β
The only time you fail is when you fall down and stay down.
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β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering: You can be successful)
β
The true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Reality is a projection of your thoughts or the things you habitually think about.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Our way of thinking creates good or bad outcomes.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.
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Herophilus
β
Judgment is a negative frequency.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
When your back is to the wall and you are facing fear head on, the only way is forward and through it.
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Stephen Richards (Releasing You from Fear (CD))
β
Success will be within your reach only when you start reaching out for it.
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β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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Before you can successfully make friends with others, first you have to become your own friend.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
No matter how small you start, always dream big.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
It sometimes takes a state of solitude to bring to mind the real power of companionship.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Happiness is something we reap from the seeds we sow. Plant misery seeds and that us what you reap.
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β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
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When you fail, that is when you get closer to success.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Everyone creates realities based on their own personal beliefs. These beliefs are so powerful that they can create [expansive or entrapping] realities over and over.~Kuan Yin
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β
Hope Bradford (Beneficial Law of Attraction: the Manifestation Teachings (Kuan Yin Law of Attraction Techniques based on "Oracle of Compassion: the Living Word of Kuan Yin))
β
Manifesting is a lot like making a cake. The things needed are supplied by you, the mixing is done by your mind and the baking is done in the oven of the universe.
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β
Stephen Richards (Think Your way to Success: Let Your Dreams Run Free)
β
If we ask, we should also be prepared to give.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
If you truly love someone, you should be more interested in keeping them happy than in being right.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Be yourself and become wealthy!
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
When you stop blaming others for where you are in life, that is when you can start to manifest your dream life!
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
If we truly love ourselves, in spite of our flaws, then we can love others in spite of theirs.
β
β
Stephen Richards (The Ultimate Success In Love)
β
There is nothing around me but money, money, money.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Remember that in the end, the universe responds to our emotions, not to our words.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
If you align your vibrations and frequencies with those things you desire, you will acquire them.
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β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
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You don't manifest dreams without taking chances.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Thrill me, chill me I went in search of money and success, all I got was a bellyful of excess! Now that I've realigned myself Iβm on my tip-toes because life is sweet! I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for all the blessings that are manifesting in my life β¦ neat!
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Without enthusiasm then what we have surrounded ourselves with becomes worthless.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
You cannot run at full throttle when applying your mindset to all of the different things running through your head. Focusing is the key to manifesting your desires.
β
β
Stephen Richards (The Ultimate Focus Builder)
β
The inner work that must be done will not always be easy and the road will not always be smooth, but it is vital to do the work of shedding the stories that are the true source of suffering.
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β
Daniel Mangena (Money Game: A Wealth Manifestation Guide. Level Up Your Mindset Step-By-Step & Create An Abundant Life)
β
Becoming wealthy is about accumulating wealth.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
If you knew the power within yourself to be truly happy, to be truly whole, then you would never ask another to become the image you desire for yourself, in order to be happy and whole.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
To control your life, control your mind. To control your mind, control your breath.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Poor is the manifestation of the absence of communication.
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β
Meir Ezra
β
There are no absolutes, and your way is neither the only way nor the right way.
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β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
When you put your passion into your desire, when it becomes a fire that threatens to consume you unless you have it, then your will is in the right place.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
The basis of Cosmic Ordering is the belief that the universe is not dead matter, but pure energy which responds to our vibrations and to our frequencies.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
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Do not invest time and money into yourself to have others completely destroy it!
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β
Stephen Richards
β
The only secret of wealth creation is knowing how to use Cosmic Ordering.
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β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
Remember your true self. You are more than just flesh and bones; you are unlimited energy and power. Knowing this, you will understand why happiness and prosperity are your birth right.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
Willful blindness sees no end of damage done.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
No matter what your wishes, they are not crazy so long as they are not crazy to you!
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
A good character is something you must make for yourself. It cannot be inherited from parents. It cannot be created by having extraordinary advantages. It isn't a gift of birth, wealth, talent or station. It is the result of your own endeavor. It is the reward that comes from living good principles and manifesting a virtuous and honorable life.
β
β
L. Tom Perry
β
Be open to the realization that who you were before and who you are now are two different people, and that what may have made you happy then, may not be the same thing that will make you happy now.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Run and hide or rise and shine ...
