Sensation Inspiring Quotes

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

I've been in love before, it's like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day you want more. You're not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things.You think about the person you love for two minutes then forget them for three hours. But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he's not there, you feel like an addict who can't get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you're willing to do anything for love."- By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Passion is a feeling that tells you: this is the right thing to do. Nothing can stand in my way. It doesn't matter what anyone else says. This feeling is so good that it cannot be ignored. I'm going to follow my bliss and act upon this glorious sensation of joy.

We crave for new sensations but soon become indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences

Close your eyes and turn your face into the wind. Feel it sweep along your skin in an invisible ocean of exultation. Suddenly, you know you are alive.

Do something every day that is loving toward your body and gives you the opportunity to enjoy the sensations of your body.

When happiness is happening it feels as if nothing else happened before it, it is a sensation that happens only in the present tense.

There is boring. There is sensational. There is mediocre. There is lazy. There is good. There is evil. People do implausible things all the time, and they run the gamut of moderately weird to truly extraordinary. But there is no normal. The world is an unbelievable place full of unbelievable people doing unbelievable things.

Realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing

To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I presume, utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates even over my despair, and will reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death.

Let it shine, the light in you. Oh, and that's delighting me! Various colors shining through. Elated, it fills my soul with ecstasy.

What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent. The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance. But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment . . . What a soft thoughtful time. In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color.

How are you coming with your home library? Do you need some good ammunition on why it's so important to read? The last time I checked the statistics...I think they indicated that only four percent of the adults in this country have bought a book within the past year. That's dangerous. It's extremely important that we keep ourselves in the top five or six percent. In one of the Monthly Letters from the Royal Bank of Canada it was pointed out that reading good books is not something to be indulged in as a luxury. It is a necessity for anyone who intends to give his life and work a touch of quality. The most real wealth is not what we put into our piggy banks but what we develop in our heads. Books instruct us without anger, threats and harsh discipline. They do not sneer at our ignorance or grumble at our mistakes. They ask only that we spend some time in the company of greatness so that we may absorb some of its attributes. You do not read a book for the book's sake, but for your own. You may read because in your high-pressure life, studded with problems and emergencies, you need periods of relief and yet recognize that peace of mind does not mean numbness of mind. You may read because you never had an opportunity to go to college, and books give you a chance to get something you missed. You may read because your job is routine, and books give you a feeling of depth in life. You may read because you did go to college. You may read because you see social, economic and philosophical problems which need solution, and you believe that the best thinking of all past ages may be useful in your age, too. You may read because you are tired of the shallowness of contemporary life, bored by the current conversational commonplaces, and wearied of shop talk and gossip about people. Whatever your dominant personal reason, you will find that reading gives knowledge, creative power, satisfaction and relaxation. It cultivates your mind by calling its faculties into exercise. Books are a source of pleasure - the purest and the most lasting. They enhance your sensation of the interestingness of life. Reading them is not a violent pleasure like the gross enjoyment of an uncultivated mind, but a subtle delight. Reading dispels prejudices which hem our minds within narrow spaces. One of the things that will surprise you as you read good books from all over the world and from all times of man is that human nature is much the same today as it has been ever since writing began to tell us about it. Some people act as if it were demeaning to their manhood to wish to be well-read but you can no more be a healthy person mentally without reading substantial books than you can be a vigorous person physically without eating solid food. Books should be chosen, not for their freedom from evil, but for their possession of good. Dr. Johnson said: "Whilst you stand deliberating which book your son shall read first, another boy has read both.

They say a man's inspiration is visual, but for a woman, it's the narrative. Abandon both the narrative and the visual. Close your eyes, measure your breath. Dead weight is sloughed off, dust swept away, forms dissolve into one atmosphere. The rib cage opens, the lungs fill, the breast rises. Waves sweep up the body on their swell, rocking it rhythmically. Feet planted, the back arches, the pelvis reaches forward. Oxygen kindles a flame, sprawling through the belly, and gathering in a warm blaze. The hand reaches to meet the sensation. Calligraphy spills from the inkwell. Open your eyes, sharpen your focus, and exclaim: There are no separations.

Dear, dear Norland,' said Elinor, 'probably looks much as it always does at this time of year. The woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves.' 'Oh!' cried Marianne, 'with what transporting sensations have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as possible from the sight.' 'It is not everyone,' said Elinor, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.

Eternity is with us, inviting our contemplation perpetually, but we are too frightened, lazy, and suspicious to respond; too arrogant to still our thought, and let divine sensation have its way. It needs industry and goodwill if we would make that transition; for the process involves a veritable spring-cleaning of the soul, a turning-out and rearrangement of our mental furniture, a wide opening of closed windows, that the notes of the wild birds beyond our garden may come to us fully charged with wonder and freshness, and drown with their music the noise of the gramaphone within. Those who do this, discover that they have lived in a stuffy world, whilst their inheritance was a world of morning-glory:where every tit-mouse is a celestial messenger, and every thrusting bud is charged with the full significance of life.

Do not shy away from the sensations I create, Cherry Blossom. Take pride in them, as I do.

Sharley felt his strength ebbing away, and his weak leg throbbed painfully, but then a tingling sensation thrilled through his frame and the fighting blood of the Lindenshield clan began to roar through his veins. He drew breath and out crashed the war cry of the icemark...

What if...the doctors couldn't find anything wrong? What if I was over-exaggerating the pain, weakness, and weird sensations?

It's strange, isn't it, how you never know you're living the best time of your life at the moment you're living it? If you could appreciate, at that instant, that this is it, maybe you'd make certain your mind imprinted every detail of the sights, smells, sounds and sensations. Then again, maybe knowing that life will only get duller, sadder, less hopeful afterward would inject melancholy into that moment. You'd miss life's peak experience by mourning it before it passes. So perhaps it's best not to know.

Observing your thoughts, feelings & sensations is the grist of the practice.

Morality exists in the neurons as a natural sensation. Religion only tries to codify it.

That which is torn develops an increased capacity for insight and forbearance. A capacity to experience sensations that escape the notice of others.

At it's best,the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then - and only then - it is handed to you. From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way.

The people had come to witness a sensational case, to see celebrities, to get material for conversation, to be seen, to kill time. They would return to unwanted jobs, unloved families, unchosen friends, to drawing rooms, evening clothes, cocktail glasses and movies, to unadmitted pain, murdered hope, desire left unreached, left hanging silently over a path on which no step was taken, to days of effort not to think, not to say, to forget and give in and give up. But each of them had known some unforgotten moment-a morning when nothing had happened, a piece of music heard suddenly and never heard in the same way again, a stranger's face seen in a bus-a moment when each had known a different sense of living. And each remembered other moments, on a sleepless night, on an afternoon of steady rain, in a church, in an empty street at sunset, when each had wondered why there was so much suffering and ugliness in the world. They had not tried to find the answer and they had gone on living as if no answer was necessary. But each had known a moment when, in lonely, naked honesty, he had felt the need of an answer.

