Short Powerful Deep Quotes

When does real love begin? At first it was a fire, eclipses, short circuits, lightning and fireworks; the incense, hammocks, drugs, wines, perfumes; then spasm and honey, fever, fatigue, warmth, currents of liquid fire, feast and orgies; then dreams, visions, candlelight, flowers, pictures; then images out of the past, fairy tales, stories, then pages out of a book, a poem; then laughter, then chastity. At what moment does the knife wound sink so deep that the flesh begins to weep with love? At first power, power, then the wound, and love, and love and fears, and the loss of the self, and the gift, and slavery. At first I ruled, loved less; then more, then slavery. Slavery to his image, his odor, the craving, the hunger, the thirst, the obsession.

Short devotions are the bane of deep piety. Calmness, grasp, strength, are never the companions of hurry.

With a deep sigh, Lucius resumed pacing. "Honestly, I can't stand this going around anymore. The story is quite simple. You, Antanasia, are the last of a long line of powerful vampires. The Dragomirs. Vampire royalty." Now that made me laugh, a squeaky, kind of hysterical laugh. "Vampire royalty. Right." Yes. Royalty. And that is the last part of the story, which your parents still seem reluctant to relate." Lucius leaned over the table across from me, bracing his arms, staring me down. "You are a vampire princess—the heir to the Dragomir leadership. I am a vampire prince. The heir to an equally powerful clan, the Vladescus. More powerful, I would say, but that's not the point. We were pledged to each other in an engagement ceremony shortly after our births.

That's arrogance, Harry. " he said, gently. "On a level so deep, you don't even realize it exists. And do you know why it's there?" "No?" I asked. He smiled again. "Because you have set a higher standard for yourself. You think that, because you have more power than others, you have to do more with it." "To whom much is given, much is required," I said, without looking up. He barked out a short laugh. "For someone who repeatedly tells me he has no faith, you have a surprising capacity to quote scripture. And that's just my point." I eyed him. "What?" "You wouldn't be twisting yourself into knots like this, Harry, if you didn't care." "So?" "Monsters don't care," Michael said. "The damned don't care, Harry. The only way to go beyond redemption is to choose to take yourself there. The only way to do it is to stop caring.

Whether they realized it or not, they were doubting possibility, and the unknown. They believed I would fail. And when we only believe what has been said before, what has been done before, we give our own power away. Possibility evaporates; potential melts and seeps away deep into the earth below us. We cut ourselves short by thinking this way. I have always felt that it is from what we believe that our lives are created, not the other way around.

Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,-- Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,-- nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,-- her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,-- that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,-- not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,-- rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common.

Turn those deep feelings and obsessions of your heart into captivating pieces of literature.

A few years after I gave some lectures for the freshmen at Caltech (which were published as the Feynman Lectures on Physics), I received a long letter from a feminist group. I was accused of being anti-women because of two stories: the first was a discussion of the subtleties of velocity, and involved a woman driver being stopped by a cop. There's a discussion about how fast she was going, and I had her raise valid objections to the cop's definitions of velocity. The letter said I was making the women look stupid. The other story they objected to was told by the great astronomer Arthur Eddington, who had just figured out that the stars get their power from burning hydrogen in a nuclear reaction producing helium. He recounted how, on the night after his discovery, he was sitting on a bench with his girlfriend. She said, "Look how pretty the stars shine!" To which he replied, "Yes, and right now, I'm the only man in the world who knows how they shine." He was describing a kind of wonderful loneliness you have when you make a discovery. The letter claimed that I was saying a women is incapable of understanding nuclear reactions. I figured there was no point in trying to answer their accusations in detail, so I wrote a short letter back to them: "Don't bug me, Man!

Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constituitionalism and legality, the belief in 'the law' as something above the state and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible. It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like 'They can't run me in; I haven't done anything wrong', or 'They can't do that; it's against the law', are part of the atmosphere of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly as anyone else. One sees it in prison-books like Wilfred Macartney's Walls Have Mouths or Jim Phelan's Jail Journey, in the solemn idiocies that take places at the trials of conscientious objectors, in letters to the papers from eminent Marxist professors, pointing out that this or that is a 'miscarriage of British justice'. Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered. The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted it in theory. An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression of a face. The familiar arguments to the effect that democracy is 'just the same as' or 'just as bad as' totalitarianism never take account of this fact. All such arguments boil down to saying that half a loaf is the same as no bread. In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct,national life is different because of them. In proof of which, look about you. Where are the rubber truncheons, where is the caster oil? The sword is still in the scabbard, and while it stays corruption cannot go beyond a certain point. The English electoral system, for instance, is an all but open fraud. In a dozen obvious ways it is gerrymandered in the interest of the moneyed class. But until some deep change has occurred in the public mind, it cannot become completely corrupt. You do not arrive at the polling booth to find men with revolvers telling you which way to vote, nor are the votes miscounted, nor is there any direct bribery. Even hypocrisy is powerful safeguard. The hanging judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horse-hair wig,whom nothing short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no circumstances take a money bribe,is one of the symbolic figures of England. He is a symbol of the strange mixture of reality and illusion, democracy and privilege, humbug and decency, the subtle network of compromises, by which the nation keeps itself in its familiar shape.

Those without power or purpose in their own lives are the first to seek power and dominion over the lives of others.

What we believe will always be more powerful than what's real.

Good writing ideas don’t have to be about political turmoil, mass killings, capitalism, racism, injustice, and so on. Find that one idea that has deep roots in your heart.

...many of us know deep down, whether we choose to admit it or not, a number of simple truths: the global capitalist economy is incompatible with life. As numerous environmentalist authors... have noted, the global economy effectively creates infinite demand and no natural community can support infinite demand, especially when nothing beneficial is given back. A global economy is extractive, it gives nothing back, but follows the ecocidal pattern of a genocidal machine converting raw materials into power at the expense of living things and living systems.

So I said, “Hey, Joe,” and hoped it was a start. He was startled. He opened and closed his mouth a few times. He made a growling noise deep in his chest, a low rumble that made my skin itch. It was pleased, that sound, like even just me saying his name was enough to make him happy. For all I knew, it was. It cut off as quickly as it started. He looked faintly embarrassed. I scuffed my foot in the dirt, waiting. He said, “Hey, Ox.” He cleared his throat and looked down. “Hi.” It was weird, that disconnect between the boy I’d known and the man before me. His voice was deeper and he was bigger than he’d ever been. He radiated power that had never been there before. It fit him well. I remembered that day that I’d really seen him for the first time, wearing those running shorts and little else. I pushed those thoughts away. I didn’t want him sniffing me out. Not yet. Because attraction wasn’t the problem right now. Especially not right now. I

We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul.

I’m a firm a believer in the power of free enterprise to move the world forward. All that Soviet respect for science was no match for the American innovation machine once unleashed. The problem comes when the government is inhibiting innovation with overregulation and short-sighted policy. Trade wars and restrictive immigration regulations will limit America’s ability to attract the best and brightest minds, minds needed for this and every forthcoming Sputnik moment.

Foundation regrets arise from our failures of foresight and conscientiousness. Like all deep structure regrets, they start with a choice. At some early moment, we face a series of decisions. One set represents the path of the ant. These choices require short-term sacrifice, but in the service of a long-term payoff. The other choices represent the path of the grasshopper. This route demands little exertion or assiduousness in the short run, but risks exacting a cost in the long run.

It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible—in short, an absolute woman-hater—had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen—nay, let us be just—had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in—sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface.

Why do we complain of Nature? She has shown herself kindly; life, if you know how to use it, is long. But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine, another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are kept busy either in the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new; some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with all the seeming of an oracle: "The part of life we really live is small."5 For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time. Vices beset us and surround us on every side, and they do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes for the discernment of truth, but they keep us down when once they have overwhelmed us and we are chained to lust. Their victims are never allowed to return to their true selves; if ever they chance to find some release, like the waters of the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm is past, they are tossed about, and no rest from their lusts abides. Think you that I am speaking of the wretches whose evils are admitted? Look at those whose prosperity men flock to behold; they are smothered by their blessings. To how many are riches a burden! From how many do eloquence and the daily straining to display their powers draw forth blood! How many are pale from constant pleasures! To how many does the throng of clients that crowd about them leave no freedom! In short, run through the list of all these men from the lowest to the highest—this man desires an advocate,6 this one answers the call, that one is on trial, that one defends him, that one gives sentence; no one asserts his claim to himself, everyone is wasted for the sake of another. Ask about the men whose names are known by heart, and you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them: A cultivates B and B cultivates C; no one is his own master. And then certain men show the most senseless indignation—they complain of the insolence of their superiors, because they were too busy to see them when they wished an audience! But can anyone have the hardihood to complain of the pride of another when he himself has no time to attend to himself? After all, no matter who you are, the great man does sometimes look toward you even if his face is insolent, he does sometimes condescend to listen to your words, he permits you to appear at his side; but you never deign to look upon yourself, to give ear to yourself. There is no reason, therefore, to count anyone in debt for such services, seeing that, when you performed them, you had no wish for another's company, but could not endure your own.

Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man's are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time—just as men's misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it un-disturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music—the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer. The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom checked his whistle. A stranger was before him—a boy a shade larger than himself. A new-comer of any age or either sex was an im-pressive curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy was well dressed, too—well

It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November. Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the original inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise upon surgery. Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange there, in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man’s handiwork on every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to the window, and looked out on the deserted street. The occasional lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement. A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford Street end.

Her scales were a deep, dark green, and textured, like a jeweled avocado rind, and they covered most of her, except the short, stubby horns on her head, which were a dull gold, like dirty jewelry. Two enormous wings, angular and with pointed tips like a bat’s, stuck out from her sides and propelled them through the air. Beyond Riv at the back of the dragon, the queen caught glimpses of a powerfully muscled tail.

That animal is not your possession. He doesn't exist for your amusement. He has needs, instincts. Urges." The way he said that word, in that deep, earthy growl, had chills rippling over her skin. She swallowed hard. "Urges?" "Yes. Urges." He sauntered toward her- as much as a man could saunter in knee-deep water. "But what could a lady like you know about those?" "Oh, I understand urges. Right now, I have the powerful urge to do this." She shoved him hard in the chest, hoping to send him flailing backward into the river. He didn't budge. Not a teeter. Not a totter. Not even a blink. Penny would not surrender. She took a step in reverse and then tried again, adding the weight of her body to the effort. This time, he was ready for her. He caught her wrists in his hands, stopping her before she could even make contact. "Now, now, Your Ladyship. This is most unbecoming behavior." "I know that." She clenched her hands into fists. "You are so maddening. You have a way of provoking me, unlike anyone I've ever known. It's as though I become a different person when I'm around you, and I'm not certain I like her." He pulled her to him. "I like her." Penny expected he would shortly ruin that statement. I like her- smoldering pause- potential to increase the return on my property investment. Not this time. Instead, he lowered his head until his mouth brushed hers. Teased her lips apart, until his tongue brushed hers. And then they tumbled together against the riverbank, and his everything brushed hers.

fad is a wave in the ocean, and a trend is the tide. A fad gets a lot of hype, and a trend gets very little. Like a wave, a fad is very visible, but it goes up and down in a big hurry. Like the tide, a trend is almost invisible, but it’s very powerful over the long term. A fad is a short-term phenomenon that might be profitable, but a fad doesn’t last long enough to do a company much good. Furthermore, a company often tends to gear up as if a fad were a trend. As a result, the company is often stuck with a lot of staff, expensive manufacturing facilities, and distribution networks. (A fashion, on the other hand, is a fad that repeats itself. Examples: short skirts for women and double-breasted suits for men. Halley’s Comet is a fashion because it comes back every 75 years or so.) When the fad disappears, a company often goes into a deep financial shock. What happened to Atari is typical in this respect. And look how Coleco Industries handled the Cabbage Patch Kids. Those homely dolls hit the market in 1983 and started to take off. Coleco’s strategy was to milk the kids for all they were worth. Hundreds of Cabbage Patch novelties flooded the toy stores. Pens, pencils, crayon boxes, games, clothing. Two years later, Coleco racked up sales of $776 million and profits of $83 million. Then the bottom dropped out of the Cabbage Patch Kids. By 1988 Coleco went into Chapter 11. Coleco died, but the kids live on. Acquired by Hasbro in 1989, the Cabbage Patch Kids are now being handled conservatively. Today they’re doing quite well.

In Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, Pabongka Rinpoche explains how the great Atisha would purify any negativity, no matter how small, immediately. Even in public or when riding his horse, as soon as he noticed a breach of his ethics, he would stop what he was doing, drop to one knee and then and there, purify it with the four opponent powers—the powers of dependence, regret, remedy and restraint. Of course, compared to us, Atisha may not have had that much to purify. Still, he would say, “I never break my pratimoksha vows; I rarely break my bodhisattva vows; but my tantric vows—I transgress those like falling rain.” Atisha practiced purification in this way because of his deep realization of the psycho-mechanics of negative karma, especially its four fundamentals: negative karma is certain to bring suffering; it multiplies exponentially; if eradicated, it cannot bring its suffering result; and once created, it never simply disappears. Through the study and practice of Dharma, we should try to attain Atisha’s level of understanding. In the meantime, we should try to practice as he did.

