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April 2 - April 25, 2022
one hour of pain followed by six of pleasure was preferable to one hour of pleasure followed by six of pain.
Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.
Courageous people must continually push themselves to be completely honest, yet must also possess the capacity to withhold the whole truth when appropriate.
To be free people we must assume total responsibility for ourselves, but in doing so must possess the capacity to reject responsibility that is not truly ours.
To be organized and efficient, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destru...
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Balancing is the discipline that gives us flexibility. Extraordinary flexibility is required for successful living in all spheres of activity.
Balancing is a discipline precisely because the act of giving something up is painful.
I learned, however, that the loss of balance is ultimately more painful than the giving up required to maintain balance. In one way or another it is a lesson I have continually had to relearn throughout my life. As must everyone, for as we negotiate the curves and corners of our lives, we must continually give up parts of ourselves. The only alternative to this giving up is not to travel at all on the journey of life. It
Bracketing is essentially the act of balancing the need for stability and assertion of the self with the need for new knowledge and greater understanding by temporarily giving up one’s self—putting one’s self aside, so to speak—so as to make room for the incorporation of new material into the self. This
a business executive will spend roughly an hour of his day reading, two hours talking and eight hours listening.
The essence of life is change, a panoply of growth and decay. Elect life and growth, and you elect change and the prospect of death.
Growing up is the act of stepping from childhood into adulthood.
If I returned to Exeter I would be returning to all that was safe, secure, right, proper, constructive, proven and known. Yet it was not me. In the depths of my being I knew it was not my path. But what was my path? If I did not return, all that lay ahead was unknown, undetermined, unsafe, insecure, unsanctified, unpredictable.
“The only real security in life lies in relishing life’s insecurity.”
I had taken the leap into the unknown. I had taken my destiny into my own hands.
Despite their outward appearances they remain psychologically still very much the children of their parents, living by hand-me-down values, motivated primarily by their parents’ approval and disapproval (even when their parents are long dead and buried), never having dared to truly take their destiny into their own hands.
While such great leaps are most commonly made during adolescence, they can be made at any age.
on an even deeper level, I sensed myself to be a good person no matter how different I might be.
“You are a beautiful and beloved individual. It is good to be you. We will love you no matter what you do, as long as you are you.”
it is only when one has taken the leap into the unknown of total selfhood, psychological independence and unique individuality that one is free to proceed along still higher paths of spiritual growth and free to manifest love in its greatest dimensions.
The highest forms of love are inevitably totally free choices and not acts of conformity.
Love
Commitment is inherent in any genuinely loving relationship.
There come many points on one’s journey of spiritual growth, whether one is alone or has a psychotherapist as guide, when one must take new and unfamiliar actions in consonance with one’s new world view.
The Risk of Confrontation The final and possibly the greatest risk of love is the risk of exercising power with humility.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bow from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrow may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the ar...
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The difficulty that humans so generally seem to have in fully appreciating the separateness of those who they are close to interferes not only with their parenting but with all their intimate relationships, including marriage.
The principle of synchronicity does not explain why or how this happened; it simply states that such implausible conjunctions of events in time occur more frequently than would be predicted by chance alone.
principle serves only to make it clear that miracles seem to be matters of timing and matters that are amazingly commonplace.
Christ’s saying “Many are called but few are chosen”
We do not come to grace; grace comes to us.
Foundation for Community Encouragement, a nonprofit organization that he and his wife, Lily, helped found in 1984.
