“I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, you have no thoughts but the body's thoughts, no goals but the body's goals. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line.”

“Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do onething. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let thebody tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up.It is always tired morning, noon, and night. But the body isnever tired if the mind is not tired. When you were youngerthe mind could make you dance all night, and the body wasnever tired... You've always got to make the mind take overand keep going.”

“Hurl yourself at goals above your head and bear the lacerations that come when you slip and make a fool of yourself. Try always, as long as you have breath in your body, to take the hard way the Spartan way - and work, work, work to build yourself into a rich, continually evolving entity.”

“Diets are based on the unspoken fear that you are a madwoman, a food terrorist, a lunatic…The promise of a diet is not only that you will have a different body; it is that in having a different body, you will have a different life. If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough, you will become a peaceful, relaxed human being.”

“Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.”

“It's a thought," I said with a grin."That's exactly what it is, Dan - a thought - no more real than the shadow of a shadow. Consciousness is not In the body; the body is In Consciousness. And you Are that Consciousness - no the phantom mind that troubles you so. You are the body, but you are everything else, too. That is what your visions revealed to you. Only the mind resists change. When you relax mindless into the body, you are happy and content and free, sensing no separation. Immortality is Already yours, but not in the same way you imagined or hope for. You have been immortal since before you were born and will be long after the body dissolves. The body is in Consciousness; never born; never dies; only changes. The mind - your ego, personal beliefs, history, and identity - is all that ends at death. And who needs it?" Socrates leaned back into his chair."I'm not sure all of that sank in.""Of course not." He laughed. "Words mean little unless you realize the truth of it yourself. And when you do, you'll be free at last.”