Life Is A Gradual Process Quotes

if, in the beginning, there were so few people on the face of the earth, and now there are so many, where did all those new souls come from?" The answer is simple. In certain reincarnations, we divide into two. Our souls divide as do crystals and start, cells and plants." Our soul divides into two, and those souls are in turn transformed into two and so, within a few generations, we are scattered over a large part of the earth. We form part of what the Alchemists call the Anima Mundi, the sould of the world; the truth is that if the Anima Mundi were merely to keep dividing, it would keep growing, but it would also become gradually weaker. That is why, as well as dividing into two, we also find ourselves. And the process of finding ourselves is called love. Because when a sould divides, it always divides into a male part and a female part. In each life, we feel a mysterious boligation to find at least one of those soul mates. The greater love that seperated them feels pleased with the Love that brings them together again. But how will i know who my soul mate is? By taking risks. By rising failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for love. As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.

With the beginning of life, comes the thirst for truth, whereas the ability to lie is gradually acquired in the process of trying to stay alive.

Not too long ago thousands spent their lives as recluses to find spiritual vision in the solitude of nature. Modern man need not become a hermit to achieve this goal, for it is neither ecstasy nor world-estranged mysticism his era demands, but a balance between quantitative and qualitative reality. Modern man, with his reduced capacity for intuitive perception, is unlikely to benefit from the contemplative life of a hermit in the wilderness. But what he can do is to give undivided attention, at times, to a natural phenomenon, observing it in detail, and recalling all the scientific facts about it he may remember. Gradually, however, he must silence his thoughts and, for moments at least, forget all his personal cares and desires, until nothing remains in his soul but awe for the miracle before him. Such efforts are like journeys beyond the boundaries of narrow self-love and, although the process of intuitive awakening is laborious and slow, its rewards are noticeable from the very first. If pursued through the course of years, something will begin to stir in the human soul, a sense of kinship with the forces of life consciousness which rule the world of plants and animals, and with the powers which determine the laws of matter. While analytical intellect may well be called the most precious fruit of the Modern Age, it must not be allowed to rule supreme in matters of cognition. If science is to bring happiness and real progress to the world, it needs the warmth of man's heart just as much as the cold inquisitiveness of his brain.

Healing hurts. If you break your leg, there is no stage in the healing process when your leg feels better than it does after it has healed. There is pain and itching and loss of strength. From the moment your leg is broken, it continues to feel bad … until, gradually, it starts to feel less bad. It's appropriate that it hurts.

In reality, genuine epiphanies are extremely rare. In contemporary adult life maturation & acquiescence to reality are gradual processes. Modern usage usually deploys epiphany as a metaphor. It is usually only in dramatic representations, religious iconography, and the 'magical thinking' of children that insight is compressed to a sudden blinding flash.

Trying to describe the process of becoming an alcoholic is like trying to describe air. It's too big and mysterious and pervasive to be defined. Alcohol is everywhere in your life, omnipresent, and you're both aware and unaware of it almost all the time, all you know is you'd die without it, and there is no simple reason why this happens, no single moment, no physiological event that pushes a heavy drinker across a concrete line into alcoholism. It's a slow, gradual, insidious, elusive becoming.

Life [can] become unbalanced, and in the process God gets pushed to the fringes. Instead of staying at the center of our lives, Christ gradually gets relegated to the shadows. Don’t let this happen to you!

Maybe I don’t want it to pass because that would mean an acceptance that life is like this: just a gradual process of loss.

Two or three million years ago, the Earth was a ball of fire, revolving arround it's own axis. It took millions of years to cool under the constant downpour of rain. The Process was slow, imperceptible, but the gradual change - transition - came to pass. Same for generation after generation of evolution on Earth. Nature never jumps. She works in a leisurely manner, experimenting continuously. The same natural transition can be seen in man. This gradual change, transition, works every where, silently building storms and destroying soloar systems.

The constant steaming in of thoughts of others must suppress and confine our own and indeed in the long run paralyze the power of thought… The inclination of most scholars is a kind of fuga vacui ( latin for vacuum suction )from the poverty of their own mind , which forcibly draws in the thoughts of others… It is dangerous to read about a subject before we have thought about it ourselves… When we read, another person thinks for us; merely repeat his mental process. So it comes about that if anybody spends almost the whole day in reading, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking. Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the commentary. Where there is a great deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge and very little experience , the result is like those books which have on each page two lines of text to forty lines of commentary

When a person dies, they cross over from the realm of freedom to the realm of slavery. Life is freedom, and dying is a gradual denial of freedom. Consciousness first weakens and then disappears. The life-processes – respiration, the metabolism, the circulation – continue for some time, but an irrevocable move has been made towards slavery; consciousness, the flame of freedom, has died out. The stars have disappeared from the night sky; the Milky Way has vanished; the sun has gone out; Venus, Mars and Jupiter have been extinguished; millions of leaves have died; the wind and the oceans have faded away; flowers have lost their colour and fragrance; bread has vanished; water has vanished; even the air itself, the sometimes cool, sometimes sultry air, has vanished. The universe inside a person has ceased to exist. This universe is astonishingly similar to the universe that exists outside people. It is astonishingly similar to the universes still reflected within the skulls of millions of living people. But still more astonishing is the fact that this universe had something in it that distinguished the sound of its ocean, the smell of its flowers, the rustle of its leaves, the hues of its granite and the sadness of its autumn fields both from those of every other universe that exists and ever has existed within people, and from those of the universe that exists eternally outside people. What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone's consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves.

Sanctification is a process. It is a gradual process. Run for your life from those who promise you instant sanctification.

In this way a process of evolution was started that led to the development of more and more complicated, self-reproducing organisms. The first primitive forms of life consumed various materials, including hydrogen sulfide, and released oxygen. This gradually changed the atmosphere to the composition that it has today, and allowed the development of higher forms of life such as fish, reptiles, mammals, and ultimately the human race.

Your confidence and self-esteem have withered away, but the very person you want to get away from is the one you rely on most. And you don’t know when it happened. Can’t pinpoint an exact day, week, or month, because it’s a gradual, subtle process. It creeps up on you slowly. So slowly that you don’t realize you’re bending, breaking, and becoming a different person. A woman who’s not happy, not living her own life, but the life her husband wants instead.

We aren’t born with a ready-made conscience. As we pass through life, we hurt people and people hurt us, we act compassionately and others show compassion to us. If we pay attention, our moral sensitivity sharpens, and these experiences become a source of valuable ethical knowledge about what is good, what is right and who I really am. Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a large variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. In the early nineteenth century, Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is ‘a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom’. He also wrote that ‘there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human’. This could well be the humanist motto.

Sometimes people become mean because of horrible experiences. It’s a gradual process that hardens their hearts and minds and forces them to develop a thick skin. In order to survive they must adapt to their harsh surroundings. They in turn become mean.

When we enter the spiritual realm we are always focused on those big, life altering miracles. Here is a truth that isn’t sold to us. Change is a long, gradual process. Yes, you can make things happen immediately, but quite often, amazing things are happening that you can’t see.

Life is an ongoing learning path where you make mistakes & you learn from it. You get better, you grow emotionally, socially and gets mature gradually. There are significant times where we are good and when we are not so right; but later on what we choose for our-self from that learning defines how better we can become. And at the end, it is better choice to surprise self. Why ? Because, the real challenge lies in overcoming the shortfalls of own-self and competing with self only. One has to exceed the expectation from the self. Otherwise, perfection seems to be a myth! Yet, the true beauty is in saying Yes to the process to betterment, not in the final destination 'cuz the perfection can never be static or stagnant..

You’re still young and healthy. Maybe that’s why you don’t understand what I am saying. Let me give you an example. Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacements never goes well. It’s all very painful—as painful as actually being cut with a knife. You will be turning thirty soon, Mr. Kawana, which means that, from now on, you will gradually enter that twilight portion of life—you will be getting older. You are probably beginning to grasp that painful sense that you are losing something, are you not?

From the beginning, Fassbinder's films showed that with the help of art it is possible to defend oneself against the destructive forces of the present, and that in the artistic process there is some kind of labour of resistance and a possibility of survival. It gradually also became a fundamental theme of his films.

Gradually I fell back into the old habit of being surrounded by books, papers, journals, and diaries.

The whole history of literary fiction as an evolutionary process may be said to be a gradual probing of deeper and deeper layers of life.

Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop wondering how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he himself had for such a long while not seen what was so clearly evident. The people were dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed habits of life adapted to this process...And so gradually had the people come to this condition that they did not realize the full horrors of it, and did not complain. Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as it should be. Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief cause of the people's great want was one that they themselves knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords. And how evident it was that the children and the aged died because they had no milk, and they had no milk because there was no pasture land, and no land to grow corn or make hay on...The land so much needed by men was tilled by these people, who were on the verge of starvation, so that the corn might be sold abroad and the owners of the land might buy themselves hats and canes, and carriages and bronzes, etc.

The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our text- books have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record: "The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps, He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory." Darwin's argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I wish only to point out that it was never -seen- in the rocks. Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study. [Evolution’s Erratic Pace - "Natural History," May, 1977]

I felt that the metal of my spirit, like a bar of iron that is softened and bent by a persistent flame, was being gradually softened and bent by the troubles that oppressed it. In spite of myself, I was conscious of a feeling of envy for those who did not suffer from such troubles, for the wealthy and the privileged; and this envy, I observed, was accompanied—still against my will—by a feeling of bitterness towards them, which, in turn, did not limit its aim to particular persons or situations, but, as if by an uncontrollable bias, tended to assume the general, abstract character of a whole conception of life. In fact, during those difficult days, I came very gradually to feel that my irritation and my intolerance of poverty were turning into a revolt against injustice, and not only against the injustice which struck at me personally but the injustice from which so many others like me suffered. I was quite aware of this almost imperceptible transformation of my subjective resentments into objective reflections and states of mind, owing to the bent of my thoughts which led always and irresistibly in the same direction: owing also to my conversation, which, without my intending it, alway harped upon the same subject. I also noticed in myself a growing sympathy for those political parties which proclaimed their struggle against the evils and infamies of the society to which, in the end I had attributed the troubles that beset me—a society which, as I thought, in reference to myself, allowed its best sons to languish and protected its worst ones. Usually, and in the simpler, less cultivated people, this process occurs without their knowing it, in the dark depths of consciousness where, by a kind of mysterious alchemy, egoism is transmuted into altruism, hatred into love, fear into courage; but to me, accustomed as I was to observing and studying myself, the whole thing was clear and visible, as though I were watching it happen in someone else; and yet I was aware the whole time that I was being swayed by material subjective factors, that I was transforming purely personal motives into universal reasons.

