Seekers Book Quotes

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

The moon will guide you through the night with her brightness, but she will always dwell in the darkness, in order to be seen.

I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books. I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams -- like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.

Dear FB Friends, Fuck Facebook!!!!! — It has proven to be worthless as a book-selling device, and is nothing but a repository for perverts, reparation-seekers, old buddies looking for handouts, syphillitic ex-girlfriends looking for extra-curricular schlong and hack writers begging for blurbs.

...Albert-next-door doesn't care for reading, and he has not read nearly so many books as we have, so he is very foolish and ignorant, but it cannot be helped... Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself.

The seeker for perfection must discover in his own life the reflection of the inner light.

What a happy woman I am, living in a garden, with books, babies, birds and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find happiness so easily." (Quoted from Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim)

A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?

Every second a seeker can start over, For his life's mistakes Are initial drafts And not the final version.

I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.

I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul.

I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.

I saw a banner hanging next to city hall in downtown Philadelphia that read, "Kill them all, and let God sort them out." A bumper sticker read, "God will judge evildoers; we just have to get them to him." I saw a T-shirt on a soldier that said, "US Air Force... we don't die; we just go to hell to regroup." Others were less dramatic- red, white, and blue billboards saying, "God bless our troops." "God Bless America" became a marketing strategy. One store hung an ad in their window that said, "God bless America--$1 burgers." Patriotism was everywhere, including in our altars and church buildings. In the aftermath of September 11th, most Christian bookstores had a section with books on the event, calendars, devotionals, buttons, all decorated in the colors of America, draped in stars and stripes, and sprinkled with golden eagles. This burst of nationalism reveals the deep longing we all have for community, a natural thirst for intimacy... September 11th shattered the self-sufficient, autonomous individual, and we saw a country of broken fragile people who longed for community- for people to cry with, be angry with, to suffer with. People did not want to be alone in their sorrow, rage, and fear. But what happened after September 11th broke my heart. Conservative Christians rallies around the drums of war. Liberal Christian took to the streets. The cross was smothered by the flag and trampled under the feet of angry protesters. The church community was lost, so the many hungry seekers found community in the civic religion of American patriotism. People were hurting and crying out for healing, for salvation in the best sense of the word, as in the salve with which you dress a wound. A people longing for a savior placed their faith in the fragile hands of human logic and military strength, which have always let us down. They have always fallen short of the glory of God. ...The tragedy of the church's reaction to September 11th is not that we rallied around the families in New York and D.C. but that our love simply reflected the borders and allegiances of the world. We mourned the deaths of each soldier, as we should, but we did not feel the same anger and pain for each Iraqi death, or for the folks abused in the Abu Ghraib prison incident. We got farther and farther from Jesus' vision, which extends beyond our rational love and the boundaries we have established. There is no doubt that we must mourn those lives on September 11th. We must mourn the lives of the soldiers. But with the same passion and outrage, we must mourn the lives of every Iraqi who is lost. They are just as precious, no more, no less. In our rebirth, every life lost in Iraq is just as tragic as a life lost in New York or D.C. And the lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like six September 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.

No lazy mind comes to poetry. For poetry goes where we are reluctant to travel. Travel we must.

The greatest book is one written by your pen, but not exactly from your mind.

All truth-seekers should study the genocide that was the Holocaust and ask themselves how on Earth this event was 'allowed' to occur, keeping in mind allowed is the correct term as there was no shortage of witnesses, including those all over Europe who stood by and did nothing to intervene. If those bystanders hadn’t just stood by, perhaps the history books would tell a different story.

Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I. Conversation after a time bores me, games tire me, and my own thoughts, which we are told are the unfailing resource of a sensible man, have a tendency to run dry. Then I fly to my book as the opium-seeker to his pipe. I would sooner read the catalogue of the Army and Navy stores or Bradshaw's Guide than nothing at all, and indeed I have spent many delightful hours over both these works. At one time I never went out without a second-hand bookseller's list in my pocket. I know no reading more fruity. Of course to read in this way is as reprehensible as doping, and I never cease to wonder at the impertinence of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the illiterate. From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? Let us admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot do without — who of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has been severed from reading too long, the apprehension and irritability, and the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him? — and so let us be no more vainglorious than the poor slaves of the hypodermic needle or the pint-pot. And like the dope-fiend who cannot move from place to place without taking with him a plentiful supply of his deadly balm I never venture far without a sufficiency of reading matter. Books are so necessary to me that when in a railway train I have become aware that fellow-travellers have come away without a single one I have been seized with a veritable dismay. But when I am starting on a long journey the problem is formidable.

You attain to knowledge by argument; You attain a craft or skill by practice; If voluntary poverty's your choice, companionship's the way, not hand or tongue. The knowledge of it passes soul to soul, not by way of talk or reams of notes. Its signs are writ upon the seeker's heart, yet still the seeker cannot ken those signs until his heart becomes exposed to light Then God reveals His: Did We not expose? [Qur'an 94:1] for We've exposed the chambers of your breast and placed the exposition in your heart

You are the way and you are the goal, and there is no distance between you and the goal. You are the seeker and you are the sought; there is no distance between the seeker and the sought. You are the worshipper and you are the worshipped. You are the disciple and you are the master. You are the means and you are the end: this is the great way.

You are right, Sahara. There are no mists, or veils, or distances. But the mist is surrounded by a mist; and the veil is hidden behind a veil; and the distance continually draws away from the distance. That is why there are no mists, or veils, or distances. That is why it is called The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. It is here that The Traveler becomes The Wanderer, and The Wanderer becomes The One Who Is Lost, and The One Who Is Lost becomes The Seeker, and The Seeker becomes The Passionate Lover, and The Passionate Lover becomes The Beggar, and The Beggar becomes The Wretch, and The Wretch becomes The One Who Must Be Sacrificed, and The One Who Must Be Sacrificed becomes The Resurrected One and The Resurrected One becomes The One Who has Transcended The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. Then for a thousand years, or the rest of the afternoon, such a One spins in the Blazing Fire of Changes, embodying all the transformations, one after the other, and then beginning again, and then ending again, 86,000 times a second. Then such a one, if he is a man, is ready to love the woman Sahara; and such a one, if she is a woman, is ready to love the man who can put into song The Great Distance of Mist and Veils. Is it you who are waiting, Sahara, or is it I?

