Ness Love Quotes

It's not that you should never love something so much that it can control you. It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled. It's not a weakness. It's your best strength.

i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows. i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling -firm-smooth ness and which i will again and again and again kiss, i like kissing this and that of you, i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs, and possibly i like the thrill of under me you so quite new.

If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.

Being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.

Not everyone has to be the Chosen One. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing things that are great for them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people properly. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyway.

We share out craziness, our neuroses, our little bit of screwed-up-ness that comes from our family. We share it. And it feels like love.

His noise is getting quieter, but I can still see it there still- See how he feels the skin of my hand against his, see how he wants to take it and press it against his mouth, how he wants to breathe in the smell of me and how beautiful I look to him, how strong after all that illness, and how he wants to just lightly touch my neck, just there, and how he wants to take me in his arms and- "Oh, God," he says, looking away suddenly. "Viola, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-" But I just put my hand to the back of his neck- And he says, "Viola-?" And I pull myself towards him- And I kiss him. And it feels like, finally.

What is it that inspires you? What do you love to do? What would you do for free? At the beginning of my busi-ness career, my why was to become a millionaire, not a good why! And why not? Because that is an aspiration rather than a why. Aspirations, I have found, won’t fuel me when the going gets tough. But a true “why” will.

They're your parents. They're meant to love you because. Never in spite.

You love him," he says. Not an asking, just a fact. "I do," I say. Also a fact.

Just because we mess up doesn’t mean all the lessons we learned are undone. Healing can be imperfect.

I still love the book-ness of books, the smell of books: I am a book fetishist—books to me are the coolest and sexiest and most wonderful things there are.

It was so much easier to be loved than to have to do any of the desperate work of loving.

Viola?" he says. And I turn to look at him - And when I do, I can hear everything he's thinking. Everything. Clearer than before, clearer than seems possible - And I'm not even sure I'm supposed to, but I look him in the eyes and I see it - In the middle of everything he's feeling - Even after we fought - Even after I doubted him - Even after I hurt him - I see how much he loves me.

Maybe hearts don't ever stop breaking once broken.

We're each other's questions, aren't we? The question that never gets an answer.

And love and care have all kinds of different faces, and within them, there’s room for understanding, and for forgiveness, and for more.

His absence is so big it's like he's there.

As scary as this can be I want you to know no matter how broken you feel, and how seemingly unlikely it is, we are never too broken to heal.

Imperfection is beautiful. To anyone who has ever felt broken beyond repair, this is for you. If you’ve ever been excluded, or told you were not enough, know that you are enough, and beautifully complete.

It is a pure soul who can hold true the in­no­cence and time­less­ness of pas­sion in an­oth­er soul. Each un­veil­ing the great­est pieces of the oth­er, locked to­geth­er at the heart for eter­ni­ty

Because when you have this much personality, there’s a fear lurking just below the surface: If you knew all of me, you wouldn’t love me anymore.

You know those plants that are always trying to find the light? Maybe they were planted in a location that didn’t necessarily facilitate growth, but inexplicably they make a circuitous route to not only survive but bloom into a beautiful plant. That was me—my whole life.

I love that you're worried,' she says, 'but you're worried about all the wrong things.

I got paralyzed by things. I’m pretty sure that ‘I hate uncertainty’ was my first full sentence as a baby.

...he prayed fundamentally as a gesture of love for what had gone and would go and could be loved in no other way. When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in the face of death, to believe in humanity's potential for building a better world, so he prayed as a lament, as a consolation, and as a hope....

we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another,

The Female Orgasm. The Big O. That elusive, reclusive Loch Ness of the labia. Does it prove the existence of God, or just His twisted sense of humor?

If I’ve learned anything, it’s that acceptance is the key to so much, and we find so much freedom in feeling fierce about what we’re accepting.

What is it that inspires you? What do you love to do? What would you do for free? At the beginning of my busi-ness career, my why was to become a millionaire—not a good why! And why not? Because that is an aspiration rather than a why. Aspirations, I have found, won’t fuel me when the going gets tough. But a true “why” will.

The Mayor's wrong - He's wrong forever and ever - It's not that you should never love something so much it can control you. It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.

Her love for me made me as tall as the mountains

It's love. But it's a different kind," "Doesn't make it any less love, though.

Letting go of that idea that I needed to be normal or that I somehow wasn’t normal just because I needed to prioritize self-care to be healthy is the biggest gift I’ve ever given myself. Being normal is being completely unique, because nobody’s the same.

Being normal is being completely unique, because nobody’s the same. Normal, honey? Who is she, anyway?

There are endless sexy shapes, colors, forms, and kinds of people who deserve celebration. It’s each one of our jobs to reject that comparison of what we think beauty is and realize we are the motherfucking beauty.

Life ain't fair. It ain't. Not never. It's pointless and stupid and there's only suffering and pain and people who want to hurt you. You can't love nothing or no one cuz it'll all be taken away or ruined and you'll be left alone and constantly having to fight, constantly having to run just to stay alive.

It's not that you should never love something so much it can control you. It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.

There’s a rhyme and reason behind my effervescent spirit, and no, I did not wake up like this. It took a lot of trauma and tears to become the person you see today.

Though if love was an animal, Garret knew, it would probably be the Loch Ness Monster. If it didn’t exist, that didn’t matter. People made models of it, put it in the water, and took photos. The hoax of it was good enough. The idea of it. Though some people feared it, wished it would just go away, had their lives insured against being eaten alive by it.

And I feel her against me - And I think Viola - I think VIOLA! - I think VIOLA!!!!

And I look right into his eyes, right into him as far as I can see, because I want him to hear me, I want him to hear me with everything I mean and feel and say.

And right on cue, Viola yells, " TODD! " And I hit him with everything I got - Every bit of her behind me - Every piece of anger and frustrayshun and nothingness - Every moment I didn't see her - Every moment I worried - Everything - Every little tiny thing I know about her - I send it right into the center of him - VIOLA

Mikey," she says, but not like she's about to say anything more, just like she's identifying me, making a place for me here that's mine to exist in. I want her so much, my heart feels heavy, like I'm grieving. Is this what they meant about that stomach feeling? They didn't say it felt this sad.

Comparing ourselves to people on social media is as risky as using WebMD to diagnose yourself. You’ll end up way more stressed than before - just don’t even go there.

Todd!” she says again but this time in a way that asks me to look at her and I do and she stops Angharrad at the edge of the square and she’s looking at me, looking right into my eyes– And I read her– And I know exactly what she’s thinking– And my Noise and my heart and my head fill up fit to burst, fill up like I’m gonna explode– Cuz she’s saying– She’s saying with her eyes and her face and her whole self– “I know,” I say back to her, my voice husky. “Me, too.” And then I turn to the Mayor and I’m filled with her, with her love for me and my love for her– And it makes me big as an effing mountain– And I take it and I slam all of it into the Mayor–

During the nuit blanche I think: Henry, my love, I can love you better now that you cannot hurt me. I can love you more gaily. More loosely. I can endure space and distance and betrayals. Only the best, the best and the strongest. Henry, my love, the wanderer, the artist, the faithless one who has loved me so well. Believe me, nothing has changed in me toward you except my courage. I cannot walk with one love ever. My head is strong, my head, but to walk, to walk into love I need miracles, the miracles of excess, and white heat, and two-ness! Lie here, breathing into my hair, over my neck. No hurt will come from me. No criticalness, no judgment. I bear you in my womb.

You can’t be fiercely loving without also being passionate - and sometimes passionate isn’t pretty. What might seem testy is actually scar tissue, the residual effects of trauma that I lived through.

Joy can live beside sorrow. Life is messy, unpredictable, and seldom tied into neat little boxes.