Nature’s ultimate goal is to foster the growth of the individual from absolute dependence to independence — or, more exactly, to the interdependence of mature adults living in community. Development is a process of moving from complete external regulation to self-regulation, as far as our genetic programming allows. Well-self-regulated people are the most capable of interacting fruitfully with others in a community and of nurturing children who will also grow into self-regulated adults. Anything that interferes with that natural agenda threatens the organism’s chances for long-term survival. Almost from the beginning of life we see a tension between the complementary needs for security and for autonomy. Development requires a gradual and ageappropriate shift from security needs toward the drive for autonomy, from attachment to individuation. Neither is ever completely lost, and neither is meant to predominate at the expense of the other. With an increased capacity for self-regulation in adulthood comes also a heightened need for autonomy — for the freedom to make genuine choices. Whatever undermines autonomy will be experienced as a source of stress. Stress is magnified whenever the power to respond effectively to the social or physical environment is lacking or when the tested animal or human being feels helpless, without meaningful choices — in other words, when autonomy is undermined. Autonomy, however, needs to be exercised in a way that does not disrupt the social relationships on which survival also depends, whether with emotional intimates or with important others—employers, fellow workers, social authority figures. The less the emotional capacity for self-regulation develops during infancy and childhood, the more the adult depends on relationships to maintain homeostasis. The greater the dependence, the greater the threat when those relationships are lost or become insecure. Thus, the vulnerability to subjective and physiological stress will be proportionate to the degree of emotional dependence. To minimize the stress from threatened relationships, a person may give up some part of his autonomy. However, this is not a formula for health, since the loss of autonomy is itself a cause of stress. The surrender of autonomy raises the stress level, even if on the surface it appears to be necessary for the sake of “security” in a relationship, and even if we subjectively feel relief when we gain “security” in this manner. If I chronically repress my emotional needs in order to make myself “acceptable” to other people, I increase my risks of having to pay the price in the form of illness. The other way of protecting oneself from the stress of threatened relationships is emotional shutdown. To feel safe, the vulnerable person withdraws from others and closes against intimacy. This coping style may avoid anxiety and block the subjective experience of stress but not the physiology of it. Emotional intimacy is a psychological and biological necessity. Those who build walls against intimacy are not self-regulated, just emotionally frozen. Their stress from having unmet needs will be high.

Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a wide variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences.

The result will be gradual transmutation of heritable forms, and adaptation to circumstances, by a process of selective culling. Eventually he gave the crank a name: natural selection. Twenty years passed after the E notebook entry. The world heard nothing about natural selection.

Like all countries in Western Europe, Spain, engaged in a deadly process of increasing productivity, had gradually rid itself of all low-skilled jobs that had previously helped to keep life a little less unpleasant, and in doing so had condemned the majority of its population to mass unemployment.

If we are blindly living out an archetype, we are not containing our own life. We are possessed, and possession acts as a magnet on unconscious people in our environment. A life that is being truly lived is constantly burning away the veils of illusion, gradually revealing the essence of the individual.

Being born again is the work of the Spirit. Whether it happens suddenly or gradually, we can't make it happen, either by strong desire and determination or by learning and believing the right beliefs. But we can be intentional about being born again. Though we can't make it happen, we can midwife the process.

This is stressful—and spiritual life is a process of gradually unraveling our confusion and bringing this stress to an end. According to the Buddhist view, by seeing things as they are, we cease to suffer in the usual ways, and our minds can open to states of well-being that are intrinsic to the nature of consciousness.

To show how memory changes to fit our story, psychologists study how memories evolve over time: if your memories of the same people change, becoming positive or negative spending on what is happening in your life now, then it’s all about you, not them. This process happens so gradually that it can be a jolt to realize you ever felt differently.

No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as long as he continues to be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning." ... "Our life, as individual persons and as members of a perplexed and struggling race, provokes us with the evidence that it must have meaning. Part of the meaning still escapes us. Yet our purpose in life is to discover this meaning, and live according to it. We have, therefore, something to live for. The process of living, of growing up, and becoming a person, is precisely the gradually increasing awareness of what that something is. This is a difficult task, for many reasons.

In short, there is still life in the tradition which the Middle Ages inaugurated. But the maintenance of that life depends, in part, on knowing that the knightly character is art not nature—something that needs to be achieved, not something that can be relied upon to happen. And this knowledge is specially necessary as we grow more democratic. In previous centuries the vestiges of chivalry were kept alive by a specialized class, from whom they spread to other classes partly by imitation and partly by coercion. Now, it seems, the people must either be chivalrous on its own resources, or else choose between the two remaining alternatives of brutality and softness. This is, indeed, part of the general problem of a classless society, which is too seldom mentioned. Will its ethos be a synthesis of what was best in all the classes, or a mere “pool” with the sediment of all and the virtues of none? But that is too large a subject for the fag-end of an article. My theme is chivalry. I have tried to show that this old tradition is practical and vital. The ideal embodied in Launcelot is “escapism” in a sense never dreamed of by those who use that word; it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable. There was, to be sure, a rumour in the last century that wolves would gradually become extinct by some natural process; but this seems to have been an exaggeration.

I don't know what's happening to me," she says, blinking through a veil of tears as she looks everywhere but at me. "I don't think I can do this anymore." My heart plummets inside my chest, my lips still hovering over hers, my hands on her waist "do what anymore?" I don't want the answer, don't want to hear what follows my question, don't want to lose her. "Fight it." Tears are still flowing from her eyes, but I think she stop crying. She sucks and several breaths when she looks at me, her eyes are clear that I anticipated. She's scared shitless - that's clear - but it's like she stop fighting the fear, giving into it instead. Her lips apart and I'm a stop whatever she's about to say, silence her with my lips, but I don't, forcing myself to hear, needing to know what's got all worked up. "I think I'm in love with you," she says, her chest heaving with every ravenous breath she takes, yet her voice is astonishingly even and she manages to maintain my gaze. My voice however is the exact opposite of even, coming out all high-pitched like I'm a thirteen year old and going through puberty all over again. "What?" She sucks and a breath, then releases is slowly, the fear in her eyes subsiding, as if she just won it. "I think I'm in love with you..." She bites on your lips and shakes her head. "No...I don't think. I know." I gradually process her words and the full extent of what she's saying. I think I'd honestly believed that she might never say them, that this love thing was going to be a one-way street. Hearing her say it... I don't even know how to describe it. It's like my entire life of associated the word with hatred. Every time my mother said it, it felt like she was trying to take something from me and it made me hate her and myself-Love equaled hate for me. But hearing it from Violet's lips, seeing that look in her eyes, the one I've never seen from anyone, is so different. She's not taking something for me right now, she's giving me something. She's giving me everything.

[W]hat cause can there be for complaint, after all, in anything that was always bound to come to an end fading gradually away? What is troubling about that? [...] Moving to one's end through nature's own gentle process of dissolution - is there a better way of leaving life than that? Not because there is anything wrong with a sudden, violent departure, but because this gradual withdrawal is an easy route.

According to the Buddhist teachings, human beings have a distorted view of reality that leads them to suffer unnecessarily. We grasp at transitory pleasures. We brood about the past and worry about the future. We continually seek to prop up and defend an egoic self that doesn’t exist. This is stressful—and spiritual life is a process of gradually unraveling our confusion and bringing this stress to an end.

But then we learn something else: that the brain doesm't like to be typecast. Just when you think everything is a matter of decrease, of subtraction and division, your brain, your memory, may surprise you. As it it's saying: Don't imagine you can rely on some comforting process of gradual decline--life's much more complicated than that. And so the brain will throw you scraps from time to time, even disengage those familiar memory loops.

Anger is very deadly. It leads to intolerance and this causes depression. I have discovered people who are temperamental need help so they can overcome such challenges. Running away from challenges doesn't help but confronting the challenges. In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the best teacher. If you must learn how to control your anger, you must practice it by being around those who usually provoke you the most. How you respond to their provocation should be rated by you on different occasions, you compare your latest reaction with your past, assess them and think of better ways to improve next time. Overcoming anger and intolerance is very difficult, but it is possible...it is just a gradual process but change is assured. Taking advice is easy but following the instructions is difficult but with time, if one is ready to overcome anger, it will be a thing of the past. Don't give up on yourself!

I have learnt something today or perhaps today's knowledge has confirmed what I probably have been noticing for a while. Maturity cannot be taught, you cannot teach a boy how to be a man or girl who to be a lady. They can act it, but until they understand the essence of being a man or absolving ladyship, they will never truly become matured. Maturity is the mental state of understanding the 'why' of every life lesson you have ever been taught. Thus, it is a gradual process.

As you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love. YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE. If you have kids, that will be a huge moment in your process of self-diminishment. You really won’t care what happens to YOU, as long as they benefit. That’s one reason your parents are so proud and happy today. One of their fondest dreams has come true: You have accomplished something difficult and tangible that has enlarged you as a person and will make your life better, from here on in, forever.

No, of course not. You’re still young and healthy. Maybe that’s why you don’t understand what I am saying. Let me give you an example. Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacements never goes well. It’s all very painful—as painful as actually being cut with a knife. You will be turning thirty soon, Mr. Kawana, which means that, from now on, you will gradually enter that twilight portion of life—you will be getting older. You are probably beginning to grasp that painful sense that you are losing something, are you not?

Some kinds of instruction in prayer used to say, at the beginning, ‘Put yourself in the presence of God.’ But I often wonder whether it would be more helpful to say, ‘Put yourself in the place of Jesus.’ It sounds appallingly ambitious, even presumptuous, but that is actually what the New Testament suggests we do. Jesus speaks to God for us, but we speak to God in him. You may say what you want – but he is speaking to the Father, gazing into the depths of the Father’s love. And as you understand Jesus better, as you grow up a little in your faith, then what you want to say gradually shifts a bit more into alignment with what he is always saying to the Father, in his eternal love for the eternal love out of which his own life streams forth. That, in a nutshell, is prayer – letting Jesus pray in you, and beginning that lengthy and often very tough process by which our selfish thoughts and ideals and hopes are gradually aligned with his eternal action; just as, in his own earthly life, his human fears and hopes and desires and emotions are put into the context of his love for the Father, woven into his eternal relation with the Father – even in that moment of supreme pain and mental agony that he endures the night before his death.

When a soul leaves a body gracefully, it, knowingly or unknowingly, lowers its life intensity enough so that it can exit the physical body with minimal drama. Elderly folk, who manage to pass on peacefully, go through a process of gradually and progressively diminishing their life energy. They come and go, exiting and returning, until they finally don’t return again. It is common to see old people sitting in their chair, barely there, and then they will spring back to life until, one day, the back and forth is done. This is a good way to die. It carries the least amount of karmic refuse and allows the individual to move forward with less drag.

