Setting Yourself Free Quotes

Don’t let mental blocks control you. Set yourself free. Confront your fear and turn the mental blocks into building blocks.

You never called me back," he said. "I called you so many times and you never called me back." Magnus looked at Alec as if he'd lost his mind. "Your city is under attack," he said. "The wards have been broken, and the streets are full of demons. And you want to know why I haven't called you?" Alec set his jaw in a stubborn line. "I want to know why you haven't called me back." Magnus threw his hands up in the air in a gesture of utter exasperation. Alec noted with interest that when he did it, a few sparks escaped from his fingertips, like fireflies escaping from a jar. "You're an idiot." "Is that why you haven't called me? Because I'm an idiot?" "No." Magnus strode toward him. "I didn't call you because I'm tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I'm tired of watching you be in love with someone else - someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do." "You love me?" "You stupid Nephilim," Magnus said patiently. "Why else am I here? Why else would I have spent the past few weeks patching up all your moronic friends every time they got hurt? And getting you out of every ridiculous situation you found yourself in? Not to mention helping you win a battle against Valentine. And all completely free of charge!

There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow.

The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.

We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we're so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they're not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. ... Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute.

If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, "I'm a free man in here" - he tapped his forehead - "and you're all right.

And I told him, I said: "One day you're going to miss the subway because it's not going to come. One of these days, it's going to break down and it's not going to come around and everyone else will just wait for the next one or will take the bus, or walk, or run to the next station: they will go on with their lives. And you're not going to be able to go on with your life! You'll be standing there, in the subway station, staring at the tube. Why? Because you think that everything has to happen perfectly and on time and when you think it's going to happen! Well guess what! That's not how things happen! And you'll be the only one who's not going to be able to go on with life, just because your subway broke down. So you know what, you've got to let go, you've got to know that things don't happen the way you think they're going to happen, but that's okay, because there's always the bus, there's always the next station...you can always take a cab.

Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to. Stay home on New Year's Eve if that's what makes you happy. Skip the committee meeting. Cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances. Read. Cook. Run. Write a story. Make a deal with yourself that you'll attend a set number of social events in exchange for not feeling guilty when you beg off.

It's in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home.

Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but don’t let them change who you are.” ~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive

But then I think, this happens sometimes, doesn’t it? People you have a history with, they won’t let you go, and as hard as you might try, you can’t disentangle yourself, can’t set yourself free. Maybe after a while you just stop trying.

True friends don't come with conditions.

From this point forward, you don’t even know how to quit in life.” ~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive

I eventually came to understand that in harboring the anger, the bitterness and resentment towards those that had hurt me, I was giving the reins of control over to them. Forgiving was not about accepting their words and deeds. Forgiving was about letting go and moving on with my life. In doing so, I had finally set myself free.

When you truly sing, you sing yourself free. When you truly dance, you dance yourself free. When you walk in the mountains or swim in the sea, again, you set yourself free.

Don't live the same day over and over again and call that a life. Life is about evolving mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

Be a woman of confidence, not cockiness. Know your boundaries, set no limits. Speak your kindness and turn your back to conformed groups. The only way to be a woman of change in this world, is to walk what you talk and set your own soul free first.

Those who achieve the extraordinary are usually the most ordinary because they have nothing to prove to anybody. Be Humble.

It is not possible that you could ever find yourself anywhere where God was not fully present, fully active, able and willing to set you free.

The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous and absolutely liberating.

When you explore your fears then you set yourself free.

Just remember, forgiveness is a way of setting yourself free of the bondage put on you by others. There is liberty to he had in it.

Do you really want to put yourself through this? Is loving me really enough to endure everything you have to just to be with me?" Meeting his fiery gaze, I ran my fingers through his hair, kissed him gently before I attempted to set us both free. "It will always be enough.

In life, there are those who save us, both in big ways and in small. Sometimes that means being set free from a dark, windowless room, or being pulled out of a burning building. More often, it means being saved from yourself, and made to finally believe that letting someone love you, isn't just a big lie that you're unwilling to tell.

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don’t use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing. What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don’t force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don’t understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day.

The high road of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.

We love our partners for who they are, not for who they are not.

Being mindful means that we suspend judgment for a time, set aside our immediate goals for the future, and take in the present moment as it is rather than as we would like it to be.

It seems to me that after someone sweeps across your life like a red-hot flame, peeling back the shutters that sat over your heart and your mind and setting free your sweetest dreams or your worst nightmares, after things cool down you've got two choices. You can either slip back into your old self, your old life, tucking those things you were too scared to look at back into hiding, or you can keep those parts of yourself out until you get so used to them that they don't scare you anymore and they just become a part of who you are.

God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you construct for yourself, or that others construct for you. Rather, He is interested in you, the you who suffers, the you who inflicts suffering on others, the you who hides, the you who has bad days (and good ones). And He meets you where you are.

When you forgive, the prisoner you set free is yourself.

The most important day is the day you decide you’re good enough for you. It’s the day you set yourself free.

What is gentlest in love is love's violence. Losing yourself in love, you reach love's goal. Love makes you suffer, as love makes you whole. Love steals your everything and makes you rich. Love is both meaningless and poetry. Captured by love, by love you are set free.

…it’s not the truth about others that will set you free, but the truth about yourself.

For each of us, there comes a time to let go. You will know when that time has come. When you have done all that you can do, it is time to detach. Deal with your feelings. Face your fears about losing control. Gain control of yourself and your responsibilities. Free others to be who they are. In so doing, you will set yourself free. ACTIVITY Is there an event or person in your life that you are trying to control? Why? Write a few paragraphs about it.

You are not you--you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself have no existence; I am but a dream--your dream, a creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me. I am perishing already, I am failing, I am passing away. In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever—for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better! Strange! that you should not have suspected years ago—centuries, ages, eons, ago!—for you have existed, companionless, through all the eternities. Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected that your universe and its contents were only dreams, visions, fiction! Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane—like all dreams: a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell—mouths mercy and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him! You perceive, now, that these things are all impossible except in a dream. You perceive that they are pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an imagination that is not conscious of its freaks—in a word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of it. The dream-marks are all present; you should have recognized them earlier. "It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream—a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!

Freedom is a place, an area. It's a higher place. There are some other people that are here, and things that are here which are unseen. But you first have to set yourself free and believe in what you cannot see, believe that there is something more out there. In freedom can be found many devotions: a devotion to love, a desire to believe, a willingness to be happy, a perseverance to have peace. All these unseen things breathe and grow in the unseen soul. A free person is not an uncommitted person, but in a free person you will find a deep devotion, and a desire to be devoted to even more.

When a lack of white blood cells exposes the horizon of being, one has to make a choice. To cloister yourself away in a germ-free environment, alive but alone, or to embrace the woman you love and catch your death of cold at the marriage ceremony? What a great show. It’s inner-directed script was unmatched by any other soap opera.

But when you are week the best way to fortify yourself is to strip the people you fear of the last bit of prestige you’re still inclined to give them. Learn to consider them they are, worse than they are in fact and from every point of view. That will release you, set you free, protect you more than you can possibly imagine. It will give you another self. There will be two of you. That will strip their words and deeds of the obscene mystical fascination that weakens you and makes you waste your time. From then on you’ll find their act no more amusing, no more relevant to your inner progress than that of the lowliest pig.

If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, go fuck yourself because you were an idiot for letting it go in the first place.

Be a team player, not a bandwagon jumper.

Forgiveness, in fact, is more for yourself than anyone else. It’s about setting yourself free from the situation and no longer ruminating about it so you can move on with your life.

As you dig your teeth into your assumptions, your teeth become sharper. You can dig deeper. You become what the world needs simply by helping yourself. It’s not easy, but it is worth it. The truth, as they say, hurts. But they also say it sets you free.

I said. ‘It seems to me that when you take a man’s money away he’s fit for nothing from that moment.’ ‘No, not necessarily. If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, ‘I’m a free man in HERE‘‘—he tapped his forehead—‘and you’re all right.

Don't become a prisoner of your own reality, set yourself free by creating a life worth living.

There is no compromise when it comes to someones delicate feelings, the only way out is to stop pretending and set yourself free from someones life.

Whatever your identity, background, or political ideology, you will be happier, healthier, stronger, and more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals if you do the opposite of what Misoponos advised. That means seeking out challenges (rather than eliminating or avoiding everything that “feels unsafe”), freeing yourself from cognitive distortions (rather than always trusting your initial feelings), and taking a generous view of other people, and looking for nuance (rather than assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us-versus-them morality).

One of the first steps in freeing yourself from a gaslighting relationship, then, is to acknowledge how unpleasant and hurtful you find this Emotional Apocalypse. If you hate being yelled at, you have the right to insist that yelling not be a part of your disagreements. Maybe some other woman wouldn't mind the loud voice, but you do. If that makes you sensitive, so be it. You have the right to set limits where you want them, not where some mythical other, "less sensitive" woman wants them.

Life is uncertain. Eternity is not. Unforgiveness cannot be allowed to last another day. Are you holding a grudge? You will never be more like God than when you forgive. Let it go. Kill the root of bitterness. Let the hurt go and set yourself free.

You need to challenge your fear of life becoming unreasonable - because it is already unreasonable. In truth, your life has never been reasonable, it’s just that you keep hoping tomorrow will be different and that you will find a way to bring more control into your world. Recognize that life will always be full of challenges and crisis. The wise way is not to attempt to find one path that promises you will never have to endure the pain of loss and illness, but instead to learn how to endure and transcend when unreasonable events come your way. Learning to defy gravity in your world - to think, perceive, and act at the mystical level of consciousness - is the greatest gift you can give yourself, because it is the gift of truth. And as we are bound to learn again and again in this life, the truth does indeed set us free.

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was yourself.

Being forgiven is like having all the worst bits of yourself stuffed into a balloon and then having that balloon set free.

Do you feel trapped by the limitations in your life? Remember, you hold the key to the freedom you seek. You can unlock those limitations and set yourself free! There is always a way, there is always another open door or unlocked door. Try them all….

Do you know who you are? God made you a woman. Accept His gift. Don't be afraid to be feminine and to add physical and spiritual loveliness to the setting where He has placed you. You are a child of God. You are a part of the bride of Christ. You belong to the King--you are royalty. Dress and conduct yourself in a way that reflects your high and holy calling. God has called you out of this world's system--don't let the world press you into its mold. Don't think, dress, or act like the world; inwardly and outwardly, let others see the difference He makes in your life.

You hold the key. And you can keep it in your hand for as long as you need to. But there will come a point where you’re ready to use that key to break out of the jail you’ve put yourself in. Only you can set yourself free.

Life was about loss. One minute standing on the promise of your dreams, then free-falling backward into nothingness. Is this what it meant to grow old? To gradually be stripped of all you cared about. And then what? Were you supposed to spend the rest of your life, dreaming about the past while you waited to die? Or did you start a new life, set the cycle in motion once again. Take the chance of losing that, too. And if you did, what happened to the old life? Did it die away from lack of attention?

I was afraid once... And because I was afraid, my magic was weak and full of fear... If you do not trust in yourself, then you shall indeed fall. Trust in yourself, Moth. When you set your magic free, then you shall be free. And your magic shall be all the stronger for it" (P. 184)

You will never stop seeing yourself. You can do nothing, you cannot escape yourself, you cannot escape your own gaze, you never will be able to: even if you were to fall into a sleep so deep that no shock, no shout, no burning pain could rouse you, there would still be this eye, your eye, that will never close, that will never sleep. You see yourself, you see yourself seeing yourself, you watch yourself watching yourself. Even if you were to wake up, your vision would remain the same, immutable. Even if you managed to grow thousands, billions of extra eyelids, there would still be this eye, behind, which would see you. You are not asleep but sleep will never come again. You are not awake and you will never wake up. You are not dead and even death could never set you free." -from "A Man Asleep

Forgiveness is really about absolution: to set free. But if you look carefully at the dynamic, the one you’re setting free is yourself.

This is the truth that sets you free: you are who you commit yourself to being, you have what you commit yourself to having, you live as you commit yourself to living.

The only way to set yourself free is to meet each new challenge relatively.

There is no such thing as loving a child too much.

Knowing who we are in Christ sets us free from the need to impress others.

Whatever you want to do, just do it. Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.

Are you able to open to the possibility that what you want is not what you need right now? If it was what you needed it would be in your life, right now, and it would come effortlessly.

Your real battle is not with the outside world, it is with an enemy that hides deep within you. Find it, Fight it and Set yourself free. The key to your freedom lies in your deepest fear.

People are creators. But I doubt that many realize this. We are not meant to go out into the world and find flawless things, we are not meant to sit down and have flawless things fall into our laps. But we are creators. We can create a beautiful thing out of what we have. The problem with idealistic people is that they see themselves as receivers instead of creators, they end up hunting for the flaw in everything in order to measure it up to their ideals. Now, when you see yourself as a creator, you can look at a chunk of marble and see the angel within it. Then you carve until you have set that angel free.

