Repetition Importance Quotes

There was a girl, and her uncle sold her. Put like that it seems so simple. No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'll mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique. Without individuals we see only numbers, a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people- but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, this skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies' own myriad squirming children? We draw our lines around these moments of pain, remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain. Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives. A life that is, like any other, unlike any other. And the simple truth is this: There was a girl, and her uncle sold her.

The importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated. Repetition is the key to learning.

Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans." Yann Martel in Life of Pi, Page 25

I learned that the world of men as it exists today is a bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it is also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering. “But moreover, I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy. I mean really succeed: do good, make a difference, serve. I discovered the key. This key is not efficiency, or probity, or insight, or wisdom. It is not political cunning, interpersonal skills, raw IQ, loyalty, vision, or any of the qualities that the bureaucratic world calls virtues, and tests for. The key is a certain capacity that underlies all these qualities, rather the way that an ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action. “The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air. “The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable. “It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.

All that really matters is to feel alive, if only for a single moment – to feel in Intense Sensation that our existence is not an endless repetition of sleeping, eating, drinking, and dressing.

Early on, to arouse a sense of belonging, of “community,” the party began to emphasize the importance, above everything else, of ritual and propaganda—the flags, the insignia, the uniforms, the pageantry, the standard greetings, the declarations of loyalty, and the endless repetition of slogans. Nazism was a cult. The appeal was strictly to emotion.

I'm trained as an architect; writing is like architecture. In buildings, there are design motifs that occur again and again, that repeat -- patterns, curves. These motifs help us feel comfortable in a physical space. And the same works in writing, I've found. For me, the way words, punctuation and paragraphs fall on the page is important as well -- the graphic design of the language. That was why the words and thoughts of Estha and Rahel, the twins, were so playful on the page ... I was being creative with their design. Words were broken apart, and then sometimes fused together. "Later" became "Lay. Ter." "An owl" became "A Nowl." "Sour metal smell" became "sourmetal smell." Repetition I love, and used because it made me feel safe. Repeated words and phrases have a rocking feeling, like a lullaby. They help take away the shock of the plot -- death, lives destroyed or the horror of the settings -- a crazy, chaotic, emotional house, the sinister movie theater.

Repetition, it turned out, was less important than struggle.

There were two ways of forgetting. For many years, he had envisioned (unimaginatively) a vault, and at the end of the day, he would gather the images and sequences and words that he didn’t want to think about again and open the heavy steel door only enough to hurry them inside, closing it quickly and tightly. But this method wasn’t effective: the memories seeped out anyway. The important thing, he came to realize, was to eliminate them, not just to store them. So he had invented some solutions. For small memories—little slights, insults—you relived them again and again until they were neutralized, until they became near meaningless with repetition, or until you could believe that they were something that had happened to someone else and you had just heard about it. For larger memories, you held the scene in your head like a film strip, and then you began to erase it, frame by frame. Neither method was easy: you couldn’t stop in the middle of your erasing and examine what you were looking at, for example; you couldn’t start scrolling through parts of it and hope you wouldn’t get ensnared in the details of what had happened, because you of course would. You had to work at it every night, until it was completely gone. Though they never disappeared completely, of course.

I agree with writer Gertrude Stein: “Anything one does every day is important and imposing.” I love repetition. Doing the same thing over and over makes me feel grounded in my life and makes my actions feel more meaningful.

The harder the struggle, the bigger the gain. The important thing is to stick with it, repetitively and consistently.

Consistency is important. Doing a good thing only once or twice or a few times is not sufficient. You've gotta do the good things repetitively and indefinitely. You've gotta do the good things over and over and over again. When you are consistent, people trust you and respect you.

There is, in the Army, a little known but very important activity appropriately called Fatigue. Fatigue, in the Army, is the very necessary cleaning and repairing of the aftermath of living. Any man who has ever owned a gun has known Fatigue, when, after fifteen minutes in the woods and perhaps three shots at an elusive squirrel, he has gone home to spend three-quarters of an hour cleaning up his piece so that it will be ready next time he goes to the woods. Any woman who has ever cooked a luscious meal and ladled it out in plates upon the table has known Fatigue, when, after the glorious meal is eaten, she repairs to the kitchen to wash the congealed gravy from the plates and the slick grease from the cooking pots so they will be ready to be used this evening, dirtied, and so washed again. It is the knowledge of the unendingness and of the repetitious uselessness, the do it up so it can be done again, that makes Fatigue fatigue.

Repetition is an important part of learning. It is a vital factor in life lessons because each recurrence tends to challenge our earlier notions, resulting in continued contemplation and greater depths of understanding.

Repetition is important in the training not only of animals but also of humans.

Short-term rehearsal gave purely short-term benefits. Struggling to hold on to information and then recall it had helped the group distracted by math problems transfer the information from short-term to long-term memory. The group with more and immediate rehearsal opportunity recalled nearly nothing on the pop quiz. Repetition, it turned out, was less important than struggle. It isn’t bad to get an answer right while studying. Progress just should not happen too quickly,

Your opponent can observe and exploit any systematic pattern almost as easily as he can exploit an unchanging repetition of a single strategy. It is unpredictability that is important when mixing.

When Pharoah restored the chief butler to his position as foretold by Joseph in his interpretation of the butler's dream, he forgot Joseph. "Yet the chief butler did not remember Joseph but forgot him." (Genesis 40:23). Why does the Bible use this repetitive language? It is obvious that if the butler forgot Joseph, he did not remember him. Yet both verbs are used, "not remembering" and "forgetting." The Bible, in using this language, is teaching us a very important lesson. There are events of such overbearing magnitude that one ought not to remember them all the time, but one must not forget them either. Such an event is the Holocaust.

Dr. Talbon was struck by another very important thing. It all hung together. The stories Cheryl told — even though it was upsetting to think people could do stuff like that — they were not disjointed They were not repetitive in terms of "I've heard this before". It was not just she'd someone trying consciously or unconsciously to get attention. really processed them out and was done with them. She didn't come up with them again [after telling the story once and dealing with it]. Once it was done, it was done. And I think that was probably the biggest factor for me in her believability. I got no sense that she was using these stories to make herself a really interesting person to me so I'd really want to work with her, or something. Or that she was just living in this stuff like it was her life. Once she dealt with it and processed it, it was gone. We just went on to other things. 'Throughout the whole thing, emotionally Cheryl was getting her life together. Parts of her were integrating where she could say,"I have a sense that some particular alter has folded in with some basic alter", and she didn't bring it up again. She didn't say that this alter has reappeared to cause more problems. That just didn't happen. The therapist had learned from training and experience that when real integration occurs, it is permanent and the patient moves on.

Seeing progress in changing numbers makes the repetitive fascinating and creates a positive feedback loop. Once again, the act of measuring is often more important than what you measure. To quote the industrial statistician George Box: “Every model is wrong, but some are useful.

It was from the experience of blackening that boy that I learned an important and valuable lesson: if you say something enough times, the repetition of it makes it true. Any notion you like, no matter how mad it seems, can be a fact’s chrysalis. Once you say it loud enough and often enough it becomes debatable. Debates change minds. Debate is the larval stage of truth. Constant, unflagging, loud repetition completes your notion’s metamorphosis into fact. The fact takes wing and flutters from place to place and mind to mind and makes a living, permanent thing of itself.

There has been so much action in the past,” said D.H. Lawrence, “especially sexual action, a wearying repetition over and over, without a corresponding thought, a corresponding realization. Now our business is to realize sex. Today the full conscious realization of sex is even more important than the act itself.

Psychological abuse is.. the sustained, repetitive, inappropriate behavior which damages or substantially reduces the creative and developmental potential of crucially important mental faculties and mental processes of a child, including intelligence, memory, recognition, perception, attention, imagination, and moral development.

The World. Hugo had once told Nathaniel in Will's presence, was made by many men, but shaped by few. The important thing was to be one of those few; to find a place in which you could change the repetitive patterns of the many Through political influence and intellectual discourse, and failing either of these , through benign coercion.

Bruce worked very hard on an obscure document about prophecy and how some people could experience events that were later realized. Scientists did not find any rational explanation for this but often called it a process of intuitive repetition. Bruce also read about second thoughts, often quite unlike the original. They came to some people like a flash, in the middle of the night. Finally, he read a combination of intuitive repetitions and that blazing nights could, as the result of revelation, find of great importance. He read that it was one of those big inventors’ ways of approaching a new unknown. These were difficult concepts to understand, and Bruce fell asleep while reading.

