The Energy Bus

So I read this book called The Energy Bus, by Jon Gordon. There's a website: www.theenergybus.com. It was really cute. I liked it a lot.

This is my success for today:
The other day I watched Elizabeth. That movie is ten years old now. At first, I was just checking to make sure it was working properly and that it was all there. Then.. of course.. I was just gonna watch it for ten minutes... and it was really quite good and I ended up watching the whole thing.

Well, today, on that second leg from Calgary, I showed it to SSN, and he really liked it, too!!! ^^

I really liked Walsingham. I'm watching the movie, and I'm all--omigosh. He's too cool! I wanna be like him!

mm.. well. it's nearly 4 am here. enough of my nocturnalness for today. ; P

powerful words

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our depest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of the universe. Your playing small does not serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

- Nelson Mandela, 1994 Inauguration Speech

Actualizing Your Vision With Devotion

"Once you have chosen the purpose of your life, the only thing left for you to do is to actualize that choice with your utmost devotion. Devotion is the biggest force that will help you accomplish your vision. Devotion is something that arises from a deep place in your heart and is your will tobe true to your true self. It is your true heart that is full of sincerity without any falsity. Devotion is something you give to something higher, clearer, and divine, to the center and the root. Ths is why devotion is an expression of your mind to become brighter than you are now, to grow more from the place you are at now.

Hope will never leave the heart of someone who lives with a child's mind. No matter what is said, whatever happens outside of the heart, such a person will always feel gratitude and happiness in life. Likewise, someone with a devotional heart cannot ever be lazy. However, one who has lost devotion will asily become useless and fall into despair. When devotion disappears, we become lazy and discontent.

When performing a task, there is a difference between doing it with uninterrupted utmost devotion and just doing it iwthout resting. This can be compared to the task of gathering sunlight through a magnifyin glass to start a fire. There is a difference between maintaining the exact focal point over peridof time and no doing so. In the beginning, it is a tiny difference, but later the former will be a big enough energy to light a fire, while the other will be a weak and dispersed energy that disappears without producing any results.

At first, you start putting in devotion because you expect something back. Once this devotion becomes sincere and from your heart, the initial expetations become smaller and smaller and only devotion grows. And then, once devotion becomes even deeper, your expectations disappear and only your sincere heart to give your utmost devotion emains. That is when your vision is actalized on its own without struggle.

The reasn why people have a hard time doing thigs with utost devotion is becausew they live their lives without focusing 100% on the present moment. devotion s something you give to the present. Giving devotion is evience that you are focusing 100% on this moment now. If you ae not focused on this moment now, your mind is caught beween worries about the future, attachments to the past, and it is obvious that there is no space for devotion."

today's dose of beauty

"Listen to the voice of the cedars when no wind stirs.
There you will find yourself."

this is a quote from Ping!, that story of a frog. i even found the picture that the author mentions in the epilogue. anyway, i was reading that book and this quote was just so beautiful i had to have it. and of course i had to share it with you.

i haven't been blogging very regularly lately, for various silly reasons.. one of them being that i feel like i'm going through some sort of spiritual puberty or something, and that in itself is quite an emotional rollercoaster ride. you can imagine, you know? i guess one good thing about satisfying books is that they take you through the whole process to the breakthrough, and you gain something from that. but with blogs.. like this, like mine. i'm a living, breathing person and there's no way to know for sure how the story will end, or when. i definitely hope and plan for the best. but just the same, objectively speaking, there's no way of knowing for sure. plus, on the one hand, although the vast majority of the 6 billion people in the world don't even know i exist, there are people who do know me, and at times it simply isn't very wise to reveal your every vulnerability.

so that's where i'm at now...

although i suppose, in a way, it might be better for me to illustrate my spiritual angst in detail--so the reader can go through the pain with me and when the breakthrough comes, experience the breakthrough together. but for now i opt for waiting until the breakthrough and then telling the whole (complete) story.
so please bear with me until i have my breakthrough.. :o)

some pix i wanted to share..

This is me and Bearistotle (teehee~ sorry, inside joke..)


and this... this is like, can you say "redundant"?

oh i forgot to mention the other day...

it was my birthday on the 29th (of november, yes) and i got a call from Umma that my grandfather passed away. i don't think i'm going to be able to make it to the funeral...

it's kinda strange, but i've never seen a real live dead person. or, as some strongly-computerworld-oriented people might put it, in RL. see, sometimes i r0xx0rs. or something like that. well anyway, somehow it just.. um.. doesn't really feel real to me, i guess. so i don't feel particularly sad.

my grandparents on my father's side died before i was born, so i guess this is kinda the first 'death in the family' for me. i had a cousin who was killed in a car crash a few years back, but as a cousin i think he was several times removed (or something like that-- he was my mother's sister's husband's sibling's son, i think). but i only heard about that, too.

anyway. i think i'm just about ready for a windfall. i'm braced for the avalanche of good news coming my way~ :o)

I discover that my heart isn't made of ice.

I had to include these videos, they're just so great!!!