| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: recriminations that generally go therewith.
1. Ineffability.--The handiest of the marks by which I classify
a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it
immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate
report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from
this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be
imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical
states are more like states of feeling than like states of
intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a
certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists.
One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the farmhouse in his purring six cylinder.
A week passed; a tense, uneventful, but uncomfortable
week for all the inmates of the little Wisconsin farmhouse.
Canler was insistent that Jane marry him at once.
At length she gave in from sheer loathing of the continued
and hateful importuning.
It was agreed that on the morrow Canler was to drive to
town and bring back the license and a minister.
Clayton had wanted to leave as soon as the plan was
announced, but the girl's tired, hopeless look kept him.
He could not desert her.
Tarzan of the Apes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: crowning, fill in the gap? He made up his mind to do it.
Why he should pledge himself to this hazardous case McTeague
was puzzled to know. With most of his clients he would have
contented himself with the extraction of the loose tooth and
the roots of the broken one. Why should he risk his
reputation in this case? He could not say why.
It was the most difficult operation he had ever performed.
He bungled it considerably, but in the end he succeeded
passably well. He extracted the loose tooth with his
bayonet forceps and prepared the roots of the broken one as
if for filling, fitting into them a flattened piece of
McTeague |
