Category: TRANSCIENCE

  • Just when all those around me were assuring me they loved me, cared for me, appreciated me, yes, even admired me, I experienced myself as a useless, unloved, and despicable person. Just when people were putting their arms around me, I saw the endless depth of my human misery and felt that there was nothing worth living for. Just when I had found a home, I felt absolutely homeless. Just when I was being praised for my spiritual insights, I felt devoid of faith. Just when people were thanking me for bringing them closer to God, I felt that God had abandoned me. It was as if the house I had finally had no floors. The anguish completely paralyzed me. I could no longer sleep. I cried uncontrollably for hours. I could not be reached by consoling words or arguments. I no longer had any interest in other people’s problems. I lost all appetite for food and could not appreciate the beauty of music, art, or even nature. All had become darkness. Within me there was one long scream coming from a place I didn’t know existed, a place full of demons.

    —Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

  • “Nostalgia is denial, denial of the painful present.”

    — Paul, Midnight in Paris (2011)

  • Or in surveying cities and spots of interest? All your bustle is useless. Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.

    …

    You wander hither and yon, to rid yourself of the burden that rests upon you, though it becomes more troublesome by reason of your very restlessness.

    …

    Do you suppose that you alone have had this experience?  Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind?  You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.  Though you may cross vast spaces of sea, your faults will follow you whithersoever you travel.

    —Seneca, XXVIII. On Travel as a Cure for Discontent, Letters from a Stoic

  • Scuffs and dents are just one obvious kind of mark. Every comment you make to somebody also leaves a mark. It’s unlikely, perhaps impossible, that it would have exactly zero effect on the rest of that person’s life, and so we must assume that they are, to some degree, forever changed.

    We’ve left a path of lasting evidence throughout our whole lives. In fact, that’s really all our lives are: the impressions we’ve left, the moments we’ve created, the marks we’ve made. Once you’re dead and gone, the work you did is still done. The things you built still stand, or maybe lean or lie in rubble, but they won’t go away. The people who knew you still know you, and still operate under your influence, whether they know it or not.

    Every second you exist, you’re scattering a broad trail of signatures on who knows what, laying causes to an untold ocean of effects that will carry on far beyond your death. The person who invented paper is certainly dead. Did his life affect yours today?

    The founders of your city, of your religion, of your language, are all probably dead too, to say nothing of your great grandparents, or theirs. What if they had done something different with their time?

    Each action you take creates a resounding shock wave that never entirely dissipates. Even in the grand scope of the whole planet, it matters. You matter, much more than you probably think.

    You’re not a drop in the bucket, quite the opposite. In a very real way, the world will be profoundly and permanently changed as a result of what you do while you’re here. It can’t be helped.

    That’s a lot of responsibility. What are you going to do with it?

    What Your Dinged Up Car Can Teach You About the Universe

  • Radical Waiting

    I have found it very important in my own life to try to let go of my wishes and instead to live in hope. I am finding that when I choose to let go of my sometimes petty and superficial wishes and trust that my life is precious and meaningful in the eyes of God, something really new, something beyond my own expectations begins to happen in me.

    To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with the conviction that God molds us in love, holds us in tenderness, and moves us away from the sources of our fear.

    Our spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction. This, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.

    —Henri Nouwen

  • Note the events of your life. Everything has deep meaning. You don’t understand them now, but later much will be revealed…

    —Venerable Barsanuphius of Optina

  • “I believe in work. If somebody doesn’t create something, however small it may be, he gets sick. An awful lot of people feel that they’re treading water — that if they vanished in smoke, it wouldn’t mean anything at all in this world. And that’s a despairing and destructive feeling. It’ll kill you.”

    ―Arthur Miller

  • When our soul begins to lose its appetite for earthly beauties, a spirit of listlessness is apt to steal into it. This prevents us from taking pleasure in study and teaching, and from feeling any strong desire for the blessings prepared for us in the life to come; it also leads us to disparage this transient life excessively, as not possessing anything of value. It even depreciates spiritual knowledge itself, either on the grounds that many others have already acquired it or because it cannot teach us anything perfect. To avoid this passion, which dejects and enervates us, we must confine the mind within very narrow limits, devoting ourselves solely to the remembrance of God. Only in this way will the intellect be able to regain its original fervor and escape this senseless dissipation.

    When we have blocked all its outlets by means of the remembrance of God, the intellect requires of us imperatively some task which will satisfy its need for activity. For the complete fulfillment of its purpose we should give it nothing but the prayer ‘Lord Jesus’, ‘No one’, it is written, ‘can say “Lord Jesus” except in the Holy Spirit’ (1 Cor. 12:3). Let the intellect continually concentrate on these words within its inner shrine with such intensity that it is not turned aside to any mental images. Those who meditate unceasingly upon this glorious and holy name in the depths of their heart can sometimes see the light of their own intellect. For when the mind is closely concentrated upon this name, then we grow fully conscious that the name is burning up all the filth which covers the surface of the soul; for it is written: ‘Our God is a consuming fire’ (Deut. 4:24). Then the Lord awakens in the soul a great love for His glory; for when the intellect with fervor of heart maintains persistently its remembrance of the precious name, then that name implants in us a constant love for its goodness, since there is nothing now that stands in the way. This is the pearl of great price which a man can acquire by selling all that he has, and so experience the inexpressible joy of making it his own (cf. Matt. 13; 46). 

    —St. Diadochos of Photiki

  • Living with such mediocrity is agonizing.

    Bimbo Ubermensch
    The Ocean

  • I felt a deep metaphysical lack. Sometimes, I still do. I definitely do. I question my existence every day.

    Bimbo Ubermensch
    The Ocean