Fluctuate Life Quotes

The rain fluctuates between drizzle and torrential. It messes with your mind. It makes you think things will always be like this, never getting better, always letting you down right when you though the worst was over.

You are told from the moment you enter school that time is constant. It never changes. It is one of those set things in life that you can always rely on... much like death and taxes. There will always be sixty seconds in a minute. There will always be sixty minutes in an hour. And there will always be twenty-four hours in a day. Time was not fluctuating. It moved on at the same, constant pace at every moment in your life. And that was the biggest load of crap that I'd ever been taught in school.

You are told from the moment you enter school that time is constant. It never changes. It is one of those set things in life that you can always rely on...much like death and taxes. There will always be sixty seconds in a minute. There will always be sixty minutes in an hour. And there will always be twenty-four hours in a day. Time was not fluctuating. It moved on at the same, constant pace at every moment in your life. And that was the biggest load of crap that I’d ever been taught in school. Truth was, time did fluctuate. It was easy to lose hours or even days in a blink of an eye. Other times, it was a struggle to get through a mere hour. It ebbed and flowed as relentlessly as the tides, and just as powerfully too. The moments that you wanted to last forever were the ones that were washed away all too soon. The moments that you wanted to speed up, were slowed down to a snail’s pace. That was the truth of the matter.

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.

Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself.

She had spent all her life in feeling miserable; this misery was her native element; its fluctuations, its varying depths, alone save her the impression of moving and living. What bothers me is that a sense of misery, and nothing else, is not enough to make a permanent soul. My enormous and morose Mademoiselle is all right on earth but impossible in eternity.

The timbre of Willa’s voice fluctuated from scarcely audible to maniacal while expressing her displeasure of being part of the family outing to begin with. “This was all Mom’s idea and it’s her fault we got hurt.”             Why on earth would you say that?” She was all happy again and we were supposed to just get over how she blamed me for Griff’s death. We had to look at the pretty flowers and that stupid waterfall from the cliff.” Willa grabbed her headphones. Discussion over.

I sat at a table in my shadowy kitchen, staring down a bottle of Boone's Farm Hard Lemonade, when a magic fluctuation hit. My wards shivered and died, leaving my home stripped of its defenses. The TV flared into life, unnaturally loud in the empty house. I raised my eyebrow at the bottle and bet it that another urgent bulletin was on. The bottle lost. "Urgent bulletin!" Margaret Chang announced. "The Attorney General advises all citizens that any attempt at summoning or other activities resulting in the appearance of a supernaturally powerful being can be hazardous to yourself and to other citizens." "No shit," I told the bottle.

Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.

Consider cotton prices," Malcolm said. "There are good records of cotton prices going back more than a hundred years. When you study fluctuations in cotton prices, you find that the graph of price fluctuations in the course of a day looks basically like the graph for a week, which looks basically like the graph for a year, or for ten years. And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there... And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.

If you are unwilling or unable to pivot and adapt to the incessant, fluctuating tides of life, you will not enjoy being here. Sometimes, people try to play the cards that they wish they had, instead of playing the hand they’ve been dealt. The capacity to adjust and improvise is arguably the single most critical human ability.

When we speak the word “life,” it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach.

That's it: watch your moods. Don't let people see you fluctuate. Don't let yourself run your mouth. Never ever cry, even alone, because your cat or your kettle might tell. Always smile, but don't laugh loudly. Mania is an extrovert, but if you need to vent, tell your mattress or maybe your therapist, but put nothing in writing and never tell a friend or coworker how you're really feeling. Downplay any problem or joy. Pay attention to any signs that your life is shitty or excellent, because either is an illusion. Be careful around men, especially ones with big arms or opinions. Stop talking.

To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your puny memory, your frame that comes in a million different configurations. You are unpredictable. You're inconstant. You take weeks to fix. The engineer must worry about the water and oxygen and food you'll need in space, about how much extra fuel it will take to launch your shrimp cocktail and irradiated beef tacos. A solar cell or a thruster nozzle is stable and undemanding. It does not excrete or panic or fall in love with the mission commander. It has no ego. Its structural elements don't start to break down without gravity, and it works just fine without sleep. To me, you are the best thing to happen to rocket science. The human being is the machine that makes the whole endeavor so endlessly intriguing.

Life is drenched with emotion: we are dipped in each other’s colors, only to dry up again — Isn’t that so? In fact, the world is fluctuating as it always does, I think it’s only me who’s changed the most. To understand and humbly accept this change. I try to believe that this is the base for happiness

God loves us so much that he crushed his Son so that we might be his and that this love isn't based on our worthiness or performance. His love doesn't fluctuate from day-to-day. It was settled the moment he set it upon you before the foundation of the world.

My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed.

The exegesis Fat labored on month after month struck me as a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one — in this case an attempt by a beleaguered mind to make sense out of the inscrutable. Perhaps this is the bottom line to mental illness: incomprehensible events occur; your life becomes a bin for hoax-like fluctuations of what used to be reality. And not only that — as if that weren't enough — but you, like Fat, ponder forever over these fluctuations in an effort to order them into a coherency, when in fact the only sense they make is the sense you impose on them, out of necessity to restore everything into shapes and processes you can recognize. The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar. And what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The madman experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know.

Her family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. For many years of her life she had had two sons; but the crime and annihilation of Edward a few weeks ago, had robbed her of one; the similar annihilation of Robert had left her for a fortnight without any; and now, by the resurrection of Edward, she had one again.

I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won't, that we are different. As a child I thought that I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old?

In this imperfect world, we face unpredictable weather conditions, fluctuating moods, fragile relationships, uncertain job prospects, and an unknown future. There are moments when it may feel like nothing is going our way. Yet, we must never lose sight of hope, for life will always go on.

Men achieve cheerfulness by moderation in pleasure and by proportion in their life excess and deficiency are apt to fluctuate and cause great changes in the soul. And souls which change over great intervals are neither stable nor cheerful. So one should set one's mind on what is possible and be content with what one has taking little account of those who are admired and envied and not dwelling on them in thought but one should consider the lives of those who are in distress thinking of their grievous sufferings so that what one has and possesses will seem great and enviable and one will cease to suffer in one's soul through the desire for more.

Whatever their degree of self-control, these parents are governed by emotion, seeing the world in black-and-white terms, keeping score, holding grudges, and controlling others with emotional tactics. Their fluctuating moods and reactivity make them unreliable and intimidating. And while they may act helpless and usually see themselves as victims, family life always revolves around their moods. Although they often control themselves outside the family, where they can follow a structured role, within the crucible of intimate family relationships they display their full impulsivity, especially if intoxicated. It can be shocking to see how no-holds-barred they can get. Many children of such parents learn to subjugate themselves to other people’s wishes (Young and Klosko 1993). Because they grew up anticipating their parent’s stormy emotional weather, they can be overly attentive to other people’s feelings and moods, often to their own detriment.

Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long time ago. There is this terrific book that has changed your life, and then you meet the author, and he has shifty eyes and funny shoes and he won't talk about anything except the injustice of the United States income tax structure toward people with fluctuating income, or how to breed Black Angus cows, or something.

Normal Christian life is a process of restoration and renewal. Our joy is not static. It fluctuates with real life. It is vulnerable to satan's attacks.

I thought about that while he made his next calls, while I kept on with the newsletters. I thought about it during Sunday service at Word of Life, and during study hours in my room, with the Viking Erin and her squeaky pink highlighter. What it meant to really believe in something—for real. Belief. The big dictionary in the Promise library said it meant something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held conviction or opinion. But even that definition, as short and simple as it was, confused me. True or real: Those were definite words; opinion and conviction just weren't—opinions wavered and changed and fluctuated with the person, the situation. And most troubling of all was the word accepts. Something one accepts. I was much better at excepting everything than accepting anything, at least anything for certain, for definite. That much I knew. That much I believed.

And then there was that key point in On the Origin of Species. That crucial point that somehow both David and before him Francis Galton had missed. What does Darwin say is the best way of building a strong species, of allowing it to endure into the future, to withstand the blows of Chaos in all her mighty forms—flood, drought, rising sea levels, fluctuating temperatures, invasions of competitors, predators, pests? Variation. Variation in genes, and hence in behavior and physical traits. Homogeneity is a death sentence. To rid a species of its mutants and outliers is to make that species dangerously vulnerable to the elements.

Moon is associated with, astrologically speaking: feelings, emotions, mothers, parenting, memories, femininity, the Goddess, witches, women, childhood, cycles, nourishment, heritage, habits, sensitivity, moods, fluctuations, subconscious, receptivity, domestic life, the public, feeding, nurturing, home, needs, and more.

To the extent that you actually realize that you are not, for example, your anxieties, then your anxieties no longer threaten you. Even if anxiety is present, it no longer overwhelms you because you are no longer exclusively tied to it. You are no longer courting it, fighting it, resisting it, or running from it. In the most radical fashion, anxiety is thoroughly accepted as it is and allowed to move as it will. You have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, by its presence or absence, for you are simply watching it pass by. Thus, any emotion, sensation, thought, memory, or experience that disturbs you is simply one with which you have exclusively identified yourself, and the ultimate resolution of the disturbance is simply to dis-identify with it. You cleanly let all of them drop away by realizing that they are not you--since you can see them, they cannot be the true Seer and Subject. Since they are not your real self, there is no reason whatsoever for you to identify with them, hold on to them, or allow your self to be bound by them. Slowly, gently, as you pursue this dis-identification "therapy," you may find that your entire individual self (persona, ego, centaur), which heretofore you have fought to defend and protect, begins to go transparent and drop away. Not that it literally falls off and you find yourself floating, disembodied, through space. Rather, you begin to feel that what happens to your personal self—your wishes, hopes, desires, hurts—is not a matter of life-or-death seriousness, because there is within you a deeper and more basic self which is not touched by these peripheral fluctuations, these surface waves of grand commotion but feeble substance. Thus, your personal mind-and-body may be in pain, or humiliation, or fear, but as long as you abide as the witness of these affairs, as if from on high, they no longer threaten you, and thus you are no longer moved to manipulate them, wrestle with them, or subdue them. Because you are willing to witness them, to look at them impartially, you are able to transcend them. As St. Thomas put it, "Whatever knows certain things cannot have any of them in its own nature." Thus, if the eye were colored red, it wouldn't be able to perceive red objects. It can see red because it is clear, or "redless." Likewise, if we can but watch or witness our distresses, we prove ourselves thereby to be "distress-less," free of the witnessed turmoil. That within which feels pain is itself pain-less; that which feels fear is fear-less; that which perceives tension is tensionless. To witness these states is to transcend them. They no longer seize you from behind because you look at them up front.

Economic theory is devoted to the study of equilibrium positions. The concept of equilibrium is very useful. It allows us to focus on the final outcome rather than the process that leads up to it. But the concept is also very deceptive. It has the aura of something empirical: since the adjustment process is supposed to lead to an equilibrium, an equilibrium position seems somehow implicit in our observations. That is not true. Equilibrium itself has rarely been observed in real life — market prices have a notorious habit of fluctuating.

Change is essential for survival. All life forms must adapt to their fluctuating circumstances. All form of life result from the process of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance. The universe is in a constant state of chaos. We each have chaos implanted into our bones. Nature wires all of us for change.

...had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples.

She fluctuated between pursuing personal fulfilment and devoting her energies to serving the community for no reward. She would do this all her life.

My whole life I've had to push through my own death threats. I'm a woman with fluctuating hormones and emotions. Period.

And from time to time, the fluctuation doesn’t produce a Big Bang, it just re-creates last Tuesday—specifically, that moment when you stubbed your toe on the kitchen table and spilled an entire cup of coffee on the floor. That moment. And every other moment of your life. And everyone else’s.

For the rest of his life, the greater the chaos, the calmer Rockefeller would become, particularly when others around him were either panicked or mad with greed. He would make much of his fortune during these market fluctuations—because he could see while others could not. This insight lives on today in Warren Buffet’s famous adage to “be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.” Rockefeller, like all great investors, could resist impulse in favor of cold, hard common sense.

My life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.

He yearned with a poet's yearning for the wide sky, the far-reaching vista of bridges, the tender and fluctuating lights on the water which seems to breathe with a life that can shiver and mourn, be comforted and rejoice.

We exist, not as wholly singular, autonomous beings, nor completely merged, but in a fluctuating space in between. This idea was expressed beautifully in Desmond Tutu's explanation of the South African concept of Ubuntu. He said, "It is to say, my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. We belong in a bundle of life. It is not I think therefore I am. It says rather: I am human because I belong, I participate, and I share.

There will always be 60 seconds in a minute. There will always be 60 minutes in an hour. And there will always be 24 hours n a day. Time was not fluctuating. It moved on at the same, constant pace at every moment in your life

I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won’t, that we are different. As a child I thought I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old? I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair. Now I am older than my love, my departed friends. Perhaps I will live so long that the New York Public Library will be obliged to hand over the walking stick of Virginia Woolf. I would cherish it for her, and the stones in her pocket. But I would also keep on living, refusing to surrender my pen.

No subject is more touched on than love, in the human life stories as well as in the literary corpus they have left us... No subject, either, is as discussed, as controversial, especially during the final period of human history, when the cyclothymic fluctuations concerning the belief in love became constant and dizzying. In conclusion, no subject seems to have preoccupied man as much; even money, even the satisfaction derived from combat and glory, loses by comparison, its dramatic power in human life stories. Love seems to have been, for humans of the final period, the acme and the impossible, the regret and the grace, the focal point upon which all suffering and joy could be concentrated.

Perhaps this is the bottom line to mental illness: incomprehensible events occur; your life becomes a bin for hoax-like fluctuations of what used to be reality. And not only that—as if that weren't enough—but you, like Fat, ponder forever over these fluctuations in an effort to order them into a coherency, when in fact the only sense they make is the sense you impose on them, out of the necessity to restore everything into shapes and processes you can recognize. The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar. And what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The madman experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know.

We tend to think that we have only two options in our life; either survive or die. We fluctuate our focus solely on these two ends. But we often forget while traveling between these two ends there is a middle path that we must pass, where we learn ‘To Live.

Disability fluctuates, growing visible, then invisible, then visible again, becoming both ever-present and haunting. Such a problematizing of physical life added a new wrinkle to the genre's double/secret identity trope: the characters now interact with their shifting bodies as bodies with all the complications involved.

I think life is one big fluctuation between horniness and a sincere quest for meaning. We just call one the other.

When I get back to the time we shared together it always fluctuates current feelings and mould them back to the same we shared back then.

Only hardness or only softness creates an inability to deal effectively with the fluctuations of life.

we all love people in our life. way of expressing it may change but the intensity never fluctuates. there are comparisons and fights in any relation because of the same reason of their existence.

Life has a strange rhythm. It takes a while to fully be aware of this (...) but the rhythm is there. The tempo shifts and fluctuates; there are structures within structures, patterns within patterns.

Modern society is in a state of turbulence brought about, in large part, by political efforts to maintain static, equilibrium conditions; practices that interfere with the ceaseless processes of change that provide the fluctuating order upon which any creative system—such as the marketplace—depends. Institutions, being ends in themselves, have trained us to resist change and favor the status quo; to insist upon the certain and the concrete and to dismiss the uncertain and the fanciful; and to embrace security and fear risk. Life, on the other hand is change, is adaptation, creativity, and novelty. But creativity has always depended upon a fascination with the mysterious, and an appreciation for the kinds of questions that reveal more than answers can ever provide. When creative processes become subordinated to preserving established interests; when the glorification of systems takes priority over the sanctity of individual lives, societies begin to lose their life-sustaining vibrancy and may collapse.

I WOULD LIKE, to begin with, to say that though parents, husbands, children, lovers and friends are all very well, they are not dogs. In my day and turn having been each of the above,—except that instead of husbands I was wives,—I know what I am talking about, and am well acquainted with the ups and downs, the daily ups and downs, the sometimes almost hourly ones in the thin-skinned, which seem inevitably to accompany human loves. Dogs are free from these fluctuations. Once they love, they love steadily, unchangingly, till their last breath. That is how I like to be loved. Therefore I will write of dogs.

Life has a strange rhythm. It takes a while to fully be aware of this. Decades. Centuries, even. It’s not a simple rhythm. But the rhythm is there. The tempo shifts and fluctuates; there are structures within structures, patterns within patterns. It’s baffling. Like when you first hear John Coltrane on the saxophone. But if you stick with it, the elements of familiarity become clear. The current rhythm is speeding up. I am approaching a crescendo. Everything is happening all at once. That is one of the patterns: when nothing is happening, nothing continues to happen, but after a while the lull becomes too much and the drums need to kick in. Something has to happen. Often that need comes from yourself. You make a phone call. You say, ‘I can’t do this life any more, I need to change.’ And one thing happens that you are in control of. And then another happens which you have no say over. Newton’s third law of motion. Actions create reactions. When things start to happen, other things start to happen. But sometimes it seems there is no explanation as to why the things are happening – why all the buses are coming along at once – why life’s moments of luck and pain arrive in clusters. All we can do is observe the pattern, the rhythm, and then live it.

