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Dead Toad Scrolls

Book by Kilroy J. Oldster · 50 quotes · Memoir Writing, Memoir, Self Determination

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Dead Toad Scrolls Quotes

“We all must determine what types of anatomical castanets vest in our central core. For aught we know, we still tend to think of ourselves as a complete and fixed product. In reality, analogous to an unfinished paper, working from the inside out, we are retooling ourselves every day whether we recognize the minor or major tinkering taking place or not. In a neurological sense, the brain is constantly working to build and rebuild itself. In a psychological sense, every day the human mind is altering who we are. We constantly take in new information that modifies and enhances our understanding of the world and our place in the environment. Every day we are using the sense of self and our accumulated knowledge to adapt to our world and modify our thinking and behavior.”

“Change is essential for survival. All life forms must adapt to their fluctuating circumstances. All form of life result from the process of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance. The universe is in a constant state of chaos. We each have chaos implanted into our bones. Nature wires all of us for change.”

“A person must escape artificial constraints and unfold the myth of their own being. There is only one path for a thinking person in life, and that is to assume the role of a compassionate observer. I can only achieve personal freedom – liberty of the mind, body, and soul – by stop worrying about how other people perceive me and no longer judge myself in terms of fame and fortune.”

“We live a life bounded by the perception of the self. Existence entails tabulating our personal contact with reality and plumbing the substance of the self. The loftiest task of all is to dream a worthy life and then go live it without fearing the unknown. It is wonderful to live; we must cherish our time by loving other people and adoring nature. We find ourselves through trial and error. We must not allow failure, pain, disappointment, heartache, or sour feelings to daunt us because each of these emotional indexes interprets our dream world intermixing with reality.”

“No person can claim to be anything more or anything less than his or her individual assimilation of a lifelong symposium of inimitable physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual occurrences. Simply put, we each place our own individualized stamp upon the meaning of life. How we live, how we struggle, and how we die reflects what life means to each of us. We are all students of life, we are a product of what we pay attention to, what we observe, and experience, and what subjects arrest our minds.”

“A person is not born as a finished product; we create ourselves every day. Resembling reality, no person is a fixed and unchangeable entity. Each of us is in the process of becoming. A person’s perspective on their life experiences depends upon reviewing and integrating an emotional gamut of reconciling values with applied effort.”

“Self-education is a lifetime affair. In life, as in science, there are unsuccessful experiments. Difficult personal and professional experiences are not for naught. Every experience contains a lesson. If we do not achieve the results we want and stop searching out solutions, it is not the experiment that is unsuccessful, but the person.”

“No person is more ruthlessly cheated than someone strip-mined of his or her ability to recall the vibrancy of the past. After all, what would any person be if robbed of all sense of long-term memory? Without memories, all that any person would know about life is if he or she was hungry or thirsty, cold or hot. Without memories of the past and shredded of any illusion of a future there cannot be a frame for our existence. Without a sense of memory, we lack cognition of the very essence of our being. In absence of our memories, there can be no introspection, no ethical awareness, and no devotion, loyalty, or love.”

“The path towards living in a spiritual manner begins by eliminating inculcated cultural biases, destroying personal illusions, and gratefully accepting the world without sentimental artifice. Emotional detachment provides for clarity of vision.”

“Any meaning of life derives from amiably accepting our anonymous role in the singular order of the universe. Such gracious reception of life’s turbulences stems from willingly capitulating to whatever fomented experiences life brings us without harboring a disconsolate degree of remorse or regret.”

“Art is a lie that reveals deep truths. Metaphor is one way to translate experience; symbols help us stretch our minds to finger elusive and illustrative truths. Truths are not always logical and human truth finding does not fit snugly onto the silicon chip of a computer. The rational as well as the irrational unites us as specie. We share expressible knowledge and suspect within ourselves and other people the unspeakable. The unfathomable is as much a part of our celestial humanity as is the dirt clutching our shoes, which accumulated grime grounds us to physical reality.”

“Similar to a how a flower grows incrementally, people also blossom in stages. As we age, we expand our knowledge of how the world works and how other people respond to our deeds. We also expand our language skills in order to communicate both our thoughts and feelings.”

“Human beings consist of a complex composite, an aggregate of several material elements not shared by inanimate objects. A person consists of feelings, thoughts, and experiences, and every person apprehends how they stand in relation to other people and nature. Matching other people, I am composed of a mind, a thinking contraption that is capable of registering pleasurable and painful physical sensations. We each maintain selected degrees of indifference and consciousness awareness. We each hold a range of cognitive mental perceptions, instinctual fears and desires, emotional impulses, mental formulations, individual dispositions, and recognizable personality traits. Most people also profess to embrace moral beliefs and adhere to various ethical precepts. Other mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, and other forms of cellular life might share some, but not all of these distinctive qualities. No other life form possesses all these mental qualities collected into a single aggregate.”

“All overt and covert emotions would shrivel without the beam of contrast and comparison to supply context and implication. We need the value of counterpoise to recognize and distinguish between similar and dissimilar concepts. How do we identify the importance of hope if we never felt despair? How do we appreciate the value of society and companionship until we experience solitude and loneliness? What would any relationship be unless draped with the boughs of thoughts and feelings, without the ongoing interaction between conscientious action and unreserved devotion, without endless empathy fused with boundless love? In the ring of time, without the verve supplied by both the real and the imaginary, life would be bland, insipid, and lackluster.”