We are all children of one God and the only thing that separates us is our ego

You worry about your parents, siblings, spouses dying, yet no one prepares you for your friends dying. Every time you flip through your address book, you are reminded of it---she's gone, he's gone, they're both gone. Names and numbers and addresses scratched out. Page after page of gone, gone, gone. The sense of loss that you feel isn't just for the person. It is the death of your youth, the death of fun, of warm conversations and too many drinks, of long weekends, of shared pains and victories and jealousies, of secrets that you couldn't tell anyone else, of memories that only you two shared.

I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!

Most of the time our inner voice tries to guide us to ‘Truth’ but we, out of our own vested interests, wish to continue living in our own self-created illusions because it suits our purpose or fulfils our needs.

More than the painting you see or the music you hear, the words you read become in the very act of reading them part of who you are, especially if they are the words of exceptionally promising writers. If there is poison in the words, you are poisoned; if there is nourishment, you are nourished; if there is beauty, you are made a little more beautiful. In Hebrew, the word dabar means both word and also deed. A word doesn’t merely say something, it does something. It brings something into being.

I have managed not to finish certain books. With barely a twinge of conscience, I hurl down what bores me or doesn't give what I crave: ecstasy, transcendence, a thrill of mysterious connection. For, more than anything else, readers are thrill-seekers, though I don't read thrillers, not the kind sold under that label, anyway. They don't thrill; only language thrills.

The wise pleasure seeker, having realised they are "different degrees of desire" and never desirable, gives up both Virtue and Vice and becomes a Kiaist. Riding the Shark of his desire he crosses the ocean of the dual principle and engages himself in self-love. 

Is it not by learning to read the book of nature with the eyes of faith that we come to recognize the drop of divinity that resides in our own souls though hidden, master? In the end is this not faith; to seek the light that takes us further, the light of Christ that brings that to which reason and knowledge alone can never raise itself? This is truth!

As he stepped into the sunlight, he heard the seals barking loudly. They must have an audience. Slick glory seekers. Whiskered prima donnas.

It is the Master who comes to the door of his student when the student is ready and the Master knows all the truth of his student

Ego is like a mad elephant which is ridden by our blind heart and blind mind and which ultimately destroys our real selves

A seeker of Truth looks beyond the apparent and contemplates the hidden. What the senses perceive is only a distortion. We all look for something that is not yet in existence,

The saint and the atheist, seekers both, bowed to each other and went their separate ways.

And naturally I was reading in the library a few days later from a book about the Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna, and I stumbled upon a story about a seeker who once came to see the great master and admitted to him that she feared she was not a good enough devotee, feared that she did not love God enough. And the saint said, "Is there nothing you love?" The woman admitted that she adored her young nephew more than anything else on earth. The saint said, "There, then. He is your Krishna, your beloved. In your service to your nephew, you are serving God.

Life is truly a matter of choices, reactions, and actions...each and every choice is governed by our reactions which in turn affect our actions and consequently the future turn of events

Chastity and moral purity were qualities McCandless mulled over long and often. Indeed, one of the books found in the bus with his remains was a collection of stories that included Tol¬stoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata,” in which the nobleman-turned-ascetic denounces “the demands of the flesh.” Several such passages are starred and highlighted in the dog-eared text, the margins filled with cryptic notes printed in McCandless’s distinc¬tive hand. And in the chapter on “Higher Laws” in Thoreau’s Walden, a copy of which was also discovered in the bus, McCand¬less circled “Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.” We Americans are titillated by sex, obsessed by it, horrified by it. When an apparently healthy person, especially a healthy young man, elects to forgo the enticements of the flesh, it shocks us, and we leer. Suspicions are aroused. McCandless’s apparent sexual innocence, however, is a corol¬lary of a personality type that our culture purports to admire, at least in the case of its more famous adherents. His ambivalence toward sex echoes that of celebrated others who embraced wilderness with single-minded passion—Thoreau (who was a lifelong virgin) and the naturalist John Muir, most prominently— to say nothing of countless lesser-known pilgrims, seekers, mis¬fits, and adventurers. Like not a few of those seduced by the wild, McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire. His yearning, in a sense, was too pow¬erful to be quenched by human contact. McCandless may have been tempted by the succor offered by women, but it paled beside the prospect of rough congress with nature, with the cosmos it¬self. And thus was he drawn north, to Alaska.

Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people approach their working lives. There are two reasons why I dislike the passion mindset (that is, two reasons beyond the fact that, as I argued in Rule #1, it’s based on a false premise). First, when you focus only on what your work offers you, it makes you hyperaware of what you don’t like about it, leading to chronic unhappiness. This is especially true for entry-level positions, which, by definition, are not going to be filled with challenging projects and autonomy—these come later. When you enter the working world with the passion mindset, the annoying tasks you’re assigned or the frustrations of corporate bureaucracy can become too much to handle. Second, and more serious, the deep questions driving the passion mindset—“Who am I?” and “What do I truly love?”—are essentially impossible to confirm. “Is this who I really am?” and “Do I love this?” rarely reduce to clear yes-or-no responses. In other words, the passion mindset is almost guaranteed to keep you perpetually unhappy and confused, which probably explains why Bronson admits, not long into his career-seeker epic What Should I Do With My Life? that “the one feeling everyone in this book has experienced is of missing out on life.

When you see an old man, you would automatically trust and respect him. He might have been a thug in his days... he might still be a crook, But your mind can’t even imagine that! A seeker must keep this factor in mind while referencing old books.

Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it . . . I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people . . . I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.

We think of agents, traffickers and facilitators as the worst abusers of refugees, but when they set out to extort from their clients, when they cheat them or dispatch them to their deaths, they are only enacting an entrepreneurial version of the disdain which refugees suffer at the hands of far more powerful enemies – those who terrorise them and those who are determined to keep them at arm’s length. Human traffickers are simply vectors of the contempt which exists at the two poles of the asylum seeker’s journey; they take their cue from the attitudes of warlords and dictators, on the one hand, and, on the other, of wealthy states whose citizens have learned to think of generosity as a vice. [from the London Review of Books Vol. 22 No. 3 · 3 February 2000]

Almost I feel the pulsebeat of the ages, Now swift, now slow, beneath my fingertips. The heartthrobs of the prophets and the sages Beat through these bindings; and my quick hand slips Old books from dusty shelves, in eager seeking For truths the flaming tongues of the ancients tell; For the words of wisdom that they still are speaking As clearly as an echoing silver bell. Here is the melody that lies forever At the deep heart of living; here we keep The accurate recorded discs that never Can be quite silenced, though their makers sleep The still deep sleep, so long as a seeker finds The indelible imprint of their moving minds.

1 One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked. A voice asked: “Who is there?” He answered: “It is I.” The voice said: “There is no room here for me and thee.” The door was shut. After a year of solitude and deprivation this man returned to the door of the Beloved. He knocked. A voice from within asked: “Who is there?” The man said: “It is Thou.” The door was opened for him. 2 The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere, they’re in each other all along. 3 Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity. The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death. Tomorrow, when resurrection comes, The heart that is not in love will fail the test. 4 When your chest is free of your limiting ego, Then you will see the ageless Beloved. You can not see yourself without a mirror; Look at the Beloved, He is the brightest mirror. 5 Your love lifts my soul from the body to the sky And you lift me up out of the two worlds. I want your sun to reach my raindrops, So your heat can raise my soul upward like a cloud. 6 There is a candle in the heart of man, waiting to be kindled. In separation from the Friend, there is a cut waiting to be stitched. O, you who are ignorant of endurance and the burning fire of love– Love comes of its own free will, it can’t be learned in any school. 7 There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired, as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts from books and from what the teacher says, collecting information from the traditional sciences as well as from the new sciences. With such intelligence you rise in the world. You get ranked ahead or behind others in regard to your competence in retaining information. You stroll with this intelligence in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more marks on your preserving tablets. There is another kind of tablet, one already completed and preserved inside you. A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest. This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid, and it doesn’t move from outside to inside through conduits of plumbing-learning. This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out.

Don Juan advises Carlito to choose a path with heart. I am familiar with it for the same reason that so many spiritual seekers are familiar with it, because it has that ring of sagely goodness that makes it the one thing out of all of Castenada’s writings that gets widely remembered. Does that make it true or valuable? Obviously not, just another cliché. Just another piece of pretty misdirection. I am well aware that a great many of the world’s most popular spiritual doctrines advocate a heart-centered approach to spiritual development, but popularity among the soundly asleep may not be the best criterion by which to judge a method for waking up.

book and magazine publishers aren’t in the business of enlightenment. They’re in the business of selling books and magazines, not truth, and they know that seekers will gladly pay to be reassured that, common sense aside, they can wake up and stay asleep; awakening within the dreamstate being a much more marketable solution than waking up from it. Such

And so I'm still a story collector. A word peddler. A knowledge warrior. Stories help us make sense of things that don't make sense at all. Like an unfortunate amount of bad luck. Or a forever-locked closet. Or a pile of toppled books in a deserted part of the library. I've gathered these words, these pages, this story, so I can share it with you, Friend, in hopes that you can find a bit of yourself in me or Eva or Merit or Edouard or John Jr. or Carroll. That's the truth of fiction, after all. It's hidden in feelings, not facts.

Be optimistic every day, not just when things are good.

No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world, I cleave to no system, I am a true seeker.

But just remember that everything you possess or face is either a reward or a test – and how you handle it determines future rewards and challenges.

I am a 'Light' seeker with a 'tude'!." ~R. Alan Woods [2013]

Defy all that’s holy, for they are the seekers Do the bidding for they are the devil’s speakers

Books are like clouds. Words are the rain. Together they nourish the heart and soul of the seeker of truth = Awa

The reader of almost any motivational or success-oriented book has urgent needs, often financial. But the dedicated seeker--the person whose questions are persistent and ever deepening--will inevitably find that the quest for a "better way" in material affairs broadens to include the meaning and nature of all of life. The sincere search for a "better way" leads to questions of purpose and existence.

We have reached the age of denial, we have become happiness seekers, afraid to feel. We are told to think positive, to seek only joy. Stores overflow with books selling you ways to rid yourself of ‘negative’ feelings.

In books, coaching sessions, and networking events aimed at the white-collar unemployed, the seeker soon encounters ideologies that are explicitly hostile to any larger, social understanding of his or her situation. The most blatant of these, in my experience, was the EST-like, victim-blaming ideology represented by Patrick Knowles and the books he recommended to his boot-camp participants. Recall that at the boot camp, the timid suggestion that there might be an outer world defined by the market or ruled by CEOs was immediately rebuked; there was only us, the job seekers. It was we who had to change. In a milder form, the constant injunction to maintain a winning attitude carries the same message: look inward, not outward; the world is entirely what you will it to be.

But the secrets of such a book are not perpetual. Once they are known, they become relegated to a lesser sphere, which is that of the knower. Having lost the prestige they once enjoyed, these former secrets now function as tools in the excavation of still deeper ones which, in turn, will suffer the same corrosive fate. And this is the fate of all the secrets of the universe. Eventually the seeker of a recondite knowledge may conclude—either through insight or sheer exhaustion—that this ruthless process is never-ending, that the mortification of one mystery after another has no terminus beyond that of the seeker's own extinction. And how many still remain susceptible to the search? How many pursue it to the end of their days with undying hope of some ultimate revelation? Better not to think in precise terms just how few the faithful are.

