“
But sometimes a person’s brain starts cycling. No matter what you do, the same thoughts just keep repeating, over and over. You get stuck in a loop, and when you’re inside that loop, you can’t see past it. You’ll keep coming up with the same possibilities, to no end, because the answers you need—they’re outside the loop. Distractions aren’t just distractions. Sometimes they can break you out of the loop.
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3))
“
Everything turns in circles and spirals with the cosmic heart until infinity. Everything has a vibration that spirals inward or outward — and everything turns together in the same direction at the same time. This vibration keeps going: it becomes born and expands or closes and destructs — only to repeat the cycle again in opposite current. Like a lotus, it opens or closes, dies and is born again. Such is also the story of the sun and moon, of me and you. Nothing truly dies. All energy simply transforms.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Your job then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship—just so long as those prayers are sincere.
I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's the history of mankind's search for holiness. If humanity never evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.
The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm. More contemporarily, the Dalai Lama has repeated the same idea, assuring his Western students repeatedly that they needn't become Tibetan Buddhists in order to be his pupils. He welcomes them to take whatever ideas they like out of Tibetan Buddhism and integrate these ideas into their own religious practices. Even in the most unlikely and conservative of places, you can find sometimes this glimmering idea that God might be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us. In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite."
But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed ... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while?
That's me in the corner, in other words. That's me in the spotlight. Choosing my religion.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
The body tires easily, but the spirit is always free and will help us get out, one day, from this infernal cycle of repeating the same mistakes every generation. Although
”
”
Paulo Coelho (The Spy)
“
You're a respectable woman, dearie, and her reputation is a woman's wealth."
"Her wealth," Tenar repeated in the same blank way; then she said it again: "Her wealth. Her treasure. Her hoard. Her value...
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (Tehanu (Earthsea Cycle, #4))
“
I look into my eyes, but they aren’t really mine, not the eyes I used to have. They’re the eyes of someone very tired and very sad, and once I see them I feel even sadder and then I see that sadness, that compassion, for the sadness in my eyes, and I see the water rising in them. I’m both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person. And then I feel sad for that person who has so much compassion because she’s clearly been through the same thing, too. And the cycle keeps repeating. It’s like when you go into a dressing room with a three-paneled mirror and you line them up just right to see the long narrowing hallway of yourselves diminishing into infinity. It feels like that, like I’m sad for an infinite number of my selves.
”
”
Lily King (Writers & Lovers)
“
As big as the world is, Nassun is beginning to realize it's also really small. The same stories, cycling around and around. The same endings, again and again. The same mistakes eternally repeated.
”
”
N.K. Jemisin (The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3))
“
When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide. For what better grounds for suicide can there be than to go on making the same series of false moves which invariably lead to the same disaster and to repeat a pattern without knowing why it is false or wherein lies the flaw? And yet to percieve that in ourselves revolves a cycle of activity which is certain to end in paralysis of the will, desertion, panic and despair - always to go on loving those who have ceased to love us, and who have quite lost all resemblance to the selves who we loved! Suicide is infectious; what if the agonies which suicide endure before they are driven to take their own life, the emotion of 'all is lost' - are infectious too?
”
”
Cyril Connolly (The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus)
“
All of history, a great wheel, turning inexorably. Just as seasons come and go, just as the moon moves endlessly through her cycle, so does time. The same wars are fought, the same plagues descend, the same folk, good or evil, rise to power. Humanity is trapped on that wheel, doomed endlessly to repeat the mistakes we have we have already made. Unless someone comes to change it.
”
”
Robin Hobb (Assassin's Quest (Farseer Trilogy, #3))
“
There's a now, a was, and a gonna be. Now is now, and after now is a was. And what comes after the was is a gonna be. It hasn't happened yet. It's gonna happen as soon as the now is over. But if you have a good now, you're bound to have a good was and a good gonna be. But after the bad now comes a bad was. But if you have a bad now and dwell on it, you're going to have a bad gonna be and you're going to have a bad cycle. If you learn from the bad was, you can turn the bad gonna be into a good gonna be. The only way you can change the cycle is after the was. If you carry the bad wases around with you, they get heavy and become should'a could'as - I should'a done this, I could'a done that.
If you learn from the was, you'll have a great now; you won't repeat the same mistakes. It will bring you to a good now, which changes the cycle to a good was, and a good gonna be. You need to learn from the wases. It's all about changing your attitude.
”
”
Sid Caesar
“
Growth is about moving forward while chaos often sends you repeatedly through the same cycles.
”
”
Victoria L. White (Learning To Love: And The Power of Sacred Sexual Spiritual Partnerships)
“
Truth is unoriginal.
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
According to Q-Jo, the whole tarot deck, or at least the twenty-two trump cards of the Major Arcana, may be read as the Fool's journey. "On one important level," she explained, "the major cards are chapters in the story of a quest. I'm talking the universal human quest for understanding and divine reunion. And it doesn't matter whether the quest starts with the Fool or ends with him, because it's a loop anyhow, a cycle endlessly repeated. When the naive young Fool finally tumbles over the precipice, he falls into the world of experience. Now his journey has really begun. Along the way, he'll meet all the teachers and tempters - the tempters are teachers, too - and challenging situations that a person is likely to meet in the task of his or her growing. The Fool is potentially everybody, but not everybody has the wisdom or the guts to play the fool. A lot of folks don't know what's in that bag they're carrying. And they're all too willing to trade it for cash. Inside the bag, the have every tool they need to facilitate their life's journey, but they won't even open it up and glance inside. Subconsciously, the goal of all of us out-of-control primates is essentially the same, but let me assure you of this: the only ones who'll ever reach that goal are the ones who have the courage to make fools of themselves along the way.
”
”
Tom Robbins (Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas)
“
Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
For the most part, people do not know they will live their lives over. Traders do not know that they will make the same bargain again. Politicians do not know they will shout from the same lectern an infinite number of times in the cycle of time. Parents treasure the first laugh from their child as if they will not hear it again. Lovers making love the first time undress shyly, show surprise at the supple thigh, the fragile nipple. How would they know that each secret glimpse, each touch will be repeated again and again and again, exactly as before?
”
”
Alan Lightman (Einstein’s Dreams)
“
I was relieved that he left, of course, but at the same time I thought what a thing of sin poverty was, that there could be nothing more sinful than forcing a small child to lie. The wages of that sin were poverty, a wage that one could not endure, leading one to sin again, and as long as one could not pull oneself out of poverty, the cycle would repeat until death.
”
”
Yū Miri (Tokyo Ueno Station)
“
The same cycle will continuously repeat until you commit yourself to healing the root of the issue.
”
”
Robin S. Baker
“
No,” Xander said, his voice suddenly serious. “But sometimes a person’s brain starts cycling. No matter what you do, the same thoughts just keep repeating, over and over. You get stuck in a loop, and when you’re inside that loop, you can’t see past it. You’ll keep coming up with the same possibilities, to no end, because the answers you need—they’re outside the loop. Distractions aren’t just distractions. Sometimes they can break you out of the loop, and once you’re out, once your brain stops cycling—” “You see the things you missed before.
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3))
“
How can I escape the same fate? In a world that seems filled with fear and panic, what can I do to stop the cycle repeating itself? Do I carry that same fragility in my own genetic make-up? Am I helpless, or is it possible for me to retake control of my life?
