every decision and situation is an addiction. If you think that the journey of self-discovery will bring you more solid facts and certainties about yourself and the world, you will be frustrated. The more you see, the more lost you will feel. That is natural. The more you discover of yourself, the more confused you will become. This is natural. The wiser you get, the more you will see that there are many paths walked by just as many people, and that just because yours is different from someone else's doesn't mean one of you is wrong. This is natural. Over time, you will develop humility, compassion, and a higher tolerance for confusion. If you allow the feeling of being lost to drive you into a search for absolute truths and correct answers, you may feel more secure when you get there, but in reality, you will be taking a step back. Allow yourself to be lost, and you will see so much more of the forest of your soul than if you beeline back for the trail. Explore. Get lost. Embrace the inevitability of confusion.
”
”
Vironika Tugaleva
“
Putting the question to one side for a moment, the human experiment can be labelled as… disappointing. But as a species, we are, at times, exceedingly vulnerable. Our vulnerability lies in the inability to understand life and its purpose. We hunt for the tools to make sense of it all: religion, science, politics, sport, the theatre. We explore and search for meaning by discovering new worlds and climbing mountains, and a great many of us find tremendous solace and comfort in these activities, but the one thing that is absolutely certain is that we are born and that we will die. The rest is propaganda.
”
”
Brian Cox (Putting the Rabbit in the Hat)
“
There is a powerful tendency in fallen human nature to drift from God-reliance to self-reliance, with the woeful results to which Teresa of Avila testified. At the very heart of the biblical revelation is a profound insight into the incapacity of the human being, apart from Christ, to live the Christian life. The primacy of grace, and our response in faith to this gift, is the clear biblical witness and an absolutely foundational element of the spiritual life. We have to be very clear on this as we proceed in exploring the elements of the spiritual journey. To neglect the very foundation, the primacy of grace, is to build a shaky structure that won't stand.
”
”
Ralph Martin (The Fulfillment of All Desire: A Guidebook to God Based on the Wisdom of the Saints)
“
You know those sedative things you hate so much?” he asked. “We’d slip one into the Forklenator’s lunch when school’s back in session and he’s in Magnate Leto mode. Then you and Fitz would ditch your afternoon sessions, let me work my mad skills on the lock to his office, and ta-da! One conked-out Forkle drooling on his giant desk, just waiting to have his memories explored. You guys would have plenty of time to do your Telepath thing and slip back to study hall before he wakes up. I doubt he’d even know anything happened.” “Absolutely not!” Sandor snapped. “No one will be ditching sessions or drugging anybody!” Sophie had to agree, even if the less-than-noble part of herself couldn’t deny that the plan was solid.
”
”
Shannon Messenger (Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #8))
“
My Pronoun is People
(Inclusivity Sonnet, 1266)
My pronoun is people,
I'm divergent, yet invincible.
I am straight, I am queer;
I am civilian, I am seer.
Spirit of life, I - am universal!
Call me disabled or differently able,
Call me collective or individual.
Fleshly forms I've got plenty,
All run by same love and liberty -
Culture supreme is inclusion.
Each heart is a shelter for another,
Each life is sanctuary for another.
Blasting all traditions of divide
into cinders with knowledge-dynamite,
we shall emerge as each other's keeper.
You ask, what am I - I say, I am human,
Better yet, I'm human's idea of a human.
I am but the human absolute -
morally unbending 'n divinely cute -
ever evolving testament to expansion.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Yaralardan Yangın Doğar: Explorers of Night are Emperors of Dawn)
“
Drae sighed. “I appreciate your flair for the dramatic, and I’m glad to learn it’s survived your hypnol poisoning. But there’s no need for you to go through the hassle of regenesis this time. We can drop the bomb from half a kilometer above the meeting and have time to escape the blast.”
Eren forced a confident smile, pulling the correct muscles into a barely remembered pattern and holding them there. “This is where you’re wrong—there is absolutely a need for me to go through the hassle of regenesis.” He reached up and rubbed a palm over the stubble covering his scalp. “If I am going to continue living in this world, I have got to get my hair back.”
Drae stared at him incredulously, then burst out laughing. “You know, that may be the first true thing you’ve said to me since this ordeal began.
”
”
G.S. Jennsen (Inversion (Riven Worlds #2; Amaranthe #15))
“
Each of us is always blessed with third options, with choices. If there is one thing the scientific approach to living our life points to is – there is no end to our abilities to discover and make meaning. There are no “absolutes,” or end point in our explorations and possibilities. The blessing comes in participating in our surroundings and consciously making meaning through our perceptions and choices. Everything is taken in as filled with blessing because no experience is exempt. We are always making meaning through our choices, but now, we do so consciously, deliberately and creatively while tapping into the universes power to manifest. We are like gardeners (always) in the garden of Eden – with the most basic choices sometimes awakening us to our true nature – do I eat the apple? Every decision as Joseph Campbell says, “is a destiny decision.
”
”
Julie Tallard Johnson (The Zero Point Agreement: How to Be Who You Already Are)
“
Buddhist Psychology
You can use enlightening Buddhist practices to transform your life. Unfortunately, many people do not know it, but the Buddhist Dharma, or teaching, is actually a scientific system of psychology, developed in India and further refined in Tibet. It is a psychology that works. I call it a „joyous science of the heart“ because it is based on the idea that while unenlightened life is full of suffering, you are completely capable of escaping from that suffering. You can get well. In fact, you already are well; you just need to awaken to that fact.
And how do you do this? By analyzing your thought patterns. When you do, you realize that you are full of „misknowledge“ - misunderstandings of yourself and the world that lead to anger, discontent, and fear. The target of Buddhist practice and the constant theme of this book is the primal misconception that you are the center of the universe, that your „self“ is a fixed, constant, and bounded entity. When you meditate on enlightened insights into the true nature of reality and the boundlessness of the self, you develop new habits of thinking. You free yourself from the constraints of your habitual mind. In other words, you teach yourself to think differently. This in turn leads you to act differently. And voila! You are on the path to happiness, fulfillment, and even enlightenment.
The battle for happiness is fought and won or lost primarily within the mind. The mind is the absolute key, both to enlightenment and to life. When your mind is peaceful, aware, and under your command, you will be securely happy. When your mind is unaware of its true nature, constantly in turmoil, and in command of you, you will suffer endlessly. This is the whole secret of the Dharma. If you recognize delusion, greed, anger, envy, and pride as the main enemies of your well-being and learn to focus your mind on overcomming them, you can install wisdom, generosity, tolerance, love, and altruism in their place. This is where enlightened psychology can be most useful. Psychology and philosophy are really one entity in Buddhism. They are called the inner science, the science of the human interior. In the flow of Indian history, it is fair to say that the Buddha was a great explorer of the human interior rather than some sort of religious prophet.
