Awe

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Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Only when these are altered is a man said to be alienatus a se . Now this spiritual self may be considered in various ways. We may divide it into faculties, as just instanced, isolating them one from another, and identifying ourselves with either in turn. This is an abstract way of dealing with consciousness, in which, as it actually presents itself, a plurality of such faculties are always to be simultaneously found; or we may insist on a concrete view, and then the spiritual self in us will be either the entire stream of our personal consciousness, or the present 'segment' or 'section' of that stream, according as we take a broader or a narrower view—both the stream and the section being concrete existences in time, and each being a unity after its own peculiar kind. But whether we take it abstractly or concretely, our considering the spiritual self at all is a reflective process, is the result of our abandoning the outward-looking point of view, and of our having become able to think of subjectivity as such, to think ourselves as thinkers . This attention to thought as such, and the identification of ourselves with it rather than with any of the objects which it reveals, is a momentous and in some respects a rather mysterious operation, of which we need here only say that as a matter of fact it exists; and that in everyone, at an early age, the distinction between thought as such, and what it is 'of' or 'about,' has become familiar to the mind. The deeper grounds for this discrimination may possibly be hard to find; but superficial grounds are plenty and near at hand. Almost anyone will tell us that thought is a different sort of existence from things, because many sorts of thought are of no things—e.g., pleasures, pains, and emotions; others are of non-existent things—errors and fictions; others again of existent things, but in a form that is symbolic and does not resemble them—abstract ideas and concepts; whilst in the thoughts that do resemble the things they are 'of' (percepts, sensations), we can feel, alongside of the thing known, the thought of it going on as an altogether separate act and operation in the mind.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  great works of other achievers. We want to have more encounters with the Sublime. Nothing is more awe-inspiring than the human brain itself—its complexity, its untapped potential. We want to realize some of that potential in our lives, not wallow in the cynical slacker attitude. We see a purpose behind everything that we experience and see. In the end, what we want is to fuse the curiosity and excitement we had toward the world as children, when almost everything seemed enchanting, with our adult intelligence. The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man’s always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they wil not live and wil die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite are as necessary for man as the smal planet he inhabits. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky 14 Resist the Downward Pull of the Group The Law of Conformity We have a side to our character that we are generally unaware of—our social personality, the different person we become when we operate in groups of people. In the group setting, we unconsciously imitate what others are saying and doing. We think differently, more concerned with fitting in and believing what others believe. We feel different emotions, infected by the group mood. We are more prone to taking risks, to acting irrationally, because everyone else is. This social personality can come to dominate who we are. Listening so much to others and conforming our behavior to them, we slowly lose a sense of our uniqueness and the ability to think for ourselves. The only solution is to develop self-awareness and a superior understanding of the changes that occur in us in groups. With such intelligence, we can become superior social actors, able to outwardly fit in and cooperate with others on a high level, while retaining our independence and rationality. An Experiment in Human Nature As a young boy growing up in communist China, Gao Jianhua (b. 1952) dreamed of becoming a great writer. He loved literature, and his teachers commended him for his essays and poems. In 1964 he gained admittance to the Yizhen Middle School (YMS), not far from where his family lived. Located in the town of Yizhen, several hundred miles north of Beijing, YMS was labeled a “key school”— over 90 percent of its students went on to college. It was difficult to get into and quite prestigious. At YMS, Jianhua was a quiet and studious boy; he had ambitions of graduating in six years with a top record, good enough to get into Beijing University, from where he would launch the writing career he dreamed about. Students at YMS lived on campus, and life there could be rather dull, since the Communist Party regulated almost every aspect of life in China, including education. There were daily military drills, propaganda classes, manual labor duty, and regular classes, which could be rigorous. At YMS, Jianhua developed a close friendship with a classmate

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  trivia, being lost in, 168 –69 troubadours, 559 Truman, Harry, 175 truth, 138 , 142 Truth Seeker, 463 –64 Tydings, Mil ard, 175 –76 Tyrone, Hugh O’Neil , Earl of, 447 ubiquity, il usion of, 138 –39 unconscious, 258 uniqueness, 373 –74, 378 , 388 , 411 , 470 –71, 516 unintended consequences, 162 –65 Ursuline nuns, 59 –62 utopia, 140 , 306 Valentino, Rudolph, 549 validation, 184 , 186 nonverbal, 410 see also self-opinion Vidal, Gore, 272 Vietnam War, 107 , 234 , 235 , 365 , 366 , 369 , 417 , 425 , 548 vision, of leaders, 458 –59, 465 –66 Visionary Artist, 463 visual system, 140 Voltaire, 532 von Sternberg, Josef, 106 Voting Rights Act, 365 voyeurism, 146 Wagner, Richard, 221 –22, 246 warfare, 501 –3 Washington Post, 235 , 236 Watergate scandal, 96 , 236 –38, 425 , 548 Watson, Thomas, 433 Watzlawick, Paul, 197 Wayne, John, 106 , 107 Weakland, John H., 197 Wel s, Frank, 293 –97, 300 Whitman, Walt, 71 Wilde, Oscar, 201 Wilder, Bil y, 192 Wil iams, Edward, 262 –67, 269 Wil iams, Jane, 262 –71, 274 –76, 286 Wilson, Woodrow, 233 Wise Blood (O’Connor), 565 , 568 , 59 Wol stonecraft, Mary, 262 , 560 Woman to Worship Him, 347 –48 women niceness and, 260 successful, envy of, 284 –85 see also gender roles and masculine and feminine traits Wonderful World of Disney, The, 294 Woods, Tiger, 378 work world, 371 –72, 494 , 548 world, viewing with expansive attitude, 225 World War II, 104 , 175 , 318 , 417 , 545 , 548 , 554 , 560 Chanel and, 135 –36 Pearl Harbor attack, 163 –64 Wren, Christopher, 279 –80 wu-wei, 352 Xenophon, 319 , 454 , 465 Yahoo!, 298 Yamamoto, Kajiro, 379 Yizhen Middle School (YMS), 391 –92, 394 , 396 , 398 –401, 403 –5 youth culture, 541 , 543 , 576 –77 zao fan, 394 zeitgeist, 518 , 543 , 547 , 550 , 551 , 554 , 558 Zeus, 19 Zhuge Liang, 162 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z About the Author Robert Greene, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power , The 33 Strategies of War , The Art of Seduction , and Mastery, is an internationally renowned expert on power strategies. He lives in Los Angeles. What’s next on your reading list? Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now. Document Outline Also by Robert Greene Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Introduction 1. Master Your Emotional Self (The Law of Irrationality) The Inner Athena Step One: Recognize the Biases Step Two: Beware the Inflaming Factors Step Three: Strategies Toward Bringing Out the Rational Self 2. Transform Self-love into Empathy (The Law of Narcissism) The Narcissistic Spectrum Four Examples of Narcissistic Types

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 3: Further, rapture denotes violence of some kind. But God rules us not by violence or force, as Damascene says [*De Fide Orth. ii, 30]. Therefore man’s soul is not carried away to things divine. On the contrary, The Apostle says (2 Cor. 12:2): “I know a man in Christ . . . rapt even to the third heaven.” On which words a gloss says: “Rapt, that is to say, uplifted contrary to nature.” I answer that, Rapture denotes violence of a kind as stated above (OBJ[3]); and “the violent is that which has its principle without, and in which he that suffers violence concurs not at all” (Ethic. iii, 1). Now everything concurs in that to which it tends in accordance with its proper inclination, whether voluntary or natural. Wherefore he who is carried away by some external agent, must be carried to something different from that to which his inclination tends. This difference arises in two ways: in one way from the end of the inclination—for instance a stone, which is naturally inclined to be borne downwards, may be thrown upwards; in another way from the manner of tending—for instance a stone may be thrown downwards with greater velocity than consistent with its natural movement. Accordingly man’s soul also is said to be carried away, in a twofold manner, to that which is contrary to its nature: in one way, as regards the term of transport—as when it is carried away to punishment, according to Ps. 49:22, “Lest He snatch you away, and there be none to deliver you”; in another way, as regards the manner connatural to man, which is that he should understand the truth through sensible things. Hence when he is withdrawn from the apprehension of sensibles, he is said to be carried away, even though he be uplifted to things whereunto he is directed naturally: provided this be not done intentionally, as when a man betakes himself to sleep which is in accordance with nature, wherefore sleep cannot be called rapture, properly speaking. This withdrawal, whatever its term may be, may arise from a threefold cause. First, from a bodily cause, as happens to those who suffer abstraction from the senses through weakness: secondly, by the power of the demons, as in those who are possessed: thirdly, by the power of God. In this last sense we are now speaking of rapture, whereby a man is uplifted by the spirit of God to things supernatural, and withdrawn from his senses, according to Ezech. 8:3, “The spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the vision of God into Jerusalem.” It must be observed, however, that sometimes a person is said to be carried away, not only through being withdrawn from his senses, but also through being withdrawn from the things to which he was attending, as when a person’s mind wanders contrary to his purpose. But this is to use the expression in a less proper signification.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  writer Jean-Paul Sartre, it was a childhood fascination with printed words on a page, and the possible magical meanings each word possessed. These moments of visceral attraction occurred suddenly and without any prodding from parents or friends. It would be hard to put into words why they occurred; they are signs of something beyond our personal control. The actress Ingrid Bergman expressed it best, when talking of the fascination she had with performing in front of her father’s movie camera at a very early age: “I didn’t choose acting. It chose me.” Sometimes these moments can come when we are older, as when Martin Luther King Jr. realized his mission in life as he got pulled into the Montgomery bus boycott. And sometimes they can occur while observing other people who are masters in their field. As a young man, the future Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa felt particularly aimless. He tried painting, then apprenticed as an assistant director on films, a job he hated. He was ready to quit when he got assigned to work for the director Kajiro Yamamoto in 1936. Watching this great master at work, suddenly his eyes were opened to the magical possibilities of film, and he realized his calling. As he later described this, “It was like the wind in a mountain pass blowing across my face. By this I mean that wonderfully refreshing wind you feel after a painfully hard climb. The breath of that wind tells you you are reaching the pass. Then you stand in the pass and look down over the panorama as it opens up. When I stood behind Yama-san in his director’s chair next to the camera, I felt my heart swell with that same feeling—‘I’ve made it at last.’” As another sign, examine moments in your life when certain tasks or activities felt natural and easy to you, similar to swimming with a current. In performing such activities, you have a greater tolerance for the tedium of practicing. People’s criticisms don’t discourage you so easily; you want to learn. You can contrast this with other subjects or tasks that you find deeply boring and unfulfilling, which frustrate you. Related to this, you will want to figure out the particular form of intelligence that your brain is wired for. In his book Frames of Mind , the psychologist Howard Gardner lists certain forms of intelligence for which people usually have one particular gift or affinity. This could be mathematics and logic, physical activity, words, images, or music. We could also add to this social intelligence, a superior sensitivity to people. When you are engaged in the activity that feels right, it will correspond to that form of intelligence for which your brain is most suited. From these various factors you should be able to spot the outline of your calling. In essence, in going through this process you are discovering yourself, what makes you different, what predates the opinions of others. You are reacquainting yourself with your natural

