| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Exiles by Honore de Balzac: sparkling water, the silent hills, the eloquent buildings. The city
spoke, it glittered, it called to me to return!
"Columns of smoke rose up by the side of the ancient pillars, whose
marble sheen gleamed white through the night; the lines of the horizon
were still visible through the mists of evening; all was harmony and
mystery. Nature would not say farewell; she desired to keep me there.
Ah! It was all in all to me; my mother and my child, my wife and my
glory! The very bells bewailed my condemnation. Oh, land of marvels!
It is as beautiful as heaven. From that hour the wide world has been
my dungeon. Beloved land, why hast thou rejected me?
"But I shall triumph there yet!" he cried, speaking with an accent of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light
of common day. Often, when faded, their quality can but
imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when they recur it is
recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible
of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and
importance.
4. Passivity.--Although the oncoming of mystical states may be
facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the
attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in
other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the
characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: the soundest defence is in attack - it was the Marquis who made the
game. Andre-Louis allowed him to do so, desired him to do so;
desired him to spend himself and that magnificent speed of his
against the greater speed that whole days of fencing in succession
for nearly two years had given the master. With a beautiful, easy
pressure of forte on foible Andre-Louis kept himself completely
covered in that second bout, which once more culminated in a lunge.
Expecting it now, Andre-Louis parried it by no more than a deflecting
touch. At the same moment he stepped suddenly forward, right within
the other's guard, thus placing his man so completely at his mercy
that, as if fascinated, the Marquis did not even attempt to recover
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