Manifesting Your Desires Quotes

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If you don't feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.
John Piper (A Hunger for God: Desiring God Through Fasting And Prayer)
Never surrender your hopes and dreams to the fateful limitations others have placed on their own lives. The vision of your true destiny does not reside within the blinkered outlook of the naysayers and the doom prophets. Judge not by their words, but accept advice based on the evidence of actual results. Do not be surprised should you find a complete absence of anything mystical or miraculous in the manifested reality of those who are so eager to advise you. Friends and family who suffer the lack of abundance, joy, love, fulfillment and prosperity in their own lives really have no business imposing their self-limiting beliefs on your reality experience.
Anthon St. Maarten
Dare to dream! If you did not have the capability to make your wildest wishes come true, your mind would not have the capacity to conjure such ideas in the first place. There is no limitation on what you can potentially achieve, except for the limitation you choose to impose on your own imagination. What you believe to be possible will always come to pass - to the extent that you deem it possible. It really is as simple as that.
Anthon St. Maarten
When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.
C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)
The moment you say , , or , the skies will open for you and the non- physical energies begin instantly to orchestrate the manifestation of your desire.
Esther Hicks
You cannot run at full throttle when applying your mindset to all of the different things running through your head. Focusing is the key to manifesting your desires.
Stephen Richards (The Ultimate Focus Builder)
It is not your job to make something happen—Universal Forces are in place for all of that. Your work is to simply determine what you want.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
Any day above ground is a good day. Before you complain about anything, be thankful for your life and the things that are still going well.
Germany Kent
Life Is Always in Motion, So You Cannot Be "Stuck
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires)
The only way to consciously deactivate a thought is to activate another. In other words, the only way to deliberately withdraw your attention from one thought is to give your attention to another.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
If you align your vibrations and frequencies with those things you desire, you will acquire them.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
There is no desire that anyone holds for any other reason than that they believe they will feel better in the achievement of it. Whether it is a material object, a physical state of being, a relationship, a condition, or a circumstance - at the heart of every desire is the desire to feel good. And so, the standard of success in life is not the things or the money - the standard of success is absolutely the amount of joy you feel.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires)
(Success is about a happy life, and a happy life is just a string of happy moments. But most people do not allow the happy moments because they are so busy trying to get a happy life.)
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
It Is Not about Controlling Thoughts, It Is about Guiding Thoughts
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
Magic comes from the heart, from your feelings, your deepest expressions of desire. That's why black magic is so easy—it comes from lust, from fear and anger, from things that are easy to feed and make grow. The sort I do is harder. It comes from something deeper than that, a truer and purer source—harder to tap, harder to keep, but ultimately more elegant, more powerful. My magic. That was at the heart of me. It was a manifestation of what I believed, what I lived. It came from my desire to see to it that someone stood between the darkness and the people it would devour. It came from my love of a good steak, from the way I would sometimes cry at a good movie or a moving symphony. From my life. From the hope that I could make things better for someone else, if not always for me. Somewhere, in all of that, I touched on something that wasn't tapped out, in spite of how horrible the past days had been, something that hadn't gone cold and numb inside of me. I grasped it, held it in my hand like a firefly, and willed its energy out, into the circle I had created with the spinning amulet on the end of its chain.
Jim Butcher (Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, #2))
your life-and everyone else in the Universe is playing the part that you have assigned to them. You can literally script any life that you desire, and the Universe will deliver to you the people, places, and events just as you decide them to be. For you are the creator of your own experience-you have only to decide it and allow it to be.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires)
Feeling good equals allowing the connection; feeling bad equals not allowing the connection—feeling bad equals resisting the connection to your Source.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
Honor your desire for a new life. Say yes to the small inklings of interest and curiosity that present themselves each day.
Lynn A. Robinson (Divine Intuition: Your Inner Guide to Purpose, Peace, and Prosperity)
You are growth-seeking Beings, and as you are moving forward, you are at your happiest.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
Your true knowledge comes from your own life experience.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
When you put your passion into your desire, when it becomes a fire that threatens to consume you unless you have it, then your will is in the right place.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
With your practiced attention to any subject, the Law of Attraction delivers circumstances, conditions, experiences, other people, and all manner of things that match your
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgment of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself... That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitiude for the gift of life.
Stanley Kunitz
Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for.
C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)
With enough attention to anything, the essence of what you have been giving thought to will eventually become a physical manifestation.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
To will is to put your emotion into your desire. Simply wanting is not desire, it is merely an undirected thought with no purpose but to pass the time.
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
once you expect something, it will come. The details of it may play out differently—but the vibrational essence will always be an exact match.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
Desire creates a starting point. Without it, no magic can be put into action.
Lawren Leo (Dragonflame: Tap Into Your Reservoir of Power Using Talismans, Manifestation, and Visualization)
Manifesting your desires requires an understanding of the universe’s abundance and inherently giving nature. If you ask from a position of fear or desperation, you are sending out your fear and desperation, and the universe, giving, reflecting, and non-judgmental as it is, will send those right back at you.
Stephen Richards
Follow your bliss,” for in the steady reaching for bliss, you must surely align with the Energy of your Source. And in that constant alignment, your Well-Being is certain.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
This is the simple basis of this eternally expanding Universe: • Variety causes contemplation. • Contemplation produces preference. • Preference is asking. • Asking is always answered.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
That is the optimal creative vantage point: To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeling of impatience, doubt, or unworthiness hindering the receiving of it—that is the Science of Deliberate Creation at its best.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
it is not possible to stand still or be stuck, because Energy, and therefore life, is always in motion. Things are always changing.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires)
All of your desires, wants, or preferences emanate from you naturally and constantly, for you stand at the Leading Edge of a Universe that makes that so.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
are here to experience outrageous joy.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
Learn the power of tantra. Focus on your desires with singleness of purpose and align your actions with your desire, and your desires will manifest into your reality.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic)
When good times turn out way bigger than you first expected, that's when you know you're on a roll!