He came into the world at a time when people were just beginning to experiment with self-exploration, but mostly in an escapist way, using their focus on the inner world to run away from the sufferings of life by entering a supposed realm of absolute quiet far removed from everday existence. The Buddha started out exploring that way too, but then realized the futility of escapism and discovered instead a way of being happier here and now. (pp. 32-33)
”
”
Robert A.F. Thurman (Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within)
“
This is not a small matter. It is from Christian Europe, after all, no matter how reluctant the PC establishment is to acknowledge it, that most philosophical and scientific exploration, as well as technological advancement, have sprung. We have already seen one key reason why science developed in the Christian world rather than the Muslim world: Christians believed in a coherent and consistent universe governed by a good God; Muslims believed in a universe governed by a God whose will was so absolute as to preclude coherence and consistency. But the implications of this all-important philosophical difference could not have worked themselves out without freedom. That freedom was not available to Christians or any other non-Muslims who had the misfortune to live under Muslim rule. In fact, any people who came under Muslim rule throughout history were ultimately reduced—no matter how extensive their numbers and grand their achievements before the Muslim conquest—to the status of a tiny and culturally derivative minority.
”
”
Robert Spencer (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades))
“
Christopher Lasch explains the process by which the therapeutic segment of the managerial elite win moral acceptance. Despite the fact that its claims to be providing “mental health” where always self-serving and highly subjective, the theapeutic class offered ethical leadership in the absence of shared principles. By defining emotional well-being as both a social good and the overcoming of what is individually and collectively dangerous, the behavioral scientists have been able to impose their absolutes upon the culturally fluid society. In “The True and Only Heaven” Lasch explores the implications for postwar politics of the “Authoritarian Personality.” A chief contributor to this anthology, Theodro Adorno, abandoned his earlier work as a cultural critic to become a proponent of governmentally imposed social therapy. According to Lasch, Adorno condemns undesirable political attitudes as “prejudice” and “by defining prejudice as a ‘social disease’ substituted a medical for a political idiom. In the end, Adorno and his colleagues “relegated a broad range of controversial issues to the clinic – to scientific study as opposed to philosophical and political debate.
”
”
Paul Edward Gottfried (After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State.)
“
You certainly don’t “need” to evangelize. You can rest assured that God is perfectly capable of bringing people to himself in His own good time and in His own good way. That said, though, it’s very likely you will be galvanized by your own joy in the Lord to share that joy with others. It’s only natural to want to share something wonderful you’ve found with everyone around you – and especially with those in your life for whom you have affection or care about. And if that life-enhancing, life-saving something you’ve found is absolutely free to anyone who will but ask for it, well.. Well then it’s a wonder, isn’t it, that every bible sold doesn’t come with a bullhorn. The question of exactly when and how it’s best for you to personally share your faith with others is one that the Holy Spirit stands ever ready to help you answer. Primarily, it’s a matter of simply paying attention to the signals you get from non-christians about the degree to which they’re ready to have a conversation in which it would be natural to talk about the value and nature of personal beliefs. Forcing that conversation is unlikely to prove productive to you or to the other person. You don’t want to alienate someone by too zealously pushing Christ on them before they’re optn to that sort of interaction with you.
The best rule of thumb when wondering how and when you should go about evangelizing is to just be yourself and relax about it. When it’s time to talk to someone about Jesus, Jesus by His spirit will let you know. Trust in this. God’s ultimate purpose is to bring every person on earth to the realization that his son died so they might have eternal life. And as a Christian you do have a role in that inspiring mission. Trust God to let you know when it’s time for you to step into it – how and with whom.
”
”
Stephen F. Arterburn (Being Christian: Exploring Where You, God, and Life Connect)
“
In consequence of the inevitably scattered and fragmentary nature of our thinking, which has been mentioned, and of the mixing together of the most heterogeneous representations thus brought about and inherent even in the noblest human mind, we really possess only *half a consciousness*. With this we grope about in the labyrinth of our life and in the obscurity of our investigations; bright moments illuminate our path like flashes of lighting. But what is to be expected generally from heads of which even the wisest is every night the playground of the strangest and most senseless dreams, and has to take up its meditations again on emerging from these dreams? Obviously a consciousness subject to such great limitations is little fitted to explore and fathom the riddle of the world; and to beings of a higher order, whose intellect did not have time as its form, and whose thinking therefore had true completeness and unity, such an endeavor would necessarily appear strange and pitiable. In fact, it is a wonder that we are not completely confused by the extremely heterogeneous mixture of fragments of representations and of ideas of every kind which are constantly crossing one another in our heads, but that we are always able to find our way again, and to adapt and adjust everything. Obviously there must exist a simple thread on which everything is arranged side by side: but what is this? Memory alone is not enough, since it has essential limitations of which I shall shortly speak; moreover, it is extremely imperfect and treacherous. The *logical ego*, or even the *transcendental synthetic unity of apperception*, are expressions and explanations that will not readily serve to make the matter comprehensible; on the contrary, it will occur to many that
“Your wards are deftly wrought, but drive no bolts asunder.”
Kant’s proposition: “The *I think* must accompany all our representations ,” is insufficient; for the “I” is an unknown quantity, in other words, it is itself a mystery and a secret. What gives unity and sequence to consciousness, since by pervading all the representations of consciousness, it is its substratum, its permanent supporter, cannot itself be conditioned by consciousness, and therefore cannot be a representation. On the contrary, it must be the *prius* of consciousness, and the root of the tree of which consciousness is the fruit. This, I say, is the *will*; it alone is unalterable and absolutely identical, and has brought forth consciousness for its own ends. It is therefore the will that gives unity and holds all its representations and ideas together, accompanying them, as it were, like a continuous ground-bass. Without it the intellect would have no more unity of consciousness than has a mirror, in which now one thing now another presents itself in succession, or at most only as much as a convex mirror has, whose rays converge at an imaginary point behind its surface. But it is *the will* alone that is permanent and unchangeable in consciousness. It is the will that holds all ideas and representations together as means to its ends, tinges them with the colour of its character, its mood, and its interest, commands the attention, and holds the thread of motives in its hand. The influence of these motives ultimately puts into action memory and the association of ideas. Fundamentally it is the will that is spoken of whenever “I” occurs in a judgement. Therefore, the will is the true and ultimate point of unity of consciousness, and the bond of all its functions and acts. It does not, however, itself belong to the intellect, but is only its root, origin, and controller.