Forcing new loans upon the bankrupt on condition that they shrink their income is nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment. Greece was never bailed out. With their ‘rescue’ loan and their troika of bailiffs enthusiastically slashing incomes, the EU and IMF effectively condemned Greece to a modern version of the Dickensian debtors’ prison and then threw away the key. Debtors’ prisons were ultimately abandoned because, despite their cruelty, they neither deterred the accumulation of new bad debts nor helped creditors get their money back. For capitalism to advance in the nineteenth century, the absurd notion that all debts are sacred had to be ditched and replaced with the notion of limited liability. After all, if all debts are guaranteed, why should lenders lend responsibly? And why should some debts carry a higher interest rate than other debts, reflecting the higher risk of going bad? Bankruptcy and debt write-downs became for capitalism what hell had always been for Christian dogma – unpleasant yet essential – but curiously bankruptcy-denial was revived in the twenty-first century to deal with the Greek state’s insolvency. Why? Did the EU and the IMF not realize what they were doing? They knew exactly what they were doing. Despite their meticulous propaganda, in which they insisted that they were trying to save Greece, to grant the Greek people a second chance, to help reform Greece’s chronically crooked state and so on, the world’s most powerful institutions and governments were under no illusions. […] Banks restructure the debt of stressed corporations every day, not out of philanthropy but out of enlightened self-interest. But the problem was that, now that we had accepted the EU–IMF bailout, we were no longer dealing with banks but with politicians who had lied to their parliaments to convince them to relieve the banks of Greece’s debt and take it on themselves. A debt restructuring would require them to go back to their parliaments and confess their earlier sin, something they would never do voluntarily, fearful of the repercussions. The only alternative was to continue the pretence by giving the Greek government another wad of money with which to pretend to meet its debt repayments to the EU and the IMF: a second bailout.

There were whole habitats where people had had their higher brain functions disengaged, so that they could live like sheep under the care of machines. In others, they’d had their minds implanted into monkeys or dolphins: lost in intricate arboreal power struggles or sorrowful sonar fantasies. Elsewhere, groups of scientists who’d had their minds reshaped by Pattern Jugglers plunged deep into the metastructure of spacetime, concocting elaborate experiments which tinkered with the very fundamentals of existence. One day, it was said, they’d discover a technique for faster-than-light propulsion, passing the secret to their allies who would install the necessary gadgetry in their habitats. The first anyone else would know about it would be when half the Glitter Band suddenly winked out of existence. The Glitter Band, in short, was a place where a reasonably curious human being could easily squander half a lifetime. But I didn’t think Reivich would spend much time there before making his way down to Yellowstone’s surface. He would want to lose himself in Chasm City as quickly as possible. Either way, I wouldn’t be far behind him. Still

Suddenly Junior Allen swung aboard, leaped, landed lightly. He was immaculate in white sport shirt, white slacks, pale blue yachting cap. I guessed he was nearing forty. I had not been prepared for him to look so powerful and so fit. He was broad, with shoulders so packed and corded with muscle they gave him a slightly simian posture, the impression enhanced by the extra-long weight and heft of brown tattooed arms, and the short legs, slightly bowed. He had a brown, seamed, knotty face, broad, smiling broadly, the smile squinching the small blue eyes. It was a friendly grin. It was a likable grin. It did not change in any way as he looked at me.

Self-Management If you can read just one book on motivation—yours and others: Dan Pink, Drive If you can read just one book on building new habits: Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit If you can read just one book on harnessing neuroscience for personal change: Dan Siegel, Mindsight If you can read just one book on deep personal change: Lisa Lahey and Bob Kegan, Immunity to Change If you can read just one book on resilience: Seth Godin, The Dip Organizational Change If you can read just one book on how organizational change really works: Chip and Dan Heath, Switch If you can read just two books on understanding that change is a complex system: Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations Dan Pontefract, Flat Army Hear interviews with FREDERIC LALOUX, DAN PONTEFRACT, and JERRY STERNIN at the Great Work Podcast. If you can read just one book on using structure to change behaviours: Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto If you can read just one book on how to amplify the good: Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin and Monique Sternin, The Power of Positive Deviance If you can read just one book on increasing your impact within organizations: Peter Block, Flawless Consulting Other Cool Stuff If you can read just one book on being strategic: Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley, Playing to Win If you can read just one book on scaling up your impact: Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao, Scaling Up Excellence If you can read just one book on being more helpful: Edgar Schein, Helping Hear interviews with ROGER MARTIN, BOB SUTTON, and WARREN BERGER at the Great Work Podcast. If you can read just two books on the great questions: Warren Berger, A More Beautiful Question Dorothy Strachan, Making Questions Work If you can read just one book on creating learning that sticks: Peter Brown, Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, Make It Stick If you can read just one book on why you should appreciate and marvel at every day, every moment: Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything If you can read just one book that saves lives while increasing impact: Michael Bungay Stanier, ed., End Malaria (All money goes to Malaria No More; about $400,000 has been raised so far.) IF THERE ARE NO STUPID QUESTIONS, THEN WHAT KIND OF QUESTIONS DO STUPID PEOPLE ASK?

Women have always desired equality and respect, but our current culture isn’t seeking it through the grace of Mary; rather, the culture seeks this equality and respect through the vices of Machiavelli: rage, intimidation, tantrums, bullying, raw emotion, and absence of logic. It is this aggressive impulse—this toxic femininity—that finds pride in calling oneself “nasty,” feels empowered by dressing as a vagina, belittles men, and sees the (tragically ironic) need to drop civility so that civility can somehow return again. The devil knows that all these marks of the anti-Mary—rage, indignation, vulgarity, and pride—short-circuit a woman’s greatest gifts: wisdom, prudence, patience, unflappable peace, intuition, her ability to weave together the fabric of society, and her capacity for a deep and fulfilling relationship with God. Instead, the father of lies promises power, fame, fortune, and sterile, fleeting pleasures.

Well, now, if I didn’t think you sewed his collar with white thread, but it’s black.” “Why, I did sew it with white! Tom!” But Tom did not wait for the rest. As he went out at the door he said: “Siddy, I’ll lick you for that.” In a safe place Tom examined two large needles which were thrust into the lapels of his jacket, and had thread bound about them—one needle carried white thread and the other black. He said: “She’d never noticed if it hadn’t been for Sid. Confound it! sometimes she sews it with white, and sometimes she sews it with black. I wish to geeminy she’d stick to one or t’other—I can’t keep the run of ’em. But I bet you I’ll lam Sid for that. I’ll learn him!” He was not the Model Boy of the village. He knew the model boy very well though—and loathed him. Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time—just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This new interest was a valued novelty in whistling, which he had just acquired from a negro, and he was suffering to practise it undisturbed. It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music—the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy. Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer. The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet.

What’s so magical about solitude? In many fields, Ericsson told me, it’s only when you’re alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful—they’re counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them. Deliberate Practice is best conducted alone for several reasons. It takes intense concentration, and other people can be distracting. It requires deep motivation, often self-generated. But most important, it involves working on the task that’s most challenging to you personally. Only when you’re alone, Ericsson told me, can you “go directly to the part that’s challenging to you. If you want to improve what you’re doing, you have to be the one who generates the move. Imagine a group class—you’re the one generating the move only a small percentage of the time.

The stone is not a plaything for little girls, Camille.” He hardened his stare. She tried to keep her eyes equally fierce. “The path to the stone is said to be riddled with traps, endless holes in the earth where you fall forever. Deep caves shelter a species of enormous beasts that protect the stone. Men who set out to find it are usually never seen again.” She sat back, surprised by his intensity and passion. “Well, then,” she said, and watched him puff out his chest victoriously. “I do hope you set out to find it.” He glowered at her. “Oh, I most certainly will. The map and stone will be mine.” Camille stood, pushing her chair back. “It looks like you have some competition, then. I won’t give up until I’ve brought my father back to life.” McGreenery flashed his white smile and roared with laughter. “Bring him back? Oh yes, you would actually use the stone.” She lifted her chin. “And you wouldn’t?” He laughed at her again. “Dear child, you don’t know a thing about it, do you? You don’t have the faintest clue how the stone will work. If you think this is some short journey without risks or sacrifices, you should sail home right now. The magic of that stone is but a fraction of the everlasting power it leads to. A clever businessman would sell that power to the highest bidder.

Dreams in which the dead interact with the living are typically so powerful and lucid that there is no denying contact was real. They also fill us with renewed life and break up grief or depression. In chapter 16, on communicating with the dead, you will learn how to make such dreams come about. Another set of dreams in which the dead appear can be the stuff of horror. If you have had a nightmare concerning someone who has recently passed, know that you are looking into the face of personal inner conflict. You might dream, for instance, that your dead mother is buried alive or comes out of her grave in a corrupted body in search of you. What you are looking at here is the clash of two sets of ideas about death. On the one hand, a person is dead and rotting; on the other hand, that same person is still alive. The inner self uses the appropriate symbols to try to come to terms with the contradiction of being alive and dead at the same time. I am not sure to what extent people on the other side actually participate in these dreams. My private experience has given me the impression that the dreams are triggered by attempts of the departed for contact. The macabre images we use to deal with the contradiction, however, are ours alone and stem from cultural attitudes about death and the body. The conflict could lie in a different direction altogether. As a demonstration of how complex such dreams can be, I offer a simple one I had shortly after the death of my cat Twyla. It was a nightmare constructed out of human guilt. Even though I loved Twyla, for a combination of reasons she was only second best in the hierarchy of house pets. I had never done anything to hurt her, and her death was natural. Still I felt guilt, as though not giving her the full measure of my love was the direct cause of her death. She came to me in a dream skinned alive, a bloody mass of muscle, sinew, veins, and arteries. I looked at her, horror-struck at what I had done. Given her condition, I could not understand why she seemed perfectly healthy and happy and full of affection for me. I’m ashamed to admit that it took me over a week to understand what this nightmare was about. The skinning depicted the ugly fate of many animals in human hands. For Twyla, the picture was particularly apt because we used to joke about selling her for her fur, which was gorgeous, like the coat of a gray seal. My subconscious had also incorporated the callous adage “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” This multivalent graphic, typical of dreams, brought my feelings of guilt to the surface. But the real meaning was more profound and once discovered assuaged my conscience. Twyla’s coat represented her mortal body, her outer shell. What she showed me was more than “skin deep” — the real Twyla underneath,

Nero," he said into the intercom, "I need a cover blast at four o'clock and you better use your powers to open the bay's door or this is going to be a fatally short ride." Shahara watched as the bay doors stretched open slowly. It was obvious they were locked down and fighting Scalera's efforts. Syn didn't wait for them to open. He put the throttle down and gunned the engines. The ship lurched forward at a velocity that plastered her against her seat. Unlike her, the ship had no idea they were about to impact with that wall and burst into flames. Syn's gaze narrowed with a deranged glint. "Do or die, baby. Do or die." Her heart hit the floor as she realized they really were going to slam into the closed doors. Nothing was moving. This was it... Bracing herself, she prayed. Syn didn't slow even a bit. He went forward without hesitation. She bit back a scream. Just as they reached the doors, they snapped open with only the lower section scraping against the bottom of the ship. The sound of steel on steel was painful but at least it wasn't fatal as they popped through and soared into the atmosphere. She leaned her head back and took a deep breath in relief. "I seriously hate you, convict." Vik snorted. "I just oiled myself, boss." Syn gave them both a droll stare. "Stop your bitching. We made it." Then under his breath, he added, "Granted it was by our short hairs, but I haven't killed us yet." -Syn, Shahara, Vik, & Nero

I have run in the sun and felt the power of it. I have run for the tape, run against the clock, I have run with thousands and run with only myself for company. I have run around and around the track over and over again and run with no idea where I was going. I have run for no particular reason to any particular place. I have run to help my heart’s efficiency; I have run because my heart ached. I have run fast and felt more alive than ever and I have run to bury or fight something deep within. I have run when I knew I needed to and I have run when I knew I shouldn’t have. I have loathed running and I have praised running. I have run for a personal record and made it and I have run giving everything I had and come up just a bit short. I have run and let laughter and storytelling roll the miles away. I have felt the pounding of every single step in silent solitude. I have run enough to know that we sometimes feel like an old pair of shoes and sometimes we feel like new ones. I have run enough to know the difference between a hard, cold head wind and a brisk steady wind at our back. I have run enough to know that once you get out a certain distance you had better be able to get back. I have had runner friends who have poured out their guts to me about my place in their life, some who just said thanks or said nothing at all. I am simply a runner who has failed and succeeded, faded and surged, hoped, dreamed! Running has given me my greatest ideas, thoughts and moments of joy. To feel the “flow”, that feeling of peace, joy, timelessness, focus and clarity is an integral part of the human experience.

