Learn to feel attracted to repulsive things without relaxing your outward discipline. The greatest inward unruliness combined with the greatest outward discipline makes for perfect sensuality. Every gesture that realizes a dream or desire unrealizes it in reality.

Substitution is less difficult than you think. By substitution I mean the practice of imagining an orgasm with man A while copulating with man B. is less difficult than you think. By substitution I mean the practice of imagining an orgasm with man A while copulating with man B.

ADVICE TO U UNHAPPILY.

MARRIED W WOMEN (III) (III).

My wish for you, my dear disciples, is that by faithfully following my advice you'll experience vastly multiplied sensual pleasures with with, not in the acts of acts of, the male animal to whom Church and State have tied you by your womb and a last name.

It's by digging its feet in the ground that the bird takes off in flight. May this image, daughters, serve as a perpetual reminder of the only spiritual commandment there is.

The height of sensuality, if you can achieve it, is to be the lewdest slut imaginable and yet never unfaithful to your husband, not even with your eyes.

To be a slut on the inside on the inside, to be unfaithful to your husband on the inside on the inside, to cheat on him as you hug him, to kiss him with kisses that aren't for him that is sensuality, O superior women, O my mysterious and cerebral disciples.

Why don't I give the same advice to men? Because the man is a different kind of creature. If he's inferior, I recommend that he seduce as many women as he can, resorting to my contempt when ..... The superior man doesn't need women. He can have sensuality without sexual possession. This is something a woman, even a superior one, could never accept. The woman is a fundamentally sexual creature.

APOCALYPTIC F FEELING.

Since every step I took in life brought me into horrifying contact with the New, and since every new person I met was a new living fragment of the unknown that I placed on my desk for my frightful daily meditation, I decided to abstain from everything, to go forward in nothing, to reduce action to a minimum, to make it hard for people and events to find me, to perfect the art of abstinence, and to take abdication to unprecedented heights. That's how badly life terrifies and tortures me.

To make a decision, to finalize something, to emerge from the realm of doubt and obscurity these are things that seem to me like catastrophes or universal cataclysms.

Life, as I know it, is cataclysms and apocalypses. With each passing day I feel that much more incompetent even to trace gestures or to conceive myself in clearly real situations.

With each passing day the presence of others which my soul always receives like a rude surprise becomes more painful and distressing. To talk with people makes my skin crawl. If they show an interest in me, I run. If they look at me, I shudder. If .....

I'm forever on the defensive. I suffer from life and from other people. I can't look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful only then do I find myself and feel comforted.

Life makes me cold. My existence is all damp cellars and lightless catacombs. I'm the disastrous defeat of the last army that sustained the last empire. Yes, I feel as if I were at the end of an ancient ruling civilization. I, who was used to commanding others, am now alone and forsaken. I, who always had advisers to guide me, now have no friend or guide.

Something in me is always begging for compassion, and it weeps over itself as over a dead god whose altars were all destroyed when the white wave of young barbarians stormed the borders and life came and demanded to know what the empire had done with happiness.

I'm always afraid others might talk about me. I've failed in everything. I didn't dare think of being something; I didn't even dream of thinking about being something, because even in my dreams in my visionary state as a mere dreamer I realized I was unfit for life.

No feeling in the world can lift my head from the pillow where I've let it sink in desperation, unable to deal with my body or with the idea that I'm alive, or even with the abstract idea of life.

I don't speak the language of any reality, and I stagger among the things of life like a sick man who finally got up after being bedridden for months. Only in bed do I feel like part of normal life. It pleases me to get a fever, since it seems perfectly natural to my recumbent state. Like a flame in the wind I flutter and get dizzy. Only in the dead air of closed rooms do I breathe the normality of my life. to my recumbent state. Like a flame in the wind I flutter and get dizzy. Only in the dead air of closed rooms do I breathe the normality of my life.

I don't even miss the ocean breeze. I've become resigned to having my soul for a cloister and to being no more to myself than an autumn in an arid expanse, with only a glimmer of living life, as of a light which expires in the canopied darkness of pools, with no energy and colour but that of the violet splendour of exile when the sun dips behind the hills...

