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“The mind provides a person with the mental fortitude to survive any physical or spiritual crisis. For the present time, I am satisfying myself by building a little shop in the back of my mind, a place where stillness resides and a jangle of thoughts can come and visit. I am building a room of my own, a room that I can retreat to when needed, a place where I am always welcomed regardless of the trappings of this ordinary and finite life. I do not need much as far as earthy rewards, but I certainly will not spurn food, drink, companionship, love, affection, friendship, or other physical, emotional, spiritual, aesthetic, and sensuous pleasures that find their way to my humble doorstep.”

“Civilization could not exist without tremors of desire and without the counteracting, negation force of disciplined denial. Nor would the gyratory pulsations of a lively civilization exist devoid of the convulsive chemistry of union and repellency. We are born with a desire to be immortal. Cursed with the knowledge that we must die, people live their orthodox lives out by displaying reckless abandon as to the outcome of human life or nervously hounded by utter despondency nipping their heels. How we resolve this decidedly human complex of carrying out our daily lives while burden by our inescapable mortality determines our essential character. The collation of similar values adopted by our community determines who we are as a people.”

“The tangible and factual components of reality along with the intangible strands of memory and imagination constitute the framework that houses our vital life force. A person is likewise composed of contradictory and complementary forces of pain and pleasure, darkness and lightness, and clashing and harmonizing bands of thoughts and feelings. The web and root of all persons consists of both the expressible and the unsayable. Who has not held imaginary conversations with gods, devils, and spirits? Persons whom enthusiastically cultivate an inner life, ardently experience the quick of nature, and willingly immerse themselves in all aspects of everyday living will experience renewal. Analogous to the heat source of fire, we need the spark of desire to fuel our hearts and the spirit of the breeze to spread our heart songs.”

“A person is bound to experience troubling doubts when attempting to forge a viable philosophy for living. When we are young, the world appears as a dream, no desire is unattainable, and no goal is impossible. We do not entertain the notion that the world will blunt our passionate aspirations, we assume that the world will yield to our resolute will. Misfortune, poverty, illness, and death crush a person’s hopes, awakening us to parts of oneself and the world that we previously denied. When fate has spoken harshly we initially feel ruined, life appears as a bleak wasteland. We must then chose to accept a misery ridden existence or rally the courage and fortitude to turn our thoughts from bitterness and regrets, surrender vain notions that we are somehow special and immune from the terrors of a life when reality does not care a wit for our survival.”

“Reality does not create the entire womb of human life. We have eyes that witness truth and beauty. We are creatures that think, plan, dream, and remember. The lambent luminescence supplied by human memory reveals that we live in a dream world. Human imagination tied to memory tells us how to live today and forevermore.”

“How we interact in our world that we inhabit determines how much happiness human beings enjoy. The ego guides human beings in performing their practical activities, and egotistical utility in turn motivates human behavior. An inflated ego can cause human beings to live in a corrupt and unethical manner that is hostile to other humans and the environment. A person’s passions can imprison them.”

“I seek to sensitize and clarify the essential elements of my soul. I will leave striving for the flags of fame and fortune behind and go where the soul beckons without fearing the decisive outcome. I will travel in a world without boundaries and embrace danger and awe. I will stand as a witness to comedy, beauty, and tragedy and apply the principles of artistic and ascetic forms of awareness to overcome the inherent frustration of enduring a fundamentally painful human existence.”

“We cannot have it all. We must live with our limitations. We cannot hold onto life with higher esteem than it deserves. We live only once, a life best served by dedicating ourselves to reducing the suffering of others, not inflicting evilness, taking satisfaction in just being, and recognizing the glory of nature.”

“Each of us is impermanent wave of energy folded into the infinite cosmic order. Acknowledgement of the fundamental impermanence of ourselves unchains us from the strictures of living a terrestrial life stuck like a needle vacillating between the magnetic pull of endless desire and the terror of death. Once we achieve freedom from any craving and all desires and we are relieved of all titanic fears, we release ourselves from living in perpetual distress. Once we rid ourselves from any impulse to exist, we discover our true place in the universal order. The composition of our life filament is exactly right when we accept the notion of living and dying with equal stoicism.”

“Personal discontent and lost illusion is the catalysis and the principal theme for every book ever written. The sign of maturity is when a person finally realizes that they would rather live truthfully than persist indulging his or her comforting delusions.”

