Mastery Of Self Book Quotes

Life is like a game of chess. To win you have to make a move. Knowing which move to make comes with IN-SIGHT and knowledge, and by learning the lessons that are acculated along the way. We become each and every piece within the game called life!

Life is like a sandwich! Birth as one slice, and death as the other. What you put in-between the slices is up to you. Is your sandwich tasty or sour? Allan Rufus.org

Hard work does not go unnoticed, and someday the rewards will follow

Unless we take that first step into the unknown, we will never know our own potential!

The most incredible architecture Is the architecture of Self, which is ever changing, evolving, revolving and has unlimited beauty and light inside which radiates outwards for everyone to see and feel. With every in breathe you are adding to your life and every out breathe you are releasing what is not contributing to your life. Every breathe is a re-birth.

Note and Quote to Self – What you think, say and do! Your life mainly consists of 3 things! What you think, What you say and What you do! So always be very conscious of what you are co-creating!

NOTE TO SELF – BOOMERANG EFFECT My words, thoughts and deeds have a boomerang effect. So be-careful what you send out!

Quotes and notes to self – Find your inner peace! Don’t be caught up in your outer world. Pay greater attention to your inner world

I respect you when I don’t try to tell you how to live your life, how to dress, how to walk, how to talk, how to do whatever you do in your kingdom.

You are here just to be, for no reason. You have no mission except to enjoy life, to be happy. The only thing you need is just to be the real you. Be authentic. Be the presence. Be happiness. Be love. Be joy. Be yourself; that’s the main point. That’s wisdom.

Enlightenment is the Goal - Love is the Game - Taking steps are the rules! - Allan Rufus

Note to Self – Thoughts design my energy! My thoughts WILL design the energy that moves me!

Even the worst thing that can happen to you is meant to happen because it’s going to push you to grow.

Whatever people think of you is really about the image they have of you, and that image isn’t you.

Be responsible for every choice you make in your life. This is your life; it’s nobody else’s life, and you will find that it’s nobody else’s business what you do with your life.

We want our freedom; we want to be ourselves, but we are also afraid to be by ourselves.

Humans have a need to explain and justify everything; we have a need for knowledge, and we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know.

Once you are aware that you’re dreaming, you recover your power to change the dream whenever you choose.

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 wish you all an ego free driven day!

You have the right to live your own life, in your own way, and there is no wrong way.

Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, took his whole life to get to the point where he said, “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.

The result of practicing the fifth agreement is the complete acceptance of yourself just the way you are, and the complete acceptance of everybody else just the way they are. The reward is your eternal happiness.

Making assumptions and then taking them personally is the beginning of hell in this world. Almost all of our conflicts are based on this, and it’s easy to understand why. Assumptions are nothing more than lies that we are telling ourselves. This creates a big drama for nothing, because we don’t really know if something is true or not. Making assumptions is just looking for drama when there’s no drama happening. And if drama is happening in someone else’s story, so what? It’s not your story; it’s someone else’s story.

Quotes and notes to self- Divine and Unique Power Find out what my Individual Divine and Unique Power IS and offer it outwards in harmony with all life!

Making assumptions and then taking them personally is the beginning of hell in this world.

What is real we cannot change, and it doesn’t matter what we believe.

If you tell someone you love him, and that person says 'Well, I don't love you," is that a reason for you to suffer? Just because someone rejects you doesn't mean you have to reject yourself. If one person doesn't love you, someone else will love you. There is always someone else. And it's better to be with someone who wants to be with you than to be with someone who has to be with you.

Words are your paintbrush, and your life is the canvas. You can paint whatever you want to paint; you can even copy another artist’s work — but what you express with your paintbrush is the way you see yourself, the way you see the entire reality.

Establishing your differences with the mentor is an important part of your self-development, whether he is of the good or bad parent type.

In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami—a man who has achieved self-mastery—convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise. “I told you not to bite,” said the swami, “but I did not tell you not to hiss.” “Many people, like the swami’s cobra, confuse the hiss with the bite,” writes Tavris.