”
”
Fiona Valpy (The Dressmaker's Gift)
“
Sometimes the same negative patterns are happening in our lives because we keep thinking the same negative thoughts. The pattern and the cycle repeat itself until we break it by replacing our negative thoughts, beliefs and faith with more positive hopeful ones.
”
”
Jeanette Coron
“
It occurred to me that human beings didn’t live beyond a hundred because they simply weren’t up for it. Psychologically, I mean. You kind of ran out. There wasn’t enough self to keep going. You grew too bored of your own mind. Of the way life repeated itself. How, after a while, there wasn’t a smile or gesture that you hadn’t seen before. There wasn’t a change in the world order that didn’t echo other changes in the world order. And the news stopped being new. The very word ‘news’ became a joke. It was all just a cycle. A slowly rotating downward one. And your tolerance for human beings, making the same mistakes over and over and over and over again, began to fade. It was like being stuck in the same song, with a chorus you had once liked but now made you want to rip your ears off.
”
”
Matt Haig (How to Stop Time)
“
Life is a cycle of the same choices with those lessons already taught. Some people act like they don't know what they are doing until they get caught. Learn from your mistakes and keep it moving never to repeat them. Don't be afraid to close that door. Since repeating a mistake becomes a choice, not a excuse for you anymore. -yl-
”
”
YackLounge Dj Kas
“
If you are out on the wheel, you are caught on the dizzying momentum of going round in circles. We call it ‘samsara’ ― ‘samsara-vatta’ means ‘going round in circles’ — endless cycles, not really going anywhere but round. That is why when you do things from ignorance, you find yourself coming back and repeating the same things over and over again.
”
”
Ajahn Sumedho (Don't Take Your Life Personally)
“
After a couple of years of monitoring the news, I’ve learned that the same stories repeat in a cycle, with just the names and places changed. At first I thought that the news broadcasters were literally reusing old reporting to save money, but I gradually came to the conclusion that humans find it comforting to watch the same news over and over again.
”
”
E.M. Foner (Turing Test (AI Diaries #1))
“
Every morning I wake up to have the same hope, that mankind had survived its own greed, its own desire to self-destruct, its own monopoly to destroy the environment regardless of the consequences, its own religious and ideological dogma that kept it in turmoil since inception….I listen to the morning news to find out that nothing had changed, and realize more certainly that we are living on a barrowed time, and sometime in the future, if we wake up there will be fewer and fewer of us who will wonder but never learn what went wrong….this is human history, keep repeating itself in destruction, greed and chaos, at the best of times it is organized chaos….and at the worst of time it is mayhem, all to serve the few….who leaves crumbs for us to continue the cycle…
”
”
Husam Wafaei (Honourable Defection)
“
Gansey said abruptly. "In we go. Ronan, don't forget to set the directional markers as we go. We're counting on you. Don't just stare at me. Nod like you understand. Good. You know what? Give them to Jane."
"What?" Ronan sounded betrayed.
Blue accepted the markers - round, plastic discs with arrows drawn on them. She hadn't realized how nervous she was until she had them in her hands; it felt good to have something concrete to do.
"I want you to whistle or hum or sing, Ronan, and keep track of time," Gansey said.
"You have got to be shitting me," Ronan replied. "Me."
Gansey peered down the tunnel. "I know you know a lot of the songs all the way through, and can do them the same sped and length every time. Because you had to memorize all of those tunes for the Irish music competitions."
Blue and Adam exchanged a delighted look. The only thing more pleasing than seeing Ronan singled out was seeing him singled out and forced to repeatedly sing an Irish jig.
"Piss up a rope," Ronan said.
Gansey, unoffended, waited.
Ronan shook his head, but then, with a wicked smile, he began to sing, "Squash one, squash two, s-"
"Not that one," both Adam and Gansey said.
"I'm not listening to that for three hours," Adam said.
Gansey pointed at Ronan until he began to breathily whistle a jaunty reel.
And they went in deeper.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3))
“
Therefore, since I could count on no continuity of sapient will to carry me through, indeed since all that was certain was that I must suffer repeated loss of same in order to maintain my body's vitality, my only course was to accomplish with what I hoped was the greater puissance of conscious craft what I had already once barely managed to achieve by accident of fate.
Which was to use these periods of conscious lucidity to engrave a mantric tropism upon the presentient levels of my mind with perpetual chanting repetition and diligent meditation, so that even when reason and conscious will had once more fled, my Bloomenkind self would, during periods of enforced floral nirvana, be programmed to follow the yellow, to follow the sun that sooner or later must rise during a cycle of such meditations into its percept sphere.
"Follow the sun, follow the yellow, follow the Yellow Brick Road ...
”
”
Norman Spinrad (Child of Fortune)
“
Everything repeated and repeated again. My family had lived within these hills for centuries. I knew that there had been many other girls who had made their homes on this ground before me, girls who were grown now and gone into the ground themselves, their babies - my great-grandmothers - grown and gone the same way. Nothing I knew was ever truly new; every path I followed had been written by the bodies of others, the course of every track sculpted by the footfall of those who came before us.
For-ev-er. For-ev-er. To the well. To the haggart. To the shed. To the hill. Along these ways, grassed hummed their old tunes, blackthorns pointed their warnings, and every well held the memory of whispered human desire. Maybe I was a strange child, feeling the constant hum of the past just beyond me, real as a bee, or maybe every child shares that feeling. All I knew was that I felt safe there, in the echo of their company.
”
”
Doireann Ní Ghríofa (A Ghost in the Throat)
“
He didn't always remember why he was doing this, but he remembered what he was doing: looking for the first time Gansey had died.
He couldn't remember the first time he'd made this choice. It was hard, now, to remember what was remembering and what was actually repeating. He wasn't even certain now which he was doing.
Noah just knew he had to keep doing it until the moment. He only had to stay solid long enough to make sure it stuck.
Here he was: Gansey, so young, twitching and dying in the leaves of a wood at the same time that Noah, miles away, had been twitching and dying in the leaves of a different wood.
All times were the same. As soon as Noah died, his spirit, full of the ley line, favored by Cabeswater, had felt spread over every moment he had experienced and was going to experience. It was easy to look wise when time was a circle.
Noah crouched over Gansey's body. He said, for the last time, "You will live because of Glendower. Someone else on the ley line is dying when they should not, and so you will live when you should not."
Gansey died.
"Good-bye," Noah said. "Don't throw it away."
He quietly slid from time.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4))
“
I look beat up, like someone who has gotten ill and aged a decade in a few months. I look into my eyes, but they aren’t really mine, not the eyes I used to have. They’re the eyes of someone very tired and very sad, and once I see them I feel even sadder and then I see that sadness, that compassion, for the sadness in my eyes, and I see the water rising in them. I’m both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person. And then I feel sad for that person who has so much compassion because she’s clearly been through the same thing, too. And the cycle keeps repeating.
”
”
Lily King (Writers & Lovers)
“
No man can part with either the past or the future. For how can a man be deprived of what he does not possess? These two things, then, must needs be remembered: the one, that all things from time everlasting have been cast in the same mould and repeated cycle after cycle, and so it makes no difference whether a man see the same things recur through a hundred years or two hundred, or through eternity: the other, that the longest liver and he whose time to die comes soonest part with no more the one than the other. For it is but the present that a man can be deprived of, if, as is the fact, it is this alone that he has, and what he has not a man cannot part with.