His singing made me want to fall to the ground and kiss it, as a son to a mother, grateful that someone could love it so keenly. For the first time in my life something new awoke within me, something irresistible: I still cannot explain it. It was a need to express myself, yes, to express myself, not only to see and sense the world, but to bring to others my vision, my thoughts and sensations, to describe the beauty of the earth as inspiringly as Daniyar could sing. I caught my breath for fear and joy of the unknown. At that time, however, I had not yet realized the need to take up brush and paints.

[Raphael's] great superiority is due to the instinctive sense which, in him, seems to desire to shatter form. Form is, in his figures, what it is in ourselves, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, an exhaustless source of poetic inspiration. Every figure is a world in itself, a portrait of which the original appeared in a sublime vision, in a flood of light, pointed to by an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which showed what the sources of expression had been in the whole past life of the subject.

Recall the confirmation fallacy: governments are great at telling you what they did, but not what they did not do. In fact, they engage in what could be labeled as phony “philanthropy,” the activity of helping people in a visible and sensational way without taking into account the unseen cemetery of invisible consequences. Bastiat inspired libertarians by attacking the usual arguments that showed the benefits of governments. But his ideas can be generalized to apply to both the Right and the Left.

Being guided by your own thoughts and abilities, living out there on the high wire and being rewarded for it: That was the Chicago way. Nothing else counted. If it were sensational enough, whether a scientific breakthrough, a rousing new style of music, or an underworld murder, it would be celebrated.

Do not yield to Satan’s enticements; rather, stand firm for truth. The unsatisfied yearnings of the soul will not be met by a never-ending quest for joy amidst the thrills of sensation and vice. Vice never leads to virtue. Hate never promotes love. Cowardice never gives courage. Doubt never inspires faith.

When you savor life with your senses, every moment feels rich and meaningful. Think about how satisfying it feels to inhale the fresh scent of mown grass or slowly run your hand across a velvet pillow. These sensations are physically pleasurable, but they also provide opportunities for you to sync with your internal wisdom to help you create your ideal life.

By now you will not be surprised to learn that Gaston Bachelard had a few things to say about the element of air. In a book called "Air and Dreams". he points out that we categorize many of our emotions by their relative weight; they make us feel heavier or lighter. Perhaps because uprightness is the human quality, we imagine human emotions arranged on a vertical scale from ground to sky. So sadness is weighed down and earthbound. joy is aerial, and the sensation of freedom defies the bonds of gravity. "Air," Bachelard writes, "is the very substance of our freedom, the substance of superhuman joy." Elation, effervescence, elevation, levity, inspiration: air words all, alveolated with vowels, leavening the dough of everyday life.

Wild eyes were another sign. It is something I have seldom seen — the expression of an ecstatic state — though much is foolishly written of them, as if they grew like Jerusalem artichokes along the road. The eyes are black, right enough, whatever their normal color is; they are black because their perception is condensed to a coal, because the touch and taste and perfume of the lover, the outcry of a dirty word, a welcome river, have been reduced in the heat of passion to a black ash, and this unburnt residue of oxidation, this calyx, replaces the pupil so it no longer receives but sends, and every hair is on end, though perhaps only outspread on a pillow, and the nostrils are flared, mouth agape, cheeks sucked so the whole face seems as squeezed as a juiced fruit; I know, for once Lou went into that wildness while we were absorbing one another, trying to kiss, not merely forcefully, not the skull of our skeleton, but the skull and all the bones on which the essential self is hung, kiss so the shape of the soul is stirred too, that's what is called the ultimate French, the furtherest fuck, when a cock makes a concept cry out and climax; I know, for more than once, though not often, I shuddered into that other region, when a mouth drew me through its generosity into the realm of unravel, and every sensation lay extended as a lake, every tie was loosed, and the glue of things dissolved. I knew I wore the wild look then. The greatest gift you can give another human being is to let them warm you till, in passing beyond pleasure, your defenses fall, your ego surrenders, its structure melts, its towers topple, lies, fancies, vanities, blow away in no wind, and you return, not to the clay you came from — the unfired vessel — but to the original moment of inspiration, when you were the unabbreviated breath of God.

What had I intuited at last? Namely this: while nothing is more precious than independence and freedom, nothing is also more precious than independence and freedom! These two slogans are almost the same, but not quite. The first inspiring slogan was Ho Chi Min’s empty suit, which he no longer wore. How could he? He was dead. The second slogan was the tricky one, the joke. It was Uncle Ho’s empty suit turned inside out, a sartorial sensation that only a man of two minds, or a man with no face, dared to wear. This odd suit suited me, for it was of a cutting-edge cut. Wearing this inside-out suit, my seams exposed in an unseemly way, I understood, at last, how our revolution had gone from being the vanguard of political change to the rearguard hoarding power. In this transformation, we were not unusual. Hadn’t the French and the Americans done exactly the same? Once revolutionaries themselves, they had become imperialists, colonizing and occupying our defiant little land, taking away our freedom in the name of saving us. Our revolution took considerably longer than theirs, and was considerably bloodier, but we made up for lost time. When it came to learning the worst habits of our French masters and their American replacements, we quickly proved ourselves the best. We, too, could abuse grand ideals! Having liberated ourselves in the name of independence and freedom—I was so tired of saying these words!—we then deprived our defeated brethren of the same.

When I write an story, I start with one true thing – a memory, an image, a sensation – then I try to say one more true thing, then another, and another. By the time I reach the end – hopefully – I've told the truth all the way through. It's harder than it sounds, harder than it ought to be. But still worth trying.

There was I, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my sensations were no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and took a firm stand on the stool. Helen Burns asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at me as she again went by. What a smile! I remember it now, and I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like a reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen Burns wore on her arm “the untidy badge;” scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.

In a sense she [Sylvia Plath] was the victim of an obsessive talent that sent her out into the world to gather sensations and seek wounds that could provide creative inspiration. Having acquired the wounds she stuck her fingers into them, turning the pain and blood into lines of highly subjective poetry that both repel and fascinate the reader.

I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in ME--not in the external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression--a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands--it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.

Oh, I was lucky, you know, to get anyone. I was what they called an old bride of twenty-six. Of course I married him. Everyone needs to keep something private from their family. Like a shutter in a rainstorm, banging against the window, I venture forth, retreat back, try afresh, retreat again. Nothing changes in my life and yet nothing is the same. That did not help, Ed knew as the words hung between them and he had that all-too-familiar sensation of wanting to claw them from the air and stuff them back in his mouth. We were all in small pieces that didn't fit together, too many countries, too many scars, too many secrets inside us. How do you make a stranger so intimate when they could easily destroy you?