Stephen Richards
Worship and spiritual hunger make you so attractive to God that your circumstances cease to matter anymore. He will move heaven and earth to find a worshiper. When you begin to worship with all your being and desire, your heart turns Him toward you. You capture His attention and attracts His affection.
Tommy Tenney (The God Catchers: Experiencing the Manifest Presence of God)
here. I would like to emphasize this last point and really drive it home as it is the key: When you get to a point where you feel so good about your unmanifest desires such that manifestation would make you feel no different… you’re on the brink of a physical manifestation.
Richard Dotts (Come and Sit with Me: How to Desire Nothing and Manifest Everything)
enact a scene. No matter what it is. Forget good and evil. Enact a scene that implies you have what you desire, and to the degree that you are faithful to that state, it will unfold in your world and no power can stop it, for there is no other power.
Neville Goddard (The Law: And Other Essays on Manifestation)
This is a universe of vibration. As Einstein once observed, "Nothing happens until something moves"-that is, everything vibrates to a particular measurable frequency. Break
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires)
How you think and create your inner world that you gonna become in your outer world. Your inner believe manifest you in the outside
Rashedur Ryan Rahman
You are the creator of your own reality.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires)
Anything that you give your attention to will become your "truth." The Law of Attraction says that it must. Your life, and everyone else's, too, is but a reflection of the predominance of your thoughts. There is no exception to this.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires)
Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to be irresponsible, yet for every accountant who deserts his family and sails for Tahiti, ten American men have heart attacks at their desks, after hours.
Mary Rose O'Reilley (The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd)
You attract whatever you give your energy, attention, and focus to. If you’re thinking about it, you’re magnetizing it to your life -- whether it’s positive or negative. Your focus may be on something you want. Or it may be on something you don’t want (or the lack of what you want).
Andrew Kap (The Last Law of Attraction Book You'll Ever Need To Read: The Missing Key To Finally Tapping Into The Universe And Manifesting Your Desires)
Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of--something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possesed your soul have been but hints of it--tantalizing glimspes, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest--if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself--you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the things we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.
C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)
You are heir to a heavenly fortune, the sole beneficiary of an infinite spiritual trust fund, a proverbial goldmine of sacred abundance beyond all common measure or human comprehension. But until you assert your rightful inheritance of this blessed gift, it will remain unclaimed and forever beyond your reach.
Anthon St. Maarten (Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny)
with an understanding of the Laws of the Universe and some willingness to deliberately choose thoughts, you can, in time, replace all hindering beliefs with life-giving beliefs,
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
When you have lived an experience that helps you understand, in an exaggerated way, the very thing you do not want, you also understand, in an exaggerated way, what you do want.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
If you never try, you'll never know. You are what you manifest.
Germany Kent
It Is Impossible to Control Conditions That Others Have Created
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
There is no desire that anyone holds for any other reason than that they believe they will feel better in the achievement of it.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
Your deepest desire,” he observes, “is the one manifested by your daily life and habits.”6 This is because our action—our doing—bubbles up from our loves, which, as we’ve observed, are habits we’ve acquired through the practices we’re immersed in. That means the formation of my loves and desires can be happening “under the hood” of consciousness. I might be learning to love a telos that I’m not even aware of and that nonetheless governs my life in unconscious ways.
James K.A. Smith (You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit)
A deep love resides inside each of us. This love is independent of the desires, thoughts, and opinions, good or bad, which are readily offered to us. It is a love that is gentle and kind, accepting and nonjudgmental, playful and spontaneous, courageous and curious. It is always encouraging and always evolving. This love can be discovered only through turning off the noise around us, coming to ourselves in silence, meditation, and prayer. If we listen carefully we will hear the murmurs of our inner voice tell yearnings of our truest selves. What is available to us is a profound understanding, appreciation, and full acceptance of self, all of the good and all of the bad. Only when we truly know that we are able to tap into this part of ourselves can we begin to love others fully. Love for others is the manifestation of love for self. We cannot love another more than we love ourselves. Life is a mirror. If you want to know what love for yourself looks like, look at your love for others. If you want to know what your love for others look like, look at your love for self. When you love yourself this way, you love God this way. This relationship is the divine love triangle; self, God, and others in any order.
Marlon Hartley Lindsay
you would not want to mask your own feelings, pretending to feel different from how you really feel. For pretending in this way does nothing to change your vibrational point of attraction. The only way you can do so is to change your vibrational offering, and when you do change your vibrational offering, the way you feel changes, too.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
This book is about consciously allowing your natural connection to the Stream of Well-Being. It is about remembering who you really are so that you can get on with the creation of your life experience in the way you intended before you came forth into this physical body, and into this magnificent Leading-Edge experience . . . where you fully intended to express your freedom in endless, joyous, co-creative ways.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
I used to have this “if I’m not worrying, I don’t feel normal” syndrome because I have come to identify so much with that sickening worry feeling! I thought it was the most normal thing in the world to do. But I know today that worrying is not natural. It is not your natural, true and unlimited state. Your natural state is one of freedom, peace and joy.
Richard Dotts (Come and Sit with Me: How to Desire Nothing and Manifest Everything)
Never try to solve the problem for the spirits by thinking about the details, but think of how you will feel when it is solved for you.
Damon Brand (Words of Power: Secret Magickal Sounds That Manifest Your Desires (The Gallery of Magick))
The world was constructed in the mind's eye, out of things unseen by the mortal eye, and made alive by faith.
Neville Goddard (How To Manifest Your Desires)
Dreams are manifestation of your deepest heart desires.
Lailah Gifty Akita
Manifest plainness and embrace the genuine; lessen self-interest and make few your desires.
Lao Tzu
Who would you have to become and what would you have to believe about yourself to attract exactly the SoulMate you desire?
Annette Vaillancourt (How to Manifest Your SoulMate with EFT: Relationship as a Spiritual Path)
If you really want to do, be or have anything, then first destroy your greatest enemy 'doubt’. The manifestation of your desire is directly proportional to how much you believe.
