The formal operational thinker has the ability to consider many different solutions to a problem before acting. This greatly increases efficiency, because the individual can avoid potentially unsuccessful attempts at solving a problem. The formal ope...
She seemed to be a nice person, too, instead of a homicidal bitch like his former wife. Otherwise, the world should fear. When Mencheres fell for a woman, he fell hard. If Kira asked for her own continent as a birthday present, Mencheres would probab...
The United States of America was a pirate nation for the first one hundred years of its existence, ripping off the patents and trademarks of the imperial European powers it had liberated itself from by blood. By keeping their GDP at home, the U.S. re...
The process of spreading a philosophy by means of free discussion among thinking adults is long and complex. From Plato to the present, it has been the dream of social planners to circumvent this process and, instead, to inject a controversial ideolo...
Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from recent suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused again to all the struggles and turmoils of life; to a...
Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it's the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times. Omniscient, omnipotent, personal-and loving us without conditions. We are connec...
The most important therapeutic capacity is the ability to be present with an open heart and to be grounded in our inner being,in our essence and authentic self, in the meditative quality within, through which we can meet another person. It is to meet...
There comes a moment in every life when the Universe presents you with an opportunity to rise to your potential. An open door that only requires the heart to walk through, seize it and hang on. The choice is never simple. It’s never easy. It’s no...
SUN, MOON, AND STARRY SKY Early summer evenings, when the first stars come out, the warm glow of sunset still stains the rim of the western sky. Sometimes, the moon is also visible, a pale white slice, while the sun tarries. Just think -- all the cel...
He was always crazy about her. If he was a king then she was his crest– the emblem of his kingdom. Without her, his world is lost. He left his house or rather palace, now spends his days on some filthy park-bench. He is a king turned to beggar. Not...
And there is neither beginning nor end, nor past nor future; there is only a present, at the same time static and ephemeral, multiple and absolute. It is the vital ocean in which we all share, according to our strength, our needs or our desires.
The universe will never 'take away' something that is for our highest and greatest good so when we 'lose' something, or our lives shift, it is always for our benefit. It’s unwrapping a surprise present from the universe.
Yes, my dear," he said reaching his hand to her cheek from where he sat. "But, it only takes one success to erase all the failures. When an opportunity presents itself, the only true failure takes place if one doesn't try at all. My wings weren't rea...
I loved reading the Dalai Lama's words: "My religion is loving-kindness." I realized that meant loving-kindness to everyone in my life: past, present, and future; and that meant loving-kindness to myself--in my pain, in my jealousy, in my fear.
It would take her thousands of steps to get anywhere, but she would get there easily, and when she arrived, in the present, it would seem like it had been a single movement that brought her there. Did existence ever seem worked for? One seemed simply...
He knew that, from now on, every day would be alike, that they would all bring the same sufferings. And he saw the weeks, the months, the years that awaited him, gloomy and implacable, coming one after the other, falling on him and suffocating him bi...
His remorse was purely physical. Only his body, strained nerves, and cowering flesh were afraid of the drowned man. Conscience played no part in his terrors, and he had not the slightest regret about killing Camille; in his moments of calm, when the ...
The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the v...
Time does not give one much leeway: it thrusts us forward from behind, blows us through the narrow tunnel of the present into the future. But space is broad, teeming with possibilities, positions, intersections, passages, detours, U-turns, dead-ends,...
In short, with each of the thousand-and-one problems that present themselves in family life, our choice is between controlling and teaching, between creating an atmosphere of distrust and one of trust, between setting an example of power and helping ...
In my mind, past, present and future became a blur as I stood in the middle of the celestial room, in the middle of forever. It was as if I were to take a rope that went on forever in both directions and cut it anywhere then the cut would always be e...