3 results for (book:deavf1 AND heading:"introductori essay by robert f butt" AND stemmed:accomplish)

DEaVF1 Introductory Essays by Robert F. Butts essays wrenching addenda delve Lumsden

Moreover, the choice of presenting the material in essay form proved to have one virtue that was more valuable than all the others combined: It allowed us to delve into the events I describe, and “our deep-seated, sometimes wrenching feelings connected to them,” a little bit at a time. Those situations might have been too devastating for us otherwise, too emotionally threatening, too charged for us to present them with at least the minimum amount of objectivity required by the written word. Many of the events and feelings evoked such deep implications of trial and challenge for Jane and me that we were often left with strong feelings of unreality: This can’t be happening to us. At our ages (52 and 62, Jane and I, respectively), why have we created lives with such nightmarish connotations? Why do I have to leave my dear wife alone in the hospital each night, so that I feel like crying for her when I go to bed by myself in the hill house? Why can’t we be left alone to live lives of peace and creativity? And how many millions and millions of times through the ages have other human beings on this planet felt the same way—and will yet? Why are our lives ending like this, when we feel that simply getting through each day is an accomplishment?

DEaVF1 Essay 7 Friday, May 7, 1982 reincarnational redemption essay serf magical

[...] It seems that we can feel his concepts—intermingled with our own questions, ideas, and accomplishments—constantly turning within a kind of special excitement and revelatory insight. [...]

[...] As far as our understanding can go, such a redemptive quality can be psychic, physical, both, or simply based on explorations of feeling and accomplishment we have yet to know.

[...] For emphasis I myself underlined that last phrase, because it’s easy to miss how very important it really is: Our individual concept of the amount of time necessary to accomplish an action like a healing will govern its progress. [...]

DEaVF1 Essay 3 Friday, April 16, 1982 sinful thyroid superhuman gland hospital

[...] His weaknesses were out in the open, dramatically presented, and from that point, unless he chose death he could only go forward—for suddenly he felt that there was after all some room to move, that achievements were possible, where before all accomplishments seemed beside the point in the face of his expected superhuman activity.