Mastery Is Not Enough Quotes

In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them -- those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn.

Very often in everyday life one sees that by losing one's temper with someone who has already lost his, one does not gain anything but only sets out upon the path of stupidity. He who has enough self-control to stand firm at the moment when the other person is in a temper, wins in the end. It is not he who has spoken a hundred words aloud who has won; it is he who has perhaps spoken only one word.

The problem with all students, he said, is that they inevitably stop somewhere. They hear an idea and they hold on to it until it becomes dead; they want to flatter themselves that they know the truth. But true Zen never stops, never congeals into such truths. That is why everyone must constantly be pushed to the abyss, starting over and feeling their utter worthlessness as a student. Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. Not even enlightenment is enough. You must continually start over and challenge yourself.

I mean that two of any thing is a most uncomfortable number. One may do as he pleases. Six may get along well enough. But two must always struggle for mastery. Two must always watch each other. The eyes of all the world will be on two, uncertain which of them to follow.

Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he's done.. almost. He hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world.. or to repair the devastation we've already wrought.

Humans, I was discovering, believed they were in control of their own lives, and so they were in awe of questions and tests, as these made them feel like they had a certain mastery over other people, who had failed in their choices, and who had not worked hard enough on the right answers.

It is horrible to think that the world could one day be filled with nothing but those little cogs, little men clinging to little jobs and striving towards bigger ones - a state of affairs which is to be seen once more, as in the Egyptian records, playing an ever-increasing part in the spirit of our present administrative system, and especially of its offspring, the students. This passion for bureaucracy ... is enough to drive one to despair. It is as if in politics ... we were deliberately to become men who need "order" and nothing but order, become nervous and cowardly if for one moment this order wavers, and helpless if they are torn away from their total incorporation in it. That the world should know no men but these: it is such an evolution that we are already caught up, and the great question is, therefore, not how we can promote and hasten it, but what can we oppose to this machinery in order to keep a portion of mankind free from this parcelling-out of the soul, from this supreme mastery of the bureaucratic way of life.

After domestication, we try to be good enough for everybody else, but we are no longer good enough for ourselves, because we can never live up to our image of perfection.

I was so sure that I knew what they needed and what I wanted to sell them that I never stopped long enough to find out what it was they wanted to buy.

I'll make a book on learning how to be a complete moron someday, and I'm sure no one will buy it, because everyone will have mastered that already by the time I gather enough moronism to process it into digestible upgrade instructions for your average village cyborg-idiot.

As composer Leonard Bernstein said, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.

Must I accept the barren Gift? -learn death, and lose my Mastery? Then let them know whose blood and breath will take the Gift and set them free: whose is the voice and whose the mind to set at naught the well-sung Game- when finned Finality arrives and calls me by my secret Name. Not old enough to love as yet, but old enough to die, indeed- -the death-fear bites my throat and heart, fanged cousin to the Pale One's breed. But past the fear lies life for all- perhaps for me: and, past my dread, past loss of Mastery and life, the Sea shall yet give up Her dead! Lone Power, I accept your Gift! Freely I make death a part of me; By my accept it is bound into the lives of all the Sea- yet what I do now binds to it a gift I feel of equal worth: I take Death with me, out of Time, and make of it a path, a birth! Let the teeth come! As they tear me, they tear Your ancient hate for aye- -so rage, proud Power! Fail again, and see my blood teach Death to die!

Love is ruthless; it doesn’t feel sorry for anyone, but it does have compassion. Fear is full of pity; it feels sorry for everyone. You feel sorry for me when you don’t respect me, when you don’t think I am strong enough to make it. On the other hand, love respects. I love you; I know you can make it. I know you are strong enough, intelligent enough, good enough that you can make your own choices. I don’t have to make your choices for you. You can make it. If you fall, I can give you my hand, I can help you to stand up. I can say, “You can do it, go ahead.” That is compassion, but it is not the same as feeling sorry. Compassion comes from respect and from love; feeling sorry comes from a lack of respect and from fear.

Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he's done--almost. He hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world--or to repair the devastation we've already wrought. We've poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit--and we go on pouring our poisons into the world. We've gobbled up irreplaceable resources as though they could never run out--and we go on gobbling them up. It's hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children will have to solve, or their children." --> Ishmael

Over-seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureaucratic thinking. People who are seriously committed to mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up. —Michael J. Gelb

Rule number two is more difficult: Don’t believe yourself. Don’t believe all the lies you tell yourself — all those lies that you never chose to believe, but were programmed to believe. Don’t believe yourself when you say you are not good enough, you are not strong enough, you are not intelligent enough. Don’t believe your own boundaries and limitations. Don’t believe you are unworthy of happiness or love. Don’t believe you are not beautiful. Don’t believe whatever makes you suffer. Don’t believe in your own drama.

As they approach true mastery of the Art of Starving, students will see that eating disorders are merely one part of a broad spectrum of self-harm. Cutting, addiction, suicidal ideation. These are all ways to assert your power. To prove that you're not weak. To show you're strong enough to control your own destiny by destroying yourself.

There exists in some individuals more than enough talents, expertises, or greatness for more than three people.

Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours.

Is it really true that you’re not perfect just the way you are? Can you see all the judgments that you have about yourself? Every judgment is just an opinion — it’s just a point of view — and that point of view wasn’t there when you were born. Everything you think about yourself, everything you believe about yourself, is because you learned it. You learned the opinions from Mom, Dad, siblings, and society. They sent all those images of how a body should look; they expressed all those opinions about the way you are, the way you are not, the way you should be. They delivered a message, and you agreed with that message. And now you think so many things about what you are, but are they the truth? You see, the problem is not really knowledge; the problem is believing in a distortion of knowledge — and that is what we call a lie. What is the truth, and what is the lie? What is real, and what is virtual? Can you see the difference, or do you believe that voice in your head every time it speaks and distorts the truth while assuring you that what you believe is the way things really are? Is it really true that you’re not a good human, and that you’ll never be good enough? Is it really true that you don’t deserve to be happy? Is it really true that you’re not worthy of love?

In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them—those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn.

The insanity of the human race had reached its historical zenith. The Cold War was at its height. Nuclear missiles capable of destroying the Earth ten times over could be launched at a moment’s notice, spread out among the countless missile silos dotting two continents and hidden within ghostlike nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines patrolling deep under the sea. A single Lafayette- or Yankee-class submarine held enough warheads to destroy hundreds of cities and kill hundreds of millions, but most people continued their lives as if nothing was wrong. As an astrophysicist, Ye was strongly against nuclear weapons. She knew this was a power that should belong only to the stars. She knew also that the universe had even more terrible forces: black holes, antimatter, and more. Compared to those forces, a thermonuclear bomb was nothing but a tiny candle. If humans obtained mastery over one of those other forces, the world might be vaporized in a moment. In the face of madness, rationality was powerless. *

When does the mastery end? How many things do I need to be good at to feel good about myself? Could Dan Brown really teach me how to write a thriller as well as he does? Do I even want to try? Or has the access to geniuses of various types simply made us feel bad that we aren't enough just being interested in what we're interested in and accomplishing the less-than-genius-level things we already accomplish? Do I need to be good at more things or simply find more enjoyment in what I'm already pretty good at?

We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a very tiny part of a vast and incredible universe….We’re challenged, as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery—not of nature, but of ourselves.

The fear of rejection can also lead you to over-dramatize events. If your boss criticized you at work, your brain may see the event as a threat and you now think, “What if I’m fired? What if I can’t find a job quickly enough and my wife leaves me? What about my kids? What if I can’t see them again?” While you are fortunate to have such an effective survival mechanism, it is also your responsibility to separate real threats from imaginary ones.

I know this will be hard, Arram. Do not be heroic. I have often done this on my own with Daleric's people. Sometimes I work here with two mastery students. I--" "Two mastery students!" Arram cried, as close to hysterics as he had ever been in his life. "Then why not at least bring another instead of using only me?" Ramasu raised his eyebrows until Arram caught his breath. Then he said, his voice kind and firm, "Because I knew you would be enough.