”
”
Marcus Aurelius (Complete Works of Marcus Aurelius)
“
Change is the only constant in the universe. This goes for all aspects. The seasons may repeat in cycles year after year, but they still change slightly as time passes. While they remain the same in what they are, they change in what they do. So should those whom have the intelligence to observe them, contemplate them, and give them names. Humans are the embodiment of change, and even if we keep the same labels and practices, humanity will change as the need arises. We've been resilient thus far, and this is evidence that if we can adapt to the changes we are faced with, then so can our inventions: philosophy, science, and religion.
John M. Penkal, Truly Satanic Volume I: Satanism
”
”
John M. Penkal
“
were portrayed by most historians as an almost static component of U.S. society. Their leaders changed with each generation, but the mass of black Americans were depicted as if the freed slaves of 1863 were the same people still not free fifty years later. There was no acknowledgment of the effects of cycle upon cycle of malevolent defeat, of the injury of seeing one generation rise above the cusp of poverty only to be indignantly crushed, of the impact of repeating tsunamis of violence and obliterated opportunities on each new generation of an ever-changing population outnumbered in persons and resources. Yet in the attics and basements of courthouses, old county jails, storage sheds, and local historical societies, I found a vast record of original documents and personal narratives revealing a very different version of events.
”
”
Douglas A. Blackmon (Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II)
“
Suppose you lived for a thousand years, or ten thousand years; would you have any more life than you have now? When you finally died, would you lose any more life than you’d lose if you died today?
This present moment is all the life we ever have. The longest life and the shortest converge on this same point. No matter how many years stretch behind or in front of us, the present moment remains the same.
The person who lives shortest owns the exact same amount of life as the one who lives longest. For the present is all we have and all we can lose. When we die, we don’t “lose” the past or future—we never owned them.
Eternity revolves like a wheel, with its circumference touching a still point—the present moment. Whether you stay at that point for hundred years, a thousand, or infinitely, you’ll only see the same cycles repeating themselves.
”
”
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
“
The formula presents a symbol of the self, for the self is not just a static quantity or constant form, but is also a dynamic process. In the same way, the ancients saw the imago Dei in man not as a mere imprint, as a sort of lifeless, stereotyped impression, but as an active force. The four transformations represent a process of restoration or rejuvenation taking place, as it were, inside the self, and comparable to the carbon-nitrogen cycle in the sun, when a carbon nucleus captures four protons (two of which immediately become neutrons) and releases them at the end of the cycle in the form of an alpha particle. The carbon nucleus itself comes out of the reaction unchanged, “like the Phoenix from the ashes.”108 The secret of existence, i.e., the existence of the atom and its components, may well consist in a continually repeated process of rejuvenation, and one comes to similar conclusions in trying to account for the numinosity of the archetypes.
”
”
C.G. Jung (Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (Collected Works, Vol 9ii))
“
I used to doubt the Fool when he told me that all of time was a great circuit, and that we are ever doomed to repeat what has been done before. But the older I get, the more I see it is so. I thought then that he meant one great circle entrapped all of us. Instead, I think we are born into our circuits. Like a colt on the end of a training line, we trot in the circular path ordained for us. We go faster, we slow down, we halt on command and we begin again. And each time we think the circle is something new.
Each circle spins off a circle of its own. Each one seems a new thing but in truth it is not. It is just our most recent attempts to correct old errors, to undo old wrongs done to us and to make up for things we have neglected. In each cycle, we may correct old errors, but I think we make as many new ones. Yet what is our alternative? To commit the same old errors again? Perhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes.
”
”
Robin Hobb (Golden Fool (Tawny Man, #2))
“
Pastor Max Lucado of San Antonio, Texas, said in an editorial for the Washington Post in February 2016 that he was “chagrined” by Trump’s antics. He ridiculed a war hero. He made a mockery of a reporter’s menstrual cycle. He made fun of a disabled reporter. He referred to a former first lady, Barbara Bush, as “mommy” and belittled Jeb Bush for bringing her on the campaign trail. He routinely calls people “stupid” and “dummy.” One writer catalogued 64 occasions that he called someone “loser.” These were not off-line, backstage, overheard, not-to-be-repeated comments. They were publicly and intentionally tweeted, recorded and presented.18 Lucado went on to question how Christians could support a man doing these things as a candidate for president, much less as someone who repeatedly attempted to capture evangelical audiences by portraying himself as similarly committed to Christian values. He continued, “If a public personality calls on Christ one day and calls someone a ‘bimbo’ the next, is something not awry? And to do so, not once, but repeatedly, unrepentantly and unapologetically? We stand against bullying in schools. Shouldn’t we do the same in presidential politics?” Rolling Stone reported on several evangelical leaders pushing against a Trump nomination, including North Carolina radio host and evangelical Dr. Michael Brown, who wrote an open letter to Jerry Falwell Jr., blasting his endorsement of Donald Trump. Brown wrote, “As an evangelical follower of Jesus, the contrast is between putting nationalism first or the kingdom of God first. From my vantage point, you and other evangelicals seem to have put nationalism first, and that is what deeply concerns me.”19 John Stemberger, president and general counsel for Florida Family Action, lamented to CNN, “The really puzzling thing is that Donald Trump defies every stereotype of a candidate you would typically expect Christians to vote for.” He wondered, “Should evangelical Christians choose to elect a man I believe would be the most immoral and ungodly person ever to be president of the United States?”20 A
”
”
Ben Howe (The Immoral Majority: Why Evangelicals Chose Political Power Over Christian Values)
“
Fusing Fire and Water This is a moving exercise in which the hands help raise and lower chee between the Sea of Energy (water) and the heart (fire). Posture: Horse stance, or sitting Technique: Exhale thoroughly and bring your hands together just below the navel, with palms up and fingertips about an inch apart. Begin inhaling slowly through the nose and slowly raise your upturned hands the torso until they reach the nipples. Time it so that inhalation is complete and hands reach the heart about the same time. Apply the Three Locks and retain the breath 3 to 5 seconds, then turn the palms over to face downward and slowly push them back down the torso as you exhale slowly through the nose, timing it so that hands reach bottom as lungs empty. Pause briefly, relax abdomen, then turn the palms back up and begin another cycle. Repeat 6 to 10 breaths. Pointers: Breathe and move hands in unison. Keep shoulders, arms, and neck muscles loose and relaxed, and “sink” the breath down as deeply as possible during retention. Benefits: This exercise moves energy up and down between the “fire” of heart and the “water” of the navel region, thus blending and balancing these two types of energy. It regulates and deepens heartbeat and develops awareness of the Sea of Energy as the body’s chee headquarters.
”
”
Daniel Reid (The Tao Of Health, Sex, and Longevity: A Modern Practical Guide to the Ancient Way)
“
We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.” “It is,” Len said. “It is,” I repeated. “There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren’t, the cycles wouldn’t keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfill the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them. And some of the new people who emerge from all this will develop new ways to cope. They’ll have to. That will break the old cycle, even if it’s only to begin a new one, a different one.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents)
“
In all your travels around Alagaësia, with Angela and without, you’ve never found anything that might explain this mystery? Or even just something that might be of use against Galbatorix.”