Life is so much a daily exercise in learning to love yourself and forgive yourself, over and over.

COOL·NESS [KOOL-NIS] -noun CATCHING your mom gazing at the crazy crowd like she finally gets it WATCHING your dad head-banging like he’s Finn’s twin brother LEARNING that your new friends Tash and Kallie are a thousand times more complicated than you realized, and loving them for it FEELING every one of your boyfriend’s pounding drumbeats, and thinking it’s the most romantic music ever written REALIZING you’re completely unique . . . even in a crowd

Our grief was leading us all towards Mexican food.

Cuz when I held you for the first time this morning and fed you from my own body, I felt so much love for you it was almost like pain, almost like I couldn't stand it one longer.

We're lucky Esme thought to add an extra room. No one was planning for Ness-Renesmee." I frowned at him, my thoughts channeled down a less pleasant path. "Not you too," I complained. "Sorry, love. I hear it in their thoughts all the time, you know. It's rubbing off on me. I sighed. My baby, the sea serpent. Maybe there was no help for it. Well, I wasn't giving in.

It wasn’t until I had lost everything I thought I wanted that I realized being an adult wasn’t about being ‘normal,’ or having a life that seems enviable to people from the outside. Being a fulfilled and successful adult has required accepting that I do have an inner child who was hurt and traumatized. It’s my job as an adult to nurture him, alongside all the other parts of me that make me who I am.

I can read it. I can read her. Cuz she’s thinking about how her own parents also came here with hope like my ma. She’s wondering if the hope at the end of our hope is just as false as the one that was at the end of my ma’s. And she;s taking the words of my ma and putting them into the mouths of her own ma and pa and hearing them say that they love her and they miss her and they wish her the world. And she’s taking the song of my pa and she’s weaving it into everything else till it becomes a sad thing all her own. And it hurts her, but it’s an okay hurt, but it hurts still, but it’s good, but it hurts. She hurts. I know all this. I know it’s true. Cuz I can read her. I can read her Noise even tho she ain’t got none. I know who she is. I know Viola Eade.

There are a million ways to reach recovery. Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t find a way that works for you.

My default is to be really critical of myself, but the world will do that for me, so I gotta make sure I always know I have my back.

Joyful accomplishments exist next to painful memories. I found a lot of my healing when I realized that my suffering didn’t undo my joy.

So I’m telling my story - the whole story - to show that some masterpieces start off a mess.

Maybe there didn’t have to be any other reasons. Maybe love made you stupid. Maybe loneliness did.

Fundamentalist Christianity: fascinating. These people actually believe that the world is twelve thousand years old. Swear to God. Based on what? I asked them. "Well, we looked at all the people in the Bible and we added 'em up all the way back to Adam and Eve, their ages? Twelve thousand years." "Well, how fucking scientific, OK. I didn't know that you'd gone to so much trouble there. That's good. You believe the world's twelve thousand years old?" "That's right." "OK, I got one word to ask you, a one word question, ready?" "Uh huh." "Dinosaurs." You know, the world's twelve thousand years old and dinosaurs existed, and existed in that time, you'd think it would been mentioned in the fucking Bible at some point: And O, Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth. But the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus... with a splinter in its paw. And the disciples did run a-screamin'. "What a big fucking lizard, Lord!" "I'm sure gonna mention this in my book," Luke said. "Well, I'm sure gonna mention it in my book," Matthew said. But Jesus was unafraid. And he took the splinter from the brontosaurus paw, and the brontosaurus became his friend. And Jesus sent him to Scotland where he lived in a loch, O so many years, attracting fat American families with their fat fuckin' dollars to look for the Loch Ness Monster. And O the Scots did praise the Lord: "Thank you, Lord! Thank you, Lord!" Twelve thousand years old. But I actually asked this guy, "OK, dinosaur fossils-- how does that fit into your scheme of life? What's the deal?" He goes: "God put those here to test our faith." "I think God put you here to test my faith, dude. I think I've figured this out." Does that-- That's what this guy said. Does that bother anyone here? The idea that God might be fucking with our heads? Anyone have trouble sleeping restfully with that thought in their head? God's running around burying fossils: "Ho ho! We'll see who believes in me now, ha ha! I'm a prankster God. I am killing me, ho ho ho!" You know? You die, you go to St. Peter: "Did you believe in dinosaurs?" "Well, yeah. There were fossils everywhere. (trapdoor opens) Aaaaarhhh!" "You fuckin' idiot! Flying lizards? You're a moron. God was fuckin' with you!" "It seemed so plausible, aaaaaahh!" "Enjoy the lake of fire, fucker!" They believe this. But you ever notice how people who believe in Creationism usually look pretty unevolved. Eyes really close together, big furry hands and feet? "I believe God created me in one day." Yeah, looks like he rushed it. Such a weird belief. Lots of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he's gonna want to see a fucking cross, man? "Ow." Might be why he hasn't shown up yet. "Man, they're still wearing crosses. Fuck it, I'm not goin' back, Dad. No, they totally missed the point. When they start wearing fishes, I might show up again, but... let me bury fossils with you, Dad. Fuck 'em, let's fuck with 'em! Hand me that brontosaurus head, Dad.

Not everyone has to be the Chosen One. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing the things that are great for them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people properly. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyway.

But you can’t make war personal,” I say, “or you’ll never make the right decisions.” “And if you didn’t make personal decisions, you wouldn’t be a person. All war is personal somehow, isn’t it? For somebody? Except it’s usually hate.” “Lee—” “I’m just saying how lucky he is to have someone love him so much they’d take on the whole world.” His Noise is uncomfortable, wondering what I’m looking like, how I’m responding. “That’s all I’m saying.” “He’d do it for me,” I say quietly. I’d do it for you too, Lee’s Noise says. And I know he would. But those people who die because we do it, don’t they have people who’d kill for them? So who’s right?

When they were together like that, they had been their own private universe, bounded just by themselves, a population of two. They were the world, and the world was them.

You end up hating so many people that without even noticing, you start to hate everyone. Including yourself. But that's the trick, you see? The trick that makes everything survivable. You've got to love somebody.

One thing I have come to notice in my life is that recovery for me has not been linear. It’s more two steps forward, three back, five forward, two back, so I’m always improving but there are setbacks within the improvement.

Colour outside the lines, live outside the box. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, or not. Don’t be afraid, listen to your heart. Heaven is a state of being – of one-ness, and Hell is a state of being – lost. We simply need to live as we best define ourselves, find our own ways of being who we are in our world. There is no requirement - only freedom of choice. We should not be judged if we are doing what we think best according to our perceptions at any given time. Guilt should be discarded, moved beyond - what matters is who we choose to be in the next moment, given what we might have learned. We continually create ourselves anew. Forgiving someone is a great way to show love, and forgive yourself too for the hurt you held onto far too long. Take back the energy you have wasted on these things and reclaim your power to be your next best self. Honour the past but refresh, expand, renew, fulfill. Heaven is within us, always reachable.

We are all a beautiful jumble of layers, parts, and mixtures of experiences, but my most important part, and in my opinion everyone’s most valuable part, is the one that chooses self-love instead of self-harm in the grand sweeping ways but also the little ways every single day. Learning to parent yourself, with soothing compassionate love, forgiving yourself, and learning from all the decisions you made to get you to where you are - that’s the key to being fulfilled. Learning to be the dream parent cheerleader to yourself. It’s been in you the whole time. And no matter how down you get, you can always make a gorgeous recovery.

All the souls to explore! - It's not so necessary to love, really, as it is to settle something deep with all of those who really matter. Love and hate are the same things, differently sifted through personal... pride, or what have you... personal pride or even just personal-ness.

