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Many people are miserable because they think that occasional destructive feelings necessarily make them terrible persons. But just as Aristotle maintained, “One swallow does not make a spring,” we must understand that one or two or even a dozen unadmirable traits does not make an unadmirable person. Long ago Edmund Burke warned humanity about the danger of false generalization in society; of judging a whole race by a few undesirable members. Today we should likewise become aware of the generalization about our individual personality. A splendid freedom awaits us when we realize that we need not feel like moral lepers or emotional pariahs because we have some aggressive, hostile feeling s towards ourselves and others. When we acknowledge these feelings we no longer have to pretend to be that which we are not. It is enough to be what we are! We discover that rigid pride is actually the supreme foe of inner victory, while flexible humility, the kind of humility that appears when we do not demand the impossible or the angelic of ourselves, is the great ally of psychic peace. ↗
And besides, in the matter of friendship, I have observed that the disappointment here arises chiefly, not from liking our friends too well, or thinking of them too highly, but rather from an over-estimate of their liking for and opinion of us; and that if we guard ourselves with sufficient scrupulousness of care from error in this direction, and can be content, and even happy to give more affection than we receive -- can make just comparison of circumstances, and be severely accurate in drawing inferences thence, and never let self-love blind our eyes -- I think we may manage to get through life with consistency and constancy, unembittered by that misanthropy which springs from revulsions of feeling. All this sounds a little metaphysical, but it is good sense of if you consider it. The moral of it is, that if we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sakes rather than for our own; we must look at their truth to themselves, full as much as their truth to us. In the latter case, every wound to self-love would be a cause of coldness; in the former, only some painful change in the friend's character and disposition -- some fearful breach in his allegiance to his better self -- could alienate the heart. (quoted from a letter by Charlotte Brontë to her publisher) ↗
Something new and unexpected, something hitherto unknown and undreamt of, had taken place in him. He did not so much understand with his mind as feel instinctively with the full force of his emotions that he could never again communicate with these people in a great gush of feeling, as he had just now, or in any way whatever. ↗
The secret of enlightenment is the absolute, unequivocal conviction that it exists. What does that mean? It means you have discovered an unshakable confidence in the fact of nonduality—in the perennial mystical revelation that IT IS . . . and I AM THAT. A confidence in that which can never be seen or known is the very ground of the enlightened state. Being is ungraspable, it’s unknowable, it’s ever elusive, and yet it is the only place you can find true confidence in life. Why? Because it is the very source of life itself. The conscious experience of Being, which is what enlightenment is, has always been the ultimate answer to the most fundamental spiritual questions: Who am I? and Why am I here? Those who have tasted enlightened awareness find that in that experience, any trace of existential doubt and all the questions that go along with it instantaneously disappear. It’s not even that they are answered, but rather, the questions lose their meaning. When you locate the nonrelative, or absolute, nature of consciousness in the depths of your own self, it is experienced as a clarity that is empty of content; a weightiness that is full of nothing in particular; a profound knowing that dissolves all questions. In that questionless state, you find yourself profoundly rooted and radically free, supported by an absolute confidence in the knowing of no-thing that changes everything. The experience of that empty ground is the answer—the one answer that always liberates each and every one of us. You simply know, unequivocally, before thought, that I am. That’s the only answer: I AM. There is no why. ↗
Of course the theologians fought the facts found by the geologists, the scientists, and sought to sustain the sacred Scriptures. They mistook the bones of the mastodon for those of human beings, and by them proudly proved that "there were giants in those days." They accounted for the fossils by saying that God had made them to try our faith, or that the Devil had imitated the works of the Creator. They answered the geologists by saying that the "days" in Genesis were long periods of time, and that after all the flood might have been local. They told the astronomers that the sun and moon were not actually, but only apparently, stopped. And that the appearance was produced by the reflection and refraction of light. They excused the slavery and polygamy, the robbery and murder upheld in the Old Testament by saying that the people were so degraded that Jehovah was compelled to pander to their ignorance and prejudice. In every way the clergy sought to evade the facts, to dodge the truth, to preserve the creed. At first they flatly denied the facts -- then they belittled them -- then they