If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor, you can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, "Im a free man in here"- he tapped his forehead- and you're all right

Choose to live, Elisabeth. There's a fire within you; keep it alight. Feed that flame with music and seasons and chocolate torte and strawberries and your Grandmother's Gugelhopf. Let it grow with your love for your family. Let it be a beacon to set your heart by, so that you remain true to yourself." He stroked my cheek. "Do this, so that I remember you like this: fierce and full of life.

If you want to live the fullness of your life—if you want to be free—you must understand, first, why you are not free, what keeps you from being free. The word prison comes from the Latin praehendere, meaning to seize, grasp, capture. A prison doesn’t have to be a physical place; it can be anything your mind creates. What has taken ahold of you? The natural process of socialization requires that the individual be influenced by Shoulds in order to function as a part of society. However, as you grow up, it is healthy to be self-aware about the Shoulds you inherited. You might value and keep some Shoulds, while others you might choose to discard. If you want to know Must, get to know Should. This is hard work. Really hard work. We unconsciously imprison ourselves to avoid our most primal fears. We choose Should because choosing Must is terrifying, incomprehensible. Our prison is constructed from a lifetime of Shoulds, the world of choices we’ve unwittingly agreed to, the walls that alienate us from our truest, most authentic selves. Should is the doorkeeper to Must. And just as you create your prison, you can set yourself free.

Don’t ruin your life over somebody else’s foolishness. If they want to leave, let them leave! Manipulating, begging, or coercing someone to stay with you is an insult to SELF. Have confidence in yourself! Know your worth! Take a stand for YOU. You deserve to be loved, respected, and appreciated by someone who’s genuinely in love with you. It may hurt to let go, but trying to force someone to stay with you is more damaging than you realize. It’s VERY unhealthy. Set Yourself Free! Be a Priority to Yourself!

Set yourself free. Realize you already have everything you need and don’t need anything else.

The mind will enchain yourself, others or both. Your heart will set you / them free

The government’s beating us down, and it all begins with those goddamn lines in the parking lot. Set yourself free, my brother. If you see a line, ignore it.

The highway of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.

Forgive to set yourself free; love to set the prisoner free.

You’re your loyal, set yourself free!

The mind is a prison for which you are both captive and jailer. You alone have the power to set yourself free.

HEART SET FREE Don’t let a broken heart stop you from sharing your love with the world. Keep being you, keep that big beautiful heart of yours open.

When we set goals that feel safe and achievable, we are caving in to our own preconceived notions of what we are capable of.

You have that look -- the look of all runaways. But I will tell you what I tell my children. The caged bird sings sadly and dies quickly. Your heartstrings are not shoelaces -- they were never meant to be knotted. It is important to set things free. You begin with yourself. And maybe a tissue.

Hard worker, punching the clock and paying the bills, you can live a life worthy this day. Your career may not involve “Christian-sanctioned” labor, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t walking in your calling. The manner in which you speak to your coworkers, the way you work diligently, your dignity as a laborer worth her wages—this is a worthy life. Every goodness God asked us to display is available to you today. Through ordinary work, people can be set free, valued, and changed, including yourself. God’s kingdom will not come in any more power elsewhere than it will come in your life today.

Free your mind. Disentangle your mindset from what can set your mind from your true purpose. Dare when you have to. Enjoy when it is a must. Relax when there is the need to, but, don’t spend the time. Don’t let wealth be a hindrance to fulfilling your true you. Don’t let poverty captivate your true you. Don’t let the environment engulf your true purpose; if possible flee to be free to dare. We all have excuses. Yourself is the most important factor in fulfilling your true you. Free your mind!!!

They told me you had been to her, And mentioned me to him: She gave me a good character, But said I could not swim. He sent them word I had not gone (We know it to be true): If she should push the matter on, What would become of you? I gave her one, they gave him two, You gave us three or more; They all returned from him to you, Though they were mine before. If I or she should chance to be Involved in this affair, He trusts to you to set them free, Exactly as we were. My notion was that you had been (Before she had this fit) An obstacle that came between Him, and ourselves, and it. Don't let him know she liked them best, For this must ever be A secret, kept from all the rest, Between yourself and me.' –

Panic always comes to me in the same way. First, I get a knot in the pit of my stomach that turns to nausea, then a fluttery breathlessness that no amount of deep breathing can cure. But what causes my fear is different every day, I never know what will set me off. It could be a kiss from my husband, or the lingering look of sadness in his eyes when he draws back. Sometimes I know he's already grieving for me, missing me even while I'm still here. Worse yet is Marah's quiet acceptance of everything I say. I would give anything for another of our old knock-down drag-out fights. That's one of the first things I'd say to you now, Marah: Those fights were real life. You were struggling to break free of being my daughter but unsure of how to be yourself, while I was afraid to let you go. It's the circle of love. I only wish I'd recognized it then. Your grandmother told me I'd know you were sorry for those years before you did, and she was right. I know you regret some of the things you said to me, as I regret my own words. None of that matters, though. I want you to know that. I love you and I know you love me.

Successes are those highlights of life we look back on with a smile. But it's the day to day grind of getting them that defines the laugh lines etched until the end of time. Enjoy each moment along the way

There should be at least a room, or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you. You should be able to untether yourself from the world and set yourself free, loosing all the fine strings and strands of tension that bind you, by sight, by sound, by thought, to the presence of other men. Once you have found such a place, be content with it, and do not be disturbed if a good reason takes you out of it. Love it, and return to it as soon as you can, and do not be too quick to change it for another.

Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart. Restriction...is a manifestation of the mind-set of attempting to control one's partner, and also an idea founded on a sense of distrust.

Never work for a person’s approval. It's that person that’s not worth the effort. Either they appreciate you or they don't. Let them go off into their own world. Set yourself free and walk away proudly into your own.

I think you often have that sense when you write-that if you can spot something in yourself and set it down on paper, you're free of it. And you're not, of course; you've just managed to set it down on paper, that's all.

I come to call you Home. Those who resonate with my words and follow them internally, will find that place and know It's completeness, its joy and fullness. I have come to call you away from suffering, from fear and from a life of sorrow and into your own, divine Being. I did not come here to give you decorative stories, to excite your imagination, or sign you up for some long program but to show you how available Truth is, and to remind you that you are never separate from It. No person on this planet is apart from the Truth in the Heart and yet the world is so vast and varied in expression. The greatest good and greatest evil is here. In this forest of duality and complexity you must find your way Home. You must win your Self back. Wisdom and trust will be your compass. Many voices came to call us but we are here today because we are freshly called by the voice of God, Love, Truth. Do not come half way home, but fully home. I know the voice that called you is true and Truth and that where you are being called to is also Real. It is inside your own Heart. It is what gives me the strength to be here. I love to see the beings being set free from the hypnosis of conditioning; from fears, false projection and the grip of ego. And I know that to be liberated is not difficult. It requires only openness and the sincere desire to be free. I don't need to hear anything about your past. Your stories are of no interest to me. That is not how I know you. I know you only through your Heart. That is my true connection with you - the living power of God. It is That which I respond to in you and it is only This that I know. I can only keep reminding you of It by pointing you again and again to the obvious in yourself. Now you must respond to my pointing. This will complete this yoga of seeing. Find and be one with That which is imperishable. Be merged in the Absolute. Don't go to sleep.

That means seeking out challenges (rather than eliminating or avoiding everything that “feels unsafe”), freeing yourself from cognitive distortions (rather than always trusting your initial feelings), and taking a generous view of other people, and looking for nuance (rather than assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us-versus-them morality).

Keep your whiskers crisp and clean. Do not let the mice grow lean. Do not let yourself grow fat Like a common kitchen cat. Have you set the kittens free? Do they sometimes ask for me? Is our catnip growing tall? Did you patch the garden wall? Clouds are gentle walls that hide Gardens on the other side. Tell the tabby cats I take All my meals with William Blake, Lunch at noon tea at four, Served in splendor on the shore At the tinkling of a bell. Tell them I am sleeping well. Tell them I have come so far, Brought by Blake's celestial cat, Buffeted by wind and rain, I may not get home again. Take this message to my friends. Say the King of Catnip sends To the cat who winds his clocks A thousand sunsets in a box, To the cat who brings the ice The shadows of a dozen mice (serve them with assorted dips and eat them like potato chips), And to the cat who guards his door A net for catching stars, and more (if patience he abide): Catnip from the other side.

You burn to have your photograph in a tennis magazine.” “I’m afraid so.” “Why again exactly, now?” “I guess to be felt about as I feel about those players with their pictures in magazines.” “Why?” “Why? I guess to give my life some sort of meaning, Lyle.” “And how would this do this again?” “Lyle, I don’t know. I do not know. It just does. Would. Why else would I burn like this, clip secret pictures, not take risks, not sleep or pee?” “You feel these men with their photographs in magazines care deeply about having their photographs in magazines. Derive immense meaning.” “I do. They must. I would. Else why would I burn like this to feel as they feel?” “The meaning they feel, you mean. From the fame.” “Lyle, don’t they?” “LaMont, perhaps they did at first. The first photograph, the first magazine, the gratified surge, the seeing themselves as others see them, the hagiography of image, perhaps. Perhaps the first time: enjoyment. After that, do you trust me, trust me: they do not feel what you burn for. After the first surge, they care only that their photographs seem awkward or unflattering, or untrue, or that their privacy, this thing you burn to escape, what they call their privacy is being violated. Something changes. After the first photograph has been in a magazine, the famous men do not enjoy their photographs in magazines so much as they fear that their photographs will cease to appear in magazines. They are trapped, just as you are.” “Is this supposed to be good news? This is awful news.” “LaMont, are you willing to listen to a Remark about what is true?” “Okey-dokey.” “The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” “Maybe I ought to be getting back.” “LaMont, the world is very old. You have been snared by something untrue. You are deluded. But this is good news. You have been snared by the delusion that envy has a reciprocal. You assume that there is a flip-side to your painful envy of Michael Chang: namely Michael Chang’s enjoyable feeling of being-envied-by-LaMont-Chu. No such animal.” “Animal?” “You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.” “This is good news?” “It is the truth. To be envied, admired, is not a feeling. Nor is fame a feeling. There are feelings associated with fame, but few of them are any more enjoyable than the feelings associated with envy of fame.” “The burning doesn’t go away?” “What fire dies when you feed it? It is not fame itself they wish to deny you here. Trust them. There is much fear in fame. Terrible and heavy fear to be pulled and held, carried. Perhaps they want only to keep it off you until you weigh enough to pull toward yourself.” “Would I sound ungrateful if I said this doesn’t make me feel very much better at all?” “LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage.” “So I’m stuck in the cage from either side. Fame or tortured envy of fame. There’s no way out.” “You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage.

You don’t need validation or approval from anyone but yourself. Even if the entire world goes against, disagrees with or attempts to crush you, stand up for what you believe in, and stand up alone if you have to! It’s better to die while living your own truth than to live in the truth of another. Lord Krishna in the holy Bhagavad Gita pointed this out when he said; “It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.” Integrity is the key to freedom. It’s only your own truth that can ‘set you free.’ It’s perfectly fine if your truth doesn’t match that of others because the experience of physical reality is a completely subjective one. It doesn’t make either of you wrong, as long as you’re both being true to yourselves, that’s all that matters.

[M]y only route was trust: trust in a *deeper* wisdom, the wisdom responsible for making my heart beat, my eyes shine, my hair grow; trust in the infinite intelligence responsible for making my cells replicate; trust in the part of me that is awake when I'm asleep at night.

Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius – set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words, – that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach. The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness. Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.

And if your master truly loved you, he would tell you that. In order to escape the bounds of earthly experience, you bind yourself to a master. Bound is bound. If your master really loved you, he would not demand your devotion. He would set you free--from himself, first of all.

You can find friends who are working for something positive, who have a purpose in life that you respect. You can go to college even if only part-time. Make your life full of positive purpose. You are free to do what you feel is right. Do what you want to do, and be yourself.” It felt as if an angel had spoken through my body. The voice was so clear and full of Rightness that I trusted it completely. Had it been my own thought or the advice of a person, I am sure I would have rejected it. But now I knew I could do whatever I set my mind to if I just kept at it positively.

Pour yourself a cup of steaming coffee, honey, then come pour yourself into me. I need you like you need your morning fix. You need me to breathe. And today I need you to love me like a storm. Love is the only thing that will heal our tormented hearts. Love is the only thing that will set us free.

if you have spent long enough being interrupted in your daily life, you will start to interrupt yourself even when you are set free from all these external interruptions. I kept looking at things and imagining how I would describe them in a tweet, and then imagining what people would say in response.