ESTABLISHING A DAILY MEDITATION First select a suitable space for your regular meditation. It can be wherever you can sit easily with minimal disturbance: a corner of your bedroom or any other quiet spot in your home. Place a meditation cushion or chair there for your use. Arrange what is around so that you are reminded of your meditative purpose, so that it feels like a sacred and peaceful space. You may wish to make a simple altar with a flower or sacred image, or place your favorite spiritual books there for a few moments of inspiring reading. Let yourself enjoy creating this space for yourself. Then select a regular time for practice that suits your schedule and temperament. If you are a morning person, experiment with a sitting before breakfast. If evening fits your temperament or schedule better, try that first. Begin with sitting ten or twenty minutes at a time. Later you can sit longer or more frequently. Daily meditation can become like bathing or toothbrushing. It can bring a regular cleansing and calming to your heart and mind. Find a posture on the chair or cushion in which you can easily sit erect without being rigid. Let your body be firmly planted on the earth, your hands resting easily, your heart soft, your eyes closed gently. At first feel your body and consciously soften any obvious tension. Let go of any habitual thoughts or plans. Bring your attention to feel the sensations of your breathing. Take a few deep breaths to sense where you can feel the breath most easily, as coolness or tingling in the nostrils or throat, as movement of the chest, or rise and fall of the belly. Then let your breath be natural. Feel the sensations of your natural breathing very carefully, relaxing into each breath as you feel it, noticing how the soft sensations of breathing come and go with the changing breath. After a few breaths your mind will probably wander. When you notice this, no matter how long or short a time you have been away, simply come back to the next breath. Before you return, you can mindfully acknowledge where you have gone with a soft word in the back of your mind, such as “thinking,” “wandering,” “hearing,” “itching.” After softly and silently naming to yourself where your attention has been, gently and directly return to feel the next breath. Later on in your meditation you will be able to work with the places your mind wanders to, but for initial training, one word of acknowledgment and a simple return to the breath is best. As you sit, let the breath change rhythms naturally, allowing it to be short, long, fast, slow, rough, or easy. Calm yourself by relaxing into the breath. When your breath becomes soft, let your attention become gentle and careful, as soft as the breath itself. Like training a puppy, gently bring yourself back a thousand times. Over weeks and months of this practice you will gradually learn to calm and center yourself using the breath. There will be many cycles in this process, stormy days alternating with clear days. Just stay with it. As you do, listening deeply, you will find the breath helping to connect and quiet your whole body and mind. Working with the breath is an excellent foundation for the other meditations presented in this book. After developing some calm and skills, and connecting with your breath, you can then extend your range of meditation to include healing and awareness of all the levels of your body and mind. You will discover how awareness of your breath can serve as a steady basis for all you do.

In the bourgeois democratic countries the need for using intrinsically good means to achieve desirable ends is more clearly realized than in Russia. But even in these countries enormous mistakes have been made in the past and still greater, still more dangerous mistakes are in process of being committed today. Most of these mistakes are due to the fact that, though professing belief in our ideal postulates, the rulers and people of these countries are, to some extent and quite incompatibly, also militarists and nationalists. The English and the French, it is true, are sated militarists whose chief desire is to live a quiet life, holding fast to what they seized in their unregenerate days of imperial highway-robbery. Confronted by rivals who want to do now what they were doing from the beginning of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, they profess and doubtless genuinely feel a profound moral indignation. Meanwhile, they have begun to address themselves, reluctantly but with determination, to the task of beating the Fascist powers at their own game. Like the Fascist states, they are preparing for war. but modern war cannot be waged or even prepared except by a highly centralized executive wielding absolute power over a docile people. Most of the planning which is going on in the democratic countries is planning designed to transform these countries into the likeness of totalitarian communities organized for slaughter and rapine. Hitherto this transformation has proceeded fairly slowly. Belief in our idea postulates has acted as a brake on fascization, which has had to advance gradually and behind a smoke screen. But if war is declared, or even if the threat of war becomes more serious than at present, the process will become open and rapid. "The defence of democracy against Fascism" entails inevitably the transformation of democracy into Fascism.

Each new human life retraces this ancient story. Young children are the very essence of human innocence. They run, play, and feel—and, as in Genesis, when they are naked they are not ashamed. Children provide a model for the assumption of healthy normality, and their innocence and vitality are part of why the assumption seems so obviously true. But that vision begins to fade as children acquire language and become more and more like the creatures adults see reflected every day in their mirrors. Adults unavoidably drag their children from the Garden with each word, conversation, or story they relate to them. We teach children to talk, think, compare, plan, and analyze. And as we do, their innocence falls away like petals from a flower, to be replaced by the thorns and stiff branches of fear, self-criticism, and pretense. We cannot prevent this gradual transformation, nor can we fully soften it. Our children must enter into the terrifying world of verbal knowledge. They must become like us.

I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of the tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in the case and preparing to come out. I waited a while, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand. That little body, I do believe is the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the rhythm of people and things

Each act of writing represents a separate lock of the author’s tissue and all serious piecework folds into an ongoing anthology. A writer’s portfolio is comprised of interlocking ideas that are in a constant state of change. A writer’s ideas gradually reflect their current mental and spiritual composition and a writer’s way of living reflects the progression of their ideas. Each written version of a person’s life stands as mental testament of who the author was at a given moment in time. Just as we cannot sum up a person’s life with an isolated snapshot, truly to understand who a writer was we must read his or her entire body of work. No single work of writing tells us who the writer was. The compilation of a writer’s scripts defines the shady author, even if some of these works overtake, correct, or contradict previous efforts. Who we are is the summation of who we were as a child, teenager, young adult, in middle age, and as an elder. Only by viewing a person in successive stages do we truly comprehend them. Only by reading the oeuvre of an author, do we appreciate the writer’s ultimate act of creation. Only by reading a person’s obituary do we come to know what their living Magnus opus stood for.

However, it looks somewhat different when viewed not from the personalistic standpoint, i.e., from the personal situation of Miss Miller, but from the standpoint of the archetype’s own life. As we have already explained, the phenomena of the unconscious can be regarded as more or less spontaneous manifestations of autonomous archetypes, and though this hypothesis may seem very strange to the layman, it is amply supported by the fact the archetype has a numinous character: it exerts a fascination, it enters into active opposition to the conscious mind, and may be said in the long run to mould the destinies of individuals by unconsciously influencing their thinking, feeling, and behaviour, even if this influence is not recognized until long afterwards. The primordial image is itself a “pattern of behaviour”4 which will assert itself with or without the co-operation of the conscious personality. Although the Miller case gives us some idea of the manner in which an archetype gradually draws nearer to consciousness and finally takes possession of it, the material is too scanty to serve as a complete illustration of the process. I must therefore refer my reader to the dream-series discussed in Psychology and Alchemy, where he will be able to follow the gradual emergence of a definite archetype with all the specific marks of its autonomy and authority.

We can all be "sad" or "blue" at times in our lives. We have all seen movies about the madman and his crime spree, with the underlying cause of mental illness. We sometimes even make jokes about people being crazy or nuts, even though we know that we shouldn't. We have all had some exposure to mental illness, but do we really understand it or know what it is? Many of our preconceptions are incorrect. A mental illness can be defined as a health condition that changes a person's thinking, feelings, or behavior (or all three) and that causes the person distress and difficulty in functioning. As with many diseases, mental illness is severe in some cases and mild in others. Individuals who have a mental illness don't necessarily look like they are sick, especially if their illness is mild. Other individuals may show more explicit symptoms such as confusion, agitation, or withdrawal. There are many different mental illnesses, including depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Each illness alters a person's thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors in distinct ways. But in all this struggles, Consummo Plus has proven to be the most effective herbal way of treating mental illness no matter the root cause. The treatment will be in three stages. First is activating detoxification, which includes flushing any insoluble toxins from the body. The medicine and the supplement then proceed to activate all cells in the body, it receives signals from the brain and goes to repair very damaged cells, tissues, or organs of the body wherever such is found. The second treatment comes in liquid form, tackles the psychological aspect including hallucination, paranoia, hearing voices, depression, fear, persecutory delusion, or religious delusion. The supplement also tackles the Behavioral, Mood, and Cognitive aspects including aggression or anger, thought disorder, self-harm, or lack of restraint, anxiety, apathy, fatigue, feeling detached, false belief of superiority or inferiority, and amnesia. The third treatment is called mental restorer, and this consists of the spiritual brain restorer, a system of healing which “assumes the presence of a supernatural power to restore the natural brain order. With this approach, you will get back your loving boyfriend and he will live a better and fulfilled life, like realize his full potential, work productively, make a meaningful contribution to his community, and handle all the stress that comes with life. It will give him a new lease of life, a new strength, and new vigor. The Healing & Recovery process is Gradual, Comprehensive, Holistic, and very Effective. www . curetoschizophrenia . blogspot . com E-mail: rodwenhill@gmail. com

Sovereign King of Detachment and Renunciation, Emperor of Death and Shipwreck, living dream that gradually wanders among the worlds ruins and wastes! Sovereign King of Despair amid splendours, grieving lord of palaces that don't satisfy, master of processions and pageants that never succeed in blotting out life! Sovereign King risen from the tombs, who came in the night by the light of the moon to tell your life to the living, royal page of lilies that have lost their petals, imperial herald of the coldness of ivory! Sovereign King Shepard of the Watches, knight errant of Anxieties traveling on moonlit roads without glory and without even a lady to serve, lord in the forest and on the slopes, a silent silhouette with visor drawn shut, passing through valleys, misunderstood in villages, ridiculed in towns, scorned in the cities! Sovereign King consecrated by Death to be her own, pale and absurd, forgotten and unrecognized, reigning amid worn-out velvets and tarnished marble on his throne at the limits of the Possible, surrounded by the shadows of his unreal court and guarded by the fantasy of his mysterious, solidierless army. (...) Your love for things dreamed was your contempt for things lived. Virgin King who disdained love, Shadow King who disdained light, Dream King who denied life! Amid the muffled racket of cymbals and drums, Darkness acclaims you Emperor!

Have you ever suddenly understood something in a “flash of recognition”? Have you ever known of someone who became an “overnight success”? Here is a great secret that holds the key to great accomplishment: both that “sudden flash” and that “overnight success” were the final, breakthrough results of a long, patient process of edge upon edge upon edge. Any time you see what looks like a breakthrough, it is always the end result of a long series of little things, done consistently over time. No success is immediate or instantaneous; no collapse is sudden or precipitous. They are both products of the slight edge. Now, I’m not saying that quantum leaps are a myth because they don’t really happen. As a matter of fact, they do happen. Just not the way people think they do. The term comes from particle physics, and here’s what it means in reality: a true quantum leap is what happens when a subatomic particle suddenly jumps to a higher level of energy. But it happens as a result of the gradual buildup of potential caused by energy being applied to that particle over time. In other words, it doesn’t “just suddenly happen.” An actual quantum leap is something that finally happens after a lengthy accumulation of slight-edge effort. Exactly the way the water hyacinth moves from day twenty-nine to day thirty. Exactly the way the frog’s certain death by drowning was “suddenly” transformed into salvation by butter. A real-life quantum leap is not Superman leaping a tall building. A real quantum leap is Edison perfecting the electric light bulb after a thousand patient efforts—and then transforming the world with it.

