![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ferineIt is not willful ignorance to be discerning of who we consider friends. It is not willful ignorance to remove oneself from drama. It is not willful ignorance to refrain from reading journals, forums, and sites that are mean-spirited and leave one with a bad feeling.
The primary outside influence for concentrating on meaningful relationships is the book A Prisoner In Fairyland by Algernon Blackwood. Actually, to refer to it as an "outside" influence is demeaning; it's very much an inside influence.
I've read many books from various genres in my days. More than a few have changed my thinking, opened my mind in new ways, and felt magical in an honest sense.
This particular book is unlike anything I've read before. It weaves a spell of hope, positivety, and the nature of giving back to the universe.
I'm reading it slowly, carefully, digesting each intricate line like a fine meal. This is honest magic.
Choice lines spurring me:
From page 40:
"'Does vivid thinking, I wonder, make pictures everywhere?... And -- can they last?.'"
From page 41:
"... if with so-called real people such an error (accidentally switching people’s names when introducing them) was possible, how could he be sure of anything? Which after all, he asked himself, was real? It was the Vicar’s mistake, he learned later; but the trivial incident served to point this confusion in his mind between an outer and an inner world -- to the disadvantage, if anything, of the former."
From page 42:
"'These ghosts that nowadays people explain scientifically -- what are they but thoughts visualized by vivid thinking such as yours -- creative thinking? They may be just pictures created in moments of strong passionate feeling that persist for centuries and reach other minds direct. They’re not seen with the outer eye, that’s certain, for no two people ever see them together. But I’m sure these pictures flame up through the mind sometimes just as clearly as folk see Grey Ladies and the like flit down the stairs at midnight.'"
From page 43:
"'I only mean', the other replied more gravely, 'that what a man thinks, and makes with thinking, is the real thing. It’s in the heart that sin is first real. The act is the least important end of it -- grave only because it is the inevitable result of the thinking. Action is merely delayed thinking, after all. Don't think ghosts and bogeys, I always say to children, or you'll surely see them.'
"'The thought that leaves your brain, provided it be a real enough thought strongly fashioned, goes all over the world, and may reach any other brain tuned to its acceptance.'
"'You always were earnest, even in your play, and I don't mind telling you that I’ve often prayed for something of that zeal of yours -- that zeal for others. It’s a remarkable gift. You will never bury it, will you?' he spoke eagerly, passionately, leaning forward a little across the table. 'Few have it nowadays; it grows rarer with the luxury and self-seeking of the age. It struck me so in you as a boy, that even your sprites worked not for themselves but for others --'"
From page 44:
"Wherein was any single thing in the world worth doing, any object of life worth following, unless as means to an end, and that end helping someone else. One's own little personal dreams became exhausted in a few years, endeavors for self smothered beneath the rain of disappointments; but others, and work for others, this was endless and inexhaustible."
From page 46:
"'Only the world today no longer believes in Fairyland,' was the reply, 'and even the children have become scientific. Perhaps it's only buried though. The two ought to run in harness really -- opposite interpretations of the universe. One might revive it -- here and there, perhaps. Without it, all the tenderness seems leaking out of life --'
"'It's belief that moves the world; people want teachers -- that's my experience in the pulpit and the parish; a world in miniature, after all -- but they won’t listen to a teacher who hasn't got it. There are no great poets today, only discoverers. The poets, the interpreters of discovery, are gone -- starved out of life by ridicule, and by questions to which exact answers are impossible.'
"'Take the whole world with you into Fairyland,' he heard the low voice come murmuring in his ear across the lilacs. And there was starlight in it -- that gentle, steady brilliance that steals into people while they sleep and dream, tracing patterns of glory they may recognize when they wake, yet marveling whence it came. 'The world wants its Fairyland back again, and won't be happy till it gets it.'
"'Once give them of your magic, and each may shape his Fairyland as he chooses...'"