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  With our philosophy, we want to manufacture the cleansing effect that the plague has on our tribal tendencies and usual self- absorption. We want to begin this on a smaller scale, by looking first at those around us, in our home and our workplace, seeing and imagining their deaths and noting how this can suddenly alter our perception of them. As Schopenhauer wrote, “The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him or her alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and inextricably lost.” We want to see that uniqueness of the other person in the present, bringing out those qualities we have taken for granted. We want to experience their vulnerability to pain and death, not just our own. We can take this meditation further. Let us look at the pedestrians in any busy city and realize that in ninety years it is likely that none of them will be alive, including us. Think of the millions and billions who have already come and gone, buried and long forgotten, rich and poor alike. Such thoughts make it hard to maintain our own sense of grand importance, the feeling that we are special and that the pain we may suffer is not the same as others’. The more we can create this visceral connection to people through our common mortality, the better we are able to handle human nature in all its varieties with tolerance and grace. This does not mean we lose our alertness to those who are dangerous and difficult. In fact, seeing the mortality and vulnerability in even the nastiest individual can help us cut them down to size and deal with them from a more neutral and strategic space, not taking their nastiness personally. In general, we can say that the specter of death is what impels us toward our fellow humans and makes us avid for love. Death and love are inextricably interconnected. The ultimate separation and disintegration represented by death drive us to unite and integrate ourselves with others. Our unique consciousness of death has created our particular form of love. And through a deepening of our death awareness we will only strengthen this impulse, and rid ourselves of the divisions and lifeless separations that afflict humanity. Embrace all pain and adversity. Life by its nature involves pain and suffering. And the ultimate form of this is death itself.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  She pointed to the circle the ring cast on the ground. I nodded, acknowledging that the shadow was as real as the ring. She smiled and waved her hand in the space between the ring and its shadow. Isn't this distance also real? She indicated our circle. I looked at the faces around me. I followed the shadow of her hand against the wall of the hut, seeing for the first time the shadows surrounding us. She called me to the present. My mind slipped back to the past, forward to the future. Arent these connected? she asked wordlessly. I felt my whole life coming full circle. Growing up so different, coming out as a butch, passing as a man, and then back to the same question that had shaped my life: woman or man? Stone Butch Blues 329 The sound of a street argument, born of frustration, woke me from sleep. I didn’t want to come back to this world. I struggled to return to the dream, but I was wide awake. It was near dawn. I unlocked the bedroom window and crawled out on the fire escape. The cool air felt good. I closed my eyes. I recalled the night Theresa and I broke up, how I stared into the night sky, straining for a glimpse of my own future. If I could send a message back in time to that young butch sitting on a milk crate, it would be this: My neighbor, Ruth, asked me recently if I had my life to live all over again would I make the same decisions? “Yes,” I answered unequivocally, “ves.” I’m so sorry it’s had to be this hard. But if I hadn’t walked this path, who would I be? At the moment I felt at the center of my own life, the dream still braided like sweetgrass in my memory. I remembered Duffy’s challenge. Imagine a world worth living in, a world worth fighting for. | closed my eyes and allowed my hopes to soat. I heard the beating of wings nearby. I opened my eyes. A young man on a nearby rooftop released his pigeons, like dreams, into the dawn. 330 = Leslie Feinberg AUTHOR NOTES ON THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Leslie had hoped she would be able to write an introduction to this 20th anniversary edition of Stone Butch Blues. But before she was able to do so, she went into hospice care at home. The notes below are a combination of material Leslie had already written and notes I typed sitting by her bedside as she continued to work. Leshe said of the Author Notes: “This was the best I could do.” Leslie died at home on November 15, 2014. For more details on Leshe’s health, go to “Casualty of an undeclared war,” her research notes on the Lyme/+ epidemic at: www. transgenderwarrior.org