It was about time he opened his eyes to see just to whom he was speaking. After several quick blinks, he managed to do just that, gazing up into a small, heart-shaped face. A pretty face. Not one of a curvy seductress or a cool-hearted courtesan, but a feminine, delicately featured face. He knew this face. He adored this face. "Miss Charlotte Greene," he stated finally, taking a risk and raising his head to get a better look. Sitting at his side, the white skirt of her thick night rail tucked around her legs, she smiled down at him with concerned eyes of deep blue. Gorgeous sapphire eyes often hidden behind the rims of small, round spectacles. Truthfully, she happened to be the complete opposite of what he was usually attracted to. She was a bit too thin, too short, and too quiet for his tastes, which had always leaned toward the voluptuous, the tall, and the spirited. Normally, she wasn't one to stand out. And he rather suspected she preferred it that way. However, while most young bucks readily discounted her merits and furtively joked about her quirky behavior behind her back, Rothbury had always sensed a subtle undercurrent of passion in her dark blue gaze. Unlike the "diamonds" of the ton and demimonde, who slinked across assembly rooms completely aware of their beauty and the power that accompanied it, Miss Greene moved like a woman who hadn't yet realized how utterly fetching she truly was. She clung to the walls, sometimes barely raising her eyes from the floor, rarely spoke but to her closest friends, and shied away from situations that demanded she converse with the opposite sex. Strange it was for him to notice those facets in such an unassuming woman. Strange it was he should have noticed her at all. But he always did. The second she walked into a room.

Life is pretty short yet magnanimous if we know just how to live right. It isn't that easy, it takes a lot of our soul, sometimes too many broken pieces to finally come together in binding a masterpiece that smiles like a solitary star forever gazing around at the music of an eternal cosmos. The most brutal yet beautiful truth about Life is that It is marked, marked with Time where every moment takes us closer to death, it doesn't have to sound or feel bad or scary because death is the most inevitable truth in this mortal world. While the knowledge of death jolts our mind with the uncertainty of Life, clutches us in the emotion of fear to think of pain or the loss of bonds, when we acknowledge that as a part of our souls' journey and take every moment as our precious gift, a blessing to experience this Life with its beautiful garden of emotions blossoming with wonderful smiles that we can paint on others, then we make our Life magnanimous, then we make even the very face of death as that of an angel coming to take us to a different voyage, soaked in a lot of memories and experiences beautifully binding our soul. I have realised that when we live each day as if it's the last day of our life, we become more loving and gentle to everyone around and especially to our own selves. We forgive and love more openly, we grace and embrace every opportunity we get to be kind, to stay in touch with everything that truly matters. I have realised that when we rise every morning with gratitude knowing that the breath of air still passes through our body, just in the mere understanding that we have one more day to experience Life once again, we stay more compassionate towards everything and everyone around and invest more of our selves into everything and everyone that truly connect and resonate with our soul. I have realised that when we consciously try to be good and kind, no matter however bad or suffocating a situation is we always end up taking everything at its best holding on to the firm grip of goodness, accepting everything as a part of our souls' lesson or just a turn of Time or Fate and that shapes into our strength and roots our core with the truest understanding of Life, the simple act of going on and letting go. Letting go of anything and everything that chains our Soul while going on with a Heart open to Love and a Soul ready to absorb all that falls along the pathway of this adventure called Life. I have realised that when we are kind and do anything good for another person, that gives us the most special happiness, something so pure that even our hearts don't know how deep that joy permeates inside our soul. I have realised that at the end of the day we do good not because of others but because of our own selves, for if tomorrow death comes to grace me I hope to smile and say I have Lived, loved unconditionally and embraced forgiveness, kindness and goodness and all the other colours of Love with every breath I caught, I have lived a Life magnanimous. So each time someone's unkind towards you, hold back and smile, and try to give your warmth to that person. Because Kindness is not a declaration of who deserves it, it's a statement of who you are. So each time some pieces of your heart lay scattered, hold them up and embrace everyone of them with Love. Because Love is not a magic potion that is spilled from a hollow space, it's a breath of eternity that flows through the tunnel of your soul. So each time Life puts up a question of your Happiness, answer back with a Smile of Peace. Because Happiness is not what you look for in others, it's what you create in every passing moment, with the power of Life, that is pretty short when we see how counted it stands in days but actually turns out absolutely incredibly magnanimous when loved and lived in moments.

he was no mountaineer when he decided to climb the Hindu Kush. A few days scrambling on the rocks in Wales, enchantingly chronicled here, were his sole preparation. It was not mountaineering that attracted him; the Alps abound in opportunities for every exertion of that kind. It was the longing, romantic, reasonless, which lies deep in the hearts of most Englishmen, to shun the celebrated spectacles of the tourist and without any concern with science or politics or commerce, simply to set their feet where few civilized feet have trod. An American critic who read the manuscript of this book condemned it as ‘too English’. It is intensely English, despite the fact that most of its action takes place in wildly foreign places and that it is written in an idiomatic, uncalculated manner the very antithesis of ‘Mandarin’ stylishness. It rejoices the heart of fellow Englishmen, and should at least illuminate those who have any curiosity about the odd character of our Kingdom. It exemplifies the essential traditional (some, not I, will say deplorable) amateurism of the English. For more than two hundred years now Englishmen have been wandering about the world for their amusement, suspect everywhere as government agents, to the great embarrassment of our officials. The Scotch endured great hardships in the cause of commerce; the French in the cause of either power or evangelism. The English only have half (and wholly) killed themselves in order to get away from England. Mr Newby is the latest, but, I pray, not the last, of a whimsical tradition. And in his writing he has all the marks of his not entirely absurd antecedents. The understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited; finally in his formal self-effacement in the presence of the specialist (with the essential reserve of unexpressed self-respect) which concludes, almost too abruptly, this beguiling narrative – in all these qualities Mr Newby has delighted the heart of a man whose travelling days are done and who sees, all too often, his countrymen represented abroad by other, new and (dammit) lower types. Dear reader, if you have any softness left for the idiosyncrasies of our rough island race, fall to and enjoy this characteristic artifact. EVELYN

We can in theory assume three extremes of human life, and consider them as elements of actual human life. Firstly, powerful and vehement willing, the great passions (Raja-Guna); it appears in great historical characters, and is described in the epic and the drama. It can also show itself, however, in the small world, for the size of the objects is here measured only according to the degree in which they excite the will, not to their external relations. Then secondly, pure knowing, the comprehension of the Ideas, conditioned by freeing knowledge from the service of the will: the life of the genius (Sattva-Guna). Thirdly and lastly, the greatest lethargy of the will and also of the knowledge attached to it, namely empty longing, life-benumbing boredom (Tama-Guna). The life of the individual, far from remaining fixed in one of these extremes, touches them only rarely, and is often only a weak and wavering approximation to one side or the other, a needy desiring of trifling objects, always recurring and thus running away from boredom. It is really incredible how meaningless and insignificant when seen from without, and how dull and senseless when felt from within, is the course of life of the great majority of men. It is weary longing and worrying, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages of life to death, accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts. They are like clockwork that is wound up and goes without knowing why. Every time a man is begotten and born the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations. Every individual, every human apparition and its course of life, is only one more short dream of the endless spirit of nature, of the persistent will-to-live, is only one more fleeting form, playfully sketched by it on its infinite page, space and time; it is allowed to exist for a short while that is infinitesimal compared with these, and is then effaced, to make new room. Yet, and here is to be found the serious side of life, each of these fleeting forms, these empty fancies, must be paid for by the whole will-to-live in all its intensity with many deep sorrows, and finally with a bitter death, long feared and finally made manifest. It is for this reason that the sight of a corpse suddenly makes us serious.

Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm—to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut. This principle is also true, ultimately, in human behavior, in human relationships. They, too, are natural systems based on the law of the harvest. In the short run, in an artificial social system such as school, you may be able to get by if you learn how to manipulate the man-made rules, to “play the game.” In most one-shot or short-lived human interactions, you can use the Personality Ethic to get by and to make favorable impressions through charm and skill and pretending to be interested in other people’s hobbies. You can pick up quick, easy techniques that may work in short-term situations. But secondary traits alone have no permanent worth in long-term relationships. Eventually, if there isn’t deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and human relationship failure will replace short-term success. Many people with secondary greatness—that is, social recognition for their talents—lack primary greatness or goodness in their character. Sooner or later, you’ll see this in every long-term relationship they have, whether it is with a business associate, a spouse, a friend, or a teenage child going through an identity crisis. It is character that communicates most eloquently. As Emerson once put it, “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.” There are, of course, situations where people have character strength but they lack communication skills, and that undoubtedly affects the quality of relationships as well. But the effects are still secondary. In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do. We all know it. There are people we trust absolutely because we know their character. Whether they’re eloquent or not, whether they have the human relations techniques or not, we trust them, and we work successfully with them. In the words of William George Jordan, “Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.

I see over and beyond all these national wars, new "empires," and whatever else lies in the foreground. What I am concerned with — for I see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly — is the United Europe. It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls, of all the broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century — this reparation of a new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future of "the European." Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the "Fatherlanders" — then they were once more "patriots." I am thinking of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Schopenhauer. Perhaps Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number, concerning whom, as a successful type of German obscurity, nothing can be said without some such "perhaps." But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small States of Europe — I refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires" — will in a short time become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle for the possession of local and international trade. Money is even now compelling European nations to amalgamate into one Power. In order, however, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery of the world with good prospects of victory (it is easy to perceive against whom this battle will be waged), she must probably "come to an understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for this struggle, just as much as modern Germany, to play her new role of broker and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland. For no one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to continue to act her old part for fifty years more; the impossibility of shutting out homines novi from the government will ruin her, and her continual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle to the carrying out of any tasks which require to be spread out over a long period of time. A man must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that he may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant. Enough; here, as in other matters, the coming century will be found following in the footsteps of Napoleon — the first man, and the man of greatest initiative and advanced views, of modern times. For the tasks of the next century, the methods of popular representation and parliaments are the most inappropriate imaginable.

...the centrality of competitiveness as the key to growth is a recurrent EU motif. Two decades of EC directives on increasing competition in every area, from telecommunications to power generation to collateralizing wholesale funding markets for banks, all bear the same ordoliberal imprint. Similarly, the consistent focus on the periphery states’ loss of competitiveness and the need for deep wage and cost reductions therein, while the role of surplus countries in generating the crisis is utterly ignored, speaks to a deeply ordoliberal understanding of economic management. Savers, after all, cannot be sinners. Similarly, the most recent German innovation of a constitutional debt brake (Schuldenbremse) for all EU countries regardless of their business cycles or structural positions, coupled with a new rules-based fiscal treaty as the solution to the crisis, is simply an ever-tighter ordo by another name. If states have broken the rules, the only possible policy is a diet of strict austerity to bring them back into conformity with the rules, plus automatic sanctions for those who cannot stay within the rules. There are no fallacies of composition, only good and bad policies. And since states, from an ordoliberal viewpoint, cannot be relied upon to provide the necessary austerity because they are prone to capture, we must have rules and an independent monetary authority to ensure that states conform to the ordo imperative; hence, the ECB. Then, and only then, will growth return. In the case of Greece and Italy in 2011, if that meant deposing a few democratically elected governments, then so be it. The most remarkable thing about this ordoliberalization of Europe is how it replicates the same error often attributed to the Anglo-American economies: the insistence that all developing states follow their liberal instruction sheets to get rich, the so-called Washington Consensus approach to development that we shall discuss shortly. The basic objection made by late-developing states, such as the countries of East Asia, to the Washington Consensus/Anglo-American idea “liberalize and then growth follows” was twofold. First, this understanding mistakes the outcomes of growth, stable public finances, low inflation, cost competitiveness, and so on, for the causes of growth. Second, the liberal path to growth only makes sense if you are an early developer, since you have no competitors—pace the United Kingdom in the eighteenth century and the United States in the nineteenth century. Yet in the contemporary world, development is almost always state led.

