Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Conversation

God and I in space alone
and nobody else in view.
"And where are the people, O Lord," I said,
"the earth below and the sky o'er head
and the dead whom once I knew?"


"That was a dream," God smiled and said,
"A dream that seemed to be true.
There were no people, living or dead,
there was no earth, and no sky o'er head;
there was only Myself -- in you."

"Why do I feel no fear," I asked,
"meeting You here this way?
For I have sinned I know full well--
and is there heaven, and is there hell,
and is this the Judgment Day?"

"Nay, those were but dreams,"
the Great God said,
"Dreams that have ceased to be.
There are no such things as fear or sin;
there is no you -- you never have been--
there is nothing at all
but Me."

-Ella Wheeler Wilcox


We constantly keep working on our souls, the cars, the money, the women. We fight each other and kill one another and it just hurts so much afterwards and we can't figure out why. But we are one, we are all one being. Just a wave of desire to exist.

If we really are separate from each other, why aren't all people born the same? Some born short, blind, why aren't all women born models? Why aren't all men born tall? It's an optical illusion therefore, and we all brought into it. My spiritual guru put it this way, loneliness is an illusion, and the only way to realize that is through meditation. I haven't found out myself because I haven't meditated on a regular basis, but you eventually start to realize, all those things you see are not really you, there is nothing permanent, and you are nothing but momentum; of cause and effect.

When you die, your body goes back to the earth, to the soil, you are a part of the universe and everybody is too.

There is no heaven, there is no hell. Those are illusions. What happens to your consciousness when you die? I don't know, I haven't found enough experience to find that out for myself yet.

What happens to the physical part of you when you die, gives us some clues. You can examine it through science and forensic tools, but why do we completely deny the ancients? Do we think just because we are here and they are not, that we are really smarter than them? Are we really open minded then?

Eugene said that when you die, your desire to exist makes you reborn, and so is your karma, your habits and your way of thinking.

Theres not really a significant need if you change your thought patterns and open up your mind that all this, this self improvement, this desire to be with a women, in the long run does NOT define you at all. Therefore, it should not consume you whole and keeping thinking that you aren't happy.

I was defensive towards spirituality in the beginning and this is the first time I blogged about it openly. I took a little chance, I opened my mind. Does that mean I'll become a monk now? Does that mean I'll stop my self improvement now?

No, that's ridiculous. Is Richard Gere a monk? Are all Muslims fanatics?

People can close their mind and call it hogwash, but why let people tell you that your favorite car wax sucks?

It works for you doesn't it?

Monday, April 09, 2007

The Bare Minimum

I refuse to be a wage slave.

I say again, I refuse to be a wage slave.

If you were a mouse in a maze with an bite-sized piece of well-aged Wisconsin cheese at the end.
Two choices.

For one, you can navigate the maze, led by the tantalizing smell, you use your intuition and wits and through lots of hard work and effort you will eventually come to the famed prize at the end of the maze. Another choice is to train and train your legs to jump and jump over the walls, curse the person who put you in the maze and search his house for the big fucking hunk of cheese, still carefully wrapped in it's package.

That's how I felt recently after reading an article by Steve Pavlina about ten reasons that you SHOULDN'T get a job, and after a little bit realization myself as I met people.

Are the people who work in offices and hourly wages are there by choice? Perhaps most of them aren't, my parents definitely weren't. They had the cultural revolution and all that, and my dad coming from a working class and my mother coming from a more entrepreneurial, business-y background.

They have different mindsets, but I believe in their generation, there wasn't much choice considering the consequences.

Today, (presuming you live in a capitalistic society) there is a lot more choice. A new generation of "new" millionaires are springing up, standards of living are high, and luxury items once reserved for the royalty or wealthy are now affordable by the common people. Medicaid, financial aid. High and nigh there are many opportunities to make it happen.

I turn around and see people, and because I was once like that too.