I need you to scry for Lousha," he said. "You told me once that you could." "Yeah, I can get you in her vicinity." Garreth had taken Lucia's scent into him and could find her from miles away. "That'll work." Witches could come in handy, he supposed. "But I don't do gratis." Garreth bluidy hated witches! "Charge me what you will! Just give me the fucking coordinates." In the background, he heard Bowen say, "Mari, never let it be said that I doona support your extortion--" "Entrepreneurial-ness," she corrected. "But a family discount, love, would no' be amiss." "The whole family? Fine," she said. "I'm scrying." While Garreth waited, she groused about how extended the "MacRieve pack" was.

no matter how much my life changes I am enough, and I am loved in and of myself and by myself, I’ll be good.

Joy can live beside sorrow.

Cheering on a corrupt institutional body that’s super problematic with money and opportunity but we all pretend like it’s an equal playing field and celebrate it—what’s more American than that?

If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don’t give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise. Keep your head down. Keep your stamina. Keep swimming...

It's like a cat bell, so pretty yet alarming, because i know I'm letting myself fall when maybe I should fly away. But the loneliness inside, it's so fucking painful. It's that longing feeling that scratches to escape and makes you want to blurt out all kinds of gushy crap just to get the girl to look at you...I hate it. Love its melty-ness and hate its leash around my neck.

It's not that you should never love something so much it can control you. It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled It's not a weakness- It's your best strength- ... I know it in my heart- Right now- Todd Hewitt- There's nothing we can't do together- And we're gonna win-

Never love something so much it can be used to control you.

Love is not jealous.

It took a long time, but my heart now feels full when I think of him. When you fall in love again—which I have—it's funny the other things that come back in with that open-ness. You have this ghost chorus of the lovers who came before, but they're benign now, they're good spirits.

I WANT her though, to take the same from me. She touches me as if I were herself, her own. She has not realized yet, that fearful thing, that I am the other, she thinks we are all of one piece. It is painfully untrue. I want her to touch me at last, ah, on the root and quick of my darkness and perish on me, as I have perished on her. Then, we shall be two and distinct, we shall have each our separate being. And that will be pure existence, real liberty. Till then, we are confused, a mixture, unresolved, unextricated one from the other. It is in pure, unutterable resolvedness, distinction of being, that one is free, not in mixing, merging, not in similarity. When she has put her hand on my secret, darkest sources, the darkest outgoings, when it has struck home to her, like a death, "this is _him!_" she has no part in it, no part whatever, it is the terrible _other_, when she knows the fearful _other flesh_, ah, dark- ness unfathomable and fearful, contiguous and concrete, when she is slain against me, and lies in a heap like one outside the house, when she passes away as I have passed away being pressed up against the _other_, then I shall be glad, I shall not be confused with her, I shall be cleared, distinct, single as if burnished in silver, having no adherence, no adhesion anywhere, one clear, burnished, isolated being, unique, and she also, pure, isolated, complete, two of us, unutterably distinguished, and in unutterable conjunction. Then we shall be free, freer than angels, ah, perfect. VIII AFTER that, there will only remain that all men detach themselves and become unique, that we are all detached, moving in freedom more than the angels, conditioned only by our own pure single being, having no laws but the laws of our own being. Every human being will then be like a flower, untrammelled. Every movement will be direct. Only to be will be such delight, we cover our faces when we think of it lest our faces betray us to some untimely fiend. Every man himself, and therefore, a surpassing singleness of mankind. The blazing tiger will spring upon the deer, un-dimmed, the hen will nestle over her chickens, we shall love, we shall hate, but it will be like music, sheer utterance, issuing straight out of the unknown, the lightning and the rainbow appearing in us unbidden, unchecked, like ambassadors. We shall not look before and after. We shall _be_, _now_. We shall know in full. We, the mystic NOW. (From the poem the Manifesto)

They’re weak and strong and they make mistakes, like anyone, like he has. And love and care have all kinds of different faces, and within them, there’s room for understanding, and for forgiveness, and for more. More and more and more. Sometimes

I knew it,” Conor grumbled. “These kinds of stories always have stupid princes falling in love.” He started walking back to the house. “I thought this was going to be good.”With one swift movement, the monster grabbed Conor’s ankles in a long, strong hand and flipped him upside down, holding him in mid-air so his T-shirt rucked up and his heartbeat thudded in his head.As I was saying, said the monster.

I just wanna be fit and have good blood pressure and feel good with my clothes off and I do. I love my body but I think that there’s always a part of me that wishes I looked more like Antoni or like an underwear model. But then again, I still really love to binge eat at McDonald’s at night, so...you know.

Doug sees beneath all of her Hope-ness. Her sees her all the way to her white-hot rage, and her fear. What Doug doesn’t see, is that most of the time, it’s much to bear, and that really, when everything is stripped away, she is just as scared as what life dishes up as the next person, that inside she is that Swarovski hummingbird displayed so innocently on her credenza, all light-reflecting surfaces and fragile as glass.

Yes", Kumiko said, seriously. "Exactly that. The extraordinary happens all the time. So much, we can't take it. Life and happiness and heartache and love. If we couldn't put it in story - " "And explain it -" "No!" she said, suddenly sharp. "Not explain. Stories do not explain. They seem to, but all they provide is a starting point. The story never ends at the end. There is always after. And even within itself, even by saying that this version is the right one, it suggests other versions, versions that exist in parallel. No, story is not an explanation, it is a net, a net through which the truth flows. The net catches some of the truth, but not all, never all, only enough so that we can live with the extraordinary without it killing us." She sagged a little, as if exhausted by this speech. "As it surely, surely would.

These are the three stages of enlightenment, the three glimpses of satori. 1. The first stage enlightenment: A Glimpse of the Whole The first stage of enlightenment is short glimpse from faraway of the whole. It is a short glimpse of being. The first stage of enlightenment is when, for the first time, for a single moment the mind is not functioning. The ordinary ego is still present at the first stage of enlightenment, but you experience for a short while that there is something beyond the ego. There is a gap, a silence and emptiness, where there is not thought between you and existence. You and existence meet and merge for a moment. And for the first time the seed, the thirst and longing, for enlightenment, the meeting between you and existence, will grow in your heart. 2. The second stage of enlightenment: Silence, Relaxation, Togetherness, Inner Being The second stage of enlightenment is a new order, a harmony, from within, which comes from the inner being. It is the quality of freedom. The inner chaos has disappeared and a new silence, relaxation and togetherness has arisen. Your own wisdom from within has arisen. A subtle ego is still present in the second stage of enlightenment. The Hindus has three names for the ego: 1. Ahamkar, which is the ordinary ego. 2. Asmita, which is the quality of Am-ness, of no ego. It is a very silent ego, not aggreessive, but it is still a subtle ego. 3. Atma, the third word is Atma, when the Am-ness is also lost. This is what Buddha callas no-self, pure being. In the second stage of enlightenment you become capable of being in the inner being, in the gap, in the meditative quality within, in the silence and emptiness. For hours, for days, you can remain in the gap, in utter aloneness, in God. Still you need effort to remain in the gap, and if you drop the effort, the gap will disappear. Love, meditation and prayer becomes the way to increase the effort in the search for God. Then the second stage becomes a more conscious effort. Now you know the way, you now the direction. 3. The third stage of enlightenment: Ocean, Wholeness, No-self, Pure being At the third stage of enlightenment, at the third step of Satori, our individual river flowing silently, suddenly reaches to the Ocean and becomes one with the Ocean. At the third Satori, the ego is lost, and there is Atma, pure being. You are, but without any boundaries. The river has become the Ocean, the Whole. It has become a vast emptiness, just like the pure sky. The third stage of enlightenment happens when you have become capable of finding the inner being, the meditative quality within, the gap, the inner silence and emptiness, so that it becomes a natural quality. You can find the gap whenever you want. This is what tantra callas Mahamudra, the great orgasm, what Buddha calls Nirvana, what Lao Tzu calls Tao and what Jesus calls the kingdom of God. You have found the door to God. You have come home.

