By and large, we were taught to perceive in a way that would make us unhappy and alienated from our genius. Why? Because such perceptions validate and perpetuate the status quo of separation and competition, the state that the teacher Don Miguel Ruiz has called “the dream of hell” and which I call the mad world.
Carolyn Elliott, Awaken Your Genius: A Seven-Step Path to Freeing Your Creativity and Manifesting Your Dreams [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library]
it is the fashion to be unhappy. To have a reason for being so would be exceedingly common-place: to be so without any is the province of genius: the art of being miserable for misery’s sake, has been brought to great perfection in our days
Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library, Internet Archive]
But—unhappy as you see me—crushed, overwhelmed with deep affliction as you behold me—anxious, but unable to repent for the past as I am, and filled with appalling dread for the future as I now proclaim myself to be, still is my power far, far beyond that limit which hems mortal energies within so small a sphere.
George W M Reynolds, Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf [Amazon, Amazon (Dover), Gutenberg, Publisher, Local Library]