Representation matters. It matters that you sit in an audience and see yourself onstage. It matters that a company who sells to a multiethnic, multicultural world works to bring every voice in so that they consider as many perspectives as possible. Black, white, Latino, Asian, old, young, gay, straight, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, differently abled, plus-size, petite—everybody should be at your table. Everybody should be on your stage. Everybody should be on your staff. Everybody should be invited to your kid’s birthday party. Everybody should be welcome in your church. Everybody should be invited over for dinner. Every single woman you know and every single one you don’t could benefit from the truth that she is capable of something great. How is she ever going to believe that if nobody sets an example? How is she ever going to believe that if nobody cares enough to see it in her and speak the truth aloud?

We get attached to people, a job, material things and a certain state of being. And, when something around us changes we suffer. Release the need to control people, release the believe there is only one job you can do, release the need to accumulate material things, welcome the unknown and set yourself free.

I believe our professional lives can be different and better. We can learn to take care of ourselves and our needs on the job. And if we are not so absorbed in other people and their business, if we believe we are important, we are free to set our own goals and reach our dreams. We are able to capture a vision for our own lives.

Procrastination is not the cause of our problems with accomplishing tasks; it is an attempt to resolve a variety of underlying issues, including low self-esteem, perfectionism, fear of failure and of success, indecisiveness, an imbalance between work and play, ineffective goal-setting, and negative concepts about work and yourself.

In life, there are those who save us, both in big ways and in small. Sometimes that means being set free from a dark, windowless room, or being pulled out of a burning building. More often, it means being saved from yourself, and made to finally believe that letting someone love you, isn't just a big lie that you're unwilling to tell.

I used to think that was what set me apart, you know? That I always did what I thought was right and didn't give much thought to consequences. But I think now it was just ego - that I'm no different than anybody else. Maybe everybody always does what they think is right and it's all just a matter of what you tell yourself the high ground is

You must set yourself free From the striving of Man And the applause of the World You must fly as you can... - No hope forever No orietur. Science and patience, The torment is sure. The fire within you, Soft silken embers, Is our whole duty But no one remembers. It is recovered. What? Eternity. In the whirling light Of the sun in the sea.

You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!" said Dum-bledore loudly. "The only protection that can possibly work against the lure of power like Voldemort's! In spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven, when you stared into a mir-ror that reflected your heart's desire, and it showed you only the way to thwart Lord Voldemort, and not immortality or riches. Harry, have you any idea how few wizards could have seen what you saw in that mirror? Voldemort should have known then what he was dealing with, but he did not! But he knows it now. You have flitted into Lord Voldemort's mind without damage to yourself, but he cannot possess you with-out enduring mortal agony, as he discovered in the Ministry. I do not think he understands why, Harry, but then, he was in such a hurry to mutilate his own soul, he never paused to understand the incomparable power of a soul that is untarnished and whole." "But, sir," said Harry, making valiant efforts not to sound argu-mentative, "it all comes to the same thing, doesn't it? I've got to try and kill him, or —" "Got to?" said Dumbledore. "Of course you've got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you've tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!" Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front ol him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father, and Sinus. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat. "I'd want him finished," said Harry quietly. "And I'd want to do it." "Of course you would!" cried Dumbledore. "You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal. ... In other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you . . . which makes it certain, really, that —" "That one of us is going to end up killing the other," said Harry. "Yes." But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumble-dore knew — and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents — that there was all the difference in the world.

Don’t bother setting up free republics or moving to a country which offers more liberties. Simply declare yourself to be an independent state. Do not involve and coerce others. This is the only way we will effect a proper revolution. Once each of us recognizes our own freedom and our own responsibility, then the chains that bind us will fall away.

Yoga is not really about getting your body healthy, although it does that too. Yoga is about the knowledge that will help you out of your predicament, the knowledge that can free you. Once you’ve made this freedom the meaning of your life, there are spiritual practices that can help you. These practices are what you do with your time in order to free yourself from yourself. You will eventually catch on that you have to distance yourself from your psyche. You do this by setting the direction of your life when you’re clear and not letting the wavering mind deter you. Your will is stronger than the habit of listening to that voice. There is nothing you can’t do. Your will is supreme over all of this.

You have a limited amount of time to get things done during the course of a given day. It follows that you should limit the scope of your to-do list to accommodate this constraint. If you only have four hours at your disposal, make sure the items on your to-do list can be completed within that time frame. Otherwise, you’ll set yourself up for failure.

Pride keeps you from dealing with truth. It distorts your vision. You never change when you think everything is fine. Pride hardens your heart and dims the eyes of your understanding. It keeps you from the change of heart—repentance—that will set you free. (See 2 Timothy 2:24–26.) Pride causes you to view yourself as a victim. Your attitude becomes, “I was mistreated and misjudged; therefore, I am justified in my behavior.” Because you believe you are innocent and falsely accused, you hold back forgiveness. Though your true heart condition is hidden from you, it is not hidden from God. Just because you were mistreated, you do not have permission to hold on to an offense. Two wrongs do not make a right!

Set yourself free not to harm any soul. But to feel your soul.

Forgiveness is a radical act of setting your soul free, and the person you blame, hate, fear or resent cannot help you with that. Only your heart holds the key.

When you reach that point in your life when letting go and setting your elf free is ur last option, set yourself free and just letting go for now u know there's no need for you.

If you can sit here and talk to a person you don’t know very well, and talk about all these things you’ve been through—that’s something. That’s courage. It’s knowing yourself.

The most treasured gift you can present yourself today is a hand of assistance to liberate you from the prison of anxiety, fear, & stress so that you can set free.

by learning to appreciate yourself, you give yourself confidence and the assurance that you aren’t useless or hopeless and that you too, have something to be proud of.

Make peace within you now. Set free and stop battling within. Choose yourself over and over.

If you don’t eat, or if you miss a meal and find yourself hungry, feel free to shed your tears in the shower. And then learn to set a schedule. Don’t bring your complaints to me.

You set yourself free by letting go of anyone who wants to leave.

There are attitudinal changes that you can make in yourself that will set you free from your reactions to problem people.

You must let the love for yourself set you free of them.

Addiction puts you in a prison where the locks are on the inside. Only you hold the keys to set yourself free.

Book- It's Not Straight ♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡ Do not set your love free... Set yourself free from it ...Your true soulmate will come to you.

May you listen to your longing to be free. May the frames of your belonging be large enough for the dreams of your soul. May you arise each day with a voice of blessing whispering in your heart …something good is going to happen to you. May you find harmony between your soul and your life. May the mansion of your soul never become a haunted place. May you know the eternal longing that lies at the heart of time. May there be kindness in your gaze when you look within. May you never place walls between the light and yourself. May you be set free from the prisons of guilt, fear, disappointment and despair. May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world to gather you, mind you, and embrace you in belonging.

People you have a history with, they won't let you go, and as hard as you might try, you can't disentangle yourself, can't set yourself free. Maybe after a while you just stop trying.

Welp, you know the old saying. If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, go fuck yourself because you were an idiot for letting it go in the first place.

When you maintain bitterness and contempt towards someone, you’re actually binding yourself to them. You’ve given them a foothold in your life with an emotional connection that is stronger than any prison cell. It’s a jail sentence of solitary anger and animosity. Forgiveness is the ONLY thing that breaks that emotional bond. It’s the key that sets you free. ~Jason Versey

in my mind's eye i always see you sitting by yourself at the kitchen table, smoking your cigarette & drinking your coffee & wanting to be anywhere else but here with us. - were you set free?

Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to. Stay home on New Year’s Eve if that’s what makes you happy. Skip the committee meeting. Cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances. Read. Cook. Run. Write a story. Make a deal with yourself that you’ll attend a set number of social events in exchange for not feeling guilty when you beg off.

Set yourself free. Forgive that person who did you wrong. Do it for yourself. Living another day with them in your mind is draining, and stifling the wonderful personality you have to offer the people around you.

Why do you give so much of yourself to a person? Does this person really need it? Isn't it a contradiction of life that when you love someone so much that you overwhelm them with too much of yourself? You want to spend more time with this person. You want to keep messaging this person. You want to know what they are doing every minute of their life! If you truly love someone then you should set them free. Give them the freedom to be themself!

If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, “I’m a free man in here”’—he tapped his forehead—‘and you’re all right.

I don’t remember when I stopped noticing—stopped noticing every mirror, every window, every scale, every fast-food restaurant, every diet ad, every horrifying model. And I don’t remember when I stopped counting, or when I stopped caring what size my pants were, or when I started ordering what I wanted to eat and not what seemed “safe,” or when I could sit comfortably reading a book in my kitchen without noticing I was in my kitchen until I got hungry—or when I started just eating when I got hungry, instead of questioning it, obsessing about it, dithering and freaking out, as I’d done for nearly my whole life. I don’t remember exactly when recovery took hold, and went from being something I both fought and wanted, to being simply a way of life. A way of life that is, let me tell you, infinitely more peaceful, infinitely happier, and infinitely more free than life with an eating disorder. And I wouldn’t give up this life of freedom for the world. What I know is this: I chose recovery. It was a conscious decision, and not an easy one. That’s the common denominator among people I know who have recovered: they chose recovery, and they worked like hell for it, and they didn’t give up. Recovery isn’t easy, at first. It takes time. It takes more work, sometimes, than you think you’re willing to do. But it is worth every hard day, every tear, every terrified moment. It’s worth it, because the trade-off is this: you let go of your eating disorder, and you get back your life. There are a couple of things I had to keep in mind in early recovery. One was that I was going to recover, even though I didn’t feel “ready.” I realized I was never going to feel ready—I was just going to jump in and do it, ready or not, and I am deeply glad that I did. Another was that symptoms were not an option. Symptoms, as critically necessary and automatic as they feel, are ultimately a choice. You can choose to let the fallacy that you must use symptoms kill you, or you can choose not to use symptoms. Easier said than done? Of course. But it can be done. I had to keep at the forefront of my mind the reasons I wanted to recover so badly, and the biggest one was this: I couldn’t believe in what I was doing anymore. I couldn’t justify committing my life to self-destruction, to appearance, to size, to weight, to food, to obsession, to self-harm. And that was what I had been doing for so long—dedicating all my strength, passion, energy, and intelligence to the pursuit of a warped and vanishing ideal. I just couldn’t believe in it anymore. As scared as I was to recover, to recover fully, to let go of every last symptom, to rid myself of the familiar and comforting compulsions, I wanted to know who I was without the demon of my eating disorder inhabiting my body and mind. And it turned out that I was all right. It turned out it was all right with me to be human, to have hungers, to have needs, to take space. It turned out that I had a self, a voice, a whole range of values and beliefs and passions and goals beyond what I had allowed myself to see when I was sick. There was a person in there, under the thick ice of the illness, a person I found I could respect. Recovery takes time, patience, enormous effort, and strength. We all have those things. It’s a matter of choosing to use them to save our own lives—to survive—but beyond that, to thrive. If you are still teetering on the brink of illness, I invite you to step firmly onto the solid ground of health. Walk back toward the world. Gather strength as you go. Listen to your own inner voice, not the voice of the eating disorder—as you recover, your voice will get clearer and louder, and eventually the voice of the eating disorder will recede. Give it time. Don’t give up. Love yourself absolutely. Take back your life. The value of freedom cannot be overestimated. It’s there for the taking. Find your way toward it, and set yourself free.

Don’t let the painting of your life be blurred with regret and unspoken words, that’s been resting on your lips for so very long. Say what you have to say and find peace. The colors of the rainbow are yours if you’d only set yourself free.

I'm not concerned with paid assassins ... mindless, soulless animals who excel at nothing else. But you, Erik ... you love all the beauty in this world ... you are a genius in so many different fields. Why do you set yourself beyond the pale of humanity by such a despicable crime?" He took off the mask and turned slowly to let me see. "This face which has denied me all human rights also frees me of all obligation to the human race," he said quietly. "My mother hated me, my village drove me from my home, I was exhibited like an animal in a cage until a knife showed me the only way to be free. The pleasures of love will always be forbidden to me ... but I am young, Nadir. I have all the desires of any normal man.

If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense.  Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre?  Don’t trouble yourself to answer—I see you laugh rarely; but you can laugh very merrily: believe me, you are not naturally austere, any more than I am naturally vicious.  The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat; controlling your features, muffling your voice, and restricting your limbs; and you fear in the presence of a man and a brother—or father, or master, or what you will—to smile too gaily, speak too freely, or move too quickly: but, in time, I think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you; and then your looks and movements will have more vivacity and variety than they dare offer now.  I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.  You are still bent on going?

It may seem completely counterintuitive, but in my experience, depressed people are the least likely to be willing to change any of their life patterns. In other words, people who hate their lives are the least likely to change them. When you love your life, you are more open to change. When you somehow find yourself in a life you never wanted, it has a paralyzing effect. It becomes a subtle version of Stockholm syndrome, where you develop an unhealthy relationship to your captor and disdain for anyone trying to set you free.