Isn’t that part of what defines every relationship? That mixture of how much you need someone and how much they need you back? It’s never an equal amount. And it fluctuates—ideally it does—because both of those things are exhausting in their own right. You needed me more than I needed you then, maybe, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t need a friend too. That I didn’t benefit from having you in my life. Of course I did.

The collective disease of humanity is that people are so engrossed in what happens, so hypnotized by the world of fluctuating forms, so absorbed in the content of their lives, they have forgotten the essence, that which is beyond content, beyond form, beyond thought. They are so consumed by time that they have forgotten eternity, which is their origin, their home, their destiny. Eternity is the living reality of who you are.

Humboldt was the first to relate colonialism to the devastation of the environment. Again and again, his thoughts returned to nature as a complex web of life but also to man’s place within it. At the Rio Apure, he had seen the devastation caused by the Spanish who had tried to control the annual flooding by building a dam. To make matters worse, they had also felled the trees that had held the riverbanks together like ‘a very tight wall’ with the result that the raging river carried more land away each year. On the high plateau of Mexico City, Humboldt had observed how a lake that fed the local irrigation system had shrunk into a shallow puddle, leaving the valleys beneath barren. Everywhere in the world, Humboldt said, water engineers were guilty of such short-sighted follies. He debated nature, ecological issues, imperial power and politics in relation to each other. He criticized unjust land distribution, monocultures, violence against tribal groups and indigenous work conditions – all powerfully relevant issues today. As a former mining inspector, Humboldt had a unique insight into the environmental and economic consequences of the exploitation of nature’s riches. He questioned Mexico’s dependence on cash crops and mining, for example, because it bound the country to fluctuating international market prices. ‘The only capital,’ he said, that ‘increases with time, consists in the produce of agriculture’. All problems in the colonies, he was certain, were the result of the ‘imprudent activities of the Europeans’.

I will here give a brief sketch of the progress of opinion on the Origin of Species. Until recently the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created. This view has been ably maintained by many authors. Some few naturalists, on the other hand, have believed that species undergo modification, and that the existing forms of life are the descendants by true generation of pre existing forms. Passing over allusions to the subject in the classical writers (Aristotle, in his "Physicae Auscultationes" (lib.2, cap.8, s.2), after remarking that rain does not fall in order to make the corn grow, any more than it falls to spoil the farmer's corn when threshed out of doors, applies the same argument to organisation; and adds (as translated by Mr. Clair Grece, who first pointed out the passage to me), "So what hinders the different parts (of the body) from having this merely accidental relation in nature? as the teeth, for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sharp, adapted for dividing, and the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident. And in like manner as to other parts in which there appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever, therefore, all things together (that is all the parts of one whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved, having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and whatsoever things were not thus constituted, perished and still perish." We here see the principle of natural selection shadowed forth, but how little Aristotle fully comprehended the principle, is shown by his remarks on the formation of the teeth.), the first author who in modern times has treated it in a scientific spirit was Buffon. But as his opinions fluctuated greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on details.

In the car inching its way down Fifth Avenue, toward Bergdorf Goodman and this glamorous party, I looked back on my past with a new understanding. This sickness, the “endo-whatever,” had stained so much—my sense of self, my womanhood, my marriage, my ability to be present. I had effectively missed one week of each month every year of my life since I was thirteen, because of the chronic pain and hormonal fluctuations I suffered during my period. I had lain in bed, with heating pads and hot-water bottles, using acupuncture, drinking teas, taking various pain medications and suffering the collateral effects of them. I thought of all the many tests I missed in various classes throughout my education, the school dances, the jobs I knew I couldn’t take as a model, because of the bleeding and bloating as well as the pain (especially the bathing suit and lingerie shoots, which paid the most). How many family occasions was I absent from? How many second or third dates did I not go on? How many times had I not been able to be there for others or for myself? How many of my reactions to stress or emotional strife had been colored through the lens of chronic pain? My sense of self was defined by this handicap. The impediment of expected pain would shackle my days and any plans I made. I did not see my own womanhood as something positive or to be celebrated, but as a curse that I had to constantly make room for and muddle through. Like the scar on my arm, my reproductive system was a liability. The disease, developing part and parcel with my womanhood starting at puberty with my menses, affected my own self-esteem and the way I felt about my body. No one likes to get her period, but when your femininity carries with it such pain and consistent physical and emotional strife, it’s hard not to feel that your body is betraying you. The very relationship you have with yourself and your person is tainted by these ever-present problems. I now finally knew my struggles were due to this condition. I wasn’t high-strung or fickle and I wasn’t overreacting.

The development of cognition, motivation, and self-regulation does not end with adolescence; indeed, personality traits do not reach their maximum stability until the third or fourth decade of life. This suggests that life history strategies are partially open to revision for a large portion of the life course -possibly depending on factors such as success in mating and reproduction, major environmental fluctuations, or unexpected changes in health, wealth or status.

All women are twins. All women are fundamentally two in one, our most essential structural feature being our bipolar nature entrained with the ceaseless rhythms of the 'inconstant Moon,' to quote Shakespeare's Juliet. Each one of us, for much of her adult life, moves monthly between the light and dark poles of hormonal and emotional fluctuation-from ovulation to menstruation. At one point expanded, then introverted; reaching out and going within; we descend to depths of unfathomable complexity and return to the world empowered and ready to begin again. Unlike the linear, one-pointed man, women (and the ancient religions of the Goddess) flow with the cyclic rhythms of the waxing and waning Moon, with its birth, death, and rebirth.

For most of us enlightenment is not a destination or graduation into a permanent higher state of consciousness, but a moment-by-moment experience constantly fluctuating between degrees of wholeness and limited consciousness. I like to call this “enlightening-ment.

A happy house for homeschool is one where every inch is used for learning, messes are welcomed, people are more precious than furnishings, and household maintenance is a varying standard with fluctuating amounts of help, and we’re all okay with it most of the time.

The belief in a definable, consistent self, an identity that develops through the course of a life-story and that can be conclusively described, breaks down, to a great extent, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at a time when psychoanalysis, scientific discoveries such as the theory of relativity, and experiments in art forms, are producing a more indeterminate approach to identity. Western biography from this time has more to say about contradictions and fluctuations in identity, and about the unknowability of the self.

In times of deep pain in my own life, the belief of the church has carried me. When we confess the creeds in worship, we don’t say, “I believe in God the Father . . .” because some weeks I do and some weeks, I can’t climb that high. Instead we confess, “We believe . . .” Belief isn’t a feeling inside of us, but a reality outside of us into which we enter, and when we find our faith faltering, sometimes all we can do is fall on the faith of the saints. We believe together. Thank God belief isn’t left to me and my ever-fluctuating faithfulness.

Trauma impels people both to withdraw from close relationships and to seek them desperately. The profound disruption in basic trust, the common feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, and the need to avoid reminders of the trauma that might be found in social life, all foster withdrawal from close relationships. But the terror of the traumatic event intensifies the need for protective attachments. The traumatized person therefore frequently alternates between isolation and anxious clinging to others. […] It results in the formation of intense, unstable relationships that fluctuate between extremes.

Our lives are brief, and so it is the quality of our experiences, rather than the extent of our possessions, that matters. The more things we own, the more we are exposed to misfortune: a fashionable home will soon be outdated, our prestige in the eyes of others will fluctuate for trivial reasons and the monuments we hope to be remembered by will be misinterpreted or torn down. The hut is an impermanent accommodation – it might be blown down in a storm or washed away in a flood, officials might arrive at our door and force us to leave – but by living here our needs become so simple that chance has less to work on.

Recently, the search for what he calls "the splinters that make up different attention problems" has taken Castellanos in a new direction. First, he explains that your brain is far less concerned with your brilliant ideas or searing emotions than with its own internal "gyroscopic busyness," which consumes 65 percent of its total energy. Every fifty seconds, its activity fluctuates, causing what he calls a "brownout." No one knows the purpose of these neurological events, but Castellanos has a thesis: the clockwork pulses enable the brain's circuits to stay "logged on" and available to communicate with one another, even when they're not being used. "Imagine you're a cabdriver on your day off," Castellanos says. "You don't need to use your workday circuits on a Sunday, but to keep those channels open, your brain sends a ping through them every minute or so. The fluctuations are the brain's investment in maintaining its circuits online.

Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there are many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all.

The EEG provided a record of rhythmic fluctuations in potential voltage over various parts of the head. Berger at first thought there was only one wave from the whole brain, but it soon became clear that the waves differed, depending on where the electrodes were put. Modern EEGs use as many as thirty-two separate channels, all over the head.

[T]he social canons and methods by which people build up instinct controls in their communal life are not brought into being deliberately; they evolve over long periods, blindly and without plan. Irregularities and contradictions in drive-controls, huge fluctuations in their severity or leniency, are therefore among the recurrent structural features of the civilizing process.

When one combines the new insights gained from studying far-from-equilibrium states and nonlinear processes, along with these complicated feedback systems, a whole new approach is opened that makes it possible to relate the so-called hard sciences to the softer sciences of life—and perhaps even to social processes as well. (Such findings have at least analogical significance for social, economic or political realities. Words like “revolution,” “economic crash,” “technological upheaval,” and “paradigm shift” all take on new shades of meaning when we begin thinking of them in terms of fluctuations, feedback amplification, dissipative structures, bifurcations, and the rest of the Prigoginian conceptual vocabulary.) It is these panoramic vistas that are opened to us by Order Out of Chaos.

FRIEND/ENEMY CENTEREDNESS. Young people are particularly, though certainly not exclusively, susceptible to becoming friend-centered. Acceptance and belonging to a peer group can become almost supremely important. The distorted and ever-changing social mirror becomes the source for the four life-support factors, creating a high degree of dependence on the fluctuating moods, feelings, attitudes, and behavior of others.

From its beginning the earthly study of economics has been infertile and unhelpful, because of the mass of unanalysed and scarcely suspected assumptions upon which it rested. The facts were ignored that trade is a bye-product and not an essential factor in social life, that property is a plastic and fluctuating convention, that value is capable of impersonal treatment only in the case of the most generalised requirements.

Thus, the question for astronauts was not How skilled a pilot are you, but Can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus only on what you can change? On the task at hand? Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we’ll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check—if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate.

At the time when the lines begin, in the mid-18th century, life expectancy in Europe and the Americas was around 35, where it had been parked for the 225 previous years for which we have data.3 Life expectancy for the world as a whole was 29. These numbers are in the range of expected life spans for most of human history. The life expectancy of hunter-gatherers is around 32.5, and it probably decreased among the peoples who first took up farming because of their starchy diet and the diseases they caught from their livestock and each other. It returned to the low 30s by the Bronze Age, where it stayed put for thousands of years, with small fluctuations across centuries and regions.4 This period in human history may be called the Malthusian Era, when any advance in agriculture or health was quickly canceled by the resulting bulge in population, though “era” is an odd term for 99.9 percent of our species’ existence.

The novelist Masao Abe has said, “In our daily life, there are moments when we are here with ourselves—moments in which we feel a vague sense of unity. But at other moments we find ourselves there—looking at ourselves from the outside. We fluctuate between here and there from moment to moment: homeless, without a place to settle.” He goes on to add that only humans experience this divisive self-consciousness, that plants and other animals just are what they are.

It must be obvious that in the high Middle Ages there was no possibility of the sort of naturalism which reduces the whole of reality to a mere sum of sense impressions any more than of a total replacement of feudal forms of rule by the bourgeois manner of life, nor again of any radical abolition of the spiritual dictatorship of the Church for a free and untrammelled secular culture. In art, as in all other fields of culture, what we find is just a certain balance between freedom and restraint. Gothic naturalism is an unstable equilibrium of world-affirming and world-denying impulses, just as the whole of chivalry is permeated by an inner contradiction, and just as the whole religious life of the period fluctuates between dogma and inwardness, between clerical creeds and lay piety, between orthodoxy and subjectivism. The same inner contradiction, the same spiritual polarity, manifests itself in all these social, religious and artistic oppositions.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

Self-confidence is what you show on the outside. Self-worth is what you feel on the inside. Self-confidence is based on mastery. Self-worth is based on identity. Self-confidence is what you can do. Self-worth is who you are. Self-confidence is believing you’re skilled enough. Self-worth is believing you ARE enough. Self-confidence fluctuates based on your environment. Self-worth is stable through every environment. Self-confidence is fragile. Self-worth is foundational. Self-confidence is the belief in your abilities as a person. Self-worth is the belief in your value as a person. Self-confidence is “I’m striving to earn love.” Self-worth is knowing “I am love.” Self-confidence gives you drive. Self-worth gives you peace. Self-confidence is optional. Self-worth is essential. Self-confidence eventually surrenders. Self-worth ultimately prevails. Self-worth is your foundation. Self-confidence is the house you build on top of it. Your house will only ever be as secure as the foundation it’s built upon.

My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when their’s are failing.

Nothing that remains static is truly ever alive. Nature does not abide idleness. All energy sources of the natural world and the cosmos are in a constant motion, they are in a perpetual state of fluctuation. All forms of living must make allowances for the seasons of change. The Earth itself is twirling through space, spinning on its axis analogous to a child’s top. The unpredictable forces of instability brought about by a combination of motion, change, and flux propels the miraculous dynamism of existence.

Sattvik actor is not egoistic. Does not have the I-am-the-doer attitude. And is free from attachment. With no preferential relationship binding him to the world. Besides, a sattvik actor possesses steadfastness, dhriti and enthusiasm, utsaha. He is energetic, cheerful and joyful in what he does. And does it with consistency of purpose until the work is done. All along his course of activity he remains disinterested in the result thereof. Success or failure means nothing to him. He maintains a balance of mind through the fluctuations of life’s experiences.

Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we’ll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check—if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate. The Greeks had a word for this: apatheia. It’s the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind. Don’t let the negativity in, don’t let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can’t afford to panic.

The concept "God" was invented as the opposite of the concept life — everything detrimental, poisonous, and slanderous, and all deadly hostility to life, wad bound together in one horrible unit in Him. The concepts "beyond" and "true world" were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists — in order that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to earthly reality. The concepts "soul," "spirit," and last of all the concept "immortal soul," were invented in order to throw contempt on the body, in order to make it sick and "holy," in order to cultivate an attitude of appalling levity towards all things in life which deserve to be treated seriously, i.e. the questions of nutrition and habitation, of intellectual diet, the treatment of the sick, cleanliness, and weather. Instead of health, we find the "salvation of the soul" — that is to say, a folie circulate fluctuating between convulsions and penitence and the hysteria of redemption. The concept "sin," together with the torture instrument appertaining to it, which is the concept "free will," was invented in order to confuse and muddle our instincts, and to render the mistrust of them man's second nature! In the concepts "disinterestedness" and "self-denial," the actual signs of decadence are to be found. The allurement of that which is detrimental, the inability to discover one's own advantage and self-destruction, are made into absolute qualities, into the "duty," the "holiness," and the "divinity" of man. Finally — to keep the worst to the last — by the notion of the good man, all that is favoured which is weak, ill, botched, and sick-in-itself, which ought to be wiped out. The law of selection is thwarted, an ideal is made out of opposition to the proud, well-constituted man, to him who says yea to life, to him who is certain of the future, and who guarantees the future — this man is henceforth called the evil one.

After mentioning these and other examples, Modris Eksteins correctly observes that the Holocaust was not exclusively a German affair. Hitler may have found ‘willing executioners’ among his own people, but also among the citizens of the lands he conquered. ‘The Holocaust was enacted in the fevered dreamscapes of Eastern Europe where right and wrong were seldom on opposite sides, and where fear and hatred were a way of life. This was a frontier land where borders and peoples had fluctuated throughout history, and where the Jew and the Gypsy were symbols of transience and instability. Holocaust was a state of mind here before it was a Nazi policy.

THE economic consequences of fluctuations in the objective exchange-value of money have such important bearings on the life of the community and of the individual that as soon as the State had abandoned the attempt to exploit for fiscal ends its authority in monetary matters, and as soon as the large-scale development of the modern economic community had enabled the State to exert a decisive influence on the kind of money chosen by the market, it was an obvious step to think of attaining certain socio-political aims by influencing these consequences in a systematic manner. Modern currency policy is something essentially new; it differs fundamentally from earlier State activity in the monetary sphere.

X believed that making fiction was sacred...and she wanted to live in that sanctity, not to be fooled by the flimsiness of perceived reality, which was nothing more than a story that had fooled most of the world. She chose, instead, to live a life in which nothing was fixed, nothing was a given--that her name might change from day to day, moment to moment, and the same was true for her beliefs, her memories, her manner of dress, her manner of speech, what she knew, what she wanted. All of it was always being called into question. All of it was costume and none of it was solid. Not even her past was a settled matter, and though anything else around her might fluctuate, that unsettled core--her history--was to remain unsettled.