During the inevitable times when you feel like your work has no meaning, find meaning at home. If you need something more to feel creative or need extra cash, then moonlight: start dream projects after work hours. At some point in time, a successful side project can become your main project and you’ll be fortunate enough to make your work and your dreams become one. || You should always have meaning outside the workplace. Work to support your lifestyle — don’t live to support your work.

Those who are not patient enough to pursue greatness chase fame.

For the sincere student, it mustn't be enough to simply understand Jiu Jitsu. We must seek to understand ourselves.

We shouldn't let our envy of distinguished masters of the arts distract us from the wonder of how each of us gets new ideas. Perhaps we hold on to our superstitions about creativity in order to make our own deficiencies seem more excusable. For when we tell ourselves that masterful abilities are simply unexplainable, we're also comforting ourselves by saying that those superheroes come endowed with all the qualities we don't possess. Our failures are therefore no fault of our own, nor are those heroes' virtues to their credit, either. If it isn't learned, it isn't earned. When we actually meet the heroes whom our culture views as great, we don't find any singular propensities––only combinations of ingredients quite common in themselves. Most of these heroes are intensely motivated, but so are many other people. They're usually very proficient in some field--but in itself we simply call this craftmanship or expertise. They often have enough self-confidence to stand up to the scorn of peers--but in itself, we might just call that stubbornness. They surely think of things in some novel ways, but so does everyone from time to time. And as for what we call "intelligence", my view is that each person who can speak coherently already has the better part of what our heroes have. Then what makes genius appear to stand apart, if we each have most of what it takes? I suspect that genius needs one thing more: in order to accumulate outstanding qualities, one needs unusually effective ways to learn. It's not enough to learn a lot; one also has to manage what one learns. Those masters have, beneath the surface of their mastery, some special knacks of "higher-order" expertise, which help them organize and apply the things they learn. It is those hidden tricks of mental management that produce the systems that create those works of genius. Why do certain people learn so many more and better skills? These all-important differences could begin with early accidents. One child works out clever ways to arrange some blocks in rows and stacks; a second child plays at rearranging how it thinks. Everyone can praise the first child's castles and towers, but no one can see what the second child has done, and one may even get the false impression of a lack of industry. But if the second child persists in seeking better ways to learn, this can lead to silent growth in which some better ways to learn may lead to better ways to learn to learn. Then, later, we'll observe an awesome, qualitative change, with no apparent cause--and give to it some empty name like talent, aptitude, or gift.

In all of these areas, the human brain is asked to do and handle more than ever before. We are dealing with several fields of knowledge constantly intersecting with our own, and all of this chaos is exponentially increased by the information available through technology. What this means is that all of us must possess different forms of knowledge and an array of skills in different fields, and have minds that are capable of organizing large amounts of information. The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways. And the process of learning skills, no matter how virtual, remains the same. In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them—those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn. The Apprenticeship Phase is more relevant and important than ever, and those who discount this notion will almost certainly be left behind. Finally, we live in a culture that generally values intellect and reasoning with words. We tend to think of working with the hands, of building something physical, as degraded skills for those who are less intelligent. This is an extremely counterproductive cultural value. The human brain evolved in intimate conjunction with the hand. Many of our earliest survival skills depended on elaborate hand-eye coordination. To this day, a large portion of our brain is devoted to this relationship. When we work with our hands and build something, we learn how to sequence our actions and how to organize our thoughts. In taking anything apart in order to fix it, we learn problem-solving skills that have wider applications. Even if it is only as a side activity, you should find a way to work with your hands, or to learn more about the inner workings of the machines and pieces of technology around you. Many Masters

Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness, conscious of the time of day, the temperature, the wind speed and direction, the angle of the sun, or the presence of rain, snow, or sleet. Let this awareness extend to your own mental, physical, and emotional condition. Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires. Make sure the windshield and windows are clean enough to provide good visibility. Check the oil and other fluid levels if it’s time to do so.

We search for love outside ourselves when love is all around us. Love is everywhere, but we don’t have the eyes to see. Our emotional body is no longer tuned to love. We are so afraid to love because it isn’t safe to love. The fear of rejection frightens us. We have to pretend to be what we are not; we try to be accepted by our partner when we don’t accept ourselves. But the problem is not that our partner rejects us. The problem is that we reject ourselves, because we are not good enough, because that is what we believe.

Hirschi was convinced that people who were usefully busy didn’t commit crimes. “The child playing ping-pong, swimming in the community pool, or doing his homework,” he said, “is not committing delinquent acts.” Hirschi didn’t spend a whole lot of time looking at people who had good jobs and became criminals anyway, completely ignoring in this way a whole class of crime. White-collar crime by its very nature involves a high degree of self-control and planning. It’s committed almost overwhelmingly by people who had enough self-mastery to make it through high school and college and hold down good jobs.

Love at first sight is a trite expression quite sufficiently discussed; enough that in certain smouldering natures like this man's, that passion leaps into a blaze, and makes such head as fire does in a rage of wind, when other passions, but for its mastery, could be held in chains. As a multitude of weak, imitative natures are always lying by, ready to go mad upon the next wrong idea that may be broached—in these times, generally some form of tribute to Somebody for something that never was done, or, if ever done, that was done by Somebody Else—so these less ordinary natures may lie by for years, ready on the touch of an instant to burst into flame.

Even mighty states and kingdoms are not exempted. If we look into history, we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings and spreading their influence, until the whole globe is subjected to their ways. When they have reached the summit of grandeur, some minute and unsuspected cause commonly affects their ruin, and the empire of the world is transferred to some other place. Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant village, inhabited only by a few abandoned ruffians, but by degrees it rose to a stupendous height, and excelled in arts and arms all the nations that preceded it. But the demolition of Carthage (what one should think should have established is in supreme dominion) by removing all danger, suffered it to sink into debauchery, and made it at length an easy prey to Barbarians. England immediately upon this began to increase (the particular and minute cause of which I am not historian enough to trace) in power and magnificence, and is now the greatest nation upon the globe. Soon after the reformation a few people came over into the new world for conscience sake. Perhaps this (apparently) trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America. It looks likely to me. For if we can remove the turbulent Gallics, our people according to exactest computations, will in another century, become more numerous than England itself. Should this be the case, since we have (I may say) all the naval stores of the nation in our hands, it will be easy to obtain the mastery of the seas, and then the united force of all Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us. Divide et impera. Keep us in distinct colonies, and then, some great men from each colony, desiring the monarchy of the whole, they will destroy each others' influence and keep the country in equilibrio. Be not surprised that I am turned into politician. The whole town is immersed in politics.

There’s a cure for aging that no one talks about. It’s called learning. In my mind, as long as you learn something new each day, stretch your personal frontiers and improve the way you think, you cannot grow old. Aging only happens to people who lose their lust for getting better and disconnect from their natural base of curiosity. “Every three or four years I pick a new subject. It may be Japanese art; it may be economics. Three years of study are by no means enough to master a subject but they are enough to understand it. So for more than 60 years I have kept studying one subject at a time,” said Peter Drucker, the father of modern management who lived

Oh, but my netherling side did, and she casts my human armor aside. She guides my hands, knots my fingers through his hair, teases his tongue with hers. She won’t let me pull away, because she wants to be there again. In Wonderland, where his tobacco-flavored kisses always take us . . . Because the things I loathe are the things she adores: His snark, his infuriating condescension. His menacing mastery of half-truths and riddles. The way he shoves me into the face of danger, forces me to look beyond my fears and reach for my full potential. Most of all, because he encourages me to believe in the madness ...in her . . . the darker side of myself: the queen who was born to reign over the Red kingdom and to give Wonderland a legacy of dreams and imagination. His gloved palms seek the bend of my waist, the bow of my hips. He moves me on top of him, so close there’s not enough space for a blade of grass between us. His kisses grow insistent, desperate. His flavor winds through me, fruit and smoke and earth, and other things born of shadows and storms . . . things I can’t put a name to.

If you are fortunate enough to have a particular activity with which you find greatest joy and technical success, it is your responsibility as a growing human being to continue that study. Whatever your endeavor, if you can expand upon the knowledge in your strongest subject, that new found understanding of all things will trickle down to every other area of your life.

