React To Nothing Quotes

In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself.

Maeve had lied. Or lied by omission. But she knew. She knew what the girl had gone through-knew she'd been a slave. That day-that day early on, he'd threatened to whip the girl, gods above. And she had lost it. He'd been such a proud fool that he'd assumed she'd lashed out because she was nothing more than a child. He should have known better-should have known that when she did react to something like that, it meant the scars went deep. And then there were the other things he'd said...

Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the belief that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali is the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammad. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them--or worse, who credibly rebut them--they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful.

You just looked..." she said, searching for the word, "taken, you know? Plus you hardly reacted to Wes. I mean, you did alittle, but nothing like most girls. It was a little swoon. Not a sa-woon, you know?" I said, "Sa-woon? Oh, come on," she said shaking her head. "Even a blind girl could tell he is amazing.

You were hurt, and you reacted. You were in an unhealthy situation in more ways than one, and you panicked and cleansed everything with fire. Don’t dismiss your emotions and your self-protection as just a fucked-up decision. Don’t reduce something so complex and real and important to nothing.

The best thing about coming out is, it's totally liberating. You feel like you've made this incredible discovery about yourself and you want to share it and be open and honest and not spend all your time wondering how is this person going to react, or should I be careful around this person, or what will the neighbors say? And it's more. It's about getting past the question of what's wrong with me, to knowing there's nothing wrong, that you were born this way. You're a normal person and a beautiful person and you should be proud of who you are. You deserve to live with dignity and show people your pride.

Listen. I don't like to preach, but here's some advice. You'll meet a lot of jerks in life. If they hurt you, remember it's because they're stupid. Don't react to their cruelty. There's nothing worse than bitterness and revenge. Keep your dignity and be true to yourself.

Neoliberalism makes citizens into consumers. The freedom of the citizen yields to the passivity of the consumer. As consumers, today’s voters have no real interest in politics –in actively shaping the community. They possess neither the will nor the ability to participate in communal, political action. They react only passively to politics: grumbling and complaining, as consumers do about a commodity or service they do not like. Politicians and parties follow this logic of consumption too. They have to ‘deliver’. In the process, they become nothing more than suppliers; their task is to satisfy voters who are consumers or customers.

Whenever I tell people I'm a misanthrope they react as though that's a bad thing, the idiots. I live in London, for God's sake. Have you walked down Oxford Street recently? Misanthropy's the only thing that gets you through it. It's not a personality flaw, it's a skill. It's nothing to do with sheer numbers. Move me to a remote cottage in the Hebrides and I'd learn to despise the postman, even if he only visited once a year. I can't abide other people, with their stink and their noise and their irritating ringtones. Bill Hicks called the human race 'a virus with shoes', and if you ask me he was being unduly hard on viruses; I'd consider a career in serial killing if the pay wasn't so bad.

we were nothing more than actions to reactions - helpless against our own fate. It's true. I react and others pay.

I’m really not comfortable with you being naked,” I said, struggling for a normal tone and failing. His brow arched. “Why should it unsettle you, pet? After all, you just said I meant nothing to you beyond mere gratitude. And you’ve seen a man’s body before, so don’t pull that blushing act with me. What could be bothering you, then? I know what’s bothering me.” The smoothly bantering tone changed to a low, furious growl. “What’s bothering me is that you dare to stand there and tell me what I do and do not feel about last night. That kissing you and holding you meant nothing to me. Then, to top it all off, that you were only reacting to me because you were impaired! That’s rich. You know what those drugs did to you in the first dose, before the second one made you comatose? They killed the bug up your arse!

There's no reassuring ceiling over you, Moneo. Only an open sky full of changes. Welcome it. Every sense you possess is an instrument for reacting to change. Does that tell you nothing?

Boo," I said. He reacted as all mutts react when I confront them. He leapt from his chair and dove for the nearest exit, shaking in terror. In my dreams. He glanced at me and started looking for Clay. It never failed. Mutts only quaked when I appeared because it usually meant Clayton wasn't far behind. I was nothing but a harbinger of doom.

Here are a few important principles to remember with regard to the giving and receiving between males and females. When a male demands, a female reacts; she doesn’t respond. When a male gives, a female responds. When a male commits, a female submits. Nothing is more precious to a female than a committed male. Nothing is no more depressing to a female than an uncommitted male. Here’s the secret, guys: If you want a submitted female, be a committed male. It’s that simple. When a male abuses, a female refuses. Whenever a man abuses a woman, she refuses to respond. When a male shares, a female cares. If you find a man who is willing to share with the woman in his life, you will find a woman who is willing to care for her man. When a male leads, a female follows. When a man carries out his God-given responsibility for leadership, a woman responds by following his lead. Leadership does not mean being bossy, always telling others what to do. No, leadership means going ahead, not putting others in the front. Good leaders lead by example, not by decree. Jesus led by example, and so did Moses, Peter, Paul, and all the other great leaders in the Bible. Leading by example means doing ourselves the things we wish others to do.

A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them." [Life magazine, December 10, 1965]

As a counterpoint to sociopathy, the condition of narcissism is particularly interesting and instructive. Narcissism is, in a metaphorical sense, one half of what sociopathy is. Even clinical narcissists are able to feel most emotions are strongly as anyone else does, from guilt to sadness to desperate love and passion. The half that is missing is the crucial ability to understand what other people are feeling. Narcissism is a failure not of conscience but of empathy, which is the capacity to perceive emotions in others and so react to them appropriately. The poor narcissist cannot see past his own nose, emotionally speaking, and as with the Pillsbury Doughboy, any input from the outside will spring back as if nothing had happened. Unlike sociopaths, narcissists often are in psychological pain, and may sometimes seek psychotherapy. When a narcissist looks for help, one of the underlying issues is usually that, unbeknownst to him, he is alienating his relationships on account of his lack of empathy with others, and is feeling confused, abandoned, and lonely. He misses the people he loves, and is ill-equipped to get them back. Sociopaths, in contrast, do not care about other people, and so do not miss them when they are alienated or gone, except as one might regret the absence of a useful appliance that one has somehow lost.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens and 90% how I react to it.

Now, lift up your beautiful face and show everyone in the room they can take nothing away from you. No matter what. Never apologize for how others react to your strength.

Are you the sort of person who can turn around when you have nothing left, and find that little bit extra inside you to keep going, or do you sag and wilt with exhaustion? It is a mental game, and it is hard to tell how people will react until they are squeezed.

She knows Daddy better than I do. I think it's because she's felt since we were children that our Daddy maybe loved me more than he loves her. This isn't true, and she knows that now--people love different people in different ways--but it must have seemed that way to her when we were little. I look as though I just can't make it, she looks like can't nothing stop her. If you look helpless, people react to you in one way and if you look strong, or just come on strong, people react to you in another way, and, since you don't see what they see, this can be very painful. I think that's why Sis was always in front of that damn mirror all the time, when we were kids. She was saying, 'I don't care. I got me.' Of course, this only made her come on stronger than ever, which was the last effect she desired: but that's the way we are and that's how we can sometimes get so fucked up. Anyway, she's past all that. She knows who she is, or, at least, she knows who she damn well isn't.

You can recognize deep narcissists by the following behavior patterns: If they are ever insulted or challenged, they have no defense, nothing internal to soothe them or validate their worth. They generally react with great rage, thirsting for vengeance, full of a sense of righteousness. This is the only way they know how to assuage their insecurities. In such battles, they will position themselves as the wounded victim, confusing others and even drawing sympathy. They are prickly and oversensitive. Almost everything is taken personally. They can become quite paranoid and have enemies in all directions to point to.

as if he were trying to escape the smell of her words as if the air from her talking came into his mouth and filled it puffed it up with poison so the brain was put to sleep and he could do nothing with it only react in his flesh.

I miss having a villain. Whether we realize it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favoring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Nothing arouses a passion for dogma more than a good antagonist. And the more unlikely the better.

There are three stages of a crisis in regards to running a business, unfortunately many leaders do nothing in stage one, and find themselves reacting in stage two when the crisis hits.

Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads. Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place. Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows? ...No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is not right. How insane they are I care not, whether medically or legally. They did not reason; they could not reason; they committed the most foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most causeless act that any two boys ever committed, and they put themselves where the rope is dangling above their heads.... Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood. . . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain

If nothing else, Malus Darkblade, you can be counted on to react to adversity with as much violence as physically possible"- Tzarkan

I look at him and my body reacts in a way that it never has before, even in the throes of passion. I look at him and I start aching so deep inside it takes all I can to think, to breathe, to speak. He’s like the brightest flame and it takes everything in me to resist its call. I know that if I give in, I’ll get burned so deeply, there might be nothing left once I come out the other side. But, god, I want to step into that flame.

He placed his hands against the Jeep on either side of my head and leaned forward, forcing me to press back against the door. He leaned in even closer, his face inches from mine. I had no room to escape. "Now," he breathed, and just his smell disturbed my thought processes, "what exactly are you worrying about?" "Well, um, hitting a tree -" I gulped "- and dying. And then getting sick." He fought back a smile. Then he bent his head down and touched his cold lips softly to the hollow at the base of my throat. "Are you still worried now?" he murmured against my skin. "Yes." I struggled to concentrate. "About hitting trees and getting sick." His nose drew a line up the skin of my throat to the point of my chin. His cold breath tickled my skin. "And now?" His lips whispered against my jaw. "Trees," I gasped. "Motion sickness." He lifted his face to kiss my eyelids. "Bella, you don't really think I would hit a tree, do you?" "No, but I might." There was no confidence in my voice. He smelled an easy victory. He kissed slowly down my cheek, stopping just at the corner of my mouth. "Would I let a tree hurt you?" His lips barely brushed against my trembling lower lip. "No," I breathed. I knew there was a second part to my brillant defense, but I couldn't quite call it back. "You see," he said, his lips moving against mine. "There's nothing to be afraid of, is there?" "No," I sighed, giving up. Then he took my face in his hands almost roughly, and kissed me in earnest, his unyielding lips moving against mine. There was really no excuse for my behavior. Obviously I knew better by now. And yet I couldn't seem to stop from reacting exactly as I had the first time. Instead of keeping safely motionless, my arms reached up to twine tightly around his neck, and I was suddenly welded to his stone figure. I sighed, and his lips parted.

You might say, “What a dreadful day,” without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever condition you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is dreadful is your reaction, your inner resistance to it, and the emotion that is created by that resistance. In Shakespeare’s words, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

We have all heard such stories of expert intuition: the chess master who walks past a street game and announces “White mates in three” without stopping, or the physician who makes a complex diagnosis after a single glance at a patient. Expert intuition strikes us as magical, but it is not. Indeed, each of us performs feats of intuitive expertise many times each day. Most of us are pitch-perfect in detecting anger in the first word of a telephone call, recognize as we enter a room that we were the subject of the conversation, and quickly react to subtle signs that the driver of the car in the next lane is dangerous. Our everyday intuitive abilities are no less marvelous than the striking insights of an experienced firefighter or physician—only more common. The psychology of accurate intuition involves no magic. Perhaps the best short statement of it is by the great Herbert Simon, who studied chess masters and showed that after thousands of hours of practice they come to see the pieces on the board differently from the rest of us. You can feel Simon’s impatience with the mythologizing of expert intuition when he writes: “The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.

They were all right here with him still but he missed them with a ferocity that threatened to turn him inside-out. Only Andrew saw the strain in Neil's mask. He crossed the room to stand in front of Neil, a silent demand in his stare. Neil wanted to answer that, but he didn't know how. German was the obvious answer because it would afford them a little bit of privacy, but Romero and Jackson didn't understand German. They wouldn't know what he was saying and they would have to react like he was spilling every dark secret. Neil couldn't allow that. He didn't want to leave Andrew with nothing, but what could he possibly say? "Thank you," he finally said. He couldn't say he meant thanks for all of it: the keys, the trust, the honesty, and the kisses. Hopefully Andrew would figure it out eventually. "You were amazing." He meant it for Andrew's ears only, but Allison was close enough to overhear. She sent Matt a significant look. Neil saw it in his peripheral vision but didn't take his eyes off Andrew to see Matt's reaction. He didn't want to look away, as if by holding Andrew's gaze he could somehow save this moment.

Life is not a sport. Life is not math. There is no final end goal and there is no right answer. Just because your truth does not match someone else's truth does not make either of you wrong. Life is not a zero sum game. If I am right, that does not make you wrong. If you are right, that does not make me wrong either. A jar of vinegar can sit in a cupboard beside a box of baking soda peacefully, and we can allow those who disagree with us to exist alongside us without reacting to them. There is nothing to prove. There is enough room in the world for all of us.

THE DAY YOU READ THIS On this day, you read something that moved you and made you realise there were no more fears to fear. No tears to cry. No head to hang in shame. That every time you thought you’d offended someone, it was all just in your head and really, they love you with all their heart and nothing will ever change that. That everyone and everything lives on inside you. That that doesn’t make any of it any less real. That soft touches will change you and stay with you longer than hard ones. That being alone means you’re free. That old lovers miss you and new lovers want you and the one you’re with is the one you’re meant to be with. That the tingles running down your arms are angel feathers and they whisper in your ear, constantly, if you choose to hear them. That everything you want to happen, will happen, if you decide you want it enough. That every time you think a sad thought, you can think a happy one instead. That you control that completely. That the people who make you laugh are more beautiful than beautiful people. That you laugh more than you cry. That crying is good for you. That the people you hate wish you would stop and you do too. That your friends are reflections of the best parts of you. That you are more than the sum total of the things you know and how you react to them. That dancing is sometimes more important than listening to the music. That the most embarrassing, awkward moments of your life are only remembered by you and no one else. That no one judges you when you walk into a room and all they really want to know, is if you’re judging them. That what you make and what you do with your time is more important than you’ll ever fathom and should be treated as such. That the difference between a job and art is passion. That neither defines who you are. That talking to strangers is how you make friends. That bad days end but a smile can go around the world. That life contradicts itself, constantly. That that’s why it’s worth living. That the difference between pain and love is time. That love is only as real as you want it to be. That if you feel good, you look good but it doesn’t always work the other way around. That the sun will rise each day and it’s up to you each day if you match it. That nothing matters up until this point. That what you decide now, in this moment, will change the future. Forever. That rain is beautiful. And so are you.

It’s important to realize that childhood experiences of profound helplessness can feel traumatic, causing people to later react to adult feelings of helplessness with sensations of collapse and a feeling of “There’s nothing I can do, and no one will help me.” As children, sensitive internalizers can be so affected by this feeling that later they’re prone to feeling like victims with no control, at the mercy of powerful people who refuse to give them what they desperately need.

When you start to lose your temper, remember: There’s nothing manly about rage. It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being—and a man. That’s who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners. To react like that brings you closer to impassivity—and so to strength. Pain is the opposite of strength, and so is anger. Both are things we suffer from, and yield to.

To grow up as a “girl” is to be nearly fatally spoiled, deformed, confused, and terrified; to be responded to with falsities, to be reacted to as nothing or as a thing—and nearly to become that thing.

Starling knew what the malicious Dr. Lecter would say, and it was true: she was afraid there was something tacky that Senator Martin saw in her, something cheap, something thief-like that Senator Martin reacted to. That Vanderbilt bitch. Dr. Lecter would relish pointing out that class resentment, the buried anger that comes with mother's milk, was a factor too. Starling gave away nothing to any Martin in education, intelligence, drive, and certainly physical appearance, but still it was there and she knew it.

People who are not adaptive may seem to function well as long as nothing is disturbing them, but they will react with various levels of frustration and helplessness when confronted by loss or by difficulty.

Outside, washing hung still on the rotary line, bone dry and stiff from the sun. A child's scooter lay abandoned on the stepping-stone path. Just one human heart beat within a kilometer radius of the farm. So nothing reacted when, deep inside the house, the baby started crying.

We breathe too fast to be able to grasp things in themselves or to expose their fragility. Our panting postulates and distorts them, creates and disfigures them, and binds us to them. I bestir myself, therefore I emit a world as suspect as my speculation which justifies it; I espouse movement, which changes me into a generator of being, into an artisan of fictions, while my cosmogonic verve makes me forget that, led on by the whirlwind of acts, I am nothing but an acolyte of time, an agent of decrepit universes. (...) If we would regain our freedom, we must shake off the burden of sensation, no longer react to the world by our senses, break our bonds. For all sensation is a bond, pleasure as much as pain, joy as much as misery. The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.

In sport the mind serves as the acolyte and apprentice of the body. Nothing interferes with the flow of the game more than the athlete who obsesses about his every move on the court. You move, you react, you recover, you drive, and the thinking is seamless and invisible in the secret codes of your game.

I searched my soul, and discovered that there was nothing anywhere in my upbringing, experience, or even primal instincts to tell me how to react to someone who has quite simply, calmly, sitting right there in front of me, stolen one of my biscuits.

But my child is strong-willed,” many parents insist. “When he decides that he wants something he just keeps at it until I cannot say no, or until I get very angry.” What is really being described here is not will but a rigid, obsessive clinging to this or that desire. An obsession may resemble will in its persistence but has nothing in common with it. Its power comes from the unconscious and it rules the individual, whereas a person with true will is in command of his intentions. The child’s oppositionality is not an expression of will. What it denotes is the absence of will, which allows a person only to react, but not to act from a free and conscious process of choosing.

There are spiritual laws at work that most people know nothing about. So when others hurt us, our tendency is to strike back because we assume that we must defend ourselves, defend our name, our honor, our career, and so on. In reality we strike back at ourselves. ... What we consider as justifiable defense of our rights may in reality plunge us into a vicious cycle that can undermine our very spiritual foundation. By reacting to aggression with aggression we lose the opportunity to spiritually benefit from the experience. this law also explains why saints, when hit, often would literally turn the other cheek. (Fr. Maximos)

The Council aren’t limp-dicked idiots – they’re senile, old bastards.” “I was hoping you’d react more positively.” Gerald thumbed through a negotiating handbook that he’d summoned with his magic. There was nothing in it about dealing with ornery elves that were overly fond of fire.

Whether we realize it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favoring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Nothing arouses a passion for dogma more than a good antagonist. And the more unlikely, the better. … It’s difficult to hate an idea. … It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group … anything.

Even worse than losing self-confidence, though, is reacting defensively. There are surgeons who will see faults everywhere except in themselves. They have no questions and no fears about their abilities. As a result, they learn nothing from their mistakes and know nothing of their limitations. As one surgeon told me, it is a rare but alarming thing to meet a surgeon without fear. “If you’re not a little afraid when you operate,” he said, “you’re bound to do a patient a grave disservice.

This is how to start telling the difference between thoughts that are informed by your intuition and thoughts that are informed by fear: Intuitive thoughts are calm. Intruding thoughts are hectic and fear-inducing. Intuitive thoughts are rational; they make a degree of sense. Intruding thoughts are irrational and often stem from aggrandizing a situation or jumping to the worst conclusion possible. Intuitive thoughts help you in the present. They give you information that you need to make a better-informed decision. Intruding thoughts are often random and have nothing to do with what’s going on in the moment. Intuitive thoughts are “quiet”; intruding thoughts are “loud,” which makes one harder to hear than the other. Intuitive thoughts usually come to you once, maybe twice, and they induce a feeling of understanding. Intruding thoughts tend to be persistent and induce a feeling of panic. Intuitive thoughts often sound loving, while invasive thoughts sound scared. Intuitive thoughts usually come out of nowhere; invasive thoughts are usually triggered by external stimuli. Intuitive thoughts don’t need to be grappled with—you have them and then you let them go. Invasive thoughts begin a whole spiral of ideas and fears, making it feel impossible to stop thinking about them. Even when an intuitive thought doesn’t tell you something you like, it never makes you feel panicked. Even if you experience sadness or disappointment, you don’t feel overwhelmingly anxious. Panic is the emotion you experience when you don’t know what to do with a feeling. It is what happens when you have an invasive thought. Intuitive thoughts open your mind to other possibilities; invasive thoughts close your heart and make you feel stuck or condemned. Intuitive thoughts come from the perspective of your best self; invasive thoughts come from the perspective of your most fearful, small self. Intuitive thoughts solve problems; invasive thoughts create them. Intuitive thoughts help you help others; invasive thoughts tend to create a “me vs. them” mentality. Intuitive thoughts help you understand what you’re thinking and feeling; invasive thoughts assume what other people are thinking and feeling. Intuitive thoughts are rational; invasive thoughts are irrational. Intuitive thoughts come from a deeper place within you and give you a resounding feeling deep in your gut; invasive thoughts keep you stuck in your head and give you a panicked feeling. Intuitive thoughts show you how to respond; invasive thoughts demand that you react.

There is nothing eloquent about my grief. It scares people. I slouch into a room and nobody knows how to react. I will take silent uneasiness over unsolicited advice any day, one more everything happens for a reason might push me over the line into homicidal.

The level of your self-control is measured as the difference between how you act when you have nothing and how you react when you have everything.

Why did I always need to do something, like referring one person to another, just for the sake of doing something, when sometimes, perhaps, it was better to do nothing?

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, PLAYWRIGHT

That is the power of formlessness — it gives the aggressor nothing to react against, nothing to hit.

We don't always have a choice. Sometimes choices are made for us by others, and there's nothing we, as humans, can do about it, except react.

It’s fine,' he said, but that mental voice sounded breathless. 'It means nothing. It’s just your body reacting.

