>Eloquence is sometimes lyrical, sometimes
powerful, but always an overstatement
and always a projection.

Dishonest people believe in words
rather than reality.<

>The way to be most helpful to others is
for me to do the thing that right now
would be most helpful to me.

I am not interested so much in what I
do with my hands or words as what I do
with my feelings. I want to live from the
inside out, not from the outside in.

Most words evolved as a description of
the outside world, hence their inadequacy
to describe what is going on inside of me.

Wanting to do something is a desire, not
a sentence. When I "decide" what I want
to do I translate my desire into a sentence
and then follow the sentence; I take
the desire out of my body and put it in
my mind. Asking myself, "What do I
want to do?" brings to mind my habitual
answers to that question, it brings in
irrelevant things I "should" be wanting to
do, and it ignores the fact that there may
be no adequate words to decribe what I
am feeling this moment.<

>If the desire to write is not accompanied
by actual writing then the desire is not
to write.<

>It is not necessary to always think words.
Words often keep me from acting in a
fully intuitive way. Fears, indecision and
frustration feed on words. Without words
they usually stop. When I am trying to
figure out how I should relate to some-
one, especially a stranger, if I will stop
thinking words, and listen to the situation,
and just be open, I find I act in a more
appropriate, more spontaneous, often
original, sometimes even courageous way.
Words are at times good for looking back,
but they are confining when I need to
act in the present.<

--Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself (My struggle to become a person). © 1970 by Hugh Prather


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