Kilroy J. Oldster

Author

Quotes by Kilroy J. Oldster

• People exercise the freedom to present themselves from a vast array of precepts. The modern human mind can engage in reflective thought and selectively determine how to organize the elements of perception. We can consciously elect to depart from stereotypical behavior and transcend the heretofore-established biological behavioral preferences. People can elect to hold prejudices or not, can make rational or irrational decisions to engage in war or not, and can take deliberate steps to arrest destruction of the ecosystem or not. Holding ourselves in check by placing a brake upon the human propensity to strike out in instinctual behavior is a distinct human quality. Restraint from instant gratification of strong impulses represents a unique human behavior trait. By intentionally refraining from committing an instinctual action, humankind asserts its sovereignty from its biological constitution. Unbound from the limitations of its biological nature, a person can employ the mind to devise alternative behavioral choices and the results of numerous behavioral choices culminate to provide a person with a sophisticated definition of the self.

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• Undergoing personal change is a difficult but necessary process of maturing into the ultimate manifestation of a desirable self. True personal transformation requires a person honestly to assess their inner spirituality and adopt a clear vision of who they want to be. An earnest person experiencing inner transformation of their values and belief system is apt to feel conflicted, confused, and disorientated. Change of self is displacement, disarticulation, and loss of self. Alteration of our self-image results in disrupting, dislocating, and modifying a person's perspective of what is significant.

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• Reading, writing, and personal introspection will not protect us from hardship and suffering, but they might introduce us to critical thinking and expose us to what is good in humankind and beautiful in the world that we share with all of nature. Contemplative thought, especially that supplemented with reading literature and attempting to write our own replies to the echoing voices of writers whom preceded us provide us with the potentiality for change, the possibility of personal illumination that enables us to experience a heighted quality of life.

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• Human being's possess the cognitive ability to survey and study the biological and cultural constraints that influence us in order to gain an enhanced understanding of who each of us are. Comprehension of what comprises a self allows human beings to monitor and regulate their thoughts and actions and therefore revise and modify their sense of self. How much conscious control we assert over our minds as well as what decisions through default we leave essentially unregulated and in the sole providence of the unconscious mind determines our self-identity. Self-identity in turns affects personal decision-making, which alters our external world. The combined impact of millions of people making conscious choices exerts a profound impact upon reality, the physical world that is constantly in flux.

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• It is understandable why a person might shirk a brutal self-assessment until the unforgiving talons of a reckless life rips their thin skin covertures into shreds leaving a person ensnared in their destructive thoughts and lacerated with bolts of self-incrimination.

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• A person must cultivate their personal tutelary spirit in order to achieve their ultimate visage.

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• Our thoughts shape us. We become our obsessions. Our thoughts can enslave us or save us.

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• Time provides all of us with the opportunity to change, alter our belief system, and create new perspectives that challenge a person's character and teach him or her how to become a happier and wiser person.

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• We become the product of our recurrent thoughts. Writing is one method of explicating upon our thoughts, condensing multiple scenes, times, and ideas, and editing our fragmented beliefs.

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• We search our entire lives to create a genuine and reliable self that can relate with other people and faithfully express our artistic temperament. Our battle for personal authenticity requires us to penetrate layers of self-deception, conquer ego defense mechanism, and destroy a false self that is intent upon meeting other people's expectations.

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• The principal advantage of narrative writing is that it assists us place our life experiences in a storytelling template. The act of strict examination forces us to select and organize our past. Narration provides an explanatory framework. Human beings often claim to understand events when they manage to formulate a coherent story or narrative explaining what factors caused a specific incident to occur. Stories assist the human mind to remember and make decisions based on informative stories. Narrative writing also prompts periods of intense reflection that leads to more writing that is ruminative. Contemplative actions call for us to track the conscious mind at work rendering an accounting of our weaknesses and our strengths, folly and wisdom.

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• Our actions reflect the distilled wisdom that we possess of the innermost self. Our personal philosophy is an activated way of living. A peaceful person delves the truest definition of the self by maintaining an attentive state of conscious awareness and ceases escaping from reality with mindless diversions. Self-inquiry is the principal method to remove ignorance, increase self-awareness, and abide in a tranquil existence

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• People undergo several sequential steps in maturing from infancy including childhood, adolescences, young adulthood, middle age, and old age. Each stage presents distinct challenges that require a person to amend how they think and act. The motive for seeking significant change in a person's manner of perceiving the world and behaving vary. Alteration of person's mindset can commence with a growing sense of awareness that a person is dissatisfied with an aspect of his or her life, which cause a person consciously to consider amending their lifestyle. The ego might resist change until a person's level of discomfort becomes unbearable. A person can employ logic to overcome the ego's defense mechanism and intentionally integrate needed revisions in a person's obsolete or ineffective beliefs and behavior patterns. The subtle sense that something is amiss in a person's life can lead to a gradual or quick alteration in a person's conscious thoughts and outlook on life. Resisting change can prolong unhappiness whereas

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• The soul evolves as a person addresses the chaos, vagaries, and perplexities of enduring an earthly life. We each ultimately become our own version of an ideal self by stage-managing who we become.

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• Self-realization is largely a matter of achieving a person's formative personality definition. People whom lack self-realization oftentimes fail to integrate their desired personality traits into all phases of their life including social life, family life, and work life. In order to achieve satisfaction with oneself, a person must know what they wish for, know how to go about achieving their goals, be capable of recognizing where they now stand, and understand how they must change in order to attain their ultimate visage.

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• Personal tranquility consists in the orderly structuring of the mind, which occurs whenever a person engages in the exquisite practice of contemplating personal experiences, harmonizing time spent with other people, reading great books, and working on self-improvement.

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• A person is not born as a finished product; we create ourselves every day. Resembling reality, no person is a fixed and unchangeable entity. Each of us is in the process of becoming. A person's perspective on their life experiences depends upon reviewing and integrating an emotional gamut of reconciling values with applied effort.

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• A person can transfigure the disquiet of solitude in a positive or negative manner. Periods of enforced solitude can cause a person to develop eccentricities of conduct and character, parley with a number of mental aberrations, partake in self-destructive diversions, or use their time productively to contemplate worldly issues and diligently work on self-improvement.

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• Self-questioning is bound to arise at the outset of any worthy quest attempting to gain self-knowledge, and this disconcerting sense of uneasiness will continue to surface akin to a petulant sea serpent until a person undertaking a vision quest either discovers a safe haven or perceptively changes the trajectory of their destructive life.

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• We script our own psyche. We each journey alone. The path that we take through life proves to be every person's supreme test of mental, physical, and emotional stamina, and the final determiner of his or her intellectual, ethical, and spiritual attainment.

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