It’s not that you should never love something so much it can control you. It’s that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.

We share our craziness, our neuroses, our little bit of screwed-up-ness that comes from our family. We share it. And it feels like love.

I don’t want you to go,” he said, the tears dropping from his eyes, slowly at first, then spilling like a river. “I know, my love,” his mother said in her heavy voice. “I know.

But they felt ancient and natural, like they were, just tonight and just here, alive in a time before Americanness. A time before any kind of ness.

You think love is one thing – turns out, it's whole big barrel of fucked-up-ness. You think marriage is one thing – turns out, it's an even bigger barrel of fucked-up-ness.

The more we fill ourselves from His life-giving love, the less we will be dictated by the grabby-ness of the flesh.

It’s not gonna be pretty, but it’s my truth, and if I don’t share it, I won’t be able to help others who are struggs to func.

We were all just doing the best we could with what we knew, and I just didn’t know very much back then.

They're your parents. They're meant to love you because. Never in spite.

Raising his eyes to look directly into Linus's face was maybe the scariest thing he'd had to do all day long, but it was only the free-falling terror that always accompanied hope.

He opens his voice, showing me other sunrises he has seen, where the fields turn golden and the Source and his one in particular stood up from their early morning labours to watch it rise, a memory as simple as that, yet covered in joy and loss and love and grief- And hope.

At the end of the day, the people we let in our space affect our ability to get to where we want to go, so if they're in the way of realizing your potential, it's okay to disconnect because you must choose yourself.

When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in the face of death, to believe in humanity's potential for building a better world, and so he prayed as a lament, as a consolation, and as a hope.

That which besets me is indifference. I can't be bothered about people. Or rather, won't. For I avoid, carefully, all occasions for being bothered... Indifference is a form of sloth, and sloth in its turn is one of the symptoms of loveless-ness. One isn't lazy about what one loves. The problem is: how to love?

I hope culturally we can continue to normalize the idea that being a survivor is so much more common than anyone realizes and we all deserve to be heard, but more importantly are deserving of a recovery full of love, laughter, and light.

Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, open-ness—an act of trust in the unknown. An ardent Jehovah’s Witness once tried to convince me that if there were a God of love, he would certainly provide mankind with a reliable and infallible textbook for the guidance of conduct. I replied that no considerate God would destroy the human mind by making it so rigid and unadaptable as to depend upon one book, the Bible, for all the answers. For the use of words, and thus of a book, is to point beyond themselves to a world of life and experience that is not mere words or even ideas. Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

The ultimate experience of love is a realization that beneath the illusion of two-ness dwells identity.

And by being possessed, you possess, because that's how love works.

The future of fiction? he said. Maybe, she said. Will it have room for, you know, love & stuff? he said. Always, she said. OK then, he said.

Learn to tolerate your own different-ness from other people and learn to navigate your own waters

But still, I struggle with body images and then struggle with the fact that I’m still struggling with them — enough already!

You try being an eight-year-old violin-playing gymnastics-obsessed geode-collecting stamp connoisseur who has to have all those things with him in order to feel safe and nurtured.

Jenna is the kind of beautiful that I can get lost in. Lost from all the fucked-up-ness in my head. She’s the kind of beautiful that laughs at all my non funny jokes because she gets me. She’s the kind of beautiful that’ll put me in my place without batting an eye. Jenna is the kind of beautiful that can transform a non believing man like me into a man who wants more. A man who can fall hard, stumbling over his own two feet because he’s so tangled up in her.

The Prince had fallen in love. She was only a farmer's daughter, but she was was beautiful, and also smart, as the daughters of farmers need to be, for farms are complicated businesses.

Respecting differences while gaining insight into our essential connected-ness, we can free ourselves from the impulse to rigidly categorize the world in terms of narrow boundaries and labels.

Is it because hope is scary?’ my father asked. I looked back at him, startled. ‘You think so, too?’ He smiled, full of love. ‘Hope is terrifying, Viola,’ he said. ‘No one wants to admit it, but it is.

The Mayor's wrong- He's wrong forever and ever- It's not that you should never love something so much it can control you. It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.

Com­rades, we love the sun that gives us light, but if the rich and the ag­gressors were to try to mono­pol­ize the sun, we should say: “Let the sun be ex­tin­guished, let dark­ness reign, etern­al night…

Jared exhales a long, long time. “Dude.” I just swallow. It’s loud in the silence. “I think it’s starting again.” “It’s probably just the pressure of everything,” Jared offers. “Finals, your massively unrequited love for Henna–” “Don’t say unrequited.” “. . . your massively invisible love for Henna . . .” I hit him on the arm. It’s friendly. More silence.

My joy and my accomplishments existed, and so did the pain from my abuse. How can we feel one without the other? Joyful accomplishments exist next to painful memories. I found a lot of my healing when I realized my suffering didn't undo my joy.

I see them on Facebook through the pictures Dad posts, but it’s like they aren’t real. It’s like they’re photoshopped Loch Ness monsters and the University of Whatever is going to prove the hoax by showing me the beam of light in the background is wavy or something. They’re real. Sometimes I wish they weren’t. And that’s horrible, so I stop wishing that. Or at least I try to.

My body made it impossible for me to succeed at being a girl. The universe had presented me with some very obvious rules for female-ness: Be small and quiet and wispy and stoic and light and smooth and don't fart or sweat or bleed or bloat or tire or hunger or yearn. But the universe had also already issued me this lumpy, loud, smelly, hungry, longing body --- making it impossible to follow the rules. Being human in a world with no tolerance for humanity felt like a setup, a game I couldn't win. But instead of understanding that there might be something wrong with the world, I decided that there was something wrong with me.

Also in this He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little[ness]. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall [last] for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God.

first. anti.blackness: black is non. second. fetish: black non ness is. fascination. taboo. obsession. necessary consumption. third. exotic: the act of making black non ness acceptable. touchable. valuable. fourth. anti.blackness: black is non. — the box circle

It was a lesson for me. Even in my loneliest times, I knew I could go deep into my imagination and create a better reality for myself. And then that’s built into my life in so many other areas. Those little moments kept me expanding instead of shrinking into myself.

We are all two spirited beings in one body. We originated from a Soul that is two-spirited, male and female in one body. When you validate, honor, and love the opposite within, you validate, honor, and love both the opposite and same-ness with another human being. A healthy relationship starts by loving the internal twin flame relationship, which results in attracting a healthy external twin flame relationship.

He loved physical books with the same avidity other people loved horses or wine or prog rock. He'd never really warmed to ebooks because they seemed to reduce a book to a computer file, and computer files were disposable things, things you never really owned. He had no emails from ten years ago but still owned every book he bought that year. Besides, what was more perfect an object than a book? The different rags of paper, smooth or rough under your fingers. The edge of the page pressed into your thumbprint as you turned a new chapter. The way your bookmark - fancy, modest, scrap paper, candy wrapper - moved through the width of it, marking your progress, a little further each time you folded it shut.

I had spent the first half of my twenties fighting to find the will to process everything that I’d survived in my childhood and adolescence. Having done the hard work, I was now in a chapter in my life where I had the clarity to pursue my dreams and passion and find some actual success.

Just like joy and pain coexist, so can discomfort and humor. Which is why you gotta buckle up buttercup, because I can go from comedy to tragedy in three seconds flat. And that’s not damaged or not normal. I hope culturally we can continue to normalize the idea that being a survivor is so much more common than anyone realizes and we all deserve to be heard, but more importantly are deserving of a recovery full of love, laughter, and light.