I never react to events in the outside world; I always react to the sensations in my own body. (...) Even when we think we react to what another person has done, to President Trump's latest tweet, or to a distant childhood memory, the truth is we always react to our immediate bodily sensations. If we are outraged that somebody insulted our nation or our god, what makes the insult unbearable is the burning sensations in the pit of our stomach and the band of pain that grips our heart. Our nation feels nothing, but our body really hurts.

Wylan sat forward like a schoolboy eager to prove he had the answers. He drew a vial from his pocket. “This version works.” “It’s a weevil?” Inej asked, examining it. “A chemical weevil,” said Jesper. “But Wylan still hasn’t named it. My vote is for the Wyvil.” “That’s terrible,” said Wylan. “It’s brilliant.” Jesper winked. “Just like you.” Wylan blushed daylily pink. “I helped as well,” added Kuwei, looking sulky. “He did help,” Wylan said. “We’ll make him a plaque,” said Kaz. “Tell them how it works. Wylan cleared his throat. “I got the idea from cane blight—just a little bit of bacteria can ruin a whole crop. Once the weevil is dropped into the silo, it will keep burrowing down, using the refined sugar as fuel until the sugar is nothing but useless mush.” “It reacts to sugar?” asked Jesper. “Yes, any kind of sugar. Even trace amounts if there’s enough moisture present, so keep it away from sweat, blood, saliva.” “Do not lick Wyvil. Does someone want to write that down?

Table 3–1. Definitions of Cognitive Distortions 1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. 2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water. 4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. 6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.” 7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” 8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. 10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Truth: Had you bothered to stick around, I would have given you every single one of your wickedest desires.” I move my hips against him to punctuate my words. I feel him react, something that brings me no little pleasure. Leaning in extra close, my tongue tastes the shell of his ear. “And I know my dark king has many wicked desires,” I whisper. I turn his face to mine, pulling it to me until only the barest bit of distance separates our lips. But instead of kissing him, I say, “I’m going to make you ache, and ache, and ache, and I will do nothing to alleviate it. I’m going to make you pay for leaving me.” I step off of him and saunter away. “Cherub,” Des says at my back, “I will enjoy every sweet second of it.

Are you okay? Are you hurt? I—” Ash’s words were cut off by Cael’s mouth on his. It took Ash a moment to react, and it wasn’t how Dex had expected. Closing his eyes, Ash returned Cael’s kiss. At Ash’s response, Cael threw his arms around Ash’s neck, and the two kissed like nothing else in the world existed. Out

All the accomplished gardeners I know are surprisingly comfortable with failure. They may not be happy about it, but instead of reacting with anger or frustration, they seem freshly intrigued by the peony that, after years of being taken for granted, suddenly fails to bloom. They understand that, in the garden at least, failure speaks louder than success. By that I don’t mean that the gardener encounters more failure than success (though in some years he will), only that his failures have more to say to him—about his soil, the weather, the predilections of local pests, the character of his land. The gardener learns nothing when his carrots thrive, unless that success is won against a background of prior disappointment. Outright success is dumb, disaster frequently eloquent. At least to the gardener who knows how to listen.

Ironically, Alfred Binet, one of the creators of the IQ test, intended the test to serve precisely the opposite function. In fact, he originally designed it (on commission from the French government) exclusively to identify children with special needs so they could get appropriate forms of schooling. He never intended it to identify degrees of intelligence or “mental worth.” In fact, Binet noted that the scale he created “does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.” Nor did he ever intend it to suggest that a person could not become more intelligent over time. “Some recent thinkers,” he said, “[have affirmed] that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we must try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.

Men, I think, are not capable of doing nothing, of saying nothing, of not reacting to injustice, of not protesting against oppression, of not striving for the good of society and the good life in the ways they see it.

I love you," Jared said. The words tasted bittersweet on his tongue but it was also a relief to be able to say them. He tipped Gabriel's face up and dragged his mouth gently across Gabriel's jaw. "I love you." Gabriel practically melted into him, tucking his face into the crook of Jared's neck. "I love you more," he whispered, brushing his lips against Jared's throat. A chaste kiss. Chaste words. But there was nothing chaste about the way kiss body reacted. Jared's heart was hammering in his chest, the familiar mix of want and longing, pain and euphoria coursing through his veins. Jared closed his eyes and wondered if this was how it felt to be between heaven and hell.

People tend to react to other people in wholesale rather than in detail, right? He's a minister, so I hate him. She's beautiful, so I like her. One month later you wake up and realize you have nothing in common with the woman.

There’s nothing manly about rage. It’s courtesy and kindness that define a human being—and a man. That’s who possesses strength and nerves and guts, not the angry whiners. To react like that brings you closer to impassivity—and so to strength.

It is quite natural, in pursuing enlightenment or just in trying to be happier, to look to your everyday experiences for signs of results. Indeed, your daily life is nothing else but an expression of your spiritual condition. Your life will change as you become more loving, but not in ways you can exactly predict. What happens is not important as how you react to what happens.

When faced with contrast, take nothing personally and don’t try to defend yourself. Defending one’s self is a vibrational relative of guilt. People will think what they like; do not feed fuel to the fire by reacting. Simply ask questions for clarity and in response say ‘Is that so?’ Take responsibility for the energy you brought to the situation, acknowledge the illusions without attachment, and move forward. Other people’s opinions are none of your business. Remember that each person is on their own unique path, and the mirror of contrast you hold up to them may be exactly what is necessary for their conscious growth at that time.

In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue. I am convinced that if we could tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero, call him the Son of Heaven instead of the Son of God, and trace his rayed nimbus in the gold thread of Chinese embroideries or the gold lacquer of Chinese pottery, instead of in the gold leaf of our own old Catholic paintings, there would be a unanimous testimony to the spiritual purity of the story. We should hear nothing then of the injustice of substitution or the illogicality of atonement, of the superstitious exaggeration of the burden of sin or the impossible insolence of an invasion of the laws of nature. We should admire the chivalry of the Chinese conception of a god who fell from the sky to fight the dragons and save the wicked from being devoured by their own fault and folly. We should admire the subtlety of the Chinese view of life, which perceives that all human imperfection is in very truth a crying imperfection. We should admire the Chinese esoteric and superior wisdom, which said there are higher cosmic laws than the laws we know.

Adam arrived at 735 Monroe Street prepared for the woman to be a bit skittish. After all, she'd run from him earlier, obviously intimidated by his overwhelming masculinity and epic sexuality. Women often had that reaction to him, especially when he was stripping off his pants. Or kilt, depending on the century. He was also prepared, however, for her inhibitions to drop swiftly, as did all women's when they got a good, close-up look at him. After that, many simply launched themselves at him in a full-frontal assault of sexual frenzy. He'd been entertaining himself with just that possibility, his entire body tight with lust, while tracking her down with the information he'd obtained int he room called "Human Resources" at Little & Staller. But nothing in his vast repertoire of experience had prepared him for Gabrielle O'Callaghan. The bloodthirsty little hellion didn't react like any woman he'd ever encountered. She took one horrified look at him, drew back her arm, hauled off, and smashed him in the face with some kind of satchel she was holding. Then slammed the door and locked it. Leaving him on the doorstep, bleeding. Bleeding, by Danu, blood trickling from his lip!

I didn’t like the dark matter part. I feel like you can’t just decide something must exist because everything’s reacting to it. You can’t just give it a name and hope it’s true.” “But maybe the objects are just behaving in a way we don’t understand. Maybe nothing is making them act that way but themselves.

Nothing could appear, the word “appearance” would make no sense, if recipients of appearances did not exist—living creatures able to acknowledge, recognize, and react to—in flight or desire, approval or disapproval, blame or praise—what is not merely there but appears to them and is meant for their perception.

For most surfers, I think—for me, certainly—waves have a spooky duality. When you are absorbed in surfing them, they seem alive. They each have personalities, distinct and intricate, and quickly changing moods, to which you must react in the most intuitive, almost intimate way—too many people have likened riding waves to making love. And yet waves are of course not alive, not sentient, and the lover you reach to embrace may turn murderous without warning. It’s nothing personal. That self-disemboweling death wave on the inside bar is not bloody-minded. Thinking so is just reflex anthropomorphism. Wave love is a one-way street.

Your jokes aren't even funny. What is this thing, anyway?' 'That's the beauty of it!' Oliver crows. 'It's nothing‒just some piece of junk from he supply closet. But you're freaking out because it could be anything.' 'Which it isn't,' I remind him. 'Exactly! The nothing becomes something because of how you react to it!

Never take offense. Even if someone is robbing you blind, it’s usually nothing personal. Survival is a funny thing, and we all react differently to it. Some react to fear and forget to be human and humane, but that doesn’t mean they have malicious intentions. People have different boundaries, and I promise to respect yours, hon.

Think of the unkind things we have forgotten,” said Niall. “Those are the ones that will be totted up against us. I sometimes wake up in the early morning and go quite cold thinking of all the things I must have done and can’t remember.” “Pappy must have taught you that,” said Celia. “Pappy had a fearful theory that when we die we go to a theater, and we sit down and see the whole of our lives re-acted before us. And nothing is omitted. Not one single, sordid detail. We have to watch it all.

Well that’s a shame,” he repeated, slightly waving his hand in front of her face to see if she would react. And sure enough. Nothing. Just off in the distance, a minister appeared.

Both she and Umfraville might be said to represent forms of revolt, and nothing dates people more than the standards from which they have chosen to react.

My mind reasons that there’s nothing to be afraid of, but something inside me I can’t control reacts differently.

Then we wonder, “Why is nothing turning out the way I want?” Tiger mind creates a little gap in which we can look at our choices. We could get mad or not get mad. We could manipulate or not manipulate. We could become desirous and fixate. We could get jealous or not. It’s up to us. Wisdom and compassion begin with cultivating discernment—not just reacting to what happens.

Kenji goes suddenly still. At the creak of the door Kenji’s eyebrows shoot up; a soft click and his eyes widen; a muted rustle of movement and suddenly the barrel of a gun is pressed against the back of his head. Kenji stares at me, his lips making no sound as he mouths the word psychopath over and over again. The psychopath in question winks at me from where he’s standing, smiling like he couldn’t possibly be holding a gun to the head of our mutual friend. I manage to suppress a laugh. “Go on,” Warner says, still smiling. “Please tell me exactly how she’s failed you as a leader.” “Hey—“ Kenji’s arms fly up in mock surrender. “I never said she failed at anything, okay? And you are clearly over-react—“ Warner knocks Kenji on the side of the head with the weapon. “Idiot.” Kenji spins around. Yanks the gun out of Warner’s hand. “What the hell is wrong with you, man? I thought we were cool.” “We were,” Warner says icily. “Until you touched my hair.” “You asked me to give you a haircut—“ “I said nothing of the sort! I asked you to trim the edges!” “And that’s what I did.” “This,” Warner says, spinning around so I might inspect the damage, “is not trimming the edges, you incompetent moron—“ I gasp. The back of Warner’s head is a jagged mess of uneven hair; entire chunks have been buzzed off. Kenji cringes as he looks over his handiwork. Clears his throat. “Well,” he says, shoving his hand in his pockets. “I mean—whatever, man, beauty is subjective—“ Warner aims another gun at him. “Hey!” Kenji shouts. “I am not here for this abusive relationship, okay?” He points to Warner. “I did not sign up for this shit!” Warner glares at him and Kenji retreats, backing out of the room before Warner has another chance to react; and then, just as I let out a sign of relief, Kenji pops his head back into the doorway and says “I think the cut looks cute, actually” and Warner slams the door in his face.

Let me sleep," he said, and shut the door; it clicked in her face and she felt animal terror - this was what she feared most in life: the clicking shut of a man's door in her face. Instantly, she raised her hand to knock, discovered the rock... she banged on the door with the rock, but not loudly, just enough to let him know how desperate she was to get back in, but not enough to bother him if he didn't want to answer. He didn't. No sound, no movement of the door. Nothing but the void. "Tony?" she gasped, pressing her ear to the door. Silence. "Okay," she said numbly; clutching her rock she walked unsteadily across the porch toward her own living quarters. The rock vanished. Her hand felt nothing. "Damn," she said, not knowing how to react. Where had it gone? Into air. But then it must have been an illusion, she realized. He put me in a hypnotic state and made me believe. I should have known it wasn't really true. A million stars burst into wheels of light, blistering, cold light, that drenched her. It came from behind and she felt the great weight of it crash into her. "Tony," she said, and fell into the waiting void. She thought nothing; she felt nothing. She saw only, saw the void as it absorbed her, waiting below and beneath her as she plummeted down the many miles. On her hands and knees she died. Alone on the porch. Still clutching for what did not exist.

Contrary to what people believe about the intuition of dogs, your intuitive abilities are vastly superior (and given that you add to your experience every day, you are at the top of your form right now). Ginger does sense and react to fear in humans because she knows instinctively that a frightened person (or animal) is more likely to be dangerous, but she has nothing you don’t have. The problem, in fact, is that extra something you have that a dog doesn’t: it is judgment, and that’s what gets in the way of your perception and intuition. With judgment comes the ability to disregard your own intuition unless you can explain it logically, the eagerness to judge and convict your own feelings, rather than honor them. Ginger is not distracted by the way things could be, used to be, or should be. She perceives only what is. Our reliance on the intuition of a dog is often a way to find permission to have an opinion we might otherwise be forced to call (God forbid) unsubstantiated.

Emotions are just a burst of chemicals in your brain that ignite and are absorbed into your body within six seconds. Because your emotional reactions happen so fast, they can often be completely unconscious. You may first notice your emotions through the physical sensations that accompany the chemical burst, such as sweating, muscle tightness, or a racing heartbeat. Research shows that most emotions will rise up, and then fall away, within 90 seconds, if you don’t react to them. You cannot control your emotions from rising up. Trying to is a waste of your time. The better strategy is learning to just Let Them rise up and then fall without reacting. There is also nothing you can do that will ever allow you to control the emotional reactions in another human being, no matter how hard you try.

People react in such complicated ways to any death, but particularly to the death of a parent, because a lot of what one feels is about oneself and the sense that nothing now stands between that self and dying. You have now become the older generation. I believe that the closer and more loving the relationship is, the deeper but simpler the grief. Of my father’s children, my brother had the hardest time

Most people reflect on their own thoughts: Is this true? Am I overreacting? I should check this out. But people with PDs don’t seem to have the ability to reflect on their own thoughts or behavior. Like someone who is drunk, their thinking is continually “under the influence” of their cognitive distortions. They can send, but not receive, new information. Because they are unaware of their cognitive distortions, these distortions can underlie serious misbehavior, including physical abuse, emotional abuse, and even legal abuse (using the legal system to attack a target and to promote false or unnecessary litigation). Information that does not fit the distortion is rigidly unconsciously blocked as too threatening and confusing. Instead, people with PDs defend their distortions in an effort to protect themselves. Blamers repeatedly react to “false alarms” caused by all-or-nothing thinking, jumping to conclusions, and so forth. They truly believe that they are in danger, and they feel powerless and out of control inside.

Jack,I've messed up enough of you life.There's nothing you can do about Cole.I'll handle him. You don't have to-" "Enough,Becks.This is what friends do. Before we got together, we were friends, remember? The friendship is still there,isn't it?" I didn't say anything for a moment. It was so much more than friendship on my side. Despite everything,I'd never stopped loving him. "Isn't it,Becks? I mean,you didn't completely forget about me in the Everneath,did you?" "No." Wasn't it obvious on my face? That he was the only thing I remembered? My memories of Jack should've been etched on my skin by now, for all the world to see. "Okay.Friends talk.Friends help each other." I nodded. "Friends don't eat friends' souls." I smiled. "Got it." "Can I ask you something else?" "Of course." "Why did you finally decide to tell me the truth?" I traced my finger along the lip of my coffee mug. "It's probably nothing, but Cole seems anxious to keep me away from you in particular. I wanted to see how he'd react, and maybe that would give me an idea as to why." He grimaced. "I have an idea." "What?" "He's in love with you." I wrinkled my forehead. "No he's not. He's not capable." Jack leaned forward. "Trust me, Becks. I know exactly what loving you looks like on a person.And he loves you." My face went warm and I looked away. If only Jack were talking about now,and not before. I shook my head. "There has to be something more to it." Jack put his chin on the palm of his hand. "Well,let's find out." "How?" Jack raised his eyes to meet mine, a shy little smile on his face, so different from his usual confident grin. "We'll spend time together. And let Cole know it.

Proust’s novel is filled with those we might call bad sufferers, wretched souls who have been betrayed in love or excluded from parties, who are pained by a feeling of intellectual inadequacy or a sense of social inferiority, but who learn nothing from such ills, and indeed react to them by engaging a variety of ruinous defense mechanisms which entail arrogance and delusion, cruelty and callousness, spite and rage.

The proof of “sudden” changes (p. 223 to the end) is quite convincing and meritorious. If you had done nothing else but to gather and present in a clear way this mass of evidence, you would have already a considerable merit. Unfortunately, this valuable accomplishment is impaired by the addition of a physical-astronomical theory to which every expert will react with a smile or with anger—according to his temperament; he notices that you know these things only from hearsay—and do not understand them in the real sense, also things that are elementary to him. . . . To the point, I can say in short: catastrophes yes, Venus no.

Most people who knew of Alustin’s vendetta assumed he had some grand master plan, but there was nothing of the sort. Alustin preferred a far more improvisatory approach— it was best, so far as he was concerned, to have tools to react to any sort of situation, rather than relying on a more fleshed-out plan. That isn’t to say he didn’t have plans at all, of course. Plans were fine so long as you remembered that they were just tools, not goals in and of themselves. People tended to get over-attached to plans, to the point where they would fail to achieve their objective rather than abandoning the plan they’d put so much time and effort into.

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker—a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either. I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne—to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why. I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world. Yours, Anne M. Frank ANNE’S DIARY ENDS HERE.

The idea that human beings cannot logically recognize suffering in a chicken, or draw meaningful conclusions about how a human would react to the conditions under which a caged hen lives, is ridiculous. There is a basis for empathy and understanding in the fact of human evolutionary continuity with other creatures that enables us to recognize and infer, in those creatures, experiences similar to our own. The fact that animals are forcibly confined in environments that reflect human nature, not theirs, means that they are suffering much more than we know in ways that we cannot fathom. If they preferred to be packed together without contact with the world outside, then we would not need intensive physical confinement facilities, and mutilations such as debeaking, since they would voluntarily cram together, live cordially, and save us money. The egg industry thinks nothing of claiming that a mutilated bird in a cage is 'happy,' 'content,' and 'singing,' yet will turn around and try to intimidate you with accusations of 'anthropomorphism' if you logically insist that the bird is miserable.

Should a situation arise that you need to deal with now, your action will be clear and incisive if it arises out of present-moment awareness. It is also more likely to be effective. It will not be a reaction coming from the past conditioning of your mind but an intuitive response to the situation. In other instances, when the time-bound mind would have reacted, you will find it more effective to do nothing — just stay centered in the Now.

All the honors of men in a state of sleep are as nothing. You must ‘repent.’ It has nothing to do with the so-called judgment of God. It is only a dream and man is reacting to the dream and he does not know that he is the dreamer and causing all the dream. The literal meaning of the Greek word translated as repent means ‘a change of mind.’ It has nothing to do with the moral picture. The churches introduced that, but it has nothing to do with it. I don’t care what a man has done, if he changes his mind in this meaning of the word ‘repent’ things will change, for he is then on the line of vertical line of states. He stands at a point on the states. There are infinite states and we must learn to distinguish between the state and the individual occupying the state. But I can now change and move into another state. I can in Time, do it in a split second and rise on the vertical line of the states.

There is nothing uniquely human in the flicker of sentience that is commonly called consciousness. Dolphins delight in watching themselves in mirrors when they are having sex, while chimps react to the death of those they care for in much the same ways that humans do. It will be objected that these animals have no clear understanding of the kind of creature they are or what it means to die. In this regard too, however, they are no different from humans.

There is nothing more nerve-racking than waiting as someone reads your writing. The reader becomes the videographer, zooming far, far into your heart and soul, unveiling every inch and corner. The writer remains a wary observer at the mercy of the reader, clueless as to how he might react. The writer is exposed, laid bare; her innermost thoughts and feelings are revealed in a potentially scathing moment of vulnerability. I trusted Peter so fully…in a way that I could not explain. For that very reason, it mattered so immensely. To actually tell him what I knew he had already often seen in my eyes was to allow him to enter a new dimension in that world. And it mattered. It really, truly mattered.

What stunned her even more was how they were both reacting now. They sat there, silent, right next to each other in the darkness, his hand wrapped around hers in a way that told her both that nothing had changed, and that everything had.

We are all convinced that we desire the truth above all. Nothing strange about this. It is natural to man, an intelligent being, to desire the truth. (I still dare to speak of man as “an intelligent being”!) But actually, what we desire is not “the truth” so much as “to be in the right.” To seek the pure truth for its own sake may be natural to us, but we are not able to act always in this respect according to our nature. What we seek is not the pure truth, but the partial truth that justifies our prejudices, our limitations, our selfishness. This is not “the truth.” It is only an argument strong enough to prove us “right.” And usually our desire to be right is correlative to our conviction that somebody else (perhaps everybody else) is wrong. Why do we want to prove them wrong? Because we need them to be wrong. For if they are wrong, and we are right, then our untruth becomes truth: our selfishness becomes justice and virtue: our cruelty and lust cannot be fairly condemned. We can rest secure in the fiction we have determined to embrace as “truth.” What we desire is not the truth, but rather that our lie should be proved “right,” and our iniquity be vindicated as “just.” This is what we have done to pervert our natural, instinctive appetite for truth. No wonder we hate. No wonder we are violent. No wonder we exhaust ourselves in preparing for war! And in doing so, of course, we offer the enemy another reason to believe that he is right, that he must arm, that he must get ready to destroy us. Our own lie provides the foundation of truth on which he erects his own lie, and the two lies together react to produce hatred, murder, disaster.