Hina Hashmi (Your Life A Practical Guide to Happiness Peace and Fulfilment)
As long as you are more aware of what you do not want regarding this situation, what you do want cannot come to you.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires)
I want to say that further you are not a great chief of this country. That you have no following, no power, no control." Logan continued, "You are on an Indian reservation merely at the sufferance of the government. You are fed by the government, clothed by the government, your children are educated by the government, and all you have and are today is because of the government. If it were not for the government you would be freezing and starving today in the mountains. I merely say these things to notify you that you cannot insult the people of the United States of America or its committees ...the government feeds and clothes and educates your children now, and desires to teach you to become farmers, and to civilize you, and make you as white men. -Senator John Logan, 1883
Dee Brown (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West)
Stream of Source Energy flows to you and through you—and that it is you. This Stream flowed before the physical Being that you know as you was born, and it will continue to flow once the physical Being that you know as you experiences what you call “death.” Every living thing, animal, human, or plant, experiences that which is called death, with no exception. Spirit, which is who we really are, is eternal. So what death must be is but a changing of the perspective of that eternal Spirit. If
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
You may be speeding through book after book trying to find the next secret, or next technique which you think can help speed up your manifestations while glossing over the harder parts. The harder parts are about working on yourself, about cultivating your inner state, and about having the discipline to focus entirely inwards during the crucial gestation period of your manifestations! That is the hard inner work that most people usually eschew in favor of the easier outer techniques. But until and unless you do the inner work necessary, things are not going to get any better for you.
Richard Dotts (Come and Sit with Me: How to Desire Nothing and Manifest Everything)
Only when the front of your body is relaxed and opened, your breath full and deep, and your gaze unguarded and directly connected with another person’s eyes, can your fullest intelligence manifest spontaneously in the situation.
David Deida (The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire)
We have gone sick by following a path of untrammelled rationalism, male dominance, attention to the visible surface of things, practicality, bottom-line-ism. We have gone very, very sick. And the body politic, like any body, when it feels itself to be sick, it begins to produce antibodies, or strategies for overcoming the condition of dis-ease. And the 20th century is an enormous effort at self-healing. Phenomena as diverse as surrealism, body piercing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz, experimental dance, rave culture, tattooing, the list is endless. What do all these things have in common? They represent various styles of rejection of linear values. The society is trying to cure itself by an archaic revival, by a reversion to archaic values. So when I see people manifesting sexual ambiguity, or scarifying themselves, or showing a lot of flesh, or dancing to syncopated music, or getting loaded, or violating ordinary canons of sexual behaviour, I applaud all of this; because it's an impulse to return to what is felt by the body -- what is authentic, what is archaic -- and when you tease apart these archaic impulses, at the very centre of all these impulses is the desire to return to a world of magical empowerment of feeling. And at the centre of that impulse is the shaman: stoned, intoxicated on plants, speaking with the spirit helpers, dancing in the moonlight, and vivifying and invoking a world of conscious, living mystery. That's what the world is. The world is not an unsolved problem for scientists or sociologists. The world is a living mystery: our birth, our death, our being in the moment -- these are mysteries. They are doorways opening on to unimaginable vistas of self-exploration, empowerment and hope for the human enterprise. And our culture has killed that, taken it away from us, made us consumers of shoddy products and shoddier ideals. We have to get away from that; and the way to get away from it is by a return to the authentic experience of the body -- and that means sexually empowering ourselves, and it means getting loaded, exploring the mind as a tool for personal and social transformation. The hour is late; the clock is ticking; we will be judged very harshly if we fumble the ball. We are the inheritors of millions and millions of years of successfully lived lives and successful adaptations to changing conditions in the natural world. Now the challenge passes to us, the living, that the yet-to-be-born may have a place to put their feet and a sky to walk under; and that's what the psychedelic experience is about, is caring for, empowering, and building a future that honours the past, honours the planet and honours the power of the human imagination. There is nothing as powerful, as capable of transforming itself and the planet, as the human imagination. Let's not sell it straight. Let's not whore ourselves to nitwit ideologies. Let's not give our control over to the least among us. Rather, you know, claim your place in the sun and go forward into the light. The tools are there; the path is known; you simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead, and get with the programme of a living world and a re-empowerment of the imagination. Thank you very, very much.
Terence McKenna (The Archaic Revival)
The essence of meditation practice in Dzogchen is encapsulated by these four points: ▪ When one past thought has ceased and a future thought has not yet risen, in that gap, in between, isn’t there a consciousness of the present moment; fresh, virgin, unaltered by even a hair’s breadth of a concept, a luminous, naked awareness? Well, that is what Rigpa is! ▪ Yet it doesn’t stay in that state forever, because another thought suddenly arises, doesn’t it? This is the self-radiance of that Rigpa. ▪ However, if you do not recognize this thought for what it really is, the very instant it arises, then it will turn into just another ordinary thought, as before. This is called the “chain of delusion,” and is the root of samsara. ▪ If you are able to recognize the true nature of the thought as soon as it arises, and leave it alone without any follow-up, then whatever thoughts arise all automatically dissolve back into the vast expanse of Rigpa and are liberated. Clearly this takes a lifetime of practice to understand and realize the full richness and majesty of these four profound yet simple points, and here I can only give you a taste of the vastness of what is meditation in Dzogchen. … Dzogchen meditation is subtly powerful in dealing with the arisings of the mind, and has a unique perspective on them. All the risings are seen in their true nature, not as separate from Rigpa, and not as antagonistic to it, but actually as none other–and this is very important–than its “self-radiance,” the manifestation of its very energy. Say you find yourself in a deep state of stillness; often it does not last very long and a thought or a movement always arises, like a wave in the ocean.  Don’t reject the movement or particulary embrace the stillness, but continue the flow of your pure presence. The pervasive, peaceful state of your meditation is the Rigpa itself, and all risings are none other than this Rigpa’s self-radiance. This is the heart and the basis of Dzogchen practice. One way to imagine this is as if you were riding on the sun’s rays back to the sun: …. Of couse there are rough as well as gentle waves in the ocean; strong emotions come, like anger, desire, jealousy. The real practitioner recognizes them not as a disturbance or obstacle, but as a great opportunity. The fact that you react to arisings such as these with habitual tendencies of attachment and aversion is a sign not only that you are distracted, but also that you do not have the recognition and have lost the ground of Rigpa. To react to emotions in this way empowers them and binds us even tighter in the chains of delusion. The great secret of Dzogchen is to see right through them as soon as they arise, to what they really are: the vivid and electric manifestation of the energy of Rigpa itself. As you gradually learn to do this, even the most turbulent emotions fail to seize hold of you and dissolve, as wild waves rise and rear and sink back into the calm of the ocean. The practitioner discovers–and this is a revolutionary insight, whose subtlety and power cannot be overestimated–that not only do violent emotions not necessarily sweep you away and drag you back into the whirlpools of your own neuroses, they can actually be used to deepen, embolden, invigorate, and strengthen the Rigpa. The tempestuous energy becomes raw food of the awakened energy of Rigpa. The stronger and more flaming the emotion, the more Rigpa is strengthened.