“In order to maintain a modicum of sanity needed to continue the vigorous fight for survival, we busy ourselves with repressing and then remembering that our ultimate fate is death. Living vigorously necessitates sparring with the forerunning concept of death. At times, it seems necessary to refuse acknowledging the tragic brevity of our existence while we greedily chase our innermost dream of experiencing and voicing the ecstasy of life. We dual constantly between the conflicting emotions wrung from expressing our enthusiasm for life, and capitulating to the dire ramifications of growing despondency given our keen awareness that we are operating under a death sentence. We begin in earnest and gladness, but we must be ever vigilant to avoid unraveling in despondency and madness.”

“It is delusional to seek peace and prosperity by settling for a safe life devoted to appeasing other people. We live only once. A person whom pursues outward applause for their life by gaining a sense of status in other people’s eyes surrenders their own values. A princely life demands more than appeasing a phantom audience. I aspire to live an authentic life by following my passion no matter where it leads.”

“Living beings must take into account both human savagery and human congeniality. The stupendous irrationality and meanness that underlies much of human behavior contrasted with the love and compassion that people unselfishly exhibit makes ordinary life both appalling and fascinating. Using all available knowledge, we must grope our way through the bizarre twilight zone cast while living amongst the great apes, an unpredictable species that is capable of displaying both immense charity and engaging in the most outrageously inhuman actions imaginable. The blessed oddity of human behavior prompts an immense swath of tolerance and produces a wellspring of sympathy for our fellow humans. The radiant minds of history’s great thinkers infused with the quick of experience of today’s perceptive students of life will assist light a pathway though the byzantine jungle for the preeminent torch bearers of tomorrow to claw through. Our collective and interweaved journey through this wrinkle of time shall produce the backdrop of the story of the next generation, a unique tale paying tribute to these thunderous times.”

“A person must find the courage to live a complete and full life. We learn to live when we stop being afraid and by engaging in critical analysis of our own thoughts, motives, emotions, and behavior. A tolerant person who lives without fear extends charity to the entire world. Courage always precedes an act of human grace, which expresses the luminosity of the human soul.”

“Life is paradoxical, but it is enough for me. Ridiculous conflicts and inconsistencies admittedly congeal into what I term the self. Personal growth commences by honing in on the troubling personal issues. I am my only enemy. A radiant soul strives for self-enrichment by passionately pursuing the serious tasks and delights of living including expressing empathy for other people. I will explore the world and attempt to eliminate the perversions of my own egocentric being.”

“Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live and a good day to die. Every day is also an apt time to learn and express joy and love for the entire natural world. Each day is an apt time to make contact with other people and express empathy for the entire world. Each day is perfect to accept with indifference all aspects of being.”

“The study of philosophy represents an extended mediation on death. The study of literature teaches us that life is absurd, because humankind possesses the foreknowledge that we each owe a death. It is the poets, persons vested with divine inspiration, whom teach us how to live, by boldly experiencing and dutifully recording all the vibrant sensations of life.”

“The first step to finding internal peace is rejecting the world’s opinion. The second step is accepting without rancor social rejection, an inability to meld into groups. The third step is keeping a serene sense of being while living in solitude. The danger of solitude is giving up on life. A delicate balance exists between pursuing solitude and maintaining an active interest in the evocative activities of life including reading and thinking. A person living alone can find the poetry in their life or slip into the absurd realm.”

“I seek to embrace the wings of madness and allow its fresh breath to tear myself apart and begin all over. I aspire to live with inspiration, work every day towards self-improvement, dare to be honest with myself, not fear hard work, cease evading challenging experiences, and not bemoan personal setbacks. I need to accept that hardship and adversity is part of the path to discovering personal truth, and appreciate the growth message that stalks suffering and loss. I must channel all personal sources of pain into a constructive format that enables me to thrive, not wither, and die. Every person has the ability to do some good in their brief stay on this planet. I need to discover the essential purpose of my life and then go live it instead of lamenting my imperfections, nursing animosity, and registering wrongs.”

“We become the product of our recurrent thoughts. Writing is one method of explicating upon our thoughts, condensing multiple scenes, times, and ideas, and editing our fragmented beliefs.”