When it is time to leave the sun and moon behind, how will you react? [34] Will you sit down and cry, like an infant? Did nothing that you heard and studied in school get through to you? Why did you advertise yourself as a philosopher when you might have told the truth: ‘I made it through a couple of primers, then read a little Chrysippus – but I hardly crossed the threshold of philosophy.’ [35] How can you associate yourself with Socrates, who lived and died as he did, or with Diogenes?

When I got to his seat, I stood in back of his chair and waited. It took a couple of minutes before his head jerked up. He sniffed the air, then slowly turned. “Boo,” I said. He reacted as all mutts react when I confront them. He leapt from his chair and dove for the nearest exit, shaking in terror. In my dreams. He glanced at me and started looking for Clay. It never failed. Mutts only quaked when I appeared because it usually meant Clayton wasn’t far behind. I was nothing but a harbinger of doom.

By silently witnessing our thoughts and feelings, we learn to accept them as they are, allowing them to rise and fall within us without resisting them or reacting to them. As you learn to be with your emotions, they will no longer overwhelm you. In the full acceptance of surrender, which is of a quite different character from mere resignation, you come to see that pain is simply pain, nothing more and nothing less. Yes, pain is painful— it’s meant to be. However, when you don’t fuel your pain by either resisting or reacting, but sit with it, it transforms itself into wisdom. Your wisdom will increase in line with your capacity for embracing all of your feelings, whatever their nature. Along with increased wisdom comes a greater capacity for compassion.

The energy form that lies behind hostility and attack finds the presence of love absolutely intolerable. If you react at all to your partner’s unconsciousness, you become unconscious yourself. But if you then remember to know your reaction, nothing is lost.

I’m sorry,” he interrupted, his arm sliding around her waist. He pulled her into the shelter of his body, her back fitting against his hairy chest. “I didn’t mean to nettle you. Here, rest against me.” He nuzzled into the pale streamers of her hair. “What a fiery little wench you are.” “I’m not fiery,” Lottie protested, for that quality was hardly something that befitted a ladylike graduate of Maidstone’s. “Yes, you are.” His hand curved possessively over her hip. “I’ve known it from the moment we met. It’s one of the reasons I wanted you.” “You said you wanted me merely for convenience.” “Well, there is that,” he said with a grin, and reacted swiftly as she tried to elbow him. “But in truth, convenience had nothing to do with it. I wanted you more than any woman I’ve ever met.” “Why did you insist on marriage, when I offered to be your mistress?” “Because being a mistress wasn’t good enough for you.” He paused before adding quietly, “You deserve everything I can give you, including my name.” -Nick & Lottie

Then I will myself to feel nothing at all. It’s not helpful to react the way a normal person would. I banish what will interfere with my clinical discipline and reason, I run it off and far away from me. After all these years I’m good at emptying myself out.

As I continued to watch, I understood what I was seeing: a polarization of viewpoint was quickly forming around the planet, as those who were undecided now reacted against a cultural viewpoint they saw leading to runaway chaos and uncertainty, perhaps even to the total disintegration of their way of life. In the United States especially, a growing number of people were becoming convinced they were now facing what amounted to a life-and-death struggle against the permissiveness and liberalism of the past twenty-five years—a culture war, as they called it—with nothing short of the survival of Western civilization at stake. I could see that many of them even considered the cause already near lost, and thus advocated extreme action. In the face of this backlash, I could see the advocates of Human Potential moving into fear and defensiveness themselves, sensing that many hard-earned victories for individual rights and social compassion were now in danger of being swept away by a tide of conservatism. Many considered this reaction against liberation an attack by the embattled forces of greed and exploitation, who were pushing forth in one last attempt to dominate the weaker members of society. Here I could clearly see what was intensifying the polarization: each side was thinking the other to be a conspiracy of evil.

Normal humanity has only the courage to react to the usual gradations that range from the beautiful to the ugly, which in the long run are nothing but nuances of the same thing. The monster, on the other hand, Don Jeronimo contended with feeling, in order to exalt them with his mystique, belongs to a different, privileged species, with its own rights and particular canons that exclude the concepts of beauty and ugliness as tenuous categories, because, in essence, monstrosity is the culmination of both qualities synthesized and exacerbated to the sublime.

I slapped him hard across the face. He didn't react to it; he just closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against the headrest. Tears began to prick my eyes, and I did nothing to try and stop them. "I can't stand this," I said through the tears, "I can't stand what I've become.

Leave all the ‘wise men to mock it or tolerate.’ Let them reach the moon or the stars, they are all dead. Nothing lives outside of man. Man is the living soul, turning slowly into a life-giving Spirit. But you cannot tell it except in a parable or metaphor to excite the mind of man to get him to go out and prove it. Leave the good and evil and eat of the Tree of Life. Nothing in the world is untrue if you want it to be true. You are the truth of everything that you perceive. ‘I am the truth, and the way, the life revealed.’ If I have physically nothing in my pocket, then in Imagination I have MUCH. But that is a lie based on fact, but truth is based on the intensity of my imagination and then I will create it in my world. Should I accept facts and use them as to what I should imagine? No. It is told us in the story of the fig tree. It did not bear for three years. One said, ‘Cut it down, and throw it away.’ But the keeper of the vineyard pleaded NO’! Who is the tree? I am the tree; you are the tree. We bear or we do not. But the Keeper said he would dig around the tree and feed it ‘or manure it, as we would say today’ and see if it will not bear. Well I do that here every week and try to get the tree ‘you’ me to bear. You should bear whatever you desire. If you want to be happily married, you should be. The world is only response. If you want money, get it. Everything is a dream anyway. When you awake and know what you are creating and that you are creating it that is a different thing. The greatest book is the Bible, but it has been taken from a moral basis and it is all weeping and tears. It seems almost ruthless as given to us in the Gospel, if taken literally. The New Testament interprets the Old Testament, and it has nothing to do with morals. You change your mind and stay in that changed state until it unfolds. Man thinks he has to work himself out of something, but it is God asleep in you as a living soul, and then we are reborn as a life-giving spirit. We do it here in this little classroom called Earth or beyond the grave, for you cannot die. You can be just as asleep beyond the grave. I meet them constantly, and they are just like this. Same loves and same hates. No change. They will go through it until they finally awake, until they cease to re-act and begin to act. Do not take this story lightly which I have told you tonight. Take it to heart. Tonight when you are driving home enact a scene. No matter what it is. Forget good and evil. Enact a scene that implies you have what you desire, and to the degree that you are faithful to that state, it will unfold in your world and no power can stop it, for there is no other power. Nothing is independent of your perception of it, and this goes for that great philosopher among us who is still claiming that everything is independent of the perceiver, but that the perceiver has certain powers. It is not so. Nothing is independent of the perceiver. Everything is ‘burned up’ when I cease to behold it. It may exist for another, but not for me. Let us make our dream a noble one, for the world is infinite response to you, the being you want to be. Now let us go into the silence.

Who, then, can know who is a David and who is a Saul? God knows. But he won’t tell. Are you so certain your king is a Saul and not a David that you are willing to take the position of God and go to war against your Saul? If so, then thank God you did not live in the days of crucifixion. What, then, can you do? Very little. Perhaps nothing. However, the passing of time (and the behavior of your leader while that time passes) reveals a great deal about your leader. And the passing of time, and the way you react to that leader—be he David or Saul—reveals a great deal about you.

She believed I had 'done something' to her, but I had done nothing. Instead of asking what I had done to her, perhaps she should have asked what I had not done. I had not reacted, not confirmed the reality of her story, not fed her mind with more thought and her pain-body with more emotion. I had allowed her to experience whatever she was experiencing at that moment, and the power of allowing lies in noninterference, nondoing. Being present is always infinitely more powerful than anything one could say or do, although sometimes being present can give rise to words or actions.

It even seems as if the ego has not been produced by nature to follow its own arbitrary impulses to an unlimited extent, but to help to make real the totality-the whole psyche. It is the ego that serves to light up the entire system, allowing it to become conscious and thus to be realized. If, for example, I have an artistic talent of which my ego is not conscious, nothing will happen to it. The gift may as well be non-existent. Only if my ego notices it can I bring it into reality. The inborn but hidden totality of the psyche is not the same thing as a wholeness that is fully realized and lived. One could picture this in the following way: The seed of a mountain pine contains the whole future tree in a latent form; but each seed falls at a certain time onto a particular place, in which there are a number of special factors, such as the quality of the soil and the stones, the slope of the land, and its exposure to the sun and wind. The latent totality of the pine in the seed reacts to these cicumstances by avoiding the stones and inclining toward the sun, with the result that the tree's growth is shaped. Thus an individual pine slowly comes into existence, constituting the fulfillment of its totality, its emergence into the realm of reality. Without the living tree, the image of the pine is only a possibility or an abstract idea. Again, the realization of this uniqueness in the individual man is the goal of the process of individuation.

Laden with all these new possessions, I go and sit at a table. And don't ask me what the table was like because this was some time ago and I can't remember. It was probably round." [...] "So let me give you the layout. Me sitting at the table, on my left, the newspaper, on my right, the cup of coffee, in the middle of the table, the packet of biscuits." "I see it perfectly." "What you don't see," said Arthur, "because I haven't mentioned him yet, is the guy sitting at the table already. He is sitting there opposite me." "What's he like?" "Perfectly ordinary. Briefcase. Business suit. He didn't look," said Arthur, "as if he was about to do anything weird." "Ah. I know the type. What did he do?" "He did this. He leaned across the table, picked up the packet of biscuits, tore it open, took one out, and . . ." "What?" "Ate it." "What?" "He ate it." Fenchurch looked at him in astonishment. "What on earth did you do?" "Well, in the circumstances I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do. I was compelled," said Arthur, "to ignore it." "What? Why?" "Well, it's not the sort of thing you're trained for, is it? I searched my soul, and discovered that there was nothing anywhere in my upbringing, experience, or even primal instincts to tell me how to react to someone who has quite simply, calmly, sitting right there in front of me, stolen one of my biscuits." "Well, you could. . ." Fenchurch thought about it. "I must say I'm not sure what I would have done either. So what happened?" "I stared furiously at the crossword," said Arthur, "couldn't do a single clue, took a sip of coffee, it was too hot to drink, so there was nothing for it. I braced myself. I took a biscuit, trying very hard not to notice," he added, "that the packet was already mysteriously open. . ." "But you're fighting back, taking a tough line." "After my fashion, yes. I ate the biscuit. I ate it very deliberately and visibly, so that he would have no doubt as to what it was I was doing. When I eat a biscuit," said Arthur, "it stays eaten." "So what did he do?" "Took another one. Honestly," insisted Arthur, "this is exactly what happened. He took another biscuit, he ate it. Clear as daylight. Certain as we are sitting on the ground." Fenchurch stirred uncomfortably. "And the problem was," said Arthur, "that having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around. What do you say? 'Excuse me... I couldn't help noticing, er . . .' Doesn't work. No, I ignored it with, if anything, even more vigor than previously." "My man..." "Stared at the crossword again, still couldn't budge a bit of it, so showing some of the spirit that Henry V did on St. Crispin's Day . ." "What?" "I went into the breach again. I took," said Arthur, "another biscuit. And for an instant our eyes met." "Like this?" "Yes, well, no, not quite like that. But they met. Just for an instant. And we both looked away. But I am here to tell you," said Arthur, "that there was a little electricity in the air. There was a little tension building up over the table. At about this time." "I can imagine."” "We went through the whole packet like this. Him, me, him, me . . ." "The whole packet?" "Well, it was only eight biscuits, but it seemed like a lifetime of biscuits we were getting through at this point. Gladiators could hardly have had a tougher time." "Gladiators," said Fenchurch, "would have had to do it in the sun. More physically gruelling." "There is that. So. When the empty packet was lying dead between us the man at last got up, having done his worst, and left. I heaved a sigh of relief, of course. "As it happened, my train was announced a moment or two later, so I finished my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper . . ." "Yes?" "Were my biscuits." "What?" said Fenchurch. "What?" "True." "No!

Wow, Skye.” He kneels in front of me, ready to put one of his huge, strong hands on my knees. I recoil suddenly before I catch myself. Someone normal doesn’t react like that at the mere possibility of an innocent touch. “Okay, I’m going to sit on your friend’s bed.” He does just that, his eyes locked with mine. I have the sense I’m trapped and I don’t like it. I don’t want to ever feel like that again. “You should go,” I say, my voice wavering and barely above a whisper. He takes a sip of his coffee absentmindedly, his eyes never leaving my face. I don’t drink mine. I don’t even feel the mug between my hands. I feel nothing besides the hammering of my heart in my chest. I’m having difficulty breathing, and my forehead and neck are sweaty under my hair. “Can I say something before I go?” he asks me in a voice calmer than he must feel if I take into account his clenched fist and the shaking of his hand holding the mug of coffee. I just nod, not sure I’m able to mutter a word through the lump in my throat. “I’m not the enemy. I’m not the kind of guy who would try to hurt you more when I know you’re already hurting, but I’m someone willing to hear you and understand you. I want to be able to help.

And what causes these reactions? Observing at the deepest level of reality, he understood that reaction occurs because of ignorance. We are unaware of the fact that we react, and unaware of the real nature of what we react to. We are ignorant of the im-permanent, impersonal nature of our existence and ignorant that attachment to it brings nothing but suffering. Not knowing our real nature, we react blindly. Not even knowing that we have reacted, we persist in our blind reactions and allow them to intensify. Thus we become imprisoned in the habit of reacting, because of ignorance. This is how the Wheel of Suffering starts turning: If ignorance arises, reaction occurs; if reaction arises, consciousness occurs; if consciousness arises, mind-and-matter occur; if mind-and-matter arise, the six senses occur; if the six senses arise, contact occurs; if contact arises, sensation occurs; if sensation arises, craving and aversion occur; if craving and aversion arise, attachment occurs; if attachment arises, the process of becoming occurs; if the process of becoming arises, birth occurs; if birth arises, decay and death occur, together with sorrow, lamentation, physical and mental suffering, and tribulations. Thus arises this entire mass of suffering.

What were you doing with her?” The words burst from my lips. Before I can take them back, he stares at me. I stare back at him as the silence stretches onwards. We’re both stiff. He says nothing. “Maybe I should ask you the same thing.” I shake my head, my nails digging into my palms. Then before I can react, he has pushed me roughly up the wall, his eyes now dark and fiery, like a storm ready to unleash itself. Good. He’s mad too. His hands force me to the wall as he presses his body against mine. The intensity of the move, the feel of him makes my breath hitch. “Get off me,” I seethe, pounding my fists into his chest but Adrian keeps me locked in place, so that his breath caresses my ear. “Were you guys too rushed?’ He mocks. “Too desperate to book a hotel room?” I can barely stifle a disgusted snort. “What are you talking about?” Fury pumps through my head. “A hotel room? What kind of girl do you think I am—mmf?” He moves against me, moving to kiss me. The moment where his lips meet mine hard and unyielding. He tastes of smoke and lipgloss—and I’m reminded of the scene earlier where he and Lauren got out of the closet together. Disgust fills me as I squirm in his arms. He groans, fire burning in his voice. “You want me, you’re trying to hide from it.” “No,” I try to bite the words at him but it comes out strangled. I try to push him away but before I have to, he releases me. I try to put as much distance between him and myself, shaking. Loathing is my voice. "Get away from me. I hate you." He swallows and looks away, his breathing slowing. He pushes himself from the wall, still very pale. Then closing his eyes and turning, he starts walking away, heading towards the parking lot. "I hate you!" I scream again behind him. Adrian stops for a moment, his back to me. “I’ve told you from the very beginning. You should.” He keeps on walking, never glancing back.

if we do nothing while we are feeling an emotion, there is no short- or long-term harm that can come to us. However, if we react to the emotion by making a DECISION, we may not only regret the immediate outcome, but we may also create a long-lasting pattern of DECISIONS that will continue to misguide us for a long time.

Tamper with my memory?" I asked nervously. "Something like that." He was watching me intently, carefully, but there was humor deep in his eyes. He placed his hands against the Jeep on either side of my head and leaned forward, forcing me to press back against the door. He leaned in even closer, his face inches from mine. I had no room to escape. "Now," he breathed, and just his smell disturbed my thought processes, "what exactly are you worrying about?" "Well, um, hitting a tree —" I gulped "— and dying. And then getting sick." He fought back a smile. Then he bent his head down and touched his cold lips softly to the hollow at the base of my throat. "Are you still worried now?" he murmured against my skin. "Yes." I struggled to concentrate. "About hitting trees and getting sick." His nose drew a line up the skin of my throat to the point of my chin. His cold breath tickled my skin. "And now?" His lips whispered against my jaw. "Trees," I gasped. "Motion sickness." He lifted his face to kiss my eyelids. "Bella, you don't really think I would hit a tree, do you?" "No, but I might." There was no confidence in my voice. He smelled an easy victory. He kissed slowly down my cheek, stopping just at the corner of my mouth. "Would I let a tree hurt you?" His lips barely brushed against my trembling lower lip. "No," I breathed. I knew there was a second part to my brilliant defense, but I couldn't quite call it back. "You see," he said, his lips moving against mine. "There's nothing to be afraid of, is there?" "No," I sighed, giving up. Then he took my face in his hands almost roughly, and kissed me in earnest, his unyielding lips moving against mine. There really was no excuse for my behavior. Obviously I knew better by now. And yet I couldn't seem to stop from reacting exactly as I had the first time. Instead of keeping safely motionless, my arms reached up to twine tightly around his neck, and I was suddenly welded to his stone figure. I sighed, and my lips parted. He staggered back, breaking my grip effortlessly. "Damn it, Bella!" he broke off, gasping. "You'll be the death of me, I swear you will." I leaned over, bracing my hands against my knees for support. "You're indestructible," I mumbled, trying to catch my breath. "I might have believed that before I met you.

At the age of twenty-nine Gautama slipped away from his palace in the middle of the night, leaving behind his family and possessions. He travelled as a homeless vagabond throughout northern India, searching for a way out of suffering. He visited ashrams and sat at the feet of gurus but nothing liberated him entirely – some dissatisfaction always remained. He did not despair. He resolved to investigate suffering on his own until he found a method for complete liberation. He spent six years meditating on the essence, causes and cures for human anguish. In the end he came to the realisation that suffering is not caused by ill fortune, by social injustice, or by divine whims. Rather, suffering is caused by the behaviour patterns of one’s own mind. Gautama’s insight was that no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction. When the mind experiences something distasteful it craves to be rid of the irritation. When the mind experiences something pleasant, it craves that the pleasure will remain and will intensify. Therefore, the mind is always dissatisfied and restless. This is very clear when we experience unpleasant things, such as pain. As long as the pain continues, we are dissatisfied and do all we can to avoid it. Yet even when we experience pleasant things we are never content. We either fear that the pleasure might disappear, or we hope that it will intensify. People dream for years about finding love but are rarely satisfied when they find it. Some become anxious that their partner will leave; others feel that they have settled cheaply, and could have found someone better. And we all know people who manage to do both.

But when I was a prostitute I protected myself, fought back at every moment, was never off guard. To protect my deeper, inner self from men, I offered them only an outer shell. I kept my heart and soul, and let my body plat its role, its passive, inert, unfeeling role. I learnt to resist by being passive, to keep myself whole by offering nothing, to live by withdrawing to a world of my own. In other words, I was telling the man he could have my body, he could have a dead body, but he would never be able to make me react, or tremble, or feel either pleasure or pain. I made no effort, expended no energy, gave no affection, provided no thought. I was therefore never tired or exhausted.

when investigative reporters proved that Exxon had known all about global warming and had covered up that knowledge. Plenty of people on the professionally jaded left told me, in one form or another, “Of course they did,” or “All corporations lie,” or “Nothing will ever happen to them anyway.” This kind of knowing cynicism is no threat to the Exxons of the world—it’s a gift. Happily, far more people reacted with usefully naïve outrage: before too long, people were comparing the oil giants with the tobacco companies, and some of the biggest cities in the country were suing them for damages. We don’t know yet precisely how it will end, only that giving them a pass because of their power makes no sense.

Many men find themselves unable to cope with even minor frustration. They get angry over trivial things, such as a broken pencil lead or an overcooked hamburger. Their anger erupts and gets out of control. They feel as though they are constantly under attack, that everyone is out to get them, and that nobody understands or cares about them. They may even get superstitious and believe that fate has it in for them, or that God has turned against them. This feeling of having no control leads to a state of continual frustration and anger. This tendency to react with instant anger can be called rage. Rage is anger that never completely goes away. Unlike regular anger, it is not a response to a specific event; rather, it is a response set, or tendency. In other words, it is an automatic way of reacting to the world without much thought. When you react to more and more situations with anger, it becomes your habitual response. You may often find yourself furiously yelling or seething inside without even knowing what it was that made you so angry. Rage sees personal attack in every disagreement. Rage causes you to feel threatened when there is no threat. And rage causes you to viciously counter-attack even a minor threat. Rage is like a wounded animal. It attacks anything that moves. And as with a wounded animal, the attacks do nothing to ease the pain. Rage depersonalizes individual people and events into a faceless, nameless "them".