To follow precisely the lead of others or advice from a book is self-defeating

When Numa died, Rome by the twin disciplines of peace and war was as eminent for self-mastery as for military power.

You’re not responsible for people’s thoughts. In fact, what people think of you is none of your business. Your job is to express your personality the best way you can while having the purest intent possible. In short, your responsibility is to do your best to be your true self. Then, people may or may not like you, and either way is fine. Remember, the most influential people such as presidents and statesmen and women are often hated by millions.

The only person who needs to be concerned about the story of you is you.

To blame the self for acting out of alignment condemns the self, which actually reinforces the misalignment, strengthens its hold upon you, and supports fear. “I am to be frightened of” would be the

During your whole life you practiced every moment to become what you believe you are right now. You practiced until it became automatic. And when you start practicing something new, when you change what you believe you are, your whole life is going to change. If you practice being impeccable with your word, if you don’t take anything personally, if you don’t make assumptions, you are going to break thousands of agreements that keep you trapped in the dream of hell. Very soon, what you agree to believe will become the choice of your authentic self, not the choice of the image of yourself that you thought you were.

For whatever goal you want to achieve, there is discomfort along that path. Self-discipline drives you through this discomfort and allows you to achieve and attain. It’s an essential component of mastery, and nothing great was ever accomplished without it.

Awareness makes all the difference.

Self-help books help you to become a better version of your present self.

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?

As an apprentice, it can be hard for us to challenge ourselves on our own in the proper way, and to get a clear sense of our own weaknesses. The times that we live in make this even harder. Developing discipline through challenging situations and perhaps suffering along the way are no longer values that are promoted in our culture. People are increasingly reluctant to tell each other the truth about themselves—their weaknesses, their inadequacies, flaws in their work. Even the self-help books designed to set us straight tend to be soft and flattering, telling us what we want to hear—that we are basically good and can get what we want by following a few simple steps. It seems abusive or damaging to people’s self-esteem to offer them stern, realistic criticism, to set them tasks that will make them aware of how far they have to go. In fact, this indulgence and fear of hurting people’s feelings is far more abusive in the long run. It makes it hard for people to gauge where they are or to develop self-discipline. It makes them unsuited for the rigors of the journey to mastery. It weakens people’s will.

By the time we grow up, our faith is already invested in so many lies that we hardly have any power left to create the dream that we want to create.

During your whole life you practiced every moment to become what you believe you are right now.

the mastery of transformation is the process of unlearning what you have already learned. You learn by making agreements, and you unlearn by breaking agreements.

Every book you've ever read on LEADERSHIP will finally make sense (and become practical) if you change the word "leader" to INFLUENCER.

Words are your paintbrush, and your life is the canvas.

The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart—this you will build your life by, this you will become.

Truth or fiction, you don’t have to believe anyone’s story. You don’t have to form an opinion about what someone says. You don’t have to express your own opinion. You don’t have to agree

We soothe newborns, but parents soon start teaching their children to tolerate higher levels of arousal, a job that is often assigned to fathers. (I once heard the psychologist John Gottman say, “Mothers stroke, and fathers poke.”) Learning how to manage arousal is a key life skill, and parents must do it for babies before babies can do it for themselves. If that gnawing sensation in his belly makes a baby cry, the breast or bottle arrives. If he’s scared, someone holds and rocks him until he calms down. If his bowels erupt, someone comes to make him clean and dry. Associating intense sensations with safety, comfort, and mastery is the foundation of self-regulation, self-soothing, and self-nurture, a theme to which I return throughout this book.

There’s the object of perception, which is the truth, and there’s our interpretation of the truth, which is just a point of view. The truth is objective, and we call it science. Our interpretation

When religions describe the dream of hell, they say it’s a place where we burn, a place where we are judged, a place of eternal punishment. Well, that description of hell is the ordinary dream of the humans. That very same thing is happening in the human mind — the judgment, the guilt, the punishment, and the emotions generated by fear that feel like a fire burning inside us. Fear is king of the underworld, and it rules our world by creating the distortions in our knowledge. Fear creates the whole world of injustice and emotional drama, the whole nightmare that billions of people are living in.