Sogyal Rinpoche (The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)
Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace? Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not. Is it not possible to attract only positive conditions into our life? If our attitude and our thinking are always positive, we would manifest only positive events and situations, wouldn’t we? Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the total picture? There have been many people for whom limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real. Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time. Even a brief illness or an accident can show you what is real and unreal in your life, what ultimately matters and what doesn’t. Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be more precise: they are neither positive nor negative. They are as they are. And when you live in complete acceptance of what is — which is the only sane way to live — there is no “good” or “bad” in your life anymore. There is only a higher good — which includes the “bad.” Seen from the perspective of the mind, however, there is good-bad, like-dislike, love-hate. Hence, in the Book of Genesis, it is said that Adam and Eve were no longer allowed to dwell in “paradise” when they “ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)
In the same way that your Emotional Set-Points can change from feeling basically good or secure to feeling bad or insecure, your set-points can change from not feeling good to feeling good, for your set-points are achieved simply by attention to a subject, and through your practiced thought.
Esther Hicks (Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires (Law of Attraction Book 7))
Q: Yet, I cannot see how can anything come to be without a cause. M: When I say a thing is without a cause, I mean it can be with-out a particular cause. Your own mother was needed to give you birth; But you could not have been born without the sun and the earth. Even these could not have caused your birth without your own desire to be born. It is desire that gives birth, that gives name and form. The desirable is imagined and wanted and manifests itself as something tangible or con-ceivable. Thus is created the world in which we live, our personal world. The real world is beyond the mind's ken; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes. Q: What do you mean by holes? And how to find them? M: Look at the net and its many contradictions. You do and undo at every step. You want peace, love, happiness and work hard to create pain, hatred and war. You want longevity and overeat, you want friendship and exploit. See your net as made of such contradictions and remove them -- *your very seeing them will make them go*
Nisargadatta Maharaj
When you combine desire and faith to that it is in which you aspire to, you send an proactive force into the universe that creates a wave of energy, thus activating energy particles which then begin the manifestation process, kind of like a magnet to iron. The bigger the desire equaled with faith, the higher likeliness of materializing what it is you strive for. Stop living a life in which you are not in control of and join forces with the universe in which we are all a part of. Expand your consciousness and be grateful for every instance in the physical plane, it is what you must decide if you want to live the life that you want.
Will Barnes (The Expansion of The Soul)
What these motivational teachers are saying (as I’ve realized after a long time) is that if something is really important to you, you will do everything necessary to ensure that it comes into your life. This teaching, if applied within the current framework, means that you’ll work on your inner state, no matter what it takes. You’ll focus exclusively on how you feel on the inside to the exclusion of everything else. You’ll not allow yourself to be bogged down by fear or negative thoughts. You’ll be persistent in your practice and overcoming your past conditioning. You’ll be determined. But notice that all our determination is channeled and focused on letting go of negative and fear thoughts. They are not focused upon outer directed actions to get what we want.
Richard Dotts (Come and Sit with Me: How to Desire Nothing and Manifest Everything)
In the beginning of our love lives, it is the beastly instinct of sexual attraction that drives us all. The butterflies in your stomach simply signal your mind that the person in front of you would make a fantastic mate to make babies with. Without this primeval drive, you won’t ever fall for anyone in your entire lifetime. The very attraction you feel towards a person in a romantic way, is a mental manifestation of a subconscious desire to mate with that person.
Abhijit Naskar (What is Mind?)
Whatever thoughts you allow yourself to know through your wonderful receiver will become an experienced reality, seen first within your embodiment and then through the conditions of your life. And whatever you desire, you have the ability — through knowing — to manifest into your life in the twinkling of an eye. That is how you create the kingdom of heaven on Earth.
Ramtha (Ramtha - The White Book)
To create what you really care for, your desire must first be well manifested in your mind. Is that what you really want? Think this through carefully. How many times in your life have you thought, “This is it.” The moment you got there you realized that was not it at all! So, first explore what it is that you really want. Once that is clear and you are committed to creating it, you generate a continuous process of thought in that direction. When you maintain a steady stream of thought without changing direction, it will manifest as a reality in your life.
Sadhguru (Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy)
After having lived life for so many years, you would have learnt that nothing external can give you permanent joy, because it’s all fleeting and temporary. Permanent joy is right here and now, in your being – it’s not out-there in some relationship or material possession. You can have everything you desire, but first you must know that none of it is going to bring you permanent joy. Permanent peace/joy is already present in your being right now, below the surface level thoughts and feelings, recognize that and rest in this place – when you do so, you will be in a place of zero resistance and thus allow swift manifestation of your desires.
Sen Mani
Some of you may feel that if you don't do something soon to change your life, you will be left by the roadside, alone, homeless and in despair. But is the despair not there as you reach and grapple to create or manifest your desires through your own effort and will? What happens if or when those things appear in your life? Joy? Peace? Or a temporary sense of relief? What if it is relief from the wanting you have been craving for so long, not the outcome, but the relief from the constant wanting.
