Inner Glimpse Quotes

[in the true mad north] of introspection, where 'falcons of the inner eye' dive and die, glimpsing in their dying fall, all life's memory of existence.

I understood it all. I understood Pablo. I understood Mozart, and somewhere behind me I heard his ghastly laughter. I knew that all the hundred thousand pieces of life's game were in my pocket. A glimpse of its meaning had stirred my reason and I was determined to begin the game afresh. I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often, the hell of my inner being.

The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world.

It seems to me that we all have a dream of our own, our own personal vision, our own individual way of giving, but for many reasons we are afraid to pursue it, or to even recognize and accept its existence. But to deny our vision is to sell our soul. Getting is living a lie, turning our back on the truth, and Visions are glimpses of the truth: Obviously nothing external can truly nurture my inner life, my Vision.

These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori. 1. The first stage enlightenment: A Glimpse of the Whole The first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being. The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego. There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence. You and existence meet and merge for a moment. And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart. 2. The second stage of enlightenment: Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner Being The second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom. The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen. Your own wisdom from within has arisen. A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment. The Hindus has three names for the ego: 1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego. 2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego. 3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being. In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness. For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God. Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear. Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God. Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction. 3. The third stage of enlightenment: Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure being At the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean. At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole. It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky. The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality. You can find the gap whenever you want. This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God. You have found the door to God. You have come home.

The pop culture cliché of the American High School movie, which adapted old archetypes, depicted a social world in which the worst sexists were always the all brawn no brains sports jock. But now that the online world has given us a glimpse into the inner lives of others, one of the surprising revelations is that it is the nerdish self-identifying nice guy who could never get the girl who has been exposed as the much more hate-filled, racist, misogynist who is insanely jealous of the happiness of others.

Real love doesn’t make you suffer. How could it? It doesn’t suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain. As I said, even before you are enlightened — before you have freed yourself from your mind — you may get glimpses of true joy, true love, or of a deep inner peace, still but vibrantly alive. These are aspects of your true nature, which is usually obscured by the mind. Even within a “normal” addictive relationship, there can be moments when the presence of something more genuine, something incorruptible, can be felt. But they will only be glimpses, soon to be covered up again through mind interference. It may then seem that you had something very precious and lost it, or your mind may convince you that it was all an illusion anyway. The truth is that it wasn’t an illusion, and you cannot lose it. It is part of your natural state, which can be obscured but can never be destroyed by the mind. Even when the sky is heavily overcast, the sun hasn’t disappeared. It’s still there on the other side of the clouds.

They, like me, like all of us, had, once upon a time, in a past so far away it seemed like heaven, caught by chance a glimpse of an inner essence, only to forget what it was. It was this lost memory that pained us, reduced us to ruins, though still we struggled to be ourselves.

Each one of us is the custodian of an inner world that we carry around with us. Now, other people can glimpse it from [its outer expressions]. But no one but you knows what your inner world is actually like, and no one can force you to reveal it until you actually tell them about it. That’s the whole mystery of writing and language and expression — that when you do say it, what others hear and what you intend and know are often totally different kinds of things.

Walk around after a good rain has given nice bath to everything. You may feel like you're walking inside a movie. You may even get a glimpse of the creator.

Sometimes one feels rage and despair that one should know so little the people one loves. one is heartbroken at the impossibility of understanding them, of getting right down into their hearts . sometimes, accidentally or under the influence of some emotion, one gets a glimpse of some emotion , one gets a glimpse of those inner selves , and one despairs how ignorant one is of that inner self and how far away one is from it.

May your inner eye See through the surfaces And glean the real presence Of everything that meets you. May your soul beautify The desire of your eyes That you might glimpse The infinity that hides In the simple sights That seem worn To your usual eyes.

FOR THE DYING May death come gently toward you, Leaving you time to make your way Through the cold embrace of fear To the place of inner tranquillity. May death arrive only after a long life To find you at home among your own With every comfort and care you require. May your leave-taking be gracious, Enabling you to hold dignity Through awkwardness and illness. May you see the reflection Of your life’s kindness and beauty In all the tears that fall for you. As your eyes focus on each face, May your soul take its imprint, Drawing each image within As companions for the journey. May you find for each one you love A different locket of jeweled words To be worn around the heart To warm your absence. May someone who knows and loves The complex village of your heart Be there to echo you back to yourself And create a sure word-raft To carry you to the further shore. May your spirit feel The surge of true delight When the veil of the visible Is raised, and you glimpse again The living faces Of departed family and friends. May there be some beautiful surprise Waiting for you inside death, Something you never knew or felt, Which with one simple touch, Absolves you of all loneliness and loss, As you quicken within the embrace For which your soul was eternally made. May your heart be speechless At the sight of the truth Of all belief had hoped, Your heart breathless In the light and lightness Where each and everything Is at last its true self Within that serene belonging That dwells beside us On the other side Of what we see.

Sometimes we must allow our locked-and-tethered inner demon a short glimpse beyond the bars,” thought Mario, “lest we forget the full extent of our virtue. One’s power does not reside in the length of their demon’s claw, but in the strength of its manacle. The unleashed demon is worthless, lest it’s controlled.

Men, Kellhus had once told her, were like coins: they had two sides. Where one side of them saw, the other side of them was seen, and though all men were both at once, men could only truly know the side of themselves that saw and the side of others that was seen—they could only truly know the inner half of themselves and the outer half of others. At first Esmenet thought this foolish. Was not the inner half the whole, what was only imperfectly apprehended by others? But Kellhus bid her to think of everything she’d witnessed in others. How many unwitting mistakes? How many flaws of character? Conceits couched in passing remarks. Fears posed as judgements … The shortcomings of men—their limits—were written in the eyes of those who watched them. And this was why everyone seemed so desperate to secure the good opinion of others—why everyone played the mummer. They knew without knowing that what they saw of themselves was only half of who they were. And they were desperate to be whole. The measure of wisdom, Kellhus had said, was found in the distance between these two selves. Only afterward had she thought of Kellhus in these terms. With a kind of surpriseless shock, she realized that not once—not once!—had she glimpsed shortcomings in his words or actions. And this, she understood, was why he seemed limitless, like the ground, which extended from the small circle about her feet to the great circle about the sky. He had become her horizon. For Kellhus, there was no distance between seeing and being seen. He alone was whole. And what was more, he somehow stood from without and saw from within. He made whole …

Every civilization built upon riches has died stillborn, ebbed away or fallen of its own weight. Once the inner eye glimpses wealth, the individual life is no longer of interest. The personal on every level becomes insignificant. Wives are abandoned, children discarded. Expendability rules. Gold erases the past, you see. It erases the mercy of God.

We’re now getting the first glimpses of the vastness of inner space. This internal, hidden, intimate cosmos commands its own goals, imperatives, and logic.

That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound. It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us. Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkably assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now posses. Our parents would still be our parents, our teachers still our teachers, our broker still our broker. Amid the stench of so much defeat and despair, we would kick fate in the teeth and claim our deserved victory. We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now. We would be saved, and as it always is in matters of salvation, we know this as a matter of perfect, pristine faith. Why? The truth is plain: We were not born to be niggers.

I knew what I stood for, even if nobody else did. I knew the piece of me on the inside, truer than all the rest, that never comes out. Doesn't everyone have one? Some kind of grand inner princess waiting to toss her hair down, forever waiting at the tower window. Some jungle animal so noble and fierce you had to crawl on your belly through dangerous grasses to get a glimpse.

I highly recommend inviting the worst-case scenario into your life. I met Ellen when I was 168 pounds and she loved me. She didn’t see that I was heavy; she only saw the person inside. My two greatest fears, being fat and being gay, when realized, led to my greatest joy. It’s ironic, really, when all I’ve ever wanted is to be loved for my true self, and yet I tried so hard to present myself as anything other than who I am. And I didn’t just one day wake up and be true to myself. Ellen saw a glimpse of my inner being from underneath the flesh and bone, reached in, and pulled me out.

If you should happen to catch a glimpse of what really matters in life, regard it with care. Decorate it with flowers. Cover it with love. Hold it in the sunshine. Give it a little bit of time and attention. And when the world tries to push you forward, listen to your heart instead. Because if you don’t make time for what really matters, no one is going to do it for you. Taking a few minutes to savor everyday wonders makes the heart fuller, the inner doubts quieter, and the human connections stronger. And that’s when the ordinary becomes extraordinary for yourself and those who share your life.

We look for the fleeting glimpses of light outside of us, when all along, we have had the sun within us.