I found you, didn’t I?
“That’s not funny,” growled Eragon. “Blast it, you have to know something more.”
I do not.
“Think, then! If I can’t find some sort of help against Galbatorix, we’ll lose, Solembum. We’ll lose, and most of the Varden, including the werecats, will die.”
Solembum hissed again. What do you expect of me, Eragon? I cannot invent help where none exists. Read the book.
“We’ll be at Urû’baen before I can finish it. The book might as well not exist.”
Solembum’s ears flattened again. That is not my fault.
“I don’t care if it is. I just want a way to keep us from ending up dead or enslaved. Think! You have to know something else!”
Solembum uttered a low, warbling growl. I do not. And--
“You have to, or we’re doomed!”
Even as Eragon uttered the words, he saw a change come over the werecat. Solembum’s ears swiveled until they were upright, his whiskers relaxed, and his gaze softened, losing its hard-edged brilliance. At the same time, the werecat’s mind grew unusually empty, as if his consciousness had been stilled or removed.
Eragon froze, uncertain.
Then he felt Solembum say, with thoughts that were as flat and colorless as a pool of water beneath a wintry, cloud-ridden sky: Chapter forty-seven. Page three. Start with the second passage thereon.
Solembum’s gaze sharpened, and his ears returned to their previous position. What? he said with obvious irritation. Why are you gaping at me like that?
“What did you just say?”
I said that I do not know anything else. And that--
“No, no, the other thing, about the chapter and page.”
Do not toy with me. I said no such thing.
“You did.”
Solembum studied him for several seconds. Then, with thoughts that were overly calm, he said, Tell me exactly what you heard, Dragon Rider.
So, Eragon repeated the words as closely as he could. When he finished, the werecat was silent for a while. I have no memory of that, he said.
“What do you think it means?”
It means that we should look and see what’s on page three of chapter forty-seven.
”
”
Christopher Paolini (Inheritance (The Inheritance Cycle, #4))
“
I’d stare at my new wrinkles in the mirror and wonder where they came from. I wasted more time, repeating the same thing day in and day out, barely present in my own life. I wasn’t looking to break out of the cycle in search of anything meaningful.
”
”
Renee Carlino (Before We Were Strangers)
“
From the earliest of times, the eye has had a privileged place in the conventions of Arabic poetry.22 As Richard Ettinghausen put it, In [Arabic courtly poetry] one reads that the ideal Arab woman must be so stout that she nearly falls asleep… . Her breasts should be full and rounded, her waist slender and graceful, her belly lean, her hips sloping, and her buttocks so fleshy as to impede her passage through a door. [Her neck is said to be] like that of a gazelle, while her arms are described as well rounded, with soft delicate elbows, full wrists, and long fingers. Her face [has] white cheeks, … and her eyes are those of a gazelle with the white of the eye clearly marked.23 Far from expanding creatively on this set of classical formulas, the figures of feminine beauty in the Nights often repeat them mechanically. This story cycle is filled with over a dozen derivative poems that repeat, in cliché terms, this same image of the beloved’s eye.
”
”
Philip F. Kennedy (Scheherazade's Children: Global Encounters with the Arabian Nights)
“
A lot of the situations that we put ourselves in are similar to a cat in a yard full of dogs. We rarely ask ourselves how we got here, (which doesn’t help with the question of how we get out of here), all of which rarely keeps us from finding ourselves in the next yard asking the same questions.
”
”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
What do I think about life experience? I think that someone that spends 50 years of his life repeating the same cycle of problems can only gain a Masters in Stupidity. Intelligence is a choice and not the absence of it, as portrayed by an apathetic acceptance of whatever comes to one's life.
”
”
Robin Sacredfire
“
Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This
”
”
James Nestor (Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art)
“
I look into my eyes, but they aren’t really mine, not the eyes I used to have. They’re the eyes of someone very tired and very sad, and once I see them I feel even sadder and then I see that sadness, that compassion, for the sadness in my eyes, and I see the water rising in them. I’m both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person. And then I feel sad for that person who has so much compassion because she’s clearly been through the same thing, too. And the cycle keeps repeating.
”
”
Lily King (Writers & Lovers)
“
I remember Marco saying, “I can’t be alone. You know I hate being alone,” as if that was a justification for him continuing his affair. The article concludes by saying that a sociopath will repeat the same relationship cycle over and over again; lather, rinse, repeat. I Google “sociopath relationship cycle.” I click a link that leads to a page with a shadowy figure wearing a mask with the words “Idealize, Devalue, Discard” on it. I have not even read what this means and chills creep all over my body. Idealize, devalue, discard.
”
”
Jen Waite (A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal)
“
stop and ponder. Just how much of our lives did the average person spend in some form of confrontation with something or someone over what they thought was right either mentally or emotionally? And most of it, she knew, being an anthropologist, were the same arguments. The same worries and bickering that thousands of generations had before us. The same fears. The same controversies. The same disagreements. In many cases humans had fought over the very same resources. A perpetual argument. An endless cycle running repeatedly in a world that had not and would not change unless something interrupted the pattern. Something so meaningful and profound that it would make every person stop and reassess what the world meant to them and what life meant to them. To make them remember that our individual flashes in time were precious, never to repeat. Never to remember what we had done or learned even between the bickering. Because this was it. Once we were gone, our lessons and memories were lost forever.
”
”
Michael C. Grumley (The Desert of Glass (Monument #2))
“
Life is a cycle that repeats over the same patterns previously established. What you allow, you accept; what you ignore, you tolerate; what you project, you reflect; and what you see, you become. All is well and all is as it should in the cycles that you create, consciously and unconsciously, for although the unconscious part of you is not visible within you, it is always visible outside of you. Both the undesired and the desired compose the elements of the ether from which the particles of reality emerge.
”
”
Dan Desmarques
“
Since I opened the account here,' I said, 'I've been given a NIE. It's here on my resident's permit.' I pushed it through the hatch to him.
'Ah yes,' he repeated. 'Excellent. A NIE. Yes, yes, the computer in Bilbao will like this. Turning to his screen, he tapped in my NIE. 'Yes, very good. You now exist. Excellent, excellent.'
Returning my precious permit and congratulating me once again on my new-found existence, Carlos bid me good day, and soon after, three months' salary duly arrived.
In the following two years, I slipped in and out of existence three times in as many minutes as an official at an office called 'El Tráfico' juggled with my NIE, my lack of NIF and yet another number – one till then unknown to me – my special personal NIT (Número de Identidad del Tráfico), which for a Spaniard is naturally the same number as their NIF, but for an alien, is a unique non-NIF, non-NIE number. CAM? (Clear as Mud?)
Also, in the intervening two years the Maastricht Treaty had come into effect, making the Spaniards and me – and even, heaven forbid, the French
”
”
Richard Guise (Two Wheels Over Catalonia: Cycling the Back-Roads of North-Eastern Spain)
“
I didn’t have any tools or methods to process my failures and disappointments so I could learn from them. Instead, I kept repeating the same mistakes and cycles over and over.
