Silent Attitude Quotes

To make a change, you must be: willing to commit, willing to change, willing to have an open mind, and willing to take action!

Maintain an attitude of anticipating success!

Realize that "I Can't" usually means "I won't"!

Maintain a forgiving attitude!

December 27, 11:00 p.m. My Dear America, I’ve never written a love letter, so forgive me if I fail now. . . . The simple thing would be to say that I love you. But, in truth, it’s so much more than that. I want you, America. I need you. I’ve held back so much from you out of fear. I’m afraid that if I show you everything at once, it will overwhelm you, and you’ll run away. I’m afraid that somewhere in the back of your heart is a love for someone else that will never die. I’m afraid that I will make a mistake again, something so huge that you retreat into that silent world of yours. No scolding from a tutor, no lashing from my father, no isolation in my youth has ever hurt me so much as you separating yourself from me. I keep thinking that it’s there, waiting to come back and strike me. So I’ve held on to all my options, fearing that the moment I wipe them away, you will be standing there with your arms closed, happy to be my friend but unable to be my equal, my queen, my wife. And for you to be my wife is all I want in the world. I love you. I was afraid to admit it for a long time, but I know it now. I would never rejoice in the loss of your father, the sadness you’ve felt since he passed, or the emptiness I’ve experienced since you left. But I’m so grateful that you had to go. I’m not sure how long it would have taken for me to figure this out if I hadn’t had to start trying to imagine a life without you. I know now, with absolute certainty, that is nothing I want. I wish I was as true an artist as you so that I could find a way to tell you what you’ve become to me. America, my love, you are sunlight falling through trees. You are laughter that breaks through sadness. You are the breeze on a too-warm day. You are clarity in the midst of confusion. You are not the world, but you are everything that makes the world good. Without you, my life would still exist, but that’s all it would manage to do. You said that to get things right one of us would have to take a leap of faith. I think I’ve discovered the canyon that must be leaped, and I hope to find you waiting for me on the other side. I love you, America. Yours forever, Maxon

Maintain a receptive attitude!

When our heart is closed, it can create a lonely and isolated feeling together with the attitude: "Nobody loves me" or "Nobody cares about me", which can make it hard for other people to love us.

Kevin was silent for an endless minute, then said, "You should be Court." It was barely a whisper, but it cut Neil to the bone. It was a resentful goodbye to the bright future Kevin had wanted for Neil. Kevin recruited Neil because he believed in Neil's potential. He brought him to the Foxes intending to make a star athlete out of him. Despite his condescending attitude and his dismissals of Neil's best efforts Kevin honestly expected Neil to make the national team after graduation. Now Kevin knew it was all for naught; Neil would be dead by May. "Will you still teach me?" Neil asked. Kevin was quiet again, but not for long this time. "Every night.

Tenderhearted people are silent sufferers they just learn the art to fly with broken wings.

You create silent enemies by revealing how much God had blessed you. There are people who are unhappy about your success and your big dreams are just too heavy for them to bear, so they will try to break you into pieces. Extinguishers of dreams are everywhere, and you can decode them by their nosy attitude towards your affairs. That is why its pertinent to keep few friends, talk less about yourself, and focus on other things pretending as if you don't exist. It doesn't make you faded or out of life, but the chances of getting your prospects destroyed will be very slim.

Create your own path.Don't blindly follow the massess... because most of the time the "M" is silent.

Silence does not always imply consent. Sometimes it simply means that the silent one has opted out of a discussion with idiots.

I’m just thinking. I guess I’m a little worried about our current political climate. The country, the state, and even the city . . . we are very divided, maybe more divided than any time in recent history. The silent underbelly of racist attitudes has become far more emboldened.

How do lineages of women from colonized places, where emphasis is put on silent enduring, learn when and where to confide in their own family if forbearance is the only attitude elevated and modeled?)

We must change our philosophy, abandon our attitude of human superiority and admit that in many cases in natural environments we find ways and means of limiting populations of organisms in a more economical way than we can do it ourselves

Right,” I muttered to myself, impaling the tiny positive-mental-attitude goblin who lived inside the deep, dark, super-black castle fortress of my soul. It was roommates with my silent love for The Sound of Music and cat memes. But

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

She shut her eyes: the sweet word "promiscuity" came to her mind and suffused her; she enunciated silently to herself: "promiscuity of ideas." How could such contradictory attitudes follow after one another in a single head like two mistresses in the same bed? In the past that nearly infuriated her, but today it entrances her: for she knows that the contract between what Leroy used to say and what he's professing today doesn't matter in the slightest. Because one idea is as good as another. Because all statements and positions carry the same value, can rub against one another, nestle, snuggle, fondle, mingle, diddle, cuddle, couple.

The root of all inauthentic manifestations of being-with-others is the attitude of self-concern. It is in this state of mind that, either consciously or unconsciously, we reduce the central aim of all value and meaning to the accomplishment of the welfare of ourselves alone. This attitude can operate very deviously even in the person who outwardly appears to be thoroughly altruistic. Despite all magnanimous commitments and generous deeds, it silently measures the ultimate worth of these things in terms of the personal satisfaction that results from them. It is the root of inauthentic being-with because it is primarily responsible in preventing our essential being-with-others from full and genuine expression.

Most serious confrontations in life are not political, they are existential. One can agree with someone's political stance but disagree in a fundamental way with how they came to that position. It is a question of attitude, of moral configuration. My husband and I had plenty of grievances, but it all boiled down to a fundamental difference in the way we perceived life, the context within which we defined ourselves and our world. For that, there was no reconciliation or resolution, there was only separation or surrender.

You are the greatest comfort for exhausted spirits. By the weight of your tenets and the delightfulness of your singing you have so refreshed me that I now think myself capable of facing the blows of Fortune. You were talking of cures that were rather sharp. The thought of them no longer makes me shudder; in fact I'm so eager to hear more, I fervently beg you for them.' 'I knew it,' She replied. 'Once you began to hang onto my words in silent attention, I was expecting you to adopt this attitude, or rather, to be more exact, I myself created it in you. The remedies still to come are, in fact, of such a kind that they taste bitter to the tongue, but grow sweet once they are absorbed. But you say you are eager to hear more. You would be more than eager to hear if you knew the destination I am trying to bring you to.' I asked what it was and she told me that it was true happiness. 'Your mind dreams of it,' she said, 'but your sight is clouded by shadows of happiness and cannot see reality.' I begged her to lead on and show me the nature of true happiness without delay. 'For you,' she said, 'I will do so gladly.

Similarly, some biblical views of women are superior to others. And so the apostle Paul’s attitude about women is that they could be and should be leaders of the Christian communities—as evidenced by the fact that in his own communities there were women who were church organizers, deacons, and even apostles (Romans 16). That attitude is much better than the one inserted by a later scribe into Paul’s letter of 1 Corinthians, which claims women should always be silent in the church (1 Corinthians 14:35–36), or the one forged under Paul’s name in the letter of 1 Timothy, which insists that women remain silent, submissive, and pregnant (1 Timothy 2:11–15).

Indeed, in the majority of cases the dying person has already lost consciousness. Death had been dissected, cut to bits by a series of little steps, which finally makes it impossible to know which step was the real death, the one in which consciousness was lost, or the one in which breathing stopped. All these little silent deaths have replaced and erased the great dramatic act of death, and no one any longer has the strength or patience to wait over a period of weeks for a moment which has lost a part of its meaning.

Attitude is a silent force that can make all the difference between success and failure.

When you smile-" He had recovered his paternal attitude, perhaps because of Nicole's silent proximity, "I always think I'll see a gap where you've lost some baby teeth.

Right,” I muttered to myself, impaling the tiny positive-mental-attitude goblin who lived inside the deep, dark, super-black castle fortress of my soul. It was roommates with my silent love for The Sound of Music and cat memes.

The girls of the sixties had mothers who predicted, insisted, argued that those girls would be hurt; but they would not say how or why. In the main, the mothers appeared to be sexual conservatives: they upheld the marriage system as a social ideal and were silent about the sex in it. Sex was a duty inside marriage; a wife’s attitude toward it was irrelevant unless she made trouble, went crazy, fucked around. Mothers had to teach their daughters to like men as a class—be responsive to men as men, warm to men as men—and at the same time to not have sex. Since males mostly wanted the girls for sex, it was hard for the girls to understand how to like boys and men without also liking the sex boys and men wanted. The girls were told nice things about human sexuality and also told that it would cost them their lives—one way or another. The mothers walked a tough line: give the girls a good attitude, but discourage them. The cruelty of the ambivalence communicated itself, but the kindness in the intention did not: mothers tried to protect their daughters from many men by directing them toward one; mothers tried to protect their daughters by getting them to do what was necessary inside the male system without ever explaining why. They had no vocabulary for the why—why sex inside marriage was good but outside marriage was bad, why more than one man turned a girl from a loving woman into a whore, why leprosy or paralysis were states preferable to pregnancy outside marriage. They had epithets to hurl, but no other discourse. Silence about sex in marriage was also the only way to avoid revelations bound to terrify—revelations about the quality of the mothers’ own lives.

With the development of chemicals with broad lethal powers, there came a sudden change in the official attitude towards the fire ant. In 1957 the United States Department of Agriculture launched one of the most remarkable publicity campaigns in its history. The fire ant suddenly became the target of a barrage of government releases, motion pictures, and government-inspired stories portraying it as a despoiler of southern agriculture and a killer of birds, livestock and man. A mighty campaign was announced …

Lao Tzu's first paragraph in the book "Tao Te Ching" is that the Tao that can be told is not the absolute Tao. Lao Tzu has his own logic, the logic of paradoxes, the logic of life. To understand Tao, you will have to create eyes. Lao Tzu believes in the unity of opposites, because that is how life is. The Tao can be communicated, but it can only be communicated from heart to heart, from being to being, from love to love, from silence to silence. Truth is always realized in silence. In silence, the truth is realized. You reach to truth through silence. All spiritual books tries to say something that can not be said in the hope that a thirst, a longing, is created in your heart to know the truth. Tao is totality. Life exists through the tension of the opposites, the meeting of the opposites. Lao Tzu says that the opposite poles of life are not really opposites, but complementaries. Thinking is always of opposites. Lao Tzu says: drop the split attitude. Be simple. And when you are simple, you do not choose. Lao Tzu says: be choiceless, let life flow. Enjoy both poles in life, and then your life becomes a symphony of opposites. How to drop the mind: do not choose. If you do not choose, the mind drops. Live life as it comes - float. Float with life. Enjoy the moment in its totality, It is to live as part of the whole, to live as part of existence. If you become silent and empty, everything will come on it's own accord. When you live without any desire for power, position, fame or success, the whole existence pours down into your emptiness.