“Disturbing encounters in life spur reflective thinking that jars a person from his or her exhausted ideologies and way of living. A person who lives passionately will develop a philosophic outlook because the road of excess leads to knowledge. Enthusiasm will frequently make a person look foolish, and result in intermittent periods of despondency and self-questioning, yet only exuberance and a degree of risk-taking leads us to wisdom.”

“Despite the personalization of life’s events, all people largely experience the same general transformative stages of life and eventually we all encounter a row of similar tragedies. We do not experience identical lives or exemplify replicable personalities. Every person is a receptacle whom is capable of experiencing the full gamut of the entire human condition. Our lives act as a period of apprenticeship, which we devote laboring to discover the truths that we can live by.”

“Understanding of oneself is the first act in establishing a transformative philosophy for living a vivid and a reflective existence. Knowing thy self is essential to designing and instigating a meaningful life that is self-directed instead of exclusively controlled by innate traits and external determinates.”

“Perception of a self is not simply about actuality. Human beings’ identities are self-generating and people constantly revise and recreate the story of their being. Coming-into-being, not being, is the highest expression of reality. We only attain the fullest knowledge of a living thing including ourselves when we know what it was, understand what it now is, and understand what it can become. We do not know the truth of a living thing’s existence until we discern its entire history from development to demise.”

“Our actions reflect the distilled wisdom that we possess of the innermost self. Our personal philosophy is an activated way of living. A peaceful person delves the truest definition of the self by maintaining an attentive state of conscious awareness and ceases escaping from reality with mindless diversions. Self-inquiry is the principal method to remove ignorance, increase self-awareness, and abide in a tranquil existence”

“Human evolution is essentially the progression of information gathering (knowledge) and consciousness, or the advancement in wisdom. A wise person is willing to learn at all stages of life by using their cognitive abilities open-mindedly to examine contradictory beliefs, and rationally meld various schools of thought into a living philosophy, developing over time a logical and systematic method to maintain and evaluate oneself in order to assist a person not merely survive but thrive.”

“The logical thinking ability of the conscious mind evolves as we mature. The clutter of capricious milieu relegated to the capacious matrix of the unconscious mind expands as we encounter variegated mileposts in life. Scrambled drives and conflicting motives influence formation of the conscious and unconscious self. Some of my previous apex personal motives and accomplishments are now repugnant to me. I seek to realign motives, drives, and desires of the conscious and unconscious mind into an orderly system in order to reduce anxiety and to reach self-fulfillment.”

“Stored personal memories along with handed down collective memories of stories, legends, and history allows us to collate our interactions with a physical and social world and develop a personal code of survival. In essence, we all become self-styled sages, creating our own book of wisdom based upon our studied observations and practical knowledge gleaned from living and learning. What we quickly discover is that no textbook exist how to conduct our life, because the world has yet to produce a perfect person – an ideal observer – whom is capable of handing down a concrete exemplar of epistemic virtues. We each draw upon the guiding knowledge, theories, and advice available for us in order to explore the paradoxes, ironies, inconsistencies, and the absurdities encountered while living in a supernatural world. We mold our personal collection of information into a practical practicum how to live and die. Each day we define and redefine who we are, determine how we will react today, and chart our quest into an uncertain future.”

“We alone control our final form through our conscious actions. We become the product of the movement of our mind and our physical actions. The joint composition of our personal beliefs coupled with performing purposeful deeds brings forth form and tangible appearance to our thoughts. To discover our special radiance we must gain freedom from all forces of oppression. We must break free from the limitations of a shallow ego in an effort to give birth to our translucent state of creative consciousness.”

“The only manner to blunt in a wholesome and righteous manner the emotional trauma of living under a death sentence is by making every day count, living passionately, and dedicating the journey stumbling through time to accomplishing a master life plan. We can assist each other find meaning in life and undertake a path that make every person’s life a worthy endeavor, but each person bears the personal responsibility for living their life, establishing who they are, and behaving in a manner that provides credence to their self-imposed ideology. If a person persists in shifting personal responsibility for their way of life onto someone else, they he or she fails to discover the meaning of his own existence.”

“We cannot replicate other people’s lives. We must each institute and broker a personalized meaning to our exclusive existence. We must each serve as our own Zen master, awaken to our inviolate personal truth, and strive to fulfill our sui generis (unique) nature.”