“In every time of season change: it is #wise to slow down and examine what our ego, thought-habits, and spiritual-energy are communicating to others...our environments. Truth is these thoughts (attitudes that aren't situationally static) are producing real activity, outcomes that shape our existence. Consider the conception of our thoughts, and what they will give birth to beyond the physical...they have an incredible power, with or without our active will, to lift us, sink us or soar us. Consider how we as human beings can be subject to the law enforcement of living under our own thought legislation...Selah.”
“Please… Whoever you are, whatever you are… I believe in you even though I don’t completely understand you. I feel you around me even though I can’t exactly describe what I’m feeling. Sometimes things happen to me and I know that you’re there and I’m humbled by the lack of coincidence that exists in the world. Whatever you want from me, it’s yours — just please help me. You know how I get when I lose control, and I find myself constantly being pulled back there these days.”
Nesse’s research focuses on the evolutionary origins of depression. Why does depression exist at all? If it’s stayed in our gene pool for so long, he argues, there must be some evolutionary benefit. Nesse believes that depression may be an adaptive mechanism meant to prevent us from falling victim to blind optimism—and squandering resources on the wrong goals.11 It’s to our evolutionary advantage not to waste time and energy on goals we can’t realistically achieve. And so when we have no clear way to make productive progress, our neurological systems default to a state of low energy...
Many secular observers and spiritual practitioners alike mistake mystical chanting as a kind of anthropological curiosity or interesting musical diversion from secular mainstream entertainment, sometimes labeling it 'world' or 'folk' music. But uttering or chanting spells, mantras or prayers shouldn't be regarded as a romantic excursion to a distant past, or faraway place, or as an escape from our everyday stresses, for relaxation or entertainment. These sounds are meant to be experienced as the timeless unity of energy currents. The chanting of ancient esoteric sounds enables us to realize we are never separate from the one continuously existing omnipresent vibration of the cosmos.
Decide.Take one of the most unsettling things you feel exist in your life and decide.Decide to meet it with love and understanding.Decide to meet it with a proactive spirit that believes that a solution, an ease, a peaceful resolve rests in the meeting.Prepare your heart for what it feels like to be joyous over the result. Give life to this solution with your breath.Let any fear be a helpmate, let it actually support and lift you to an awareness that your next opportunity for growth is revisiting you through this present unsettling because you are now more than capable and authentically ready to meet it.Learn and value the lesson and transcend its repetitive nature.
Obsession. It starts with a spark. A flicker. At the strike of a match. Lying dormant in most of us, obsession feasts on the fumes, breathes in the smoky scent, curing around and in on itself. Building. We pet it, nurse it into existence. It is ours. All ours. A coveted perfection. And when it refuses to be ignored, it rages. It roars to life. A building inferno. Consuming. We are but pawns to its deceptive power. Though we attempt to guide it, caress it tenderly into a loving beauty, it can not be controlled. It’s a haunted, vengeful lover. Like a wildfire devouring life within it’s path, we can only follow it’s carnal trail.
Yet the laboriously sought musical epiphany rarely compares to the unsought, even unwanted tune whose ambush is violent and sudden: the song the cab driver was tuned to, the song rumbling from the speaker wedged against the fire-escape railing, the song tingling from the transistor on the beach blanket. To locate those songs again can become, with age, something like a religious quest, as suggested by the frequent use of the phrase "Holy Grail" to describe hard-to-find tracks. The collector is haunted by the knowledge that somewhere on the planet an intact chunk of his past still exists, uncorrupted by time or circumstance.
F. Scott Fitzgerald believed inserting exclamation points was the literary equivalent of an author laughing at his own jokes, but that's not the case in the modern age; now, the exclamation point signifies creative confusion. All it illustrates is that even the writer can't tell if what they're creating is supposed to be meaningful, frivolous, or cruel. It's an attempt to insert humor where none exists, on the off chance that a potential reader will only be pleased if they suspect they're being entertained. Of course, the reader isn't really sure, either. They just want to know when they're supposed to pretend to be amused.
Life is plenty pointless. We're all put here on this earth, such a minuscule thing, really. This tiny Earth, in the midst of an ever-larger universe. We were put here for reasons unbeknownst to us, reasons that may not even exist. And, above all that, we try so hard. People work to discover things, to try to create the greatest new thing, to learn everything, to find answers. But those answers are pointless. Because one day, this world will end. And whatever mark you may have thought you left will vanish, like it was never even there. And that, my friends, is the meaning of life.
We know very well that we have ancestors. But our ancestors are not only human. We have animal ancestors; we have plant ancestors; and we have mineral ancestors. Our human ancestors are still very young. Human beings appeared very late in the history of life on Earth. Our animal ancestors are still there within us. The reptile, the fish, and the ape are still in our blood. Not only were they part of us in the past, but they continue to exist within us. Just look deeply into your cells. We see that we are the whole history of life.