Why two (or whole groups) of people can come up with the same story or idea at the same time, even when across the world from each-other: "A field is a region of influence, where a force will influence objects at a distance with nothing in between. We and our universe live in a Quantum sea of light. Scientists have found that the real currency of the universe is an exchange of energy. Life radiates light, even when grown in the dark. Creation takes place amidst a background sea of energy, which metaphysics might call the Force, and scientists call the "Field." (Officially the Zero Point Field) There is no empty space, even the darkest empty space is actually a cauldron of energies. Matter is simply concentrations of this energy (particles are just little knots of energy.) All life is energy (light) interacting. The universe is self-regenreating and eternal, constantly refreshing itself and in touch with every other part of itself instantaneously. Everything in it is giving, exchanging and interacting with energy, coming in and out of existence at every level. The self has a field of influence on the world and visa versa based on this energy. Biology has more and more been determined a quantum process, and consciousness as well, functions at the quantum level (connected to a universe of energy that underlies and connects everything). Scientist Walter Schempp's showed that long and short term memory is stored not in our brain but in this "Field" of energy or light that pervades and creates the universe and world we live in. A number of scientists since him would go on to argue that the brain is simply the retrieval and read-out mechanism of the ultimate storage medium - the Field. Associates from Japan would hypothesize that what we think of as memory is simply a coherent emission of signals from the "Field," and that longer memories are a structured grouping of this wave information. If this were true, it would explain why one tiny association often triggers a riot of sights, sounds and smells. It would also explain why, with long-term memory in particular, recall is instantaneous and doesn't require any scanning mechanism to sift through years and years of memory. If they are correct, our brain is not a storage medium but a receiving mechanism in every sense, and memory is simply a distant cousin of perception. Some scientists went as far as to suggest that all of our higher cognitive processes result from an interaction with the Field. This kind of constant interaction might account for intuition or creativity - and how ideas come to us in bursts of insight, sometimes in fragments but often as a miraculous whole. An intuitive leap might simply be a sudden coalescence of coherence in the Field. The fact that the human body was exchanging information with a mutable field of quantum fluctuation suggested something profound about the world. It hinted at human capabilities for knowledge and communication far deeper and more extended than we presently understand. It also blurred the boundary lines of our individuality - our very sense of separateness. If living things boil down to charged particles interacting with a Field and sending out and receiving quantum information, where did we end and the rest of the world began? Where was consciousness-encased inside our bodies or out there in the Field? Indeed, there was no more 'out there' if we and the rest of the world were so intrinsically interconnected. In ignoring the effect of the "Field" modern physicists set mankind back, by eliminating the possibility of interconnectedness and obscuring a scientific explanation for many kinds of miracles. In re-normalizing their equations (to leave this part out) what they'd been doing was a little like subtracting God.

And this contrast between what applies to us and to the woman we love, is not only a matter of desire, but also of lying. What is more usual than to lie, whether we wish to conceal, say, the daily fluctuations of our health when we want to represent it as strong, or to hide a vice, or to go, without hurting another, toward the thing which we prefer? Lying is the most necessary means of self-preservation, and the most used. And yet it is the thing we are determined to expunge from the life of the woman we love, lying is what we spy upon, sniff out, hate above all. It turns our feelings upside down, it is enough to make us break off a relationship, it seems to us to hide the greatest faults, unless of course it hides them so well that we do not suspect their existence.

I believe in movement. I believed in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believed in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believed in life, which one day each of us shall lose. (...) I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old? I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair. Now I am older than my love, my departed friends. Perhaps I will live so long that the New York Public Library will be obliged to hand over the walking stick of Virginia Woolf. I would cherish it for her, and the stones in her pocket. But I would also keep on living, refusing to surrender my pen.

Multi-modular brains have at their beck and call a tremendous number of paths to conscious experience. If one route gets destroyed, another may provide an alternate course. To stamp out consciousness, all modules leading to a conscious state must be shut down. Until this happens, intact modules will continue to pass information from one layer to another and induce a subjective feeling of experience. The contents of that conscious experience may be very different from normal, but consciousness remains. Visiting the neuropsychology clinic, we will see how various assaults on our brain affect consciousness and provide insights into how our brains are organized. It turns out that the endless fluctuations of our cognitive life, which are managed by our cortex, ride on a sea of emotional states, which are constantly being adjusted by our subcortical brain.

Perhaps the heritability of IQ implies something entirely different, something that once and for all proves that Galton’s attempt to discriminate between nature and nurture is misconceived. Consider this apparently fatuous fact. People with high IQ s, on average, have more symmetrical ears than people with low IQ s. Their whole bodies seem to be more symmetrical: foot breadth, ankle breadth, finger length, wrist breadth and elbow breadth each correlates with IQ. In the early 1990s there was revived an old interest in bodily symmetry, because of what it can reveal about the body’s development during early life. Some asymmetries in the body are consistent: the heart is on the left side of the chest, for example, in most people. But other, smaller asymmetries can go randomly in either direction. In some people the left ear is larger than the right; in others, vice versa. The magnitude of this so-called fluctuating asymmetry is a sensitive measure of how much stress the body was under when developing, stress from infections, toxins or poor nutrition. The fact that people with high IQs have more symmetrical bodies suggests that they were subject to fewer developmental stresses in the womb or in childhood. Or rather, that they were more resistant to such stresses. And the resistance may well be heritable. So the heritability of IQ might not be caused by direct ‘genes for intelligence’ at all, but by indirect genes for resistance to toxins or infections – genes in other words that work by interacting with the environment. You inherit not your IQ but your ability to develop a high IQ under certain environmental circumstances. How does one parcel that one into nature and nurture? It is frankly impossible.

You are told from the moment you enter school that time is constant. It never changes. It is one of those set things in life that you can always rely on... much like death and taxes. There will always be sixty seconds in a minute. There will always be sixty minutes in an hour. And there will always be twenty-four hours in a day. Time was not fluctuating. It moved on at the same, constant pace at every moment in your life. And that was the biggest load of crap that I'd ever been taught in school. Truth was, time did fluctuate. It was easy to lose hours or even days in a blink of an eye. Other times, it was a struggle to get through a mere hour. It ebbed and flowed as relentlessly as the tides, and just as powerfully too. The moments that you wanted to last forever were the ones that were washed away all too soon. The moments that you wanted to speed up, were slowed down to a snail’s pace. That was the truth of the matter.

Tranquillity is a certain equality of mind which no condition of fortune can either exalt or depress. Nothing can make it less, for it is the state of human perfection: it raises us as high as we can go, and makes every man his own supporter, whereas he that is borne up by anything else may fall. He that judges aright, and perseveres in it, enjoys a perpetual calm; he takes a true prospect of things; he observes an order and measure in all his actions; he has a benevolence in his nature; he squares his life according to reason, and draws to himself love and admiration. Without a certain and unchangeable judgment, all the rest is but fluctuation. Liberty and serenity of mind must necessarily ensue upon the mastering of those things, which either allure or affright us, when, instead of these flashy pleasures (which even at the best are both vain and hurtful together), we shall find ourselves possessed of an excellent joy assured and a continual peace and repose of soul.

Spiritual aspiration, hunger for God, is the most important blessing one can have. Spiritual hunger leads to sincere sadhana, and sincere sadhana leads to a progressive spiritual life. By regular repetition of the diksha mantra, our mind becomes more and more stable and a gradual transformation of consciousness unfolds. Japa is the foundation. Keep the current of Divine Remembrance flowing at all times. There is a river of rapturous bliss ever flowing just underneath our fluctuating thoughts. Sadhana allows us to feel, hear, see and bathe in this celestial stream. It flows in the center of our spine. It flows in the center of our being. It flows from the infinite ocean of satchitananda from which we come, in which we live and into which we will eventually return. The faint intuitive fragrance of this stream is love, happiness, joy and satisfaction. To drink from it directly is mind-blowing ecstasy. To drown in it is immortality, transcending the limitations of time, space and form in the Eternal One: the One we call Kali, the One we call Ramakrishna.

Therefore, perception, which I count as the most wonderful of instruments, has just as little reality as that of my poor senses. However I might conceive of matter, it is always something different from what I understood it to be. But it is not only that I can never completely perceive the essence of matter, but also it's that it has no being. Spray water on a hot oven and it is instantaneously vaporized, if I throw a lump of sugar into a cup of tea it melts. If I break the cup I'm drinking out of, I'll have nothing but shards - but no longer a cup. If, however, being can be turned into not-being with the flip of the wrist, then it is not worth talking about it as being. Not-being, death, is the real essence of all matter, life is only a negation of this essence for an infinitely short span of time. But the thought of the drop of water, or the lump of sugar remains immutable, it can never be broken, vaporated, or melted. So isn't this thought to be spoken of with much greater right as reality, than fluctuating material is? "From The Diary Of An Orange Tree

We pay a high price for this ingenious neural machinery, though, because the default mode network is responsible for mind-wandering. “Experience sampling”—which involves asking people about their mood and thoughts at random moments throughout the day—suggests that our minds wander from what we’re actually doing an amazing 30 percent to 50 percent of the time that we’re awake, and that this is often associated with feelings of unhappiness.6–8 According to Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, who created an iPhone app, Rate Your Happiness, to gather some of this data, fluctuations in happiness depend more on what we’re thinking than what we’re doing. Crucially, the results suggest that mind-wandering is the cause rather than the consequence of negative emotions. As the opening verse of the Dhammapada expresses it, “Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draw it.”9 Less poetically, the psychologists concluded that “the ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.” So, while

The combination of loss aversion and narrow framing is a costly curse. Individual investors can avoid that curse, achieving the emotional benefits of broad framing while also saving time and agony, by reducing the frequency with which they check how well their investments are doing. Closely following daily fluctuations is a losing proposition, because the pain of the frequent small losses exceeds the pleasure of the equally frequent small gains. Once a quarter is enough, and may be more than enough for individual investors. In addition to improving the emotional quality of life, the deliberate avoidance of exposure to short-term outcomes improves the quality of both decisions and outcomes. The typical short-term reaction to bad news is increased loss aversion. Investors who get aggregated feedback receive such news much less often and are likely to be less risk averse and to end up richer. You are also less prone to useless churning of your portfolio if you don’t know how every stock in it is doing every day (or every week or even every month). A commitment not to change one’s position for several periods (the equivalent of “locking in” an investment) improves financial performance.

Not that there is no distress. Terrible movements, laws that underpin and organize tragedy and genocide, gods that present themselves in the guise of death and destitution, monsters lying in wait, corpses coming and going on the tide, infernal powers, threats of all sorts, abandonments, events without response, monstrous couplings, blind waves, impossible paths, terrible forces that every day tear human beings, animals, plants, and things from their sphere of life and condemn them to death: all these are present. But what is missing, far from the dead ends, random observations, and false dilemmas (Afrocentrism vs. Africanism), is any sign of radical questioning. For what Africa as a concept calls fundamentally into question is the manner in which social theory has hitherto reflected on the problem (observable also elsewhere) of the collapse of worlds, their fluctuations and tremblings, their about-turns and disguises, their silences and murmurings. Social theory has failed also to account for time as lived, not synchronically or diachronically, but in its multiplicity and simultaneities, its presence and absences, beyond the lazy categories of permanence and change beloved of so many historians.

The degree of consciousness of a living creature fluctuates up and down, depending on its emotional condition, within the limits of an octave of vibrations. These fluctuations, however, must not exceed the limits of elasticity of the nerves; for if they do, injuries and sicknesses of a more or less serious nature occur, even death. The vibration belonging to creative vital energy is absolutely lethal for creatures whose consciousness has not yet reached this level. It would burn out the nerves and nervous centres. For this reason, vital energy from the spinal column, where it has its seat, is transformed into a low vibration corresponding to the degree of consciousness of the person concerned and only this transformed vital current is conducted into the body. ‘Thus animals, for example, are animated by a much lower life vibration than primitive man; and primitive man with his beast-like selfish nature, is animated by lower vibrations of vital energy than a person who is spiritually developed. If one were to conduct the vital energy of a highly developed human being into an animal or a much less developed human, the animal or “lower-level” human would die instantly because of the contact with the more powerful vibrations.

Eliot's own reflections on the primitive mind as a model for nondualistic thinking and on the nature and consequences of different modes of consciousness were informed by an excellent education in the social sciences and philosophy. As a prelude to our guided tour of the text of The Waste Land, we now turn to a brief survey of some of his intellectual preoccupations in the decade before he wrote it, preoccupations which in our view are enormously helpful in understanding the form of the poem. Eliot entered Harvard as a freshman in 1906 and finished his doctoral dissertation in 1916, with one of the academic years spent at the Sorbonne and one at Oxford. At Harvard and Oxford, he had as teachers some of modern philosophy's most distinguished individuals, including George Santayana, Josiah Royce, Bertrand Russell, and Harold Joachim; and while at the Sorbonne, he attended the lectures of Henri Bergson, a philosophic star in Paris in 1910-11. Under the supervision of Royce, Eliot wrote his dissertation on the epistemology of F. H. Bradley, a major voice in the late-nineteenth-, early-twentieth-century crisis in philosophy. Eliot extended this period of concentration on philosophical problems by devoting much of his time between 1915 and the early twenties to book reviewing. His education and early book reviewing occurred during the period of epistemological disorientation described in our first chapter, the period of "betweenness" described by Heidegger and Ortega y Gasset, the period of the revolt against dualism described by Lovejoy. 2 Eliot's personal awareness of the contemporary epistemological crisis was intensified by the fact that while he was writing his dissertation on Bradley he and his new wife were actually living with Bertrand Russell. Russell as the representative of neorealism and Bradley as the representative of neoidealism were perhaps the leading expositors of opposite responses to the crisis discussed in our first chapter. Eliot's situation was extraordinary. He was a close student of both Bradley and Russell; he had studied with Bradley's friend and disciple Harold Joachim and with Russell himself. And in 1915-16, while writing a dissertation explaining and in general defending Bradley against Russell, Eliot found himself face to face with Russell across the breakfast table. Moreover, as the husband of a fragile wife to whom both men (each in his own way) were devoted, Eliot must have found life to be a kaleidoscope of brilliant and fluctuating patterns.

I thought a lot about death. My death. I got used to the idea of dying. I always imagined it’d be peaceful, with slow-motion scenes and a nice background melody… like in a movie. But I was wrong. I was lost in the eerie quiet. It was cold and dark. My hair floated lightly in the air. No, not in the air, but in the water. Water surrounded me from every side. Frozen water that seemed to burn in my lungs. I was drowning and couldn’t breathe. I tried to swim. Desperately, I kicked my legs and waved my hands, but I wasn’t able to reach the surface. I felt all my energies slowly leave me. It was too dark, and I was tired, but I didn’t want to give up. I didn’t want to die. I tried to push harder with my feet, hoping to feel something solid underneath me, but there was nothing but the fluctuating light and darkness. It swallowed me and I didn’t know what to do. I had always been afraid of two things in my life, water and darkness, so I wondered how the hell I had ended up here. My head was spinning due to the lack of oxygen. I kept fighting, but every cell in my body screamed to let it go. I had to breathe, so I opened my mouth and inhaled strongly. Water came into my lungs, but it had stopped hurting. I no longer felt anything when my body became numb and the darkness devoured me.

A few years ago my friend Jon Brooks supplied this great illustration of skewed interpretation at work. Here’s how investors react to events when they’re feeling good about life (which usually means the market has been rising): Strong data: economy strengthening—stocks rally Weak data: Fed likely to ease—stocks rally Data as expected: low volatility—stocks rally Banks make $4 billion: business conditions favorable—stocks rally Banks lose $4 billion: bad news out of the way—stocks rally Oil spikes: growing global economy contributing to demand—stocks rally Oil drops: more purchasing power for the consumer—stocks rally Dollar plunges: great for exporters—stocks rally Dollar strengthens: great for companies that buy from abroad—stocks rally Inflation spikes: will cause assets to appreciate—stocks rally Inflation drops: improves quality of earnings—stocks rally Of course, the same behavior also applies in the opposite direction. When psychology is negative and markets have been falling for a while, everything is capable of being interpreted negatively. Strong economic data is seen as likely to make the Fed withdraw stimulus by raising interest rates, and weak data is taken to mean companies will have trouble meeting earnings forecasts. In other words, it’s not the data or events; it’s the interpretation. And that fluctuates with swings in psychology.