...the presence of others has become even more intolerable to me, their conversation most of all. Oh, how it all annoys and exasperates me: their attitudes, their manners, their whole way of being! The people of my world, all my unhappy peers, have come to irritate, oppress and sadden me with their noisy and empty chatter, their monstrous and boundless vanity, their even more monstrous egotism, their club gossip... the endless repetition of opinions already formed and judgments already made; the automatic vomiting forth of articles read in those morning papers which are the recognised outlet of the hopeless wilderness of their ideas; the eternal daily meal of overfamiliar cliches concerning racing stables and the stalls of fillies of the human variety... the hutches of the 'petites femmes' - another worn out phrase in the dirty usury of shapeless expression! Oh my contemporaries, my dear contemporaries... Their idiotic self-satisfaction; their fat and full-blown self-sufficiency: the stupid display of their good fortune; the clink of fifty- and a hundred-franc coins forever sounding out their financial prowess, according their own reckoning; their hen-like clucking and their pig-like grunting, as they pronounce the names of certain women; the obesity of their minds, the obscenity of their eyes, and the toneless-ness of their laughter! They are, in truth, handsome puppets of amour, with all the exhausted despondency of their gestures and the slackness of their chic... Chic! A hideous word, which fits their manner like a new glove: as dejected as undertakers' mutes, as full-blown as Falstaff... Oh my contemporaries: the ceusses of my circle, to put it in their own ignoble argot. They have all welcomed the moneylenders into their homes, and have been recruited as their clients, and they have likewise played host to the fat journalists who milk their conversations for the society columns. How I hate them; how I execrate them; how I would love to devour them liver and lights - and how well I understand the Anarchists and their bombs!

Here is what we do as worshipers of a Santa Claus God: We embrace the conviction that God is an infinitely generous source of all good, but conveniently forget that we were created in God’s image to be in some significant sense like God – not like God in God’s divinity, for we are human and not divine, but like God “in true righteous ness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24), like God in loving enemies (Matthew 5:44). To live well as a human being is to live in sync with who God is and how God acts.

I fully recognize there is an urgent need for constructing the _strategic we-nes-in-sameness_ and promoting the _solidarity of sameness_. The sheer realization of the inextricable interconnectedness of I-ness/me-ness and we-ness/us-ness is the round for an authentic solidarity with one another in spite of and regardless of the difference.

She’s always saying that being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.” She catches my eye. “Which is something I believe, too.

Fake it till you make it and make it look graceful.

I knew it,” Conor grumbled. “These kinds of stories always have stupid princes falling in love.

you don't have to ride the elevator to the basement.

the more you love and accept yourself, the less you need other people's approval.

He answered the phone to his daughter with a broken but joyous heart, ready to speak with her of astonishment and wonder.

No Hate Speech Online is a social media netiquette rule. Return hate in kind (ness) for proper netiquette. Love Muslims alike.

Fake it til you make it and make it look graceful.

I love straight people

All I had to lose was the moment, and a moment is something that we should never let go to waste.

My worst nightmare had been realized, and I was still here.

In Marriage You Learn To Give Up The "Me ness for We ness!

And maybe, Adam thought, maybe hearts don't ever stop breaking once broken. Maybe they just keep on beating, until they're broken again, and then they keep on beating still.

other people's opinions are not a reflection of you, as long as your spirit is thriving.

For all the times I've been hurt I did some hurting.

I expected to be happy, but let me tell you something. Anticipating happiness and being happy are two entirely different things. I told myself that all I wanted to do was go to the mall. I wanted to look at the pretty girls, ogle the Victoria's Secret billboards, and hit on girls at the Sam Goody record store. I wanted to sit in the food court and gorge on junk food. I wanted to go to Bath and Body Works, stand in the middle of the store, and breathe. I wanted to stand there with my eyes closed and just smell, man. I wanted to lose myself in the total capitalism and consumerism of it all, the pure greediness, the pure indulgence, the pure American-ness of it all. I never made it that far. I didn't even make it out of the airport in Baltimore with all its Cinnabons, Starbucks, Brooks Brothers, and Brookstones before realizing that after where we'd been, after what we'd seen, home would never be home again.

We ambled on to the gift store where I found a t-shirt that tickled my fancy. I also fell in love with a pen holder that looked like a family of spotted Nessies. I asked the clerk to first wrap the pen holder in some tissue paper and then in the t-shirt. My heart would be broken if it didn’t survive the trip back home. There were some things a woman cannot live without.

Not everyone has to be the chosen one. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing the things that are great from them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people probably. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyways.

I have come to learn, though, that the more you love and accept yourself, the less you need other people’s approval. I never want my childlike spirit, my desire to learn and entertain, to change.

It’s not that you should never love something so much it can control you. It’s that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled. It’s not a weakness– It’s your best strength

Because when you have this much personality, there’s a fear lurking just below the surface: If you knew all of me, you wouldn’t love me anymore. You would no longer want me as your new best friend.

It’s not that you should never love something so much it can control you. It’s that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled. It’s not a weakness– It’s your best strength–

You know that feeling of invincibility you sometimes get, especially when young and testing yourself - well that could be because actually know deep down that we are indeed eternal. We come into this world to live a life, to experience it, from somewhere else, some other plane, but we are programmed by all around us to deny or forget this - until one day we may remember again. That feeling of blissful reconnection with our source can be invoked through nature, beautiful writing or art or music, any detailed craft or work of discovery or personal dedication, meditation or other mentally balancing practice, or even through religious experience if there is a pure communion (not a pretence of it). But we should not yearn to return too soon, we should accept that we have come here for the duration of each life, and revel in the chance to learn and grow on this splendid planet. We can draw a deep sense of being-ness. peace, and love from this connection, which will sustain us through any trial. Once nurtured, this becomes stronger than any other connection, so of course our relationships here are most joyful when they allow us the personal freedom to spend time developing and celebrating that connection. Our deepest friendships form with those we can share such time and experiences with - discussing, meditating, immersing ourselves in nature, or creating our music, art, written or other works. Our journeys here are voyages of discovery, opening out the wonders within and all around. What better companions could we have than those who are able to fully share in such delights with us?

It’s not that you should never love something so much it can control you. It’s that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled. It’s not a weakness– It’s your best strength–

If I’d known then what I know now, I would have told my little baby self that being strong and masculine has everything to do with having the courage and audacity to be different. It’s such a better way to be a man—bold and courageous—than squashing it down and trying to fit into a very basic idea of how men are supposed to be. Not to mention that the concepts around masculinity are as tired as the day is long.

But just like joy and pain coexist, so can discomfort and humor. Which is why you gotta buckle up, buttercup, because I can go from comedy to tragedy in three seconds flat. And that’s not damaged or not normal.

Oh, poor little Seth, with his poor little parents who didn't love him. You said we all want there to be more than this! Well, there's always more than this. There's always something you don't know. Maybe your parents didn't love you enough, and that sucks, yes, it does, but maybe it wasn't because you were bad. Maybe it was just because the worst thing in the world had happened to them and they weren't able to deal with it.

Is it because hope is scary?’ my father asked. I looked back at him, startled. ‘You think so, too?’ He smiled, full of love. ‘Hope is terrifying, Viola,’ he said. ‘No one wants to admit it, but it is.’ I feel my eyes go wet again. ‘Then how can you stand it? How can you bear even thinking it? It feels so dangerous, like you’ll be punished for even thinking you deserved it.’ He touched my arm, just lightly. ‘Because, Viola, life is so much more terrifying without it.

To me, those are core American family values: cheering on a corrupt institutional body that’s super problematic with money and opportunity but we all pretend like it’s an equal playing field and celebrate it- what’s more American than that?

