the battle......................

 

     Upon the battlefield of the human soul two masters are ever contending for the crown of supremacy for the kingship and dominion of the heart; the master of self, called also the Prince of this world, and the master of truth, called also that Father God.  The master self if that rebellious one whose weapons are passion, pride, avarice, vanity, self-will, implements of darkness; the master truth is that meek and lovely one whose weapons are gentleness, patience, purity, sacrifice, humility, love, instruments of light.

     In every soul the battle is waged, and as a soldier cannot engage at once in two opposing armies, so every heart is enlisted either in the ranks of self or of truth.

-James Allen, From Poverty to Power

circumstances...........

 

     We are buffeted by circumstances so long as we believe ourselves to be creatures of outside conditions; but when we realize that we are a creative power and that we may command the hidden soil and seeds of our being out of which circumstances arise, then we become the rightful masters of ourselves.

     That circumstances grow out of thought, each of us, who has for any length of time practiced self-control and self-purification, knows—for we will have notices the alteration in our circumstances has been in exact ratio with our altered mental condition.  So true is this that when we earnestly apply ourselves to remedy the defects in our character and make swift and marked progress, we pass rapidly through a succession of vicissitudes.

     The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors, that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its basest desires—and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.

-James Allen, As A Man Thinketh

Vital needs......................

 

Freedom is a vital food for the human soul.  In the concrete sense of the word, freedom means the possibility of choice. . . . Those who lack good will or remain infantile are never free in any state of society.

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Initiative and responsibility, the feeling of being useful and even indispensable, are vital needs of the human soul.

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Equality is a vital need of the human soul.  It consists of public, general, and effective recognition, concretely expressed through institutions and practices, that every human being is owed the same amount of respect and consideration because respect is due to every human being as such and has no degrees.

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Hierarchy is a vital need of the human soul.  It comprises a certain veneration, a certain devotion, to superiors considered not in their person or for the powers they exercise, but as symbols.

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Honour is a vital need of the human soul.

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Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.  There are two kinds, disciplinary and penal.

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Security is an essential need of the soul.  Security means that the soul is not hampered by fear or terror, except as a result of a combination of accidental circumstances and for rare and short periods.

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Risk is an essential need of the soul.  The absence of risk creates a kind of boredom that numbs in a different way from fear, but almost as much.

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Private property is a vital need of the soul.  The soul is isolated, lost, when not surrounded by objects that feel like an extension of the body's limbs.

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Participation in collective goods does not consist of material enjoyment but in a sense of ownership, is just as important a need.  It is a state of mind rather than a legal provision.

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-Simone Weil, excerpted from The Need for Roots

counsel.........................

     My soul preached to me and said, "Do not be delighted because of praise, and do not be distressed because of blame."

     Ere my soul counselled me, I doubted the worth of my work.

     Now I realize that the trees blossom in Spring and bear fruit in Summer without seeking praise; and they drop their leaves in Autumn and become naked in Winter without fearing blame.

Kahlil Gibran, Thoughts and Mediations

 

two "races" of man..............

 

     From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man.  Both are found everywhere; they penetrated into all groups of society.  No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people.  In this sense, no group is of "pure race"—and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.

     Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths.

-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

splintered.................

 

     The modern experiment has been the act of dethroning both literal human sovereignty and the representatives of the sacred order, and replacing them with purely human, and purely abstract, notions—'the people' or 'liberty' or 'democracy' or 'progress'.  I'm all for liberty, and it would be nice to give democracy a try one day too, but the dethroning of the sovereign—Christ—who sat at the heart of the Western sacred order has not led to universal equality and justice.  It has led, via a bloody shortcut through Robespierre, Stalin and Hitler, to the complete triumph of the power of money, which has splintered our culture and our souls into a million angry shards.

-Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity

prevail...............................

 

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

-William Faulkner, from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December, 1950

soul..........................

 

It's the great self-persuasion paradox:  To believe in yourself, you first have to get yourself to believe in yourself.

