Triangle Life Quotes

Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.

Alex, Add it up. No matter how much you want her in your life, she doesn’t belong. A triangle can’t fit into a square. Just pointing out the facts” "“Gracias” I don’t point out that if it’s a big enough square, a small triangle can fit inside perfectly. All you have to do is make a few adjustments.

…God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don’t fit well together anymore, it’s all become meaningless. So He has abandoned it.

We do not remember days, Shemei, we remember moments, and the richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten.

In fact, I think that’s probably what the Bermuda Triangle is up to. It doesn’t mean to do any harm, and it’s actually pretty nice once you get to know it. It’s just that Bermuda doesn’t know how to handle itself when somebody sails into its territory, because that hardly ever happens.

Funny, reely," he said. "You spend your whole life goin' to school and learnin' stuff, and they never tell you about stuff like the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs and all these Old Masters running around the inside of the Earth. Why do we have to learn boring stuff when there's all this brilliant stuff we could be learnin', that's what I want to know.

It wasn’t me,” Lars supplied, from the front seat. “I didn’t tell.” “Of course it wasn’t Lars,” Michael said, having overheard him. “Tell Lars no one is blaming him.” Seriously, if my life were one of those romance novels with a love triangle, Lars and Michael would be the sexy paranormal alpha males, but the two of them would be in love with each other and just ignore me.

He's really jealous, Ybon said rather weakly. Just have him meet me, Oscar said. I make all boyfriends feel better about themselves.

I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I never wanted this for you. This life…I knew it was going to kill me in the end. I wish you didn’t have to be here when it finally caught up.

Well sue me for staring. I'd be willing to scrub away my shame on his washboard abs.

Have you ever loved someone so intensely, so entirely ,that it's painful to be apart from them? I'm not talking about being in a long-distance relationship or even a particularly painful case of unrequited love. I'm talking about being in a completely different world from the other person, a world where you can see them and hear them but you can't touch them and they can't see or hear you.

You're kind of... distracting. Am I? Yes. In the best way.

In life you have to avoid three geometric figures - vicious circles, love triangles and square minds

A deep love resides inside each of us. This love is independent of the desires, thoughts, and opinions, good or bad, which are readily offered to us. It is a love that is gentle and kind, accepting and nonjudgmental, playful and spontaneous, courageous and curious. It is always encouraging and always evolving. This love can be discovered only through turning off the noise around us, coming to ourselves in silence, meditation, and prayer. If we listen carefully we will hear the murmurs of our inner voice tell yearnings of our truest selves. What is available to us is a profound understanding, appreciation, and full acceptance of self, all of the good and all of the bad. Only when we truly know that we are able to tap into this part of ourselves can we begin to love others fully. Love for others is the manifestation of love for self. We cannot love another more than we love ourselves. Life is a mirror. If you want to know what love for yourself looks like, look at your love for others. If you want to know what your love for others look like, look at your love for self. When you love yourself this way, you love God this way. This relationship is the divine love triangle; self, God, and others in any order.

I couldn’t,” he finally whispered. “You were the one who taught me to live, to take chances. For a while, I convinced myself that we were too different, and that it was better to let you go. But now, I’ve come to the realization that my life is probably going to be very short. And I want to spend it doing something that matters. With someone that matters. I don’t want to regret that I gave up without a fight.

In the fairytales, when the knight in shining armor is killed defending his fair maiden, she brings him back to life with a magical kiss, and they live happily ever after. But this wasn’t that sort of fairytale.

Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else... Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses… Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in you bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called “The Loves of the Triangles”; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing.

I still belonged to you long after you belonged to someone else.

Human beings had polluted the seawater and mechanically destroyed the nearby coast; all life had paid this price. Often, in airports, on sidewalks, at restaurants, children and adults alike stop me to ask about barracuda and sharks; killer whales; the deadly sorcery of the Bermuda Triangle; the Loch Ness Monster. When I saw Le Veyron, I believed that the sea’s most monstrous force doesn’t live in Loch Ness. It lives in us.

I’m not this unusual,” she said. “It’s just my hair.” She looked at Bobby and she looked at me, with an expression at once disdainful and imploring. She was forty, pregnant, and in love with two men at once. I think what she could not abide was the zaniness of her life. Like many of us, she had grown up expecting romance to bestow dignity and direction. “Be brave,” I told her. Bobby and I stood before her, confused and homeless and lacking a plan, beset by an aching but chaotic love that refused to focus in the conventional way. Traffic roared behind us. A truck honked its hydraulic horn, a monstrous, oceanic sound. Clare shook her head, not in denial but in exasperation. Because she could think of nothing else to do, she began walking again, more slowly, toward the row of trees.

The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

Don’t forget to be specific…Details. Put in all the details. The boys appreciate all that detailed daily life sh*t they don’t get anymore. If you’ve got a teacher you’re hot for, tell ‘em what her hair looks like, what her legs look like, what she eats for lunch. If she’s teaching you geometry, tell ‘em how she draws a bloody triangle on the blackboard. If you went down the shop for a bag of sweets yesterday, did you ride your pushee? Did you go by foot? Did you see a rainbow along the way? Did you buy gobstoppers or clinkers or caramels? If you had a good meat pie last week was it steak and peas or curry or mushroom and beef? You catchin’ my drift? Details.

One of the greatest myths of addiction is that it’s interesting. There is a slight glamour in the beginning, a feeling of doing something wrong, of indulging in a weird world populated by ghosts who used to be struggling musicians but don’t make music anymore, or writers who never write. And then your whole life is getting high and being numb, and there’s absolutely no reason to leave your bed except to get more money. Your life becomes a triangle of elemental needs: get money, get drugs, get home.

There isn’t anything about me that is analogous to the Bermuda Triangle’s “rogue wave” phenomenon (at least I hope there isn’t). I don’t capsize sailors, much less entire ships. I keep myself to myself, you know? In fact, I think that’s probably what the Bermuda Triangle is up to. It doesn’t mean to do any harm, and it’s actually pretty nice once you get to know it. It’s just that Bermuda doesn’t know how to handle itself when somebody sails into its territory, because that hardly ever happens. It hasn’t had much chance to practice, and it’s used to things going a certain way. So if a sailor DOES come around, it gets a little nervous, freaks the fuck out, and creates hurricane-like devastation in every direction around it. And then it gets embarrassed and sad and calls its friends.

Can dimples wink? Because I felt like his just did.

symbolizes Shakti, the feminine; the upward triangle, Shiva, the masculine. The two components are known as om and hrim in Sanskrit. Remarkable examples of conceptual parallelism.

When we are not aware of what we care about and why, we lose the ability to create the life we want and to feel our best no matter the circumstances life presents.

For me… it was excruciating.” He closed his eyes for a moment then focused on her. “It is so painful to truly love someone so much and not have them. For years I practiced tolerating that pain. Around the time I was sixteen I could finally stand to look at you. So, I did, all the damn time. I watched you so carefully. I captured every smile, every frown, every tear from you. I wanted you… but I couldn’t have you. Then one day we became friends and the pain came back, but I didn’t care because you were my friend, my best friend. But when you kissed me, I realized the feeling I had before was nothing compared to what I felt when we kissed. I felt alive… and guilty and betrayed, because it’s not fair. It’s not fair for me to go through that… to want to kiss you every day, every hour, every minute for the rest of my miserable life, but I want to. I’m afraid that it will get to a point where I need to. I have been in love with you since I was eight years old. I have hated the way my father has treated me, but nothing has hurt me as much as the pain of my mother’s death except seeing you and my brother in bliss. What I want is for you to stay in this room with me. I want to feel how you feel, taste how you taste, and completely fall in you because I’m just… tired of always wanting what I can’t have. I want to make you smile, make you happy… I want to be inside you… I want to give you pleasure in every way… mind, body, and soul… I am completely, madly… and utterly in love with you… and it hurts… because I can’t have you. And it hurts because if there is a chance that I can then it is possible that it will turn out to be my tragedy and misfortune. And all I can say to that … I accept my tragedy… but I don’t wish it.

