To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody’s mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.
Interestingly enough, not all feelings result from the body’s reaction to external stimuli. Sometimes changes are purely simulated in the brain maps.
I wrote two plotted books, got some of the fundamentals of storytelling down, then… it’s sort of like taking the training wheels off, trying to write a book that’s fun in the same way without relying on quite such mechanical or external beats.
You can look for external sources of motivation and that can catalyze a change, but it won’t sustain one. It has to be from an internal desire.
Unraveling external selves and coming home to our real identity is the true meaning of soul work.
I look at modern life and I see people not taking responsibility for their lives. The temptation to blame, to find external causes to one’s own issues is something that is particularly modern. I know that personally I find that sense of responsibility interesting.
From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon.
Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment.
I think that the power of the Silent Minute lies in its inherent lack of external direction: what participants actually do during that minute – prayer, contemplation, focus – is up to them.
Amusement is a way of boredom-avoidance through external stimulation that fails to exercise our minds. It’s mere diversion.
From my first published paper in 1946, my obsession has been to objectify inner experiences, to demystify the software of human existence. How? By relating changes in external behavior, systematically and lawfully, to changes in the brain.
India continues to be guided by the principles of being non-interfering, non-prescriptive, and non-judgemental. In other words, India remains ready to provide any support but strongly believes that it is for the Arab countries to decide their destiny without any external interference or diktats from outside.
I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there’s a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us.
Sensation is not the conduction of a quality or state of external bodies to consciousness, but the conduction of a quality or state of our nerves to consciousness, excited by an external cause.
The external world is changing drastically, and enterprises and products will have a short lifecycle if they don’t change. So we have to react to market trends. Nothing lasts forever in today’s world.
I get anxiety and distressed from external stimuli quite easily, so if I’m in a constant state of self-protection, it’s exhausting.
What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things… it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.
The digestive canal represents a tube passing through the entire organism and communicating with the external world, i.e. as it were the external surface of the body, but turned inwards and thus hidden in the organism.
With external help, even the countries ravaged by World War II recovered.
We will not reform the yuan until the time is right even if there is external pressure.
It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every religion and philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along, and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them.
The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.
I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external, the kind of fiction that Jane Smiley nicely describes as ‘first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don’t fit, into their social worlds.’
I paint to rest from the phenomena of the external world-to pronounce and to make notations of its essences with which to verify the inner eye.
I try to write about internal experience versus the external self. I like to present ideas, but not package them neatly.
The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.
Internal unity means that external security issues can be dealt with.
If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least resistance, a tendency that causes us either to remain as we are, or to look primarily to activities external to ourselves for what will provide new impetus to our lives.
Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces.
When you’re external to a publisher, most independent developers live on paranoia. The mainstay of every day is paranoia – every indie company believes their publisher in some way has these Machiavellian plans that will cause disaster for the game and the studio.
I’m an external person, I’m not than internal at all.
Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things; and I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatever state he is.
Christmas… is not an external event at all, but a piece of one’s home that one carries in one’s heart.
We live in a time of conflict – external and internal – when we sometimes concentrate too much on what divides us. Today, fly the Stars and Stripes with pride and confidence that what unites is far stronger.
Chinese learning is an internal learning, but Western learning is an external one; Chinese learning is for the cultivation of oneself, just as Western learning is for the handling of worldly affairs.
Feeling successful is internal, not external.
We must recognize that Small Island Developing States are particularly vulnerable to climate change, natural disasters, and external shocks.
Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.
We know we need bosses and deadlines to help us get work done. But sometimes we can also use an external push to make us have a good time. In both cases, our future self will appreciate the help.
Writing is work. It takes a lot of contemplation, concentration, and out-and-out sweat. People tend to romanticize it, that somehow your work appears by benefit of some mystical external force. In reality, to be a writer, you have to sit down and write. It’s work, and often it’s hard work.
Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.
Libya is a failed state and becoming a launching pad for external operations, as is Sinai in Egypt.
Non-democratic regimes always need to mobilize their people against external enemies in order to maintain internal stability.
When you are passionate about something, you don’t need external motivation to work towards achieving it.
There are two different stories in horror: internal and external. In external horror films, the evil comes from the outside, the other tribe, this thing in the darkness that we don’t understand. Internal is the human heart.
I don’t blame anyone but myself for the kind of parts I got. To blame external circumstances is absolute folly.
There are comedians who focus on everything that is external. They focus on politics and the news, what’s going on in that city and that night.
Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.
I think that’s one of the first things you’d say if you met me: that I am just nice and smiley. And that’s how I might appear when I’m not competing. But I’m totally different when it comes to sport. It’s just something that seems to be within me. It’s not external or visual. But it’s within me.
Changes in relative ionic concentration across the postsynaptic membrane are readily effected by altering the ionic composition of the external medium.
Developing countries have much to gain from capital mobility: the ability to tap external sources of finance, greater financial efficiency from deeper stock and bond markets, and technology transfer and know-how from foreign direct investment.
Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.
It follows from what we have just said, that the natural changes of monads come from an internal principle, since an external cause would be unable to influence their inner being.