I have no other real pleasure besides the analysis of my pain, nor any other sensual delight besides the morbid dribbling of sensations when they crumble and rot light footsteps in the murky shadows, and we don't even turn around to find out whose they are; faint songs in the distance, the words of which we don't try to catch, for we are lulled more by the vagueness of what they're saying and by the mystery of where they come from; hazy secrets of pallid waters, filling the and nocturnal spaces with ethereal far-aways; bells of distant carriages, and who knows where they're returning from or what laughs and gaiety they contain, because from here they're just distant, drowsy carriages in the dull torpor of an afternoon in which summer is giving way to autumn... and nocturnal spaces with ethereal far-aways; bells of distant carriages, and who knows where they're returning from or what laughs and gaiety they contain, because from here they're just distant, drowsy carriages in the dull torpor of an afternoon in which summer is giving way to autumn...

The flowers in the garden have died and withered to become other flowers older and more noble, their dead yellow more compatible with mystery, silence and solitude. The water bubbles that surface in the pools have their place in dreams. The distant croaking of frogs! O lifeless countryside within me! O rustic peacefulness of dreams! O my life, futile as that of a shiftless vagabond who sleeps on the side of the road, in a fresh and transparent slumber, with the fragrance of the meadows entering his soul like a mist, profound and full of eternity like everything that's not linked to anything, nocturnal, anonymous, nomadic and weary beneath the stars' cold compassion.

I follow wherever my dreams lead, making the images into steps that lead to other images; I unfold like a fan each chance metaphor into a large, inwardly visible picture; I cast off my life like a suit that's too tight. I hide among trees, far away from the roads. I lose myself. And for a few tenuous moments I'm able to forget my taste for life, to bury the thought of daylight and bustle, and to consciously, absurdly terminate in my sensations, with an empire in agonizing ruins but also with a grand entrance amid victory banners and drums into a glorious final city where I would weep over nothing and desire nothing, asking no one not even myself for so much as the right to exist.

It's me who suffers from the sickly surfaces of the pools I've created in dreams. Mine is the paleness of the moon I envision over wooded landscapes. Mine is the weariness of the stagnant autumn skies that I remember but have never seen. All of my dead life, all my flawed dreams and all that I had that wasn't mine oppresses me in the blue of my inner skies, in the visible rippling of my soul's rivers, and in the vast, restless serenity of the wheat on the plains which I see but don't see.

A cup of coffee, a bit of tobacco whose aroma passes through me when I smoke it, my eyes half shut in a half-dark room this, and my dreams, are all I want from life. If it doesn't seem to me like too little? I don't know. How should I know what's a little and what's a lot?

O summer afternoon outside, how I'd like to be utterly different... I open the window. Everything outside is soft, but it cuts me like an indefinite pain, like a vague feeling of dissatisfaction.

And one last thing cuts me, tears me, rips my soul to pieces. It's that I, in this moment and at this window, thinking these sad and soft things, ought to be an attractive, aesthetic figure, like a figure in a painting and I'm not even that...

Let the moment pass and be forgotten... Let the night come, let it grow, let it fall over everything and never lift back up. Let this soul be my tomb for ever, and become sheer darkness, and may I never be able to live again without feelings and desires. become sheer darkness, and may I never be able to live again without feelings and desires.

THE A ART OF E EFFECTIVE D DREAMING (I) (I).

Make sure, first of all, that you respect nothing, believe nothing, nothing. But while showing disrespect, you should hold on to the desire to respect something; while despising what you don't love, you should retain the painful longing to love someone; and while disdaining life, you should preserve the idea that it must be wonderful to live and cherish it. Having done this, you'll have laid the foundations for the edifice of your dreams. nothing. But while showing disrespect, you should hold on to the desire to respect something; while despising what you don't love, you should retain the painful longing to love someone; and while disdaining life, you should preserve the idea that it must be wonderful to live and cherish it. Having done this, you'll have laid the foundations for the edifice of your dreams.

Remember that you're embarking on the loftiest task of all. To dream is to find ourselves. You're going to be the Columbus of your soul. You're going to set out to discover your own landscapes. Make sure you're on the right track and that your instruments can't mislead you.

The art of dreaming is difficult, because it's an art of passivity, in which we concentrate our efforts on avoiding all effort. If there were an art of sleeping, it would no doubt be somewhat similar.

Note that the art of dreaming is not the art of directing our dreams. To direct is to act. The true dreamer surrenders to himself, is possessed by himself.

Avoid all material stimulants. In the beginning you'll be tempted to masturbate, to consume alcohol, to smoke opium..... This is all effort and seeking. To be a good dreamer, you have to be nothing but a dreamer. Opium and morphine are purchased in pharmacies how can you expect to dream through them? Masturbation is a physical thing how can you expect.....