The Manifestation Manifesto Meditation” "Right now, I find a quiet and comfortable space where I can easily concentrate on these words as I gently read them aloud. "With the sound of my voice I soothe my nervous system … calm my entire body and relax my thoughts. I speak slowly … with a gentle but resonant tone. And as I do, I start to relax now. "I keep my eyes open and let them blink naturally when they want to … and they might start to feel slightly heavy and droopy … as they would feel when I read a book before going to sleep. “I use my imagination so that with every word I become more relaxed and drowsier. (Imagine feeling drowsy.). I keep my eyes open just enough to take in the following words. "I turn my attention to my breathing, and use this opportunity to relax my mind and body more deeply. "As I count my exhalations backwards from five to one, I let each number represent a gradually deeper level of relaxation and heightened focus. (Draw a breath before reading each number, and count as you exhale.) "Five … I double my relaxation and increase my concentration. "Four … With every number and every breath, I relax. "Three … I count slowly as I meditate deeper … deeper still. "Two … I use my imagination to double this meditative state. "One … My body is relaxed as my mind remains focused. (Pause for five seconds and breathe normally.) "At this level of meditation, people experience different things. Some notice interesting body sensations … such as a warmth or tingling in their fingers. I might also have that experience. (Pause five seconds.) "Some people feel a floating sensation … with a dreamy quality. I may experience that. (Pause five seconds.) "Whatever sensations I experience are exactly right for me at this moment. Whether I feel something unusual now or at some other time, I let that process happen on its own as I focus on the following manifesto. “I allow my subconscious to absorb the manifesto as I read each affirmation with purpose and conviction. (Pause for five seconds.) “The power to manifest is fully mine, here and now. “I acknowledge and embrace my power to manifest. “All human beings have this power, yet I choose to use it consciously and purposefully. “From the unlimited energy of the Universe, I attract all that I need to experience joy and abundance. “I recognize and consider the consequences of all that I manifest. I take full responsibility. “With awareness and intention, I apply my power for my highest good and for the welfare of others. “All of my manifestations reflect my inner state of being. Therefore, I ever seek to grow in wisdom and to become a better person. “With relaxed confidence, I employ the powers of Thought, Emotion and Vital Energy to manifest my desires.  “I let go of beliefs and ideas that suppress or encumber me and I cultivate those which empower me. “I accept what I manifest with appreciation and satisfaction. I am thankful. “I go forth with great enthusiasm with the realization that I manifest my life and circumstances. “I am ready to take charge of my manifestations from this moment onward.” “Day by day, I grow in awareness of my power to manifest my desires with speed and accuracy.” RECOMMENDED READING * Mastering Manifestation: A Practical System for Rapidly Creating Your Dream Reality - Adam James * Banned Manifestation Secrets - Richard Dotts * Manifesting: The Secret behind the Law of Attraction - Alexander Janzer * The Secret Science Behind Miracles - Max Freedom Long * The Kybalion - Three Initiates

Darwin’s Hopes Shattered However, although evolutionists have been making strenuous efforts to find fossils since the middle of the nineteenth century all over the world, no transitional forms have yet been uncovered. All of the fossils, contrary to the evolutionists' expectations, show that life appeared on Earth all of a sudden and fully-formed. One famous British paleontologist, Derek V. Ager, admits this fact, even though he is an evolutionist: The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find – over and over again – not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another. This means that in the fossil record, all living species suddenly emerge as fully formed, without any intermediate forms in between. This is just the opposite of Darwin's assumptions. Also, this is very strong evidence that all living things are created. The only explanation of a living species emerging suddenly and complete in every detail without any evolutionary ancestor is that it was created. This fact is admitted also by the widely known evolutionist biologist Douglas Futuyma: Creation and evolution, between them, exhaust the possible explanations for the origin of living things. Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from pre-existing species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence. Fossils show that living beings emerged fully developed and in a perfect state on the Earth. That means that "the origin of species," contrary to Darwin's supposition, is not evolution, but creation.

In short the only fully rational world would be the world of wishing-caps, the world of telepathy, where every desire is fulfilled instanter, without having to consider or placate surrounding or intermediate powers. This is the Absolute's own world. He calls upon the phenomenal world to be, and it IS, exactly as he calls for it, no other condition being required. In our world, the wishes of the individual are only one condition. Other individuals are there with other wishes and they must be propitiated first. So Being grows under all sorts of resistances in this world of the many, and, from compromise to compromise, only gets organized gradually into what may be called secondarily rational shape. We approach the wishing-cap type of organization only in a few departments of life. We want water and we turn a faucet. We want a kodak-picture and we press a button. We want information and we telephone. We want to travel and we buy a ticket. In these and similar cases, we hardly need to do more than the wishing—the world is rationally organized to do the rest. But this talk of rationality is a parenthesis and a digression. What we were discussing was the idea of a world growing not integrally but piecemeal by the contributions of its several parts. Take the hypothesis seriously and as a live one. Suppose that the world's author put the case to you before creation, saying: "I am going to make a world not certain to be saved, a world the perfection of which shall be conditional merely, the condition being that each several agent does its own 'level best.' I offer you the chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is unwarranted. It is a real adventure, with real danger, yet it may win through. It is a social scheme of co-operative work genuinely to be done. Will you join the procession? Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?" Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? Would you say that, rather than be part and parcel of so fundamentally pluralistic and irrational a universe, you preferred to relapse into the slumber of nonentity from which you had been momentarily aroused by the tempter's voice? Of course if you are normally constituted, you would do nothing of the sort. There is a healthy- minded buoyancy in most of us which such a universe would exactly fit. We would therefore accept the offer—"Top! und schlag auf schlag!" It would be just like the world we practically live in; and loyalty to our old nurse Nature would forbid us to say no. The world proposed would seem 'rational' to us in the most living way. Most of us, I say, would therefore welcome the proposition and add our fiat to the fiat of the creator. Yet perhaps some would not; for there are morbid minds in every human collection, and to them the prospect of a universe with only a fighting chance of safety would probably make no appeal. There are moments of discouragement in us all, when we are sick of self and tired of vainly striving. Our own life breaks down, and we fall into the attitude of the prodigal son. We mistrust the chances of things. We want a universe where we can just give up, fall on our father's neck, and be absorbed into the absolute life as a drop of water melts into the river or the sea. The peace and rest, the security desiderated at such moments is security against the bewildering accidents of so much finite experience. Nirvana means safety from this everlasting round of adventures of which the world of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist, for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life. And to men of this complexion, religious monism comes with its consoling words: "All is needed and essential—even you with your sick soul and heart. All are one

We don't die willingly. The more invested we are in the worlds projected by patterns, the stronger the denial, anger, and bargaining, and the despair of depression. Insight practice is inherently frustrating because you are looking to see where, at first, you are unable to see--beyond the world of the patterns. Another way to look at insight practice is to see that the process has three stages: shock, disorganization, and reorganization. The first stage starts when you see beyond illusion. You experience a shock. You react by denying that you saw what you saw, saying, in effect, "That makes no sense. I'll just forget about that." Unfortunately, or fortunately, your experience of seeing is not so easily denied. It is too vivid, too real, to ignore. Now you become angry because the illusion in which you have lived has been shattered. You know you can't go back, but you don't want to go forward. You are still attached to the world of patterns. You feel anxious, and the anxiety gradually matures into grief. You now know that you have to go forward. You experience the pain of separating from what you understood, just as the lama in the example experienced pain at the loss of his worldview. You then enter a period of disorganization. You withdraw, become apathetic, lose your energy for life, become restless, and routinely reject new possibilities or directions. You surrender to the changes taking place but do nothing to move forward. A major risk at this stage is that you remain in a state of disorganization. You hold on to an aspect of the old world. parents who have lost a child in an accident or to violence, for example, have great difficulty in letting go. They may keep the child's bedroom just as it was. Their views and expectations of life have been shattered, and, understandably, they cling to a few of the shards. They may stay in the stage of disorganization for a long time. The third stage of insight is reorganization. You experience a shift, and you let the old world go, even the shards. You accept the world that you see with your new eyes. What was previously seen as being absolute and real is now seen differently. The old structures, beliefs, and behaviors no longer hold, and you enter a new life.

adolescence; as never, surely, were the certain-coursed, dynamic roller-coasters of youth. For most men and women these thirty years are taken up with a gradual withdrawal from life, a retreat first from a front with many shelters, those myriad amusements and curiosities of youth, to a line with less, when we peel down our ambitions to one ambition, our recreations to one recreation, our friends to a few to whom we are anaesthetic; ending up at last in a solitary, desolate strong point that is not strong, where the shells now whistle abominably, now are but half-heard as, by turns frightened and tired, we sit waiting for death. At forty, then, Merlin was no different from himself at thirty-five; a larger paunch, a gray twinkling near his ears, a more certain lack of vivacity in his walk. His forty-five differed from his forty by a like margin, unless one mention a slight deafness in his left ear. But at fifty-five the process had become a chemical change of immense rapidity. Yearly he was more and more an "old man" to his family--senile almost, so far as his wife was concerned. He was by this time complete owner of the bookshop. The mysterious Mr. Moonlight Quill, dead some five years and not survived by his wife, had deeded the whole stock and store to him, and there he still spent his days, conversant now by name with almost all that man has recorded for three thousand years, a human catalogue, an authority upon tooling and binding, upon folios and first editions, an accurate inventory of a thousand authors whom he could never have understood and had certainly never read. At sixty-five he distinctly doddered. He had assumed the melancholy habits of the aged so often portrayed by the second old man in standard Victorian comedies. He consumed vast warehouses of time searching for mislaid spectacles. He "nagged" his wife and was nagged in turn. He told the same jokes three or four times a year at the family table, and gave his son weird, impossible directions as to his conduct in life. Mentally and materially he was so entirely different from the Merlin Grainger of twenty-five that it seemed incongruous that he should bear the same name. He worked still In the bookshop with the assistance of a youth, whom, of course, he considered

Meanwhile, in Europe, the Renaissance continued, and I began to see the full scope of the Second Insight. The power of the church to define reality was diminishing, and Europeans were feeling as though they were awakening to look at life anew. Through the courage of countless individuals, all inspired by their intuitive memories, the scientific method was embraced as a democratic process of exploring and coming to understand the world in which humans found themselves. This method—exploring some aspect of the natural world, drawing conclusions, then offering this view to others—was thought of as the consensus-building process through which we would be able, finally, to understand mankind’s real situation on this planet, including our spiritual nature. But those in the church, entrenched in Fear, sought to squelch this new science. As political forces lined up on both sides, a compromise was reached. Science would be free to explore the outer, material world, but must leave spiritual phenomena to the dictates of the still-influential churchmen. The entire inner world of experience—our higher perceptual states of beauty and love, intuitions, coincidences, interpersonal phenomena, even dreams—all were, at first, off limits to the new science. Despite these restrictions, science began to map out and describe the operation of the physical world, providing information rich in ways to increase trade and utilize natural resources. Human economic security increased, and slowly we began to lose our sense of mystery and our heartfelt questions about the purpose of life. We decided it was purposeful enough just to survive and build a better, more secure world for ourselves and our children. Gradually we entered the consensus trance that denied the reality of death and created the illusion that the world was explained and ordinary and devoid of mystery. In spite of our rhetoric, our once-strong intuition of a spiritual source was being pushed farther into the background. In this growing materialism, God could only be viewed as a distant Deist’s God, a God who merely pushed the universe into being and then stood back to let it run in a mechanical sense, like a predictable machine, with every effect having a cause, and unconnected events happening only at random, by chance alone.