Wake up each day with the glorious sensation of something to strive for and get one step closer to then, inspire another to do the same. You will NEVER have a bad day.

Hustle is essential for sensational success

I am a sensation of light, fire, bursting, shifting, cracking, floating, flowing. I am an eruption, an awakening, a monsoon of myself. I am a memory of eternal oneness.

You may fall down in life, Lift yourself up and be strong. To stand up, you should know what falling down is like.

Believe, someday you will be at the place you always wanted to be.

Life is too short to hate. Always get back to the one who loves you the most.

Gaiety can be found in making others happy. The true felicity is an inner quality. A state and peace of mind!

Always give more and expect less, Look at others with love and not hatred, Dream big and enjoy the little things in life.

By following the intelligent sensations of the body we are led to an even deeper self-knowing.

The art of existence is to find a sensation of spiritual expansion that makes you larger than existence itself.

Planet Earth is a fantastic destination if you manage to find this surreal sensation of wild liberation.

The story of the Medusa became a worldwide sensation. Two of the survivors penned an account that inspired a monumental painting by Théodore Géricault.

Success in everything is born out of struggle, Wear your passion, live your dream Travel often, make memories And know how to act Happiness in life is to love and be loved truly.

Colored like a sunset tide is a gaze sharply slicing through the reflective glass. A furrowed brow is set much too seriously, as if trying to unfold the pieces of the face that stared back at it. One eyebrow is raised skeptically, always calculating and analyzing its surroundings. I tilt my head trying to see the deeper meaning in my features, trying to imagine the connection between my looks and my character as I stare in the mirror for the required five minutes. From the dark brown hair fastened tightly in a bun, a curl as bright as woven gold comes loose. A flash of unruly hair prominent through the typical browns is like my temper; always there, but not always visible. I begin to grow frustrated with the girl in the mirror, and she cocks her hip as if mocking me. In a moment, her lips curve in a half smile, not quite detectable in sight but rather in feeling, like the sensation of something good just around the corner. A chin was set high in a stubborn fashion, symbolizing either persistence or complete adamancy. Shoulders are held stiff like ancient mountains, proud but slightly arrogant. The image watches with the misty eyes of a daydreamer, glazed over with a sort of trance as if in the middle of a reverie, or a vision. Every once and a while, her true fears surface in those eyes, terror that her life would amount to nothing, that her work would have no impact. Words written are meant to be read, and sometimes I worry that my thoughts and ideas will be lost with time. My dream is to be an author, to be immortalized in print and live forever in the minds of avid readers. I want to access the power in being able to shape the minds of the young and open, and alter the minds of the old and resolute. Imagine the power in living forever, and passing on your ideas through generations. With each new reader, a new layer of meaning is uncovered in writing, meaning that even the author may not have seen. In the mirror, I see a girl that wants to change the world, and change the way people think and reason. Reflection and image mean nothing, for the girl in the mirror is more than a one dimensional picture. She is someone who has followed my footsteps with every lesson learned, and every mistake made. She has been there to help me find a foothold in the world, and to catch me when I fall. As the lights blink out, obscuring her face, I realize that although that image is one that will puzzle me in years to come, she and I aren’t so different after all.

The opulent cars, driving by maniac males on the boulevard, A needy girl impetrating down on the roadway, Desperate humans, varied lifestyle, fallacious feelings. Everything ends in ones death!

Dreams are memories. Memories are dreams. But my time with you hasn’t become a dream just yet. Because the sensation of your kisses keep me from sleep. I’m in love, God help me, I’m in love.

Your need for acceptance can make you invisible in this world. Don't let anything stand in the way of the light that shines through this form. Risk being seen in all of your glory.” -Commencement Speech

Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are in my opinion not philosophers; for they lack the first requirement of a philosopher, namely a seriousness and honesty of inquiry. They are merely sophists who wanted to appear to be rather than to be something. They sought not truth, but their own interest and advancement in the world. Appointments from governments, fees and royalties from students and publishers, and, as a means to this end, the greatest possible show and sensation in their sham philosophy-such were the guiding stars and inspiring genii of those disciples of wisdom. And so they have not passed the entrance examination and cannot be admitted into the venerable company of thinkers for the human race. Nevertheless they have excelled in one thing, in the art of beguiling the public and of passing themselves off for what they are not; and this undoubtedly requires talent, yet not philosophical.

Have you been lately in Sussex?" said Elinor. "I was at Norland about a month ago." "And how does dear, dear Norland look?" cried Marianne. "Dear, dear Norland," said Elinor, "probably looks much as it always does this time of year. The woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves." "Oh!" cried Marianne, "with what transporting sensations have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven much as possible from the sight." "It is not everyone," said Elinor, "who has your passion for dead leaves.

Every object is transformed within us according to the images it evokes, the sensations that cluster around it. To be sure an object may please us for itself alone, for the pleasant feelings that a harmonious sight inspires in us; but far more often the pleasure that an object affords us does not derive from the object in itself. Our fantasy embellishes it, surrounding it, making it resplendent with images dear to us. Then we no longer see it for what it is, but animated by the images it arouses in us or by the things we associate with it. In short, what we love about the object is what we put in it of ourselves, the harmony established between it and us, the soul that it acquires only through us, a soul composed of our memories.

Don't wish that you were in another's skin, that you were born different. Someone who is prettier with lighter skin or darker complexion with semi hair. No one can ever be you, love all your flaws, your mistakes and imperfections. They make you “YOU” and it is pretty amazing

Greatest delight in life is, having someone who loves you for the lifetime! Joy is what one needs the most in life. You can experience the moment of jollity when someone says “You are the inspiration” It can be found in everyday life, when a child gives you a smile while crossing the road or an old man thanking you for an help.

Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things. Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and colored sensations and keep your pen moving across the page. If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.

To youth and natural cheerfulness like Emma's, though under temporary gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of spirits. The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.

Abel wanted to know all about flesh and how it responded to skin, tongue, velvet, fur, lips. His enthusiasm was contagious. I'd been a good-enough lover before, but Abel inspired my curiosity and my lust. Sex wasn't just better than I'd ever known it could be; it was more interesting. There were tools to explore, sensations to try, tastes and textures to experiment with, states of consciousness to achieve or discard.

For that short space of time, she forgot she was sad and a little afraid. She let herself forget that after tonight, she might never see him again and that if she did, whatever it was between them would no longer exist. When he deepened the kiss and his weight pressed her against the ground, she forgot everything, losing herself in a wave of sensation that carried no threat, inspired no fear, and belonged to no one but her.