But true Zen never stops, never congeals into such truths. That is why everyone must constantly be pushed to the abyss, starting over and feeling their utter worthlessness as a student. Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. Not even enlightenment is enough. You must continually start over and challenge yourself.

You were right from the beginning sir.” Lascelles said. “There can be only one magician in England.” “What do you mean?” “I mean, that two of anything is a most uncomfortable number. One may do as he pleases. Six may get along well enough, but two must always struggle for mastery. Two must always watch each other. The eyes of the world must always be on two, uncertain which of them to follow.

The bed. “I asked for two,” Rhys said, hands already up. His breath clouded in front of him. Not even a fireplace. And not enough space to even demand he sleep on the floor. I didn’t trust my mastery over flame to attempt warming the room. I’d likely burn this whole filthy place to the ground. “If you can’t risk using magic, then we’ll have to warm each other,” I said, and instantly regretted it.

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

The explosion was deafening; a huge cloud of fire rolled out the window after us, its immense heat brushing my face as we tumbled into the snow. We hit the ground and rolled. Flaming debris from the house came down around us; Griffin shoved me flat on my back, covering us both with his heavy coat. The echoes of the explosion reflected back across the river, then slowly dwindled away, like dying thunder. The leaping flames threw warm light onto the falling snow, turning it into a storm of sparks pouring down from the heavens. Griffin started to push himself off of me, then stoped. His hands were braced on either side of my shoulders, his legs twined with mine. Mt heart pounded, my palms sweated, and I was suddenly, acutely aware of how close his face was to mine. "You're a madman," he whispered. "An utter madman." "Perhaps," I allowed. "But it worked." The leaping light from the burning house painted his features in gold, highlighting his patrician nose and finding threads of brown and blue in his green eyes. His pupils widened, the irises contracting to silver. "Whatever am I going to do with you?" he murmured. The warmth of his breath feathered over my skin. Heat collected in my groin, my lips. My mouth was dry, my voice hoarse, and perhaps he was right and it was madness when I whispered, "Whatever you want." A shiver went through his body, perhaps because we were lying on the cold ground. But instead of getting up, he leaned closer, his overlong hair tumbling over his forehead. He paused, his mouth almost touching mine, his eyes seeming to ask a question. It was madness; it was folly; it was sheer selfishness. I was delusional, misguided, wrong, out of control. I needed to pull back, to say something sane, to re-establish mastery over myself. I could not do this. I could not take the risk. Later tonight, I'd relive this moment in my lonely bed and wonder if I'd done the right thing. But at least that would be familiar, would be something I knew how to cope with. And yet the very thought felt like dying. I surged forward, crossing the final, tiny gap and pressing my lips to his. It was awkward and desperate and frantic, but the feel of his mouth against mine sent a bolt of electricity straight down my spine. Just a moment, just this one kiss, surely that would be enough... Then he kissed me back, and it would never be enough, a thousand years of this would not be enough. His mouth was hungry and insistent, his tongue probing my lips, asking for greater intimacy. I granted it, tongues swirling together, mine followed his when it retreated and tasting him in return. There came the clanging of bells in the distance, the fire company alerted to the explosion. Griffin drew back a fraction. His breath was as raged as mine, which left me dazed with wonder. "My dear," he whispered against my lips. Then he swallowed convulsively. "We should leave, before the fire companies come." "Y-Yes." It was amazing I managed that much coherence. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against mine, our breaths mingling. "Will you come home with me?" Was he asking...? "Yes." Oh, God, yes. His lips curved into a smile.

What weakens this force, what makes you not feel it or even doubt its existence, is the degree to which you have succumbed to another force in life - social pressures to conform. This counterforce can be very powerful. You want to fit into a group. Unconsciously, you might feel that what makes you different is embarrassing or painful. Your parents often act as a counterforce as well. They may seek to direct you to a career path that is lucrative and comfortable. If these counterforces become strong enough, you can lose complete contact with your uniqueness, with who you really are. Your inclination and desires become modeled on those of others.

The ascetic ideal has an aim — this goal is, putting it generally, that all the other interests of human life should, measured by its standard, appear petty and narrow; it explains epochs, nations, men, in reference to this one end; it forbids any other interpretation, any other end; it repudiates, denies, affirms, confirms, only in the sense of its own interpretation (and was there ever a more thoroughly elaborated system of interpretation?); it subjects itself to no power, rather does it believe in its own precedence over every power — it believes that nothing powerful exists in the world that has not first got to receive from “it” a meaning, a right to exist, a value, as being an instrument in its work, a way and means to its end, to one end. Where is the counterpart of this complete system of will, end, and interpretation? Why is the counterpart lacking? Where is the other “one aim”? But I am told it is not lacking, that not only has it fought a long and fortunate fight with that ideal, but that further it has already won the mastery over that ideal in all essentials: let our whole modern science attest this — that modern science, which, like the genuine reality-philosophy which it is, manifestly believes in itself alone, manifestly has the courage to be itself, the will to be itself, and has got on well enough without God, another world, and negative virtues.

If I feel sorry for you, it means I don’t respect you. You cannot make your own choices. When I have to make the choices for you, at that point I don’t respect you. If I don’t respect you, then I try to control you. Most of the time when we tell our children how to live their lives, it’s because we don’t respect them. We feel sorry for them, and we try to do for them what they should do for themselves. When I don’t respect myself, I feel sorry for myself, I feel I’m not good enough to make it in this world. How do you know when you don’t respect yourself? When you say, “Poor me, I’m not strong enough, I’m not intelligent enough, I’m not beautiful enough, I cannot make it.” Self-pity comes from disrespect.

There are two types of shot. The first is the shot made with great precision, but without any soul. In this case, although the archer may have a great mastery of technique, he has concentrated solely on the target and because of this he has not evolved, he has become stale, he has not managed to grow, and, one day, he will abandon the way of the bow because he finds that everything has become mere routine. The second type of shot is the one made with the soul. When the intention of the archer is transformed into the flight of the arrow, his hand opens at the right moment, the sound of the string makes the birds sing, and the gesture of shooting something over a distance provokes —paradoxically enough— a return to and an encounter with oneself.

Animals are locked in a perpetual present. They can learn from recent events, but they are easily distracted by what is in front of their eyes. Slowly, over a great period of time, our ancestors overcame this basic animal weakness. By looking long enough at any object and refusing to be distracted—even for a few seconds—they could momentarily detach themselves from their immediate surroundings. In this way they could notice patterns, make generalizations, and think ahead. They had the mental distance to think and reflect, even on the smallest scale. These early humans evolved the ability to detach and think as their primary advantage in the struggle to avoid predators and find food. It connected them to a reality other animals could not access. Thinking on this level was the single greatest turning point in all of evolution—the emergence of the conscious, reasoning mind.

You can leave the country, get remarried, build a whole new career, date 12 other people, find an entirely new friend group, feel happier and more fulfilled than ever, and still grieve for what your younger self went through. Even though you’re different on the outside, that part of you still very much exists within. That younger self doesn’t just want you to keep walking; it wants you to turn around and acknowledge it. You will, with time. You are not wrong or broken for feeling the way that you do. You responded to your circumstances as any healthy person would have. If anyone else was in your shoes, they would have reacted the exact same way. They would feel the exact same way. You were a healthy person who went through something traumatic and responded accordingly. You are someone who moved on because they had to, but who wasn’t sick enough to disassociate entirely from the past.

And for that little piece of love, because they are starving, they allow other people to control their lives. They let others tell them what to do, what not to do, how to dress, how not to dress, how to behave, how not to behave, what to believe, what not to believe. “I love you if you behave in this way. I love you if you let me control your life. I love you only if you are good to me. If not, then forget it.” The problem with humans is that they don’t know they have a magical kitchen in their heart. All this suffering begins because long ago we closed our hearts and we no longer feel the love that is there. At some point in our life, we became afraid to love, because we believed love isn’t fair. Love hurts. We tried to be good enough for someone else, we tried to be accepted by someone else, and we failed. We have already had two or three lovers and a few broken hearts. To love again is to risk too much.