Kelly Martin (When Everyone Shines But You - Saying Goodbye To I'm Not Good Enough)
I hope you never seek validation from others in any aspect of your life I hope you are confident in your desires and remain true to your personal passions I hope you cling to wonder and curiosity I hope you recognize your power to manifest an intentional and tranquil life I hope you are capable of being happy for others I hope you understand that gratification is fleeting, as is every emotion and moment I hope you find peace in simplicity I hope you transform this world, but do not become lost in the trend
Rosalie Bardo
Why pray for the Kingdom of God to come unless you have in your heart a desire and a willingness to aid in its establishment? Praying for His will to be done and then not trying to live it, gives you a negative answer at once. You would not grant something to a child who showed that attitude towards a request he is making of you. If we pray for the success of some cause or enterprise, manifestly we are in sympathy with it. It is the height of disloyalty to pray for God’s will to be done, and then fail to conform our lives to that will.
David O. McKay
I know it was personally right, it was divinely right, for those apostles to hear what Jesus said and to tarry for the Holy Spirit; however, it is not right now to tarry for the Holy Spirit. Then why do we not all receive the Holy Spirit, you ask? Because our bodies are not ready for it; our temples are not cleansed. When our temples are purified and our minds are put in order so that carnalities and fleshly desires and everything contrary to the Spirit have gone, then the Holy Spirit can take full charge. The Holy Spirit is not a manifestation of carnality. There are any number of people who never read the Word of God who could not be led away by the powers of Satan. But the power of the Holy Spirit is most lovely, divine in all its construction. It is a great refiner. It is full of life, but it is always divine—never natural. If you deal in the flesh after you are baptized in the Holy Spirit, you cease to go on. Beloved, I want to speak about something greater; something to lift your minds, elevate your thoughts, and bring you into divine ways; something that elevates you out of yourself and into God, out of the world and into a place where you know you have rest for your feet, where you cease from your own works (Heb. 4:10), and where God works in you mightily “to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). When I think about a river—a pure, holy, divine river—I say, “What can stand against its inrush?” Wherever it is—in a railway coach, in the street, or in a meeting—its power and flow will always be felt; it will always do its work. Jesus spoke about the Holy Spirit that was to be given. I want you to think about how God gave it, how its coming was manifested, and its reception and its outflow after it had come.
Smith Wigglesworth (Wigglesworth on the Anointing)
Most of the church landscape in my lifetime has been heavily invested in trying to do something for Jerry or Sherri or some other icon of unchurchness. The problem is that they have been only about themselves from the moment they could wail for their mothers, and the decision to give them at church what they can find in any self-help book appears now as a choice to abandon the One in whose honor the church gathers. What they need is to be set free from themselves with finality and to be lost in the awesome wonder of the manifest presence of God. It was never God’s desire that He would sit on the sideline and watch us frantically devise impressive ways to reach people or simply hold the line on orthodoxy as though faithfulness can exist in a vacuum apart from fruitfulness. God is the Matter of first importance! Can you say that about your current weekly encounter with church?
James MacDonald (Vertical Church: What Every Heart Longs for. What Every Church Can Be.)
The law of manifestation operates like a triangle: First, know what you want and visualize it as if you already had it; Second, see it behind the illusion of reality, practice it in your decisions, choose the people you hang out with, etc; Third, believe, have faith and work on your emotions to be at the right frequency. This triangle of manifestation is one of the secrets of many religions: Christianity, Scientology, and Freemasonry. In Masonry is seen as "heart, mind and desire"; in Scientology is perceived as "reality, communication and affinity"; in Christianity is understood as "Father, son and holy ghost"; basically, "actions, learnings and emotions". In Christianity, the Father equals reality or the Creator of the illusion, the son is the way, the path, he road of our decisions and actions, and the holy ghost is our heart, instincts and desires manifested in that same path. In word words, through Jesus, and with the power of the holy ghost, you reach God. This is an allegory that not many Christians can understand. Jesus represent behavior - right and wrong, the holy ghost is our faith, your heart and emotions reflecting back at you what you attract, it's the energy that connects you to your dreams, and God represents the Architect of Reality. So, through moral behavior and positive emotions, your understand God and life, and then you receive "paradise". This paradise is whatever you dream for yourself. Furthermore, if someone has shown you this way, he has been as an angel to you, a messenger of God; if someone stopped you from reaching it, he has been as a demon, a worker for Satan, the enemy, if you failed in seeing this path, you have redirected yourself towards hell. And if you hate your life, you are already in hell. If you want to get out of hell, you must accept the truth, and this truth is that you must know God, for He is the truth. He and the truth are one and the same.
Robin Sacredfire
Like seeds planted in the depths of our souls, our dreams are at the center of who we really are. Our mission and our right is to nurture them and to allow them to grow. To follow your dreams takes courage, action, persistence, time and patience, but most of all, you must first believe in them. Believing in your dreams means that you trust your aspirations exist for a reason and the reason is your calling. Believing in your dreams means that you hold true that everything is possible and you can manifest the life and experiences you desire. We know that dreaming is a form of planning. We know that everything we enjoy and appreciate around us – every advancement and contribution to society – developed from the commitment, perseverance, and belief in our dreams.
Melia Keeton-Digby (The Heroines Club: A Mother-Daughter Empowerment Circle)
Imagine if you can ... a world in which half the inhabitants are larger and stronger than you and are thus able to force you to their will at any time or any place. That unchangeable fact colors everything in your life - from the route you choose when you walk down the street to what you look for when you enter a room, how you dress, how you smile, how you assess people on first meeting? Friend or foe? Is this person a threat? Will that one do me harm? It's all about survival. ... Mock a a woman's desire for jewels and fine clothes and grand houses if you must, but understand that they are simple manifestations of what she truly desires - survival, safety, security - because those baubles are the thing that proclaim to the world that she is of value and, as such, will be protected.