Your friends are…interesting,” she said, making me snort. “I would hate to see your enemies.” She looked back at me, black eyes assessing. “You did not mention that one of the ‘friends’ you risked your life for was desperately hoping he could rip your head off.” “I was a soldier of the Order,” I said wearily. “He’s the leader of a rogue dragon underground. I’m sure I’ve killed a few of his dragons in the past.”I’m also stupidly in love with the girl he considers his, and we both know it.

Someday, you're going to have to trust the people who love you. If you understand nothing else, understand this. People who love you--people like me--are actually here to help you through life, not complicate it.

Metal is from the earth, he thought as he scrutinized. From below: from that realm which is the lowest, the most dense. Land of trolls and caves, dank, always dark. Yin world, in its most melancholy aspect. World of corpses, decay and collapse. Of feces. All that has died, slipping and disintegrating back down layer by layer. The daemonic world of the immutable; the time-that-was. And yet, in the sunlight, the silver triangle glittered. It reflected light. Fire, Mr. Tagomi thought. Not dank or dark object at all. Not heavy, weary, but pulsing with life. The high realm, aspect of yang: empyrean, ethereal. As befits work of art. Yes, that is artist's job: takes mineral rock from dark silent earth transforms it into shining light-reflecting form from sky. Has brought the dead to life. Corpse turned to fiery display; the past had yielded to the future.

I can't stop thinking about what he felt like against my body, against my lips. I can't remember anything else, anything before that. And I realize in this moment that I've finally done it. That horrible, awful thing I swore I would never do. The frosting. The cigarettes. The blue glass triangle. The shooting stars. The taste of his mouth on mine in the hall closet. Gone. All I can think about is Sam. Matt is – erased. My whole body is warm and buzzing. Sam is smiling next to me, because of me. And I've never felt so lonely in all my life.

Love isn’t a choice. Nor is life. We connect, or we don’t connect. We live, and we die. There is no forever. The real fight is in making the best of it, making a difference, and appreciating the small glimmers of happiness.

[From 1994 introduction by Dr. Klaus Müller.] The postwar German government did not simply forget about homosexuals; on the contrary, it actively continued to persecute them, and to justify the efforts of the Nazis in this respect… The Nazi version of Paragraph 175 was, in fact, explicitly upheld in 1957 by the West German supreme court.

Christmas is the marriage of chaos and design. The real sound of life, for once, can burst out because a formal place has been set for it. At the moment when things have gotten sufficiently loose, the secret selves that these familiar persons hold inside them shake the room...An undercurrent of clowning and jostling is part of the process by which we succeed finally in making our necessary noise: despite the difficulty of getting the words right, of getting the singers on the same page, of keeping the ritual from falling apart into the anarchy of separate impulses. From such clatter--extended and punctuated by whatever instrument is handy, a triangle a tambourine, a Chinese gone--beauty is born.

…whether we gays live in Vienna or anywhere else, we can live as decent a life as we want, but the contempt of our fellow humans, and social discrimination, is the same as it was thirty or fifty years ago. The progress of humanity has passed us by.

A winged angel, with the sign of the sun upon his forehead and on his breast the square and triangle of the septenary. I speak of him in the masculine sense, but the figure is neither male nor female. It is held to be pouring the essences of life from chalice to chalice. It has one foot upon the earth and one upon waters, thus illustrating the nature of the essences. A direct path goes up to certain heights on the verge of the horizon, and above there is a great light, through which a crown is seen vaguely. Hereof is some part of the Secret of Eternal Life, as it is possible to man in his incarnation. All the conventional emblems are renounced herein.

If the history of the last century taught us the dangers of empowering governments to determine genetic “fitness” (i.e., which person fits within the triangle, and who lives outside it), then the question that confronts our current era is what happens when this power devolves to the individual. It is a question that requires us to balance the desires of the individual— to carve out a life of happiness and achievement, without undue suffering— with the desires of a society that, in the short term, may be interested only in driving down the burden of disease and the expense of disability. And operating silently in the background is a third set of actors: our genes themselves, which reproduce and create new variants oblivious of our desires and compulsions— but, either directly or indirectly, acutely or obliquely, influence our desires and compulsions. Speaking at the Sorbonne in 1975, the cultural historian Michel Foucault once proposed that “a technology of abnormal individuals appears precisely when a regular network of knowledge and power has been established.” Foucault was thinking about a “regular network” of humans. But it could just as easily be a network of genes.

Sometimes life carries you in different directions and you don’t even realise you’ve gone down a fork in the road; the great GPS of destiny has not followed the planned route and there has been no sign to indicate you’ve passed the point of no return. Life’s Bermuda Triangle is both myth and reality.

While in principle groups for survivors are a good idea, in practice it soon becomes apparent that to organize a successful group is no simple matter. Groups that start out with hope and promise can dissolve acrimoniously, causing pain and disappointment to all involved. The destructive potential of groups is equal to their therapeutic promise. The role of the group leader carries with it a risk of the irresponsible exercise of authority. Conflicts that erupt among group members can all too easily re-create the dynamics of the traumatic event, with group members assuming the roles of perpetrator, accomplice, bystander, victim, and rescuer. Such conflicts can be hurtful to individual participants and can lead to the group’s demise. In order to be successful, a group must have a clear and focused understanding of its therapeutic task and a structure that protects all participants adequately against the dangers of traumatic reenactment. Though groups may vary widely in composition and structure, these basic conditions must be fulfilled without exception. Commonality with other people carries with it all the meanings of the word common. It means belonging to a society, having a public role, being part of that which is universal. It means having a feeling of familiarity, of being known, of communion. It means taking part in the customary, the commonplace, the ordinary, and the everyday. It also carries with it a feeling of smallness, or insignificance, a sense that one’s own troubles are ‘as a drop of rain in the sea.’ The survivor who has achieved commonality with others can rest from her labors. Her recovery is accomplished; all that remains before her is her life.

What if I can't do this, Gregori?" She sounded close to tears. "What if I can never do this?" "No one is making you do anything, ma petite," he replied gently, kissing her stomach. "We are just exploring possibilites." "But,Gregori," she tried to protest, attempting to bring his head back up so that he could see her very real fear for him, for their life together. "If I cannot persaude you otherwise, mon amour, I am not much of a lifemate, now am I?" The words were muffled in the tight silky curls, the intriguing little triangle at the apex of her thighs. "You don't understand,Gregori." Savannah closed her eyes against the waves of fire racing through her. "It's me who is no real lifemate.I don't know how to please you, and I'm so afraid of this." "Relax,bebe." He breathed warm air against her, inhaled her scent. "You please me far more than you will ever know.

At first, like a lot of trauma survivors, I was impatient and wanted immediate results. Once I caught myself in this behavior, I realized that it takes consistent commitment to heal patterns. After three or four months, I noticed a huge positive shift within myself. I felt a new level of happiness and contentment that I hadn't even known existed. I finally understood how my old trauma patterns had attracted drama in my present life. once I saw this dynamic, I made a conscious decision to "Drama Detox," and the patterns faded away.

For more than two million years man has been a hunter, and he still hasn't found what he wants.

Death drives desire.

Jews, homosexuals, and Gypsies, the yellow, pink and brown triangles, were the prisoners who suffered most frequently and most severely from the tortures and blows of the SS and the Capos. They were described as the scum of humanity, who had no right to live on German soil and should be exterminated… but the lowest of the low in this "scum" were we, the men with the pink triangle.

Order streamed from Noah in blue triangles and as the pure fury of his classifications rose around him, engulfing his life, they came to be called waves by others, who drowned, a world of them.

