Life Imprint Quotes

Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes. That was what Atlas was telling me when he said “I love you.” He was letting me know that I was the biggest wave he’d ever come across. And I brought so much with me that my impressions would always be there, even when the tide rolled out.

People leave imprints on our lives, shaping who we become in much the same way that a symbol is pressed into the page of a book to tell you who it comes from. Dogs, however, leave paw prints on our lives and our souls, which are as unique as fingerprints in every way.

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever.

What we leave behind in this life is the memory of who we were and what we did. An imprint, no more.

love him. I still do and I always will. He was a huge wave that left a lot of imprints on my life, and I’ll feel the weight of that love until I die. I’ve accepted that.

Sometimes just the tiniest allocation of time spent with a friend, imprints on your mind and gives you something to smile about for the rest of the week, month, or your life!

… What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary -property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life -don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.

I sound contemptuous, but I am not. I am interested--intrigued even--by the way time erases real lives, leaving only vague imprints. Blood and spirit fade away so that only names and dates remain.

I don't have a diary, I don't write things into a diary. I imprint myself into the sky and when the sunlight shines brightly, I can stand under the sun's rays and everything I have imprinted of myself into the sky, I will begin to see again, feel again, remember. And when the wind begins to blow, it blows the details over my face, and I remember everything I left in the sky and see new things being born. I am unwritten.

Life was an uncertain thing, and there were some moments one wished to remember, to imprint upon one's mind that the memory might be taken out later, like a flower pressed between the pages of a book, and admired and recollected anew. - Sophie and Gideon Lightwood

A Litany for Survival For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children's mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours: For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother's milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive. And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.

Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes.

In psychology (okay, Twilight) they teach you about the notion of imprinting, and I think it applies here. I reverse-imprinted with athleticism. Ours is the great non-love story of my life.

And there it was. He knew it, and I knew it. There was nothing left for me to do. Do you know how hard it is to say nothing ? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite? I just tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to imprint what I had left of him on myself. I did not speak...

I love him. I still do and I always will. He was a huge wave that left a lot of imprints on my life, and I’ll feel the weight of that love until I die. I’ve accepted that.

I think you will leave a lasting imprint on Ansel's heart. You spared her life, and returned her father's sword. And maybe when she makes her next move to reclaim her title, she will remember the assassin from the North and the kindness you showed her, and try to leave fewer bodies in her wake.

Similar to siblings, French Fries all stem from the same family, the potato family. Yet each and every one is different. A different shape, a different flavor, a different purpose, etc. Now, despite all these differences, each French fry in the batch will share a similar origin story. However, the outcome will be unique. The point is to have patience with your sibling French fry and realize that life imprints differently on each and every one of us. Some of us will be salty, some of us will be peppered, but in the end we are all just trying to catch up.

Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming

That's the sacred intent of life, of God--to move us continuously toward growth, toward recovering all that is lost and orphaned within us and restoring the divine image imprinted on our soul.

If all the women over the world have been permitted to be married to only one man, except one woman. He'd love to marry that woman. That is the imprint of man

Like the ancients I leave no trace but the imprint of kindness, left on the souls I’ve dared to love.

Its culture: the fruit of its life, the product of its own efforts in thought and art. This culture is not international. It is the expression of the national genius, of the blood. The culture is international in its brilliance but national in origin. Someone made a fine comparison: bread and wheat may be internationally consumed, but they always bear the imprint of the soil from which they came.

She grasped the crook and flail with cool hands and sank gracefully to her knees. The High Priest of Amun placed a piece of flatbread imprinted with an ankh, the symbol of everlasting life, upon her tongue. It was gritty, the dough having been sprinkled with sand blessed by all the High Priests before it was baked that morning.

Half naked, he drank her in with his eyes, imprinting this moment into his mind. This, he would take to his death – the woman that stirred him to life.

Every day in every way we are leaving our mark.

Imprinting." I heard the smile disappear from Cat's face. "Next." I repeated myself. "Are you referring to Stephenie Meyer's books?" "Yes," I said. A little unwillingly. Cat chuckled. "There's no shame in reading enjoyable books. But this topic is better discussed later." "Got it.

How can you come to understand your life when even the beginning is so complicated: a single cell imprinted with the color of your eyes and the shape of your face the pattern on your palm and the moods that will shadow you through your life. How can you be alive when every choice you make breaks the world into a thousand filaments each careless step branching into long tributaries of alternate lives shuddering outward and outward like sheet lightning.

As I travel through life, I gather experiences that lie imprinted on the deepest strata of memory, and there they ferment, are transformed, and sometimes rise to the surface and sprout like strange plants from other worlds. What is the fertile humus of the subconscious composed of? Why are certain images converted into recurrent themes in nightmares or writing?

Life was an uncertain thing, and there were some moments one wished to remember to, to imprint upon one's mind that the memory might be taken out later, like a flower pressed between the pages of a book, and admired and recollected anew.

Warm familiar scents drift softly from the oven, And imprint forever upon our hearts That this is home and that we are loved.

Life doesn't take itself seriously for long. Joy leaves an imprint even in the hardest sorrow.

No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert, the brand which marks the nomad; and he will have within him the yearning to return, weak or insistent according to his nature. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match.

I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree. Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other...

I love him. I still do and I always will. He was a huge wave that left a lof of imprints on my life, and I'll feel the weight of that love until I die. I've accepted that.

You should holistically build yourself to be the best you. The evidence of your glorious life should be an inspiration to many . You create your world yourself in your own positive way. You are stronger than ever and bolder than you think. Brave the odds and initiate new imprints for all to aspire and follow your footprints.

Thousands of individuals unknowingly contribute to the creation of our lives. Over the years, these serendipitous exchanges made imprints on my mind and heart and served as catalysts for my ongoing growth and development.

I love you, Lily. Everything you are. I love you." I know those words get thrown around a lot, especially by teenagers. A lot of times prematurely and without much merit. But when he said them to me, I knew he wasn't saying it like he was in love with me. It wasn't that kind of "I love you." Imagine the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed on the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes. That was what Atlas was telling me wen he said "I love you." He was letting me know that I was the biggest wave he'd ever come across. And I brought so much with me that my impression would always be there, even when the tide rolled out.

It was that time of life: Talents were rising to the surface, weaknesses were beginning to show through, we were finding out what kinds of people we would be. Some would turn out beautiful, some funny, some shy. Some would be smart, others smarter. THe chubby ones would likely always be chubby. THe beloved, I sensed, would be beloved for life. And I worried that loneliness might work that way, too. Maybe loneliness was imprinted in my genes, lying dormant for years but now coming into full bloom.

He had lived without her before. He could get over it! In a year or so he'd be able to walk straight past her without his heart so much as missing a beat. He needed her as much as a drunk needs a cork! But he understood all too quickly how vain these thoughts were. How can you tear something out of your heart? Your heart isn't made out of paper and your life isn't written down in ink. You can't erase the imprint of years.

Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes. That was what Atlas was telling me when he said “I love you.” He was letting me know that I was the biggest wave he’d ever come across. And I brought so much with me that my impressions would always be there, even when the tide rolled out.

It's strange, isn't it, how you never know you're living the best time of your life at the moment you're living it? If you could appreciate, at that instant, that this is it, maybe you'd make certain your mind imprinted every detail of the sights, smells, sounds and sensations. Then again, maybe knowing that life will only get duller, sadder, less hopeful afterward would inject melancholy into that moment. You'd miss life's peak experience by mourning it before it passes. So perhaps it's best not to know.

The idea of love walked along the water and her gaze was full of absence and her eyes spat lighting. The impressionable evening received by turns the imprints of grasses, clouds, bodies, and wore crazy astronomical designs. The idea of love walked straight ahead without seeing anything; she was wearing tiny isosceles mirrors whose perfect assemblage was amazing. They were so many images of fish tails, when, by their angelic nature, they answer the promise one might make of always finding each other again. Finding each other again even in the depths of a forest, where the thread of a star is an articulation more silent than life, the dawn a liquor stronger than blood. Who is lost, who truly wanders off when a cup of coffee is steaming in the fog and waiters dressed in snow circulate patiently on the surface of floors whose desired height can be indicated with one's hands? Who? A solitary man whom the idea of love has just left and who tucks in his spirit like an imaginary bed. The man falls all the same and in the next room, under the moon-white verandah, a woman rises whom the idea of love has abandoned. The gravel weeps outside, a rain of glass is falling in which we recognize small chains, tears in which we have time to see ourselves, mirror tears, shards of windows, singular crystals like the ones we witness in our hand on awakening, leaves and the faded petals of those roses that once embelished certain distillery bottles. It's just that the idea of love, it seems angry with love. This is how it began.

Beauty is the only human aspect which cannot be captured on any canvas howsoever hard an artist tries. At the most, the undaunted artist can replicate the beauty on paper but what is a replica in comparison to the original! The humbling resemblance can only be respected, not truly adored. Beauty cannot be imprisoned in the lens of a camera. The images of beauty are a moment of its essence. Beauty cannot be displayed to evoke pleasure for all on a cinema screen. Those are just its imprints, mere illusions of its existence. Beauty cannot be described by words; it cannot be written or read about. There are no suitable words in all the languages of the world, ancient or modern to hold it between a paper and a pen or a script and an eye. Beauty can only be experienced from far, its delightful aroma can only be tasted through one’s eyes and its pleasurable sight can only be felt from the soul. Beauty can only be best described at its origin through a befuddling silence, the kind that leaves one almost on the verge of a pleasurable death, just because one chooses beauty over life. There is nothing in this world to hold something so pure, so divine except a loving heart. And it is the only manner through which love recognises love; the language of love has no alphabet, no words.

Wisdom is achieved very slowly. This is because intellectual knowledge, easily acquired, must be transformed into ‘emotional,’ or subconscious, knowledge. Once transformed, the imprint is permanent. Behavioral practice is the necessary catalyst of this reaction. Without action, the concept will wither and fade. Theoretical knowledge without practical application is not enough.

My body had never felt so small or so fragile. In one sense, it was a moment of ecstasy and I was comforted with soft, almost compassionate, encouragement. "Delicate," she said. The word imprinted on me like the cold before it. I was weak and going numb, but I was delicate. This is what I had wanted. I wanted to lose weight and retain some ounce of delicacy to resemble that of the spider-figured women I had seen in all those flashing images. Suddenly, the lack of strength displayed by my body was counterbalanced with a surging lease of mental satisfaction and might. As I lay in bed, buried under all my layers of clothes and bed sheets, the warmth still could not reach me. It was too late for that now and I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep, basking in my success and enduring the cold until I could finally slip into a forgetful slumber.

I believe,” I say slowly, “that everyone you meet leaves an imprint on you. By the end of your life, that imprint has shaped who you are and what life you’ve lived. So, I guess it’s kind of the same thing.