”
”
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation, Volume II)
“
In the night I awoke. Was this my own voice reciting what was written? “ ‘And every secret thing shall be opened, and every dark place illuminated.’ ” Dear God, no, do not let them know this, do not let them know the great accumulation of all of this, this agony and joy, this misery, this solace, this reaching, this gouging pain, this . . . But they will know, each and every one of them will know. They will know because what you are remembering is what has happened to each and every one of them. Did you think this was more or less for you? Did you think—? And when they are called to account, when they stand naked before God and every incident and utterance is laid bare—you, you will know all of it with each and every one of them! I knelt in the sand. Is this possible, Lord, to be with each of them when he or she comes to know? To be there for every single cry of anguish? For the grief-stricken remembrance of every incomplete joy? Oh, Lord, God, what is judgment and how can it be, if I cannot bear to be with all of them for every ugly word, every harsh and desperate cry, for every gesture examined, for every deed explored to its roots? And I saw the deeds, the deeds of my own life, the smallest, most trivial things, I saw them suddenly in their seed and sprout and with their groping branches; I saw them growing, intertwining with other deeds, and those deeds come to form a thicket and a woodland and a great roving wilderness that dwarfed the world as we hold it on a map, the world as we hold it in our minds. Dear God, next to this, this endless spawning of deed from deed and word from word and thought from thought—the world is nothing. Every single soul is a world! I started to cry. But I would not close off this vision—no, let me see, and all those who lifted the stones, and I, I blundering, and James' face when I said it, I am weary of you, my brother, and from that instant outwards a million echoes of those words in all present who heard or thought they heard, who would remember, repeat, confess, defend . . . and so on it goes for the lifting of a finger, the launching of the ship, the fall of an army in a northern forest, the burning of a city as flames rage through house after house! Dear God, I cannot . . . but I will. I will. I sobbed aloud. I will. O Father in Heaven, I am reaching to You with hands of flesh and blood. I am longing for You in Your perfection with this heart that is imperfection! And I reach up for You with what is decaying before my very eyes, and I stare at Your stars from within the prison of this body, but this is not my prison, this is my Will. This is Your Will. I collapsed weeping. And I will go down, down with every single one of them into the depths of Sheol, into the private darkness, into the anguish exposed for all eyes and for Your eyes, into the fear, into the fire which is the heat of every mind. I will be with them, every solitary one of them. I am one of them! And I am Your Son! I am Your only begotten Son! And driven here by Your Spirit, I cry because I cannot do anything but grasp it, grasp it as I cannot contain it in this flesh-and-blood mind, and by Your leave I cry. I cried. I cried and I cried. “Lord, give me this little while that I may cry, for I've heard that tears accomplish much. . . .” Alone? You said you wanted to be alone? You wanted this, to be alone? You wanted the silence? You wanted to be alone and in the silence. Don't you understand the temptation now of being alone? You are alone. Well, you are absolutely alone because you are the only One who can do this! What judgment can there ever be for man, woman, or child—if I am not there for every heartbeat at every depth of their torment?
”
”
Anne Rice (Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (Life of Christ Book 2))
“
The world can be validly construed as a forum for action, as well as a place of things. We describe the world as a place of things, using the formal methods of science. The techniques of narrative, however – myth, literature, and drama – portray the world as a forum for action. The two forms of representation have been unnecessarily set at odds, because we have not yet formed a clear picture of their respective domains. The domain of the former is the 'objective world' – what is, from the perspective of intersubjective perception. The domain of the latter is 'the world of value' – what is and what should be, from the perspective of emotion and action.
The world as forum for action is 'composed,' essentially, of three constituent elements, which tend to manifest themselves in typical patterns of metaphoric representation. First is unexplored territory – the Great Mother, nature, creative and destructive, source and final resting place of all determinate things. Second is explored territory – the Great Father, culture, protective and tyrannical, cumulative ancestral wisdom. Third is the process that mediates between unexplored and explored territory – the Divine Son, the archetypal individual, creative exploratory 'Word' and vengeful adversary. We are adapted to this 'world of divine characters,' much as the 'objective world.' The fact of this adaptation implies that the environment is in 'reality' a forum for action, as well as a place of things.
Unprotected exposure to unexplored territory produces fear. The individual is protected from such fear as a consequence of 'ritual imitation of the Great Father' – as a consequence of the adoption of group identity, which restricts the meaning of things, and confers predictability on social interactions. When identification with the group is made absolute, however – when everything has to be controlled, when the unknown is no longer allowed to exist – the creative exploratory process that updates the group can no longer manifest itself. This 'restriction of adaptive capacity' dramatically increases the probability of social aggression and chaos.
Rejection of the unknown is tantamount to 'identification with the devil,' the mythological counterpart and eternal adversary of the world-creating exploratory hero. Such rejection and identification is a consequence of Luciferian pride, which states: all that I know is all that is necessary to know. This pride is totalitarian assumption of omniscience – is adoption of 'God’s place' by 'reason' – is something that inevitably generates a state of personal and social being indistinguishable from hell. This hell develops because creative exploration – impossible, without (humble) acknowledgment of the unknown – constitutes the process that constructs and maintains the protective adaptive structure that gives life much of its acceptable meaning.
'Identification with the devil' amplifies the dangers inherent in group identification, which tends of its own accord towards pathological stultification. Loyalty to personal interest – subjective meaning – can serve as an antidote to the overwhelming temptation constantly posed by the possibility of denying anomaly. Personal interest – subjective meaning – reveals itself at the juncture of explored and unexplored territory, and is indicative of participation in the process that ensures continued healthy individual and societal adaptation.
Loyalty to personal interest is equivalent to identification with the archetypal hero – the 'savior' – who upholds his association with the creative 'Word' in the face of death, and in spite of group pressure to conform. Identification with the hero serves to decrease the unbearable motivational valence of the unknown; furthermore, provides the individual with a standpoint that simultaneously transcends and maintains the group.
”
”
Jordan B. Peterson (Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief)
“
I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.”“Did you catch many?” I asked.“Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.”“Why is that?” I asked.“Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.
”
”
Isaac Asimov (It's Been a Good Life)
“
Their eyes met.
For a split second she caught a glimpse of heat in his eyes. Then Jake banked the flame and broke out of her embrace.
Marnie felt a hot blush rise from her toes to her nose.