In comparison to those other forms of 'screwing the nine to five' - worker organizing, legislation, and mutual aid - the allure of the productivity gospel is supposed to be that you don't need anyone but yourself to achieve freedom. The problem is that, according to this plan, more freedom requires ever more (self-)mastery, ever-bettering playing of your cards. Increasingly unable to control any of her surrounding circumstances, the consumer of this kind of self-help risks turning on herself with displaced intensity, surveilling herself with spreadsheets and averages, docking points , and meting out punishment in a secularized space of 'confession and rebuke'. This approach perfectly fits the neoliberal worldview of total competition. Not only will you not find help among others, but everyone else becomes your opponent while you jealously guard and 'supercharge' the time you possess. Whether you wring enough value out of it is on you.

HAPPINESS: "Flourishing is a fact, not a feeling. We flourish when we grow and thrive. We flourish when we exercise our powers. We flourish when we become what we are capable of becoming...Flourishing is rooted in action..."happiness is a kind of working of the soul in the way of perfect excellence"...a flourishing life is a life lived along lines of excellence...Flourishing is a condition that is created by the choices we make in the world we live in...Flourishing is not a virtue, but a condition; not a character trait, but a result. We need virtue to flourish, but virtue isn't enough. To create a flourishing life, we need both virtue and the conditions in which virtue can flourish...Resilience is a virtue required for flourishing, bur being resilient will not guarantee that we will flourish. Unfairness, injustice, and bad fortune will snuff our promising lives. Unasked-for pain will still come our way...We can build resilience and shape the world we live in. We can't rebuild the world...three primary kinds of happiness: the happiness of pleasure, the happiness of grace, and happiness of excellence...people who are flourishing usually have all three kinds of happiness in their lives...Aristotle understood: pushing ourselves to grow, to get better, to dive deeper is at the heart of happiness...This is the happiness that goes hand in hand with excellence, with pursuing worthy goals, with growing mastery...It is about the exercise of powers. The most common mistake people make in thinking about the happiness of excellence is to focus on moments of achievement. They imagine the mountain climber on the summit. That's part of the happiness of excellence, and a very real part. What counts more, though, is not the happiness of being there, but the happiness of getting there. A mountain climber heads for the summit, and joy meets her along the way. You head for the bottom of the ocean, and joy meets you on the way down...you create joy along the way...the concept of flow, the kind of happiness that comes when we lose ourselves through complete absorption in a rewarding task...the idea of flow..."Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times...The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limit in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."...Joy, like sweat, is usually a byproduct of your activity, not your aim...A focus on happiness will not lead to excellence. A focus on excellence will, over time, lead to happiness. The pursuit of excellence leads to growth, mastery, and achievement. None of these are sufficient for happiness, yet all of them are necessary...the pull of purpose, the desire to feel "needed in this world" - however we fulfill that desire - is a very powerful force in a human life...recognize that the drive to live well and purposefully isn't some grim, ugly, teeth-gritting duty. On the contrary: "it's a very good feeling." It is really is happiness...Pleasures can never make up for an absence of purposeful work and meaningful relationships. Pleasures will never make you whole...Real happiness comes from working together, hurting together, fighting together, surviving together, mourning together. It is the essence of the happiness of excellence...The happiness of pleasure can't provide purpose; it can't substitute for the happiness of excellence. The challenge for the veteran - and for anyone suddenly deprived of purpose - is not simple to overcome trauma, but to rebuild meaning. The only way out is through suffering to strength. Through hardship to healing. And the longer we wait, the less life we have to live...We are meant to have worthy work to do. If we aren't allowed to struggle for something worthwhile, we'll never grow in resilience, and we'll never experience complete happiness.

This is simply the long history of the origin of responsibility. That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more immediate task of first making man to a certain extent, necessitated, uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The immense work of what I have called, "morality of custom", the actual work of man on himself during the longest period of the human race, his whole prehistoric work, finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate hardness, despotism, stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact: man, with the help of the morality of customs and of social strait-waistcoats, was made genuinely calculable. If, however, we place ourselves at the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom finally bring to light that to which it was only the means, then do we find as the ripest fruit on its tree the sovereign individual, that resembles only himself, that has got loose from the morality of custom, the autonomous "super-moral" individual (for "autonomous" and "moral" are mutually-exclusive terms),—in short, the man of the personal, long, and independent will, competent to promise, and we find in him a proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of what has been at last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of human perfection in general. And this man who has grown to freedom, who is really competent to promise, this lord of the free will, this sovereign—how is it possible for him not to know how great is his superiority over everything incapable of binding itself by promises, or of being its own security, how great is the trust, the awe, the reverence that he awakes—he "deserves" all three—not to know that with this mastery over himself he is necessarily also given the mastery over circumstances, over nature, over all creatures with shorter wills, less reliable characters? The "free" man, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds in this possession his standard of value: looking out from himself upon the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind themselves by promises),—that is, every one who promises like a sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his trusts but confers honour by the very fact of trusting, who gives his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the "teeth of fate,"—so with equal necessity will he have the heel of his foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct—what name will he give to it, to this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there is no doubt about it—the sovereign man calls it his conscience.

This is the common source of the illusion that one is then in possession of the thing itself. But actually one has acquired nothing more than its name, despite the age-old prejudice that the name magically represents the thing, and that it is sufficient to pronounce the name in order to posit the thing's existence. In the course of the millennia the reasoning mind has been given every opportunity to see through the futility of this conceit, though that has done nothing to prevent the intellectual mastery of a thing from being accepted at its face value. It is precisely our experiences in psychology which demonstrate as plainly as could be wished that the intellectual "grasp" of a psychological fact produces no more than a concept of it, and that a concept is no more than a name, a flatus vocis. These intellectual counters can be bandied about easily enough. They pass lightly from hand to hand, for they have no weight or substance. They sound full but are hollow; and though purporting to designate a heavy task and obligation, they commit us to nothing. The intellect is undeniably useful in its own field, but is a great cheat and illusionist outside of it.

All that part of Creation that lies within our observation is liable to change... If we look into history, we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings and spreading their influence, until the whole globe is subjected to their ways... England immediately upon this began to increase (the particular and minute cause of which I am not historian enough to trace) in power and magnificence, and is now the greatest nation upon the globe. Soon after the Reformation a few people came over into the new world for conscience sake. Perhaps this (apparently) trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire into America. It looks likely to me. For if we can remove the turbulent Gallics, our people, according to the exactest computations, will in another century, become more numerous than England itself. Should this be the case, since we have (I may say) all the naval stores of the nation in our hands, it will be easy to obtain the mastery of the seas, and then the united force of all Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us... Keep us in distinct colonies... Be not surprised that I am turned politician. The whole town is immersed in politics.

I see over and beyond all these national wars, new "empires," and whatever else lies in the foreground. What I am concerned with — for I see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly — is the United Europe. It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls, of all the broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century — this reparation of a new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future of "the European." Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the "Fatherlanders" — then they were once more "patriots." I am thinking of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Schopenhauer. Perhaps Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number, concerning whom, as a successful type of German obscurity, nothing can be said without some such "perhaps." But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small States of Europe — I refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires" — will in a short time become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle for the possession of local and international trade. Money is even now compelling European nations to amalgamate into one Power. In order, however, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery of the world with good prospects of victory (it is easy to perceive against whom this battle will be waged), she must probably "come to an understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for this struggle, just as much as modern Germany, to play her new role of broker and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland. For no one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to continue to act her old part for fifty years more; the impossibility of shutting out homines novi from the government will ruin her, and her continual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle to the carrying out of any tasks which require to be spread out over a long period of time. A man must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that he may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant. Enough; here, as in other matters, the coming century will be found following in the footsteps of Napoleon — the first man, and the man of greatest initiative and advanced views, of modern times. For the tasks of the next century, the methods of popular representation and parliaments are the most inappropriate imaginable.