Certain moments in my life are imprinted in me memory. They're easy to recall with perfect clarity, whether I want to remember them or not. Any small thing can trigger them: a phrase, a smell, a thought. It brings everything back like I'm reliving that moment, a brief scene in the movie of my life, complete with how horrible I felt at the time. And I usually felt horrible in those moments that I want to forget that stick around.

A handful of experiences when I was small have made me a confirmed nonathlete. In psychology (okay, Twilight) they teach you about the notion of imprinting, and I think it applies here. I reverse-imprinted with athleticism. Ours is the great non-love story of my life.” — Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and other concerns)

There is a special kind of beauty that manifests itself only in the faces of very old women. Their furrowed skin contains all the marks and memories imprinted by a life lived. Old women whose bodies the earth is crying out to embrace.

We ike to think we are our own people, but sometimes it seems we are just playing out a script that was imprinted in us along ago.

Sometimes people leave such a deep imprint on our hearts that they never go away.

When you look at sand do you see its relation to water or do you see its imprints of life?

How can you tear something out of your heart? Your heart isn't made of paper and your life isn't written down in ink. You can't erase the imprint of years.

In travelling where novelties of all kinds press in upon us, mental food is often supplied so rapidly from without that there is no time for digestion. We regret that the quickly shifting impressions can leave no permanent imprint. In reality, however, it is with this as it is with reading. How often we regret not being able to retain in the memory one-thousandth part of what is read ! It is comforting in both cases to know that the seen as well as the read has made a mental impression before it is forgotten, and thus forms the mind and nourishes it, while that which is retained in the memory merely fills and swells the hollow of the head with matter which remains ever foreign to it, because it has not been absorbed, and therefore the recipient can be as empty as before.

Everything you have ever done has led up to this very moment. Savor your life, the lessons, the wisdom, the failures, the victories and all the relationships that have made an imprint in your journey.

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.

Let Love Move You... If you can’t stop thinking of her, it’s because her essence has left an imprint on your heart… on your soul... Don’t be afraid of this feeling; be nourished by it... Let it stir your entire being… Let it help release your greatest self... Let it inspire you to be loving… to be respectful… to be romantic… to be intelligent… to be passionate… to be a good listener… to be appreciative… Let this wonderful feeling move you to become a passionate love maker… a ravenous seducer... Do not be afraid of this deep love! Let it reveal the best of you… Let this feeling encourage you to behave in an honest and sincere manner… So that you may be more than a person she would settle for… so that you may be a person she would yearn for.

Who was this woman before me, her face imprinted with the expectations of others? I was Mom. I was Wife. I was Tragedy. I was Pilot. They all were me, and I, them. That was a fate we could not escape, we women; we would always be called upon by others in a way men simply never were. But weren't we always, first and foremost -- woman? Wasn't there strength in that, victory, clarity -- in all the stages of a woman's life?

He would not live the life of his daughter by falling apart and not giving her anything but anticipated grief and collateral heartache. He wanted to imprint paternal love on her body. Maybe she would be strong and regenerated enough to stay, and maybe his intense affection would work its magic.

The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story - of course that is how we all live, it's the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It's like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It's like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you - and it can't, and it shouldn't, because something IS missing. That isn't of its nature negative. The missing part, the missing past, can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record, the imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life, your fingers trace the space where it might have been, and your fingers learn a kind of Braille.

It seemed everything that had ever lived and died in this world had passed through here, had left its indelible imprint.

I would remember this as one of those moments in life that I can hold onto and smile about, forever.

It can fuck you up, if you meet the most important person in your life when you’re sixteen, seventeen. You imprint on them, and you never escape from it. That’s what happened to me.

What we leave behind in this life is the memory of who we were and what we did. An imprint, no more. I have learned much. I have become wise. But have I made a difference? I cannot tell.

Once you are born into physical reality, you unfold your life within an imprint of cosmic energy that embodies a plan of intent and purpose, a plan designed and approved by you. Throughout

If someone were to autopsy her heart, they'd find traces of life, evidence of eons gone by. Times when she'd been able to feel and the feelings left imprints. Maybe her heart was wearing a cast. Maybe it wasn't sclerosed at all but atrophied, shrunken, and the cast enclosing it was scribbled over with stories written in a dead language. Was there any softness left in there? Any spot that was still unfired, unformed, unglazed? Was there access? Entry? A place still open to impression? No. Her heart was finished. It bore, perhaps, records of life, but it wasn't alive. Too late for decoration. Too late for effects. Further handling could only result in cracks and fractures. People could cut themselves on the edges of her heart, she was sure of it.

...I remembered watching her 'put her face on', as she called it, and wondering if one day I'd be like her, a beautiful fish in a man-made poor, circling and circling, surviving the tedium only because my memory can contain what is imprinted on the last few minutes of my life, constantly forgetting my thoughts.

When you believe in someone you profoundly increase their ability to have faith in themselves and achieve. When you love someone you imprint on their heart something so powerful that it changes the trajectory of their life. When you do both, you set into motion, a gift to the world…because those who are believed in and loved understand the beauty of a legacy and the absolute duty of paying it forward. ~ Jason Versey

Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had one been there, long after the tide recedes.

Since I’d left Blue with Darius, the lasting imprint of her ashen cheeks and wide eyes were burned into my retinas. She’d fought at my side tonight with the fierceness of a warrior. And she’d saved my fucking life.

I had travelled from Spain into Morocco and from there south to the Atlas Mountains, at the edge of the Sahara Desert…one night, in a youth hostel that was more like a stable, I woke and walked out into a snowstorm. But it wasn’t the snow I was used to in Minnesota, or anywhere else I had been. Standing bare chest to cool night, wearing flip-flops and shorts, I let a storm of stars swirl around me. I remember no light pollution, heck, I remember no lights. But I remember the light around me-the sense of being lit by starlight- and that I could see the ground to which the stars seemed to be floating down. I saw the sky that night in three dimensions- the sky had depth, some stars seemingly close and some much farther away, the Milky Way so well defined it had what astronomers call “structure”, that sense of its twisting depths. I remember stars from one horizon to another, making a night sky so plush it still seems like a dream. It was a time in my life when I was every day experiencing something new. I felt open to everything, as though I was made of clay, and the world was imprinting on me its breathtaking beauty (and terrible reality.) Standing nearly naked under that Moroccan sky, skin against the air, the dark, the stars, the night pressed its impression, and my lifelong connection was sealed.

We never truly lose the ones we love. They stay with us in everything we do. Those who affect us so deeply leave imprints that cannot be removed. We are who we are because of who we’ve loved and who we’ve lost – those things we do not decide. So never be afraid. Live boldly, love fiercely, and forgive quickly. Life is too short for anything else.

Life was an uncertain thing, and there were some moments one wished to remember, to imprint upone one's mind that the memory might be taken out later, like a flower pressed between the pages of a book, and admired and recollected anew

Funny how those things felt so important then. Go and see the Christmas lights, bake and assemble the gingerbread house. And – poof. They disappear into history, causing only stress and leaving no imprint, like a footstep on sand that gets washed away too swiftly. Her entire life, she’s been so concerned with how things seem to be. Keeping up appearances. Having it all, the house with the carved pumpkin so everybody knew they’d done it. And yet. What was it all for?

recalled a concept from the Jewish mystics—rishima—“the imprint an experience leaves.” They believed that if you endured something and let it pass without memory or reflection, if you didn’t change after having gone through it, it was as if the event had never happened. But if an experience left an imprint, if it inspired growth or altered the course of your life, then, according to the mystics, even the most painful and challenging experiences become a blessed teacher.

There is only one way out of this, namely, total separation from all the world. But withdrawal from the world does not mean physical removal from it. Rather, it is the withdrawal by the soul of any sympathy for the body. One becomes stateless and homeless. One gives up possessions, friends, ownership and property, livelihood, business connection, social life and scholarship. The heart is made ready to receive the imprint of sacred teaching, and this making ready involves the unlearning of knowledge deriving from evil habits. To write on wax, one has first to erase the letters previously written there, and to bring sacred teaching to the soul one must begin by wiping out preoccupation rooted in ordinary habits.

The tides of time should be able to imprint the passing of the years on an object. The physical decay or natural wear and tear of the materials used does not in the least detract from the visual appeal, rather it adds to it. It is the changes of texture and colour that provide the space for the imagination to enter and become more involved with the devolution of the piece. Whereas modern design often uses inorganic materials to defy the natural ageing effects of time, wabi sabi embraces them and seeks to use this transformation as an integral part of the whole. This is not limited to the process of decay, but can also be found at the moment of inception, when life is taking its first fragile steps toward becoming.

It is genes that allow the human mind to learn, to remember, to imitate, to imprint, to absorb culture, and to express instincts. Genes are not puppet masters or blueprints. Nor are they just the carriers of heredity. They are active during life;

As we have seen, whatever you do with your body, mind, or energy leaves a certain imprint. These imprints configure themselves into tendencies. These tendencies have been traditionally described in India by a wonderfully apt word: vasana. Literally, vasana means smell. This “smell” is generated by a vast accumulation of impressions caused by your physical, mental, emotional, and energy actions. Depending upon the type of smell you emit, you attract certain kinds of life situations to yourself.

This was my life, and I was the one to choose how to spend it, didn’t I? Hadn’t I done enough? Put up with enough? Sucked it up enough? If I didn’t put up with people who should have mattered, why the hell was I putting up with people who didn’t? Life was what you made out of it, at least that was what those Chicken Soup books my foster father thrust on me when I was a teenager imprinted on me. When life gives you lemons, you get to choose what you make out of them; it doesn’t always have to be lemonade. With

Where there is little danger, there seems to be little stimulation. Perhaps the pattern of struggle is so deeply imprinted in the genes of all life conceived in this benevolently hostile planet that the removal of obstacles automatically atrophies a survival drive.

Biblical worldview'. The term means literally a 'view of the world', a biblically informed perspective on all of reality. A worldview is like a mental map that tells you how to navigate the world effectively. It is the imprint of God's objective truth on our inner life.

Children are imprinted with the lessons of life from their earliest years. They learn from their parents how to give and receive love. It is the necessary lesson which they must learn if they are to do more than exist in an emotional vacuum inhabited only by themselves.

What we value and our priorities in life make us who we are. We are unique not only because of our outward differences, but arguably more importantly, our inward differences. Our values steer our personal and professional lives and have a distinct imprint on the decisions we make.