He said he was disappointed with the way his fellow-countrymen had reacted to the depression; he would have expected them to take their misfortune with more equanimity. Knowing that nothing is easier than to bear other people's calamities with fortitude, I thought that Elliot, richer now than he had ever been in his life, was perhaps hardly entitled to be severe.

You can’t choose what life throws at you, but you can choose how you react to it. The truth is, we deserve nothing. We need to fight for what we want. We need to fight for the things that make us want to go skinny dipping at midnight, and dance in the rain, and wish on falling stars. We pave our own way. We create our own destiny. We choose the life we fucking want.

Only Andrew saw the strain in Neil's mask. He crossed the room to stand in front of Neil, a silent demand in his stare. Neil wanted to answer that, but he didn't know how. German was the obvious answer because it would afford them a little bit of privacy, but Romero and Jackson didn't understand German. They wouldn't know what he was saying and they would have to react like he was spilling every dark secret. Neil couldn't allow that. He didn't want to leave Andrew with nothing, but what could he possibly say? "Thank you," he finally said. He couldn't say he meant thanks for all of it: the keys, the trust, the honesty, and the kisses. Hopefully Andrew would figure it out eventually. "You were amazing." He meant it for Andrew's ears only, but Allison was close enough to overhear. She sent Matt a significant look. Neil saw it in his peripheral vision but didn't take his eyes off Andrew to see Matt's reaction. He didn't want to look away, as if by holding Andrew's gaze he could somehow save this moment. Then Wymack was motioning for them to head out and Neil had no choice but to turn his back on his teammates.

The mind that is deceived believes that this world is real. It believes that it is a real person and that there are real events that are happening to it. I really lost my job; I really do not have enough money to pay the rent. That is how it feels. It really does not see it as a dream. When we go to bed at night and dream, do we react to the dreams? There is running and sometimes fear and lots of emotions that seem to go on in those dreams. Why? Because the mind thinks it is in the dream. If you really let go of judgment you will start to see more and more that you are the dreamer of the dream, you are the cause of the dream. If I am in the dream it does not seem like I am the cause of the dream and I am not in control of it, but if I step back and realize that I am the dreamer of the dream, then I can accept another purpose for it. OK, I am going to change the purpose – out with the ego and in with the Holy Spirit! The Course calls that the happy dream. There is nothing on the screen that has changed, there are still the same things going on, what the world describes as wars and so on but my purpose for the world has changed.

Tell me the story," said Fenchurch firmly. "You arrived at the station." "I was about twenty minutes early. I'd got the time of the train wrong." "Get on with it." Fenchurch laughed. "So I bought a newspaper, to do the crossword, and went to the buffet to get a cup of coffee." "You do the crossword?" "Yes." "Which one?" "The Guardian usually." "I think it tries to be too cute. I prefer The Times. Did you solve it?" "What?" "The crossword in the Guardian." "I haven't had a chance to look at it yet," said Arthur, "I'm still trying to buy the coffee." "All right then. Buy the coffee." "I'm buying it. I am also," said Arthur, "buying some biscuits." "What sort?" "Rich Tea." "Good Choice." "I like them. Laden with all these new possessions, I go and sit at a table. And don't ask me what the table was like because this was some time ago and I can't remember. It was probably round." "All right." "So let me give you the layout. Me sitting at the table. On my left, the newspaper. On my right, the cup of coffee. In the middle of the table, the packet of biscuits." "I see it perfectly." "What you don't see," said Arthur, "because I haven't mentioned him yet, is the guy sitting at the table already. He is sitting there opposite me." "What's he look like?" "Perfectly ordinary. Briefcase. Business suit. He didn't look," said Arthur, "as if he was about to do anything weird." "Ah. I know the type. What did he do?" "He did this. He leaned across the table, picked up the packet of biscuits, tore it open, took one out, and..." "What?" "Ate it." "What?" "He ate it." Fenchurch looked at him in astonishment. "What on earth did you do?" "Well, in the circumstances I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do. I was compelled," said Arthur, "to ignore it." "What? Why?" "Well, it's not the sort of thing you're trained for is it? I searched my soul, and discovered that there was nothing anywhere in my upbringing, experience or even primal instincts to tell me how to react to someone who has quite simply, calmly, sitting right there in front of me, stolen one of my biscuits." "Well, you could..." Fenchurch thought about it. "I must say I'm not sure what I would have done either. So what happened?" "I stared furiously at the crossword," said Arthur. "Couldn't do a single clue, took a sip of coffee, it was too hot to drink, so there was nothing for it. I braced myself. I took a biscuit, trying very hard not to notice," he added, "that the packet was already mysteriously open..." "But you're fighting back, taking a tough line." "After my fashion, yes. I ate a biscuit. I ate it very deliberately and visibly, so that he would have no doubt as to what it was I was doing. When I eat a biscuit," Arthur said, "it stays eaten." "So what did he do?" "Took another one. Honestly," insisted Arthur, "this is exactly what happened. He took another biscuit, he ate it. Clear as daylight. Certain as we are sitting on the ground." Fenchurch stirred uncomfortably. "And the problem was," said Arthur, "that having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject a second time around. What do you say? "Excuse me...I couldn't help noticing, er..." Doesn't work. No, I ignored it with, if anything, even more vigor than previously." "My man..." "Stared at the crossword, again, still couldn't budge a bit of it, so showing some of the spirit that Henry V did on St. Crispin's Day..." "What?" "I went into the breach again. I took," said Arthur, "another biscuit. And for an instant our eyes met." "Like this?" "Yes, well, no, not quite like that. But they met. Just for an instant. And we both looked away. But I am here to tell you," said Arthur, "that there was a little electricity in the air. There was a little tension building up over the table. At about this time." "I can imagine.

You'd try to look elsewhere but you wouldn't be able to help yourself, and you'd look back again. Because there was something going on. There was some sort of special air around this person. Or a special light? Yes. That was it. If you just came in this crummy Lavomatic on the avenue de La Bourdonnais on December twenty-ninth at five o'clock in the afternoon and you saw this figure in the dreary neon lights, this is exactly what you would say to yourself: Holy shit. An angel. Camille raised her eyes just then, saw him, did not react right away as if she had not recognized him, then finally smiled. A very faint smile, a slight brilliance, a little sign of recognition among regulars. "Got your wings in there?" he asked, pointing to her bag. "Sorry?" "Nah, nothing.

I was thinking more about the facts of death (real death) after I read your letter and I thought, after your words, that this was, indeed, the awfulness of dying...that you must do it alone. I remember well being right beside my mother as she died, and trying to help her, to stay there, right there, so she wouldn't have to walk the barrier alone...to go as far as I could into that dumb country...I wanted to hold her hand, as one holds a child's hand, to take her across to say "It's all right. I'm here. Don't be afraid"...And I did. And then she was gone. She was in the nothingness...Without me. Without herself!... Thus she made the transition from something to nothingness...but what good was I? With all that love (longing) I couldn't stop the hours or the pain...I couldn't matter. No. Pain mattered more and it was, dear God, pain that rocked her out. Not me. For all my longing and my wanting, not me. And now she is a nothing. Except for me...for me she is a big something...a something I love and hate and still react to and talk to. That is what keeps us alive. That living thing we leave behind. That['s] the flame. But that the body should be gone, a piece of furniture only,,, that dear body...

Awareness, no matter how confused it may be, develops from every act of rebellion: the sudden, dazzling perception that there is something in man with which he can identify himself, even if only for a moment. Up to now this identification was never really experienced. Before he rebelled, the slave accepted all the demands made upon him. Very often he even took orders, without reacting against them, which were far more conducive to insurrection than the one at which he balks. He accepted them patiently, though he may have protested inwardly, but in that he remained silent he was more concerned with his own immediate interests than as yet aware of his own rights. But with loss of patience—with impatience—a reaction begins which can extend to everything that he previously accepted, and which is almost always retroactive. The very moment the slave refuses to obey the humiliating orders of his master, he simultaneously rejects the condition of slavery. The act of rebellion carries him far beyond the point he had reached by simply refusing. He exceeds the bounds that he fixed for his antagonist, and now demands to be treated as an equal. What was at first the man's obstinate resistance now becomes the whole man, who is identified with and summed up in this resistance. The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to life itself. It becomes for him the supreme good. Having up to now been willing to compromise, the slave suddenly adopts ("because this is how it must be . . .") an attitude of All or Nothing. With rebellion, awareness is born.

The particular egoic patterns that you react to most strongly in others and misperceive as their identity tend to be the same patterns that are also in you, but that you are unable or unwilling to detect within yourself. In that sense, you have much to learn from your enemies. What is it in them that you find most upsetting, most disturbing? Their selfishness? Their greed? Their need for power and control? Their insincerity, dishonesty, propensity to violence, or whatever it may be? Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you. But it is no more than a form of ego, and as such, it is completely impersonal. It has nothing to do with who that person is, nor has it anything to do with who you are. Only if you mistake it for who you are can observing it within you be threatening to your sense of self.

The best way to let go of the need for control is to become powerful. Power has nothing to do with brawn or domination. It means you have the strength to respond instead of react, to take charge of your life, to have total ownership of your choices. You are powerful because you’re not giving your power away. If you take back your power and still want to be right, then choose to be kind, because kindness is always right.

What happens when you’ve been following a star, and it leads you to a stable? What happens when all of a sudden, after thinking that something grand and glorious would be at the other end, you end up in the backyard of a barn? And there, instead of a palace and a king on a throne, you find a little baby held by his mother. It’s nothing like what you had anticipated. How do you react when you follow the star and find a stable?

You don’t always need to speak. Just because something can be said doesn’t mean it should be. Not every situation needs your opinion, not every moment needs a reaction. Sometimes, silence is your smartest move — not out of fear, but out of clarity. It gives you space to think, to listen, to understand what’s really going on beneath the surface. Words can build or break — and once spoken, you can’t take them back. Holding back isn’t suppression; it’s choosing not to waste energy where it won’t be valued or understood. It’s knowing the difference between what’s helpful and what’s just noise. In personal life, in work, in conflict — people who master silence often see more, understand more, and carry fewer regrets. In a world that’s quick to react, real strength is choosing to stay quiet — not because you have nothing to say, but because you know not everything needs to be said.

Elend tried to tell himself it was only her injury, but he sensed something deeper. Something in the way she looked at him, something in the way she reacted to his affection. And despite himself, he could think of only one thing that had changed. He was no longer king. Vin was not shallow. She had shown him nothing but devotion and love during their year and a half together. Yet how could she not react—even if unconsciously—to his colossal failure?

Then, consciously decide that throughout the day: 1. I will be as cheerful as possible. 2. I will try to feel and act a little more friendly toward other people. 3. I am going to be a little less critical and a little more tolerant of other people, their faults, failings, and mistakes. I will place the best possible interpretation on their actions. 4. Insofar as possible, I am going to act as if successes are inevitable, and I already am the sort of personality I want to be. I will practice “acting like” and “feeling like” this new personality. 5. I will not let my own opinion color facts in a pessimistic or negative way. 6. I will practice smiling at least three times during the day. 7. Regardless of what happens, I will react as calmly and as intelligently as possible. 8. I will ignore completely and close my mind to all those pessimistic and negative “facts” that I can do nothing to change.

I saw a group of women standing by a station wagon. There were seven of them, pushing cartons and shopping bags over the open tailgate into the rear of the car. Celery stalks and boxes of Gleem stuck out of the bags. I took the camera from my lap, raised it to my eye, leaned out the window a bit, and trained it on the ladies as if I were shooting. One of them saw me and immediately nudged her companion but without taking her eyes off the camera. They waved. One by one the others reacted. They all smiled and waved. They seemed supremely happy. Maybe they sensed that they were waving at themselves, waving in the hope that someday if evidence is demanded of their passage through time, demanded by their own doubts, a moment might be recalled when they stood in a dazzling plaza in the sun and were registered on the transparent plastic ribbon; and thirty years away, on that day when proof is needed, it could be hoped that their film is being projected on a screen somewhere, and there they stand, verified, in chemical reincarnation, waving at their own old age, smiling their reassurance to the decades, a race of eternal pilgrims in a marketplace in the dusty sunlight, seven arms extended in a fabulous salute to the forgetfulness of being. What better proof (if proof is ever needed) that they have truly been alive? Their happiness, I think, was made of this, the anticipation of incontestable evidence, and had nothing to do with the present moment, which would pass with all the others into whatever is the opposite of eternity. I pretended to keep shooting, gathering their wasted light, letting their smiles enter the lens and wander the camera-body seeking the magic spool, the gelatin which captures the image, the film which threads through the waiting gate. Sullivan came out of the supermarket and I lowered the camera. I could not help feeling that what I was discovering here was power of a sort.

It is the sheer weight of the robot that makes us feel we are living in a ‘wooden world’. We can see for example that the moment Ouspensky or Ward returned from the mystical realm of perfect freedom and found themselves ‘back in the body’ they once again found themselves saddled with all their boring old habits and worries and neuroses, all their old sense of identity built up from the reactions of other people, and above all the dreary old heaviness, as if consciousness has turned into a leaden weight. This is the sensation that made the romantics feel that life is a kind of hell — or at the very least, purgatory. Yet we know enough about the robot to know that this feeling is as untrustworthy as the depression induced by a hangover. The trouble with living ‘on the robot’ is that he is a dead weight. He takes over only when our energies are low. So when I do something robotically I get no feedback of sudden delight. This in turn makes me feel that it was not worth doing. ‘Stan’ reacts by failing to send up energy and ‘Ollie’ experiences a sinking feeling. Living becomes even more robotic and the vicious circle effect is reinforced. Beyond a certain point we feel as if we are cut off from reality by a kind of glass wall: suddenly it seems self-evident that there is nothing new under the sun, that all human effort is vanity, that man is a useless passion and that life is a horrible joke devised by some demonic creator. This is the state I have decribed as ‘upside-downness’, the tendency to allow negative emotional judgements to usurp the place of objective rational judgements. Moreover this depressing state masquerades as the ‘voice of experience’, since it seems obvious that you ‘know’ more about an experience when you’ve had it a hundred times. This is the real cause of death in most human beings: they mistake the vicious circle effects of ‘upside-downness’ for the wisdom of age, and give up the struggle.

Things are as they are and not as we would like them to be. At the same time, regardless of how far away reality falls short of our desires, we can still choose how to respond to circumstances. Freedom doesn’t only reside in the fact that you can choose. It’s also about how you react to situations where you haven’t been able to choose. And that freedom is a source of meaning and of keeping your feet on the ground, of not getting bogged down in things you can do nothing about or getting frustrated.

Where did the dagger come from?” Azriel’s hazel eyes held nothing but cool wariness. “Why do you want to know?” “Because the Starsword”—she motioned to the blade he had down his back—“sings to it. I know you’re feeling it, too.” Let it be out in the open. “It’s driving you nuts, right?” Bryce pushed. “And it gets worse when I’m near.” Azriel’s face again revealed nothing. “It is,” Nesta answered for him. “I’ve never seen him so fidgety.” Azriel glowered at his friend. But he admitted, “They seem to want to be near each other.” Bryce nodded. “When I landed on that lawn, they instantly reacted when they were close together.” “Like calls to like,” Nesta mused. “Plenty of magical things react to one another.” “This was unique. It felt like … like an answer. My sword blazed with light. That dagger shone with darkness. Both of them are crafted of the same black metal. Iridium, right?” She jerked her chin to Azriel, to the dagger at his side. “Ore from a fallen meteorite?” Azriel’s silence was confirmation enough. “I told you guys back in that dungeon,” Bryce went on. “There’s literally a prophecy in my world about my sword and a dagger reuniting our people. When knife and sword are reunited, so shall our people be.” Nesta frowned deeply. “And you truly think this is that particular dagger?” “It checks too many boxes not to be.” Bryce lifted a still-bloody hand, and she didn’t miss the way they both tensed. But she furled her fingers and said, “I can feel them. It gets stronger the closer I get to them.

I said, "I want to wear something funny and cool. Marjorie, could I wear your sparkly baseball hat?" The three of us looked at Marjorie. Now I remember thinking that her answer could change everything back to the way it was; Dad could find a job and stop praying all the time and Mom could be happy and call Marjorie shellfish again and show us funny videos she found on YouTube, and we all could eat more than just spaghetti at dinner and, most important, Marjorie could be normal again. Everything would be okay if Marjorie would only say yes to me wearing the sparkly sequined baseball hat, the one she'd made in art class a few years ago. The longer we watched Marjorie and waited for her response, the more the temperature in the room dropped and I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. She stopped twisting her spaghetti around her fingers. She opened her mouth, and vomit slowly oozed out onto her spaghetti plate. Dad: "Jesus!" Mom: "Honey, are you okay?" She jumped out of her seat and went over to Marjorie, stood behind her, and held her hair up. Marjorie didn't react to either parent, and she didn't make any sounds. She wasn't retching or convulsing involuntarily like one normally does when throwing up. It just poured out of her as though her mouth was an opened faucet. The vomit was as green as spring grass, and the masticated pasta looked weirdly dry, with a consistency of mashed-up dog food. She watched Dad the whole time as the vomit filled her plate, some of it slopping over the edges and onto the table. When she finished she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "No, Merry. You can't wear my hat." She didn't sound like herself. Her voice was lower, adult, and growly. "You might get something on it. I don't want you to mess it up." She laughed. Dad: "Marjorie..." Marjorie coughed and vomited more onto her too-full plate. "You can't wear the hat because you're going to die someday." She found a new voice, this one treacly baby-talk. "I don't want dead things wearing my very special hat.

If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get my children to believe.”“I will discipline the hell out of my children.”“It’s my job to ensure that they do what is right.”“If I do nothing else, I will send children out into the world who are prepared to live right.”“After I’m done with him, he’ll never even think of doing that again.” The assessment in these statements that children need to change is right. The deep desire for that change which motivates a parent is right. The commitment to work for that change is right. Then what is wrong with each of these statements? Each of them assumes power on the part of parents that no parent has, and that assumption creates all kinds of parenting trouble. If you are going to be what God has designed you to be as a parent and do what he’s called you to do, you must confess one essential thing. This confession has the power to change much about the way you act and react toward your children. It is vital that you believe and admit that you have no power whatsoever to change your child.

So, I’m saying yes whether I want to or not,” I said, my voice just edging to a growl. He’d played me like a chump by pressing all the buttons I couldn’t help but react to. “Glad to hear it. You’ll begin during the fall semester, to make your transition a little smoother. The Academy will also want to assess your skill level before you start, so expect a visit. Now that we’ve taken care of that bit of business, I’ve ordered filet mignon. After the night you’ve had, I’m sure nothing less than a steak will do.” He gestured for the waiter,

From the standpoint of logic, a child is rather horribly perfect. A baby may be even more perfect, but so alien to an adult that only superficial standards of comparison apply. The thought processes of an infant are completely unimaginable. But babies think, even before birth. In the womb they move and sleep, not entirely through instinct. We are conditioned to react rather peculiarly to the idea that a nearly-viable embryo may think. We are surprised, shocked into laughter, and repelled. Nothing human is alien. But a baby is not human. An embryo is far less human.

Multiple-model agnosticism, then, is a way out of postmodernism which doesn't lead into the belief that, out of all the billions of people in the world, you are the only one who really gets it and everyone else are idiots. The problem is, however, that our models are too damned convincing, and it is a struggle to remember that they are models and not reality. Hence much of the work of the Discordians - bar the stuff included purely for shits and giggles - is aimed at shocking people into realising the extent to which they confuse their models with the actuality. The 23 Enigma is a good case in point. Wilson was basically training his readers to notice 23s everywhere and, as any Discordian will tell you, he did this very well indeed. The point is, however, that there is nothing special about the number in itself. It is the fact that it has been singled out and had meaning applied to it, and that Discordians have been trained to recognise it, which is significant. Had it been the number 47, or 18, or 65, the effect would have been the same. Indeed, in his later years Wilson admitted that it would have been much better if he had trained his readers to spot quarters on the ground instead of number 23s. Of course, Multiple-model agnosticism also allows you to consider the model which states that the above paragraph is mistaken, and that the number 23 is significant. Many Discordians have explored this model at length. As I understand it, that model doesn't lead to anywhere pleasant, but the curious are encouraged to explore it for themselves to see if that's true. The reason that the 23 Enigma is useful is because it demonstrates the amount of information that our models filter out. In actuality, the coincidental and synchronistic appearances of the number 23 are matched by coincidental and synchronistic appearances of every other number, even though our models fail to react to these. They are just models, after all, and models are significantly less detailed than what they represent. Reality itself is ablaze with infinite connections: every particle in the cosmos affects every other particle. It's Too Much, it really is, and seeing reality in all its innate finery would be so overpowering that you'd be in no state to nip down the shops when you need a pint of milk.