”
”
Michael J Heil (Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose)
“
But sometimes a person’s brain starts cycling. No matter what you do, the same thoughts just keep repeating, over and over. You get stuck in a loop, and when you’re inside that loop, you can’t see past it. You’ll keep coming up with the same possibilities, to no end, because the answers you need—they’re outside the loop.
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3))
“
Sometimes a person's brain starts cycling. No matter what you do, the same thoughts just keep repeating, over and over. You get stuck in a loop, you can't see past it. You'll keep coming up with possibilities, to no end, because the answers you need. They're outside the loop. Distractions aren't just distractions. Sometimes they can break you out of the loop, and once you're out, once your brain stops cycling. You see the things you missed before
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnesnn
“
But mainly, to be human, it is... to be vulnerable. More importantly, to allow yourself to be vulnerable. To engulf yourself in vulnerability and to give yourself permission to drown in it. To be human... is to feel. To be human is to be conscious and aware of the role given to you, aware of what impact you need to make on this world. To be conscious and mindful of what energy you put out into this world, and the energy you allow yourself to receive. To be human is to experience. To make mistakes and learn from them, and make that same mistake again and learn from it once more. It is to obtain compassion and perspective and treat others with kindness, even when you, yourself, have not been treated the same. It is to move on, to detach, to go on with your life, meet new people, and repeat that endless cycle. It is to laugh and fill your body and every inch of your soul with laughter. It is to be around people who you love, who exert love, and who love you.
”
”
Braelyn Wilson (Counting Stars)
“
Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This flip-flopping—breathing all-out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again—is the key to Tummo’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can come under our control. Conscious heavy breathing, McGee told me, allows us to bend so that we don’t get broken. •
”
”
James Nestor (Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art)
“
My pain and the resolve that followed it became a cycle that would repeat itself many times. I believe it is, in a profound way, the very through line of my life. The struggles I endured as a child are what allowed me to recognize and care about pain in others. The validation I longed for as a child is what I see other people longing for just as intensely. Thousands of people had the courage to share their stories with me because their story was my story. Their pain was my pain. Because all pain is the same.
”
”
Bruce D. Perry (What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing)
“
What you don’t want is to find yourself in a place where you have the same narrative and the same words coming into your head on cycle, coming in on repeat, and you’re wondering why you’re not getting further in your career.
”
”
Lauren Simmons (Make Money Move: A Guide to Financial Wellness)
“
I go up the stairs, past the presidents, directly to the bathroom even though I’m already wearing my uniform. It’s empty. I catch myself in the mirror over the sink. It’s tilted away from the wall for people in wheelchairs so that I’m at a slightly unfamiliar angle to myself. I look beat up, like someone who has gotten ill and aged a decade in a few months. I look into my eyes, but they aren’t really mine, not the eyes I used to have. They’re the eyes of someone very tired and very sad, and once I see them I feel even sadder and then I see that sadness, that compassion, for the sadness in my eyes, and I see the water rising in them. I’m both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person. And then I feel sad for that person who has so much compassion because she’s clearly been through the same thing, too. And the cycle keeps repeating. It’s like when you go into a dressing room with a three-paneled mirror and you line them up just right to see the long narrowing hallway of yourselves diminishing into infinity. It feels like that, like I’m sad for an infinite number of my selves.
”
”
Lily King (Writers & Lovers)
“
Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This flip-flopping—breathing all-out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again—is the key to Tummo’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can come under our control.
”
”
James Nestor (Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art)
“
It is a shame that what happens today already happened yesterday, and will happen again tomorrow; it will continue to happen until the end of time, or until man finds out he is not only what he thinks, but mostly what he feels. The body tires easily, but the spirit is always free and will help us get out, one day, from this infernal cycle of repeating the same mistakes every generation. Although thoughts always remain the same, there is something stronger, and this is called Love.
”
”
Paulo Coelho
“
People that encounter me cannot understand why I refuse to worship, either it is a religion, a prophet or a writer. They don't understand that I was born to be worshipped, and not worship, As me, many others have been here before and face the same. People disdain, ignore and ridicule the living while worshipping the dead. And once I'm gone, the cycle will repeat, with someone better than me facing what I face now. I'm great now, not 300 years from now, when everyone will agree with this statement but I won't be here to disagree wit it and show a better path.
”
”
Robin Sacredfire
“
Meditation is the best tool for neutralizing the voice in the head. It's a muzzle for the ego. Being mindful is an innate but underused ability we all have, the act of being aware without judging. When you repeatedly go through the cycle of trying to focus on your breath, losing that focus, and noticing and returning to the practice, you are literally building your mindfulness muscle the same way dumbbell curls build your biceps. As this mind-muscle develops, you start being way more aware of thoughts, emotions, and sensations as what they really are: squirts of chemicals & hormones that enter, peak and then fade completely back to the nothingness of which they arose. In other words, mindfulness provides space between impulse and action, so you're not a slave to whatever pops into your head. You are not your thoughts. You are the awareness of them.
”
”
Dan Harris (10% Happier)
“
I was also troubled by a sensibility in much of the conventional history of the era that these events were somehow inevitable. White animosity toward blacks was accepted as a wrong, but logical extension of antebellum racial views. Events were presented as having transpired as a result of large--seemingly unavoidable--social and anthropological shifts, rather than the specific decisions and choices of individuals. What's more, African Americans were portrayed by most historians as an almost static component of U.S. society: Their leaders changed with each generation, but the mass of black Americans were depicted as if the freed slaves of 1863 were the same people still not free fifty years later. There was no acknowledgement of the effects of cycle upon cycle of malevolent defeat, of the injury of seeing one generation rise above the cusp of poverty only to be indignantly crushed, of the impact of repeating tsunamis of violence and obliterated opportunities on each new generation of an ever-changing population out-numbered in persons and resources.
”
”
Douglas A. Blackmon
“
Change is the only constant in the universe. This goes for all aspects. The seasons may repeat in cycles year after year, but they still change slightly as time passes. While they remain the same in what they are, they change in what they do. So should those whom have the intelligence to observe them, contemplate them, and give them names. Humans are the embodiment of change, and even if we keep the same labels and practices, humanity will change as the need arises. We've been resilient thus far, and this is evidence that if we can adapt to the changes we are faced with, then so can our inventions: philosophy, science, and religion.
”
”
John M. Penkal
“
APRIL 1 Worshiping with other believers helps you view all of life from the vantage point of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not just the most important miracle ever. It’s not just the most astounding event in the life of the Messiah. It’s not just an essential item in your theological outline. It’s not just the reason for the most important celebratory season of the church. It’s not just your hope for the future. No, the resurrection is all that and more. It is also meant to be the window through which you view all of life. Second Corinthians 4:13–15 captures this truth very well: “[We know] that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.” But what does it look like to look at life through the window of the resurrection? As I assess my life right here, right now, what about the resurrection must I remember? Let me suggest five things. The resurrection of Jesus guarantees your resurrection too. Life is not a constantly repeating cycle of the same old same old. No, under God’s rule this world is marching toward a conclusion. Your life is being carried to a glorious end. There will be a moment when God will raise you out of this broken world, and sin and suffering will be no more. The resurrection tells you what Jesus is now doing. Jesus now reigns. First Corinthians 15 says that he will continue to reign until the final enemy is under his feet. You see, your world is not out of control, but under the careful control of One who is still doing his sin-defeating work. The resurrection promises you all the grace you need between Jesus’s resurrection and yours. If your end has already been guaranteed, then all the grace you need along the way has been guaranteed as well, or you would never make it to your appointed end. Future grace always carries with it the promise of present grace. The resurrection of Jesus motivates you to do what is right, no matter what you are facing. The resurrection tells you that God will win. His truth will reign. His plan will be accomplished. Sin will be defeated. Righteousness will overcome evil. This means that everything you do in God’s name is worth it, no matter what the cost. The resurrection tells you that you always have reason for thanks. Quite apart from anything you have earned, you have been welcomed into the most exciting story ever and have been granted a future of joy and peace forever. No matter what happens today, look at life through this window.