Oh, those lapses, darling. So many of us walk around letting fly with “errors.” We could do better, but we’re so slovenly, so rushed amid the hurly-burly of modern life, so imprinted by the “let it all hang out” ethos of the sixties, that we don’t bother to observe the “rules” of “correct” grammar. To a linguist, if I may share, these “rules” occupy the exact same place as the notion of astrology, alchemy, and medicine being based on the four humors. The “rules” make no logical sense in terms of the history of our language, or what languages around the world are like. Nota bene: linguists savor articulateness in speech and fine composition in writing as much as anyone else. Our position is not—I repeat, not—that we should chuck standards of graceful composition. All of us are agreed that there is usefulness in a standard variety of a language, whose artful and effective usage requires tutelage. No argument there. The argument is about what constitutes artful and effective usage. Quite a few notions that get around out there have nothing to do with grace or clarity, and are just based on misconceptions about how languages work. Yet, in my experience, to try to get these things across to laymen often results in the person’s verging on anger. There is a sense that these “rules” just must be right, and that linguists’ purported expertise on language must be somehow flawed on this score. We are, it is said, permissive—perhaps along the lines of the notorious leftist tilt among academics, or maybe as an outgrowth of the roots of linguistics in anthropology, which teaches that all cultures are equal. In any case, we are wrong. Maybe we have a point here and there, but only that.

That’s the thing about the words we utter. We have to choose them carefully. They have the power to affect others, and maybe affect the course of things in ways we can never imagine. Sometimes we remember something someone said years later. It gets imprinted in our memory and refuses to go away.

We are all tied to a lineage of love that has existed since time immemorial. Even if we haven't had a direct experience of that love, we know that it exists and has made an indelible imprint on our souls. It's remarkable to think that the entire span of human life exists within each one of us, going all the way back to the hands of the Creator. In our bodies we carry the blood of our ancestors and the seeds of the future generations. We are a living conduit to all life. When we contemplate the vastness of the interwoven network that we are tied to, our individual threads of life seem far less fragile. We are strengthened by who we come from and inspired by the those who will follow. ~ Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change.

Therefore, the job you have is your sacred vocation. If you are in school, that is your sacred vocation. One of the ways the enemy of your soul diminishes your imprint on eternity is by getting you to believe the lie that your job is secular and that church stuff is sacred. There is no such thing as the secular/sacred divide.

Nietzsche’s words that relate to this with respect to masks and the processes of life. He speaks of three stages in the life of the spirit incarnate in each of us. Three transformations of the spirit, he calls it. The first is that of the camel which gets down on its knees and asks, “Put a load on me.” That’s the period of these dear little children. This is the just-born life that has come in and is receiving the imprint of the society. The primary mask. “Put a load on me. Teach me what I must know to live in this society.” Once heavily loaded, the camel struggles to its feet and goes out into the desert — into the desert of the realization of its own individual nature. This must follow the reception of the culture good. It must not precede it. First is humility, and obedience, and the reception of the primary mask. Then comes the turning inward, which happens automatically in adolescence, to find your own inward life. Nietzsche calls this the transformation of the camel into a lion. Then the lion attacks a dragon; and the dragon’s name is Thou Shalt. The dragon is the concretization of all those imprints that the society has put upon you. The function of the lion is to kill the dragon Thou Shalt. On every scale is a “Thou Shalt,” some of them dating from 2000 b.c., others from this morning’s newspaper. And, when the dragon Thou Shalt has been killed — that is to say, when you have made the transition from simple obedience to authority over your own life — the third transformation is to that of being a child moving spontaneously out of the energy of its own center. Nietzsche calls it a wheel rolling out of its own center.

I’d spent months carefully winding my gift into a tight spool, only letting it out by inches, and only when I needed it. The strain of keeping it bound up had been a steady, constant reminder that I had to work to keep the life I’d built for myself out here. It was a muscle I’d carefully toned to withstand nearly any pressure. Letting it all go felt like shaking a bottle of soda and ripping off the cap. It fizzed and flooded and swept out of me, searching for the connections waiting to be made. I didn’t guide it, and I didn’t stop it—I don’t know if I could have if I tried. I was the burning center of a galaxy of faces, memories, loves, heartbreaks, disappointments, and dreams. It was like living dozens of different lives. I was lifted and shattered by it, how strangely beautiful it was to feel their minds linked with my own. The spinning inside my head slowed with the movement around me. I felt time hovering nearby, waiting to resume its usual tempo. The darkness slid into the edges of my vision, seeping through my mind like a drop of ink in water. But I was in control of the moment, and there was one last thing that I needed to say to them, one last idea to imprint in their minds. “I’m Green.

It’s entirely on our children to build their best futures. Not on us, parents. And we should be imprinting this message on our children’s brains from as early as possible.

To recklessly excuse a failure is to believe that I’ve effectively erased it from the story of my life, when I’ve actually imprinted it in indelible ink.

the imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life, your fingers trace the space where it might have been, and your fingers learn a kind of braille.

Unless at some point in our life we become conscious of the emotional energy we have absorbed from our parents, we will inevitably transfer this imprint to our own children.

Behind the Eyes of every soul Lies the imprint of life’s journey

Your unconditional love made an everlasting imprint on my heart & life forever.

Imprint kindness upon every path you tread… Let every step you take bear the mark of kindness.

Words are never merely sounds. They become echoes that linger long after they’re spoken—touching hearts, shaping minds, and leaving imprints that endure. Choose your words wisely.

The secret to battling cancer, then, is to find means to prevent these mutations from occurring in susceptible cells, or to find means to eliminate the mutated cells without compromising normal growth. The conciseness of that statement belies the enormity of the task. Malignant growth and normal growth are so genetically intertwined that unbraiding the two might be one of the most significant scientific challenges faced by our species. Cancer is built into our genomes: the genes that unmoor normal cell division are not foreign to our bodies, but rather mutated, distorted versions of the very genes that perform vital cellular functions. And cancer is imprinted in our society: as we extend our life span as a species, we inevitably unleash malignant growth (mutations in cancer genes accumulate with aging; cancer is thus intrinsically related to age). If we seek immortality, then so, too, in a rather perverse sense, does the cancer cell.

It’s easy to think of your life as being meaningless out here, a tiny forgotten imprint that can easily be washed away by the next passing storm, but instead of making me feel small, it gives everything more purpose, more meaning. I’m no more or less important than a small seedling trying to burst through the soil. We all play a part on this earth. And however small, I intend to play mine.

I believe there is an impulse in each of us to make our own personal and individual mark on the world around us. The little child coming upon a stretch of clean white snow gleefully rushes forward to imprint the shapes of his feet upon it. A woman passing through a strange room pauses briefly to move an object on a table, making a slight rearrangement that her eye finds more pleasing. A boy carves his initials upon a tree. We all write our names upon the sand. All of us hope that our choices and our actions will make a little sweeter those rooms we enter, those worlds we move through, those lives we touch, those people and those places we leave behind us. It is, in a way, our small gesture toward immortality, our little message to the universe. It says, "I was here", to the ages.

The curve seems to be imprinted on us as a way to repurpose us for a changing role in society as we age, a role that is less about ambition and competition, and more about connection and compassion.

It's hard to believe that this is how it's done. That this is how we get here into the world, by accident or design, the microscopic pieces of ourselves borne by fluids and blood and growing into a tiny kingdom of cells inside someone else's body. It seems so difficult to become alive. So improbable. . . How can it be possible? she wonders. How can you come to understand your life when even the beginning is so complicated: a single cell imprinted with the color of your eyes and the shape of your face, the pattern on your palm and the moods that will shadow you through your life. How can you be alive when every choice you make breaks the world into a thousand filaments, each careless step branching into long tributaries of alternate lives, shuddering outward and outward like sheet lightning.

Being loved by Blake isn’t something you can describe. You just feel it settle into your bones, taking shelter in your heart. She leaves an imprint on your life. She makes you want to be a better person.

Adopted children are self invented because we have to be. There's an absence, a void, a question mark at the very beginning of our lives. A crucial part of our story is gone, and violently. Like a bomb in the womb, the baby explodes into an unknown world and it's only knowable through some kind of story. Of course, that is how we all live, it's the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after its started. It's like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It's like arriving after a curtain up, the feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you, and it can't, and it shouldn't, because something is missing. That isn't of its nature negative, the missing part, the missing past can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record. The imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life your fingers trace the space where it might have been and your fingers learn a kind of braille. There are markings here, raised like welts.

In fact, you should take a nap this afternoon, because there won't be much sleep tonight. I mean to have you every way I can. I mean to intoxicate you and torment you so that you know precisely how I feel about you." His finger trailed down her cheek and tipped up her chin. "Don't mistake what is going to happen tonight." His voice was sinful, dark and hoarse. "You will never forget the imprint of my skin after tonight, Esme. Waste your life chitchatting with ladies in lace caps. Raise your child with the help of your precious Sewing Circle. But in the middle of all those lonely nights, you will never, ever, forget the night that lies ahead of us.

Queer identity hid itself in the shadows of these dark streets and both women had, at some time, left an imprint of their body upon some unfamiliar bed; an addendum of promises, made for a lifetime but meant only for a night.

One spiritual writer has observed that human beings are born with two diseases: life, from which we die; and hope, which says the first disease is not terminal. Hope is built into the structure of our personalities, into the depths of our unconscious; it plagues us to the very moment of our death. The critical question is whether hope is self-deception, the ultimate cruelty of a cruel and tricky universe, or whether it is just possibly the imprint of reality.

Books are the mind's ballast, for so many of us--the cargo that makes us what we are, a freight that is ephemeral and indelible, half-forgotten but leaving an imprint. They are nutrition, too. My old age fear is not being able to read--the worst deprivation. Or no longer having my books around me: the familiar, eclectic, explanatory assemblage that hitches me to the wide world, that has freed me from the prison of myself, that has helped me to think, and to write.

If powerful enough, I believe moments can leave an emotional imprint on all things in the universe, clinging to a song, a scent, a brush of the wind. And like a song, a book becomes a time capsule of these chapters in a writer’s life.

And then it came to him: a seal cylinder. When rolled upon a tablet of soft clay, the carved cylinder left an imprint that formed a picture. Two figures might appear at opposite ends of the tablet, though they stood side by side on the surface of the cylinder. All the world was as such a cylinder. Men imagined heaven and earth as being at the ends of a tablet, with sky and stars stretched between; yet the world was wrapped around in some fantastic way so that heaven and earth touched. It

You see, one of the reason why I embark on this journey is to question myself on the many myth of security that has been imprinted on us from the day we are born. ... It was also driven from my readings on the early theory of feminism (Simone de Beauvoir's) that say that 80% of a woman's life everyday (in a house) is spent cleaning the dirt that keeps on coming back. Therefore I wanted to explore the other side of it, that is, if I don't have a house, what would the 80% of my day be filled with?