Set your eyes on the highest state you can imagine and don’t take them off. If you slip, just get back up. It doesn’t matter. The very fact that you even want to go through this process of freeing the energy flow means you are great. You will get there. Just keep letting go.

and You do not live in temples built by hands. And You are not served by human hands, as if You needed anything, because You Yourself give all men life and breath and everything else. From one man You made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and You determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. You, my Father, did this so that men would seek You and perhaps reach out for You and find You, though You are not far from each one of us. For in You we live and move and have our being! (Acts 17:24–28)

I remember the sad case of a very godly man whom I knew who had two daughters who were the most excellent women. They had reached middle life when I met them. They lived, in a sense, for the things of God, and yet neither of them had ever become a member of a Christian church, or ever taken communion at the Lord's Table. As regards their life and conduct, you could not think of better people, and yet they had never become members of the church and they had never partaken of the bread and the wine. Why? They said they did not feel they were good enough. What was the matter with them? They were looking at themselves instead of at the finished, perfect work of Christ. You look at yourself and, of course, you will miserable, for within there is blackness and darkness. The best saint when he looks at himself becomes unhappy; he sees things that should not be there, and if you and I spend our whole time looking at ourselves we shall remain in misery, and we shall lose the joy. Self-examination is all right, but introspection is bad. Let us draw the distinction between these two things. We can examine ourselves in the light of Scripture, and if we do that we shall be driven to Christ. But with introspection a man looks at himself and continues to do so, and refuses to be happy until he gets rid of the imperfections that are still there. Oh, the tragedy that we should spend our lives looking at ourselves instead of looking at Him who can set us free!

As long as you perceive that anyone is holding you back, you have not taken full responsibility for your own liberation. Liberation means that you stand free of making demands on others and on life to make you happy. When you discover yourself to be nothing but Freedom, you stop setting up conditions and requirements that need to be satisfied in order for you to be happy. It is in the absolute surrender of all conditions and requirements that Liberation is discovered to be who and what you Are. Then the love and wisdom that flows out of you have a liberating effect on others. (p. 119)

SO, WHERE DOES this leave us? If we can’t rely on the market forces of supply and demand to set optimal market prices, and we can’t count on free-market mechanisms to help us maximize our utility, then we may need to look elsewhere. This is especially the case with society’s essentials, such as health care, medicine, water, electricity, education, and other critical resources. If you accept the premise that market forces and free markets will not always regulate the market for the best, then you may find yourself among those who believe that the government (we hope a reasonable and thoughtful government) must play a larger role in regulating some market activities, even if this limits free enterprise. Yes, a free market based on supply, demand, and no friction would be the ideal if we were truly rational. Yet when we are not rational but irrational, policies should take this important factor into account.

Stop Looking for Occasions to Be Offended When you live at or below ordinary levels of awareness, you spend a great deal of time and energy finding opportunities to be offended. Today we’re going to examine how you can stop allowing yourself to be offended by others and instead respond positively with love and forgiveness. A news report, an economic downturn, a rude stranger, a fashion miscue, someone cursing, a sneeze, a black cloud, any cloud, an absence of clouds—just about anything will do if you’re looking for an occasion to be offended. Along the extra mile, you’ll never find anyone engaging in such absurdities. Become a person who refuses to be offended by anyone, any thing, or any set of circumstances. If something takes place and you disapprove, by all means state what you feel from your heart; and if possible, work to eliminate it and then let it go. Most people operate from the ego and really need to be right. So, when you encounter someone saying things that you find inappropriate, or when you know they’re wrong, wrong, wrong, forget your need to be right and instead say, “You’re right about that!” Those words will end potential conflict and free you from being offended. Your desire is to be peaceful—not to be right, hurt, angry, or resentful. If you have enough faith in your own beliefs, you’ll find that it’s impossible to be offended by the beliefs and conduct of others. Not being offended is a way of saying, “I have control over how I’m going to feel, and I choose to feel peaceful regardless of what I observe going

You are designed for success. Life's tough, but you are greater than its challenges. No matter what you have been through, you're still here. You have a history of victory. So ignore the haters, the doubters, and free yourself from the emotional saboteurs. Don't ever forget that you are beautiful, you are capable, you are worthy... you are enough. Set healthy standards and stick to them. Don't settle. Set healthy goals and follow them. Let your behavior speak the love and passion in your heart. Live life to the fullest... make each day worth remembering... Dream BIG & dare to go for it... Be unapologetically you!

7. Character is built in the course of your inner confrontation. Character is a set of dispositions, desires, and habits that are slowly engraved during the struggle against your own weakness. You become more disciplined, considerate, and loving through a thousand small acts of self-control, sharing, service, friendship, and refined enjoyment. If you make disciplined, caring choices, you are slowly engraving certain tendencies into your mind. You are making it more likely that you will desire the right things and execute the right actions. If you make selfish, cruel, or disorganized choices, then you are slowly turning this core thing inside yourself into something that is degraded, inconstant, or fragmented. You can do harm to this core thing with nothing more than ignoble thoughts, even if you are not harming anyone else. You can elevate this core thing with an act of restraint nobody sees. If you don’t develop a coherent character in this way, life will fall to pieces sooner or later. You will become a slave to your passions. But if you do behave with habitual self-discipline, you will become constant and dependable. 8. The things that lead us astray are short term—lust, fear, vanity, gluttony. The things we call character endure over the long term—courage, honesty, humility. People with character are capable of a long obedience in the same direction, of staying attached to people and causes and callings consistently through thick and thin. People with character also have scope. They are not infinitely flexible, free-floating, and solitary. They are anchored by permanent attachments to important things. In the realm of the intellect, they have a set of permanent convictions about fundamental truths. In the realm of emotion, they are enmeshed in a web of unconditional loves. In the realm of action, they have a permanent commitment to tasks that cannot be completed in a single lifetime.

Everybody should know exactly what it is that they are. Really now. If you are beautiful, please know that you are beautiful; if you are strong please know that you are strong; if you are courageous please know that you are courageous; if you are a cunt, please don't fool yourself thinking you're a good person. You are in fact a cunt. If you are a giver, then know you are a giver and learn how to receive. If you are a receiver, identify this, then learn how to give. If you are incredibly stupid; please try to fix that and if you are profoundly intelligent, then please don't hide that. If you are gay, then love being gay and if you're straight then love being straight. Please be who it is that you are, please look into the mirror, please see yourself. Always. Every day. Be whatever it is that you are. Fix what needs to be fixed, throw out what needs to be thrown out; but please, not even for a second, do not ever stop looking at your reflection in the mirror!

Remember: there is no such thing as guilt-free boundary setting. If you want to minimize (not eliminate) guilt, change the way you think about the process. Stop thinking about boundaries as mean or wrong; start to believe that they’re a nonnegotiable part of healthy relationships, as well as a self-care and wellness practice.

Having a fear of failure means you believe that even the smallest error could be evidence that you are a worthless and awful person. Having a fear of being imperfect means that it is difficult for you to accept yourself as you are—imperfect and, therefore, perfectly human—and so you interpret any criticism, rejection, or judgment by others as a threat to your very tenuous grasp on perfection. Having a fear of impossible expectations means fearing that even after you’ve worked hard and achieved the goals set for you, your only reward will be continually higher and more difficult goals to achieve, with no rest and no time to savor your achievements.

Instead of judging yourself and others, you become curious about why you feel judgmental in the first place and move your awareness toward a place of curiosity: “Why do I feel this way? Why am I judging this person? Why am I judging myself in this way? Can I learn more about this rather than judge it?” Curiosity will set you free.

You and I cannot see what God has in store for us. That is why you should never believe that your worst fears are your fate or that when you are down, you will never rise again. You must have faith in yourself, in your purpose, and in God’s plan for your life. Then you must put fears and insecurities aside and trust that you will find your way. You may not have a clue of what lies ahead, but it’s better to act on life than simply let life act on you. If you have faith, you don’t need proof—you live it. You don’t need to have all the right answers, just the right questions. No one knows what the future holds. Most of the time, God’s plan is beyond our grasp and often beyond even the reach of our imaginations. As a ten-year-old boy, I never would have believed that within the next ten years, God would send me to travel the world to speak to millions of people, inspiring them and leading them to Jesus Christ. Nor could I ever have known that the love of my family would one day be matched and even surpassed by the love of the intelligent, spiritual, fearless, and beautiful young woman who recently became my wife. That boy who despaired at the thought of his future is at peace today as a man. I know who I am, and I take one step at a time, knowing God is on my side. My life is overflowing with purpose and love. Are my days free of worry? Is every day blessed with sunshine and flowers? No, we all know life doesn’t work that way. But I thank God for each and every moment that He allows me to walk the path He has set out for me. You and I are here for a purpose. I’ve found mine, and you should take my story as an assurance that your path awaits you too.

you must keep following in love knowing that it will destroy you if you believe that this-romantic love, infatuation, obsession-will set you free you will forever be trapped in cages you put yourself in let it hurt and bleed and grow and know that it is not meant to be everything you want, yet, it is everything it is everything.

Another New Year's dawned, new opportunities and difficulties are sneaking around you. To take hold of good and let go bad, face the new challenges and open the new chances to anew your life again. Everyday train your brain to solve all difficulties and transform them into opportunities, get rich mentally, physically and financially. Love your family, friends, colleagues and all folks surrounded by you. Take care of your health, children, wealth and travel new exotic places, people and enjoy good food. Life is very short, fully enjoy it. Embrace new ideas, knowledge and every opportunity. And always surround yourself with good people and avoid toxic and negative people to secure your peace of mind and dignity. I wholeheartedly and boldly set my plan as is the best year of my life for financial freedom, good health, richness, love, care and abundance. I do solemnly yearn for the folks around the world a thoroughly Peaceful, Happy and Beautiful New Year free from hunger, poverty, disease, inequality, war and conflict.

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

THE WELL Be thankful now for having arrived, for the sense of having drunk from a well, for remembering the long drought that preceded your arrival and the years walking in a desert landscape of surfaces looking for a spring hidden from you so long that even wanting to find it now had gone from your mind until you only remembered the hard pilgrimage that brought you here, the thirst that caught in your throat; the taste of a world just-missed and the dry throat that came from a love you remembered but had never fully wanted for yourself, until finally after years making the long trek to get here it was as if your whole achievement had become nothing but thirst itself. But the miracle had come simply from allowing yourself to know that you had found it, that this time someone walking out into the clear air from far inside you had decided not to walk past it any more; the miracle had come at the roadside in the kneeling to drink and the prayer you said, and the tears you shed and the memory you held and the realization that in this silence you no longer had to keep your eyes and ears averted from the place that could save you, that you had been given the strength to let go of the thirsty dust laden pilgrim-self that brought you here, walking with her bent back, her bowed head and her careful explanations. No, the miracle had already happened when you stood up, shook off the dust and walked along the road from the well, out of the desert toward the mountain, as if already home again, as if you deserved what you loved all along, as if just remembering the taste of that clear cool spring could lift up your face and set you free.

Breaking Free Activity #34 Are there any areas in your personal relationships in which you avoid setting appropriate boundaries? Do you: •​Tolerate intolerable behavior. •​Avoid dealing with a situation because it might cause conflict. •​Not ask for what you want. •​Sacrifice yourself to keep the peace. If you applied the Second Date rule or the Healthy Male rule to these situations, how might you change your behavior?

(...) You Sophotechs are smarter than I am; why did you let me do such a foolish thing?” “We answer every question our resources and instruction parameters allow; we are more than happy to advise you, when and if we are asked.” “That’s not what I’m thinking of, and you know it.” “You are thinking we should use force to defend you against yourself against your will? That is hardly a thought worth thinking, sir. Your life has exactly the value you yourself place on it. It is yours to damage or ruin as you wish.” (...) “Is that another hint? Are you saying I’m destroying my life? People at the party, twice now, have said or implied that I’m going to endanger the Oecumene itself. Who stopped me?” “Not I. While life continues, it cannot be made to be without risk. The assessment of whether or not a certain risk is worth taking depends on subjective value-judgments. About such judgments even reasonable men can differ. We Sophotechs will not interfere with such decisions. (...) If we were to overrule your ownership of your own life, your life, would, in effect, become our property, and you, in effect, would become merely the custodian or trustee of that life. Do you think you would value it more in such a case, or less? And if you valued it less, would you not take greater risks and behave more self-destructively? If, on the other hand, each man’s life is his own, he may experiment freely, risking only what is his, till he find his best happiness.” “I see the results of failed experiments all around us, in these cylinders. I see wasted lives, and people trapped in mind sets and life forms which lead nowhere.” “While life continues, experimentation and evolution must also. The pain and risk of failure cannot be eliminated. The most we can do is maximize human freedom, so that no man is forced to pay for another man’s mistakes, so that the pain of failure falls only on he who risks it. And you do not know which ways of life lead nowhere. Even we Sophotechs do not know where all paths lead.” “How benevolent of you! We will always be free to be stupid.” “Cherish that freedom, young master; it is basic to all others.