One day, on the verge of dying of boredom, Uncle Johnny had had enough. He turned to me and said sternly, “Noah, I’m not gonna sit in here like we’re in an oversized coffin. We’re either opening the door or we’re turning the TV on. Which one do you want?” I rolled my eyes and grumbled for a few minutes before answering, “All right. Turn on the TV.” Without hesitation Uncle Johnny shot up out of that chair and reached up to hit the power button on the TV mounted from the ceiling. No sooner had his butt hit the chair seat than he was right back up again. “Fuck that. I am opening the door, too, because I want it open.” He vigorously emphasized his intention so I didn’t protest. He marched over and swung that door open. I swear he might have even taken a deep breath as if it were fresh mountain air. Then he came back to his chair and sat down. There was a movie on starring Matthew Broderick. I’d never heard of it before but Uncle Johnny was explaining to me that this was a remake and Gene Wilder had played Broderick’s character in the original film. In spite of myself, and my stubborn wish to sit and suffer in silence, I really liked the movie. And I remember thinking, I am really enjoying myself. I even turned to Uncle Johnny and said, “I’m glad we turned the TV on. This is great!” Uncle Johnny just smiled as if to say, “Of course! Finally!” We were right in the middle of the movie when one of my machines started to malfunction. The machine’s beeps drowned out the movie. A nurse came in to fix the problem and it just happened to be the hot nurse I had a crush on. She had short hair, a few tattoos on her arm, and she always wore a bandana over her head. The machine she was trying to fix was plugged in on the other side of the bed, up against the wall. “Oh, I see. Hold on. I have to move the bed out from the wall to fix this,” she said. At this point I was just watching her. She fixed the machine and pushed the bed back up against the wall. She actually hit the wall with the bed and zap! The TV went out! “WHAT?! NO!” I screamed. She couldn’t get it to turn back on. She tried but nothing worked. “Oh no, I’m sorry. We’ll have to get maintenance down here to fix it,” she said with an apologetic look that I met with a glare of disdain. She was no longer hot to me. She was just the nurse who broke the TV. Maintenance didn’t come to repair the TV until the next day. I didn’t get to watch the rest of the movie. In fact, I never saw the end of the movie and I didn’t even know the name of it until years later. Maybe one of these days I’ll get to see The Producers from start to finish.

There are truths which are best recognized by mediocre heads, because they are most appropriate for them; there are truths which have charm and seductive power only for mediocre minds: — at this very point we are pushed back onto this perhaps unpleasant proposition, since the time the spirit of respectable but mediocre Englishmen — I cite Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer — is successfully gaining pre-eminence in the middle regions of European taste. In fact, who could doubt how useful it is that such spirits rule from time to time? It would be a mistake to think that highly cultivated spirits who fly off to great distances would be particularly skilful at establishing many small, common facts, collecting them, and pushing to a conclusion: — they are, by contrast, as exceptional men, from the very start in no advantageous position vis-à-vis the “rules.” In the final analysis, they have more to do than merely have knowledge — for they have to be something new, to mean something new, to present new values! The gap between knowing something and being able to do something is perhaps greater as well as more mysterious than people think. It’s possible that the man who can act in the grand style, the creating man, will have to be a person who does not know; whereas, on the other hand, for scientific discoveries of the sort Darwin made a certain narrowness, aridity, and conscientious diligence, in short, something English, may not be an unsuitable arrangement. Finally we should not forget that the English with their profoundly average quality have already once brought about a collective depression of the European spirit. What people call “modern ideas” or “the ideas of the eighteenth century” or even “French ideas” — in other words, what the German spirit has risen against with a deep disgust — were English in origin. There’s no doubt of that. The French have been only apes and actors of these ideas, their best soldiers, as well, and at the same time unfortunately their first and most complete victims. For with the damnable Anglomania of “modern ideas” the âme française [French soul] has finally become so thin and emaciated that nowadays we remember almost with disbelief its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profoundly passionate power, its resourceful nobility. But with our teeth we must hang on to the following principle of historical fairness and defend it against the appearance of the moment: European noblesse [nobility] — in feeling, in taste, in customs, in short, the word taken in every higher sense — is the work and invention of France; European nastiness, the plebeian quality of modern ideas, the work of England.

Let us now assume that under truly extraordinary circumstances, the daimon nevertheless breaks through in the individual, so to speak, and is this able to let its destructive transcendence be felt: then one would have a kind of active experience of death. Thereupon the second connection becomes clear: why the figure of the daimon or doppelgänger in the ancient myths could be melded with the deity of death. In the Nordic tradition the warrior sees his Valkyrie precisely at the moment of death or mortal danger. In religious asceticism, mortification, self-renunciation, and the impulse of devotion to God are the preferred methods of provoking and successfully overcoming the crisis I have just mentioned. Everyone knows the expressions which refer to these states, such as the 'mystical death' or 'dark night of the soul', etc. In contrast to this, within the framework of a heroic tradition, the path to the same goal is the active rapture, the Dionysian unleashing of the active element. At its lower levels, we find phenomenons such as the use of dance as a sacred technique for achieving an ecstasy of the soul that summons and uses profound energies. While the individual’s life is surrendered to Dionysian rhythm, another life sinks into it, as if it where his abyssal roots surfacing. The 'wild host' Furies, Erinyes, and suchlike spiritual natures are symbolic picturings of this energy, thus corresponding to a manifestation of the daimon in its terrifying and active transcendence. At a higher level we find sacred war-games; higher still, war itself. And this brings us back to the ancient Aryan concept of battle and the warrior ascetic. At the climax of danger and heroic battle, the possibility for such an extraordinary experience was recognized. The Lating ludere, meaning both 'to play' and 'to fight', seems to contain the idea of release. This is one of the many allusions to the inherent ability of battle to release deeply-buried powers from individual limitations and let them freely emerge. Hence the third comparison: the daimon, the Lar, the individualizing I, etc., are not only identical with the Furies, Erinyes, and other unleashed Dionysian natures, which themselves have many traits similar to the goddess of death — they are also synonymous with the storm maidens of battle, the Valkyries and Fravartis. In the texts, for example, the Fravartis are called 'the terrible, the all-powerful', 'those who attack in storm and bestow victory upon those who conjure them', or, more precisely, those who conjure them up in themselves. From there to the final comparison is only a short step. In the Aryan tradition the same martial beings eventually take on the form of victory-goddesses, a transformation which denotes the happy completion of the inner experience in question. Just as the daimon or doppelgänger signifies a deep, supra-individual power in its latent condition as compared to ordinary consciousness; just as the Furies and Erinyes reflect a particular manifestation of daimonic rages and eruptions (and the goddesses of death, Valkyries, Fravartis, etc., refer to the same conditions, as long as these are facilitated by battle and heroism) — in the same way the goddess of victory is the expression of the triumph of the I over this power. She signifies the victorious ascent to a state unendangered by ecstasies and sub-personal forms of disintegration, a danger that always lurks behind the frenetic moment of Dionysian and even heroic action. The ascent to a spiritual, truly supra-personal condition that makes one free, immortal, and internally indestructible, when the 'Two becomes One', expresses itself in this image of mythical consciousness.

Sung was a land which was famous far and wide, simply because it was so often and so richly insulted. However, there was one visitor, more excitable than most, who developed a positive passion for criticizing the place. Unfortunately, the pursuit of this hobby soon lead him to take leave of the truth. This unkind traveler once claimed that the king of Sung, the notable Skan Askander, was a derelict glutton with a monster for a son and a slug for a daughter. This was unkind to the daughter. While she was no great beauty, she was definitely not a slug. After all, slugs do not have arms and legs - and besides, slugs do not grow to that size. There was a grain of truth in the traveler's statement, in as much as the son was a regrettable young man. However, soon afterwards, the son was accidentally drowned when he made the mistake of falling into a swamp with his hands and feet tied together and a knife sticking out of his back. This tragedy did not encourage the traveler to extend his sympathies to the family. Instead, he invented fresh accusations. This wayfarer, an ignorant tourist if ever there was one, claimed that the king had leprosy. This was false. The king merely had a well-developed case of boils. The man with the evil mouth was guilty of a further malignant slander when he stated that King Skan Askander was a cannibal. This was untrue. While it must be admitted that the king once ate one of his wives, he did not do it intentionally; the whole disgraceful episode was the fault of the chef, who was a drunkard, and who was subsequently severely reprimanded. .The question of the governance, and indeed, the very existence of the 'kingdom of Sung' is one that is worth pursuing in detail, before dealing with the traveler's other allegations. It is true that there was a king, his being Skan Askander, and that some of his ancestors had been absolute rulers of considerable power. It is also true that the king's chief swineherd, who doubled as royal cartographer, drew bold, confident maps proclaiming that borders of the realm. Furthermore, the king could pass laws, sign death warrants, issue currency, declare war or amuse himself by inventing new taxes. And what he could do, he did. "We are a king who knows how to be king," said the king. And certainly, anyone wishing to dispute his right to use of the imperial 'we' would have had to contend with the fact that there was enough of him, in girth, bulk, and substance, to provide the makings of four or five ordinary people, flesh, bones and all. He was an imposing figure, "very imposing", one of his brides is alleged to have said, shortly before the accident in which she suffocated. "We live in a palace," said the king. "Not in a tent like Khmar, the chief milkmaid of Tameran, or in a draughty pile of stones like Comedo of Estar." . . .From Prince Comedo came the following tart rejoinder: "Unlike yours, my floors are not made of milk-white marble. However, unlike yours, my floors are not knee-deep in pigsh*t." . . .Receiving that Note, Skan Askander placed it by his commode, where it would be handy for future royal use. Much later, and to his great surprise, he received a communication from the Lord Emperor Khmar, the undisputed master of most of the continent of Tameran. The fact that Sung had come to the attention of Khmar was, to say the least, ominous. Khmar had this to say: "Your words have been reported. In due course, they will be remembered against you." The king of Sung, terrified, endured the sudden onset of an attack of diarrhea that had nothing to do with the figs he had been eating. His latest bride, seeing his acute distress, made the most of her opportunity, and vigorously counselled him to commit suicide. Knowing Khmar's reputation, he was tempted - but finally, to her great disappointment, declined. Nevertheless, he lived in fear; he had no way of knowing that he was simply the victim of one of Khmar's little jokes.

But as the daylight began to come through the curtains, I knew I was facing something for which I had not been prepared. It was a curious sensation, like suddenly feeling cold water round your feet, then feeling it slowly rising up your legs. It took me some time to realize that they were attacking from some part of my mind of whose existence I was unaware. I had been strong because I was fighting them out of knowledge, but I should have known that my knowledge of mind was pitifully small. I was like an astronomer who knows the solar system, and thinks he knows the universe. What the parasites were doing was to attack me from below my knowledge of myself. It is true that I had given some small thought to the matter; but I had—rightly—postponed it as a study for a more advanced period. I had reflected often enough that our human life is based completely on ‘premises’ that we take for granted. A child takes its parents and its home for granted; later, it comes to take its country and its society for granted. We need these supports to begin with. A child without parents and a regular home grows up feeling insecure. A child that has had a good home may later learn to criticize its parents, or even reject them altogether (although this is unlikely); but it only does so when it is strong enough to stand alone. All original thinkers develop by kicking away these ‘supports’ one by one. They may continue to love their parents and their country, but they love from a position of strength—a strength that began in rejection. In fact, though, human beings never really learn to stand alone. They are lazy, and prefer supports. A man may be a fearlessly original mathematician, and yet be slavishly dependent on his wife. He may be a powerful free thinker, yet derive a great deal more comfort than he would admit from the admiration of a few friends and disciples. In short, human beings never question all their supports; they question a few, and continue to take the rest for granted. Now I had been so absorbed in the adventure of entering new mental continents, rejecting my old personality and its assumptions, that I had been quite unaware that I was still leaning heavily on dozens of ordinary assumptions. For example, although I felt my identity had changed, I still had a strong feeling of identity. And our most fundamental sense of identity comes from an anchor that lies at the bottom of a very deep sea. I still looked upon myself as a member of the human race. I still looked upon myself as an inhabitant of the solar system and the universe in space and time. I took space and time for granted. I did not ask where I had been before my birth or after my death. I did not even recognize the problem of my own death; it was something I left ‘to be explored later’. What the parasites now did was to go to these deep moorings of my identity, and proceed to shake them. I cannot express it more clearly than this. They did not actually, so to speak, pull up the anchors. That was beyond their powers. But they shook the chains, so that I suddenly became aware of an insecurity on a level I had taken completely for granted. I found myself asking: Who am I? In the deepest sense. Just as a bold thinker dismisses patriotism and religion, so I dismissed all the usual things that gave me an ‘identity’: the accident of my time and place of birth, the accident of my being a human being rather than a dog or a fish, the accident of my powerful instinct to cling to life. Having thrown off all these accidental ‘trappings’, I stood naked as pure consciousness confronting the universe. But here I became aware that this so-called ‘pure consciousness’ was as arbitrary as my name. It could not confront the universe without sticking labels on it. How could it be ‘pure consciousness’ when I saw that object as a book, that one as a table? It was still my tiny human identity looking out of my eyes. And if I tried to get beyond it, everything went blank.

Characteristics: An ancient breed of northern Chinese origin, this all-purpose dog of China was used for hunting, herding, pulling and protection of the home. While primarily a companion today, his working origin must always be remembered when assessing true Chow type. The general outline of a fully-coated Chow. A powerful, sturdy, squarely built, upstanding dog of Arctic type, medium in size with strong muscular development and heavy bone. The body is compact, short coupled, broad and deep, the tail set high and carried closely to the back, the whole supported by four straight, strong, sound legs. Viewed from the side, the hind legs have little apparent angulation and the hock joint and metatarsals are directly beneath the hip joint. It is this structure which produces the characteristic short, stilted gait unique to the breed. The large head with broad, flat skull and short, broad and deep muzzle is proudly carried and accentuated by a ruff. Elegance and substance must be combined into a well balanced whole, never so massive as to outweigh his ability to be active, alert and agile. Clothed in a smooth or an offstanding rough double coat, the Chow is a masterpiece of beauty, dignity and naturalness, unique in his blue-black tongue, scowling expression and stilted gait.