External relationships seem to have been emptied by a massive withdrawal of the real libidinal self. Effective mental activity has disappeared into a hidden inner world; the patient's conscious ego is emptied of vital feeling and action, and seems to have become unreal. You may catch glimpses of intense activity going on in the inner world through dreams and fantasies, but the patient's conscious ego merely reports these as if it were a neutral observer not personally involved in the inner drama of which it is a detached spectator. The attitude to the outer world is the same: non-involvement and observation at a distance without any feeling, like that of a press reporter describing a social gathering of which he is not a part, in which he has no personal interest, and by which he is bored. Such activity as is carried on may appear to be mechanical. When a schizoid state supervenes, the conscious ego appears to be in a state of suspended animation in between two worlds, internal and external, and having no real relationships with either of them. It has decreed an emotional and impulsive standstill, on the basis of keeping out of effective range and being unmoved.

We entered the cool cave of the practice space with all the long-haired, goateed boys stoned on clouds of pot and playing with power tools. I tossed my fluffy coat into the hollow of my bass drum and lay on the carpet with my worn newspaper. A shirtless boy came in and told us he had to cut the power for a minute, and I thought about being along in the cool black room with Joey. Let's go smoke, she said, and I grabbed the cigarettes off the amp. She started talking to me about Wonder Woman. I feel like something big is happening, but I don't know what to do about it. With The Straight Girl? I asked in the blankest voice possible. With everything. Back in the sun we walked to the edge of the parking lot where a black Impala convertible sat, rusted and rotting, looking like it just got dredged from a swamp. Rainwater pooling on the floor. We climbed up onto it and sat our butts backward on the edge of the windshield, feet stretched into the front seat. Before she even joined the band, I would think of her each time I passed the car, the little round medallions with the red and black racing flags affixed to the dash. On the rusting Chevy, Joey told me about her date the other night with a girl she used to like who she maybe liked again. How her heart was shut off and it felt pretty good. How she just wanted to play around with this girl and that girl and this girl and I smoked my cigarette and went Uh-Huh. The sun made me feel like a restless country girl even though I'd never been on a farm. I knew what I stood for, even if nobody else did. I knew the piece of me on the inside, truer than all the rest, that never comes out. Doesn't everyone have one? Some kind of grand inner princess waiting to toss her hair down, forever waiting at the tower window. Some jungle animal so noble and fierce you had to crawl on your belly through dangerous grasses to get a glimpse. I gave Joey my cigarette so I could unlace the ratty green laces of my boots, pull them off, tug the linty wool tights off my legs. I stretched them pale over the car, the hair springing like weeds and my big toenail looking cracked and ugly. I knew exactly who I was when the sun came back and the air turned warm. Joey climbed over the hood of the car, dusty black, and said Let's lie down, I love lying in the sun, but there wasn't any sun there. We moved across the street onto the shining white sidewalk and she stretched out, eyes closed. I smoked my cigarette, tossed it into the gutter and lay down beside her. She said she was sick of all the people who thought she felt too much, who wanted her to be calm and contained. Who? I asked. All the flowers, the superheroes. I thought about how she had kissed me the other night, quick and hard, before taking off on a date in her leather chaps, hankies flying, and I sat on the couch and cried at everything she didn't know about how much I liked her, and someone put an arm around me and said, You're feeling things, that's good. Yeah, I said to Joey on the sidewalk, I Feel Like I Could Calm Down Some. Awww, you're perfect. She flipped her hand over and touched my head. Listen, we're barely here at all, I wanted to tell her, rolling over, looking into her face, we're barely here at all and everything goes so fast can't you just kiss me? My eyes were shut and the cars sounded close when they passed. The sun was weak but it baked the grime on my skin and made it smell delicious. A little kid smell. We sat up to pop some candy into our mouths, and then Joey lay her head on my lap, spent from sugar and coffee. Her arm curled back around me and my fingers fell into her slippery hair. On the February sidewalk that felt like spring.

Because he’d given up, the surface of life was comfortable for him. He worked reasonably hard, was easy to get along with and, except for an occasional glimpse of inner emptiness shown in some short stories he wrote at the time, his days passed quite usually.

You know what is the worst thing in the world? You are amidst this crowd, a swarm of people, Who think they connect with you, Every one of them, in their own way. But in reality, you are being ripped apart, Connecting with each one of them. It is a constant struggle to connect with someone, To be heard,to be understood,to be loved, to be accepted. And it is done with a glimpse of hope, That someone from these known and unknown faces, Will hear you out, someone with a warm & genuine smile, Will touch your heart. And that's precisely when,perhaps,you would say, Yes, THIS IS ME.

In appearance Sachish gives the impression of a celestial being. His eyes glow; his long, slender fingers are like tongues of flame; the colour of his skin is more a luminescence than a colour. As soon as I set eyes on him I seemed to glimpse his inner self; and from that moment I loved him.

It is quite understandable that you are afraid of this place. You have so little knowledge of it. You have caught glimpses of it, you have even been there at times, but for most of your life you have dwelt among your emotions, passions, and feelings and searched in them for inner peace and joy.

My poor little child Karin Boye My poor child, so afraid of the dark, who has met ghosts of another kind, who always among those clad in white glimpses those with evil faces, now let me sing you gentle songs, from fright they free, from force and cramp. Of the evil they ask no repentance. Of the good they ask not for battle. See, you must know, that all that lives is deep inside of equal kind. Like trees and herbs it seeks to grow - pulled forward by its inner laws. And trees may fall and flowers wilt and branches break, their power lost, still the dream remains - awaits the call - in every living drop of sap. (205)

As we advance in the spiritual life and in the practice of systematic self-examination we are often surprised by the discovery of vast unknown tracts of the inner life of the soul. They seem like great plains stretching out in mystery and wrapt in mists that sometimes for a moment lift, or sweep off and leave one looking for one brief instant upon great reaches of one’s own life, unknown, unmeasured, unexplored. Men stand at such moments breathless in wonder and in awe gazing upon these great tracts upon which they have never looked before, with kindling eyes and beating hearts; and while they look the mists steal back till all is lost to sight once more and they are left wondering if what they saw was reality, or the creation of their fancy. Or sometimes they see, not far-stretching plains which fill the soul with an awestruck sense of its expansiveness and of how much has been left absolutely uncultivated, not these plains but mountain peaks climbing and reaching upwards till lost in the heavens, echoing it may be with the voice of many streams whose waters fertilize and enrich those small tracts of the soul’s life which have been reclaimed and cultivated and which many a man has thought to be his whole inner self, though he never asked himself whence those rich streams had their source. Now he sees how their source lay in unmeasured heights of his own inner being whose existence he never dreamed of before. In one brief instant they have unveiled themselves. He looks again, and they are shut out from his eyes, there is no token visible that he possesses such reaches, such heights of life. The commonplaces of his existence gather in and crowd upon him, the ordinary routine of life settles down upon him, limiting and confining him on all sides, the same unbroken line measures his horizon, such as he has always known it, the same round of interests and occupations crowd in upon his hours and fill them, the pressure of the hard facts of life upon him are as unmistakable and as leveling as ever, bidding him forget his dreams and meet and obey the requirements of the world in which he lives. And yet the man who has caught but a momentary glimpse of that vast unknown inner life can never be the same as he was before; he must be better or worse, trying to explore and possess and cultivate that unknown world within him, or trying—oh, would that he could succeed!—to forget it. He has seen that alongside of, or far out beyond the reach of, the commonplace life of routine, another life stretches away whither he knows not, he feels that he has greater capacities for good or evil than he ever imagined. He has, in a word, awakened with tremulous awe to the discovery that his life which he has hitherto believed limited and confined to what he knew, reaches infinitely beyond his knowledge and is far greater than he ever dreamed.

That’s extremely important to understand. He had given up. Because he’d given up, the surface of life was comfortable for him. He worked reasonably hard, was easy to get along with and, except for an occasional glimpse of inner emptiness shown in some short stories he wrote at the time, his days passed quite usually.

In Zen, such a glimpse is called satori. Satori is a moment of Presence, a brief stepping out of the voice in your head, the thought processes, and their reflection in the body as emotion. It is the arising of inner spaciousness where before there was the clutter of thought and the turmoil of emotion. The thinking mind cannot understand Presence and so will often misinterpret it. It will say that you are uncaring, distant, have no compassion, are not relating. The truth is, you are relating but at a level deeper than thought and emotion. In fact, at that level there is a true coming together, a true joining that goes far beyond relating. In the stillness of Presence, you can sense the formless essence in yourself and in the other as one. Knowing the oneness of yourself and the other is true love, true care, true compassion.

The feminine was an idea that existed in theory, the stuff of novels or a rare phenomenon to be glimpsed from across the street. The best description Robin knew of women came from a treatise he’d once flipped through by a Mrs Sarah Ellis,* which labelled girls ‘gentle, inoffensive, delicate, and passively amiable’. As far as Robin was concerned, girls were mysterious subjects imbued not with a rich inner life but with qualities that made them otherworldly, inscrutable, and possibly not human at all.

