Al David Quotes
Maybe fate's arithmetic is so diffuse that it's not arithmetic at all.
Evan no longer tells people I fight bad guys for a living. When asked, he tells his friends that his dad talks on the phone a lot and vacuums on occasion.
Evil's when you push your agenda over someone else's. When you assert your beliefs over somebody's contrary beliefs. That's evil.
Shamanism is not simply a component of society: on the contrary, shamanism, together with its tiered cosmos, can be said to be the overall framework of society.
Consciousness has evolved biologically and can therefore be explained biologically.
Primary consciousness is a state of being aware of things in the world – of having mental images in the present.But it is not accompanied by any sense of a person with a past and future…
Primary consciousness is a kind of ‘remembered present’…
I believe it is reasonable to assume that higher-order consciousness developed neurologically in Africa before the second wave of emigration to the Middle East and Europe.
Improved memory made possible the long-term recollection of dreams and visions and the construction of those recollections into a spirit world.
Once human beings had developed higher-order consciousness, they had the ability to see mental images projected onto surfaces and to experience afterimages.
For the makers, the paintings and engravings were visions, not representations of visions.
In Lascaux and other sites, hoofs are depicted to show their underside, or hoofprint.
The portable animal statuettes were therefore far more than decorative trinkets: they were reified three-dimensional spirit animals with all their prophylactic and other powers.
Shamans submit to death in order to serve their communities.
The Upper Palaeolithic figures known as ‘wounded men’ occur at Cougnac and Pech Merle, two sites in the Quercy district of France.
The ‘wounded men’ may, I argue, represent a form of shamanistic suffering, ‘death’ and initiation that was closely associated with somatic hallucinati
In altered states of consciousness, the nervous system itself becomes a ‘sixth sense’ that produces a variety of images including entoptic phenomena.
There were at least four contexts in which San shamans acquired insights into the spiritual world: – the trance dance, – special curing rituals, – viewing rock art, and – dreams.
The principal aim of a vision quest is to ‘see’ a spirit animal that will become the quester’s animal-helper and source of his power.
A shaman’s activities as a sorcerer, or his own conscious act of entry into the supernatural world, were a kind of “killing”.
People tend to romanticise consciousness, as if it’s something spiritual. It’s just a word we use to describe complexity.
We are not at the center of ourselves, but instead — like the Earth in the Milky Way, and the Milky Way in the universe — far out on a distant edge, hearing little of what is transpiring.
Consciousness is the chronic pain of life, and all higher organisms suffer it every waking moment.
After all, it isn't the facts of one's environment, but one's attitude toward them, that determines whether one will be defeated or victorious.
Force is incomplete and therefore has to be fed energy constantly. Power is total and complete in itself and requires nothing from outside.
Humankind is but the pieces in a game, plastic soldiers waging war between boy gods.
I tried to say something cool, wound up stammering something like, “WANNA YOU WANNA WEENIE ME?” The end kind of trailed off in a shrill, choking warble.
those who get upset for being treated the way that they treat others, will never understand why others treat them the way that they treat others.
When one person attempts to “fix it” for the other person, the connection of acceptance is snapped and the sender and receiver miss an opportunity for understanding.
When I looked at myself through the prism of awareness, great tears came as I connected with how this wounded child felt.
Love is the reason why, in confusion, we understand.
The health of an enlightened and progressive society is measured by how vibrant is its science fiction, since that is where true self-critique and appraisal and hope lie.
It is incumbent upon us to do what we can, even if we cannot do much.
Hard work is great. It buys you more tickets to the luck lottery.
He had seen better days - though these had only served to embitter him against his current circumstances.
Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.
The world was full of waistrels and waifs, sycophants and spies - all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or written suspect
Furniture or gold can be taken away from you, but knowledge and a new language can easily be taken from one place to the other, and nobody can take them away from you.
Language itself is a major resource in the naming of what cannot be named