On the eleventh day, it finally stopped raining. Musashi chafed to be out in the open, but it was another week before they were able to return to work under a bright sun. The field they had so arduously carved out of the wilderness had disappeared without a trace; in its place were rocks, and a river where none had been before. The water seemed to mock them just as the villagers had. Iori, seeing no way to reclaim their loss, looked up and said, “This place is beyond hope. Let’s look for better land somewhere else.” “No,” Musashi said firmly. “With the water drained off, this would make excellent farmland. I examined the location from every angle before I chose it.” “What if we have another heavy rain?” “We’ll fix it so the water doesn’t come this way. We’ll lay a dam from here all the way to that hill over there.” ‘That’s an awful lot of work.” “You seem to forget that this is our dōjō. I’m not giving up a foot of this land until I see barley growing on it.” Musashi carried on his stubborn struggle throughout the winter, into the second month of the new year. It took several weeks of strenuous labor to dig ditches, drain the water off, pile dirt for a dike and then cover it with heavy rocks. Three weeks later everything was again washed away. “Look,” Iori said, “we’re wasting our energy on something impossible. Is that the Way of the Sword?” The question struck close to the bone, but Musashi would not give in. Only a month passed before the next disaster, a heavy snowfall followed by a quick thaw. Iori, on his return from trips to the temple for food, inevitably wore a long face, for the people there rode him mercilessly about Musashi’s failure. And finally Musashi himself began to lose heart. For two full days and on into a third, he sat silently brooding and staring at his field. Then it dawned on him suddenly. Unconsciously, he had been trying to create a neat, square field like those common in other parts of the Kanto Plain, but this was not what the terrain called for. Here, despite the general flatness, there were slight variations in the lay of the land and the quality of the soil that argued for an irregular shape. “What a fool I’ve been,” he exclaimed aloud. “I tried to make the water flow where I thought it should and force the dirt to stay where I thought it ought to be. But it didn’t work. How could it? Water’s water, dirt’s dirt. I can’t change their nature. What I’ve got to do is learn to be a servant to the water and a protector of the land.” In his own way, he had submitted to the attitude of the peasants. On that day he became nature’s manservant. He ceased trying to impose his will on nature and let nature lead the way, while at the same time seeking out possibilities beyond the grasp of other inhabitants of the plain. The snow came again, and another thaw; the muddy water oozed slowly over the plain. But Musashi had had time to work out his new approach, and his field remained intact. “The same rules must apply to governing people,” he said to himself. In his notebook, he wrote: “Do not attempt to oppose the way of the universe. But first make sure you know the way of the universe.

[O]ur attitudes towards things like race or gender operate on two levels. First of all, we have our conscious attitudes. This is what we choose to believe. These are our stated values, which we use to direct our behavior deliberately . . . But the IAT [Implicit Association Test] measures something else. It measures our second level of attitude, our racial attitude on an unconscious level - the immediate, automatic associations that tumble out before we've even had time to think. We don't deliberately choose our unconscious attitudes. And . . . we may not even be aware of them. The giant computer that is our unconscious silently crunches all the data it can from the experiences we've had, the people we've met, the lessons we've learned, the books we've read, the movies we've seen, and so on, and it forms an opinion.

Emma’s eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating, in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched— she admitted—she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley, than with Frank Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet’s having some hope of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!

Everyone expects me to apologize, but this is not something I can apologize for, because I told the truth, and sooner or later Mother was bound to find out anyway. I seem to be indifferent to Mother’s tears and Father’s glances, and I am, because both of them are now feeling what I’ve always felt. I can only feel sorry for Mother, who will have to decide what her attitude should be all by herself. For my part, I will continue to remain silent and aloof, and I don’t intend to shrink from the truth, because the longer it’s postponed, the harder it will be for them to accept it when they do hear it!

In every act of rebellion, the rebel simultaneously experiences a feeling of revulsion at the infringment of his rights and a complete and spontaneous loyalty to certain aspects of himself. Thus he implicitly brings into play a standard of values so far from being gratuitous that he is prepared to support it no matter what the risks. Up to this point he has at least remained silent and has abandoned himself to the form of despair in which a condition is accepted even though it is considered unjust. To remain silent is to give the impression that one has no opinions, that one wants nothing, and in certain cases it really amounts to wanting nothing. Despair, like the absurd, has opinions and desires about everything in general and nothing in particular. Silence expresses this attitude very well. But from the moment that the rebel finds his voice—even though he says nothing but "no"—he begins to desire and to judge. The rebel, in the etymological sense, does a complete turnabout. He acted under the lash of his master's whip. Suddenly he turns and faces him. He opposes what is preferable to what is not. Not every value entails rebellion, but every act of rebellion tacitly invokes a value. Or is it really a question of values?

The mystics have always stressed the religious aspect of Islam, the rationalists the other one. All the same, both of them have always had difficulties with Islam, simply because it cannot be put into any of their classifications. Take wudu as an example. A mystic will define it as a religious ablution with symbolic meaning. A rationalist will look upon it as a matter of hygiene only. They are both right, but only partly. The defectiveness of the mystic explanation lies in the fact that it lets the hygienic side of wudu become a mere form. Following the same logic in other questions, this approach will reduce Islam to pure religion, by eliminating all physical, intellectual, and social components from it. The rationalists take quite the opposite way. By neglecting the religious side, they degrade Islam to a political movement only, creating a new type of nationalism from it, a so called Islamic nationalism, deprived of ethical-religious substance, empty and equal to all other nationalisms in this regard. To be a Muslim in this case, does not represent an appeal or a duty, a moral or a religious obligation, or any attitude to the universal truth. It means only belonging to a group different from the other one. Islam has never been only a nation. Rather, Islam is a call to a nation, " to enjoin the right and to forbid the wrong" Quran- that is, to perform a moral mission. If we disregard the political component of Islam and accept religious mysticism , we silently admit dependence and slavery. On the contrary, if we ignore the religious component , we cease to be any moral force.

It amazes me how few questions I know to ask, or whom to ask them of, until it’s already too late for the answers to be useful. How do lineages of women from colonized places, where emphasis is put on silent enduring, learn when and where to confide in their own family if forbearance is the only attitude elevated and modeled?)

But how does the Atonement motivate, invite, and draw all men unto the Savior? What causes this gravitational pull-- this spiritual tug? There is a certain compelling power that flows from righteous suffering-- not indiscriminate suffering, not needless suffering, but righteous, voluntary suffering for another. Such suffering for another is the highest and purest form of motivation we can offer to those we love. Contemplate that for a moment: How does one change the attitude or the course of conduct of a loved one whose every step seems bent on destruction? If example fails to influence, words of kindness go unheeded, and the powers of logic are dismissed as chaff before the wind, then where does one turn... In the words of the missionary evangelist, E. Stanley Jones, suffering has "an intesnse moral appeal." Jones once asked Mahatma Gandhi as he sat on a cot in an open courtyard of Yervavda jail, "'Isn't your fasting a species of coercion?' 'Yes,' he said very slowly, 'the same kind of coercion which Jesus exercises upon you from the cross.'" As Jones reflected upon that sobering rejoinder, he said: "I was silent. It was so obviously true that I am silent again every time I think of it. He was prfoundly right. The years have clarified it. And I now see it for what it is: a very morally potent and redenptive power if used rightly. But it has to be used rightly.

Within each one of us there is a healer. Healing has always been a way and a deep source of joy for me. Healing is basically our own energy, which overflows from our inner being, from the meditative quality within, from the inner silence and emptiness. Healing is pure love in essence. Love is what creates healing. Love is the strongest force there is. The sheer presence of love is, in itself, healing. It is more the absence of love – than the presence of love –, which creates problems. Healing is a quality, which we can freely share without any ownership. Healing is not something that we can claim as our own; healing is to be a medium, a channel, for the whole. Healing is a medium through which we can develop our inner qualities of presence, love, joy, intuition, truth, silence, wisdom, creativity and inner wholeness. Healing comes originally from the silence within, where we are already in contact with the whole, with the divine. Healing is what makes us spread our inner wings of love and silence and soar high on the sky of consciousness and touch the stars. Healing is to be in service of God. People who have a quality of heart and sensitivity are naturally healing. With some people that we meet, we feel naturally uplifted and inspired. With other people that we meet, we become tired and heavy. With people, who can listen without judging and evaluating, it is easy to find the right words to share problems and difficulties. And with other people, it seems almost impossible to find the right words. People, who have a healing presence and quality, can support our own inner source of love, truth and silence through their presence. These people also seem to have an intuitive sensitivity to saying the right words, which lift and inspires us. This is the people whose presence can mirror the inner truth, which we already know deep within ourselves. The human heart is a healer, which heals others and ourselves. It is the hearts quality of love, acceptance and compassion, plus communication through words, that creates healing. A word that comes from the heart creates healing. A silent listening with a quality of presence and an accepting attitude creates space for healing to happen. Without love it is only possible to reach the personality of the other person, to reach the surface and periphery of the other person The gift of healing comes when we see the other person with love and compassion. It is the quality of heart, which creates the love and the genuine caring for the other person. When our words are carried by the quality of heart, you can say almost anything to the other person and he will still be able to be open and receptive. But if our words lack the quality of heart, it also becomes difficult for the other person to continue to be open and receptive. Even if a therapist is very skilful, technically, or has a clear clairvoyant ability, and still lacks the natural roots in the soil of the heart, then his words will not touch the heart of the other person.

