Spontaneous Catch Up Quotes

We are so busy, so occupied with many little things, that we are blind to the one great thing. Only in the pauses between things, in the brief contemplative spaces of just being, can we catch a glimpse of love itself. Even then, we often feel so unfree that we think we are unworthy of love. But the glimpses keep coming. In the momentary emptiness when an addictive need is not yet satisfied, in encountering a situation in which we do not know what to do, in finding ourselves giving or receiving a touch of tenderness for no reason at all, in the spontaneous eruption of laughter, another small space opens. The invitation is given again. Time and time again we ignore the invitations and fill the spaces immediately, dulling our consciousness with drivenness. But love continues, hoping to catch us in a willing moment. Thousands of little spaces come each day. They exist between each choice we make and the next, after each thought is completed and before the next begins, between each breath and the next, in every hunger or wanting, whenever something wakes us up to presence. Now and then, through some mysterious interweaving of divine grace and human willingness, we see what is in the space and do not run away. We become aware of our hearts’ response and are given the most wonderful experience of freedom . . .

Claray started to turn away, but then stopped and whirled back to give him a quick kiss, then promptly blushed at the spontaneous action when his eyebrows flew up. "Wives kiss husbands when they part," she muttered to cover her embarrassment, and headed away, only to have him catch her arm and draw her back. "That was no' a proper kiss," he announced solemnly, and then commenced to show her his version, which left her breathless and flushed when he released her and walked back to the men.

Oh, without the brigade one could still somehow manage to survive the camp! Without the brigade you are an individual, you yourself choose your own line of conduct. Without the brigade you can at least die proudly, but in the brigade the only way they allow you even to die is in humiliation, on your belly. From the chief, from the camp foreman, from the jailer, from the convoy guard, from all of them you can hide and catch a moment of rest; you can ease up a bit here on hauling, shirk a bit there on lifting. But from the driving belts, from your comrades in the brigade, there is neither a hiding place, nor salvation, nor mercy. You cannot not want to work. You cannot, conscious of being a political [prisoner], prefer death from hunger to work. No! Once you have been marched outside the compound, once you have been registered as going out to work, everything the brigade does today will be divided not by twenty-five but by twenty-six, and because of you the entire brigade's percentage of norm will fall from 123 to 119, which makes the difference between the ration allotted to record breakers and ordinary rations, and everyone will lose a millet cake and three and a half ounces of bread. And that is why your comrades keep watch on you better than any jailers! And the brigade leader's fist will punish you far more effectively than the whole People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Now that is what spontaneous initiative in re-education means! That is psychological enrichment of the personality by the collective!

Since 1996, the Kuramoto model has turned up in other physical settings, from arrays of coupled lasers to the hypothesized oscillations of the wispy subatomic particles called neutrinos. We may be catching the first glimpses of a deep unity in the nature of sync. Whether there will be any practical applications remains to be seen. Given how many diseases are related to synchrony and its disruption (epilepsy, cardiac arrhythmias, chronic insomnia) and how many devices rely on synchrony (Josephson and laser arrays, electrical power grids, the global positioning system), it seems safe to say that a deeper understanding of spontaneous sync is bound to find practical benefit.

There are many ways to be a spontaneous free spirit. One of them is to act before you think: Throw your body into the moment and let your mind catch up. With practice, your body and your mind will fly through the air together and you will learn to live in the present tense.

In a flash I saw myself, time and again, existing from birth until death, thrown from one life to the next, without pause, many times over. My head spun with images of enduring connections, long since forgotten. Catching my breath, I lifted myself up with the forcefulness of my will, fueled by my wings, which energized and drove me upward. Climbing further—higher, above the quagmire of memories, which once rang true for me, stripped of my identity and unburdened of the flesh, I felt an unstoppable freedom. A fresh unfastened energy filled my spirit with vigor. Spontaneity drove me forward, faster and higher, my spirit unfurling with new unrestrained will.