They had no conception that sex had anything to do with emotional feelings and the desire for human contact — even among homosexuals. All that they cared about was a little bit of pleasure for themselves.

You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called “The Loves of the Triangles”; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular.

He was only five-foot-ten, but people frequently mistook him for being over six feet, at least in part because his gigantic Afro made him appear larger than life. His thin, angular frame, which was shaped like an inverted triangle, furthered this illusion; he had narrow hips, a small waist, but impossibly wide shoulders and arms. His fingers were abnormally long and sinuous, and like the rest of him, they were a rich caramel color. His bandmates jokingly called him “The Bat” because of his preference for covering his windows and sleeping during the day, but the nickname also fit his penchant for wearing capes, which furthered his superhero appearance.

Lara. The power of the Triangle is the power of a god. Take that power, and every other person in the world becomes a bit player on your stage. Their lives become figments of a dream that you're having." — Lord Richard Croft

On what may be the last page he wrote in his notebooks, Leonardo drew four right triangles with bases of differing lengths (fig. 143). Inside of each he fit a rectangle, and then he shaded the remaining areas of the triangle. In the center of the page he made a chart with boxes labeled with the letter of each rectangle, and below it he described what he was trying to accomplish. As he had done obsessively over the years, he was using the visualization of geometry to help him understand the transformation of shapes. Specifically, he was trying to understand the formula for keeping the area of a right triangle the same while varying the lengths of its two legs. He had fussed with this problem, explored by Euclid, repeatedly over the years. It was a puzzle that, by this point in his life, as he turned sixty-seven and his health faded, might seem unnecessary to solve. To anyone other than Leonardo, it may have been.

One consequence of losing a parent—obvious enough, although it hadn't occurred to me beforehand—is that it reconfigures the rest of your family. All my life, it had been the four of us; to the extent that had ever changed, it had only been joyfully, in the direction of more. But part of mourning my father involved acclimating to a new family geometry, a triangle instead of a square. As a unit, we were smaller, differently balanced, and, at first, unavoidably sadder.

Even an iridescent pigeon at Slava’s feet—as a flying creature, arguably prone to curiosity about the gentleman invading its airspace—was more concerned with a triangle of pizza on the ground, approaching it as shyly as a girl at a dance.

The law of manifestation operates like a triangle: First, know what you want and visualize it as if you already had it; Second, see it behind the illusion of reality, practice it in your decisions, choose the people you hang out with, etc; Third, believe, have faith and work on your emotions to be at the right frequency. This triangle of manifestation is one of the secrets of many religions: Christianity, Scientology, and Freemasonry. In Masonry is seen as "heart, mind and desire"; in Scientology is perceived as "reality, communication and affinity"; in Christianity is understood as "Father, son and holy ghost"; basically, "actions, learnings and emotions". In Christianity, the Father equals reality or the Creator of the illusion, the son is the way, the path, he road of our decisions and actions, and the holy ghost is our heart, instincts and desires manifested in that same path. In word words, through Jesus, and with the power of the holy ghost, you reach God. This is an allegory that not many Christians can understand. Jesus represent behavior - right and wrong, the holy ghost is our faith, your heart and emotions reflecting back at you what you attract, it's the energy that connects you to your dreams, and God represents the Architect of Reality. So, through moral behavior and positive emotions, your understand God and life, and then you receive "paradise". This paradise is whatever you dream for yourself. Furthermore, if someone has shown you this way, he has been as an angel to you, a messenger of God; if someone stopped you from reaching it, he has been as a demon, a worker for Satan, the enemy, if you failed in seeing this path, you have redirected yourself towards hell. And if you hate your life, you are already in hell. If you want to get out of hell, you must accept the truth, and this truth is that you must know God, for He is the truth. He and the truth are one and the same.

Your parents helped you to construct the triangle within you, and thus your structure for your adult life. You decide if the structure needs re-tuning. Find your lessons in this and correct them. Bring love and compassion into the situation.

Breaking Free Activity #15 It can be difficult to make a direct link between your caretaking behavior and the emotional pukes which inevitably follow. Observe the ways you hurt the people you love. •Do you make cutting remarks or hurtful "jokes"? •Do you embarrass them in public? •Are you frequently late? •Do you "forget" things they've asked you to do? •Do you criticize them? •Do you withdraw from them or threaten to leave? •Do you let frustration build until you blow up at them? Ask the significant others in your life to give you feedback about your caretaking and emotional pukes. This information may be hard to hear and may trigger a shame attack, but it is important information for breaking out of the victim triangle.

As G. K. Chesteron once wrote: “You can free things from alien or accidental laws of their own nature…. Do not go about…encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end.

The Bermuda Triangle coughs up myths like a consumptive asthmatic. Missing vessels are blamed on aliens. Atlantis. Time rifts. Ghost ships. Magnetic anomalies. Methane eruptions. People go mad. People lose their minds. Sometimes I think I've been in the Bermuda Triangle my whole life.

All of them, before their imprisonment in concentration camps, had been decent people in private life, many indeed highly respected citizens, who had never come up against the law, but were set apart only by their homosexual feelings. Al of these otherwise decent people had been assembled here, in this melting pot of disgrace and torment, for extermination through back-breaking labor, hunger, and torture. None of them were child molesters or had had sex with children or adolescents, as all of these had a green triangle. Were we with our pink triangle really outrageous criminals and "degenerates", a menace to society?

[The new camp commander's] first order was that our pink triangles should be replaced by new ones that were almost double in size. And over the triangle a yellow stripe would be sewn, 2 centimeters wide and 12 centimeters long. "That's so I can recognize you filthy queer scum before you get close," he explained with a nasty smile.

Eva and Anne Morgan, one a niece and the other a daughter of J. P. Morgan, the most powerful financier in U.S. history, used their family’s money to finance women workers who were protesting before and after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, even putting up a Fifth Avenue mansion as security for bail when those protesters were arrested. The

No matter how much we longed for the destruction of the Nazi regime, we could not remain undisturbed by the bombing raids, and none of us enjoyed them, out of fear for our nearest and dearest. The attacks would fall on towns where thousands of innocent people would lose their lives, people who had as much repulsion for the war as us concentration-camp victims.

Get it, get it, get it!” moaned Bean. She had never been so bored in her entire life. She was so bored she fell on the floor. Then she took a tiny peek up at the lady in the dressing room next door. Yow. “Get up, Bean!” said her mother. “This minute.” Bean got up and sat on the triangle seat again. She waited. Nancy looked at herself. “I kind of like it,” Nancy said. “But it costs forty dollars. That’s all my

Because without a true understanding of who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live my life, I defined myself by what I wasn’t, because what I wasn’t was very apparent to me. Without a strong foundation to steady you and a set of values to guide you, you stop being someone with limitless potential and become someone defined only by your pain. Unfortunately pain often screams louder than potential in our minds.

You know how depression lies? Well anxiety is stupid. I did not just say people with anxiety are stupid. No, no. I mean that anxiety itself is stupid. If you asked anxiety what two plus two is, anxiety will think very hard and say "triangle" or "a bag of Fritos" or "a commemorative stamp." Because anxiety doesn't know what anything is. It will try to convince you that things that are totally fine are worthy of dread.

Sppooooon!!! Where are yoooooouuuu?” The Enchanted Spoon was a bit frightened of the key and had taken to hiding, because the key kept on wanting to kiss the spoon. Wish was so delighted with her success in bringing the spoon and the key and the pins to life that she accidentally did the same with Bodkin’s fork, and regrettably that created a love triangle. The fork decided that it was in love with the key, and that the unfortunate spoon was its main rival. So Bodkin would be trying to eat his supper, and the fork would leap heroically out of Bodkin’s hand to pin the Enchanted Spoon to the ground. Or the spoon would find himself being stalked… and the fork would challenge him to a fight… and the spoon would stick out his chest like a proud swordsman, and the two of them would conduct a complicated spoon-and-fork fight, lunging and parrying and dueling and ambushing each other across the Sweet Track.