Wake up every day, expecting not to know what's going to happen, and look for the events to unfold with curiosity. Instead of stressing and managing, just be present at anything that pops up with the intention of approaching it with your best efforts. Whatever happens in the process of spiritual awakening is going to be unpredictable and moving forward, if you're just the one who notices it, not fighting or making a big project out there. •       You may have emotional swings, energetic swings, psychic openings, and other unwanted shifts that, as you knew, feel unfamiliar to your personality. Be the beholder. Don't feel like you have something to fix or alter. They're going to pass. •       If you have severe trauma in your history and have never had therapy, it might be very useful to release the pains of memories that arise around the events. Therapy teaches you how to express, bear witness, release, and move forward. Your therapist needn't know much about kundalini as long as he or she doesn't discount that part of your process. What you want to focus on is the release of trauma-related issues, and you want an experienced and compassionate therapist who sees your spiritual orientation as a motivation and support for the healing process. •       This process represents your chance to wake up to your true nature. Some people wake up first, and then experience the emergence of a kundalini; others have the kundalini process going through as a preparation for the emergence. The appearance happens to do the job of wiping out, so is part of either pattern. Waking up means realizing that whoever looks through your eyes, lives through your senses, listens to your thoughts, and is present at every moment of your experience, whether good or bad, is recognized or remembered. This is a bright, conscious, detached and unconditionally loving presence that is universal and eternal and is totally free from all the conditions and memories you associate with as a personal identity. But as long as you believe in all of your personal conditions and stories, emotions, and thoughts, you have to experience life filtered by them. This programmed mind is what makes the game of life to be varied and suspense-filled but it also causes suffering and fear of death. When we are in Samadhi and Satori encounters, we glimpse the Truth about the vast, limitless space that is the foundation for our being. It is called gnosis (knowledge) or the One by the early Gnostics. Some spiritual teachings like Advaita Vedanta and Zen go straight for realization, while others see it as a gradual path through years of spiritual practices. Anyway, the ending is the same. As Shakespeare said, when you know who you are, the world becomes a stage and you the player, and life is more light and thoughts less intrusive, and the kundalini process settles down into a mellow pleasantness. •       Give up places to go and to be with people that cause you discomfort.

It is in the heart that the mystery of spiritual conception takes place. This is not the physical heart but what the Sufis call the heart of hearts. The heart of hearts is the heart of the Self which is on the right side of the physical body. In the moment of spiritual conception a special energy is infused into this heart which makes it spin in a particular way. I once had a vision in which my heart was cut open with a knife, taken out and breathed upon—the dust was blown off—and then spun. My teacher did not interpret this inner happening but said that I would come to understand it. Years later I heard her say to someone else that once the heart has been spun in this way it remains spinning for the rest of that person’s incarnation. The divine energy of the Self vibrates at a higher frequency to our ordinary human self. Through the spinning of the heart, the higher consciousness of the Self is able to be integrated into the lower vehicles, into the denser dimensions of the human being. All the wayfarer’s spiritual work has been a preparation for this moment, and from now on the work will be to give birth to this seed of consciousness, to attune one’s waking consciousness to the higher vibrations of the Self that are now spinning within the heart. This is the gradual process of awakening to the consciousness of the heart, opening the eye of the heart through which the Beloved is able to experience His creation. Sufis are known as “a brotherhood of migrants who ‘keep watch’ on the world and for the world,” because through the open eye of His lovers’ hearts the Beloved keeps watch on the world. Through His lovers’ hearts humanity is kept attuned to the Beloved. Just as a single heart is spun when the individual is ready to contain the higher energy of the Self, so does this same process happen with a group. When the group has a central core bonded together in love then its collective heart, its central core of light, is spun. In order to help this process, groups of souls that have been bonded together in past lifetimes are forming specific groups. They hold the spiritual core of the group that allows many others to be included in this dynamic unfolding. The spinning hearts of the lovers of God are forming the map made of points of light which I referred to in the previous chapter. At this time His lovers are being positioned around the planet. Some have already been positioned. Some are moving to physical locations while others are having their hearts awakened to this hidden purpose. Slowly this map is being unfolded, and in certain important places lovers are forming clusters of points of light. Certain spiritual groups have been formed or are being formed to contain these clusters as dynamic centers of light. When this map of light around the world is fully unfolded it will be able to contain and transform the energy structure of the planet. It has the potential to be the bond that will enable the world soul, the anima mundi, to be impregnated with a higher consciousness. The hearts of His lovers form part of the hidden heart of the world. As this map is unfolding so their spinning hearts can open the heart of the world. At this moment in cosmic time the planet is being aligned with its inner source, allowing the world to be infused with a certain cosmic energy that can dramatically speed up the evolution of this planet. If the heart of the world opens, it can receive this frequency of cosmic energy and directly implant it into the hearts of people. This would alter human life more than we could imagine. It is to help in this opening of the heart that many old souls have incarnated at this particular time and are working together. (p. 36 - 38)

For unknown ages after the explosive outpouring of matter and energy of the Big Bang, the Cosmos was without form. There were no galaxies, no planets, no life. Deep, impenetrable darkness was everywhere, hydrogen atoms in the void. Here and there, denser accumulations of gas were imperceptibly growing, globes of matter were condensing-hydrogen raindrops more massive than suns. Within these globes of gas was kindled the nuclear fire latent in matter. A first generation of stars was born, flooding the Cosmos with light. There were in those times, not yet any planets to receive the light, no living creatures to admire the radiance of the heavens. Deep in the stellar furnaces, the alchemy of nuclear fusion created heavy elements from the ashes of hydrogen burning, the atomic building blocks of future planets and lifeforms. Massive stars soon exhausted their stores of nuclear fuel. Rocked by colossal explosions, they returned most of their substance back into the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the stars, new raindrops made of many elements were forming, later generation of stars being born. Nearby, smaller raindrops grew, bodies far too little to ignite the nuclear fire, droplets in the interstellar mist on their way to form planets. Among them was a small world of stone and iron, the early Earth. Congealing and warming, the Earth released methane, ammonia, water and hydrogen gases that had been trapped within, forming the primitive atmosphere and the first oceans. Starlight from the Sun bathed and warmed the primeval Earth, drove storms, generated lightning and thunder. Volcanoes overflowed with lava. These processes disrupted molecules of the primitive atmosphere; the fragments fell back together into more and more complex forms, which dissolved into the early oceans. After a while the seas achieved the consistency of a warm, dilute soup. Molecules were organized, and complex chemical reactions driven, on the surface of clay. And one day a molecule arose that quite by accident was able to make crude copies of itself out of the other molecules in the broth. As time passed, more elaborate and more accurate self replicating molecules arose. Those combinations best suited to further replication were favored by the sieve of natural selection. Those that copied better produced more copies. And the primitive oceanic broth gradually grew thin as it was consumed by and transformed into complex condensations of self replicating organic molecules. Gradually, imperceptibly, life had begun. Single-celled plants evolved, and life began generating its own food. Photosynthesis transformed the atmosphere. Sex was invented. Once free living forms bonded together to make a complex cell with specialized functions. Chemical receptors evolved, and the Cosmos could taste and smell. One celled organisms evolved into multicellular colonies, elaborating their various parts into specialized organ systems. Eyes and ears evolved, and now the Cosmos could see and hear. Plants and animals discovered that land could support life. Organisms buzzed, crawled, scuttled, lumbered, glided, flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through steaming jungles. Small creatures emerged, born live instead of in hard-shelled containers, with a fluid like the early ocean coursing through their veins. They survived by swiftness and cunning. And then, only a moment ago, some small arboreal animals scampered down from the trees. They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.

The Vedas are considered to be the direct words of the Lord. The Lord gives us the opportunity to enjoy material life as we want, and at the same time He gives directions for the modes and processes of abiding by the Vedas so that gradually one may be elevated to liberation from material bondage.

I AM WORKING ON YOUR BEHALF. Bring Me all your concerns, including your dreams. Talk with Me about everything, letting the Light of My Presence shine on your hopes and plans. Spend time allowing My Light to infuse your dreams with life, gradually transforming them into reality. This is a very practical way of collaborating with Me. I, the Creator of the universe, have deigned to co-create with you. Do not try to hurry this process. If you want to work with Me, you have to accept My time frame. Hurry is not in My nature. Abraham and Sarah had to wait many years for the fulfillment of My promise, a son. How their long wait intensified their enjoyment of this child! Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses.

In one set of experiments, for example, researchers affiliated with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism trained mice to press levers in response to certain cues until the behavior became a habit. The mice were always rewarded with food. Then, the scientists poisoned the food so that it made the animals violently ill, or electrified the floor, so that when the mice walked toward their reward they received a shock. The mice knew the food and cage were dangerous—when they were offered the poisoned pellets in a bowl or saw the electrified floor panels, they stayed away. When they saw their old cues, however, they unthinkingly pressed the lever and ate the food, or they walked across the floor, even as they vomited or jumped from the electricity. The habit was so ingrained the mice couldn’t stop themselves.1.23 It’s not hard to find an analog in the human world. Consider fast food, for instance. It makes sense—when the kids are starving and you’re driving home after a long day—to stop, just this once, at McDonald’s or Burger King. The meals are inexpensive. It tastes so good. After all, one dose of processed meat, salty fries, and sugary soda poses a relatively small health risk, right? It’s not like you do it all the time. But habits emerge without our permission. Studies indicate that families usually don’t intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week—as the cues and rewards create a habit—until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries. When researchers at the University of North Texas and Yale tried to understand why families gradually increased their fast food consumption, they found a series of cues and rewards that most customers never knew were influencing their behaviors.1.24 They discovered the habit loop. Every McDonald’s, for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’ architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines. The foods at some chains are specifically engineered to deliver immediate rewards—the fries, for instance, are designed to begin disintegrating the moment they hit your tongue, in order to deliver a hit of salt and grease as fast as possible, causing your pleasure centers to light up and your brain to lock in the pattern. All the better for tightening the habit loop.1.25 However, even these habits are delicate. When a fast food restaurant closes down, the families that previously ate there will often start having dinner at home, rather than seek out an alternative location. Even small shifts can end the pattern. But since we often don’t recognize these habit loops as they grow, we are blind to our ability to control them. By learning to observe the cues and rewards, though, we can change the routines.