Constance FitzGerald, a contemporary Carmelite authority on John’s theology, points out John’s assertion that this divine inflow is the “loving Wisdom of God.” Specifically, she says, it is the active presence of Jesus Christ as Wisdom, as divine Sophia. Thus, “Dark night is not primarily some thing, an impersonal darkness like a difficult situation or distressful psychological condition, but someone, a presence leaving an indelible imprint on the human spirit and consequently on one’s entire life.”21

Release the old imprints of isolation and separateness, letting them wither and die like a vine that no longer has any purpose. Rest in this protected place in which you are nourished and, in turn, nourish others who need your time, love, and attention.

Maybe our parents’ lives are imprinted within us, maybe the only fate there is is the temptation of reliving their mistakes. Maybe, try as we might, we will never be able to outrun the blood that runs through our veins. Or. Or maybe we are free the moment we’re born. Maybe everything we’ve ever done is by our own hands. Nina wasn’t sure. She just knew that, somehow, after everything that had happened in her life, she had ended up all alone on the front stoop, left behind by a man she had dared to trust.

There are some things in life we know to be true, beyond logic or reason, science or faith. Irresistible truths, they're called, the things we seem to instinctively grasp, as if the knowledge were imprinted deep in our DNA, written on the very fiber of our souls.

Daily life is an ongoing adaptation process of imprinting our memory’s storage center with useful data and the ceaseless expurgation of undesirable facts, exfoliation of destructive thoughts, and weeding out annoying emotional quirks that seemingly sprout out of thin air.

Rembrandt’s embrace remained imprinted on my soul far more profoundly than any temporary expression of emotional support. It had brought me into touch with something within me that lies far beyond the ups and downs of a busy life, something that represents the ongoing yearning of the human spirit, the yearning for a final return, an unambiguous sense of safety, a lasting home. The yearning for a lasting home, brought to consciousness by Rembrandt’s painting, grew deeper and stronger, somehow making the painter himself into a faithful companion and guide.

In contrast to ordinary memories both good and bad, which are mutable and dynamically changing over time, traumatic memories are fixed and static. They’re imprints, engrams from past overwhelming experiences. Deep impressions carved into the sufferer’s brain body and psyche. These harsh and frozen imprints do not yield to change, nor do they readily update with current information. The fixity of imprints prevents us from forming new strategies and extracting new meanings. There is no fresh ever-changing now, and no real flow in life. In this way, the past lives on in the present.

A horoscope is a specific map, or picture, of the heavens that is cast for the date, time, and location of your birth. The positions of the sun, moon, and planets, as well as the sign that hovers at the horizon, are all placed around the wheel of the zodiac to reveal the intricate mathematical relationships that portray your personal blueprint and potential for development. This map can reveal your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual gifts and challenges, and you are always free to grow and change, according to your own volition. Also noteworthy are the nodal points, or the locations where the path of Earth and the path of the moon intersect, forming what is known as the “head and tail of the sky dragon,” or the north and south nodes. The location of the celestial dragon in a chart is of utmost importance, for it indicates the direction in which you are moving to achieve the fulfillment of your personal destiny, as well as the place in the past that you are emerging from. Once you are born into physical reality, you unfold your life within an imprint of cosmic energy that embodies a plan of intent and purpose, a plan designed and approved by you. Throughout

We generally don't leave our mark by lunging from one stunning achievement to the next. Much of our forward motion isn't all that interesting when viewed from day to day. It's only through weighing collective sum of these repeated moments that such a life presses it's profound imprint on the lives of others.

You’re imprinted all over me. I see my life and you’re always there. When you were born, when you moved away, and my world became nothing but shades of gray. Then you came back, and I didn’t understand then like I do now why I suddenly came back to life. The first night we kissed, the first night we made love.

I remember watching her "put her face on," as she called it, and wondering if one day I'd be like her, a beautiful fish in a man-made pool, circling and circling, surviving the tedium only because my memory can contain only what is imprinted on the last few minutes of my life, constantly forgetting my thoughts.

He came to believe that this was the very sort of thing that happened when you let yourself get caught in one culture's insistence that love ought to be like this or that. The key for people like him, he ultimately concluded, in this as in most matters, was to be nimble. Your privilege as an immigrant was to pick and choose your inheritance, maintain what suited you and participate merely to the extent of your patience and interest. It was not in your nature to align with one side fully, and so you couldn't help but make a life that was both apart and among. You didn't make one choice and stick with it but, rather, hundreds of minor choices with which you created a unique path through the corridors of old traditions and the avenues of the new. And you cultivated this dividedness because you carried always the imprint of that first move -- the decision to leave home. Indeed, this initiating choice, more than anything, was your true inheritance.

They dream of the happiness of stretching out one's legs and of the relief one feels after going to the toilet. In Orotukan the earth thaws only in the summer and only to the depth of three feet—and only then can they bury the bones of those who died during the winter. And you have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and the hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like without a convoy [escort]. So what's this about unwiped feet? And what's this about a mother-in-law? What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory—property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life—don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart—and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted in their memory!

The same year, Hasbro—which had soaked up Kenner years earlier—reactivated its option to produce action figures and issued a new line of Star Wars toys under the imprint “The Power of the Force.” A manager at FAO Schwarz in New York was surprised to see that there were more adults than children buying the new line of toys—a

In a culture that often views a child in terms of the expense in time and money he will cost in his lifetime, how important it is to intentionally recognize the infinite value of a tiny human being, created with the very imprint and image of God on his life, and to understand that this little one’s life will have consequences for eternity.

In the words of the choreographer Twyla Tharp, “Skill gets imprinted through action.” Assign yourself daily drills to practice the mechanical basics of the skill, whether reviewing flash cards or working with a kitchen knife. Learning all the recipes in the world won’t make you a great chef if you can’t chop, dice, and julienne those veggies.

The tides of time should be able to imprint the passing of the years on an object. They physical decay or natural wear and tear of the materials used does not in the least detract from the visual appeal, rather it adds to it. It is the changes of texture and colour that provide the space for the imagination to enter and become more involved with the devolution of the piece. Whereas modern design often uses inorganic materials to defy the natural ageing effects of time, wabi sabi embraces them and seeks to use this transformation as an integral part of the whole. This is not limited to the process of decay, but can also be found at the moment of inception, when life is taking its first fragile steps toward becoming.

I always imagined that you might write something about me. I wanted to leave an imprint on your life. I don’t want to be “just another patient”. I wanted to be “special”. I want to be something, anything. I feel like nothing, no one. If I left an imprint on your life, maybe I would be someone, someone you wouldn’t forget. I’d exist then. (Marge’s letter to Yalom)

Time, so majestically fine, was passing by when I asked him to stop, a while, and lay his imprint upon the spaciousness of feelings: his face, reflected in the mirror of my memories, his smile, envisaged by my eyes, in quest of his new dwellings with wells of meanings. And there, he stopped its moment... and kissed my curiosity. It was then when I felt in love with him.

The mind is rich with possibilities for fulfilment, but you decide to dwell on the limited horizons and paradigms that you are used to, the societal imprint. You do not tap into exactly what your mind and your soul wants, so you live the life that is imposed on you, not the life that you are meant to live. You live the life of pleasing others, life of seeking acceptance not fulfilment.

Telling you all this, Camilo, the stab of pain that sliced through my chest that day comes back in full force; it’s a recurring pain that ambushes me out of nowhere. There can’t be a pain worse than that one, so great it has no name. I know, I know, who am I to complain? My daughter’s death wasn’t a punishment. I’m just a statistic, this is the oldest and most common suffering in human history. Before, no one even expected children to survive, so many died in childhood, and it’s still that way in a large part of the world, but that does nothing to lessen the horror when you’re the mother. I felt like I’d been emptied out from the inside, I was a bloody cavity, I couldn’t breathe, my bones were made of wax, my soul had taken flight. And the world still turned as if nothing had happened: I stand up, take one step then another, find my voice and respond, I haven’t lost my mind, I drink water, my mouth full of sand, my eyes burning, and my little girl stiff, frozen, sculpted in alabaster—my daughter who will never again call me Mom, who left a tremendous imprint in her passage through my life, the memory of her laughter, her grace, her rebelliousness, her suffering.

What human language captures the dislocation, the acute insufficiency of being in the presence of the superorganism, the sinking, shrinking feeling at this display of industrial steel and light and might? It was as if nothing I’d ever done in my life prior to this counted. As if my past life was revealed to be a waste, a gesture in slow motion, because what I considered scarce and precious was in fact plentiful and cheap, and what I counted as rapid progress turned out to be glacially slow. The observer, that old record keeper, the chronicler of events, made his appearance in that taxi. The hands of my clock turned elastic while I imprinted these feelings in memory. You must remember this. It was all I had, all I’ve ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.

And he'll think, with a certain melancholy, when he watches the water clamber up the shore, that every effort, and even every pleasure in life, every goal that's reached and achieved, every recollection, lasts only for an instant, just like the water that throws itself onto the beach, leaving a spontaneous imprint whose wavering contours, like the line drawn by a heart monitor, are never quite the same.

We all have this circuit and need to exercize it periodically. Cuddling, sucking, hugging etc. and daily playing with (a) one’s own body (b) another’s body and (c) the environment, are perpetually necessary to neurosomatic-endocrine health. Those who deny such primordial functions because of rigid imprinting on the Third (rationalistic) or Fourth (moralistic) circuit tend to become “dried up,” “prune-faced,” unattractive, “cold,” and muscularly rigid. The baby-functions of playing with one’s own body, another’s body and the environment continue throughout life in all animals. This “playfulness” is a marked characteristic of all conspicuously healthy individuals of the sort Maslow calls “self-actualizers.” If this initial imprint is negative — if the universe in general and other humans in particular are imprinted as dangerous, hostile and frightening — the Prover will go on throughout life adjusting all perceptions to fit this map. This is what is known as the “Injustice Collector” syndrome (in the language of Dr. Edmund Bergler). The female members of this imprint group become Radical Feminists; the male members are less organized and can be found in fringe groups of the extreme Left and extreme Right.

Henry called my house a laboratory of the soul. Enter this laboratory of the soul where every feeling will be X-rayed by Dr. Allendy to expose the blocks, the twists, the deformations, the scars which interfere with the flow of life. Enter this laboratory of the soul where incidents are refracted into a diary, dissected to prove that everyone of us carries a deforming mirror where he sees himself too small or too large, too fat or too thin, even Henry who believes himself so free, blithe, and unscarred. Enter here where one discovers that destiny can be directed, that one does not need to remain in bondage to the first wax imprint made on childhood sensibilities. One need not be branded by the first pattern. Once the deforming mirror is smashed, there is a possibility of wholeness; there is a possibility of joy.

