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Life is a spiritual exercise in evolving from an exoskeleton for support and survival to an endoskeleton. Think about it. When we get our emotional support and well-being from outside ourselves, everything someone says or does can set us off and ruin our day. Since we can’t control or predict what another person does, our moods are at the mercy of our environment. We can’t adapt to the situation if our intimate partner doesn’t behave the way we think they should. Everything is then perceived as a personal attack and attempt to upset us. Up goes our armor and it’s all-out war.

With an internal support structure, we can stand strong because our stability doesn’t depend on anything outside ourselves. We can be vulnerable and pay attention to what’s happening around us, knowing that whatever comes, we have the flexibility to adapt to the situation. There’s a reason we call cowards spineless: It takes great courage to drop your armor, expose your soft inside, and come to terms with the reality of what’s happening around you. It’s a powerful thing to then realize that you can survive it. When we examine our intimate relationships from this perspective, we realize that they aren’t for finding static, lifelong bliss like we see in the movies. They’re for helping us evolve a psycho-spiritual spine, a divine endoskeleton made from conscious self-awareness so that we can evolve into a better life without recreating the same problems for ourselves again and again. When we learn to find our emotional and spiritual support from inside ourselves, nothing that changes our environment or relationships can unsettle us.

Scientists have found that music stimulates more parts of the brain than any other human function.

Elena Mannes

Ah! I wish you were here to walk with me now that the warm weather is come at last. Things have been delayed but to be more welcome, and to burst forth twice as thick and beautiful. This is boasting however, and counting of the chickens before they are hatched: the East winds may again plunge us back into winter: but the sunshine of this morning fills one’s pores with jollity, as if one had taken laughing gas. Then my house is getting on: the books are up in the bookshelves and do my heart good: then Stothard’s Canterbury Pilgrims are over the fireplace: Shakespeare in a recess: how I wish you were here for a day or two!

Edward FitzGerald

I am Jewish, but Beethoven is my religion.

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And life is beautiful, love is beautiful, nature and music are beautiful.

I desire the tiniest one-room flat in the centre of the city, close to all amenities, from where I will take my godchildren and perhaps some very handsome young admirers out to dinner.

Ben Pentreath

Some Shia Muslim clerics say broadcasting music is at odds with the religion, and Iran has adopted a curious policy of broadcasting concerts but not showing the instruments - often replacing them with pictures of flowers.