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  beyond our perceptual system. What are the other elements we cannot perceive, the other realities invisible to us? (The latest discoveries in most branches of science will have this eye-opening effect, and reading articles in any popular scientific journal will generally yield a few sublime thoughts.) We can also expose ourselves to places on the planet where all our normal compass points are scrambled—a vastly different culture or certain landscapes where the human element seems particularly puny, such as the open sea, a vast expanse of snow, a particularly enormous mountain. Physically confronted with what dwarfs us, we are forced to reverse our normal perception, in which we are the center and measure of everything. In the face of the Sublime, we feel a shiver, a foretaste of death itself, something too large for our minds to encompass. And for a moment it shakes us out of our smugness and releases us from the deathlike grip of habit and banality. — In the end, think of this philosophy in the following terms: Since the beginning of human consciousness, our awareness of death has terrified us. This terror has shaped our beliefs, our religions, our institutions, and so much of our behavior in ways we cannot see or understand. We humans have become the slaves to our fears and our evasions. When we turn this around, becoming more aware of our mortality, we experience a taste of true freedom. We no longer feel the need to restrict what we think and do, in order to make life predictable. We can be more daring without feeling afraid of the consequences. We can cut loose from all the illusions and addictions that we employ to numb our anxiety. We can commit fully to our work, to our relationships, to all our actions. And once we experience some of this freedom, we will want to explore further and expand our possibilities as far as time will allow us. Let us rid death of its strangeness, come to know it, get used to it. Let us have nothing on our minds as often as death. At every moment let us picture it in our imagination in al its aspects. . . . It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere. Premeditation of death is premeditation of freedom. . . . He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from al subjection and constraint. —Michel de Montaigne Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank Anna Biller for her assistance on so many aspects of this book—including her deft editing, the endless insightful ideas she supplied me during our discussions, and all the love and support during the writing. This book would not be possible without her many contributions, and I am eternally grateful. I would like to thank my agent, Michael Carlisle of Inkwell Management, master of human nature, for all his invaluable advice

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  õ After the white authorities executed Turner, his lawyer, a white man named Thomas Gray, published a pamphlet called The Confessions of Nat Turner. It’s unclear if these were actually the words of Turner or if Gray modified them. But even if Gray shaped the text, it gives a sense of how Turner claimed divine inspiration to rally his followers. Take this passage: While laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn … And now the Holy Ghost had revealed itself to me, and made plain the miracles it had shown me; for as the blood of Christ had been shed on this earth, and had ascended to heaven for the salvation of sinners, [it] was now returning to earth in the form of dew. õ Turner said that he told a white man about these miracles, and nasty, bloody sores immediately appeared all over the man’s body. Consider the power that story would have on other slaves listening to Turner: It was likely an appealing message of divine justice. SLAVE WORSHIP õ Until the early 19th century, evangelical groups allowed blacks to preach to people of their own race. The Baptists licensed and ordained black men, and Methodists allowed black lay preachers until state legislatures started outlawing it in the 1810s. õ As the years passed, the slave codes in the South restricting slave behavior became more and more oppressive. The codes made it illegal for blacks to gather in meetings for worship or education. õ By the 1820s, most black Christians in the South had to be under the authority of white congregations and denominations. In theory, black Christians in the South always had a white pastor and were under the discipline of a white church. Lecture 19—Slave Religion in the Americas 187

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Yes, there was a war. Yes, we came from its epicenter. In that war, a woman gifted herself a new name—Lan—in that naming claimed herself beautiful, then made that beauty into something worth keeping. From that, a daughter was born, and from that daughter, a son. All this time I told myself we were born from war—but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty. Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence—but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it. — Paul is behind me by the gate, clipping a bushel of mint leaves to garnish the pesto. His scissors snap at the stems. A squirrel hurries down from a nearby sycamore, stops at the base, sniffs the air, then doubles back, vanishing up the branches. You’re just ahead as I approach; my shadow touches your heels. “Little Dog,” you say, without turning, the sun long gone from the garden, “come here and look at this.” You point to the ground at your feet, your voice a whisper-shout. “Isn’t this crazy?” I remember the room. How it burned because Lan sung of fire, surrounded by her daughters. Smoke rising and collecting in the corners. The table in the middle a bright blaze. The women with their eyes closed and the words relentless. The walls a moving screen of images flashing as each verse descended to the next: a sunlit intersection in a city no longer there. A city with no name. A white man standing beside a tank with his black-haired daughter in his arms. A family sleeping in a bomb crater. A family hiding underneath a table. Do you understand? All I was given was a table. A table in lieu of a house. A table in lieu of history. “There was a house in Saigon,” you told me. “One night, your father, drunk, came home and beat me for the first time at the kitchen table. You were not born yet.” — But I remember the table anyway. It exists and does not exist. An inheritance assembled with bare mouths. And nouns. And ash. I remember the table as a shard embedded in the brain. How some will call it shrapnel. And some will call it art. I am at your side now as you point at the ground where, just beyond your toes, a colony of ants pours across the dirt patch, a flood of black animation so thick it resembles the shadow of a person that won’t materialize. I can’t make out the individuals—their bodies linked to one another in an incessant surge of touch, each six-legged letter dark blue in the dusk—fractals of a timeworn alphabet. No, these are not monarchs. They are the ones who, come winter, will stay, will turn their flesh into seeds and burrow deeper—only to break through the warm spring loam, ravenous.