People look at initiates or gurus as having fancy titles, deep or advanced spiritual information or super powers. Yet in truth initiation is about becoming a good human again. The same way animals know what their role is when it comes to serving nature. Initiates understand their unique roles in serving nature. Since each person is unique, either initiate understands they were born under an astrological sign, to serve a unique role to nature. Adebamgbe From the short story Dark Initiation

if there isn’t deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and human relationship failure will replace short-term success.

The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul. For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed. It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. History has recorded several large-scale returns led by such men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunately there seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether or not another such return may be expected before the coming of Christ is a question upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not of too great importance to us now. What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know: but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.

Something was wrong with the devices themselves. Digging deep into the internal structure of the circuit boards with powerful microscopes, Simon's team had discovered broken and incorrect connections, electronic dead-ends, short circuits, and nonsensical pathways.

be her friend, if she would let him. He gulped in a deep breath of the evening air and flopped into Pop’s wooden rocking chair. It smelled as if rain was coming, and with the oppressing heat they’d been having lately, the land could surely use a good dousing. A short time later, a streak of lightning shot across the sky, followed by a thunderous roar that shook the whole house. “Jah, a summer storm’s definitely coming,” he murmured. “Guess I’d best be getting to bed, or I’ll be tempted to sit out here and watch it all night.” Noah had enjoyed watching thunderstorms ever since he was a boy. Something fascinated him about the way lightning zigzagged across the sky as the rain pelted the earth. It made Noah realize the awesomeness of God’s power. Everything on earth was under the Master’s hand, and Noah never ceased to marvel at the majesty of it all. He rose from his chair just as the rain started to fall. It fell lightly at first but soon began to pummel the ground. He gazed up at the dismal, gray sky. “Keep us all safe this night, Lord.” Faith shuddered and pulled the sides of her pillow around her ears as she tried to drown out the sound of the storm brewing outside her bedroom window. She’d been afraid of storms since

A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient with slower and less-direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relationships with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions, and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: These and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul.

Lorenzo steps closer, his body a breath away from mine as he whispers, "Trust me?" I have no idea what he's asking, but I nod because what else am I gonna do? We're about to go to dinner and pretend like we're happy newlyweds with someone who could blow up my entire social circle, and likely my professional life, with a single well-placed word. Lorenzo walks me backward until my back hits the wall. I gasp, surprised. But he's not done. "Trust me," he orders softly. And with that, he picks me to straddle him and slams my back against the door with a thump. It rattles loudly behind me. "Fuck, Abigail, Quick, mia rosa. Come on my cock before your friends get here or they're going to hear me fucking you deep and hard. I want your cum on me and my cum in you while we sit at this prim and proper dinner, wife." I gasp, both at his filthy talk and the ridge of his cock pressing against my core. "Ungh." I can't make words, am barely making incoherent sounds, and Lorenzo lifts one hand from my thigh to hold my head still. He meets my eyes, one of his brows lifted pointedly. If I couldn't feel his cock, I wouldn't even know what this is doing to him. For all the fire rushing through my body and turning my brain to melted goo, he's clear-eyed and has a plan. I blink and realize what he's doing. Emily needs to think we're newlyweds, and what do newlyweds do non-stop? Fuck. Now that I've caught on, he winks at me and I smile back. He thrusts against me and I bounce on the door. "Yes, hard ... just like that," I moan. He grunts, finding a pace that is actually doing a lot for me even though I just came in the shower a bit ago. I'd be embarrassed at the wet heat of my core, but his cock jumps against me. I like that he's carried away too as he dry humps me, only hinting at what we're playacting. "Take it. Take me, Abigail," he hisses through clenched teeth. Is that for effect or is he holding the reins that tightly? "Yes, my Italian Stallion!" I cry out, clawing at his shoulders for purchase. Confusion mars his face as he mouths, "Italian Stallion?" I shake me head and whisper back, "I don't know, it just came out." He grins like that's the funniest thing he's ever heard and goes back to thrusting against me with renewed furor. "That's it, mia rosa. Are you going to come for me?" Oh shit. I am. Like I am ... for real. Any sane, rational, reasonable person would tilt their hips and move away from the power of his thrusts to save a little face. Do I? Absolutely not. If anything, I'm humping him back, riding him like the pony at my sixteenth birthday party. Don't laugh ... it was an amazing blowout. Like I'm about to have ... "Yes, yes. Right there Lorenz-ohh!" He pulls me tight against him, his cock grinding against my clit as he grunts through several short strokes and says something I don't understand in Italian. Is he? Did he? As I float back to Earth and realize what just happened, there's another knock on the door. This one is harder and louder. "Hey, Abi! We have reservations, you know?" Emily yells through the wood, literally inches away from where I just loudly came on Lorenzo's cock for real.

When white people stop short of reconciliation, it’s often because they are motivated by a deep need to believe in their own goodness, and for that goodness to be affirmed over and over and over again. These folks want a pat on the back simply for arriving at the conclusion that having people of color around is good. But reconciliation is not about white feelings. It’s about diverting power and attention to the oppressed, toward the powerless. It’s not enough to dabble at diversity and inclusion while leaving the existing authority structure in place. Reconciliation demands more.

The aim of self-image psychology is not to create a fictitious self that is all-powerful, arrogant, egoistic, and all-important. Such an image is as inappropriate and unrealistic as the inferior image of self. Our aim is to find the real self, and to bring our mental images of ourselves more in line with the objects represented by our goals. However, it is common knowledge among psychologists that most of us underrate ourselves; short change ourselves and sell ourselves short. Actually, there is no such thing as a “superiority complex.” People who seem to have one are actually suffering from feelings of inferiority—their “superior self” is a fiction, a cover-up, to hide from themselves and others their deep-down feelings of inferiority and insecurity.

Next come the magickally important Hebrew letters Yud-Heh-Vahv-Heh, YHVH for short, the Tetragrammaton. I have already discussed it, but let’s add some more information. The Yud looks like this: . The upper tip of the Yud is associated with the first Sephira. The rest of the Yud, along with the Heh (which looks like this: ), is associated with the second through fourth Sephiroht. The Vahv is an elongated Yud and looks like this: . It is related to the fourth through ninth Sephiroht. Notice the overlap between the Vahv and Heh. The second or last Heh is related to the tenth Sephira. The first Heh is known as the Heh Superior (Sup.) and the second Heh is known as the Heh Inferior (Inf.). Hebrew is read from right to left, and the Tetragrammaton looks like this: Vertically, it looks like this: The creatures in the next column are both real and unreal, while the tools of the following column are magickal tools. The lamen is a medallion hung around the neck to represent a certain power or quality. The names are the various God, archangelic, and angelic names, along with other words of power. The traditional magician of the Middle Ages wore two robes: an outer robe, representing the silence necessary to being a magician, which concealed a hidden, inner robe of truth. Today, most magicians wear only one robe, the two robes being more symbolic than actual. Finally, the last column is self-explanatory with the sole added note that the plant associated with the first Sephira is an almond “aflower.” That is, it should be blooming. This list of Kabalistic correspondences is by no means complete. But it is a good start. I suggest that you make up a series of Trees of Life, each one filled out with one of the columns. You may wish also to make up a very large Tree of Life putting many of the correspondences associated with a Sephira in the drawing of that Sephira. I urge a deep study of the correspondences now. Their importance will become clearer to you as we move into the study of Grey Magick. For a far more complete version

She stepped into the lamplit room. Arin looked up from where he sat. His fingers tightened around the glass in his hand. He stared. She flushed, realizing that she’d forgotten to throw a robe over her thin nightdress. Or had she forgotten? Had she not decided in some way too quick for thought that this was exactly what she’d wanted? She glanced down at the shift’s hem, which hit just below the knees. The cloth was as sheer as melted butter. Her flush deepened. She saw the expression on Arin’s face. He glanced away. “Gods,” he said, and drank. “Exactly.” That brought his gaze back. He swallowed, winced, and said, “It’s possible that I’ve lost any claim to coherent thought, but I’ve no idea what you mean.” “Those gods of yours.” His dark brows were lifted. His eyes had grown round. The glass in his hand was a tumbler, the liquid a thumb’s width high and deep green. It looked like the blood of leaves. He cleared his throat. Hoarsely, he said, “Yes?” “Did you pray to them?” “Kestrel, I am praying to them right now. Very hard, in fact.” She shook her head. “Did you pray to your”--she rummaged through her memory--“god of souls?” She was ready to believe in a supernatural reason. It would explain his power over her. He coughed, then gave a short, rasping laugh. “That god doesn’t listen to me.” He set the tumbler next to the carafe on the table. He paused, thinking. In a new, slow tone, he said, “Except perhaps now.” He dropped his cheek into an open palm and rubbed fingers into one closed eye. He nodded at the chair across the table from him. “Would you like to sit?” Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure she actually wanted to get closer to him. Her pulse had gone erratic. “I’m fine here.” “I’d really rather.” “If I make your uncomfortable, why don’t you leave?” He laughed again. “Ah, no. No, thank you. Here.” He slid the glass across the table. The remaining liquid sloshed but didn’t spill. When she sat, curious (what would the blood of leaves taste like?), he said, “You might want to try only a bit first.” “That’s not wine.” “It decidedly is not.” “What is it?” “An eastern liquor. Roshar gave it to me. He said that if you drink enough of it, the dregs start to taste like sugar. I suspect a prank.” “But you’ve no head for drink.” He looked as startled as she felt. “Of all the things, you remember that.” She had remembered something else, too, as she’d tried to sleep. She’d come to ask him about it, but the words stuck in her throat. Instead, she appraised him. “You seem clear-minded enough.” “It’s early. Still, I don’t know. This conversation feels just shy of a delusion.

Gasping desperately, she clenched her hands on his shoulders, fingers sinking deep. His lips firmed, he suckled gently- Patience felt the earth quake. The heat of his mouth shocked her- the wet sweep of his tongue scalded her. She gave a strangled cry. That sound, keenly feminine, acutely evocative, caught and focused Vane's attention. Focused every hunter's instinct. Desire heightened, need escalated. His demons turned frenzied- her siren's song lured them on. Urged him on. Compulsion swelled- tense, turbulent, powerful. Desire seethed hotly. He drew a ragged breath- And remembered- all he'd nearly forgotten, all her wild responses had driven from his mind. This was one seduction he had to, need to, manage perfectly- this time, there was meaning beyond the act. Seducing Patience Debbington was too important to rush- conquering her senses, her body, was only the first step. He didn't want her just once- he wanted her for a lifetime. Dragging in a shuddering breath, Vane caught hold of his reins and hauled his impulses up short. Something in him wailed with frustration. He shut his mind to the relentless pounding of his arousal. And set himself to soothe hers. He knew how. There were planes of warm desire on which women could float, neither driven, nor quiescent, but simply buoyed on a sea of pleasure. With hands and lips, mouth and tongue, he soothed her fever flesh, took the sting from her aches, the edge from her passion, and eased her into that pleasured sea. Patience was beyond understanding- all she knew was the peace, the calm, the profound pleasure that welled and washed through her. Content, she flowed with the tide, letting her senses stretch. The whirling that had disoriented her slowed; her mind steadied. Full consciousness, when it came, was no shock; the continuing touch of Vane's hands, the artful caress of his lips, his tongue, were familiar- no threat.

Where is everyone?” Cat asked, looking around the deserted ship. “Shore leave,” he said laconically. “What about us?” “If it’s urgent, we’ll just have to swim.” Cat yawned and stretched languidly, feeling boneless from Travis’s loving and a long, wonderful nap. “Swim? Ha. I’d go down like a brick. Looks like you’re stuck with me.” Travis tilted her face up and kissed her swiftly. “Remember that, witch. You’re mine.” Her eyes widened into misty silver pools. She looked up at him through dense lashes that glinted red and gold. He smiled. “You really are a pirate, aren’t you?” Cat muttered. “Where you’re concerned, yes.” The sensual rasp in Travis’s voice sent echoes of ecstasy shimmering through her. His smile was rakish and utterly male, reminding her of what it was like to have him deep inside her. It was all Cat could do not to simply stand and stare at her lover. In the slanting afternoon light his eyes had a jewel-like purity of color. His skin was taught, deeply bronzed, and his beard was spun from dark gold. Beneath his faded black T-shirt and casual shorts, his body radiated ease and power. “Don’t move,” Cat ordered, heading back to the cabin. “Where are you going?” “Don’t move!” She raced below deck, grabbed the two camera cases she used most often, and ran back on deck. While Travis watched her with a lazy, sexy gleam in his eyes, she pulled out a camera and a small telephoto lens. When she retreated a few feet back along the deck, he moved as though to follow. “No,” she said. “Stay right where you are. You’re perfect.” “Cat,” he said, amusement curling in his voice, “what are you doing?” “Taking pictures of an off-duty buccaneer.” The motor drive surged quickly, pulling frame after frame of film through the camera. “You’re supposed to be taking pictures of the Wind Warrior,” Travis pointed out. “I am. You’re part of the ship. The most important part. Creator, owner, soul.” She caught the sudden intensity of his expression, an elemental recognition of her words. The motor drive whirred in response to her command. After a few more frames she lowered the camera and walked back to him. “Get used to looking into a camera lens.” Cat warned Travis. “I’ve been itching to photograph you since the first time I looked into those gorgeous, sea-colored eyes of yours.” Laughing softly, he snaked one arm around her and pulled her snugly against his side.