It took a moment for her eyes to focus and her brain to function. Bewildered, she looked up to find him watching her. His heavy-lidded eyes held a strange desperation as he reached back and unhooked the vice of her ankles from around his wiast.
Her legs dropped. Her heels thumped against the cabinet.
Beneath his hawklike gaze she felt stripped bare and vulnerable. He studied her face, seeming to see more than her features. He seemed to delve into her mind, to touch things deep and frightening—parts of herself Marnie was still exploring.
The muscles in his jaw knotted and unknotted. After a moment he stepped back and casually, but with difficulty, adjusted his jeans
Heat flooded her cheeks. Legs splayed, nipples peaked to his clinical gaze, she’d never experienced such acute embarrassment in her life. Her breath hitched as she jumped off the counter, tugging her top down and her pants up.
At a loss for hers, she half laughed. “I have absolutely no idea what to say.” Which was a reasonable start, she guessed. It was rare for her to be speechless. But then, this was a day of firsts.
“I told you you weren’t my type.” The brass button on his jeans closed like the clasp of a miser’s purse. Other than a faint flush on the ridge of his cheekbones and what looked like a painful erection, he seemed totally unaffected by what had just happened.
She stared at him. “Not your t—What do you call what just happened?” Marnie was confused. It was out of character for her to be sexually aggressive. But now that she’d done it, she wasn’t sorry.
“What part of ‘I don’t want you’ didn’t you understand?”
He’d wanted her. He might lie about it, but his body had been honest. He was as hard as petrified wood.
“Then what”—she pointed—“is that?”
He ignored the bulge in his jeans. “Just because I have it doesn’t mean I intend to use it.”
Marnie stepped forward and touched his arm. He jerked away from her as if she’d used a cattle prod.
“Was it something I said?” she asked quietly, dropping her hand to her side. “Look, I have a tendency to sort of speak without running the words through my brain first. But I know I didn’t give out mixed signals just now. I wanted to make love with you. It was very good. No, darn it, it was excellent. So if you have some sort of medical condition, let’s talk about i—”
He moved backward, almost tripping over Duchess sprawled on the floor. The dog rose to hover anxiously between them. Jake’s eyes turned as he said, “I do not have a medical condition.”
Marnie backed up—mentally as well as physically. Her hip bumped the counter. “Good.”
He scowled and swore under his breath.
“That is good, isn’t it?” she asked tentatively.
”
”
Cherry Adair (Kiss and Tell (T-FLAC, #2; Wright Family, #1))
“
As if reading his mind, she smiled happily up at him. “Gary really came through for us, didn’t he?”
“Absolutely, ma petite. And Beau LaRue was not so bad either. Come, we cannot leave the poor man pacing the swamp. He will think we are engaging in something other than conversation.”
Wickedly Savannah moved her body against his, her hands sliding provocatively, enticingly, over the rigid thickness straining his trousers. “Aren’t we?” she asked with that infuriating sexy smile he could never resist.
“We have a lot of clean-up to do here, Savannah,” he said severely. “And we need to get word to our people, spread the society’s list through our ranks, warn those in danger.”
Her fingers were working at the buttons of his shirt so that she could push the material aside to examine his chest and shoulder, where two of the worst wounds had been. She had to see his body for herself, touch him to assure herself he was completely healed. “I suggest, for now, that your biggest job is to create something for Gary to do so we can have a little privacy.” With a smooth movement, she pulled the shirt from over her head so that her full breasts gleamed temptingly at him.
Gregori made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan. His hands came up to cup the weight of her in his palms, the feel of her soft, satin skin soothing after the burning torture of the tainted blood. His thumbs caressed the rosy tips into hard peaks. He bent his head slowly to the erotic temptation because he was helpless to do anything else. He needed the merging of their bodies after such a close call as much as she did. He could feel the surge of excitement, the rush of liquid heat through her body at the feel of his mouth pulling strongly at her breast.
Gregori dragged her even closer, his hands wandering over her with a sense of urgency. Her need was feeding his.
“Gary,” she whispered. “Don’t forget about Gary.”
Gregori cursed softly, his hand pinning her hips so that he could strip away the offending clothes on her body. He spared the human a few seconds of his attention, directing him away from the cave. Savannah’s soft laughter was taunting, teasing. “I told you, lifemate, you’re always taking off my clothes.”
“Then stop wearing the damn things,” he responded gruffly, his hands at her tiny waist, his mouth finding her flat stomach. “Someday my child will be growing right here,” he said softly, kissing her belly. His hands pinned her thighs so that he could explore easily without interruption. “A beautiful little girl with your looks and my disposition.”
Savannah laughed softly, her arms cradling his head lovingly. “That should be quite a combination. What’s wrong with my disposition?” She was writhing under the onslaught of his hands and mouth, arcing her body more fully into his ministrations.
“You are a wicked woman,” he whispered. “I would have to kill any man who treated my daughter the way I am treating you.”
She cried out, her body rippling with pleasure. “I happen to love the way you treat me, lifemate,” she answered softly and cried out again when he merged their bodies, their minds, their hearts and souls.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Magic (Dark, #4))
“
The rationalization of her conduct was justified inside Leah's mind as an exploration off the various sexual liaisons that a user could participate within whilst inside Spectrum and that reasoning allowed her to paddle through the shallow, murky waters of infidelity with absolutely no qualms at all and without any of her actions, invoking any subsequent feelings of guilt.
”
”
Jill Thrussell (Spectrum: Detour of Wrong (Glitches #5))
“
Amos liked to call good ideas “raisins.” There were three raisins in the new theory. The first was the realization that people responded to changes rather than absolute levels. The second was the discovery that people approached risk very differently when it involved losses than when it involved gains. Exploring people’s responses to specific gambles, they found a third raisin: People did not respond to probability in a straightforward manner. Amos and Danny already knew, from their thinking about regret, that in gambles that offered a certain outcome, people would pay dearly for that certainty. Now they saw that people reacted differently to different degrees of uncertainty. When you gave them one bet with a 90 percent chance of working out and another with a 10 percent chance of working out, they did not behave as if the first was nine times as likely to work out as the second. They made some internal adjustment, and acted as if a 90 percent chance was actually slightly less than a 90 percent chance, and a 10 percent chance was slightly more than a 10 percent chance. They responded to probabilities not just with reason but with emotion.
