You don't go straight into your next life after this one ends. That's near-death experiencers so reliably report having met their dead relatives and friends immediately after they leave their bodies: when somebody's on their way out of incarnation, everyone who's already there and hasn't gone onto a new life yet joins a welcoming committee. (It's very much as though they'd gone to a different country, and show up at the airport to greet the new arrival.)

After that, we all have a lot of work to do between lives, but unless you've really screwed up and end up in the very lowest end of the astral (which is the origin of the legends of Hell), it's not nonstop work, so you can hang out with the people you care about in the intervals.

It's normal, too, for people with close karmic links to be reborn in situations where they'll come back into relationship in their next lives, though the relationship may not be the same: your mother in this life may be your kid brother the next time around, or what have you. (It's also not uncommon for people to be born into the same family).

Finally, remember that material incarnation is not a permanent condition, and once you finish your lives in material bodies and go on to more interesting things, you can and will meet everyone who's already reached the same condition, and can expect to meet the others when they get there.

You don't have credibility because you don't do what you say you will, and you don't do what you say you will because you're not credible to yourself.

It's not enough to "tell the truth". To "mouth the words that correspond to some best approximation of reality". That's getting off on a technicality. You gotta LIVE SINCERELY.

Whales make natural spacefarers, given their familiarity with low-gravity environments. They will be the custodians of generation ships.

People put themselves in precarious situations where they can get hurt, not because they want to get hurt or even for the wicked thrill of it, but paradoxically because they want to feel safe. If you solve the fundamental lacking, the behavior ceases. On the one hand it's trying to provoke God's hand/fate/society/individual people to protect you, in another frame it's putting yourself in an environment where your always-already emotional state 'makes sense', if you don't know why you are feeling anxious. Make the outer world match the internal world, so that at least there is not the dissonance. This is how a lot of psychological motivations work, and it is only paradoxical on the surface.

Building a coherent whole is more important than individual notions of "truth". These "truth-seekers" have an important role, though: to not let the whole degenerate. They keep injecting new ideas and noise in the information flow, which enhances the group's ability to adapt.

There's a story, no idea if it's true, of a guy in the 1400s who finds an indulgence salesman. He asks, can I buy an indulgence for a sin I haven't committed yet? The salesman says yes. So the man pays him, then robs him.

As I got older it became clearer to me that not many people are really serious about anything. Some people go their whole lives without ever having met anyone else who I might describe as actually serious, so they find it hard to believe that anybody could really mean what they say, since everything everyone says is bullshit. I remember feeling like that myself at some of my low points in life, when I was at my most depressed.

"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

A young man 23 years old came from the mines to San Francisco, with the intention of soon leaving the latter place for home. On the evening of his arrival, he, with his companions, visited the gambling saloons. After watching for a long time the varied fortunes of a table, supposed to be undergoing the process of "tapping," from the continued success of those betting against the bank, the excitement overthrew his better judgment, and he threw upon the "seven spot" of a new deal, a bag which he said contained 1100 dollars --- his all, the result of two years' privation and hard labor --- exclaiming, with a voice trembling from intense excitement, "my home or the mines." As the dealer slowly resumed the drawing of his cards --- with his countenance livid, from fear of the inevitable fate that seems ever attendant upon the tapping process when once commenced --- I turned my eyes towards the young man who had staked his whole gains upon a card; and never shall I forget the impression made by his look of intense anxiety, as he watched the cards as they fell from the dealer's hands. All the energies of his system seemed concentrated in the fixed gaze of his eyes, while the deadly pallor of his face bespoke the subdued action of his heart. All around seemed infected with the sympathetic powers of the spell --- even the hitherto successful winners forgot their own stakes, in the hazardous chance placed upon the issue of the bet. The cards are slowly told, with the precision of high wrought excitement. The seven spot wins! The spell is broken --- reaction takes place. The winner explains, with a deep-drawn sigh, "I will never gamble again," and was carried from the room in a deep swoon, from which he did not fully recover until the next morning, and then to know that the equivalent surrendered for his gain, was the color of his hair, now changed to a perfect white.

GF asked what gamergate was and I looked in the mirror and I was 800 years old.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.

God rewards painful decisiveness. When you make a decision in favour of the good, and in alignment with your heart and soul no matter how painful it is, God opens doorways to better things for you. He glorifies your pain.

When I was a kid, I was complaining to a great artist about how a thing I made didn't get any attention. He said "If you made something, and it didn't call attention to itself, it's failed in the most basic way. You can't blame the audience, it's just your fault." I still remember him.

When my brother was 3, we were sitting in church and he leaned over and said to us "daddy killed the cat". Later that afternoon, my dad was taking the trash out and accidentally stepped on our kitten, killing it instantly.

Being around kids is interesting because enough random people with no incentive to lie tell you stuff like this and it becomes difficult to write off.