...it takes great humility to find oneself unjustly condemned and be silent, and to do this is to imitate the Lord Who set us free from all our sins. ... The truly humble person will have a genuine desire to be thought little of, and persecuted, and condemned unjustly, even in serious matters. ... It is a great help to meditate upon the great gain which in any case this is bound to bring us, and to realize how, properly speaking, we can never be blamed unjustly, since we are always full of faults, and a just man falls seven times a day, so that it would be a falsehood for us to say we have no sin. If, then, we are not to blame for the thing that we are accused of, we are never wholly without blame in the way that our good Jesus was. ... Thou knowest, my Good, that if there is anything good in me it comes from no other hands than Thine own. For what is it to Thee, Lord, to give much instead of little? True, I do not deserve it, but neither have I deserved the favors which Thou hast shown me already. Can it be that I should wish a thing so evil as myself to be thought well of by anyone, when they have said such wicked things of Thee, Who art good above all other good? ... Do Thou give me light and make me truly to desire that all should hate me, since I have so often let Thee, Who hast loved me with such faithfulness. ... What does it matter to us if we are blamed by them all, provided we are without blame in the sight of the Lord? ...meditate upon what is real and upon what is not. ... Do you suppose, ... that, if you do not make excuses for yourself, there will not be someone else who will defend you? Remember how the Lord took the Magdalen's part in the Pharisee's house and also when her sister blamed her. He will not treat you as rigorously as He treated Himself: it was not until He was on the Cross that He had even a thief to defend Him. His Majesty, then, will put it into somebody's mind to defend you; if He does not, it will be because there is no need. ...be glad when you are blamed, and in due time you will see what profit you experience in your souls. For it is in this way that you will begin to gain freedom; soon you will not care if they speak ill or well of you; it will seem like someone else's business. ... So here: it becomes such a habit with us not to reply that it seems as if they are not addressing us at all. This may seem impossible to those of us who are very sensitive and not capable of great mortification. It is indeed difficult at first, but I know that, with the Lord's help, the gradual attainment of this freedom, and of renunciation and self-detachment, is quite possible.

set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words, - that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach. The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness. Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose. 2. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.

Follow these steps—over and over again for a decade—and you just might become a master: • Remember that deliberate practice has one objective: to improve performance. “People who play tennis once a week for years don’t get any better if they do the same thing each time,” Ericsson has said. “Deliberate practice is about changing your performance, setting new goals and straining yourself to reach a bit higher each time.” • Repeat, repeat, repeat. Repetition matters. Basketball greats don’t shoot ten free throws at the end of team practice; they shoot five hundred. • Seek constant, critical feedback. If you don’t know how you’re doing, you won’t know what to improve. • Focus ruthlessly on where you need help. While many of us work on what we’re already good at, says Ericsson, “those who get better work on their weaknesses.” • Prepare for the process to be mentally and physically exhausting. That’s why so few people commit to it, but that’s why it works.

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, “Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?” The young sceptic says, “I have a right to think for myself.” But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.” There

for everyone who responds to your imaginal act is a shadow. How can a shadow be causative in your world? The moment you give another the power of causation, you have transferred to him the power that rightfully belongs to you. Others are only shadows, bearing witness to the activities taking place in you. The world is a mirror, forever reflecting what you are doing within yourself. If you know this, you are set free and a series of events will unfold within you to reveal the story of salvation.

Torrens kicked at the door until it was finally opened. The farm couple and three youngsters had been eating breakfast in the common room. The yard dog would have bounded in had not Torrens kicked the door shut. 'I want a bed. Quilts. A hot drink. I am a doctor. This woman is my patient.' The farm couple was terrified. The look on the face of Torrens cut short any questions. They did as he ordered. One of the children ran to fetch his medical kit from the cart. The woman motioned for Torrens to set Caroline on a straw pallet. The farmer kept his distance, but his wife, shyly, fearffully, ventured closer. She glanced at Torrens, as if requesting his permission to help. Between them, they made Caroline as comfortable as they could. Torrens knelt by the pallet. Caroline reached for his hand. 'Leave while you can. Do not burden yourself with me.' 'A light burden.' 'I wish you to find Augusta.' 'You have my promise.' 'Take this.' Caroline had slipped off a gold ring set with diamonds. 'It was a wedding gift from the king. It has not left my finger since then. I give it to you now - ' Torrens protested, but Caroline went on - 'not as a keepsake. You and I have better keepsakes in our hearts. I wish you to sell it. You will need money, perhaps even more than this will bring. But you must stary alive and find my child. Help her as you have always helped me.' 'We shall talk of this later, when you are better. We shall find her together.' 'You have never lied to me.' Caroline's smile was suddenly flirtacious. 'Sir, if you begin now, I shall take you to task for it.' Her face seemed to grow youthful and earnest for an instant. Torrens realized she held life only by strength of will. 'I am thinking of the Juliana gardens,' Caroline said. 'How lovely they were. The orangerie. And you, my loving friend. Tell me, could we have been happy?' 'Yes.' Torrens raised her hand to his lips. 'Yes. I am certain of it.' Caroline did not speak again. Torrens stayed at her side. She died later that morning. Torrens buried her in the shelter of a hedgerow at the far edge of the field. The farmer offered to help, but Torrens refused and dug the grave himself. Later, in the farmhouse, he slept heavily for the first time since his escape. Mercifully, he did not dream. Next day, he gave the farmer his clothing in trade for peasant garb. He hitched up the cart and drove back to the road. He could have pressed on, lost himself beyond search in the provinces. He was free. Except for his promise. He turned the cart toward Marianstat.

We in the West regard the universe as a creation of God; like an invention or a product. After he created the universe, God set himself to oversee it and manage it. We see God as our boss. He created the universe, he is present in it, he manages every part of it, but he is still separate from it. It's like he installed video cameras all over the universe, so he can see everything that happens, and he can cause this or that to happen, but he is not a part of what happens. The Eastern view is very different. To the Hindu, for example, God didn't create the universe, but God became the universe. Then he forgot that he became the universe. Why would God do this? Basically, for entertainment. You create a universe, and that in itself is very exciting. But then what? Should you sit back and watch this universe of yours having all the fun? No, you should have all the fun yourself. To accomplish this, God transformed into the whole universe. God is the Universe, and everything in it. But the universe doesn't know that because that would ruin the suspense. The universe is God's great drama, and God is the stage, the actors, and the audience all at once. The title of this epic drama is "The Great Unknown Outcome." Throw in potent elements like passion, love, hate, good, evil, free will; and who knows what will happen? No one knows, and that is what keeps the universe interesting. But everyone will have a good time. And there is never really any danger, because everyone is really God, and God is really just playing around.

I have seen countless people say they want to transform themselves and their lives and tune into the new vibration. But when the challenges have come, which are necessary to make that happen, they want out immediately and go back to life as before. Yet these challenges set us free. The reason we face personal and emotional mayhem when we start this journey is because of the need to clean out our emotional cesspit of suppressed and unprocessed emotional debris that we have pushed deep into our subconscious because we don’t want to deal with it. If we don’t clear the emotional gunge of this and other physical lifetimes, we can’t reconnect with our multidimensional self. We can’t be free of the reptilian manipulation and control from the lower fourth dimension. So when we say we intend to transform, that intent draws to us the people and experiences necessary to bring that suppressed emotion to the surface where we can see it and deal with it. The same is happening collectively as the information presented in this book comes into the light of public attention, so we can see it, address it and heal it. Much of the New Age is in denial of this collective cesspit because it doesn’t want to face its own personal cesspit. It would rather sit around a candle and kid itself it is enlightened while, in fact, it is an emotional wreck with a crystal in its hand. The information in this book is part of the healing of Planet Earth and the human consciousness as the veil lifts on all that has remained hidden and denied. Hey, this is a wonderful time we’re living through here. We are tuning to the cosmic dance, the wind of change, the rhythm of reconnection with all that is, has been, or ever will be. You have come to make a difference, for yourself and for the world. You have the opportunity to do that now, now, now. Grasp it and let’s end this nonsense. A few can only control billions because the billions let it happen. We don’t have to. And we can change it just by being ourselves, allowing other people to be themselves, and enjoying the gift of life. This is not a time to fear and it’s not a time to hide. It is a time to sing and a time to dance.

That’s not something I am capable of doing.” I make my voice gentle, and I stroke a wet lock of hair from her face and tuck it behind her ear. She stares up at me, eyes shining. So beautiful. My precious, lovely Toy. “I don’t want to lie to you again, and to say that I was sorry would be a lie. Being sorry would require a conscience, and I’m not wired that way. In my world, I define right and wrong. For me to apologize would mean that I was saying I thought what I did was…bad. You want me to be honest with you? I’m not sorry. What is right is what benefits me. End of story. But I am saying that I should not have gone so far when I punished you. And we’re going to have to work out a new set of rules and a new way to get along. Because I’m not going to lose you.” “Why?” she demands despairingly, her face twisting with anguish. “I just want to be free. I hate it here. I hate you, and if I could kill you, I would. I will keep trying to kill you, myself, and Elizabeth, until I succeed. Do you not understand that?” “I do. And all I can do is watch you day and night so I can protect you from yourself,

When best-selling author and spiritual teacher Iyanla Vanzant joined me on the show, I told her that I keep the lesson in forgiveness she shared with me in a little book of quotes I’ve collected over the years: “You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex, but eventually it will ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them.” This speaks so clearly to me. Pushing against the need to forgive is like spreading poison in your veins. Surrender to the hurt, loss, resentment, and disappointment. Accept the truth. It did happen and now it’s done. Make a decision to meet the pain as it rises within you and allow it to pass right through. Give yourself permission to let go of the past and step out of your history, into the now. Forgive, and set yourself free. —Oprah

We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we're so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they're not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. ... Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute.

It must be nice to sit back in your study and look at your Thomas Jefferson biographies and think to yourself, 'thank God we're finally killing this big government leviathan" without having to reconcile the fact that the kill off isn't elevating you, the common man, to new autonomy. It's facilitating the enshrinement of extremely wealthy jerk off ideologues who see the world as something to be sold off to the highest bidder. Big gub'ment in the hands of presumptuous elites? No thanks. The world turned into a regulation free marketplace with no avenue for recourse against the profit-at-any-cost set? Double no thanks.

Lilith is the Wild Woman within every woman who would rather become notorious than be refrained from bathing in the sea, howling at the moon, dancing in the forest, and making love to life itself. Lilith knows that it is only through setting your boundaries that you can set yourself free. She knows the price both the Goddess and Her daughters pay to honor their ways, for She is not the only one to suffer condemnation by those who fear feminine power. Like Her, they defamed Her sisters too: magical Hecate became the baby-killing hag and wicked witch, and mystical Mary Magdalene was turned into the sinful whore. Know this: there is nothing more threatening to those enslaved by their fears than someone who dares to live freely. And live freely you must. As a bird-snake Goddess who dwells in the dark depths of your holy yoni and crown, Lilith compels you to harness your untapped life-force energy to do all that you wish to do without explanation or apology. Far from being the deceptive serpent, Lilith is the wise liberator. And She is on Eve’s side. Of course She wants her (and everyone) to “be like God,” for She knows that we are the embodiment of the Divine. She wants to free Eve and every woman (and man) from the illusion of the perfect life that comes at the price of blind obedience. She invites us to bite into the forbidden fruit of knowledge so that we may be free to think for ourselves and decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. She knows this comes with responsibility and consequence, and She emboldens you to take it on. Yes, Lilith wants you to be God-like, to have Divine authority and will in your own life. She calls you to leap boldly forward as you take the inspired action you need to take to live your most physically- and spiritually-free life. Those who live freely will join you. Those who don’t will no longer have the power to hold you back.

No matter what you do for a living or who you think you work for, you only work for one person, YOURSELF!. It makes no difference if you work part time, have a salaried position, are a top executive of a corporation or run your own business. You are selling your existence at a set price. Your career goal in life should be based on doing work that you’re passionate about, while saving your time and increasing your profit. This is your life. You have the same existence in this life as any world leader, corporate executive or celebrity. You have your own free will to make decisions to get you exactly where you want to go. There are opportunities around every corner. Go find them!