By using repetition, images, and other strategies - all of which communicate truths in ways that are not cognitively or propositional - marketing forms us into the kind of persons who want to buy beer to have meaningful relationships, or to buy a car to be respected, or buy the latest thing to come along simply to satisfy the desire that has been formed and implanted in us. It is important to appreciate that these disciplinary mechanisms transmit values and truth claims, but not via propositions or cognitive means; rather, the values are transmitted more covertly...This covertness of the operation is also what makes it so powerful: the truths are inscribed in us through the powerful instruments of imagination and ritual.

This new science of performance argues that you get better at a skill as you develop more myelin around the relevant neurons, allowing the corresponding circuit to fire more effortlessly and effectively. To be great at something is to be well myelinated. This understanding is important because it provides a neurological foundation for why deliberate practice works. By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you’re forcing the specific relevant circuit to fire, again and again, in isolation. This repetitive use of a specific circuit triggers cells called oligodendrocytes to begin wrapping layers of myelin around the neurons in the circuits—effectively cementing the skill. The reason, therefore, why it’s important to focus intensely on the task at hand while avoiding distraction is because this is the only way to isolate the relevant neural circuit enough to trigger useful myelination. By contrast, if you’re trying to learn a complex new skill (say, SQL database management) in a state of low concentration (perhaps you also have your Facebook feed open), you’re firing too many circuits simultaneously and haphazardly to isolate the group of neurons you actually want to strengthen. In

Looking down from the heavens, she saw how small, and yet how important each human life is. Drops in the bucket of eternity. She saw her minute place in the organic machine of the Cosmos, witnessed the give and take and the slow, steady swinging of life's pendulum. The world relies on order, pattern, and repetition. The earth spins and swings around the sun with rational, mathematical predictability. But she also saw the chaotic nature of things. No matter what, you can never know with certainty what will happen. Lightening can strike, the ground can open up and swallow you, and the very air you breathe can tear your life away.

There is all the world of difference between the invasive use of force, on the one hand, and the peaceful but assertive refusal to interact, on the other. Indeed, in the entire realm of political philosophy, there is scarcely a distinction more important to make, nor one easier to make. Nevertheless, for many people, the distinction between these two concepts is hard to discern. This is all the more reason to make it clearly and repetitively.

The reason your subconscious mind learned to do those things is because you did them repetitively through your conscious mind. Repetition is one of the keys for programming the subconscious mind. (Remember the importance of “repetition”,

Deep thinking and learning is also taxing on our energy stores, and so we require simplification and reinforcement. Our minds, through repetition or emotion, learn things and then, having committed them to memory, rely on this information and often never question it again; we put our energy into other things we deem more important. Like building a structure with a strong base, we make our mental models the foundation for adding newer information. We notice things that match our view and we dismiss things that do not. As we build our narrow knowledge on top of that foundation, we might not even realize when the foundation itself is weak. And so, as we go on with our lives, filtering a massive amount of information, we can easily become blind to important information, caught in our own bubbles, disregarding some information or alternative views, even when it might be helpful to us. Our decisions are shaped by what we regard as the facts, and if new information emerges that belies what we believe, it often hardens us to our original view.

From his own lessons, he knew repetition was important. The key was not to overdo the repetition—not to make it so tiresome that it actually had an inverse result and caused the student to forget. That was called boredom. According to Elizabeth, boredom was what was wrong with education today.

We don't want to be passive squares, boring phonies, or conformists seduced by comfort trapped in a repetitive, endless ritual of consuming, who keep buying shit that's thrown at us as a bone, who forget how to ask honest and important questions, who are just trying to make it through the day.

The origin of repetitive conflicts can be found in the past of your current life, in your previous lives, or even in the lives of your ancestors. But in truth, the origin of the problem is of scarce importance. It is not essential to know it with Ho‘oponopono. This is because, in all respects, it is you who are the creator of everything that happens in your life. It is you who chose the family into which you were born, the one that corresponds precisely to your karma, will allow you to answer the question you pose for yourself, and will generate the conflict you were not able to resolve in your past life.

People with personal experience of bipolar disorder will often state the importance of routine and structure as a way of preventing relapse. Routine, in this context, does not mean boring and repetitive so much as relatively predictable and stable. This appears to have many beneficial physical effects, one of which is sleep.

The process of weaving a tapestry connects with something primal in our experience as dexterous creatures. There is something sensuous and attractive about tapestry weaving. Its slow rhythm has a very peaceful, repetitive quality to it. And the step-by-step problem-solving nature of the process brings a sense of accomplishment and allows a gentle reconnection with self. The depth of color in a simple piece of yarn, the endless variations of expression when colors are woven next to each other, and the accomplishment of a finished expression that represents something important to you--these are the reasons many of us engage with this historied art form.

There were two ways of forgetting. For many years, he had envisioned (unimaginatively) a vault, and at the end of the day, he would gather the images and sequences and words that he didn’t want to think about again and open the heavy steel door only enough to hurry them inside, closing it quickly and tightly. But this method wasn’t effective: the memories seeped out anyway. The important thing, he came to realize, was to eliminate them, not just to store them. So he had invented some solutions. For small memories—little slights, insults—you relived them again and again until they were neutralized, until they became near meaningless with repetition, or until you could believe that they were something that had happened to someone else and you had just heard about it. For larger memories, you held the scene in your head like a film strip, and then you began to erase it, frame by frame. Neither method was easy: you couldn’t stop in the middle of your erasing and examine what you were looking at, for example; you couldn’t start scrolling through parts of it and hope you wouldn’t get ensnared in the details of what had happened, because you of course would. You had to work at it every night, until it was completely gone. Though they never disappeared completely, of course. But they were at least more distant—they weren’t things that followed you, wraithlike, tugging at you for attention, jumping in front of you when you ignored them, demanding so much of your time and effort that it became impossible to think of anything else. In fallow periods—the moments before you fell asleep; the minutes before you were landing after an overnight flight, when you weren’t awake enough to do work and weren’t tired enough to sleep—they would reassert themselves, and so it was best to imagine, then, a screen of white, huge and light-lit and still, and hold it in your mind like a shield.

Every year there was an important poetry contest at the fair of ‘Ukaz, just outside Mecca, and the winning poems were embroidered in gold on fine black cloth and hung on the walls of the Kabah. Muhammad’s followers would, therefore, have been able to pick up verbal signals in the text that are lost in translation. They found that themes, words, phrases, and sound patterns recurred again and again—like the variations in a piece of music, which subtly amplify the original melody, and add layer upon layer of complexity. The Qur’an was deliberately repetitive; its ideas, images, and stories were bound together by these internal echoes, which reinforced its central teaching with instructive shifts of emphasis. They linked passages that initially seemed separate, and integrated the different strands of the text, as one verse delicately qualified and supplemented others. The Qur’an was not imparting factual information that could be conveyed instantaneously. Like Muhammad, listeners had to absorb its teachings slowly; their understanding would grow more profound and mature over time, and the rich, allusive language and rhythms of the Qur’an helped them to slow down their mental processes and enter a different mode of consciousness.

Neural systems have evolved to be especially sensitive to novelty, since new experiences usually signal either danger or opportunity. One of the most important characteristics of both memory, neural tissue, and of development, then, is that they all change with patterned, repetitive activity. So, the systems in your brain that get repeatedly activated will change, and the systems in your brain that don’t get activated won’t change.

Normal people don’t have to decide what’s worth remembering. You are given a hierarchy, recurring characters, the help of repetition, of anticipation, the firm hold of a long history. But I have to decide the importance of each and every memory. I only remember a handful of people, and in order to do that, I have to hold tight, because the only repetition available—the only way I am going to see them again—is if I conjure them in my mind.

Hockey is a sport that rewards repetition. The same exercises, the same movements, until a player’s responses become instinctive, branded into his marrow. The puck doesn’t just glide, it bounces as well, so acceleration is more important than maximum speed, hand-eye coordination more important than strength. The ice judges you by your ability to change direction and thought quicker than anyone else—that’s what separates the best players from the rest.