A common response in surveys of religious attitudes is to say something like, 'I don't go to church, but I have my own personal idea of God.' This kind of statement makes me in turn react like a philosopher. Soppy, I cry. You have your own personal idea of God, but does God have His own personal idea of you? Because that's what matters. Whether He's an old man with a white beard sitting in the sky, or a life force, or a disinterested prime mover, or a clockmaker, or a woman, or a nebulous moral force, or nothing at all, what counts is what He, She, It, or Nothing thinks of you rather than you of them.

the effect of repetition on liking is a profoundly important biological fact, and that it extends to all animals. To survive in a frequently dangerous world, an organism should react cautiously to a novel stimulus, with withdrawal and fear. Survival prospects are poor for an animal that is not suspicious of novelty. However, it is also adaptive for the initial caution to fade if the stimulus is actually safe. The mere exposure effect occurs, Zajonc claimed, because the repeated exposure of a stimulus is followed by nothing bad. Such a stimulus will eventually become a safety signal, and safety is good.

She instantly lowered her face, staring at her lap, so that nothing was visible of her beyond the clusters of sunflower curls that framed the netted bun on top of her head. Intrigued by the curve of one plump cheek, he lifted her chin and made her look toward him, ignoring her flinch as he touched her. His first impression was of green eyes, wide as a baby owl's and just as solemn. Dumpling cheeks, a straight nose, and a firm little mouth- all ordinary, and all in common female proportion. There was nothing notably strange about her features- and yet it was an odd face, the kind of face that looked out of burrows and tree-knots and hedgerows, unblinking, innocent and as old as time. If she'd had whiskers to twitch it wouldn't have surprised him, so strong was the impression of a small, prudent wild creature with dark brows like furry markings. Strangely, she made him want to smile, as if he'd just pulled aside a branch and discovered a nightingale staring gravely back at him from its nest. He found himself reacting in the same way, consciously containing his moves and his voice, as if he might startle her away. "Hullo," he said softly, giving her a light, suggestive chuck beneath her plump chin as he let her go.

Violet didn’t realize that she’d pressed herself so tightly against the door until it opened from the inside and she stumbled backward. She fell awkwardly, trying to catch herself as her feet slipped and first she banged her elbow, and then her shoulder-hard-against the doorjamb. She heard her can of pepper spray hit the concrete step at her feet as she flailed to find something to grab hold of. Her back crashed into something solid. Or rather, someone. And from behind, she felt strong, unseen arms catch her before she hit the ground. But she was too stunned to react right away. “You think I can let you go now?” A low voice chuckled in her ear. Violet was mortified as she glanced clumsily over her shoulder to see who had just saved her from falling. “Rafe!” she gasped, when she realized she was face-to-face with his deep blue eyes. She jumped up, feeling unexpectedly light-headed as she shrugged out of his grip. Without thinking, and with his name still burning on her lips, she added, “Umm, thanks, I guess.” And then, considering that he had just stopped her from landing flat on her butt, she gave it another try. “No…yeah, thanks, I mean.” Flustered, she bent down, trying to avoid his eyes as she grabbed the paper spray that had slipped from her fingers. She cursed herself for being so clumsy and wondered why she cared that he had been the one to catch her. Or why she cared that he was here at all. She stood up to face him, feeling more composed again, and quickly hid the evidence of her paranoia-the tiny canister-in her purse. She hoped he hadn’t noticed it. He watched her silently, and she saw the hint of a smile tugging at his lips. Violet waited for him to say something or to move aside to let her in. His gaze stripped away her defenses, making her feel even more exposed than when she had been standing alone in the empty street. She shifted restlessly and finally sighed impatiently. “I have an appointment,” she announced, lifting her eyebrows. “With Sara.” Her words had the desired effect, and Rafe shrugged, still studying her as he stepped out of her way. But he held the door so she could enter. She brushed past him, stepping into the hallway, as she tried to ignore the fact that she was suddenly sweltering inside her own coat. She told herself it was just the furnace, though, and had nothing to do with her humiliation over falling. Or with the presence of the brooding dark-haired boy. When they reached the end of the long hallway, Rafe pulled out a thick plastic card from his back pocket. As he held it in front of the black pad mounted on the wall beside a door, a small red light flickered to green and the door clicked. He pushed it open and led the way through. Security, Violet thought. Whatever it is they do here, they need security. Violet glanced up and saw a small camera mounted in the corner above the door. If she were Chelsea, she would have flashed the peace sign-or worse-a message for whoever was watching on the other end. But she was Violet, so instead she hurried after Rafe before the door closed and she was locked out.

So – I am n-nothing more than – than a bloody job?! On top of not knowing why you must look after me – you only jumped at the chance to help me because your – that V-Vampire thought you couldn’t?! What are you, some – some child?!” “I am no child, human!” “Oh I would not have thought so,” she breathed condescendingly sending his blood to boil despite the ring, “if it were not for the fact that only children react so wondrously juvenile when faced with such a choice! You bargain my life over a show of bravado! And where is your brother, Christian?! He has not been here to see your brilliant work as my watcher, has he?!

Philosophy is the theory of multiplicities, each of which is composed of actual and virtual elements. Purely actual objects do not exist. Every actual surrounds itself with a cloud of virtual images. This cloud is composed of a series of more or less extensive coexisting circuits, along which the virtual images are distributed, and around which they run. These virtuals vary in kind as well as in their degree of proximity from the actual particles by which they are both emitted and absorbed. They are called virtual in so far as their emission and absorption, creation and destruction, occur in a period of time shorter than the shortest continuous period imaginable; it is this very brevity that keeps them subject to a principle of uncertainty or indetermination. The virtuals, encircling the actual, perpetually renew themselves by emitting yet others, with which they are in turn surrounded and which go on in turn to react upon the actual: ‘in the heart of the cloud of the virtual there is a virtual of a yet higher order ... every virtual particle surrounds itself with a virtual cosmos and each in its turn does likewise indefinitely.’ It is the dramatic identity of their dynamics that makes a perception resemble a particle: an actual perception surrounds itself with a cloud of virtual images, distributed on increasingly remote, increasingly large, moving circuits, which both make and unmake each other. These are memories of different sorts, but they are still called virtual images in that their speed or brevity subjects them too to a principle of the unconsciousness. It is by virtue of their mutual inextricability that virtual images are able to react upon actual objects. From this perspective, the virtual images delimit a continuum, whether one takes all of the circles together or each individually, a spatium determined in each case by the maximum of time imaginable. The varyingly dense layers of the actual object correspond to these, more or less extensive, circles of virtual images. These layers, whilst themselves virtual, and upon which the actual object becomes itself virtual, constitute the total impetus of the object. The plane of immanence, upon which the dissolution of the actual object itself occurs, is itself constituted when both object and image are virtual. But the process of actualization undergone by the actual is one which has as great an effect on the image as it does on the object. The continuum of virtual images is fragmented and the spatium cut up according to whether the temporal decompositions are regular or irregular. The total impetus of the virtual object splits into forces corresponding to the partial continuum, and the speeds traversing the cut-up spatium. The virtual is never independent of the singularities which cut it up and divide it out on the plane of immanence. As Leibniz has shown, force is as much a virtual in the process of being actualized as the space through which it travels. The plane is therefore divided into a multiplicity of planes according to the cuts in the continuum, and to the divisions of force which mark the actualization of the virtual. But all the planes merge into one following the path which leads to the actual. The plane of immanence includes both the virtual and its actualization simultaneously, without there being any assignable limit between the two. The actual is the complement or the product, the object of actualization, which has nothing but virtual as its subject. Actualization belongs to the virtual. The actualization of the virtual is singularity whereas the actual itself is individuality constituted. The actual falls from the plane like a fruit, whist the actualization relates it back to the plane as if to that which turns the object back into a subject.

Neoliberalism makes citizens into consumers. The freedom of the citizen yields to the passivity of the consumer. As consumers, today’s voters have no real interest in politics - in actively shaping the community. They possess neither the will nor the ability to participate in communal, political action. They react only passively to politics: grumbling and complaining, as consumers do about a commodity or service they do not like. Politicians and parties follow this logic of consumption too. They have to *deliver* In the process, they become nothing more than suppliers; their task is to satisfy voters who are consumers or customers.

The comparatively innocent hero still shows some marked imperfection or defect – irresolution, precipitancy, pride, credulousness, excessive simplicity, excessive susceptibility to sexual emotions, and the like. These defects or imperfections are certainly, in the wide sense of the word, evil, and they contribute decisively to the conflict and catastrophe. And the inference is again obvious. The ultimate power which shows itself disturbed by this evil and reacts against it, must have a nature alien to it. Indeed its reaction is so vehement and ‘relentless’ that it would seem to be bent on nothing short of good in perfection, and to be ruthless in its demand for it.

We are able to overcome grievances towards others when we understand that everyone is acting from their own fallible experiences in life. You can only react to anything, from your own storage of life experience that's happened to you thus far. No one can possibly react to anything beyond their own personal storage box of life. That's why it's bound to be fallible, bound to hurt someone else who's coming from somewhere else, and that's also why sometimes something explodes! Nothing is ever personally about us. We all look back ten years later and then see what we could have said or done differently. Better. It's the same way for everybody, and that's how we can let things go.

Jay came over as soon as Violet called him; she didn’t even have to give him a reason. He was there in less than ten minutes. Of course, he’d heard about what had happened to Hailey. Everyone had. Buckley was a small town, and news traveled fast . . . especially bad news. When he got there she told him what she was thinking about doing. It was nothing dangerous, at least as far as she was concerned, and she hadn’t expected Jay to disagree with her about it. So when he did, she was more than a little bit surprised by his stubborn reaction. “No way,” he insisted, and his voice left little room for argument. “There is no way you’re going to go around looking for this guy.” Violet was shocked by the tone of his voice, and by the harsh look he shot at her. She thought maybe he misunderstood her plan, so she tried to explain it to him again. “Jay, I’m only going to public places, like malls and parks, to see if I can get a feeling for who this guy is. Who knows, maybe he goes to places like that to find them, maybe he hands out there waiting to pick out a girl to . . . you know, kidnap.” She tried to make her argument sound logical, but there was a desperate edge to her voice. “I’m not going out alone . . . you can go with me. We’ll just hang out at different places to see if we can find him. And if we do, we’ll call my uncle. It’s not like we’d do anything stupid.” “’Anything stupid’ would be going out to look for a killer. I won’t let you go looking for trouble, Violet. This guy is dangerous, and you need to leave it to the cops. They know what they’re doing. And they’re armed.” He sounded like he thought she’d lost her mind, and maybe she had, but she had already made her decision. “Look, I’m doing this. I was just asking you to come along with me.” “You’re not,” he insisted. “Even if I have to tell your uncle and your parents what you’re planning. I promise you, you’re not doing it.” She could feel her temper flaring. “You can’t stop me, Jay. If you tell on me, then I’ll lie. I’ll bat my eyes innocently and promise not to go looking for this guy. But I swear to you that every chance I get, even if I have to sneak out of the house to do it, I will be trying to find him.” She stood up, meaning to glare back at him, but instead found herself craning her neck just so she could see his face. The awkward position didn’t steal nay of her thunder. She refused to back down. “I mean it, Jay. You can’t stop me.” Jay glared incredulously back at her. Emotions ranging from disbelief to frustration and back to disbelief again flashed darkly across his face. He seemed to be fighting with himself now. But when she heard him sigh, and then saw him raking his hand restlessly through his hair, she knew she’d won. His icy determination seemed to melt right before her eyes. “Damn it, Violet.” He sighed brusquely, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tightly. “What choice do I have?” he asked as he practically squeezed the life out of her. She wasn’t sure how to react to him now. It definitely wasn’t a tender hug, but the close contact made her undisclosed desires stir all the same. She couldn’t help wondering if he felt even a fraction of what she did. His arms were strong, and she felt safe in the circle of them. She’d never imaged that she could feel so comfortable and so uncomfortable at the same time. She waited within the space of his embrace to see where this was going. “So, how is this going to work?” he demanded roughly against the top of her head.

You should have know this, Mari, that I would help you." She was smiling again as she wiped her eyes. "Maybe I should have known. But I didn't, Alain. You are a Mage, and sometimes my memories of what happened in the waste and in Ringhmon and at Dorcastle have seemed like some kind of hallucination. I didn't know how you would react when I found you. I was actually...Alain, I was afraid that when I found you I'd discover that you'd gone back to being like you were when we first met. That you'd just look at me as if I didn't exist and walk away. I should have realized that wouldn't happen. I should have known that you'd help without question. You keep saying that truth doesn't exist, buy you are true. There's nothing false about you.

I’m okay. I think all this isolation, and all the extra security stuff, is just starting to wear on me. I’m going a little stir-crazy being cooped up all the time.” She tried to explain her sulky mood. “Especially with Homecoming this weekend. The idea of sitting around here, while everyone else is out having fun, just sucks.” He didn’t react the way she’d expected him to react. She’d expected some more sympathy, and maybe even some suggestive comments about the two of them being left alone together. What she didn’t expect was for him to smile at her. But he did. And it was his sideways smile, which told Violet that he knew something she didn’t. “What?” she demanded adamantly. He grinned. He was definitely keeping something from her. “Tell me!” she insisted, glowering at him. “I don’t know . . .” he teased her. “I’m not sure you deserve it.” She punched him in the arm for making her beg. “Please, just tell me.” He laughed at her. “Fine. I give up. Bully.” He pretended to rub his arm where she’d hit him. “What if I were to tell you that . . .”—he dragged it out, making her lean closer in anticipation, his crooked smile lighting up his face—“. . . we’re still going to the dance?” Violet was speechless. That wasn’t at all what she’d expected him to say. “Yeah, right,” she retorted cynically. “My parents barely let me go to school, let alone go to the dance.” “You’re right, they didn’t want you to go, but we talked about it, and even your uncle Stephen helped out. The football game was definitely out of the question; there are just too many people coming and going, and there’re no restrictions for getting in. But the dance is at school, in the gym. Only students and their dates can get in, and your uncle said he was already planning to have extra security there. So, as long as I promise to keep a close eye on you . . . which I do”—his voice suggested that the last part had nothing to do with keeping her safe, and Violet felt her cheeks flushing in response—“your parents have agreed to let you go.” She glanced down at her ankle, double-wrapped in Ace bandages, and completely useless. “But I can’t dance.” She felt crestfallen. He slid his finger beneath her shin and lifted it up so that she was staring into his eyes. “I don’t care at all if we dance. I just want to take my girlfriend”—his emphasis on the word gave her goose bumps, and she smiled—“to Homecoming.” They stayed there like that, with their eyes locked and unspoken meaning passing between them, for several long, electrifying moments. Violet was the first to break the spell. “Lissie’ll be there,” she stated in a voice that was devoid of any real jealousy. Jay shook his head, still gazing at her intently. “I won’t even notice her. I won’t be able to take my eyes off you.” Violet was glad she was already sitting, because his words made her feel weak and fluttery. The corner of her mouth twitched upward with satisfaction. “Not if I have any say in it, you won’t,” she answered.

Close friendships, Gandhi says, are dangerous, because “friends react on one another” and through loyalty to a friend one can be led into wrong-doing. This is unquestionably true. Moreover, if one is to love God, or to love humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to any individual person. This again is true, and it marks the point at which the humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable. To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. The autobiography leaves it uncertain whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children, but at any rate it makes clear that on three occasions he was willing to let his wife or a child die rather than administer the animal food prescribed by the doctor. It is true that the threatened death never actually occurred, and also that Gandhi — with, one gathers, a good deal of moral pressure in the opposite direction — always gave the patient the choice of staying alive at the price of committing a sin: still, if the decision had been solely his own, he would have forbidden the animal food, whatever the risks might be. There must, he says, be some limit to what we will do in order to remain alive, and the limit is well on this side of chicken broth. This attitude is perhaps a noble one, but, in the sense which — I think — most people would give to the word, it is inhuman. The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid. There is an obvious retort to this, but one should be wary about making it. In this yogi-ridden age, it is too readily assumed that “non-attachment” is not only better than a full acceptance of earthly life, but that the ordinary man only rejects it because it is too difficult: in other words, that the average human being is a failed saint. It is doubtful whether this is true. Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for “non-attachment” is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work. But it is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly or the humanistic ideal is “higher”. The point is that they are incompatible. One must choose between God and Man, and all “radicals” and “progressives”, from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect chosen Man.

The couples who got divorced had only turned toward their partner’s bids 33 percent of the time. The couples who stayed together had turned toward 86 percent of the time.[1] It was an enormous difference—a statistical gap you rarely see in scientific studies. We’d found a major point of intervention. If we could help couples understand the importance of these little moments that might seem like nothing, just slipping by under the radar, we could really help people turn things around. How people reacted to their partner’s bids for connection was in fact the biggest predictor of happiness and relationship stability. These fleeting little moments, it turned out, spelled the difference between happiness and unhappiness, between lasting love and divorce.

I know nothing of the Other World, and I have the honesty to admit it. Other people know more about it than I do, and I'm incapable of proving that they're mistaken. I don't dream of imposing my philosophy on a village girl. Although religion does not aim at seeking for the truth, it is a kind of philosophy which can satisfy simple minds, and that does no harm to anyone. Everything is finally a matter of the feeling man has of his own impotence. In itself, this philosophy has nothing pernicious about it. The essential thing, really, is that man should know that salvation consists in the effort that each person makes to understand Providence and accept the laws of nature. Since all violent upheavals are a calamity, I would prefer the adaptation to be made without shocks. What could be longest left undisturbed are women's convents. The sense of the inner life brings people great enrichment. What we must do, then, is to extract from religions the poison they contain. In this respect, great progress has been made during recent centuries. The Church must be made to understand that her kingdom is not of this world. What an example Frederick the Great set when he reacted against the Church's claim to be allowed to interfere in matters of State ! The marginal notes, in his handwriting, which one finds on the pleas addressed to him by the pastors, have the value of judgments of Solomon. They're definitive. Our generals should make a practice of reading them daily. One is humiliated to see how slowly humanity progresses.

It takes some getting used to,' Mr. Forkle said. 'But what you're seeing is a visual representation of each other's moods.' 'So that means if I do this...' Keefe tickled Sophie's neck. 'GAH--everything just went supersonic!' Fitz said. Sophie snatched Keefe's wrist as he reached to tickle her again. 'Don't. You. Dare.' 'Whoa, now everything's red and ripply,' Fitz said. 'Is that because she's angry?' 'Precisely, Mr. Vacker. Every time her emotions shift, the patterns and colors will change. And with practice, you'll learn to interpret what you see.' 'Okay, but...can't they just say, "Hey, I'm feeling this?"' Keefe asked. 'People aren't always honest about their feelings--even with themselves,' Mr. Forkle told him. 'Plus, many telepathic missions involve stealth and secrecy. So for this exercise I'm going to need both of you to forget everything around you. Let the world drop away, leaving only you two.' Keefe sighed. 'Just tell them to stare into each other's eyes and they'll be good.' 'None of that, Mr. Sencen. From this moment on, you have one job and one job only: to judge their translations of the various emotions I'll be triggering.' 'Triggering how?' Sophie asked. 'You'll see soon enough. And you'll go first, Miss Foster. For this to work, Mr. Vacker, it's crucial that you not react externally. No yelling or thrashing or screaming or--' 'Uhhh, what are you going to do to me?' Fitz asked. 'Nothing you won't survive. Consider it an exercise in self-control. And try not to listen to his thoughts, Miss Foster. Study only the changes in his emotional center and make your deduction. We begin now.' Sophie closed her eyes and focus on the colors weaving around Fitz's mind. She was about to ask if she was missing something when the pattern exploded into a swirl of pale blue tendrils. The color felt to bright to be sad, but also too wild to be peaceful. 'Tension?' she guessed. 'Kinda close,' Keefe told her. The laughter in his voice made her wonder what had happened to poor Fitz. She tried to think of other emotions as his mind turned electric blue. 'Shock?' she guessed. 'That counts,' Keefe said. 'Though the best answer would've been "surprise."' 'Is that an emotion?' she asked. 'Indeed it is,' Mr. Forkle said. 'One of the most common emotions you'll experience as you navigate someone's mind--hence why I chose it as our starting point.' 'Can I talk now?' Fitz asked. 'Because that was seriously disgusting!' Sophie opened her eyes and tried not to laugh when she saw red fruit smashed all over Fitz's face. He wiped his cheeks on his sleeves, but that only smeared the pulp. 'I think I'm going to like this assignment,' Keefe said. 'What else can we fling at Fitz?' 'Nothing for the moment,' Mr. Forkle told him. 'It's his turn to interpret. Everyone close your eyes. And remember, no cues of any kind, Miss Foster.' Sophie counted the seconds, bracing for the worst--and when nothing chaned, she opened her eyes and found Mr. Forkle with his finger over his lips in a 'shhh' sign. 'Um...confusion,' Fitz guessed. 'That works,' Keefe said. 'It started as anticipation, but then it shifted.' 'Very good,' Mr. Forkle said. 'And well done, Mr. Sencen. I wasn't sure you'd recognize confusion. It's one of the more challenging emotions for Empaths.' 'Maybe on other people,' Keefe said. 'But on Foster it's easy. Why are her emotions so much stronger?' 'Honestly, I'm not sure,' Mr. Forkle admitted. 'I suspect it stems from the combination of her inflicting ability and her human upbringing. But it was one of the surprises of her development. Much like her teleporting. Okay, Miss Foster, it's your turn to guess again.' She closed her eyes and watched as the lines of color in Fitz's mind blossomed to a snowflake of purple. 'Pride?' she guessed. Keefe laughed. 'Wow, add more fail points to Sophitz.' 'Quiet,' Mr. Forkle told him.