I have told you I was of sceptical habit; but though I understood little or nothing, I began to dread, vainly proposing to myself the iterated dogmas of science that all life is material, and that in the system of things there is no undiscovered land, even beyond the remotest stars, where the supernatural can find a footing. Yet there struck in on this the thought that matter is as really awful and unknown as spirit, that science itself but dallies on the threshold, scarcely gaining more than a glimpse of the wonders of the inner place.

The search for this inner truth is the search for beauty. People whose vision does not penetrate beyond the narrow limits of the commonplace, and to whom a cabbage is but a vulgar vegetable, are surprised if they see a beautiful picture painted of one, and say that the artist has idealised it, meaning that he has consciously altered its appearance on some idealistic formula; whereas he has probably only honestly given expression to a truer, deeper vision than they had been aware of. The commonplace is not the true, but only the shallow, view of things. [...] Our moments of peace are, I think, always associated with some form of beauty, of this spark of harmony within corresponding with some infinite source without. [...]. In moments of beauty (for beauty is, strictly speaking, a state of mind rather than an attribute of certain objects [...]) we seem to get a glimpse of this deeper truth behind the things of sense. And who can say but that this sense, dull enough in most of us, is not an echo of a greater harmony existing somewhere the other side of things, that we dimly feel through them, evasive though it is

One more time. I’m—not—yours. And hitting Cade like that was so . . . so wrong! You could have killed him!” “Do you want me tae?” She started away. “I’m going to check on him—” “Then you do want me tae!” He raised her elbow and spun her around, a wild look in his eyes. His shirt was ripped almost free, displaying his sheening chest, still heaving from the battle. “This is a vulnerable time. I have no’ claimed you, and the full moon nears. Yet you receive the attentions of another male? Witch, you play with fire!” He swiped the back of his hand over his bleeding temple. “Forget the demon. He knows you’re no’ his. If he’d truly believed you were, he would have put up more of a fight. He dinna even hit a rage state.” “You didn’t change to your werewolf form for me!” “I dinna want you to see it!” he roared, grasping her upper arms. “Doona ever doubt my desire for you—if I truly was in a contest for the right to have you, I’d have bitten his goddamned throat free, then laid it at your feet in offer!” Her lips parted. She thought she’d just caught a glimpse of the inner workings of how a Lykae male thought. And she . . . liked it.

I'd like to think I can access my inner four-year-old—curious about the world, skeptical of her little brother, innocently kind, occasionally cruel, always trusting. My inner seven-year-old—full of imagination, turning the creek bed behind my house into a fantasy kingdom ruled by mice. My inner seventeen-year-old—falling in love for the first time, feeling very grown-up making decisions for her future, and at the same time, very young. And now, when I occasionally have moments when I glimpse what I might be like at forty-five, or sixty-eight, or ninety-two, or any of the years to come. I'd like to add an addendum to Madeleine's theory. Just as I'm all the ages I have been, I'm all the readers I have been.

The empress—the most important woman in the world—is confined to the Great Within. Women like those who live in the Garden of Fragrant Delights and the Mansion of Golden Light may be among the most elite in China, but we’re also the most constrained, having lived our entire lives in the inner chambers in first our parents’ homes, then our husbands’. Concubines and servants get glimpses of the outside world, but they are bought and sold. Common women—those married to farmers, butchers, and shopkeepers, those who labor in silk factories or sort tea leaves, and those who fall under the category of the Three Aunties and Six Grannies—may work in the outside world of men, but they can’t avoid the hardships that come as a result.

In the Bible it is said that no one will enter the kingdom of God whose soul is not born again. Being born means being alive. It is not only a gay disposition or an external inclination to merriment and pleasure that is the sign of a living soul. External joy and amusement may come simply through the external being of man. However, even in this outer joy and happiness, there is a glimpse of the inner joy and happiness, and that is a sign of the soul having been born again. What makes the soul alive? It makes itself alive when it strikes its depths instead of reaching outward. The soul, after coming up against the iron wall of this life of falsehood, turns back within itself; it encounters itself, and this is how it becomes living.

He left the classroom, left India and gave up. He returned to his Midwest, picked up a practical degree in journalism, married, lived in Nevada and Mexico, did odd jobs, worked as a journalist, a science writer and an industrial-advertising writer. He fathered two children, bought a farm and a riding horse and two cars and was starting to put on middle-aged weight. His pursuit of what has been called the ghost of reason had been given up. That’s extremely important to understand. He had given up. Because he’d given up, the surface of life was comfortable for him. He worked reasonably hard, was easy to get along with and, except for an occasional glimpse of inner emptiness shown in some short stories he wrote at the time, his days passed quite usually.

she enjoyed her continued glimpses into the inner workings of world affairs. She often would sit back in the middle of some long meeting and wonder how it was that these men and women had risen to the top of the global elite. They weren't marked by exceptional genius. The did not have extraordinarily deep knowledge or creative opinions. If there was one trait the best of them possessed, it was a talent for simplification. They had the ability to take a complex situation and capture the heart of the matter in simple terms. A second after they located the core fact of any problem, their observation seemed blindingly obvious, but somehow nobody had simplified the issue in quite those terms beforehand. They took reality and made it manageable for busy people. p338

punch everyone else who got a glimpse of her creamy skin. We had just finished unloading the last of her boxes, and I’d come up to make sure she was settling in all right. My eyes strayed to the queen size bed on the far wall, it was a far cry from the oversized king in my bedroom, but it was still tempting as hell. Especially since Sophia was spending the night with her Nonna. “Gianna.” She yelped, jumping to her feet and spinning around. Her hand flew to her chest, drawing my attention to her incredible tits as they lifted and fell with her rapid breathing. “Jiminy Crickets, Nic! You scared the heck out of me!” I chuckled and shook my head as I prowled toward her. She was too fucking adorable and I never wanted her to change. Well, with the exception of bringing out the inner tigress I knew would be there in the bedroom.

All of the blissful and beautiful aspects of the Absolute are present in each and every person and living thing, but they remain dormant because they are hidden behind the mask of maya. In other words, we are all blinded to this inner bliss and beauty by our limited sense of who we are, and by the habit of directing so much of our attention out into the world. Everyone can have momentary glimpses of inner bliss when they experience something that is extremely pleasing to the senses and the mind. But usually these situations are fleeting and simply leave a person unfulfilled and longing for more. They then pursue the outer object in an attempt to rediscover the blissful state, not realizing that the source of bliss is within and need not be attached to an outer stimulus at all. This inner beauty can be discovered and contacted at will through simply turning our attention within, and through the various practices outlined in this yoga. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. 123.

Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: "inner consistency of reality," it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the "joy" in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a "consolation" for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, "Is it true?" The answer that I gave to that question at first was (quite rightly): "If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world." That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the "eucatastrophe" we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world.

Our cities have constructed elaborate expressways and elevated skyways, and white Americans speed from suburb to inner city through vast pockets of black deprivation without ever getting a glimpse of the suffering and misery in their midst. But while so many white Americans are unaware of conditions inside the ghetto, there are very few ghetto dwellers who are unaware of the life outside. Their television sets bombard them day by day with the opulence of the larger society. From behind the ghetto walls they see glistening towers of glass and steel springing up almost overnight. They hear jet liners speeding over their heads at six hundred miles an hour. They hear of satellites streaking through outer space and revealing details of the moon. Then they begin to think of their own conditions. They know that they are always given the hardest, ugliest, most menial work to do. They look at these impressive buildings under construction and realize that almost certainly they cannot get those well-paying construction jobs, because building trade unions reserve them for whites only. They know that people who built the bridges, the mansions and docks of the South could build modern buildings if they were only given a chance for apprenticeship training. They realize that it is hard, raw discrimination that shuts them out. It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.