We tend to have tunnel vision that job security comes from a job that pays by the hour. We work in cubicles and we don't see a visual difference in the work we do, most of us don't see a vaccine that we invented saving many lives, inventing a new lasting light bulb, or fusion, all it is, is at the end of the day, we see our paycheck.

We want to leave a mark on the world that we and others can see and be proud of it at the very least.

Perhaps whatever you are doing makes you happy, perhaps you are perfectly content with your job because you get to see the world, get backstage passes, and travel to exotic cities and meet many, many women of different nationalities. Thats great too, as long as you are happy.

But I bet we can identify with that rat in the maze, except the maze of life is much, much longer and difficult to navigate. We smell the cheese, which is the dream of attaining the ultimate happiness in life. But we are stuck, navigating the maze and it is hard. We get frustrated and we don't know how much longer we have to find our way or if we are even going the right way.

I been reading some synergistic books on wealth, health, and self improvement lately. The good stuff, the ones that don't just come highly recommended but are classics in their own category.

I am not sure what other people do to get by, but from what it seems, most people seem to have a very narrow and safe path. For example, I rarely see people take the initiative to even meet their neighbors in my dorm, and people don't talk to the students they sit with for the entire semester.

Most people see the world through tunnel vision, they have one path to go, one girl to call, one career, one investment, one paycheck to live.

I am young, I never held a full-time job, but I have worked my ass off at a part-time job at my father's restaurant. I didn't enjoy it, I couldn't imagine myself or other people enjoying working at such job, but I really appreciate and hand my most utter respect to those people who do it because they keep the gears of society well oiled and moving.

Without them, we wouldn't have what we have.

As Steve Pavlina said, what is job security when you can get laid off at any second?

I don't think I am them, I see myself as more than that. I will be happy.

Isn't life suppose to be happy?

From the reading I have been doing and just seeing other people make their move in the world, I am convinced that I can do great. I can do extraordinary. If I just put that little effort in to train my legs, make them stronger, more agile, and be able to jump for the big hunk of cheese.

But doing that requires effort, and an unwavering vision. A willingness to take pain, to stick through with something for the long term.

I think it's not the consequences and conditions we live in this day and age that says who we will be in the future. There's no great war, no global disease to speak of, and for the first time in the history of the world, the power is in our hands to have anything we want as long as we BELIEVE it can be possible and WORK towards it.

I think that if these people see what they can accomplish, see the potential of what they can do, we all can have anything we want, be anything we want.

Of course, society won't let us do that. In order to keep it moving, there has to be people that sweat and live by the hour. There are people that aren't simply suppose to even know they hold this much power. The unlucky majority.

I don't want to be a gear, I am armed with this knowledge, this belief, and I will not let it go to waste. Perhaps now you have a little bit of this knowledge now as well, I hope I can at least spark a tiny bit of a billionth fraction of what you can be are truly capable of.

Start picking up synergistic books, it took me a while to realize how much power we can have just by knowing.

Some recommendations, add Steve Pavlina's Personal Development blog to your bookmarks, T. Harveker's Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, Fantastic Voyage by Ray Kurzweil, David Allen's Getting Things Done, The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, and of course How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

Next time you order coffee at a diner, give the waitress a larger tip not because she is very attractive but because you know that without her, we wouldn't have many of the things we have.

I also suggest this, everyday you wake up, when you're ordering your coffee, no matter where you stands in terms of social skills, make small talk or compliment the Starbucks bartistas (or whatever coffee shop you're in). I was pretty social for a year and had great success, and somehow became a hermit in the last few months, but I was getting my dinner at 7-11 today and asked what town I was in. The clerk merely gave me a smile and asked where I was going, I said Stony Brook, he said that was a little far and we shared a chuckle.

The exchange felt organic, I feel alive. Only if we had more of those to start our day.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Mom


"When people compare themselves with others, they only compare themselves to death."


Be happy with yourself now, you ARE good enough, you ARE amazing.
Find happiness in doing the things you love, learning and changing at your own pace.

Forget what other people say or do, or tell you what you should do. Do you live your life for them or for you?

Nobody can take that way from you.