The way out of the drama triangle, as many spiritual teachers, therapists and coaches have suggested, is the creative orientation. This is where we exercise full responsibility and accountability. In this, we become artists and activists of our own lives, and focus our attention on the changes that we’d like to bring into being. As we move beyond old habits of blaming, complaining, excuses, and wishful thinking, life begins to open up. This becomes a world of opportunity, power, and freedom.

1.  Position one blank sheet of paper to your right and another to your left; then take a pencil in each hand. Simultaneously, draw a vertical line on the right sheet and a circle on the left sheet. Repeat three times, alternating figures on the right and left sheets.  2.  Draw a triangle on one sheet while drawing a square on the other. Then switch: draw the square on the first sheet and the triangle on the other.  3.  Draw a circle on one sheet while drawing a triangle on the other. Switch figures and do it again.  4.  Draw two circles on one sheet while drawing one square on the other. Then switch.  5.  Draw two squares on one sheet while drawing one triangle on the other. Then switch.  6.  Draw a triangle on one sheet while drawing a square on the other and also tracing a circle on the floor with one leg. Then switch hands (and switch to the other leg).  7.  Draw a circle with one hand and a triangle with the other while tracing a square on the floor with one leg. Then switch all.  8.  Draw a triangle with one hand and two squares with the other while tracing a circle on the floor with one leg. Then switch all.  9.  Draw a triangle with one hand and a square with the other while tracing a circle on the floor with one leg and nodding your head twice forward and twice backward. 10.  Draw a triangle with one hand and a square with the other while tracing a vertical line with the leg on the same side as the hand that is drawing the triangle, and a horizontal line with leg on the same side as the hand that is drawing the square. Then switch all.

You've asked me what the lobster is weaving there with his golden feet? I reply, the ocean knows this. You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent bell? What is it waiting for? I tell you it is waiting for time, like you. You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms? Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know. You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal, and I reply by describing how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies. You enquire about the kingfisher's feathers, which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides? Or you've found in the cards a new question touching on the crystal architecture of the sea anemone, and you'll deal that to me now? You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean spines? The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks? The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out in the deep places like a thread in the water? I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its jewel boxes is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure, and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the petal hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl. I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead of human eyes, dead in those darknesses, of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes on the timid globe of an orange. I walked around as you do, investigating the endless star, and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked, the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

Scarcely a word has been written on the fact that along with the millions whom Hitler had butchered on grounds of "race," hundreds of thousands of people were sadistically tortured to death simply for having homosexual feelings. Scarcely anyone has publicized the fact that the madness of Hitler and his gang was not directed just against the Jews, but also against us homosexuals, in both cases leading to the "final solution" of seeking the total annihilation of these human beings. May they never be forgotten, these multitudes of dead, our anonymous, immortal martyrs.

A couple of minutes later, and the tram started to climb up from Alfama, the streets widened, heavy traffic and Lisboetas about their normal hum-drum business. We skipped off at a busy triangle where three roads converged. A handful of shoppers and workers waited in the small yellow bus shelters, or smoked against the trees that would fringe the diamond with shade when summer came again. Taxi drivers drank coffee from paper cups and ribbed an old guy shaving in his cab. Just another normal day rolling around; no problem, and life trips along no matter who dies in the night.

The Egyptians believed in sacred words, and there’s a story about Isis tricking the great god Ra to reveal his secret magic word. The Hebrews believed there was great power in God’s name. I find it sometimes ironic that the Christian prayer Our Father or Pater Noster finishes with the word Amen. Amen means ‘hidden one.’ It used to be the name of Ra who was called Amen Ra or Amen Osiris. The Our Father has aspects similar to what is written in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Maxim of Ani. The Freemasons use the golden triangle, as do Christian churches. It is an expensive and rare gift.

This man kept us standing and waiting for a good while, while a group of eight to ten Capos gathered round us and looked us up and down… They were on the lookout for a possible lover among the new arrivals. Because I still did not have a full beard, even though nearly twenty-three, so looked younger than my years, and because I had filled out a bit again thanks to the supplementary rations from my Sachsenhausen Capo, I was obviously very much at the center of these Capos' considerations… The situation in which the five of us found ourselves seemed to me very much like a slave-boy market in ancient Rome.

How many did you eat?” I asked. “Eight,” Slug answered, breathing heavily. “Eight quesadilla triangles?” I said, grossed out. Slug shook his head. “No… eight full quesadillas,” he said, again pronouncing it wrong. “Dude,” I said, my jaw dropping to the floor. “That’s, like, um… four times eight… thirty four slices!” Naomi quickly corrected me. “Thirty two slices.” “Thirty two slices!” I repeated. “This kid can pack ‘em away!” Wyatt said, bringing another plate of quesadillas to the group. “Gidgy…” Slug said, reaching for his twin sister, who was scooting away from his greasy fingers. “I might need a stomach transplant after this.” “Gross,” she said. “Don’t touch me. And stomach transplants aren’t a real thing.” “Giiiiidgy!” Slug groaned. “We’re twins! Your stomach is an exact match for mine! Only you can save me! I only need half of it. The other half’ll grow back!” “Dude,” Gidget said, raising an eyebrow. “You can’t have my stomach.” “But what if I need it?” Slug whined, sliding lower in his chair. “You’re just gonna—” And then Slug let out the grossest burp I’d ever heard in my life. It was loud, and it was bad. Like, my eyes started watering. Slug instantly sat up in his seat with a smile beaming across his face. “All better,” he said, reaching for another quesadilla on Wyatt’s plate. “Mmmm, gimme, gimme, gimme!

Many of us believe we are our emotions, our circumstances. I AM depressed I AM angry I AM poor These emotions and circumstances are passing through. What you grab and hold in your mind can define you in the moment but is really transitory. As we move into reframing our world, focusing on what we want rather than being blown around and just reacting, it can be like learning a new script. You may feel awkward at first but the more you go into character, learning the lines of "As you Like it.." the easier it gets and you become that role. In truth the role behind any mask is the I AM, the divine. May you be aware of your true nature as you walk through this play called life.

If you spend all your time trying to be happy, you end up focusing all your attention on yourself and how “happy” you are and, as a result, you become a shriveled self who can’t live for some larger cause. Your life will center on yourself and your moment-by-moment focus will be on how you feel inside. Your sole criterion of evaluation for seeking a job, making friends, finding a spouse (or staying with a spouse!), and selecting a church will reduce to one overarching concern: How does this particular thing make me feel? The best way to be happy in the contemporary sense is to forget about it, to try to live a good life for a bigger purpose, especially for the cause of Christ.

Because, even if my corrupt body is rotten and wracked with pain, even if all my senses have departed from me, leaving only agony and decay, my Mind is still blessed with Life. And, as in the long nights of my Youth, when I could find no sleep, I lie here . . . and think of Numbers. For Numbers are the bridge between the World of Perfection and this fallen, foolish vale of tears. They exist both in the purity of abstraction, and in the concrete, solid, sinful world. They exist in the ten fingers of my twitching, clutching hands, in the spidery numeric scrawls in Schäffer’s books of accounts, they exist in that vision of perfection in this fallen world, the Cathedral, in its circles, in its triangles, in the parabolae of its curls and curves, a beauteous image of the Godhead as a finite, geometrical and comprehensible idea. And they exist also in pure conception, in the flights of numerical beauty that my mind conceives. Can one set a limit on numbers? Can one imagine where the line could be drawn and say . . . after this count, one may reckon no further? No. They have no beginning and have no end. Numbers stretch out, beyond our human limits, beyond our comprehension, to a boundless Infinity. This physical world, my body, my life, will come to an end, but numbers count onwards for ever, towards the greatest of all reckonings that can never, ever be reached.