Kaki Warner (Bride of the High Country (Runaway Brides, #3))
Allowing. People tend to make very bad choices based on fear and force themselves to stay in or choose relationships which are neither healthy nor a good fit for them. For instance, thought patterns based on fear go like this: • “This relationship is so hard, but we’ve been together forever, and I hate to throw it all away.” • “We fight so much, but when we get along, it’s really great.” • “I think it’s best to stay together for the kids.” • “This is what marriage is supposed to be like, no point in doing it all over again.” These are all thoughts based on the fear of being alone. When misery is more tolerable than the thought of being alone, it’s really pretty sad. When you force yourself to stay in a situation (love or otherwise), which feels like such a struggle, even when you can choose a different route…well,
Jennifer O'Neill (Universal Laws: 18 Powerful Laws & The Secret Behind Manifesting Your Desires (Finding Balance Book 1))
Moses questions God about death Moses asks God the most basic question, "You create us; then you kill us. "Why" God says, I understand the purpose within your question; therefore I'll answer. You want to know the meaning of phenomenal duration, so you can teach others and help their souls unfold. Anyone who asks this question has some of the answer. Sow seed corn, Moses, and you will experience the purpose of taking a form. Moses plants and tends the crop; when the ears have ripened to the shape of their beauty, he brings out to the field his blade and sharpening stone. The unseen voice comes, Why did you work to bring the corn to perfection only now to chop it down? "Lord, it is the winnowing time when we separate the corn grains we use for food from the straw we use for bedding and fodder. They must be stored in different cribs in the barn." Where did you learn this threshing-floor work? "You gave me discernment." Do you not feel that I should have a similar discernment in the planting and harvesting of forms that I do? So creation has a purpose. God has said, I was a hidden treasure, and I desired to be known. That desire is part of manifestation.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems)
SUMMARY OF YOUR AIDS TO HEALTH • Find out what it is that heals you. Realize that correct directions given to your subconscious mind will heal your mind and body. • Develop a definite plan for turning over your requests or desires to your subconscious mind. • Imagine the end desired and feel its reality. Follow it through, and you will get definite results. • Decide what belief is. Know that belief is a thought in your mind and that what you think you create. • It is foolish to believe in sickness or in anything that will hurt or harm you. Believe in perfect health, prosperity, peace, wealth, and divine guidance. • Great and noble thoughts upon which you habitually dwell become great acts. • Apply the power of prayer therapy in your life. Choose a certain plan, idea, or mental picture. Unite mentally and emotionally with that idea. As you remain faithful to your mental attitude, your prayer will be answered. • Always remember, if you really want the power to heal, you can have it through faith, which means a knowledge of the working of your conscious and subconscious mind. Faith comes with understanding. • Blind faith means that a person may get results in healing without any scientific understanding of the powers and forces involved. • Learn to pray for your loved ones who may be ill. Quiet your mind. Your thoughts of health, vitality, and perfection operating through the one universal subjective mind will be felt and made manifest in the mind of your loved
Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (GP Self-Help Collection Book 4))
Leave all the ‘wise men to mock it or tolerate.’ Let them reach the moon or the stars, they are all dead. Nothing lives outside of man. Man is the living soul, turning slowly into a life-giving Spirit. But you cannot tell it except in a parable or metaphor to excite the mind of man to get him to go out and prove it. Leave the good and evil and eat of the Tree of Life. Nothing in the world is untrue if you want it to be true. You are the truth of everything that you perceive. ‘I am the truth, and the way, the life revealed.’ If I have physically nothing in my pocket, then in Imagination I have MUCH. But that is a lie based on fact, but truth is based on the intensity of my imagination and then I will create it in my world. Should I accept facts and use them as to what I should imagine? No. It is told us in the story of the fig tree. It did not bear for three years. One said, ‘Cut it down, and throw it away.’ But the keeper of the vineyard pleaded NO’! Who is the tree? I am the tree; you are the tree. We bear or we do not. But the Keeper said he would dig around the tree and feed it ‘or manure it, as we would say today’ and see if it will not bear. Well I do that here every week and try to get the tree ‘you’ me to bear. You should bear whatever you desire. If you want to be happily married, you should be. The world is only response. If you want money, get it. Everything is a dream anyway. When you awake and know what you are creating and that you are creating it that is a different thing. The greatest book is the Bible, but it has been taken from a moral basis and it is all weeping and tears. It seems almost ruthless as given to us in the Gospel, if taken literally. The New Testament interprets the Old Testament, and it has nothing to do with morals. You change your mind and stay in that changed state until it unfolds. Man thinks he has to work himself out of something, but it is God asleep in you as a living soul, and then we are reborn as a life-giving spirit. We do it here in this little classroom called Earth or beyond the grave, for you cannot die. You can be just as asleep beyond the grave. I meet them constantly, and they are just like this. Same loves and same hates. No change. They will go through it until they finally awake, until they cease to re-act and begin to act. Do not take this story lightly which I have told you tonight. Take it to heart. Tonight when you are driving home enact a scene. No matter what it is. Forget good and evil. Enact a scene that implies you have what you desire, and to the degree that you are faithful to that state, it will unfold in your world and no power can stop it, for there is no other power. Nothing is independent of your perception of it, and this goes for that great philosopher among us who is still claiming that everything is independent of the perceiver, but that the perceiver has certain powers. It is not so. Nothing is independent of the perceiver. Everything is ‘burned up’ when I cease to behold it. It may exist for another, but not for me. Let us make our dream a noble one, for the world is infinite response to you, the being you want to be. Now let us go into the silence.
Neville Goddard (The Law: And Other Essays on Manifestation)
Human nature inclines us to have recourse to petition for the purpose of obtaining from another, especially from a person of higher rank, what we hope to receive from him. So prayer is recommended to men, that by it they may obtain from God what they hope to secure from Him. But the reason why prayer is necessary for obtaining something from a man is not the same as the reason for its necessity when there is question of obtaining a favor from God. Prayer is addressed to man, first, to lay bare the desire and the need of the petitioner, and secondly, to incline the mind of him to whom the prayer is addressed to grant the petition. These purposes have no place in the prayer that is sent up to God. When we pray we do not intend to manifest our needs or desires to God, for He knows all things. The Psalmist says to God: "Lord, all my desire is before Thee" and in the Gospel we are told: "Your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things." Again, the will of God is not influenced by human words to will what He had previously not willed. For, as we read in Numbers 23:19, "God is not a man, that He should lie, nor as the son of man, that He should be changed"; nor is God moved to repentance, as we are assured in 1 Kings 15:29. Prayer, then, for obtaining something from God, is necessary for man on account of the very one who prays, that he may reflect on his shortcomings and may turn his mind to desiring fervently and piously what he hopes to gain by his petition. In this way he is rendered fit to receive the favor.