Computers speak machine language," Hiro says. "It's written in ones and zeroes -- binary code. At the lowest level, all computers are programmed with strings of ones and zeroes. When you program in machine language, you are controlling the computer at its brainstem, the root of its existence. It's the tongue of Eden. But it's very difficult to work in machine language because you go crazy after a while, working at such a minute level. So a whole Babel of computer languages has been created for programmers: FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, LISP, Pascal, C, PROLOG, FORTH. You talk to the computer in one of these languages, and a piece of software called a compiler converts it into machine language. But you never can tell exactly what the compiler is doing. It doesn't always come out the way you want. Like a dusty pane or warped mirror. A really advanced hacker comes to understand the true inner workings of the machine -- he sees through the language he's working in and glimpses the secret functioning of the binary code -- becomes a Ba'al Shem of sorts." "Lagos believed that the legends about the tongue of Eden were exaggerated versions of true events," the Librarian says. "These legends reflected nostalgia for a time when people spoke Sumerian, a tongue that was superior to anything that came afterward." "Is Sumerian really that good?" "Not as far as modern-day linguists can tell," the Librarian says. "As I mentioned, it is largely impossible for us to grasp. Lagos suspected that words worked differently in those days. If one's native tongue influences the physical structure of the developing brain, then it is fair to say that the Sumerians -- who spoke a language radically different from anything in existence today -- had fundamentally different brains from yours. Lagos believed that for this reason, Sumerian was a language ideally suited to the creation and propagation of viruses. That a virus, once released into Sumer, would spread rapidly and virulently, until it had infected everyone." "Maybe Enki knew that also," Hiro says. "Maybe the nam-shub of Enki wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe Babel was the best thing that ever happened to us.

EXERCISE 10: DEVELOPING A GRAND VISION You may want to do this exercise alone, out in a natural setting somewhere. 1. See Your Interests, Values, and Abilities. The next step is to discover how your interests and your deep values connect into and form your mission. It can be accomplished by seeing a grand, whole, meaningful image of what purpose you could dedicate your life to. This will be formed from your interests, values, and present goals. Begin to play with the images that you see, which represent some kind of direction that you want to take. As you get a sense of what your mission can be, see various snapshots of yourself doing what you love to do, snapshots of your abilities. 2. Focus on Heroes and Heroines. Take a look at what your favorite heroes or heroines do. See yourself doing things that give you the same feeling you get when you think of them. See snapshots of the person you want to become. Any images you don’t like can fade away. 3. Direct a Movie of Yourself. See yourself the way you want to be—doing the things you love to do. Whatever you choose to put on the screen, you’re the Spielberg, you’re the director. See the images that you feel passionate about. You can play with the images in front of you. Pretend that you’re in the middle of an inner, three-dimensional movie theater. It’s a place where you can see and hear and feel with great fidelity. Notice how much you can see, letting the wisdom from within guide the visual display that you see in front of you. Visualize it, feel it, enjoy it. The images are often up close and in full, rich color. See yourself living out a scenario that gives you tingles in your spine. You can zoom in on that glorious, fun-filled, exciting future that you see. It allows you to do what you love to do and accomplish what you believe in. 4. Recall Your Deep Values. List your deep values as you watch your mission scenario. Notice how your values and your images can fit together with a remarkable consistency. 5. Ask for Help from Your Inner Wisdom. Ask for your inner wisdom, the higher powers, or God to guide your grand vision. This vision is going to be more of a discovery than a creation. Let it come to you. Ask and it will come. Take the time to see and hear those aspects of life that unify into a whole that you feel a powerful passion for. See some more images. See some time going by. See various bright, radiant, up-close, colorful images of what it is that you could create in your life. They can begin going in a certain direction, coalescing and representing many of your current goals, some of the things that you want. See them develop into a kind of grand visionary collection of images that represents your purpose and your mission. 6. Do What It Takes. Take whatever time you need—five minutes, an hour, a whole afternoon. This is your life, your future that you are creating. When you finish, write it down. Your images are so attractive, you have some glimpses of what your mission is. Now you can develop it more fully. Ask the visionary in you to give you the gift of this grand vision. Now that you can see your grand vision of what you want to contribute to, you can make that vision into a cause to work for—a specific direction to channel your efforts to.

It happens to people who lead a public life (..) they lose their inner being completely; they don't know who they are except what the public says about them. They depend on others' opinions; they don't have a sense of their being. One of the most famous actresses, Marilyn Monroe, committed suicide, and psychoanalysts have been brooding on the reason why. (..) My feeling is that she committed suicide because that was the only thing left she could have done privately. Everything was public; that was the only thing left she could do on her own, alone, something absolutely intimate and secret. Public figures are always tempted toward suicide because only through suicide can they have a glimpse of who they are.

God is all that exists. Every stone, flower, tree, animal and human being are on a spiritual journey to recognize their true self, their divine essence. We have been living lives as stones, flowers, trees and animals in order to develop our consciousness. Stones, flowers and animals also have consciousness. The more matter, the less consciousness. The more consciousness, the less matter. God is not a person, God is the underlying thread of consciousness in existence. Real love means to realize that we are one with the other person, one with nature, and one with the trees, the stones, the earth and the blue sky. It means to realize that all of life is God. I was 9 years old when I had my first spiritual awakening, my first glimpse of wholeness with existence. This created a deep thirst and longing in my heart and being to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole. I have always had the capacity to go within myself and to discover the silence within, the inner meditative quality, the inner source of love and truth, the inner language of silence. Now I notice that this silence is going deeper, and that I go beyond the ego and disappear into the silence. It is astonishing to realize that growing up actually means to become one with existence. It means to find the whole existence within myself, it means to discover that existence is alive in my own heart and being. The song of a bird echoes my own inner voice, the beauty of a flower reflects my own inner beauty, a dog becomes an expression of my own unconditional love and friendship, the majestic mountains create an ecstatic joy, and I discover all the shining stars of the sky within my own heart. It is to realize that the whole existence is alive, and that the underlying thread of consciousness is God. Silence is the inner door to God.

For certain people, an unintended consequence of such mindfulness practice is the experience of a still, vivid, and detached awareness that does more than just deal with a specific pain; it opens a new perspective on how to come to terms with the totality of one’s existence, that is, birth, sickness, aging, death, and everything else that falls under the broad heading of what the Buddha called dukkha. The simple (though not necessarily easy) step of standing back and mindfully attending to one’s experience rather than being uncritically overwhelmed with the imperatives of habitual thoughts and emotions can allow a glimpse of an inner freedom not to react to what one’s mind is insisting that one do. The experience of such inner freedom, I would argue, is a taste of nirvana itself.

Expect, at some point, to want to run away from all this. It’s a little like opening a can of worms, or maybe caterpillars—you may want to shove them all back inside. But as you walk this path, you will also have glimpses of feeling freer, of a more direct connection to your life and the people in it. And once the pull of that greater freedom and authenticity takes hold, it becomes harder to turn back. It’s as though an inner volcano has started to erupt, and despite the danger, we welcome the release. The pain of the truth still feels better than the pain of self-deception. As we settle into the process, at some point we tend to go through a natural grieving as we let go of old identities, familiar habits and ways of being. Eventually those caterpillars disperse, weaving themselves into protective cocoons while shedding their former identity. Unraveling the membranes of our schema patterns, we too begin to emerge from our cocoons, feeling lighter and more alive—as if, metaphorically, we were growing wings.

It’s exhausting,” I said. “I have to battle this part along with the sense of frustration and hopelessness it creates. It’s so tough and strong that it seems undefeatable.” “What does the overburdened restless part want?” “It wants someone to bring it under control to rest and have peace. It’s like a hyperactive fidgety child, pacing back and forth, crying for someone to make it stop.” I was having trouble connecting my inner true self to the stressed part because of the intense energy it was creating. Keith guided me by helping me communicate with the stressed part. I needed to make it understand that by stepping aside it would allow the healing process of unburdening the emotional component that was holding in the shame. Without the burden of the disgrace, the anxious, stressed-out, perfectionist, striver part would not have to work so hard to compensate for its self-perceived shortcomings. Furthermore, relieving the humiliating burdens would bring rest, tranquility, and peace. The intense energy could then be orchestrated in better ways. At this point, we ended our session. I left his office once again annoyed and uncertain, wondering if I was ever going to be able to live a normal peaceful life. As I meditated on the session during the week, I understood what my therapist was explaining. I visualized fast-forwarding directly to the ultimate goal of un-blending the various multiple defender traits from the abuse. Getting to the root of the therapy and healing process of dealing with the disgraceful iniquity was my goal. I had trouble believing whether or not my logic in understanding the process was correct. It seemed too simplistic to me at first. I envisioned confessing all my scandalous deeds and desires for the world to know. I imagined no more secrets or lies and eliminating the need to masquerade with a phony façade to hide the atrocious creature I thought I was. Instantly, I was buoyant as helium. The crushing weight from the wicked acts was lifted from my shoulders. The mortifying and disgusting impressions I had were no longer there. I was able to get a brief glimpse of the divine true self. For a moment, I physically felt what life could be like while at peace with myself. Happiness and comfort engulfed me at the possibility of living a life free of judgment, low selfesteem, anxiety and paranoia. While in this good frame of mind, I became aware of all the goodness inside of me and the decent things I was doing in life. My human flaws appeared to be minor bumps in the road rather than being amplified into major roadblocks. I began to see how I pulled myself out of mental illness, addiction, and sexual perversion. I became conscious that I survived sexual abuse at an early age and persevered by holding it together. I was imbued with a sense of accomplishment. I now comprehended and conquered the difficult therapeutic work of dealing with the harmful emotions associated with bringing the misconduct to the surface.

