| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Rahill, the president of the sixth form. In many a talk, on the
highroad or lying belly-down along the edge of the baseball
diamond, or late at night with their cigarettes glowing in the
dark, they threshed out the questions of school, and there was
developed the term "slicker."
"Got tobacco?" whispered Rahill one night, putting his head
inside the door five minutes after lights.
"Sure."
"I'm coming in."
"Take a couple of pillows and lie in the window-seat, why don't
you."
This Side of Paradise |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: lake that has been fed by countless springs. It is a great pool of
living water, mingled from many sources and tainted with much
impurity. It is synthetic in its nature; it becomes simpler from
original complexities; the sediment subsides.
A life perfectly adjusted to its surroundings is a life without
mentality; no judgment is called for, no inhibition, no disturbance
of the instinctive flow of perfect reactions. Such a life is bliss,
or nirvana. It is unconsciousness below dreaming. Consciousness is
discord evoking the will to adjust; it is inseparable from need. At
every need consciousness breaks into being. Imperfect adjustments,
needs, are the rents and tatters in the smooth dark veil of being
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: Xenophon the Athenian was born 431 B.C. He was a
pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans,
and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
Anabasis |