From page 47:
"'You have the big and simple things alive in you,' the voice carried on his pictured thought among the flowers, 'In your heart they lie all waiting to be used. Nothing can smother them. Only -- you must give them out.'"
The primary outside influence for concentrating on meaningful relationships is the book A Prisoner In Fairyland by Algernon Blackwood. Actually, to refer to it as an "outside" influence is demeaning; it's very much an inside influence.
I've read many books from various genres in my days. More than a few have changed my thinking, opened my mind in new ways, and felt magical in an honest sense.
This particular book is unlike anything I've read before. It weaves a spell of hope, positivety, and the nature of giving back to the universe.
I'm reading it slowly, carefully, digesting each intricate line like a fine meal. This is honest magic.
Choice lines spurring me:
From page 40:
"'Does vivid thinking, I wonder, make pictures everywhere?... And -- can they last?.'"
From page 41:
"... if with so-called real people such an error (accidentally switching people’s names when introducing them) was possible, how could he be sure of anything? Which after all, he asked himself, was real? It was the Vicar’s mistake, he learned later; but the trivial incident served to point this confusion in his mind between an outer and an inner world -- to the disadvantage, if anything, of the former."
From page 42:
"'These ghosts that nowadays people explain scientifically -- what are they but thoughts visualized by vivid thinking such as yours -- creative thinking? They may be just pictures created in moments of strong passionate feeling that persist for centuries and reach other minds direct. They’re not seen with the outer eye, that’s certain, for no two people ever see them together. But I’m sure these pictures flame up through the mind sometimes just as clearly as folk see Grey Ladies and the like flit down the stairs at midnight.'"
From page 43:
"'I only mean', the other replied more gravely, 'that what a man thinks, and makes with thinking, is the real thing. It’s in the heart that sin is first real. The act is the least important end of it -- grave only because it is the inevitable result of the thinking. Action is merely delayed thinking, after all. Don't think ghosts and bogeys, I always say to children, or you'll surely see them.'
"'The thought that leaves your brain, provided it be a real enough thought strongly fashioned, goes all over the world, and may reach any other brain tuned to its acceptance.'
"'You always were earnest, even in your play, and I don't mind telling you that I’ve often prayed for something of that zeal of yours -- that zeal for others. It’s a remarkable gift. You will never bury it, will you?' he spoke eagerly, passionately, leaning forward a little across the table. 'Few have it nowadays; it grows rarer with the luxury and self-seeking of the age. It struck me so in you as a boy, that even your sprites worked not for themselves but for others --'"
From page 44:
"Wherein was any single thing in the world worth doing, any object of life worth following, unless as means to an end, and that end helping someone else. One's own little personal dreams became exhausted in a few years, endeavors for self smothered beneath the rain of disappointments; but others, and work for others, this was endless and inexhaustible."
From page 46:
"'Only the world today no longer believes in Fairyland,' was the reply, 'and even the children have become scientific. Perhaps it's only buried though. The two ought to run in harness really -- opposite interpretations of the universe. One might revive it -- here and there, perhaps. Without it, all the tenderness seems leaking out of life --'
"'It's belief that moves the world; people want teachers -- that's my experience in the pulpit and the parish; a world in miniature, after all -- but they won’t listen to a teacher who hasn't got it. There are no great poets today, only discoverers. The poets, the interpreters of discovery, are gone -- starved out of life by ridicule, and by questions to which exact answers are impossible.'
"'Take the whole world with you into Fairyland,' he heard the low voice come murmuring in his ear across the lilacs. And there was starlight in it -- that gentle, steady brilliance that steals into people while they sleep and dream, tracing patterns of glory they may recognize when they wake, yet marveling whence it came. 'The world wants its Fairyland back again, and won't be happy till it gets it.'
"'Once give them of your magic, and each may shape his Fairyland as he chooses...'"
From page 47:
"'You have the big and simple things alive in you,' the voice carried on his pictured thought among the flowers, 'In your heart they lie all waiting to be used. Nothing can smother them. Only -- you must give them out.'"