The crucial issue of the times, he suggested, was the human person: a unique being, who lived in a material world but had intense spiritual longings, a mystery to himself and to others, a creature whose dignity emerged from an interior life imprinted with the image and likeness of God. The world wanted to hear what the Church had to say about the human person and the human condition, particularly in light of other proposals—“scientific, positivist, dialectical”—that imagined themselves humanistic and presented themselves as roads to liberation. At the end of 2,000 years of Christian history, the world had a question to put to the Church: What was Christian humanism and how was it different from the sundry other humanisms on offer in late modernity? What was the Church’s answer to modernity’s widespread “despair [about] any and all human existence”?

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" oder "life" of "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever.

All the little Indians in a half circle around Aunt Emily are getting an imprinting that will last for life. The sound of her voice reading will condition how they look upon themselves and the world. It will become part of the loved ambience of Battell Pond, a glint in the chromatic wonder of childhood. These small sensibilities will never lose the images of dark woods and bright lake. Nature to them will always be beneficent and female.

This is what we call the “You Always / You Never” trap. Our experience with our family members starts so early in life that our expectations about relationships become deeply imprinted, and anything that happens, no matter how subtle, often gets pressed into that old imprint. We have to remember that as we grow and change throughout our lives, so do our family members; by not giving them the benefit of the doubt, we may not see how they have changed.

Wherever you go and whatever you do, take care to leave only luminous imprints behind you. You are walking or driving down a road: bless that road and ask that all those who pass that way may receive peace and light and be led onto the right path. Why be content to live unconsciously and record nothing but dirt and disorder? Why not try to work like the sun which ceaselessly impregnates the universe with its light and warmth, its life and generosity? Try not

You are each born with the conscious knowledge of what has come before. Your brain is far from an empty slate, waiting for the first imprint of experience; it is already equipped with complete "equations", telling you who you are and where you have come from. Nor do you wipe that slate clean, symbolically speaking, before you write your life upon it. Instead, you draw upon what has gone before: the experiences of your ancestors, back through time immemorial.

Blessed moments are just like droplets of water, once they touch the ground they never return the same. Such are those beautiful memories that melt our hearts. Those moments happen only once. They take our breath away in a few minutes but imprint it in our memory forever. Once we no longer experience such moments our minds remember these beautiful memories but a few seconds later agony floods in. When a moment becomes a memory it is a very painful experience.

Leave an imprint. You're young now. But when you get older and look back at your life, you'll ask yourself a whole bunch of questions. Did I make a difference? Did I contribute something? Did my being here matter? Dud I do something that left an imprint? I'm not asking you to end hunger or repair the ozone. But I am asking you to think about your purpose --- to recognize that your life isn't infinite, and that you should use your limited time here to do something that matters.

The major difficulty in training animals is that they operate either by instinct or by rote. The shortcut of intelligence to make new associations that are not instinctive is minimally available. Therefore, imprinting in an animal’s mind the artificial connection that if it does a certain action, say, roll over, it will get a treat can be achieved only by mind-numbing repetition. It is a slow process that depends as much on luck as on hard work, all the more so when the animal is an adult.

Keeping a personal journal empowers you to see and improve, on a day-by-day basis, the way you’re developing and using your endowments. Because writing truly imprints the brain, it also helps you remember and apply the things you’re trying to do. In addition, it gives you a powerful contextual tool. As you take occasion—perhaps on a mission statement renewal retreat—to read over your experiences of past weeks, months, or years, you gain invaluable insight into repeating patterns and themes in your life.

The moment she stepped inside, she relaxed, as if her body and senses basked in the comfort of returning to her workplace. In the past, she used to live by mantras like passion and willpower, as if by imprinting the words on her mind, they would somehow breathe meaning into her life. Then one day she realised it felt like she was driving herself into a corner, and she resolved never to let those words dictate her life again. Instead, she learnt to listen to her body, her feelings, and be in happy places.

You’re right, poltergeists are the third classification. They’re not an entity in their own right, though. They’re altered versions of either spectres or imprints. When a ghost becomes highly emotional—if a researcher taunts them, for instance, or if they see a scene strongly reminiscent of a powerful moment from their life—they can gather additional energy and start affecting the physical world. Usually, that manifests as objects being thrown or as gusts of wind. Sometimes, poltergeists will try to touch you, which I’m told feels like an ice cube being run over your skin.

The homeless man sitting by the road begging for beer money? Christ made manifest. The grocery clerk standing on her feet all day saying a thousand hellos to a thousand different strangers? Christ made manifest. The nun walking through the subway station, the Buddhist monk catching the city bus, the window washer scrubbing the side of a Manhattan sky rise five hundred feet in the air? Christ made manifest, Christ made manifest, Christ made manifest. The image of God imprinted on every human, everywhere—the shiny stuff of heaven made tangible across the faces of ethnicities and cultures and people groups.

Family histories repeat, Nina thought. For a moment, she wondered if it was pointless to try to escape it. Maybe our parents’ lives are imprinted within us, maybe the only fate there is is the temptation of reliving their mistakes. Maybe, try as we might, we will never be able to outrun the blood that runs through our veins. Or. Or maybe we are free the moment we’re born. Maybe everything we’ve ever done is by our own hands. Nina wasn’t sure. She just knew that, somehow, after everything that had happened in her life, she had ended up all alone on the front stoop, left behind by a man she had dared to trust.

For what it is worth, Celaena,” he rasped, “I believe you were the closest thing to a friend Ansel has ever allowed herself to have. And I think she sent you away because she truly cared for you.” She hated her mouth for wobbling. “That doesn’t make it hurt any less.” “I didn’t think it would. But I think you will leave a lasting imprint on Ansel’s heart. You spared her life, and returned her father’s sword. She will not soon forget that. And maybe when she makes her next move to reclaim her title, she will remember the assassin from the North and the kindness you showed her, and try to leave fewer bodies in her wake.

Imprinting isn't a life sentence. Our people thrive with our significant by our side. We all know the importance of what has happened since Maggie came into our lives. The proof of how destiny works and moves is right here in this circle, in these four couples that will be joined today. But more than destiny and purpose is love. The love one feels for his significant is bigger than any ocean, deeper than any well, more powerful than any storm. When we join these significants today, they are telling us that they want no one else, will always be there for each other and will never part from their mate. Not that I have to tell them that.

To learn that his treasures had been lost months ago, and so far away, was no different from learning of the death, similarly distant in time and geography, of a beloved person. Such a death bears a peculiar imprint of doubt. To be told one day that someone has gone off to the other side of the world, and with whom you expect momentarily to be reunited, has actually been dead for many months, during which you have been going on with your life, unaware of this subtraction that has taken place, makes a mockery of the finality of death. Death is reduced to news. And news is always a little unreal—which is why we bear to take in so much of it.

What makes you come alive? What keeps you going ? Is there hope in your heart still or has the weariness of the world attached itself to you like a limpet leaving you afraid and passionless? Do you wake up with a smile and stars in your eyes after restless, feverish soul-searching in the night? Do you dream, dream beyond what is possible and beyond the narrow confines of your jaded existence? How old do you feel? How much in love can you fall? How much step is there in your dance, o how many notes left in your song ? Have you decided to sit by and watch others dance or weep at the dying notes of your own swan song? Shake your lethargy. Come alive to innocence once more. Believe past your own jaded cynicism. Pretend you are young once more. Jump up with a spring in your feet, fall breathlessly in love again. Let the colors of the world wash over your walls, brushing the greys away. Let the sunlight of hope flood through your doubting self, o let the music play. Dance till you ache and drop, laugh till you cry. Sing till your lungs burst, and journey till the very road ends and dream by the moonless starless nights. Sleep with a secret smile on your lips, your body flush with the imprints of lips. Come alive, my dearest ...reclaim yourself from the living dead. Life beckons

You love wealth and money not because it is a good thing in itself, but because it seems to be of service to your life’s enjoyment. So no matter how good God is, you do not love him unless you think that he is useful to you and your plans. Consequently, if you loved God in this way—with an eye to your own advantage—you would be affecting a servile love, and in your perverse and corrupt natural affection you would clearly be sinning. But never do you love even to this extent. For we never sense the benefits of God unless our heart has already been purified through the Holy Spirit and God’s kindness has been imprinted on a pure and pious heart.

The mother is downloading emotion programs into the infant’s right brain. The child is using the output of the mother’s right hemisphere as a template for the imprinting, the hardwiring, of circuits in his own right hemisphere.”2 You’re even determining the size of his hippocampi3 (more development confers better learning, stress management, and mental health), anterior cingulate (emotional regulation), and amygdala (emotional reactivity). This early brain wiring influences happiness levels and mood later in life, because better wiring means a better ability to connect with others, regulate positive or negative emotions, and soothe ourselves.

However, the main endeavor must always be to let particular observations precede general ideas, and not vice versa, as is usually and unfortunately the case; as though a child should come feet foremost into the world, or a verse be begun by writing down the rhyme! The ordinary method is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.

So, it is natural to man that he should live in a society of many. More fully: in other animals, there is imprinted a natural inclination toward all the things which are useful or harmful to them, as the sheep naturally esteems the wolf to be its enemy. . . But man has a natural knowledge of those things which are necessary for his life only in common, as he, so to speak, strives through reason to move from universal principles to those things which are necessary for human life. But it is not possible for one man to attain, through his own reason, to everything of this sort. And so it is necessary to man that he live in a multitude, that one might be helped by another.

Most people don't know what they want unless they see it in context. Relativity makes us make decisions in life. But it can also make us downright miserable. Why? Because jealousy and envy spring from comparing our lot in life with that of others. A great law of human action is that in order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. Price tags by themselves are not necessarily anchors. They become anchors when we contemplate buying a product or service at that particular price. That's when the imprint is set. With everything you do, you should train yourself to question your repeated behaviors. According to the standard economic framework, consumers' willingness to pay is one of the two inputs that determine market prices ( this is the demand ). But what consumers are willing to pay can easily be manipulated and this means that consumers don't in fact have a good handle on their own preferences and the prices they are willing to pay for different goods and experiences. Zero is not just another price, it turns out. Zero is an emotional hot button, a source of irrational excitement. Behavioral economists believe that people are susceptible to irrelevant influences from their immediate environment ( which we call context effects ), irrelevant emotions, shortsightedness and other forms of irrationality.

I think we all feel great ambivalence at the sight of our own Horoscope. On the one hand we’re proud to see that the sky is imprinted on our individual life, like a postmark with a date stamped on a letter – this makes it distinct, one of a kind. But at the same time it’s a form of imprisonment in space, like a tattooed prison number. There’s no escaping it. I cannot be someone other than I am. How awful. We’d prefer to think we’re free, able to reinvent ourselves whenever we choose. This connection with something as great and monumental as the sky makes us feel uncomfortable. We’d rather be small, and then our petty little sins would be forgivable. Therefore I’m convinced that we should get to know our prison very well.