If you truly want to let go of a past experience, you have to reenter it through your memory. Close your eyes and find the feeling in your body that is uncomfortable. This is your portal to its root. Follow the feeling and ask it to show you where it started. You’ll remember a time, place, or experience. Sometimes, the memory is fresh enough that you don’t need to do this, and you can simply reenter the memory by imagining that you are back where it all began. Now what you have to do is to superimpose a narrative to your younger self. You need to imagine that you, your healed and happy older self, is imparting some wisdom. Imagine sitting next to your younger self as they got their heart broken and giving them very specific instructions about why this is absolutely for the best and although they cannot know it yet, there is another relationship out there that is far, far better. Imagine sitting next to your younger self when they felt really down and giving them the exact instructions regarding what they need to do to feel better: who they need to call, where they need to go, what they need to begin doing, and what they need to stop doing. Most importantly, imagine telling your younger self that absolutely everything—yes, everything—is going to be okay. That their fears are largely unfounded, that good things are coming, and that life will turn out well in the end.

But self-mastery triumphs in this Modern Life of ours. So if we haven’t found happiness or calm or balance amidst it all - if we don’t cope - it’s because we’ve not tried hard enough. Because Modern Life dictates there’s an answer out there . . .you just have to try harder to find it and master it. Of course it doesn’t exist. So we are set up to fail. I feel for younger people. I think they’re hit particularly hard by this doomed imperative. Many sociologists peg increased anxiety among teens and young adults to this phenomenon. The standard solution is to consume - food, possessions, partners, gurus. If our self-worth is suffering, we’re told to buy a new moisturizer. Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, writes, “We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.” Shia once again: “Today we’re told to do more stuff that has no purpose, which makes anxious.” Again, I think young people feel this acutely. And here’s the dirty clincher: All of it drives us outward, away from our true selves and fro our yearning to know ourselves better. Plus, it drives us away from each other. Lack of community and belonging is cited by Dr. Jean Twenge, a social psychologist at San Diego State University and author of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - And More Miserable Than Ever Before, as the primary driver of anxiety today. I’d include extensive quotes from Dr. Twenge, but I think the book title says it all. Then (big sigh), when we do find it all too much, Modern Life slaps us with a “disorder” or disease diagnosis.

5. Move toward resistance and pain A. Bill Bradley (b. 1943) fell in love with the sport of basketball somewhere around the age of ten. He had one advantage over his peers—he was tall for his age. But beyond that, he had no real natural gift for the game. He was slow and gawky, and could not jump very high. None of the aspects of the game came easily to him. He would have to compensate for all of his inadequacies through sheer practice. And so he proceeded to devise one of the most rigorous and efficient training routines in the history of sports. Managing to get his hands on the keys to the high school gym, he created for himself a schedule—three and a half hours of practice after school and on Sundays, eight hours every Saturday, and three hours a day during the summer. Over the years, he would keep rigidly to this schedule. In the gym, he would put ten-pound weights in his shoes to strengthen his legs and give him more spring to his jump. His greatest weaknesses, he decided, were his dribbling and his overall slowness. He would have to work on these and also transform himself into a superior passer to make up for his lack of speed. For this purpose, he devised various exercises. He wore eyeglass frames with pieces of cardboard taped to the bottom, so he could not see the basketball while he practiced dribbling. This would train him to always look around him rather than at the ball—a key skill in passing. He set up chairs on the court to act as opponents. He would dribble around them, back and forth, for hours, until he could glide past them, quickly changing direction. He spent hours at both of these exercises, well past any feelings of boredom or pain. Walking down the main street of his hometown in Missouri, he would keep his eyes focused straight ahead and try to notice the goods in the store windows, on either side, without turning his head. He worked on this endlessly, developing his peripheral vision so he could see more of the court. In his room at home, he practiced pivot moves and fakes well into the night—such skills that would also help him compensate for his lack of speed. Bradley put all of his creative energy into coming up with novel and effective ways of practicing. One time his family traveled to Europe via transatlantic ship. Finally, they thought, he would give his training regimen a break—there was really no place to practice on board. But below deck and running the length of the ship were two corridors, 900 feet long and quite narrow—just enough room for two passengers. This was the perfect location to practice dribbling at top speed while maintaining perfect ball control. To make it even harder, he decided to wear special eyeglasses that narrowed his vision. For hours every day he dribbled up one side and down the other, until the voyage was done. Working this way over the years, Bradley slowly transformed himself into one of the biggest stars in basketball—first as an All-American at Princeton University and then as a professional with the New York Knicks. Fans were in awe of his ability to make the most astounding passes, as if he had eyes on the back and sides of his head—not to mention his dribbling prowess, his incredible arsenal of fakes and pivots, and his complete gracefulness on the court. Little did they know that such apparent ease was the result of so many hours of intense practice over so many years.

Should you operate upon your clients as objects, you risk reducing them to less than human. Following the culture of appropriation and mastery your clients become a kind of extension of yourself, of your ego. In the appropriation and objectification mode, your clients’ well-being and success in treatment reflect well upon you. You “did” something to them, you made them well. You acted upon them and can take the credit for successful therapy or treatment. Conversely, if your clients flounder or regress, that reflects poorly on you. On this side of things the culture of appropriation and mastery says that you are not doing enough. You are not exerting enough influence, technique or therapeutic force. What anxiety this can breed for some clinicians! DBT offers a framework and tools for a treatment that allows clients to retain their full humanity. Through the practice of mindfulness, you can learn to cultivate a fuller presence to the moments of your life, and even with your clients and your work with them. This presence potentiates an encounter between two irreducible human beings, meeting professionally, of course, and meeting humanly. The dialectical framework, which embraces contradictions and gives you a way of seeing that life is pregnant with creative tensions, allows for your discovery of your limits and possibilities, gives you a way of seeing the dynamic nature of reality that is anything but sitting still; shows you that your identity grows from relationship with others, including those you help, that you are an irreducible human being encountering other irreducible human beings who exert influence upon you, even as you exert your own upon them. Even without clinical contrivance.

The empowerment triangle turns drama upside-down, transforming the persecutor (or scapegoat) into a challenger, the rescuer into a coach, and the victim into a creator. The empowerment dynamic allows all the roles to be essential for growth. In the drama triangle, the persecutor works with issues of power, the rescuer works with issues of responsibility, and the victim works with area of vulnerability: The drama triangle is familiar to many of us. We all know this pattern inside ourselves. We get stuck in a situation that we want to escape, and it creates drama. By leaning into the dynamic and entering deeper into relationship, we can work the energy so that it becomes an enriching transformation. If you can work this in a group, then you’ve subdued the scapegoat archetype and turned it into something more life affirming. The most important thing about the drama triangle is to make people aware of it. When a group can understand and recognize how this is a kind of destructive pattern, it becomes empowered to change the pattern. Uncoupling drama from our organizational and personal lives is the key. The group as a whole can embody a role to create safety and make sense of the system. Transformation from the drama to the redeemed starts with a pause, then an inquiry of what’s happening here, then a recollection of the three roles and who is playing what role in this context. Once the system is self-aware, ask the questions: “what else is possible? How can I become so centered that something new can happen? How can a new perception take place?” With enough safety and connection, the group will be able to follow the healing energy into re-organization and re-integration of the parts. Claiming or remembering your own archetype can protect against falling into one.