Awareness, no matter how confused it may be, develops from every act of rebellion: the sudden, dazzling perception that there is something in man with which he can identify himself, even if only for a moment. Up to now this identification was never really experienced. Before he rebelled, the slave accepted all the demands made upon him. Very often he even took orders, without reacting against them, which were far more conducive to insurrection than the one at which he balks. He accepted them patiently, though he may have protested inwardly, but in that he remained silent he was more concerned with his own immediate interests than as yet aware of his own rights. But with loss of patience—with impatience—a reaction begins which can extend to everything that he previously accepted, and which is almost always retroactive. The very moment the slave refuses to obey the humiliating orders of his master, he simultaneously rejects the condition of slavery. The act of rebellion carries him far beyond the point he had reached by simply refusing. He exceeds the bounds that he fixed for his antagonist, and now demands to be treated as an equal. What was at first the man's obstinate resistance now becomes the whole man, who is identified with and summed up in this resistance. The part of himself that he wanted to be respected he proceeds to place above everything else and proclaims it preferable to everything, even to life itself. It becomes for him the supreme good. Having up to now been willing to compromise, the slave suddenly adopts ("because this is how it must be . . .") an attitude of All or Nothing. With rebellion, awareness is born.

The room fell silent. It was the way she kept disagreeing—without embarrassment, without melodrama—as if she would have the last say, as if she knew she’d win in the end. This is exactly the kind of attitude her coworkers had complained of. And the way she implied that hers and Calvin’s relationship was at some higher level—as if it had been crafted from nondissolvable material that survived everything, even his death. Annoying.

...the manner of speech of everybody in the world — held strange, elusive complexities, intricately presented with overtones of vagueness: I have always been baffled by these precautions so strict as to be useless, and by the intensely irritating little maneuvers surrounding them. In the end I have felt past caring; I have laughed them away with my clowning, or surrendered to them abjectly with a silent nod of the head, in the attitude of defeat.

That strange feeling came back to Nick’s stomach, although this time it traveled upward to the vicinity of his heart. His hands stroked and soothed the mare, but all his attention centered on the woman kneeling in the straw. The haughty attitude Elizabeth sometimes displayed had vanished. Happiness lit up her face, and her eyes shone with love. Look at me that way, he silently pleaded. He knew Star didn’t appreciate her loving attention the same way he would.

God's Rush to Give. January 17 SILENCE. Be silent before Me. Seek to know and then to do My will in all things. Abide in My Love. An atmosphere of loving understanding to all men. This is your part to carry out, and then I surround you with a protective screen that keeps all evil from you. It is fashioned by your own attitude of mind, words, and deeds, towards others. I want to give you all things, good measure, pressed down and running over. Be quick to learn. You know little yet of the Divine Impatience which longs to rush to give. Does one worrying thought enter your mind, one impatient thought? Fight it at once. Love and Trust are the solvents for the worry and cares and frets of a life. Apply them at once. You are channels, and though the channel may not be altogether blocked, fret and impatience and worry corrode, and in time would become beyond your help. Persevere, oh! persevere. Never lose heart. All is well.

In 1917 I went to Russia. I was sent to prevent the Bolshevik Revolution and to keep Russia in the war. The reader will know that my efforts did not meet with success. I went to Petrograd from Vladivostok, .One day, on the way through Siberia, the train stopped at some station and the passengers as usual got out, some to fetch water to make tea, some to buy food and others to stretch their legs. A blind soldier was sitting on a bench. Other soldiers sat beside him and more stood behind. There were from twenty to thirty.Their uniforms were torn and stained. The blind soldier, a big vigorous fellow, was quite young. On his cheeks was the soft, pale down of a beard that has never been shaved. I daresay he wasn't eighteen. He had a broad face, with flat, wide features, and on his forehead was a great scar of the wound that had lost him his sight. His closed eyes gave him a strangely vacant look. He began to sing. His voice was strong and sweet. He accompanied himself on an accordion. The train waited and he sang song after song. I could not understand his words, but through his singing, wild and melancholy, I seemed to hear the cry of the oppressed: I felt the lonely steppes and the interminable forests, the flow of the broad Russian rivers and all the toil of the countryside, the ploughing of the land and the reaping of the wild corn, the sighing of the wind in the birch trees, the long months of dark winter; and then the dancing of the women in the villages and the youths bathing in shallow streams on summer evenings; I felt the horror of war, the bitter nights in the trenches, the long marches on muddy roads, the battlefield with its terror and anguish and death. It was horrible and deeply moving. A cap lay at the singer's feet and the passengers filled it full of money; the same emotion had seized them all, of boundless compassion and of vague horror, for there was something in that blind, scarred face that was terrifying; you felt that this was a being apart, sundered from the joy of this enchanting world. He did not seem quite human. The soldiers stood silent and hostile. Their attitude seemed to claim as a right the alms of the travelling herd. There was a disdainful anger on their side and unmeasurable pity on ours; but no glimmering of a sense that there was but one way to compensate that helpless man for all his pain.

The more rights I surrender and the more I level myself down to others, the more deeply do I sink into the average and ultimately into the greatest number. The first condition which an aristocratic society must have in order to maintain a high degree of freedom among its members, is that extreme tension which arises from the presence of the most antagonistic instincts in all its units: from their will to dominate. . . . If ye would fain do away with strong contrasts and differences of rank, ye will also abolish strong love, lofty attitudes of mind, and the feeling of individuality. Concerning the actual psychology of societies based upon freedom and equality. — What is it that tends to diminish in such a society? The will to be responsible for ones self (the loss of this is a sign of the decline of autonomy); the ability to defend and to attack, even in spiritual matters; the power of command; the sense of reverence, of subservience, the ability to be silent, great passion, great achievements, tragedy and cheerfulness.

If a man postpone[s] any open acknowledgement... that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends [are] based... he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and sceptical attitudes which are not really his. But... they may become his. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.

There's really no reason to come to satsang at all, unless you have an open heart! If you came to satsang with an open heart, Reality will be yours. Not my reality or your reality, but Reality, the Reality, what people call the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God. You are already That, but you have so many concepts you cover it up. You have so many feelings and dogmas and attitudes that you cover up the Godliness. So you have to open your heart and let your reality shine through. How do you do this? By keeping silent, by not being judgmental, by leaving the world alone. There will always be something in this world to correct, either in yourself or in your family or in the world or people. You have learned from experience that you cannot do this. The correction is always made within yourself. It is yourself with a small "s" that sees the problem. But if you try to resolve the problem outside of you, it will never be resolved. It's resolving yourself, knowing the Truth, understanding who you are, that brings you peace and realization. (p. 3-4)

Alliance (Sonata)" Of dusty gazes fallen down to the soil or leaves without sound and entombing. Of metals without light, with the void, with the absence of the dead day of coup. At the top of the hands the dazzle of butterflies, the start of butterflies whose light has no end. You were keeping the trail of light, of broken beings that the sun abandoned, getting dark, throws to the churches. Stained with glances, with the aim of bees, your material of unexpected flame fleeing coming before and after the day and to your family of gold. The days stalked they cross the secrecy but fall inside of your voice of light. Oh proprietress of love, on your rest I founded my dream, my silent attitude. With your body of shy number, extended suddenly until quantities that define the earth, behind the fight of the white days of space and chills of slow deaths and withered stimuli, I feel burn your lap and move your kisses making fresh swallows in my dream. Sometimes the fate of your tears amounts as the age up to my forehead, there they are striking the waves, being destroyed of death: its’ movement is damp, depressed, final.

Alliance (Sonata) " Of dusty glances fallen to the ground or of soundless leaves burying themselves. Of metals without light, with the emptiness, with the absence of the suddenly dead day. At the tip of the hands the dazzlement of butterflies, the upflight of butterflies whose light has no end. You kept the trail of light, of broken beings that the abandoned sun, sinking, casts at the churches. Stained with glances, dealing with bees, your substance fleeing from unexpected flame precedes and follows the day and its family of gold. The spying days cross in secret but they fall within your voice of light. Oh mistress of love, in your rest I established my dream, my silent attitude. With your body of timid number, suddenly extended to the quantities that define the earth, behind the struggle of the days white with space and cold with slow deaths and withered stimuli, I feel your lap burn and your kisses travel shaping fresh swallows in my sleep. At times the destiny of your tears ascends like age to my forehead, there the waves are crashing, smashing themselves to death: their movement is moist, drifting, ultimate.

Emma's eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating, in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched—she admitted—she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley, than with Frank Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet's having some hope of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!

There is indeed a poetical attitude to be adopted towards all things, but all things are not fit subjects for poetry. Into the secure and sacred house of Beauty the true artist will admit nothing that is harsh or disturbing, nothing that gives pain, nothing that is debatable, nothing about which men argue. He can steep himself, if he wishes, in the discussion of all the social problems of his day, poor-laws and local taxation, free trade and bimetallic currency, and the like; but when he writes on these subjects it will be, as Milton nobly expressed it, with his left hand, in prose and not in verse, in a pamphlet and not in a lyric. This exquisite spirit of artistic choice was not in Byron: Wordsworth had it not. In the work of both these men there is much that we have to reject, much that does not give us that sense of calm and perfect repose which should be the effect of all fine, imaginative work. But in Keats it seemed to have been incarnate, and in his lovely ODE ON A GRECIAN URN it found its most secure and faultless expression; in the pageant of the EARTHLY PARADISE and the knights and ladies of Burne-Jones it is the one dominant note. It is to no avail that the Muse of Poetry be called, even by such a clarion note as Whitman’s, to migrate from Greece and Ionia and to placard REMOVED and TO LET on the rocks of the snowy Parnassus. Calliope’s call is not yet closed, nor are the epics of Asia ended; the Sphinx is not yet silent, nor the fountain of Castaly dry. For art is very life itself and knows nothing of death; she is absolute truth and takes no care of fact; she sees (as I remember Mr. Swinburne insisting on at dinner) that Achilles is even now more actual and real than Wellington, not merely more noble and interesting as a type and figure but more positive and real.