Awakening The historical agonizing moments of hysteria mocking, left negative imprints into my tomorrow mourning, triggering constant anxiousness in the moment worrying, worrying about the past is not living for tomorrow. Awakening from historical trauma is moving forward to live today and for tomorrow. Facing tomorrow, must be living in the present day. Living at the moment, awakening begins. Feeling the moment awakening awakens. Awakening allows genuine moments to penetrate. Awakening creates new memories of the present time. Awakening aware of the past. Awakening is in the present. Awakening willing to be there for tomorrow. You have awakened from the past, living in present and facing tomorrow. You are well awaken living your life. by Tina Leung: I Face Forward poem

The bed sank as Amar sat beside me. Warm fingertips trailed across my cheek, brushing the hair from my forehead and sending sparks of light up my spine. His lips grazed my temples. “Soon, jaani.” I waited until his footsteps echoed outside before squinting around the room. Without him, it seemed colder. I retraced his touch lightly, careful to avoid smudging the imprint of his lips against my skin. He had called me jaani--“my life.” I stared at the closed door. Where his skin touched mine felt burnished, hallowed by the words he left hanging in the air. Jaani jaani jaani. I wanted him to say it again. I wanted him to say it closer to my ear, my neck…my lips. But the surge of warmth faded as the memory of my dream prickled behind my eyes. Magic was not the only coaxing, dangerous thing around me.

happen, and it’s not uncommon for them to happen for some people. What people usually see, if their experiences are real, is what needs to be seen, what needs to be freed. As one great Buddhist abbess said to me, “You usually don’t have a past life that shows you what a sterling example of enlightenment you were, because enlightenment leaves no trace; it is like a fire that burns clean. There’s no karmic imprint it leaves behind.” She said if you have any past lives, you’re probably going to see what a grade-A jackass you were—which I loved, and which has corresponded to my experience. I didn’t necessarily always see what a grade-A jackass I was, although in some cases, I saw that I was a lot more than a grade-A jackass. Most of the past lives I saw were moments of confusion, moments of unresolved karmic conflict.

Crossover' is a word scientists use to describe dolphins' soaring over seas, their traveling so free and fast, so high-spirited and almost effervescent that their sleek bodies barely skim the waves. The suggestion of splashes from tail and pectoral leaves a luminous wake across the water. For these crossover miles, the dolphins, like their human terrestrial mammal kin, belong more to the element of air than the sea.... Held in [the dolphins'] fluid embrace, I pulled my arms close against my sides and our communal speed increased... Racing around the lagoon, I opened my eyes again to see nothing but an emerald underwater blur. And then I remembered what I had either forgotten long ago or never quite fully realized. This feeling of being carried along by other animals was familiar. Animals had carried me all my life. I was a crossover--carried along in the generous and instructive slipstream of other species. And I had always navigated my life with them in mind, going between the human and animal worlds--a crossover myself. By including animals in my life I was always engaging with the Other, imagining the animal mind and life. For almost half a century, my bond with animals had shaped my character and revealed the world to me. At every turning point in my life an animal had mirrored or influenced my fate. Mine was not simply a life with other animals, but a life because of animals. It had been this way since my beginning, born on a forest lookout station in the High Sierras, surrounded by millions of acres of wilderness and many more animals than humans. Since infancy, the first faces I imprinted, the first faces I ever really loved, were animal.

his nightmares, he and the Bird fought death matches, the Bird trying to beat him to death, Louie trying to strangle the life from the sergeant. He’d been staying as far as he could from the Bird, who had been whipping about camp like a severed power line, but the sergeant always hunted him down. Then, abruptly, the violence stopped. The Bird had left camp. The guards said that he had gone to the mountains to ready the promised new camp for the POW officers. The August 22 kill-all death date was one week away. On August 15, Louie woke gravely ill. He was now having some twenty bloody bowel movements a day. After the month’s weigh-in, he didn’t record his weight in his diary, but he did note that he’d lost six kilos, more than thirteen pounds, from a frame already wasted from starvation. When he gripped his leg, his fingers sank in, and the imprints

What do we inherit, and how, and why? The relatively new field of epigenetics studies the impact of environment and experience on genes themselves. How much had the gene pool of the Waldens - that apparently cheerful extended family I had seen singing on YouTube - formed me? I did not come from the line of small, wiry, dark-eyed people of the shtetl, the men swaying over crumbling tombstones, prayer books in their hands. The imprint of pogroms, of the difficulties and sorrows of immigrant life was not mine - at least not in the physical sense. But I had carried these things a long way in my heart. I was of that dusty and doomed Polish village - and I was not. What had I inherited psychologically? What was in my blood? I was made of three people: my mother, my father, Ben Walden. Disparate worlds had been floating and colliding within me all my life.

As they are shutting up Smoker in this unorthodox fashion I catch the image of Ginger that has so stunned and infuriated him. A flash — the spare boyish figure. Dark nipples on pink skin over protruding ribs, red tuft of pubic hair. Arms, legs, and almost nothing between them. She’s looking at me, or rather at Smoker, a faraway, completely impassive look. One arm is twisted, and there’s a reddish sore below her elbow. She licks it. Then lowers her arm, not even attempting to cover herself, and walks inside the shower stall. That walk is imprinted on Smoker’s retinas in a sequence of narrow snapshots, one sliding over the next. (...) She doesn’t care how many people witness her fights with Noble, doesn’t care who Blind is with if he’s not with her. It’s all the same to her whether she’s clothed or naked, a girl or a boy, she’s a social animal, the kind that is best adapted to life in the House. Smoker is right at least in that — Ginger is a monster, like many of us. Like the best of us.

When we are in-tune with our inner being and our intents match in accordance to the universe, we come to experience a mysterious kind of life force. A vital psycho-energetic fundamental substance, which constantly propels us forwards, and with such passion, too. It empowers us to impose our will and imprint our intent on the universe. This vibrational energy not only permeates us, but it also spreads throughout the entirety of existence — that which seems to be outside of us. Such sobering realisation creeps up on you once you’ve been touched by the ‘otherness’. You instantly know that it’s not really about You. But rather, it’s about the ‘U’ in the ‘US’. Truly, no man is an island. This liberating moment leaves us with a transcendental sensation of belonging to the whole; of ‘mattering’ and of being able to co-create compassionate change in the world. Allow this Prima Materia to flow through you unobstructed and you start living a magical existence through which synchronicity reaches notorious heights and nothing is impossible.

We human pioneers of the “great camping trip,” as George Attla would dub it, will remain incorporated, as it were, in the fabric that weaves our history. But what of the four hundred pioneer dogs? Those wonders of God’s creation, who weathered Arctic gales, slept in snowbanks, suffered exhaustion, sore, raw feet, and, to some degree, human ignorance, and neglect. What of them? Leaders Genghis, Kiana, and Sonny. Others, who strained in wheel, team, and swing positions, and at times, in lead as well, were Kuchik, Koyuk, Snippy, Eska, Shiak, Flame, Bandit, Casper, and Crazy. Names listed on a sheet of paper seem such a hollow tribute to twelve of a person’s most loyal, tested friends. And hollow that tribute would be, if all twelve of them were not imprinted indelibly in my heart. Those twelve devoted, steadfast trail companions bestowed upon me the one true adventure of my life. In so doing, they became the pathfinders for all ensuing generations of endurance race dogs. Genghis, Kiana, Sonny, Kuchik, Koyuk, Snippy, Eska, Shiak, Flame, Bandit, Casper, and Crazy—a renewed and heartfelt salute.

A note of caution: epigenetics is also on the verge of transforming into a dangerous idea. Epigenetic modifications of genes can potentially superpose historical and environmental information on cells and genomes—but this capacity is speculative, limited, idiosyncratic, and unpredictable: a parent with an experience of starvation produces children with obesity and overnourishment, while a father with the experience of tuberculosis, say, does not produce a child with an altered response to tuberculosis. Most epigenetic “memories” are the consequence of ancient evolutionary pathways, and cannot be confused with our longing to affix desirable legacies on our children. As with genetics in the early twentieth century, epigenetics is now being used to justify junk science and enforce stifling definitions of normalcy. Diets, exposures, memories, and therapies that purport to alter heredity are eerily reminiscent of Lysenko’s attempt to “reeducate” wheat using shock therapy. Mothers are being asked to minimize anxiety during their pregnancy—lest they taint all their children, and their children, with traumatized mitochondria. Lamarck is being rehabilitated into the new Mendel. These glib notions about epigenetics should invite skepticism. Environmental information can certainly be etched on the genome. But most of these imprints are recorded as “genetic memories” in the cells and genomes of individual organisms—not carried forward across generations. A man who loses a leg in an accident bears the imprint of that accident in his cells, wounds, and scars—but does not bear children with shortened legs. Nor has the uprooted life of my family seem to have burdened me, or my children, with any wrenching sense of estrangement. Despite Menelaus’s admonitions, the blood of our fathers is lost in us—and so, fortunately, are their foibles and sins. It is an arrangement that we should celebrate more than rue. Genomes and epigenomes exist to record and transmit likeness, legacy, memory, and history across cells and generations. Mutations, the reassortment of genes, and the erasure of memories counterbalance these forces, enabling unlikeness, variation, monstrosity, genius, and reinvention—and the refulgent possibility of new beginnings, generation upon generation.

What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I’ll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory—property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life—don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides. If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart—and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it might be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted in their memory! But the convoy guards stroke the black handles of the pistols in their pockets. And we sit there, three in a row, sober fellows, quiet friends.

So many synapses,' Drisana said. 'Ten trillion synapses in the cortex alone.' Danlo made a fist and asked, 'What do the synapses look like?' 'They're modelled as points of light. Ten trillion points of light.' She didn't explain how neurotransmitters diffuse across the synapses, causing the individual neurons to fire. Danlo knew nothing of chemistry or electricity. Instead, she tried to give him some idea of how the heaume's computer stored and imprinted language. 'The computer remembers the synapse configuration of other brains, brains that hold a particular language. This memory is a simulation of that language. And then in your brain, Danlo, select synapses are excited directly and strengthened. The computer speeds up the synapses' natural evolution.' Danlo tapped the bridge of his nose; his eyes were dark and intent upon a certain sequence of thought. 'The synapses are not allowed to grow naturally, yes?' 'Certainly not. Otherwise imprinting would be impossible.' 'And the synapse configuration – this is really the learning, the essence of another's mind, yes?' 'Yes, Danlo.' 'And not just the learning – isn't this so? You imply that anything in the mind of another could be imprinted in my mind?' 'Almost anything.' 'What about dreams? Could dreams be imprinted?' 'Certainly.' 'And nightmares?' Drisana squeezed his hand and reassured him. 'No one would imprint a nightmare into another.' 'But it is possible, yes?' Drisana nodded her head. 'And the emotions ... the fears or loneliness or rage?' 'Those things, too. Some imprimaturs – certainly they're the dregs of the City – some do such things.' Danlo let his breath out slowly. 'Then how can I know what is real and what is unreal? Is it possible to imprint false memories? Things or events that never happened? Insanity? Could I remember ice as hot or see red as blue? If someone else looked at the world through shaida eyes, would I be infected with this way of seeing things?' Drisana wrung her hands together, sighed, and looked helplessly at Old Father. 'Oh ho, the boy is difficult, and his questions cut like a sarsara!' Old Father stood up and painfully limped over to Danlo. Both his eyes were open, and he spoke clearly. 'All ideas are infectious, Danlo. Most things learned early in life, we do not choose to learn. Ah, and much that comes later. So, it's so: the two wisdoms. The first wisdom: as best we can, we must choose what to put into our brains. And the second wisdom: the healthy brain creates its own ecology; the vital thoughts and ideas eventually drive out the stupid, the malignant and the parasitical.