The definition of morality; Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents, actuated by a desire to avenge themselves with success upon life. I attach great value to this definition. 8 [Pg 141] Have you understood me? I have not uttered a single word which I had not already said five years ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra. The unmasking of Christian morality is an event which unequalled in history, it is a real catastrophe. The man who throws light upon it is a force majeure, a fatality; he breaks the history of man into two. Time is reckoned up before him and after him. The lightning flash of truth struck precisely that which theretofore had stood highest: he who understands what was destroyed by that flash should look to see whether he still holds anything in his hands. Everything which until then was called truth, has been revealed as the most detrimental, most spiteful, and most subterranean form of life; the holy pretext, which was the "improvement" of man, has been recognised as a ruse for draining life of its energy and of its blood. Morality conceived as Vampirism.... The man who unmasks morality has also unmasked the worthlessness of the values in which men either believe or have believed; he no longer sees anything to be revered in the most venerable man—even in the types of men that have been pronounced holy; all he can see in them is the most fatal kind of abortions, fatal, because they fascinate. The concept "God" was invented as the opposite of the concept life—everything detrimental, poisonous, and slanderous, and all deadly hostility to life, wad bound together in one horrible unit in Him. The concepts "beyond" and "true world" were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists—in order that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to earthly reality. The concepts "soul," "spirit," and last of all the concept "immortal soul," were invented in order to throw contempt on the body, in order to make it sick and "holy," in order to cultivate an attitude of appalling levity towards all things in life which deserve to be treated seriously, i.e. the questions of nutrition and habitation, of intellectual diet, the treatment of the sick, cleanliness, and weather. Instead of health, we find the "salvation of the soul"—that is to say, a folie circulate fluctuating between convulsions and penitence and the hysteria of redemption. The concept "sin," together with the torture instrument appertaining to it, which is the concept "free will," was invented in order to confuse and muddle our instincts, and to render the mistrust of them man's second nature! In the concepts "disinterestedness" and "self-denial," the actual signs of decadence are to be found. The allurement of that which is [Pg 142] [Pg 143] The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ecce Homo, by Friedrich Nietzsche. detrimental, the inability to discover one's own advantage and self-destruction, are made into absolute qualities, into the "duty," the "holiness," and the "divinity" of man. Finally—to keep the worst to the last—by the notion of the good man, all that is favoured which is weak, ill, botched, and sick-in-itself, which ought to be wiped out. The law of selection is thwarted, an ideal is made out of opposition to the proud, well-constituted man, to him who says yea to life, to him who is certain of the future, and who guarantees the future—this man is henceforth called the evil one. And all this was believed in as morality!

John Glen, the first American astronaut to orbit the earth, spent nearly a day in space still keeping his heart rate under a hundred beats per minute. That's a man not simply sitting at the controls but in control of his emotions. A man who had properly cultivated, what Tom Wolfe later called, "the Right Stuff." But you...confront a client or a stranger on the streets and your heart is liable to burst out of your chest; or you are called on to address a crowd and your stomach crashes through the floor. It's time to realize that this is a luxury, an indulgence of our lesser self. In space, the difference between life and death lies in emotional regulations. Hitting the wrong button, reading the instrument panels incorrectly, engaging a sequence too early- none of these could have been afforded on a successful Apollo mission- the consequences were too great. Thus, the question for astronauts was not How skilled a pilot are you, but Can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus only on what you can change? On the task at hand? Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we'll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check- if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate. The Greeks had a word for this: apatheia. It's the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind. Don't let the negativity in, don't let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can't afford to panic. This is the skill that must be cultivated- freedom from disturbance and perturbation- so you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems, rather than reacting to them. p28-9

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man.

Grieve not for lost love, whether it is through death or the fickle fluctuations of human nature. Love itself is never lost, but just plays hide-and-seek with you in many hearts; that in pursuing it you might find its ever greater manifestations. It will keep hiding from you, and disappointing you, until you have quested long enough to find its abode in the One who resides in the deepest recesses of your own soul, and in the heart of everything. Then you will say: “O Lord, when I resided in the house of mortal consciousness, I thought I loved my parents and my friends; I fancied I loved birds, beasts, possessions. But now that I have moved into the mansion of Omnipresence, I know it is Thee alone I love, manifested as parents, friends, all creatures and all things. By loving Thee alone, my heart expanded to love the many. By being loyal in my love to Thee, I am loyal to all I love. And I love all beings forever.” I see life on earth as only a scenic backdrop behind which my loved ones hide at death. As I love them when they are before my eyes, so does my love follow them with my ever-watching mental gaze when they move elsewhere, behind death’s screen. Those whom I have loved I could never hate, even though they grow uninteresting through ugly behavior. In my museum of recollections, I can still behold those traits that caused me to love them. Beneath the temporary mental masks of those whose behavior I dislike, I see the perfect love of my great Beloved, even as I see it in those worthy souls that I love. To stop loving is to stem the purifying flow of love. I shall loyally love every being, every thing, until I find all races, all creatures, all animate and inanimate objects embraced by my love. I will love until every soul, every star, every forsaken creature, every atom, is lodged in my heart; for in the infinite love of God, my breast of eternity is large enough to hold everything in me. O Love, I see Thy glowing face in the gems. I behold Thy shy blush in the blossoms. I am enraptured, hearing Thee warble in the birds. And I dream in ecstasy when my heart embraces Thee in all hearts. O Love, I met Thee in all things—only a little and for a while—but in Omnipresence I clasp Thee entirely and forever, and I rejoice in Thy joy evermore.

One of the positive side-effects of maintaining a very high degree of awareness of death is that it will prepare the individual to such an extent that, when the individual actually faces death, he or she will be in a better position to maintain his or her presence of mind. Especially in Tantric Buddhism, it is considered that the state of mind which one experiences at the point of death is extremely subtle and, because of the subtlety of the level of that consciousness, it also has a great power and impact upon one’s mental continuum. In Tantric practices we find a lot of emphasis placed on reflections upon the process of death, so that the individual at the time of death not only retains his or her presence of mind, but also is in a position to utilize that subtle state of consciousness effectively towards the realization of the path. From the Tantric perspective, the entire process of existence is explained in terms of the three stages known as ‘death’, the ‘intermediate state’ and ‘rebirth’. All of these three stages of existence are seen as states or manifestations of the consciousness and the energies that accompany or propel the consciousness, so that the intermediate state and rebirth are nothing other than various levels of the subtle consciousness and energy. An example of such fluctuating states can be found in our daily existence, when during the 24-hour day we go through a cycle of deep sleep, the waking period and the dream state. Our daily existence is in fact characterized by these three stages. As death becomes something familiar to you, as you have some knowledge of its processes and can recognize its external and internal indications, you are prepared for it. According to my own experience, I still have no confidence that at the moment of death I will really implement all these practices for which I have prepared. I have no guarantee! Sometimes when I think about death I get some kind of excitement. Instead of fear, I have a feeling of curiosity and this makes it much easier for me to accept death. Of course, my only burden if I die today is, ‘Oh, what will happen to Tibet? What about Tibetan culture? What about the six million Tibetan people’s rights?’ This is my main concern. Otherwise, I feel almost no fear of death. In my daily practice of prayer I visualize eight different deity yogas and eight different deaths. Perhaps when death comes all my preparation may fail. I hope not! I think these practices are mentally very helpful in dealing with death. Even if there is no next life, there is some benefit if they relieve fear. And because there is less fear, one can be more fully prepared. If you are fully prepared then, at the moment of death, you can retain your peace of mind. I think at the time of death a peaceful mind is essential no matter what you believe in, whether it is Buddhism or some other religion. At the moment of death, the individual should not seek to develop anger, hatred and so on. I think even non-believers see that it is better to pass away in a peaceful manner, it is much happier. Also, for those who believe in heaven or some other concept, it is also best to pass away peacefully with the thought of one’s own God or belief in higher forces. For Buddhists and also other ancient Indian traditions, which accept the rebirth or karma theory, naturally at the time of death a virtuous state of mind is beneficial.

You are familiar with The Decline of the West, in which Oswald Spengler takes note of the current decadence of painting, as well as literature and music, and concludes that the end of our cultural epoch has arrived. He is a philosopher, but one descended from the natural sciences. He arranges observations, he records insights and knowledge. He takes a graphic view of history. And if he sees that a line curves downward, he considers the trend a proven fact, so that zero must be reached at a particular time and place. And that moment represents the end, the decline of the West! "But his graphing has no bearing on any of my ideas and plans as architect and politician. I study the reasons why the line curves downward, and I try to remove the causes. But at the same time, I examine the reasons why at an earlier time the line curved upward! And then I set out to restore the conditions of that day, to awake anew the creative wall of that time, and to bring about a new crest in the constantly fluctuating curve of history. "No doubt about it! Our culture has entered on stagnation, it looks like old age. But the reasons for this state do not lie in the fact that it has genuinely passed its manhood, but rather that the upholders of this culture, the Germanic-European peoples, have neglected it and have turned their attention to material tasks, to technology, industry, to hunger for material possessions, to rapacity, and to an economic egocentrism that overwhelms everything else. All their thinking and striving reaches its only climax in account books and in the outward show of the worldly goods they possess. "I am overcome with disgust, a vexing scorn, when I see the way such people live and behave! [ . . . ] But thank God, it is only the top ten thousand who think along these lines. It is true that the whole of the bourgeoisie is already strongly infected and sickly. But bourgeois youth are still healthy and can be shown the way back to nature, to a higher development, to new cultural will, provided only that they do not become enmeshed in the treadmill of meaningless and wholly materialistic contemporary life, only to drown either in the cupidity of business or in the tedium of the middle-class workaday routine or in the corruption of the big city. “If we succeed in replacing the egocentric cupidity of business with a socialist communal wall and a work-affirming responsibility for the common-weal; in abolishing the tedium of middle-class workaday monotony by substituting for it the potential enjoyment of personal liberty, the beauty of nature, the splendor of our own Fatherland and the thousandfold diversity of the rest of the world; and if we put an end to the corruption of omnipresent degeneracy, bred in the warrens of buildings and on the asphalt streets of the cities of millions - then the road is clear to a new life, to a new creative will, to a new flight of the free, healthy spirit and mind. And then, my dear Herr Roselius, your bricks will form themselves into entirely new shapes all by themselves. Temples of life will be built, cathedrals of a higher cult will be raised, and even thousands of years later, the walls will bear witness to the exalted times out of which even more exalted ones were bom!” When Roselius had left Hitler’s room with me, he took my hand and said: “Wagener, I thank you for having made this hour possible. What a man! And how small we feel, concerned as we are with those things that preoccupy us! But now I know' what I have to do! In spite of my sixty years, I have only one goal: to join in the work of helping the young people and the German Volk to find internal and external freedom!

Look at stocks as part ownership of a business. 2. Look at Mr. Market—volatile stock price fluctuations—as your friend rather than your enemy. View risk as the possibility of permanent loss of purchasing power, and uncertainty as the unpredictability regarding the degree of variability in the possible range of outcomes. 3. Remember the three most important words in investing: “margin of safety.” 4. Evaluate any news item or event only in terms of its impact on (a) future interest rates and (b) the intrinsic value of the business, which is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out during its remaining life, adjusted for the uncertainty around receiving those cash flows. 5. Think in terms of opportunity costs when evaluating new ideas and keep a very high hurdle rate for incoming investments. Be unreasonable. When you look at a business and get a strong desire from within saying, “I wish I owned this business,” that is the kind of business in which you should be investing. A great investment idea doesn’t need hours to analyze. More often than not, it is love at first sight. 6. Think probabilistically rather than deterministically, because the future is never certain and it is really a set of branching probability streams. At the same time, avoid the risk of ruin, when making decisions, by focusing on consequences rather than just on raw probabilities in isolation. Some risks are just not worth taking, whatever the potential upside may be. 7. Never underestimate the power of incentives in any given situation. 8. When making decisions, involve both the left side of your brain (logic, analysis, and math) and the right side (intuition, creativity, and emotions). 9. Engage in visual thinking, which helps us to better understand complex information, organize our thoughts, and improve our ability to think and communicate. 10. Invert, always invert. You can avoid a lot of pain by visualizing your life after you have lost a lot of money trading or speculating using derivatives or leverage. If the visuals unnerve you, don’t do anything that could get you remotely close to reaching such a situation. 11. Vicariously learn from others throughout life. Embrace everlasting humility to succeed in this endeavor. 12. Embrace the power of long-term compounding. All the great things in life come from compound interest.

In recent years, Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) devices have emerged as a game-changer in diabetes management, offering patients a real-time view of their glucose levels and revolutionizing the way they monitor their condition. Among the pioneers in providing these life-changing devices, Med Supply US stands out as a reliable source, offering CGMs from various renowned brands like Abbott, Dexcom, and more. This article explores the significance of CGM devices and highlights the contribution of Med Supply US in making them accessible to those in need. Understanding CGM Devices: For individuals living with diabetes, maintaining optimal blood glucose levels is crucial to prevent serious health complications. Traditionally, this involved frequent finger-prick tests, which could be inconvenient and sometimes inaccurate. CGM devices, however, have transformed this process by providing continuous and real-time glucose level readings. These devices consist of a small sensor inserted under the skin that measures glucose levels in the interstitial fluid. The data collected is then transmitted to a receiver or a smartphone app, allowing users to track their glucose levels throughout the day and night. Benefits of CGM Devices: The introduction of CGM devices has brought about a paradigm shift in diabetes management due to their numerous benefits: Real-time Monitoring: CGM devices offer a real-time insight into glucose trends, enabling users to make informed decisions about their diet, exercise, and insulin dosages. This real-time feedback empowers individuals to take timely action to maintain their glucose levels within a healthy range. Reduced Hypoglycemia and Hyperglycemia: By providing alerts for both low and high glucose levels, CGMs help users avoid dangerous hypoglycemic episodes and hyperglycemic spikes. This is particularly beneficial during sleep when such episodes might otherwise go unnoticed. Data-Driven Insights: CGM devices generate a wealth of data, including glucose trends, patterns, and even predictive alerts for potential issues. This information can be shared with healthcare providers to tailor treatment plans for optimal diabetes management. Enhanced Quality of Life: The convenience of CGM devices reduces the need for frequent finger pricks, leading to an improved quality of life for individuals managing diabetes. The constant insights also alleviate anxiety related to unpredictable glucose fluctuations. Med Supply US: Bringing Hope to Diabetes Management: Med Supply US has emerged as a prominent supplier of CGM devices, offering a range of options from reputable brands such as Abbott and Dexcom. The availability of CGMs through Med Supply US has made these cutting-edge devices accessible to a wider demographic, bridging the gap between technology and healthcare. Med Supply US not only provides access to CGM devices but also plays a crucial role in educating individuals about their benefits. Through informative resources, they empower users to make informed choices based on their specific needs and preferences. Furthermore, their commitment to customer support ensures that users can seamlessly integrate CGM devices into their daily routines.

In longtime meditators, such as Tibetan monks who have meditated for over 10,000 hours, the parietal lobe shows greatly reduced activity during meditation. While the brain’s energy usage only fluctuates around 5% up or down each day, in these adepts it drops up to 40% as they enter an altered state of consciousness. People who are isolated and lonely show the opposite effect. Their parietal lobes may be highly active. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are increasing in our fragmented society, according to a number of studies, and they have detrimental effects on our health. We are social beings, and a sense of connectedness translates into overall physical and emotional well-being. In a meta-analysis of 148 studies with a total of 308,849 participants, the researchers found “a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow up.” Even when the researchers corrected for behaviors such as smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise, the effect remained consistent. Think back to the times of your life when you were happiest. For most of us, special moments with family and friends come to mind. We may have been on vacation with loved ones or enjoying a meal or a joke with friends. It may have been singing carols during the holidays, when billions of people join in affirming “peace on earth, goodwill to men.” What’s common to all those happy times is that your attention was fully in the present moment, the “timelessness” of Chapter 2. You weren’t worrying about the past or stressing over the future, the way you might be doing if you didn’t have precious people to engage your thoughts. Time and space receded as the love-filled present occupied your attention. Only in the present moment can you escape the demon’s obsession with the mistakes of the past and the problems of tomorrow. Experiences of timelessness, as the parietal lobe shuts down, shape our perception of the world and how we act in it.

In longtime meditators, such as Tibetan monks who have meditated for over 10,000 hours, the parietal lobe shows greatly reduced activity during meditation. While the brain’s energy usage only fluctuates around 5% up or down each day, in these adepts it drops up to 40% as they enter an altered state of consciousness. People who are isolated and lonely show the opposite effect. Their parietal lobes may be highly active. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are increasing in our fragmented society, according to a number of studies, and they have detrimental effects on our health. We are social beings, and a sense of connectedness translates into overall physical and emotional well-being. In a meta-analysis of 148 studies with a total of 308,849 participants, the researchers found “a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow up.” Even when the researchers corrected for behaviors such as smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise, the effect remained consistent. Think back to the times of your life when you were happiest. For most of us, special moments with family and friends come to mind. We may have been on vacation with loved ones or enjoying a meal or a joke with friends. It may have been singing carols during the holidays, when billions of people join in affirming “peace on earth, goodwill to men.” What’s common to all those happy times is that your attention was fully in the present moment, the “timelessness” of Chapter 2. You weren’t worrying about the past or stressing over the future, the way you might be doing if you didn’t have precious people to engage your thoughts. Time and space receded as the love-filled present occupied your attention. Only in the present moment can you escape the demon’s obsession with the mistakes of the past and the problems of tomorrow. Experiences of timelessness, as the parietal lobe shuts down, shape our perception of the world and how we act in it. A Stanford study of people who experienced “the deep now” found that it changed their behavior.