”
”
Michael Lewis (The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds)
“
Before I met Rosie, I’d believed that a snake’s personality was rather like that of a goldfish. But Rosie enjoyed exploring. She stretched her head out and flicked her tongue at anything I showed her. Soon she was meeting visitors at the zoo. Children derived the most delight from this. Some adults had their barriers and their suspicions about wildlife, but most children were very receptive. They would laugh as Rosie’s forked tongue tickled their cheeks or touched their hair.
Rosie soon became my best friend and my favorite snake. I could always use her as a therapist, to help people with a snake phobia get over their fear. She had excellent camera presence and was a director’s dream: She’d park herself on a tree limb and just stay there. Most important for the zoo, Rosie was absolutely bulletproof with children. During the course of a busy day, she often had kids lying in her coils, each one without worry or fear.
Rosie became a great snake ambassador at the zoo, and I became a convert to the wonderful world of snakes. It would not have mattered what herpetological books I read or what lectures I attended. I would never have developed a relationship with Rosie if Steve hadn’t encouraged me to sit down and have dinner with her one night.
I grew to love her so much, it was all the more difficult for me when one day I let her down.
I had set her on the floor while I cleaned out her enclosure, but then I got distracted by a phone call. When I turned back around, Rosie had vanished. I looked everywhere. She was not in the living room, not in the kitchen, not down the hall. I felt panic well up within me. There’s a boa constrictor on the loose and I can’t find her! As I turned the corner and looked in the bathroom, I saw the dark maroon tip of her tail poking out from the vanity unit.
I couldn’t believe what she had done. Rosie had managed to weave her body through all the drawers of the bathroom’s vanity unit, wedging herself completely tight inside of it. I could not budge her. She had jammed herself in.
I screwed up all my courage, found Steve, and explained what had happened.
“What?” he exclaimed, upset. “You can’t take your eyes off a snake for a second!” He examined the situation in the bathroom. His first concern was for the safety of the snake. He tried to work the drawers out of the vanity unit, but to no avail. Finally he simply tore the unit apart bare-handed.
The smaller the pieces of the unit became, the smaller I felt. Snakes have no ears, so they pick up vibrations instead. Tearing apart the vanity must have scared Rosie to death. We finally eased her out of the completely smashed unit, and I got her back in her enclosure. Steve headed back out to work. I sat down with my pile of rubble, where the sink once stood.
”
”
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
“
The absolute joy in life, in friendship, in love, is learning about a person, deciphering them, taking each and every mask off to find a new one, waiting to be explored and understood.
”
”
Tarun Shanker (These Vicious Masks)
“
The pragmatic mood is already visible in the Odyssey. The poem opens with Odysseus living on a remote island ruled by a nymph who offers him immortality if he will remain as her consort. A bit surprisingly to anyone steeped in the orthodox Western religio-philosophical-scientific tradition, he refuses, preferring mortality and a dangerous struggle to regain his position as the king of a small, rocky island and be reunited with his son, aging wife, and old father. He turns down what the orthodox tradition says we should desire above all else, the peace that comes from overcoming the transience and vicissitudes of mortality, whether that peace takes the form of personal immortality or of communing with eternal verities, moral or scientific—in either case ushering us to the still point of the turning world. Odysseus prefers going to arriving, struggle to rest, exploring to achieving—curiosity is one of his most marked traits—and risk to certainty. The Odyssey situates Calypso’s enchanted isle in the far west, the land of the setting sun, and describes the isle in images redolent of death. In contrast, Odysseus’s arrival at his own island, far to the east, a land of the rising sun, is depicted in imagery suggestive of rebirth.
Another thing that is odd about the protagonist, and the implicit values, of the Odyssey from the orthodox standpoint is that Odysseus is not a conventional hero, the kind depicted in the Iliad. He is strong, brave, and skillful in fighting, but he is no Achilles (who had a divine mother) or even Ajax; and he relies on guile, trickery, and outright deception to a degree inconsistent with what we have come to think of as heroism or with its depiction in the Iliad. His dominant trait is skill in coping with his environment rather than ability to impose himself upon it by brute force. He is the most intelligent person in the Odyssey but his intelligence is thoroughly practical, adaptive. Unlike Achilles in the Iliad, who is given to reflection, notably about the heroic ethic itself, Odysseus is pragmatic. He is an instrumental reasoner rather than a speculative one.
He is also, it is true, distinctly pious, a trait that the Odyssey harps on and modern readers tend to overlook. But piety in Homeric religion is a coping mechanism. Homeric religion is proto-scientific; it is an attempt to understand and control the natural world. The gods personify nature and men manipulate it by “using” the gods in the proper way. One sacrifices to them in order to purchase their intervention in one’s affairs—this is religion as magic, the ancestor of modern technology—and also to obtain clues to what is going to happen next; this is the predictive use of religion and corresponds to modern science. The gods’ own rivalries, mirroring (in Homeric thought, personifying or causing) the violent clash of the forces of nature, prevent human beings from perfecting their control over the environment. By the same token, these rivalries underscore the dynamic and competitive character of human existence and the unrealism of supposing that peace and permanence, a safe and static life, are man’s lot.
Odysseus’s piety has nothing to do with loving God as creator or redeemer, or as the name, site, metaphysical underwriter, or repository of the eternal or the unchanging, or of absolutes (such as omniscience and omnipotence) and universals (numbers, words, concepts). Odysseus’s piety is pragmatic because his religion is naturalistic—is simply the most efficacious means known to his society for controlling the environment, just as science and technology are the most efficacious means by which modern people control their environment.
”
”
Richard A. Posner (Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy)
“
For a long period of human history, most of the world thought swans were white and black swans didn’t exist inside the confines of mother nature. The null hypothesis that swans are white was later dispelled when Dutch explorers discovered black swans in Western Australia in 1697. Prior to this discovery, “black swan” was a euphemism for “impossible” or “non-existent,” but after this finding, it morphed into a term to express a perceived impossibility that might become an eventuality and therefore disproven. In recent times, the term “black swan” has been popularized by the literary work of Nassim Taleb to explain unforeseen events such as the invention of the Internet, World War I, and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
”
”
Oliver Theobald (Statistics for Absolute Beginners: A Plain English Introduction)
“
Freedom is always a question of degree rather than an absolute good that we do or do not possess.
”
”
Charlotte Fox Weber (Tell Me What You Want: A Therapist and Her Clients Explore Our 12 Deepest Desires)
“
I am someone who absolutely loves combining scientific facts with spirituality.