There is an alternative approach to being wrong as fast as you can. It is the notion that if you carefully think everything through, if you are meticulous and plan well and consider all possible outcomes, you are more likely to create a lasting product. But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them—if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line—well, you’re deluding yourself. For one thing, it’s easier to plan derivative work—things that copy or repeat something already out there. So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal. Moreover, you cannot plan your way out of problems. While planning is very important, and we do a lot of it, there is only so much you can control in a creative environment. In general, I have found that people who pour their energy into thinking about an approach and insisting that it is too early to act are wrong just as often as people who dive in and work quickly. The overplanners just take longer to be wrong (and, when things inevitably go awry, are more crushed by the feeling that they have failed). There’s a corollary to this, as well: The more time you spend mapping out an approach, the more likely you are to get attached to it. The nonworking idea gets worn into your brain, like a rut in the mud. It can be difficult to get free of it and head in a different direction. Which, more often than not, is exactly what you must do.

He smiled and pulled the ugly white fichu from her neck. She blinked and looked down at the simple, square neckline of her bodice as if she'd never seen it. Perhaps she hadn't. Perhaps she dressed in the dark like a nun. "What are you doing?" He sighed. "I confess, I find your naïveté perplexing. How have you arrived at the advanced age of six and twenty without having anyone attempt seduction upon yourself? I'm of two minds on the matter: One, utter astonishment at my sex and their deaf disregard for your siren call. Two, glee at the thought that your innocence might signal that you are indeed innocent. Why this should excite me so, I don't know- virginity has never before been a particular whim of mine. I think perhaps it's the setting. Who knows how many virgins were deflowered here by my lusty ancestors? Or," he said as he deftly unpinned and tossed aside her apron, "maybe it's simply you." "I don't..." Her words trailed off and then, interestingly, she blushed a deep rose. Well. That question settled, then. His little maiden was really a maiden. "What?" "I think it's you," he confided, pulling the strings tying her hideous mobcap beneath her chin. She made a wild grab for it, but he was faster, snatching the bloody thing off- finally, and with a great deal of satisfaction. She might've deprived him of a wife that it'd taken him half a year and a rather large sum of money to entangle, but by God, he'd taken off her awful cap. And underneath... "Oh, Séraphine," he breathed, enchanted, for her hair was as black as coal, as black as night, as black as his own soul, save for one white streak just over her left eye. But she'd twisted and braided and tortured the strands, binding them tight to her head, and his fingers itched to let them free. "Don't!" she said, as if she knew what he wanted, her hands flying up to cover her hair. He batted them aside, laughing, pulling a pin here, a pin there, dropping them carelessly to the carpet as she squealed like a little girl and backed away from him, trying frantically to ward off his fingers. He might've taken pity on her had he not just spent an hour on a freezing moor, wondering if he was going to find her dead, neck broken, at the bottom of a hill. Her hair came down all at once, a tumbling mass, tousled and heavy and nearly down to her waist. "Wonderful," he murmured, taking it in both hands and lifting it.

Before you die, give some serious thought to vowing holy disobedience whenever necessary. Discerning and knowing why one would choose to disobey is by far the most serious and mysterious part of listening to the voice of the Gods. It's also a recurring theme throughout the Bible. Biblical stories tell of four extraordinary circumstances that call for divinely inspired disobedience: the situation is unbearable and survival is at stake; the call to disobey promises deliverance; acts of disobedience would relieve oppression; and last but not least, swift, immediate divine intervention is not at all likely. The only divine reasons for disobedience are those that come from God and contain moral imperatives to set yourself and others free... Given the sad shape of authority in this world, it's not a bad practice for everyone to vow before they die.

There was one monk who never spoke up. His name was Vappa, and he seemed the most insecure about Gautama coming back to life. When he was taken aside and told that he would be enlightened, Vappa greeted the news with doubt. “If what you tell me is true, I would feel something, and I don’t,” he said. “When you dig a well, there is no sign of water until you reach it, only rocks and dirt to move out of the way. You have removed enough; soon the pure water will flow,” said Buddha. But instead of being reassured, Vappa threw himself on the ground, weeping and grasping Buddha’s feet. “It will never happen,” he moaned. “Don’t fill me with false hope.” “I’m not offering hope,” said Buddha. “Your karma brought you to me, along with the other four. I can see that you will soon be awake.” “Then why do I have so many impure thoughts?” asked Vappa, who was prickly and prone to outbursts of rage, so much so that the other monks were intimidated by him. “Don’t trust your thoughts,” said Buddha. “You can’t think yourself awake.” “I have stolen food when I was famished, and there were times when I stole away from my brothers and went to women,” said Vappa. “Don’t trust your actions. They belong to the body,” said Buddha. “Your body can’t wake you up.” Vappa remained miserable, his expression hardening the more Buddha spoke. “I should go away from here. You say there is no war between good and evil, but I feel it inside. I feel how good you are, and it only makes me feel worse.” Vappa’s anguish was so genuine that Buddha felt a twinge of temptation. He could reach out and take Vappa’s guilt from his shoulders with a touch of the hand. But making Vappa happy wasn’t the same as setting him free, and Buddha knew he couldn’t touch every person on earth. He said, “I can see that you are at war inside, Vappa. You must believe me when I say that you’ll never win.” Vappa hung his head lower. “I know that. So I must go?” “No, you misunderstand me,” Buddha said gently. “No one has ever won the war. Good opposes evil the way the summer sun opposes winter cold, the way light opposes darkness. They are built into the eternal scheme of Nature.” “But you won. You are good; I feel it,” said Vappa. “What you feel is the being I have inside, just as you have it,” said Buddha. “I did not conquer evil or embrace good. I detached myself from both.” “How?” “It wasn’t difficult. Once I admitted to myself that I would never become completely good or free from sin, something changed inside. I was no longer distracted by the war; my attention could go somewhere else. It went beyond my body, and I saw who I really am. I am not a warrior. I am not a prisoner of desire. Those things come and go. I asked myself: Who is watching the war? Who do I return to when pain is over, or when pleasure is over? Who is content simply to be? You too have felt the peace of simply being. Wake up to that, and you will join me in being free.” This lesson had an immense effect on Vappa, who made it his mission for the rest of his life to seek out the most miserable and hopeless people in society. He was convinced that Buddha had revealed a truth that every person could recognize: suffering is a fixed part of life. Fleeing from pain and running toward pleasure would never change that fact. Yet most people spent their whole lives avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. To them, this was only natural, but in reality they were becoming deeply involved in a war they could never win.

January 25th THE ONLY PRIZE “What’s left to be prized? This, I think—to limit our action or inaction to only what’s in keeping with the needs of our own preparation . . . it’s what the exertions of education and teaching are all about—here is the thing to be prized! If you hold this firmly, you’ll stop trying to get yourself all the other things. . . . If you don’t, you won’t be free, self-sufficient, or liberated from passion, but necessarily full of envy, jealousy, and suspicion for any who have the power to take them, and you’ll plot against those who do have what you prize. . . . But by having some self-respect for your own mind and prizing it, you will please yourself and be in better harmony with your fellow human beings, and more in tune with the gods—praising everything they have set in order and allotted you.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 6.16.2b–4a

When I Find It Difficult to Trust Him Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. PROVERBS 3:5 HAS YOUR HUSBAND ever done something you feel has violated your trust in him? It doesn’t have to be anything as terrible as infidelity. It could be financial irresponsibility, or some kind of lie or deception, or hurtful treatment of you, or a confidence he shared with someone else. Whatever it is, you can find yourself wary—always suspecting he may do the same thing again. Yet there must be trust in your marriage relationship or you can never move forward. Living in such a close relationship without trust is not living at all. It’s remarkably sad to not be able to trust the one we are supposed to trust the most. If this has happened to you, it must be remedied, rectified, and resolved. Only God can truly restore the kind of trust you need to have. If your husband has done something to lose your trust, pray that God will lead him to complete repentance. Pray also that your heart will be willing to forgive him. This can be especially hard if he is a repeat offender, but it is not too hard for God to work forgiveness in your heart if you are willing. Ask God to set you free of all anger, frustration, disappointment, fear, and resentment. The most important thing to do after you have prayed for your husband’s repentance and your forgiveness is to pray you will trust God to work a miracle in your husband’s heart and yours as well. You have to first decide that You will trust God with all your heart and not lean on your own understanding. Then He will enable you to trust your husband again. My Prayer to God LORD, I confess any time when I have lost faith in my husband and don’t have full trust in him. I know that is not the way You want me to live. Help us both to have faith in each other and not live in constant distrust, bracing ourselves for what violation of trust is going to happen next. Where my distrust is unfounded, I pray You would help me to see that and enable me to step out in trust of him again. Where my distrust is legitimate because he has truly violated that trust, I ask for a miracle of restoration. First of all, I pray You would lead my husband to total repentance. Bring him to his knees before You in confession so he can be restored. I pray he will be sincerely apologetic to me as well. Second, help me to forgive him so completely that I can trust him fully without reservation again. And last, but most important of all, help me to trust You with all my heart to rectify this situation. Work powerfully in my husband to make him trustworthy, and do a work in me to make me trusting. Help me to not depend on my own reasoning, but rather to depend on Your ability to transform us both. In Jesus’ name I pray.

First, of course, the work ethic... This is one of those magician's tricks in which all our attention is focused on one hand while the other hand does the manipulating. Implicit in the work ethic are the ideas (1) that because one must work to acquire wealth, work equals wealth, and (2) that that is the whole equation. With these go the corollaries that anyone who has wealth must have earned it by hard work and is, therefore, beyond criticism; that anyone who doesn't have it deserves to suffer-- thus penalizing any who do not work for money; and (since you have a right to all you earn) that the only real work is for one's self; and finally, that any limit set to the amount of wealth an individual may acquire is a satanic device to deprive men of their free agency-- thus making mockery of the Council of Heaven... In Zion you labor, to be sure, but not for money, and not for yourself, which is the exact opposite of our present version of the work ethic.

Couldn't I come along with you? I've been trapped inside for days now and I need some sunshine and exercise. If you're really busy today, maybe I could hhelp. It's not as if I'm a greenhorn who'd get in your way." "This isn't a good idea, Freckles, and you know it." The feisty redhead grinned. "I admit I'm somewhat ignorant on the subject, but I've never heard of doing "it" on the back of a horse." A roguish grin dangled from the corner of his mouth. "Sweetheart, you'd be surprised where...Never mind." Though he'd tried to sound gruff, Willow detected a slight wavering in his determination. "I'll promise not to attack your body, if that's what you're worried about." She started laughing. Moving closer, she backed him against the door. Then tilting her head, she hit him full force with her big blue-green sparklers. Her lips parted in a very seductive, very naughty smile. "Please, just a short ride?" She toyed with the edge of his black leather vest, the backs of her fingers sliding up and down his chest. Rider sucked in a gulp of air. "Dammit, woman,what's Mrs. Brigham been teaching you? Stop that!" He batted her hand away, laughing despite himself. He was beaten and he knew it. "Well?" She smiled slyly. He grasped her arms and set her away to a safer distance. "All right, all right. I give up. I'll take you for a ride." When her face lit up,he raised a cautioning finger and hastened to add, "On one condition. You have to keep yours hands to yourself. No touching!" "Yes! I promise!" Willow threw herself into his arms and pulled his face close for a brisk buss on the cheek. Then she sprang free and skipped past him to the door. "I kow, no touching. That was just a thank you. Hurry up, I'm all ready to go." Following in her wake, Rider groaned, "Yeah,so am I-in more ways than one." "What did you say?" she called back. "I said you were a little flirt!" She gave him an innocent smile over her shoulder and sprinted off to saddle Sugar.

Why don't you ask me up for a drink?" "A drink? There's not much of a variety, but you're welcome." "It's nice to be asked occasionally." Before he could tuck his hand safely in his pocket, she took it, threaded their fingers together. "You have free time now and again yourself," she said easily. "I wonder if you've heard of the concept of dates. Dinner, movies, drives?" "I've some experience with them," He glanced at his pickup as they turned his quarters. "It you've a yen for a drive, you can climb up into the lorry, but I'd need to shovel it out first." She huffed out a breath. "That, Donnelly, wasn't the most romantic of invitations." "Secondhand lorries aren't particularly romantic, and I've forgotten where I parked my glass coach." "If that's another princess crack-" She broke off,set her teeth. Patience, she reminded herself. She wasn't going to spoil things with an argument. "Never mind.We'll forget the drive." She opened the door herself. "And move straight to dinner.

