Why do adults think every girl who isn’t some overachieving nitwit needs to be reassured about her intelligence? Folks, my self-esteem is just fine, thanks. I may not be school smart, and I may do extremely stupid things sometimes, but I know I’m...
, a collateral form of (the so-called "holy war"), taken [by Sufis] to mean "earnest striving after the mystical life." The term is based on the Koranic text, "And they that strive earnestly in Our cause, them We surely guide upon Our paths." A Tradi...
Only by acknowledging the full extent of slavery's full grip on U.S. Society - its intimate connections to present day wealth and power, the depth of its injury to black Americans, the shocking nearness in time of its true end - can we reconcile the ...
For it is good to cleave to God, and to put our hopes in the Lord, so that, when we have exchanged this poor life for the kingdom of heaven, we may cry aloud: 'Whom have I in heaven but thee? There is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.' Assur...
To attempt to describe how music pervades and flavors a life feels a little like an invasion of privacy, even if the privacy is my own. Listening to music,...is finally the most inward of acts--so inward that even language, even the language of thoug...
Like Mom, Zoe thought–like Mom used to. And that’s where they differed, for Zoe wrote quiet poetry suffused with twilight and questions. It’s not even good poetry, she thought. I don’t have talent, it’s her. I should be the one ill; she has...
Your suffering needs to be respected. Don't try to ignore the hurt, because it is real. Just let the hurt soften you instead of hardening you. Let the hurt open you instead of closing you. Let the hurt send you looking for those who will accept you i...
When both our inner man and woman takes responsibility for themselves and lives their own truth, a joy and love begins to flow naturally between them. Healing means to develop the inner man and woman so that love can flow between them. Healing is to ...
No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way... To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a l...
So let those people go on weeping and wailing whose self-indulgent minds have been weakened by long prosperity, let them collapse at the threat of the most trivial injuries; but let those who have spent all their years suffering disasters endure the ...
The inner man is the periphery of our consciousness. It is also the inner man that takes care of and protects the inner woman for example through putting up creative boundaries. The meeting between a man and a woman on the outer plane creates a relat...
In order to deserve, we must pay our dues and steadily work for perfection. We must relish in struggle, and relinquish pride. We must dispel fear and seek enlightenment. We must shun division and honor love. We must know our hearts and seek to unders...
America, I think, is about poor people playing music and poor people sharing food and poor people dancing, even when everything else in their life is so desperate, and so dismal that it doesn't seem there should be any room for any music, any extra f...
Love is not an exclusive relationship with another person; love is the quality that arises when we are in contact with our inner being, with our authentic self, with the meditative quality within, with the inner silence and emptiness. This inner empt...
Amazingly, we take for granted that instinct for survival, fear of death, must separate us from the happiness of pure and uninterpreted experience, in which body, mind, and nature are the same. This retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters...
Do not wallow in your mistakes. Do not grovel and prostrate yourself in hopes of forgiveness. We all make mistakes. Apologize and move forward. Do not replay the event in your head. Do not continue to beat yourself up. Do not profusely explain, defen...
The more we delve into quantum mechanics the stranger the world becomes; appreciating this strangeness of the world, whilst still operating in that which you now consider reality, will be the foundation for shifting the current trajectory of your lif...
To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from preten...
I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream th...
I've lived here ... my whole life. It's where I lost all my baby teeth. Where tiny hamster, gerbil, and bird skeletons lie in rotted-out cardboard coffins beneath the oak tree in our backyard. Also where, if some future archaeologist goes digging, th...
It feels as though Tony's a ghost, a wisp of someone I once loved, or never loved at all and thought was someone else. I don't feel anything, not even when he fucks me. I wonder if he knows. I wonder if he believes I still want him. I always tell mys...
