I learned to put my trust in God and to see Him as my strength. Long ago I set my mind to be a free person and not to give in to fear. I always felt that it was my right to defend myself if I could. I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear." - Rosa Parks
Do not fear the conflict, do not flee it. Where there is no struggle, there is no virtue; where faith and love are not tempted, it is not possible to be sure whether they are really present. They are proved and revealed in adversity, that is, in difficult and grievous circumstances, both outward and inward - during sickness, sorrow, or privations
I had always been an atheist until I met Lenny. He was too wonderously complex and good for there to be no benevolent and intelligent force behind our marvelous cosmos. Lenny gave me the actual proof my fiercely skeptical mind had always demanded. Not some logical, 37-step proof of God's existence. It was a personal proof. And it was irrefutable.
The term entheogen proposes a radical inversion of customary attitudes towards religion as faith or as something concerned with an ultimate reality or truth that is not a construct: ‘en-theo-gen’ is less ‘enthused by an experience of God within’ than something akin to 'empowering our ability to imagine or create the divine.
Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
That’s life. It’s a series of knock-down, drag-out fights with yourself and others that will leave you lying on the ground bruised and bloody and drooling all over your shag carpeting. But all that doesn’t define you, your reaction to it does. Your environment doesn’t make you who you are, your choices — your beliefs, do.
We can block our blessings with one thought, one decision. Sometimes your blessing may require certain actions on your behalf. You asked for the job? Now, you must get dressed and go to the interview and prove yourself worthy of the position. When you move, you activate your faith. And, suddenly everything falls into place. Faith without works is dead.
I don't trust people. The good part is, i don't really have to. I've surrendered my faith to the Higher power, and it's unconditional love for me. Who am i to question it's motives? Even if there are things i can't understand. This is why there's no need to trust people - if they are on my path, it means they are good for me.
Pessimism doesn’t change the reality; it prolongs the status quo. And it brings everyone down. It’s only ever lose-lose. Optimism and faith coupled with pragmatism change the reality. Self-belief and self-reliance change the reality. Boldness to explore new ideas changes the reality. A vision powered by effort and energy changes the reality.
But that delusional urge is only one of the varieties of self-deception that encourage us to believe we know another human being and, for that matter, ourselves. This faith in having the measure of others really becomes unstuck when you begin to consider how many you’d acknowledge as having the measure of you. That number dwindles before your eyes.
The average man has no central core of moral assurance, no spring within his breast, no inner strength to place him above the need for repeated psychological shots to give him the courage to go on living. He has become a parasite on the world, drawing his life from his environment, unable to live a day apart from the stimulation which society affords him.
The truth is real change begins with your willingness and courage to take the first step forward. Usually, the first step is the most difficult one to take. All resistances and old habits must be eliminated. Deep within you there must be determination to overcome your obstacles. To believe God has something better for you and lean on Him as you persevere.
The conflicting missions of the two armies seemed to have no fog, no gray, only black-and-white clarity. I had lived my life in terms of compromise, rule-bending, trade-offs, concessions, bargaining, striking deals, finding middle ground. In these two great armies, there was no such thing. Good was good, and evil was evil, and they shared no common ground.
Economics is not the central problem of this century. It is a relative problem which can be solved in relative ways. Faith is the central problem of this age. The Western world does not know it, but it already possesses the answer to this problem-but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as Communism's faith in Man.