Now if you dream about masturbating, all fine and good. If you dream about smoking opium or taking morphine, and become intoxicated from the idea of the opium, of the morphine of your dreams, then you deserve to be praised: you are performing like a perfect dreamer. of the morphine of your dreams, then you deserve to be praised: you are performing like a perfect dreamer.

Always think of yourself as sadder and more miserable than you are. There's no harm in it. It even serves as a kind of trick ladder to the world of dreams.

THE A ART OF E EFFECTIVE D DREAMING (II) (II).

Postpone everything. Never do today what you can leave for tomorrow.* In fact you need not do anything at all, tomorrow or today.

Never think about what you're going to do. Don't do it.

Live your life. Don't be lived by it. Right or wrong, happy or sad, be your own self. You can do this only by dreaming, because your real life, your human life, is the one that doesn't belong to you but to others. You must replace your life with your dreaming, concentrating only on dreaming perfectly. In all the acts of your real life, from that of being born to that of dying, you don't act you're acted; you don't live you're merely lived.

Become an inscrutable sphinx to others. Shut yourself in your ivory tower, but without slamming the door. Your ivory tower is you.

And if someone tells you this is false and absurd, don't believe it. But don't believe in what I say either, because one ought not believe in anything.

Disdain everything, but in such a way that your disdain doesn't disturb you. Don't think you're superior because you disdain. This is the key to the art of noble disdain.

THE A ART OF E EFFECTIVE D DREAMING (III) (III).

By virtue of dreaming everything, everything in life will make you suffer more.....

That's the cross you will have to bear.

THE A ART OF E EFFECTIVE D DREAMING FOR M METAPHYSICAL M MINDS.

Reason, everything is easy and everything is easy and , because everything for me is a dream. I decide to dream something and I dream it. Sometimes I create in myself a philosopher, who methodically expounds philosophies while I, a young page, pay court to his daughter, whose soul I am, outside the window of her house. , because everything for me is a dream. I decide to dream something and I dream it. Sometimes I create in myself a philosopher, who methodically expounds philosophies while I, a young page, pay court to his daughter, whose soul I am, outside the window of her house.

I'm limited, of course, by what I know. I can't create a mathematician. But I'm content with what I have, which already allows for infinite combinations and countless dreams. And perhaps, through dreaming, I'll achieve still more. Though it's not really worth the bother. I'm already quite satisfied.

Pulverization of the personality: I don't know what my ideas are, nor my feelings or my character... When I feel something, I feel it only vaguely, in the visualized person of some being or other that appears in me. I've replaced my own self with my dreams I've replaced my own self with my dreams. Each person is merely his own dream of himself. I'm not even that.

Never read a book to the end, nor in sequence and without skipping.

I've never known what I felt. Whenever people spoke to me of such and such emotion and described it, I always felt they were describing something in my soul, but when I thought about it later, I always doubted. I never know if what I feel I am is what I really am or merely what I think I am. I'm a character of* my own plays.

Effort is useless but entertains. Reason is sterile but amusing. To love is tiresome but is perhaps preferable to not loving. Dreaming, however, substitutes for everything. In dreams I can have the impression of effort without actual effort. I can enter battles without the risk of getting scared or being wounded. I can reason without aiming to arrive at some truth (which I would never arrive at in any case), without trying to solve some problem (which I know I would never solve)..... I can love without worrying about being rejected or cheated on, and without getting bored. I can change my sweetheart and she'll always be the same. And should I wish to be cheated on or spurned, I can make it happen, and always in the way I want, always in the way that gives me pleasure. In dreams I can experience the worst anxieties, the harshest torments, the greatest victories. I can experience all of it as if it happened in life; it depends only on my ability to make my dreams vivid, sharp, real. This requires study and inner patience.