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  As children, our minds were much more fluid and open. We would make the most surprising and creative associations between ideas. But as we get older, we tend to tighten this down. We live in a sophisticated, high-tech world dominated by statistics and ideas gleaned from big data. Free associations between ideas, images from dreams, hunches, and intuitions seem irrational and subjective. But this leads to the most sterile forms of thinking. The unconscious, the Shadow side of the mind, has powers we must learn to tap into. And in fact some of the most creative people in our midst actively engage this side of thinking. Albert Einstein based one of his theories of relativity on an image from a dream. The mathematician Jacques Hadamard made his most important discoveries while boarding a bus or taking a shower —hunches that came out of nowhere, or what he claimed to be his unconscious. Louis Pasteur made his great discovery about immunization based on a rather free association of ideas after an accident in his laboratory. Steve Jobs claimed that his most effective ideas came from intuitions, moments when his mind roamed most freely. Understand: The conscious thinking we depend on is quite limited. We can hold on to only so much information in short- and long-term memory. But the unconscious contains an almost limitless amount of material from memories, experiences, and information absorbed in study. After prolonged research or work on a problem, when we relax our minds in dreams or while we are performing unrelated banal activities, the unconscious begins to go to work and associate all sorts of random ideas, some of the more interesting ones bubbling to the surface. We all have dreams, intuitions, and free associations of ideas, but we often refuse to pay attention to them or take them seriously. Instead you want to develop the habit of using this form of thought more often by having unstructured time in which you can play with ideas, widen the options you consider, and pay serious attention to what comes to you in less conscious states of mind. In a similar vein, you want to explore from within your own darkest impulses, even those that might seem criminal, and find a way to express them in your work or externalize them in some fashion, in a journal for instance. We all have aggressive and antisocial desires, even toward those we love. We also have traumas from our earliest years that are associated with emotions we prefer to forget. The greatest art in all media somehow expresses these depths, which causes a powerful reaction in us all because they are so repressed. Such is the power of the films of Ingmar Bergman or the novels of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and you can have the same power by externalizing your dark side. Show the Shadow.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Depending on patterns from early childhood, in the group setting we become more passive or more aggressive than usual, revealing the less developed sides of our character. When it comes to leaders, we generally don’t see them as ordinary people. We tend to feel somewhat awed and intimidated in their presence, as if they possessed some mythical extra powers. When we contemplate our group’s main rival or enemy, we can’t help but get a little heated and angry and exaggerate any negative qualities. If others in the group are feeling anxious or outraged by something, we often get swept up in the group mood. All of these are subtle indications that we are under the influence of the group. If we are experiencing the above transformations, we can be sure the same is going on with our colleagues. Now imagine some outside threat to our group’s well-being or stability, a crisis of sorts. All of the above reactions would be intensified by the stress, and our apparently civilized, sophisticated group could become quite volatile. We would feel greater pressure to prove our loyalty and go along with anything the group advocated. Our thinking about the rival/enemy would become even more simplistic and heated. We would be subject to more powerful waves of viral emotions, including panic or hatred or grandiosity. Our group could split up into factions with tribal dynamics. Charismatic leaders could easily emerge to exploit this volatility. If pushed far enough, the potential for aggression lies under the surface of almost any group. But even if we hold back from overt violence, the primitive dynamic that takes over can have grave consequences, as the group overreacts and makes decisions based on exaggerated fears or uncontrollable excitement. To resist this downward pull that groups inevitably exert on us, we must conduct a very different experiment in human nature from Mao’s, with a simple goal in mind—to develop the ability to detach ourselves from the group and create some mental space for true independent thinking. We begin this experiment by accepting the reality of the powerful effect that the group has on us. We are brutally honest with ourselves, aware of how our need to fit in can shape and warp our thinking. Does that anxiety or sense of outrage that we feel come completely from within, or is it inspired by the group? We must observe our tendency to demonize the enemy and control it. We must train ourselves to not blindly venerate our leaders; we respect them for their accomplishments without feeling the need to deify them. We must be especially careful around those who have charismatic appeal, and try to demystify and pull them down to earth. With such awareness, we can begin to resist and detach.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  I was enamored of the verve, torque, and tone of the pastor’s voice, his sermon on Noah’s Ark inflected with hesitations, rhetorical questions amplified by long silences that intensified the story’s effect. I loved the way the pastor’s hands moved, flowed, as if his sentences had to be shaken off him in order to reach us. It was, to me, a new kind of embodiment, one akin to magic, one I’d glimpsed only partially in Lan’s own storytelling. But that day, it was the song that offered me a new angle of seeing the world, which is to say, seeing you. Once the piano and organ roared into the first thick chords of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” everyone in the congregation rose, shuffling, and let their arms fly out above them, some turning in circles. Hundreds of boots and heels hammered the wooden floors. In the blurred gyrations, the twirling coats and scarfs, I felt a pinch on my wrist. Your fingernails were white as they dug into my skin. Your face—eyes closed—lifted toward the ceiling, you were saying something to the fresco of angels above us. At first I couldn’t hear through the sound of clapping and shouting. It was all a