It is good to ask questions, especially when we are uncertain, unsure or confused. However, we must check our attitudes and be certain that we do not fall into a position of “questioning.” Questioning will only yield mistrust and division. Our motives should be to bring greater understanding and clarity to situations. Should we speak up or should we be silent? We must consider our choices prayerfully. Think of a time when you approached someone with a “questioning” attitude. How did he or she respond to you? What about a time when you approached someone with a pure attitude of asking questions? Was the response different?

focus and attitude, he’d declared. Which one had been right? Was there more I could do? A name and a category for what I was? “Can you project?” Kate asked interestedly. “Project?” I asked. “Push it out from yourself,” Kate explained. “Shield someone besides yourself.” “I don’t know. I’ve never tried. I didn’t know I should do that.” “Oh, you might not be able to,” Kate said quickly. “Heavens knows I’ve been working on it for centuries and the best I can do is run a current over my skin.” I stared at her, mystified. “Kate’s got an offensive skill,” Edward said. “Sort of like Jane.” I flinched away from Kate automatically, and she laughed. “I’m not sadistic about it,” she assured me. “It’s just something that comes in handy during a fight.” Kate’s words were sinking in, beginning to make connections in my mind. Shield someone besides yourself, she’d said. As if there were some way for me to include another person in my strange, quirky silent head. I remembered Edward cringing on the ancient stones of the Volturi castle turret. Though this was a human memory, it was sharper, more painful than most of the others—like it had been branded into the tissues of my brain. What if I could stop that from happening ever again? What if I could protect him? Protect

He peered up at the house. “I know you’re finished in there, Blake. May as well come out.” I breathed a silent sigh. Blake strolled onto the deck wearing low-slung skater shorts and flip-flops. Being shirtless must’ve been mandatory in California. I kind of wished they’d get dressed so I could focus properly when I told them about the prophecy. Blake joined us beside the pool. “So . . . ,” said Blake, rocking back on his heels. “Lover’s quarrel over?” “We’re not lovers,” Kaidan and I said together. “What’s stopping you?” Blake smiled. “What’s stopping you and Ginger?” Kaidan asked. “An ocean, man. Fu—” He glanced at me. “Uh . . . eff you.” “Eff me?” Kaidan asked, grinning. “No, eff you, mate.” Blake put a fist over his mouth when he caught what must have been a seething look on my face, and he laughed, punching Kaidan in the arm. “Told you, man! She’s pissed about the cursing thing! Ginger was right.” I shook my head. I wouldn’t look at them. I was too humiliated to deny it. “Girl, all you have to do is say the word, and Mr. Lusty McLust a Lot here will be happy to whisper some dirty nothings in your ear.” Kaidan half grinned, sexuality rolling off him as wild as the Pacific below us. I took a shaky breath. “I don’t appreciate when people are fake with me.” I pointed this statement at Kaidan. Okay, calling him a fake was overboard, especially if he was just being respectful. But my feelings were bruised and battered. If Kai wasn’t going to forgive me or be willing to talk, I couldn’t hang around and deal with his bad attitude. It hurt too much, and the unfairness frustrated me to no end. “If you guys will sit down and shut up for a minute, I’ll tell you what I came here to say, and then I’m out of here. You two can find someone else to make fun of.” They both wiped the smiles from their faces. I pulled a padded lawn chair over and sat. They moved a couple of chairs closer, giving me their attention. 

Hyperbolic Suggestion is—as one might infer from the term’s literal interpretation—a method of suggestion induced upon the subject (or subjects), in question, through the blatant and immoderate invocation of hyperbole. Simply stated, excessive exaggeration induces a trance upon the recipient, rendering him or her remarkably susceptible to suggestion. Thus, through the use of a multitude of descriptive adjectives and superlatives, neural mechanisms and pathways are overloaded, as canals and bypasses are burrowed into the thick of the gray matter. The dendrites are, through this process, tuned to a predetermined frequency by which the seeds of suggestion can be sown. When this occurs, the subject becomes incredibly compliant to any orders given at a certain tone of voice. In some cases, orders need not be given. The subject’s attitudes might well be so affected by the hyperbole as to affect his natural tendencies...Emmanuel silently wondered if there existed a perfect combination of words or phrases that could somehow—as in the case of Hyperbolic Suggestion—subvert even the most stubborn of wills. Then again, maybe it wasn’t so much the words as it was how they were spoken: if he achieved exactly the most desirable intonation, rhythm, timing, pitch and pronunciation in his speaking, would his verbal appeals somehow make greater inroads in garnering their consent? There had to be some optimal combination of aspirated consonants, diphthongs, facial expressions and inflection he could somehow affect in order to persuade them effectively. But it seemed that to search for this elusive mixture of ingredients would only prove an onerous task, conceivably of little benefit. In view of this sobering reality, he decided instead to try out a completely different approach from those previous: it occurred to him that his attempts at persuasion might be slightly more effective if he carried them out as dialogues, rather than as monologues.

Happiness is not just a mindset You trade it with silent penance, Sometimes in your violent cries with a grin to disguise. The toil makes you stoic yet crowns you strong. In the timidest moment of apprehensions you are made to nod to fake comprehension. Assimilate risks vs rewards, still nothing might seem to pay off, It is achieved when you elude capital punishment for uncommitted crimes. You can embrace it when you persist to elicit obscured fears, Yeah, happiness is not a mindset instead you mindfully harvest Happiness is to strategise circumstances for mental alacrity, social satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment and personal fulfilment to develop holistic aspects of wellbeing

Religion, as it is known in the western world in the 19th century, was male religion. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, though they may differed about what sacrament to take when or which day was actually the Sabbath, were in completed agreement on one subject - the status of women. Females were to be regarded as inferior creatures who were divinely intended to be obedient and silent vessels for the production of children and the pleasure and convenience of men. These attitudes not only thrived in the Church but found their way past those great arched doorways to install themselves in a more personal way into the thoughts, feelings and values of every Jewish, Christian or Mohammedan family.

FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 1943 Dearest Kitty, Oh my, another item has been added to my list of sins. Last night I was lying in bed, waiting for Father to tuck me in and say my prayers with me, when Mother came into the room, sat on my bed and asked very gently, “Anne, Daddy isn’t ready. How about if I listen to your prayers tonight?” “No, Momsy,” I replied. Mother got up, stood beside my bed for a moment and then slowly walked toward the door. Suddenly she turned, her face contorted with pain, and said, “I don’t want to be angry with you. I can’t make you love me!” A few tears slid down her cheeks as she went out the door. I lay still, thinking how mean it was of me to reject her so cruelly, but I also knew that I was incapable of answering her any other way. I can’t be a hypocrite and pray with her when I don’t feel like it. It just doesn’t work that way. I felt sorry for Mother—very, very sorry—because for the first time in my life I noticed she wasn’t indifferent to my coldness. I saw the sorrow in her face when she talked about not being able to make me love her. It’s hard to tell the truth, and yet the truth is that she’s the one who’s rejected me. She’s the one whose tactless comments and cruel jokes about matters I don’t think are funny have made me insensitive to any sign of love on her part. Just as my heart sinks every time I hear her harsh words, that’s how her heart sank when she realized there was no more love between us. She cried half the night and didn’t get any sleep. Father has avoided looking at me, and if his eyes do happen to cross mine, I can read his unspoken words: “How can you be so unkind? How dare you make your mother so sad!” Everyone expects me to apologize, but this is not something I can apologize for, because I told the truth, and sooner or later Mother was bound to find out anyway. I seem to be indifferent to Mother’s tears and Father’s glances, and I am, because both of them are now feeling what I’ve always felt. I can only feel sorry for Mother, who will have to figure out what her attitude should be all by herself. For my part, I will continue to remain silent and aloof, and I don’t intend to shrink from the truth, because the longer it’s postponed, the harder it will be for them to accept it when they do hear it! Yours, Anne

The family were wild," she said suddenly. "They tried to marry me off. And then when I'd begun to feel that after all life was scarcely worth living I found something"—her eyes went skyward exultantly—"I found something!" Carlyle waited and her words came with a rush. “Courage—just that; courage as a rule of life, and something to cling to always. I began to build up this enormous faith in myself. I began to see that in all my idols in the past some manifestation of courage had unconsciously been the thing that attracted me. I began separating courage from the other things of life. All sorts of courage—the beaten, bloody prize-fighter coming up for more—I used to make men take me to prize-fights; the déclassé woman sailing through a nest of cats and looking at them as if they were mud under her feet; the liking what you like always; the utter disregard for other people's opinions—just to live as I liked always and to die in my own way—Did you bring up the cigarettes?" He handed one over and held a match for her silently. "Still," Ardita continued, "the men kept gathering—old men and young men, my mental and physical inferiors, most of them, but all intensely desiring to have me—to own this rather magnificent proud tradition I'd built up round me. Do you see?" "Sort of. You never were beaten and you never apologized." "Never!" She sprang to the edge, poised or a moment like a crucified figure against the sky; then describing a dark parabola plunked without a slash between two silver ripples twenty feet below. Her voice floated up to him again. "And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life—not only over-riding people and circumstances but over-riding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things." She was climbing up now, and at her last words her head, with the damp yellow hair slicked symmetrically back, appeared on his level. "All very well," objected Carlyle. "You can call it courage, but your courage is really built, after all, on a pride of birth. You were bred to that defiant attitude. On my gray days even courage is one of the things that's gray and lifeless." She was sitting near the edge, hugging her knees and gazing abstractedly at the white moon; he was farther back, crammed like a grotesque god into a niche in the rock. "I don't want to sound like Pollyanna," she began, "but you haven't grasped me yet. My courage is faith—faith in the eternal resilience of me—that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide—not necessarily any silly smiling. Oh, I've been through hell without a whine quite often—and the female hell is deadlier than the male." "But supposing," suggested Carlyle, "that before joy and hope and all that came back the curtain was drawn on you for good?" Ardita rose, and going to the wall climbed with some difficulty to the next ledge, another ten or fifteen feet above. "Why," she called back, "then I'd have won!

He always carried (I have not yet mentioned it, I think) a pocket-handkerchief of rich silk and of imposing proportions, which was of great value to him in his profession. I have seen him so terrify a client or a witness by ceremoniously unfolding this pocket-handkerchief as if he were immediately going to blow his nose, and then pausing, as if he knew he should not have time to do it before such client or witness committed himself, that the self-committal has followed directly, quite as a matter of course. When I saw him in the room he had this expressive pocket-handkerchief in both hands, and was looking at us. On meeting my eye, he said plainly, by a momentary and silent pause in that attitude, "Indeed? Singular!" and then put the handkerchief to its right use with wonderful effect.