It is important for us to realize that emphasis on conformity and the fear of spontaneous living can have an effect almost as devastating as the totalitarian’s deliberate assault on the mind . . . . Trained into conformity the child may well grow up into an adult who welcomes with relief the authoritarian demands of a totalitarian leader. It is the welcome repetition of an old pattern that can be followed without investment of a new emotional energy.14

Rhythm, repetition, making patterns--these are not only important devices for shaping the strange and abstract instrument/object we call a poem or a story, but they are craved as well because of our primordial need for reassurance, the sense of security we get from moving over the known. A mystery doesn't lose power in revisiting. Writing is not just to know, it is also to console. We need to be reminded that we are part of the obscure rhythm of birth and decade. It is the humming that matters.

I charge you with a phrase from the gospel of John, Updike that is: Your only duty is to give the mundane its beautiful due. You step from this moment with scripture and stole ordained to the ordinary. Ours is an existence in something more than the husk it once was but not yet the bloom it shall be; in other words, you are charged to the in-between, middle-earth, us. Yes, our lives are sewn on occasion with a texture of joy unmistakable, the foretastes. But many days, if not most hours, reek of repetition, a mundane rising and falling punctuated with what the old hymn writer penned as “seasons of distress and grief.” The relief you are charged to bring to our souls in times like these is beauty – nothing more, nothing less. It is your only duty. Give up all other ambitions for the dross they are. Give the mundane its beautiful due. Bear witness to the truth we so often bury, that our lives are shot through with drama, interest, relevance, importance, and poetry. Live among us, story by story, with both precision and surprisingness. Help us to believe in God by startling us with the kicker – God believes in us. Know this, that yours is not so much a high calling as it is a careful attention; you are to be a person of prayer, not big britches. Once you begin a gesture it's often fatal not to go through with it, so please, for the love of God and us and you, go through with this. The world for you may be even harder from here on in, but most things worth doing are hard. So break and bless and preach and teach and laugh and sing and weep and rage and whisper at the altar of this astonishingly splendid fallen world. Give the mundane its beautiful due. Amen and amen.

It is hard to overstate the biological significance of obsessions, compulsions and the psychological mechanisms that produce them. On the one hand, compulsions bear striking similarities to various repetitive, ritualized behaviors observed in other animals --including self-grooming, food inspection and washing, and checking for predators. On the other hand, cultural rituals --which also share several features with OCD symptoms-- perform a range of important functions in human societies, from group coordination in social and religious ceremonies to the transmission of knowledge between generations.

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.

In their writing on education, Deci and Ryan proceed from the principle that humans are natural learners and children are born creative and curious, “intrinsically motivated for the types of behaviors that foster learning and development.” This idea is complicated, however, by the fact that part of learning anything, be it painting or programming or eighth-grade algebra, involves a lot of repetitive practice, and repetitive practice is usually pretty boring. Deci and Ryan acknowledge that many of the tasks that teachers ask students to complete each day are not inherently fun or satisfying; it is the rare student who feels a deep sense of intrinsic motivation when memorizing her multiplication tables. It is at these moments that extrinsic motivation becomes important: when behaviors must be performed not for the inherent satisfaction of completing them, but for some separate outcome. Deci and Ryan say that when students can be encouraged to internalize those extrinsic motivations, the motivations become increasingly powerful. This is where the psychologists return to their three basic human needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When teachers are able to create an environment that promotes those three feelings, they say, students exhibit much higher levels of motivation. And how does a teacher create that kind of environment? Students experience autonomy in the classroom, Deci and Ryan explain, when their teachers “maximize a sense of choice and volitional engagement” while minimizing students’ feelings of coercion and control. Students feel competent, they say, when their teachers give them tasks that they can succeed at but that aren’t too easy — challenges just a bit beyond their current abilities. And they feel a sense of relatedness when they perceive that their teachers like and value and respect them.

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other’s tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes—forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There’s not a chance you’d mistake one for another, after a minute’s close inspection), but still unique. Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, “casualties may rise to a million.” With individual stories, the statistics become people—but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child’s swollen, swollen belly, and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted, distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies’ own myriad squirming children? We draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain.

There are two opposing conceptions concerning lies. The first is attributed to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who is reputed to have said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” There is another one, attributed to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said: “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.” It is clear that the Russian leadership has a preference for Lenin’s approach. Even faced with unequivocal evidence it continues to deny the facts. Apart from unfounded accusations against Georgia of genocide and the denial of its own use of cluster bombs, the war in Georgia was preceded and accompanied by open lies, misinformation (for instance, about “uncontrollable” South Ossetian militias), and active disinformation, all reminiscent of the old Soviet style. In this way Russia almost succeeded in hiding the most important fact: that this was not a “Russian-Georgian war,” but a Russian war against Georgia in Georgia. There was not a single Georgian soldier that crossed the Russian frontier at any point. The Georgian troops that went into South Ossetia did not cross international frontiers, but intervened in their own country, no different from Russian troops intervening in Chechnya. It was Russian and not Georgian troops that crossed the border of another, sovereign country, in breach of the principles of international law [230―31].

There were other strange signals and signs. Another day, suddenly felt an almost overwhelming urge to travel to Balitmore. I wanted to 'kidnap' a helicoper fly it there if I didn't drive the there', she explains. 'I had no idea where I was to go, only that I was certain I would know my destination as I encountered signs and certain landmarks along the way. I was not even certain who I was to meet, or what my mission was, but I felt I must go.' Beginning to heal by this time with Talbon's help, she resisted that urge. Yet she sensed she would be summoned for three more Cat Woman missions: two in 1999 and one in 2000. As for the code words for activating her, those had been erased from Cheryl's conscious memory. Buried deep in her unconscious mind, however, the words, when called up, cause her to react as her programmers want her to. Though she can't remember the activation codes, Cheryl knows her handlers said the same things every time. 'I'm working on unblocking the words in therapy. Once I know what the words are, I can learn how to stop their effect on me. I did it already when I learned the control code. Standing in front of a mirror, I said the control code words over and over until I was completely desensitised to them. That's what I have to do for the activation code words... but I have not been able to recall all of them as yet.' Dr. Talbon was struck by another very important thing. 'It all hung together. The stories Cheryl told - even though it was upsetting to think people could do stuff like that - they were not disjointed. They were not repetitive in terms of "I've heard this before". It was not just trying consciously or unconsciously to get attention. She'd really processed them out and was done with them. She didn't come up with it again [after telling the story once and dealing with it]. Once it was done, it was done. And I think that was probably the biggest factor for me in her believability. I got no sense that she was using these stories to make herself a really interesting person to me so I'd really want to work with her, or something.

The second implication of these studies is that nonverbal cues are as or more important than verbal cues. The subtle circumstances surrounding how we say things may matter more than what we say. Jennings, after all, wasn’t injecting all kinds of pro-Reagan comments in his newscasts. In fact, as I mentioned, ABC was independently observed to have been the most hostile to Reagan. One of the conclusions of the authors of the headphones study—Gary Wells of the University of Alberta and Richard Petty of the University of Missouri—was that “television advertisements would be most effective if the visual display created repetitive vertical movement of the television viewers’ heads (e.g., bouncing ball).” Simple physical movements and observations can have a profound effect on how we feel and think.

I may appear to suffer from some sort of compulsive repetition syndrome, but these rituals are important to me. I have many places where I sit and think, “I have been here before, I am here now, and I will be here again.” Sometimes, lost in reverie, I remember myself approaching across the same green, or down the same footpath, in 1962 or 1983, or many other times. Sometimes Chaz comes along on my rituals, but just as often I go alone. Sometimes Chaz will say she’s going shopping, or visiting a friend, or just staying in the room and reading in bed. “Why don’t you go and touch your bases?” she’ll ask me. I know she sympathizes. These secret visits are a way for me to measure the wheel of the years and my passage through life. Sometimes on this voyage through life we need to sit on the deck and regard the waves.

Material life, of course, presents itself to us in the anecdotal form of thousands and thousands of assorted facts. Can we call these events? No: to do so would be to inflate their importance, to grant them a significance they never had. That the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian ate with his fingers from the dishes at a banquet (as we can see from a drawing) is an everyday detail, not an event. So is the story about the bandit Cartouche, on the point of execution, preferring a glass of wine to the coffee he was offered. This is the dust of history, microhistory in the same sense that Georges Gurvitch talks about micro-sociology: little facts which do, it is true, by indefinite repetition, add up to form linked chains. Each of them represents the thousands of others that have crossed the silent depths of time and endured.

