The second stage of meditation begins when you can successfully stop thought for long periods of time. At this point you move beyond the awareness of this world.
I liked Westerns for two reasons: First, it took the actor outside. They were all very physical at that time and not limited to a stage. Second, they paid my rent an awful lot.
When you can successfully stop thought for longer periods of time, you do move into other worlds. This can also happen in the very beginning, if a person meditates with someone who is very advanced.
We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Some vows, or contracts, are for life; others are for limited periods of time.
Continually reorder the mind and the mental structures, the ability to think in prescribed ways, to analyze in prescribed ways, and to stop thought for periods of time.
If you can stop using substance or stop your addictive behavior for extended periods of time without craving, you are not dependent. You are dependent only if you can't stop without physical or psychological distress (you have unpleasant physical and/or psychological withdrawal symptoms) or if you stop and then relapse.
The good news is that you don't have to stop thoughts completely to meditate. It takes a long time to stop thought impeccably. What you need is to detach yourself from thought.
Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there's gonna come a time that you're gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.
The time between appearances for us is so great that we lose track of it. It would be like watching 'Ben Hur' at one frame a second. There would be long periods of time where absolutely nothing was going on.
I don't come on to seduce the audience. I don't care if everyone laughs. I can't think about that anymore. If there's anything that a lot of experience on stage and a lot of stage time gives you is the confidence to know that it's ok if they're not laughing every second you're up there. Although that's what drives me and I still go too fast a lot of the time.
Classical is a more refined and structured dance form. Folk is made for celebration. That's not a very competitive dance form. Though you can bring classical on stage, folk becomes limited. Like you would love to do bhangra and garba at parties, but when you see it on stage, it is very limited in terms of movements.
We have to stop using words like 'that time of the month' or other such variations. Say it: I have my periods. There is nothing to be shy or embarrassed about.
More than periods where I don't write anything, I have periods where I just write junk and I know I'm writing junk but I can't stop.
Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view.
I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.