I just helped with a birthing." Amber flames lit his angry dark eyes. "Women have no business doing that kind of work. It's not decent!" Thoroughly provoked by his unreasonable attitude, Willow completely forgot Miriam's presence. "Well, that's a lamebrain thing to say, considering it's us females who do the birthing. All men do is prime their-" "Willow!" Miriam interjected. "That is quite enough!" Seemingly disgusted with both of them, Miriam waved Rider off dismissively. "Mr. Sinclair, you've seen for yourself she's quite all right so I suggest you take yourself elsewear." "Fine! It's a little too whiffy around here for me anyway." He jerked Sultan around and rode off in a monstrous huff. Willow was pricked by his disdain more than she cared to admit. "Did you hear what he said? He said I stink! You'd think I'd just climbed out of a pig sty! Hell, how would he know if I stink? He wasn't even close enough to sniff me." Miriam exhaled a deep sigh and wrinkled her nose. "Well, believe me, I'm close enough!" Miriam bristled but then recognized the teasing twinkle in Miriam's soft hazel eyes and broke into a grin. "It'll never do to stick you in a tub," the landlady observed. "I'd kill myself, filling and dumping it before we got you clean. Stay here and don't move. I'll be right back." Miriam returned, loaded down with towels, soap, and clean clothes. "Lead the way to that swimming hole you were telling me about." The two women silently traipsed down the narrow path to the river, Willow brooding over Rider's sarcasm and Miriam wondering if Willow's clothes could be laundered or if she should just burn them.

Directly Mr Pye stepped ashore he heard her voice. 'The name is Dredger,' it said. Mr Pye lifted his head again, his thorn-shaped nose veering towards her and the rest of his round face following it, as a ship must follow its bowsprit. His little mouth continued to smile gently but it gave nothing away. As he remained silent, Miss Dredger raised her voice as though to establish the fact of her forthright nature from the outset. 'Mr Pye, I imagine!' Her new acquaintance removed his glasses, wiped them carefully, and re-set them on his nose. 'Who else?' he murmured. 'Who else, dear lady?' As Miss Dredger could not think 'who' else could possibly be Mr Pye, and had no wish to follow so foolish a train of conjecture, she blew some smoke out of her nostrils. Mr Pye watched the smoke-jets with interest, ad then, as though he were suggesting an alternative attitude to life, he drew a little box from his waistcoat pocket and helped himself to a fruit-drop. At this, Miss Dredger raised one of her black eyebrows, and as she did so she caught sight of young Pépé - and seeing him reminded her of Mr Pye's luggage. She turned to Mr Pye, her scrubbed hands on her tweed hips. 'What have you brought with you?' she said. Mr Pye turned his gaze upon her. 'Love,' he said. 'Just ... Love ...' and then he transferred the fruit-drop from one cheek to the other with a flick of his experience tongue. His fat little hands that held the lapels of his coat were quite green with the light reflected from the harbour water. Miss Dredger's face had turned the most dreadful colour and she had shut her eyes. The smoke drifted out of her nostrils with no enthusiasm. There were some things that simply are not mentioned - unless one wishes to be offensive and embarrassing. Religion, Art, and now this new horror - Love. What on earth did the man mean?

When we try to express communion with God in words, we rapidly reach the end of our capacities. But in the depths of our being Christ is praying for more than we imagine. Compared to the immensity of that hidden prayer of Christ in us, our explicit praying dwindles to almost nothing. That is why silence is so essential in discovery the heart of prayer. Although God never stops trying to communicate with us, God never stops trying to communicate with us, God never wants to impose anything on us. Often God's voice comes in a whisper, in a breath of silence. Remaining in silence in God's presence, open to the Spirit, is already prayer. It is not a matter of trying to obtain inner silence at all costs by following some method that creates a kind of emptiness within. The important thing is a childlike attitude of trust by which we allow Christ to pray within us silently, and then one day, we will discover that the depths of our being ar inhabited by a Presence.

Arjuna, I will now enumerate the marks of the devotee I most dearly love. I love the one who harbors no ill will toward any living being, who returns love for hatred, who is friendly and compassionate toward all. I love the devotee who is beyond ‘I’ and ‘mine,’ unperturbed by pain and not elated by pleasure, who possesses firm faith, is forgiving, ever contented and ever meditating on Me. “I love the peaceful devotee who is neither a source of agitation in the world nor agitated by the world. I love those who are free of fear, envy, and other annoyances that the world brings, who accept the knocks that come their way as blessings in disguise. “I love those who do their worldly duties unconcerned and untroubled by life. I love those who expect absolutely nothing. Those who are pure both internally and externally are also very dear to Me. I love the devotees who are ready to be My instrument, meet any demands I make on them, and yet ask nothing of Me. “I love those who do not rejoice or feel revulsion, who do not grieve, do not yearn for possessions, are not affected by the bad or good things that happen to and around them and yet are full of devotion to Me. They are dear to Me because they live in the Self (Atma), not in the commotion of the world. “I love devotees whose attitudes are the same toward friend or foe, who are indifferent to honor or ignominy, heat or cold, praise or criticism—who not only control their talking but are silent within. Also very dear to Me are those generally content with life and unattached to things of the world, even to home. I love those whose sole concern in life is to love Me. Indeed, these and all the others I mentioned are very, very dear to Me. “Hold Me as your highest goal. Live your life in accordance with the immortal wisdom I have taught you here, and practice this wisdom with great faith and deep devotion. Surrender your mind and heart completely to Me. Then I will love you dearly, and you will go beyond death to immortality.

...the Kabbalist was interested not in the perfected text whose author is dead and can no longer respond but in contact with the living Author for whom the text is an intermediary. Even when the pneuma was needed in order to better understand the Bible, the content of this deeper apprehension was, in many cases, a better insight into divine matters. According to the French philosopher, the death of the author is a condition for finalizing the text and rendering it into a static perfection, allowing for a "complete" relation. This request is based upon a rigid attitude toward the contents, which are to be approached when they can no longer change. It is an axiom of the Kabbalists that the sacred text is in an ongoing process of change, evidently a symptom of its inherent infinity and divinity. For them, Scripture is a way of overcoming the post-prophetic eclipse of revelation, an endeavor to recapture the presence of the Author and its nature; the biblical text produces a silent dialogue and eventually even union between Author and reader,..

Silently evolving here was the attitude before God that Paul explored in his theology of justification: These are people who do not flaunt their achievements before God. They do not stride into God’s presence as if they were partners able to engage with him on an equal footing; they do not lay claim to a reward for what they have done. These are people who know that their poverty also has an interior dimension; they are lovers who simply want to let God bestow his gifts upon them and thereby to live in inner harmony with God’s nature and word. The saying of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux about one day standing before God with empty hands, and holding them open to him, describes the spirit of these poor ones of God: They come with empty hands; not with hands that grasp and clutch, but with hands that open and give and thus are ready to receive from God’s bountiful goodness. Because this is the case, there is no opposition between Matthew, who speaks of the poor in spirit, and Luke, in whose Gospel the Lord addresses the “poor” without further qualification.

All Night, All Night Rode in the train all night, in the sick light. A bird Flew parallel with a singular will. In daydream's moods and attitudes The other passengers slumped, dozed, slept, read, Waiting, and waiting for place to be displaced On the exact track of safety or the rack of accident. Looked out at the night, unable to distinguish Lights in the towns of passage from the yellow lights Numb on the ceiling. And the bird flew parallel and still As the train shot forth the straight line of its whistle, Forward on the taut tracks, piercing empty, familiar -- The bored center of this vision and condition looked and looked Down through the slick pages of the magazine (seeking The seen and the unseen) and his gaze fell down the well Of the great darkness under the slick glitter, And he was only one among eight million riders and readers. And all the while under his empty smile the shaking drum Of the long determined passage passed through him By his body mimicked and echoed. And then the train Like a suddenly storming rain, began to rush and thresh-- The silent or passive night, pressing and impressing The patients' foreheads with a tightening-like image Of the rushing engine proceeded by a shaft of light Piercing the dark, changing and transforming the silence Into a violence of foam, sound, smoke and succession. A bored child went to get a cup of water, And crushed the cup because the water too was Boring and merely boredom's struggle. The child, returning, looked over the shoulder Of a man reading until he annoyed the shoulder. A fat woman yawned and felt the liquid drops Drip down the fleece of many dinners. And the bird flew parallel and parallel flew The black pencil lines of telephone posts, crucified, At regular intervals, post after post Of thrice crossed, blue-belled, anonymous trees. And then the bird cried as if to all of us: 0 your life, your lonely life What have you ever done with it, And done with the great gift of consciousness? What will you ever do with your life before death's knife Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate? As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls, Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feel the vast Draft of the abyss sucking him down and down, An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown: This is the way that night passes by, this Is the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable abyss.

What to Do If Stopped While Driving        •   Pull over safely to the side of the road if you see a police flashing lights behind you        •   If the officer asks where you’re coming from, politely ask why you were stopped—remember, the Supreme Court has ruled that the officer must have a reasonable suspicion based on “specific and articulable facts” that a person who’s been stopped is armed or has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime        •   Answer the officer’s questions as succinctly as possible, without embellishment        •   Always have your identification handy; if the officer asks for your license and registration, get his permission to reach for them—you don’t want him thinking you may be reaching for a weapon        •   If they ask for permission to search your car, politely refuse        •   If the officer tells you to get out of the car, do as he says—and if he puts you up against the car, stay there        •   If police insist on searching the vehicle, remain silent while they are doing so        •   Most importantly, even though you will almost certainly be outraged, don’t give the police any attitude or reason to claim you were hostile or belligerent, because that’s the quickest way to escalate the encounter

Willow turned her gaze from him as he sat down on the bed and smoothed her tangled hair off her face. "I'm sorry I wasn't here for you, sweetheart. Are you all right now?" Willow couldn't help flinching from his touch. "Of course I'm all right," she snapped. Rider jerked his hand back as if bitten. "Freckles, honey, is something wrong, something you're not telling me?" The angry redhead shrugged. "What could possibly be wrong?" "I don't know. You just seem a little....out of sorts." Bastard, she silently cursed. But aloud she said, "I'm fine. Just tired, I guess." "Do you want me to bring your supper to you in here? I'd be happy to keep you company." "I would like to have my supper in here but don't bother yourself on my account. I'm sure you have things to discuss with Pa and the boys." Rider stood abruptly, obviously at a loss over her attitude. "Fine,Willow, if that's what you want." "It is." He opened the door to leave but halted when she called, "Rider." "Yes?" "You better move your things in with one of the boys. Miriam is sharing my bed tonight." "Tonight? But I'm leaving tomorrow and won't be back until-" "Really,Rider, it's only for one night and I ain't,er, am not in any shape for fooling around!" "I know that," he bit out, his ire piqued now. "I just thought it might be nice to hold you." With that, he slammed out the door and Willow broke into tears. Before they stopped, her head was pounding all over again.