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β
Stephen Richards
β
To will is to put your emotion into your desire. Simply wanting is not desire, it is merely an undirected thought with no purpose but to pass the time.
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
β
Human beings are incredibly slow, Cosmic Ordering is incredibly fast!
β
β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Connection: Change your life within minutes!)
β
It has taken me a lot of years, but I find silence is sometimes the best answer.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
By spending time being abundant in the present, using the tactics and strategies I give you, such as playing the Money Game, you will start to break down resistance and prove to yourself that everything you want is already yours.
β
β
Daniel Mangena (Money Game: A Wealth Manifestation Guide. Level Up Your Mindset Step-By-Step & Create An Abundant Life)
β
This gameβs principal purpose is to expose your mind to the experience of firsthand evidence of money coming to you, with you not having to reach out for it. You may have to take action to formalise receiving the gift, but ideally you are not to reach out and look for it: it should just show up.
β
β
Daniel Mangena (Money Game: A Wealth Manifestation Guide. Level Up Your Mindset Step-By-Step & Create An Abundant Life)
β
The basic premise is that for any outcome to show up for you, there must be an alignment of our energy or emotions (energy in motion), our mindset and beliefs, and the actions that we are at least positioned to take with a clear intention in mind.
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β
Daniel Mangena (Money Game: A Wealth Manifestation Guide. Level Up Your Mindset Step-By-Step & Create An Abundant Life)
β
Become your own success story, not someone else's.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
As for the life of money-making, it is one of constraint, and wealth manifestly is not the good we are seeking, because it is for use, that is, for the sake of something further:
β
β
Aristotle (Ethics)
β
Thought is power, as is desire, but neither is enough unless it is backed by faith, specificity, and the desire to see to it that it becomes.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
With sticky thinking you can become unstuck!
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Stop harboring grudges against those who have wronged you, it just holds you back when you really want to be in the NOW.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Remove whatever you no longer need in your life, to make room for what you do need in your life.
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β
Avis J. Williams
β
When you are aligned with the truth of who you truly are, then you experience bliss.
β
β
Vivian Amis (I AM - The Key to Manifesting)
β
Your reality is a reflection of yourself
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β
Avis J. Williams
β
When you send out a powerful thought into the universe, you send out ripples to all parts of it which come back to you, reflecting what it is you sent out.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Regardless of whether luck or coincidence is involved, desires directed in the right way have a tendency to manifest.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Some people only dream of success⦠while others wake up and use Cosmic Ordering.
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β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Connection: Change your life within minutes!)
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Learn the power of tantra. Focus on your desires with singleness of purpose and align your actions with your desire, and your desires will manifest into your reality.
β
β
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (The Wealth Reference Guide: An American Classic)
β
Beauty is more popular than virtues because it is more visible than virtues.
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β
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
β
When you listen to your intuition and it sparks your creativity, that allows you to become energized to find your purpose. Your purpose cannot be manifested with dormant intuitionβyou have to reawaken active intuition to be in tune with your purpose. This is why active intuition is like an ignition: it generates that sparkβthe energy needed to channel holistic wealth.
β
β
Keisha Blair (Holistic Wealth: 32 Life Lessons to Help You Find Purpose, Prosperity, and Happiness)
β
You must wake up to the truth that whoever you are, that whatever you have or think you do not have, you are perfect in the here and now. Unless you can accept yourself, you will never be satisfied with anything, because it all begins with yourself.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
When you begin to actively participate in the creation of your life, there is never an end, even in death, for physics tells us that nothing is ever created nor destroyed, merely transformed.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
Your belief systems are what will ultimately dictate what is possible. Overcoming their limitations is not a matter of fighting it, but taking complete ownership, complete integration of all the belief systems that you have right now, and then simply making the choice to introduce inputs into your mental environment that support the truth of what you want to see.
β
β
Daniel Mangena (Money Game: A Wealth Manifestation Guide. Level Up Your Mindset Step-By-Step & Create An Abundant Life)
β
Follow your heart. It will lead you to where you need to be.
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β
Avis J. Williams
β
Desire is what lends power to thought, it is that element that separates a wish or a day dream into reality, if properly directed.
