Youth is such a fascinating and volatile concoction of vulnerability, dependence, restlessness, relentlessness. You're still learning the terms of the world and of the self, in a very immediate way.
I'm still a researcher. The best way to explain it is that I trusted myself deeply as a professional, but I did not have a lot of self-trust personally. When I started learning all of these things about the value and the importance of belonging, vulnerability, connection, self-kindness and self-compassion, I trusted what I was learning - again, I know I'm a good researcher. When those things and wholeheartedness started to emerge with all these different properties, I knew I had to listen. I'd heard these messages before personally but I didn't trust myself there.
We think of cannabis as a drug, in accordance with international opinions. This means that even consuming small amounts can lead to very severe dependence. With alcohol or cigarettes however, sensibly limited consumption does not bear the risk of immediate addictiveness as this is the case with cannabis according to our opinion. With alcohol there surely is an element of a tradition. However, enjoyed in moderation, as supplement to a meal for example, alcohol is not something that causes immediate dependence. Still, there is a great need for prevention and information in this matter.
Emotional dependence is the opposite of emotional strength. It means needing to have others to survive, wanting others to "do it for us," and depending on others to give us our self-image, make our decisions, and take care of us financially. When we are emotionally dependent, we look to others for our happiness, our concept of "self," and our emotional well-being. Such vulnerability necessitates a search for and dependence on outer support for a sense of our own worth.
You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself — it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.
The idea of dependence is an explanation, whereas self-sufficiency is an unprecedented, nonanalogous concept in terms of what we know about life within nature. Is not self-sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?
He took pains to avoid self-depreciation, self-mockery, ambiguity, irony, subtlety, vulnerability, a civilized world-weariness and a tragic sense of history--the very things, he says, that are most natural to him.
I had to do so much self-searching and self-work and learning how to navigate in a world that seemed very mean.
Having a self, even a simple self, allows you to look into the world and put a mark over what is more important and less important. It's a way of classifying the world in terms of your own needs.
I see being a woman in the world as a social problem. That's very urgently problematic in terms of it still being a man's world, and women's identities still being shaped by the way men look at them, and the way men can control what kinds of opportunities they can get based on how desirable the men find them, or how compliant. I don't think that's really changed a lot.
If we expected self-reliance of family groups, if we expected hardiness and resilience and initiative on the part of individuals, and if we rewarded initiative instead of dependence on government, we would not only ameliorate many of the family-related social problems we see at present, but we would also reduce our vulnerability to terrorism. People who are hardy, resilient, and self reliant are a lot harder to terrorize.
Revenge tries to solve the problem of vulnerability. If I strike back, I transfer vulnerability from myself to the other. And yet by striking back I produce a world in which my vulnerability to injury is increased by the likelihood of another strike. So it seems as if I'm getting rid of my vulnerability and instead locating it with the other, but actually I'm heightening the vulnerability of everyone and I'm heightening the possibility of violence that happens between us.
We have volcanoes also in our immediate neighborhood. I wish we didn't have to travel that far. Probably the kind of magnitude and awesome raw power of them is very fascinating, and of course it's very cinematic.
I studied philosophy in school, became disgruntled by the fact that it was a way to have a very interesting conversation with very few people about very few things in very narrow terms and yet still believed (and still believe today) that there was something that I was getting myself involved in when I said I wanted to study philosophy.
He had in abundance youth’s most dangerous qualities: optimism and relentlessness. He would risk everything he had to fly the plane that could carry the bomb within him.
God dwells in you, as you, and you don't have to 'do' anything to be God-realized or Self-realized,
it is already your true and natural state.
Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward,
and sacrifice your ego mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being.
For this to be your own presently lived experience,
Self-Inquiry Meditation is a direct and immediate way.
I believe America's chief strategic vulnerability is our dependence on imported petroleum.