You say, you don't have any prejudice! Let's put that to test, shall we! Read the following phrases, pausing a few seconds after each. Hallelujah! ¡Viva la libertad! Shabbat Shalom! Allahu Akbar! Black Lives Matter! We're Here, We're Queer! My body, my decision! Now bring your faculty of reason into action, and think, which of the terms induced a negative emotional response in your mind? It's nothing out of the ordinary, it's just common animal nature. How your brain got conditioned to react in such a way that's a different matter. The main thing is, your brain just reacted exactly like the brain of pavlov's dog every time it heard the bell. The only difference is that, a dog doesn't have further brain capacity to question such conditioning, but a human does.

have to give it, especially if that engagement seems emotionally charged. When you decide not to dignify an irrational communication with a response, it’s about preserving your personal dignity and mental clarity. Just because someone throws the ball doesn’t mean you have to catch it. Think of it this way: How would you feel if you sent someone an emotionally charged email but never received a response? You’d initially be confused. First, you’d double-check your Sent folder to make sure it went through. Then you’d start obsessing over the audible “ding” of your incoming messages, thinking it might be their response. Finally, you’d begin wondering if they even got your electronic tirade, somehow found a way to block your emails, or what else they might be doing that was more important than sending you a reply. In the end, you’d feel embarrassed, your pride deflated, and the fire you had to engage in keyboard karate would burn out. That’s the power of not reacting. When faced with a situation in which you’re being provoked, take a moment to let your emotions pass, and then ask yourself, “Do I really need to respond?” Assess the situation from a logical vantage point—rather than an emotional one—and base your decisions on what will ultimately benefit you in the long run. This mental strategy, however, isn’t solely for dealing with insults or slander. It’s just as effective when trying to handle people who constantly want your time and attention. Sometimes you simply don’t have it to give. Or giving it will distract you from things that are more important. When it comes to time allocation, it’s good to separate the signals from the noise. If everything in your life is important, then nothing is.

You should leave your wife more time.” “She has all day available.” “I’m not kidding. If you don’t, you’re guilty not only on a human level but also on a political one.” “What’s the crime?” “The waste of intelligence. A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women’s intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn’t realize it.” I waited in silence for Pietro to respond. My husband reacted with sarcasm. “Elena can cultivate her intelligence when and how she likes, the essential thing is that she not take time from me.” “If she doesn’t take it from you, then who can she take it from?” Pietro frowned. “When the task we give ourselves has the urgency of passion, there’s nothing that can keep us from completing it.” I felt wounded, I whispered with a false smile: “My husband is saying that I have no true interest.

(BDO) October 22: The Dollar Squeeze A debt is a short cash position—i.e., a commitment to deliver cash that one doesn’t have. Because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, and because of the dollar surplus recycling that has taken place over the past few years…lots of dollar denominated debt has been built up around the world. So, as dollar liquidity has become tight, there has been a dollar squeeze. This squeeze…is hitting dollar-indebted emerging markets (particularly those of commodity exporters) and is supporting the dollar. When this short squeeze ends, which will happen when either the debtors default or get the liquidity to prevent their default, the US dollar will decline. Until then, we expect to remain long the USD against the euro and emerging market currencies. The actual price of anything is always equal to the amount of spending on the item being exchanged divided by the quantity of the item being sold (i.e., P = $/Q), so a) knowing who is spending and who is selling what quantity (and ideally why) is the ideal way to get at the price at any time, and b) prices don’t always react to changes in fundamentals as they happen in the ways characterized by those who seek to explain price movements in connection with unfolding news. During this period, volatility remained extremely high for reasons that had nothing to do with fundamentals and everything to do with who was getting in and out of positions for various reasons—like being squeezed, no longer being squeezed, rebalancing portfolios, etc. For example, on Tuesday, October 28, the S&P gained more than 10 percent and the next day it fell by 1.1 percent when the Fed cut interest rates by another 50 basis points. Closing the month, the S&P was down 17 percent—the largest single-month drop since October 1987.

I also suspect that he loves you." Trying to suppress the anguished hope that flared in her heart, Lauren turned her face to the stained-glass window near their table. "What makes you think so?" "To begin with, he isn't treating you the way he normally treats the women in his life." "I know that. He's nice to the others," Lauren said bitterly. "Exactly!" Mary agreed. "He's always treated his women with an attitude of amused indulgence...of tolerant indifference. While an affair lasts he's attentive and charming. When a woman begins to bore him he courteously but firmly dismisses her from his life. Not once to my knowledge has any woman touched an emotion in him deeper than affection or desire. I've seen them try in the most inventive ways to make him jealous,yet he has reacted with nothing stronger than amusement, or occasionally exasperation. Which brings us to you." Lauren blushed at being correctly categorized with the other woen Nick had taken to bed,but she knew it was useless to deny it. "You," Mary continued quietly, "have evoked genuine anger in him.He is furious with you and with himself. Yet he doesn't dismiss you fro his life; he doesn't even send you downstairs. Doesn't it seem odd to you that he won't let you work for Jim,and simply have you come upstairs to act as translator when Rossi's call finally comes through?" "I think he's keeping me up there for revenge," Lauren said grimly. "i think he is too.Perhaps he's trying to get back at you for what you're making him feel.Or possibly he's trying to find fault with you,so that he won't feel the way he does any longer. I don't know. Nick is a complex man. Jim, Ericka and I are all very close to him, and yet he keeps each one of us at a slight distance. There's a part of himself that he will not share with others, not even us.

In attunement, it is the infant who leads and the mother who follows. “Where their roles differ is in the timing of their responses,” writes John Bowlby, one of the century’s great psychiatric researchers. The infant initiates the interaction or withdraws from it according to his own rhythms, Bowlby found, while the “mother regulates her behaviour so that it meshes with his... Thus she lets him call the tune and by a skillful interweaving of her own responses with his creates a dialogue.” The tense or depressed mothering adult will not be able to accompany the infant into relaxed, happy spaces. He may also not fully pick up signs of the infant’s emotional distress, or may not be able to respond to them as effectively as he would wish. The ADD child’s difficulty reading social cues likely originates from her relationship cues not being read by the nurturing adult, who was distracted by stress. In the attunement interaction, not only does the mother follow the child, but she also permits the child to temporarily interrupt contact. When the interaction reaches a certain stage of intensity for the infant, he will look away to avoid an uncomfortably high level of arousal. Another interaction will then begin. A mother who is anxious may react with alarm when the infant breaks off contact, may try to stimulate him, to draw him back into the interaction. Then the infant’s nervous system is not allowed to “cool down,” and the attunement relationship is hampered. Infants whose caregivers were too stressed, for whatever reason, to give them the necessary attunement contact will grow up with a chronic tendency to feel alone with their emotions, to have a sense — rightly or wrongly — that no one can share how they feel, that no one can “understand.” Attunement is the quintessential component of a larger process, called attachment. Attachment is simply our need to be close to somebody. It represents the absolute need of the utterly and helplessly vulnerable human infant for secure closeness with at least one nourishing, protective and constantly available parenting figure. Essential for survival, the drive for attachment is part of the very nature of warm-blooded animals in infancy, especially. of mammals. In human beings, attachment is a driving force of behavior for longer than in any other animal. For most of us it is present throughout our lives, although we may transfer our attachment need from one person — our parent — to another — say, a spouse or even a child. We may also attempt to satisfy the lack of the human contact we crave by various other means, such as addictions, for example, or perhaps fanatical religiosity or the virtual reality of the Internet. Much of popular culture, from novels to movies to rock or country music, expresses nothing but the joys or the sorrows flowing from satisfactions or disappointments in our attachment relationships. Most parents extend to their children some mixture of loving and hurtful behavior, of wise parenting and unskillful, clumsy parenting. The proportions vary from family to family, from parent to parent. Those ADD children whose needs for warm parental contact are most frustrated grow up to be adults with the most severe cases of ADD. Already at only a few months of age, an infant will register by facial expression his dejection at the mother’s unconscious emotional withdrawal, despite the mother’s continued physical presence. “(The infant) takes delight in Mommy’s attention,” writes Stanley Greenspan, “and knows when that source of delight is missing. If Mom becomes preoccupied or distracted while playing with the baby, sadness or dismay settles in on the little face.

The central figure of Buddhism is not a god but a human being, Siddhartha Gautama. According to Buddhist tradition, Gautama was heir to a small Himalayan kingdom, sometime around 500 BC. The young prince was deeply affected by the suffering evident all around him. He saw that men and women, children and old people, all suffer not just from occasional calamities such as war and plague, but also from anxiety, frustration and discontent, all of which seem to be an inseparable part of the human condition. People pursue wealth and power, acquire knowledge and possessions, beget sons and daughters, and build houses and palaces. Yet no matter what they achieve, they are never content. Those who live in poverty dream of riches. Those who have a million want two million. Those who have two million want 10 million. Even the rich and famous are rarely satisfied. They too are haunted by ceaseless cares and worries, until sickness, old age and death put a bitter end to them. Everything that one has accumulated vanishes like smoke. Life is a pointless rat race. But how to escape it? At the age of twenty-nine Gautama slipped away from his palace in the middle of the night, leaving behind his family and possessions. He travelled as a homeless vagabond throughout northern India, searching for a way out of suffering. He visited ashrams and sat at the feet of gurus but nothing liberated him entirely – some dissatisfaction always remained. He did not despair. He resolved to investigate suffering on his own until he found a method for complete liberation. He spent six years meditating on the essence, causes and cures for human anguish. In the end he came to the realisation that suffering is not caused by ill fortune, by social injustice, or by divine whims. Rather, suffering is caused by the behaviour patterns of one’s own mind. Gautama’s insight was that no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction. When the mind experiences something distasteful it craves to be rid of the irritation. When the mind experiences something pleasant, it craves that the pleasure will remain and will intensify. Therefore, the mind is always dissatisfied and restless. This is very clear when we experience unpleasant things, such as pain. As long as the pain continues, we are dissatisfied and do all we can to avoid it. Yet even when we experience pleasant things we are never content. We either fear that the pleasure might disappear, or we hope that it will intensify. People dream for years about finding love but are rarely satisfied when they find it. Some become anxious that their partner will leave; others feel that they have settled cheaply, and could have found someone better. And we all know people who manage to do both.

It isn’t when we find the secret ingredient. That is to know that this “I” is a fictitious entity that is always ready to wither away the moment we stop sustaining it. We don’t have to go to a holy place to experience this. All we have to do is simply sit and pay attention to our breath, allowing ourselves to let go of all of our fantasies and mental images. Then we can experience connecting to our inner world. As we begin to rest and pay attention, we begin to see everything clearly. We see that the self has no basis or solidity. It is a complete mental fabrication. We also realize that everything we believe to be true about our life is nothing but stories, fabricated around false identifications. “I am an American. I am thirty years old. I am a teacher, a taxi driver, a lawyer . . . whatever.” All of these ideas or identities are stories that have never really happened in the realm of our true nature. Watching the dissolution of these individual stories is not painful. It is not painful to see everything dissolving in front of us. It is not like watching our house burn down. That is very painful because we don’t want to lose everything. Spiritual dissolution is not like that because what is being destroyed is nothing but this sense of false identities. They were never real in the first place. Try this. Pay attention to your breath in silence. Look at your mind. Immediately we see that thoughts are popping up. Don’t react to them. Just keep watching your mind. Notice that there is a gap between each thought. Notice that there is a space between the place where the last thought came to an end and the next one hasn’t arrived yet. In this space there is no “I” or “me.” That’s it. It might be hard to believe how simple it is to realize the truth. As a matter of fact the Tibetan lama Ju Mipham said that the only reason we don’t realize the truth is because it is too simple.

I know there is no such thing as forever. Someday we will die and our bones will turn to dust. Someday humankind will be gone and the earth will be ruled by sentient rabbits, or by the machines we leave behind, or by creatures we can't even imagine. And then the sun will go supernova and swallow the earth and all the other planets, and the universe will continue to expand until the bonds of gravity loosen and all things drift away into the darkness, and all stars will go silent and cold, and matter itself will break down into nothingness. Time will end, and there will be nothing but vast, cold, empty space. The atoms that once composed our bodies will be dispersed across unimaginable distances. But then, subatomic particles are connected in ways we don't understand. Two particles that have interacted physically are bound by quantum entanglement. They will react to each other even after being separated, no matter the distance, linked by intangible cords across space and time.

Instead, the battle is joined at the level of pure abstraction. The issue, the newest Right tells us, is freedom itself, not the doings of the subprime lenders or the ways the bond-rating agencies were compromised over the course of the last decade. Details like that may have crashed the economy, but to the renascent Right they are almost completely irrelevant. What matters is a given politician’s disposition toward free markets and, by extension, toward the common people of the land, whose faithful vicar the market is. Now, there is nothing really novel about the idea that free markets are the very essence of freedom. What is new is the glorification of this idea at the precise moment when free-market theory has proven itself to be a philosophy of ruination and fraud. The revival of the Right is as extraordinary as it would be if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear power plants in the days after the Three Mile Island disaster; if we had reacted to Watergate by making Richard Nixon a national hero.

And James could feel the pressure build behind his eyes as tears threatened to break through. He squeezed his grandmother's hand. "I've heard my mother call my father weak my whole life, but what if I'm just like him?" James said. He expected his grandmother to react, but she remained silent. "I want to be my own nation." He knew she wouldn't be able to understand what he said, and yet it seemed that she had heard him. Even though he spoke in a whisper, she heard him. His grandmother didn't speak at first, just watched him. "We are all weak most of the time," she said finally. "Look at the baby. Born to his mother, he learns how to eat from her, how to walk, talk , hunt, run. He does not invent new ways. He just continues with the old. This is how we all come to the world, James. Weak and needy, desperate to learn how to be a person." She smiled at him. "But if we do not like the person we have learned to be, should we just sit in front of our fufu, doing nothing? I think, James, that maybe it is possible to make a new way.

Hey, did you hear about Brad Miller?" he asked, already forgetting about the Lissie conversation. "He got his car taken away for getting another speeding ticket. Of course he tried to tell his parents that it was a setup." Violet laughed. "Yeah, because the police have nothing better to do than to plan a sting operation targeting eleventh-grade idiots." She was more than willing to go along with this diversion from conversations about Jay and his many admirers. Jay laughed too, shaking his head. "You're so cold-hearted," he said to Violet, shoving her a little but playing along. "How's he supposed to go cruising for unsuspecting freshman and sophomores without a car? What willing girl is going to ride on the handlebars of his ten-speed?" "I don't see you driving anything but your mom's car yet. At least he has a bike," she said, turning on him now. He pushed her again. "Hey!" he tried to defend himself. "I'm still saving! Not all of us are born with a silver spoon in our mouths." They were both laughing, hard now. The silver spoon joke had been used before, whenever one of them had something the other one didn't. "Right!" Violet protested. "Have you seen my car?" This time she shoved him, and a full-scale war broke out on the couch. "Poor little rich girl!" Jay accused, grabbing her arm and pulling her down. She giggled and tried to give him the dreaded "dead leg" by hitting him with her knuckle in the thigh. But he was too strong, and what used to be a fairly even matchup was now more like an annihilation of Violet's side. "Oh, yeah. Weren't you the one"-she gasped, still giggling and thrashing to break free from his suddenly way-too-strong grip on her, just as his hand was almost at the sensitive spot along the side of her rib cage-"who got to go to Hawaii..." She bucked beneath him, trying to knock him off her. "...For spring break...last..." And then he started to tickle her while she was pinned beneath him, and her last word came out in a scream: "...YEAR?!" That was how her aunt and uncle found them. Violet never heard the key in the dead bolt, or the sound of the door opening up. And Jay was just as ignorant of their arrival as she was. So when they were caught like that, in a mass of tangled limbs, with Jay's face just inches from hers, as she giggled and squirmed against him, it should have meant they were going to get in trouble. And if it had been any other teenage boy and girl, they would have. But it wasn't another couple. It was Violet and Jay...and this was business as usual for the two of them. Even her aunt and uncle knew that there was no possibility they were doing anything they shouldn't. The only reprimand they got was her aunt shushing them to keep it down before they woke the kids. After Jay left, Violet took the thirty dollars that her uncle gave her and headed out. As she drove home, she tried to ignore the feelings of frustration she had about the way her aunt and uncle had reacted-or rather hadn't reaction-to finding her and Jay together on the couch. For some reason it made her feel worse to know that even the grown-ups around them didn't think there was a chance they could ever be a real couple.

When I Want to Be More Like Jesus Whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked. 1 JOHN 2:5-6 NOTHING REVEALS to a woman how close or far away she is from being like Jesus than the relationship she has with her husband. The way she thinks, talks, acts, and reacts around him—or in response to him—shows her how far she has to go in order to become all that God wants her to be. Marriage is one of the true testing grounds for what is in all of us. Any selfishness, inconsideration, or lack of love in either a husband or wife will be revealed as they live together day after day, year after year. But if ever a woman doesn’t like what she sees happening in herself with regard to her marriage relationship, she can seek to be more like Jesus, so that His love, selflessness, and kindness will grow in her and be revealed to those around her—especially her husband. (A man can and should do the same thing, of course, but this is about you right now.) Ask God to help you walk as Jesus walked. The only way to actually do that is by the power of the Holy Spirit. If you have received Jesus, then you have His Holy Spirit in you, and you can live God’s way because the Holy Spirit enables you to do so. The way to have the perfect love of Jesus grow in you is to be daily in God’s Word so you can hear from Him about how to live, and you can read about the way Jesus lived, and you can let the Word live in you so you can be led by God’s Spirit to make the right choices about how to live your life. The Bible says if we say we know God and do not keep His commandments, we have no truth in us (1 John 2:4). Thank God that you have the mind of Christ and therefore all you need to become more Christlike. Ask the Holy Spirit to lead you and teach you and enable you to have the same compassion, selflessness, forgiveness, mercy, and love toward your husband that Jesus has toward you. Ask Him to fill you with His truth. My Prayer to God LORD, help me to think like You, act like You, and talk like You—with compassion, love, grace, and mercy. Take away everything in me that is not of You—all anger, bitterness, criticism, and lack of love. Remove every tendency in me to function in the flesh and lash out with my words or actions. Take away any desire in me to withdraw from my husband, whether physically, emotionally, or mentally. I know that holding myself apart from him is not what You want me to do, for Your nature is to have us draw close to each other as You draw close to us, and I want to imitate You. Lead me in Your ways, Lord. Teach me what Your unconditional love means and help me to display it. Fill me so full of Your love and forgiveness that it overflows from me to my husband. Mold my heart into the way You want it to be. Change me every time I read Your Word. Help me to be so sold out to You that I cannot move or speak apart from the love You put in my heart. Lord, You are beautiful, kind, gentle, faithful, true, unselfish, wise, lovely, peaceful, good, and holy. You are light and life. Enable me to be more like You. In Jesus’ name I pray.

She was still standing there several moments later when Ian walked in to invite her to ride with him. “Still trying to find your answer, sweetheart?” he asked with a sympathetic grin, mistaking the cause of her wary stare. “No, I found mine,” she said, her voice unintentionally accusing as she thrust both pieces of paper toward him. “What I would like to know,” she continued, unable to tear her gaze from him, “is how it happens to be the same answer you arrived at in a matter of moments.” His grin faded, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, ignoring the papers in her outthrust hand. His expression carefully impassive, he said, “That answer is a little more difficult than the one I wrote down for you-“ “You can do this-calculate all those figures in your mind? In moments?” He nodded curtly, and when Elizabeth continued to stare at him warily, as if he was a being of unknown origin, his face hardened. In a clipped, cool voice he said, “I would appreciate it if you would stop staring at me as if I’m a freak.” Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open at his tone and his words. “I’m not.” “Yes,” he said implacably. “You are. Which is why I haven’t told you before this.” Embarrassed regret surged through her at the understandable conclusion he’d drawn from her reaction. Recovering her composure, she started around the desk toward him. “What you saw on my face was wonder and awe, no matter how it must have seemed.” “The last thing I want from you is ‘awe,’” he said tightly, and Elizabeth belatedly realized that, while he didn’t care what anyone else thought of him, her reaction to all this was obviously terribly important to him. Rapidly concluding that he’d evidently had some experience with other people’s reaction to what must surely be a form of genius-and which struck them as “freakish”-she bit her lip, trying to decide what to say. When nothing came to mind, she simply let love guide her and reacted without artifice. Leaning back against the desk, she sent him an amused, sidelong smile and said, “I gather you can calculate almost as rapidly as you can read?” His response was short and chilly. “Not quite.” “I see,” she continued lightly. “I would guess there are close to ten thousand books in your library here. Have you read them all?” “No.” She nodded thoughtfully, but her eyes danced with admiring laughter as she continued, “Well, you’ve been quite busy the past few weeks-dancing attendance on me. No doubt that’s kept you from finishing the last thousand or two.” His face softened as she asked merrily, “Are you planning to read them all?” With relief, she saw the answering smile tugging at his lips. “I thought I’d attend to that next week,” he replied with sham gravity. “A worthy endeavor,” she agreed. “I hope you won’t start without me. I’d like to watch.” Ian’s shout of laughter was cut short as he snatched her into his arms and buried his face in her fragrant hair, his hands clenching her to him as if he could absorb her sweetness into himself. “Do you have any other extraordinary skills I ought to know about, my lord?” she whispered, holding him as tightly as he was holding her. The laugher in his voice was replaced by tender solemnity. “I’m rather good,” he whispered, “at loving you.