This reaction to the work was obviously a misunderstanding. It ignores the fact that the future Buddha was also of noble origins, that he was the son of a king and heir to the throne and had been raised with the expectation that one day he would inherit the crown. He had been taught martial arts and the art of government, and having reached the right age, he had married and had a son. All of these things would be more typical of the physical and mental formation of a future samurai than of a seminarian ready to take holy orders. A man like Julius Evola was particularly suitable to dispel such a misconception. He did so on two fronts in his Doctrine: on the one hand, he did not cease to recall the origins of the Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, who was destined to the throne of Kapilavastu: on the other hand, he attempted to demonstrate that Buddhist asceticism is not a cowardly resignation before life's vicissitudes, but rather a struggle of a spiritual kind, which is not any less heroic than the struggle of a knight on the battlefield. As Buddha himself said (Mahavagga, 2.15): 'It is better to die fighting than to live as one vanquished.' This resolution is in accord with Evola's ideal of overcoming natural resistances in order to achieve the Awakening through meditation; it should he noted, however, that the warrior terminology is contained in the oldest writings of Buddhism, which are those that best reflect the living teaching of the master. Evola works tirelessly in his hook to erase the Western view of a languid and dull doctrine that in fact was originally regarded as aristocratic and reserved for real 'champions.' After Schopenhauer, the unfounded idea arose in Western culture that Buddhism involved a renunciation of the world and the adoption of a passive attitude: 'Let things go their way; who cares anyway.' Since in this inferior world 'everything is evil,' the wise person is the one who, like Simeon the Stylite, withdraws, if not to the top of a pillar; at least to an isolated place of meditation. Moreover, the most widespread view of Buddhists is that of monks dressed in orange robes, begging for their food; people suppose that the only activity these monks are devoted to is reciting memorized texts, since they shun prayers; thus, their religion appears to an outsider as a form of atheism. Evola successfully demonstrates that this view is profoundly distorted by a series of prejudices. Passivity? Inaction? On the contrary, Buddha never tired of exhorting his disciples to 'work toward victory'; he himself, at the end of his life, said with pride: katam karaniyam, 'done is what needed to he done!' Pessimism? It is true that Buddha, picking up a formula of Brahmanism, the religion in which he had been raised prior to his departure from Kapilavastu, affirmed that everything on earth is 'suffering.' But he also clarified for us that this is the case because we are always yearning to reap concrete benefits from our actions. For example, warriors risk their lives because they long for the pleasure of victory and for the spoils, and yet in the end they are always disappointed: the pillaging is never enough and what has been gained is quickly squandered. Also, the taste of victory soon fades away. But if one becomes aware of this state of affairs (this is one aspect of the Awakening), the pessimism is dispelled since reality is what it is, neither good nor bad in itself; reality is inscribed in Becoming, which cannot be interrupted. Thus, one must live and act with the awareness that the only thing that matters is each and every moment. Thus, duty (dhamma) is claimed to be the only valid reference point: 'Do your duty,' that is. 'let your every action he totally disinterested.

PRAYER FOR SELF-LOVE Today, Creator of the Universe, we ask that you help us to accept ourselves just the way we are, without judgment. Help us to accept our mind the way it is, with all our emotions, our hopes and dreams, our personality, our unique way of being. Help us to accept our body just the way it is, with all its beauty and perfection. Let the love we have for ourselves be so strong that we never again reject ourselves or sabotage our happiness, freedom, and love. From now on, let every action, every reaction, every thought, every emotion, be based on love. Help us, Creator, to increase our self-love until the entire dream of our life is transformed, from fear and drama to love and joy. Let the power of our self-love be strong enough to break all the lies we were programmed to believe — all the lies that tell us we are not good enough, or strong enough, or intelligent enough, that we cannot make it. Let the power of our self-love be so strong that we no longer need to live our life according to other people’s opinions. Let us trust ourselves completely to make the choices we must make. With our self-love, we are no longer afraid to face any responsibility in our life or face any problems and resolve them as they arise. Whatever we want to accomplish, let it be done with the power of our self-love. Starting today, help us to love ourselves so much that we never set up any circumstances that go against us. We can live our life being ourselves and not pretending to be someone else just to be accepted by other people. We no longer need other people to accept us or tell us how good we are because we know what we are. With the power of our self-love, let us enjoy what we see every time we look in the mirror. Let there be a big smile on our face that enhances our inner and outer beauty. Help us to feel such intense self-love that we always enjoy our own presence.

Man’s destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he’s done — almost. He hasn’t quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man’s conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we’ve attained, we don’t have enough mastery to stop devastating the world — or to repair the devastation we’ve already wrought. We’ve poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit — and we go on pouring our poisons into the world. We’ve gobbled up irreplaceable resources as though they could never run out — and we go on gobbling them up. It’s hard to imagine how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody’s really doing anything about it. It’s a problem our children will have to solve, or their children. Only one thing can save us. We have to increase our mastery of the world. All this damage has come about through our conquest of the world, but we have to go on conquering it until our rule is absolute. Then, when we’re in complete control, everything will be fine. We’ll have fusion power. No pollution. We’ll turn the rain on and off. We’ll grow a bushel of wheat in a square centimeter. We’ll turn the oceans into farms. We’ll control the weather — no more hurricanes, no more tornadoes, no more droughts, no more untimely frosts. We’ll make the clouds release their water over the land instead of dumping it uselessly into the oceans. All the life processes of this planet will be where they belong—where the gods meant them to be—in our hands. And we’ll manipulate them the way a programmer manipulates a computer. And that’s where it stands right now. We have to carry the conquest forward. And carrying it forward is either going to destroy the world or turn it into a paradise — into the paradise it was meant to be under human rule. And if we manage to do this — if we finally manage to make ourselves the absolute rulers of the world — then nothing can stop us. Then we move into the Star Trek era. Man moves out into space to conquer and rule the entire universe. And that may be the ultimate destiny of man: to conquer and rule the entire universe. That’s how wonderful man is.

At the sound of the heavy knob turning, he cursed under his breath. She was coming in, damn it! To stop Maria before she ruined everything, he grabbed her about the waist, hauled her against him, and sealed his mouth to hers. At first she seemed too stunned to do anything. When after a moment, he felt her trying to draw back from him, he caught her behind the neck in an iron grip. “Oh,” Gran said in a stiff voice. “Beg pardon.” Dimly he heard the door close and footsteps retreating, but before he could let Maria go, a searing pain shot through his groin, making him see stars. Blast her, the woman had kneed him in the ballocks! As he doubled over, fighting to keep from passing out, she snapped, “That was for making me look like a whore, too!” When she turned for the door, he choked out, “Wait!” “Why should I?” she said, heading inexorably forward. “You’ve done nothing but insult and humiliate me before your family.” Still reeling, he presented his only ace in the hole, “If you return to town,” he called after her, “what will you do about your Nathan?” That halted her, thank God. He forced himself to straighten, though the room spun a little. “You still need my help, you know.” Slowly, she faced him. “So far you haven’t demonstrated any genuine intent to offer help,” she said icily. “But I will.” He gulped down air, struggling for mastery over his pain. “Tomorrow we’ll return to town and hire a runner. I know one who’s very adept. You can tell him everything you’ve learned so far about your fiancés disappearance, and I’ll make sure he pursues it.” “And in exchange, all I have to do is pretend to be a whore?” He grimaced. Christ, she felt strongly about this. He should have known that any woman who would thrust a sword at him wouldn’t be easily bullied. “No.” “No, what?” she demanded. “You needn’t pretend to be a whore. Just don’t leave. This can still work.” “I don’t see how,” she shot back. “You’ve already said we met in a brothel. Telling them we’re thieves is no better. I won’t have them thinking that we’re about to steal you blind.” “I’ll come up with some story, don’t worry,” he clipped out. “Something else to make me sound like a low, grasping schemer?” “No” She had him cornered, and she knew it. “Trust me, your background alone is enough to alarm Gran. She pretends not to mind it right now, but she won’t let it go on. Just stay. I’ll make it right, I swear.

With awareness we can easily understand why relationships don’t work — with our parents, with our children, with our friends, with our partner, and even with ourselves. Why doesn’t the relationship with ourselves work? Because we are wounded and we have all that emotional poison that we can hardly handle. We are full of poison because we grew up with an image of perfection that is not true, which does not exist, and in our mind it isn’t fair. We have seen how we create that image of perfection to please other people, even though they create their own dream that has nothing to do with us. We try to please Mom and Dad, we try to please our teacher, our minister, our religion, and God. But the truth is that from their point of view, we are never going to be perfect. That image of perfection tells us how we should be in order to acknowledge that we are good, in order to accept ourselves. But guess what? This is the biggest lie we believe about ourselves, because we are never going to be perfect. And there is no way that we can forgive ourselves for not being perfect. That image of perfection changes the way we dream. We learn to deny ourselves and reject ourselves. We are never good enough, or right enough, or clean enough, or healthy enough, according to all those beliefs we have. There is always something the Judge can never accept or forgive. That is why we reject our own humanity; that is why we never deserve to be happy; that is why we are searching for someone who abuses us, someone who will punish us. We have a very high level of self-abuse because of that image of perfection. When we reject ourselves, and judge ourselves, and find ourselves guilty and punish ourselves so much, it looks like there is no love. It looks like there is only punishment, only suffering, only judgment in this world. Hell has many different levels. Some people are very deep in hell and other people are hardly in hell, but still they are in hell. There are very abusive relationships in hell and relationships with hardly any abuse. You are no longer a child, and if you have an abusive relationship, it is because you accept that abuse, because you believe you deserve it. You have a limit to the amount of abuse you will accept, but no one in the whole world abuses you more than you abuse yourself. The limit of your self-abuse is the limit you will tolerate from other people. If someone abuses you more than you abuse yourself, you walk away, you run, you escape. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, perhaps you stay longer. You still deserve that abuse.