β
β
Stephen Richards
β
I started with $50, and within 48 hours received just under $200 dollars in crypto currency that I had not been expecting. I went on over the coming months to refine the process through trial and error until today, I am able to call in thousands at a time that comes in the most weird and wacky ways.
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β
Daniel Mangena (Money Game: A Wealth Manifestation Guide. Level Up Your Mindset Step-By-Step & Create An Abundant Life)
β
Thoughts create emotions, emotions create feelings and feelings create behaviour. So itβs very important that our thoughts are positive, to attract the right people, events and circumstances into our lives.
β
β
Avis J. Williams (The Psychic Mind: A Practical Guide to Psychic Development & Spiritual Growth)
β
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people wonβt feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
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β
T. Harv Eker (Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth)
β
Peace and Blessings manifest with every lesson learned. If your knowledge were your wealth then it would be well earned.
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β
Erykah Badu
β
Think big or die small!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Whether itβs your health, wealth, happiness, or any other element of your entire life experience, it is essential to keep in mind the importance of the movement of your attention. You must be obstinate and persistent in not allowing the viewpoints or information of others to alter your inner world. You know what you wish to become and what you would like to manifest for yourself.
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β
Wayne W. Dyer (Wishes Fulfilled: Mastering the Art of Manifesting)
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Show respect to all. If you accept that all is undifferentiated oneness, and that all things are merely different aspects of that one thing (but vibrating at different frequencies), then you must respect yourself and everything and everyone around you.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Manifesting your desires requires an understanding of the universeβs abundance and inherently giving nature. If you ask from a position of fear or desperation, you are sending out your fear and desperation, and the universe, giving, reflecting, and non-judgmental as it is, will send those right back at you.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
A person functioning exclusively in the Cartesian mode may be free from manifest symptoms but cannot be considered mentally healthy. Such individuals typically lead ego-centred, competitive, goal-oriented lives. Overpreoccupied with their past and their future, they tend to have a limited awarenessof the present and thus a limited ability to derive satisfaction from ordinary activities in everyday life. They concentrate on manipulating the external world and measure their living standard by the quantity of material possessions, while they become ever more alienated from their inner world and unable to appreciate the process of life. For people whose existence is dominated by this mode of experience no level of wealth, power, or fame will bring genuine satisfaction
β
β
Fritjof Capra
β
To prohibit a great people, however, from making all that they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.
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β
Adam Smith (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations)
β
Naysayers can't prevent your brilliance and purpose from entering the world. It will seep under doors like water flooding into a room. Its shafts will beam through windows like dazzling rays on a bright, summery morning. Within the sunlight are galaxies and constellations filled with opportunities for you to take. All you have to do is create the environment for its manifestation and keep striving, keep going.
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β
Keisha Blair (Holistic Wealth (Expanded and Updated): 36 Life Lessons to Help You Recover from Disruption, Find Your Life Purpose, and Achieve Financial Freedom)
β
To change your life, you need to become aware of yourself
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β
Avis J. Williams
β
We canβt control everything that happens to us, but we can control how we respond to things we canβt control.
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β
Avis J. Williams
β
The universe only exist within us. All of what is outside of us is also within us.
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β
Avis J. Williams
β
Everybody talks about being rich, Cosmic Ordering does something about it.
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β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering: You can be successful)
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Often the only difference between success and failure is not using Cosmic Ordering.
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β
Stephen Richards (Cosmic Ordering Guide)
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If you do not completely accept yourself, you can not love yourself fully. It would be hard to love anything unconditionally.
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β
Avis J. Williams
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Ignite the light within you, it will make your world brighter.
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β
Avis J. Williams
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Focus on what you can do right now, not what you can't do right now
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β
Avis J. Williams
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A man can be knocked down a thousand times and can still get back up, but when he puts himself down he has defeated himself more than a million others could have done.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
Some find that they are content with little, while others find that they want much, much more. Still others create and manifest many things, only to later discover that it was the creation which brought them greater joy and satisfaction, more so than the actual possession or enjoyment of those creations.