That wondrous instant of our meeting — my mind’s eye sees you standing there, a vision transient and fleeting, true beauty’s spirit, pure and rare. In toils of hopeless grief confounded, amid life’s noise and stress it seems for long that tender voice resounded and those sweet features came in dreams. Years passed; the storms that life engenders dispersed my former hopes of grace and I forgot those accents tender, the heavenly beauty of your face. And in my dark incarceration my days passed like the clouds above, bereft alike of inspiration, of tears, of life itself, of love. My soul awoke to new existence, again you stood before me there, a vision lasting but an instant, true beauty’s spirit, pure and rare. My heart relives the old sensation and once more steal down from above, God’s benediction, inspiration, and tears, and life itself and love.

Once, during a concert of cathedral organ music, as I sat getting gooseflesh amid that tsunami of sound, I was struck with a thought: for a medieval peasant, this must have been the loudest human-made sound they ever experienced, awe-inspiring in now-unimaginable ways. No wonder they signed up for the religion being proffered. And now we are constantly pummeled with sounds that dwarf quaint organs. Once, hunter-gatherers might chance upon honey from a beehive and thus briefly satisfy a hardwired food craving. And now we have hundreds of carefully designed commercial foods that supply a burst of sensation unmatched by some lowly natural food. Once, we had lives that, amid considerable privation, also offered numerous subtle, hard-won pleasures. And now we have drugs that cause spasms of pleasure and dopamine release a thousandfold higher than anything stimulated in our old drug-free world.

Georgia closed her eyes and concentrated on the sensations of the island--- the bracing, spicy scent of evergreen needles, the briny creaminess of an oyster still in its shell, the chewy, viscous luxury of Star's honey on the comb, the light acidity of a local cider. And then she cooked what she felt, that sense of wonder, the lightness and clean sea salt air. A sprinkle of salt, the crispness of fresh vegetables, the unctuous luxury of good olive oil.

There’s a groundlessness in life after loss, as if somebody is pulling the rug out from under you again and again. It’s hard to find anything stable and secure to stand on, and when you do, there’s always the fear that it’s going to be taken away. Know that this sense of not having legs to stand on is completely normal and is a very real sensation brought on by loss. It’s not pleasant by any means—in fact, it can be downright terrifying—but it is an expected part of grief.

Walking was a habit he'd been unwilling to give up. He couldn't see the point in shutting himself up in a vehivle any more often than he had to, doing damage to the earth and the air in order to avoid using his body. People did just that all the time, though. Most claimed they needed to save time. It was true they had little enough of that-- their lives were so soon ended. But Nathan didn't see them treating time as precious otherwise. They'd sit in their cars at a fast-food place for fifteen minutes when it would be quicker to park and go inside. No, he blamed the modern culture of urgency. Only the most urgent sensations, emotions, and situations were considered important. They called it living life to the fullest. Not surprisingly, many sought numbness in alcohol or the pervasive voyeurism of reality TV while others tried to live a perpetual peak experience through drugs, sex, or celebrity. Ordinary lives, ordinary living had little value. Nathan thought people needed to wash dishes by hand sometimes. Prepare their own meals more often. And take walks.

Le culte des sens a été souvent décrié, et à juste titre : un instinct naturel inspire aux hommes la terreur de passions et de sensations qui leur semblent plus fortes qu'eux-mêmes, et qu'ils ont conscience de partager avec les formes inférieures du monde organique. Mais Dorian Gray estimait que la vraie nature des sens n'avait jamais été bien comprise, qu'ils avaient gardé leur animalité sauvage uniquement parce qu'on avait voulu les soumettre par la famine ou les tuer à force de souffrance, au lieu de chercher à en faire les éléments d'une spiritualité nouvelle, ayant pour trait dominant une sûre divination de la beauté. Quand il considérait la marche de l'homme à travers l'Histoire, il était poursuivi par une impression d'irréparable dommage. Que de choses on avait sacrifiées, et combien vainement ! Des privations sauvages, obstinées, des formes monstrueuses de martyre et d'immolation de soi, nées de la peur, avaient abouti à une dégradation plus épouvantable que la dégradation tout imaginaire qu'avaient voulu fuir de pauvres ignorants : la Nature, dans sa merveilleuse ironie, avait amené les anachorètes à vivre dans le désert, mêlés aux animaux sauvages ; aux ermites, elle avait donné pour compagnons les bêtes des champs.

Poisoned with a heartbreak Perhaps there's a reason why we find it difficult to love. Love is a sensation, one that can be difficult to regulate. So, how might such a thing be killed? Is there a legitimate reason, or is it just the fear of falling in love again? Heartbreak is a term that speaks for itself, however it is not like a broken bone, that it does not heal. Love may have an eternal effect. Being wounded by someone to whom you were emotionally attached can result in psychological distress. Some may be rendered speechless, some may be hurt, some may call for death, and others may distance themselves from a gender. Healing takes time, but not from the unhealable.

ESTABLISHING A DAILY MEDITATION First select a suitable space for your regular meditation. It can be wherever you can sit easily with minimal disturbance: a corner of your bedroom or any other quiet spot in your home. Place a meditation cushion or chair there for your use. Arrange what is around so that you are reminded of your meditative purpose, so that it feels like a sacred and peaceful space. You may wish to make a simple altar with a flower or sacred image, or place your favorite spiritual books there for a few moments of inspiring reading. Let yourself enjoy creating this space for yourself. Then select a regular time for practice that suits your schedule and temperament. If you are a morning person, experiment with a sitting before breakfast. If evening fits your temperament or schedule better, try that first. Begin with sitting ten or twenty minutes at a time. Later you can sit longer or more frequently. Daily meditation can become like bathing or toothbrushing. It can bring a regular cleansing and calming to your heart and mind. Find a posture on the chair or cushion in which you can easily sit erect without being rigid. Let your body be firmly planted on the earth, your hands resting easily, your heart soft, your eyes closed gently. At first feel your body and consciously soften any obvious tension. Let go of any habitual thoughts or plans. Bring your attention to feel the sensations of your breathing. Take a few deep breaths to sense where you can feel the breath most easily, as coolness or tingling in the nostrils or throat, as movement of the chest, or rise and fall of the belly. Then let your breath be natural. Feel the sensations of your natural breathing very carefully, relaxing into each breath as you feel it, noticing how the soft sensations of breathing come and go with the changing breath. After a few breaths your mind will probably wander. When you notice this, no matter how long or short a time you have been away, simply come back to the next breath. Before you return, you can mindfully acknowledge where you have gone with a soft word in the back of your mind, such as “thinking,” “wandering,” “hearing,” “itching.” After softly and silently naming to yourself where your attention has been, gently and directly return to feel the next breath. Later on in your meditation you will be able to work with the places your mind wanders to, but for initial training, one word of acknowledgment and a simple return to the breath is best. As you sit, let the breath change rhythms naturally, allowing it to be short, long, fast, slow, rough, or easy. Calm yourself by relaxing into the breath. When your breath becomes soft, let your attention become gentle and careful, as soft as the breath itself. Like training a puppy, gently bring yourself back a thousand times. Over weeks and months of this practice you will gradually learn to calm and center yourself using the breath. There will be many cycles in this process, stormy days alternating with clear days. Just stay with it. As you do, listening deeply, you will find the breath helping to connect and quiet your whole body and mind. Working with the breath is an excellent foundation for the other meditations presented in this book. After developing some calm and skills, and connecting with your breath, you can then extend your range of meditation to include healing and awareness of all the levels of your body and mind. You will discover how awareness of your breath can serve as a steady basis for all you do.