In this regard, you can think of each individual slow wave of NREM sleep as a courier, able to carry packets of information between different anatomical brain centers. One benefit of these traveling deep-sleep brainwaves is a file-transfer process. Each night, the long-range brainwaves of deep sleep will move memory packets (recent experiences) from a short-term storage site, which is fragile, to a more permanent, and thus safer, long-term storage location. We therefore consider waking brainwave activity as that principally concerned with the reception of the outside sensory world, while the state of deep NREM slow-wave sleep donates a state of inward reflection—one that fosters information transfer and the distillation of memories. If wakefulness is dominated by reception, and NREM sleep by reflection,

Many Native American traditions use the word "medicine" to refer to anything that has spiritual power and that keeps us walking in beauty. Each poem, short story and prose in this book is a remedy to the things that cause us to forget what walking in beauty feels like and empowers us to re-story our limiting and repetitive narrative into multi-dimensional abstracts of art from which we can heal ourselves and our collective through. These stories have been wildcrafted from the wilderness: the one within and without - the one above and below – the one we live in now and the one our ancestors call us back to through the eaves. They seam the two worlds together to make medicine for deep and restorative healing.

of God, seeing “scripture can only be understood thro’ the same Spirit whereby it was given.” Our reading should likewise be closed with prayer, that what we read may be written on our hearts. 6. It might also be of use, if while we read, we were frequently to pause, and examine ourselves by what we read, both with regard to our hearts, and lives. This would furnish us with matter of praise, where we found God had enabled us to conform to his blessed will, and matter of humiliation and prayer, where we were conscious of having fallen short. And whatever light you then receive, should be used to the uttermost, and that immediately. Let there be no delay. Whatever you resolve, begin to execute the first moment you can. So shall you find this word to be indeed the power of God unto present and eternal salvation.

Spent the day with the male on the tundra, exercising his abilities, several of which have developed since I’ve come to live here. My current hypothesis is this new (or ancient?) species of wolves develop and deepen their powers throughout their lives. Whether they are born with them or they evolve, it is unclear, and I do not expect to know until our first litter of pups are born. His abilities are extraordinary—he can summon fire, freeze and unfreeze ice under his paws and, what is perhaps his strongest and oldest ability, he is able to show me past events by triggering memories in my mind—memories that are not even mine, but are his. I’ve taken to calling him Ames—short, of course, for Amethyst.

The whole purpose of the coming of the Word into the world is to produce people in whom the power of the kingdom will bear fruit. But since the kingdom is fully, albeit mysteriously, present in the Word (since, in other words, the Word's fruitfulness is not in question but is already an accomplished fact), it is chiefly for our sakes that the parable enjoins the necessity of response. The biggest difference made by responses to the Word is the difference they make to us, for us, and in us. They decide not whether the Word will achieve his purposes but whether we will enjoy his achievement - or find ourselves in opposition to it. Admittedly, I am leaning once again in the direction of a descriptive rather than a prescriptive interpretation ofJesus' words. What he is saying in this parable seems to me to be of a piece with all his other loving, if often sad, commentaries on our condition. He is not threatening some kind of retaliation by the Word against people who fail to make the best response; rather, he is almost wistfully portraying what we miss when we fall short and fail to bear fruit. And there is the Word. In the case of even the most promising of the deficient responses to the sowing of the Word (namely, in the verse about the seed that fell among thorns - Matt. 13:22; Mark 4:18), the result specified is that it becomes dkarpos, without fruit, unfruitful. For a plant, the failure to bear fruit is not a punishment visited on it by the seed, but an unhappy declination on the plant's part from what the seed had in mind for it. It is a missing of its own fullness, its own maturity - even, in some deep sense, of its own life. So too with us. If we make deficient responses to the Word, we do not simply get ourselves in dutch; rather, we fail to become ourselves at all.

The idea of the British philosophers Berkeley and Hume that man did not passively observe and absorb knowledge, but rather by the process of observation created it and moulded the world through his own consciousness, had taken deep hold in Germany. Clausewitz did not need to read the works of his contemporary Kant (and there is no evidence that he did) to become familiar with these ideas which formed the basis of Kant’s philosophy. He had also absorbed those that had re-entered philosophical thought with the revival of Hellenism and were so powerfully to influence the work of the young Hegel: the Socratic distinctions between the ideal and its manifestations, between the absolute, unattainable concept and the imperfect approaches to it in the real world.

information that Volkov runs the primary supply routes for small arms and other supplies between Russia and the rebels in Donetsk.” “Can’t we just call in an air strike?” Max muttered. He was squatting next to Kate, peering through the darkness with a pair of night-vision binoculars and listening on a separate earpiece. Silver moonlight illuminated Max’s face and Kate found herself admiring his profile. He was even more handsome than when they first met several months ago outside Minsk. Back then, he was recovering from a two-foot piece of rebar that had impaled his side. Despite the constant strain of trying to keep his family alive, she noticed he was thriving under the pressure. A simmering fire burned behind the deep blackness of his eyes. He was bred for this sort of thing. Kate almost felt sorry for the consortium members, knowing Max wouldn’t rest until they were all dead and buried. Max’s eyes flashed when he looked over at her, reminding her of the strength he possessed. When he held her gaze, she saw a powerful conviction, the confidence he had gained after surviving in the face of overwhelming danger, a resolve emanating from the depths of his soul, an aura she couldn’t help but be attracted to. The moment lingered even as his eyes moved back to the binoculars and he went back into the dark recesses of his mind. She fought back the attraction, willing it to a place somewhere out of reach. She was bad at love. She had a habit of falling fast and hard before paying the price as things fell apart. As she got older, she found she didn’t want to bother with it anymore. It was too much work, too much of a distraction from what drove her. Besides, she couldn’t imagine there was room in his heart while he fought for his family’s survival. She touched his bicep. “If you’re from Belarus, and your given name was Mikhail, how did you end up with the nickname Max?” He kept his eyes glued to the field glasses. “It’s short for Maxim, a common name in Belarus. My mother started calling me Max when I was young. She said—” “Your surrogate mother?” “Right. The mother who raised me. She told me that she lost an argument with my father. She wanted to name me after Maxim Gorky, a Soviet Marxist writer and comrade of Lenin’s. My father wouldn’t hear of it. I think it was her

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga said it like this: Could there really be any such thing as horrifying wickedness [if there were no God and we just evolved]? I don’t see how. There can be such a thing only if there is a way that rational creatures are supposed to live, obliged to live. . . . A [secular] way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort . . . and thus no way to say there is such a thing as genuine and appalling wickedness. Accordingly, if you think there really is such a thing as horrifying wickedness (. . . and not just an illusion of some sort), then you have a powerful . . . argument [for the reality of God].7 In short, the problem of tragedy, suffering and injustice is a problem for everyone. It is at least as big a problem for non-belief in God as for belief. It is therefore a mistake, though an understandable one, to think that if you abandon belief in God it somehow makes the problem of evil easier to handle. A woman in my church once confronted me about sermon illustrations in which evil events turned out for the good. She had lost a husband in an act of violence during a robbery. She also had several children with severe mental and emotional problems. She insisted that for every one story in which evil turns out for good there are one hundred in which there is no conceivable silver lining. In the same way, much of the discussion so far in this chapter may sound cold and irrelevant to a real-life sufferer. ‘So what if suffering and evil doesn’t logically disprove God?’ such a person might say. ‘I’m still angry. All this philosophising does not get the Christian God “off the hook” for the world’s evil and suffering!’ In response the philosopher Peter Kreeft points out that the Christian God came to earth to deliberately put himself on the hook of human suffering. In Jesus Christ, God experienced the greatest depths of pain. Therefore, though Christianity does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, it provides deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair.

It was not the first time that his duty had been to comfort, as best he could, one of the broken things his brother’s imperious speed had cast aside and forgotten. He made no attempt to analyze the situation or to state it in exact terms; but he felt Katharine Gaylord’s need for him, and he accepted it as a commission from his brother to help this woman to die. Day by day he felt her demands on him grow more imperious, her need for him grow more acute and positive; and day by day he felt that in his peculiar relation to her his own individuality played a smaller and smaller part. His power to minister to her comfort, he saw, lay solely in his link with his brother’s life. He understood all that his physical resemblance meant to her. He knew that she sat by him always watching for some common trick of gesture, some familiar play of expression, some illusion of light and shadow, in which he should seem wholly Adriance. He knew that she lived upon this and that her disease fed upon it; that it sent shudders of remembrance through her and that in the exhaustion which followed this turmoil of her dying senses, she slept deep and sweet and dreamed of youth and art and days in a certain old Florentine garden, and not of bitterness and death.

When someone comes forward with some gesture of reconciliation, try to recognize that and appreciate it for what it is as opposed to how it falls short. The benefit of the doubt will benefit both of you.

Here are a few of the defenses that many people carry inside, sometimes for the rest of their lives: AVOIDANCE. Avoidance is usually about fear. Emotions and relationships have hurt me, so I will minimize emotions and relationships. People who are avoidant feel most comfortable when the conversation stays superficial. They often overintellectualize life. They retreat to work. They try to be self-sufficient and pretend they don’t have needs. Often, they have not had close relationships as kids and have lowered their expectations about future relationships. A person who fears intimacy in this way may be always on the move, preferring not to be rooted or pinned down; they are sometimes relentlessly positive so as not to display vulnerability; they engineer things so they are the strong one others turn to but never the one who turns to others. DEPRIVATION. Some children are raised around people so self-centered that the needs of the child are ignored. The child naturally learns the lesson “My needs won’t be met.” It is a short step from that to “I’m not worthy.” A person haunted by a deprivation schema can experience feelings of worthlessness throughout life no matter how many amazing successes they achieve. They often carry the idea that there is some flaw deep within themselves, that if other people knew it, it would cause them to run away. When they are treated badly, they are likely to blame themselves. (Of course he had an affair; I’m a pathetic wife.) They sometimes grapple with a fierce inner critic. OVERREACTIVITY. Children who are abused and threatened grow up in a dangerous world. The person afflicted in this way often has, deep in their nervous system, a hyperactive threat-detection system. Such people interpret ambivalent situations as menacing situations, neutral faces as angry faces. They are trapped in a hyperactive mind theater in which the world is dangerous. They overreact to things and fail to understand why they did so. PASSIVE AGGRESSION. Passive aggression is the indirect expression of anger. It is a way to sidestep direct communication by a person who fears conflict, who has trouble dealing with negative emotions. It’s possible such a person grew up in a home where anger was terrifying, where emotions were not addressed, or where love was conditional and the lesson was that direct communication would lead to the withdrawal of affection. Passive aggression is thus a form of emotional manipulation, a subtle power play to extract guilt and affection. A husband with passive-aggressive tendencies may encourage his wife to go on a weekend outing with her friends, feeling himself to be a selfless martyr, but then get angry with her in the days before the outing and through the weekend. He’ll let her know by various acts of withdrawal and self-pity that she’s a selfish person and he’s an innocent victim. —

Nevertheless, during his short reign, King Lunalilo enacted laws that would change the course of Hawaiʻi’s history forever. In a move that was considered very divisive, King Lunalilo offered to exchange the lagoon of Pearl Harbor to the United States in exchange for the exemption of taxes on a number of Hawaiian goods that were exported to the United States, mainly sugar. However, the king withdrew the offer before it was deemed official due to significant pushback from the other aliʻi and the general public. This event showed that the people and rulers of Hawaiʻi harbored deep feelings of distrust, bitterness, and suspicion toward foreign involvement and land treaties. Additionally, King Lunalilo behaved contrary to King Kamehameha V’s example by electing three American ministers to seats of power and by cooperating and associating himself with the missionaries.

Without it, no one would ever have understood what God had revealed of himself and of his wisdom in the public arena. Our obtuseness, our deep self-centeredness, our love of pomp and power and prestige, simply would not have allowed us to understand the cross or our need of it. In short, our very lostness demanded the work of the Spirit of God, to the end that we might “understand what God has freely given us” (2:12).