”
”
Paul David Tripp (New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional)
“
But sometimes a person’s brain starts cycling. No matter what you do, the same thoughts just keep repeating, over and over. You get stuck in a loop, and when you’re inside that loop, you can’t see past it. You’ll keep coming up with the same possibilities, to no end, because the answers you need—they’re outside the loop. Distractions aren’t just distractions. Sometimes they can break you out of the loop, and once you’re out, once your brain stops cycling—” “You see the things you missed before.
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Final Gambit (The Inheritance Games, #3))
“
Here I would also follow in the steps of the ancients. Historians such as Titus Livy and Herodotus. I would look into the past, as they did, and speculate that the same forces that compel nations and empires to rise and fall will always be repeated, in endless cycle, throughout history. Understand the past, and one can anticipate what is to come. Understand the nature of men, and one can anticipate what men will do.” He nodded, but as if he did not entirely accept my prescription. “Then that is the error in this science of anticipation. The nature of men. Surely in this new age, this rebirth of humanity, we are changed men, different even than our own fathers. How can you anticipate a new man?” He had mined the very foundation of my science; had I been less fixed in my fundamental conviction, or had his question been more oblique, I might have accepted this chastisement.
”
”
Michael Ennis (The Malice of Fortune)
“
None of this matters. I mean, those people—that man and his kids who you just fed—they matter, but no one cares about them. Those kids ar the future if they don't starve to death. But if they manage to grow up, what kind of men will they be?'
'That's what Earthseed was about,' I said. 'I wanted us to understand what we could be, what we could do. I wanted to give us a focus, a goal, something big enough, complex enough, difficult enough, and in the end, radical enough to make us become more than we ever have been. We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's the way things are. That's the way things have always been.'
'It is,' Len said.
'It is,' I repeated. 'There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren't, the cycles wouldn't keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfil the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them. And some of the new people who emerge from all this will develop new ways to cope. They'll have to. That will break the old cycle, even if it's only to begin a new one, a different one.
'Earthseed is about preparing to fulfil the Destiny. It's about learning to live in partnership with one another in small communities, and at the same time, working out a sustainable partnership with our environment. It's about treating education and adaptability as the absolute essentials that they are. It's...' I glanced at Len, caught a little smile on her face, and wound down. 'It's about a lot more than that,' I said. 'But those are the bones.'
'Makes a strange sermon.'
'I know.
”
”
Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2))
“
There are recurring cycles, ups and downs, but the course of events is essentially the same, with small variations. It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.
”
”
Theodor Reik
“
The old story where the central plot is money and power define success, is fundamentally flawed. History has repeatedly proven that this story doesn’t work. It causes pain, suffering and fear; it destroys life and our planet; and it dampens the human spirit. In this narrative, those oppressed by the money-power society inevitably rebel, take over, and sadly repeat the same destructive cycle.
”
”
Michele Hunt (DreamMakers: Innovating for the Greater Good)
“
The same worries and bickering that thousands of generations had before us. The same fears. The same controversies. The same disagreements. In many cases humans had fought over the very same resources. A perpetual argument. An endless cycle running repeatedly in a world that had not and would not change unless something interrupted the pattern. Something so meaningful and profound that it would make every person stop and reassess what the world meant to them and what life meant to them. To make them remember that our individual flashes in time were precious, never to repeat. Never to remember what we had done or learned even between the bickering. Because this was it. Once we were gone, our lessons and memories were lost forever.
”
”
Michael C. Grumley (The Desert of Glass (Monument #2))
“
Repeat the one arm snatch in 3-5 sets, first with the left (if it is the weaker one), and then for the same number of sets with the right arm. For some sessions, perform the complete cycle of the exercise by switching the kettlebell from hand to hand. Pay a lot of attention to developing your wrist strength. Snatch more often with the weaker arm.
”
”
Pavel Tsatsouline (The Russian Kettlebell Challenge: Xtreme Fitness for Hard Living Comrades)
“
To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week.
”
”
James Nestor (Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art)
“
Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week. This flip-flopping—breathing all-out, then not at all, getting really cold and then hot again—is the key to Tummo’s magic. It forces the body into high stress one minute, a state of extreme relaxation the next. Carbon dioxide levels in the blood crash, then they build back up. Tissues become oxygen deficient and then flooded again. The body becomes more adaptable and flexible and learns that all these physiological responses can come under our control. Conscious heavy breathing, McGee told me, allows us to bend so that we don’t get broken.
”
”
James Nestor (Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art)
“
Shh,” I murmur, taking care to keep my voice low. “It is only a dream. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
[...]
"A dream,” she repeats, pupils dilated as she stares up at me. She licks her lips, and I follow the movement with my eyes, a heat pulsing low at the base of my spine. “It was just a dream.”
I nod, trying to angle my hips away from her in a futile attempt to hide my thickening cock. But her body is pressed close to mine, tucked beside me under my and Jadi’s wool traveling blankets.
I see the moment she realizes, my preternatural vision able to take in the details of her shock. I see the way her pale eyes go wide, cheeks flushing pink. Hear her breath hitch in surprise. I feel my own cheeks heat in response, a flush of shame tightening in my chest.
Shame at how much I want her. At how I’ve treated her. Shame at how jealously I guarded Jadi’s affections. At the way I cruelly tried to drive him away from her.
“Asterion?”
My name is barely a whisper on her lips, but she doesn’t pull away from me. Instead, her thigh presses against my hardening length. Almost like she’s seeking me out.
But of course, that can’t be right. No woman would seek me out. Not after the way I’ve treated her.
“Yes?” My voice catches in my throat, but I don’t dare look away.
“Do you – are you…” her voice trails off, but she keeps her eyes locked on mine.
Guilt tightens its hold behind my ribs, but I nod. There’s no point in denying it. No point in lying to her. Not when she can feel the proof of my attraction to her pressing against her.
“I’m sorry,” I grit out, pulling my hand away from her face. “I don’t mean to… Please, just ignore it.”
I roll away until I’m lying on my back, my erection almost painful as it pushes against the weight of the blankets.
“Because of Jadi?” she asks, her voice thready and uncertain.
I furrow my brow, glaring with irritation into the darkness. “Jadi? What does Jadi have to do with it?”
“I mean – just that you and Jadi are together. Lovers? I not know word,” she babbles. “And I know that. Respect that. I not want come between you and Jadi. At party, he asked if he could court me,” she confesses. “I sorry if I…”
I cut her off with a frustrated hiss, hating myself even more for this proof of how I’ve hurt Jadi. How successfully I have pushed her away from him.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” I grind out. “Jadi has every right to court you. Every right. The only one who could deny him that is you.”