What determines what we remember and what we forget? The key to memory consolidation is attentiveness. Storing explicit memories and, equally important, forming connections between them requires strong mental concentration, amplified by repetition or by intense intellectual or emotional engagement. The sharper the attention, the sharper the memory. “For a memory to persist,” writes Kandel, “the incoming information must be thoroughly and deeply processed. This is accomplished by attending to the information and associating it meaningfully and systematically with knowledge already well established in memory.”35 If we’re unable to attend to the information in our working memory, the information lasts only as long as the neurons that hold it maintain their electric charge—a few seconds at best. Then it’s gone, leaving little or no trace in the mind.

One of the reasons that repetition is so important lies in your teenager’s brain development. One of the frontal lobes’ executive functions includes something called prospective memory, which is the ability to hold in your mind the intention to perform a certain action at a future time—for instance, remembering to return a phone call when you get home from work. Researchers have found not only that prospective memory is very much associated with the frontal lobes but also that it continues to develop and become more efficient specifically between the ages of six and ten, and then again in the twenties. Between the ages of ten and fourteen, however, studies reveal no significant improvement. It’s as if that part of the brain—the ability to remember to do something—is simply not keeping up with the rest of a teenager’s growth and development. The parietal lobes,

When difficulties seem insurmountable, optimists react in a more constructive and creative way. They accept the facts with realism, know how to rapidly identify the positive in adversity, draw lessons from it, and come up with an alternative solution or turn to a new project. Pessimists would rather turn away from the problem or adopt escapist strategies — sleep, isolation, drug or alcohol abuse — that diminish their focus on the problem.9 Instead of confronting them with resolve, they prefer to brood over their misfortunes, nurture illusions, dream up “magic” solutions, and accuse the whole world of being against them. They have a hard time drawing lessons from the past, which often leads to the repetition of their problems. They are more fatalistic (“I told you it wouldn’t work. It’s always the same, no matter what I do”) and are quick to see themselves as “mere pawns in the game of life.

From *the form of time and of the single dimension* of the series of representations, on account of which the intellect, in order to take up one thing, must drop everything else, there follows not only the intellect’s distraction, but also its *forgetfulness*. Most of what it has dropped it never takes up again, especially as the taking up again is bound to the principle of sufficient reason, and thus requires an occasion which the association of ideas and motivation have first to provide. Yet this occasion may be the remoter and the smaller, the more our susceptibility to it is enhanced by interest in the subject. But, as I have already shown in the essay *On the Principle of Sufficient Reason*, memory is not a receptacle, but a mere faculty, acquired by practice, of bringing forth any representations at random, so that these have always to be kept in practice by repetition, otherwise they are gradually lost. Accordingly, the knowledge even of the scholarly head exists only *virtualiter* as an acquired practice in producing certain representations. *Actualiter*, on the other hand, it is restricted to one particular representation, and for the moment is conscious of this one alone. Hence there results a strange contrast between what a man knows *potentia* and what he knows *actu*, in other words, between his knowledge and his thinking at any moment. The former is an immense and always somewhat chaotic mass, the latter a single, distinct thought. The relation is like that between the innumerable stars of the heavens and the telescope’s narrow field of vision; it stands out remarkably when, on some occasion, a man wishes to bring to distinct recollection some isolated fact from his knowledge, and time and trouble are required to look for it and pick it out of that chaos. Rapidity in doing this is a special gift, but depends very much on the day and the hour; therefore sometimes memory refuses its service, even in things which, at another time, it has ready at hand. This consideration requires us in our studies to strive after the attainment of correct insight rather than an increase of learning, and to take to heart the fact that the *quality* of knowledge is more important than its quantity. Quantity gives books only thickness; quality imparts thoroughness as well as style; for it is an *intensive* dimension, whereas the other is merely extensive. It consists in the distinctness and completeness of the concepts, together with the purity and accuracy of the knowledge of perception that forms their foundation. Therefore the whole of knowledge in all its parts is permeated by it, and is valuable or troubling accordingly. With a small quantity but good quality of knowledge we achieve more than with a very great quantity but bad quality." —from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne in two volumes: volume II, pp. 139-141

FUNDAMENTAL FIVE  MONDAY - The first exercise you will do is the push-up. Try and perform 3 sets and as many reps as you can in each set. It is fine here if you use a raised platform for the hands as we are just trying to get stronger here. The second exercise you will perform is the dip exercise. Here you can do either a ledge dip if your strength is not strong enough, or some triceps dips if your strength is at a decent level. Keep trying to work towards the goal of doing 10 perfect triceps dips. Thirdly you will perform 3 sets of squats. Concentrate on good form here and try and descend as low as you are able to. Your target is to be able to perform 25 perfect reps before moving on. You can also do conditioning exercises here as well if that is part of your goal. Note that this is not required, as our main focus is to build strength. TUESDAY - On this day you will aim to perform a pulling exercise, ideally the chin-up. If you are not strong enough to perform any chin-ups, work with the row until your strength increases. Again, you should be aiming for 3 sets of as many reps as you can do, until you can do 10 perfect reps. The second exercise should be your core exercise. This can be any of the easier variations, such as the plank, crunch, dish, or hanging leg raise. Remember, that the sole aim here is to work up to performing 10 perfect hanging knee raises. WEDNESDAY - This is a rest day, and you should ensure that you get plenty of good food and sleep on this day. THURSDAY - This should be the same as Mondays workout. FRIDAY - This should be the same as Tuesdays workout. SATURDAY / SUNDAY - These are both rest days, as in the beginning it is important for your body to have enough rest and to be able to recover properly from the workouts. This also leaves you totally fresh for the week ahead. As was said before, only once you can perform the five fundamental movements and their required number of repetitions, you should move on to the next program.

The Restoration did not so much restore as replace. In restoring the monarchy with King Charles II, it replaced Cromwell's Commonwealth and its Puritan ethos with an almost powerless monarch whose tastes had been formed in France. It replaced the power of the monarchy with the power of a parliamentary system - which was to develop into the two parties, Whigs and Tories - with most of the executive power in the hands of the Prime Minister. Both parties benefited from a system which encouraged social stability rather than opposition. Above all, in systems of thought, the Restoration replaced the probing, exploring, risk-taking intellectual values of the Renaissance. It relied on reason and on facts rather than on speculation. So, in the decades between 1660 and 1700, the basis was set for the growth of a new kind of society. This society was Protestant (apart from the brief reign of the Catholic King James II, 1685-88), middle class, and unthreatened by any repetition of the huge and traumatic upheavals of the first part of the seventeenth century. It is symptomatic that the overthrow of James II in 1688 was called The 'Glorious' or 'Bloodless' Revolution. The 'fever in the blood' which the Renaissance had allowed was now to be contained, subject to reason, and kept under control. With only the brief outburst of Jacobin revolutionary sentiment at the time of the Romantic poets, this was to be the political context in the United Kingdom for two centuries or more. In this context, the concentration of society was on commerce, on respectability, and on institutions. The 'genius of the nation' led to the founding of the Royal Society in 1662 - 'for the improving of Natural Knowledge'. The Royal Society represents the trend towards the institutionalisation of scientific investigation and research in this period. The other highly significant institution, one which was to have considerably more importance in the future, was the Bank of England, founded in 1694.

One TV show I’m not a fan of is this show called Football. This show has been going on for fifty-four seasons, and honestly, I don’t see the appeal. Episodes are repetitive, the writing is confusing, the cinematography is flat, there are too many characters to keep track of, and I can’t relate to any of their struggles. Also, for some reason, they all want to hold this oddly shaped ball. I must have missed the episode where they explained why it’s so important. Football episodes always have a huge live studio audience at the tapings. The audience is so big that a lot of times they can be seen in the shots—which I wouldn’t mind if the audience wasn’t screaming every time the show started to get interesting. Whenever Football airs the season finale, I get invited to viewing parties and people cosplay as their favorite character. I always go because of the free food, but I’m never caught up in the show, so it’s hard for me to get invested. Oh well, at least the commercials are entertaining.

Spiritual aspiration, hunger for God, is the most important blessing one can have. Spiritual hunger leads to sincere sadhana, and sincere sadhana leads to a progressive spiritual life. By regular repetition of the diksha mantra, our mind becomes more and more stable and a gradual transformation of consciousness unfolds. Japa is the foundation. Keep the current of Divine Remembrance flowing at all times. There is a river of rapturous bliss ever flowing just underneath our fluctuating thoughts. Sadhana allows us to feel, hear, see and bathe in this celestial stream. It flows in the center of our spine. It flows in the center of our being. It flows from the infinite ocean of satchitananda from which we come, in which we live and into which we will eventually return. The faint intuitive fragrance of this stream is love, happiness, joy and satisfaction. To drink from it directly is mind-blowing ecstasy. To drown in it is immortality, transcending the limitations of time, space and form in the Eternal One: the One we call Kali, the One we call Ramakrishna.

