| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: ``No, no, no,'' cried the lady, drawing Bessie Bell closer.
``Now nearly two years she has been with us,'' said Sister Helen
Vincula.
``She was just old enough to be put to the table in a high chair,''
said the lady. ``Ah, how she did laugh and crow and jump when her
father took the peacock-feather-fly-brush from the maid, and waved
it in front of her! She would seize the ends of the feathers, and
laugh and crow louder than ever, and hide her laughing little face
deep into the feathers--Ah me--''
But Bessie Bell said nothing, nor remembered anything. For she did
not know that the lady was talking of something green, and blue, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: provinces, especially if well laid out. So that Madame Moreau, fair,
rosy, and fresh, about thirty-six years of age, still slender and
delicate in shape in spite of her three children, played the young
girl and gave herself the airs of a princess. If, when she drove by in
her caleche, some stranger had asked, "Who is she?" Madame Moreau
would have been furious had she heard the reply: "The wife of the
steward at Presles." She wished to be taken for the mistress of the
chateau. In the villages, she patronized the people in the tone of a
great lady. The influence of her husband over the count, proved in so
many years, prevented the small bourgeoisie from laughing at Madame
Moreau, who, in the eyes of the peasants, was really a personage.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: the wish to be getting. Therefore the sufficiency of contentment is
an enduring and unchanging sufficiency.
47. 1. Without going outside his door, one understands (all that takes
place) under the sky; without looking out from his window, one sees
the Tao of Heaven. The farther that one goes out (from himself), the
less he knows.
2. Therefore the sages got their knowledge without travelling; gave
their (right) names to things without seeing them; and accomplished
their ends without any purpose of doing so.
48. 1. He who devotes himself to learning (seeks) from day to day to
increase (his knowledge); he who devotes himself to the Tao (seeks)
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