Stay open, who knows? Lightning could strike.

  

This feeling of impermanence is really something. My teacher had said in the past, "Change happens in two ways: 1) Maybe you like ice cream and one day you happen to gorge on too much of it. Then you realize that it has lost its magic on you. That's the slight, subtle changes we commonly go through in our lives. 2) Then there are the big ones which cause us to have a fresh perspective on life. It's like looking in the mirror and not being able to recognize oneself or identify with the big ideas one has about their identity. We can think ourselves really lucky when presented a chance of experiencing the second kind of change." Hmm...

The Fire

Listen, I've light
in my eyes
and on my skin
the warmth of a star, so strange
is this
that I
can barely comprehend it:
I think
I'll lift my face to it, and then
I lift my face,
and don't even know how
this is done.  And
everything alive
(and everything's
alive) is turning
into something else
as at the heart
of some annihilating
or is it creating
fire
that's burning, unseeably, always
burning at such speeds
as eyes cannot
detect, just try
to observe your own face
growing old
in the mirror, or
is it beginning
to be born?

~ Franz Wright ~

START THE WAY ... Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river

 

• Tao
  "the way", "the path". it is often represented by water because water always seeks the path of least resistance, yet is strong enough to demolish even stone when no other recourse is available. everything below flows from this.

Here are 10 guides to the Way.

1. Make your goal effortless action
   avoid unnecessary action or action that is not spontaneous.
   
2. Treasure simplicity
   eliminate whatever is unnecessary and artificial and appreciate the simple and the apparently ordinary.
   
3. Cultivate stillness
   only stillness will clear muddy waters and enable you to see the truth.
   
4. Be patient
   can you remain unmoving until the right action arises?
   
5. Be gentle
   love peace and restraint and avoid all unnecessary violence. "do not regard weapons as lovely things. for to think them lovely means to delight in them, and to delight in them means to delight in the slaughter of men."
   
6. See beauty
   in the mundane and the normal. Apreciate the beauty around you and in yourself.
   
7. Be true
   dedicate your life only to that which you find beautiful or fascinating, and thus be true to yourself.
   
8. Live in the moment
   feel the hand of time sweeping past second by second.
   
9. Be happy
   to conduct one's life according to the Tao, is to conduct one's life without regrets.
   
10. Be compassionate and honor life
    only those who are compassionate and treasure life in all its forms can show true bravery and acquire true wisdom. 

 Source: from the blog Positive Thoughts

In Company of Great Minds

...

Alcott also benefited from her parent's close friendships with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne, all of whom were her informal educators, and she spent many hours perusing the shelves of Emerson's library. She also went on nature excursions with Thoreau, something that undoubtedly appealed to her tomboy nature. And living among so many transcendentalists, Alcott learned from a young age the virtue of working tirelessly toward self-improvement and perfection.

...

Source: Excerpted from the article Building Castles in the Air on Little Women fame author Louisa May Alcott, in SUCCESS Magazine's September issue.

On Love

1 Corinthians 13

New International Version (NIV)

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 

 

...

Alfred Nobel - His Life and Work

The Sound of Music

The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears
My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds that rise from the lake to the trees
My heart wants to sigh like the chime that flies from a church on a breeze
To laugh like a brook as it trips and falls over stones on its way
To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to prey
I go to the hills when my heart is lonely
I know I will hear what I've heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I'll sing once more.

Present

My teacher says it so well when he says, "A gift is a creator of worlds between the giver and receiver. If offered and received in the most sincere way, it completely transcends our ideas of commerce. And when that happens, we are in turn presented with a life experience to cherish."