Forgiveness takes a great deal of personal strength. A weak person cannot forgive, and their actions will keep them captive and fester like an infected wound,” Friedrich said. Cinderella stared at him. “What?” “Of everyone in this rotten country, you, Cinderella, are the nearest to grasping forgiveness. You are so close to bridging the gap between us—all of us. Hate cannot drive out hate. As long as those from Trieux hate those from Erlauf, our countries will be in an eternal struggle. But if you can forgive us, you will set not only yourself free, but your countrymen as well. I want you to have the courage to forgive. I want you to be the person to save our countries.” “Friedrich, I am not capable of saving anyone. I can’t even save my own servants. I’m about to lose my lands. I don’t know what hope you see in me, but I am not capable of it.” “You are much stronger than you know,” he said, stepping closer. “You can conquer a country with forgiveness.” He lowered his head towards Cinderella. When

The limits of your life are just creations of your own self; and in a fantasy world, even the lies become true... Only you can push your limits! Only you know what you think or imagine those limits are. No one can get inside your head to see where you've set your barriers. Analyze your internal conversation: Do you use limiting thoughts? When you think of a dream, do you kill it immediately? Is your mind set in the “tell me all the reasons why I CAN NOT” mode? If so, prepare to change your programming, and accept that THERE ARE NO LIMITS TO WHAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE. ONLY THOSE YOU IMPOSE YOURSELF… To limit yourself only builds walls and barriers where there should be none! Where there are none! The more open and barrier-free your mind is, the greater the chance of achieving what you want. So, test your supposed limits over and over and over again! Tools, people, resources… Everything will come your way, once you start trying, challenging and testing your self-imposed limits. Replace those negative limiting thoughts with positive thoughts of possibility, believe and faith. Turn on the light of your mind, and kill the darkness!

Lies always hurt. Shirley made it clear to me that she would accept nothing but 100 percent honesty in our relationship. That slap across the face was an eye-opener. It made me feel that I didn’t need to sneak around behind her back. It gave me the freedom for the first time in my life to let go of my secrets. It’s a lesson that I continue to learn--if you lie, no matter how good your intentions, you carry the lie with you. It weighs you down, it holds you back, and you start to lose respect for yourself. The biggest lies of all are those we tell ourselves. Every time you say, “I can’t do that,” “I don’t have what it takes,” “It’s too late,” or “I’m not good enough,” you’re keeping yourself from living your truth. This is always a tough one for me, and something I continually have to work on. Why do we lie to ourselves? Because a lie feels easy and comfortable. It keeps fear and pain away; it shields you from the unknown. But you deserve more. You deserve not to settle, not to be distracted, and not to deny yourself your highest potential. As the saying goes, “The truth shall set you free.” Be honest about what you want, what you need, and what you’re capable of. Tune out the negative voices in your head that hold you back. Change your mind, change yourself.

A person is never the same person for very long. You can carry memories in your soul, for example, of childhood friendships, but agonize over the fact that they are only memories because those friends are not the same people right now. This kind of experiential interaction with memories and the people attached to our memories, is a source of anguish in all of our lives. There is a type of acceptance and understanding that needs to be applied here: accepting that the scenes of life change as time goes by, and understanding that the people occupying the scenes of your life were in fact authentic. But right now, they are authentically who they are NOW, which is a different person. They're not the same person today. But who they used to be was also who they truly were at that time. We need to release people from the chains of our memories and not demand explanations of them. We must allow them the freedom to morph, to grow, into all the persons they were meant to become. But then we also have to afford ourselves this, in that very same breath. And this is why, sometimes marriages need to be over, sometimes friendships need to be over, sometimes relationships need to come to an end. Because you need to set yourself, and other people, free from the skins they used to wear.

This revolution in the role of government has been accompanied, and largely produced, by an achievement in public persuasion that must have few rivals. Ask yourself what products are currently least satisfactory and have shown the least improvement over time. Postal service, elementary and secondary schooling, railroad passenger transport would surely be high on the list. Ask yourself which products are most satisfactory and have improved the most. Household appliances, television and radio sets, hi-fi equipment, computers, and, we would add, supermarkets and shopping centers would surely come high on that list. The shoddy products are all produced by government or government-regulated industries. The outstanding products are all produced by private enterprise with little or no government involvement. Yet the public—or a large part of it—has been persuaded that private enterprises produce shoddy products, that we need ever vigilant government employees to keep business from foisting off unsafe, meretricious products at outrageous prices on ignorant, unsuspecting, vulnerable customers. That public relations campaign has succeeded so well that we are in the process of turning over to the kind of people who bring us our postal service the far more critical task of producing and distributing energy.

Despite her grave concern over her uncle, Elizabeth chuckled inwardly as she introduced Duncan. Everyone exhibited the same stunned reaction she had when she’d discovered Ian Thornton’s uncle was a cleric. Her uncle gaped, Alex stared, and the dowager duchess glowered at Ian in disbelief as Duncan politely bent over her hand. “Am I to understand, Kensington,” she demanded of Ian, “that you are related to a man of the cloth?” Ian’s reply was a mocking bow and a sardonic lift of his brows, but Duncan, who was desperate to put a light face on things, tried ineffectually to joke about it. “The news always has a peculiar effect on people,” he told her. “One needn’t think too hard to discover why,” she replied gruffly. Ian opened his mouth to give the outrageous harridan a richly deserved setdown, but Julius Cameron’s presence was worrying him; a moment later it was infuriating him as the man strode to the center of the room and said in a bluff voice, “Now that we’re all together, there’s no reason to dissemble. Bentner, being champagne. Elizabeth, congratulations. I trust you’ll conduct yourself properly as a wife and not spend the man out of what money he has left.” In the deafening silence no one moved, except it seemed to Elizabeth that the entire room was beginning to move. “What?” she breathed finally. “You’re betrothed.” Anger rose up like flames licking inside her, spreading up her limbs. “Really?” she said in a voice of deadly calm, thinking of Sir Francis and John Marchman. “To whom?” To her disbelief, Uncle Julius turned expectantly to Ian, who was looking at him with murder in his eyes. “To me,” he clipped, his icy gaze still on her uncle. “It’s final,” Julius warned her, and then, because he assumed she’d be as pleased as he to discover she had monetary value, he added, “He paid a fortune for the privilege. I didn’t have to give him a shilling.” Elizabeth, who had no idea the two men had ever met before, looked at Ian in wild confusion and mounting anger. “What does he mean?” she demanded in a strangled whisper. “He means,” Ian began tautly, unable to believe all his romantic plans were being demolished, “we are betrothed. The papers have been signed.” “Why, you-you arrogant, overbearing”-She choked back the tears that were cutting off her voice-“you couldn’t even be bothered to ask me?” Dragging his gaze from his prey with an effort, Ian turned to Elizabeth, and his heart wrenched at the way she was looking at him. “Why don’t we go somewhere private where we can discuss this?” he said gently, walking forward and taking her elbow. She twisted free, scorched by his touch. “Oh, no!” she exploded, her body shaking with wrath. “Why guard my sensibilities now? You’ve made a laughingstock of me since the day I set eyes on you. Why stop now?

Stopping just short of her mouth, he rasped, “Are you still engaged to Blakeborough?” Her gorgeous eyes narrowed. “My engagement didn’t stop you last night.” “It would now.” A coy smile broke over her lips, and she tightened her grip on his neck. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing I am not.” With a growl of triumph, he kissed her once more. She was here. She was his. Nothing else mattered. Still kissing her, he jerked both sets of curtains closed. Then he tugged her onto his lap and began to tear at the fastenings of her pelisse-dress. He wanted to touch her, taste her…be inside her. He could think of naught else. “I take it that you mean to seduce me,” she murmured between kisses. “Yes.” Seduce her and marry her. And then seduce her again, as often as he could. “Well then, carry on.” So he did. He unfastened her clothes just enough to bare her breasts, then seized one in his mouth. God, she was perfect. His perfect jewel. She buried her hands in his hair to pull her into him, sighing and moaning as if she would die if he didn’t make love to her. Which was exactly how he felt. Working his hand up beneath her skirts and into the slit in her drawers, he found her so wet and hot that he nearly came right there. He slipped a finger inside her silky sweetness, and she gasped, then began to tug at his trouser buttons. “You’re all I want, Jane.” As he stroked her, he used his other hand to brush hers away so he could unfasten his own trouser buttons. “The only woman I ever cared about.” “You’re the only man Iever cared about.” She undulated against his fingers, begging for him with her body. “Why do you think…I waited for you so long?” “Not long enough, apparently,” he muttered, “or you wouldn’t have gotten yourself engaged to Blakeborough.” He tugged at her nipple with his teeth, then relished her cry of pleasure. “I only…did it because I was…tired of waiting.” She arched against his mouth. “Because you clearly weren’t…coming back for me.” “I was sure you hated me.” At last he got his trousers open. “You acted like you hated me still.” “I did.” Her breath was unsteady. “But only because…you tore us apart.” He shifted her to sit astride him. “And now?” Flashing him a provocative smile he would never have dreamed she had in her repertoire, she unbuttoned his drawers. “Do I look like I hate you?” His cock, so hard he thought it might erupt right there and embarrass him, sprang free. “You look like…like…” He paused to take in her lovely face with its flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, and lush lips. Then he swept his gaze down to her breasts with their brazen tips, displayed so enticingly above the boned corset and her undone shift. He then dropped his eyes to the smooth thighs emerging from beneath her bunched-up skirts. Shoving the fabric higher, he exposed her dewy thatch of curls, and a shudder of anticipation shook him. “You look like an angel.” She uttered a breathy laugh. “A wanton, more like.” Taking his cock in her hand, she stroked it so wonderfully that he groaned. “Would an angel do this?

Fully His I have been forgiven and set free from my sins. There was a boy who lived in a town on the seaside. He was a skilled and clever carver, and he carved himself a little wooden boat. When he put sails on it, it really sailed. One day, he took it down to the shore and was sailing it at the edge of the sea, but the tide changed and carried his boat out to sea, and he could not recover it. So, he went home without his boat. With the next change of the wind and tide, the boat came back again. A man walking along the seashore found the boat, picked it up, and saw it was a beautiful piece of work. He took it to a local shop and sold it. The shop owner cleaned it up and put it on display in his shop window with a price of thirty-five dollars. Some while later, the boy walked past the shop, looked in the window, and saw his boat with a price of thirty-five dollars. He knew, however, that he had no way to prove that it was his boat. If he wanted his boat, there was only one thing he could do: buy it back. He set to work, taking any job he could to earn the money to buy his boat. Once he earned the money, he walked into the shop and said, “I want to buy that boat.” He paid the money, and, when he got the boat in his hands, he walked outside and stopped on the sidewalk. He held the boat to his chest and said, “Now you’re mine. I made you and I bought you.” That is redemption. First, the Lord made us, but we were in Satan’s slave market. Then, He bought us. We are doubly His. Can you see how valuable you are to the Lord? Think of yourself as that boat for a moment. You may feel so inadequate, so worthless. You wonder whether God ever really cares. Just try to believe that you are that boat in the Lord’s arms and He is saying to you, “Now you’re Mine. I made you and I bought you. I own you; you’re fully Mine.”     Thank You,

Jesus Christ did not set a limit for Himself, neither did He follow all His own maxims to the letter. The Holy Spirit ever inspired His holy soul and, being entirely abandoned to its every breath, it had no need to consult the moment that had passed, to know how to act in that which was coming. The breath of grace shaped every moment according to the eternal truths subsisting in the invisible and unfathomable wisdom of the Blessed Trinity. The soul of Jesus Christ received these directions at every moment, and acted upon them externally. The Gospel shows in the life of Jesus Christ a succession of these truths; and this same Jesus who lives and works always, continues to live and work in the souls of His saints. If you would live according to the Gospel, abandon yourself simply and entirely to the action of God. Jesus Christ is its supreme mouthpiece. “He was yesterday, is to-day, and will be for ever.” (Hebr. xiii, 8); continuing, not recommencing His life. What He has done is finished; what remains to be done is being carried on at every moment. Each saint receives a share in this divine life, and in each, Jesus Christ is different, although the same in Himself. The life of each saint is the life of Jesus Christ; it is a new gospel. The cheeks of the spouse are compared to beds of flowers, to gardens filled with fragrant blossoms. The divine action is the gardener, admirably arranging the flower beds. This garden resembles no other, for among all the flowers there are no two alike, or that can be described as being of the same species, except in the fidelity with which they respond to the action of the Creator, in leaving Him free to do as He pleases, and, on their side, obeying the laws imposed on them by their nature. Let God act, and let us do what He requires of us; this is the Gospel; this is the general Scripture, and the common law.

Because,' he said, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you, especially when you are near me, as now; it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situation in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and the nI've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.' 'That I never would, sir; you know -,' impossible to proceed. [...] The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway and asserting a right to predominate - to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes, and to speak. 'I grieve to leave Thornfield; I love Thornfield; I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright, and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in, with an origin, a vigorous, and expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you forever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.' 'Where do you see the necessity?' he asked, suddenly. 'Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.' 'In what shape?' 'In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman, your bride.' 'My bride! What bride? I have no bride!' 'But you will have.' 'Yes; I will! I will!' He set his teeth. 'Then I must go; you have said it yourself.' 'No; you must stay! I swear it, and the oath shall be kept.' 'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. 'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automation? a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that addresses your spirits; just as if both had passed through the grace, and we stood at God's feel, equal - as we are!' 'As we are!' repeated Mr. Rochester - 'so,' he added, including me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips; 'so, Jane!' 'Yes, so, sir,' I rejoined; 'and yet not so; for you are a married man, or as good as a married man, and we'd to one inferior to you - to one with whom you have no sympathy - whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union; therefore I am better than you - let me go!' 'Where, Jane? to Ireland?' 'Yes - to Ireland. I have spoke my mind, and can go anywhere now.' 'Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird that is tending its own plumage in its desperation.' 'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.' Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him. 'And your will shall decide your destiny,' he said; 'I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.' 'You play a farce, which I merely taught at.' 'I ask you to pass through life at my side - to be my second self, and best earthly companion.' [...] 'Do you doubt me, Jane?' 'Entirely.' 'You have no faith in me?' 'Not a whit.