In order to get to know who is in your System, each individual alter needs to complete a piece of paper in the form of a circle (or triangle) which contains the following information: their name, their age (it might be an age range, like age 4-7), and their traits. strengths and skills. (All parts must have a name. If they do not have a name, they need to choose one. lf their name was given to them by a perpetrator and is too upsetting or if it has a negative association, they may wish to change their name—that is perfectly ok. Any name that is not negative or triggering is fine—it does not have to be a standard ‘proper name’ as they are commonly thought of.) On the back of the circle or triangle they need to write down what caused them to split off.

I go to one of my favorite Instagram profiles, the.korean.vegan, and I watch her last video, in which she makes peach-topped tteok. The Korean vegan, Joanne, cooks while talking about various things in her life. As she splits open a peach, she explains why she gave up meat. As she adds lemon juice, brown sugar, nutmeg, a pinch of salt, cinnamon, almond extract, maple syrup, then vegan butter and vegan milk and sifted almond and rice flour, she talks about how she worried about whitewashing her diet, about denying herself a fundamental part of her culture, and then about how others don't see her as authentically Korean since she is a vegan. I watch other videos by Joanne, soothed by her voice into feeling human myself, and into craving the experiences of love she talks of and the food she cooks as she does. I go to another profile, and watch a person's hands delicately handle little knots of shirataki noodles and wash them in cold water, before placing them in a clear oden soup that is already filled with stock-boiled eggs, daikon, and pure white triangles of hanpen. Next, they place a cube of rice cake in a little deep-fried tofu pouch, and seal the pouch with a toothpick so it looks like a tiny drawstring bag; they place the bag in with the other ingredients. "Every winter my mum made this dish for me," a voice says over the video, "just like how every winter my grandma made it for my mum when she was a child." The person in the video is half Japanese like me, and her name is Mei; she appears on the screen, rosy cheeked, chopsticks in her hand, and sits down with her dish and eats it, facing the camera. Food means so much in Japan. Soya beans thrown out of temples in February to tempt out demons before the coming of spring bring the eater prosperity and luck; sushi rolls eaten facing a specific direction decided each year bring luck and fortune to the eater; soba noodles consumed at New Year help time progress, connecting one year to the next; when the noodles snap, the eater can move on from bad events from the last year. In China too, long noodles consumed at New Year grant the eater a long life. In Korea, when rice-cake soup is eaten at New Year, every Korean ages a year, together, in unison. All these things feel crucial to East Asian identity, no matter which country you are from.

Just beyond the pi-pi, and disposed in a triangle before the entrance of the house, were three magnificent bread-fruit trees. At this moment I can recap to my mind their slender shafts, and the graceful inequalities of their bark, on which my eye was accustomed to dwell day after day in the midst of my solitary musings. It is strange how inanimate objects will twine themselves into our affections, especially in the hour of affliction. Even now, amidst all the bustle and stir of the proud and busy city in which I am dwelling, the image of those three trees seems to come as vividly before my eyes as if they were actually present, and I still feel the soothing quiet pleasure which I then had in watching hour after hour their topmost boughs waving gracefully in the breeze.

I press the blue glass triangle to my lips and smile for Matt, my best-friend-that’s-a-boy, my last goodbye to the brokenhearted promise I carried like my journal for so long. Somewhere below the black frothy ocean, a banished mermaid reads my letters and weeps endlessly for a love she’ll never know – not for a single moment. Before the trip, Frankie and I set out to have the Absolute Best Summer Ever, the summer of twenty boys. We’ll never agree on the final count – whether the boys from Caroline’s should be included in the tally, whether the milk-shake man was too old to be considered a “boy,” whether her tattooed rock star interlude was anything other than a rebound. But in the end, there were only two boys who really mattered. Matt and Sam. When I close my eyes, I see Sam lying next to me on the blanket that first night we watched the stars – the night he made me look at everything in a different way; the breeze on my skin and the music and the ocean at night. But I also see Matt; his marzipan frosting kiss. All the books he read to me. His postcard fairy tales of California, finally coming to life in Zanzibar Bay. When I kissed Sam, I was so scared of erasing Matt. But now I know that I could never erase him. He’ll always be part of me – just in a different way. Like Sam, making smoothies on the beach two thousand miles away. Like Frankie, my voodoo magic butterfly finding her way back home in the dark. Like the stars, fading with the halo of the vanishing moon. Like the ocean, falling and whispering against the shore. Nothing ever really goes away – it just changes into something else. Something beautiful.

Over a span of twenty years, Shakespeare churned out an impressively whopping thirty-eight plays, 154 love sonnets, and two epic narrative poems. While most people associate him with his plays, it was his sonnets that likely earned him admiration among his contemporaries. Yes, that’s right: In his lifetime, Shakespeare garnered more acclaim for his sonnets than he did for his plays. In England during the 1590s, writing plays was considered a bit hackish—a way to pay the bills—and not an intellectual pursuit. Writing sonnets was all the rage— and a way to gain literary prestige. These poems weren’t published for the plebeian public, but were written down and shared among the literati—and aristocrats looking for some intellectual cachet by becoming patrons to brilliant but perhaps financially strapped writers. So, while Shakespeare likely wrote nearly all of his love sonnets in the early to mid 1590s, they weren’t officially collected and published until 1609, well after the fad had passed. W. H. Auden said of Shakespeare’s sonnets: “They are the work of someone whose ear is unerring.” In today’s less poetry-friendly world, appreciation of these sonnets tends, sadly, to be relegated to classrooms, Valentine’s Day, and anniversaries. Which is too bad, because—though they do indeed rhyme—they are far superior to the ditties found in ninety-nine-cent greeting cards. In fact, they cover the whole gamut of love—the good, the bad, the erotic, and the ugly, including love triangles, being dumped, and jealousy. There is also speculation as to how autobiographical the sonnets are. The truth is that we know so little about Shakespeare’s private life.

Kant distinguished between two types of truths: (1) analytic propositions, which derive from logic and “reason itself” rather than from observing the world; for example, all bachelors are unmarried, two plus two equals four, and the angles of a triangle always add up to 180 degrees; and (2) synthetic propositions, which are based on experience and observations; for example, Munich is bigger than Bern, all swans are white. Synthetic propositions could be revised by new empirical evidence, but not analytic ones. We may discover a black swan but not a married bachelor or (at least so Kant thought) a triangle with 181 degrees. As Einstein said of Kant’s first category of truths: “This is held to be the case, for example, in the propositions of geometry and in the principle of causality. These and certain other types of knowledge… do not previously have to be gained from sense data, in other words they are a priori knowledge.” Einstein

From the start the proportion of asocials in the camp was about one-third of the total population, and throughout the first years prostitutes, homeless and ‘work-shy’ women continued to pour in through the gates. Overcrowding in the asocial blocks increased fast, order collapsed, and then followed squalor and disease.  Although we learn a lot about what the political prisoners thought of the asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame. Had compensation been available they might have seen a reason to come forward, but none was offered.  The German associations set up after the war to help camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help ‘asocial’ survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as ‘fighters’ against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the Western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black- or green-triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or at any later trials.  As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials’ stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans’ groups. Today, door-knocking down the Düsseldorf Bahndamm, one of the few pre-war red-light districts not destroyed, brings only angry shouts of ‘Get off my patch'.