In longtime meditators, such as Tibetan monks who have meditated for over 10,000 hours, the parietal lobe shows greatly reduced activity during meditation. While the brain’s energy usage only fluctuates around 5% up or down each day, in these adepts it drops up to 40% as they enter an altered state of consciousness. People who are isolated and lonely show the opposite effect. Their parietal lobes may be highly active. Feelings of loneliness and isolation are increasing in our fragmented society, according to a number of studies, and they have detrimental effects on our health. We are social beings, and a sense of connectedness translates into overall physical and emotional well-being. In a meta-analysis of 148 studies with a total of 308,849 participants, the researchers found “a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow up.” Even when the researchers corrected for behaviors such as smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise, the effect remained consistent. Think back to the times of your life when you were happiest. For most of us, special moments with family and friends come to mind. We may have been on vacation with loved ones or enjoying a meal or a joke with friends. It may have been singing carols during the holidays, when billions of people join in affirming “peace on earth, goodwill to men.” What’s common to all those happy times is that your attention was fully in the present moment, the “timelessness” of Chapter 2. You weren’t worrying about the past or stressing over the future, the way you might be doing if you didn’t have precious people to engage your thoughts. Time and space receded as the love-filled present occupied your attention. Only in the present moment can you escape the demon’s obsession with the mistakes of the past and the problems of tomorrow. Experiences of timelessness, as the parietal lobe shuts down, shape our perception of the world and how we act in it. A Stanford study of people who experienced “the deep now” found that it changed their behavior. They “felt they had more time available . . . and were less impatient . . . more willing to volunteer their time to help others . . . preferred experiences over material products . . . and experienced a greater boost in life satisfaction.” A quiet parietal lobe promotes empathy, compassion, relaxation, appreciation, connectedness, and self-esteem.

The fundamental cause of that epidemic [of deaths of despair] … was not economic fluctuations, but rather the long-term loss of a way of life among white working class Americans.

Human nature is a complex blend of altruism and self-interest, creating odds that fluctuate between acts of kindness and moments of insensitivity.

A Moment of Joy" The ruling global elites are holding their breath in anticipation of who may be the first to start a nuclear war! The wealthy and the stock market traders are fearfully watching the fluctuation in the stock prices… Writers, media pundits, and academics on the payroll of power and authority are worried about a potential revolution that may put an end to the powers in place, and consequently to their existence! Doctors, engineers, and other professionals are all alarmed and watching the job market in fear of losing their cushy jobs! Only the waitress at the nearby restaurant is experiencing a moment of joy for the generous tip she just received from the last customer tonight! [Original poem published in Arabic on October 30,2023 at ahewar.org]

Chakra balance is the process of restoring a harmonious energy flow through the chakra system. Often the effect of well-balanced chakras translates into a feeling of well-being, relaxation, centeredness, increased vitality and self-incarnation. When we talk about balancing the chakra, we might actually refer to different techniques and meanings. A commonly accepted definition of chakra balancing is the process by which the chakra energy is brought into a well-functioning, harmonious state. The notion of calming a chakra tackles only part of the picture: Each chakra part of a system that works as a whole. When we look at how the chakras work, we see that they have a fluid relation and an active relationship with one another. Therefore, it is not only important to consider each chakra when doing chakra balancing, but also the neighboring centers and the energy throughout the body. Why balancing your chakras? The aim of balancing the chakra is to maintain a balanced flow which will preserve our overall energy level. We are subjected to a number of activities, sources of stress and demands in our daily lives that result in fluctuations in our energy level. Some may feel draining, others may experience fulfillment or nourishment. Moreover, past events and experiences often leave a long-lasting influence on how we feel and are in the world and thus influence how we manage our day-to-day energy. Stresses imposed on us by life demands will result in interruptions and changes in our energy flow and imbalances in the chakras. A chakra imbalance can affect: • How much energy flows through the chakra or chakra network • A chakra is defective when the energy is "blocked" or "closed" •       A chakra is overactive when the energy flow is increased excessively and is not controlled •       The direction of the energy field associated with one or more chakras is displaced. Balancing consists of maintaining appropriate and stable flow where there is not enough, controlling energy where there is too much, and aligning where imbalance or displacement is present. How to balance your chakras? Chakra balancing strategies fall into three categories: those based on a physical process or action, a meditative or introspective exercise, and energy transfer from or on your own.

A man does not commence to truly live until he finds an immovable center within himself on which to stand, by which to regulate his life, and from which to draw his peace. If he trusts to that which fluctuates he also will fluctuate; if he leans upon that which may be withdrawn he will fall and be bruised; if he looks for satisfaction in perishable accumulations he will starve for happiness in the midst of plenty.

Individual experiences of the Kundalini process vary greatly, but the fundamental signs of the rising Kundalini that a person may experience include: • Feeling different, not fitting in • A deep dissatisfaction or a yearning for inner development • Inner sensations of light, sound, current, or heat • A heightened inner or outer awareness; increased sensitivity • Feelings of energy flowing or vibrating within • Special abilities, capacities, and talents • Non-ordinary phenomena; altered states • Spontaneous bodily movements or breathing patterns • Emotional fluctuations; psychological issues coming forward • Atypical sensations or sensitivities • An interest in spiritual growth or in metaphysics or the esoteric • Compassion and a desire to help others • A sense that something non-ordinary, transformative, or holy is happening within • Personal development, and optimally, spiritual transformation and realization CHAPTER 2 BENEFITS OF ASCENSION KUNDALINI And once the latent spirit is awoken, it bolts up the spine, creating other important changes. Maybe the most important of these is the opening of the chakras, the centers of energy that govern our energetic body. All seven must be open so that the Kundalini can rise. There are many people who have devoted their entire life to awakening their Kundalini through meditation practice and spiritual study. Everything takes so much time, really. If you are one who is attuned to the universal energy, the cycle of awakening Kundalini will be easier for you, rather than random. So, what are the rewards of awakening the Kundalini? • Increased intelligence and IQ capacity As you begin your awakening process, your mind becomes clearer, and your mental capacity deepens and enriches in potential. You will be able to multitask and plan more than ever before, and you may even see that your IQ number is actually increasing as your kundalini travels within. It will touch your third eye and crown chakra as shakti energy spins and moves through your chakras, opening these mental capacities as effortlessly as it acts on your heart and healing. • Greater sense of peace, bliss, and tranquility One of kundalini awakening's most commonly experienced benefits includes an increased sense of peace, bliss, tranquility, and confidence in the universe that you are exactly where you should be. Chalk it up to meditation or yoga or even being in nature, but it is also true that when your kundalini awakening begins and becomes sustained, you can find a deep and lasting peace even in moments beyond nature or meditation. You will begin to notice how that equilibrium remains in an inner space that you always and everywhere bring with you.

Women’s brains in particular come into adulthood gifted with an excellent ability to recall specific aspects of verbal information, such as the precise details of a conversation, as well as episodic memory—the ability to recall details of past personal experiences, chiefly what, where, and when they happened. This fact may explain how so many women seem to possess crystal clear recall of conversations their husbands swear never occurred! All kidding aside, young adult women come equipped with a mature brain, a sharp memory, and fluent communication skills. At the same time, though, the internal processes that make and remake the brain (namely, the death and birth of neurons and their fluctuating activity) will rise and fall with each of our menstrual cycles, and throughout our lives. In fact, even once the brain has reached its mature state, it remains plastic, retaining the capacity to shift and change in response to our life experiences. These brain-body shifts are never more evident than . . . when a woman becomes pregnant.

Things looked pretty much the same everywhere, and the only interesting structure consisted of faint random-looking sound waves that made the soup about 0.001% denser in some places. These faint waves are widely believed to have originated as so-called quantum fluctuations, because Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics forbids anything from being completely boring and uniform.

And in this century the Inuit's life has been a tight-rope dance on a cord fastened on one end to the world's least hospitable land with the world's most severe and fluctuating climate, and fastened on the other end to the Danish colonial administration.

Bown explains. He told Justin about a pattern he had noticed among people who had done multimonth stints in complete isolation in nature. After ten days, time starts to distort. You begin to lose the awareness of what day it is, or exactly how many days have passed since you began. Around twenty-five days in, you begin to lose the habit of compressing thoughts into words, and your internal monologue evaporates. You run on intuition. At forty days, you enter into a kind of dream state in which days and nights blend together; you dream when you’re awake, and you’re aware of reality when you sleep. At sixty-five days, Bown told Justin, you begin to become more aware of the natural processes around you. You start to notice the life cycles of birds and animals and even subtle changes in plants fluctuating by day or night, in cool weather or hot. But the biggest change after two months is that you lose your “self.” Your sense of being an individual relating to a community or society fades, and you become just another aspect of the nature that surrounds you.

Struggle is the beauty of life. This beauty vanishes as soon as our struggle ends. In spiritual life one moves backwards and forwards, but in this way one gradually makes progress. No line is perfectly straight in this world. The mind fluctuates like the waves of the ocean. Don’t be upset when the mind goes down. It will rise again. There is nothing more harmful than to be despondent. Trials and tribulations make our minds strong, but despondency does not do us any good. Rather, it takes away our strength.

Maybe we shouldn't do that," Jordi said. "Flatten ourselves like that. Erratic doesn't have to mean crazy or irresponsible. Shouldn't we be normalizing change?

I take it that it is normal for an adolescent to behave for a considerable length of time in an inconsistent and unpredictable manner; to fight her impulses and accept them; to love her parents and to hate them; to revolt against them and be dependent on them; to be deeply ashamed to acknowledge her mother before others and, unexpectedly, to desire heart-to-heart talks with her; to thrive on imitation of others while searching unceasingly for her own identity; to be more idealistic, artistic, generous, and unselfish than she will ever be again, but also the opposite: self-centered, egoistic, calculating. Such fluctuations and extreme opposites would be deemed highly abnormal at any other time of life. At this time they may signify no more than that an adult structure of personality takes a long time to emerge, that the individual in question does not cease to experiment and is in no hurry to close down on possibilities.

I think we’re constantly changing. No person is exactly who they were the day before. Life fluctuates, and we shift ourselves to accommodate it.

Their fluctuating moods and reactivity make them unreliable and intimidating. And while they may act helpless and usually see themselves as victims, family life always revolves around their moods.

Most people believe, “My lifestyle is about the same every month. Our savings are fixed. We make a salary, so what we earn is fixed. And lastly, what we spend is fixed.” But the truth is that no one reading this book has a robotic life filled with endless repeating loops where they get paid the exact same amount of money every single month for decades on end. We all have fluctuations in our income.

Unlocking the Benefits of Continuous Glucose Monitors: A Comprehensive Guide Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs) have revolutionized diabetes management, offering real-time insights into blood sugar levels like never before. As the prevalence of diabetes continues to rise globally, understanding the significance of CGMs becomes paramount. Let's delve into the world of CGMs, exploring their benefits, functionality, and impact on diabetes care. What are Continuous Glucose Monitors? Continuous Glucose Monitors are wearable devices that continuously track glucose levels throughout the day and night. Unlike traditional glucose meters, CGMs provide real-time data, offering a comprehensive view of glucose fluctuations and trends. Benefits of Continuous Glucose Monitors Continuous Monitoring CGMs provide a continuous stream of glucose data, empowering individuals to make informed decisions about their diet, exercise, and medication. Early Detection CGMs can detect both hypo- and hyperglycemic episodes before they become severe, enabling prompt intervention. Improved Diabetes Management By providing insights into how different factors affect blood sugar levels, CGMs facilitate personalized diabetes management strategies. Enhanced Quality of Life CGMs reduce the need for frequent fingerstick testing, minimizing discomfort and improving overall quality of life for individuals with diabetes. Remote Monitoring CGMs can be integrated with smartphone apps, allowing caregivers and healthcare providers to remotely monitor glucose levels and provide timely assistance. How do Continuous Glucose Monitors Work? CGMs consist of three main components: a sensor, transmitter, and receiver/display device. Measurement of glucose levels in the interstitial fluid is performed by the sensor, which is commonly inserted beneath the skin. The transmitter sends this data to the receiver/display device, where users can view real-time glucose readings and trends. Conclusion Continuous Glucose Monitors represent a significant advancement in diabetes management, offering unparalleled insights and convenience. With their ability to provide continuous glucose monitoring, early detection of fluctuations, and personalized insights, CGMs are transforming the lives of individuals with diabetes worldwide. Embracing this technology can lead to better diabetes management, improved quality of life, and reduced risk of diabetes-related complications.

The Game-Changer in Diabetes Management: Continuous Glucose Monitors Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs) have revolutionized diabetes management, offering real-time insights into blood sugar levels like never before. In this article, we'll delve into the significance of CGMs, their benefits, and why they are a game-changer for individuals living with diabetes. Understanding Continuous Glucose Monitors Continuous Glucose Monitors are wearable devices that constantly monitor glucose levels in the interstitial fluid, providing users with real-time data on their blood sugar levels. Unlike traditional finger-prick tests, CGMs offer a continuous stream of information, allowing for proactive management of diabetes. Benefits of Continuous Glucose Monitors Real-Time Monitoring: CGMs offer instant feedback on blood sugar levels, enabling users to make informed decisions about their diet, medication, and lifestyle choices. Early Detection of Trends: CGMs track glucose trends over time, allowing users to identify patterns and adjust their management strategies accordingly. Improved Diabetes Management: With continuous monitoring, individuals can better manage their blood sugar levels, reducing the risk of hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia episodes. Enhanced Quality of Life: CGMs provide greater freedom and flexibility, reducing the need for frequent finger pricks and offering peace of mind to individuals and their caregivers. Why CGMs Are a Game-Changer Precision Medicine: Continuous Glucose Monitors enable personalized diabetes management by providing individualized insights into glucose fluctuations and responses to various factors. Empowerment Through Data: CGMs empower users with valuable data, enabling them to take control of their health and make informed decisions in collaboration with healthcare providers. Continuous Innovation: Advancements in CGM technology, such as improved accuracy and connectivity features, continue to enhance the user experience and expand the capabilities of these devices. Integration with Digital Health Ecosystem: CGMs seamlessly integrate with mobile apps and other digital health platforms, facilitating data sharing, remote monitoring, and telehealth consultations. Conclusion Continuous Glucose Monitors represent a significant advancement in diabetes management, offering real-time insights, personalized care, and improved quality of life for individuals living with diabetes. As technology continues to evolve, CGMs will play an increasingly vital role in empowering individuals to live healthier, more active lives while effectively managing their condition.

Burnham’s comment, offered in 1992, came in response to the discovery of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) by the COBE satellite, providing another dramatic confirmation of the big bang model and its implication of a beginning. Yet it is not only cosmology that has rendered the “God hypothesis” newly respectable. As one surveys several classes of evidence from the natural sciences—cosmology, astronomy, physics, biochemistry, molecular biology, and paleontology—the God hypothesis emerges as an explanation with unique scope and power. Theism explains an ensemble of metaphysically significant events in the history of the universe and life more simply, more adequately, and more comprehensively than major competing metaphysical systems, including not only materialism and naturalism, but also pantheism and deism

Plants remind us that we are contiguous with our environment, impacted by its every fluctuation, impacts that reverberate through our lineage. Our environment shapes our lives and the lives of our descendants. We inherit their environment in bodily form. One could say we inherit the earth.

We all live in a world governed by uncertainty. No one can predict the future with complete accuracy, no matter how well-informed or well-prepared they may be. The stock market fluctuates, relationships evolve, and our health can change overnight. By accepting that uncertainty is a fundamental aspect of life, we free ourselves from the burden of trying to control every detail.

But we are not magicians to make the optimistic temperament universal; and alongside of the deliverances of temperamental optimism concerning life, those of temperamental pessimism always exist, and oppose to them a standing refutation. In what is called 'circular insanity,' phases of melancholy succeed phases of mania, with no outward cause that we can discover; and often enough to one and the same well person life will present incarnate radiance to-day and incarnate dreariness to-morrow, according to the fluctuations of what the older medical books used to call "the concoction of the humors." In the words of the newspaper joke, "it depends on the liver.

What I try to convey to my patients is that they can meet the challenges life throws at them by changing the way they relate to them. The goal is to meet the challenges with equanimity, not to make them go away. When Suzuki Roshi said not to be bothered by the waves' fluctuations, he meant it. And one thing we can say for sure. Life gives us endless opportunity to practice. Mostly we fail. Who can say they are not bothered by anything, really? But when we make the effort, the results can be astonishing. In an insecure world, we can become our own refuge. Our eon do not have to have the last word.

All biology, I began to understand, is in fact ecology. Ecosystem dynamics that ecologists study apply just as easily to single plants themselves. Resources like food and water fluctuate in an ecosystem, which causes different individuals to take up residence in different groupings at different times.

When it comes to this, I cannot help feeling that I am at the end of a fluctuation that originated with a single butterfly. I mean, with one half degree of difference, everything I want could be mine. I am good, but not good enough, which is worse than simply being bad. It is almost. The difference between being there when it happens and stepping out just in time to see it on the news.