For it is a fact that man can be profoundly out of step with his times. A man may have been born in a city famous for its idiosyncratic culture and yet, the very habits, fashions, and ideas that exalt that city in the eyes of the world may make no sense to him at all. As he proceeds through life, he looks about in a state of confusion, understanding neither the inclinations nor the aspirations of his peers. For such a fellow, forget any chance of romance or professional success; those are the provenance of men in step with their times. Instead, for this fellow the options will be to bray like a mule or find what solace he can from overlooked volumes discovered in overlooked bookshops. And when his roommate stumbles home at two in the morning, he has little choice but to listen in silent mystification as he is recounted the latest dramas from the city’s salons. But events can unfold in such a manner that overnight the man out of step finds himself in the right place at the right time. The fashions and attitudes that had seemed to alien to him are suddenly swept aside and supplanted by fashions and attitudes in perfect sympathy with his deepest sentiments. Then, like a lone sailor adrift for years on alien seas, he wakes one night to discover familiar constellations overhead. And when this occurs--this extraordinary realignment of the stars--the man so long out of step with his times experiences a supreme lucidity. Suddenly all that has passed comes into focus as a necessary course of events, and all that promises to unfold has the clearest rhyme and reason.

He saw a man who was certainly Weston, to judge from his height and build and coloring and features. In that sense he was quite recognizable. But the terror was that he was also unrecognizable. He did not look like a sick man: but he looked very like a dead one. The face which he raised from torturing the frog had that terrible power which the face of a corpse sometimes has of simply rebuffing every conceivable human attitude one can adopt towards it. The expressionless mouth, the unwinking stare of the eyes, something heavy and inorganic in the very folds of the cheek, said clearly: “I have features as you have, but there is nothing in common between you and me.” It was this that kept Ransom speechless. What could you say—what appeal or threat could have any meaning—to that? And now, forcing its way up into consciousness, thrusting aside every mental habit and every longing not to believe, came the conviction that this, in fact, was not a man: that Weston’s body was kept, walking and undecaying, in Perelandra by some wholly different kind of life, and that Weston himself was gone. It looked at Ransom in silence and at last began to smile. We have all often spoken—Ransom himself had often spoken—of a devilish smile. Now he realized that he had never taken the words seriously. The smile was not bitter, nor raging, nor, in an ordinary sense, sinister; it was not even mocking. It seemed to summon Ransom, with a horrible naïveté of welcome, into the world of its own pleasures, as if all men were at one in those pleasures, as if they were the most natural thing in the world and no dispute could ever have occurred about them. It was not furtive, nor ashamed, it had nothing of the conspirator in it. It did not defy goodness, it ignored it to the point of annihilation. Ransom perceived that he had never before seen anything but halfhearted and uneasy attempts at evil. This creature was wholehearted. The extremity of its evil had passed beyond all struggle into some state which bore a horrible similarity to innocence. It was beyond vice as the Lady was beyond virtue.

When we speak of God’s will, we are usually speaking only of some recognizable sign of His will. The signpost that points to a distant city is not the city itself, and sometimes the signs that point to a great place are in themselves insignificant and contemptible. But we must follow the direction of the signpost if we are to get to the end of our journey. Everything that exists and everything that happens bears witness to the will of God. It is one thing to see a sign and another thing to interpret that sign correctly. However, our first duty is to recognize signs for what they are. If we do not even regard them as indications of anything beyond themselves, we will not try to interpret them. Of all the things and all the happenings that proclaim God’s will to the world, only very few are capable of being interpreted by men. And of these few, fewer still find a capable interpreter. So that the mystery of God’s will is made doubly mysterious by the signs that veil it from our eyes. To know anything at all of God’s will we have to participate, in some manner, in the vision of the prophets: men who were always alive to the divine light concealed in the opacity of things and events, and who sometimes saw glimpses of that light where other men saw nothing but ordinary happenings. And yet if we are too anxious to pry into the mystery that surrounds us we will lose the prophet’s reverence and exchange it for the impertinence of soothsayers. We must be silent in the presence of signs whose meaning is closed to us. Otherwise we will begin incontinently to place our own superstitious interpretation upon everything— the number of steps to a doorway, a card pulled out of the pack, the shadow of a ladder, the flight of birds. God’s will is not so cheap a mystery that it can be unlocked by any key like these! Nevertheless, there are some signs that everyone must know. They must be easily read and seen, and they are indeed very simple. But they come sparingly, few in number; they show us clearly enough the road ahead but not for more than a few paces. When we have taken those few paces, what will happen? We must learn to be poor in our dependence on these clear signs, to take them as they come, not to demand more of them than we need, not to make more of them than they really tell. If I am to know the will of God, I must have the right attitude toward life. I must first of all know what life is, and to know the purpose of my existence.

But…but that’s tragic! To go through life without color? Unable to appreciate art, or beauty?” He laughed. “Now, sweet-hold your brush before you paint me a martyr’s halo. It’s not as though I’m blind. I have a great appreciation for art, as I believe we’ve discussed. And as for beauty…I don’t need to know whether your eyes are blue or green or lavender to know that they’re uncommonly lovely.” “No one has lavender eyes.” “Don’t they?” His gaze caught hers and refused to let go. Leaning forward, he continued, “Did that tutor of yours ever tell you this? That your eyes are ringed with a perfect circle a few shades darker than the rest of the…don’t they call it the iris?” Sophia nodded. “The iris.” He propped his elbow on the table and leaned forward, his gaze searching hers intently. “An apt term it is, too. There are these lighter rays that fan out from the center, like petals. And when your pupils widen-like that, right there-your eyes are like two flowers just coming into bloom. Fresh. Innocent.” She bowed her head, mixing a touch of lead white into the sea-green paint on her palette. He leaned closer still, his voice a hypnotic whisper. “But when you take delight in teasing me, looking up through those thick lashes, so saucy and self-satisfied…” She gave him a sharp look. He snapped his fingers. “There! Just like that. Oh, sweet-then those eyes are like two opera dancers smiling from behind big, feathered fans. Coy. Beckoning.” Sophia felt a hot blush spreading from her bosom to her throat. He smiled and reclined in his chair. “I don’t need to know the color of your hair to see that it’s smooth and shiny as silk. I don’t need to know whether it’s yellow or orange or red to spend an inordinate amount of time wondering how it would feel brushing against my bare skin.” Opening his book to the marked page, he continued, “And don’t get me started on your lips, sweet. If I endeavored to discover the precise shade of red or pink or violet they are, I might never muster the concentration for anything else.” He turned a leaf of his book, then fell silent. Sophia stared at her canvas. Her pulse pounded in her ears. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of her neck, channeling down between her shoulder blades, and a hot, itchy longing pooled at the cleft of her legs. Drat him. He’d known she was taunting him with her stories. And now he sat there in an attitude of near-boredom, making love to her with his teasing, colorless words in a blatant attempt to fluster her. It was as though they were playing a game of cards, and he’d just raised the stakes. Sophia smiled. She always won at cards. “Balderdash,” she said calmly. He looked up at her, eyebrow raised. “No one has violet lips.” “Don’t they?” She laid aside her palette and crossed her arms on the table. “The slope of your nose is quite distinctive.” His lips quirked in a lopsided grin. “Really.” “Yes.” She leaned forward, allowing her bosom to spill against her stacked arms. His gaze dipped, but quickly returned to hers. “The way you have that little bump at the ridge…It’s proving quite a challenge.” “Is that so?” He bent his head and studied his book. Sophie stared at him, waiting one…two…three beats before he raised his hand to rub the bridge of his nose. Quite satisfactory progress, that. Definite beginnings of fluster.

Any method can settle the mind in the present moment, but with Silent Illumination you can be relieved of even the present moment. Just take this attitude: don’t worry about the past or the future, and let go of the present too. Just stay in awareness. Chan is called the “gateless gate” because it has no door to enlightenment.

Joy. First, we must choose to have a joyful attitude. Joy is not something we automatically feel. Many times joy is a choice we must make. It is a decision that comes from the will. We can choose the attitude we will have. We can choose whether we will laugh or frown. We can choose whether we will praise or keep silent. We can choose whether we will express joy to others or express sorrow.

There are two ways in which healthy survivability can develop in silent sons. On one hand, there are boys who come through incredibly troubled families and still emerge as healthy men. Although this does not happen very often, a number of researchers have found that at least 10 percent of children from severely dysfunctional families emerge as healthy people.1 The explanation for this includes getting help from outside of the family, having a positive attitude or temperament, resiliency in the face of stress, and the ability of some children in dysfunctional families to have a sense of autonomy. On the other hand, I believe that men can become healthy survivors by using their strengths and positive characteristics to overcome their pasts. This type of man knows that what he has learned from his experience is more important than where he has been. He builds on his experiences and does not allow them to tear him down. While it may seem that the term “healthy survivor” describes a man who is not affected by anything, this is not true. The healthy survivor does not deny his experiences, nor does he let them force him into negative behaviors. Rather, he has learned to maintain balance in himself and his life. If he is in pain, he deals with it. He admits when he is vulnerable, and is able to ask for help. He is not afraid to show his emotions, but he is not controlled by them either. He knows he is in control of himself. More importantly, he likes who he is and is comfortable with his life. It may have taken a long time for him to grow into a healthy survivor, or he could have been using his strength all along. Either way, the healthy survivor would not trade places with anyone today. He values what it took to get him where he is and he values himself. He is not for sale. Healthy survivors share many positive traits. How many of the following do you have? He knows how to attract and use the support of healthy people around him. He has developed a healthy sense of humor. He has developed a well-balanced sense of autonomy. He is socially at ease and others are comfortable around him. He is willing to identify and express his feelings. He can work through, not deny, his problems. He is neither controlled or controlling. He does not live in fear of his past, but with contentment and a sense of power about the present. He can love and be loved. He likes who he is, not what he is.

