| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: (which I am not), I was determined that I would either kill those lions
or they should kill me. So I told Tom that he need not come unless he
liked, but I was going; and being a plucky fellow, a Swazi by birth, he
shrugged his shoulders, muttered that I was mad or bewitched, and
followed doggedly in my tracks.
"We soon reached the kloof, which was about three hundred yards in
length and but sparsely wooded, and then the real fun began. There
might be a lion behind every bush--there certainly were four lions
somewhere; the delicate question was, where. I peeped and poked and
looked in every possible direction, with my heart in my mouth, and was
at last rewarded by catching a glimpse of something yellow moving behind
Long Odds |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: individual soul. A creed that fills the shallow with satisfaction
leaves but an aching void in the deep. It is not of the slightest
consequence how the belief starts; differentiated it is bound to
become. The higher minds alone can rest content with abstract
imaginings; the lower must have concrete realities on which to pin
their faith. With them, inevitably, ideals degenerate into idols.
In all religions this unavoidable debasement has taken place.
The Roman Catholic who prays to a wooden image of Christ is not one
whit less idolatrous than the Buddhist who worships a bronze statue
of Amida Butzu. All that the common people are capable of seeing is
the soul-envelope, for the soul itself they are unable to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: memory; it was the first time that I knowingly met Beauty.
And in the house there were books. The rubbish old Lady Drew
read I never saw; stuff of the Maria Monk type, I have since
gathered, had a fascination for her; but back in the past there
had been a Drew of intellectual enterprise, Sir Cuthbert, the son
of Sir Matthew who built the house; and thrust away, neglected
and despised, in an old room upstairs, were books and treasures
of his that my mother let me rout among during a spell of wintry
wet. Sitting under a dormer window on a shelf above great stores
of tea and spices, I became familiar with much of Hogarth in a
big portfolio, with Raphael, there was a great book of
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