The man who throws light upon it is a force majeure, a fatality; he breaks the history of man into two. Time is reckoned up before him and after him. The lightning flash of truth struck precisely that which theretofore had stood highest: he who understands what was destroyed by that flash should look to see whether he still holds anything in his hands. Everything which until then was called truth, has been revealed as the most detrimental, most spiteful, and most subterranean form of life; the holy pretext, which was the "improvement" of man, has been recognised as a ruse for draining life of its energy and of its blood. Morality conceived as Vampirism.... The man who unmasks morality has also unmasked the worthlessness of the values in which men either believe or have believed; he no longer sees anything to be revered in the most venerable man—even in the types of men that have been pronounced holy; all he can see in them is the most fatal kind of abortions, fatal, because they fascinate. The concept "God" was invented as the opposite of the concept life—everything detrimental, poisonous, and slanderous, and all deadly hostility to life, was bound together in one horrible unit in Him. The concepts "beyond" and "true world" were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists—in order that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to earthly reality. The concepts "soul," "spirit," and last of all the concept "immortal soul," were invented in order to throw contempt on the body, in order to make it sick and "holy," in order to cultivate an attitude of appalling levity towards all things in life which deserve to be treated seriously, i.e. the questions of nutrition and habitation, of intellectual diet, the treatment of the sick, cleanliness, and weather. Instead of health, we find the "salvation of the soul"—that is to say, a folie circulate fluctuating between convulsions and penitence and the hysteria of redemption. The concept "sin," together with the torture instrument appertaining to it, which is the concept "free will," was invented in order to confuse and muddle our instincts, and to render the mistrust of them man's second nature! In the concepts "disinterestedness" and "self-denial," the actual signs of decadence are to be found. The allurement of that which is detrimental, the inability to discover one's own advantage and self-destruction, are made into absolute qualities, into the "duty," the "holiness," and the "divinity" of man. Finally—to keep the worst to the last—by the notion of the good man, all that is favoured which is weak, ill, botched, and sick-in-itself, which ought to be wiped out. The law of selection is thwarted, an ideal is made out of opposition to the proud, well-constituted man, to him who says yea to life, to him who is certain of the future, and who guarantees the future—this man is henceforth called the evil one. And all this was believed in as morality!—Ecrasez l'infâme! Have you understood me? Dionysus versus Christ.

Europe’s central banks had nearly all committed themselves to the gold standard by 1908; that meant that they nearly all had to target their gold reserves, raising rates (or otherwise intervening) if they experienced a specie outflow. At the very least, this simplified life for investors, by reducing the risk of large exchange rate fluctuations.

Gazing over the countless fluctuations and transformations in Earth’s multibillion-year history, I am struck by the unique strangeness of the present moment. We suddenly find ourselves sort of running a planet—a role we never anticipated or sought—without knowing how it should be done. We’re at the controls, but we’re not in control. This book is my view of how we got into this situation, and where that leaves us now. A child of the space age, I grew up captivated by the romance of planetary exploration. My timing was right to become a NASA research scientist working in the new field of astrobiology, the scientific study of life in the universe. My participation in the spacecraft exploration of other planets has informed my view of our presence on this

Special relativity killed the classical dream of using the energy-momentum-velocity relations of a particle as a means of probing the dynamic origins of its mass. The relations are purely kinematic. The classical picture of a particle as a finite little sphere is also gone for good. Quantum field theory has taught us that particles nevertheless have structure, arising from quantum fluctuations. Recently, unified field theories have taught us that the mass of the electron is certainly not purely electromagnetic in nature. But we still do not know what causes the electron to weigh.

There will always be sixty seconds in a minute. There will always be sixty minutes in an hour. And there will always be twenty-four hours in a day. Time does not fluctuate. It moves on at the same, constant pace at every moment in your life. And

Here are a few things yoga nidra can do: Activate the relaxation response and deactivate the stress response (which improves functioning of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and the endocrine system). Increase immunity and the ability to fight germs and infections (Kumar 2013a, 82–94) Improve heart functioning by lowering blood pressure and cholesterol (Pandya and Kumar 2007) Decrease pain Improve control of fluctuating blood glucose and symptoms associated with diabetes (Amita et al. 2009) Significantly improve anxiety, depression, and well-being in patients with menstrual irregularities and in those having psychological problems (Rani et al. 2011) Manage pre- and postsurgical conditions (Kumar 2013a, 56) Reduce insomnia and improve sleep: while not intended as a substitute for sleep, one hour of effective yoga nidra practice is equivalent to about four hours of sleep (Kumar 2013a) Increase energy, especially when needed most Reduce worry and enhance clear thinking and problem solving Improve and refresh your outlook Replace mood swings and emotional upsets with greater emotional understanding and stability Develop intuition and increase creativity Improve meditation and enhance its benefits Integrate, heal, and revitalize your body, mind, and spirit Enhance your Self-awareness and ability to experience witness consciousness (defined later in this chapter) Transform thoughts and feelings of separation into a direct experience of wholeness Finally, one of yoga nidra’s prime benefits is that it brings yoga’s essential teachings to life that have been handed down to us over the ages from the Upanishads, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Bhagavad Gita, Tantric texts, and others.

Antifragile shows how people confuse risk of ruin with variations and fluctuations—a simplification that violates a deeper, more rigorous logic of things.

Ella. This is an emergency!” To my mother, Candy Varner, everything was an emergency. She was a shock-and-awe parent, the ultimate drama queen. But she had covered it up so adeptly that few people suspected what went on behind closed doors. She had demanded her daughters’ collusion in the myth of our happy family life, and Tara and I had given it to her without question. At times Mom wanted interaction with my younger sister and me, but she quickly became impatient and surly. We learned to watch for every sign that would indicate the fluctuations of her mood. We had been storm chasers, trying to stay close to the twister without getting swept up in it

The fact remains, however, that life on Earth does appear to be bounded by certain inviolable laws that synchronistically incorporate fluctuation and harmony.

We humans are about 2/ 3 water. Each of us contains about 40 liters (or quarts) of the stuff, and each liter weighs a bit over 2 pounds. Our bodies effectively regulate fluid balance by adjusting urine output and sense of thirst, but this is done within a 2-liter range. Within this range, your body doesn’t really care if it is up to a liter above or below its ideal fluid level. What this means is that we all live inside a 4-pound-wide grey zone, so that from day to day we fluctuate up or down (i.e., plus or minus) 2 pounds. This happens more or less at random, so with any one weight reading you don’t know where your body is within that fluid range. Your weight can be the same for 3 days in a row, and the next morning you wake up and the scale says you’ve ‘gained’ 3 pounds for no apparent reason. For people who weigh themselves frequently, this can be maddening.

Understanding what it means to die, to sever oneself of the foolish hope for immortality, is what allows human beings the capability to appreciate simple pleasures and endure whatever hardships living a full life requires. Eternity is beautiful whereas time is unredeemable and problematic. Our faith, our hopes, and our love exist only in points of time. We discover eternity by avoiding the snares of prejudice and mental delusion, using the memory of whole civilizations to understand the past, and employing human consciousness to transcend fluctuations in time.

Grow, but don't go with the flow" Flowing is too awesome, but it fluctuates your direction every time. Grow yourself to create endurance to go against the flow and create a perfect victory, which inspire the others to do the same game against the flow. "Growing against the flow, is the simple way to generate your hidden endurance

What defines you? Is it those hazy memories of yesterday, or last year, or childhood? Is it the emotions and thoughts that are passing through you in this very moment? Is it the future where you achieve or even fail to achieve the goals you set? Or are you defined by something bigger than all that? Something that is beyond the change, beyond the fluctuations of your life? To practice mindfulness is to see that it is your changeless nature that truly defines you, rather than the ebb and flow of your emotional tides or the shifting directions of your thought streams.

Why does this happen even though India has a good economic foundation? It is because we have an economic system which is vulnerable to the fluctuations of the world economy and our economic growth is not sustainable, as witnessed from the 5 per cent GDP growth in the 1990s to 9 per cent for around four years till 2009 and, finally, the present 5.5 per cent. This is mainly due to our prevailing economic policies which are stifling the growth of agriculture and food processing, the manufacturing sector and the service sector. If we bring a marked change in our socio-political and economic policies with a focus on inclusiveness, then I am confident that we as a nation will be able to overcome the economic crisis and progress to new heights.

To understand what that means in commonsense terms, consider a person who plans to live off the income from $1 million invested in T-bills. Suppose he retires in a given year and converts his investments into an inflation-protected annuity with a return of 4% to 5%. He will receive an annual income of $40,000 to $50,000. But now suppose he retires a few years later, when the return on the annuity has dropped to 0.5%. His annual income will now be only $5,000. Yes, the $1 million principal amount was fully insured and protected, but you can see that he cannot possibly live on the amount he will now receive. T-bills preserve principal at all times, but the income received on them can vary enormously as return on the annuity goes up or down. Had the retiree bought instead a long-maturity U.S. Treasury bond with his $1 million, his spendable income would be secure for the life of the bond, even though the price of that bond would fluctuate substantially from day to day. The same holds true for annuities: Although their market value varies from day to day, the income from an annuity is secure throughout the retiree’s life.

you feeling full longer and your metabolism revved up. The protein can make the smoothie taste slightly pasty, so try the smoothie first without it and then add the protein to see if it is palatable to you. Since you will be avoiding dairy (cow’s milk) during the cleanse, be sure you use a non-dairy, plant-based protein powder, such as rice, soy, or hemp protein, and not whey protein powder, which is made from cow’s milk. My favorite brands are RAW Protein by Garden of Life, Sunwarrior’s Protein Blend, or Rainbow Light’s Acai Berry Blast Protein Energizer. However, there are other quality options also. Other great sources of protein include hard-boiled eggs, raw or unsalted nuts and seeds, especially chia seeds or flaxseeds, and unsweetened peanut butter. Chew your smoothies. Try to go through the chewing motion as much as possible, as the saliva in your mouth starts the digestive process. So, in as much as you can remember, try “chewing” your smoothie. This will also help minimize gas and bloating. Expect your weight to fluctuate.

Lao Tze's vision is compatible with the Positive Paradigm of Change. In fact, placing the language of his passages into the levels of the Wheel serves to clarify his vision. The model is therefore shown here, along with its application to the subtitle: Common Sense. The right-brain compliment to the left-brain words of Passage One is also supplied below as a hint of what's possible. Einstein's warning, the basis of Rethinking Survival, could well have been spoken by a Chinese sage: 'Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison [of separatist thinking] by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. . . We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." Prominent themes which link Einstein with the Chinese yoga tradition include not only Compassion but also Unity and Survival. In addition, anticipating the Positive Paradigm, Lao Tze repeated alludes to a timeless center at life's hub encompassed by the surface rim of fluctuating events. 1. The Eternal is beyond words, undefinable and illusive, all-pervading yet mysterious. The timeless, though ungraspable, is the unfailing source of all experience. To transcend mortality, and attain sublime peace, turn inward, releasing desire and ambition. To manifest inner vision, accomplishing every goal in time, extend outward with passionate conviction. Unmanifest and manifest are two sides of a coin, seamlessly joined, though apparently opposite. Entering this paradox is the beginning of magic.

Maintain Your Driveway for Long Term There are certain points that we should take into consideration if we want to increase the life of our driveways. First of all make sure that they are constructed with waterproof material and are properly sealed with quality products. Sealing is mandatory as it protects the driveway from chemicals, rusts, harsh and fluctuating weathers or any other uncalled for conditions and damaging products. If there is even a single opening then that can be a call for immediate attention and it should be immediately restored. It has been observed that improper drain system and severe temperature fluctuations are the main reasons for gaps and fractures to occur in driveways in Hexham and Durham. But this will not be the case with Driveways Newcastle as special care is taken while constructing them. It is highly recommended that heavy vehicles be kept away from the driveways because they do not have the capacity to hold such big automobiles and plus the driveways are not only meant to be parking zones. Vehicles like, trucks and cranes can instantly ruin the look of the driveways by spoiling their structure. Next thing to keep in mind is that you keep pulling out the weeds or the shrubs that tend to grow near your driveway. Even they have the tendency of harming your driveway by loosening the blocks. This will increase the longevity of your patio or the driveway. To clean the driveway of the oil stains, you can make use of foaming water or wire brush. Never use any type of chemical for cleaning purpose; it will damage your driveways. Driveways in Newcastle and near around areas have driveways Newcastle and driveways Sunderlands and they are very sturdy and durable compared to other driveways but nevertheless, even they have to be looked after with proper maintenance at regular level. The popularity of imprinted concrete driveways has suddenly surged because of their stylish look and durability. They are much in demand in Hexham and Durham for construction of patios, pathways, garden walls, etc. To decide on which driveway to construct you need to have a basic understanding of driveways and rest you can always consult a professional company who will advise you to the best as well as construct your driveways. It is recommended that these professionals be thoroughly knowledgeable and highly experienced. You will find many such companies if you search on the internet which have exceptional experience and an urge to provide you with beautiful driveways and patios.

I lost my parents during adolescence. I know what you're going through," he says, as the bartender arrives with the coffees. Andrea freezes. How does he know? They start drinking, in silence. Ian is disarmingly slow while Andrea, leaning back on the counter, finishes his in two quick sips. "And what am I going through Ian?" he challenges him, leaning his elbow next to the small cup and looking at him. Ian takes his last sip and gets off the stool. "You’re broken and experience moments of perfect chaos: one moment you're happy and the next moment you want to cut your veins," he says seriously. "You fluctuate in everyday life, hoping to create your own, new balance with small rituals. You organize your time in such a way that you don’t stand still, because if you stand still, you think. And if you think, you suffer. You're unstable, restless." He pauses. "Am I close?" "Quite." "And you’re looking for something that will make you feel better." He raises an eyebrow. "Or, maybe, fix you." He nods. "Yes." "And you've found it, too." He steps towards the cash till. "But you haven’t made it yours yet." "You’re right," says Andrea, taking his wallet. "You’re my guest," replies Ian, lifting his hand. "Thanks." The

We've seen that the theories of the Core forces, each deeply based on symmetry, can be combined. The three separate Core symmetries can be realized as parts of a single, all-encompassing symmetry. Moreover, that encompassing symmetry brings unity and coherence to the clusters of the Core. From a motley six, we assemble the faultless Charge Account. We also discover that once we correct for the distorting effect of Grid fluctuations-and after upping the ante to include SUSY-the different powers of the Core forces derive from a common value at short distances. Even gravity, that hopelessly feeble misfit, comes into the field. To reach this clear and lofty perspective, we made some hopeful leaps of imagination. We assumed that the Grid-the entity that in everyday life we consider empty space-is a multilayered, multicolored superconductor. We assumed that the world contains the extra quantum dimensions required to support super-symmetry. And we boldly took the laws of physics, supplemented with these two "super" assumptions, up to energies and down to distances far beyond where we've tested them directly. From the intellectual success so far achieved-from the clarity and coherence of this vision of unification-we are tempted to believe that our assumptions correspond to reality. But in science, Mother Nature is the ultimate judge. After the solar expedition of 1919 confirmed his prediction for the bending of light by the Sun, a reporter asked Albert Einstein what it would have meant if the result had been otherwise. He replied, "Then God would have missed a great opportunity." Nature doesn't miss such opportunities. I anticipated that Nature's verdicts in favor of our "super" ideas will inaugurate a new golden age in fundamental physics.

In one sense it is both remarkable and exciting to find ourselves in a universe dominated by nothing. The structures we can see, like stars and galaxies, were all created by quantum fluctuations from nothing. And the average total Newtonian gravitational energy of each object in our universe is equal to nothing. Enjoy the thought while you can, if you are so inclined, because, if all this is true, we live in perhaps the worst of all universes one can live in, at least as far as the future of life is concerned.

However, the answer can be inferred from the WMAP data, by measuring the sizes of the temperature fluctuations—the hot and cold (light and dark) splotches in Figure 3 ([>]). Before WMAP was launched, theorists had already worked out how big the physical sizes of the strongest fluctuations should be. Converting that into apparent angular size in the sky depends on the geometry of space: if the universe is positively curved, it would make the angles appear larger, while negative curvature would make them smaller. If the universe is geometrically flat (that is, has Euclidean geometry), the angular size of the strongest hot and cold fluctuations should be about 1° across. The results that flowed back from the satellite were definitive.14 The fluctuations were very close to 1° in size, a result confirmed by ground-based and balloon-based experiments. Cosmologists then declared that to within observational accuracy of about 2 percent, space is flat.15

We cannot fluctuate between periods of full confidence of what was achieved on the cross and uncertainty as to what it means for us. We must be persuaded beyond turning that God is FOR us and not against us. Without this, we will have very shallow roots that can easily be pulled up by even the most benign storms of life. It is impossible to stand when you have divided your mind. When you have one part agreeing with God and the other part in agreement with the works of your hand or the world; you will become unstable in all of your ways. We must make our minds single regarding the word of God. Not only that it’s true, but that it is the only truth. Then we are ready to get fitted for the battles that are sure to come.