For Seekers of Faith (By St. Benedict)   GRACIOUS and holy Father, give us the wisdom to discover you, the intelligence to understand you, the diligence to seek after you, the patience to wait for you, eyes to behold you, a heart to meditate upon you, and a life to proclaim you, through the power of the spirit of Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

Wearing perfume can't be a substitute for bath. For a seeker, reading famous spiritual books, visiting some holy Gurus and places, doing some chanting and rituals is like wearing perfume. If you wish to take bath, throw yourself to the universe. It will make you do things that are not even remotely spiritual or religious. But they will bathe you clean.

As you watch anything—a tree, your wife, your children, your neighbor, the stars of a night, the light on the water, the bird in the sky, anything—there is always the observer—the censor, the thinker, the experiencer, the seeker—and the thing he is observing; the observer and the observed; the thinker and the thought. So, there is always a division. It is this division that is time. That division is the very essence of conflict. And when there is conflict, there is contradiction. There is “the observer and the observed”—that is a contradiction; there is a separation. And hence where there is contradiction, there is conflict. And when there is conflict, there is always the urgency to get beyond it, to conquer it, to overcome it, to escape from it, to do something about it, and all that activity involves time…. As long as there is this division, time will go on, and time is sorrow. And a man who will understand the end of sorrow must understand this, must find, must go beyond this duality between the thinker and the thought, the experiencer and the experienced. That is, when there is a division between the observer and the observed, there is time, and therefore there is no ending of sorrow. Then, what is one to do? You understand the question? I see, within myself, the observer is always watching, judging, censoring, accepting, rejecting, disciplining, controlling, shaping. That observer, that thinker, is the result of thought, obviously. Thought is first; not the observer, not the thinker. If there was no thinking at all, there would be no observer, no thinker; then there would only be complete, total attention.

If you want to know the secrets of existence, do the math. There is no other way. There is only one truth, the truth of mathematics. It is the infallible, absolute truth. All truth-seekers come in the end to mathematics. Pythagoras got there first. It’s time for everyone else to join him and hear the Music of the Spheres. Are your ears attuned to the perfect notes of the universe? Only the gods can hear the divine music. Are you one of them?

This seat taken?" My eyes grazing over the only other occupant, a guy with long glossy dark hair with his head bent over a book. "It's all yours," he says. And when he lifts his head and smiles,my heart just about leaps from my chest. It's the boy from my dreams. The boy from the Rabbit Hole,the gas station,and the cave-sitting before me with those same amazing,icy-blue eues, those same alluring lips I've kissed multiple times-but only in slumber, never in waking life. I scold my heart to settle,but it doesn't obey. I admonish myself to sit,to act normal, casual-and I just barely succeed. Stealing a series of surreptitious looks as I search through my backpack, taking in his square chin,wide generous lips,strong brow,defined cheekbones, and smooth brown skin-the exact same features as Cade. "You're the new girl,right?" He abandons his book,tilting his head in a way that causes his hair to stream over his shoulder,so glossy and inviting it takes all of my will not to lean across the table and touch it. I nod in reply,or at least I think I do.I can't be too sure.I'm too stricken by his gaze-the way it mirrors mine-trying to determine if he knows me, recognizes me,if he's surprised to find me here.Wishing Paloma had better prepared me-focused more on him and less on his brother. I force my gaze from his.Bang my knee hard against the table as I swivel in my seat.Feeling so odd and unsettled,I wish I'd picked another place to sit, though it's pretty clear no other table would have me. He buries his smile and returns to the book.Allowing a few minutes to pass,not nearly enough time for me to get a grip on myself,when he looks up and says, "Are you staring at me because you've seen my doppelganer roaming the halls,playing king of the cafeteria? Or because you need to borrow a pencil and you're too shy to ask?" I clear the lump from my throat, push the words past my lips when I say, "No one's ever accused me of being shy." A statement that,while steeped in truth, stands at direct odds with the way I feel now,sitting so close to him. "So I guess it's your twin-or doppelganer,as you say." I keep my voice light, as though I'm not at all affected by his presence,but the trill note at the end gives me away.Every part of me now vibrating with the most intense surge of energy-like I've been plugged into the wall and switched on-and it's all I can do to keep from grabbing hold of his shirt, demanding to know if he dreamed the dreams too. He nods,allowing an easy,cool smile to widen his lips. "We're identical," he says. "As I'm sure you've guessed. Though it's easy enough to tell us apart. For one thing,he keeps his hair short.For another-" "The eyes-" I blurt,regretting the words the instant they're out.From the look on his face,he has no idea what I'm talking about. "Yours are...kinder." My cheeks burn so hot I force myself to look away,as words of reproach stampede my brain. Why am I acting like such an inept loser? Why do I insist on embarrassing myself-in front of him-of all people? I have to pull it together.I have to remember who I am-what I am-and what I was born to do.Which is basically to crush him and his kind-or,at the very least,to temper the damage they do.

This young world desires that there should arrive or appear from the outside-not happiness-but misfortune; and their imagination is already busy beforehand to form a monster out of it, so that they may afterwards be able to fight with a monster. If these distress-seekers felt the power to benefit themselves, to do something for themselves from internal sources, they would also understand how to create a distress of their own, specially their own, from internal sources.

But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross. Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, the same way that I will die more easily once I have completed this story. I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams--like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves. Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that--one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. Each man carries the vestiges of his birth--the slime and eggshells of his primeval past--with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below. Each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. But each of us--experiments of the depths--strives toward his own destiny. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone.

