I am also aware how the points I am making above can readily be explained away with references to my ego, ignorance, lack of commitment, wrong priorities, etc. All that is fine. Things be as they may, the fact is that this is how I feel currently and this is the action my heart propels me to do. That is the same heart that brought me into Art of Living in the first place. I have nothing else to trust.

“Take stock of those around you and you will...hear them talk in precise terms about themselves and their surroundings, which would seem to point to them having ideas on the matter. But start to analyze those ideas and you will find that they hardly reflect in any way the reality to which they appear to refer, and if you go deeper you will discover that there is not even an attempt to adjust the ideas of this reality. Quite the contrary: through these notions the individual is trying to cut off any personal vision of reality, of his own very life. For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his "ideas" are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defense of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality.”

~JOSÉ ORTEGA y GASSET

"How much lipstick can you put on the pig without poisoning the poor thing?"

- some net person

"The illusion of freedom [in America] will continue as long as it's
profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion
becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the
scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables
and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back
of the theater."

~Frank Zappa