My wife and I have had the joy of working with thousands of college students and have engaged in countless conversations with them about what they’re going to do as they approach graduation. Up to that point, they had felt safe and secure knowing they were simply coming back to campus for another year of school. But now that they were being kicked out of the nest, they felt a strong need to pray, get counsel, pursue options, and make decisions. As I chat with these twenty-one to twenty-five-year olds, I love to pose an unusual question. “If you could do anything with your life, what would you want to do? Just for a moment, free your mind from school loans or parents’ wishes or boyfriend pressure. Put no constraints or parameters on it. Write down what you would love to do with your life if you got to choose.” There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those! Most have never allowed their mind or heart to think that broadly or freely. They’ve been conditioned to operate under some set of exterior expectations or self-imposed limitations. A few have sat there so long staring at that blank sheet, I thought they might pass out! They finally get an inspirational thought, and begin enthusiastically scribbling something. They finish with a smile, pass it over to me, and I take a look. Nine out of ten times I pass it back to them, look deep into their eyes and quietly say, “Go do this.” There is a reason they feel so excited about the specific direction, cause, or vocation they wrote down. It’s because God is the One who put it in their heart. “Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). “Are you delighting yourself in the Lord?” I ask the graduating senior. “I am certainly seeking to,” they reply. “Well then,” I respond, “you’ve just written down the desires of your heart. So, go for it.” Too simplistic or idealistic? I probably do have a more “wide-open” view of helping a person discover God’s direction for their life, but I believe this exercise strikes at the core of understanding what each of us were designed to do.

When someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my head,” he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues. You have probably come across “mad” people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that’s not much different from what you and all other “normal” people do, except that you don’t do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn’t necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.” Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease. The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence. When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. 2Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified [1] by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. 7You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8This persuasion is not from him who calls you. 9A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. 11But if I, brothers, [2] still preach [3] circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed. 12I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves! 13For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. Keep in Step with the Spirit 16But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21envy, [4] drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Bear One Another’s Burdens

FREEING YOURSELF FROM YOUR MIND What exactly do you mean by “watching the thinker”? When someone goes to the doctor and says, “I hear a voice in my head,” he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way, virtually everyone hears a voice, or several voices, in their head all the time: the involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues. You have probably come across “mad” people in the street incessantly talking or muttering to themselves. Well, that’s not much different from what you and all other “normal” people do, except that you don’t do it out loud. The voice comments, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn’t necessarily relevant to the situation you find yourself in at the time; it may be reviving the recent or distant past or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or “mental movies.” Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person’s own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease. The good news is that you can free yourself from your mind. This is the only true liberation. You can take the first step right now. Start listening to the voice in your head as often as you can. Pay particular attention to any repetitive thought patterns, those old gramophone records that have been playing in your head perhaps for many years. This is what I mean by “watching the thinker,” which is another way of saying: listen to the voice in your head, be there as the witnessing presence. When you listen to that voice, listen to it impartially. That is to say, do not judge. Do not judge or condemn what you hear, for doing so would mean that the same voice has come in again through the back door. You’ll soon realize: there is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching it. This I am realization, this sense of your own presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond the mind.

First problem: To produce wealth. Second problem: To share it. The first problem contains the question of labor. The second contains the question of salary. In the first problem the employment of forces is in question. In the second, the distribution of enjoyment. From the proper employment of forces results public power. From a good distribution of enjoyments results individual happiness. By a good distribution, not an equal but an equitable distribution must be understood. From these two things combined, the public power without, individual happiness within, results social prosperity. Social prosperity means the man happy, the citizen free, the nation great. England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth admirably, she divides it badly. This solution which is complete on one side only leads her fatally to two extremes: monstrous opulence, monstrous wretchedness. All enjoyments for some, all privations for the rest, that is to say, for the people; privilege, exception, monopoly, feudalism, born from toil itself. A false and dangerous situation, which sates public power or private misery, which sets the roots of the State in the sufferings of the individual. A badly constituted grandeur in which are combined all the material elements and into which no moral element enters. Communism and agrarian law think that they solve the second problem. They are mistaken. Their division kills production. Equal partition abolishes emulation; and consequently labor. It is a partition made by the butcher, which kills that which it divides. It is therefore impossible to pause over these pretended solutions. Slaying wealth is not the same thing as dividing it. The two problems require to be solved together, to be well solved. The two problems must be combined and made but one. …Solve the two problems, encourage the wealthy, and protect the poor, suppress misery, put an end to the unjust farming out of the feeble by the strong, put a bridle on the iniquitous jealousy of the man who is making his way against the man who has reached the goal, adjust, mathematically and fraternally, salary to labor, mingle gratuitous and compulsory education with the growth of childhood, and make of science the base of manliness, develop minds while keeping arms busy, be at one and the same time a powerful people and a family of happy men, render property democratic, not by abolishing it, but by making it universal, so that every citizen, without exception, may be a proprietor, an easier matter than is generally supposed; in two words, learn how to produce wealth and how to distribute it, and you will have at once moral and material greatness; and you will be worthy to call yourself France.

What are we doing here?” Burnes said, almost to himself. “That, Burnes, I cannot tell you. I do not know why anyone leaves his house, to travel ten thousand miles, when all the poetry that has ever been written, all the poetry since the beginning of the world all tells us the single lesson that we would be happiest in our own homes, since that is where happiness is born, and where it lives. What poetry cannot answer is the question that follows from that, whether we men actually want to be happy, or whether we would prefer to be restless. In your case—in the English, excuse me, the British case—I would say that when you have gone home, when you are all old and thinking about what this adventure, this whole centuries-long adventure meant, what it meant to you . . . well, things do not always mean something, but perhaps your adventure, perhaps it meant something. You will sit at home and look into your fires and draw your Cashmire shawls about you, and think that you came here for one reason. Of course, now, you tell yourself all sorts of fairy stories—you are here to sell us your wonderful English goods, you want to set us free, you want us to grow up, you want to educate us and make us worship three gods instead of forty thousand—” “Only one God.” “I stand corrected, Burnes-ji, and I am sure your one God is much more sensible than ours, who are quaint, who have the heads of elephants and monkeys and have blue skin. They are all very good reasons to tell yourself at the time, but they are not, at the bottom, the real reason you came here. You came here not to make yourselves rich, not to make us better and Christian and clean and dressed in Bradford cotton. You believe all this, I know. But when you are old and tired and sleeping in a thousand years’ time, you will start to realize that you came here and took possession of what was not yours for one reason. To surrender it, to give it up. That is the only reason. Do you not know your Shakespeare, Burnes? Have you never seen The Tempest in your London theatres? Do you not think it strange that, so very long ago, before your English kings owned anything at all, your English poet was dreaming of giving it all up, of surrendering what was not yet yours? Of what never would truly be yours? You are not adventurers; you are all Prosperos, waiting for the day you can give it up, drown your book, and return nobly. We endure your presence, because we see that when you look at us, you know that we will take it all back one day. And you want us to. That desire is so strong in you, it makes you build an empire; because if you never had an empire, you would not have one so nobly to surrender. That, Burnes, is what you are doing here. You asked me, and you did not think that I had an answer. But I have an answer, and that is what you are doing here. And now you are tired, and I shall leave you.

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."  13 In that He says, "A new covenant," He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. (NKJV)        Covenant determines how God relates to people.        The Old (Law) Covenant: God had to relate to sinful people as a Holy Righteous God would/had to. Do bad get cursed, do good get blessed.        The New (Grace) Covenant: God relates to sinful people through Jesus, reconciling them to Himself and no longer relating to them through the Law since Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the law on the behalf of people. Heb 7:18-19              The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless 19 (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God. (NIV)        The Law Covenant was weak and useless in providing people with right-standing before God because nobody could ever keep it perfectly (Gal 3:10, James 2:10, James 4:17).        The better hope by which we draw near to God is not our own righteousness or holiness, but through Jesus Christ’s free gift of righteousness. (Eph 2:8-9, Rom 3:20-26)        Because of this Jesus qualifies you to do the same works and greater because you have the same right-standing before God as Jesus has. (John 14:12). Gal 3:11-14              Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith."  12 The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, "The man who does these things will live by them."  13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."  14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. (NIV)        NO ONE is justified by the law. No one can please God by keeping the law and living holy.        Righteousness (right standing before God) is attained by faith in Christ only.        The Law is not of faith which makes relating to God through it not pleasing to Him. (Heb 11:6)        Jesus became a curse for us, removing the right of the curse of the Law to come on us. (This doesn’t mean the curse doesn’t exist)        Living under the Law, trying to be justified by your own efforts to live holy and pleasing to God is A CURSE! No good will come from it.        In fact, you alienate yourself from the life of Christ by doing it. (Gal 5:1-5) 2 Cor 3:4-9              Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. 5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. 6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant- — not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7 Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, 8 will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? 9 If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! (NIV)        Law Covenant: Ministry of DEATH and CONDEMNATION.        Engraved on stone: 10 Commandments.        Grace Covenant: Ministry of LIFE and the SPIRIT.        Engraved on our hearts Rom 8:1              There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. (NKJV)

I don’t…believe you,” she lied, her blood running wild through her veins. His gleaming gaze impaled her. “Then believe this.” And suddenly his mouth was on hers. This was not what she’d set out to get from him. But oh, the joy of it. The heat of it. His mouth covered hers, seeking, coaxing. Without breaking the kiss, he pushed her back against the wall, and she grabbed for his shoulders, his surprisingly broad and muscular shoulders. As he sent her plummeting into unfamiliar territory, she held on for dear life. Time rewound to when they were in her uncle’s garden, sneaking a moment alone. But this time there was no hesitation, no fear of being caught. Glorying in that, she slid her hands about his neck to bring him closer. He groaned, and his kiss turned intimate. He used lips and tongue, delving inside her mouth in a tender exploration that stunned her. Enchanted her. Confused her. Something both sweet and alien pooled in her belly, a kind of yearning she’d never felt with Edwin. With any man but Dom. As if he sensed it, he pulled back to look at her, his eyes searching hers, full of surprise. “My God, Jane,” he said hoarsely, turning her name into a prayer. Or a curse? She had no time to figure out which before he clasped her head to hold her for another darkly ravishing kiss. Only this one was greedier, needier. His mouth consumed hers with all the boldness of Viking raiders of yore. His tongue drove repeatedly inside in a rhythm that made her feel all trembly and hot, and his thumbs caressed her throat, rousing the pulse there. Thank heaven there was a wall to hold her up, or she was quite sure she would dissolve into a puddle at his feet. Because after all these years apart, he was riding roughshod over her life again. And she was letting him. How could she not? His scent of leather and bergamot engulfed her, made her dizzy with the pleasure of it. He roused urges she’d never known she had, sparked fires in places she’d thought were frozen. Then his hands swept down her possessively as if to memorize her body…or mark it as belonging to him. Belonging to him. Oh, Lord! She shoved him away. How could she have fallen for his kisses after what he’d done? How could she have let him slip that far under her guard? Never again, curse him! Never! For a moment, he looked as stunned by what had flared between them as she. Then he reached for her, and she slipped from between him and the wall, panic rising in her chest. “You do not have the right to kiss me anymore,” she hissed. “I’m engaged, for pity’s sake!” As soon as her words registered, his eyes went cold. “It certainly took you long enough to remember it.” She gaped at him. “You have the audacity to…to…” She stabbed his shoulder with one finger. “You have no business criticizing me! You threw me away years ago, and now you want to just…just take me up again, as if nothing ever happened between us?” A shadow crossed his face. “I did not throw you away. You jilted me, remember?” That was the last straw. “Right. I jilted you.” Turning on her heel, she stalked back toward the road. “Just keep telling yourself that, since you’re obviously determined to believe your own fiction.” “Fiction?” He hurried after her. “What are you talking about?” “Oh, why can’t you just admit what you really did and be done with it?” Grabbing her by the arm, he forced her to stop just short of the street. He stared into her face, and she could see when awareness dawned in his eyes. “Good God. You know the truth. You know what really happened in the library that night.” “That you manufactured that dalliance between you and Nancy to force me into jilting you?” She snatched her arm free. “Yes, I know.” Then she strode out of the alley, leaving him to stew in his own juices.