Themes of descent often turn on the struggle between the titanic and the demonic within the same person or group. In Moby Dick, Ahab’s quest for the whale may be mad and “monomaniacal,” as it is frequently called, or even evil so far as he sacrifices his crew and ship to it, but evil or revenge are not the point of the quest. The whale itself may be only a “dumb brute,” as the mate says, and even if it were malignantly determined to kill Ahab, such an attitude, in a whale hunted to the death, would certainly be understandable if it were there. What obsesses Ahab is in a dimension of reality much further down than any whale, in an amoral and alienating world that nothing normal in the human psyche can directly confront.The professed quest is to kill Moby Dick, but as the portents of disaster pile up it becomes clear that a will to identify with (not adjust to) what Conrad calls the destructive element is what is really driving Ahab. Ahab has, Melville says, become a “Prometheus” with a vulture feeding on him. The axis image appears in the maelstrom or descending spiral (“vortex”) of the last few pages, and perhaps in a remark by one of Ahab’s crew: “The skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world.” But the descent is not purely demonic, or simply destructive: like other creative descents, it is partly a quest for wisdom, however fatal the attaining of such wisdom may be. A relation reminiscent of Lear and the fool develops at the end between Ahab and the little black cabin boy Pip, who has been left so long to swim in the sea that he has gone insane. Of him it is said that he has been “carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro . . . and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps.”Moby Dick is as profound a treatment as modern literature affords of the leviathan symbolism of the Bible, the titanic-demonic force that raises Egypt and Babylon to greatness and then hurls them into nothingness; that is both an enemy of God outside the creation, and, as notably in Job, a creature within it of whom God is rather proud. The leviathan is revealed to Job as the ultimate mystery of God’s ways, the “king over all the children of pride” (41:34), of whom Satan himself is merely an instrument. What this power looks like depends on how it is approached. Approached by Conrad’s Kurtz through his Antichrist psychosis, it is an unimaginable horror: but it may also be a source of energy that man can put to his own use. There are naturally considerable risks in trying to do so: risks that Rimbaud spoke of in his celebrated lettre du voyant as a “dérèglement de tous les sens.” The phrase indicates the close connection between the titanic and the demonic that Verlaine expressed in his phrase poète maudit, the attitude of poets who feel, like Ahab, that the right worship of the powers they invoke is defiance.

Your indecisiveness can lead you to being manipulated and controlled like a puppet by others. Because you can’t decide- you can be pushed into compromising and bending backwards. Take responsibility of your life and your choices. Seeking support for every choice or decision can make you easy prey to the people you are looking up to. Once in a while it’s OK to take their suggestion but for every little thing going to them is not right and will not help you in the long run either. People will start taking you for granted and lose respect for you. God has given you wisdom so use that; follow your gut feelings and try to lead your life as an outcome of your own choices. At least it will be your life based on your decisions and you won’t have any regrets later. Pray if you feel weak at deciding things, God will surely help you.

Dilemma of a Modern Christian:We know enough Word to make us Argumentativebut not enough to help ourself change.We have enough Knowledge to make us Religiousbut not enough to make us Godly.We have enough Reasons for being critical about othersbut never enough to be Compassionate.We have enough Wisdom to say that we are Rightbut never enough to Say "God I'm Sorry".We have enough Friends who leads us astraybut never enough who builds us Spiritually.We have enough Talents to score point over othersbut never enough to Serve one another.We have enough Achievements to fill ourselves with Self-Glorybut not enough to make us Holy.We have enough Time to attend all our Needsbut never enough to Seek God in Worship....God please help us to have enough but plenteous enough to 'Please You' in all the ways of our Life.- Santosh Thankachan

The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit?

For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as His own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness, and truth then formerly we have been acquainted with.

Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding,” Joseph exclaimed. “If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn’t there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?”The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: “There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun.

Love is the divine Mother's arms; when those arms are spread, every soul falls into them.The Sufis of all ages have been known for their beautiful personality. It does not mean that among them there have not been people with great powers, wonderful powers and wisdom. But beyond all that, what is most known of the Sufis is the human side of their nature: that tact which attuned them to wise and foolish, to poor and rich, to strong and weak -- to all. They met everyone on his own plane, they spoke to everyone in his own language. What did Jesus teach when he said to the fishermen, 'Come hither, I will make you fishers of men?' It did not mean, 'I will teach you ways by which you get the best of man.' It only meant: your tact, your sympathy will spread its arms before every soul who comes, as mother's arms are spread out for her little ones.

People want to share but they usually don’t.
People don’t talk to each other about real things because they’re afraid of how they’ll be judged. Or they think other people don’t have the capacity to carry the burden of what they have to say. They see the compulsion to put that burden out in the world as a show of weakness. But all that stuff is what makes us human; more than that, it’s what makes being human interesting and funny. How we got away from that, I don’t know. But fuck that: We’re built to deal with shit. We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It’s what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love animals so much. We’re aware of it all and have to process it. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations, and bullshit come from.

If you want to change your life for the better, simple, just choose health for yourself and others, every step, every mode, and every turn; in your psyche, emotions, mental focus, and body; in your thoughts, words, and deeds. Start with the part of your being that your will and willingness currently have a better hold on. It is the body for some, mental focus for some, emotion and psyche for others. And then as you begin to see yourself get healthier and stronger, and hence happier, apply the realized health, strength, and happiness to choose health toward your whole being, past the part of your being you started with, and then you see very quickly that infinite happiness is you, supreme wisdom is you, indomitable power is you, and that you are the sole (soul :) ) Universe potential, and have always been!Unconditional health be you always! Vijayi Bhava! Victory be yours!Amma, ‘A Iyer in Jose’s Well

If you want to change your life for the better, simple, just choose health for yourself and others, every step, every mode, and every turn; in your psyche, emotions, mental focus, and body; in your thoughts, words, and deeds. Start with the part of your being that your will and willingness currently have a better hold on. It is the body for some, mental focus for some, emotion and psyche for others. And then as you begin to see yourself get healthier and stronger, and hence happier, apply the realized health, strength, and happiness to choose health toward your whole being, past the part of your being you started with, and then you see very quickly that infinite happiness is you, supreme wisdom is you, indomitable power is you, and that you are the sole (soul :) ) Universe potential, and have always been!Unconditional health be you always! Vijayi Bhava! Victory be yours!"Amma, A Iyer in Jose’s Well