He had loved Enzo. Loved him. And who cared if it was the love of a fifteen - and then a sixteen-year-old. Why did that make any less? They were older than those two idiots in Romeo and Juliet. Why did everyone no longer a teenager automatically dismiss any feeling you had then? Who cared if he'd grow out of it? That didn't make it any less true in those painful and euphoric days when it was happening. The truth was always now, even if you were young. Especially if you were young.

Story is, my ma was friends with Ben before they left for New World, that they were both members of the Church when the offer of leaving and starting up a settlement was made. Ma convinced Pa and Ben convinced Cillian and when the ships landed and the settlement started, it was my ma and pa who raised sheep on the next farm over from Ben and Cillian growing wheat and it was all friendly and nice and the sun never set and men and women sang songs together and lived and loved and never got sick and never never died. That

If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it.

I just wanna be fit and have good blood pressure and feel good with my clothes off and I do. I love my body but I think that there’s always a part of me that wishes I looked more like Antoni or like an underwear model. But then again, I still really love to binge eat at McDonald’s at night, so...you know.

The Greek myth of Narcissus is directly concerned with a fact of human experi­ence, as the word Narcissus indicates. It is from the Greek word narcosis, or numb­ness. The youth Narcissus mistook his own reflection in the water for another person. This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. The nymph Echo tried to win his love with fragments of his own speech, but in vain. He was numb. He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed system. Now the point of this myth is the fact that men at once become fascinated by any extension of themselves in any ma­terial other than themselves. There have been cynics who insisted that men fall deep­est in love with women who give them back their own image. Be that as it may, the wisdom of the Narcissus myth does not convey any idea that Narcissus fell in love with anything he regarded as himself. Obviously he would have had very different feelings about the image had he known it was an extension or repetition of himself. It is, perhaps, indicative of the bias of our intensely technological and, therefore, narcotic culture that we have long interpreted the Narcissus story to mean that he fell in love with himself, that he imagined the reflection to be Narcissus!

And for a second, a second he would relive for years to come, Adam found himself considering it. Would it really be so bad? Wade didn't look like someone who would ever take his time about anything, and if it was over quick, who would really be harmed...? He would. The thought of Wade's hands on his bare skin alone gave him goosebumps, already felt like a violation, but if... If he deserved this. (Did he?) If Wade has spotted in him - as he obviously had - that corruption at his heart, that little piece of unfixable brokenness - It's not real love, Marty said. We're just messing around, Enzo said. Maybe it was all true. Maybe this is what happened to people like him. (People like what?)

And I loved the way that felt. That private battle, and the way I always caved in the end. So maybe it was fucked up, but to me that was kind of the point of kink. Not the fucked-up-ness, exactly, but the fact that you got to piss on society’s idea of fucked up. And nobody could stop you. Finger-waggers couldn’t storm your house and tell you it was wrong for one person to call another a kike or a cunt or a fag. Couldn’t stop you from taking a shit on your partner’s face. Couldn’t say you were weak or crazy for wanting to be dressed like a baby or walked like a dog. With kink, you had the power to be your sickest, most secret self. Maybe one of my goals could be to make that sickness less secret.

Learning to parent yourself, with soothing compassionate love, forgiving yourself, and learning from all the decisions you made to get you to where you are—that’s the key to being fulfilled. Learning to be the dream parent cheerleader to yourself. It’s been in you the whole time. And no matter how down you get, you can always make a gorgeous recovery.

Not to mention my grandparents’ generation grew up in the Depression and World War II and didn’t have the ability to teach what they did not know. Self-care, self-love, and nurturing yourself were all considered hogwash. Just eat a balanced diet of a bottle of wine a night, a protein, a carb, and a vegetable, push your feelings down, and get on with it.

If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don’t give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise. Keep your head down. Keep your stamina.

We are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another.

Nestes dez contos sobre psicoterapia há poucas discussões explícitas acerca do significado da vida. A busca de significado, muito semelhante à busca de prazer, deve ser conduzida indiretamente. O significado resulta da atividade significativa: quanto mais o procurarmos deliberadamente, menos provável será seu encontro; as perguntas racionais que alguém pode fazer a respeito do significado sempre excederão as respostas. Na terapia, assim como na vida, a presença de significado é um subproduto do vínculo e do comprometimento, e é nesse sentido que os terapeutas devem dirigir seus esforços - não que o vínculo ofereça uma resposta racional às perguntas sobre significados, mas porque faz com que essas perguntas não tenham importância.

The answer is that it does not matter what you think , the monster said, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day. You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.

She’s always saying that being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day.” She catches my eye. “Which is something I believe, too.” “So what happened?” I ask. “Why isn’t she still in charge?” “She made a mistake,” Corinne says primly. “People who didn’t like her took advantage of it.” “What kind of mistake?” Her permanent frown gets bigger. “She saved a life.

It's not you it's me' she couldn't use that line. Even though it really was her and not him, everyone thought that line really meant, 'it's not me. It's definitely you.'  There was still a part of her that thought perhaps she shouldn't do it at all. In Andrew she had all the raw ingredients for a perfect life. Here was a grown-up, good-looking, solvent, generous, warm-hearted man who adored her. A man who adored her even when she looked like the loch ness monsters little sister and had a terrible temper to match. It didn't take a huge leap of imagination to see Andrew standing at the top of the aisle, looking back at lou walking towards him with a grin as wide as the English channel. She could see him painting the nursery yellow; pushing a pram that contained two lovely brown haired twins (one boy, one girl); presenting her woth an eternity ring on their tenth anniversary, taking the twins to school, teaching them how to play football on long, summer holidays in Tuscany, giving the daughter away at her own wedding, cosying up to Lou on the veranda of their perfect house as their retirement stretched ahead of them- a long straight road of well-planned for, financially comfortable and perpetually sunny days.  'oh god' Lou poured herself a vodka.

...the ultimate experience of love is a realization that beneath the illusion of two-ness dwell identity: "each is both." This realization can expand into a discovery that beneath the multitudinous individualities of the whole surrounding universe--human, animal, vegetable, even mineral--dwells identity; whereupon the love experience becomes cosmic, and the beloved who first opened the vision is magnified as the mirror of creation.

...the ultimate experience of love is a realization that beneath the illusion of two-ness dwell identity: "each is both." This realization can expand into a discovery that beneath the multitudinous individualities of the whole surrounding universe--human, animal, vegetable, even mineral--dwells identity; whereupon the love experience becomes cosmic, and the beloved who first opened the vision is magnified as the mirror of creation.

I’ve been operating according to the idea that it is almost impossible to let go of mental patterns that operate unconsciously and that I have to know such a pattern of thinking first in order to let go of it and abide in my true nature. Leave all those mental habits and patterns alone. The self that is apparently operating, that seems to know these patterns and that would ‘let go of them’ is itself simply one such pattern. These patterns of thinking and feeling have taken their shape, over the years, from the belief that we are a separate self, without our making any particular effort. In just the same way, as our experiential conviction that we are not a limited, located self deepens, so our thoughts, feelings and subsequent behaviour will slowly, effortlessly and naturally realign themselves with this new understanding. In order to know our self we do not need to know the mind. No other knowledge than the knowledge that is present right now in this very moment is required to know our self. What does it mean to know our self? We are our self, so we are too close to our self to be able to know our self as an object. Our simply being our self is as close to knowing our self as we will ever come. We cannot get closer than that. In fact, being our self is the knowing of our self, but it is not the knowing of our self as an object. To say ‘I am’, (in other words to assert that we are present), we must know that ‘I am’. Being and knowing are, in fact, one single non-objective experience. But we do not step outside of our self in order to know our own being. We simply are our self. That being of our self is the knowing of our self. This being/knowing is shining in all experience. This experiential understanding dissolves the idea that our self is not present here and now and that it is not known here and now. And when our desire to know or find ourselves as an object is withdrawn, we discover that our own self was and is present all along, shining quietly in the background, as it were, of all experience. As this becomes obvious we discover that it is not just the background but also the foreground. In other words, it is not just the witness but simultaneously the substance of all experience. Completely relax the desire to find yourself as an object or to change your experience in any way. Relax into this present knowing of your own being. See that it is intimate, familiar and loving. See clearly that it is never not with you. It is shining here in this experience, knowing and loving its own being. It runs throughout all experience, closer than close, intimately one with all experience but untouched by it. As this intimate oneness, it is known as love. In its untouchable-ness it is known as peace and in its fullness it is known as happiness. In its openness and willingness to give itself to any possible shape (including the apparent veiling of its own being), it is known as freedom and, as the substance of all things, it is known as beauty. However, more simply it is known just as ‘I’ or ‘this’. Who Is? Q: All these questions about consciousness