Pre-modern forms of authority , based predominantly upon value-rationality and natural law, are here succeeded by legal-rational forms of domination and by the rule of instrumental reason. With this, religious beliefs and ultimate ideals gradually recede from (public) life as they are disenchanted by the claims of 'rational' science and are replaced increasingly by the idealized pursuit of secular, material ends. This leads to a world in which questions of meaning and value disappear from the public arena, and in which the scope for creative action and for the pursuit of ultimate values becomes increasingly restricted. And in this regard, the twin processes of cultural and social rationalization lead to the same end: to a condition of nihilism in which the highest 'ultimate' values are devalued, or devalue themselves, and hence, for the most part, are no longer able to guide social action, which itself becomes, in turn, increasingly routinized and mundane.

We actually have a misperception of reality. And what we're doing through meditation is training in being able to perceive reality correctly. Enlightenment is perceiving reality with an open, unfixated mind, even in the most difficult circumstances... You could say it's as if we are in a box with a tiny little slit. We perceive reality out of that little slit, and we think that's how life is. And then as we meditate - if we train in gentleness, and if we train in letting go, if we bring relaxation as well as faithfulness to the technique into the equation; if we work with open eyes and with being awake and present, and if we train that way moment after moment in our real life - what begins to happen is that the crack begins to get bigger, and it's as if we perceive more. We develop a wider and more tolerant perspective. It might just be that we notice that we're sometimes awake and we're sometimes asleep; or we notice that our mind goes off, and our mind comes back. We begin to notice - the first big discovery, of course - that we think so, so much. We begin to develop what's called prajna, or "clear wisdom." With this clear wisdom, we are likely to feel a growing sense of confidence that we can handle more, that we can even love more. Perhaps there are times when we are able to climb out of the box altogether. But believe me, if that happened too soon, we would freak out. Usually we're not ready to perceive out of the box right away. But we move in that direction. We're becoming more and more relaxed with uncertainty, more and more relaxed with groundlessness, more and more relaxed with not having walls around us to keep us protected in a little box or cocoon. Enlightenment isn't about going someplace else or attaining something that we don't have right now. Enlightenment is when the blinders start to come off. We are uncovering the true state, or uncovering buddha nature. This is important because each day when you sit down, you can recognize that it's a process of gradually uncovering something that's already here. That's why relaxation and letting go are so important. You can't uncover something by harshness or uptightness because those things cover our buddha nature. Stabilizing the mind, bringing out the sharp clarity of mind, needs to be accompanied by relaxation and openness.

Liaquat and his westernized colleagues thought they had given Islamists what they wanted. But for Maududi and his fellow Islamists, the Objectives Resolution marked the beginning of a process of cleansing non-Muslim influences from Pakistani State and society. In one of his writings, Maududi had argued that non-Muslim culture had a negative impact on Muslim life. ‘It destroys its inner vitality, blurs its vision, befogs its critical faculties, breeds inferiority complexes, and gradually but assuredly saps all the springs of culture and sounds its death-knell,’ he wrote. He argued that, ‘the Holy Prophet has positively and forcefully forbidden the Muslims to assume the culture and mode of life of the non-Muslims’.

Aryadeva tells us: “In the beginning, we must abandon all negative actions; in the middle, all attachment to ego; and in the end, all extremes, opinions or concepts.”3 To obtain such a realization, we must unite wisdom with inner accomplishment. Theoretical knowledge and intellectual conviction are not enough. We ourselves must reflect, in life circumstances that are a teaching, in order to validate the doctrine by means of personal experience and authentic familiarization. Meditation is the gradual process that acclimates us to a new vision.

Growth is the process of gradual increase towards living a fulfilled life

As I’ve already mentioned, there is just one way to escape this negative spiral—by tidying efficiently all at once, as quickly as possible, to make the perfect clutter-free environment. But how does this create the right mind-set? When you tidy your space completely, you transform the scenery. The change is so profound that you feel as if you are living in a totally different world. This deeply affects your mind and inspires a strong aversion to reverting to your previously cluttered state. The key is to make the change so sudden that you experience a complete change of heart. The same impact can never be achieved if the process is gradual. To achieve a sudden change like this, you need to use the most efficient method of tidying. Otherwise, before you know it, the day will be gone and you will have made no headway. The more time it takes, the more tired you feel,

People have trouble discarding things that they could still use (functional value), that contain helpful information (informational value), and that have sentimental ties (emotional value). When these things are hard to obtain or replace (rarity), they become even harder to part with. The process of deciding what to keep and what to discard will go much more smoothly if you begin with items that are easier to make decisions about. As you gradually work toward the harder categories, you will be honing your decision-making skills. Clothes are the easiest because their rarity value is extremely low.

The idea of natural selection is not hard to grasp. If individuals within a species differ genetically from one another, and some of those differences affect an individual’s ability to survive and reproduce in its environment, then in the next generation the “good” genes that lead to higher survival and reproduction will have relatively more copies than the “not so good” genes. Over time, the population will gradually become more and more suited to its environment as helpful mutations arise and spread through the population, while deleterious ones are weeded out. Ultimately, this process produces organisms that are well adapted to their habitats and way of life.

Over the two centuries before Jesus, the celebration had taken on quite a bit of Greek Socratic (Hellenistic) influence, which suited Jewish social tradition quite nicely, so what had begun as the recitation of a story had morphed into almost a question and response ritual. On the morning of Preparation Day for the celebration, the head of the household took a lamb to The Temple for slaughter. Then, he would bring the meat home so that it, together with the other prescribed ritual foodstuffs, could be properly prepared. Eventually, when it was time for the meal, those gathered would be called to table for a joyous repast. But the feast included an important ritual. Someone at table would query those gathered, following an informal script that revolved around four questions that not only told the great Story of Exodus, but also applied it to the participants’ present lives. So we might imagine: “This is the story of our slavery, and today we are enslaved…” “We wandered for forty years in the arid desert, and today we find that we are wandering, unable to make a decision…” “But at last we arrived in the Promised Land, and we’re planning … this year, God-willing.” Followed by, “Since then we have been committed to making ourselves and our people thrive in God’s promise of this Land—and look around this table and see the kernel of the community that needs our love, every day.” From this deep annual ritual and the understandings flowing from it, we can well imagine how this core metaphor became a spiritual springboard for every Hebrew’s journey with God—a journey of freedom and liberation, one with four sequential paths that continually repeated in the lives of every individual, and in the life of the community. So there is the key—and it is a far-reaching link, indeed. The explanation for early Christians’ natural comfort with being Followers of The Way was specifically and profoundly rooted in their Jewish traditions and almost certainly, the principal of fourness, in ancient rituals from prehistory. The sequence was well-known to them, and the road well-marked. Yet, as Christians did in so many other ways, they expanded the journey from that of their predecessors, pushing beyond the liberation of a single tribe and outer freedom from an oppressive Pharaoh. Christians took the framework of freedom and crafted an identifiable, cyclical inner journey of transformation available to everyone, incorporating the living reality of Jesus the Christ. And soon, The Way came to be understood by early Christians as the ongoing gradual process of transformation into the image of the eternal Christ in whom they believed they were already made.

Conclusion: Adulthood at Last, Ready or Not We have seen in this chapter that the feeling of being in-between is a common part of being an emerging adult. Entering adulthood is no longer as definite and clear-cut as getting married. On the contrary, the road to young adulthood is circuitous, and the end of it usually does not come until the late twenties. Young people reach adulthood not because of a single event, but as a consequence of the gradual process of becoming self-sufficient and learning to stand alone. As they gradually take responsibility for themselves, make independent decisions, and pay their own way through life, the feeling grows in them that they have become adults. However, they view this achievement with mixed emotions. The independence of emerging adulthood is welcome, and they take pride in being able to take care of themselves without relying on their parents’ assistance. Nevertheless, the responsibilities of adulthood can be onerous and stressful, and emerging adults sometimes look back with nostalgia on a childhood and adolescence that seem easier in some ways than their lives now. Claims that most emerging adults experience a “quarterlife crisis”35 in their twenties may be exaggerated; life satisfaction and well-being go up from adolescence to emerging adulthood, for most people. But even if it is not exactly a “crisis,” emerging adulthood is experienced as a time of new and not always welcome responsibilities, a time of not just exhilarating independence and exploration but stress and anxiety as well. Despite the difficulties that come along with managing their own lives, most emerging adults look forward to a future they believe is filled with promise. Whether their lives now are moving along nicely or appear to be going nowhere, they almost unanimously believe that eventually they will be able to create for themselves the kind of life they want. They will find their soul mate, or at least a loving and compatible marriage partner. They will find that dream job, or at least a job that will be enjoyable and meaningful. Eventually this happy vision of the future will be tested against reality, and for many of them the result will be a jarring collision that will force them to readjust their expectations. But during emerging adulthood everything still seems possible. Nearly everyone still believes their dreams will prevail, whatever perils the world may hold for others. Are they too optimistic? Oh yes, at least from the perspective of their elders, who know all too well the likely fate of youthful dreams. Yet is important to understand their optimism as a source of strength, as a psychological resource they will need to draw upon during a stage of life that is often difficult. Given their high expectations for life, they are almost certain to fall short, but it is their self-belief that allows them to get up again after they have been knocked down, even multiple times. They may be optimistic, but the belief that they will ultimately succeed in their pursuit of happiness gives them the confidence and energy to make it through the stresses and uncertainty of the emerging adult years. NOTES Preface to the Second Edition 1.

Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

Most of the studies on chess thinking are related to expertise and really they are about perception. they deal with our visual take on positions rather than the thinking as a productive process. Chess ability stems from noticing patterns over time and recognising in related contexts. Patterns are the raw material of the trunking process, they are constellations of pieces that we gradually become to understand as competitively meaningful.

Your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. Find out what makes you kinder, what opens you up and brings out the most loving, generous, and unafraid version of you—and go after those things as if nothing else matters. Because, actually, nothing else does.

Enlightenment is possible – for everyone. However, I don‘t think we will all awaken spontaneously in the way contemporary spiritual teachers Krishnamurti or Eckhart Tolle did. Most of us will never experience a voice from on high, a flash of life-altering insight, stigmata, or a transcendent miracle. Anything is possible, but the odds are not in our favor. What these teachers experienced is like winning the lottery. Yet, from the Buddhist perspective, most of us have already won the lottery: against all probability, we have been born as human beings with intact senses and a bit of interest in pursuing something spiritual. This is even more remarkable when we consider the obstacles and temptations of our materialistic culture, in which spirit is thrown out with the bathwater of religious dogma, God is proclaimed dead, consciousness is reduced to epiphenomena of the brain, and life‘s purpose is made a hedonic scramble on a treadmill to nowhere. What is far more likely than sudden enlightenment is gradual awakening. Following a systematic educational process like a college curriculum, gradual awakening builds on incremental insights into who we truly are, learning to care for ourselves and others, and discovering creative ways to engage the problems we all face. This gradual process of awakening doesn‘t offer an escape hatch to another realm of reality or disavow our human wounds, limits, and foibles in this realm; rather it embraces and transforms them, because the only way out is through.