There’s more, you know,” he whispered, letting his breath caress her ear. “I’m sure there must be,” she replied, her voice mere breath. “You are?” he asked teasingly, squeezing her again. “I’m not so green that I think one can make a baby from what we’ve been doing.” “I’d be happy to show you the rest,” he murmured. “Not— Oh!” He’d squeezed again, this time allowing his fingers to tickle her skin. He loved that she couldn’t think when he touched her breasts. “You were saying?” he prompted, nibbling on her neck. “I— I was?” He nodded, the faint stubble of his beard brushing her throat. “I’m sure you were. But then again, perhaps I’d rather not hear. You’d begun with the word ‘not.’ Surely,” he added with a flick of his tongue against the underside of her chin, “not a word that belongs between us at a time like this. But”— his tongue moved down the line of her throat to the hollow above her collarbone—“ I digress.” “You— you do?” He nodded. “I believe I was trying to determine what pleases you, as all good husbands should do.” She said nothing, but her breathing quickened. He smiled against her skin. “What, for example, about this?” He flattened his hand so that he was no longer cupping her, instead just letting his palm graze lightly over her nipple. “Anthony!” she choked out. “Good,” he said, moving to her neck, nudging her chin up so that she was more open to him. “I’m glad we’re back to Anthony. ‘My lord’ is so formal, don’t you think? Far too formal for this.” And then he did what he’d been fantasizing about for weeks. He lowered his head to her breast and took her into his mouth, tasting, suckling, teasing, reveling in each gasp he heard spill forth from her lips, each spasm of desire he felt shivering across her body. He loved that she reacted this way, thrilled that he did this to her. “So good,” he murmured, his breath hot and moist against her skin. “You taste so damn good.” “Anthony,” she said, her voice hoarse, “Are you sure—” He put a finger to her lips without even lifting his face to look at her. “I have no idea what you’re asking, but whatever it is”— he moved his attention to her other breast—“ I’m sure.” -Anthony & Kate

Jesus… is this about him? Hastings?” “No, this is about you.” She points at me. “You and your innocent act… and your money, and your things. The words you say—the jokes, the laughs, the smiles you give her that she eats right up, and ugh, your face.” “My face?” “Your stupid fucking face,” she says, running her hands through her hair as she groans, those words startling me. Kennedy doesn’t curse. “Your face is everywhere. I’m sick of it!” “You’re sick of my face.” “Yes!” “There’s not much I can do about that.” “You can get out of my head,” she says. “Stop being there all the time!” I laugh at that, because it’s so damn absurd, but that’s the wrong thing to do. Her eyes narrow as she stares me down, looking like she wants to hit me right now. “I hate you,” she says, her voice shaking. “I’ve never hated someone as much as I hate you, Jonathan.” Those words, they wake me right up. I’m no longer laughing. There’s nothing funny about it. I got under her skin, and with the two of us already on shaky ground, I know that’s dangerous. She turns to leave, like she’s going to walk away, but I grab her arm to stop her. “Come on, don’t be like that…” “Don’t touch me,” she says, ripping from my grasp. I let go as I stand up, stepping toward her. “Just… wait a minute… talk to me.” “There’s nothing left to say.” “I’ll be goddamned.” I grab her arm again before she can walk out. “You can’t tell me you hate me and then leave. That’s bullshit. You bust up in here while I’m asleep to yell at me…” “You deserve it!” “Maybe so, but still…” “Still nothing,” she says, turning to me again, getting right in my face. “I hate you. That’s it. There’s nothing else to say. I hate everything about you. Your voice, your face… I hate it. Why aren’t you going away?” “Because I can’t,” I tell her, “and I’m pretty sure you don’t really want me to.” She scoffs. “You’re upset,” I say, “but you’re lying to yourself if you think you want me gone.” “I do.” “You don’t.” “Leave.” “No.” “Go away.” “I’m not.” As soon as that last word leaves my lips, she’s on me, slamming into me, her lips pressing against mine. She’s kissing me, and I’m so fucking stunned that it takes me a moment to react, a moment to consider kissing her back. She moans and wraps her arms around my neck, clinging to me damn near aggressively as she kicks the door closed.

Everyone is free to create his world as he wants it if he knows that the whole thing is responding to him. In Luke 13 we are told the story of five Galileans who have been murdered by Pilate. ‘And he mixed their blood with their offering, etc.’And the central figure of the gospels which is your awakened Imagination says to his followers; ‘Do you think these five were worse sinners than the others? I tell you ‘No.’ But unless you repent you will all likewise perish in the same manner.’Here on one level we think it served them right, just as those who saw the scene on the Sunset Blvd. would say ‘It served her right cutting across the street like that!’ In this story in Luke we are told that a man sinned in the past and was murdered by Pilate. It has nothing to do with it. Then Jesus asked them, ‘Do you think that the eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse offenders than the others who dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. On this level of the dream people think of getting even. It is a dream of confusion and people are reactivating, but man has to awaken and become an actor. On this present level man is always reflecting life, not knowing he is the cause of all he observes. But when he awakens from the dream and then becomes an actor. What percentage would have done what this lady in the car did? They would have reacted, or feasted on the fruit of the tree of good and evil. They would have had a violent reaction, and then they would have had a violent resistance from this dead universe. But this lady makes her dream and the whole thing comes to pass exactly as she pictured it, even to the number of blocks. You might almost think she had manufactured that little old lady in gray, but I tell you everything comes in response to our own wonderful imaginal activity. You can be anything in this world but you cannot know it or expect it to come unless you Act. If you react based on the past, you continue in the same pattern. To be the man you desire to be you must create the scene, as this lady did, and the whole world will be convulsed if that is necessary to bring it to pass. There is no other power but God, but God had to ‘forget’ he was God in this state of sleep, and then He awakens and consciously determines the conditions he wants in the world.

But nature has protected the lower animal by endowing them with instincts. An instinct is a programmed perception that calls into play a programmed reaction. It is very simple. Animals are not moved by what they cannot react to. They live in a tiny world, a sliver of reality, one neuro-chemical program that keeps them walking behind their nose and shuts out everything else. But look at man, the impossible creature! Here nature seems to have thrown caution to the winds along with the programmed instincts. She created an animal who has no defense against full perception of the external world, an animal completely open to experience. Not only in front of his nose, in his umwelt, but in many umwelten. He can relate not only to animals in his own species, but in some ways to all other species. He can contemplate not only what is edible for him, but everything that grows. He not only lives in this moment, but expands his inner self to yesterday, his curiosity to centuries ago, his fears to five billion years from now when the sun will cool, his hopes to an eternity from now. He lives not only on a tiny territory, nor even on an entire planet, but in a galaxy, in a universe, and in dimensions beyond visible universes. It is appalling, the burden that man bears, the experiential burden. As we saw in the last chapter, man can't even take his own body for granted as can other animals. It is not just hind feet, a tail that he drags, that are just "there," limbs to be used and taken for granted or chewed off when caught in a trap and when they give pain and prevent movement. Man's body is a problem to him that has to be explained. Not only his body is strange, but also its inner landscape, the memories and dreams. Man's very insides-his self-are foreign to him. He doesn't know who he is, why he was born, what he is doing on the planet, what he is supposed to do, what he can expect. His own existence is incomprehensible to him, a miracle just like the rest of creation, closer to him, right near his pounding heart, but for that reason all the more strange. Each thing is a problem, and man can shut out nothing. As Maslow has well said, "It is precisely the godlike in ourselves that we are ambivalent about, fascinated by and fearful of, motivated to and defensive against. This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods." There it is again: gods with anuses.

solid player is a mental game fish if they: Change a proven winning strategy because they are running bad/hot. Never recognize when someone has played well against them and/or believe everyone they play against is bad and just gets lucky. Try to win every hand. Think the outcome of a hand can be changed by shouting, praying, or playing a favorite hand. Get frustrated when a bad player plays badly and they even educate them as to why they are bad. Feel like a failure when they lose a hand that was played profitably. Think the solution to running bad is to stop playing or change stakes. Read a poker book cover to cover and think they know everything in it. Watch some of Phil Galfond’s training videos and think they should now be able to crush the game like him. Believe that they are cursed or that other people are luckier than they are. Believe it’s possible to own another player’s soul. Play more hands when they are winning/losing. Play fewer hands when they are winning/losing. Play badly when the stakes are too small for them to care. Allow things to get personal with another regular. Tell bad beat stories to anyone that will listen, while doing nothing to improve how they react to bad beats. Say “one time.

Try not to be the hater. Try not to be the person who tears down someone else's work. The world needs more people who contribute their gifts and share their work and ideas. Working up the courage to do that can be tough. Support those who display that courage and vulnerability. Even if you don't enjoy their work, at least appreciate the fact that they did something. It's easy to be passive and complain. It's much harder to step into the creative arena and bring into existence something from nothing. And nobody needs permission to create. There aren't any prerequisites to contribute to the world around you. You just need to choose to build something and follow it through, and get out of your own way (limiting beliefs / self doubt / excuses). Too many people die with great ideas inside them. Let them out! It's all fleeting castles made of sand anyways. What do you have to lose? If you do find yourself on the receiving end of negativity, the choice is still yours to not react in anger, to accept that opinion as 1 out of 7+ billion and keep being true to yourself, as that is truly all that matters. You can either be judged because you created something or ignored because you left your greatness inside of you. Your call.

Then at a certain moment they lose heart, and the storm that was outside comes inside -- the storm is within them too. Anguish, death no longer simply circle round, they come inside. And then they turn to Christ and do what we very often do with God: we look at God in time of stress and tragedy, and we are indignant that He is so peaceful. The story in the Gospel underlines it by saying that Christ was sleeping with His head on a pillow- the final insult. They are dying and He is comfortable. This is exactly what we feel about God so often. How dare He be blissful, how dare He be so comfortable when I am in trouble? And the disciples do exactly what we do so very often. Instead of coming to God and saying 'You are peace, you are the Lord, say a word and my servant will be healed, say a word and things will come right', they shake Him out of His sleep and say 'Don't you care that we are perishing?' In other words, 'If you can do nothing, at least don't sleep. If you can do nothing better, then at least die in anguish with us.' Christ reacts, He gets up and says 'Men of little faith!' and brushing them aside, He turns towards the storm and, projecting His inner stillness, His harmony and peace on the storm He says 'Be still, be quiet' and everything is quiet again.

People reacted with hate and fear and then community by wearing American flag shirts, bandannas, crying, huddling, lost, and senseless. They packed the gymnasium to talk about how they felt. A lot of students were from New York so I understood their pain. For them, it was personal. But for me, it was surreal. I didn't take it personally: I'd never subscribed to America. I never felt included in this country. To this day, someone tells me to go back to China at least three times a year and I live in downtown New York. (222-233) Americans. Americans. AMERICANS. They've called me chink. They've treated me like the Other. They laughed at my food, they laughed at my family, they laughed at my culture, they wouldn't give me a proper interview because of my face. Americans. They did that. When 9/11 happened, I was an observer. I mourned for the victims and felt for the people as individuals, but this wasn't my fight. It wasn't the victims' fight, either, though. They were caught in the middle as always. The little people suffer for the crimes of few. This fight wasn't between the people that flew the planes and the people in the towers. We all got played by politics we had nothing to do with. (223) If you want your voice to be heard, you have to fight. There's no other way around it. You can't expect people to seek you out; if you know you're right and you have the answers, then it's your duty to tell the world.(224)

A stir of motion, like a swirl of muddy water, disturbed the surface of the tablet. Then colors--red, blue, green, yellow--bloomed on the slate and began to form lines and shapes even as they intermingled to form other, subtler shades. After a few seconds, an image of Arya appeared. Once it was complete, he released the spell and studied the fairth. He was pleased with what he saw. The image seemed to be a true and honest representation of Arya, unlike the fairth he had made of her in Ellesméra. The one he held now had a depth that the other one had lacked. It was not a perfect image with regard to its composition, but he was proud that he had been able to capture so much of her character. In that one image, he had managed to sum up everything he knew about her, both the dark and the light. He allowed himself to enjoy his sense of accomplishment for a moment more, then he threw the tablet off to the side, to break it against the ground. “Kausta,” said Arya, and the tablet curved through the air and landed in her hand. Eragon opened his mouth, intending to explain or to apologize, but then he thought better of it and said nothing. Holding up the fairth, Arya stared at it with an intent gaze. Eragon watched her closely, wondering how she would react. A long, tense minute passed. Then Arya lowered the fairth. Eragon stood and held out his hand for the tablet, but she made no move to return it. She appeared troubled, and his heart sank; the fairth had upset her. Looking him straight in the eye, she said in the ancient language, “Eragon, if you are willing, I would like to tell you my true name.” Her offer left him dumbstruck. He nodded, overwhelmed, and, with great difficulty, managed to say, “I would be honored to hear it.

One day in the dojo (the martial-arts studio) before our karate class began, I witnessed the power of a concentrated focus unlike anything that I’d ever seen growing up in the heartland of northern Missouri. On that day, our instructor walked into the room and asked us to do something very different from the form and movement practices that were familiar to us. He explained that he would seat himself in the center of the thick mat where we honed our skills, close his eyes, and go into a meditation. During this exercise, he would stretch his arms out on either side of his body, with his palms open and facedown. He asked us to give him a couple of minutes to “anchor” himself in this T position and then invited us to do anything that we could to move him from his place. The men in our class outnumbered the women by about two to one, and there had always been a friendly competition between the sexes. On that day, however, there was no such division. Together, we all sat close to our instructor, silent and motionless. We watched as he simply walked to the center of the mat, sat down with his legs crossed, closed his eyes, held out his arms, and changed his breathing pattern. I remember that I was fascinated and observed closely as his chest swelled and shrank, slower and slower with each breath until it was hard to tell that he was breathing at all. With a nod of agreement, we moved closer and tried to move our instructor from his place. At first, we thought that this was going to be an easy exercise, and only a few of us tried. As we grabbed his arms and legs, we pushed and pulled in different directions with absolutely no success. Amazed, we changed our strategy and gathered on one side of him to use our combined weight to force him in the opposite direction. Still, we couldn’t even budge his arms or the fingers on his hands! After a few moments, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and with the gentle humor we’d come to respect, he asked, “What happened? How come I’m still sitting here?” After a big laugh that eased the tension and with a familiar gleam in his eyes, he explained what had just happened. “When I closed my eyes,” he said, “I had a vision that was like a dream, and that dream became my reality. I pictured two mountains, one on either side of my body, and myself on the ground between the peaks.” As he spoke, I immediately saw the image in my mind’s eye and felt that he was somehow imbuing us with a direct experience of his vision. “Attached to each of my arms,” he continued, “I saw a chain that bound me to the top of each mountain. As long as the chains were there, I was connected to the mountains in a way that nothing could change.” Our instructor looked around at the faces that were riveted on each word he was sharing. With a big grin, he concluded, “Not even a classroom full of my best students could change my dream.” Through a brief demonstration in a martial-arts classroom, this beautiful man had just given each of us a direct sense of the power to redefine our relationship to the world. The lesson was less about reacting to what the world was showing us and more about creating our own rules for what we choose to experience. The secret here is that our instructor was experiencing himself from the perspective that he was already fixed in one place on that mat. In those moments, he was living from the outcome of his meditation. Until he chose to break the chains in his imagination, nothing could move him. And that’s precisely what we found out.

As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month. Actually, I’m what a romantic movie is to a profound thinker—a mere diversion, a comic interlude, something that is soon forgotten: not bad, but not particularly good either. I hate having to tell you this, but why shouldn’t I admit it when I know it’s true? My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne—to beat her down, hide her. But it doesn’t work, and I know why. I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared. So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether. As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world.

THE OBEDIENCE GAME DUGGAR KIDS GROW UP playing the Obedience Game. It’s sort of like Mother May I? except it has a few extra twists—and there’s no need to double-check with “Mother” because she (or Dad) is the one giving the orders. It’s one way Mom and Dad help the little kids in the family burn off extra energy some nights before we all put on our pajamas and gather for Bible time (more about that in chapter 8). To play the Obedience Game, the little kids all gather in the living room. After listening carefully to Mom’s or Dad’s instructions, they respond with “Yes, ma’am, I’d be happy to!” then run and quickly accomplish the tasks. For example, Mom might say, “Jennifer, go upstairs to the girls’ room, touch the foot of your bed, then come back downstairs and give Mom a high-five.” Jennifer answers with an energetic “Yes, ma’am, I’d be happy to!” and off she goes. Dad might say, “Johannah, run around the kitchen table three times, then touch the front doorknob and come back.” As Johannah stands up she says, “Yes, sir, I’d be happy to!” “Jackson, go touch the front door, then touch the back door, then touch the side door, and then come back.” Jackson, who loves to play army, stands at attention, then salutes and replies, “Yes, sir, I’d be happy to!” as he goes to complete his assignment at lightning speed. Sometimes spotters are sent along with the game player to make sure the directions are followed exactly. And of course, the faster the orders can be followed, the more applause the contestant gets when he or she slides back into the living room, out of breath and pleased with himself or herself for having complied flawlessly. All the younger Duggar kids love to play this game; it’s a way to make practicing obedience fun! THE FOUR POINTS OF OBEDIENCE THE GAME’S RULES (MADE up by our family) stem from our study of the four points of obedience, which Mom taught us when we were young. As a matter of fact, as we are writing this book she is currently teaching these points to our youngest siblings. Obedience must be: 1. Instant. We answer with an immediate, prompt “Yes ma’am!” or “Yes sir!” as we set out to obey. (This response is important to let the authority know you heard what he or she asked you to do and that you are going to get it done as soon as possible.) Delayed obedience is really disobedience. 2. Cheerful. No grumbling or complaining. Instead, we respond with a cheerful “I’d be happy to!” 3. Thorough. We do our best, complete the task as explained, and leave nothing out. No lazy shortcuts! 4. Unconditional. No excuses. No, “That’s not my job!” or “Can’t someone else do it? or “But . . .” THE HIDDEN GOAL WITH this fun, fast-paced game is that kids won’t need to be told more than once to do something. Mom would explain the deeper reason behind why she and Daddy desired for us to learn obedience. “Mom and Daddy won’t always be with you, but God will,” she says. “As we teach you to hear and obey our voice now, our prayer is that ultimately you will learn to hear and obey what God’s tells you to do through His Word.” In many families it seems that many of the goals of child training have been lost. Parents often expect their children to know what they should say and do, and then they’re shocked and react harshly when their sweet little two-year-old throws a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store. This parental attitude probably stems from the belief that we are all born basically good deep down inside, but the truth is, we are all born with a sin nature. Think about it: You don’t have to teach a child to hit, scream, whine, disobey, or be selfish. It comes naturally. The Bible says that parents are to “train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Why would you do that with me? A simple kiss was enough. What could you be thinking?" "What indeed." He pushed a hand through his hair, more than a little offended at her accusatory tone. "I'm male. You rubbed your... femaleness all over me. I didn't think. I reacted." "You reacted." "Yes." "To..." She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "To me." "It is a natural response. Aren't you a scientist? Then you should understand. Any red-blooded man would react to such stimulus." She stepped back. She dipped her chin and peered at him over her spectacles. "So you find me stimulating." "That's not what I-" He bit off the rest of that sentence. The only way to end a nonsensical conversation was to simply cease talking. Colin drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He closed his eyes briefly. And then he opened them and looked at her. Really looked at her, as though for the first time. He saw thick, dark hair a man could gather by the fistful. Prim spectacles, perched on a gently sloped nose. Behind the lenses, wide-set eyes- dark and intelligent. And that mouth. That ripe, pouting, sensual mouth. He let his gaze drift down her form. There was a wicked thrill to knowing lushness smoldered beneath that modest sprigged muslin gown. To having felt her shape, scouting and chartering her body with all the nerve endings of his own. Their bodies had met. More than that. They'd grown acquainted. Nothing more would come from it, of course. Colin had rules for himself, and as for her... she didn't even liked him, or pretend to. But she showed up in the middle of the night, hatching schemes that skirted the line between academic logic and reckless adventure. She started kisses she had no notion how to continue. Taken all together, she was simply... A surprise. A fresh, bracing gust of the unexpected, for good or ill. "Perhaps," he said cautiously, "I do find you stimulating.

Yes, my friend, ship wreckage was once the wood of a tree, nothing special about it - just like any other kind of wood. Men cut down the tree. They sawed and worked and planed and shaped and polished and caulked and tarred it. They made a ship out it, and they celebrated the birth of that ship, they christened it like a child. And they entrusted themselves to it. But the men were no longer very much in charge. The ship too had its say. A ship’s a being in its own right, like a person, so to speak, that thinks, and breathes, and reacts. A ship has its own mission to accomplish. It has its own destiny. So it sinks, this vessel, it founders because it was meant to founder, on such a day at such a time, on account of this or that, and in such a place. Maybe it was already written in the stars. And then long afterwards, other men discover the wreck, they refloat it, they bring to the surface the bits of wood — and you should see with what respect they do this. And you think a piece of wreckage like that doesn’t know anything, doesn’t remember anything, isn’t capable of anything, that it’s as senseless as it is hard, that it’s. . . as thick as a plank? I’ll tell you something worth remembering, that sailors well know: wood from a shipwreck is “back-flash” wood. Whatever takes place under the auspices and under the sign of even the smallest fragment ot a shipwreck cuts more than just one way. One swinish deed is multiplied a thousandfold; one flower’, (he meant, a kindness),'will bring you a field full of flowers, an entire province, tulips, cyclamens, take your pick. For instance: there’s shipwreck wood in the base frame of the sign of the four sergeants. That’s something “the likes of us” know. Well, once that guy was through,’ (he meant, the man who’d been praying), ‘I guarantee, the judge, every member of the jury, the prosecutor, the warders, the hangman, his assistants, the whole damn lot of them are going to get their comeuppance, and how! From now on they’re jinxed. Seriously jinxed. And for a long time to come.