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β
Stephen Richards
β
For a century or more, the βcivilizedβ world regarded as a manifestation of its wealth metal dug from deep in the ground, refined at great labor, and transported great distances to be buried again in elaborate vaults deep under the ground,
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β
Felix Martin (Money: The Unauthorised Biography)
β
You never gain something but that you lose something.β And now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealthβbut for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it.
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β
Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
β
I know that money, power, prestige and fame do not bring happiness. If history teaches us anything it teaches us that. You know it. Everybody agrees this to be a manifest truth so self-evident as to need to repetition. What is strange to me is that, despite the fact that the world knows this, it does not want to know it and it chooses almost always to behave as if it were not true. It does not suit the world to hear that people who are leading the high life, an enviable life, a privileged life are as miserable most days as anybody else, despite the fact that it must be obvious they would be - given that we are all agreed that money and fame do not bring happiness. Instead the world would prefer to enjoy the idea, against what it knows to be true, that wealth and fame do in fact insulate and protect against misery and it would rather we shut up if we are planning to indicate otherwise.
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β
Stephen Fry
β
I die, and yet not dies in me
The ardour of my love for Thee,
Nor hath Thy Love, my only goal,
Assuaged the fever of my soul.
To Thee alone my spirit cries;
In Thee my whole ambition lies,
And still Thy Wealth is far above
The poverty of my small love.
I turn to Thee in my request,
And seek in Thee my final rest;
To Thee my loud lament is brought,
Thou dwellest in my secret thought.
However long my sickness be,
This wearisome infirmity,
Never to men will I declare
The burden Thou has made me bear.
To Thee alone is manifest
The heavy labour of my breast,
Else never kin nor neighbors know
The brimming measure of my woe.
A fever burns below my heart
And ravages my every part;
It hath destroyed my strength and stay,
And smouldered all my soul away.
Guidest Thou not upon the road
The rider wearied by his load,
Delivering from the steeps of death
The traveller as he wandereth?
Didst Thou not light a beacon too
For them that found the Guidance true
But carried not within their hand
The faintest glimmer of its brand?
O then to me Thy Favour give
That, so attended, I may live,
And overwhelm with ease from Thee
The rigor of my poverty.
β
β
Ψ°Ω Ψ§ΩΩΩΩ Ψ§ΩΩ
Ψ΅Ψ±Ω (Sufism: An Account of the Mystics of Islam)
β
If all human beings in a population either are declared equal in their native strengths and rights, or else are persuaded to believe this, then the eventual realization of the hard truth of the matter that no amount of redistribution of wealth and status can ever obliterate inequality in one form or another must often take the form of covetousness mixed with resentment: that is, envy. ....The only remedy for the poisons created by egalitarianism in a society is emphatically not ever-greater dosages of political redistribution of wealth and status, for such dosages worsen the disease, producing fevers of avarice and envy. No, the sole remedy for this pathology is the introduction and diffusion of individual liberty as a sovereign value. Respect for individual liberty makes it possible for human beings to live in and be aware of differentiation a condition that, in biology, is recognized for what it is, the basis of progressive evolution, but which, in its social manifestation, receives no such recognition because of both the inequality intrinsic to all social differentiation and the ideology of equality that has spread so widely and so devastatingly in the twentieth century.