“But you and Jadi…”
“Are lovers? Intertwined as closely as two threads woven into the same cloth? Yes.” I bark out a bitter, mirthless laugh. “Which makes my treatment of him – of you – even worse.”
The words are spilling out now, like water into the hull of a ship once the wood has cracked. Now that I’ve started, there is no stopping it.
“I’ve known for moon cycles that he cares for you, and I hurt him for it. I was cruel to him and tried to chase you away. Because I was afraid you would steal him away from me, and he’s all I have. He’s everything to me. He’s my heart. My heart.”
I clutch my fist against my chest in emphasis, still staring at the ceiling, not daring to turn and meet her eyes with my own.
“I was jealous, and it was wrong, and now the gods are probably laughing at me. Because I want you. I want you. After trying to drive Jadi away from you, now I want you for myself. But I don’t deserve you. Not after the way I’ve treated you. And even then, even if I hadn’t…”
[...]
“I want you too.” Her words are no more than a whisper, and I tense, my first instinct to dismiss them the moment I register what she’s said.
“I want you. And Jadi,” she admits, and there’s a raw vulnerability in those simple words that I don’t understand. “I shouldn’t, should I? Want you both, I mean? Like that?”
I roll to my side to stare at her in disbelief.
”
”
Elisha Kemp (Burn the Stars (Dying Gods, #2))
“
During the short time they’d lived together, they’d had rather a lot of serious talks, and the format had always been the same. She’d start with a speech-cum-lecture-cum-list-of-charges and he’d sit still and be quiet, trying not to let his attention wander; then there’d be an awkward silence, and then she’d start talking again, usually saying the same things but in a slightly different order. The cycle would repeat itself (rarely more than five times), and at the end either she’d burst into tears and stomp out of the room, lose her temper and stomp out of the room or sit on his lap and start nibbling his ear.
”
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Tom Holt (Earth, Air, Fire and Custard (J. W. Wells & Co., #3))
“
When leaders solicit criticism, respond constructively to it, and reward it, they begin the process of normalizing feedback as a positive force. When the CEO solicits criticism and rewards people for giving it to them it sends a signal to middle managers that they should do the same. As people at all levels of the organization realize giving honest feedback is safe and even encouraged, a virtuous cycle ensues, producing teams that function at a remarkably high level. People are more innovative when they are less afraid to take risks, and when they learn from mistakes rather than hiding and repeating them.
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Kim Malone Scott (Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean (Expert Thinking))
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Time and again, history has proved a very bad predictor of future events. This is because history never repeats itself; nothing in human society…ever happens twice under exactly the same conditions or in exactly the same way.17 So it is also with earthquakes. There are no cycles, no warnings, no signals, no precursors. The Earth starts shaking whenever it wants to.
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Mark Buchanan (Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen)
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The Sexual Competition Hypothesis is based on the fact that throughout human evolutionary history the female shape has been a reliable indicator of the female's reproductive history and reproductive potential. The same is not true for men, where physical appearance, while relevant, is much less useful in assessing a man's reproductive potential. The visual signal for a female's peak reproductive potential in ancestral environments was the female's nubile shape, which was generally short-lived and declined with the repeated cycles of gestation and lactation.
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Riadh Abed (Evolutionary Psychiatry: Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental Health)
“
Compared to other emotions (joy, sadness, anger), there is a lot of physical evidence that love is actually a concept closer to hormone activity than emotion. Biologically, love is a powerful neurotic condition. Desire to love is accompanied by sexual desire, but it is similar to hunger and thirst for hormonal reasons. When you fall in love, the brain releases several chemicals: pheromone, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin, and so on. Just by hugging a loved one or simply looking at a photograph of a boyfriend, the hormone oxytocin is released in the body and acts as an analgesic for headaches. What is interesting is that if you break up, the symptoms you experience are similar to the withdrawal symptoms of drug addicts. In some cases, withdrawal from the demonstration may release a chemical that weakens the heart in the body.
Biochemically, phenylethylamine , which secretes in the brain's limbic system, acts as a stimulant, a kind of natural amphetamine. The phrase love is a drug is no longer a metaphor but an explanatory note in this scene. But it takes 2 seconds to look at the opponent and take the so-called saying at first sight. In just two seconds, phenylethylamine is secreted and becomes full, stimulating the brain, making the opponent look barefaced. If you can make your opponent secrete phenylethylamine, this is the birth of XXX, a grossly outbreak of creatures. However, the secretion of phenylethylamine has a shelf life and generally does not exceed 2 years. [10] After that period, I will get back to my mind. From this time on, love has passed through the stages of chemistry and sociology.
But a new fact has been announced. It is said that there are quite a couple who secrete this phenylethylamine throughout life. (...) In this case, however, it is not the same as the whole life, but the period when it is secreted like other normal couples, and the time when the secretion is diminished repeatedly. However, the cycle of this pattern is similar to the two people, so it is a good fit for a lifetime. If you think about it a little differently, you will come back bump bang for a while and then fall back to each other. On the contrary, the broken couples still have one secretion, and the other side breaks into the resting period, and the secretion side considers that the other's love has cooled, Perhaps the main pattern that a man and a woman make and break is confessing - fellowship - Confession feels that the opponent is obsessed with the pattern of departure - separation, It may be that the action of the opponent, who started the pause more quickly and began to climax at the apex of the secretion at that point, is regarded as an obsession.
However, it is difficult to justify the feeling of love as a simple hormonal change. It is not possible to reveal what kind of change is happening in any situation, even if it is revealed that what kind of hormone change occurs when feeling love, and it is impossible to tell. Just as you do not secrete phenylethylamine, which is one of the most common types of phenylethylamine you encounter on the roadside, you can not say that this research has 'revealed the principles of love' and 'why you fall in love'. The latter is influenced by individual values, experience and situation, first impressions, and the conditions of the opponent.
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”
Love Is Beautiful
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Transverse waves usually have to travel along the edge of the medium – for example, on the top of the water that the wave passes through. For a longitudinal wave, the regular cycle is in the same direction as the wave moves forward, not at right angles. The medium is repeatedly squashed up and relaxed like a concertina, so what travels through it is a pattern of compression and rarefaction.
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Brian Clegg (Gravitational Waves: How Einstein's spacetime ripples reveal the secrets of the universe (Hot Science))
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look into my eyes, but they aren’t really mine, not the eyes I used to have. They’re the eyes of someone very tired and very sad, and once I see them I feel even sadder and then I see that sadness, that compassion, for the sadness in my eyes, and I see the water rising in them. I’m both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person. And then I feel sad for that person who has so much compassion because she’s clearly been through the same thing, too. And the cycle keeps repeating.
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Lily King (Writers & Lovers)
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I wait here in the darkness, not quite dead, not quite living, bleak and useless as a monument to a forgotten kingdom, awaiting the call to arms. I stand watch as the centuries turn to millennia, as the same cycles repeat, pretending that when I am called, I can help by adding to the carnage.