There are various ways of dreaming. One is to surrender completely to your dreams, without trying to make them clear and sharp, letting yourself go in the hazy twilight of the sensations they arouse. This is an inferior, tiresome form of dreaming, for it's monotonous, always the same. Rather different is the clear and directed directed dream, but the effort expended on directing it makes the dream too obviously artificial. The supreme artist the kind of dreamer I am expends only the effort of dream, but the effort expended on directing it makes the dream too obviously artificial. The supreme artist the kind of dreamer I am expends only the effort of wanting wanting his dream to be such and such, in accord with his whims, and it unfolds before him exactly as he would have desired but could never have conceived, because the mental effort would have worn him out. I want to dream of myself as a king. I decide all of a sudden that this is what I want, and lo and behold I'm the king of some country. Which one and what kind, the dream will tell me. For I've so triumphed over my dreams that they always unexpectedly bring me what I want. By focusing more sharply, I can perfect those scenes of life that come to me as only vague impressions. I would be utterly incapable of consciously picturing the various Middle Ages of diverse eras on diverse Earths that I've experienced in dreams. I'm amazed at the wealth of imagination that I never realized was in me. I let my dreams go their own way... They've become so pure that they always surpass my expectations. They're always even more beautiful than what I wanted. But only the most advanced dreamer can hope to reach this point. I've spent years dreamingly striving for this, and today I achieve it without effort. his dream to be such and such, in accord with his whims, and it unfolds before him exactly as he would have desired but could never have conceived, because the mental effort would have worn him out. I want to dream of myself as a king. I decide all of a sudden that this is what I want, and lo and behold I'm the king of some country. Which one and what kind, the dream will tell me. For I've so triumphed over my dreams that they always unexpectedly bring me what I want. By focusing more sharply, I can perfect those scenes of life that come to me as only vague impressions. I would be utterly incapable of consciously picturing the various Middle Ages of diverse eras on diverse Earths that I've experienced in dreams. I'm amazed at the wealth of imagination that I never realized was in me. I let my dreams go their own way... They've become so pure that they always surpass my expectations. They're always even more beautiful than what I wanted. But only the most advanced dreamer can hope to reach this point. I've spent years dreamingly striving for this, and today I achieve it without effort.

The best way to start dreaming is through books. Novels are especially helpful for the beginner. The first step is to learn to give in completely to your reading, to live totally with the characters of a novel. You'll know you're making progress when your own family and its troubles seem insipid and loathsome by comparison. It's best to avoid reading literary novels, which tend to divert our attention to the formal structure.

I'm not ashamed to admit that this is how I started. Strangely enough, detective novels, are what I are what I instinctively read. I was never able to read romantic novels in any sustained way, but this is for personal reasons, I being romantically disinclined even in my dreams. Let each man cultivate his particular inclination. Let us never forget that to dream is to explore ourselves. Sensual souls, for their reading matter, should choose the opposite of what I read. instinctively read. I was never able to read romantic novels in any sustained way, but this is for personal reasons, I being romantically disinclined even in my dreams. Let each man cultivate his particular inclination. Let us never forget that to dream is to explore ourselves. Sensual souls, for their reading matter, should choose the opposite of what I read.

When the dreamer experiences physical physical sensation when a novel about combat, flights and battles leaves his body sensation when a novel about combat, flights and battles leaves his body really really exhausted and his legs worn out then he has passed beyond the first stage of dreaming. In the case of the sensual soul, he should be able without any masturbation except in his mind to experience an ejaculation at the appropriate moment during the novel. exhausted and his legs worn out then he has passed beyond the first stage of dreaming. In the case of the sensual soul, he should be able without any masturbation except in his mind to experience an ejaculation at the appropriate moment during the novel.

Next, the dreamer should try to transfer all of this to the mental plane. The dreamed ejaculation (which I choose as the most violent and striking example) should be felt without actually happening should be felt without actually happening. The fatigue will be greater, but the pleasure will be incomparably more intense.

In the third stage all sensation becomes mental. This increases the feeling of pleasure and also of fatigue, but the body no longer feels anything; instead of weary limbs, it's our mind, will and emotions that become slack and sluggish... Having arrived this far, it's time to advance to the supreme stage of dreaming.

The second stage is to construct novels for your own enjoyment. This should be attempted only once dreaming has become perfectly mentalized, as described above. Otherwise, the effort to set a novel in motion will hinder the smooth mentalization of pleasure.

Third stage: Once our imagination has been trained, it will fashion dreams all by itself whenever we want.

At this point there's hardly even any mental fatigue. The dissolution of personality is total. We are mere ashes endowed with a soul but no form not even that of water, which adopts the shape of the vessel that holds it.