”
”
Robin S. Baker (Esotericism With an Unconventional Soul: Exploring Philosophy, Spirituality, Science, and Mysticism)
“
There’s a lot of reference to a samurai mindset, which goes something like this: at my side is a sword, and if I draw my sword then I am utterly lethal. I train every day to be more and more lethal. I am quite capable of breaking someone down, of crushing them, of using my skill and strength to hurt them or even kill them. I can take a life, in violence and savagery. This is not theory or an idea from a book, this is a reality I live every day. But I don’t, and I absolutely will not unless I have exhausted every other option. I am absolutely beholden to keep my sword sheathed and my violence in check. I must always try to avoid drawing my sword: I must walk away from situations, run if I have to, or try to defuse violence with words. Only when all other options have been explored will I resort to violence. There are very strict moral guidelines around when it’s ok to use violence (for example, defending a vulnerable person from violence). If I ever do reach this point I will deploy every shred of my skill to end the situation as quickly as possible.
”
”
Alexander Butler (The Happiness Toolkit: The secrets of success, fulfilment and finding your true self (The Arete Trilogy Book 1))
“
And I can’t sit here and tell you how I finally grew up, because to this day now I don’t have a clue. I wrote a lot. And I came here. And the scars don’t ever go away, and sometimes they still hurt like an absolute bitch, and it’s been twenty years. But somehow you learn to carry them inside of you. It’s how love songs are written, probably. I say ‘probably’ because what the hell do I know about writing love songs, but I do know that I hear them differently than I used to. When I was a kid.
”
”
Nash Jenkins (Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos)
“
there must be an absolutely unavoidable requirement for sleep. It can’t be a function that simply requires lying down, closing the eyes, or being relaxed. Humans can do all these things without being asleep. Instead, these critical functions must require us to be cut off from the outside world, unaware of what is happening around us, and truly asleep. Offline memory processing precisely fits the bill. Our brains are not like DVRs, which can record an ongoing TV show while playing back an older recording to the screen. We cannot simultaneously pay attention to new sensory information and replay or analyze previously stored memories. It has to be one or the other.
”
”
Antonio Zadra (When Brains Dream: Understanding the Science and Mystery of Our Dreaming Minds: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep)
“
Let’s begin by exploring your relationship to the world around you. We’ll start by making a statement that you probably will not agree with: The moment in front of you right now has absolutely nothing to do with you. Before you disagree, just look at the moment in front of you. Don’t do anything with it. Don’t meditate on it or try to be positive about it. Just notice that there is a moment in front of you. Now, look to the left; there’s a different moment in front of you. Look to the right; there’s yet another moment in front of you. Those moments were there before you looked at them, and they will still be there when you’re done looking. How many moments exist in the world right now that you are not looking at? How about in the entire universe? You must admit that those moments have nothing to do with you. They belong to themselves and their relationship to all that surrounds them. You didn’t create them, and you don’t make them come and go. They are just there. The moment in front of you is just another moment in the universe that exists even when you are not looking at it. It is completely impersonal.
”
”
Michael A. Singer (Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament)
“
There is truth. And there is the illusion of the relative world. Each one of us can choose whether we would like to delve into and participate in the illusion’s adventures, or if we would like to know the truth. Time and time again, life gives us many invitations to explore all types of pathways and adventures. And time and time again, life gives us just as many invitations to know the truth of who we are.
We get to choose — each one of us.
”
”
Purna Satya (On Reality: Questions and Answers)
“
My wonderful PhD supervisor, Martin Hyland... instilled in me the idea of starting sentences with ‘there is a sense in which…’ because math isn’t about right and wrong, it’s not about absolute truth; it’s about different contexts in which different things can be true, and about different senses in which different things can be valid. Abstraction in mathematics is about making precise which sense we mean, so that instead of having divisive arguments... we can investigate more effectively what is causing certain outcomes to arise.
”
”
Eugenia Cheng (The Joy of Abstraction: An Exploration of Math, Category Theory, and Life)
“
CLASSICAL PHYSICS RELIES upon the three laws of thermodynamics. These are laws about energy that tell us how energy functions and, therefore, what we can (and cannot) do with it. As practical as they might be for the Western medical practitioner, they are stretched by quantum occurrences. The three laws are as follows: First law: Energy likes to be conserved; therefore it cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed. Second law: Entropy (a measure of information) tends to increase. This means that the longer a system exists, the more disorder or unavailable information it contains. Third law: As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy or chaos becomes more constant. These laws govern the macrocosmos, but are not consistently true in the microuniverse of quanta. According to the second law, for instance, energy (or information that vibrates) gradually reduces in availability until it reaches absolute zero. Science cannot yet achieve absolute zero, but it can approach it. At this point, energy supposedly stands still. According to the first law, however, energy cannot be destroyed, which means the unavailable information has to go somewhere. Atoms and mass can only store a limited amount of information, so this missing data is not hiding in a coffee cup. It is possible, however, that it is stored in anti- or parallel worlds, or perhaps in the subtle energy domains explored by Dr. Tiller in “A Model of Subtle Energy”.
”
”
Cyndi Dale (The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy)
“
New life is not a repetition of a previous one but an entirely new circle. Theoretically, repetitions are possible because there is no end to infinite possibilities, and Everything is possible. We can never have a total experience of Infinity. Even God cannot have this experience because reaching and fully exploring infinity is impossible. Infinity is not actuality but absolute potential. Infinity, understood in this way, is the ultimate Source of the World’s freshness, uniqueness, and meaning.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
No one had ever played with me like this—seen my body as an erotic playground to explore.
”
”
Jill Ramsower (Absolute Silence (The Five Families, #5))
“
SPACE IN THE UNIVERSE
EINSTEIN’S SPACE
The space we explored and elaborated on before is not the same as we experience in the existing Universe, as we “see” it. In the “space,” before the Universe, as we know it, there is no point of reference. A point of reference exists only if there is a relationship between something and something else, even if that relationship is only between two things, two entities.
We will call the space we experience Einstein’s space. Einstein’s space is “impregnated,” programmed, or shall we dare to say, “contaminated” by the awakening, “explosion” of the Absolute. This explosion is the dispersion of Nothingness into the Being, not the “explosion” of the Being into Nothingness. The “space” created this way is not the clean “space” we described as an absolute vacuum, emptiness, or nothingness.
If we talk about the Primordial Being and Nonbeing, we cannot talk about space from Einstein’s physics point of view. In the primordial “space,” the Being does not possess any material properties; the same applies to the Nonbeing or nothingness. In such a state, there is no space as we understand it. Every point is the same point. Every moment is the same moment. In such a state, the vastness of “space” and “time” are the same point and moment. This is the infinity of the finite, compressed infinity of the Absolute Being.