Beauty, mystery, wonder. They all three go together. The primary human response to an encounter with overwhelming beauty is wonder. Wonder is the transcendent sensation we experience when we find ourselves in the presence of an awe-inspiring sunset, artistic masterpiece, or newborn baby. Wonder is the uniquely human reaction to the sublime. Wonder is a large part of what it means to be human. Wonder defined is, "a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, or inexplicable." We wonder at two things - the beautiful and the mysterious. A life stripped of beauty and mystery is a life barren of wonder, and a life without wonder is a kind of deep poverty.

We feel Divine Love entering us firstly through gentle, soft, humbling, kind and loving feelings, independent of any other person. This can be experienced as gently overwhelming as it increases, dependent on the depth of our desire for It. As we heal further, and more of our negative, repressed emotions and causal soul wounds are removed, the entering of Divine Love into our souls becomes stronger and stronger, bringing deep tears, powerful sensations and expansions in the heart and soul in immense gratitude, humility and feelings of great love and even more yearning for God. There may also be whole body tingling and sensations, crown chakra and heart explosions, feelings of being fully bathed in love and light, great feelings of humility, awe and wonder at the indescribable nature of God’s Love, and at how much He loves you. Receiving Divine Love can feel like being immersed in a bath of love all over, in every part of you, every cell. Deep peace, joy and waves of ecstasy, rapture and bliss arise and flow all over, and great humility washes over the soul. Immense love for God as the most wondrous, awe inspiring Soul that He Is is felt. A deepening into the essence of your pure soul occurs, along with the deep desire to give more of your soul to God. You feel deeply nurtured and embraced in God’s Arms. There is nothing better than resting and dropping into This. You feel the purity of His Love that is the most pleasurable feeling your soul will ever experience. Heat, pressure, inner and outer movements, pulsing, physical shifts and alignments can occur as you open and embody more Divine Love and the feeling of Blessedness this brings. This Blessedness also arises in felt feelings of forgiveness and mercy. Divine Love is Perfect in its trust and tenderness. We become more and more like a child; innocent, joyful, playful and beautiful as we were created to Be. This play is a pure and glorious sensation, wishing to share itself freely and touching all others. Receiving Divine Love can also become so powerful that we are brought to our knees in immense gratitude, rapture, pain and bliss, sometimes all at once. Receiving Divine Love in its fullness is overwhelming, and can even be physically painful in the heart as it inflows to such a degree that the heart actually stretches to accommodate It all. It is both rapturous and ecstatic, as the body may rock, sway and stretch as it receives more and more Divine Love.8 There is no better feeling in all universes than to receive this Greatest Love of all loves, the most pleasurable feelings a soul can experience as it has actually been designed this way, yet our physical bodies cannot take too much of it at one time! When I receive Divine Love in a rapturous way, it is blissful to the soul yet sometimes painful to the physical. Sometimes I have to stop praying as the body becomes too tired.

we live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. the martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. by its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. we can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. from family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. most island universes are sufficiently like one another to permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or “feeling into”. thus, remembering our own bereavements and humiliations, we can condole with others in analogous circumstances, we can put ourselves (always, of course, in a slightly pickwickian sense) in their places. but in certain cases communication between universes is incomplete or even nonexistent. the mind is its own place, and the places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. words to which the symbols refer belong to mutually exclusive realms of existence.

Let’s talk about mankind’s most adored emotion – Love. However, love itself is not a single emotion, rather a blend of many. It is such an enchanting sensation, that it has been inspiring artists, scientists, philosophers and thinkers for ages. Albert Einstein said, “any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves”. Geniuses around the world came up with various creations under the spell of love. Schrodinger’s Wave Equation, Hawking’s Hawking Radiation, Tagore’s songs, Rumi’s poems, are just a few among the plethora of scientific and philosophical literature created under the enigmatic and warm influence of love. So, technically it is totally worth being crazy in love.

And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? turn your attention thither.try to raise the submerged sensations of the ample past; your personality will grow more firm, your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling past which the noise of others goes by far away. And if out of this turning inward, out of this absorption into your own world verses come, then it will not occur to you to ask anyone whether they are good verses. nor will you try to interest magazines in your poems; for you will see in them your fond natural possessions, a fragment and a voice of your life.

The religious utopian hides his pride behind the mask of humility; he recognizes God alone; he does not recognize ministers or sacraments since he puts himself in place of both. He ministers his own religious needs and he consecrates his inner self as a place of worship more worthy of receiving God than the churches. He substitutes his own sentiments and emotions for doctrine, because doctrines are man-made speculations unable to comprehend God's essence. He considers the sacramental, ceremonial and generally institutional aspects of religion as rigid and expendable molds which are adequate for the unthinking who need strong sensations and impressions to sustain their faith. He, on the other hand, puts his trust in his own individual inspiration, strengthens his faith through direct and permanent contact with the divine and so rises as a pure spirit to the level of a "truer" religion. The secular utopian also displays excessive pride. He believes that societies of the past were based on error since they yielded to the political principle of organization and hierarchy. The goal of the utopian is to create a society in its pristine purity, as it were, unsullied by laws and magistrates, functioning through its members' natural good will and cooperativeness. Laws, institutions, symbols, flags, armies, disciplines, patriotic encouragement and the like will all be abolished because, for pure social beings, their inner motivation of social living - togetherness - is quite sufficient and because they would serve to anchor the citizens, bodily and emotionally, in the soil and reality of the State just as pomp and ceremony, rules and institutions anchor the faithful in religion.