“Language is the gateway of the mind and a bridge that connects us to other human beings. Language enables a person to share their clandestine inner world with other human beings and to learn about other people’s mysterious world of logical thoughts and poetic sentiments.”

“For the philosopher, language, thought, and passion are the same. Ideas are personal to a philosopher; they express their human passion and articulate their novel ideas in language. Ideas are more than mere concepts, trifles that the philosophical mind toys with. Ideas provide both the structure and inner vitality that holds great thinkers’ conceptual structure together.”

“Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), a Portuguese poet, writer, and philosopher said, ‘The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd – The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regrets over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”

“Analogous to how we teach a child to develop vision by exposing them to visual stimulus a person must learn how to love by immersing themselves in the quick of nature and actively engaging in the tumult of family life. We become loveable by being a loving person. We find ourselves by devoting our lives to the service of other people.”

“No one wants to live out a narrow life, have his or her life story read as a stale cliché. The test for a self-fulfilled person is to establish their objectives, stay true to personal goals and values, while operating in a society that might embrace them, hate them, or might be utterly neutral, unacquainted, and indifferent to their existence.”

“Knowingly accepting oneself is the quintessential mission of every person. We each must fix ourselves, make ourselves right with the world we were born into, and construct a satisfactory existence out of our very own scarf. I am my personal healer, diagnostician, etiologist, psychiatrist, and neurologist.”

“Rejoicing in the variegated ringtones of life allows us to accept a life full of beauty, harshness, tragedy, and dark comedy without incurring any backlash of dread. Accepting our personal faults while attempting to learn and gain greater control over our primordial impulses produces self-improvement and enhances personal happiness.”

“A fine line exists between quitting on ourselves and letting go of a restrictive position in life and moving forward to reach our ultimate destination based upon our natal predisposition honed by a lifetime of experimentation. Who has not been forced to stop and ask ourselves, ‘who are we,’ ‘what are we doing,’ and ‘where are we going?’ Who has not been forced to pause by life’s dynamic forces and ask ourselves, ‘what mystical chords bind us as a species; what is the meaning of life; and how do we give birth to our genetic blueprint while shaping a sense of purposefulness out of our own existence and striving to bring joy to other people’s hearth?’ To answer these life affirming questions that gnaw most voraciously at our consciousness at the time when tension and unsettling trauma besieges us, we must appreciate our heritage, be mindful our epoch, accept responsibility for our adult decisions, and strive to accumulate wisdom that segues our entrance into the future. Each of us must arrive at a unifying philosophy that guides our living quest, and the sooner we come to terms with our eccentric self the quicker we will perceive and appreciate the ineffable beauty of nature.”

“Pain and self-loathing habitually implants its incendiary embers in the universal desire for other people to love us. What a life torn asunder by bolts of pain laced with shame teaches us is that we cannot look endlessly for other people to love us. We must delve from ourselves the ability to unreservedly love all life forms and empathize with all people. We should care for, and not judge, or be envious of other people. When we learn unconditionally to love other people, we learn to accept our own fitful humanity.”

“Self-realization is largely a matter of achieving a person’s formative personality definition. People whom lack self-realization oftentimes fail to integrate their desired personality traits into all phases of their life including social life, family life, and work life. In order to achieve satisfaction with oneself, a person must know what they wish for, know how to go about achieving their goals, be capable of recognizing where they now stand, and understand how they must change in order to attain their ultimate visage.”

“Ruefully, nobody perceives me as exceptionally gifted, intelligent, handsome, or physically strong. My sense of alienation stems from an inferiority complex, depressive nature, and manic tendencies that repulse other people. For many years, I passively accepted my clumsiness, uselessness, and lack of capacity for learning by avoiding serious literature and other opportunities for personal growth. I embraced personal ignorance by favoring tactile sensations and gross pleasure afforded in a materialistic culture that revels in a hedonistic lifestyle.”

“A sundry of intimate encounters with the vibrant intellect of perceptive thinkers dissolves a recluse’s shroud of seclusion. Can I manufacture the needed first aid kit to arrest my internal hemorrhaging? Can I stave off my mental deterioration by exploring the written words of renowned authors? Can I map a course out of my present quandary by scouring the libraries brimming with the beautiful mind works of previous generations of eminent writers? Will diligent encounters with the incisive thoughts of outstanding essayist shred the indivisible bars shielding my indeterminate self and release me from of the monochrome cage of self-imposed isolation? Can respected writers’ perceptive soul-searching create a template for my inchoative thoughts spontaneously to mature?”

“Quietude is the hermit’s humble tool. An intrepid person might attempt to wring out of him or herself a translucent state of creative consciousness by deliberately cutting oneself off from all outside stimuli. When the exterior world forms a wall of impenetrable silence, in our state of exile we can hear the unique cadence of the subtle mind’s authentic ringtone.”

“If a person wishes to engender self-improvement, they must eschew conventional norms and seek an authentic conversation with the self. I need to acknowledge all my ugly warts and attempt to use the conscious mind to trace my lowly state of existence devoted to pleasure seeking and self-glorification. I can give into the dismal implications of all the years I labored in foolish vocational and recreational pursuits or labor to transform former suffering into a creative force. I seek to convert the toxic tears of bitterness into a healing serum by cultivating an artistic approach to life. Cheerfully living in exile and embracing solitude creates personal space needed to flourish.”