I looked upon slumbering Nature, and with deep reflection discovered the reality of a vast and infinite thing—something no power could demand, influence acquire, nor riches purchase. Nor could it be effaced by the tears of time or deadened by sorrow; a thing which cannot be discovered by the blue lakes of Switzerland or the beautiful edifices of Italy.  It is something that gathers strength with patience, grows despite obstacles, warms in winter, flourishes in spring, casts a breeze in summer, and bears fruit in autumn—I found Love.

David Christian, who, in March 2011, narrated the complete history of the universe for a TED audience and took all of 18 minutes to do it (17 minutes and 40 seconds, to be exact). Christian told me that he teaches a world-history course that examines the entire history of the universe—from the Big Bang 13 billion years ago to today. The Big History course is offered by The Teaching Company in a series of 48 half-hour lectures. Christian’s deep understanding of the subject helped him condense the content into just the right amount of time to grab the audience’s attention and inspire them to take better care of our fragile planet. “I’ve been teaching Big History now for over 20 years, so I have a pretty good feel for the story and that means I can tell it in many different versions,”6 Christian told me. E. F. Schumacher, economist and author of Small Is Beautiful, once said, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” Courage is the key word. It takes courage to keep things simple. It takes courage to put one picture on a PowerPoint slide instead of filling it with tiny text that most people in the audience won’t even be able to read. It takes courage to reduce the number of the slides in a presentation. It takes courage to speak for 18 minutes instead of rambling on for much longer. Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Be sophisticated. Keep your presentations and pitches short and simple.

I'm sorry.' I blinked. 'What do you possibly have to be sorry for?' 'His hands were shaking- as if in the aftermath of that fury at what Keir had called me, what he'd threatened. Perhaps he'd brought me here before heading home in order to have some privacy before his friends could interrupt. 'I shouldn't have let you go. Let you see that part of us. Of me.' I'd never seen him so raw, so... stumbling. 'I'm fine.' I didn't know what to make of what had been done. Both between us and to Keir. But it had been my choice. To play that role, to wear those clothes. To let him touch me. But... I said slowly, 'We knew what tonight would require of us. Please- please don't start protecting me. Not like that.' He knew what I meant. He'd protected me Under the Mountain, but that primal, male rage he'd just shown Keir... A shattered study splattered in paint flashed through my memory. Rhys rasped. 'I will never- never lock you up, force you to stay behind. But when he threatened you tonight, when he called you...' Whore. That's what they'd called him. For fifty years, they'd hissed it. I'd listened to Lucien spit the words in his face. Rhys released a jagged breath. 'It's hard to shut down my instincts.' Instincts. Just like... like someone else had instincts to protect, to hide me away. 'Then you should have prepared yourself better,' I snapped. 'You seemed to be going along just fine with it, until Keir said-' 'I will kill anyone who harms you,' Rhys snarled. 'I will kill them, and take a damn long time doing it.' He panted. 'Go ahead. Hate me- despise me for it.' 'You are my friend,' I said, and my voice broke on the word. I hated the tears that slipped down my face. I didn't even know why I was crying. Perhaps for the fact that it had felt real on that throne with him, even for a moment, and... and it likely hadn't been. Not for him. 'You're my friend- and I understand that you're High Lord. I understand that you will defend your true court, and punish threats against it. But I can't... I don't want you to stop telling me things, inviting me to do things, because of the threats against me.' Darkness rippled, and wings tore from his back. 'I am not him,' Rhys breathed. 'I will never be him, act like him. He locked you up and let you wither, and die.' 'He tried-' 'Stop comparing. Stop comparing me to him.' The words cut me short. I blinked. 'You think I don't know how stories get written- how this story will be written?' Rhys put his hands on his chest, his face more open, more anguished than I'd seen it. 'I am the dark lord, who stole away the bride of spring. I am a demon, and a nightmare, and I will meet a bad end. He is the golden prince- the hero who will get to keep you as his reward for not dying of stupidity and arrogance.' The things I love have a tendency to be taken from me. He'd admitted that to me Under the Mountain. But his words were kindling to my temper, to whatever pit of fear was yawning open inside of me. 'And what about my story?' I hissed. 'What about my reward? What about what I want?' 'What is it that you want, Feyre?' I had no answer. I didn't know. Not anymore. 'What is it that you want, Feyre?' I stayed silent. His laugh was bitter, soft. 'I thought so. Perhaps you should take some time to figure that out one of these days.' 'Perhaps I don't know what I want, but at least I don't hide what I am behind a mask,' I seethed. 'At least I let them see who I am, broken bits and all. Yes- it's to save your people. But what about the other masks, Rhys? What about letting your friends see your real face? But maybe it's easier not to. Because what if you did let someone in? And what if they saw everything, and still walked away? Who could blame them- who would want to bother with that sort of mess?' He flinched. The most powerful High Lord in history flinched. And I knew I'd hit hard- and deep. Too hard. Too deep. 'Rhys,' I said.

Nicky was watching their reactions uneasily, clearly wishing they would take this a little more seriously. “A couple of decades ago,” she said, “some of our orbiting gamma ray observatories began picking up incredibly powerful bursts. Long story short, it became obvious that these were coming not down from deep space but up from below—from the earth. So powerful that they maxed out the sensors, so we couldn’t even tell how massive they actually were. Turned out they were coming from thunderclouds. The conditions in those storm towers down there are impossibly strange. Free electrons get accelerated upward and get kicked up into a hyperenergetic state, massively relativistic, and at some point they bang into atoms in the tops of the storm towers with such energy that they produce gamma rays which in turn produce positrons—antimatter. The positrons have opposite charges, so they get accelerated downward. The cycle repeats, up and down, and at some point you get a burst of gamma rays that is seriously dangerous—you could get a lifetime’s worth of hard radiation exposure in a flash.” She paused for a moment, then stared directly at me with a crazy half smile. “The earth,” she said, “is an alien world.

AS IF THE abstracting qualities of numbers and scale aren’t enough to deal with when trying to run an organization, these days we have the added complication of the virtual world. The Internet is nothing short of awe inspiring. It gives the power to operate at scale or spread ideas to anyone, be it a small business or a social movement. It gives us the ability to find and connect with people more easily. And it is incredible at speeding the pace of commercial transactions. All of these things are good. But, just as money was developed to help expedite and simplify transactions by allowing payment to be rendered without barter, we often use the Internet as a means to expedite and simplify communication and the relationships we build. And just as money can’t buy love, the Internet can’t buy deep, trusting relationships. What makes a statement like that somewhat tricky or controversial is that the relationships we form online feel real. We can, indeed, get bursts of serotonin when people “like” our pictures, pages or posts or when we watch ourselves go up in a ranking (you know how much serotonin loves a ranking). The feelings of admiration we get from virtual “likes” or the number of followers we have is not like the feelings of admiration we get from our children, or that a coach gets from their players. It is simply a public display of “like” with no sacrifice required—a new kind of status symbol, if you will. Put simply, though the love may feel real, the relationship is still virtual. Relationships can certainly start online, but they only become real when we meet face-to-face.

He meant it, but he bent his head to hers and took her mouth, so short of breath he must have hers, needing so urgently to join with her that he would do it in whatever way he might—hands, breath, mouth, arms; his thigh pressed between hers, opening her legs. Her hand lay flat against his chest, as though to push him off—then tightened convulsively, grasping shirt and flesh together. Her fingers dug deep in the muscle of his breast, and then they were glued together, openmouthed and gasping, front teeth scraping painfully in the flurry of their wanting. “I don’t … we’re not …” He broke free for a moment, his mind grasping dimly for the fragments of words. Then her hand found its way under his kilt, a cold, sure touch on his heated flesh, and he lost all power of speech. “Once more before we quit,” she said, and her breath wreathed him in heat and mist. “For old times’ sake.” She sank to her knees in the wet yellow leaves, pulling him down to her.   It

As Lara stared in the square Queen Anne mirror poised on the chest of drawers in her room, it seemed that the atmosphere changed, the air suddenly heavy and pressing. It was so quiet in the cottage that she could hear her own mad heartbeat. She caught sight of something in the mirror, a deliberate movement that paralyzed her. Someone had entered the cottage. Skin prickling, Lara stood in frozen silence and stared into the mirror as another reflection joined her own. A man's bronzed face... short, sun-streaked brown hair... dark brown eyes... the hard, wide mouth she remembered so well. Tall... massive chest and shoulders... a physical power and assurance that made the room seem to shrink around him. Lara's breath stopped. She wanted to run, to cry out, faint, but it seemed that she had been turned to stone. He stood just behind her, his head and shoulders looming far above hers. His gaze held hers in the mirror... The eyes were the same color, yet... he had never looked at her like this, with an intensity that made every inch of her skin burn. His was the hard gaze of a predator. She shook in fright as his hands moved gently to her hair. One by one he slipped the confining pins from the shining sable mass, and set them on the dresser before her. Lara watched him, quivering with each light tug on her hair. "It's not true," she whispered. He spoke in Hunter's voice, deep and slightly raspy. "I'm not a ghost, Lara." She tore her gaze from the mirror and stumbled around to face him. He was so much thinner, his body lean, almost rawboned, his heavy muscles thrown into stark prominence. His skin was tanned to a copper blaze that was far too exotic for an Englishman. And his hair had lightened to the mixed gold and brown of a griffin's feathers.

Current theories regarding the function and construction of the pyramid fall short. A credible theory would have to explain the following conditions found inside the Great Pyramid: -The selection of granite as the building material for the King's Chamber. It is evident that in choosing granite, the builders took upon themselves an extremely difficult task. -The presence of four superfluous chambers above the King's Chamber. -The characteristics of the giant granite monoliths that were used to separate these so-called "construction chambers." -The presence of exuviae, or the cast-off shells of insects, that coated the chamber above the King's Chamber, turning those who entered black. -The violent disturbance in the King's Chamber that expanded its walls and cracked the beams in its ceiling but left the rest of the Great Pyramid seemingly undisturbed. -The fact that the guardians were able to detect the disturbance inside the King's Chamber, when there was little or no exterior evidence of it. -The reason the guardians thought it necessary to smear the cracks in the ceiling of the King's Chamber with cement. -The fact that two shafts connect the King's Chamber to the outside. -The design logic for these two shafts—their function, dimensions, features, and so forth.

Kadie stared at Saintcrow. He was taller than Vaughan, broad-shouldered, and lean-hipped, with an air of confidence and authority that was almost tangible. He wore black jeans, black boots, and a black silk shirt open at the throat. His inky black hair brushed the collar of his jacket; his eyes were like deep pools of ebony. A thin white scar ran from the outer corner of his left eye, down his cheek, and disappeared under his shirt collar. Power radiated from him, making the short hairs rise along her arms. Even if no one had told her what he was, she would have known he wasn't human. Saintcrow took Kadie's hands in his. "I regret that I was not able to welcome you when you arrived," he said. Kadie nodded. His voice moved over her like a caress, deep and whiskey smooth. Eyes narrowed, Saintcrow took hold of the black scarf hanging out of her back pocket and tossed it aside. "I rather fancy her," he said. "You don't mind if I borrow her for a while, do you, Vaughan?" It wasn't really a request, not the way he said it. Clenching her hands into fists, Kadie sent a pleading glance to Vaughan. He looked at her, his eyes filled with pity. "As you wish, my lord," he said, and vanished from sight. Kadie stared at Saintcrow. She had been afraid of Vaughan, but that was nothing compared to the terror that gripped her when Saintcrow looked at her through those fathomless black eyes. "Come along, Kadie Andrews." His gaze burned into hers, hotter than hellfire, yet strangely compelling. When he held out his hand, she dared not refuse. With a predatory smile, his fingers- long and incredibly strong- closed over her own. A rush of preternatural power surrounded her. It was like being caught in the center of a tornado. The world spun out of focus. Darkness swallowed her.

