We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.
Interpretation
Life is a brief experience between two voids, emphasizing its transient beauty.
Nikos Kazantzakis' quote reflects on the nature of existence, suggesting that life is a fleeting moment of brightness amidst the darkness of before and after. It invites a contemplation of life as a precious, luminous interval that deserves appreciation in contrast to the inevitability of life's end and the origins that remain shrouded in mystery.
In practice
In a motivational speech about appreciating the moment, this quote can inspire the audience to cherish their experiences.
A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long. It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends. But among responsible men, men who keep their eyes riveted day and night upon the Supreme Duty, the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.
This, I thought, is how great visionaries and poets see everything- as if for the first time. Each morning they see a new world before their eyes; they do not really see it, they create it.
What happiness this is: to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of paradise?
I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen.
The dual substance of Christ - the yearning, so human, so superhuman, of man to attain God. [...] has always been a deep inscrutable mystery to me. [...] My principle anguish and source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. [...] And my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met.
I fight to embrace the entire circle of human activity to the full extent of my ability.
A certain type of person strives to become a master over all, and to extend his force, his will to power, and to subdue all that resists it. But he encounters the power of others, and comes to an arrangement, a union, with those that are like him: thus they work together to serve the will to power. And the process goes on.
Life is teleology par excellence; it is the intrinsic striving towards a goal, and the living organism is a system of directed aims which seek to fulfill themselves.
Veganism has given me a higher level of awareness and spirituality, primary because the energy associated with eating has shifted to other areas. If youβre violent to yourself by putting [harmful] things into your body that violate its spirit, it will be difficult not to perpetuate that [violence] onto someone else.
For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.
All the forces that we see in nature, such as gravitation, attraction, and repulsion, or as thought, feeling, and nervous motion - all these various forces resolve into that Prana, and the vibration of the Prana ceases. In that state it remains until the beginning of the next cycle. Prana then begins to vibrate, and that vibration acts upon the Akasha, and all these forms are thrown out in regular succession.
Don't see yourself as a body of clay; See yourself as a mirror reflecting the divine beauty.
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