This process of euhemerisation, as it is called, or the making of men into gods and gods into men, sometimes, though more rarely, begins during the life of the hero, but usually after death. The true history of his life is gradually amplified and decorated with fanciful incidents, to fit it to the new character which has been posthumously given him.

It was as if an illness that had been latent in me for a long time were now threatening to erupt, as if some soul-destroying and inexorable force had fastened upon me and would gradually paralyze my entire system. I already felt in my head the dreadful torpor that heralds disintegration of the personality, I sensed that in truth I had neither memory nor the power of thought, nor even an existence, that all my life had been a constant process of obliteration, a turning away from myself and the world. If someone had come then to lead me away from myself and the world. If someone had come then to lead me away to a place of execution I would have gone meekly, without a word, without so much as opening my eyes, just as people who suffer from violent seasickness, if they are crossing the Caspian Sea on a steamer, for instance, will not offer the slightest resistance should someone tell them that they are about to be thrown overboard.

That word process is key. You don’t just “find” answers to complex life problems (or any type of complex problem, including business ones). You work your way, gradually, toward figuring out those answers, relying on questions each step of the way.

Spiritual life means learning to become one-pointed, to focus all our energy in one direction, towards Him. Through continually repeating His name we alter the grooves of our mental conditioning, the grooves which like those on a record play the same tune over and over again, repeat the same patterns which bind us in our mental habits. The dhikr gradually replaces these old grooves with the single groove of His name. The automatic thinking process is redirected towards Him. Like a computer we are reprogrammed for God. It is said that what you think, you become. If we continually think of Allâh we become one with Allâh. But the effect of the dhikr is both more subtle and more powerful than solely an act of mental focusing. One of the secrets of a dhikr (or mantra) is that it is a sacred word which conveys the essence of that which it names. This (“In is “the mystery of the identity of God and His Name” the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”). In our common everyday language there is not this identity. The word “chair” does not contain the essence of a chair. It merely signifies a chair. But the sacred language of a dhikr is different; the vibrations of the word resonate with that which it names, linking the two together. Thus it is able to directly connect the individual with that which it names. (p. 121)

Spiritual life means learning to become one-pointed, to focus all our energy in one direction, towards Him. Through continually repeating His name we alter the grooves of our mental conditioning, the grooves which like those on a record play the same tune over and over again, repeat the same patterns which bind us in our mental habits. The dhikr gradually replaces these old grooves with the single groove of His name. The automatic thinking process is redirected towards Him. Like a computer we are reprogrammed for God. It is said that what you think, you become. If we continually think of Allâh we become one with Allâh. But the effect of the dhikr is both more subtle and more powerful than solely an act of mental focusing. One of the secrets of a dhikr (or mantra) is that it is a sacred word which conveys the essence of that which it names. This is the mystery of the identity of God and His Name („in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”). In our common everyday language there is not this identity. The word “chair” does not contain the essence of a chair. It merely signifies a chair. But the sacred language of a dhikr is different; the vibrations of the word resonate with that which it names, linking the two together. Thus it is able to directly connect the individual with that which it names. (p. 121)

The process of deciding what to keep and what to discard will go much more smoothly if you begin with items that are easier to make decisions about. As you gradually work toward the harder categories, you will be honing your decision-making skills.

But that, I am afraid, was my mistake from the very beginning, the fatal flaw in my design. I thought that I could suffocate the Old Man with shovelfuls of dirt and mud. But with his body in the soil, in the specific silt of this family's land, everything on it was bound to die. Rancor seeped from his eyelids, his mouth, his ears, his ass, where his head had been all the days of his life. I should have never made him one with the land. I should have thrown his body into the sea, expelled it and not me. My anger keeps me digging into the earth, pulling at its protective mantle, eager to see his body decaying deep inside. The Old Man has refused to cooperate. His body is wholly intact. Years of alcohol can do that to a person, make him dead but not departed, make him indelible to those who have had the misfortune of sharing his name. Pickled and preserved is another way of thinking about it. All the water that is normally found inside a body had been in his displaced by alcohol, of a proof strong enough to kill anything that comes in contact with it. The tiny animals, the grubs, the worms that help to bring about the decomposition of the body before it can be returned to the earth, had with him no hope of doing their work. So they left him alone, left his hate to poison the land, a process so gradual, so obedient to this still functioning will, that it would take my lifetime to complete. If I had a son, it might take his lifetime as well. This is as close to being immortal as the Old Man ever had the right to be, and I am the one, the only one who keeps him that way.

And it occurred to me by the time I was a teenager that I had become part of the land, every bit as much a part of it as sparrow eggs or thrasher nest, garter snake or oak tree, and that the rest of my life, or anyone's life, would be a gradual learning process, a journey toward fitting into one's home, for those of us lucky enough to still recognize what is home...that which we are a part of, rather than estranged from. And rather than using the word "lucky," perhaps I should use the word grace.

PCD & Franchise Company, International Standard Quality Products in Ahmedabad Gujarat India. Desta Life Sciences is the top PCD Pharma Franchise company in India. We are procured from faithful vendors to ensure its International Standard Quality Products. We're at Desta Science for Health Life providing the best PCD Franchise for business. This is the best Business Opportunity in India. We have 200+ Products, 4 Divisions and 13 Innovative Products. Desta Lifesciences, Started in 2011. The company's philosophy has been rooted in Quality and care and it is this ideology that has kept us alive through ups and downs. The company's greatest asset has always been its employees and it is in them we place our trust to shoulder the company's corporate responsibility and to uphold the company's ideals and values. A healthy blend of World-Class Quality, Disease prevalence-dependent, wide variety of products, stress on preventive Lifestyle products, a positive upbeat mood of one & all in the company and a feeling of oneness, is the recipe that Desta Lifesciences presents humbly to humanity. The "For the people, By the People" dictum is followed by the management in the company, thus making it surge forward with the force of the common goal to accomplish our Mission. We aim to serve mankind globally through our affordable and international standard quality products, encompassing the environmental synergy in the process. As we enter into the technological age of pharmaceuticals, we promise to adapt to more advanced technologies while simultaneously focusing on delivery of care. The future holds great promise as we gradually hope to venture into Exports and R&D to establish ourselves in the global market.

The reality, when the sexy advertisements have been stripped away, is that the actual product is ethanol.122 It is a horrible-tasting, addictive poison. So we sweeten it with sugar and flavoring or process it to make it more palatable. The product’s product is inebriation, a gradual deadening of your senses until you become completely intoxicated. And the side effects that are never disclosed are many. Think about ads for new medications, like Viagra or blood pressure medication. They are legally required to disclose all the statistically relevant side effects. Alcohol has the same cancer-causing effects as asbestos,123 and just three drinks per week can increase a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer by 15%,124 yet there are no labeling requirements whatsoever. Yet compared to other drugs (illegal, legal, and prescription), alcohol bears the highest harm rating.125

Machines are fully functional from the day of their programming.” Erasmus sounded smug. “That explains a lot. For us, life is a gradual developmental process. Without nurturing, we can’t survive,” she said. “You have never been nurtured. I think you should make improvements to the way you raise the slave children in your pens. Show them more kindness, encourage their curiosity.

Sometimes I have the feeling that nothing that happens happens, that everything happened and at the same time didn't, because nothing happens without interruption, nothing lasts or endures or is ceaselessly remembered, and even the most monotonous and routine of existences gradually cancels itself out, negates itself in its apparent repetitiveness until nothing is anything and no one is anyone they were before, and the weak wheel of the world is pushed along by forgetful beings who hear and see and know what is not said, never happens, is unknowable and unverifiable. Sometimes I have the feeling that what takes place is identical to what doesn't take place, what we dismiss or allow to slip by us identical to what we accept and seize, what we experience identical to what we never try, and yet we spend our lives in a process of choosing and rejecting and selecting, in drawing a line to separate these identical things and make of our story a unique story that we can remember and that can be recounted, either now or at the end of time, and thus be erased or swept away, the annulment of everything we are and do. We pour all our intelligence and our feelings and our enthusiasm into the task of discriminating between things that will all be made equal, if they haven't already been, and that's why we're so full of regrets and lost opportunities, of confirmations and reaffirmations and opportunities grasped, when the truth is that nothing is affirmed and everything is constantly in the process of being lost. There's no such thing as a whole or perhaps there never was anything.

Are My Thoughts in My Dreams, Creating? Jerry: I would like to understand the dream world. Are we creating in our dreams? Are we attracting anything through the thoughts we're having or experiencing in our dreams? Abraham: You are not. While you sleep, you have withdrawn your consciousness from your physical time-space reality, and you are temporarily not attracting while you are sleeping. Whatever you are thinking (and therefore feeling) and that which you are attract is always a match. Also, what you are thinking and feeling in the dream state and what is manifesting in your life experience is always a match. Your dreams give you a glimpse into what you have created or what you are in the process of creating - but you are not in the process of creating while you are dreaming. Often you are unaware of the pattern of your thoughts until they actually manifest in your experience because you have developed your habit of thought gradually over a long period of time. And while it is possible, even after something unwanted that has manifested, to focus and change it to something you do want, it is more difficult to do that after it has manifested. An understanding of what your dream state really is can help you recognize the direction of your thoughts before they actually materialize in your experience. It is much easier to correct the direction of your thoughts when your dream is your indication that it is when a real-life manifestation is your indication.

Spiritual life can be regarded as a course of gradual recovery from the addiction to the peculiar type of awareness that splits everything into subject and object. This primary addiction is the seedbed from which arise all secondary addictions. These latter are possible only because the ego is confronted by objects, which it tries to control or by which it is, or feels, controlled. To be more specific, the secondary addictions are all substitutes for the bliss that is the essence of the experience of transparency, which is at the heart of the integral consciousness, as defined by Gebser. This experience of transparency reveals the archaic interconnectedness and simultaneity of all beings and things without disowning, displacing, or distorting the cognitive realizations characteristic of the magical, mythical, and mental structures of consciousness. The secondary addictions are desperate, if mistaken, attempts to remove the primary addiction, which is our addiction to self-conscious experience, revolving around the division between subject (mind) and object (world). They are mistaken because instead of removing the primary addiction, they fortify it and thus also aggravate the sense of isolation and powerlessness experienced by the faltering rational personality. The British novelist Aldous Huxley saw this very clearly. He said: The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul. When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good works, and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion’s chemical surrogates alcohol and “goof-pills” in the modern West, alcohol and opium in the East, hashish in the Mohammedan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America, alcohol and coca in the Andes, alcohol and the barbiturates in the more up-to-date regions of South America.7 Huxley did not even mention workaholism and sex as two widely used substitutes for the realization of originary bliss. He spoke, however, of some people’s fascination with, and fatal attraction to, precious stones. This passion for gems, Huxley observed, is anchored in the fact that they “bear a faint resemblance to the glowing marvels seen with the inner eye of the visionary.”8 But deeper still than such splendid visions is, to use Gebser’s terms, the transcendental “light” of the undivided Origin itself.9 Realizing that “light” through voluntary self-transcendence is the ultimate form of healing both the person and the planet. That is the purpose of authentic spirituality. Spiritual life can usefully be pictured as a progressive recovery from the addiction of ordinary life, which is inherently schizoid and hence lacking in fullness and bliss. The well-known twelve-step program of recovery used in the literature on addiction also can serve as a convenient model for the spiritual process. Spiritual recovery is an uncovering of the spiritual dimension, whether we call it transcendental Self, God, Goddess, or the Ultimate—the dimension that is ordinarily covered up by the self-divided ego-personality, especially when it comes under the influence of the rational consciousness.