But there was something more precious than his poems; something far away he didn’t yet possess and longed for—manliness; he knew that it could only be attained by action and courage; and if courage meant courage to be rejected, rejected by everything, by the beloved woman, by the painter, and even by his own poems—so be it: he wanted to have that courage. And so he said: “Yes, I know that the revolution has no need for my poems. I regret that, because I like them. But unfortunately my regret is no argument against their useless-ness. Again there was silence, and then one of the men said: “This is dreadful,” and he actually shuddered as if a chill had run down his spine. Jaromil felt the horror his words had produced in everyone there, that they were seeing in him the living disappearance of everything they loved, everything that made life worthwhile. It was sad but also beautiful: within the space of an instant, Jaromil lost the feeling of being a child.

we should all be amazed that we are Christians, that the great God is working in us. In “O Little Town of Bethlehem” we sing, “O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.” It’s a bold image, but quite right. Every Christian is like Mary. Everyone who puts faith in Christ receives, by the Holy Spirit, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27, emphasis mine). We should be just as shocked that God would give us—with all our smallness and flaws—such a mighty gift. And so no Christian should ever be far from this astonishment that “I, I of all people, should be loved and embraced by his grace!” I would go so far as to say that this perennial note of surprise is a mark of anyone who understands the essence of the Gospel. What is Christianity? If you think Christianity is mainly going to church, believing a certain creed, and living a certain kind of life, then there will be no note of wonder and surprise about the fact that you are a believer. If someone asks you, “Are you a Christian?” you will say, “Of course I am! It’s hard work but I’m doing it. Why do you ask?” Christianity is, in this view, something done by you—and so there’s no astonishment about being a Christian. However, if Christianity is something done for you, and to you, and in you, then there is a constant note of surprise and wonder. John Newton wrote the hymn: Let us love and sing and wonder, Let us praise the Savior’s name. He has hushed the law’s loud thunder, He has quenched Mount Sinai’s flame. He has washed us with his blood He has brought us nigh to God.1 See where the love and wonder comes from—because he has done all this and brought us to himself. He has done it. So if someone asks you if you are a Christian, you should not say, “Of course!” There should be no “of course-ness” about it. It would be more appropriate to say, “Yes, I am, and that’s a miracle. Me! A Christian! Who would have ever thought it? Yet he did it, and I’m his.” SHE

Cosmopolitanism promotes a sense of new _we-ness as regarding every individual human being as a citizen of the cosmos. However, the _we-cosmic-citizens_ are not to promote the _we-ness-in-sameness_, but rather the we-ness-in-alterity_.Unlike the solidarity-in-sameness, cosmopolitan _solidarity-in-alterity_ celebrates the singularity and difference of each individual human being while not denying the historical necessity of the strategic construction of _we_ to challenge the very sociopolitically imposed category

Something I have learned in life is that things are never as they seem. You think love is one thing – turns out, it's whole big barrel of fucked-up-ness. You think marriage is one thing – turns out, it's an even bigger barrel of fucked-up-ness. You think you can plan something down to the letter – but really, things will go down however they're going to go down, regardless of your planning. You think you've made up your mind – but someone can make it up for you. You think you're resolved to do something – and then you do the exact opposite.

When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in the face of death, to believe in humanity's potential for building a better world . . .

When they sold Ness in 1796, Esi's lips stood in the same thin line. Ness could remember reaching out for her mother, flailing her arms and kicking her legs, fighting against the body of the man who'd come to take her away. And still Esi's lips had not moved, her hands had not reached out. She stood there, solid and strong, the same as Ness had always known her to be. And though Ness had met warm slaves on other plantations, black people who smiled and hugged and told nice stories, she would always miss the gray rock of her mother's heart. She would always associate real love with a hardness of spirit.

All organisms are shaped to behave in ways that increase fitness even if that decreases health and happiness. Did you ever desperately want to have sex with someone even though you knew that could lead to disaster? Most people have, with sometimes dire consequences. Then there are the rest of our desires and the inevitable suffering because they cannot all be fulfilled. We want so badly to be important, rich, loved, admired, attractive, and powerful. For what? the good feelings from succeeding are just about balanced by the bad feelings from failure. Our emotions benefit our genes far more than they do us.

My philosophy was very much to embrace yourself and love what you are, instead of making you something you're not. Refine what you already have- don't change it at its core. We have all done things we never thought we could and been places we never thought we could go. Good and bad. As scary as this can be I want you to know no matter how broken you feel, and how seemingly unlikely it is, we are never too broken to heal. More than that, there will be people who love and accept you completely, and there will be people who do not. If you love and accept yourself all the way, no matter what, through thick and thin, then either way you will make it through.

a desire to be apart, sometimes, to understand who I am without the rest. And what I return to, the me-ness that I know as pure, inescapable self . . . is hunger. Desire. Longing, this longing to possess, to become, to break like a wave on a rock and reform, and break again, and wash away. This is a necessary part of any ecosystem, but it unsettles others, this inability to be satisfied. It is difficult—it is very difficult, to befriend where you wish to consume, to find those who, when they ask Do I have you still, when they end a letter with Yours, mean it in any substantive way. So I go. I travel farther and faster and harder than most, and I read, and I write, and I love cities. To be alone in a crowd

When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in the face of death, to believe in humanity’s potential for building a better world, and so he prayed as a lament, as a consolation, and as a hope, but he felt that he could not express this to Nadia,

Hence they would be very foolish who would think that God is failing them because of their lack of spiritual sweetness and delight, or would rejoice, thinking they possess God because of the presence of this sweet ness. And they would be more foolish if they were to go in search of this sweetness in God and rejoice and be detained in it. With such an attitude they would no longer be seeking God with their wills grounded in the emptiness of faith and charity, but they would be seeking spiritual satisfaction and sweetness, which are creatures, by following after their own pleasure and appetite. And thus they would no longer be loving God purely, above all things, which means centering all the strength of one's will on him.

Segundo Platão, um filosofo grego: No início da criação, os homens e as mulheres não eram como hoje; havia apenas um ser, baixo, com um corpo e um pescoço, mas a cabeça tinha duas faces, cada uma olhando para uma direcção. Era como se as duas criaturas estivessem presas pelas costas, com dois sexos opostos, quatro pernas e quatro braços. Os deuses gregos, porém, eram ciumentos, e viram que uma criatura que tinha quatro braços trabalhava mais, as duas faces opostas estavam sempre vigilantes e não exigiram tanto esforço para ficar de pé ou andar por longos períodos. E, o que era mais perigoso, a tal criatura tinha dois sexos diferentes, não precisavam de ninguém para continuar a reproduzir-se. Então, disse Zeus, o supremo senhor do Paraíso: "Tenho um plano para fazer com que estes mortais percam a sua força." E, com um raio, cortou a criatura em dois, criando o homem e a mulher. Isso aumentou muito a população do mundo, e ao mesmo tempo desorientou e enfraqueceu os que nele habitavam- porque agora tinham de procurar de novo a sua parte perdida, abraçá-la novamente, e nesse abraço recuperar a força antiga, a capacidade de evitar a traição, a resistência para andar durante longos períodos e aguentar o trabalho cansativo. A esse abraço em que os dois corpos se fundem de novo em um chamamos sexo. (...) Depois de os deuses separarem a dita criatura com sexos opostos, por que razão algumas delas resolvem que o dito abraço pode ser apenas uma coisa, um negocio como outro qualquer- que em vez de aumentar, retira a energia às pessoas ?

