| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: Here is still another case, the writer being a man aged
twenty-seven, in which the experience, probably almost as
characteristic, is less vividly described:--
"I have on a number of occasions felt that I had enjoyed a period
of intimate communion with the divine. These meetings came
unasked and unexpected, and seemed to consist merely in the
temporary obliteration of the conventionalities which usually
surround and cover my life. . . . Once it was when from the
summit of a high mountain I looked over a gashed and corrugated
landscape extending to a long convex of ocean that ascended to
the horizon, and again from the same point when I could see
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,
Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,
A lamp in darkness.
IV
A November Night
There! See the line of lights,
A chain of stars down either side the street --
Why can't you lift the chain and give it to me,
A necklace for my throat? I'd twist it round
And you could play with it. You smile at me
As though I were a little dreamy child
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: doctor of the University of Louvain, who was traveling with his clerk.
This little group of folk, who looked contemptuously at each other,
was separated from the passengers in the forward part of the boat by
the bench of rowers.
The belated traveler glanced about him as he stepped on board, saw
that there was no room for him in the stern, and went to the bows in
quest of a seat. They were all poor people there. At first sight of
the bareheaded man in the brown camlet coat and trunk-hose, and plain
stiff linen collar, they noticed that he wore no ornaments, carried no
cap nor bonnet in his hand, and had neither sword nor purse at his
girdle, and one and all took him for a burgomaster sure of his
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