harmonized them -- then they denied that they had denied them. Then they changed the meaning of the "inspired" book to fit the facts. At first they said that if the facts, as claimed, were true, the Bible was false and Christianity itself a superstition. Afterward they said the facts, as claimed, were true and that they established beyond all doubt the inspiration of the Bible and the divine origin of orthodox religion. Anything they could not dodge, they swallowed and anything they could not swallow, they dodged. I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the New because it vouched for the truth of the Old. I gave it up on account of its miracles, its contradictions, because Christ and his disciples believe in the existence of devils -- talked and made bargains with them. expelled them from people and animals. This, of itself, is enough. We know, if we know anything, that devils do not exist -- that Christ never cast them out, and that if he pretended to, he was either ignorant, dishonest or insane. ↗
It’s like um… I’ve become used to change I think from my life, when I was younger when I lived with my mum for awhile, we used to move house every like six months, you know, and I sort of became used to things changing all the time… It was like, I learned to like it. It got the point where you travel, like you start to reduce the amount of possessions you have… You start to, you know… If you live in one place, same house, same friends, same job for years and years and years, and the same possessions and everything, then you start to believe that is your identity. Um… I have none of those things, I have no consistency, and I like that. Everything’s changing all the time so, when everything does change around you and you become used to changing, you become in-touch with the one thing that is consistent… And the thing that is consistent is something inside you which is like, not really that individual, it’s not like a pure individual, it’s something that everyone has inside them I think. And you realize that there’s no such thing as an individual, we’re just all a collection of each other’s influence on each other. Everyone says things to each other, the television, your parents, your friends, that’s all we are, is a collection of intermingling ideas as a collective. ↗
Life is not perfect It's a place of pain, a place of shame, a place of danger, and maybe a place of joy, No, life is not perfect, And it doesn't matter what aspect. Some times it's a sunset and a sunrise, Or the blue skies, Or a prize in disguise, But sometimes it's also sour, A wail and a roar, With no one to implore, Life is a test It throws problems at us And waits for us to crumble, under the distress, And looks as we struggle, And gathers the pieces that are left, But if we look at it differently, We can carry on brilliantly, It's just a matter of will power, And being courageous, A matter of refusing to be a coward, and facing what is dangerous, Life doesn't throw problems at us, to see us lose hope, No, it expects us to become strong, It doesn't expect us to mope Or mourn, Life is like a teacher, It teaches a lesson, That whatever the situation, Life must go on Time won't stop, And wait for you to gain hope No, it'll carry on, And let you mope, Time can't be reversed, No amount of crying will change the situation, So stop thinking that your life is cursed, Because life must go on... ↗
So me and her, we dated for a while. A long while. Then, one day, we got to talking, and I told her how much I loved her, and she looked at me and told me, 'I don't love you. I never will...' I told her I thought I could change that. Maybe she didn't love me right now, but she would eventually...She said okay. And we stayed together. And we fought. We fought a lot. And then I realized I had made a big mistake. She had given me her youth, and it was gone, and I didn't know how to get out of it. And then she got sick. And she was dying. So I made good with her, and I stuck by her. And I felt horrible. Because I felt like here was this woman who didn't want to be with me, she told me that, and I ignored it. And she was spending the end of her like with someone she didn't love. And now she was gone. And part of me felt relieved that I was freed of this relationship, and that made me feel so terrible. I couldn't deal with it. People are always trying to tell you something, how they feel. Some of them say it outright, and some of them, they tell you with their actions. And your have to listen...Listen, and don't ignore what you hear. ↗
Perhaps many things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad. The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of. If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy embarrassment, everything in us withdraws, a silence arises, and the new experience, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it all and says nothing. ↗
This advance (at first very much against the will of the outdistanced men) will transform the love experience, which is now filled with error, will change it from the ground up, and reshape it into a relationship that is meant to be between one human being and another, no longer one that flows from man to woman. And this more human love (which will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding and releasing) will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle: the love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other. ↗
