| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Golden Sayings of Epictetus by Epictetus: Depart, my friend and find fault no more!
XCIII
You are sailing to Rome (you tell me) to obtain the post of
Governor of Cnossus. You are not content to stay at home with
the honours you had before; you want something on a larger scale,
and more conspicuous. But when did you ever undertake a voyage
for the purpose of reviewing your own principles and getting rid
of any of them that proved unsound? Whom did you ever visit for
that object? What time did you ever set yourself for that? What
age? Run over the times of your life--by yourself, if you are
ashamed before me. Did you examine your principles when a boy?
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart: The sight of the familiar gray coat, the scrap of conversation,
so enlightening as to poor Peter's quest, that Peter was growing
thin and white, made her almost reel. She had been too occupied
with her own position to realize Peter's. With the glimpse of him
came a great longing for the house on the Siebensternstrasse, for
Jimmy's arms about her neck, for the salon with the lamp lighted
and the sleet beating harmlessly against the casement windows,
for the little kitchen with the brick stove, for Peter.
Doubts of the wisdom of her course assailed her. But to go back
meant, at the best, adding to Peter's burden of Jimmy and Marie,
meant the old situation again, too, for Marie most certainly did
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: more after the pattern of what in ourselves is called immediate
feeling, than after that of proposition and judgment. But our
immediate feelings have no content but what the five senses
supply; and we have seen and shall see again that mystics may
emphatically deny that the senses play any part in the very
highest type of knowledge which their transports yield.
In the Christian church there have always been mystics. Although
many of them have been viewed with suspicion, some have gained
favor in the eyes of the authorities. The experiences of these
have been treated as precedents, and a codified system of
mystical theology has been based upon them, in which everything
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