[the virgin birth account] occurs everywhere. When the Herod figure ( the extreme figure of misgovernment) has brought man to the nadir of spirit, the occult forces of the cycle begin to move. In an inconspicuous village, Mary is born who will maintain herself undefiled by fashionable errors of her generation. Her womb, remaining fallw as the primordial abyss, summons itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilzed the void. Mary's virgin birth story is recounted everywhere. and with such striking unity of the main contours, that early christian missionaries had to think the devil must be creating mockeries of Mary's birth wherever they testified. One missionary reports that after work was begun among Tunja and Sogamozzo South American Indians, "the demon began giving contrary doctrines. The demon sought to discredit Mary's account, declaring it had not yet come to pass; but presently, the sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin in a small village, causing her to conceive by rays of the sun while she yet remained virgin." Hindu mythology tells of the maiden parvati who retreated to the high hills to practice austerities. Taraka had usurped mastery of the world, a tyrant. Prophecy said only a son of the high god Shiva could overthrow him. Shive however was the pattern god of yoga-alone, aloof, meditating. It was impossible Shiva could be moved to beget. Parvati tried changing the world situation by metching Shiva in meditation. Aloof, indrawn in her soul meditating, she fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four great fires. One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture. "My desire," she said "is Shiva, the Highest. He is the god of solitude and concentration. I therefore imitate his meditation to move him from his balance and bring him to me in love." Shiva, the youth announced, is a god of destruction, shiva is World Annhilator. Snakes are his garlands. The virgin said: He is beyond the mind of such as you. He is terrifying but the source of grace. snake garlands or jewel garlands he can assume or put off at will. Shiva is my love. The youth thereupon put away his disguise-he was Shiva. The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother's womb in the shape of a milk white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready virgin womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero savior or a world--annihilating demon may be conceived-one can never know.

You cannot change the outer event (for that has been created by the lot of you, and you are not grown enough in your consciousness to alter individually that which has been created collectively), so you must change the inner experience. This is the road to mastery in living. Nothing is painful in and of itself. Pain is a result of wrong thought. It is an error in thinking. A Master can disappear the most grievous pain. In this way, the Master heals. Pain results from a judgment you have made about a thing. Remove the judgment and the pain disappears.

Who would you be if you were no longer the man or woman who’s never good enough? As strange as it may seem, there’s something scary about that. At least, the certainty of not being good enough gives you some comfort.

We domesticate humans the same way we domesticate a dog or any other animal: with punishment and reward. This is perfectly normal. What we call education is nothing but domestication of the human being. We are afraid to be punished, but later we are also afraid of not getting the reward, of not being good enough for Mom or Dad, sibling or teacher. The need to be accepted is born. Before that, we don’t care whether we are accepted or not. People’s opinions are not important. They are not important because we just want to play and we live in the present. The

Why do we move on when a child makes a C on a test and obviously did not understand all of the material? (p. 117) An A is not the goal. However, it should be the outcome of mastery learning every single time. ... Accepting less than A-level work from our children sends them the message that either the material isn't important enough to be learned, that it isn't important to do your best, or that excellence isn't worth the trouble. We must fight against the "a B or C is ok" mentality! (p. 118)

The way to reduce the pain which you associate with earthly experiences and events—both yours and those of others—is to change the way you behold them. You cannot change the outer event (for that has been created by the lot of you, and you are not grown enough in your consciousness to alter individually that which has been created collectively), so you must change the inner experience. This is the road to mastery in living.

Here then is an idealised fantasy of how modern men could be. They are not motivated by greed or by a sense of purpose, they are sexually adventurous but not predators, they see themselves as valid rather than victims, confident enough to be true to themselves, brave enough not to hide themselves away. They know when they can relax and enjoy life and when they need to harden, stand firm, protect themselves and others. In a very meta modern way they are skilled at knowing when they should swing to these extremes. If the Beatles are an expression of yes and the Bond is a statement of no, they are an ability to choose the right response at any given moment. The fantasy of being Bond has always been a desire to be confident, skilled and brave. To make it modern it also has to be wise, there is no reason why you can’t be emotionally intelligent behind the wheel of a really fast sports car. Or to put it another way they need an ambition and mastery of Paul, the bravery and honesty of John, the sense of higher purpose and great cause of George and an ability to enjoy life of Ringo.

Yoga is the effort to experience one's divinity personally and then to hold on that experience forever. Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul your attention away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future so that you can seek instead a place of eternal presence form which may regard yourself and your surrounding with poise. it's all god in disguise but they yogis believe a human life is a very special opportunity because only in alumni from and only with a special opportunity because only in a human form and only with a human mind can God realization ever occur. is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen. a great yogi is anyone who has achieved the permanent state of enlightened bliss. A guru is a great yogi who can actually pass that state on to theirs. mantravirya the potency of the Enlighted consciousness capable of conscious inquiry a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. living spiritual master when I was nine, I couldn't do a thing with it except cry later over these years my hypersensitive awareness of times s led me to push myself to experience life at a maximum pace if I were going to have such a short visit on earth, I had to do everything possible e to experience it now hence all the traveling all the romances all the ambition all the pasta. On the other the Zen masters always say that you cannot see your reflection in running water only in still Ater so something was telling me it would be spiritually negligent to run off now then so much was happening right here in this small, cloistered place where every minute of the day is organized to facilitate self-exploration and devotional practice. vipassana mediation teaches that grief and nuisance are inevitable in this life but if you can plant yourself in stillness long enough you will in time experience the truth that everything. (both uncomfortable and lovely) does eventually pass. Man is neither entirely ap upper off the god and is not entirely the captain of his own destiny he is a little of both. But when they do show up again i can just send them back here back to this rooftop of memory back to the care of those two cool blue souls who already and always understand everything This is what rituals are for we do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place of our most complicated feeling of joy or trauma so that we don't have to have those feelings around with us forever weight us down. we have hands we can stand on them if we want to that's our privilege that is the joy of a moral body and that is because God needs us because God loves to feel things through our hands.

I find writing frustrating. Words seem inadequate for all emotions. I do not have enough mastery of language to put my feelings to paper. Perhaps the author's duty is not to express his feelings but those of the story or novel.

Your life exists without meaning until you experience the thought that attaches meaning to it.

Until we recognize that we live in content yet perceive in thought, we are trapped in meanings that are not truly ours.

Mental health is the exact same way. It is not a measure of how happy we seem, how perfect things are, or how unconditionally “positive” we can be, but that we are able to move through day-to-day life and the occasional challenge with enough fluidity and reason that we aren’t stifled or held back by ourselves.

The point of meditation is to make yourself quiet enough so that the water comes back to its natural stillness. You don’t have to force the water to be still. It does it on its own when you stop interrupting it.

As they improved, the fighters would begin to tune him out, feeling like they already knew enough. Their egos would get in the way and they would stop learning.

Each and every person you look at is sorting themselves out. While they might appear confident and in control or carefree with a relaxed demeanor, everyone is working through some private personal issue. Issues like these often present themselves as things that other people seem to have already solved. These issues can include insecurities, fear, anger, compulsive lying, or impulsive behaviors, to name just a few. While there are many variations of these, the number and severity of them can vary depending on the individual. Yet, their common theme is one of shame and our desire to hide them. Regardless of your awareness of them, if you are human, you have them. They fuel a large portion of your motivations and identity with others. If it is not clear to you now, just answer this question: What would you not want people to know about you?

these fears and the insecurities that protect us influence: The rules we force ourselves to follow The opportunities we justify avoiding The excuses we give into The stories we tell ourselves about others The assumptions we make about the world  The generalizations about the world The unhealthy narratives we subscribe to The beliefs we hold about what is possible The limitations we place on others The logic and reasoning we insist are correct The best practices we follow  The self-sabotaging behaviors we engage in

The more personal the issue, the more universal the issue.