Every human is a magician, and in the interaction between the magicians, there are spells being cast everywhere. How? By misusing the word, by taking everything personally, by distorting everything we perceive with assumptions, by gossiping and spreading emotional poison with the word. Humans cast spells mainly upon the people we love the most, and the more authority we have, the more powerful the spells.

In the stories of the greatest Masters, past and present, we can inevitably detect a phase in their lives in which all of their future powers were in development, like the chrysalis of a butterfly. This part of their lives—a largely self-directed apprenticeship that lasts some five to ten years—receives little attention because it does not contain stories of great achievement or discovery. Often in their Apprenticeship Phase, these types are not yet much different from anyone else. Under the surface, however, their minds are transforming in ways we cannot see but contain all of the seeds of their future success.

I think ritual is most effective as a means of helping you work on and with yourself. I don't believe in "casting spells" or "cursing" other people. If you have that desire, I'd suggest you do a cleansing/banishing/liberation ritual to free yourself of the need to control another person rather than wasting any more energy on the subject in question. Master yourself and you'll no longer feel the need to master others.

When we find out that Santa Claus isn’t the truth, we no longer believe in Santa Claus, and the power we invested in that symbol returns to us. This is when we become aware that we are the one who agreed to believe in Santa Claus.

In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami—a man who has achieved self-mastery—convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise. “I told you not to bite,” said the swami,

The world is in crisis. It needs people who have the skill to combine inner power with outer action. Inner power comes from self mastery, observing and controlling the ego, and deepening integrity through a regular practice of reflection or meditation.

As artists, we distort the truth and create the most amazing theories; we create entire philosophies and the most amazing religions; we create stories and superstitions about everything, including ourselves. And this is exactly the main point: We create them.

3,2,1........Launch! A lot of preparation goes into launching a rocket ship. No short cuts or cheating will get that rocket to its destination. A lot of hard work and dedication goes into every launch. What are you doing to launch? Are you doing the proper work needed? Are you dedicated?

Certainly I wouldn't be writing this book, on this subject, if living with freedom were easy. The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

From a very early age Edison became used to doing things for himself, by necessity. His family was poor, and by the age of twelve he had to earn money to help his parents. He sold newspapers on trains, and traveling around his native Michigan for his job, he developed an ardent curiosity about everything he saw. He wanted to know how things worked—machines, gadgets, anything with moving parts. With no schools or teachers in his life, he turned to books, particularly anything he could find on science. He began to conduct his own experiments in the basement of his family home, and he taught himself how to take apart and fix any kind of watch. At the age of fifteen he apprenticed as a telegraph operator, then spent years traveling across the country plying his trade. He had no chance for a formal education, and nobody crossed his path who could serve as a teacher or mentor. And so in lieu of that, in every city he spent time in, he frequented the public library. One book that crossed his path played a decisive role in his life: Michael Faraday’s two-volume Experimental Researches in Electricity. This book became for Edison what The Improvement of the Mind had been for Faraday. It gave him a systematic approach to science and a program for how to educate himself in the field that now obsessed him—electricity. He could follow the experiments laid out by the great Master of the field and absorb as well his philosophical approach to science. For the rest of his life, Faraday would remain his role model. Through books, experiments, and practical experience at various jobs, Edison gave himself a rigorous education that lasted about ten years, up until the time he became an inventor. What made this successful was his relentless desire to learn through whatever crossed his path, as well as his self-discipline. He had developed the habit of overcoming his lack of an organized education by sheer determination and persistence. He worked harder than anyone else. Because he was a consummate outsider and his mind had not been indoctrinated in any school of thought, he brought a fresh perspective to every problem he tackled. He turned his lack of formal direction into an advantage. If you are forced onto this path, you must follow Edison’s example by developing extreme self-reliance. Under these circumstances, you become your own teacher and mentor. You push yourself to learn from every possible source. You read more books than those who have a formal education, developing this into a lifelong habit. As much as possible, you try to apply your knowledge in some form of experiment or practice. You find for yourself second-degree mentors in the form of public figures who can serve as role models. Reading and reflecting on their experiences, you can gain some guidance. You try to make their ideas come to life, internalizing their voice. As someone self-taught, you will maintain a pristine vision, completely distilled through your own experiences—giving you a distinctive power and path to mastery.

