We apply reality from within. The world is our perception of the world. So what other people think of you, famous or not, is an independent construct taking place in their brain, and we shouldn’t worry too much about it.
Maybe a life of devotion doesn’t need to be robes and chanting; maybe it’s just going through life with open eyes and an open mind, looking out for chances to help people and buzz on the altruistic zip it gives, like coins in Mario Land.
The condition in extreme is identifiable but the less obvious version of addiction is still painful and arguably worse because we simply adapt to living in pain.
Drag your past around if you like, an old dead decaying ox of what you think they might’ve thought, or what might’ve been if you’d done what you ought. That which needs to burn let it burn. If the idea doesn’t serve you, let it go. If it separates you from the moment, from others, from yourself, let it go.
The next industrial revolution is toward decentralized, autonomous, and resilient systems where individuals and communities control their own destinies. This requires a transformation of our economic model from privatized control to co-operative models of ownership, which the social technologies of the Internet can facilitate.
The only meaningful interpretation of any religious teaching is to honor the divine within ourselves and love the divine in one another.
Plus how much time have I given over to watching TV or staring out of windows or pursuing pointless relationships or looking at my Twitter mentions? Those hours all add up and are sadly deducted from the overall life total. They are not a break from life, these ‘harmless’ distractions, they are life. They are life and they are death.
Yes, people made mistakes but that’s what humans do and I am under no obligation to hoard these errors and allow them to clutter my perception of the present.
In spite of the anguish my addiction to drugs and alcohol has caused me, I wouldn’t relinquish its lessons.
Be the change you wish to see in the world,” said Gandhi. If you want a nonviolent world, you cannot use violence to achieve it. He also said, “In the end the British will walk out because 100,000 British cannot control 350 million Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate.
A theist is a person who has seen through the material and mechanical world and doesn’t commit suicide’.
Whatever I endure in recovery, I need never again suffer the indignity of active addiction. The despair and hopelessness. The inexhaustible cycle of incremental self-immolation. I am reminded of how far I’ve come, of the miracle that, with help and humility, I can, one day at a time, live free from drugs and alcohol.
A pain in the leg means ‘don’t put pressure on this leg’; a pain in the mind means ‘change the way you live’.
When people are content they are difficult to manoeuvre. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies.
All desires are the inappropriate substitute for the desire to be at one with God.
I think that there is an infinite creative force that generates all consciousness and all matter and we are all connected and if you align yourself with this infinite creative force then you can be positive and you can be beautiful, I don’t think its a person or god, I don’t believe in any particular doctrine or dogma, only that humanity is connected.
In a sense we re-write our past. We change our narrative. We reprogram ourselves. There is no objective history, this we know, only stories. Our character is the result of this story we tell ourselves about ourselves, and the process of inventorying breaks down the hidden and destructive personal grammar that we have unwittingly allowed to govern our behaviour.
I believe that what the 12 Steps and their encompassing philosophy, which I will lay out for you in these pages, will provide is nothing less than a solution to the dissatisfaction of living, and dying, to anyone with the balls to do the work. And it is work. Indeed it is a personal rebirth and the journey entails all manner of uncomfortable confrontations with who you truly are.
Society is collapsing, and people are starting to recognize that the reason they feel like they’re mentally ill is that they’re living in a system that’s not designed to suit the human spirit.
The nation state is a relatively modern idea, and I don’t think we’re getting a lot out of it except for flags and World Cups.