Negative He has rigid attitudes. He is jealous, suspicious. He is defiant. He is lonely. He is insensitive to his feelings. He poses a high risk for addiction. He is secretive. He holds inner anger. He fears being hurt. He frequently resorts to denial of problems. Transitions Needed • Learn interpersonal relationship skills. • Develop a realistic concept of a healthy relationship. • Develop alternatives for handling stress. • Learn to identify and express your emotions. • Learn to accept help and support from others.

The ego, vanity, jealousy and such other flaws define the imperceptive attitude and fly silently, towards self-victimizing.

Everyone needs the real time practical examples inspite of the silent wording and this is what, which contributes its full time struggle to throw us, even more back to thousands of the bullshits to keep us away from the things which are more close to us. Because we believe in doings not in feelings, we believe in physical outlook not in hidden inlook. Measure yourself where you are!

What is at stake at the present great turning point? An individualistic worldview is being replaced by a socialistic one! A thousand-year-old attitude toward life is being thrust aside by completely new concepts. “Such a change cannot be decreed by legislation! Nor can it be brought about by a ministry, no matter how homogeneously it is put together and how saturated and filled it is with the new ideas. “Such a transformation requires an inner conversion! A mental, a spiritual, an ethical, even a religious one! … “It is such a far-reaching and complete conversion that the adult is no longer capable of it. Only youth can be converted, newly aligned and adjusted to the socialist sense of obligation toward the community… “…when you observe the enthusiasm of youth, when the cheerful hands of an innocent child reach for you, then you will sense the inner conversion; then you will realize that a new faith is awakening out of the lethargy of a corrupt epoch and taking to the march — the faith in divine justice, in heavenly truth; the faith in an unworldly, paradisiacal future, where the lust for power, force, and enmity gives way to equality and fraternity, the spirit of sacrifice, love and loyalty, and the will to stand before the throne of the Almighty with the open heart of one ready to believe in God. And they [the youth] will have sufficient greatness to stammer out the prayer for their brothers and fathers, ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they knew not what they did.’ “It is on this basis alone that the new world can be built! To lay this groundwork is our task. Our own hopes can aim no further. We must leave some things to be done by those who come after us. Your work will be a signpost for the future, a witness to our great intention, but in our time it will not be crowned with realization.” He fell silent. His inner enthusiasm had driven the blood into his cheeks. His eyes glowed like bright lights. I thought of Strasser, of our plans. And I felt: Our thinking is so puny.

The goal of many educators, albeit unconfessed, is to condition our young, who are perfectly alive with perfect feelings, to become separated from their feelings, to repress them, to deaden them. The scheme of too many parents and too many teachers is to teach these perfect little living creatures the attitudes of the dead and to instill in them the virtue of death, which is, of course, to be perfectly still, as if in the graveyard, perfectly silent, as if in the tomb, for the dead exhibit the most exemplary behavior. The dead never speak up or cause trouble. I say too many teachers and too many parents love the dead more than the living. But death comes soon enough. Death ought not be imposed upon our young before their time.

I stand on the banks of time silently witnessing the world change beneath my feet. I arrive at a desirable place in a world when I learn to accept a world devoid of my paltry existence. When my self-inflicted wounds heal, I will stand as mute as a mountain impervious to the whimsy of the quaking world and no longer be deluded into aspiring to be a member of a fantasy world of pleasure-seeking people. Fame and fortune do not matter to an enlightened person, it is sufficient simply to be present and unflinchingly support all life forms without hesitation.

Around it was a patch of silent common, smouldering in places, and with a few dark, dimly seen objects lying in contorted attitudes here and there. Here and there was a burning bush or tree. Beyond was a fringe of excitement, and farther than that fringe the inflammation had not crept as yet. In the rest of the world the stream of life still flowed as it had flowed for immemorial years.

Humble Inquiry is an attitude that can and should show up in different kinds of situations. The most important aspect of the attitude is situational awareness, assessing in every conversation what your purpose is and how it aligns to the situation at hand. You may just be exploring, having fun, or trying to convince someone of something; you may be trying to build a relationship or decipher what may really be going on if the situation is ambiguous or full of conflict. Everything you do next will be an intervention, even if you just stay in a silent observer mode, and will convey some aspect of your purpose to the other person in the conversation. It will help to learn to become mindful of the different consequences of what you say.

The receptionist, a fifty-something woman, was a rigid gatekeeper—her attitude matching her tight bun. Her dark hair was pulled back so fiercely, it appeared to tug at her skin. She wasn’t impressed that they were the PWCPD or that they wanted an audience with Charles Windsor, the CEO. She scowled and asked, “What is this regarding?

Remaining silent for a million years without a plan is folly, while a single day of silence combined with thoughtful contemplation can alter everything for eternity.

It's fantastic to realise that with age I am becoming the person I always thought I would one day become. I have regained faith in what was previously indifferent to me. I have learned to listen to my innermost side, that side where my soul used to keep silent and now speaks without needing to be asked anything. I began not to doubt myself or what I choose to leave behind without hesitation. I have dared to follow my rebelliousness as a free man without being afraid of the opinion of others. I no longer give so much importance to details and ideas. I became a lover of attitudes and understood that I am all that remains after nothing else remains. Nobody teaches me any more. I just listen to the sky inside my chest. José Micard Teixeira text taken from my English book "Memoirs of a soul

Reflect on the silent intelligence inherent in all Self 2 actions and our attitude of arrogance and mistrust will gradually change. With it will dissolve the unnecessary self-instructions, criticisms and tendencies to overcontrol that tend to occupy the unfocused mind.

Vhalla?” She hadn’t even heard Larel stir. “Morning.” Vhalla finished dressing quickly. “Are you all right?” It was annoying how Larel missed nothing. “I’m fine.” Vhalla began breaking down the tent. “Was it another dream?” “Enough, Larel,” Vhalla sighed and straightened. The Western woman was silent. Vhalla should’ve been too, but there was an aching feeling in Vhalla’s stomach that put nastiness in her blood. “Why are you always pestering me? It’s none of your concern what I dream or don’t dream, what I eat or what I don’t eat.” Larel’s face was expressionless. “Just leave me alone for once.” Vhalla grabbed her pack and stormed off, leaving the rest of the tent for Larel. She hated herself for those words. It wasn’t Larel’s fault. The class Vhalla was born into, the Night of Fire and Wind, the prince’s confusing and frustrating hot and cold attitude toward Vhalla. Larel had no control over any of it. Vhalla had just taken her frustrations out on someone who wasn’t expecting it.

Mind is not necessarily dependent on the education process. Mind possesses of itself all eloquence, beauty, and poetry. Mind has the power to express prose. Spirit, God, is heard when the human mind’s noise is silent. We are all capable of more than we do. The action of Soul confers the freedom that explains excellent impromptu speeches, admirable movie scripts, or meaningful texts.

Ehsan Sehgal Quotes about Media — — — * Words matter and mirror if your head is a dictionary of insight and your feelings are alive. * Sure, fake news catches and succeeds attention, but for a while; however, it embraces disregard and unreliability forever. * Media rule the incompetent minds and pointless believers. * A real journalist only states, neither collaborates nor participates. * The majority of journalists and anchors have the information only but not the sense of knowledge. * When the media encourages and highlights the wrong ones, anti-democratic figures, criminals in uniform, and dictators in a supreme authority and brilliant context, sure, such a state never survives the breakdown of prosperity and civil rights, as well as human rights. Thus, the media is accountable and responsible for this as one of the democratic pillars. *Media cannot be a football ground or a tool for anyone. It penetrates the elementary pillar of a state, it forms and represents the language of entire humanity within its perception of love, peace, respect, justice, harmony, and human rights, far from enmity and distinctions. Accordingly, it demonstrates its credibility and neutrality. * When the non-Western wrongly criticizes and abuses its culture, religion, and values, the Western media highlights that often, appreciating in all dimensions. However, if the same one even points out only such subjects, as a question about Western distinctive attitude and role, the West flies and falls at its lowest level, contradicting its principles of neutrality and freedom of press and speech, which pictures, not only double standards but also double dishonesty with itself and readers. Despite that, Western media bother not to realize and feel ignominy and moral and professional stigma. * Social Media has become the global dustbin of idiocy and acuity. It stinks now. Anyone is there to separate and recycle that. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean to constitute insulting, abusing, and harming deliberately in a distinctive and discriminative feature and context, whereas supporting such notions and attempts is a universal crime. * Social media is a place where you share your favourite poetry, quotes, songs, news, social activities, and reports. You can like something, you can comment, and you can use humour in a civilised way. It is social media, but it is not a place to love or be loved. Any lover does not exist here, and no one is serious in this regard. Just enjoy yourself and do not try to fool anyone. If you do that, it means you are making yourself a fool; it is a waste of time, and it is your defeat too. * I use social media only to devote and denote my thoughts voluntarily for the motivation of knowledge, not to earn money as greedy-minded. * One should not take seriously the Social-Media fools and idiots. * Today, on social media, how many are on duty? * Journalists voluntarily fight for human rights and freedom of speech, whereas they stay silent for their rights and journalistic freedom on the will and restrictions of the boss of the media. Indeed, it verifies that The nearer the church, the farther from god. * The abuse, insult, humiliation, and discrimination against whatever subject is not freedom of expression and writing; it is a violation and denial of global harmony and peace. * Press freedom is one significant pillar of true democracy pillars, but such democracy stays deaf, dumb, and blind, which restricts or represses the media. * Press and speech that deliberately trigger hatred and violation fall not under the freedom of press and speech since restrictions for morale and peace apply to everyone without exemption. * Real press freedom is just a dream, which nowhere in the world becomes a reality; however, journalists stay dreaming that.

Although we don't tend to think of libraries as media technologies, they are. The public library is, in fact, one of the most important and influential informational media ever created—and one that proliferated only after the arrival of silent reading and movable-type printing. A community's attitudes and preferences toward information take concrete shape in its library's design and services. [...] The library provides, as well, a powerful symbol of our new media landscape: at the center stands the screen of the Internet-connected computers; the printed word has been pushed to the margins.