Finally, note that his grandmother is not even present in the current situation, as he has now taken up the reins of domestication and subjugated his own will without anyone's else's influence. In the Toltec tradition we refer to this phenomenon as self-domestication. As my father likes to say, “Humans are the only animals on the planet that self-domesticate.” The relationship between the boy and his grandmother forms a part of the Dream of the Planet, and the lunch between the grandmother and her grandson is a basic example of how domestication and self-domestication within the Dream occurs. The grandmother domesticated her grandson in that moment, but he continued to self-domesticate himself long after that. Self-domestication is the act of accepting ourselves on the condition that we live up to the ideals we have adopted from others in the Dream of the Planet, without ever considering if those ideals are what we truly want. While the consequences of finishing a bowl of soup are minimal, domestication and self-domestication can take much more serious and darker forms as well. For instance, many of us learned to be critical of our physical appearance because it wasn't “good enough” by society's standards. We were presented with the belief that we weren't tall enough, thin enough, or that our skin wasn't the right color, and the moment we agreed with that belief we began to self-domesticate. Because we adopted an external belief, we either rejected or tried to change our physical appearance so we could feel worthy of our own self-acceptance and the acceptance of others. Imagine for a moment the many industries that would cease to exist if we all loved our bodies exactly the way they are. To be clear, domestication regarding body image is different from wanting to lose weight in order to be healthy, or even having a preference to look a certain way. The key difference is that with a preference, you come from a place of self-love and self-acceptance, whereas with domestication you start from a place of shame, guilt, and not being “enough.” The line between these two can be thin sometimes, and a Master of Self is one who can look within and determine his or her true motive. Another popular form of domestication in the current Dream of the Planet revolves around social class and material possessions. There is an underlying belief promulgated by society that those who have the most “stuff” or who hold certain jobs are somehow more important than the rest. I, for one, have never met anyone who was more important than anyone else, as we are all beautiful and unique creations of the Divine. And yet many people pursue career paths they dislike and buy things they don't really want or need all in an effort to achieve the elusive goals of peer acceptance and self-acceptance. Instances such as these (and we can think of many others) are the ways in which domestication leads to self-domestication, and the result is that we have people living lives that aren't their own.

At a recognizable point in the research process, looking at more sources does not provide more insight. When we have consulted enough material to identify patterns and developments, then … we have the mastery necessary to offer an interpretation of the past

As my father likes to say, “Humans are the only animals on the planet that self-domesticate.” The relationship between the boy and his grandmother forms a part of the Dream of the Planet, and the lunch between the grandmother and her grandson is a basic example of how domestication and self-domestication within the Dream occurs. The grandmother domesticated her grandson in that moment, but he continued to self-domesticate himself long after that. Self-domestication is the act of accepting ourselves on the condition that we live up to the ideals we have adopted from others in the Dream of the Planet, without ever considering if those ideals are what we truly want. While the consequences of finishing a bowl of soup are minimal, domestication and self-domestication can take much more serious and darker forms as well. For instance, many of us learned to be critical of our physical appearance because it wasn't “good enough” by society's standards. We were presented with the belief that we weren't tall enough, thin enough, or that our skin wasn't the right color, and the moment we agreed with that belief we began to self-domesticate. Because we adopted an external belief, we either rejected or tried to change our physical appearance so we could feel worthy of our own self-acceptance and the acceptance of others. Imagine for a moment the many industries that would cease to exist if we all loved our bodies exactly the way they are. To be clear, domestication regarding body image is different from wanting to lose weight in order to be healthy, or even having a preference to look a certain way. The key difference is that with a preference, you come from a place of self-love and self-acceptance, whereas with domestication you start from a place of shame, guilt, and not being “enough.” The line between these two can be thin sometimes, and a Master of Self is one who can look within and determine his or her true motive. Another popular form of domestication in the current Dream of the Planet revolves around social class and material possessions. There is an underlying belief promulgated by society that those who have the most “stuff” or who hold certain jobs are somehow more important than the rest. I, for one, have never met anyone who was more important than anyone else, as we are all beautiful and unique creations of the Divine. And yet many people pursue career paths they dislike and buy things they don't really want or need all in an effort to achieve the elusive goals of peer acceptance and self-acceptance. Instances such as these (and we can think of many others) are the ways in which domestication leads to self-domestication, and the result is that we have people living lives that aren't their own.

In your whole life nobody has abused you more than you have abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that person. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly. If you abuse yourself very badly, you can even tolerate someone who beats you up, humiliates you, and treats you like dirt. Why? Because in your belief system you say "I deserve it. This person is doing me a favor by being with me. I'm not worthy of love and respect. I'm not good enough." We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don't accept ourselves the way e are, and why we don't accept others the way they are.

Whether we are simultaneously cooking dinner and sending emails while holding a baby or driving and eating breakfast while mentally organizing the day’s schedule, the circus act of being a mom forces us to do more than one thing at a time. As if that weren’t enough, we do so with a frequency and a mastery that none of the standardized cognitive tests would ever manage to measure. So please take heart, these shifts are in service to a bigger picture, not ones that leave you wanting down the road.

The belief that I’m not good enough and must work harder The pride I feel from working harder than most people The victim mentality that comes from working hard while not getting the results I want The idea I’m somewhat ‘special’ The idea the world needs to be changed, and The need to control the outcome of my actions.

Satisfaction does not come from experiences, but rather by being open to experience as it is.

When we stop closing ourselves off to what life is by thinking of what life is not, we open ourselves up to what life could be.

When you give your energy to certain thoughts, they gain life. There’s a saying that the wolf that wins is the one that you feed, and when it comes to the quality of your life, you need to be extremely careful of what you allow yourself to think. It will soon become what you feel, then what you believe, and then how you behave, and sure enough, the way you live.

The point where hubris takes over had been reached by 1936. Germany had been conquered. It was not enough. Expansion beckoned. World peace would soon be threatened. Everything was coming about as he alone had foreseen it, thought Hitler. He had come to regard himself as ordained by Providence. ‘I go with the certainty of a sleepwalker along the path laid out for me by Providence,’ he told a huge gathering in Munich on 14 March. His mastery over all other power-groups within the regime was by now well-nigh complete, his position unassailable, his popularity immense. Few at this point had the foresight to realize that the path laid out by Providence led into the abyss.

And then by the fifth chapter, something unexpected happened. The fifth chapter is about the creative process itself. And the idea is that once you do enough work on a project, enough preparation, and you’ve had all of these months of experience delving into the subject, you often reach a state of creativity where ideas come to you out of nowhere. And suddenly this was happening to me.

Some people can’t figure out why they can’t seem to motivate themselves enough to create a new business to facilitate their goal of becoming significantly wealthier, perhaps not realizing that they have a subconscious belief that to be rich is to be egocentric or disliked.

Consequently, rather than feeling you’re not good enough, understand that you’re not good enough yet. The “yet” here is key. It changes your perspective. Instead of focusing on the “not good enough”, you will focus on the “not yet” part. Instead of suffering from your current situation, you will become excited about what lies ahead of you. You will begin to enjoy the process of continuous improvement.

Instead of wondering whether or not someone else will think you are enough, stop and ask yourself: Is my life enough for me?

Revelations occur when ideas that were sitting in the margins of your mind finally get enough attention to dominate your thoughts. These are the “clicking” moments, the moments when you finally understand advice you’ve heard your entire life.

Operating with long-term goals will bring you tremendous clarity and resolve. These goals—a project or business to create, for instance—can be relatively ambitious, enough to bring out the best in you. The problem, however, is that they will also tend to generate anxiety as you look at all you have to do to reach them from the present vantage point. To manage such anxiety, you must create a ladder of smaller goals along the way, reaching down to the present. Such objectives are simpler the further down the ladder you go, and you can realize them in relatively short time frames, giving you moments of satisfaction and a sense of progress.