The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.
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The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be "out there" and the person that appears to be "in here" are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.
Anxiety [...] is sort of the opposite of ego. You're so sure you'll do everything wrong you're afraid to do anything at all. Often this, rather than "laziness" is the real reason you find it hard to get started.
When one isn't dominated by feelings of separateness from what he's working on, then one can be said to "care" about what he's doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one's doing. When one has this feeling then he also see the inverse side of caring, Quality itself.
The past cannot remember the past. The future can't generate the future. The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is.
I think it's important to tie care to Quality by pointing out that care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing. A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares. A person who cares about what he sees and does is a person who's bound to have some characteristics of Quality.
sophistry - n. - a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning, false argument
casuistry - n. - specious, deceptive, or oversubtle reasoning, especially in questions of morality; fallacious or dishonest application of general principles; sophistry
Little children were trained not to do "just what they liked" but... but what?... Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities. When you are trained to despise "just what you like" then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others - a good slave. When you learn not to do "just what you like" then the System loves you.
When you try to climb a mountain to prove how big you are, you almost never make it. And even if you do, it's a hollow victory. In order to sustain the victory you have to prove yourself again and again in some other way, and again and again and again, driven forever to fill a false image, haunted by the fear that the image is not true and someone will find out.
You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.
One does it and the other talks about how it's done and the talk about how it's done never seems to match how one does it.
"How do you know all that?" he said.
"It's obvious."
"Well then, why didn't I see it?"
"You have to have some familiarity."
"Then it's not obvious, is it?"
What is the truth and how do you know it when you have it?... How do we really know anything? Is there an "I", a "soul", which knows, or is this soul merely cells coordinating senses?... Is reality basically changing, or is it fixed and permanent?... When it's said that something means something, what is meant by that?
They had made the mistake of thinking of a personality as some sort of possession, like a suit of clothes, which a person wears. But apart from a personality what is there? Some bones and flesh. A collection of legal statistics, perhaps, but surely no person. The bones and flesh and legal statistics are the garments worn by the personality, not the other way around.
There was danger, he felt, of overrunning himself, and he had to hold onto his awareness of the present, sensing the blurred deflection of experience, the flowing moment, the continual solidification of that-which-is into the perpetual-was.
There came over her then a longing for a rainbow in this place that would never see rain. 'I must suppress such longings,' she thought. 'They're a weakness. I no longer can afford weaknesses.'
The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" - which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.
Great gods below! Why didn't you say you were a weirding woman and a fighter?
Whether a thought is spoken or not it is a real thing and it has power.
A stone is heavy and the sand is weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.
suborn - v. - bribe or otherwise induce someone to commit an unlawful act
demur - v. - to make objection, especially on the grounds of scruples, take exception, object
concomitant - n. - a phenomenon that naturally follows or accompanies something
[T]he proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.
anachronism - n. - a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned. an act of attributing a custom, event, or object to a period to which it does not belong
My copy of Dune. So pretty 😻
Knowing where the trap is – that's the first step in evading it.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