Aristotle, the most rational of all rational beings, understood that logic rarely persuades on its own.

Choices complicate things.

Bad news, good news.  Stuff happens.  Your response determines what kind of soul you have, and how much you live up to that soul.

Opportunity requires a decision.

Chaotic moments—a sudden promotion or a piece of bad news—don't determine your future.  Your choices do.

-all excerpts from the latest from Jay Heinrichs, Aristotle's Guide to Self-Persuasion

Reexamine....................

 

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul

-Walt Whitman

a geometry of sunbeams.............

 

I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world.  With a geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundation of nature.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

nourishment.........................

 

In the kitchen, a monk is pulling down one small bottle after another, scattering spices across the communal meal he's preparing.  "I always get up early when it's my turn to cook," he says. "To think about color, think about texture."

    "I hadn't realized meals were so important."

    "It's a hard life." He looks straight at me. "The guys need something to brighten their day."

-Pico Iyer, Aflame

Although, more sleep would be pretty good.......

 No, we don’t need more sleep. It’s our souls that are tired, not our bodies. We need nature. We need magic. We need adventure. We need freedom. We need truth. We need stillness. We don’t need more sleep, we need to wake up and live.

-Brooke Hampton

Reaching......................

 

    

via

reality based..................

Franklin's humanity was based on no illusions about life—on no sappy opinions about the natural goodness of human beings, on no false hopes for the future.  Rather, it was based on seeing the world as it really is, and not as we want it to be.  Moreover, his deep skepticism was, in his view, the only means by which he or any other human being could be free of pride, envy, anger, and indignation, which distort the soul, separate us from others, and give rise to folly and human wickedness. 

-Jerry Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought

Hmmm..................

      Deeply idealistic—a moral people, Adams held, would elect moral leaders—he believed virtue the soul of democracy.  To have a villainous ruler imposed on you was a misfortune.  To elect him yourself was a disgrace.

-Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

Highly recommended........................

 

     A carpenter faces the accusation of his level, and electrician must answer the question of whether the lights are in fact on, a speed shop engine builder sees his results in a quarter-mile time slip.  Such standards have a universal validity that is apparent to all, yet in the discriminations made by practitioners of an art respond also to aesthetic subtleties that may not be visible to the bystander.  Only a fellow journeyman is entitled to say 'nicely done.' . . . It is in doing the job nicely that the tradesman puts his own stamp on it.  His individuality is not only compatible with, it is realized through his efforts to reach a goal that is common.

     His individuality is thus expressed as an activity that, in answering to a shared world, connects him to others: the customers he serves and other practitioners of his art, who are competent to recognize the peculiar excellence of his work.   Such a sociable individuality contrasts with the self-enclosure that tis implicit in the idea of "autonomy," which means giving a law to oneself.  The idea of autonomy denies that we are born into a world that existed prior to us.  It posits an essential aloneness; an autonomous being is free in the sense that a being severed from all others is free.  To regard oneself in this way is to betray the natural debts we owe to the world, and commit the moral error of ingratitude.  For in fact we are basically dependent beings: one upon another, and each on a world that is not of our making.

Souls.........................

      Now, you may be an atheist, an agnostic, a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist, or something else, but this posture of respect and reverence, this awareness of the infinite dignity of each person you meet, is a precondition for seeing people well. You may find the whole idea of God ridiculous, but I ask you to believe in the concept of a soul.  You may just be chatting with someone about the weather, but I ask you to assume that the person in front of you contains some piece of themselves that has no weight, size, color, or shape yet gives them infinite value and dignity.  If you consider that each person has a soul, you will be aware that each person has some transcendent spark inside them.  You will be aware that at the deepest level we are all equals.  We're not equal in might, intelligence, or wealth, but we are all equal on the level of our souls.  If you see the people you meet as precious souls, you'll probable wind up treating them well.

-David Brooks, How To Know A Person