kaleidoscope of color and movement as fat organ and trumpet notes boomed through the pews from the brass band. I wrested my arm from your grip. When I leaned in, I heard your words underneath the song—you were speaking to your father. Your real one. Cheeks wet with tears, you nearly shouted. “Where are you, Ba?” you demanded in Vietnamese, shifting from foot to foot. “Where the hell are you? Come get me! Get me out of here! Come back and get me.” It might have been the first time Vietnamese was ever spoken in that church. But no one glared at you with questions in their eyes. No one made a double take at the yellow-white woman speaking her own tongue. Throughout the pews other people were also shouting, in excitement, joy, anger, or exasperation. It was there, inside the song, that you had permission to lose yourself and not be wrong. I stared at the toddler-sized plaster of Jesus hanging to the side of the pulpit. His skin seemed to throb from the stamping feet. He was regarding his petrified toes with an expression of fatigued bewilderment, as if he had just woken from a deep sleep only to find himself nailed red and forever to this world. I studied him for so long that when I turned to your white sneakers I half expected a pool of blood under your feet.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  RABANUS. But nothing hinders our supposing that the sun and moon with the other stars shall for a time lose their light, as we know did the sun at the time of the Lord’s passion; as Joel also says, The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and manifest day of the Lord come. (Joel 2:31.) But when the day of judgment is passed, and the life of future glory shall dawn, and there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, then shall that come to pass of which Isaiah speaks, The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold. (Is. 30:26.) The stars shall fall from heaven, is expressed in Mark; There shall be stars falling from heaven, (Mark. 13:25.) that is, lacking their proper light. JEROME. By the powers of heaven, we understand the bands of the Angels. CHRYSOSTOM. Very fitly shall they be shaken and dismayed, seeing so mighty a change being wrought, their fellow-servants punished, and the universe standing before a terrible tribunal. ORIGEN. But as, at the dispensation of the Cross, the sun was eclipsed, and darkness was spread over the earth; so when the sign of the Son of Man appears in heaven, the light of the sun, moon, and stars, shall fail, as though waning before the might of that sign. This we understand to be the sign of the cross, that the Jews may see, as Zacharias and John speak, Him whom they have pierced, (Zech. 12:10. John 19:37.) and the sign of victory. CHRYSOSTOM. But because the sun will be darkened, the cross would not be seen, if it were not far brighter than the rays of the sun. That the disciples might not be ashamed, and grieve over the cross, He speaks of it as a sign, with a kind of distinction. The sign of the cross will appear to overthrow the shamelessness of the Jews, when Christ shall appear in the judgment, shewing not only His wounds, but His most ignominious death, And then all the tribes of the earth shall mourn. For when they shall see the cross, they shall bethink them how they have gained nought by His death, and that they have crucified Him whom they ought to have worshipped. JEROME. Rightly does He say, the tribes of the earth, for they shall mourn who have no citizenship in heaven, but are written in earth. (Jer. 17:13.)

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AMBROSE. The work of divine healing commenced on the sabbath, signifying thereby that he began anew where the old creation ceased, in order that He might declare at the very beginning that the Son of God was not under the Law, but above the Law. Rightly also He began on the sabbath, that He might shew Himself the Creator, who interweaves His works one within another, and follows up that which He had before begun; just as a builder determining to reconstruct a house, begins to pull down the old one, not from the foundation, but from the top, so as to apply his hand first to that part, where he had before left off. Holy men may through the word of God deliver from evil spirits, but to bid the dead rise again, is the work of Divine power alone. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. But the Jews spoke falsely of the glory of Christ, saying, He casteth out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils. To remove this charge, when the devils came beneath His invincible power, and endured not the Divine Presence, they sent forth a savage cry, as it follows: And he cried with a loud voice, saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, &c. BEDE. As if he said, Abstain a while from troubling me, thou who hast no fellowship with our designs. AMBROSE. It ought not to shock any one that the devil is mentioned in this book as the first to have spoken the name of Jesus of Nazareth. For Christ received not from him that name which an Angel brought down from heaven to the Virgin. The devil is of such effrontery, that he is the first to use a thing among men and bring it as something new to them, that he may strike people with terror at his power. Hence it follows: For I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God. ATHANASIUS. (ad Epise. Æg. et Lib.) He spoke of Him not as a Holy One of God, as if He were like to the other saints, but as being in a remarkable manner the Holy One, with the addition of the article. For He is by nature holy by partaking of whom all others are called holy. Nor again did He speak this as if He knew it, but He pretended to know it. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. (et Tit. Bost.) For the devils thought by praises of this sort to make Him a lover of vainglory, that He might be induced to abstain from opposing or destroying them by way of grateful return. CHRYSOSTOM. The devil wished also to disturb the order of things, and to deprive the Apostles of their dignity, and to incline the many to obey Him.