Today we know that there are multiple reasons for the changing water levels. One factor is the amount of water coming in from the Volga which is tied to the rainfall of a huge catchment region – all of which in turn relates to the atmospheric conditions of the North Atlantic. Many scientists now believe that these fluctuations reflect climatic changes in the northern hemisphere, making the Caspian Sea an important field of study for climate change investigations. Other theories claim that the water levels are affected by tectonic forces. These are exactly the kinds of global connections that interested Humboldt. To see the Caspian Sea, Humboldt wrote to Wilhelm, was one of the ‘highlights of my life

FRIEND/ENEMY CENTEREDNESS. Young people are particularly, though certainly not exclusively, susceptible to becoming friend-centered. Acceptance and belonging to a peer group can become almost supremely important. The distorted and ever-changing social mirror becomes the source for the four life-support factors, creating a high degree of dependence on the fluctuating moods, feelings, attitudes, and behavior of others. Friend

His life-experiences, and reflections upon them, led Y to believe that the most difficult challenge in life was how to be kind, yet strong. ‘To be kind is not enough,’ he would say. ‘You have to be strong to give to others, and strong to withstand life’s fluctuating fortunes.

Marine beings, when not affixed to the sea floor, adapt to a fluctuating or pelagic life,” Perseu studied on the afternoon of May 15, 192. Heroic and empty, the citizen kept standing beside the open window. But in fact he could never transmit to anyone the extent to which he was harmonious, and even if he spoke, no word could convey the graciousness of his appearance: his extreme harmony was simply evident. “Pelagic animals reproduce with profusion,” he said with hollow luminosity. Blind and glorious—that was all that could be known of him. . . . “They feed on basic microvegetation, infusorials, etc.” “Etc.!” he repeated brilliant, unconquerable. . . . “This discoidal animal is formed according to the symmetry based on the number 4.” That’s what it said! And the sun beat down on the dusty page: a cockroach was even climbing up the house across the street. . . . Then the boy said something as lustrous as a scarab: “Pelagic beings reproduce with extraordinary profusion,” he finally exclaimed from memory.

A society that endorses abortion devalues the life of every single member, as it allows mothers to destroy their children and sanctions violence against the most vulnerable members of the human community. Each of us enters life dependent on our families, particularly on our mothers, and though our level of dependence fluctuates throughout the course of our lives, we remain dependent on one another. A healthy society doesn’t deny or try to eliminate dependency; it helps people meet the needs of their neighbors and bear one another’s burdens.

of this increased lower-GI-symptom risk is due to the fluctuations of estrogen and progesterone, with a greater incidence of lower-GI issues during the 5 to 7 days before you get your period (the high-hormone phase of the menstrual cycle).

Any given eddy [in fluid dynamics] taken separately has a lower internal entropy than its chaotic surroundings, but the source of that local incidence of low entropy is the streamlined flow that it formed in. And those turbulent eddies ultimately serve to increase the entropy of the greater flow. So given a much larger source of order, the global process of dissipation of that order results in eddies of low entropy. Life appears to be just such an eddy. In the case of life, the original source of extreme low entropy is the Big Bang itself. In the process of redistributing energy into the most random possible state, little eddies of order, like galaxies, stars, planets, and life, naturally arise. These blips in order are actually serving the second law, helping the universe disperse its early extreme low entropy state. So I guess that makes you a little eddy of order, a momentary fluctuation of interesting but ultimately, in service of the spread of disorder and dullness, an agent in the inexorable trend to maximise the entropy of... Space-Time.

Change can be scary, but it's utterly unavoidable. In fact, impermanence is the only thing you can truly rely on. If you are unwilling or unable to pivot and adapt to the incessant, fluctuating tides of life, you will not enjoy being here. Sometimes, people try to play the cards that they wish they had, instead of playing the hand they've been dealt. The capacity to adjust and improvise is arguably the single most critical human ability. p193

Are you sure you’re not a Boltzmann Brain? Or at least, do you know your local environment didn’t recently fluctuate into existence? How do you know you’re

Change can be scary, but it’s utterly unavoidable. In fact, impermanence is the only thing you can truly rely on. If you are unwilling or unable to pivot and adapt to the incessant, fluctuating tides of life, you will not enjoy being here. Sometimes, people try to play the cards that they wish they had, instead of playing the hand they’ve been dealt. The capacity to adjust and improvise is arguably the single most critical human ability.

To apply first principles thinking to the field of value investing, consider several fundamental truths. Understand and practice the following if you want to become a good investor: 1. Look at stocks as part ownership of a business. 2. Look at Mr. Market—volatile stock price fluctuations—as your friend rather than your enemy. View risk as the possibility of permanent loss of purchasing power, and uncertainty as the unpredictability regarding the degree of variability in the possible range of outcomes. 3. Remember the three most important words in investing: “margin of safety.” 4. Evaluate any news item or event only in terms of its impact on (a) future interest rates and (b) the intrinsic value of the business, which is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out during its remaining life, adjusted for the uncertainty around receiving those cash flows. 5. Think in terms of opportunity costs when evaluating new ideas and keep a very high hurdle rate for incoming investments. Be unreasonable. When you look at a business and get a strong desire from within saying, “I wish I owned this business,” that is the kind of business in which you should be investing. A great investment idea doesn’t need hours to analyze. More often than not, it is love at first sight. 6. Think probabilistically rather than deterministically, because the future is never certain and it is really a set of branching probability streams. At the same time, avoid the risk of ruin, when making decisions, by focusing on consequences rather than just on raw probabilities in isolation. Some risks are just not worth taking, whatever the potential upside may be. 7. Never underestimate the power of incentives in any given situation. 8. When making decisions, involve both the left side of your brain (logic, analysis, and math) and the right side (intuition, creativity, and emotions). 9. Engage in visual thinking, which helps us to better understand complex information, organize our thoughts, and improve our ability to think and communicate. 10. Invert, always invert. You can avoid a lot of pain by visualizing your life after you have lost a lot of money trading or speculating using derivatives or leverage. If the visuals unnerve you, don’t do anything that could get you remotely close to reaching such a situation. 11. Vicariously learn from others throughout life. Embrace everlasting humility to succeed in this endeavor. 12. Embrace the power of long-term compounding. All the great things in life come from compound interest.

Neurodivergent Checklist Time Blindness: Many neurodivergent people have trouble properly perceiving time as it passes. It either goes by too quickly or slowly. The perception of time depends on the level of stimulation the neurodivergent person is dealing with. It also can vary depending on what you’re focused on. If you’ve ever found yourself unable to account for time, you may be neurodivergent. Executive Dysfunction: This is what you experience when you want to accomplish a task, but despite how hard you try, you cannot see it through. Executive dysfunction happens for various reasons, depending on the type of neurodivergence in question. Still, the point is that this is a common occurrence in neurodivergent people. Task Multiplication: What is task multiplication? It happens when you set off to accomplish one thing but have to do a million other things, even though that wasn’t your original plan. For instance, you may want to sit down to finish some writing, only to notice water on the floor. You get up to grab a mop, and on the way, you notice the laundry you were supposed to drop off at the dry cleaners. Stooping to pick up the bag, you find yourself at eye level with your journal and remember you were supposed to make an entry the previous day, so you’re going to do that now. On and on it goes. Inconsistent Sleep Habits: This depends on what sort of neurodivergence you’re dealing with and if you’ve got comorbid disorders. Most importantly, neurodivergent people sleep more or less than “regular” people. You may also notice that your sleep habits fluctuate a lot. Sometimes you may sleep for eight hours at a stretch for a week, only to suddenly start running on just three hours of sleep. Emotional Dysregulation: With many neurodivergent people, it’s hard to keep emotions in check. Emotional dysregulation occurs in extreme emotions, sudden mood swings, or inappropriate emotional reactions (either not responding to the degree they should or overreacting). Hyperfixation: This also plays out differently depending on the brand of neurodivergence in question. Often, neurodivergent people get very involved in topics or hobbies to the point of what others may think of as obsession. Picking Up on Subtleties but Missing the Obvious: Neurodivergent people may struggle with picking up on things neurotypical people can see easily. At the same time, they are incredibly adept at noticing the subtle things everyone else misses. Sensory Sensitivities: If you’re neurodivergent, you may be unable to ignore your clothes tag scratching your back, have trouble hearing certain sounds, and can’t quite deal with certain textures of clothing, food, and so on. Rejection Sensitivity: Neurodivergent people are often more sensitive to rejection than others due to neurological differences and life experiences. For instance, children with ADHD get much more negative feedback than their peers without ADHD. Neurodivergent people are often rejected to the point where they notice rejection even when it’s not there.

Our relationship with ourselves significantly affects how we interact with other people. Our self-esteem frequently depends on how we feel we are “doing” at relationships. Given that this fluctuates, so does our self-esteem. Intellectually, we may tell ourselves that it shouldn’t, but when have emotions ever obeyed the intellect?

A scientific frontier, as defined in 1907 by the former viceroy, George Curzon, was “a Frontier which unites natural and strategical strength.”67 The period term “scientific” reflected a process of merging precise geographical information with military or political strategy, and revealed the development of geopolitics as an analytic frame derived from the premise that geography was a determining factor in the success or failure of states. Frontiers were “the razor’s edge” upon which the “life or death” of nations rested; their strategic aspects could shift alongside the geopolitical fluctuations of imperial politics.

Too much stress on being positive is just one more way our culture figuratively overmedicates the normal fluctuations of our emotions, just the way society often literally overmedicates rambunctious children and women with mood swings.

Love! How many legends were organized for it? It was said that it is the most mysterious human feeling that pushes us to do things we are not ready for and heedless of us. Despite the reality, and the difficulties, we do the impossible, and in the name of love, we do miracles. Just legends but the truth is that history did not mention that any miracle has happened thanks to love. Myths, of which there is no use but our consolation, and the justification of our blind rush behind unjustified, incomprehensible feelings, to do what we were not ready to do, and then we pay the price with a reassuring conscience, and with a comfortable mind, in the name of love. If we analyze these feelings, love, anger, hate, tranquility, fear, we will find that they are another face of pain, just chemical reactions inside our bodies, and hormones controlled by our mind, it decides when to kindle the fire of love in us, and when to make hate blind us. If you know how to motivate the mind to produce the hormone needed to produce the desired emotions, then you do not have to talk about anything anymore. It is all your emotions, which are yours. This inevitably makes human feelings subject to causation in the universe, unless our feelings are from another world, not causal. Therefore, the most magical words remain, those that come out of the mouth of a lover describing his love for his lover, “I love you without reason.” This is the impossibility desired, and in the subconscious, these words have charm and glamour, and the tongue of the lover says, “My love for you is not from this causal world, neither the color of your hair, nor your eyes, nor your body, nor your sweet voice, nor your way of speaking, nor anything that you possess is a reason why I love you, because my love for you is not causal, does not belong to this world.” A lie loved by the mind of the lovers, a legend among the millions which says, that nothing in this world can anticipate the feelings and moods of human beings before they occur, and more precisely, the private feelings and fluctuations, of an individual, to be precise, and not just of a large group of people, the more we try to customize it, the more difficult it becomes. And where the indicators of the collective mind, the demagogue, can give us an idea of the general direction and the future fluctuations of a society or group of people, not because of a weakness in the lines of defense of feelings, but rather because we know that the mob, the collective mind, and the herd, will force many to follow it, even if it violates what they feel, what they want at their core. The mind is designed for survival, and you know that survival’s chances are stronger with the stronger group, the more number, it will secrete all the necessary hormones, to force you to follow the herd. However, the feelings assigned to a particular person remain an impossible task, so many people are able to deceive each other by showing signs of expected trends and fluctuations that contradict the reality of what they feel. Humans and scientists have treated it as something unpredictable, coming from another world, a curse on science, as if it were a whiff of a magical spell cast on us from the immemorial. But in fact, emotions are causal, and every cause has a causative. Like everything else in this world, the laws of chaos and randomness apply to them. They can be accurately predicted, formulated into mathematical equations, and even manipulated. All it takes is to have something that contains all the cosmic events, a number we did not imagine, starting with the flutter of a butterfly, a breath of air, temperatures across the universe, a word a man says to his son, a donkey’s kick, a rabbit’s jump, and ending with the movement of stars and planets, and cosmic explosions, and beyond, and able to deal with them, and with the hierarchical possibilities of their occurrence.

One way to avoid the design problems encountered by the transcendental meditation researchers would be to keep one of the variables fixed. This could be either the number of meditators or the “target” of consciousness-induced order. Beyond this, as philosopher Evan Fales and sociologist Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa suggested after reviewing the Maharishi effect, “Presumably, if the material world can be influenced in purposive ways by collective meditation, inanimate detectors could be constructed and placed at varying distances from the collective meditators.”6 This is essentially the approach that we took, although our motivations were based upon a logical extension of laboratory research on mind-matter interactions using random-number generators, and not by the claims of the transcendental meditators. Properties of Consciousness Whatever else consciousness may be, let us suppose that it also has the following properties, derived from a combination of Western and Eastern philosophies.7 The first property is that consciousness extends beyond the individual and has quantum field–like properties, in that it affects the probabilities of events. Second, consciousness injects order into systems in proportion to the “strength” of consciousness present. This is a refinement of quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s observation about one of the most remarkable properties of life, namely, an “organism’s astonishing gift … of ‘drinking orderliness’ from a suitable environment.”8 Third, the strength of consciousness in an individual fluctuates from moment to moment, and is regulated by focus of attention. Some states of consciousness have higher focus than others. We propose that ordinary awareness has a fairly low focus of attention compared to peak states, mystical states, and other nonordinary states.9 Fourth, a group of individuals can be said to have “group consciousness.” Group consciousness strengthens when the group’s attention is focused on a common object or event, and this creates coherence among the group. If the group’s attention is scattered, then the group’s mental coherence is also scattered. Fifth, when individuals in a group are all attending to different things, then the group consciousness and group mental coherence is effectively zero, producing what amounts to background noise. We assume that the maximum degree of group coherence is related in some complicated way to the total number of individuals present in the group, the strength of their common focus of attention, and other psychological, physiological, and environmental factors. Sixth, physical systems of all kinds respond to a consciousness field by becoming more ordered. The stronger or more coherent a consciousness field, the more the order will be evident. Inanimate objects (like rocks) will respond to order induced by consciousness as well as animate ones (like people, or tossed dice), but it is only in the more labile systems that we have the tools to readily detect these changes in order. In sum, when a group is actively focused on a common object, the “group mind” momentarily has the “power to organize,” as Carl Jung put it.10 This leads us to a very simple idea: as the mind moves, so moves matter.

GV-15 and 16 are located within one inch of each other on the back of the head, at the base of the hairline. By striking this point, the ability of the Extraordinary Vessels to correct energetic imbalances of the Yang associated meridians are severed. What does this mean exactly? It means that a forceful strike or series of strikes, which are aimed at GV-15 and 16, will greatly hinder, or even completely stop, the ability of the body to correct energetic imbalances to the heart. This concept is referred to as “sealing the qi”1 or “sealing the energy.” Remember that in a combative situation that your opponent’s body will be in an energetic state in which the Fire and Metal meridians will be in great excess. The Wood, Water, and Earth meridians will be energetically in a highly deficient state during such an encounter. During the encounter you attack the Main Meridians in a manner that accentuates those imbalances. This is through your initial entering technique to the strike that places your opponent in a position where strikes to GV-15 and 16 are possible. Your finishing strike or strikes are focused on those two points, which are no more than one half of an inch from each other. It is a great possibility that the excessive energy of the heart, which can not be corrected by the Extraordinary Vessels after your finishing strike, will result in a heart attack. Think of it this way. Because of the automatic responses of Body Alarm Reaction, the Heart meridian is “flooded” with extra energy by the Extraordinary Vessels. That extra energy places in the Heart meridian in an excessive state. Martial techniques are executed that contribute to this already excessive state. The heart will be overwhelmed with extra energy. It will be beating at a much greater than normal rate. To correct this excessive state the body would normally utilize the connection points of GV-15 and 16 to “pipe out” or “draw off” the excessive energy that is present in the Heart meridian. By striking GV-15 and 16, repeatedly if possible, the connection is disrupted to the point that this can not occur. The result is that the heart is in a major excessive state and it can not correct the imbalance. That can result in arrhythmia. This is the worst possible energetic attack to the delicate Yin associated Heart Meridian. It is the worst possible energetic attack period. The Heart is the most delicate and important organ of the body to energetic fluctuations. Where are no other energetic attacks that have this much of a negative effect on the body. The results of this type of attack are extremely serious and should only be used in life-or-death situations!