The effectiveness of this kind of propaganda demonstrates one of the chief characteristics of modern masses. They do not believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience; they do not trust their eyes and ears but only their imaginations, which may be caught by anything that is at once universal and consistent in itself. What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated in importance because of the common belief in the masses’ inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is important only because it convinces them of consistency in time. What the masses refuse to recognize is the fortuitousness that pervades reality. They are predisposed to all ideologies because they explain facts as mere examples of laws and eliminate coincidences by inventing an all-embracing omnipotence which is supposed to be at the root of every accident. Totalitarian propaganda thrives on this escape from reality into fiction, from coincidence into consistency.

Islamic art in its many forms is of the greatest import for the understanding of the essence of Islam and a central means of transmitting its message to the contemporary world. When one thinks of Islam, one should go beyond the repetitive scenes on television of wars and battles, which unfortunately abound in today’s world, to behold the peace and harmony of Islamic art seen in the great mosques, traditional urban settings and gardens, and the rhythm and geometry of calligraphy and arabesque designs; read in the poems that sing of the love that permeates all of God’s creation and binds creatures to God; and heard in the strains of melodies that echo what we had experienced in that primordial morn preceding creation and our descent into this lowly world. Today more than ever before, the understanding of Islamic art is an indispensable key for the comprehension of Islam itself. Those who are sensitive to the language of traditional art and the beauty of a paradisal order that emanates from it as well as the intellectual principles conveyed through it can learn much from this art.

Sometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. There came to me in this case a melody which the air had strained, and which had conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the sound which the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to vale. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.

It is a well-worn saying but one nonetheless true and nonetheless worthy of repetition, inasmuch as it expresses peculiarly the situation now widely prevalent, that "where there is no vision the people perish. " Mankind as a whole, or more particularly the Western element, has lost in some incomprehensible way its spiritual vision. An heretical barrier has been erected separating itself from that current of life and vitality which even now, despite willful impediment and obstacle, pulses and vibrates passionately in the blood, pervading the whole of universal form and structure. The anomalies presented today are due to this rank absurdity. Mankind is slowly accomplishing its own suicide. A self-strangulation is being effected through a suppression of all individuality, in the spiritual sense, and all that made it human. It continues to withhold the spiritual atmosphere from its lungs, so to speak. And having severed itself from the eternal and never-ceasing sources of light and life and inspiration, it has deliberately blinded itself to the fact— than which no other could compare in importance—that there is a dynamic principle both within and without from which it has accomplished a divorce. The result is inner lethargy, chaos, and the disintegration of all that formerly was held to be ideal and sacred.

May I? I would like you to remember something.” His hand accepts the flute. It’s not merely warm — it’s hot, like the places on the walls where someone has just written something important. The handprints are always hot, visible to the touch. The flute trembles and meanders in Blind’s hand, the dead wood follows the traces left by the live wood. Blind plays the song he had heard once, the one with the wind, the spiraling leaves, and the boy in the middle of the whirlwind, protected and vulnerable at the same time. Blind plays well, this is not the first time he has played this song. He re-creates all the nuances faithfully, and he can be proud of his performance. “What was that?” Humpback says. “You used to play this down in the yard. Remember?” Humpback shakes his head. They often respond like that to Blind, and only then check themselves and put their movements into words, but by that time it’s already unnecessary. “No, I don’t.” Blind plays another snippet, and Humpback’s aloof silence tells him that Humpback really does not recognize his own song. “Too many repetitions.” Blind doesn’t tell him that the repetitions are his, that they helped him weave the protective net, that it’s what the magic of monotony is about, completing the circle, doubling on itself until the end becomes the beginning, building an impenetrable wall around the player. The words remain unsaid as he hands back the flute. Other people’s songs have damaged Humpback, he can no longer do magic even when he lives in a tree.

To begin with, it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting-up of a "standard English" which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called "good prose style." On the other hand it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one can choose--not simply accept--the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impression one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally.

What I want to know is whether or not I can expect a repetition of it, if I were to agree with what Alexandra wants.” Drowning in angry mortification, Elizabeth nevertheless managed not to flinch or drop her gaze, and although her voice shook slightly, she managed to say calmly and clearly, “I have no control over wagging tongues, your grace. If I had, I would not have been the topic of scandal two years ago. However, I have no desire whatever to reenter your society. I still have scars enough from my last sortie among the Quality.” Having deliberately injected a liberal amount of derision into the word “Quality,” Elizabeth closed her mouth and braced herself to be verbally filleted by the old woman whose white brows had snapped together over the bridge of her thin nose. An instant later, however, the pale hazel eyes registered something that might have been approval, then they shifted to Alexandra. With a curt nod the dowager said, “I quite agree, Alexandra. She has spirit enough to endure what they will put her through. Amazing, is it not,” continued the dowager to Elizabeth with a gruff smile, “that on the one hand we of the ton pride ourselves on our civilized manners, and yet many of us will dine on one another’s reputations in preference to the most sumptuous meal.” Leaving Elizabeth to sink slowly and dazedly into a chair she’d shot out of but moments before, the dowager then walked over to the sofa and seated herself, her eyes narrowed in thought. “The Willington’s ball tonight will be a complete crush,” she said after a moment. “That may be to our advantage-everyone of importance and otherwise will be there. Afterward there’ll be less reason to gossip about Elizabeth’s appearance, for everyone will have seen her for themselves.” “Your grace,” Elizabeth said, flustered and feeling some expression of gratitude was surely in order for the trouble the dowager was about to be put to, “it-it’s beyond kind of you to do this-“ “Nonsense,” the woman interrupted, looking appalled. “I am rarely kind. Pleasant, at times,” she continued while Alexandra tried to hide her amusement. “Even gracious when the occasion demands, but I wouldn’t say ‘kind.’ ‘Kind’ is so very bland. Like lukewarm tea. Now, if you will take my advice, my girl,” she added, looking at Elizabeth’s strained features and pale skin, “you will immediately take yourself upstairs and have a long and restorative nap. You’re alarmingly peaked. While you rest”-she turned to Alexandra-“Alexandra and I will make our plans.” Elizabeth reacted to this peremptory order to go to bed exactly as everyone reacted to the dowager duchess’s orders: After a moment of shocked affront she did exactly as she was bidden.

First came the flower girls, pretty little lasses in summery frocks, skipping down the aisle, tossing handfuls of petals and, in one case, the basket when it was empty. Next came the bridesmaids, Luna, strutting in her gown and heels, a challenging dare in her eyes that begged someone to make a remark about the girly getup she was forced to wear. Next came Reba and Zena, giggling and prancing, loving the attention. This time, Leo wasn’t thrown by Teena’s appearance, nor was he fooled. How could he have mistaken her for his Vex? While similar outwardly, Meena’s twin lacked the same confident grin, and the way she moved, with a delicate grace, did not resemble his bold woman at all. How unlike they seemed. Until Teena tripped, flailed her arms, and took out part of a row before she could recover! Yup, they were sisters all right. With a heavy sigh, and pink cheeks, Teena managed to walk the rest of the red carpet, high heels in hand— one of which seemed short a heel. With all the wedding party more or less safely arrived, there was only one person of import left. However, she didn’t walk alone. Despite his qualms, which Leo heard over the keg they’d shared the previous night, Peter appeared ready to give his daughter away. Ready, though, didn’t mean he looked happy about it. The seams of the suit his soon-to-be father-in-law wore strained, the rented tux not the best fit, but Leo doubted that was why he looked less than pleased. Leo figured there were two reasons for Peter’s grumpy countenance. The first was the fact that he had to give his little girl away. The second probably had to do with the snickers and the repetition of a certain rumor, “I hear he lost an arm-wrestling bet and had to wear a tie.” For those curious, Leo had won that wager, and thus did his new father-in-law wear the, “gods-damned-noose” around his neck. However, who cared about that sore loser when upon his arm rested a vision of beauty. Meena’s long hair tumbled in golden waves over her shoulders, the ends curled into fat ringlets that tickled her cleavage. At her temples, ivory combs swept the sides up and away, revealing the creamy line of her neck. The strapless gown made her appear as a goddess. The bust, tight and low cut, displayed her fantastic breasts so well that Leo found himself growling. He didn’t like the appreciative eyes in the crowd. Yet, at the same time, he felt a certain pride. His bride was beautiful, and it was only right she be admired. From her impressive breasts, the gown cinched in before flaring out. The filmy white fabric of the skirt billowed as she walked. He noted she wore flats. Reba’s suggestion so she wouldn’t get a heel stuck. Her gown didn’t quite touch the ground. Zena’s idea to ensure she wouldn’t trip on the hem. They’d taken all kinds of precautions to ensure her the smoothest chance of success. She might lack the feline grace of other ladies. She might have stumbled a time or two and been kept upright only by the smooth actions of her father, but dammit, in his eyes, she was the daintiest, most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. And she is mine.