This inclination is a reflection of a person’s uniqueness. This uniqueness is not something merely poetic or philosophical—it is a scientific fact that genetically, every one of us is unique; our exact genetic makeup has never happened before and will never be repeated. This uniqueness is revealed to us through the preferences we innately feel for particular activities or subjects of study. Such inclinations can be toward music or mathematics, certain sports or games, solving puzzle-like problems, tinkering and building, or playing with words. With those who stand out by their later mastery, they experience this inclination more deeply and clearly than others. They experience it as an inner calling. It tends to dominate their thoughts and dreams. They find their way, by accident or sheer effort, to a career path in which this inclination can flourish. This intense connection and desire allows them to withstand the pain of the process—the self-doubts, the tedious hours of practice and study, the inevitable setbacks, the endless barbs from the envious. They develop a resiliency and confidence that others lack.

It may be that the human race is not ready for freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe. Certainly I wouldn't be writing this book, on this subject, if living with freedom were easy. The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

Sex is also a positive way of working on one's personal freedom project. After all, it is one of the few areas of real privacy that a person has in an existence that is almost wholly social, entirely shaped by the parents and society. In this sense, sex as a project represents a retreat from the standardizations and monopolizations of the social world. No wonder people dedicate themselves so all-consumingly to it, often from childhood on in the form of secret masturbations that represent a protest and a triumph of the personal self. As we will see in Part II of this book, Rang goes so far as to say that this use of sex explains all sexual conflicts in the individual-"from masturbation to the most varied perversions." The person attempts to use his sex in an entirely individual way in order to control it and relieve it of its determinism. It is as though one tried to transcend the body by depriving it entirely of its given character, to make sport and new invention in place of what nature "intended." The "perversions" of children certainly show this very clearly: they are the true artists of the body, using it as clay to assert their symbolic mastery. Freud saw this and recorded it as "polymorphous perversity"-which is one way of talking about it. But he seems not to have realized that this kind of play is already a very serious attempt to transcend determinism, not merely an animal search for a variety of body-zone pleasures.

Share your success stories with others. Don't brag, but don't hide your light. People want (and need) to be inspired and instructed. I know I want to follow and learn from successful people. Isn't that the basis for every business and self-help book? People will also give you good ideas to build on your own wins when you share openly. And when you write out your wins to an audience, your own ideas start to grow within you. Will you try? What's a win you've had lately? Don't be shy about it.

THREE LEVELS OF LAW America's Declaration of Independence names three kinds of law: the laws of man, of nature and nature’s God. The Book of Change is based on the laws of natural change. They emanate from and depend on divine law and serve as the rightful foundation of civil law. Clearly, laws legislated in ignorance of or in opposition to natural and divine law are not likely to work out well. Policy makers at all levels would do well to give this point careful thought. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote about the relationship of divine, natural and human law in a way that inspired readers at the time of the American Revolution to fight for freedom from tyranny. Approaching natural law from the deeper understanding of the ancients could inspire a reinvention of democracy now. Sages say that freedom from tyranny begins with dispelling ignorance and overcoming toxic, negative emotions. Inalienable freedom starts with the self-awareness and self-mastery which can be gained by diligent use of the I Ching. pp. 3-4.