Thomas Aquinas (Aquinas's Shorter Summa: Saint Thomas's Own Concise Version of His Summa Theologica)
Senor sempere and I were friends for almost forty years, and in all that time we spoke about God and the mysteries of life on only one occasion. Almost nobody knows this, but Sempere had not set foot in a church since the funeral of his wife Diana, to whose side we bring him today so that they might lie next to one another forever. Perhaps for that reason people assumed he was an atheist, but he was truly a man of faith. He believed in his friends, in the truth of things and in something to which he didn't dare put a name or a face because he said as priests that was our job. Senor Sempere believed we are all a part of something, and that when we leave this world our memories and our desires are not lost, but go on to become the memories and desires of those who take our place. He didn't know whether we created God in our own image or whether God created us without quite knowing what he was doing. He believed that God, or whatever brought us here, lives in each of our deeds, in each of our words, and manifests himself in all those things that show us to be more than mere figures of clay. Senor Sempere believed that God lives, to a smaller or greater extent, in books, and that is why he devoted his life to sharing them, to protecting them and to making sure their pages, like our memories and our desires are never lost. He believed, and made me believe it too, that as long as there is one person left in the world who is capable of reading them and experiencing them, a small piece of God, or of life, will remain. I know that my friend would not have liked us to say our farewells to him with prayer and hymns. I know that it would have been enough for him to realsie that his friends, many of whom have come here today to say goodbye, will never forget him. I have no doubt that the Lord, even though old Sempere was not expecting it, will recieve our dear friend at his side, and I know that he will live forever in the hearts of all those who are here today, all those who have discovered the magic of books thanks to him, and all those who, without even knowing him, will one day go through the door of his little bookshop where, as he liked to say, the story has only just begun. May you rest in peace, Sempere, dear friend, and may God give us all the opportunity to honour your memory and feel grateful for the priviledge of having known you.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
About his madmen Mr. Lecky was no more certain. He knew less than the little to be learned of the causes or even of the results of madness. Yet for practical purposes one can imagine all that is necessary. As long as maniacs walk like men, you must come close to them to penetrate so excellent a disguise. Once close, you have joined the true werewolf. Pick for your companion a manic-depressive, afflicted by any of the various degrees of mania - chronic, acute, delirious. Usually more man than wolf, he will be instructive. His disorder lies in the very process of his thinking, rather than in the content of his thought. He cannot wait a minute for the satisfaction of his fleeting desires or the fulfillment of his innumerable schemes. Nor can he, for two minutes, be certain of his intention or constant in any plan or agreement. Presently you may hear his failing made manifest in the crazy concatenation of his thinking aloud, which psychiatrists call "flight of ideas." Exhausted suddenly by this riotous expense of speech and spirit, he may subside in an apathy dangerous and morose, which you will be well advised not to disturb. Let the man you meet be, instead, a paretic. He has taken a secret departure from your world. He dwells amidst choicest, most dispendious superlatives. In his arm he has the strength to lift ten elephants. He is already two hundred years old. He is more than nine feet high; his chest is of iron, his right leg is silver, his incomparable head is one whole ruby. Husband of a thousand wives, he has begotten on them ten thousand children. Nothing is mean about him; his urine is white wine; his faeces are always soft gold. However, despite his splendor and his extraordinary attainments, he cannot successfully pronounce the words: electricity, Methodist Episcopal, organization, third cavalry brigade. Avoid them. Infuriated by your demonstration of any accomplishment not his, he may suddenly kill you. Now choose for your friend a paranoiac, and beware of the wolf! His back is to the wall, his implacable enemies are crowding on him. He gets no rest. He finds no starting hole to hide him. Ten times oftener than the Apostle, he has been, through the violence of the unswerving malice which pursues him, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Now that, face to face with him, you simulate innocence and come within his reach, what pity can you expect? You showed him none; he will certainly not show you any. Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, 0 Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all the perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen. Mr. Lecky's maniacs lay in wait to slash a man's head half off, to perform some erotic atrocity of disembowelment on a woman. Here, they fed thoughtlessly on human flesh; there, wishing to play with him, they plucked the mangled Tybalt from his shroud. The beastly cunning of their approach, the fantastic capriciousness of their intention could not be very well met or provided for. In his makeshift fort everywhere encircled by darkness, Mr. Lecky did not care to meditate further on the subject.
James Gould Cozzens (Castaway)
To realize we love another to get love because we do not love our own self is one of our core human wounds. For each of the two parts of this prayer meditation, express out loud or silently these sentences. Let the feelings and memories come. Express the feelings intuitively, changing and adding to the sentences if it helps. You can repeat one sentence several times in a row until you feel it, or go straight into the next one. You can improvise sentences that may better fit your feelings. One may also experience spirit interference in this prayer meditation. This can manifest as voices and feelings disagreeing with it. Unless you are living as unconditional love, you can be sure these are negative spirits trying to dissuade you from traveling deeper into your own wounds to release them, thereby banishing these spirit influences forever. Do each part for one hour. This meditation prayer can be about two hours long. Center yourself and drop into a prayerful, silent heartful space. Ask to become vulnerable and open your heart. Part One: I am not loved I am not loved I am not loved I have never been loved My parents did not love me I need love I need love I need love Please love me My quest for love has never worked My quest for love will never work Nobody really loves me Nobody really loved me How do you feel? Part Two: I am love I am love I am love God loves me God loves me God loves me God desires me God desires me God desires me I am love I am love I am love (from your heart) I am not loved I have never been loved I am not loved I am not LOVED I am just not loved No one has ever loved me No one loves me I am not loved I am not loved I do not love myself I do not love myself I do not love myself I am loved I am loved I am loved I am LOVED God is not here for me God has never been here for me God is not here for me God has left me I am not loved I have never been loved No one loves me God loves me God LOVES me God wants me God wants me God LOVES me God WANTS me God desires me I don’t want God I don’t want God I don’t want God I want fear I want fear I want fear I AM LOVED I AM LOVED I AM LOVED God wants me God desires me God loves me What does this make you feel? The experience of love and need in co-dependent relationships In such a relationship, one or both partners cover each others emotions by giving false comfort, false ‘love’ and other placating behaviors that prevent the other in deeply feeling and owning their own emotions. When you want to get out of this pattern, this prayer meditation will help. It will let both partners feel the truth of the unspoken demand of love and how they respond to it. Simply sit in front of your partner and express out loud these sentences as a way to reveal the unconscious behavior that is being played out between you both.