Adira squirmed in Leah’s arms, wanting down. Leah lowered her until her little sneaker-clad feet touched the floor. Adira toddled away, patting the garments that brushed her head and shoulders. Straightening, Leah watched her for a moment, then turned back to Seth. “I guess I’ll get back to work.” Was that disappointment he felt upon hearing her words? He really was enjoying her company. Adira turned around and toddled back. Grasping Leah’s fingers, she reached out, took Seth’s hand, and placed Leah’s in it. Seth instinctively curled his fingers around Leah’s. Satisfied, Adira turned and toddled off once more. “Oh,” Leah said with a surprised chuckle. “Well. Maybe not.” Seth was surprised, too. What was Adira thinking? He glanced at Leah. Should he apologize? “Sorry about that.” “No worries,” she said with another charming smile. Raising their clasped hands, she turned them so his was on top and slid her free hand over it. “Oooh. Look how big your hand is.” How many times had he heard Tracy or one of the other mortal women he frequently encountered think Oooh. Look how big his hands are. You know what they say: big hands, big feet, big package in much the same tone as Leah’s. Seth couldn’t help it. He barked out a laugh. Leah’s eyes widened. “Wait. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” “It sounded as if you like that my hands are so big.” She flushed. “I do, but I didn’t mean it like you think.” “How do I think you meant it?” he asked with exaggerated innocence. Face red, she laughed. “Stop making me blush. I just meant I like that you’re so big. Not just your hands. But all over.” Again her eyes widened. “I mean, not all over, but—” Laughing, he took pity on her. “It’s all right. I understood what you meant the first time.” Smiling, she squinted up at him. “You like to tease, don’t you?” “Guilty as charged.” Many immortals did. It helped lighten what could otherwise be a dark existence. She caressed his hand again, sending little tingles through it. “My hand actually looks small in yours. That’s so cool.” It did. And the sensations her soft touch inspired unnerved him a bit. His pulse even picked up. Seth eyed her curiously. “You really dislike your size so much?” He thought it a shame. She was a beautiful woman. Shrugging, she released his hand and let hers fall to her sides. “When someone gives you a complex in high school, it tends to stick with you.” Adira reappeared as if by magic. Taking Leah’s hand, she again placed it in Seth’s, then moved away. The two looked at each other and smiled. Leah nodded after Adira. “Maybe she’s hoping I’ll distract you so she can take her time looking over the toys she plans to coax you into buying before you leave.” Seth winked. “Or maybe she just heard you say you like my big hands.

But no, music lasted longer than anything it inspired. After LPs, cassettes, and CDs, when matrimony was about to decay into its component elements—alimony and acrimony—the songs startled him and regained all their previous, pre-Rachel meanings, as if they had not only conjured her but then dismissed her, as if she had been entirely their illusion. He listened to the old songs again, years later on that same dark promenade, when every CD he had ever owned sat nestled in that greatest of all human inventions, the iPod, dialed up and yielding to his fingertip’s tap. The songs now offered him, in exchange for all he had lost, the sensation that there was something still to long for, still, something still approaching, and all that had gone before was merely prologue to an unimaginably profound love yet to seize him. If there was any difference now, it was only that his hunger for music had become more urgent, less a daily pleasure than a daily craving.

Tito looked eagerly toward the dark crest of the mountain, behind which the sky pulsed in the morning light. Now a fragment of the rocky ridge flashed violently like a glowing metal beginning to melt. The crest blurred and seemed suddenly lower, as if it were melting down, and from the fiery gap the dazzling sun appeared. Simultaneously, the ground, the house, and their shore of the lake were illuminated, and the two, standing in the strong radiance, instantly felt the delightful warmth of this light. The boy, filled with the solemn beauty of the moment and the glorious sensation of his youth and strength, stretched his limbs with rhythmic arm movements, which his whole body soon took up, celebrating the break of day in an enthusiastic dance and expressing his deep oneness with the surging, radiant elements. His steps flew in joyous homage toward the victorious sun and reverently retreated from it; his outspread arms embraced mountain, lake, and sky; kneeling, he seemed to pay tribute to the earth mother, and extending his hands, to the waters of the lake; he offered himself, his youth, his freedom, his burning sense of is own life, like a festive sacrifice to the powers. The sunlight gleamed on his tanned shoulders; his eyes were half-closed to the dazzle; his young face stared masklike with an expression of inspired, almost fanatical gravity.

Since my biographer may be too staid Or know too little to affirm that Shade Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support Running across the tub to hold in place The shaving mirror right before his face And with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'd Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed." The more I weigh, the less secure my skin; In places it's ridiculously thin; Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick And my grimace, invited the wicked nick. Or this dewlap: some day I must set free The Newport Frill inveterate in me. My Adam's apple is a prickly pear: Now I shall speak of evil and despair As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight, Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate Through strawberry-and-cream the gory mess And find unchanged that patch of prickliness. I have my doubts about the one-armed bloke Who in commercials with one gliding stroke Clears a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin, Then wipes his faces and fondly tries his skin. I'm in the class of fussy bimanists. As a discreet ephebe in tights assists A female in an acrobatic dance, My left hand help, and holds, and shifts its stance. Now I shall speak...Better than any soap Is the sensation for which poets hope When inspiration and its icy blaze, The sudden image, the immediate phrase Over the skin a triple ripple send Making the little hairs all stand on end As in the enlarged animated scheme Of whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream.

It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button.

Union with God is not something we acquire by a technique but the grounding truth of our lives that engenders the very search for God. Because God is the ground of our being, the relationship between creature and Creator is such that, by sheer grace, separation is not possible. God does not know how to be absent. The fact that most of us experience throughout most of our lives a sense of absence or distance from God is the great illusion that we are caught up in; it is the human condition. The sense of separation from God is real, but the meeting of stillness reveals that this perceived separation does not have the last word. This illusion of separation is generated by the mind and is sustained by the riveting of our attention to the interior soap opera, the constant chatter of the cocktail party going on in our heads. For most of us this is what normal is, and we are good at coming up with ways of coping with this perceived separation (our consumer-driven entertainment culture takes care of much of it). But some of us are not so good at coping, and so we drink ourselves into oblivion or cut or burn ourselves “so that the pain will be in a different place and on the outside.”15 The grace of salvation, the grace of Christian wholeness that flowers in silence, dispels this illusion of separation. For when the mind is brought to stillness, and all our strategies of acquisition have dropped, a deeper truth presents itself: we are and have always been one with God and we are all one in God (Jn 17:21). The marvelous world of thoughts, sensation, emotions, and inspiration, the spectacular world of creation around us, are all patterns of stunning weather on the holy mountain of God. But we are not the weather. We are the mountain.

Once, during a concert of cathedral organ music, as I sat getting gooseflesh amid that tsunami of sound, I was struck with a thought: for a medieval peasant, this must have been the loudest human-made sound they ever experienced, awe-inspiring in now-unimaginable ways. No wonder they signed up for the religion being proffered. And now we are constantly pummeled with sounds that dwarf quaint organs. Once, hunter-gatherers might chance upon honey from a beehive and thus briefly satisfy a hardwired food craving. And now we have hundreds of carefully designed commercial foods that supply a burst of sensation unmatched by some lowly natural food. Once, we had lives that, amid considerable privation, also offered numerous subtle, hard-won pleasures. And now we have drugs that cause spasms of pleasure and dopamine release a thousandfold higher than anything stimulated in our old drug-free world. An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top nonnatural sources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong explosions of synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation.90 This has two consequences. First, soon we barely notice the fleeting whispers of pleasure caused by leaves in autumn, or by the lingering glance of the right person, or by the promise of reward following a difficult, worthy task. And the other consequence is that we eventually habituate to even those artificial deluges of intensity. If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we’d desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger. What was an unexpected pleasure yesterday is what we feel entitled to today, and what won’t be enough tomorrow.