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β
Robert A. Nisbet
β
Women are taught to sacrifice, to play nice, to live an altruistic life because a good girl is always rewarded in the end. This is not a virtue; it is propaganda. Submission gets you a ticket to future prosperity that will never manifest. By the time you realize the ticket to success and happiness you have been sold isnβt worth the paper it was printed on, it will be too late. Go on, spend a quarter of your life, even half of your life, in the service of others and you will realize you were hustled. You do not manifest your destiny by placing others first! A kingdom built on your back doesnβt become your kingdom, it becomes your folly. History does not remember the slaves of Egypt that built the pyramids, they remember the Pharaohs that wielded the power over those laborers. Yet here you are, content with being a worker bee, motivated by some sales pitch that inspires you to work harder for some master than you work for yourself, with this loose promise that one day you will share in his wealth. Altruism is your sin. Selfishness is your savior. Ruthless aggression and self-preservation are not evil. Why arenβt females taught these things? Instead of putting themselves first, women are told to be considerate and selfless. From birth, they have been beaten in the head with this notion of βDonβt be selfish!β Fuck that. Your mother may have told you to wait your turn like a good girl, but Iβm saying cut in front of that other bitch. Club Success is about to hit capacity, and you donβt want to be the odd woman out. Where are the powerful women? Those who refuse to play by those rules and want more out of life than what a man allows her to have? I created a category for such women and labeled them Spartans. Much like the Greek warriors who fought against all odds, these women refuse to surrender and curtsy before the status quo. Being
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β
G.L. Lambert (Men Don't Love Women Like You: The Brutal Truth About Dating, Relationships, and How to Go from Placeholder to Game Changer)
β
Among this bewildering multiplicity of ideals which shall we choose? The answer is that we shall choose none. For it is clear that each one of these contradictory ideals is the fruit of particular social circumstances. To some extent, of course, this is true of every thought and aspiration that has ever been formulated. Some thoughts and aspirations, however, are manifestly less dependent on particular social circumstances than others. And here a significant fact emerges: all the ideals of human behaviour formulated by those who have been most successful in freeing themselves from the prejudices of their time and place are singularly alike. Liberation from prevailing conventions of thought, feeling and behaviour is accomplished most effectively by the practice of disinterested virtues and through direct insight into the real nature of ultimate reality. (Such insight is a gift, inherent in the individual; but, though inherent, it cannot manifest itself completely except where certain conditions are fulfilled. The principal pre-condition of insight is, precisely, the practice of disinterested virtues.) To some extent critical intellect is also a liberating force. But the way in which intellect is used depends upon the will. Where the will is not disinterested, the intellect tends to be used (outside the non-human fields of technology, science or pure mathematics) merely as an instrument for the rationalization of passion and prejudice, the justification of self-interest. That is why so few even of die acutest philosophers have succeeded in liberating themselves completely from the narrow prison of their age and country. It is seldom indeed that they achieve as much freedom as the mystics and the founders of religion. The most nearly free men have always been those who combined virtue with insight.
Now, among these freest of human beings there has been, for the last eighty or ninety generations, substantial agreement in regard to the ideal individual. The enslaved have held up for admiration now this model of a man, now that; but at all times and in all places, the free have spoken with only one voice.
It is difficult to find a single word that will adequately describe the ideal man of the free philosophers, the mystics, the founders of religions. 'Non-attached* is perhaps the best. The ideal man is the non-attached man. Non-attached to his bodily sensations and lusts. Non-attached to his craving for power and possessions. Non-attached to the objects of these various desires. Non-attached to his anger and hatred; non-attached to his exclusive loves.
Non-attached to wealth, fame, social position. Non-attached even to science, art, speculation, philanthropy. Yes, non-attached even to these. For, like patriotism, in Nurse Cavel's phrase, 'they are not enough, Non-attachment to self and to what are called 'the things of this world' has always been associated in the teachings of the philosophers and the founders of religions with attachment to an ultimate reality greater and more significant than the self. Greater and more significant than even the best things that this world has to offer. Of the nature of this ultimate reality I shall speak in the last chapters of this book. All that I need do in this place is to point out that the ethic of non-attachment has always been correlated with cosmologies that affirm the existence of a spiritual reality underlying the phenomenal world and imparting to it whatever value or significance it possesses.