With my immeasurable inner light, I have built a rainbow bridge of love all the way back to heaven. I once walked the path of darkness, but with baby steps, I found my way out. At first glimpse, I knew I was in unfamiliar territory – but it was beautiful. I took my light sword and cut away all of the overgrown brush that was initially blocking the path, for I could see the light seeping through. I forged on knowing it was only a matter of time before I would be living and breathing that light. With each issue I forgave that presented itself upon my path, the rainbow bridge took me further and further along, at times taking me through the craziest of storms – which this past year has been proof of.

BRANDON!” Jarryd’s voice echoed through the halls and felt like cymbals in Brandon’s ears.  He groaned and sat up.  “I’m in here!” “BRANDON!” Greyson gave him a half-smile and dropped to his pillow.  “Aaah.  It feels good to lie here with no obligations.  Sooo nice.” “Jerk.”  Brandon threw Liam’s pillow at him.  “Someone stole my towel!”  Jarryd screamed.  “I’m NAKED!”  Brandon’s eyes squinted and his lips curled in disgust.  “I’m not in here!  I’m not in here!” Greyson glimpsed Brandon’s panicked face then suddenly stuffed his face into Liam’s pillow to stifle his laughter.  Brandon eyed the boy and kept a cautious look at the doorway, stuck between two unique situations; finally, Greyson had broken his stubborn reserve, but he had an odd, naked boy to clothe in the hall. “W-w-w-w-w what…” he heard from the hall.  Liam had happened upon Jarryd.  Jarryd laughed hysterically, “What are you looking at?  This is my body.  God gave it to me!” Liam rushed into the room, soaking wet, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Ja-Ja-Jarryd’s naked!” Brandon got up and cautiously approached the hall.  “I’m coming out and you better have clothes on, or you’re spending free time with me tomorrow.” “Oh, geez!”  Jarryd expressed from out of view in the hall.  “Nick, throw me my boxers!  Quick!”  Brandon looked back toward Greyson and rolled his eyes.  Greyson dropped his hat over his face, his stomach still bouncing with inner laughter. “Are these my boxers?  These are yours!”  “I’m coming out in three…”  “Can I wear them?” Jarryd asked his brother.  “NO!” Nick shouted. “Two…” “I’m putting them on!”  “One!

This ”joy” which I have selected as the mark of the true fairy-story (or romance), or as the seal upon it, merits more consideration. Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a faroff gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite. I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairystory, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the “turn” in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

These two factors—self-contempt and anxiety—are largely responsible for the repression of sadistic impulses. The thoroughness and depth of repression vary. Often the destructive impulses are merely kept from awareness. By and large it is astonishing how much sadistic behavior can be lived out without the individual's knowing it. He is conscious only of occasional desires to mistreat a weaker person, of being excited when he reads about sadistic acts, or of having some obviously sadistic fantasies. But these sporadic glimpses remain isolated. The bulk of what he does to others in his daily behavior is for the most part unconscious. His numbness of feeling for himself and others is one factor that blurs the issue; until this is dispelled he cannot emotionally experience what he does. Besides, the justifications brought to bear to conceal the sadistic trends are often clever enough to deceive not only the sadistic person himself but even those affected by them.

For example, a man can look at a beautiful painting of a nude like the Rokeby Venus in two ways. He can see her as an object of desire, and perhaps experience some degree of sexual arousal. Or he can see her as an archetype of Woman, the essence of the feminine. The latter way of looking, in which personal interests and aims are temporarily discarded, is, according to Schopenhauer, the only way to appreciate art, and the only way, therefore, of obtaining a glimpse of the inner nature of the world. Schopenhauer calls this the ‘aesthetic way of knowing’. It is an exercise in empathy. Worringer expresses it thus: ‘We are delivered from our individual being as long as we are absorbed into an external object, an external form, with our inner urge to experience.’18

Some snapshots are disturbing, and glimpsing them reminds me that we all have a dark side. Others are blurry. People don’t always remember events or conversations clearly, but they do remember with great accuracy how an experience made them feel. Therapists have to be interpreters of these blurry snapshots, aware that patients need to be fuzzy to some extent, because those first snapshots help to gloss over painful feelings that might be invading their peaceful inner territory. In time, they find out that they aren’t at war after all, that the path to peace is to call a truce with themselves.

They were here to catch a glimpse of the kaleidoscope of color within their souls. To examine closely the beauty that lurks inside all of us but is rarely seen. They were here to explore the radiant spectrum of their inner selves, to uncover a magical primal strength inherited from their ancestors. They sought treasures buried in caves that many feared to enter.

He nodded. “She kept her demon.” “So we shall be keeping her, then.” It didn’t sound like a question. He lifted his eyes to check, with sights both first and second, if Nikys truly seemed all right with this. Her smile was pensive, but dimples could be glimpsed. Better than all right, said Des, and, as annoying as that inner voice could sometimes get, he was so glad to have it back. She went on, Marrying her was one of the best things we ever did, you know. You’ll get no argument from me. Nice change.

Shattered mirrors on the living room floor, a place where mirrors — in any form — should not be. Lying and laying — up and down the room they reflect each whole thing, its completeness, as if the very sight could harm us — so perfect, so unreal from their perspective. I drown on the floorboards, you waste my tears by drying them. All the lies, the lies you told, up and down the room like mirrors, broken ones. Truth reflects nothing unless it’s broken. Outside this room, you roam the hallways, searching for feelings within. Dating a lie, dangerous and monstrous like your mind and soul. Survival is a matter of time and a dance on balanced sheets. The shattered pieces still lie there — waiting for completeness to end, chaos ensuring perfection. The lies fall still in the afternoon light that rests on the floorboards. Breathing easily now, vanishing glimpses — truth fades slowly, holding no place between you and me and all the lies you told.

Increasingly, rather than render nighttime more accessible, we are instead risking its gradual elimination. Already, the heavens, our age-old source of awe and wonder, have been obscured by the glare of outdoor lighting. Only in remote spots can one still glimpse the grandeur of the Milky Way. Entire constellations have disappeared from sight, replaced by a blank sky. Conversely, the fanciful world of our dreams has grown more distant with the loss of segmented sleep and, with it, a better understanding of our inner selves. Certainly, it is not difficult to imagine a time when night, for all practical purposes, will have become day—truly a twenty-four/seven society in which traditional phases of time, from morning to midnight, have lost their original identities. ........... The residual beauty of the night sky, alternating cycles of darkness and light, and regular respites from the daily round of sights and sounds—all will be impaired by enhanced illumination. Ecological systems, with their own patterns of nocturnal life, will suffer immeasurably. With darkness diminished, opportunities for privacy, intimacy, and self-reflection will grow more scarce. Should that luminous day arrive, we stand to lose a vital element of our humanity—one as precious as it is timeless. That, in the depths of a dark night, should be a bracing prospect for any spent soul to contemplate.

Yes, I do have this strange faith in my own mind’s correctness. Nature has to be this way, no matter what other people have said before me. I have somehow been given the opportunity to glimpse the inner logic of nature more deeply and more accurately than anyone else before me has. I am unaccountably lucky in this fact, and though I take no personal credit for it, I do wish to publish it so that I may share this valuable vision with others.

I knew what I stood for, even if nobody else did. I knew the piece of me on the inside, truer than all the rest, that never comes out. Doesn't everyone have one? Some kind of grand inner princess waiting to toss her hair down, forever waiting at the tower window. Some jungle animal so noble and fierce you had to crawl on your belly through dangerous grasses to get a glimpse.

Meeting God Within When people succeed in coming home to themselves and glimpsing their own inner beauty, something amazing happens: they are blessed with a real compassion for who they themselves are, in all their vulnerability. This compassion, in turn, carves out a space where they can welcome God into their hearts. It is as if they must first become aware of the marvel of themselves, and only then are they ready to get in touch with the wonder of God. Their new relationship with themselves ushers in a nourishing friendship with the One who has always been calling them. This journey inward does not take place overnight. Although the heart is only fifteen inches from the head, it can take us years to arrive at our emotional core. I used to imagine that God didn’t particularly like the world because it wasn’t spiritual enough. Only later it dawned on me that God had created the world in love, and had passionately left clues to this fact everywhere. The persons and events of my daily life were already signs of God. Had I paid compassionate attention to my longings and my joys, I would have heard in them the symphony of God’s own infinite joy. God was intimately involved in my life, but I was sadly ignorant of the riches inside me. To find God, I did not have to leave the world, but to come home to it—and to myself—and God would be there, waiting for me.