Every ritual repetition of the cosmogony is preceded by a symbolic retrogression to Chaos. In order to be created anew, the old world must first be annihilated. The various rites performed in connection with the New Year can be put in two chief categories: (I) those that signify the return to Chaos (e.g., extinguishing fires, expelling 'evil' and sins, reversal of habitual behavior, orgies, return of the dead); (2) those that symbolize the cosmogony (e.g., lighting new fires, departure of the dead, repetition of the acts by which the Gods created the world, solemn prediction of the weather for the ensuing year). In the scenario of initiatory rites, 'death' corresponds to the temporary return to Chaos; hence it is the paradigmatic expression of the end of a mode of being the mode of ignorance and of the child's irresponsibility. Initiatory death provides the clean slate on which will be written the successive revelations whose end is the formation of a new man. We shall later describe the different modalities of birth to a new, spiritual life. But now we must note that this new life is conceived as the true human existence, for it is open to the values of spirit. What is understood by the generic term 'culture,' comprising all the values of spirit, is accessible only to those who have been initiated. Hence participation in spiritual life is made possible by virtue of the religious experiences released during initiation. All the rites of rebirth or resurrection, and the symbols that they imply, indicate that the novice has attained to another mode of existence, inaccessible to those who have not undergone the initiatory ordeals, who have not tasted death. We must note this characteristic of the archaic mentality: the belief that a state cannot be changed without first being annihilated-in the present instance, without the child's dying to childhood. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this obsession with beginnings, which, in sum, is the obsession with the absolute beginning, the cosmogony. For a thing to be well done, it must be done as it was done the first time. But the first time, the thing-this class of objects, this animal, this particular behavior-did not exist: when, in the beginning, this object, this animal, this institution, came into existence, it was as if, through the power of the Gods, being arose from nonbeing. Initiatory death is indispensable for the beginning of spiritual life. Its function must be understood in relation to what it prepares: birth to a higher mode of being. As we shall see farther on, initiatory death is often symbolized, for example, by darkness, by cosmic night, by the telluric womb, the hut, the belly of a monster. All these images express regression to a preformal state, to a latent mode of being (complementary to the precosmogonic Chaos), rather than total annihilation (in the sense in which, for example, a member of the modern societies conceives death). These images and symbols of ritual death are inextricably connected with germination, with embryology; they already indicate a new life in course of preparation. Obviously, as we shall show later, there are other valuations of initiatory death-for example, joining the company of the dead and the Ancestors. But here again we can discern the same symbolism of the beginning: the beginning of spiritual life, made possible in this case by a meeting with spirits. For archaic thought, then, man is made-he does not make himself all by himself. It is the old initiates, the spiritual masters, who make him. But these masters apply what was revealed to them at the beginning of Time by the Supernatural Beings. They are only the representatives of those Beings; indeed, in many cases they incarnate them. This is as much as to say that in order to become a man, it is necessary to resemble a mythical model.

SUCCESSFUL MUSCLE BUILDING: 7 TIPS FOR MORE MUSCLE MASS How does successful muscle building work? Today I have 7 tips for more muscle mass for you. In addition to the training itself, there are many other factors that determine success in building muscle. The more of the following points you take into account, the faster and more successfully you will be able to build muscle. THE RIGHT TRAINING PLAN No training plan is suitable for everyone. Find or create a training plan that matches your level and goals. For beginners, I recommend a full-body plan . The whole body is trained every time in 2-3 units per week. If you have been training longer and have some experience, I would recommend a 2 or 3 split. Every muscle group can be trained up to 2 times a week. I would fundamentally advise against a 4 or 5 split, but of course, there are also professionals for whom such a plan can make sense. CONTINUALLY GROW STRONGER The increase in strength is a very good indicator of successful muscle building. Try to train so that you slowly but surely get stronger. That doesn't mean that you have to move heavy weights every time you exercise. You can also improve your technique or do one more repetition here and there. It is only important that you make progress. PROPER NUTRITION You could easily write your own contribution to the muscle building diet. The most important thing is that you consume enough calories. Your body needs a slight excess of calories, i.e. more calories than it consumes. This is the only way you can gain weight and therefore also muscle mass. It is also important that you consume enough protein: approx. 2g protein per kilo of body weight. For example, if you weigh 80 KG, you should eat around 160g of protein a day. The remaining calories can then be consumed divided into fats and carbohydrates. The higher the quality of the food, the more strength you will have in training. ADEQUATE SLEEP FOR REGENERATION Your muscles grow in the resting phases and not during training. It is all the more important for the body that it receives sufficient regeneration and sleep. JUST FOCUS ON YOURSELF Everyone does it every now and then and compares himself with the other members in the gym. Especially when it comes to strength and muscle mass, it quickly becomes a competition who is stronger or wider. However, this way of thinking is dangerous because it leads you to overexert yourself. In these situations in particular, high spirits or even a little inattentiveness can quickly lead to an injury. Apart from injuries, you are not doing yourself a favor, because everyone is different and has different requirements. Do not try to compare yourself with other members, but concentrate on yourself and try to become better than before. DRINK ENOUGH Your body needs enough fluid and, above all, water to function properly. It is best to drink 1 liter per 20kg bodyweight . So if you weigh 80kg, you should drink about 4 liters a day. In addition to water, you can always drink unsweetened tea. This has a pleasant taste and you can drink it both warm and cold. Thus, your body is ideally supplied with liquid, which supports many important processes in your body. TAKE THE CREATINE SUPPLEMENT Creatine (or creatine written) can give you additional strength and volume in your muscles. Many studies have proven the effective effects of creatine. When you take creatine, the cellular energy level of your muscles improves, which increases your short-term performance, so you can train harder, increase your maximum strength and reduce cell damage during long endurance sessions. I recommend taking 5g a day. Either in a shake before or after training or immediately after getting up with a large glass of water. If you take these tips to heart, successful muscle building is almost guaranteed

So, we have a paradox where washing the dishes one time is seemingly unimportant. But washing them 10,000 times (consistently, every day) is important because that repetition ensures that we always have plates and silverware at our disposal. But we can’t wash the dishes 10,000 times unless we start by washing them once. A single action done correctly and repeatedly makes all the difference in our lives.

Thirty thousand years ago there lived 'another human species' - the Neanderthals. Tremendous. If it is true, it is symbolically more important than the fact that man is descended from the apes. The shadow of this vanished human species weighs heavy on all our anthropology, since our entire concept of evolution privileges the exclusive universality of a single humanity, ours, the one that survived. And what if it were not the only one? Then that's the end of our privilege. If we had to eliminate this twin, this prehistoric double, to ensure our hegemony, if this other species had to disappear, then the rules of the game of being human are no longer the same. And where does this passion for universality come from, this lust to eliminate every other race? (It is a good bet that if any other race emerged from space, our first aim would be to subjugate or destroy it.) Why is it that in twin forms there always has to be one that dies? Why do we always have to wipe out duality everywhere to establish the monopoly of a species, a race, a subject? Having said this, it is not certain that we really did win out. What if we were carrying that double within us like a dead twin? And perhaps many others, in a kind of Unconscious, the stubborn heir to all the previous murders. Having achieved the unity of the species, for the greater glory of Homo sapiens, are we not now duplicating ourselves for the worse - in that artificial twinness of the clone, in which the species, denying its origins once and for all, prolongs itself as spectre in an infinite repetition? Over the screen of our consciousness and our Unconscious hovers the shadow of this original crime, the traces of which we shall doubtless never recover.

How to deal with resentment To start letting go of resentment, we’ll discuss the importance of: Changing/reevaluating your interpretation Confronting the situation Forgiving (breaking free from identification), and Forgetting (stopping the repetition).

Much of the advertising focused on Graham’s name and image. He appreciated the power of repetition. He once remarked that the quality of the words and colors on a billboard was less important than the number of billboards a motorist passed.