He had no desire to form attachments to people. That would have required more trust and intimacy than he could summon. But he did care for all the Hathaway brood, even Leo. And then there was Win, for whom Kev would have died a thousand times over. He would never degrade Win with his touch, or dare to assume a place in her life other than as a protector. She was too fine, too rare. As she grew into womanhood, every man in the county was enthralled by her beauty. Outsiders tended to view Win as an ice maiden, neat and unruffled and cerebral. But outsiders knew nothing of the sly wit and warmth that lurked beneath her perfect surface. Outsiders hadn't seen Win teaching Poppy the steps to a quadrille until they had both collapsed to the floor in giggles. Or frog-hunting with Beatrix, her apron filled with leaping amphibians. Or the droll way she read a Dickens novel with an array of voices and sounds, until the entire family howled at her cleverness. Kev loved her. Not in the way that novelists and poets described. Nothing so tame. He loved her beyond earth, heaven, or hell. Every moment out of her company was agony; every moment with her was the only peace he had ever known. Every touch of her hands left an imprint that ate down his soul. He would have killed himself before admitting it to anyone. The truth was buried deep within his heart.

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person “the world today” or “life” or “reality” he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever. For me, this moment—four years is a moment in history—was the war. The war was and is reality for me. I still instinctively live and think in its atmosphere. These are some of its characteristics: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the President of the United States, and he always has been. The other two eternal world leaders are Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin. America is not, never has been, and never will be what the songs and poems call it, a land of plenty. Nylon, meat, gasoline, and steel are rare. There are too many jobs and not enough workers. Money is very easy to earn but rather hard to spend, because there isn’t very much to buy. Trains are always late and “always crowded with “servicemen.” The war will always be fought very far from America and it will never end. Nothing in America stands still for very long, including the people, who are always either leaving or on leave. People in America cry often. Sixteen is the key and crucial and natural age for a human being to be, and people of all other ages are ranged in an orderly manner ahead of and behind you as a harmonious setting for the sixteen-year-olds of this world.

There was a mild, damp wind blowing. It was weather I was quite familiar with; and a sudden feeling and presentiment ran through me: that New Year’s Day was not a day that differed from any other, not the first day of a new life when I could remake the acquaintance of Gilberte with the die still uncast, as though on the very first day of Creation when no past yet existed, as though the sorrows she had sometimes caused me had been wiped out, and with them all the future ones they might portend, as though I lived in a new world in which nothing remained of the old except one thing: my wish that Gilberte would love me. I realized that, since my heart yearned in this way for the redesign of a universe which had not satisfied it, this meant that my heart had not changed; and I could see there was no reason why Gilberte’s should have changed either. I sensed that, though it was a new friendship for me, it would not be a new friendship for her, just as no years are ever separated from each other by a frontier, and that though[…]“it was a new friendship for me, it would not be a new friendship for her, just as no years are ever separated from each other by a frontier, and that though we may put different names to them, they remain beyond the reach of our yearnings, unaware of these and unaffected by them. Though I might dedicate this year to Gilberte, though I might try to imprint upon New Year’s Day the special notion I had made up for it, as a religion is superimposed on the blind workings of nature, it was in vain: I was aware that this day did not know it was called New Year’s Day, and that it was coming to an end in the twilight in a way that was not unknown to me. What I recognized, what I sensed “in that mild wind blowing about the Morris column with its posters, was the reappearance of former times, with the never-ending unchangingness of their substance, their familiar dampness, their ignorant fluidity.

Rennie looked again and his hand attached itself to his arm, which was part of him. He wasn’t very far away. She fell in love with him because he was the first thing she saw after her life had been saved. This was the only explanation she could think of. She wished, later, when she was no longer feeling dizzy but was sitting up, trying to ignore the little sucking tubes that were coming out of her and the constant ache, that it had been a potted begonia or a stuffed rabbit, some safe bedside object. Jake sent her roses but by then it was too late. I imprinted on him, she thought; like a duckling, like a baby chick. She knew about imprinting; once, when she was hard up for cash, she’d done a profile for Owl Magazine of a man who believed geese should be used as safe and loyal substitute for watchdogs. It was best to be there yourself when the goslings came out of the eggs, he said. Then they’d follow you to the ends of the earth. Rennie had smirked because that man seemed to think that being followed to the ends of the earth by a flock of adoring geese was both desirable and romantic, but she’d written it all down in his own words. Now she was behaving like a goose, and the whole thing put her on foul temper. It was inappropriate to have fallen in love with Daniel, who had no distinguishing features that Rennie could see. She hardly even knew what he looked like, since, during the examinations before the operation, she hadn’t bothered to look at him. One did not look at doctors; they were functionaries, they were what your mother one hoped you would marry, they were fifties, they were passe. It wasn’t only inappropriate, it was ridiculous. It was expected. Falling in love with your doctor was something middle-aged married women did, women in soaps, women in nurse novels and sex-and-scalpel epics with titles like Surgery and nurse with big tits and doctors who looked like Dr. Kildare on the covers. It was the sort of thing Toronto Life did stories about, soft-core gossip masquerading as hard-nosed research expose. Rennie could not stand being guilty of such a banality.

The biology of potential illness arises early in life. The brain’s stress-response mechanisms are programmed by experiences beginning in infancy, and so are the implicit, unconscious memories that govern our attitudes and behaviours toward ourselves, others and the world. Cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and the other conditions we examined are not abrupt new developments in adult life, but culminations of lifelong processes. The human interactions and biological imprinting that shaped these processes took place in periods of our life for which we may have no conscious recall. Emotionally unsatisfying child-parent interaction is a theme running through the one hundred or so detailed interviews I conducted for this book. These patients suffer from a broadly disparate range of illnesses, but the common threads in their stories are early loss or early relationships that were profoundly unfulfilling emotionally. Early childhood emotional deprivation in the histories of adults with serious illness is also verified by an impressive number of investigations reported in the medical and psychological literature. In an Italian study, women with genital cancers were reported to have felt less close to their parents than healthy controls. They were also less demonstrative emotionally. A large European study compared 357 cancer patients with 330 controls. The women with cancer were much less likely than controls to recall their childhood homes with positive feelings. As many as 40 per cent of cancer patients had suffered the death of a parent before the age of seventeen—a ratio of parental loss two and a half times as great as had been suffered by the controls. The thirty-year follow-up of Johns Hopkins medical students was previously quoted. Those graduates whose initial interviews in medical school had revealed lower than normal childhood closeness with their parents were particularly at risk. By midlife they were more likely to commit suicide or develop mental illness, or to suffer from high blood pressure, coronary heart disease or cancer. In a similar study, Harvard undergraduates were interviewed about their perception of parental caring. Thirty-five years later these subjects’ health status was reviewed. By midlife only a quarter of the students who had reported highly positive perceptions of parental caring were sick. By comparison, almost 90 per cent of those who regarded their parental emotional nurturing negatively were ill. “Simple and straightforward ratings of feelings of being loved are significantly related to health status,” the researchers concluded.

That’s right, isn’t it?” Harry urged him. “You died, but I’m talking to you. . . . You can walk around Hogwarts and everything, can’t you?” “Yes,” said Nearly Headless Nick quietly, “I walk and talk, yes.” “So you came back, didn’t you?” said Harry urgently. “People can come back, right? As ghosts. They don’t have to disappear completely. Well?” he added impatiently, when Nick continued to say nothing. Nearly Headless Nick hesitated, then said, “Not everyone can come back as a ghost.” “What d’you mean?” said Harry quickly. “Only . . . only wizards.” “Oh,” said Harry, and he almost laughed with relief. “Well, that’s okay then, the person I’m asking about is a wizard. So he can come back, right?” Nick turned away from the window and looked mournfully at Harry. “He won’t come back.” “Who?” “Sirius Black.” said Nick. “But you did!” said Harry angrily. “You came back — you’re dead and you didn’t disappear —” “Wizards can leave an imprint of themselves upon the earth, to walk palely where their living selves once trod,” said Nick miserably. “But very few wizards choose that path.” “Why not?” said Harry. “Anyway — it doesn’t matter — Sirius won’t care if it’s unusual, he’ll come back, I know he will!” And so strong was his belief that Harry actually turned his head to check the door, sure, for a split second, that he was going to see Sirius, pearly white and transparent but beaming, walking through it toward him. “He will not come back,” repeated Nick quietly. “He will have . . . gone on.” “What d’you mean, ‘gone on’?” said Harry quickly. “Gone on where? Listen — what happens when you die, anyway? Where do you go? Why doesn’t everyone come back? Why isn’t this place full of ghosts? Why — ?” “I cannot answer,” said Nick. “You’re dead, aren’t you?” said Harry exasperatedly. “Who can answer better than you?” “I was afraid of death,” said Nick. “I chose to remain behind. I sometimes wonder whether I oughtn’t to have . . . Well, that is neither here nor there. . . . In fact, I am neither here nor there. . . .” He gave a small sad chuckle. “I know nothing of the secrets of death, Harry, for I choose my feeble imitation of life instead. I believe learned wizards study the matter in the Department of Mysteries —” “Don’t talk to me about that place!” said Harry fiercely. “I am sorry not to have been more help,” said Nick gently. “Well . . . well, do excuse me . . . the feast, you know . . .” And he left the room, leaving Harry there alone, gazing blankly at the wall through which Nick had disappeared. Harry felt almost as though he had lost his godfather all over again in losing the hope that he might be able to see or speak to him once more. He walked slowly and miserably back up through the empty castle, wondering whether he would ever feel cheerful again.