As she wrote her pulse quickened to the pleasure of forming the phrases,--her blood warmed to the joy of the working. She was experiencing a return of the familiar sensation of happiness in constructing. Quite suddenly, in fancy she caught in the far distance a glimpse of silver wings. It gave her a warm thrill of gratification too deep for words. Immediately she knew through some inner consciousness, that no matter what the future would hold--joy or sorrow, happiness or grief--that no matter where life's paths would lead her--through sharp and stony ways or beside still waters--buried deep within her was an indestructible capacity to visualize a white bird flying. She might never get close to the way of its winging, but always there would be joy in lifting her eyes to the glory of its distant flight.

A real Guru's initiation is beyond the divisions of sects and creeds: it is the awakening to our own inner reality which, once glimpsed, determines our further course of development and our actions in life without the enforcement of outer rules.

I find EVERYTHING poetic, and it’s in the corners of my heart which are sometimes mysterious that I catch a glimpse of poetry. Forms and colours brought into harmonies create a form of poetry in themselves." [Letter 675, Arles, c. 8 September 1888]

Perpetua's account, known as the The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas, is considered important for church history in a way that goes beyond the historical accounting of early Christian martyrdom. First, the account is a treasure because it is widely regarded as the earliest writing by a female Christian in the history of the church. Perpetua tells her own story in her own way. A glimpse into the inner life of an early Christian female who is facing martyrdom is extraordinary, particularly since Perpetua shares things that are unique to the experience of being a female. For example, Perpetua was a twenty-two-year-old woman who was still nursing her newborn child at the time of her arrest. She describes in detail the emotional anguish of separation, as well as the rather intimate record of the pain in her breasts because her child was not receiving the breast milk.28 The whole account reminds us of the wonderful particularity that is present in a female perspective. Reading Perpetua's account is also a reminder of how often women in the church have been "seen as adjuncts to men, rather than as historical protagonists in their own

After years of watching newborns smile, we wish to deflate the gas bubble. Newborns do smile, and not because of gas (unless after passing it). As veteran smile watchers we divide smiles into two types: inside smiles and outside smiles. Inside smiles, occurring in the first few weeks, are a beautiful reflection of an inner feeling of rightness. Some are sleep grins; some are only a happy twitch in the corner of the mouth. Relief smiles occur after being rescued from a colicky period, after a satisfying feeding, or after being picked up and rocked. During face-to-face games is another time to catch a smile. Baby’s early smiles convey an “I feel good inside” message and leave you feeling good inside. Be prepared to wait until next month for the true outside (or social) smiles, which you can initiate and which will absolutely captivate all adoring smile watchers. Whatever their cause, enjoy these fleeting grins as glimpses of the whole happy-face smiles that are soon to come.

I'm to take Becca Collins out dancing and try to get a glimpse of her inner workings?' 'Don't be crude.' She sniffed and, dare I say it, blushed a little. 'I trust you to use your best judgment. Don't do anything you aren't comfortable with.' 'You realize I used to dress up like a showgirl and have knives thrown at my face. My threshold for uncomfortable is pretty high.

Chapter 2: The Blinders of the Senses: Awakening from the Sensory Dream Close your eyes and imagine standing in a garden. The air is fragrant with the scent of flowers, and the sun's warmth kisses your skin. You hear the rustle of leaves, the chirping of birds, and the distant hum of life. This sensory symphony envelops you, defining your experience of the world around you. But what if I told you that this symphony is both a blessing and a limitation? Welcome to the chapter where we pull back the curtain on the senses—the windows through which we perceive reality. These senses are our gateways to the world, allowing us to touch, taste, hear, see, and smell. They are our connection to the external, the bridge that links us to the physical universe. However, in their splendor lies a trap—a trap that keeps us tethered to the surface of existence. Picture this: you're in a theater, engrossed in a captivating movie. The screen and the story before you are so compelling that you forget you're sitting in a theater, watching a mere projection. In the same way, our senses project a vivid reality that captivates us, making us forget that they're just a means of perception, not the ultimate truth. Our senses act as both guides and misguides. They offer us a glimpse into the world, but they also distort reality. They're like a paintbrush in the hands of an artist, creating a beautiful but partial picture. We become so focused on this picture that we overlook the canvas on which it's painted—the canvas of consciousness. Consider the blind spots in your eyes. These are spots where you literally cannot see, yet your brain fills in the gaps seamlessly, creating a complete image. Similarly, our senses have "blind spots" when it comes to the inner world of thoughts, emotions, and consciousness. They excel at perceiving the external, but they struggle to illuminate the internal. Herein lies the paradox: while our senses are our windows to the world, they can also be our blinders, keeping us from seeing the whole picture. Just as a map provides information about the terrain but not the essence of a place, our senses provide data about the world but not the essence of our being. So, how do we escape this sensory dream and peer beyond the blinders? The answer lies in a shift of focus. We must turn our attention inwards, away from the dazzling spectacle of the external world. It's here, in the quietude of introspection, that we can begin to untangle the threads of our consciousness from the threads of sensation. In the coming pages, we'll delve into the paradox of perception and introspection. We'll journey through the ways our senses illuminate the external and yet leave us in the dark about the internal. And most importantly, we'll explore the profound power of looking beyond the surface, awakening to a reality that transcends the sensory landscape. So, get ready to peel back the layers of perception, to unveil the subtle dance between our senses and our consciousness. As we journey through this chapter, remember: just as a photograph captures a moment in time, our senses capture a moment in reality. But to grasp the essence of existence, we must go beyond the snapshot and embrace the living, breathing symphony of

Children are - and this seems to be a cultural if not a biological necessity - terrorised by the adult experience of life, which, glimpsing it obliquely, at times of stress, and in fragments which makes no sense, they try to ignore. Many fantasy and sf readers are living out a prolonged childhood in which they retain that terror and erect- in collusion with professional writers who themselves often began as teenage daydreamers - powerful defences against it. Thus they prefer fiction which, like "hard" sf, ignores adult experience or ropes it off in a reductivist way; or which, like fantasy and horror fiction, diffuses and defuses it through fairytale and myth; or - perhaps most characteristically since the New Wave, "inner space" and the soft sciences- which generalises and politicises it. (Post New Wave readers, especially those who consider themselves most adult and intelligent in their use of the genre, seem not to fear experience so much as individual experience. They are not frightened of life so much as life's particularity. The trap is circular. The less you engage your own adult experience, the less you value it, and the more you tend to rely on systematic ideological validations of it. This is no better than the school playground, with its establishmentally validated experiences and sociative norms, you believe you have left behind.)

There are those who know of the existence of the Divine Force. They’ve had enough direct inner experience to know that Divine Consciousness is a reality. They have seen glimpses of a force that is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent; a force that is aware of all things at all times, equally. It is universally conscious.

There were no direct flights yet, and the coronavirus had curtailed international travel, so Margalit had chartered a private plane with about fifty seats and was bringing along the top executives of more than a dozen of the most promising Israeli companies in JVP’s portfolio. Some journalists had been invited along to get an immersive, up-close, and behind-the-scenes glimpse into this historic and very public foray into the Arabian Gulf, which was once enemy territory and off-limits to Israelis.

And as you sit by the water’s edge, may you remember the secrets hidden in the depths, the songs sung by the unseen, and the nameless world where everything begins anew. In that place, may you glimpse the light of your own soul, shining with the same brilliance as the stars that adorn the heavens.

Yet just beneath the surface of the middle-aged woman, rarely glimpsed now, the girl within still dances, an inner, secret self whose existence sometimes surprises me. She is as real as the outer me, still patiently awaiting my acceptance and recognition.

Glows of feeling, glimpses of insight, and streams of knowledge and perception float into our finite world.

Dreams are an invaluable resource for messages and insight. Equally valuable is the conscious state you enter before you fall asleep. This transitional state can evoke pre-dream imagery that can be remembered later on. Why might one do that, you might be wondering? Well, this state gives us a glimpse into our unconscious minds. The part of ourselves that is usually hidden, even to us, comes out in our restful states. We notice more when we’re still. I suspect this may even be why people tend to notice paranormal happenings at night, versus during the day. When we’re in a relaxed state, unstimulated by our usual beeps and buzzes, we notice more. In the late hours of the evening, we’re a lot more receptive to subtleties that go unnoticed throughout our day. This state of pre-sleep is a resource into our inner worlds.