Niflheim: the world of primordial darkness, cold, mist, and ice Norns: the three sisters who control the fate of men and women Ormstunga: means serpent’s tongue, from orm (serpent) and stunga (tongue) Prow: the front end of a ship or boat Ragnarök: the final battle between the gods and giants which will bring an end to the gods of Asgard. Sax-knife: a large single-edged knife Skald: a poet, a storyteller Skjaldborg: a shield wall Sleipnir: Odin’s eight-legged horse Snekkja: a viking longship used for battle Stern: the back end of a ship or boat Suðrikaupstefna: Southern Market, from the words suðr (south) and kaupstefna (market) Surtr: a fire giant who leads his kin into battle against the gods of Asgard during Ragnarök Svartalfheim: the world inhabited by the dwarves Tafl: a strategy board game Thrall: a slave Valhalla: Odin’s hall where those who died in battle reside Valknut: a symbol made of three interlocked triangles, also known as Odin’s Knot. It is thought to represent the transition from life to death, Odin, and the power to bind and unbind

Imagine the upside-down triangle formed by the Anatolian plateau in the west, the Mesopotamian plain in the east, and the Egyptian valley in the south. Squeeze the sides of that triangle between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian desert, and there in the Levantine narrows is tiny Israel. It was the hinge of the three then-known continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It was the corridor, cockpit, and cauldron of imperial competition. With warring superpowers first to the north and south, then to the west and east, invasion for Israel was inescapable and defeat inevitable—despite Deuteronomy 28. If Israel had spent all of its life on its knees praying, the only change in its history would have been to have died—on its knees praying. It is a crime against both humanity and divinity to tell a people so located that a military defeat is a punishment from God. This holds also, but for different reasons, on disease and drought, famine and even earthquake. No wonder, therefore, that Israel’s Psalter is filled with cries for forgiveness and pleas for mercy. External invasions, internal famines, and any other disasters were not divine punishments for how the people of Israel lived its covenantal life with God, but human consequences of where the nation of Israel lived it.

It was too easy! It was much too easy! Five hours had not yet gone by since I had met you. How easy it was! If only you had shown at least a modicum of resistance. Well, how long should you have resisted to satisfy me? Six hours? Seven? Eight? I was being stupid and ridiculous. Your licentiousness would be the same, if you held back for five, fifty, or five hundred hours. Well, why didn’t I have the courage to put an end to this festering triangle? Because of a desire for revenge? Perhaps. But I think there was a different motive. Had it been simply desire for revenge, would it not have been more effective to tear the mask from my face on the spot? But I was afraid. Of course, the behavior of the mask, which was demolishing my calm everyday life, was cruel, but returning to the faceless, enclosed days was even more terrifying. Fear strengthened fear, and like a bird that has lost its feet and is unable to alight upon the ground, I would have to keep endlessly hovering. But that was not the end of it. If I really could not endure the situation, the mask, alive as it was, might well kill you. Your fornication would be difficult to deny, which gave me an alibi. But I did not kill you. Why? I wonder. Because I did not want to lose you? No, precisely not wanting to lose you was reason enough for killing you. It would be senseless to seek rationality in jealousy. Just look at yourself. You who had rejected me so positively, who had rebelled against my face, now lay broken beneath the mask!

1.  Position one blank sheet of paper to your right and another to your left; then take a pencil in each hand. Simultaneously, draw a vertical line on the right sheet and a circle on the left sheet. Repeat three times, alternating figures on the right and left sheets. 2.  Draw a triangle on one sheet while drawing a square on the other. Then switch: draw the square on the first sheet and the triangle on the other. 3.  Draw a circle on one sheet while drawing a triangle on the other. Switch figures and do it again. 4.  Draw two circles on one sheet while drawing one square on the other. Then switch. 5.  Draw two squares on one sheet while drawing one triangle on the other. Then switch. 6.  Draw a triangle on one sheet while drawing a square on the other and also tracing a circle on the floor with one leg. Then switch hands (and switch to the other leg). 7.  Draw a circle with one hand and a triangle with the other while tracing a square on the floor with one leg. Then switch all. 8.  Draw a triangle with one hand and two squares with the other while tracing a circle on the floor with one leg. Then switch all. 9.  Draw a triangle with one hand and a square with the other while tracing a circle on the floor with one leg and nodding your head twice forward and twice backward. 10.  Draw a triangle with one hand and a square with the other while tracing a vertical line with the leg on the same side as the hand that is drawing the triangle, and a horizontal line with leg on the same side as the hand that is drawing the square. Then switch all.

The empowerment triangle turns drama upside-down, transforming the persecutor (or scapegoat) into a challenger, the rescuer into a coach, and the victim into a creator. The empowerment dynamic allows all the roles to be essential for growth. In the drama triangle, the persecutor works with issues of power, the rescuer works with issues of responsibility, and the victim works with area of vulnerability: The drama triangle is familiar to many of us. We all know this pattern inside ourselves. We get stuck in a situation that we want to escape, and it creates drama. By leaning into the dynamic and entering deeper into relationship, we can work the energy so that it becomes an enriching transformation. If you can work this in a group, then you’ve subdued the scapegoat archetype and turned it into something more life affirming. The most important thing about the drama triangle is to make people aware of it. When a group can understand and recognize how this is a kind of destructive pattern, it becomes empowered to change the pattern. Uncoupling drama from our organizational and personal lives is the key. The group as a whole can embody a role to create safety and make sense of the system. Transformation from the drama to the redeemed starts with a pause, then an inquiry of what’s happening here, then a recollection of the three roles and who is playing what role in this context. Once the system is self-aware, ask the questions: “what else is possible? How can I become so centered that something new can happen? How can a new perception take place?” With enough safety and connection, the group will be able to follow the healing energy into re-organization and re-integration of the parts. Claiming or remembering your own archetype can protect against falling into one.

Until recently, three unspoken principles have guided the arena of genetic diagnosis and intervention. First, diagnostic tests have largely been restricted to gene variants that are singularly powerful determinants of illness—i.e., highly penetrant mutations, where the likelihood of developing the disease is close to 100 percent (Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs disease). Second, the diseases caused by these mutations have generally involved extraordinary suffering or fundamental incompatibilities with “normal” life. Third, justifiable interventions—the decision to abort a child with Down syndrome, say, or intervene surgically on a woman with a BRCA1 mutation—have been defined through social and medical consensus, and all interventions have been governed by complete freedom of choice. The three sides of the triangle can be envisioned as moral lines that most cultures have been unwilling to transgress. The abortion of an embryo carrying a gene with, say, only a ten percent chance of developing cancer in the future violates the injunction against intervening on low-penetrance mutations. Similarly, a state-mandated medical procedure on a genetically ill person without the subject’s consent (or parental consent in the case of a fetus) crosses the boundaries of freedom and noncoercion. Yet it can hardly escape our attention that these parameters are inherently susceptible to the logic of self-reinforcement. We determine the definition of “extraordinary suffering.” We demarcate the boundaries of “normalcy” versus “abnormalcy.” We make the medical choices to intervene. We determine the nature of “justifiable interventions.” Humans endowed with certain genomes are responsible for defining the criteria to define, intervene on, or even eliminate other humans endowed with other genomes. “Choice,” in short, seems like an illusion devised by genes to propagate the selection of similar genes.