Think of your memory as much more than a tool that relies on repetition to function. While repetition is a key to storing information, it is only one way in which your brain absorbs important details.

Often they are connected to our schedule or calendars, such as: • Meals • Bedtime routines • Words you say as your kids start the day, head to school, or return home Rituals and traditions are often connected to the regular things a family inevitably navigates together: • Family mantras can help us persevere through a challenge or remember who we are. • A template can guide how you ask for and offer forgiveness to one another. Some are born from a desire to lean into special experiences and connect them to important ideas: • Holiday traditions for Christmas and Easter help us enter into God’s great work in the world, not only as it happened in the past, but as it continues today. • Birthday celebrations are a chance to bless a family member for simply being who they are, honoring them as a gift from God and expressing gratitude for them. Repetition is the very thing that empowers any of these practices.

This understanding is important because it provides a neurological foundation for why deliberate practice works. By focusing intensely on a specific skill, you’re forcing the specific relevant circuit to fire, again and again, in isolation. This repetitive use of a specific circuit triggers cells called oligodendrocytes to begin wrapping layers of myelin around the neurons in the circuits—effectively cementing the skill. The reason, therefore, why it’s important to focus intensely on the task at hand while avoiding distraction is because this is the only way to isolate the relevant neural circuit enough to trigger useful myelination.

When these ancient parts of your brain are active or rehearsing the next disaster using the DMN, they effortlessly hijack your attention. You try to meditate and repetitive negative thinking takes over. In the cage match between Caveman Brain and Bliss Brain, Caveman Brain always wins. Survival is a more important need than happiness or self-actualization. You can’t self-actualize if you’re dead. In 2015 the US National Institutes of Health estimated that less than 10% of the US population meditates. One of the primary reasons for this is that meditation is hard. Most people who start a meditation program drop out. GETTING THE BEST OF ALL WORLDS When writing my first best-selling book, The Genie in Your Genes, I experimented with many schools of stress reduction and meditation. Heart coherence. Mindfulness. EFT tapping. Neurofeedback. Hypnosis. One day I had a Big Idea: What happens when you combine them all? I began playing with a routine that did just that. Here’s what I came up with: First, you tap on acupressure points to relieve stress. Second, you close your eyes and relax your tongue on the floor of your mouth. This sends a signal to your vagus nerve, which wanders all over your body, connecting all the major organ systems. It’s the key signaling component of the parasympathetic nervous system, which governs relaxation. 4.8. The vagus nerve connects with all the major organ systems of your body. Third, you imagine the volume of space inside your body, particularly between your eyes. This automatically generates big alpha in your brain, moving you toward the Awakened Mind. Fourth, you slow your breathing down to 6 seconds per inbreath and 6 seconds per outbreath. This puts you into heart coherence. Fifth, you imagine your breath coming in and going out from your heart area, and you picture a sphere of energy in your heart. Sixth, you send a beam of heart energy to a person or place that makes you feel wonderful. This puts you into deep coherence. After enjoying the connection for a while, you send compassion to everyone and everything in the universe. Feeling universal compassion produces the major brain changes seen in fMRI scans of longtime meditators. As we’ll see in Chapters 6 and 8, compassion moves the needle like nothing else. At this point, most people drop into Bliss Brain automatically. They’re in a combination of alpha, heart coherence, and parasympathetic dominance. They haven’t been asked to still their minds, sit cross-legged, follow a guru, or believe in a deity. They’ve just followed a sequence of simple physical steps. After a few minutes of universal compassion, you again focus your beam on a single person or place. You then gently disengage and draw the energy beam back into your own heart. Seventh, you direct your beam of compassion to a part of your body that is suffering or in pain. You end the meditation by returning your attention to the here and now.

psychodynamic theory, a refinement and advancement of earlier Freudian concepts. In the most basic terms, this means that my work is generally informed by attention to the importance of childhood and adolescent experiences, unconscious motivations, and repetitions of earlier conflicts in present-day relationships.

The drama and the development of the play’s ideas arise from a triangular tension implied in the above structure. The fundamental conflict of the play, even more important than the conflicts among the characters, is among the three organizational paradigms at work in the play’s structure. The first paradigm is the reversed chronology of the plot or the play’s basic, backward-moving narrative structure. The second is directly opposed to the first: the implied, ineluctable forward movement of time. The third overlays the other two: a cyclical structure based in the play’s method of repetition and variation. The backward-moving narrative structure emphasizes two ideas we have already seen elsewhere. The first is a more elaborate development of the life-is-a-journey metaphor that Ben Stone employed in “The Road You Didn’t Take.” The second is the idea of a life’s meaning being governed by the anticipated completion of a goal, the point of narrative closure that makes a complete, meaning-providing structure for a life story. Both ideas are established in the opening number, “Merrily We Roll Along,” which is reprised throughout the show as a means of segueing from scene to scene and year to year. The song introduces the image of the dream as the goal one’s life is aiming for, the end of the journey and, more than that, the thing that gives the journey its purpose and meaning. The ensemble sings: Dreams don’t die, So keep an eye on your dream [….] Time goes by And hopes go dry, But you still can try For your dream. (F 383) Like Ben, the ensemble has conflicting feelings about life’s journey. In a counterpoint section, one half of the ensemble sings “Plenty of roads to try,” while the other

I emphasized the importance of essays since, as scientists, they would one day have to write papers to prove their theories. But in reality, nothing was ever proven in their world, since everything was at the whim of the Great Leader. Their writing skills were as stunted as their research skills. Writing inevitably consisted of an endless repetition of his achievements, none of which was ever verified, since they lacked the concept of backing up a claim with evidence.

That attachment styles can vary based on type—for example, friendship or a romantic relationship. 2. That how a person behaves in one relationship—for example, with one specific friend—can spread to how they behave in other relationships of that same type—such as with other friends. This concept is important because it truly demonstrates the ability of the subconscious to store and replay beliefs based on repetition and emotion. Now that you understand the fluidity of attachment styles and why they lie along a spectrum, you can begin to discover your dominant attachment style in different areas of your life. Consider how you act and feel in your relationships, whether they are romantic, platonic, or familial. Examine the ratio of activating to deactivating strategies in your thoughts and behaviors. Recall that activating strategies are decisions that are made based on prior information and experiences. Deactivating strategies are actions that drive self-reliance and deny attachment needs altogether, pushing others away. If you have relatively more activating strategies, you may have a greater fear of abandonment and be on the Anxious side of the spectrum. More deactivating strategies may indicate a subconscious belief around complete autonomy, placing you more on the Dismissive-Avoidant side of the attachment scale. Keep in mind that this tool should be used in romantic relationships after the honeymoon phase is over, a phase that occurs during the first two years of the relationship. During the honeymoon phase, your brain has higher levels of dopamine in the caudate nucleus and ventral tegmental regions, according to Scientific American. These areas of the brain are responsible for, respectively, learning and memory and emotional processing. Consequently, your attachment style may be unclear to you in the early phases of your romantic relationship since your emotions, memory, and hormone regulation are atypical. Our experiences can also dramatically alter our attachment style. For example, if Sophie were to partake in certain forms of therapy and practices such as recurrent meditation, she may be able to better understand and re-equilibrate her subconscious beliefs. According to Science Daily, since meditation induces theta brain waves and activates areas of the frontal lobe associated with emotional regulation, Sophie could eventually bring herself into a more Secure attachment space without the help of a Secure partner. However, although it is common to express different attachment styles in different areas of life, the type of attachment you have in relationships ultimately tends to be the attachment style that you associate with the type of relationship. For example, you can be Dismissive-Avoidant in familial relationships because you experienced emotional neglect from parental figures, but you could also be Fearful-Avoidant in romantic relationships due to domestic abuse that has occurred. This illustrates that major events such as betrayal, loss, or abuse can alter our attachment style in different chapters of life, but that ultimately attachment styles are fluid and often dependent on the kind of relationships we are in. We tend to have a primary attachment style, most associated with how we show up in romantic relationships, that plays a large role in our personality structure. This essentially dictates how we give and receive love and what our subconscious expectations are of others.