You must forgive those who hurt you, even if whatever they did to you is unforgivable in your mind. You will forgive them not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because you don't want to suffer and hurt yourself every time you remember what they did to you. It doesn't matter what others did to you, you are going to forgive them because you don't want to feel sick all the time. Forgiveness is for your own mental healing. You will forgive because you feel compassion for yourself. Forgiveness is an act of self-love.

In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami—a man who has achieved self-mastery—convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise. “I told you not to bite,” said the swami, “but I did not tell you not to hiss.

When you are operating in low vibration you must call things to you that are in accord with that frequency. The action of fear, as we have taught you, is to create more fear, and when you are operating in fear and you claim fear, that becomes your teacher until you decide otherwise. When you move into the frequency of the light, or the Christed Self, as it is manifested as you, what it will call to you will be what it requires. The lessons may be the same, you see, but you may learn to cook a cake in a gutter or in a fine kitchen, it really depends on what you hold as your frequency.

Now you know that all the acting you did your whole life was really for nothing because nobody perceives you the way you want to be perceived. You can see that all the drama that happens in your movie isn’t really noticed by anybody around you. It’s obvious that everybody’s attention is focused on their own movie. They don’t even notice when you’re sitting right beside them in their theater! The actors have all their attention on their story, and that is the only reality they live in. Their attention is so hooked by their own creation that they don’t even notice their own presence—the one who is observing their movie.

As an audience it seems we’re as good as saying, “I’ll pay attention to your idea if you… * are already being taken seriously in some way * have found your place (professionally or personally) * believe strongly in something relevant to your idea * are connecting (with ideas, with people) in meaningful ways * are finding ways to be useful in the world * are finding ways to achieve more of what you value * have developed mastery and control * are participating in interesting things * and are radiating love and acceptance for self and others.” Your chosen audience will have three or four things on that list they value most in their own lives. And because they do value those things so highly, they’ll be looking for those signals from you.

In explaining the way that trivial, if diverting, pursuits like Guitar Hero provide an easy alternative to meaningful work, Horning draws on the writing of political theorist Jon Elster. In his 1986 book An Introduction to Karl Marx, Elster used a simple example to illustrate the psychic difference between the hard work of developing talent and the easy work of consuming stuff: Compare playing the piano with eating lamb chops. The first time one practices the piano it is difficult, even painfully so. By contrast, most people enjoy lamb chops the first time they eat them. Over time, however, these patterns are reversed. Playing the piano becomes increasingly more rewarding, whereas the taste for lamb chops becomes satiated and jaded with repeated, frequent consumption. Elster then made a broader point: Activities of self-realization are subject to increasing marginal utility: They become more enjoyable the more one has already engaged in them. Exactly the opposite is true of consumption. To derive sustained pleasure from consumption, diversity is essential. Diversity, on the other hand, is an obstacle to successful self-realization, as it prevents one from getting into the later and more rewarding stages. “Consumerism,” comments Horning, “keeps us well supplied with stuff and seems to enrich our identities by allowing us to become familiar with a wide range of phenomena—a process that the internet has accelerated immeasurably. . . . But this comes at the expense with developing any sense of mastery of anything, eroding over time the sense that mastery is possible, or worth pursuing.” Distraction is the permanent end state of the perfected consumer, not least because distraction is a state that is eminently programmable. To buy a guitar is to open possibilities. To buy Guitar Hero is to close them. A

There is an underlying rhythm to all text. Sentences crashing fall like the waves of the sea, and work unconsciously on the reader. Punctuation is the music of language. As a conductor can influence the experience of the song by manipulating its rhythm, so can punctuation influence the reading experience, bring out the best (or worst) in a text. By controlling the speed of a text, punctuation dictates how it should be read. A delicate world of punctuation lives just beneath the surface of your work, like a world of microorganisms living in a pond. They are missed by the naked eye, but if you use a microscope you will find a exist, and that the pond is, in fact, teeming with life. This book will teach you to become sensitive to this habitat. The more you do, the greater the likelihood of your crafting a finer work in every respect. Conversely the more you turn a blind eye, the greater the likelihood of your creating a cacophonous text and of your being misread.