β
β
Aldous Huxley (Ends and Means)
β
SUMMARY OF YOUR AIDS TO HEALTH β’ Find out what it is that heals you. Realize that correct directions given to your subconscious mind will heal your mind and body. β’ Develop a definite plan for turning over your requests or desires to your subconscious mind. β’ Imagine the end desired and feel its reality. Follow it through, and you will get definite results. β’ Decide what belief is. Know that belief is a thought in your mind and that what you think you create. β’ It is foolish to believe in sickness or in anything that will hurt or harm you. Believe in perfect health, prosperity, peace, wealth, and divine guidance. β’ Great and noble thoughts upon which you habitually dwell become great acts. β’ Apply the power of prayer therapy in your life. Choose a certain plan, idea, or mental picture. Unite mentally and emotionally with that idea. As you remain faithful to your mental attitude, your prayer will be answered. β’ Always remember, if you really want the power to heal, you can have it through faith, which means a knowledge of the working of your conscious and subconscious mind. Faith comes with understanding. β’ Blind faith means that a person may get results in healing without any scientific understanding of the powers and forces involved. β’ Learn to pray for your loved ones who may be ill. Quiet your mind. Your thoughts of health, vitality, and perfection operating through the one universal subjective mind will be felt and made manifest in the mind of your loved
β
β
Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (GP Self-Help Collection Book 4))
β
When the culture of the East, its chief characteristic, is added to the strength of body and the strength of mind of the agricultural center, its special contribution, and these two great characteristics are constantly imbued with the spirit of independence and love of liberty which lives in the hearts of the dwellers of the mountains, their main quality added to the national character, there is every reason to believe that we shall have a people and institutions such as will be permanent; with such wealth of resources, of such high education and intelligence, and of such vitality, of such longevity, of such devotion to freedom and hostility to centralization and tyranny as shall enable this Nation of ours to stand indefinitely; and to maintain in the future years its manifest destiny of leading the peoples and nations of earth in the principles of free government, constitutional security and individual liberty. Under these and under these alone, the faculties, the aspirations and inspirations of mankind may be unfolded into their full flowering to the fruition of an ever greater and more humane civilization.
β
β
Charles Edwin Winter (Four Hundred Million Acres: The Public Lands and Resources)
β
Moral sense is almost completely ignored by modern society. We have, in fact, suppressed its manifestations. All are imbued with irresponsibility. Those who discern good and evil, who are industrious and provident, remain poor and are looked upon as morons. The woman who has several children, who devotes herself to their education, instead of to her own career, is considered weak-minded. If a man saves a little money for his wife and the education of his children, this money is stolen from him by enterprising financiers. Or taken by the government and distributed to those who have been reduced to want by their own improvidence and the shortsightedness of manufacturers, bankers, and economists. Artists and men of science supply the community with beauty, health, and wealth. They live and die in poverty. Robbers enjoy prosperity in peace. Gangsters are protected by politicians and respected by judges. They are the heroes whom children admire at the cinema and imitate in their games. A rich man has every right. He may discard his aging wife, abandon his old mother to penury, rob those who have entrusted their money to him, without losing the consideration of his friends. ...Ministers have rationalized religion. They have destroyed its mystical basis. But they do not succeed in attracting modern men. In their half-empty churches they vainly preach a weak morality. They are content with the part of policemen, helping in the interest of the wealthy to preserve the framework of present society. Or, like politicians, they flatter the appetites of the crowd.
β
β
Alexis Carrel (L'Homme, cet inconnu (French Edition))
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The first question we needed to address in response to the popular βTake America Back for Godβ slogan concerned the precedent of Jesus, and in this light we must judge that the slogan can lead us into temptation. The second concerns the meaning of the slogan itself. I, for one, confess to being utterly mystified by the phrase. If we are to take America back for God, it must have once belonged to God, but itβs not at all clear when this golden Christian age was.
Were these God-glorifying years before, during, or after Europeans βdiscoveredβ America and carried out the doctrine of βmanifest destinyββthe belief that God (or, for some, nature) had destined white Christians to conquer the native inhabitants and steal their land? Were the God-glorifying years the ones in which whites massacred these natives by the millions, broke just about every covenant they ever made with them, and then forced survivors onto isolated reservations? Was the golden age before, during, or after white Christians loaded five to six million Africans on cargo ships to bring them to their newfound country, enslaving the three million or so who actually survived the brutal trip? Was it during the two centuries when Americans acquired remarkable wealth by the sweat and blood of their slaves? Was this the time when we were truly βone nation under God,β the blessed time that so many evangelicals seem to want to take our nation back to?
Maybe someone would suggest that the golden age occurred after the Civil War, when blacks were finally freed. That doesnβt quite work either, however, for the virtual apartheid that followed under Jim Crow lawsβalong with the ongoing violence, injustices, and dishonesty toward Native Americans and other nonwhites up into the early twentieth centuryβwas hardly βGod-glorifying.β (In this light, it should come as no surprise to find that few Christian Native Americans, African-Americans, or other nonwhites join in the chorus that we need to βTake America Back for God.β)
If we look at historical reality rather than pious verbiage, itβs obvious that America never really βbelonged to God.
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Gregory A. Boyd (The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church)