Affirmations should always be stated as a positive. Affirm what you do want, not what you don’t want. Affirmations work best when they are short and very clear about a single desired goal. Take the time to write, rewrite, and polish your affirmation until you can express your desire in a short statement of precise and well-chosen words. Affirmations should be specific about the desired goal, but not about how to accomplish it. Your subconscious knows better than you what it can do and how it can do it. Do not make unreasonable time demands. Your subconscious can’t make anything happen “suddenly” or “now.” Just saying the words will have little effect. When you affirm your desire you must do it with such faith and conviction that your subconscious becomes convinced of how important it is to you. As you affirm your desire to yourself, visualize it in your mind’s eye as big as a billboard. Make it big, powerful, and memorable. Repetition of your emotionalized affirmation is crucial.

Remember that while repetition may be boring to you, it isn’t to your child. Babies and toddlers learn through repetition, which is why routines are such an effective and important teaching tool for this age group.

Ritual can be defined as the structured repetition of important concepts, made resonant through the help of formal pageantry and ceremony. Ritual takes thoughts that are known but unattended and renders them active and vivid once more in our distracted minds. Unlike standard modern education, ritual doesn’t aim to teach us anything new; it wants to lend compelling form to what we believe we already know. It wants to turn our theoretical allegiances into habits.

Kettlebell deadlift. The kettlebell deadlift primarily targets the posterior chain (lower back, glutes, and hamstrings). It is an excellent companion to the kettlebell box squat and additionally helps teach proper hip-creasing mechanics, creating an important foundation for the classical kettlebell exercises (e.g., swing, clean, snatch). With the kettlebell on the ground, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart with the kettlebell just in front of you (see figure 7.9a). Keep your chest lifted as you sit back with your hips until your hands can reach the handle (see figure 7.9b). Grab the handle with both hands and stand up by pressing your feet into the ground until your body is fully upright (see figure 7.9c). Repeat by sitting back to lightly touch the kettlebell to the ground. Do 10 controlled repetitions with a light weight and then repeat with a more challenging weight (e.g., women start with 8 kg [18 lb] for 10 repetitions and then use 12 kg [26 lb] for 10 repetitions; men start with 16 kg [35 lb] for 10 repetitions and then use 24 kg [53 lb] for 10 repetitions). This basic exercise teaches you to keep your center of gravity aligned vertically over your base of support. It is important to have control over your center of mass because kettlebell training involves such dynamic movements. A strong and stable base will keep you safe when swinging the kettlebell. KEY PRINCIPLES Crease at the hips instead of bending at the waist. Maintain a neutral spine and slightly arched lower back. Legs can be bent or straight depending on the desired training effect. Straight legs will recruit the hamstrings more and bent legs will recruit the quadriceps more.

In the Bible, repetition implies importance. Jesus spends a lot of time telling us to love our neighbors. Care for the poor and marginalized. Help the needy. Have dinner with the people in your community that you despise the most. Welcome the stranger. See every man, woman, and child as image bearers of God, valued and beloved. For me, one party tends to favor policies that do that more than the other. It’s as simple as that. My Republican friends will argue with me

In this book we look at the learning conditions of repetition, deliberate attention, retrieval, and creative use which are very important for language learning, and teachers could examine how well the activities they use make use of these conditions.

Invocation of Ya ‘Aziz brings freedom without limitations and is a remedy for our experience of being powerless and under great restraint due to restrictions that may be real or imagined. Repetition of Ya ‘Aziz is also an important remedy for the common human experience of feeling undervalued and worthless.

All rituals are grounded in repetition and rigidly fixed action sequences.17 But they differ from habits in one important way. Rituals lack a direct, immediate reward. Instead, we have to invent a meaning and impose it on them. We lift our glasses to toast, blow out candles on a birthday cake, and wear caps and gowns at graduation. The act of standing silently for a song, singing while candles burn, or wearing a ceremonial costume acts as feedback, reinforcing our belief that something meaningful is taking place—an act of respect for our country, a celebration of another year, or an educational accomplishment.

The most important emphasis in the allotted warmup time is repetition. Don’t talk more than they play!

In general, poor PFC function leads people to make repetitive mistakes. Their actions are not based on experience, or forethought, but rather on the moment. The moment is what matters. This phrase comes up over and over with my ADD patients. For many people with ADD, forethought is a struggle. It is natural for them to act out what is important to them at the immediate moment, not two moments from now or five moments from now, but now! A person with ADD may be ready for work a few minutes early, but rather than leave the house and be on time or a few minutes early, she may do another couple of things that make her late. Likewise, a person with ADD may be sexually attracted to someone he just met, and even though he is married and his personal goal is to stay married, he may have a sexual encounter that puts his marriage at risk. The moment was what mattered. In the same vein, many people with ADD take what I call a crisis management approach to their lives. Rather than having clearly defined goals and acting in a manner consistent to reach them, they ricochet from crisis to crisis. In school, people with ADD have difficulty with long-term planning. Instead of keeping up as the semester goes along, they focus on the crisis in front of them at the moment—the next test or term paper. At work they are under continual stress. Deadlines loom and tasks go uncompleted. It seems as though there is a need for constant stress in order to get consistent work done. The constant stress, however, takes a physical toll on everyone involved (the person, his or her family, coworkers, employers, friends, etc.).

When Mama P. had rocked and held the traumatized and neglected children she cared for, she’d intuitively discovered what would become the foundation of our neurosequential approach: these children need patterned, repetitive experiences appropriate to their developmental needs, needs that reflect the age at which they’d missed important stimuli or had been traumatized, not their current chronological age. When she sat in a rocking chair cuddling a seven-year-old, she was providing the touch and rhythm that he’d missed as an infant, experience necessary for proper brain growth. A foundational principle of brain development is that neural systems organize and become functional in a sequential manner. Furthermore, the organization of a less mature region depends, in part, upon incoming signals from lower, more mature regions. If one system doesn’t get what it needs when it needs it, those that rely upon it may not function well either, even if the stimuli that the later developing system needs are being provided appropriately. The key to healthy development is getting the right experiences in the right amounts at the right time.

Here are a few of of the most important red flags discussed in this book. The presence of any of these symptoms in a system suggests that there is a problem with the system’s design: Shallow Module: the interface for a class or method isn’t much simpler than its implementation (see pp. 25, 110). Information Leakage: a design decision is reflected in multiple modules (see p. 31). Temporal Decomposition: the code structure is based on the order in which operations are executed, not on information hiding (see p. 32). Overexposure: An API forces callers to be aware of rarely used features in order to use commonly used features (see p. 36). Pass-Through Method: a method does almost nothing except pass its arguments to another method with a similar signature (see p. 52). Repetition: a nontrivial piece of code is repeated over and over (see p. 68). Special-General Mixture: special-purpose code is not cleanly separated from general purpose code (see p. 71). Conjoined Methods: two methods have so many dependencies that its hard to understand the implementation of one without understanding the implementation of the other (see p. 75). Comment Repeats Code: all of the information in a comment is immediately obvious from the code next to the comment (see p. 104). Implementation Documentation Contaminates Interface: an interface comment describes implementation details not needed by users of the thing being documented (see p. 114). Vague Name: the name of a variable or method is so imprecise that it doesn’t convey much useful information (see p. 123). Hard to Pick Name: it is difficult to come up with a precise and intuitive name for an entity (see p. 125). Hard to Describe: in order to be complete, the documentation for a variable or method must be long. (see p. 133). Nonobvious Code: the behavior or meaning of a piece of code cannot be understood easily. (see p. 150).

This is your life and you're so deep in it that you can't unmake it, you can't unbirth your baby because she wishes to be alive, you can't remake your career, there's no way you'll be a professional dancer anymore or join the philharmonic, don't even fantasize about one day becoming that avant-garde independent filmmaker because you're here, feeling like you did when your mother died but now wondering who around you thinks it's of importance to know how difficult it is to nurse? Or how often you are covered— down to your elbows-in feces when changing diapers? What difference does it make if anyone knows the quantity of laundry that is created between these four walls? Or the hanging of the laundry, the folding of the laundry. Who wants to recognize the repetition? Who cares about what domesticity is made of? The very thing that brought us into this world and its conditions are spat upon.

The most powerful part of verbal suggestion is beyond the habitual meaning we give to the words they contain. Of more direct importance is the sound itself, tone, repetition, volume, pace, rhythm, and change of all these things.

Remember that the most important part of learning something new or developing new habits is repetition—

The habit of setting priorities, overcoming procrastination, and getting on with your most important task is a mental and physical skill. As such, this habit is learnable through practice and repetition, over and over again, until it locks into your subconscious mind and becomes a permanent part of your behavior. Once it becomes a habit, it becomes both automatic and easy to do.