The law of manifestation operates like a triangle: First, know what you want and visualize it as if you already had it; Second, see it behind the illusion of reality, practice it in your decisions, choose the people you hang out with, etc; Third, believe, have faith and work on your emotions to be at the right frequency. This triangle of manifestation is one of the secrets of many religions: Christianity, Scientology, and Freemasonry. In Masonry is seen as "heart, mind and desire"; in Scientology is perceived as "reality, communication and affinity"; in Christianity is understood as "Father, son and holy ghost"; basically, "actions, learnings and emotions". In Christianity, the Father equals reality or the Creator of the illusion, the son is the way, the path, the road of our decisions and actions, and the holy ghost is our heart, instincts and desires manifested in that same path. In other words, through Jesus, and with the power of the holy ghost, you reach God. This is an allegory that not many Christians can understand. Jesus represents behavior - right and wrong, the holy ghost is our faith, your heart and emotions reflecting back at you what you attract, it's the energy that connects you to your dreams, and God represents the Architect of Reality. So, through moral behavior and positive emotions, your understand God and life, and then you receive "paradise". This paradise is whatever you dream for yourself. Furthermore, if someone has shown you this way, he has been as an angel to you, a messenger of God; if someone stopped you from reaching it, he has been as a demon, a worker for Satan, the enemy; if you failed in seeing this path, you have redirected yourself towards hell. And if you hate your life, you are already in hell. If you want to get out of hell, you must accept the truth, and this truth is that you must know God, for He is the truth. He and the truth are one and the same.

Neuroimaging studies show the PFC reining in more emotional brain regions in the name of doing (or thinking) the right thing. Stick a volunteer in a brain scanner and flash up pictures of faces. And in a depressing, well-replicated finding, flash up the face of someone of another race and in about 75 percent of subjects, there is activation of the amygdala, the brain region central to fear, anxiety, and aggression.[*] In under a tenth of a second.[*] And then the PFC does the harder thing. In most of those subjects, a few seconds after the amygdala activates, the PFC kicks in, turning off the amygdala. It’s a delayed frontocortical voice—“Don’t think that way. That’s not who I am.” And who are the folks in which the PFC doesn’t muzzle the amygdala? People whose racism is avowedly, unapologetically explicit—“That is who I am.”[13] In another experimental paradigm, a subject in a brain scanner plays an online game with two other people—each is represented by a symbol on the screen, forming a triangle. They toss a virtual ball around—the subject presses one of two buttons, determining which of the two symbols the ball is tossed to; the other two toss it to each other, toss it back to the subject. This goes on for a while, everyone having a fine time, and then, oh no, the other two people stop tossing the ball to the subject. It’s the middle-school nightmare: “They know I’m a dork.” The amygdala rapidly activates, along with the insular cortex, a region associated with disgust and distress. And then, after a delay, the PFC inhibits these other regions—“Get this in perspective; this is just a stupid game.” In a subset of individuals, however, the PFC doesn’t activate as much, and the amygdala and insular cortex just keep going, as the subject feels more subjective distress. Who are these impaired individuals? Teenagers—the PFC isn’t up to the task yet of dismissing social ostracism as meaningless. There you have it.[*]

How Could You Not - for Jane Kenyon It is a day after many days of storms. Having been washed and washed, the air glitters; small heaped cumuli blow across the sky; a shower visible against the firs douses the crocuses. We knew it would happen one day this week. Now, when I learn you have died, I go to the open door and look across at New Hampshire and see that there, too, the sun is bright and clouds are making their shadowy ways along the horizon; and I think: How could it not have been today? In another room, Keri Te Kanawa is singing the Laudate Dominum of Mozart, very faintly, as if in the past, to those who once sat in the steel seat of the old mowing machine, cheerful descendent of the scythe of the grim reaper, and drew the cutter bars little reciprocating triangles through the grass to make the stalks lie down in sunshine. Could you have walked in the dark early this morning and found yourself grown completely tired of the successes and failures of medicine, of your year of pain and despair remitted briefly now and then by hope that had that leaden taste? Did you glimpse in first light the world as you loved it and see that, now, it was not wrong to die and that, on dying, you would leave your beloved in a day like paradise? Near sunrise did you loosen your hold a little? How could you not already have felt blessed for good, having these last days spoken your whole heart to him, who spoke his whole heart to you, so that in the silence he would not feel a single word was missing? How could you not have slipped into a spell, in full daylight, as he lay next to you, with his arms around you, as they have been, it must have seemed, all your life? How could your cheek not press a moment to his cheek, which presses itself to yours from now on? How could you not rise and go, with all that light at the window, those arms around you, and the sound, coming or going, hard to say, of a single-engine plane in the distance that no one else hears?

THE GREAT GULON INCIDENT: [JUST GONNA LEAVE THIS ONE WITH: REDACTED] [NOT THAT I HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS!] THE VACKER CONNECTION: [UH, FITZY’S MY BEST FRIEND—NOT A “CONNECTION.” AND ALDEN AND DELLA ARE WAY NICER TO ME THAN MY OWN PARENTS ARE. BIANA’S SUPER AWESOME TOO. ALVAR… NOT SO MUCH. I PROBABLY SHOULD’VE SEEN THAT ONE COMING. BUT WHATEVER, MY POINT IS: I DIDN’T TRY TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE VACKERS—NO MATTER WHAT WEIRD STUFF WAS IN ONE OF MY ERASED MEMORIES. SO DON’T GO THINKING THERE’S MORE TO IT THAN THAT.] [AND HOW DO YOU GUYS EVEN KNOW ABOUT THAT MEMORY? THAT KINDA MAKES ME WANT TO RIP THIS REGISTRY PENDANT OFF MY NECK AND THROW IT FAR, FAR AWAY!] INSTANT RIVALRY: [YOU THINK BANGS BOY AND ME ARE “RIVALS”? HATE TO BREAK IT TO YOU, BUT NOPE! I MEAN, YEAH, HE’S SUPER ANNOYING WITH ALL THE “LOOK AT ME, I’M A MOODY SHADE” NONSENSE—AND HIS HAIR IS TOTALLY RIDICULOUS. BUT THERE’S NO RIVALRY. JUST DON’T EXPECT US TO BE BESTIES, AND WE’LL BE GOOD.] UNWITTING ERRAND BOY: [OKAY, THAT SUBHEADING MAKES ME WANT TO PUNCH WHOEVER WROTE IT IN THE MOUTH. BUT… I GUESS IT’S ALSO KIND OF TRUE. MY MOM DID HAVE ME DO STUFF AND THEN ERASE MY MEMORIES SO I WOULDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT. MOM OF THE YEAR, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. TRY NOT TO BE JEALOUS.] [AND I’M WORKING ON GETTING THOSE MEMORIES BACK, BY THE WAY. I’VE BEEN FILLING JOURNALS WITH DRAWINGS AND EVERYTHING. IT’S JUST TAKING A WHILE BECAUSE I’VE BEEN A LITTLE BUSY ALMOST DYING AND STUFF.] TEAM FOSTER-KEEFE: [WOO-HOO, TEAM FOSTER-KEEFE IS OFFICIALLY A THING!] [BUT THE REST OF THE STUFF IN THIS SECTION IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GETTING REDACTED. SERIOUSLY—BOUNDARIES, PEOPLE! FOSTER’S AMAZING—AND OBVIOUSLY WORKING WITH ME MAKES HER EVEN MORE AMAZING. BUT YOU GUYS NEED TO STOP WITH ALL OF YOUR WEIRDO SPECULATING.] ONE PART OF A TRIANGLE: [OKAY, THAT’S IT. I’M DEEEEEEEEEEFINITELY DITCHING THIS PENDANT THING. WHY IS THE COUNCIL PAYING ATTENTION TO THIS STUFF???????????] [ACTUALLY, YOU KNOW WHAT? IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, BUT I’M GOING TO ADD ONE THING: FOSTER GETS TO DO WHATEVER SHE WANTS, OKAY? SHE CAN LIKE WHOEVER SHE WANTS. OR BE CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT SHE’S FEELING. SHE CAN EVEN BE OBLIVIOUS—IT’S HER LIFE. HER CHOICE. AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO STAY OUT OF IT.] [EVEN ME.] [ESPECIALLY ME. I WOULD NEVER WANT TO…] [NEVER MIND. MY POINT IS, LET THE POOR GIRL FIGURE THIS OUT ON HER OWN. AND SERIOUSLY, STAY OUT OF OUR LIVES!!!!]