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  The noun semnotēs also occurs three times in the Pastoral Epistles. Prayer is to be made for kings and those in authority that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and in all honesty (I Tim. 2.2). Semnotēs, gravity, is the quality which should be the outstanding quality of a good father (I Tim. 3.4), and of a good teacher (Titus 2.7). Clearly this quality of gravity and dignity was meant to be the characteristic of the Christian life. These words have a most notable background and atmosphere in secular Greek. It may truly be said that there are no more majestic words in the whole Greek language. Let us study their usage in ordinary Greek that we may see just what they demand of the Christian, and that we may understand the quality in which the Christian life is to be clothed. (i) The word semnos is particularly connected with the gods. It means revered, august, holy. Apollo is called by Aeschylus the august commander (The Seven against Thebes 800). Poseidon is called awful Poseidon by Sophocles (Oedipus Coloneus 55). The sacrifices of the gods are holy sacrifices (Pindar, Olymp. 7.42); the temple of Apollo is a holy house (Pindar, Nem. 1.72). In every case the word used is semnos, for semnos is a word with the majesty of divinity in it. (ii) But there were certain gods of whom this word was specially used. It was specially used of the Erinyes, the Furies whose duty and task it was to avenge sin. So much so was this the case that these Furies were actually called the semnai (the feminine plural of the adjective). There were three of these grim goddesses, Allecto, ‘she who never rests’, Tisiphone, ‘the avenger of murder’, and Megaera, ‘the jealous one’, and once a man had sinned they were on his heels, and neither in this world or the next did they let him go. ‘They are the avengers of every transgression of natural order, and especially of offences which touch the foundation of human society. They punish, without mercy, all violations of filial duty, or the claims of kinship, or the rites of hospitality; murder, perjury and like offences.... The punishment begins on earth and is continued after death.’ The Erinyes, the Furies, the semnai were nothing less than the custodians of divine justice. There is much about them in Greek tragedy. Sophocles calls them ‘majestic swift-footed hounds of vengeance’ (Ajax 837). Euripides says of them: ‘They are the dread ones; wise art thou to name them not.’ The most terrible description of the semnai is in Aeschylus’ play, The Eumenides.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  democratic empire, the Periclean golden age were now and forever over. The man who had curbed their most dangerous emotions— aggression, greed, hubris, selfishness—had been gone from the scene for too long, his wisdom long forgotten. • • • Interpretation: As Pericles surveyed the political scene early in his career, he noticed the following phenomenon: Every Athenian political figure believed he was rational, had realistic goals, and plans on how to get there. They all worked hard for their political factions and tried to increase their power. They led Athenian armies into battle and often came out ahead. They strove to expand the empire and bring in more money. And when their political maneuvering suddenly backfired, or the wars turned out badly, they had excellent reasons for why this had happened. They could always blame the opposition or, if need be, the gods. And yet, if all these men were so rational, why did their policies add up to so much chaos and self-destructiveness? Why was Athens such a mess and the democracy itself so fragile? Why was there so much corruption and turbulence? The answer was simple: his fellow Athenians were not rational at all, merely selfish and shrewd. What guided their decisions was their base emotions—hunger for power, attention, and money. And for those purposes they could be very tactical and clever, but none of their maneuvers led to anything that lasted or served the overall interests of the democracy. What consumed Pericles as a thinker and a public figure was how to get out of this trap, how to be truly rational in an arena dominated by emotions. The solution he came up with is unique in history and devastatingly powerful in its results. It should serve as our ideal. In his conception, the human mind has to worship something, has to have its attention directed to something it values above all else. For most people, it is their ego; for some it is their family, their clan, their god, or their nation. For Pericles it would be nous , the ancient Greek word for “mind” or “intelligence.” Nous is a force that permeates the universe, creating meaning and order. The human mind is naturally attracted to this order; this is the source of our intelligence. For Pericles, the nous that he worshipped was embodied in the figure of the goddess Athena. Athena was literally born from the head of Zeus, her name itself reflecting this—a combination of “god” ( theos ) and “mind” ( nous ). But Athena came to represent a very particular form of nous — eminently practical, feminine, and earthy. She is the voice that comes to heroes in times of need, instilling in them a calm spirit, orienting their minds toward the perfect idea for victory and success, then giving them the energy to achieve this. To be visited by Athena was the highest blessing of them all, and it was her spirit that guided

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Cottage in WashingtonMany years later, I wrote part of this book in a cottage on an island off the coast of Washington State. If I could choose one word to describe the island, that word would be: wet. Or maybe: elemental. Slick, meaty slugs littered the grass, the path, my porch. When I hiked to the ocean, I watched falcons dive into the water and pull up writhing fish. When I crossed a saltwater lagoon, clouds of gnats followed me as if I were the queen of the damned. At night I slept with the windows open, and I heard so many creatures: owls, frogs, and once, something that sounded like a slide whistle. Once I picked up a snail to observe it and dropped it by accident. When I picked it up again the shell was cracked, and a white foam was frothing from the site of the injury. I was horrified at the monstrosity of my mistake—the pure, unbridled thoughtlessness of it. I’d come all the way to this island to write a book about suffering, and you did something terrible to a resident of the island who’d done no harm. One day I was chatting with a fellow writer while viewing Mount Rainier when we both heard a scream of terror. We stopped talking and stared at each other; when it happened again, we ran off into the forest, yelling the names of the others. Except for our panting, there was only silence. “Maybe it was an animal?” I said, though I doubted it. The night before everyone had to leave, we were all gathered around a campfire when we heard it again—three howls that crescendoed into the unmistakable sound of a woman screaming. We started, and then agreed that it must have been an animal, a bobcat or something. But that didn’t stifle the chill that accompanied the sound, the grievous and undeniable sound of fear. Dream House as 9 Thornton SquareBefore it was a verb, gaslight was a noun. A lamp. Then there was a play called Angel Street in 1938, and then a film, Gaslight, in 1940, and then a second film in 1944, directed by George Cukor and featuring an iconic, disheveled, unraveling performance from Ingrid Bergman.