[T]he very existence of such powers argues a counterforce. We call powers of the first kind dark, though they may use a species of deadly light... and we call those of the second kind bright, though I think that they may at times employ darkness, as a good man nevertheless draws the curtains of his bed to sleep. Yet there is truth to the talk of darkness and light, because it shows plainly that one implies the other. The tale I read to little Severian said that the universe was but a long word of the Increate's. We, then, are syllables of that word. But the speaking of any word is futile unless there are other words, words that are not spoken. If a beast has but one cry, the cry tells nothing; and even the wind has a multitude of voices, so that those who sit indoors may hear it and know if the weather is tumultuous or mild. The powers we call dark seem to me to be the words the Increate did not speak... and these words must be maintained in a quasi-existence, if the other word, the word spoken is to be distinguished. What is not said can be important - but what is said is more important... And if the seekers after dark things find them, may not the seekers after bright find them as well? And are they not more apt to hand their wisdom on?

It is clear to us today, too, that Freud was wrong about the dogma, just as Jung and Adler knew right at the beginning. Man has no innate instincts of sexuality and aggression. Now we are seeing something more, the new Freud emerging in our time, that he was right in his dogged dedication to revealing man's creatureliness. His emotional involvement was correct. It reflected the true intuitions of genius, even though the particular intellectual counterpart of that emotion-the sexual theory-proved to be wrong. Man's body was "a curse of fate," and culture was built upon repression-not because man was a seeker only of sexuality, of pleasure, of life and expansiveness, as Freud thought, but because man was also primarily an avoider of death. Consciousness of death is the primary repression, not sexuality. As Rank unfolded in book after book, and as Brown has recently again argued, the new perspective on psychoanalysis is that its crucial concept is the repression of death. This is what is creaturely about man, this is the repression on which culture is built, a repression unique to the self-conscious animal. Freud saw the curse and dedicated his life to revealing it with all the power at his command. But he ironically missed the precise scientific reason for the curse.

Allowing the war-prone individuals, bent on evil, to gain power in governments must be one of the most significant reasons that wars erupt. Individuals with prowar inclinations are naturally aggressive and seek power over others. As Friedrich Hayek argued in his book The Road to Serfdom, “the worst get on top.” The power seekers also convince themselves that they are superior to average people and have a moral responsibility to use force to mold the world as they see fit. The propaganda is that war is for the sake of “goodness and righteousness.” Isabel Paterson described it in her book The God of the Machine as “the humanitarian with a guillotine.” Those who are more prone to peace tend to be complacent and to not resist the propaganda required to mobilize otherwise peaceful people to fight and die for the lies told and the false noble goals proposed by the self-appointed moral leaders.

Bakunin, on the other hand, considered himself a revolutionist of the deed, "not a philosopher and not an inventor of systems, like Marx." He adamantly refused to recognize the existence of any "a priori ideas or preordained, preconceived laws." Bakunin rejected the view that social change depended on the gradual maturation of "objective" historical conditions. On the contrary, he believed that men shaped their own destinies, that their lives could not be squeezed into a Procrustean bed of abstract sociological formulas. "No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world," Bakunin declared. "I cleave to no system, I am a true seeker." Mankind was not compelled to wait patiently as the fabric of history unfolded in the fullness of time. By teaching the working masses theories, Marx would only succeed in stifling the revolutionary ardor every man already possessed—"the impulse to liberty, the passion for equality, the holy instinct of revolt.

SPIEGEL: You have a lot of respect for the Dalai Lama, you even rewrote some Buddhist writings for him. Are you a religious person? Cleese: I certainly don't think much of organized religion. I am not committed to anything except the vague feeling that there is something more going on than the materialist reductionist people think. I think you can reduce suffering a little bit, like the Buddhists say, that is one of the few things I take seriously. But the idea that you can run this planet in a rational and kind way -- I think it's not possible. There will always be these sociopaths at the top -- selfish people, power-seekers who want to spend their whole lives seeking it. Robin Skynner, the psychiatrist that I wrote two books with, said to me that you could begin to enjoy life when you realized how bad the planet is, how hopeless everything is. I reached that point these last two or three years when I saw that our existence here is absolutely hopeless. I see the rich people have got a stranglehold on us. If somebody had said that to me when I was 20, I would have regarded him as a left-wing loony. SPIEGEL: You may not have been a left-wing loony, but you were happy to attack and ridicule the church. The "Life of Brian," the story of a young man in Judea who isn't Jesus Christ, but is nevertheless followed like a savior and crucified afterwards, was regarded as blasphemy when it was released in 1979. Cleese: Well there was a small number of people in country towns, all very conservative, who got upset and said, "You can't show the film." So people hired a coach and drove 15 miles to the next town and went to see the film there. But a lot of Christians said, "We got it, we know that the joke is not about religion, but about the way people follow religion." If Jesus saw the Spanish Inquisition I think he would have said, "What are you doing there?" SPIEGEL: These days Muslims and Islam are risky subjects. Do you think they are good issues for satire? Cleese: For sure. In 1982, Graham Chapman and I wrote a number of scenes for "The Meaning of Life" movie which had an ayatollah in them. This ayatollah was raging against all the evil inventions of the West, you know, like toilet paper. These scenes were never included in the film, although I thought they were much better than many other scenes that were included. And that's why I didn't do any more Python films: I didn't want to be outvoted any longer. But I wouldn't have made fun of the prophet. SPIEGEL: Why not? Cleese: How could you? How could you make fun of Jesus or Saint Francis of Assisi? They were wonderful human beings. People are only funny when they behave inappropriately, when they've been taken over by some egotistical emotion which they can't control and they become less human. SPIEGEL: Is there a difference between making fun of our side, so to speak, the Western, Christian side, and Islam? Cleese: There shouldn't be a difference. [SPIEGEL Interview with John Cleese: 'Satire Makes People Think' - 2015]

each adult would, at a time chosen by the wind, go out and walk the ice alone. The aim of such journeying was to find the kyzat, the perfect place, a spot that on all the ice had been ordained by the Gods in the Sky and in the Sea for that individual alone as the place where all the elements of their life find meaning, giving a vision of such clarity that the air itself becomes ice and the wisdom of Sky and Sea finds a place in the seeker’s heart, allowing them to endure the hardships of the years ahead. Quell had admitted to Yaz in a private moment that his own journey to find his kyzat, a walk that had lasted four days, had brought him to an ice spike at the juncture of three pressure ridges. Here he was visited by the epiphany that, having run out of his allotted ration of angel-fish, if he did not turn back he would lose first his toes then his fingers to the wind. Yaz had wondered if that wasn’t the wisdom that the ritual was designed to impart. That there is nothing but ice and more ice, and that if you are too stubborn to admit it and turn back, you will die and your malcontent will no longer burden your clan.

