A Quote by A.S.A. Harrison
We live alone in our cluttered psyches, possessed by our entrenched beliefs, our fatuous desires, our endless contradictions - and like it or not we have to put up with this in one another.
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A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries.
Most people would say they live with an internal angst that they can't always put their finger on. This is because the Internet has changed our very way of being in this world, compelling us to be perpetually "on" - from our cars to our computers, our tablets to our smartphones, our desks to our living rooms or dining tables, our churches to our libraries to our schools.
More and more people are beginning to feel that there must be another way of thinking, perceiving, and acting. And perhaps the beginning of another way of looking at the world is to re-evaluate all of our beliefs. It is, after all, our beliefs that determine what we are, experience, and expect. When we are willing to take a new look at our own beliefs, we then have an opportunity to begin rediscovering who and what we are and to redetermine our true purpose on Earth.
There is a close relationship between a house full of possessions and a heart full of desires, between a cluttered closet and a crowded schedule, between having no place to put possessions and having no priorities for our life. These are precious clues. They remind us to slow down, to live in the present, to reduce the desires that drain our vitality, to clarify priorities so we can give our time and attention to what matters most. Tragically, in the press of modern life, we have managed to get backwards one of life's most vital truths: people are to be loved; things are to be used.
Our bodies and our minds have their own timing that pay little attention to our cerebral desires. We can't force or expect things to change as fast as we want, but when we put our efforts in the direction of our intention and drop everything else like snow falling, things unfold with ease.
Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers.
Our beliefs are what create our experiences. As we change our beliefs, we alter our perception, our version of reality.
We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs. To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment -- and that is not easy ... but it is the only way to learn what it might feel like to be someone else and the only way to start the dialogue.
We don't even know what our desire is. We ask other people to tell us our desires. We would like our desires to come from our deepest selves, our personal depths - but if it did, it would not be desire. Desire is always for something we feel we lack.
The blue light emanating from our cell phones, our tablets and our laptops is playing havoc on our brain chemicals: our serotonin, our melatonin. It's screwing up our sleep patterns, our happiness, our appetites, our carbohydrate cravings.
Artworks are especially good at helping our psyches in a variety of ways: they rebalance our moods, lend us hope, usher in calm, stretch our sympathies, reignite our senses, and reawaken appreciation.
We should probably start searching around a little earlier in our lives for what I call parallel activities, because most of us get entrenched in our careers. And, of necessity, we're earning a living, and it's taking our time, and we're building our résumé, and we want our résumé generally to be our proficiency within our field, because chances are we're going to be applying for another position within the field. So we tend to put off a lot of this sort of what I call parallel discovery until we're either very successful and have the time to do that, or more often until we're retired.
DUE TO OUR FEELINGS ARISING FROM CONTACT, we think and we rationalize, conceptualize, theorize, philosophize and speculate. Because of the feeling arising from the six senses, we increase our desire; we come to wrong views and wrong beliefs. We recall our past sights, smells, sounds, tastes, touches and ideas and build up more desires, thoughts, concepts, beliefs, ideas, theories and philosophies.
We can trace back our existence almost to a point. Former time presents us with trains of thoughts gradually diminishing to nothing. But our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding. Our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection of being.
The path to realizing our dreams is never smooth. Invariably we encounter bends, turns, detours, and roadblocks. Sometimes our frustrations make us want to give up the journey, but frustrations signal the need to pause for introspection and redirection. Frustrations are promptings from God to search our souls even more deeply to find our power and purpose, and to live it. Frustrations tell us that our thoughts and actions are not yet in harmony with our desires.
Indeed, this life is a test. It is a test of many things - of our convictions and priorities, our faith and our faithfulness, our patience and our resilience, and in the end, our ultimate desires.
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