Real love doesn’t make you suffer. How could it? It doesn’t suddenly turn into hate, nor does real joy turn into pain. As I said, even before you are enlightened — before you have freed yourself from your mind — you may get glimpses of true joy, true love, or of a deep inner peace, still but vibrantly alive. These are aspects of your true nature, which is usually obscured by the mind. Even within a “normal” addictive relationship, there can be moments when the presence of something more genuine, something incorruptible, can be felt. But they will only be glimpses, soon to be covered up again through mind interference. It may then seem that you had something very precious and lost it, or your mind may convince you that it was all an illusion anyway. The truth is that it wasn’t an illusion, and you cannot lose it. It is part of your natural state, which can be obscured but can never be destroyed by the mind. Even when the sky is heavily overcast, the sun hasn’t disappeared

To make a conscious effort to sense yourself, to do something even as simple as deliberately feeling your elbow on the chair while reading this book, introduces a powerful catalyst into the situation. The customary situation is reversed. The “I” consciously wills itself to experience the world in the form of the body. Now the “I” is active and the world is passive. Moreover, consciousness is not so intensely and immediately confused with its own contents, but is able to step back from them, even if only for an instant or two. This small but powerful polarization is the beginning of freedom. In the Gurdjieff Work, the fundamental meditative practice is known as “sitting,” and the basic directions are simple: to be aware of the sensations of the body while sitting upright. Anyone with even a little experience of this practice is likely to make a startling discovery: sensations begin to lose their solidity, their thingness, and become fluid and dynamic. Under certain circumstances one can even sense a circulation of subtle energy. The question then arises of whether this circulation is going on all the time or the direction of attention has somehow brought about an inner transformation. Gurdjieff said, “Even a feeble light of consciousness is enough to change completely the character of a process, while it makes many of them altogether impossible. Our inner psychic processes (our inner alchemy) have much in common with those chemical processes in which light changes the character of the process and they are subject to analogous laws.” With directed attention to the body, sensations seem to move from solid to liquid; what was seemingly hard and palpable suddenly turns out to be fluid and changing. One discovers the enormous difference between the body as physical object and the body as it is felt within. To have some familiarity with this experience gives a glimpse of what esoteric teachings mean when they speak of the “subtle body.” While most systems say there are many such bodies (in Gurdjieff’s there are four), the most immediate and accessible is this subtle body to which we gain access through our own sensation.

It isn't right if you ask me,' Cook says. 'Women have no need of an education.' 'Well luckily nobody is asking you,' Mrs Derbyshire snaps at her, showing a rare glimpse into her inner thoughts. 'Women have as much right to an education as men

It's only words and words are all I've. I'm a person who enjoys quiet moments, of reflection and Introspection. And over the years I've come to grasp a fundamental truth about myself: "Words are all I have." This realization runs deep, emphasizing the significance of my composing journey. It's an acknowledgment that the very make-up of my being, from couching joy to helming sorrow, relies on my art of words. It's only words, but to me, they hold the essence of my dreams. Each word I speak or write is a reflection of who I am and what I feel. They're not just letters strung together; they're pieces of my soul; shared.. It's only words, but they're my gateway to the world of my innermost thoughts and feelings. With each word expressed, I reveal a piece of my heart, offering glimpses into my fear and mettle. Through the art of language, I try to epitomize, I reveal the sanctuary of my soul, trusting, with the raw beauty of the vulnerabilities. In this self-awareness, I find the strength that accompany the words I choose to wield. They often become the bridge between my inner world and the external reality, giving meaning to my experiences and connecting me with others on a profound level. It's only words. This very phrase encapsulates the essence of my personal journey—a recognition of the weight and wonder held within the words that accompany me through every epoch of my life. Wishes are a strong current guiding us through the river of dreams, gently nudging us towards the shores of our deepest desires. I wish my words dance like poetry and sing like music, leaving a trail of wonder and enchantment in their wake.

Sometimes Rockefeller gave Gates glimpses into his inner sadness.

Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold? Like an attachment to a sparrow: we glimpse it and it’s gone.

It is not a light thing to be called “a friend of God”!  It doubtless cost Abraham many tears, and hours of conflict as “against hope” he “believed in hope” that God would fulfil His word.  It cost Moses much to stand unflinchingly true to God in the face of Israel’s sufferings and Pharaoh’s parleying.

Would that we had learnt thus to be God’s ambassadors, and to be so self-effaced while delivering the message, that the souls to whom we are sent know they have to deal with God, and not with His messengers.  Alas! it is to be feared that many of us have scarcely learnt the first elements of spiritual service.

Ignorance of God and of His heart and His written Word, lie at the bottom of much aimless prayer.

But although external ties between the Eleatics and first Cynics are scanty, the conceptual resemblances are striking. Again, one must not read literally, and must bear in mind that the tenets of Eleaticism were so compelling that they essentially created the philosophical atmosphere breathed by the Cynics: these tenets determined a general orientation that the Cynics unconsciously adopted, despite the fact that their explicit rhetoric was to reject the convoluted "wisdom" of Eleatics, Academics, Peripatetics, and other schools. In order to trace the intellectual asceticism of the Cynics back to Eleatic ontology, we will first describe Parmenides' vision of the One and the attributes of reality itself. These attributes had immense influence especially over subsequent physics and epistemology. Moreover, they give the Greek praise of poverty a philosophical aspect: the truth is so beautiful and absorbing that to glimpse it transforms a person, turns him in a different direction, and wrenches him away from his previous devotion to conventional goods. Philosophy is a solitary activity that pulls the thinker away from work, marriage, family, citizenship, away even from sensual pleasure and the distractions of sense-experience. Indeed, the physical world as a whole loses its hold over the "wise;' who knows something far more real and compelling. That is, the Eleatic elevation of the absolute over the relative - of the singular, eternal, and unchanging over the heterogeneous, temporal, and shifting - introduces a lasting dualism into much Greek thought. This dualism culminates eventually in a variety of types of philosophical poverty. The Platonic philosopher becomes an intellectual and even religious ascetic who devotes himself to the pursuit of divine Ideas. The Cynic, on the other hand, dismisses such talk of eternity simply to contrast mundane Fortune and the self. While the external world is filled with "smoke" ( tuphos), and is as undesirable as it is unintelligible, the Cynic unconsciously emulates the attributes of the Eleatic One, and so proclaims his self-sufficiency, unity, consistency, and inner purity from contaminating desires and relations.

We can only hope to catch a glimpse of people's inner light through their actions and words, and even then it remains an enigma, but the perfect mystic's inner light cannot be contained within him for he does not follow the patterns trod by other men.

There is a kaleidoscope of beauty we can meet within us when we truly sit with ourselves.......whatever our external circumstance is,we have this precious gems within waiting to be utilized.Instead of discounting all the beauty we are, we can start opening up to it and make it a reality,activate it in various ways,be creative when we have a glimpse of it.That's how we can start breaking the barriers down from our hearts that blocks us from truly living fearlessly and kindly and nobly.

When Jews “unplug,” and maintaina distance toward the society in which they live, they do not do it forthe sake of their own different substantial identity—in a way, anti-Semitism is right here: the Jews are, in effect, “rootless,” their Law is“abstract,” it “extrapolates” them from the social Substance.And there we have the radical gap that separates the Christian sus-pension of the Law, the passage from Law to love, from the pagan sus-pension of the social law: the highest (or, rather, deepest) point ofevery pagan Wisdom is, of course, also a radical “unplugging” (ei-ther the carnivalesque orgy, or direct immersion in the abyss of theprimordial Void, in which all articulated differences are suspended);what is suspended here, however, is the “pagan” immanent law ofthe social, not the Jewish Law that already unplugs us from the so-cial. When Christian mystics get too close to the pagan mystical ex-perience, they bypass the Jewish experience of the Law—no wonderthey often become ferocious anti-Semites. Christian anti-Semitismis, in effect, a clear sign of the Christian position’s regression into pa-ganism: it gets rid of the “rootless,” universalist stance of Christian-ity proper by transposing it onto the Jewish Other; consequently,when Christianity loses the mediation of the Jewish Law, it loses thespecific Christian dimension of Love itself, reducing Love to the pa-gan “cosmic feeling” of oneness with the universe. It is only refer-ence to the Jewish Law that sustains the specific Christian notion of Love that needs a distance, that thrives on differences, that has noth-ing to do with any kind of erasure of borders and immersion inOneness. (And within the Jewish experience, love remains on thispagan level—that is to say, the Jewish experience is a unique combi-nation of the new Law with pagan love, which accounts for its innertension.)The trap to be avoided here is the opposition of the “external” so-cial law (legal regulations, “mere legality”) and the higher “inter-nal” moral law, where the external social law may strike us ascontingent and irrational, while the internal law is fully assumed as“our own”: we should radically abandon the notion that external so-cial institutions betray the authentic inner experience of the true we should radically abandon the notion that external so-cial institutions betray the authentic inner experience of the trueTranscendence of Otherness (in the guise, for example, of the oppo-sition between the authentic “inner” experience of the divine and its“external” reification into a religious institution in which the reli-gious experience proper degenerates into an ideology legitimizingpower relations). If there is a lesson to be learned from Kafka, it isthat, in the opposition between internal and external, the divine di-mension is on the side of the external. What can be more “divine”than the traumatic encounter with the bureaucracy at its craziest—when, say, a bureaucrat tells us that, legally, we don’t exist? It is insuch encounters that we catch a glimpse of another order beyondmere earthly everyday reality. There is no experience of the divinewithout such a suspension of the Ethical. And far from being simplyexternal, this very externality (to sense, to symbolic integration)holds us from within: Kafka’s topic is precisely the obscene jouissancethrough which bureaucracy addresses the subject on the level of thedisavowed innermost (“ex-timate,” as Lacan would have put it) realkernel of his being.

Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought. For most people, such gaps happen rarely and only accidentally, in moments when the mind is rendered “speechless,” sometimes triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion, or even great danger. Suddenly, there is inner stillness. And within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace.

It is true that philosophy is quite aware of the Buddhistic picture of life, of the sorrows and sicknesses which drag him down at times. That is why it makes equanimity a leading item of the inner work upon himself, why it becomes so necessary. But it is also true that moments, moods, and glimpses are also possible when there is uplift, and he can confirm for himself that the human link with the higher power is a very real thing.

Acceptance – the beautiful way out *Acceptance is a wonderful tool to relieve yourself of the pull and push between the past and future. *With acceptance you fall into the present straightaway. *The first thing is to accept all the happenings of the outer world and all the happenings of the inner world. *Whatever problems you have in the outer world and whatever problems you have in the inner world, just accept them in their entirety. *Summarize all that you experience as problems and accept them in totality. *Accept all guilt, all mistakes and all failures. *Even if you cannot accept, accept that you cannot accept. You will then relax and guilt will drop from your mind. *Just try this small experiment: Just relax for three days with complete. acceptance. If you relax for three days without the pull and push in the inner and outer worlds, are you going to lose all your wealth? Surely not! So there is no problem. In three days you are not going to lose anything. Why don’t you give it a try? *Just for three days, sincerely, utterly, accept everything in your life one hundred percent! *If you are not able to accept one hundred percent then accept that you are not able to accept one hundred percent. *Even the acceptance of ‘I am not able to accept myself in the inner world and outer world’ will make you drop from the pull and push between the past and future. *The moment you understand, ‘I am unable to free myself from the pull and push of desires and fears, I am not able to accept my reality,’ that very understanding will start doing its job. *If you can fall into the present moment, relaxing from the outer world and inner world things, in three days you will have a glimpse: *What is life? What does it mean to live in the present moment? If this happens to you, you will experience such ecstasy, such a different space, such a different life that you have never experienced before. *You have lived based on your philosophy for maybe the last thirty years. Just for three days, don’t try to alter anybody in the outer world. *You will see that when you experiment with such great techniques, they work miracles in your being. *They start a great alchemy process in your being. *If you are not able to be sincere, accept that you are not able to be sincere. Even that sincerity is enough. You will start seeing a different space in you.

We are about to examine these marvelous truths in-depth. They are almost beyond our capacity to grasp. But as we feed upon them, little by little, they will become a part of our inner consciousness. We need to catch a glimpse of them in our spirits—not in our heads. (Yet they do have to go through our heads to get down into our hearts; the mind is the door to the heart.) Once these truths really dawn on our hearts, people will say of us as it was said of those in the Old Testament, “There are giants in the land,” for this will make us to become spiritual giants!

The reason why we look happy to your eyes while we're watching TV ads must be that at all other times we're less stable and calm, and our faces are blanker. Perhaps what you're getting when you look at us watching commercials on the TV is a brief glimpse of the Real Us.

Dreams provide glimpses of yourself and your life that you might not otherwise see: your deepest desires, untapped potential, self-defeating patterns, and opportunities for greater happiness.

Is there not in every human soul, was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the other, which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish? Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which every physiologist would probably have responded no, and that without hesitation, had he beheld at Toulon, during the hours of repose, which were for Jean Valjean hours of revery, this gloomy galley-slave, seated with folded arms upon the bar of some capstan, with the end of his chain thrust into his pocket to prevent its dragging, serious, silent, and thoughtful, a pariah of the laws which regarded the man with wrath, condemned by civilization, and regarding heaven with severity. Certainly,—and we make no attempt to dissimulate the fact,— the observing physiologist would have beheld an ir- Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 159 remediable misery; he would, perchance, have pitied this sick man, of the law’s making; but he would not have even essayed any treatment; he would have turned aside his gaze from the caverns of which he would have caught a glimpse within this soul, and, like Dante at the portals of hell, he would have effaced from this existence the word which the finger of God has, nevertheless, inscribed upon the brow of every man,—hope. Was this state of his soul, which we have attempted to analyze, as perfectly clear to Jean Valjean as we have tried to render it for those who read us? Did Jean Valjean distinctly perceive, after their formation, and had he seen distinctly during the process of their formation, all the elements of which his moral misery was composed? Had this rough and unlettered man gathered a perfectly clear perception of the succession of ideas through which he had, by degrees, mounted and descended to the lugubrious aspects which had, for so many years, formed the inner horizon of his spirit? Was he conscious of all that passed within him, and of all that was working there? That is something which we do not presume to state; it is something which we do not even believe. There was too much ignorance in Jean Valjean, even after his misfortune, to prevent much vagueness from still lingering there. At times he did not rightly know himself what he felt. Jean Valjean was in the shadows; he suffered in the shadows; he hated in the shadows; one might have said that he hated in advance of himself. He dwelt habitually in this shadow, feeling his way like a blind man and a dreamer. Only, at intervals, there suddenly came 160 Les Miserables to him, from without and from within, an access of wrath, a surcharge of suffering, a livid and rapid flash which illuminated his whole soul, and caused to appear abruptly all around him, in front, behind, amid the gleams of a frightful light, the hideous precipices and the sombre perspective of his destiny. The flash passed, the night closed in again; and where was he? He no longer knew. The peculiarity of pains of this nature, in which that which is pitiless—that is to say, that which is brutalizing—predominates, is to transform a man, little by little, by a sort of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast; sometimes into a ferocious beast. Jean Valjean’s successive and obstinate attempts at escape would alone suffice to prove this strange working of the law upon the human soul. Jean Valjean would have renewed these attempts, utterly useless and foolish as they were, as often as the opportunity had presented itself, without reflecting for an instant on the result, nor on the experiences which he had already gone through. He escaped impetuously, like the wolf who finds his cage open. Instinct said to him, ‘Flee!’ Reason would have said, ‘Remain!’ But in the presence of so violent a temptation, reason vanished;

In contrast to most of the examples given in this chapter, it is occasionally recorded that even solitary confinement imposed by enemies can be the trigger for psychological experiences of lasting value. Anthony Grey, who experienced solitary confinement in China, and Arthur Koestler, who was similarly imprisoned in Spain, discussed their experiences together on television. The transcript of their discussion appears in Koestl’s collection of essays, Kaleidoscope. Both men were grateful that they did not have to share a cell with another prisoner. Both felt that solitude enhanced their appreciation of, and sympathy with, their fellow men. Both had intense experiences of feeling that some kind of higher order of reality existed with which solitude put them in touch. Both felt that trying to put this experience into words tended to trivialize it, because words could not really express it. Although neither man subscribed to any orthodox religious belief, both agreed that they had felt the abstract existence of something which was indefinable or which could only be expressed in symbols. Anthony Grey thought that his experience had given him a new awareness and appreciation of normal life. Koestler concurred, but added that he had also become more aware of horrors lurking under the surface. Koestler also refers to a feeling of inner freedom, of being alone and confronted with ultimate realities instead of with your bank statement. Your bank statement and other trivialities are again a kind of confinement. Not in space but in spiritual space . . . So you have got a dialogue with existence. A dialogue with life, a dialogue with death. Grey comments that this is an area of experience into which most people do not enter. Koesder righdy affirms that most people have occasional confrontations of this kind when they are severely ill or when a parent dies, or when they first fall in love. Then they are transferred from what I call the trivial plane to the tragic or absolute plane. But it only happens a few times. Whereas in the type of experience which we shared, one has one’s nose rubbed into it, for a protracted period.17 So, occasionally, good can come out of evil. Anthony Grey recalled being shown a painting by a Chinese friend in which a beautiful lotus flower is growing out of mud. The human spirit is not indestructible; but a courageous few discover that, when in hell, they are granted a glimpse of heaven.