| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: great admiration. On a table he found a mother-of-pearl chest
decorated with delicate silver vines and flowers of clustered rubies,
and on the cover was a silver plate engraved with these words:
THE SHAGGY MAN:
HIS BOX OF ORNAMENTS
The chest was not locked, so he opened it and was almost dazzled by
the brilliance of the rich jewels it contained. After admiring the
pretty things, he took out a fine golden watch with a big chain,
several handsome finger-rings, and an ornament of rubies to pin upon
the breast of his shaggy shirt-bosom. Having carefully brushed his
hair and whiskers all the wrong way to make them look as shaggy as
The Road to Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: many people inhabit their own lives in just this way, not knowing
where they are or how to tell others how to reach them.
Discernment
"But compared to the pearls, this piece of string is worthless,"
said the man, as he pulled it from the necklace and lost his
whole treasure.
It Depends on How You Look at It:
Eight Vignettes on Perspective
A man's house burned to the ground. Upon hearing of it, the man
said angrily, "This is the fault of oxygen!" For, as he explained,
if there hadn't been any oxygen in the atmosphere, his house never
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: for fifty years. Now when a young knight named Conrad
von Geisberg heard this, he said that if the castle were
his he would destroy that chamber, so that no foolish
person might have the chance to bring so dreadful
a misfortune upon himself and afflict such as loved
him with the memory of it. Straightway, the company
privately laid their heads together to contrive some
way to get this superstitious young man to sleep in that chamber.
And they succeeded--in this way. They persuaded
his betrothed, a lovely mischievous young creature,
niece of the lord of the castle, to help them in their plot.
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