The Infinity and Eternity outside the realm of the “material” Universe are the Infinity of Eternity and Eternity of Infinity enslaved beyond space and time. That which gives space and “time” to the World is beyond the spacetime continuum. The Universe is the manifestation of the Absolute Being.
Absolute Being is spaceless and timeless. It is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It encapsulates all the space and time, yet it is outside space and time. Absolute is spaceless space and timeless time. Absolute is Everything and nothing at the same time.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
Possibilities are infinite. Absolute is infinite in its potential and unaware of all possibilities. Every new cycle explores the new possibility of where free will lies. The Universe is “learning” its potential and creative power from itself through its endless cycles and variations. Its cycles are not the same. Here lies the spark of freedom and potential for free will that makes determinism and free will compatible.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
The only exploring I wanted to do at the moment was between Filip De Luca and myself.
”
”
Jill Ramsower (Absolute Silence (The Five Families, #5))
“
Just when I started to regain control of my life, he went and swept the rug out from under me. I was livid. Filip had stolen my escape plan. If I wanted to have access to a club, he was my only option. The thought of giving up on my exploration when it had only just begun was a hammer straight to my gut. I desperately wanted more of what I’d experienced at the club, but not if it resulted in the extortion of my secrets. Filip would pry each of my ugly truths from my clenched and bloodied fists. He held all the cards, and it made me furious.
”
”
Jill Ramsower (Absolute Silence (The Five Families, #5))
“
The world is determined by its essence (the Universal Mind's “immaterial substance”) and by its universal laws, which are the same everywhere and are determined. If they are determined, that implies no uncertainty, but this conclusion is incorrect. Regardless of the essence from which everything comes to be (or is transformed), its manifestation, or its material substance, the world (Universe) will constantly evolve differently in any particular manifestation. The starting point, if nothing else, will always be different and form different universes in every specific manifestation.
Both the Being and Nonbeing are limitless, which makes them “infinite,” and infinity is zero. Their frame is the Absolute itself, simultaneously providing the absolute limit and potential (infinity). The purpose of the world and the Absolute is not one particular existence and one particular world (Universe) or one life but a continuation of existence (universes) ad infinitum. Without infinity, there would be no real life because, at one point, existence would cease to exist forever, and it would be as if it had never existed. But infinity (although never reachable) secures continuation. Any manifestation of the Absolute, in the form of the World, follows the uncertainty principle, preserving the youth of the Absolute and originality (uniqueness) of any or all universes existing simultaneously or at any past or future time.
The “Dimensions” we can never explore are not some exotic dimensions of the string theory but rather the “dimensions” of the micro-micro and macro-macro-level that humans will probably never reach.
We can bypass the laws of physics only if we bypass the consequences of physical transformation. If we could operate on the level of pure information and return to the material form, not only would time travel be possible, but more valuable and fundamental endeavors would also be possible. When we say time travel, we do not mean traveling to the past or future using a time machine. That would be something similar to alchemy. Perhaps humankind, or any other species, can never achieve this level of science and technology except God. But we can imagine Beings transcending their physical existence and becoming immaterial. We can also imagine such beings on other levels beyond the “physical” world and existence known to us. The Ultimate Source, the Universal Mind, is the Ultimate Alchemist of Reality and the Universe.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
If we would, hypothetically, explore the idea of the universe's contraction, the result would be similar to the black hole. Regardless of a much bigger mass of the whole Universe, as ours is, the absolute contraction would lead to the same point at which the black hole reaches maximum density. The point of maximum density is Zero, at which point the Big Bang happens (or the Universe disappears, which is less likely). In this sense, from the point of the result, expansion or contraction of the Universe would lead to almost the same result.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
Even if we create a better human eye (biologically), a better leg, a better heart, and a better jaw, this will prove nothing except our drive to continue and improve ourselves and live within the given frame. An idea of creation in terms of fundamental creation of what we see as the Universe (or anything in it) will always be beyond human reach. Whatever we create can only be the modification or mutation of whatever exists. We can explore our potential for novelty within scientific discoveries and arts and not in the realm of primordial original creation beyond human comprehension and reach.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
Address
BARTON CENTRE, 912, 9th Floor, Mahatma Gandhi Rd,
Bengaluru, Karnataka - 560 001
Phone Number
+91 8884400919
Set out on an exhilarating experience to the hypnotizing scenes and energetic societies of Kenya Tour Package From Bangalore. Kenya, eminent for its different natural life, unblemished sea shores, and rich social legacy, offers a really remarkable travel insight. This article fills in as a thorough manual for help you plan and capitalize on your Kenya visit, from the arranging stages to investigating the staggering attractions and drenching in the nearby customs. Find the miracles that look for you in Kenya and prepare for a remarkable excursion that could only be described as epic.
Prologue to Kenya Visit Bundles
Assuming you're hoping to set out on an exhilarating experience that joins untamed life, nature, and culture, Kenya is the ideal location for your next excursion. With its different scenes, colorful untamed life, and dynamic culture, Kenya offers a special encounter for explorers searching something strange.
Why Pick Kenya for Your Next Get-away
Kenya's charm lies in its dazzling public parks overflowing with natural life, flawless sea shores with completely clear waters, and a rich social legacy that makes certain to spellbind your faculties. Whether you're a nature darling, experience searcher, or essentially hoping to loosen up in a tropical heaven, Kenya has something for everybody.
Outline of Surfnxt's Kenya Visit Bundle from Bangalore
Surfnxt's Kenya visit bundle from Bangalore is intended to offer you a remarkable involvement with the core of Africa. From exciting safari undertakings to loosening up ocean side escapes, this bundle has everything. With master guides, agreeable facilities, and consistent planned operations, Surfnxt guarantees that your excursion to Kenya is absolutely phenomenal.
Arranging Your Outing from Bangalore to Kenya
While arranging your Kenya Tour Package From Bangalore, it's fundamental to consider the booking system and essential records expected for a smooth travel insight. Furthermore, understanding the best chance to visit Kenya can assist you with taking full advantage of your excursion.
Booking Interaction and Important Archives
Booking your Kenya visit bundle with Surfnxt is simple and bother free. Just follow the means given by Surfnxt's group, and guarantee you have every one of the important records like a legitimate identification, visa, and travel protection to stay away from any last-minute inconveniences.
Best Opportunity to Visit Kenya
The best chance to visit Kenya is during the dry season, which normally falls between June to October and January to February. During this time, you can observer the Incomparable Relocation in Masai Mara and appreciate clear skies for ideal natural life seeing and open air exercises.