Should a child be allowed to “decide for himself” on matters related to God? Aren’t we forcing our religion down children’s throats when we tell them what to believe? Let me answer with an illustration from nature. A little gosling (baby goose) has a peculiar characteristic that is relevant at this point. Shortly after it hatches from its shell it becomes attached, or “imprinted,” to the first thing seen moving nearby. From that time forward, the gosling follows that particular object when it moves in the vicinity. Ordinarily, it becomes imprinted to the mother goose which hatched the new generation. If she is removed, however, the gosling settles for any mobile substitute, whether alive or not. In fact, a gosling becomes imprinted most easily to a blue football bladder, dragged by on a string. A week later, the baby falls in line behind the bladder as it scoots by. Time is the critical factor in this process. The gosling is vulnerable to imprinting for only a few seconds after hatching from the shell. If that opportunity is lost, it cannot be regained. In other words, there is a critical, brief period in the gosling’s life when this instinctual learning is possible. There is also a critical period when certain kinds of instruction are easier in the life of children. Although humans have no instincts (only drives, reflexes, urges, etc.), there is a brief period during childhood when youngsters are vulnerable to religious training. Their concepts of right and wrong are formulated during this time, and their view of God begins to solidify. As in the case of the gosling, the opportunity of that period must be seized when it is available. Leaders of the Catholic Church have been widely quoted as saying, “Give us the child until he is seven years old and we’ll have him for life.” They are usually correct, because permanent attitudes can be instilled during these seven vulnerable years. Unfortunately, however, the opposite is also true. The absence or misapplication of instruction through that prime-time period may place a severe limitation on the depth of a child’s later devotion to God. When parents withhold indoctrination from their small children, allowing them to “decide for themselves,” the adults are almost guaranteeing that their youngsters will “decide” in the negative. If parents want their children to have a meaningful faith, they must give up any misguided attempts at objectivity. Children listen closely to discover just how much their parents believe what they preach. Any indecision or ethical confusion from the parent is likely to be magnified in the child. After the middle adolescent age (ending at about fifteen years), children resent being told exactly what to believe. They don’t want religion “forced down their throats,” and should be given more autonomy in what they believe. If the early exposure has been properly conducted, children will have an inner mainstay to steady them. Their early indoctrination, then, is the key to the spiritual attitudes they carry into adulthood.

John went on to introduce the topic of addictive drugs, which he described as having the biggest influence on the soul’s pathway. They are generally the saddest souls in the afterlife as they struggle with their addiction, which has totally affected the purpose of their previous life. Drug use leaves an imprint on the psyche that is difficult to remove. Sometimes this imprint even remains ingrained as those spirits move into their next incarnation, as part of their karma, so that they can continue to learn lessons about their addictions.

What passes for morality or spirituality in the vast majority of people's lives is the way everybody they grew up with thinks. Some would call it conditioning or even imprinting.

Both you and the meeting attendees are falling prey to an evolutionarily imprinted lull in wakefulness that favors an afternoon nap, called the post-prandial alertness dip (from the Latin prandium, “meal”). This brief descent from high-degree wakefulness to low-level alertness reflects an innate drive to be asleep and napping in the afternoon, and not working. It appears to be a normal part of the daily rhythm of life. Should you ever have to give a presentation at work, for your own sake—and that of the conscious state of your listeners—if you can, avoid the midafternoon slot.

The etymological root of the word character stretches back to the Ancient Greek word for a “stamping tool”. Our life experiences stamp their imprint on us and in conjunction with our genetic dispositions help shape our character. This stamp of experience, however, operates at both the level of the body and the mind and for this reason our character is expressed as much in our bodies as it is through our minds.

next. My dad called this imprinting. In the 1980s he’d have NASA leaders, IBM executives, educators, and athletes write down specific memories of strong performances on note cards and put a plan in place to review and relive them. He understood that words trigger pictures, which impact emotions, which lead to performances. He’d teach me this process as flick back/flick up—flick back to a past moment, and then flick up and apply that past behavior to a future moment.

Animals are certainly attached to us, but they do not love us in the true sense of the word: their dependence is ensured when we take advantage of the imprint mechanism, the biological phenomenon that guarantees they will identify with us for life.

If he slipped and fell in, would I dive after him? Absolutely. That’s love, and I still love him. I always will love him. It shouldn’t be that way. Something as brief as our marriage should die like a roman candle. One blaze of glory, imprinted on the retina for a few moments and then fading. This wasn’t that. This was a flash fire, and I am scarred for life, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Montessori kindergarten. Never before or since have I encountered a school so vibrant with love, laughter, and gentleness. The teachers treated the children with deep, honest respect, never patronizing them, never coercing them, never manipulating them with disapproval or praise, giving them an experience of unconditional love. Those kindergarten days are now but a foggy memory to the children who went on from there into the harsh, degrading world of separation, but in my mind’s eye I see a small golden glow inside of them, and within that glow I see a seed. It is the seed of the unconditional love and respect they received there, awaiting the moment to sprout and blossom and deliver the same fruit that my children received to those they touch. Maybe a year or two of kindergarten isn’t enough to overcome the brutal apparatus of separation that governs modern childhood, but who knows when and how it might blossom forth? Who knows what effects it will bear? To be in a sanctuary of love and respect every day for one or two years during such a formative stage of life imprints a person with a tendency toward compassion, security, self-love, and self-respect. Who knows how that imprint will alter the child’s choices later in life? Who knows how those choices will change the world?

I tune in to all the people I’ll see and meet and interact with in the future, through my blogs, teleclasses, radio shows, podcasts, emails, social media, and keynotes. I feel a connection with everyone in my future and everyone in my past. I feel love flowing from my heart to all of them. I carry within me the indelible imprint of that time spent in communion with the infinite. I know that it will infuse my whole day, elevating my mind to a level at which it would never be capable of functioning unless I had centered myself at the start of the day. The insights and ideas that arise in and after meditation are usually at a level of brilliance far above that of which I am capable in my ordinary waking consciousness. From this elevated perspective I’m making connections in a way that my ordinary consciousness cannot match. I know I will find solutions, solve problems, and experience breakthroughs that I would never have had were my daily activities not infused with the wisdom, creativity, clarity, and joy of Bliss Brain. This produces a fundamentally different life from one lived at the level of ordinary consciousness. I lived at that address for a long time before I discovered the ecstasy of connection with the infinite. At that level of ordinary reality, I believed my fears were real. I believed that my limitations were objective facts. I believed that who I was today was determined by my past experiences. My mind was trapped in a small subset of possibilities. Now that I know that the expansive state is possible, and that I can reach it in meditation every day, I see limitless possibilities. I’m no longer stuck in that small local mind that sees problems as real and limitations as facts. When I move into Bliss Brain, I see vistas of possibility in which those problems and limitations cease to exist. They are only real at that limited level of mind, and they disappear when you consciously choose to ascend your awareness to the level of infinite nonlocal mind. You then bring the solutions and possibilities of that level back down to your daily walk through life. This creates a completely different experience than a life trapped in the confinement of local mind.

And so, I think, there is a collective depression among us, not so much dealt with as glossed over and suppressed. Each of us, as individual actors in a larger drama, carries an imprint of a larger despair. We are coping with intense amounts of chaos and fear, both personally and together. We are all being challenged, in one form or another, to recreate our lives.

Behind every person is a story, a collection of moments that shape the contours of their existence. It's a narrative woven with threads of joy and sorrow, painted with strokes of laughter and tears. Each individual carries within them a unique history, a composition of experiences that define who they are. Beyond the surface, there are layers of emotions, a complex interplay of happiness, pain, and everything in between. It's a journey marked by footprints of relationships, imprints of challenges, and echoes of accomplishments. Behind every person is a living novel, a mosaic of memories, and a reflection of the intricate dance between resilience and vulnerability. So, in the weave of life, let's explore the myriad stories that make each person extraordinary and incomprehensibly beautiful.

Of all the luxuries that came with her new life, Belle was certain she would never grow accustomed to the sheer vastness of knowledge available to her. Her library. She had plans to seek out a specific book, the one that had been gifted to her after she read it so many times it had imprinted in her mind. It had everything she loved in a book- an unfamiliar, faraway setting, magic spells and sword fights, and characters in disguise. She had brought it from home and added it to the library only a few weeks before, shelving it hastily before they left for Paris. Normally she would wander the stacks aimlessly, taking the time to pause and pull books from the shelves.

Everything you do, every thought you have, every word you say creates a memory that you will hold in your body. It’s imprinted on you and affects you in subtle ways – ways you are not always aware of. With that in mind, be very conscious and selective.

Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes. That was

When materialists like Daniel Dennett say that a person's experiences *are* the chains of neural firings in her brain *they are mistaking the {animal's} tracks for the {animal's} gait; the imprinted image for the phenomenon.*

I love him. I still do and I always will. He was a huge wave that left a lot of imprints on my life, and I’ll feel the weight of that love until I die.

Right now, I feel it. Life. I can feel what living is. It’s in one moment to the next. One breath that leads to another. One touch, one sigh, one glance, creating a perfect moment that is imprinted forever.

Healing our mind is crucial, because otherwise our problems, which are beginningless, become endless. We may use medicine or some other external means to heal a particular disease, but the disease will return unless we heal our mind. If we do nothing to heal our mind, there is always the danger that we will again create the cause of the disease, that we will repeat the actions that caused us to become physically unhealthy. We will then experience the same illness in future lives, or even in this life. Curing disease through external means is not the best solution because the cause of disease is not external. Bacteria, viruses, spirits, and so forth may act as external conditions for disease, but disease itself has no external cause. In the West, however, the external conditions for a particular disease are usually regarded as its cause. The cause of disease is not external; it is in the mind – or we could say, it is the mind. Disease is caused by our self-cherishing, ignorance, anger, attachment, and other delusions and by the negative actions motivated by these negative thoughts. Our negative thoughts and actions leave imprints on our mind, which then manifest as disease or other problems. The imprints also make it possible for disturbing thoughts and negative actions to arise again. A physical sign necessarily has a physical cause, but the physical cause arises because of the inner cause, the imprints left on the mind by negative thoughts and actions. To fully understand disease, we have to understand the inner cause, which is the actual cause of disease and which also creates the physical conditions for disease. As long as we ignore its inner cause, we have no real cure for disease. We must study its development and recognize that its cause is in the mind. Once we recognize this, we will automatically understand that the healing of disease also has to come from the mind. (p. 4-5)

European empires of the nineteenth century were economy empires, cheaply obtained by taking advantage of new technologies, and, when the cost of keeping thein rose a century later, quickly discarded. In the process, they unbalanced world relations, overturned ancient ways of life, and opened the way for a new global civilization… The technological means the imperialists used to create their empires, however, have left a far deeper imprint than the ideas that motivated them. In their brief domination, the Europeans passed on to the peoples of Asia and Africa their own fascination with machinery and innovation. This has been the true legacy of imperialism.

Music you love is imprinted on all that is you, a tattoo of sorts that fades too deep into the skin to see but remains against the bone, a memory of youth or an important era of your life.