My bedroom is separated from the main body of my house so that I have to go outside and cross some pseudo-Japanese stepping stones in order to go to sleep at night. Often I get rained on a little bit on my way to bed. It’s a benediction. A good night kiss. Romantic? Absolutely. And nothing to be ashamed of. If reality is a matter of perspective, then the romantic view of the world is as valid as any other - and a great deal more rewarding. It makes of life and unpredictable adventure rather that a problematic equation. Rain is the natural element for romanticism. A dripping fir is a hundred times more sexy than a sunburnt palm tree, and more primal and contemplative, too. A steady, wind-driven rain composed music for the psyche. It not only nurtures and renews, it consecrates and sanctifies. It whispers in secret languages about the primordial essence of things. Obviously, then, the Pacific Northwest's customary climate is perfect for a writer. It's cozy and intimate. Reducing temptation (how can you possibly play on the beach or work in the yard?), it turns a person inward, connecting them with what Jung called "the bottom below the bottom," those areas of the deep unconscious into which every serious writer must spelunk. Directly above my writing desk there is a skylight. This is the window, rain-drummed and bough-brushed, through which my Muse arrives, bringing with her the rhythms and cadences of cloud and water, not to mention the latest catalog from Victoria's Secret and the twenty-three auxiliary verbs. Oddly enough, not every local author shares my proclivity for precipitation. Unaware of the poetry they're missing, many malign the mist as malevolently as they non-literary heliotropes do. They wring their damp mitts and fret about rot, cursing the prolonged spillage, claiming they're too dejected to write, that their feet itch (athlete's foot), the roof leaks, they can't stop coughing, and they feel as if they're slowly being digested by an oyster. Yet the next sunny day, though it may be weeks away, will trot out such a mountainous array of pagodas, vanilla sundaes, hero chins and god fingers; such a sunset palette of Jell-O, carrot oil, Vegas strip, and Kool-Aid; such a sea-vista display of broad waters, firred islands, whale spouts, and boat sails thicker than triangles in a geometry book, that any and all memories of dankness will fizz and implode in a blaze of bedazzled amnesia. "Paradise!" you'll hear them proclaim as they call United Van Lines to cancel their move to Arizona.

THE BASIC LYING-DOWN POSTURE Begin by lying on your back on the floor or ground—a comfortable surface (firm, but not too hard)—with your knees up, your feet flat on the floor, and a yoga strap tied just above the knees. The strap should be tied tight enough so the knees are just touching or almost touching. We’re creating a triangle between the knees, the feet, and the floor, so that you can relax your thighs, lower back, and pelvic area. Your feet should be comfortably spread apart so that you feel stable and can fully relax. You may also want something supporting your head, such as a folded towel, a sweater, or a small pillow, to raise it slightly. Cross your hands at or over your lower belly with the left hand under the right hand, little fingers down toward the pubic bone, thumbs up toward the navel. This gathers your energy and awareness toward the core of the body. Feel the earth under you and let your body sink down as if into the earth. The more you can allow yourself to feel supported by the earth, the more fully you will be able to relax. Check the comfort of your position. You want to be really relaxed, so your body’s not being strained in any particular way. You should be holding yourself so you can completely relax the muscles in the lower back and the inner thighs and so there’s no effort of holding at all. You’re really relaxed: the triangle of your knees, two feet, and the floor should be very restful for you. Then, put your awareness in your body, and just let yourself continue to relax. Soon after you begin doing these practices, you’ll notice that any time you lie down in this way, in the same position with the intention to do body work, the body responds very quickly. This is the one time in our life when our body actually becomes the focus of attention. We’re not using the body for something else. We’re simply making a relationship with it as it is. It’s the only occasion when we ever do this, including in our sleep. The body begins to respond, to relax, to develop a sense of well-being, even in just taking this position. So just take a few minutes, and let your body completely relax. As you’re just lying there, you’ll notice that your body begins to let go. A muscle here, a muscle there, a tendon here, a joint there: it begins to release the tension in various places. It’s a very living situation. You might think, “Why am I here? There’s not much happening.” That’s not true at all. As long as you’re attentive and you put your awareness into your body, there’s a very dynamic, very lively process of relaxation that the body goes through. But you have to be present. You have to be in your body. You have to be intentionally and deliberately feeling your body for this to work.

Sharon passed around a handout: "Triangle of Self-Actualization" by Abraham Maslow. The levels of human motivation. It resembled the nutrition triangle put out by the FDA, with five horizontal levels of multiple colors. I vaguely remembered it from my one college psychology course in the 1970's. "Very applicable with refugees," Sharon said. "Maslow theorized that one could not move to a higher level until the prior level was satisfied. The first level, the triangle base, is physiological needs. Like food and water. Until a person has enough to eat and drink, that's all one would be concerned with." I'd never experienced not being able to satisfy my thirst or hunger, but it sounded logical that that would be my only concern in such a situation. For the Lost Boys, just getting enough food and water had been a daily struggle. I wondered what kind of impact being stuck at the bottom level for the last fourteen years would have on a person, especially a child and teen. "The second level is safety and security. Home. A sanctuary. A safe place." Like not being shot at or having lions attack you. They hadn't had much of level two, either. Even Kakuma hadn't been safe. A refugee camp couldn't feel like home. "The third level is social. A sense of belonging." Since they'd been together, they must have felt like they belonged, but perhaps not on a larger scale, having been displaced from home and living in someone else's country. "Once a person has food, shelter, family and friends, they can advance to the fourth level, which is ego. Self-esteem." I'd never thought of those things occurring sequentially, but rather simultaneously, as they did in my life. If I understood correctly, working on their self-esteem had not been a large concern to them, if one at all. That was bound to affect them eventually. In what way remained to be seen. They'd been so preoccupied with survival that issues of self-worth might overwhelm them at first. A sure risk for insecurity and depression. The information was fascinating and insightful, although worrisome in terms of Benson, Lino, and Alepho. It also made me wonder about us middle-and upper-class Americans. We seldom worried about food, except for eating too much, and that was not what Maslow had been referring to. Most of us had homes and safety and friends and family. That could mean we were entirely focused on that fourth level: ego. Our efforts to make ourselves seem strong, smart, rich, and beautiful, or young were our own kind of survival skill. Perhaps advancing directly to the fourth level, when the mind was originally engineered for the challenges of basic survival, was why Prozac and Zoloft, both antidepressants, were two of the biggest-selling drugs in America. "The pinnacle of the triangle," Sharon said, "is the fifth level. Self-actualization. A strong and deeply felt belief that as a person one has value in the world. Contentment with who one is rather than what one has. Secure in ones beliefs. Not needing ego boosts from external factors. Having that sense of well-being that does not depend on the approval of others is commonly called happiness." Happiness, hard to define, yet obvious when present. Most of us struggled our entire lives to achieve it, perhaps what had brought some of us to a mentoring class that night.

At the age of twenty, I obtained my first copy of The Eye in the Triangle at an Occult Bookstore in Los Angeles called The Psychic Eye and, naturally, I read it with the greatest enthusiasm and interest, and I excitedly extracted the essentials from its pages. It subsequently left a deep impression upon my mind, and it has continued to influence my life in ways invaluable to my growth as both a man and a magician. Since that first reading, I have read the book a few more times, including recently, and every time it has illumined my understanding of Crowley, his magick and his mysticism in some manner or another useful to my life and magical progress. I have read most published and unpublished works by Israel Regardie, but this book is the one he wrote that moved me the most, finding the greatest meaning and place in the sanctuary of my soul. I feel that The Eye in the Triangle is essential reading material for anyone who is seriously interested in learning about the life, magick and mysticism of Aleister Crowley.

Whether we choose the path of faith or not, we all must agree that all of life's ironies cannot be by accident.

The only certainty in life is that all things will certainly change.