Tiny House of Stone

This was just too gorgeous to not share...
Tribute to the Tiny House blog - they consistently post "tiny house in a landscape" photos.  There's something about stone I find very compelling.

I'm back after a week hiatus from my blog.  I know you missed me.

I confirmed a new friend on Facebook today named Amber Tucker, from Monterrey, Mexico.  I have many friends in and from Monterrey, in fact.  Amber is a Multicultural Development Specialist in a program called Rainbow Cultural Garden - yet another brilliant program and set of ideas from Keith Raniere.  Keith has such a remarkable IQ he was in the Guinness Book of World Records for highest at 240.  Yes, 240.   It has been one of the best assets in my life!  Seriously, he should be being hailed and protected for the national treasure that he is...instead he's endured the worst case of character assassination I've ever seen.  This type of behavior is yet another example of the Human Experiment failing...so very sad.  That others are noticing this failure is evident in books like The Windup Girl I reported on in my last post.  Will we change in time to save our species?

Back to Amber.  She posted a quote from Steve Jobs on her FB page an hour ago that I just have to share.  I was so delighted with it I had to comment - and now re-post it.  Here's the quote:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything-all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. Their is no reason not to follow your heart.
-Steve Jobs

And here's my comment:

Wow. This is the main thing I try to remember every day. 
I loved Steve Jobs for many reasons, but this is such a poignant expression of his willingness to feel the vulnerability that we all have (but avoid feeling or acknowledging). Love it, Amber. Thank you for sharing.

I feel inspired enough by it intend today to view the TED talk "How to Live Before You Die" - Steve's keynote speech at Stanford's commencement ceremony.

The Windup Girl

I really do believe we humans are an experiment. 
I'm not sure how we're doing as far as success or failure from the perspective of our 'creator(s)'...hard for me to imagine much of the time that we're 'succeeding'...
My friend Keith Raniere once said something like 'science fiction is simply reality that hasn't happened yet' (not a direct quote mind you).  I agree.  I just read a scifi novel called "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi.  It's won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, to name just a couple of it's credits.  An amazing story of a near future dystopia, it reminded me, in part, of the favorite television series I mentioned yesterday, Battle Star Galactica.  Technological creations of humans, who are "humans", play unforeseen and surprising roles in the future of humanity.  Not for the faint of heart, this story, but astonishingly good.  For a more in depth review I suggest you read Blue Tyson's write up on Amazon.  I agree with this comment of his, and I agree with his five star rating:

The novel leaves you uneasy the whole way through, but fascinated. After many thousands of stories I am not easy to surprise. I had no idea what the hell was going to happen in this book, apart from the fact that it was likely to be bloody. The writing is excellent. Bacigalupi is a major talent, if unfortunately not very prolific.

I'm not a big fan of "bloody", but this didn't diminish the wondrous nature of this expression in writing.  Run, don't walk to your nearest book source and buy this book.  It's a masterpiece. 

The Windup Girl

Dance On...

We work the hardest and perform our best when the object of our attention is something we love.  It is our opportunity to be our most expressive - and it's always created by us.  Such an interesting thing to even contemplate.  We are, indeed, the ones to give our lives meaning.

Browsing tonight, I visited my friend Ivy's blog, entitled "set the heart aflame".  (Love the name) A talented writer, Ivy Nevares is also a very talented dancer.   She applies her passion for dance by learning a plethora of different dance styles - well! - and teaching them to others.  Nataraja  Center for Movement Arts is the name of her dance studio.  Recently, she and a group of her students performed publicly at a Belly Dance competition held in Troy.  Her recent post is not only a sharing of her feelings after the event, but contains a beautiful video she was sent from another friend of ours,  Ken.  Please visit and enjoy it for yourself - I posted the link to my Facebook page as well.  It's an exquisite piece - thank you, Ken.

Moving Water - Rumi

I'm so completely in love with poetry of Rumi, I'm going to continue to share.  In my opinion, he says all of the most important things a human can think about or say...  A little more info on him, then another wonderful poem.

Jelaluddin Rumi, the 13th century mystic poet, was truly one of the most passionate and profound poets in history.  Now, today his presence still remains strong, due in part to how his words seem to drip of the divine, and startle a profound remembrance that links all back to the Soul-Essence.  Born in what is present day Afghanistan in 1207, he produced his master work the Masnawi which consists of over 60,000 poems before he died in 1273.  The best way to fully say in words his impact, is that he has the ability to describe the Indescribable, Ineffable-- God.

   Moving Water

When  you do things from your soul, you feel a river

moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section, the feeling

disappears.  Don't let

others lead you.  They may be blind or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope

of God.  And what is that?  Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness

people sit in jail, the trapped bird's wings are tied,

fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness.  You've seen a magistrate

inflict visible punishment.  Now 

see the invisible.  If you could leave your selfishness, you

would see how you've

been torturing your soul.  We are born and live inside black water in a well.

How could we know what an open field of sunlight is? Don't

insist on going where

you think you want to go.  Ask the way to the spring.  Your

living pieces will form

a harmony.  There is a moving palace that floats in the air

with balconies and clear

water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained

Heroic Human

Some days I need reminders like these from great souls like this man.

Compassion and nonviolence help us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions,
to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic
weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit
from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Heroic Struggle

The human struggle is such an interesting one... it's one often misunderstood and maligned.  But, even humans we may find less than admirable, for whatever reasons, have what my mentor, Keith Raniere, has aptly named a Heroic Struggle.

Each day I find myself in the midst of mine - and so do you, whether you're aware of it or not.
Mr. Raniere created a structure for the company, Executive Success Programs, Inc., that encourages transforming our struggle from one mainly internal to one that is external.  What does this mean?  Most of us thrash about daily with objectives that would have gone well if it weren't for the interference of other people.  Right.  While some of this may be "true", most of it is our own failure to factor in the variables of human behavior and the fact that the real world, reality if you would, rarely matches the picture we have in our head of how we would like things to be.  We don't just prefer this picture.  We're vested and attached to it.  The greatest discrepancy between the two pictures typically falls into the sector of human behavior.  Including, obviously (not?), our own.  We aren't really struggling with the external world, we're struggling with our own beliefs of how we believe the world should be, rather than how it is.

The structure he designed, and the path those of us who have chosen to work with it follow, is merit and value-based, it's predecessor being the martial arts system of earning your way up a hierarchical ladder to higher and higher designations of improvement.  I am fortunate to include these people amongst my close friends - the community of people with whom I work and play.

I love the quote below and find it relative.  Thank you, Tom.

Those of us who attempt to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening our own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. We will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of our own obsessions, our aggressivity, our ego-centered ambitions, our delusions about the ends and means.
-Thomas Merton, philosopher