| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: brushwood, so dense that the wind and rain could not get through
it, nor could the sun's rays pierce it, and the ground
underneath lay thick with fallen leaves. The boar heard the
noise of the men's feet, and the hounds baying on every side as
the huntsmen came up to him, so he rushed from his lair, raised
the bristles on his neck, and stood at bay with fire flashing
from his eyes. Ulysses was the first to raise his spear and try
to drive it into the brute, but the boar was too quick for him,
and charged him sideways, ripping him above the knee with a gash
that tore deep though it did not reach the bone. As for the
boar, Ulysses hit him on the right shoulder, and the point of
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: He in the unchanging excellence arrayed,
Endless return to man's first state has made.
Who knows how glory shines,
Yet loves disgrace, nor e'er for it is pale;
Behold his presence in a spacious vale,
To which men come from all beneath the sky.
The unchanging excellence completes its tale;
The simple infant man in him we hail.
2. The unwrought material, when divided and distributed, forms
vessels. The sage, when employed, becomes the Head of all the
Officers (of government); and in his greatest regulations he employs
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: Miss Farish's confidences were cut short by the parting of the
curtain on the first TABLEAU--a group of nymphs dancing across
flower-strewn sward in the rhythmic postures of Botticelli's
Spring. TABLEAUX VIVANTS depend for their effect not only on the
happy disposal of lights and the delusive-interposition of layers
of gauze, but on a corresponding adjustment of the mental vision.
To unfurnished minds they remain, in spite of every enhancement
of art, only a superior kind of wax-works; but to the responsive
fancy they may give magic glimpses of the boundary world between
fact and imagination. Selden's mind was of this order: he could
yield to vision-making influences as completely as a child to the
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