There is the difference between us,” he said. “You are God embodied. You walk around within the greatest miracle of this universe, yet you refuse to touch or see or feel or believe in it.

"The individual can no longer live except in a climate of tension and overexcitement. He can no longer be a smiling skeptical spectator. He is indeed "engaged," but involuntarily so, since he has ceased to dominate his own thoughts and actions."

Have they been educated to the level of their intellectual ability or ambition? Is their use of free time engaging, meaningful, and productive? Have they formulated solid and well-articulated plans for the future? Are they (and those they are close to) free of any serious physical health or economic problems? Do they have friends and a social life? A stable and satisfying intimate partnership? Close and functional familial relationships? A career — or, at least, a job — that is financially sufficient, stable and, if possible, a source of satisfaction and opportunity? If the answer to any three or more of these questions is no, I consider that my new client is insufficiently embedded in the interpersonal world and is in danger of spiraling downward psychologically because of that.

decisively engaged’?” I

But what I came to realize was - leads alone aren’t enough. We want engaged leads: people who *show* interest in the stuff you sell. If someone gives their contact information on a website, that is an engaged lead. If someone follows you on social media and you can contact them, that is an engaged lead. If people reply to your email campaign, they are engaged leads. The leads showing interest are the leads that matter. Engaged leads are the true output of advertising.

I am not talking about you being a spectator, I am talking about involvement. I am talking about involving yourself into life in such a way that you dissolve into it.

Rice professor Erik Dane finds that the more expertise and experience people gain, the more entrenched they become in a particular way of viewing the world. He points to studies showing that expert bridge players struggled more than novices to adapt when the rules were changed, and that expert accountants were worse than novices at applying a new tax law. As we gain knowledge about a domain, we become prisoners of our prototypes.

Hardly anyone has been told the following truth: In order to be genuinely happy there is one and only one thing you need to do: get deprogrammed, get rid of those attachments.

O How may I ever express that secret word? O how can I say He is not like this, and He is like that? If I say that He is within me, the universe is ashamed: If I say that He is without me, it is falsehood. He makes the inner and the outer worlds to be indivisibly one; The conscious and the unconscious, both are His footstools. He is neither manifest nor hidden, He is neither revealed nor unrevealed: There are no words to tell that which He is.

"To become the enemy" means to think yourself in the enemy's position

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager — I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

Those who avoid the sin of intellectual sloth could be called “engaged.” They are more alert, more intellectually active, less willing to be satisfied with superficially attractive answers, more skeptical about their intuitions.

What a crafty enemy we have. Can you see it? The enemy knows that if he can cause us to hide ourselves — who God made us to be — that it also causes us to lose sight of our identity in God as his image-bearers. Then, because our view of ourselves has been diminished, we shrink from stepping into the destiny God created for us. That’s a very effective strategy.

A mind enclosed in language is in prison.

Our existence as embodied beings is purely momentary; what are a hundred years in eternity? But if we shatter the chains of egotism, and melt into the ocean of humanity, we share its dignity. To feel that we are something is to set up a barrier between God and ourselves; to cease feeling that we are something is to become one with God.” — Gandhi