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  These gestures often appeared at moments of significant therapeutic movement and frequently indicated pleasingly unforeseen resources and shifts toward flow and wholeness. Moreover, I became fascinated by the similarity of these involuntary gestures to those of the sacred dances that I had seen at various cultural performances presented at University of California–Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. These hand/finger/arm movements, called mudras, are all-embracing and inclusive, across the spectrum of the human experience and throughout the world. Particularly in Asia, the way one’s hands and fingers are poised communicates very deep and universal meanings, ones that are related more than just personally to dancer or audience member. c When the therapist observes such spontaneous mudras, then pauses, taking the time to bring them to the client’s attention, the client can then use that information to explore how his “outside” posture feels on the “inside.” It is not surprising, at this juncture, for the client to contact a treasure chest of powerful resources of connection, empowerment, flow, goodness and wholeness. I believe that these archetypal movements arise at unique moments when the instinctual is seamlessly wedded with one’s conscious awareness—when the primitive brain stem and the highest neocortical functions integrate. In summary, Behavior is the only category that the therapist is directly aware of. As clients become aware—at first only marginally—of their own behaviors, they may incorporate these perceptions into an observer role where they are reminding themselves to note sensations associated with those behaviors. When linked with thoughts, this is a powerful tool to dissolve compulsions and addictions. The Affect Channel The two subtypes in the fourth channel are the categorical emotions and the felt sense, or contours of sensation-based feeling. Emotions Emotions include the categorical ones described by Darwin and refined in extensive laboratory studies by Paul Ekman. These distinct emotions include fear, anger, sadness, joy and disgust. Again, these are feelings that the client is experiencing internally and that the therapist can deduce from the client’s face and posture even when the client is unaware of them. Contours of Feeling Another level of affect—the registration of contours of feeling—is, perhaps, even more important to the quality and conduct of our lives than are the categorical emotions. Eugene Gendlin extensively studied and described these softer affects and coined the term felt sense. 95 When you see dew on a blade of grass in the morning light or visit a museum and delight in a beautiful painting, you’re usually not experiencing a categorical emotion. Or when meeting a good friend you haven’t seen for months, you’re probably not feeling fear, sorrow, disgust or even joy. Contours are the sensation-based feelings of attraction and avoidance, of “goodness” and “badness.” You experience these nuances countless times throughout the day. While it’s easy to imagine a day without perceiving any of the categorical emotions, try for a moment to conjure up a day without any felt sense affects.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  because you have come so far with your improved skills and actual achievements. If you have taken the time to properly work through the other principles, you will naturally return back down to earth after a few days or hours of grandiose exuberance. — Finally, at the source of our infantile grandiosity was a feeling of intense connection to the mother. This was so complete and satisfying that we spend much of our time trying to recapture that feeling in some way. It is the source of our desire to transcend our banal existence, to want something so large we cannot express what it is. We have glimmers of that original connection in intimate relationships and in moments of unconditional love, but these are rare and fleeting. Entering a state of flow with our work or cultivating deeper levels of empathy with people (see chapter 2) will give us more such moments and satisfy the urge. We feel oneness with the work or with other people. We can take this even further by experiencing a deeper connection to life itself, what Sigmund Freud called “the oceanic feeling.” Consider this in the following way: The formation of life itself on the planet Earth so many billions of years ago required a concatenation of events that were highly improbable. The beginning of life was a tenuous experiment that could have expired at any moment early on. The evolution since then of so many forms of life is astounding, and at the end point of that evolution is the only animal we know to be conscious of this entire process, the human. Your being alive is an equally unlikely and uncanny event. It required a very particular chain of events leading to the meeting of your parents and your birth, all of which could have gone very differently. At this moment, as you read this, you are conscious of life along with billions of others, and only for a brief time, until you die. Fully taking in this reality is what we shall call the Sublime. (For more on this, see chapter 18.) It cannot be put into words. It is too awesome. Feeling a part of that tenuous experiment of life is a kind of reverse grandiosity—you are not disturbed by your relative smallness but rather ecstatic at the sense of being a drop in this ocean. Then, overwhelmed by the afflictions I suffered in connection with my sons, I sent again and inquired of the god what I should do to pass the rest of my life most happily; and he answered me: “Knowing thyself, O Croesus—thus shal you live and be happy.” . . . [But] spoiled by the wealth I had and by those who were begging me to become their leader, by the gifts they gave me and by the people who flattered me, saying that if I would consent to take command they would al obey me and I should be the