If we are lucky, we gradually gain an appreciation for how destruction can give rise to unprecedented forms of vitality, how our capacity to survive distress leaves behind a smoldering residue that we can draw on to constitute empowering life narratives. Although the process of living is perhaps inherently damaging, we can learn to make use of this damage—the same way that we can learn to make use of accidents—to generate more vigorous forms of life.

7. The closer we are to Self-realization, or enlightenment, the more ordinary we become. Only seekers striving for liberation as if it were a trophy glamorize the yogic process and themselves. They want to be extraordinary, whereas liberated beings are perfectly ordinary. They are as happy washing dishes as they are sitting quietly in meditation or teaching their disciples. For this reason, Yoga has from the beginning celebrated not only the path of the world-renouncing ascetic (samnyāsin) but also that of the world-engaging householder (grihastha) who uses the opportunities of daily life to practice the virtues of a yogic lifestyle. 8. In all Yoga practice, there is an element of pleasant “surprise” or favorableness. In the theistic schools of Yoga, this is explained as the grace (prasāda) of the Divine Being; in nontheistic schools, such as Jaina Yoga or certain schools of Buddhist Yoga, help is said to flow from liberated beings (called arhats, buddhas, bodhisattvas, tīrthankaras, or mahā-siddhas). Also, gurus are channels of benevolent energies, or blessings, intended to ripen their disciples. The process by which a guru blesses a disciple is called “transmission” (samcāra). In some schools, it is known as shakti-pāta, meaning “descent of the power.” The power in question is the Energy of Consciousness itself. 9. All Yoga is initiatory. That is, initiation (dīkshā) by a qualified teacher (guru) is essential for ultimate success in Yoga. It is possible to benefit from a good many yogic practices even without initiation. Thus, most exercises of Hatha-Yoga—from postures to breath control to meditation—can be successfully practiced on one’s own, providing the correct format has been learned. But for the higher stages of Yoga, empowerment through initiation is definitely necessary. The habit patterns of the mind are too ingrained for us to make deep-level changes without the benign intervention of a Yoga master. All yogic practices can usefully be viewed as preparation for this moment. 10. Yoga is a gradual process of replacing our unconscious patterns of thought and behavior with new, more benign patterns that are expressive of the higher powers and virtues of enlightenment. It takes time to accomplish this far-reaching work of self-transformation, and therefore practitioners of Yoga must first and foremost practice patience. Enlightenment, or liberation, is not realized in a matter of days, weeks, or months. We must be willing to commit to an entire lifetime of yogic practice. There must be a basic impulse to grow, regardless of whether or not we will achieve liberation in this lifetime. It is one of Yoga’s fundamental tenets that no effort is ever wasted; even the slightest attempt at transforming ourselves makes a difference. It is our patient cumulative effort that flowers into enlightenment sooner or later.

Tapas is any practice that pushes the mind against its own limits, and the key ingredient of tapas is endurance. Thus in the archaic Rig-Veda (10.136), the long-haired ascetic or keshin is said to “endure” the world, to “endure” fire, and to “endure” poison.1 The keshin is a type of renouncer, a proto-yogin, who is a “wind-girt” (naked?) companion of the wild God Rudra (Howler). He is said to “ascend” the wind in a God-intoxicated state and to fly through space, looking down upon all things. But the name keshin harbors a deeper meaning, for it also can refer to the Sun whose “long hair” is made up of the countless rays that emanate from the solar orb and reach far into the cosmos and bestow life on Earth. This is again a reminder that the archaic Yoga of the Vedas revolves around the Solar Spirit, who selflessly feeds all beings with his/her/its compassionate warmth. The early name for the yogin is tapasvin, the practitioner of tapas or voluntary self-challenge. The tapasvin lives always at the edge. He deliberately challenges his body and mind, applying formidable will power to whatever practice he vows to undertake. He may choose to stand stock-still under India’s hot sun for hours on end, surrounded by a wall of heat from four fires lit close by. Or he may resolve to sit naked in solitary meditation on a windswept mountain peak in below-zero temperatures. Or he may opt to incessantly chant a divine name, forfeiting sleep for a specified number of days. The possibilities for tapas are endless. Tapas begins with temporarily or permanently denying ourselves a particular desire—having a satisfying cup of coffee, piece of chocolate, or casual sex. Instead of instant gratification, we choose postponement. Then, gradually, postponement can be stepped up to become complete renunciation of a desire. This kind of challenge to our habit patterns causes a certain degree of frustration in us. We begin to “stew in our own juices,” and this generates psychic energy that can be used to power the process of self-transformation. As we become increasingly able to gain control over our impulses, we experience the delight behind creative self-frustration. We see that we are growing and that self-denial need not necessarily be negative.

The single most important Hatha-Yoga technique of purification is a particular type of breath control that is performed by breathing alternately through the left and the right nostril. This practice is intended to remove all obstructions from the network of subtle channels through which the life force circulates, thus making proper breath control and deep concentration possible. In the ordinary person, state the scriptures of Hatha-Yoga, the circulation of the life force is obstructed. The technique of alternate breathing is known as nādī-shodhana. When the subtle conduits (nādī)—or arcs of the life energy—are completely purified, the life force can circulate freely in the body, and it becomes amenable to voluntary control. Already Patanjali noted in his Yoga-Sūtra (2.52) that breath control has the effect of removing the “covering” (āvarana) that prevents one’s inner light to manifest clearly. The objective of Hatha-Yoga is to conduct the life force along the body’s central axis to the crown of the head. This flow of prāna through the central conduit—called sushumnā-nādī—is thought to awaken the full psychospiritual potential of the body. This potential is better known as the “serpent power” (kundalinī-shakti). When the kundalinī is awakened from its dormant state in the lowest center (cakra) at the base of the spine, it rushes up to the crown center. This ascent is accompanied by a variety of psychic and somatic phenomena. These include visionary states and, when the kundalinī reaches the top center, ecstatic transcendence into the formless Reality, which is inherently inconceivable and blissful. As the kundalinī force is active in the crown center, the rest of the body is gradually depleted of energy. This curious effect is explained as the progressive purification of the five elements (bhūta) constituting the physical body—earth, water, fire, air, and ether. The Sanskrit term for this process is bhūta-shuddhi. Purification of the body not only leads to health and inner balance but also affects the way in which a person perceives the world. This is clearly indicated in Patanjali’s Yoga-Sūtra (2.40), which states: Through purity [the yogin gains] a desire to protect his own limbs [and a desire for] noncontamination by others. The decisive phrase sva-anga-jugupsā has often been translated as “disgust toward one’s own body,” but this is not at all in the spirit of Yoga. Jugupsā is more appropriately rendered as “desire to protect.” The adept is eager to protect his body against contamination by others. This is combined with an inner distance from one’s own physical vehicle through sustained witnessing.

Tapas is any practice that pushes the mind against its own limits, and the key ingredient of tapas is endurance. Thus in the archaic Rig-Veda (10.136), the long-haired ascetic or keshin is said to “endure” the world, to “endure” fire, and to “endure” poison.1 The keshin is a type of renouncer, a proto-yogin, who is a “wind-girt” (naked?) companion of the wild God Rudra (Howler). He is said to “ascend” the wind in a God-intoxicated state and to fly through space, looking down upon all things. But the name keshin harbors a deeper meaning, for it also can refer to the Sun whose “long hair” is made up of the countless rays that emanate from the solar orb and reach far into the cosmos and bestow life on Earth. This is again a reminder that the archaic Yoga of the Vedas revolves around the Solar Spirit, who selflessly feeds all beings with his/her/its compassionate warmth. The early name for the yogin is tapasvin, the practitioner of tapas or voluntary self-challenge. The tapasvin lives always at the edge. He deliberately challenges his body and mind, applying formidable will power to whatever practice he vows to undertake. He may choose to stand stock-still under India’s hot sun for hours on end, surrounded by a wall of heat from four fires lit close by. Or he may resolve to sit naked in solitary meditation on a windswept mountain peak in below-zero temperatures. Or he may opt to incessantly chant a divine name, forfeiting sleep for a specified number of days. The possibilities for tapas are endless. Tapas begins with temporarily or permanently denying ourselves a particular desire—having a satisfying cup of coffee, piece of chocolate, or casual sex. Instead of instant gratification, we choose postponement. Then, gradually, postponement can be stepped up to become complete renunciation of a desire. This kind of challenge to our habit patterns causes a certain degree of frustration in us. We begin to “stew in our own juices,” and this generates psychic energy that can be used to power the process of self-transformation. As we become increasingly able to gain control over our impulses, we experience the delight behind creative self-frustration. We see that we are growing and that self-denial need not necessarily be negative. The Bhagavad-Gītā (17.14–16) speaks of three kinds of austerity or tapas: Austerity of body, speech, and mind. Austerity of the body includes purity, rectitude, chastity, nonharming, and making offerings to higher beings, sages, brahmins (the custodians of the spiritual legacy of India), and honored teachers. Austerity of speech encompasses speaking kind, truthful, and beneficial words that give no offense, as well as the regular practice of recitation (svādhyāya) of the sacred lore. Austerity of the mind consists of serenity, gentleness, silence, self-restraint, and pure emotions.

England calls the process dissipative adaptation. Potentially, it provides a universal mechanism for coaxing certain molecular systems to get up and dance the entropic two-step. And as that’s what living things do for a living—they take in high-quality energy, use it, and then return low-quality energy in the form of heat and other wastes—perhaps dissipative adaptation was essential to the origin of life.42 England notes that replication itself is a potent tool of dissipative adaptation: if a small collection of particles has become adept at absorbing, using, and dispensing energy, then two such collections are better still, as are four or eight, and so on. Molecules that can replicate might then be an expected output of dissipative adaptation. And once replicating molecules appear on the scene, molecular Darwinism can kick in, and the drive to life begins. These ideas are in their early stages, yet I can’t help but think they would have made Schrödinger happy. Using fundamental physical principles, we have developed an understanding of the big bang, the formation of stars and planets, the synthesis of complex atoms, and now we are determining how those atoms might arrange into replicating molecules well adapted for extracting energy from the environment to build and sustain orderly forms. With the power of molecular Darwinism to select for ever-fitter molecular collections, we can envision how some might acquire the capacity to store and transmit information. An instruction manual passed from one molecular generation to the next, which preserves battle-tested fitness strategies, is a potent force for molecular dominance. Acting out over hundreds of millions of years, these processes may have gradually sculpted the first life.