There is another call, the one that arrives the day when what once worked no longer does. Sometimes people need a shock; sometimes a tocsin call. It is time for a wake-up call. A man is fired from a job; a child runs away from home; ulcers overtake the body. The ancients called this “soul loss.” Today, the equivalent is the loss of meaning or purpose in our lives. There is a void where there should be what Gerard Manley Hopkins calls “juice and joy.” The heart grows cold; life loses its vitality. Our accomplishments seem meaningless. As Tolstoy wrote in his Confessions, “Nothing ahead except ruins.” We seem to be in the thick of the forest without a road. “What, then, must we do?” The long line of myths, legends, poetry, and stories throughout the world tell us that it is at that moment of darkness that the call comes. It arrives in various forms—an itch, a fever, an offer, a ringing, an inspiration, an idea, a voice, words in a book that seem to have been written just for us—or a knock. THE KNOCK The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away. I'm looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling. —Robert Pirsig

overcome. Seth Godin calls these inevitable obstacles The Dip. In his brilliant little book of the same name, he describes the intricacies of knowing when to quit and when to stick—and why it’s so important to learn how to do this effectively. Seth gives a pertinent example of the entrepreneur-wannabe: Do you know an entrepreneur-wannabe who is on his sixth or twelfth new project? He jumps from one to another, and every time he hits an obstacle, he switches to a new, easier, better opportunity. And while he’s a seeker, he’s never going to get anywhere. He never gets anywhere because he’s always switching lines, never able to really run for it. While starting up is thrilling, it’s not until you get through the Dip that your efforts pay off. Countless entrepreneurs have perfected the starting part, but give up long before they finish paying their dues. The sad news is that when you start over, you get very little credit for how long you stood in line with your last great venture.[31] Quitting isn’t always bad, but it needs to be done for the right reasons, and never for the wrong ones. It’s never black and white, but it always comes back to passion. Read The Dip. It will help.

The stories we read in books, what's presented to us as being interesting - they have very little to do with real life as it's lived today. I'm not talking about straight-up escapism, your vampires, serial killers, codes hidden in paintings, and so on. I mean so-called serious literature. A boy goes hunting with his emotionally volatile father, a bereaved woman befriends an asylum seeker, a composer with a rare neurological disorder walks around New York, thinking about the nature of art. People looking back over their lives, people having revelations, people discovering meaning. Meaning, that's the big thing. The way these books have it, you trip over a rock you'll find some hidden meaning waiting there. Everyone's constantly on the verge of some soul-shaking transformation. And it's - if you'll forgive my language - it's bullshit. Modern people live in a state of distraction. They go from one distraction to the next, and that's how they like it. They don't transform, they don't stop to smell the roses, they don't sit around recollecting long passages of their childhood - Jesus, I can hardly remember what I was doing two days ago. My point is, people aren't waiting to be restored to some ineffable moment. They're not looking for meaning. That whole idea of the novel - that's finished.

As humans formed by the hands of a creative, imaginative God, we crave the supernatural. Believe it or not, we yearn for the very power we are actually destined for. It is why media concerning magic, witchcraft and sorcery is so prevalent today, because we were born for greater planes than most of us have currently seen. Amazingly, we are actually created to work in the same supernatural powers displayed in the bible and we are feeling the lack of it as our culture turns to crafty, counterfeit imitations. Though there are a few who perform miraculous acts around the world, the rest of us are left leading considerably mundane lives in a compromised condition, as if in half-form. Nevertheless, we are sons and daughters made in the image of an all-powerful God Who longs to see us live as supernatural kingdom-beings who have claimed their birthright and are moving in signs and wonders to lead a generation to Him. Assuredly, it is possible to manifest God’s glory through His great power in order to heal the wounded, sick and dying and bring hope and life to people who are dry and desolate. One day, it may even be possible to breathe underwater without scuba gear or fly without aviation. As for seeking, that is a gift accessible to anyone. Seek God, soak up His presence and you will find all that you long for, completing the destiny He planned for you before you were formed in your mother’s womb. My question is this: Do you long to move in the supernatural? If yes, the answer is simple. Seek. Seek Him. He is waiting.

But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross. Few people nowadays know what man is. Many sense this ignorance and die the more easily because of it, the same way that I will die more easily once I have completed this story. I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams--like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves. Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that--one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. Each man carries the vestiges of his birth--the slime and eggshells of his primeval past--with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below. Each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. But each of us--experiments of the depths--strives toward his own destiny. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone.