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Brandon Mull (Dragonwatch (Dragonwatch #1))
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Here’s the information: To practice Wim Hof’s breathing method, start by finding a quiet place and lying flat on your back with a pillow under your head. Relax the shoulders, chest, and legs. Take a very deep breath into the pit of your stomach and let it back out just as quickly. Keep breathing this way for 30 cycles. If possible, breathe through the nose; if the nose feels obstructed, try pursed lips. Each breath should look like a wave, with the inhale inflating the stomach, then the chest. You should exhale all the air out in the same order. At the end of 30 breaths, exhale to the natural conclusion, leaving about a quarter of the air left in the lungs, then hold that breath for as long as possible. Once you’ve reached your breathhold limit, take one huge inhale and hold it another 15 seconds. Very gently, move that fresh breath of air around the chest and to the shoulders, then exhale and start the heavy breathing again. Repeat the whole pattern three or four rounds and add in some cold exposure (cold shower, ice bath, naked snow angels) a few times a week.
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James Nestor (Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art)
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As big as the world is, Nassun is beginning to realize it’s also really small. The same stories, cycling around and around. The same endings, again and again. The same mistakes eternally repeated.
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N.K. Jemisin (The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3))
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Gansey peered down the tunnel. "I know you know a lot of the songs all the way through, and can do them the same sped and length every time. Because you had to memorize all of those tunes for the Irish music competitions."
Blue and Adam exchanged a delighted look. The only thing more pleasing than seeing Ronan singled out was seeing him singled out and forced to repeatedly sing an Irish jig.
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Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3) (Free Preview Edition))
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People that encounter me cannot understand why I refuse to worship, either it is a religion, a prophet or a writer. They don't understand that I was born to be worshipped, and not worship. As me, many others have been here before and face the same. People disdain, ignore and ridicule the living while worshipping the dead. And once I'm gone, the cycle will repeat, with someone better than me facing what I face now. And I am great now, not three hundred years from now, when everyone will agree with this statement but I won't be here to disagree with it and show a better path.
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Robin Sacredfire
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I was thinking today about how everything turns in circles and spirals with the cosmic heart until infinity. Everything has a vibration that spirals INWARD or OUTWARD -- and everything turns together in the same direction at the same time. This vibration keeps going: it becomes born and expands or closes and destructs -- only to repeat the cycle again in opposite current. So, we can find out if we are going to end or awaken by studying how a shell on a snail or sea creature is being built. If we take one of these to a lab and observe the direction in which it creates its shell, we will know if we are going to destruct in this cycle or truly awaken.
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Suzy Kassem
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Even if the cat knocks into it, a pendulum clock does not switch to a sixty-two–second minute. Turbulence in a fluid was a behavior of a different order, never producing any single rhythm to the exclusion of others. A well-known characteristic of turbulence was that the whole broad spectrum of possible cycles was present at once. Turbulence is like white noise, or static. Could such a thing arise from a simple, deterministic system of equations? Ruelle and Takens wondered whether some other kind of attractor could have the right set of properties. Stable—representing the final state of a dynamical system in a noisy world. Low-dimensional—an orbit in a phase space that might be a rectangle or a box, with just a few degrees of freedom. Nonperiodic—never repeating itself, and never falling into a steady grandfather-clock rhythm. Geometrically the question was a puzzle: What kind of orbit could be drawn in a limited space so that it would never repeat itself and never cross itself—because once a system returns to a state it has been in before, it thereafter must follow the same path. To produce every rhythm, the orbit would have to be an infinitely long line in a finite area. In other words—but the word had not been invented—it would have to be fractal.
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James Gleick (Chaos: Making a New Science)
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hundred because they simply weren’t up for it. Psychologically, I mean. You kind of ran out. There wasn’t enough self to keep going. You grew too bored of your own mind. Of the way life repeated itself. How, after a while, there wasn’t a smile or gesture that you hadn’t seen before. There wasn’t a change in the world order that didn’t echo other changes in the world order. And the news stopped being new. The very word ‘news’ became a joke. It was all just a cycle. A slowly rotating downward one. And your tolerance for human beings, making the same mistakes over and over and over and over again, began to fade. It was like being stuck in the same song, with a chorus you had once liked but now made you want to rip your ears off.
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Matt Haig (How to Stop Time)
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BASIC LIFE ATTRIBUTES
Four purusharthas or goals of the life be,
So very crystal clear in life undisputedly;
1
Artha getting useful wealth and prosperity,
Finding the meaning for living herein truly;
2
Kama fulfilling desires, acting repeatedly,
It the physical, material desire fulfillment be;
14
Dharma – the foundation of all human goals be,
Refers to obligations, conduct, moral duties;
25
Moksha – the liberation from the web of maya be,
Freedom from the cycles of birth and death clearly;
33
As all the rivers must lead to the sea eventually,
All spiritual paths leading to the same goal finally;
43
And all of the variety of life are created certainly,
By combination of the three Gunas undisputedly.
44
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Munindra Misra (Goals of Life)
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There are only eight numbers. They repeat.” “That’s right, and it’s amazing that we could calculate this with only one hundred examples. Despite every block being a slightly different size and shape, calculating the ratios gets us only eight different ones, and the same thing happens when we divide the circumference by the ratio as a percentage. Furthermore, the eight unique numbers that result from that calculation are all Fibonacci numbers.
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J.C. Ryan (The 10th Cycle (Rossler Foundation, #1))
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I added new fields to the database, with the calculations your colleague applied to the data. Now we are able to see the result as soon as I have put the raw data into the record,” Raj was saying. As he typed, a dizzying array of numbers in rows and columns marched across the screen. A few more keystrokes, and the data arranged itself into a chart, showing the final calculation in colored numbers. Sarah and Daniel looked closer, to notice that the different colors always represented the same number, red for five, green for eight, and so on. The sequences, clearly Fibonacci numbers, went no higher than thirty-four. “How many of these blocks have you finished, Raj?” Daniel asked. “All of them in the passageway, both sides.” “And yet, not counting zero or the repeated one, we have only eight numbers, the highest being thirty-four. Could we have been mistaken about the message? It doesn’t seem like enough.
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J.C. Ryan (The 10th Cycle (Rossler Foundation, #1))
“
And yet, not counting zero or the repeated one, we have only eight numbers, the highest being thirty-four. Could we have been mistaken about the message? It doesn’t seem like enough.” Raj said, “You know, it looks like we have discovered the keyboard and the screen of a computer, but where is the computer?” Daniel and Sarah saw it almost at the same time, but Sarah found her voice first. “That’s it, it’s a sign, but it’s only pointing to the alphabet, it isn’t the alphabet itself.” “Why do you say that?” Raj asked. “Because, there aren’t enough letters, if we assign a letter to each number. No alphabet has so few.
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J.C. Ryan (The 10th Cycle (Rossler Foundation, #1))
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This sequence will have to be put through all its iterations, starting with each of the thirty-four letters or symbols we come up with at the top right corner. Then we need to repeat the process from left to right and bottom to top just in case.” “Why not do the same thing reading down in columns instead of across in rows?” Sarah asked. “We should, with the same process; right to left, left to right, top to bottom, and bottom to top.” “How about diagonal?” Daniel’s question was meant to be a little sarcastic, as he contemplated the painstaking work involved. “Good point,
”
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J.C. Ryan (The 10th Cycle (Rossler Foundation, #1))