The German Reformation stands out as an energetic protest of antiquated spirits, who were by no means tired of mediæval views of life, and who received the signs of its dissolution, the extraordinary flatness and alienation of the religious life, with deep dejection instead of with the rejoicing that would have been seemly. With their northern strength and stiff-neckedness they threw mankind back again, brought about the counter-reformation, that is, a Catholic Christianity of self-defence, with all the violences of a state of siege, and delayed for two or three centuries the complete awakening and mastery of the sciences; just as they probably made for ever impossible the complete inter-growth of the antique and the modern spirit. The great task of the Renaissance could not be brought to a termination, this was prevented by the protest of the contemporary backward German spirit (which, for its salvation, had had sufficient sense in the Middle Ages to cross the Alps again and again). It was the chance of an extraordinary constellation of politics that Luther was preserved, and that his protest; gained strength, for the Emperor protected him in order to employ him as a weapon against the Pope, and in the same way he was secretly favoured by the Pope in order to use the Protestant princes as a counter-weight against the Emperor. Without this curious counter-play of intentions, Luther would have been burnt like Huss...

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.

Even if we restrict ourselves to the comparatively limited conceptual repertoire for talking about such matters that early Wittgenstein makes available, we may already say this: in order to learn a first language, the potential speaker needs not only to learn to see the symbol in the sign, she needs the very idea of language to become actual in her. This formal aspect of what it is to be human—the linguistic capacity as such—is something that dawns with the learning of one’s first language, with one’s becoming the bearer of a linguistic practice. We touched above, in the reply to Sullivan, on how the Tractatus inherits and adapts yet a further feature of the Kantian enterprise of critique: it starts with the assumption not only that we already have the very faculty we seek to elucidate in philosophy, but also that the prosecution of the philosophical inquiry must everywhere involve the exercise of the very capacity it seeks to elucidate. The Tractatus does not seek to confer the power of language on us: we already have this and bring it to our encounter with the book. Hence, it does not seek to explain what language is (as it is sometimes put) from sideways-on—from a position outside language—but rather from the self-conscious perspective of someone who already, in seeking philosophical clarity about what language is, seeks clarity about herself qua linguistic being. Through its exercise, however, the book does seek to confer a heightened mastery of that capacity on us—a reflective self- understanding of its logic and its limits, and of the philosophical confusions that arise from misunderstandings thereof. This heightened mastery (like the general power itself) can be acquired only through forms of further exercise of that same capacity. What I just said about the Tractatus, at this level of methodological abstraction, is no less true of the method of the Philosophical Investigations. The author of the Tractatus, however, unlike later Wittgenstein, never pauses for even a moment to reflect upon what it means to learn to recognize the symbol in the sign through attending to contexts of significant use. Nevertheless, early Witt- genstein would certainly agree with his later self on this point: for the learner of language, light must gradually dawn over the whole—over sign and symbol together.

Except to the most avid seekers of wisdom, Stoicism is either unknown or misunderstood. Indeed, it would be hard to find a word dealt a greater injustice at the hands of the English language than “Stoic.” To the average person, this vibrant, action-oriented, and paradigm-shifting way of living has become shorthand for “emotionlessness.” Given the fact that the mere mention of philosophy makes most nervous or bored, “Stoic philosophy” on the surface sounds like the last thing anyone would want to learn about, let alone urgently need in the course of daily life. What a sad fate for a philosophy that even one of its occasional critics, Arthur Schopenhauer, would describe as “the highest point to which man can attain by the mere use of his faculty of reason.” Our goal with this book is to restore Stoicism to its rightful place as a tool in the pursuit of self-mastery, perseverance, and wisdom: something one uses to live a great life, rather than some esoteric field of academic inquiry. Certainly, many of history’s great minds not only understood Stoicism for what it truly is, they sought it out: George Washington, Walt Whitman, Frederick the Great, Eugène Delacroix, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, Matthew Arnold, Ambrose Bierce, Theodore Roosevelt, William Alexander Percy, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Each read, studied, quoted, or admired the Stoics.