Features of Kenya Visit Bundle with Surfnxt
Set out on an extraordinary excursion with Surfnxt's Kenya visit bundle as you dig into the entrancing safari undertakings in Kenya's famous public stops and enjoy ocean side escapes and water exercises along the staggering shoreline.
Safari Undertakings in Kenya's Public Parks
Get ready to observe the lofty Huge Five - lions, elephants, bison, panthers, and rhinos - right at home as you continue exciting safari trips in Kenya's undeniably popular public stops like Masai Mara and Amboseli.
Ocean side Escapes and Water Exercises in Kenya
Loosen up on the perfect sea shores of Diani and Watamu, where you can absorb the sun, swim in turquoise waters, and participate in exciting water exercises like swimming, jumping, and water sports, making your get-away in Kenya genuinely remarkable.
Investigating the Untamed life and Nature in Kenya
Experience the crude excellence of Kenya's untamed life and nature as you experience the famous Large Five on safari and visit protection focuses and holds devoted to saving the country's rich biodiversity.
”
”
Kenya Tour Package From Bangalore
“
Although language, as we know it, helped humans acquire supremacy over other animals, if we follow evolution, we could easily infer that language is still only a purely animalistic expression, regardless of how advanced it seems to us compared to other animals. But what the real potential and possibilities are, we barely know or try to explore and understand.
”
”
Dejan Stojanovic (ABSOLUTE (THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS))
“
When you get high on something - including "spiritual bliss" - there is always going to be a low. The comedown is your body / mind returning to balance, or the closest thing to balance that it knows. If you desperately crave bliss while your body / mind needs balance, you are bound to label the changeover as "feeling bad," when in fact it's the best thing that can happen.
Zen practice is not about getting high on anything and in so doing, getting high on absolutely everything. We then find that everything we encounter - bliss and nonbliss - possesses a tremendous depth and beauty that we usually miss.
”
”
Brad Warner (Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between)
“
No comatose space travel, no millennial hibernation, however interminable, promise even a scintilla of what earthbound man has already accomplished. Our own planet still holds countless unlocked mysteries as great as any that lie beyond our own Milky Way. And even that knowledge, however deeply it penetrates, is only part of the total manifestation of life in millions of living species. The actual genius that will "flourish only in space, in the realm of the machine," is the genius of entropy and anti-life. With space exploration, the traditional enemy of God and man has already re-appeared, in post-Faustian form. And as of old, if one is willing to sell one's soul to him, he offers his ancient bribe-unlimited power of control, control absolute, not only over all other kingdoms and principalities, but over life itself.
”
”
Lewis Mumford (The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2))
“
Those who opt for contemporary worship at its best are absolutely committed to offering heartfelt, fully engaged, jubilant expressions of love and thanks to the One who so wildly loves us.
”
”
Paul Basden (Exploring the Worship Spectrum: 6 Views (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology Book 3))
“
Don’t try to make any identity of yourself but search for your inner individuality and let it explore.
”
”
Nitin Yaduvanshi (Absolute Love Letter)
“
face.” I sat spellbound. Here it was — the image of grace I had been seeking: an aspiring father bringing unconditional acceptance to a child who had absolutely nothing to offer, no accolades or accomplishments, just herself in all of her vulnerability and scars and weaknesses. My eyes moistened. This is the love of a dad. Maybe — just maybe — this is the love of a Father.
”
”
Lee Strobel (The Case for Grace: A Journalist Explores the Evidence of Transformed Lives)
“
How in the direction of nearby services with plumber
The disease or damaged sewer somewhere to eat on the needs of the environment of the property or in the office is not immediate. Drinking water supply as a result of the expiry of promoting damage, as a significant drop due to the free flow of H2O or ruin your furniture imported and domestic wood. Therefore, the same under the sink, although the cover or part of the house damaged, is smart, a plumber can choose the rescue and hardened pipes quickly. Even before he published a plumber in the house, the important point is high absolutely certain that the supply mechanically interlocked with H2O is on drunk driving to create, so it does not come through other more harm in the sense of your own home , Or, if this type of pipes has a main valve arranged directly detected water meter. Some require keys, and some just came clockwise at the end of lead in drinking water purchased at home alternative pipeline valves.
Today, every time you select a plumber, it is less complicated to the user to check the direction of friends and spouse and children advice. Family and friends are to be generally easier to purchase self-guided tour, and will be used by similar problems, are able to keep track direction when they can to implement fantastic plumber composed. Examine the site and installers who can access services, many alternatives are completely abandoned. Plumbers usually contain effective advantage proposals with their name and ask their previous customers to ensure that their correct answers about the plumber. The first person with specialized potentially provide unique designs, what and who himself is a must.
At the time, in fact, to relax tight, you can ask to self has types and issues, as they were only in the organization. Added opinion does not necessarily mean a lot more experience, no matter when. In addition, plumbers constructive part’s sure you as needed to be able to manage the project management. Plumber’s consultant can make sure their professionalism. If your own way, one after another, before the service, appearance and adequate compensation and professional identity can be reproduced in the way see that they treat their business. And most important ideals, what little. At any time to explore alternative wages to leave the direction of the conversation, such as supply and property prices have some people will be surprised to see how you will use the monthly bill too important to save for economic time. That's because each of us the importance of creating knew, of course, considering all costs move towards Bill damage to your account, after the tube to take healed.
”
”
Boiler Repair
“
You will not lose one ounce. You are absolutely stunning just as you are. Your curves are beautiful. You are soft in all the places a woman should be soft. Your body makes me think of long days and nights spent exploring every curve. You provide a haven for me, mind, body and soul,
”
”
Julia Mills (Her Dragon To Slay (Dragon Guards, #1))
“
Who 'waits for inspiration' has probably never explored the brain. Its much larger than the entire internet. Writing, however, is partly stalking the big wave, and ride it when it comes. However, the thousands and thousands of blokes sitting at the shoreline trying to create waves by splashing their hands in the surf - it might be what they teach at writer workshops, but the sight is absolutely ghastly.
”
”
Martijn Benders
“
Life is meant to be truly lived, fully explored and enjoyably experienced with an absolute sense of purpose. Therefore, “the path with heart,” this revitalized journey, forged through life, is the path of authentic awakening … otherwise known as the path of the Awakened Warrior.
”
”
Gregg Swanson (Self-Mastery: Live a Life of Power, Purpose and Passion with Perseverance!)