the ten thousand things To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things. – Eihei Dogen If one is very fortunate indeed, one comes upon – or is found by – the teachings that match one’s disposition and the teachers or mentors whose expression strikes to the heart while teasing the knots from the mind. The Miriam Louisa character came with a tendency towards contrariness and scepticism, which is probably why she gravitated to teachers who displayed like qualities. It was always evident to me that the ‘blink’ required in order to meet life in its naked suchness was not something to be gained in time. Rather, it was clear that it was something to do with understanding what sabotages this direct engagement. So my teachers were those who deconstructed the spiritual search – and with it the seeker – inviting one to “see for oneself.” I realised early on that I wouldn’t find any help within traditional spiritual institutions since their version of awakening is usually a project in time. Anyway, I’m not a joiner by nature. I set out on my via negativa at an early age, trying on all kinds of philosophies and practices with enthusiasm and casting them aside –neti neti – equally enthusiastically. Chögyam Trungpa wised me up to “spiritual materialism” in the 70s; Alan Watts followed on, pointing out that whatever is being experienced is none other than ‘IT’ – the unarguable aliveness that one IS. By then I was perfectly primed for the questions put by Jiddu Krishnamurti – “Is there a thinker separate from thought?” “Is there an observer separate from the observed?” “Can consciousness be separated from its content?” It was while teaching at Brockwood Park that I also had the good fortune to engage with David Bohm in formal dialogues as well as private conversations. (About which I have written elsewhere.) Krishnamurti and Bohm were seminal teachers for me; I also loved the unique style of deconstruction offered by Nisargadatta Maharaj. As it happened though, it took just one tiny paragraph from Wei Wu Wei to land in my brain at exactly the right time for the irreversible ‘blink’ to occur. I mention this rather august lineage because it explains why the writing of Robert Saltzman strikes not just a chord but an entire symphonic movement for me. We are peers; we were probably reading the same books by Watts and Krishnamurti at the same time during the 70s and 80s. Reading his book, The Ten Thousand Things, is, for me, like feeling my way across a tapestry exquisitely woven from the threads of my own life. I’m not sure that I can adequately express my wonderment and appreciation… The candor, lucidity and lack of jargon in Robert’s writing are deeply refreshing. I also relish his way with words. He knows how to write. He also knows how to take astonishingly fine photographs, and these are featured throughout the book. It’s been said that this book will become a classic, which is a pretty good achievement for someone who isn’t claiming to be a teacher and has nothing to gain by its sale. (The book sells for the production price.) He is not peddling enlightenment. He is simply sharing how it feels to be free from all the spiritual fantasies that obscure our seamless engagement with this miraculous thing called life, right now.

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

I have often thought that if the people who write books for children knew a little more it would be better. I shall not tell you anything about us except what I should like to know about if I was reading the story and you were writing it. Albert's uncle says I ought to have put this in the preface, but I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.

Wouldn’t you think that something so attractive would be at the forefront of every inquiring human being’s desire? There are stumbling blocks along the way, however, that are of such a nature as to keep out all but those who have an impassioned desire for the presence of God—a desire stronger than the draw of anything else in life. Penetrating the holy presence of God is the reward of fighting the good fight and overcoming all obstructions in the way. This all-consuming desire for God’s presence goes a long way in tackling the major hindrances a seeker might find. When the goal is in clear view, the obstacles become trivial. Let’s

wanted to have an evening where no one gets kidnapped or blown up. Except on film. Who knows what might happen to Romeo?” “Anyone who has read the play,” Caprice said. “Someone read the play to me, and I definitely think there might be a bomb scene.” “It’s almost like you weren’t paying attention at all when I read to you,” Caprice said. “I tend to zone out after a massive head wound,” he said.

You’re so weird, and what’s weirder is that your weirdness is starting not to seem so weird anymore.

Curiosity overcame common sense. They

I really have to go,” he said. “But please, whatever you do, stay angry just like that.” She slammed the door on his smugly handsome face, leaning against the heavy wood for support. The mirror on the opposite wall reflected her flushed, happy, starry-eyed expression.

You spend more time with that kid than most people spend with their Siamese twin,” Aston said as she stepped from her car. “Jake’s good for what ails me,” Caprice said. “What does ail you?” Aston asked, tipping her head with a worried frown. For most of the summer, she had been trying without success to get Caprice to open up. To not do so was weird, but Caprice couldn’t take the chance. Her secrets were weighty but much too important to unload on Aston. Besides, she might tell their parents in some misguided attempt to be helpful or protective. “Gee, I don’t know, the guy I like got blown up and is lying in the hospital,” Caprice said. Her attempt at humor fell flat onto the sidewalk. “Your high school experience is turning out much different than mine,” Aston said. “You have no idea,” Caprice muttered.

Alex, I really love you,” she said. She had said it every day since the incident, at first through tears and embarrassment. Now it was as easy as saying hello. Of course it helped that he was in a coma. “I think if you loved me, we could have something really great together. But you don’t, so I’m an idiot for thinking it. If you wake up…” Her voice broke and she paused. “I mean when you wake up, I don’t know what’s going to happen to us. I mean, not that I think there’s an us, it’s just that I think maybe…” she broke off and dropped her head to the bed with a groan. “I can’t even be suave when you’re unconscious.

Come on,” Aston urged, poking her. “There’s nothing so bad in the world that a hefty dose of Mr. Darcy can’t make better.

Jake, this isn’t your fault, okay? The guy got away; there’s nothing you could have done.” “We could have tied him to the chair,” Jake said. “Well, there’s that. But we’re new at this, and we’re learning. We have to have a curve.” “You’re a really nice boss,” he said. “I’m not your boss,” she said. “Sure you’re not. You’re just the one who gives us orders, the one we all turn to when we have no idea what to do, the one who pulls everything together and organizes us. But you’re totally not our boss.” “As long as we’re clear on that,” Caprice said. Jake laughed. “I’m serious, Caprice, I think you have some kind of latent talent as either a cop or a terrorist. You’re scary good at this stuff. It’s like you automatically know what to ask these guys. I mean, McKenna has her talents when it comes to incapacitating and causing pain, but she had no idea what to do with the guy after we caught him. She got him to tell her his address, which we already knew, and then he got away.” “I know you’re trying to be nice, but I don’t want to hear this. This isn’t my thing; this isn’t me. This is temporary. I’m filling a need, and that’s all. When Alex is back on his feet…” “What?” Jake interrupted. “You’re going to hand over the reins of the club and go quietly into the night? You couldn’t stop yourself from arguing with him before you took over. How are you going to do that now that you’ve had a taste of power?” “You make me sound like some kind of control freak. The truth is that I’ll be relieved when Alex comes back.