After Us, the Salamanders!, The Future belongs to the Newts, Newts Mean Cultural Revolution. Even if they don't have their own art (they explained) at least they are not burdened with idiotic ideals, dried up traditions and all the rigid and boring things taught in schools and given the name of poetry, music, architecture, philosophy and culture in any of its forms. The word culture is senile and it makes us sick. Human art has been with us for too long and is worn-out and if the newts have never fallen for it we will make a new art for them. We, the young, will blaze the path for a new world of salamandrism: we wish to be the first newts, we are the salamanders of tomorrow! And so the young poetic movement of salamandrism was born, triton - or tritone - music was composed and pelagic painting, inspired by the shape world of jellyfish, fish and corals, made its appearance. There were also the water regulating structures made by the newts themselves which were discovered as a new source of beauty and dignity. We've had enough of nature, the slogans went; bring on the smooth, concrete shores instead of the old and ragged cliffs! Romanticism is dead; the continents of the future will be outlined with clean straight lines and re-shaped into conic sections and rhombuses; the old geological must be replaced with a world of geometry. In short, there was once again a new trend that was to be the thing of the future, a new aesthetic sensation and new cultural manifestoes; anyone who failed to join in with the rise of salamandrism before it was too late felt bitterly that he had missed his time, and he would take his revenge by making calls for the purity of mankind, a return to the values of the people and nature and other reactionary slogans. A concert of tritone music was booed off the stage in Vienna, at the Salon des Indépendents in Paris a pelagic painting called Capriccio en Bleu was slashed by an unidentified perpetrator; salamandrism was simply victorious, and its rise was unstoppable.

Two years ago, having been walking towards La Nouvelle France, I turned to the left, and willing to extend my walk round Montmartre, crossed the village of Clignancourt. As I walked along, thoughtful, and regardless of the surrounding objects, I felt something clasp my knees, and immediately perceived it was a child of about five or six years old, clinging round them, who at the same time looked up so fondly and familiarly in my face, that I was greatly moved, saying to myself, "thus I should have been treated by my own." I took the child in my arms, and after having kissed it several times, in a kind of transport, continued my way. I felt as I walked on that something was wanting to complete my satisfaction, and this obliged me to return. I reproached myself with having quitted the child so soon, thinking I had discovered in its manner a kind of inspiration, which ought not to have been slighted. Giving into the temptation, I ran towards the child, embraced it again, and gave him money to buy some small Nanterre loaves, a man who sold them happening to be passing by. J began to make him talk; and on asking who's son he was? He pointed to a man that was hooping some barrels. I was just preparing to quit the child, in order to speak to the father, when I was prevented by seeing a man whisper him, who appeared to be one of those spies who are ever at my heels. While this person was speaking, I remarked that the cooper's eyes were fixed attentively on me, with no very friendly aspect: this sight contracted my heart in an instant, and I quitted both father and child, with greater expedition than I had returned to them; but with a sensation less agreeable, and which altered my whole chain of feelings. I have, notwithstanding, frequently felt these sentiments revive, and have often passed Clignancourt, in hopes of seeing this child again, but have never since met either with him or his father, and the only result of this encounter is, a lively remembrance, intermingled with that pleasing melancholy which is natural to me in all those emotions that penetrate my heart.

Action Step: Nourished by “Light” You can prove to yourself how nourishing a new word can be once it begins to be your personal theme. Let’s use the word light. Since it’s the opposite of heavy, this word is one of the best for our purposes. The more you bring light into your life, the easier it will be to lose weight. Why? Because light covers so many positive experiences. Look at the following usages: Lighthearted Light-handed Enlightened Feeling light and bright The light of inspiration Lightness of being The light of the soul The light of God If you had these things in your life, it would be much easier for your body to be light. Your mind would be sending messages that are the opposite of heavy, dull, inert, tired, bored, dark, unenlightened. Start to rid yourself of those messages and let your body conform to lightness and all of its positive connotations. With this background, you can proceed to use light in various ways, beginning with the physical sensation of being light. Exercise: Filling with Light Sit in a quiet room by yourself. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths until you feel centered and ready. (It’s best to sit upright if you can rather than lounging back in your chair.) Breathing normally, visualize light filling your chest each time you inhale. The light is soft, warm, and white. Watch it suffuse your chest. Now exhale normally, but leave the light inside. On your next breath, take in more light. See the light filling your chest now begin to suffuse the rest of your body, moving down into your abdomen. Don’t force the visualization, and don’t worry if you have trouble seeing the light—even a faint sense of white light is good enough. With each breath, let the light suffuse your arms, then your hands all the way to the fingertips. Let it suffuse your legs down to your toes. Finally, send the light into your head and out the top in a beam that reaches high. Sit with the light for a few moments, then lift your arms, letting them float upward as if the light is causing them to rise. You are like a balloon filled completely with light. Enjoy the sensation, then open your eyes. This is a good exercise to counteract feelings of dullness, heaviness, fatigue, and sadness. The sensation of being physically light, paired with the visualization of inner light, creates a big change in how you relate to your body.

Skiddy Cottontail—that was his name—and he defended LGBT equality. He was a flamboyant, colorful striped rabbit, with a headdress of a rainbow crown on his forehead. The radiance of his energy was violet, scarlet, and turquoise; as it represented his love for everyone. In the infancy years of his existence, he was abandoned—alone—unwanted—unloved; rejected by a world that disdains him. His father wished him deceased, his family exiled him from the warren, he was physically mistreated and preyed on by homophobic mobs in the surrounding community by Elephants—Hyenas—rats. They splashed spit at his face, advising him that God condemns homosexuality—as Christ did not. They would slam him on the pavement with their Bibles, strike him in the stomach with their feet, throw boulders of stone at his body: imploring—abusing—condemning him to a tyrannical sentence. Skiddy Cottontail thought that his existence would end with this case of cruelty—violence—assault that was perpetrated against him. He wanted to cease to exist— he wanted to commit the ultimate murder on himself—he no more desired to go on living— he realized hope is already deceased. He yearned to have the courage to emerge, to discover his bravery that would sever this spiral of sensations of oppression. Being a victim made him a slave to his opponent—as his adversaries have full leverage against him. Life has become a thread of light, which he longed to be liberated from its shackles. His demon—a voice that keeps blaming him for his crimes in the back of his mind—a glass that continually cracks in his heart—will keep breaking him if he does not devise a way out of this crisis. He was conscious by his innermost conviction that there was candlelight with a key that had the potential to illuminate a new chapter that will erase this trail of obscurity behind him. He sees a new horizon with greater comprehension, a journey that can give him the roses of affection than a handful of dead birds that his adversaries handed him along the way. The stunning blossoming trees did have a forest—beautiful greenery that was colorful like the rainbow in the Heavens. This home will embrace him with a warm embrace of open arms, where cruelty is forbidden; where adoration can forever abound. Dawn will know him when he arrives. No more hurricanes or strife will be here—no crying of a sad humanity are here—only a gift of harmony and devotion, beyond all explanation, will abide in the heart of Skiddy Cottontail—when he finds his way out from this opponent world for a beautiful existence that is called liberation. Skiddy Cottontail has found a happiness that can only bring him contentment like nothing in this hurtful world can. Find your own sense of balance like him, Skiddy Cottontail, and you will experience serenity as much as him.