Father," Chartrand said, "may I ask you a strange question?" The camerlegno smiled. "Only if I may give you a strange answer." Chartrand laughed. "I have asked every priest I know, and I still don't understand." "What troubles you?" The camerlegno led the way in short, quick strides, his frock kicking out in front of him as he walked. His black, crepe-sole shoes seemed befitting, Chartrand thought, like reflections of the man's essence... modern but humble, and showing signs of wear. Chartrand took a deep breath. "I don't understand this omnipotent-benevolent thing." The camerlegno smiled. "You've been reading Scripture." "I try." "You are confused because the Bible describes God as an omnipotent and benevolent deity." "Exactly." "Omnipotent-benevolent simply means that God is all-powerful and well-meaning." "I understand the concept. It's just... there seems to be a contradiction." "Yes. The contradiction is pain. Man's starvation, war, sickness..." "Exactly!" Chartrand knew the camerlegno would understand. "Terrible things happen in this world. Human tragedy seems like proof that God could not possibly be both all-powerful and well-meaning. If He loves us and has the power to change our situation, He would prevent our pain, wouldn't He?" The camerlegno frowned. "Would He?" Chartrand felt uneasy. Had he overstepped his bounds? Was this one of those religious questions you just didn't ask? "Well... if God loves us, and He can protect us, He would have to. It seems He is either omnipotent and uncaring, or benevolent and powerless to help." "Do you have children, Lieutenant?" Chartrand flushed. "No, signore." "Imagine you had an eight-year-old son... would you love him?" "Of course." "Would you do everything in your power to prevent pain in his life?" "Of course." "Would you let him skateboard?" Chartrand did a double take. The camerlegno always seemed oddly "in touch" for a clergyman. "Yeah, I guess," Chartrand said. "Sure, I'd let him skateboard, but I'd tell him to be careful." "So as this child's father, you would give him some basic, good advice and then let him go off and make his own mistakes?" "I wouldn't run behind him and mollycoddle him if that's what you mean." "But what if he fell and skinned his knee?" "He would learn to be more careful." The camerlegno smiled. "So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child's pain, you would choose to show your love by letting him learn his own lessons?" "Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It's how we learn." The camerlegno nodded. "Exactly.

there’s dozens of stories about some kid from our world falling into a different, magical one, being the chosen one or the close companion of the chosen one and saving the world, and then going home where they’re delighted to see their family again and have a new appreciation of their own life. but what about someone who didn’t miss it? what if you save the world and you’re given your medal and stripped of the magic you learned and put back in a world you never missed? and you’re furious. maybe you gave up a few years of your life. you have callouses and muscles and a few scars and maybe a missing eye or something. you definitely have some blood on your hands. you might have PTSD you can’t talk to anyone about. and suddenly you’re fifteen again, in a body that’s too soft and too short and too complete. you’re always cold because there’s no magic burning in your veins anymore, and even as you grow up the feeling of not fitting doesn’t go away because when you look in the mirror at eighteen you look all wrong: this is not what you’re supposed to look like at eighteen. the sky clouds and you rub at the phantom ache of injuries this body never received. you wake up screaming sometimes remembering the sorcerer who burnt your hand to ashes, or the final battle you almost didn’t make it through, or the moment you felt the magic in you go out. but here’s the thing: they took you and made you into a weapon that was determined enough and powerful enough to save a whole world. they can put you back where they found you but they can’t undo everything. and there’s this, too: the place between worlds clings to you. you can’t tease fire out of the air but you can feel the pull of the doorways all the time, although none of them so far go to your world. but you try to make it work for a decade, anyway. you’re dutiful. but one night you leave work late and for the thousandth time you catch yourself searching the sky for firebirds. and you break. of the three portals within five hundred miles, one is a howling, frozen wasteland and one is a deep violet void, but one opens into a misty forest that you step into and don’t look back. it’s not your world, but if you keep going long enough, you’ll get there. (and maybe much, much later, hundreds of worlds later, you climb through a window, or a door of woven branches int he middle a field, or push aside a curtain, and as you set foot on new land you feel the fire in your veins and sparks at your fingertips and finally, finally, you’re home)

In short, Mossadegh’s being in power was not a threat to the US interest of preventing Soviet expansion. The CIA acknowledges the Soviets’ “paucity of military preparations and the probable unwillingness of the USSR to intervene militarily on its [Tudeh’s] behalf.”27 And finally, the CIA, in another memo on April 17, acknowledges “Moscow’s recent overtures of conciliation toward the West.”28 In the end, the CIA’s assessment was correct, with the Soviet Union not making any moves in the eleventh hour of the coup to save the Mossadegh government.29 Thus, the CIA was quite aware that there was no internal or external Communist threat to Iran. Indeed, the CIA recognized that, to the extent Mossadegh was dealing with Russia at all, he was being forced to by the very circumstances in which the United States and Britain were putting him. Thus, in an August 6, 1953, internal embassy memo, Iranian Minister of National Economy A.A. Akhavi is quoted as saying that “there is no desire to have any relations with the neighbor to the north, including commercial relations, but that Iran was being forced to deal with Russia by reason of the fact that the United States and most of the free world would not buy its products.”30

The Guardian further notes, in an unintentional rebuke to Cyrus Vance who claimed to Archbishop Romero that the Carter Administration was seeking “peaceful and progressive solutions” in El Salvador, that “the arming of one side of the conflict by the US [which began under Carter] hastened the country’s descent into a civil war in which 75,000 people died and 1 million out of a population of 6 million became refugees.” And, while Vance in his letter decried the violence on both sides of the political spectrum in El Salvador, it was in truth the forces which the United States funded which carried out the lion’s share of the violence. Thus, as El Salvador’s Truth Commission would later conclude, “85% of ‘serious acts of violence’ were attributed to the state” which the United States backed throughout the conflict. In truth, the United States’ “Salvador option,” or option of creating, training, and arming indigenous paramilitary death squad units to destroy local insurgencies, really began in Colombia in the early 1960s, was then carried out in Vietnam, and continues to this day in countries such as Afghanistan and Syria. And so, Romero’s words to Carter shortly before his death ring as powerful and true as they did then, and they continue to be ignored by successive US presidents.

The feeling of power was incredible. His hands bunched in her hair; low, aggressive growls escaped from deep in his throat. She found his thighs with her nails, raking lightly, driving him wild, wanting him crazy for her, wanting him mindless with passion. Mikhail dragged her up, closer. His hands found the firm muscles of her bottom, cupped, massaged. “I claim you as my lifemate.” He whispered the words, a black magic incantation, centuries old. His hand moved up her spine, around to the fullness of her breast, down satin skin to find the thatch of midnight black curls. Raven cried out when his fingers found her beneath the bubbling water, found her and began a slow, torturous exploration. Her mouth was open against his chest, her breath short and coming in little gasps. The craving grew, the fire built, something wild and abandoned in her fought for freedom. She could hear their hearts beating as one, hear his blood, hers. She felt her body pulsing with life, with need, with such hunger that she needed all of him to fill her and make her complete. She needed him in her mind, his erotic, insatiable appetite, the incredible lust he had that made him burn and ache for her. She needed his body possessing hers, taking hers wildly, without reservation. And she needed his blood. His hand cradled the back of her head as he moved her to the water’s edge. “I belong to you. I offer my life for you. Take what it is you need, what it is you want.” His whispered words opened up the door to a terrible craving. His fingers moved aggressively, his body pressing hers to the earth, half in and half out of the water.

Over the last half of my life, I’ve read hundreds of poetry books. Whenever I read a poem that I loved or felt a deep connection to, I added it to a collection I titled “200 Antidepressant Poems.” Now, whenever I feel overwhelmed or feel I did something wrong, I go to the meditation room, randomly open my manuscript, then read a poem loudly. Usually two poems are enough to make me feel better and restore love in my heart. Here are my 11 favorite poems to read when I am feeling depressed (11 is the master power number): “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop “Leaving One” by Ralph Angel “A Cat in an Empty Apartment” by Wisława Szymborska “Apples” by Deborah Digges “Michiko Nogami (1946–1982)” by Jack Gilbert “Eating Alone” by Li-Young Lee “The Potter” by Peter Levitt “Black Dog, Red Dog” by Stephen Dobyns “The Word” by Mark Cox “Death” by Maurycy Szymel “This” by Czeslaw Milosz

inside. The heat that separates and tears you apart from your home, he thought. Would he make it back safe? Or even if he did make it back alive, would there even be a home to come back to? Downstairs, he caught sight of his mother packing food for his journey. He gazed at her face, memorizing every curve and line. He hoped she’d be all right. As if she knew what he was feeling, she reached out and hugged him and choked back the tears. “Nothing will keep us apart for long. You’ll come back to us, I feel it in my bones.” The weight of her words made him even sadder to leave. His father ambled down the hallway, carrying something wrapped in a red silk cloth. “I’ve something for you, son. I’d hope to give this to you when you came of age. It will prove valuable on your journey.” He handed him a sheathed short sword. Talis withdrew the sword and gaped at the red-tinged steel with ghost patterns and smoky lines running along the blade. A tremendous weight rushed up his arm from the sword as if imbued with some terrific power. His arm tensed and he winced. “This… this sword is for me?” Father was really giving him this treasure? The sheath was made of blackened leather and elaborate swirling patterns ran down the spine, with silver studs lining the edge. Talis gasped. It was immaculate. Why would Father give him such a priceless gift? He gazed at the ruby-studded hilt—a puma’s face with ruby eyes shaping the hilt’s edge. “It’s the finest sword in Naru.” Father narrowed his eyes at the expression on Talis' face. “What is it, what are you feeling?” “I’m not sure,” Talis stammered, fighting the power. “It’s so strong.” His father’s eyes sparkled. “You’re sensing the power within the sword—” “It’s magical?” What did his father know of such things? He was a man of commerce and trade. “The magical gift runs deep in our family history.” Father took the sword from Talis and raised it to the firelight. “This is no regular sword… it possesses great power. The red color is not from blood; there's fire magic within.” Fire magic… Master Viridian said his element was fire,

In a now-famous experiment, he and his colleagues compared three groups of expert violinists at the elite Music Academy in West Berlin. The researchers asked the professors to divide the students into three groups: the “best violinists,” who had the potential for careers as international soloists; the “good violinists”; and a third group training to be violin teachers rather than performers. Then they interviewed the musicians and asked them to keep detailed diaries of their time. They found a striking difference among the groups. All three groups spent the same amount of time—over fifty hours a week— participating in music-related activities. All three had similar classroom requirements making demands on their time. But the two best groups spent most of their music-related time practicing in solitude: 24.3 hours a week, or 3.5 hours a day, for the best group, compared with only 9.3 hours a week, or 1.3 hours a day, for the worst group. The best violinists rated “practice alone” as the most important of all their music-related activities. Elite musicians—even those who perform in groups—describe practice sessions with their chamber group as “leisure” compared with solo practice, where the real work gets done. Ericsson and his cohorts found similar effects of solitude when they studied other kinds of expert performers. “Serious study alone” is the strongest predictor of skill for tournament-rated chess players, for example; grandmasters typically spend a whopping five thousand hours—almost five times as many hours as intermediatelevel players—studying the game by themselves during their first ten years of learning to play. College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups. Even elite athletes in team sports often spend unusual amounts of time in solitary practice. What’s so magical about solitude? In many fields, Ericsson told me, it’s only when you’re alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful—they’re counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them. Deliberate Practice is best conducted alone for several reasons. It takes intense concentration, and other people can be distracting. It requires deep motivation, often self-generated. But most important, it involves working on the task that’s most challenging to you personally. Only when you’re alone, Ericsson told me, can you “go directly to the part that’s challenging to you. If you want to improve what you’re doing, you have to be the one who generates the move. Imagine a group class—you’re the one generating the move only a small percentage of the time.” To see Deliberate Practice in action, we need look no further than the story of Stephen Wozniak. The Homebrew meeting was the catalyst that inspired him to build that first PC, but the knowledge base and work habits that made it possible came from another place entirely: Woz had deliberately practiced engineering ever since he was a little kid. (Ericsson says that it takes approximately ten thousand hours of Deliberate Practice to gain true expertise, so it helps to start young.)

So Sofie leapt onto the lip of the fountain and smiled at the wolves closing in. They wouldn’t kill her. Not when the Hind was waiting to interrogate her. Too bad they didn’t know what Sofie truly was. Not a human, nor a witch. She let the power she’d gathered by the docks unspool. Crackling energy curled at her fingertips and amid the strands of her short brown hair. One of the dreadwolves understood then—matched what he was seeing with the myths Vanir whispered to their children. “She’s a fucking thunderbird!” the wolf roared—just as Sofie unleashed the power she’d gathered on the water flooding the square. On the dreadwolves standing ankle-deep in it. They didn’t stand a chance. Sofie pivoted toward the docks as the electricity finished slithering over the stones, hardly sparing a glance for the smoking, half-submerged carcasses. The silver darts along their collars glowed molten-hot.

FOCUS is one of the most valuable skills in business, and is becoming increasingly rare. If you can master this skill, you’ll achieve extraordinary results and make more money than most people. In his book, "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success In a Distracted World", Cal Newport says: “Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep – spending their days instead in a frantic blur of email and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.” When I started writing a book a month, I have to admit, it was challenging. I quickly realized I had a focus problem. Coincidentally, I attended a book festival and picked up a book by Catherine Price, "How to Break Up With Your Phone", and discovered my life was being sucked away one text message, one social media post, and one email at a time. If I wanted to write a book a month, I needed to get my life and my time back. I read Catherine’s book, and the following especially resonated with me: “Today, just over a decade since smartphones entered our lives, we’re beginning to suspect that their impact on our lives might not be entirely good. We feel busy but ineffective… The same technology that gives us freedom can also act like a leash—and the more tethered we become, the more it raises the question of who’s actually in control.” I had lost control of my time and my ability to focus. It wasn’t an overnight event, it was a slow, insidious change that happened over a long period of time. Below are some other interesting statistics from Price’s book: Americans check their phones 47 times per day.