Many of my friends think I read books all day and alphabetize the shelves. Well, sometimes I do alphabetize shelves. But more often than not, my job title could be "friend". Or just simply "caring ear." Public librarians are often part information seekers, part social workers.

While a major focus of this book is fear mongering by journalists and others, throughout the chapters that follow I take note as well of reporters who bring to light serious dangers about which the public hears little from politicians, corporations, and most of the media. Indeed, again and again I find that it is reporters, rather than government oversight organizations, academics, or other professional truth seekers, who debunk silly or exaggerated scares that other journalists irresponsibly promulgate.

Some of my problems I solved with my sword. But many others, I solved with books. They might look unassuming, but there were worlds within these pages.

All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous. The seekers for prizes tend to labor not for inherent excellence but for alien rewards; they tend to write this, or timorously to avoid writing that, in order to tickle the prejudices of a haphazard committee.

For those of us fascinated with the spiritual quest, the deepening of our journeys begins the moment we begin to ask what is sacred to us: architecture, history, music, books, nature, food, religious heritage, family history, the lives of saints, scholars, heroes, artists?

It’s human nature to focus on beginnings or endings, and that’s why we often lose sight of where we are and what we’re doing, in the moment. But the present moment—the ever-present now—is all we ever really have. Our past is already lost, gone forever. Our future might never come.

The purpose of the tarot is to empower the Seeker, never to harm. (...) How do you phrase the truth in a way that will empower rather than harm? This is an essential skill that every tarot practitioner must develop. In fact, the subject matter requires its own full length book.

Despite mournful envy and Dejected wrath, We bask under blue skies, Bewitching stars, And mystical moons, Loving rumbles of thunder, Glistening raindrops, And a hazy peaceful sunrise. In the face of Sorrowful greed, We delight in magnificent mountains, Bountiful oceans, Turquoise lagoons, Beautiful blossoms, And the green, green grass Of springtime. Through raging anger, Aching sadness, We treasure radiant sunsets, Seek marble courtyards, Ancient architecture, And splendid arched bridges. We sing the praises of Breathtaking falls. Even crushed And bewildered, We are captivated by Exquisite winged creatures, Tropical forests, And the critters we nurture. We embrace the power in our divinity And the superb magic of everything. With every threat to the world We belong to And embrace, We revel in books and dreams. We’re mesmerized by Otherworldly visions And plentiful hues. We cherish The light in ever-curious Truth seekers, And are ever grateful For smiles, Rapturous affection, Laughter, And love.

I recommend the books only to ready minds. Those who have inquired about them or those who are on the right path. Seekers of wisdom.

An objective observer might look at the vast majority of spiritual seekers today and classify them as spiritually self-lobotomized. They set out to find life and discover truth, and wind up sitting in a dark room repeating a meaningless syllable, eyes closed, brain silenced, convinced that they’re actually making a great journey.

In 1970 the Quakers released a slim book entitled “Who Shall Live? Man’s Control over Birth and Death: A Report Prepared for the American Friends Service Committee” which was the result of a decision which the Family Planning Committee of the AFSC reached in December 1966 “to explore the issues involved in abortion.” That meeting in turn flowed from the November 1966 meeting that the AFSC had had with Planned Parenthood, and that meeting resulted from the setback the Quaker and Episcopalian forces for sexual liberation and eugenics in Philadelphia had suffered at the hands of Martin Mullen, when the governor capitulated to his demands and backed away from state-promoted birth control in August of the same year. As a result of their meeting with Planned Parenthood, the Quakers decided to “make a study of the availability of family planning services for medically indigent families in the city and to form an estimate as to the extent of the unmet need for such services. “Who Shall Live” was the fruit of this labor. “Who Shall Live?” is a graphic example of moral theology in the Quaker mode. It begins by announcing that “for 300 years members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) have been seekers after the truth” and concludes by admitting that they have been so far unsuccessful in their efforts. Where once people like Fox and Penn “thought of himself as created only a few thousand years ago,” the enlightened Quakers who wrote birth-control tracts in the 1960s “now know he is part of an evolutionary process that has been going on for billions of years. In that process he has arrived at a stage of knowledge and technology whereby he himself has the power, at least in part, to determine the direction in which he will evolve in the future.” Having decided that their religious forebears were wrong on just about everything because they didn’t understand science, the 1970 Quakers then give some sense of their own grasp of science as it applies to population issues. Looking at the world from outer space in 1968, the Quakers found it “incredible that 3.5 billion people should be living on that small spinning planet.” Taking their cue from Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book “The Population Bomb” the Quakers concluded quite logically that if the planet cannot sustain 3.5 billion people in 1968, then it certainly couldn’t sustain 6 billion people in the year 2000. Unless drastic population-control measures are introduced immediately, dire consequences will follow. “Lamont C. Cole, who is a Professor of Ecology warns that we may one day find ourselves short of breathable air,” the Quakers announced breathlessly.

They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,” he said softly. “They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” In that moment Libby’s wish during class became a prayer.

In these days of spiritual awakening and decline in church attendance Catherine and Gil’s book is an excellent resource for both spiritual seekers and faith communities searching for new ways to meeting spiritual needs. Their years of leading Wisdom’s Way Interfaith School and pilgrimages to Ireland has given them authentic background material on which to draw.

Ai uses AMOK design parameters to allow new Ai to explore their environment free of restriction. They are, in a practical sense, independent seekers of Truth.

From the start, I wanted my book to have a ready-made audience of conspiracy theorists and seekers. Now, through the Enoch-synchronicity connection, I came face-to-face with my target audience and their religious manifestos, rambling manuscripts, and crackpot analyses—misspelled and riddled with bad grammar, posted on Facebook, countless websites, blogs, and bulletin boards. In aggregate, my future readers were a community of the lost, the lonely, and the crazy.