There is no greater sensation of consciousness than to expend yourself completely through the quickening fires of passion.

whenever you confuse between right and wrong, don't take the decision to win the situation but the sensation of the people affected by the decision.

When men feel like “family”, where the blood and genetic inheritance that unites them is the force of Love, the qualities that for so long have been inhibited by ignorance, fear and anger manifest in them spontaneously. Selfishness then vanishes with the sensation of being a part of, and not apart from.

THE NEXT DAY WAS RAIN-SOAKED and smelled of thick sweet caramel, warm coconut and ginger. A nearby bakery fanned its daily offerings. A lapis lazuli sky was blanketed by gunmetal gray clouds as it wept crocodile tears across the parched Los Angeles landscape. When Ivy was a child and she overheard adults talking about their break-ups, in her young feeble-formed mind, she imagined it in the most literal of essences. She once heard her mother speaking of her break up with an emotionally unavailable man. She said they broke up on 69th Street. Ivy visualized her mother and that man breaking into countless fragments, like a spilled box of jigsaw pieces. And she imagined them shattered in broken shards, being blown down the pavement of 69th Street. For some reason, on the drive home from Marcel’s apartment that next morning, all Ivy could think about was her mother and that faceless man in broken pieces, perhaps some aspects of them still stuck in cracks and crevices of the sidewalk, mistaken as grit. She couldn’t get the image of Marcel having his seizure out of her mind. It left a burning sensation in the center of her chest. An incessant flame torched her lungs, chest, and even the back door of her tongue. Witnessing someone you cared about experiencing a seizure was one of those things that scribed itself indelibly on the canvas of your mind. It was gut-wrenching. Graphic and out-of-body, it was the stuff that post traumatic stress syndrome was made of.

Feel the energy, starting with your hands, and if you maintain the sensation of being connected to that energy as you pray, you can be more deeply immersed in your prayer. The reason is because the entire universe itself is composed of the energy you're feeling with your hands right now. When you maintain that feeling of connection with the universe as you pray for the great hopes and dreams cherished by your soul, you are broadcasting your prayer to the entire universe as your audience. If the whole universe is resonating with your dream and working with you to make your dream come true, wouldn't that lend great strength to you?

Plus, if you think carefully, when you fall in love with someone not for her lookay, don't you think it's purer? It would last longer as physical aged but personality grows

To help you along the way, our patients shared these catchphrases they used that inspired or motivated them when they were feeling down or defeated. Use one of theirs or come up with some of your own. • Only I have the power to let myself down.17 • I don’t have unlimited time to flail around in the universe. • I don’t really want to give up ever . . . if I give up, what else do I have? • Reality is better than the fiction in my head. • I’d rather feel the uncomfortable sensations for a while (by not giving in to the false messages) and have my sanity. • What am I doing today to improve my life? • These thoughts and sensations are not real—do not give in to them. • Do not feed the monster. • Remember what it is like to give in—you lose time, energy, and relationships. • With respect to deceptive brain messages, it’s not what you think or feel, it’s what you do that counts.18 • These deceptive brain messages have no power—they are false. EXERCISE: Write down what you will say to inspire and motivate you to keep going when you feel like giving up or believe the deceptive brain messages are true:

This is an opportunity to access your deepest wisdom and assimilate it so that it becomes a part of your daily living. Beware of any potential traps or ruses that you’re tempted to get involved in. Rather than staying stuck in this apparent impasse, open your mind to the infinite number of possibilities that are before you, and make a choice. Don’t limit yourself to the mundane world, but instead be willing to explore other dimensions and realities. It’s time to write creatively without limits of tradition or habit, allowing yourself to be inspired by Nature. BLACK WIDOW SPIDER It’s time for a fresh perspective on what you’re doing, perhaps even a perspective that’s contrary to your usual way of thinking and seeing things. Your intuitive powers are very strong now, so pay closer attention to the subtle sensations in your body rather than relying solely on what meets the eye. You’ve done the hard work; now be patient and wait expectantly for the rewards that will come. There’s soon to be a substantial shift in the direction of your life, with a beneficial and renewed sense of purpose. This is a good time to do a dietary cleanse and detoxification to clear out any toxicity or pollutants in your body. Be direct and straightforward in all of your dealings, rather than dancing around the issues. What you once thought of as threatening is really quite harmless, so there’s no need to fear. There’s a situation you’re involved in where it will work better for you to remain in the background. BROWN RECLUSE SPIDER This is an opportunity to eliminate as much toxicity in your life as possible, in your body and in your relationships. Honor your need for solitude. This is a time of great transformation for you. TARANTULA Trust your intuitive senses—what you feel in your body—more than what you see. This is a time to shed anything that has served its purpose for the growth of your consciousness but is now no longer needed. Your sensitivity is increasing, particularly to the vibrations you feel from your environment. Be especially gentle to yourself in the next few days, doing whatever you can to provide comfort and self-nurturing. In spite of your sturdiness and strength, this is a very sensitive and delicate time for you, so treat yourself accordingly. Although you tend to stay in the background and by yourself, be willing to come forward as necessary for your own social and emotional nourishment.

  Action: Bring out one of your favorite games tonight and play it with the family. No TV allowed.   Today’s Wisdom: Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule. —FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON

From the inaccessible mountains, across the desert which no mortal foot has trod, far as the confines of the unknown ocean, breathes the spirit of the eternal Creator; and every atom to which he has given existence finds favour in his sight. Ah, how often at that time has the flight of a bird, soaring above my head, inspired me with the desire of being transported to the shores of the immeasurable waters, there to quaff the pleasures of life from the foaming goblet of the Infinite, and to partake, if but for a moment even, with the confined powers of my soul, the beatitude of that Creator who accomplishes all things in himself, and through himself! My dear friend, the bare recollection of those hours still consoles me. Even this effort to recall those ineffable sensations, and give them utterance, exalts my soul above itself, and makes me doubly feel the intensity of my present anguish. It