Padma Aon Prakasha (Dimensions of Love: 7 Steps to God)
The family were wild," she said suddenly. "They tried to marry me off. And then when I'd begun to feel that after all life was scarcely worth living I found something"—her eyes went skyward exultantly—"I found something!" Carlyle waited and her words came with a rush. “Courage—just that; courage as a rule of life, and something to cling to always. I began to build up this enormous faith in myself. I began to see that in all my idols in the past some manifestation of courage had unconsciously been the thing that attracted me. I began separating courage from the other things of life. All sorts of courage—the beaten, bloody prize-fighter coming up for more—I used to make men take me to prize-fights; the déclassé woman sailing through a nest of cats and looking at them as if they were mud under her feet; the liking what you like always; the utter disregard for other people's opinions—just to live as I liked always and to die in my own way—Did you bring up the cigarettes?" He handed one over and held a match for her silently. "Still," Ardita continued, "the men kept gathering—old men and young men, my mental and physical inferiors, most of them, but all intensely desiring to have me—to own this rather magnificent proud tradition I'd built up round me. Do you see?" "Sort of. You never were beaten and you never apologized." "Never!" She sprang to the edge, poised or a moment like a crucified figure against the sky; then describing a dark parabola plunked without a slash between two silver ripples twenty feet below. Her voice floated up to him again. "And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life—not only over-riding people and circumstances but over-riding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things." She was climbing up now, and at her last words her head, with the damp yellow hair slicked symmetrically back, appeared on his level. "All very well," objected Carlyle. "You can call it courage, but your courage is really built, after all, on a pride of birth. You were bred to that defiant attitude. On my gray days even courage is one of the things that's gray and lifeless." She was sitting near the edge, hugging her knees and gazing abstractedly at the white moon; he was farther back, crammed like a grotesque god into a niche in the rock. "I don't want to sound like Pollyanna," she began, "but you haven't grasped me yet. My courage is faith—faith in the eternal resilience of me—that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide—not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I've been through hell without a whine quite often—and the female hell is deadlier than the male." "But supposing," suggested Carlyle, "that before joy and hope and all that came back the curtain was drawn on you for good?" Ardita rose, and going to the wall climbed with some difficulty to the next ledge, another ten or fifteen feet above. "Why," she called back, "then I'd have won!
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Offshore Pirate)
From another corner of neuroscience, we’re learning about a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Though there are more than fifty neurotransmitters (that we know of), scientists studying substance problems have given dopamine much of their attention. The brain’s reward system and pleasure centers—the areas most impacted by substance use and compulsive behaviors—have a high concentration of dopamine. Some brains have more of it than others, and some people have a capacity to enjoy a range of experiences more than others, owing to a combination of genetics and environment. The thing about dopamine is that it makes us feel really good. We tend to want more of it. It is naturally generated through ordinary, pleasurable activities like eating and sex, and it is the brain’s way of rewarding us—or nature’s way of rewarding the brain—for activities necessary to our survival, individually or as a species. It is the “mechanism by which ‘instinct’ is manifest.” Our brains arrange for dopamine levels to rise in anticipation and spike during a pleasurable activity to make sure we do it again. It helps focus our attention on all the cues that contributed to our exposure to whatever felt good (these eventually become triggers to use, as we explain later). Drugs and alcohol (and certain behaviors) turn on a gushing fire hose of dopamine in the brain, and we feel good, even euphoric. Dopamine produced by these artificial means, however, throws our pleasure and reward systems out of whack immediately. Flooding the brain repeatedly with dopamine has long-term effects and creates what’s known as tolerance—when we lose our ability to produce or absorb our own dopamine and need more and more of it artificially just to feel okay. Specifically, the brain compensates for the flood of dopamine by decreasing its own production of it or by desensitizing itself to the neurotransmitter by reducing the number of dopamine receptors, or both. The brain is just trying to keep a balance. The problem with the brain’s reduction in natural dopamine production is that when you take the substance or behavior out of the picture, there’s not enough dopamine in the brain to make you feel good. Without enough dopamine, there is no interest or pleasure. Then not only does the brain lose the pleasure associated with using, it might not be able to enjoy a sunset or a back rub, either. A lowered level of dopamine, combined with people’s longing for the rush of dopamine they got from using substances, contributes to “craving” states. Cravings are a physiological process associated with the brain’s struggle to regain its normal dopamine balance, and they can influence a decision to keep using a substance even when a person is experiencing negative consequences that matter to him and a strong desire to change. Depending on the length of time and quantities a person has been using, these craving states can be quite uncomfortable and compelling. The dopamine system can and does recover, starting as soon as we stop flooding it. But it takes time, and in the time between shutting off the artificial supply of dopamine and the brain’s rebuilding its natural resources, people tend to feel worse (before they feel better). On a deep, instinctual level, their brains are telling them that by stopping using, something is missing; something is wrong. This is a huge factor in relapse, despite good intentions and effort to change. Knowing this can help you and your loved one make it across this gap in brain reward systems.
Jeffrey Foote (Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change)
My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head—useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there—in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)