Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.
Made in the perfect image of a perfect relationship, we are relational to the core of our beings and filled with a desire for transcendent purpose. We long to be an irreplaceable part of a shared adventure.
[People] might have a different word for the yearning of the heart and the yearning of the spirit that is looking for what I call "God," it still is the same thing. It is the heart's yearning to know the origin of its mystery. It's a heart's yearning to know the power of the divine in each of our lives. It's a heart's yearning to be connected to that.
There are few qualities more vital than a strong yearning. That desire to reach a little farther, to be a little more, yearning...for a piece of something greater, can often make all the difference.
Our behavior is driven by a fundamental core belief: the desire, and the ability, of an organization to continuously learn from any source, anywhere; and to rapidly convert this learning into action is its ultimate competitive advantage.
There are many objects of desire, and therefore many desires. Some are born with us, hunger, yearning, and pride of place, and some are of the foolishness of the world, such as the desire to eat off silver plates. Desire is a wild horse to be tamed. Virtue is habit long continued. The taming of desire is like the training of an athlete. Discipline is not the restraint but the use of energy.
We know desire is rooted in absence and yearning. What you don't have is often ten times richer than what you actually experience. An affair is a perfect erotic plot because it fits the erotic equation of psychotherapist Jack Morin: "Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement.".
Despite my belief that somehow my work would get me where I wanted to be, there was still some kind of fathomless yearning. Yes, my career aspirations were always goading me. But partially, I think I tried to let those dreams replace or become the other yearning, to have that other form of value.
At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.
When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.
Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est" ("They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier").
It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in, God.
He only has to refuse his ultimate love to everything that is not God.
This refusal does not presuppose any belief.
It is enough to recognize what is obvious to any mind:
that all the goods of this world, past, present, and future, real or imaginary,
are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying
the desire that perpetually burns within us
for an infinite and perfect good.
I should fear the infinite power and inflexible justice of the almighty mortal hardly as yet apotheosized, so wholly masculine, with no sister Juno, no Apollo, no Venus, nor Minerva, to intercede for me, thumoi phileousa te, kedomene te.
Everything is perfect in the universe - even your desire to improve it.
At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self.
To the perfect, if it be perfect, there is nothing that can be added; therefore, the will is not capable of any other desire, when that which is of the perfect is present with it, highest and best.