Mastery of the self is everything.

The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, by Nathaniel Branden, PhD. Breaking the Chain of Low Self-Esteem, by Marilyn Sorensen, PhD.

Humans are born with awareness; we are born to perceive the truth, but we accumulate knowledge, and we learn to deny what we perceive. We practice not being aware, and we master not being aware.

But now you are aware that our opinions are not the truth; they’re just a point of view.

We tell them about a Santa Claus who rewards little children who are “good,” or more like “God.” These messages are distorted. The kind of god who plays with justice doesn’t exist. Santa Claus doesn’t exist. All that knowledge in our head isn’t real.

The world of the warriors is the world of trying. We try to change the world that we don’t like, and we keep trying, and trying, and trying, and the war looks endless.

You are the unknowable. You are here just to be in this moment, in this dream. Being has nothing to do with knowledge. It’s not about understanding. You don’t need to understand. It’s not about learning. You are here to unlearn, and that’s it, until one day you realize you know nothing.

nothing will be left on the table that is unexpressed by the True Self. And

Because the Divine Self knows who he is, he needs no glory from man. The

Sometimes, you just have to do it and follow your instincts. Not over analyse or question things and allow fear to cloud your view, because this is it, this is your time and it won't come again.

When someone is operating out of alignment, they may do harm, or what you would call harm, but it is not done by the Divine Self. It is done by the one who has forgotten her true nature. And anyone who has designs upon another at the cost of their own will is in the act of forgetting.

The belief system rules the human life like a tyrant. It takes our freedom away from us and makes us its slave.

Every one of our beliefs, from a minimal one like the sound of a letter to a whole philosophy, is using our life force to survive.

In the process of domestication, the belief system becomes the book of law that rules our lives. When we follow the rules according to our book of law, we reward ourselves; when we don’t follow the rules, we punish ourselves. The belief system becomes the big judge in our mind, and also the greatest victim because first it judges us, then it punishes us. The big judge is made by symbols, and it works with symbols to judge everything we perceive, including the symbols! The victim is the part of us that receives the judgment and suffers the punishment. And when we interact with the outside dream, we judge and punish everyone and everything else according to our personal book of law.

And if you challenge your beliefs just by asking yourself if what you believe is true, you may find out something very interesting: All your life you tried to be good enough for somebody else, and you left yourself last. You sacrificed your personal freedom to live according to somebody else’s point of view.

Be skeptical because most of what you hear isn’t true. You know that humans speak with symbols, and that symbols aren’t the truth. Symbols are only the truth because we agree, not because they are really the truth.

The truth doesn’t need you to believe it; the truth simply is, and it survives whether you believe it or not. Lies need you to believe them. If you don’t believe lies, they don’t survive your skepticism, and they simply disappear.

The only truth for you is what you perceive in your world. With this awareness, there’s nothing to prove to anyone. It’s not about being right or wrong. You respect whatever somebody says because it’s another artist speaking. Respect is so important. When you learn to listen, you show respect for the other artists—you show respect for their art, for their creation.

Right now, you are interpreting what I’m saying according to your personal knowledge. You are rearranging the symbols and transforming them in a way that maintains an equilibrium with everything in your belief system.

Don’t believe everything you learned! Not believing yourself is a huge advantage, because most of what you learned is not the truth. Everything you know, your whole reality, is nothing but symbols. But you are not that bunch of symbols that talk in your head. You know that, and that’s why you are skeptical and you don’t believe yourself.

Can you see the consequences of believing yourself? Believing yourself is one of the worst things you can do because you’ve been telling yourself lies your whole life, and if you believe all those lies, that’s why your dream isn’t a pleasant dream.

Humans are born with the power of creation, and we are constantly creating stories with the words that we learned.