Central to any understanding of stress, health and disease is the concept of adaptiveness. Adaptiveness is the capacity to respond to external stressors without rigidity, with flexibility and creativity, without excessive anxiety and without being overwhelmed by emotion. People who are not adaptive may seem to function well as long as nothing is disturbing them, but they will react with various levels of frustration and helplessness when confronted by loss or by difficulty. They will blame themselves or blame others. A person’s adaptiveness depends very much on the degree of differentiation and adaptiveness of previous generations in his family and also on what external stressors may have acted on the family. The Great Depression, for example, was a difficult time for millions of people. The multigenerational history of particular families enabled some to adapt and cope, while other families, facing the same economic scarcities, were psychologically devastated. “Highly adaptive people and families, on the average, have fewer physical illnesses, and those illnesses that do occur tend to be mild to moderate in severity,” writes Dr. Michael Kerr. Since one important variable in the development of physical illness is the degree of adaptiveness of an individual, and since the degree of adaptiveness is determined by the multigenerational emotional process, physical illness, like emotional illness, is a symptom of a relationship process that extends beyond the boundaries of the individual “patient.” Physical illness, in other words, is a disorder of the family emotional system [which includes] present and past generations. Children who become their parents’ caregivers are prepared for a lifetime of repression. And these roles children are assigned have to do with the parents’ own unmet childhood needs — and so on down the generations. “Children do not need to be beaten to be compromised,” researchers at McGill University have pointed out. Inappropriate symbiosis between parent and child is the source of much pathology.

Roan studied the photo in his hand. Shiloh Gallagher had to be twenty-nine years old according to what Maud had told him. Damned if she didn’t look twenty-five or so, her features unlined. She wasn’t model pretty, but she had an arresting face, with huge intelligent-looking green eyes. His gaze dropped to her mouth and he felt himself stir. Her mouth would make any man go crazy. Her upper lip was full, but thinner than her lower one. The shape of her mouth made him feel heat in his lower body. “Is she married?” “No,” Maud said. She’s single. Never did marry. I don’t know why. Shiloh’s a beautiful girl.” She was hardly a girl, but Roan said nothing because he was fully reacting to her as a woman. He wondered if she was curvy or rail thin. He was disgruntled over his avid curiosity. “I have no problem with it. You know I get up early and come in late. She’s going to have to fend for herself. I’m not cooking for her.” “Right,” Maud agreed. “She’s pretty shaken up, Roan. You might find that stressful until, hopefully, Shiloh will start to relax.” Shrugging, he slid the photo onto the desk. “Maud, I just hope I don’t stress her out with my award-winning personality,” he said, and he cracked a small, sour grin. Maud cackled. “I think you’ll like her, Roan. She’s a very kind person. An introvert like you. Just remember, she’s trying to write. Because of the stalking, she’s suffering from writer’s block and she’s got a book due to her editor in six months. So, she’s under a lot of other stress.” “I’ll handle it, Maud. No problem.” “Good,” Maud said, relieved. She sat up in the chair. “I’ll call Shiloh back, let her know she can come, and I’ll find out what time she’s arriving tomorrow. I’d like you to pick her up at the Jackson Hole Airport. So take that photo with you.” He stood, settling the cowboy hat on his head. “Don’t need the photo.” Because her face was already stamped across his heart. Whatever that meant. “I’ll find her after she deplanes, don’t worry. Just get back to me on the time.

We may have to mask your scent.” He looked at her soberly. “Did Olivia tell you anything about scent marking?” “Scent marking?” Sophie wracked her brain, trying to remember. It seemed vaguely familiar though she couldn’t remember exactly what it involved. Still, how bad could it be? “Oh, uh, sure. Scent marking.” She nodded. “Good. Because in the last extremity, if I hear the sniffers around this cabin, I may have to scent mark you—to mask your scent with my own.” “Can you do that? I mean, is your scent that much stronger than mine, especially when they’re focused on me?” Sylvan looked down at his hands. “Normally it isn’t but right now…ever since the trip we took in the transport tube…” Sophie thought of the warm, spicy scent that seemed to go to her head, the way it made her react to him… “It’s your mating scent, isn’t it?” she asked in a low voice, not daring to look at him. “Yes.” He sounded ashamed. “But why…” She risked a sidelong glance at him. “Why is it coming out now? I, uh, thought it only happened during the claiming period. But you’re not, um, claiming me or anything. I mean, we’re not… you know.” “I know.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand what’s going on either. We haven’t even been dream sharing. Well, that is, I mean…” He cleared his throat. “I’ve had a few dreams of you. But nothing out of the ordinary.” He glanced at her. “Have you…had any strange dreams?” “No.” Sophie shook her head and a look of mingled disappointment and relief passed over his stern features. “I have been, uh, having problems with my art, though,” she admitted in a low voice. “Problems with your art?” He frowned. “What do you mean?” “I paint,” Sophie explained. “You know—with a paintbrush and easel?” She made a painting motion in the air and his eyes widened. “That was what I dreamed. That you were painting a picture of…of me.” Sophie nearly choked. “But I have been! You’re all I’ve been able to paint lately. Even when I try not to, you always sneak in there. It’s so annoying.” Then she realized what she’d said. “Uh, I mean—” “It doesn’t matter.” Sylvan cut her off, shaking his head. “So we have been dream sharing, in a way.” Sophie

Trying to trick the creature, hoping that it would react without hesitation to the first sign of movement in the door way, Travis tucked the revolver under his belt, quietly picked up one of the dining-room chairs, eased to within six feet of the kitchen, and pitched the chair through the open door. He snatched the revolver out of his waistband and, as the chair sailed into the kitchen, assumed a shooter's stance. The chair crashed into the Formica-topped table, clattered to the floor, and banged against the dishwasher. The lantern-eyed enemy did not go for it. Nothing moved. When the chair finished tumbling, the kitchen was again marked by a hushed expectancy . Einstein was making a curious sound, a quiet shuddery huffing, and after a moment Travis realized the noise was a result of the dog's uncontrollable shivering. No question about it: the intruder in the kitchen was the very thing that had pursued them through the woods more than three months ago. During the intervening weeks, it had made its way north, probably traveling mostly in the wildlands to the east of the developed part of the state, relentlessly tracking the dog by some means that Travis could not understand and for reasons he could not even guess. In response to the chair he had thrown, a large white-enameled canister crashed to the floor just beyond the kitchen doorway, and Travis jumped back in surprise, squeezing off a wild shot before he realized he was only being taunted. The lid flew off the container when it hit the floor, and flour spilled across the tile. Silence again. By responding to Travis's taunt with one of its own, the intruder had displayed unnerving intelligence. Abruptly Travis realized that, coming from the same research lab as Einstein and being a product of related experiments, the creature might be as smart as the retriever. Which would explain Einstein's fear of it. If Travis had not already accommodated himself to the idea of a dog with humanlike intelligence, he might have been unable to credit this beast with more than mere animal cleverness; however, events of the past few months had primed him to accept-and quickly adapt to-almost anything.

While walking toward them, I dropped my backpack, then pulled my tank top off over my head to reveal my bikini. And just balled up my tank top in one hand as if it were nothing, and threw it into the boat. “Heeeeeey!” I said in a high girl-voice as I hugged Cameron, whom I hadn’t seen since he’d come home from college for the summer a few days ago. He hugged me back and kept glancing at my boobs and trying not to. My brother had that look on his face like he was going to ask Dad to take me to the shrink again. I bent over with my butt toward them, dropped my shorts, and threw those in the boat, too. When I straightened and turned toward the boys, I was in for a shock. I had thought I wanted Sean to stare at me. I did want him to stare. But now that Sean and Cameron and Adam were all staring at me, speechless, I wondered whether there was chicken salad on my bikini, or-somewhat worse-an exposed nipple. I didn’t feel a breeze down there, though. And even I, with my limited understanding of grand entrances and seducing boys, understood that if I glanced in the direction they were staring and there were no nipple, the effect of the grand entrance would be lost. So I snapped my fingers and asked, “Zone much?” Translation: I’m hot? Really? Hmph. Adam blinked and turned to Sean. “Bikini or what?” Sean still stared at my boobs. Slowly he brought his strange pale eyes up to meet my eyes. “This does a lot for you,” he said, gesturing to the bikini with the hand flourish of Clinton from What Not to Wear. Surely this was my imagination. He didn’t really know I’d been studying how to be a girl for the past year! “Sean,” I said without missing a beat, “I do a lot for the bikini.” Cameron snorted and shoved Sean. Adam shoved him in the other direction. Sean smiled and seemed perplexed, like he was trying to think of a comeback but couldn’t, for once. Off to the side, my brother still looked very uncomfortable. I hadn’t thought through how he’d react to the unveiling of the swan. I hadn’t thought through any of their reactions very well, in case you weren’t getting this. I wanted Sean to ask me out, but I didn’t want to lose my relationship, such as it was, with everybody else.

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

1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. 2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water. 4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. 6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.” 7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” 8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. 10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Pinter is leaving for the day?” Isaac commented. “That’s a pity.” “Why?” “Haven’t you noticed how he looks at Celia sometimes? I think he might have set his sights on her.” “I thought so, too. Until just now.” “Just now?” “He did not react exactly as I expected when I-“ Oh, dear, perhaps she should not mention that. Isaac might not approve.” “Hetty?” Isaac prodded. “What mischief have you been up to now? You weren’t warning him off, were you?” The disapproval in his tone made her bristle. “And what if I was? The man is the love child of a light-heeled wench and God knows whom.” Isaac’s jaw tautened. “I didn’t know you were such a snob.” “I am not,” she protested. “But given his circumstances, I want to be sure he is interested in Celia for something other than her fortune. I watched my daughter marry a man whom she thought loved her, only to discover that he was merely a more skillful fortune hunter than most. I do not want to make that mistake again.” He sighed. “All right. I suppose I understand your caution. But Pinter? I’ve never seen a less likely fortune hunter. He talks about people of rank with nothing but contempt.” “And does that not worry you? She is one of those people, after all.” “What it tells me is that he doesn’t think much of marrying for rank or fortune.” She gripped his arm. “I suppose. And I must admit that when I hinted I could disinherit her if she married too low-“ “Hetty!” “I would not do it, mind you. But he does not know that. It is a good way to be sure how he feels about her.” “You’re playing with fire,” he gritted out. “And what did he say to it?” “He told me she would never marry anyone as low as him, then tried to convince me to rescind my ultimatum for her so she could marry a man she loved. And that was after I made it clear that it could not be him. He was very eloquent on the subject of what she deserved. Accused me of not knowing her worth, the impertinent devil.” “Good man, our Pinter,” he muttered. “I beg your pardon?” she said, bristling. “A man in love will fight to see that the woman he cares for is given what she deserves, even if he can’t have her.” Isaac eyed her askance. “Even if some meddler has dictated that marrying her would ruin her future forever.” A chill ran down Hetty’s spine. She had not considered her tactic in quite that light. “Be careful, my dear,” Isaac said in a low voice. “You’ve been dabbling in your grandchildren’s lives to such good effect you’ve forgotten that the heart is beyond your purview.” Was he right?

Taking control of the situation There are a great many parents—as I’ve learned by attending endless parent support group meetings— who had the same high hopes for their families as I. If you’re such a parent, then you probably know that it isn’t just the child who can be out of control, but also the parent. Possibly you are also aware that continuous reacting on your part is useless as well as extremely hazardous to your health and well-being. The most ruinous thing you can do is to allow the situation to continue on its present destructive course. Here are some simple steps you can take to deactivate the negativity so rampant in your family dynamics. Please note that it takes courage and determination to carry this off successfully. Cut off all funds to the addict. Holding onto the purse strings with an iron fist will have immediate results, as well as repercussions. (Keep an eye on family valuables. In fact, lock them away.) Cut off all privileges accorded to your addicts— such as use of the family car or having their friends in your house. Carry out all threats you make. The fastest way to lose credibility with addicted children is to become a “softie” at the last minute. Refuse to rescue your addicts when they get into legal jams. Don’t pay their fines or their bail. Get yourself into a support group such as Al-Anon, Nar-Anon, Parents Anonymous, or Tough Love as fast as you can. Attempt to get your addicted kids into rehabs. If they’re underage you can sign them in. Adult admission is done on a voluntary basis, so you may be out of luck. Drugs erase any trace of conscience. Be aware that many of today’s drugged youths will think nothing of injuring or even murdering their parents for money. If you suspect that your child could resort to this level of violence, get in touch with the police. If you’re a single parent there will be one voice, but if you’re married there’ll be two. It’s important to merge those two voices so that a single, clear message reaches the addict. If you can work with your partner as a team to institute these simple steps when dealing with the addict, you’ll have done yourself and your family a great service. If, however, you entertain the notion that you were responsible for your child’s addictions in the first place, chances are you won’t be effective in enforcing these guidelines. That’s what the next chapter is all about. Note 1. Drug abuse and alcoholism are officially listed in The International Classification of Diseases, 4th edition, 9th revision, the World Health Organization’s directory on diseases.

We may have to mask your scent.” He looked at her soberly. “Did Olivia tell you anything about scent marking?” “Scent marking?” Sophie wracked her brain, trying to remember. It seemed vaguely familiar though she couldn’t remember exactly what it involved. Still, how bad could it be? “Oh, uh, sure. Scent marking.” She nodded. “Good. Because in the last extremity, if I hear the sniffers around this cabin, I may have to scent mark you—to mask your scent with my own.” “Can you do that? I mean, is your scent that much stronger than mine, especially when they’re focused on me?” Sylvan looked down at his hands. “Normally it isn’t but right now…ever since the trip we took in the transport tube…” Sophie thought of the warm, spicy scent that seemed to go to her head, the way it made her react to him… “It’s your mating scent, isn’t it?” she asked in a low voice, not daring to look at him. “Yes.” He sounded ashamed. “But why…” She risked a sidelong glance at him. “Why is it coming out now? I, uh, thought it only happened during the claiming period. But you’re not, um, claiming me or anything. I mean, we’re not… you know.” “I know.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand what’s going on either. We haven’t even been dream sharing. Well, that is, I mean…” He cleared his throat. “I’ve had a few dreams of you. But nothing out of the ordinary.” He glanced at her. “Have you…had any strange dreams?” “No.” Sophie shook her head and a look of mingled disappointment and relief passed over his stern features. “I have been, uh, having problems with my art, though,” she admitted in a low voice. “Problems with your art?” He frowned. “What do you mean?” “I paint,” Sophie explained. “You know—with a paintbrush and easel?” She made a painting motion in the air and his eyes widened. “That was what I dreamed. That you were painting a picture of…of me.” Sophie nearly choked. “But I have been! You’re all I’ve been able to paint lately. Even when I try not to, you always sneak in there. It’s so annoying.” Then she realized what she’d said. “Uh, I mean—” “It doesn’t matter.” Sylvan cut her off, shaking his head. “So we have been dream sharing, in a way.” Sophie felt herself go cold all over. “Does…does that mean you’re going to try to…to claim me? The way Baird claimed Liv?” Oh my God, if he does, if he claims me, then he’ll want to bite me! That’s the way his people do it. She had horror-movie visions of being held down under his muscular bulk, held down and pierced multiple times and in multiple ways. God, his teeth in my throat at the same time he’s inside me, filling me, holding me down and biting and thrusting. He’s so big, so strong—I’d never be able to get away. The horror she felt must have showed on her face, because Sylvan’s voice was rough when he spoke. “Don’t worry, Sophia. Even if I wanted to claim you, I couldn’t.” “Oh right.” She felt a small measure of relief. “Your vow.” “My vow,” he agreed. “Sylvan,

Claire… It is not what you think. Won’t you please allow me to explain? Please. Allow me to speak with you.” It was more tempting than she liked. “There is nothing to say. We both know what I saw.” She paused. “Now go away.” Her tone was as aloof as she could manage between tears that would not stop. She saw the handle turn. “Don’t you dare!” She took a pre-emptive step back. But he did dare. The door opened slowly. “Are you…dressed?” “Of course, I am dressed!” she said furiously. “I am packing. Kindly have a carriage ordered.” It was a lie but he would not know that. Her case was still open on the window seat. He pushed the door open wider. He did not look like a man who had come from the arms of another woman. His face was not flushed with desire. It looked rather drawn in fact. But what did she know of such things? Perhaps that woman had merely exhausted him. “I did not invite her here, Claire. I did not even know she was coming.” He pushed locks of dark hair from his eyes. Claire bit her lip, thinking of how she had looked forward to touching those waves, brushing it possessively off his face herself. “Serafina does what she pleases. As you can see, she has no sense of propriety or discretion. She believes she owns Isabel and I even still. Even though, after her unforgiveable actions, she quite thoroughly relinquished rights to us both some time ago. I do not believe Isabel has pardoned her yet. I certainly will not.” He looked at her, eyes wide and beseeching. Not a hint of pride or arrogance. “She does not want me to be happy without her, Claire,” he said softly. “She must have found out I was to be married and she came with all haste. This is exactly what she was hoping for—or nearly so. When you walked in…” “Oh? Nearly so?” Fury twisted inside her. “I apologize for intruding so unexpectedly, for interrupting your passionate liaison. I suppose if Isabel and I had not walked in, you would still be there even now. On the floor together perhaps.” Thomas looked taken aback, then angry. “Of course not! Do you really think me so…? Is that what you believe, Claire? You did exactly what Serafina hoped you would do. Reacted with anger and jealousy, blamed me, and stormed out.” “Jealousy!” Claire exclaimed, drawing herself up. “I assure you—I am not jealous in the least. If she wants you, she is welcome to have you. I did not want you in the first place, as you will recall.” He flinched. If she did not know better, she might almost have believed him to be hurt. She swallowed hard. “What have I to be jealous of? The fact that you prefer your mistress to…” Oh, no. Her voice was catching in her throat. “…to… me…” She hiccupped embarrassingly, tears flowing over. All of a sudden Thomas’s arms were around her, holding her firmly to his chest. “Claire… No, no…” he whispered. Her cheek was pressed up rather roughly against his tailcoat. He smelled so good. She closed her eyes, her body relaxing against him. There was another smell there. An overpoweringly sweet scent of lilacs. She pushed herself away, hands against his chest. “You smell of her.” He looked horrified. Horrified that he did? Or horrified that she had noticed? Did he smell of her from head to toe? Claire felt nauseous.

One can take the ape out of the jungle, but not the jungle out of the ape. This also applies to us, bipedal apes. Ever since our ancestors swung from tree to tree, life in small groups has been an obsession of ours. We can’t get enough of politicians thumping their chests on television, soap opera stars who swing from tryst to tryst, and reality shows about who’s in and who’s out. It would be easy to make fun of all this primate behavior if not for the fact that our fellow simians take the pursuit of power and sex just as seriously as we do. We share more with them than power and sex, though. Fellow-feeling and empathy are equally important, but they’re rarely mentioned as part of our biological heritage. We would much rather blame nature for what we don’t like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like. As Katharine Hepburn famously put it in The African Queen, ”Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” This opinion is still very much with us. Of the millions of pages written over the centuries about human nature, none are as bleak as those of the last three decades, and none as wrong. We hear that we have selfish genes, that human goodness is a sham, and that we act morally only to impress others. But if all that people care about is their own good, why does a day-old baby cry when it hears another baby cry? This is how empathy starts. Not very sophisticated perhaps, but we can be sure that a newborn doesn’t try to impress. We are born with impulses that draw us to others and that later in life make us care about them. The possibility that empathy is part of our primate heritage ought to make us happy, but we’re not in the habit of embracing our nature. When people commit genocide, we call them ”animals”. But when they give to the poor, we praise them for being ”humane”. We like to claim the latter behavior for ourselves. It wasn’t until an ape saved a member of our own species that there was a public awakening to the possibility of nonhuman humaneness. This happened on August 16, 1996, when an eight-year-old female gorilla named Binti Jua helped a three-year-old boy who had fallen eighteen feet into the primate exhibit at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo. Reacting immediately, Binti scooped up the boy and carried him to safety. She sat down on a log in a stream, cradling the boy in her lap, giving him a few gentle back pats before taking him to the waiting zoo staff. This simple act of sympathy, captured on video and shown around the world, touched many hearts, and Binti was hailed as a heroine. It was the first time in U.S. history that an ape figured in the speeches of leading politicians, who held her up as a model of compassion. That Binti’s behavior caused such surprise among humans says a lot about the way animals are depicted in the media. She really did nothing unusual, or at least nothing an ape wouldn’t do for any juvenile of her own species. While recent nature documentaries focus on ferocious beasts (or the macho men who wrestle them to the ground), I think it’s vital to convey the true breadth and depth of our connection with nature. This book explores the fascinating and frightening parallels between primate behavior and our own, with equal regard for the good, the bad, and the ugly.