Dharma Master Cheng Yen is a Buddhist nun living in Hualien County, a mountainous region on the east coast of Taiwan. Because the mountains formed barriers to travel, the area has a high proportion of indigenous people, and in the 1960s many people in the area, especially indigenous people, were living in poverty. Although Buddhism is sometimes regarded as promoting a retreat from the world to focus on the inner life, Cheng Yen took the opposite path. In 1966, when Cheng Yen was twenty-nine, she saw an indigenous woman with labor complications whose family had carried her for eight hours from their mountain village to Hualien City. On arriving they were told they would have to pay for the medical treatment she needed. Unable to afford the cost of treatment they had no alternative but to carry her back again. In response, Cheng Yen organized a group of thirty housewives, each of whom put aside a few cents each day to establish a charity fund for needy families. It was called Tzu Chi, which means “Compassionate Relief.” Gradually word spread, and more people joined.6 Cheng Yen began to raise funds for a hospital in Hualien City. The hospital opened in 1986. Since then, Tzu Chi has established six more hospitals. To train some of the local people to work in the hospital, Tzu Chi founded medical and nursing schools. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of its medical schools is the attitude shown to corpses that are used for medical purposes, such as teaching anatomy or simulation surgery, or for research. Obtaining corpses for this purpose is normally a problem in Chinese cultures because of a Confucian tradition that the body of a deceased person should be cremated with the body intact. Cheng Yen asked her volunteers to help by willing their bodies to the medical school after their death. In contrast to most medical schools, here the bodies are treated with the utmost respect for the person whose body it was. The students visit the family of the deceased and learn about his or her life. They refer to the deceased as “silent mentors,” place photographs of the living person on the walls of the medical school, and have a shrine to each donor. After the course has concluded and the body has served its purpose, all parts are replaced and the body is sewn up. The medical school then arranges a cremation ceremony in which students and the family take part. Tzu Chi is now a huge organization, with seven million members in Taiwan alone—almost 30 percent of the population—and another three million members associated with chapters in 51 countries. This gives it a vast capacity to help. After a major earthquake hit Taiwan in 1999, Tzu Chi rebuilt 51 schools. Since then it has done the same after disasters in other countries, rebuilding 182 schools in 16 countries. Tzu Chi promotes sustainability in everything it does. It has become a major recycler, using its volunteers to gather plastic bottles and other recyclables that are turned into carpets and clothing. In order to promote sustainable living as well as compassion for sentient beings all meals served in Tzu Chi hospitals, schools, universities, and other institutions are vegetarian.

There are silent killers like poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related conditions. These remain a daily and ongoing catastrophe, but they rarely manage to achieve and sustain, prime-time headline coverage on the news. Why not report on these until someone acts on them?

Two hours later, we pause along the road, in the midst of cornfields. Alex turns his horse away from me and stares toward the crops for a long silent moment, and all I can hear is the distant sound of a cow mooing. And then he turns his horse around and heads back in the direction we came from. “Are you supposed to…I don’t know…see anyone today?” He cocks his head to the side and smiles at me, like he knows he’s been caught, but like he doesn’t care. “Not entirely. There are days I simply want to ride and see the land that has been left to me. I fear I may never see it all.” “Oh.” We turn our horses and head back in the direction of Harksbury. I like the way he relaxes when we’re this far away from it all. I’m starting to realize where he gets his attitude. Why he’s so uptight. The world rests on his shoulders. But out here, it’s just us. A guy and a girl. Riding horses. Hanging out. “Thank you,” he says. Huh? “For what?” He twists his reins around in his hands for so long I think he hasn’t even heard me. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him fidget. The only sound is the crunching of the horses’ shod hooves over compact dirt and loose rocks. “For being who you are,” he says. “You don’t accept anything as it is. Not if you don’t agree with it. You see things the way they should be and not the way they are…and it makes me want to do the same.” I just stare at him. Where’s Alex and who is this guy? “I’ve never met a girl who…challenges me as you do. I find I’m seeing things differently.” He exhales slowly. “I should not have raised my voice to you earlier. I am sorry.” I almost choke on my own spit. First a compliment and then an apology? And yet his apology is for yelling. Not kissing me. So what does that mean? He’s not sorry he kissed me? Something warm spreads through me and makes it impossible not to grin. Somehow, after all those confrontations, I earned his respect. By standing up for something. For someone. “Oh. Um, thanks,” I say. “Does this mean you think I might know a thing or two you don’t?” I smile at him and stare straight into his eyes. Is this flirting? “Perhaps,” he smiles back at me, his eyes sparkling with amusement. I wish this moment would last forever. But it can’t. He reaches down to run a hand over the glossy white coat of his horse with one of his doeskin-gloved hands. Say it. Just tell him you like him. He looks up at me, and I dart my eyes away and stare straight ahead. I like you. But I can’t do it. The words are caught somewhere at the back of my throat.

They sat in silence until the howl of a distant coyote made her shiver. "He sings for his mate," Cade reassured her. "Does he think the sound of his loneliness will attract her?" Lily asked wryly. "I'm sure it is the beauty of his song." His voice contained almost a hint of a chuckle. "I'm sure that's what he thinks." Her scoffing hid an undertone of bitterness, and Cade was silent for a while. "Men often hide their fears with actions," he finally said. By this time, the anger of the day had leeched out of her and into the cold stone. Wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her head upon them, Lily reluctantly gave his statement some thought. Cade had a way of saying things that made sense, even when she didn't want to admit it. "I suppose a man who wasn't afraid would be a fool. I just find it hard to imagine someone like you being afraid." Cade's low laugh wasn't amused. "Because of my size or because of my birth?" Lily considered this. "Both, I suppose. To me, Indians are like the wolves, fearless of anything. All I have seen or heard of them is the damage they have done. And your size makes you seem invulnerable, even though that is ridiculous. A bullet knows nothing of size. Perhaps it is your attitude. You look as if you scorn everything, even death." "I do not mean to give that impression. And warriors aren't fearless. As you say, only fools are without fear. They are just better at disguising their feelings. If Clark takes his band of men against the Indians as he threatens, he will find old men and women and children. Ride with him, and you will see their fear." Lily didn't ask how he knew of Ollie's plans. Half the ranch could have heard his shouting. Instead, she asked, "How do you know what he will find? Have you seen them?" "They are related to my father's tribe. Their fathers and sons were massacred by Comanches several years ago, and many others were lost in epidemics. They try to live by raising squash and corn and fishing from the river. They mean no harm. This land has been theirs for centuries. They do not understand the difference since the white man's coming." "I do not know how to stop Ollie," Lily murmured. Somehow she was disappointed that Cade had brought her out here to tell her this. He could have said as much in the morning in the middle of the yard. "I know how to stop him. Just tell me if you learn when he is to leave." "We don't need any more bloodshed." Lily rearranged her legs in preparation for rising. Cade caught her arm, and he was suddenly very near, hovering over her, his dark face dangerously near. "There will be no bloodshed." Perhaps

I blow a lock of hair off my face, exasperated with his way of ‘discussing’ the situation. As it is, I can do little more than glare at him, our eyes locked in silent communication that we have perfected over many years. A smug, self-satisfied smile touches his lips as he lowers me to the floor. I nod, place my hands on his chest and rest my head there, smiling to myself as the frantic heartbeat against my cheek belies his cocky attitude. He brushes his lips lightly against my hair, cups my ass in his hands and gives it a firm smack before stepping away. “Very well,” he says briskly as he straightens his cufflinks, lightly brushes imaginary lint from an arm of his tailored jacket, and turns for the door. “I’ll see you at home, then -- where you will sit by my side at dinner, in full view of the household, and then fuck me in my bed.” I’m practically hissing and spitting at his retreating back as I bellow, “Lock the fucking door!” His sardonic laughter echoes off the walls as his footsteps fade.

I couldn’t help but smile when my Aunt Bailey answered her phone. “Hey, Liv, whose ass do I need to beat?” “Why do you assume that’s why I’m calling?” I asked with a laugh. It was the first time I had smiled in days. But with Bailey and her spunky attitude, it was hard to avoid. “Because darlin’, I got you figured out. You sent out a mass message to us stating you were studying for finals. You’ve neglected to respond to any messages that followed, and that spells out one thing. Trouble on the college guy front.” I could hear a baby squealing happily in the background. “So I’m gonna ask again. Do I need to catch a plane to Texas and beat the shit out of this Keeton guy I’ve been hearing so much about?” “Are you there?” I asked, because it wasn’t like Bailey to remain so quiet. “Um, yeah,” she said in return. I could hear clicking sounds as if she was typing on a keyboard. “I’m just checking flights to Texas, because this Lacy bitch needs to meet your Aunt Bailey.” “You need to make this Lacy realize she won’t run you off.” I sat silent, letting everything Bailey said sink in. “If he’s who you want, Liv.” I bit down on my lower lip. “If Keeton is who you want, then you have to show her he’s yours.” “I do,” I whispered. I had never felt about anyone else the way I felt about Keeton. But my fear was that the man I was already falling for was a man I didn’t even know.

Your attitude may be dark but You shouldn't hide you star. -Soul

Psyche was sure now that her estranged husband was trying to help her. She loved him for that. Even his falsetto voice was kind of cute. But she decided to play along. “I’m listening, O Great Tower, who in no way resembles my wonderful husband.” “Okay, then,” said the voice. “As I was saying, Aphrodite will create distractions to test your resolve. She knows you are kind and helpful. She will try to use that against you. No matter who asks you for help on your journey, don’t listen to them! Don’t stop!” “Thank you, Tower. If you were my husband, Eros, which of course you aren’t, I would tell you I love you deeply and I’m very sorry. Also, how’s the shoulder?” “It hurts pretty bad,” said the tower. “But I think…” Falsetto: “Towers don’t have shoulders, silly.” The tower went silent. Psyche kissed the parapet. Then she started off on her super-fun journey to Mount Taenarus and the Underworld. Can we talk about this for a second? A lot of heroes have journeyed to the Underworld. I’ll tell you about some of them later. Most were dudes with swords and big attitudes. Heck, I’ve journeyed to the Underworld with a sword