| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: bodily disease. In the spiritual realm there are also two ways,
one gradual, the other sudden, in which inner unification may
occur. Tolstoy and Bunyan may again serve us as examples,
examples, as it happens, of the gradual way, though it must be
confessed at the outset that it is hard to follow these windings
of the hearts of others, and one feels that their words do not
reveal their total secret.
Howe'er this be, Tolstoy, pursuing his unending questioning,
<181> seemed to come to one insight after another. First he
perceived that his conviction that life was meaningless took only
this finite life into account. He was looking for the value of
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: "I'll wait another half-hour."
She sank down into her chair again, and took up the same position
which Mary had compared to the position of one watching an unseeing
face. She watched, indeed, not a face, but a procession, not of
people, but of life itself: the good and bad; the meaning; the past,
the present, and the future. All this seemed apparent to her, and she
was not ashamed of her extravagance so much as exalted to one of the
pinnacles of existence, where it behoved the world to do her homage.
No one but she herself knew what it meant to miss Ralph Denham on that
particular night; into this inadequate event crowded feelings that the
great crises of life might have failed to call forth. She had missed
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum: notice that Pon and Trot were watching them.
Gloria had been tied to a stout post in the center of
the room and the King was giving the Wicked Witch a
quantity of money and jewels, which Googly-Goo had
provided in payment. When this had been done the King
said to her:
"Are you perfectly sure you can freeze this maiden's
heart, so that she will no longer love that low
gardener's boy?"
"Sure as witchcraft, your Majesty," the creature
replied.
The Scarecrow of Oz |
