
“丕賱禺丕胤乇 丕賱兀賵賱 賱丕 賷禺胤卅 ..丕亘賳 毓乇亘賷”
―
―

“At the core of every addiction is an emptiness based in abject fear. The addict dreads and abhors the present moment; she bends feverishly only toward the next time, the moment when her brain, infused with her drug of choice, will briefly experience itself as liberated from the burden of the past and the fear of the future鈥攖he two elements that make the present intolerable. Many of us resemble the drug addict in our ineffectual efforts to fill in the spiritual black hole, the void at the center, where we have lost touch with our souls, our spirit鈥攚ith those sources of meaning and value that are not contingent or fleeting. Our consumerist, acquisition-, action-, and image-mad culture only serves to deepen the hole, leaving us emptier than before. The constant, intrusive, and meaningless mind-whirl that characterizes the way so many of us experience our silent moments is, itself, a form of addiction鈥攁nd it serves the same purpose. 鈥淥ne of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove the emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain.鈥14 So writes Eckhart Tolle. Even our 24/7 self-exposure to noise, e-mails, cell phones, TV, Internet chats, media outlets, music downloads, videogames, and nonstop internal and external chatter cannot succeed in drowning out the fearful voices within.”
― In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
― In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“We see then that the self too is an imaginary story, just like nations, gods and money. Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we鈥檝e seen, novels we鈥檝e read, speeches we鈥檝e heard, and daydreams we鈥檝e savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that鈥檚 what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories.”
― Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
― Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
“賱丕亘丿 賲賳 鬲兀賳賷孬 丕賱賲賰丕賳 丨鬲賶 鬲賰鬲賲賱 賲賰丕賳鬲賴”
―
―
“丕賳 賱兀賳賮丕爻 丕賱賮噩乇 乇丕卅丨丞”
―
―
Ragaa鈥檚 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Ragaa鈥檚 Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends鈥
Polls voted on by Ragaa
Lists liked by Ragaa