I’d fallen in love with Amy because I was the ultimate Nick with her. Loving her made me superhuman, it made me feel alive. At her easiest, she was hard, because her brain was always working, working, working—I had to exert myself just to keep pace with her. I’d spend an hour crafting a casual e-mail to her, I became a student of arcana so I could keep her interested: the Lake poets, the code duello, the French Revolution. Her mind was both wide and deep, and I got smarter being with her. And more considerate, and more active, and more alive, and almost electric, because for Amy, love was like drugs or booze or porn: There was no plateau. Each exposure needed to be more intense than the last to achieve the same result. Amy made me believe I was exceptional, that I was up to her level of play. That was both our making and undoing. Because I couldn’t handle the demands of greatness. I began craving ease and average-ness, and I hated myself for it, and ultimately, I realized, I punished her for it. I turned her into the brittle, prickly thing she became. I had pretended to be one kind of man and revealed myself to be quite another. Worse, I convinced myself our tragedy was entirely her making. I spent years working myself into the very thing I swore she was: a righteous ball of hate.

Porridge is our soup, our grits, our sustenance, so it's pretty much the go-to for breakfast. For the first time, I ate with a bunch of other Taiwanese-Chinese kids my age who knew what the hell they were doing. Even at Chinese school, there were always kids that brought hamburgers, shunned chopsticks, or didn't get down with the funky shit. They were like faux-bootleg-Canal Street Chinamen. That was one of the things that really annoyed me about growing up Chinese in the States. Even if you wanted to roll with Chinese/Taiwanese kids, there were barely any around and the ones that were around had lost their culture and identity. They barely spoke Chinese, resented Chinese food, and if we got picked on by white people on the basketball court, everyone just looked out for themselves. It wasn't that I wanted people to carry around little red books to affirm their "Chinese-ness," but I just wanted to know there were other people that wanted this community to live on in America. There was on kid who wouldn't eat the thousand-year-old eggs at breakfast and all the other kids started roasting him. "If you don't get down with the nasty shit, you're not Chinese!" I was down with the mob, but something left me unsettled. One thing ABCs love to do is compete on "Chinese-ness," i.e., who will eat the most chicken feet, pig intestines, and have the highest SAT scores. I scored high in chick feet, sneaker game, and pirated good, but relatively low on the SAT. I had made National Guild Honorable Mention for piano when I was around twelve and promptly quit. My parents had me play tennis and take karate, but ironically, I quit tennis two tournaments short of being ranked in the state of Florida and left karate after getting my brown belt. The family never understood it, but I knew what I was doing. I didn't want to play their stupid Asian Olympics, but I wanted to prove to myself that if I did want to be the stereotypical Chinaman they wanted, I could. (189) I had become so obsessed with not being a stereotype that half of who I was had gone dormant. But it was also a positive. Instead of following the path most Asian kids do, I struck out on my own. There's nature, there's nurture, and as Harry Potter teaches us, there's who YOU want to be. (198) Everyone was in-between. The relief of the airport and the opportunity to reflect on my trip helped me realize that I didn't want to blame anyone anymore, Not my parents, not white people, not America. Did I still think there was a lot wrong with the aforementioned? Hell, yeah, but unless I was going to do something about it, I couldn't say shit. So I drank my Apple Sidra and shut the fuck up. (199)

When it begins it is like a light in a tunnel, a rush of steel and steam across a torn up life. It is a low rumble, an earthquake in the back of the mind. My spine is a track with cold black steel racing on it, a trail of steam and dust following behind, ghost like. It feels like my whole life is holding its breath. By the time she leaves the room I am surprised that she can’t see the train. It has jumped the track of my spine and landed in my mothers’ living room. A cold dark thing, black steel and redwood paneling. It is the old type, from the western movies I loved as a kid. He throws open the doors to the outside world, to the dark ocean. I feel a breeze tugging at me, a slender finger of wind that catches at my shirt. Pulling. Grabbing. I can feel the panic build in me, the need to scream or cry rising in my throat. And then I am out the door, running, tumbling down the steps falling out into the darkened world, falling out into the lifeless ocean. Out into the blackness. Out among the stars and shadows. And underneath my skin, in the back of my head and down the back of my spine I can feel the desperation and I can feel the noise. I can feel the deep and ancient ache of loudness that litters across my bones. It’s like an old lover, comfortable and well known, but unwelcome and inappropriate with her stories of our frolicking. And then she’s gone and the Conductor is closing the door. The darkness swells around us, enveloping us in a cocoon, pressing flat against the train like a storm. I wonder, what is this place? Those had been heady days, full and intense. It’s funny. I remember the problems, the confusions and the fears of life we all dealt with. But, that all seems to fade. It all seems to be replaced by images of the days when it was all just okay. We all had plans back then, patterns in which we expected the world to fit, how it was to be deciphered. Eventually you just can’t carry yourself any longer, can’t keep your eyelids open, and can’t focus on anything but the flickering light of the stars. Hours pass, at first slowly like a river and then all in a rush, a climax and I am home in the dorm, waking up to the ringing of the telephone. When she is gone the apartment is silent, empty, almost like a person sleeping, waiting to wake up. When she is gone, and I am alone, I curl up on the bed, wait for the house to eject me from its dying corpse. Crazy thoughts cross through my head, like slants of light in an attic. The Boston 395 rocks a bit, a creaking noise spilling in from the undercarriage. I have decided that whatever this place is, all these noises, sensations - all the train-ness of this place - is a fabrication. It lulls you into a sense of security, allows you to feel as if it’s a familiar place. But whatever it is, it’s not a train, or at least not just a train. The air, heightened, tense against the glass. I can hear the squeak of shoes on linoleum, I can hear the soft rattle of a dying man’s breathing. Men in white uniforms, sharp pressed lines, run past, rolling gurneys down florescent hallways.

My love is free from everything. It has no boundaries to come inside & outside. It has no space for rudeness & hate. It is filled with pure & clean purposes. It is something which has no beyond. It has no self, it has no business, it possess open-ness of heart & smiles. It is unreal to the world but far noble if implemented ........

Open your eyes to see humanity! Open your mind to see love around! Open your mouth to talk in well manner! Open your brain to learn new things! Open your hand to give positivity! Open your heart to forgive the people! Open your secrets to save the characters!

Bold people don't afraid to speak in public to whom they love in spite of entire world & I think this the deepest & loudest talk of open-ness.

You are snaking a shimmering pathway full of love and joy sincerity and kindness companionship and loyalty and you-ness all over the place and you don’t even see it.

Being okay with being gay, or different, means nothing until you love all of your gayness and different-ness. Really, the “manliest” move of all is just looking in the mirror, shutting out the noise of the world, and deciding to be nothing but yourself.

I think the only universal key to processing grief is to have compassion for yourself, to be able to ask yourself what it is you really need, and to not care about how others perceive your process.

not taking on the experiences or negativity of others, but staying open to accepting joy or gratitude)

Comparing ourselves to people on social media is as risky as using WebMD to diagnose yourself.

Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don’t give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it.