With this thoroughly established, complete and autonomous plays can unfold in us line by line. We may no longer have the energy to write them, but that won't be necessary. We'll be able to create secondhand; we can imagine one poet writing in us in one way, while another poet will write in a different way. I, having refined this skill to a considerable degree, can write in countlessly different ways, all of them original. thoroughly established, complete and autonomous plays can unfold in us line by line. We may no longer have the energy to write them, but that won't be necessary. We'll be able to create secondhand; we can imagine one poet writing in us in one way, while another poet will write in a different way. I, having refined this skill to a considerable degree, can write in countlessly different ways, all of them original.

The highest stage of dreaming is when, having created a picture with various figures whose lives we live all at the same time, we are jointly and interactively all of those souls we are jointly and interactively all of those souls. This leads to an incredible degree of depersonalization and the reduction of our spirit to ashes, and it is hard, I admit, not to feel a general weariness throughout one's entire being. But what triumph!

This is the only final asceticism. It's an asceticism without faith, and without any God.

God am I.

CASCADE.

Children know that the doll isn't real, but they treat it as if it were, to the point of crying with grief when it breaks. The art of children is in non-realization. How blessed is that deluded age, when life is negated* by the absence of sex, and reality is negated by the act of playing, unreal things standing in for real ones!

If I could only go back to being a child and remain one for ever, oblivious to the values that men attach to things and the relations they establish between them! When I was little, I often stood my toy soldiers on their heads. And what convincing argument of logic can prove to me that real soldiers shouldn't march head downward?

Gold is worth no more than glass to a child. And is gold's value truly any greater? The child obscurely senses the absurdity of the wraths, passions and fears he sees sculpted in adult gestures. And aren't all our fears, hatreds and loves truly vain and absurd?

O divinely absurd intuition of children! True vision of things, which we always dress with conventions, however nakedly we see them, and always blur with our ideas, however directly we look at them!

Might not God be an enormous child? Doesn't the whole universe seem like a game, like the prank of a mischievous child? So unreal, so.....

I laughingly threw out this idea for consideration, and only now, seeing it from a distance, do I realize how ghastly it is. (Who's to say it isn't true?) And it falls to the ground at my feet, shattering into shards of mystery and pulverized horror...

I wake up to make sure I exist...

An immense, indefinite tedium gurgles with a deceptively fresh sound in the cascades past the beehives, at the stupid far end of the yard.

CENOTAPH.

No surviving widow or son placed the obol in his mouth to pay Charon. We'll never know with what eyes he crossed the Styx and saw his face forever veiled to us reflected nine times in the waters of the underworld. The name of his shadow, which now wanders on the banks of the gloomy rivers, is for us but another shadow.

He died for his Country, without knowing how or why. His sacrifice had the glory of going unrecognized. He gave his life with his whole heart and soul: out of instinct, not duty; because he loved his Country, not because he was conscious of it. He defended it as a man defends his mother, whose son he is by birth rather than by logic. Faithful to the primeval secret, he didn't think about or wish for his death but instinctively lived it, as he had lived his life. The shadow he now inhabits is brother to the shadows that fell at Thermopylae, faithful in their flesh to the pledge made at their birth.

He died for his Country the way the sun daily rises. He was already, by nature, what Death would make of him.

He did not fall on behalf of some zealous faith, nor was he killed in the vile struggle for some great ideal. Unsullied by faith or humanitarianism, he did not die in defence of a political idea, the future of humanity, or a new religion. Having no faith in another world, with which the credulous of Mohammed and the followers of Christ deceive themselves, he saw death arrive without hoping for life in it; he saw life leave him without hoping for a better one.

He passed on naturally, like the wind and the day, taking with him the soul that had made him different. He plunged into the shadows the way a man, arriving at a door, walks through it. He died for his Country, the only thing above us that we can know and grasp. Neither the paradise of Moslems and Christians nor the transcendental oblivion of Buddhists was reflected in his eyes when in their depths the flame of his earthly life went out.

If we don't know who he is, neither did he know who he was. He did his duty without knowing what he'd done. He was guided by what makes the roses bloom and the death of leaves beautiful. Life has no better purpose, nor death a better reward.

Now, according as the gods allow, he visits the lightless regions, passing by the laments of Cocytus and the fire of Phlegethon, and hearing in the night the slow flowing of the livid, Lethean current.

He is anonymous like the instinct that killed him. He didn't think he would die for his Country; he died for it. He didn't decide to do his duty; he just did it. Since his soul bore no name, it is only right that we not ask what name defined his body. He was Portuguese, but not this or that Portuguese, and so he stands as the universal Portuguese.