One can define conservatism as the political form of melancholy. It remained decisive for the conservative syndrome which took shape in Europe after the 1789 French Revolution that it had resulted from looking back at the irretrievable goods, life forms and arts of the pre-bourgeois times. One of the preconditions was the certainty of never becoming the dominant view. It acquired its elegiac hues by emphasizing the habit of expecting the darker constants of human nature. To be conservative is to continue believing that good and noble things are tied to places and unique phenomena – for vulgar things, on the other hand, the majority principle and mechanical repetition are sufficient. Such reserve imposes itself on those with nothing more to win in a history addicted to novelty. This way of feeling will be cultivated by those who are keen to avoid being mistaken for profiteers of future conditions. When people in the optimistic mainstream speak of a constant improvement of living conditions, the conservative keeps a low profile. Assuming that better things lie ahead – does that not already mean searching in the wrong direction? Fluctuating between equanimity and disgust, the conservative watches the activities of those moved by progressive feelings and waits for entropy to do its work. Progress, the conservative is sure, is only ever an acceleration of the flight from good, which lies unattainable behind us… Any conservative who wanted to elevate themselves to the level of principles had to move on from here to anthropological generalizations. They had to learn to associate the idea of “mankind” with the epithet “incorrigible”… One could no longer even speak of the “return of the tragic” – for we are ineluctably embedded in it, as if in a fabric woven of first and second nature.

Sometimes I wonder whether my whole life has been a singular quest for beauty. Beauty in mathematics, and beauty in literature and in music. I feel that creating mathematics and writing fiction are closely related. While authors are poets in the universe of language, mathematicians seek the poetry in the language of the universe. The German mathematician Karl Weierstrass once wrote that any great mathematician must also be a poet. When I was young, several people told me that I’d be a poet when I grew up. So in a way, it feels as if I’ve tried to investigate whether the reverse implication is true: whether every poet must also be a great mathematician. I still don’t know the answer, but I doubt that this is the case. Over the past few years, I’ve started to dream of writing a novel. I’ve marveled at how the enjoyment of hearing a piece of music often gets stronger the better you know the piece, while a novel rarely has the same impact on third reading. Is it because music relies on recognition, while literature relies on the unexpected? Or has it more to do with the structure of the music, how the themes reflect each other so that the listener discovers ever new connections? The way the interplay of colors in a painting can fluctuate in different light, so that the painting continually changes? If so, it must be possible to write a novel in the same way. A novel that gets richer every time you read it, because you discover new connections that were previously invisible. A novel that carries something of the eternal beauty of music and mathematics within it. One of the most alluring things about mathematics is perhaps the feeling of being able to uncover unshakeable truths. And that terms such as truth and beauty obtain a kind of objectivity, because mathematicians have a shared understanding of what constitutes a valid proof and what is aesthetically beautiful. The disadvantage is that the truths of mathematics don’t say anything about what is true in the world beyond mathematics itself.

The Kapha Season Kapha season is like springtime for your body. For the first twenty years, your body builds bones and tissues, and the circadian rhythm fluctuates wildly at times, trying to find a balance. Babies aren’t born with a set sleep schedule, but they develop one quickly during the first months of life. Gradually, the body settles into a system in which the hormones, blood pressure, bowels, and other systems function on a diurnal schedule. Anyone with teenagers knows that they give up their regular sleep habits and become night owls. They are impossible to pry out of bed in the morning and sleep until noon on weekends. In fact, some researchers suggest that the real end of adolescence can be marked by the time when young adults give up trying to stay up so late. Teenagers’ eating schedules, too, become erratic as they crave energy while their bodies are growing and maturing. When they get out of balance, teens can struggle in school and get inflammatory conditions, such as acne. They can adopt dietary habits that will be harder to shake as they become adults, which can lead to weight gain and depression in adulthood. This is a crucial time to introduce kids to healthy eating, a good night’s sleep, and plenty of exercise. Their growing bodies demand a lot of fuel, and their muscles need to move in order to develop properly. I often see patients who are still in their teen years struggling with school, friendships, and finding a sense of purpose. Though it may sound surprising, I can often trace these problems back to an unhealthy schedule, including late nights of doing homework (or texting while pretending to do homework), and eating unhealthy foods late in the day. Another culprit is little or no exercise, and a lack of natural light. Kids need natural light during these critical growing years.

I’ve fallen into the thought process of “I’ll be happy when I’m a size _____.” This is shallow and untrue. We cannot find our self-worth or happiness in our size. There is no such thing as a “size happy.” Large or small, Jesus loves us all. Friend, please stop looking for your validation in the mirror or on a scale. Your identity cannot be found there no matter how long you stare. Your worth cannot be found on the tag inside your jeans or leggings. Your beauty cannot be measured. Your appearance does not define you. Your identity is found in something that no one but God can truly see. Check out what God said when the prophet Samuel saw David’s impressive elder brother and thought Eliab must be the man God had chosen to be king: The LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7) God looks at the heart. Your weight will fluctuate, your body will change, but his love for you remains the same. Your body is a vessel. It’s a tool. It does not determine your value. Only Christ can do that. Your body is not an object for others to look at for pleasure. Your identity is safely hidden in God’s care. The apostle Paul said it this way: “You died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3 NLT). No amount of Photoshop can change who we are in Christ. It’s time to remove the filters we hide behind and allow God to reveal our identity in him.

Pecora started the transmitter and receiver in different states, and then asked the computer to predict their behavior far into the future. As the numbers poured out, they bobbled erratically—the aperiodicity expected of chaos—but amazingly, their values converged toward each other. They were synchronizing. By driving the receiver with a chaotic signal transmitted from a duplicate of itself, Pecora had coaxed them to fluctuate in lockstep.

Dear Chicago" Dear Chicago, You'll never guess. You know the girl you said I'd meet someday? Well, I've got something to confess. She picked me up on Friday. Asked me if she reminded me of you. I just laughed and lit a cigarette, Said "that's impossible to do." My life's gotten simple since. And it fluctuates so much. Happy and sad and back again. I'm not crying out to much. Think about you all the time. It's strange and hard to deal. Think about you lying there. And those blankets lie so still. Nothing breathes here in the cold. Nothing moves or even smiles. I've been thinking some of suicide. But there's bars out here for miles. Sorry about the every kiss. Every kiss you wasted (bad / back) I think the thing you said was true, I'm going to die alone and sad. The wind's feeling real these days. Yeah, baby, it hurt's me some. Never thought I'd feel so blue. New York City, you're almost gone. I think that I've fallen out of love, I think I've fallen out of love . . . with you. Ryan Adams, Demolition (2002)

The care home is set back from the road. There are trees crowding out the whole front of the place. I stand outside on the pavement and wonder what I should do. There is a postman on the other side of the road, but other than that – no one. I inhale. Life has a strange rhythm. It takes a while to fully be aware of this. Decades. Centuries, even. It’s not a simple rhythm. But the rhythm is there. The tempo shifts and fluctuates; there are structures within structures, patterns within patterns. It’s baffling. Like when you first hear John Coltrane on the saxophone. But if you stick with it, the elements of familiarity become clear. The current rhythm is speeding up. I am approaching a crescendo. Everything is happening all at once. That is one of the patterns: when nothing is happening, nothing continues to happen, but after a while the lull becomes too much and the drums need to kick in. Something has to happen. Often that need comes from yourself. You make a phone call. tures within structures, patterns within patterns. It’s baffling. Like when you first hear John Coltrane on the saxophone. But if you stick with it, the elements of familiarity become clear. The current rhythm is speeding up. I am approaching a crescendo. Everything is happening all at once. That is one of the patterns: when nothing is happening, nothing continues to happen, but after a while the lull becomes too much and the drums need to kick in. Something has to happen. Often that need comes from yourself. You make a phone call. You say, ‘I can’t do this life any more, I need to change.’ And one thing happens that you are in control of. And then another happens which you have no say over. Newton’s third law of motion. Actions create reactions. When things start to happen, other things start to happen. But sometimes it seems there is no explanation as to why the things are happening – why all the buses are coming along at once – why life’s moments of luck and pain arrive in clusters. All we can do is observe the pattern, the rhythm, and then live it.

Consistency between Dionysos-type godforms is also demonstrated in five minor attributes, which fluctuate in degree depending upon the particular norms, standards, and values of a given culture. These attributes are: 1. Unsurpassed viciousness toward those who would harm the followers of the god. When this aspect of Dionysian godforms is aroused, they are what has been termed “Hunters of Men.” 2. These Deities are lawgivers who, very often, figure in literal or symbolic acts of human sacrifice, whether this sacrifice occurs because of the breaking of laws, as part of worship, or for the granting of special favors to a community at large. Paradoxically, these same godforms ultimately do away with all requirements for human sacrifice. 3. Such archetypes are portals between upper, lower, and middle worlds: Bridges between the realms of life and death, they are gatekeepers, or the companions of gatekeepers, and masters of altered states of being. 4. Godforms of this type are often portrayed as adherents or defenders of the divine feminine, and can often be found in the company of female worshippers, goddesses, or their own mates, without whom they are incomplete, and upon whom they rely in order to fulfill their multiple roles of Divine Child, Bridegroom, Father, Savior, and Reborn One. Sensuality, too, is a Dionysian trademark: This is usually a paradoxical sensuality, at once childlike and ravaging, remarkably androgynous yet undeniably masculine in its expression. 5. Bewitching is an acceptable description of Dionysos-syncretistic Deities; many are unsurpassed in the powers of discrimination, response, wisdom, healing, fertility, prophecy, and magic in general. When Dionysos was invoked or worshipped by the ancient Greeks for his command of the powers listed above, he was considered agathos daemon, or “the good demon”: Demons, to the pagan Hellenes, were not necessarily wholly evil forces of the kind espoused by the Christian faith. They were seen as demigods capable of bringing either wealth and happiness or pain and suffering to mankind, of appearing in any sort of theriomorphic form — including no form at all — and of interceding between the supreme godhead and mankind.

Technically speaking, true meditation in the yogic sense cannot be done by a person who is under stress or who has a weak body, weak lungs, hard muscles, collapsed spine, fluctuating mind, mental agitation, or timidity. Often people think that sitting quietly is meditation. This is a misunderstanding. True meditation leads us to wisdom (jnana) and awareness (prajna), and this specifically helps in understanding that we are more than our ego. For this one needs the preparations of the postures and the breathing, the withdrawal of the senses and concentration.

That means plants could be said to have dialects, and are alert to their contexts enough to know when to deploy them. More than that, they have a clear sense of who is who; who is family, and who is not. They are in touch with their surroundings, and with the fluctuating status of their enemies. Their communication is not just rudimentary but complex and layered, alive with multiple meanings.

Quetelet had introduced a radically new way of thinking about human beings. As one of his admirers put it, 'Man is seen to be an enigma only as an individual, in mass, he is a mathematical problem.' Quetelet's successors took his ideas in many different directions. For one thing, his work was valuable politically because it could be interpreted in different ways. While conservatives insisted that little could be done to alter the current system, radicals accused governments of impeding the natural course of progress, and Utopians--such as Karl Marx--envisaged harmonious societies governed by nature's own laws guaranteeing improvement. Data collection projects proliferated, and statisticians searched for laws governing every aspect of life, ranging from the weather to the growth of civilization, from stock market fluctuations to the incidence of disease. Many scientists took their ideas from Quetelet rather than from abstract textbooks--but they added their own twist. Whereas Quetelet regarded individual deviations from the norm as errors to be eliminated, scientists set out to study how variations occur.

One autistic person's 'level of functioning' will fluctuate throughout their day, week and life, depending upon circumstances, environment, mood and other factors. Someone who has been deemed 'high functioning' simply due to external factors (such as their home life, their support circle, or simply how well they have learned to mask themselves) may in fact need more resources and support than someone who has been deemed 'low functioning'.

It's stupid to run from pain instead of to it because pain always comes, and if I could just accept that, life would not be a constant fluctuation between numbness and fear.

Other things you might notice are a burning sensation in the mouth, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), shoulder aches, even all-over body pain, something known as arthralgia. You might get heart palpitations as well, and find that you’re getting breast tenderness as the estrogen fluctuates. You may notice things like dry skin and dry hair. You might find it really hard to lose weight so your weight might increase. And then there’s a whole host of symptoms in regard to your periods. If you’re not using any form of hormonal contraceptive, your periods might become heavier or lighter, more frequent or further apart. You might also notice changes to your vagina, whether that’s dryness, difficulty with sexual intercourse, recurrent urinary tract infections, or maybe even urge incontinence. So, as you can see, perimenopause can affect the whole body, not just your periods.

Walter’s fortunes fluctuated wildly, but the Brennans did not wait to have a family. Arthur, “Mike,” was born on January 6, 1922, Walter Jr., “Andy,” on July 21, 1923, and baby Ruth “Ruthie” on September 22, 1924. By 1924, Walter’s mother and father had also moved to California, settling in Pasadena. With three children to feed, Ruth supplemented the family’s meager budget by growing her own vegetables and raising chickens. All three children would quickly learn two fundamental facts about their father: He worked almost all the time, and he expected them to carry their own weight. No Brennan child would be out on the road in a delivery wagon at the age of eleven, but every Brennan child would—certainly by the age of eleven—know what it cost to obtain the things he or she wanted.

Even though these individuals had seemed perfectly healthy at birth, something that had happened during their development in the womb affected them for decades afterwards. And it wasn’t just the fact that something had happened that mattered, it was when it happened. Events that take place in the first three months of development, a stage when the foetus is really very small, can affect an individual for the rest of their life. This is completely consistent with the model of developmental programming, and the epigenetic basis to this. In the early stages of pregnancy, where different cell types are developing, epigenetic proteins are probably vital for stabilising gene expression patterns. But remember that our cells contain thousands of genes, spread over billions of base-pairs, and we have hundreds of epigenetic proteins. Even in normal development there are likely to be slight variations in the expression of some of these proteins, and the precise effects that they have at specific chromosomal regions. A little bit more DNA methylation here, a little bit less there. The epigenetic machinery reinforces and then maintains particular patterns of modifications, thus creating the levels of gene expression. Consequently, these initial small fluctuations in histone and DNA modifications may eventually become ‘set’ and get transmitted to daughter cells, or be maintained in long-lived cells such as neurons, that can last for decades. Because the epigenome gets ‘stuck’, so too may the patterns of gene expression in certain chromosomal regions. In the short term the consequences of this may be relatively minor. But over decades all these mild abnormalities in gene expression, resulting from a slightly inappropriate set of chromatin modifications, may lead to a gradually increasing functional impairment. Clinically, we don’t recognise this until it passes some invisible threshold and the patient begins to show symptoms.

In a memo dated April 22, 1942, concerning a script conference about Maryland, Darryl Zanuck rejected the idea of making a radical change in Brennan’s screen persona. Brennan simply could not be presented as “a prospective bridegroom—even though in real life he is a man about 38.” Such a persona would be “completely wrong since Brennan is a most unromantic character . . . the audience would never swallow him in any romantic complication because of his unattractiveness.” Instead, the producer suggested that the screenwriters build interest by concentrating on Brennan’s character and his fluctuating fortunes.

The ‘Sturm und Drang’ was even more complicated in its sociological structure than the West European forms of preromanticism, and not merely because the German middle class and the German intelligentsia had never identified themselves closely enough with the enlightenment to keep their eyes sharply fixed on the aims of the movement and not to deviate from it, but also because their struggle against the rationalism of the absolutist regime was at the same time a struggle against the progressive tendencies of the age. They never became aware of the fact that the rationalism of the princes represented a less serious danger for the future than the anti-rationalism of their own compeers. From being the enemies of despotism they, therefore, became the instruments of reaction and merely promoted the interests of the privileged classes with their attacks on bureaucratic centralization. To be sure, their struggle was not directed against the social levelling tendencies of the system, with which aristocratic and upper middle-class interests were in conflict, but against its generalizing influence and violation of all intellectual distinction and variety. They championed the rights of life, of individual being, natural growth and organic development, against the rigid formalism of the rationalized administration, and meant not only the denial of the bureaucratic state with its mechanical generalization and regimentation, but also the repudiation of the planning and regulating reformism of the enlightenment. And although the idea of the spontaneous, irrational life was still of an indefinite and fluctuating nature and certainly hostile to the enlightenment, but not yet markedly conservative in its purpose, nevertheless, it already contained the essence of the whole philosophy of conservatism. It did not need much now to ascribe a mystical superrationality to this principle of ‘life’, in contrast to which the rationalism of enlightened thought seemed unnatural, inflexible and doctrinaire, and to represent the rise of political and social institutions from historical ‘life’ as a ‘natural’, that is to say, superhuman and superrational growth, in order to protect these institutions against all arbitrary attacks and to secure the continuance of the prevailing system.

The people who cannot see the future scopes will always fluctuate and circulate inside material stuffs.

Fluctuations between periods of drought and heavy rain become a thing of the past, and what remains is a constantly bubbling spring. Although it has to be said, it doesn’t always bubble. Often it looks more like a swampy-squishy area, a dark patch on the forest floor seeping toward the nearest little stream. If you take a closer look (and to do that you must get down on your knees), you can make out the tiny rivulets that betray the existence of a spring. Now, to find out whether this is indeed groundwater or just surface water left over from a heavy shower, reach for your thermometer. Less than 48 degrees Fahrenheit?