There is no way of joining the past with the present, and there is no difference between what is a moment past and what is eternally past. There is never a past present, only a past. This is so because all objective knowledge about a human being is knowledge about one’s past, of what one has been than of what one is. If the present moment is to have genuine novelty, if it is not perfectly determined by events of the past, then it must be possible for the present to produce a break with the past in the form a knowledge of the past. Could time be reverses, and the future change places with the past, the past would cry out against us, and our future, full as loudly, as we against the ages foregone. All the Ages are his children, calling each other names. We are therefore, genuinely living in the present because we are prepared for any and every response to our address, the expected as well as the unexpected—and it is this that constitutes genuine listening. What nuisance can be so great to an individual busied with immense affairs, as to have to explain, or attempt to explain, or to attempt to explain, small details to others incapable of understanding them?  #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5

The difference between a pseudo listening and a genuine listening is that while in the pseudo listening situation the listener pretends to listen, what one hears is determined by that individual’s past knowledge of the person he or she is listening to or by his or her theories concerning human nature. Genuine listening does not know ahead of time what it will hear; in the full uniqueness of the present it listens to the speech of the other without filtering what it hears through the screen of its own prejudgments. The purpose of genuine listening is therefore really to hear what the other is saying, constantly being aware that one is saying something that is new and not just a revelation of one’s nature, which the hearer has already identified and which is fixed as the others psychology. The doubts of the past may be as nothing to the dangers of the future. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible. Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5

Life is the dialogue between human and God in which each is the other’s reason for being. The extended lines of relations meet in the eternal God. Life is an endless transition from God and back to God. Sooner or later, the times comes when even the most cherished aspect recedes, when a spiritual tiredness over takes the most authentic essence of the soul turns into God. However, an individual may hate God and curse him, one may turn away from God when the suffering of human destiny becomes unbearable; but no individual can reduce God to the status of a thing who no longer addresses him and becomes one object among others in the World for God. In dealing with God, he can become abyss between the self and the Absolute in the ecstasy of mystical union. Time and again, however, many humans turn from thinking about God to addressing him, and it is then that one communicates with the living God, as distinct from merely giving intellectual assent to the God of the philosopher. This is true even when the Absolute Thou addressed is not called God.  #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5

However, when one, too, who abhors the name of God, and believes oneself to be godless, gives one’s whole being to addressing the Thou of one’s life as a Thou that cannot be limited by another, one address God. God never comes where knaves are present. Human folly is not needed to fill up the great design of God. There is no stature, no beauty, no proportions, nor any colours in which humans themselves can well be fashioned, that is not already done to one’s hands. When you would conceive of that great Being truly and fully, you must be able to realize the duration of eternity, obliterate the little periods of time and chronology, which require a starting and a resting-place in our human minds—soar out of the reach of the sickly atmospheres which surrounds these little planets, and stand erect in the broad and fathomless light of God’s own atmosphere. We are overhasty to speak—as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and makes his love felt through ours. No accident happens to us without the Divine permission. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5

God Almighty is just and gracious, and gives not his assent to rash and inhuman curses. Even if the unreality of our times were no greater than that of previous eras, this in itself would be no cause for rejoicing or lack of concern. Because humans have always engaged in undesirable activities such as child abuse or family violence, this is no excuse for our acceptance of them. As we know all too well, the socially accepted problems or unchangeables of the human condition of one era, e.g, racial prejudice, slavery, have become the great social causes of another. Rather than being permanent unchanging features of the human condition, in some cases, such as slavery, they have been greatly eradicated. Above all, the one thing we have not assumed is that reality, especially its knowledge by humans, is independent of our minds, need, and social purposes. The very description of reality is shot through and through with human needs, passions, emotions. It is also strongly affected by the nature of our minds and the general culture of which we are part of. However, if we stay in contact with that center of power, the eternal Thou, its energy is released in our lives. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5