His place is not next to the creators of Portugal, who have a different stature and a different consciousness. He doesn't belong in the company of our demigods, whose daring extended the routes of the sea and brought within our reach more land than could be had.

Let no statue or stone commemorate this soul who was all of us. Since he was the entire people, for a tomb he should have this entire land. We should bury him in his own memory, with only his example for a stone.

DECLARATION OF D DIFFERENCE.

The things of city and state have no power over us. It doesn't matter that the ministers and their courtiers shamelessly mishandle the nation's affairs. All of this occurs outside, like mud on a rainy day. We have nothing to do with it, however much it may have to do with us.

We are likewise indifferent to great convulsions such as war and crises around the world. As long as they don't come to our house, we don't care on whose door they knock. This attitude would appear to be founded on a profound contempt for others, but its real basis is merely a sceptical view of ourselves.

We're not kind or charitable. Not because we're the opposite, but because we're neither one way nor the other. Kindness is the form of delicacy that belongs to crude souls. It interests us as a phenomenon that takes place in other people, who have other ways of thinking. We observe without approving or disapproving. Our vocation is to be nothing.

We would be anarchists if we had been born in the classes which call themselves underprivileged, or in any of the others from which one can move up or down. But we are for the most part individuals born in the cracks between classes and social divisions nearly always in that decadent space between the aristocracy and the upper-middle class, the social niche of geniuses and lunatics with whom it's possible to get along.

Action disconcerts us, partly because of our physical incompetence, but mainly because it offends our moral sensibility. We consider it immoral to act. It seems to us that every thought is debased when expressed in words, which transform the thought into the property of others, making it understandable to anyone who can understand it.

We're sympathetic towards the occult and the secret arts. We are not occultists, however. We weren't born with the kind of will it takes, let alone the patience to educate and develop such a will into the perfect instrument of a wizard or hypnotist. But we sympathize with occultism, especially since it tends to express itself in ways that many who read and even think they understand it don't understand a thing. Its arcane attitude is arrogantly superior. It is, in addition, a rich source of mysterious and terrifying sensations: astral larvae, the strange beings with strange bodies evoked in its temples by ritual magic, and the immaterial presences that hover all around our unperceiving senses, in the physical silence of inner sound all of this comforts us in darkness and distress with the caress of its sticky, horrid hand.

But we don't sympathize with occultists when they act as apostles and champions of humanity; this strips them of their mystery. The only valid reason for an occultist to operate in the astral realm is for the sake of a higher aesthetic, not for the insidious purpose of doing good to others.

Almost unawares we harbour an ancestral sympathy for black magic, for the forbidden forms of transcendental science, and for the Lords of Power who sold themselves to Condemnation and a degenerate Reincarnation. The eyes of our weak, vacillating souls lose themselves like a bitch in heat in the theory of inverse degrees, in corrupted rites, and in the sinister curve of the descendent, infernal hierarchy.

Like it or not, Satan exerts an attraction on us like a male on a female. The serpent of Material Intelligence has wound around our heart, as around the symbolic caduceus of the God who communicates: Mercury, lord of Understanding.

Those of us who aren't homosexuals wish we had the courage to be. Our distaste for action can't help but feminize us. We missed our true calling as housewives and idle chatelaines because of a sexual mix-up in our current incarnation. Although we don't believe this one bit, to act as though we do smacks of irony's very blood.

None of this is out of meanness, just weakness. In private we adore the Bad, not because it's bad, but because it's stronger and more intense than the Good, and all that is strong and intense is attractive to nerves that should have belonged to a woman. Pecca fortiter Pecca fortiter can't apply to us, for we have no force, not even the force of intelligence, which is the only one we could ever claim. To think of sinning forcefully that's the most we can do with this severe dictum. But even this is not always possible, for our inner life has its own reality which we sometimes find painful just because it is a reality. The existence of laws governing the association of ideas (along with all other mental operations) is insulting to our inherent lack of discipline. can't apply to us, for we have no force, not even the force of intelligence, which is the only one we could ever claim. To think of sinning forcefully that's the most we can do with this severe dictum. But even this is not always possible, for our inner life has its own reality which we sometimes find painful just because it is a reality. The existence of laws governing the association of ideas (along with all other mental operations) is insulting to our inherent lack of discipline.

DIVINE E ENVY.