Flamenco

Wow. Beautiful.

“Make it a habit to ask yourself: What’s going on inside me at this moment? That question will point you in the right direction. But don’t analyze, just watch. Focus your attention within. Feel the energy of the emotion. If there is no emotion present, take your attention more deeply into the inner energy field of your body. It is the doorway into Being.”

- Eckhart Tolle -

From http://livingmiracle.tumblr.com/ ~~

Friend

A friend is:

a) one who knows us, but loves us anyway
b) one who knows us not, but loves us anyway too.

It's beautiful.

Take A Plunge

You can't feel the depth of a lake

without diving down 

headfirst 

into 

it.

Then the pain.

And the possibility of Death.

Sure, many would not understand.

More would only mock at you.

But,

upon rising

back to the surface,

none can appreciate all you've seen

the Depth, the Beauty-unseen & the Beauty-seen-yet-unseen

I blew it up

Every change which I have prided in myself over the past 2 months... 

So hard to keep in touch with them when I am with you... 

I seem to shrink back to how I used to be, with just a phantom memory of how I am at the present.

The Past 2 Months

Heh, a part of me wished I could tell you how horrible it has been.

But no. In actuality, I really have to say, life has been better since we went our ways, that I'm better off alone, at least, better off than we were.

Sure, many times it really felt horrible, losing you. Oh no, I didn't lose you, I threw you away. Yes I did. And I am sorry.

We've grown, though, from me throwing you away. Our eyes opened, and now, I feel unsure, and it seems, that you do as well, in this new light in which we see the world around us, I feel alone. Sometimes lonely, but forever alone. It's not the angst-y type of Alone that I used to hang so tightly to, not the me-against-the-world kind of Alone. More of an "I am Alone", the world goes on around me and it is up to me to choose where I go. People and other beings, they are all natural. And neutral. Natural and neutral. Neutral and natural. I may not know what drives them, but I sure can guess, I may not be able to control them, but I can control myself. 

Enough of me, back to you. How will we be as friends? Tried talking to you so we could decide today... But well, Time permits us not to. Or maybe not. So let us try now.

No. No. No. I am still growing to understand my emotions. Hell, what was I feeling earlier today? Bad, oppression, His Gaze, His Words, I Shiver and irrational emotions overwhelm me once more.

A Scorpion Moment

There was this Hindu who saw a scorpion floundering around in the water.

He decided to save it by stretching out his finger, 

but the scorpion stung him.

The man still tried to get the scorpion out of the water,

but the scorpion stung him again.

A man nearby told him to stop,

to stop saving the scorpion that kept on stinging him.

But the Hindu said: 

"It is the nature of the scorpion to sting. 

It is my nature to love.

Why, then, 

should I give up my nature to love 

just because it is the nature of the scorpion to sting?

Adapted from InspirationalStories.com

How true indeed, why should we lose our good nature just due to the bad of others?

A true story by Kent Nerburn: The Last Cab Ride

Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. One time I arrived in the middle of the night for a pick up at a building that was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window.

Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, then drive away. But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, I reasoned to myself. So I walked to the door and knocked.

“Just a minute,” answered a frail, elderly voice.

I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80′s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase.

The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

“Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness.

“It’s nothing,” I told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated.”

“Oh, you’re such a good boy,” she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”

“It’s not the shortest way,” I answered quickly.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice.”

I looked in the rear view mirror. Her eyes were glistening.

“I don’t have any family left,” she continued. “The doctor says I don’t have very long.”

I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. “What route would you like me to take?” I asked.

For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl.

Sometimes she’d ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now.”

We drove in silence to the address she had given me.

It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her. I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching into her purse.

“Nothing,” I said.

“You have to make a living,” she answered.

“There are other passengers.”

Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.

“You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said. “Thank you.”

I squeezed her hand, then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.

I didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly, lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? On a quick review, I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life. We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware—beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

I love this story. It reminds me that everyone has their own story behind them, it reminds me not to judge others, to treat others with compassion and care... For many a times, our society hardens hearts into ice, and all it takes is a little love to melt them down just that little bit.

A Letter from Paulo Coelho

I remember receiving a letter from the American publisher, HarperCollins, which said that "reading The Alchemist was like getting up at dawn and seeing the sun rise while the rest of the world still slept." I went outside, looked up at the sky and thought to myself, "So, the book is going to be translated!" At the time, I was struggling to establish myself as a writer and to follow my path, despite all the voices telling me it was impossible.

And little by little, my dream was becoming reality. Ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million copies were sold in America. One day, a Brazilian journalist phoned to say that President Clinton had been photographed reading the book. Some time later, when I was in Turkey, I opened the magazine Vanity Fair and there was Julia Roberts, declaring that she adored the book. Walking alone down a street in Miami, I heard a girl telling her mother, "You must read The Alchemist!"

The book has been translated into 61 languages, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and people are beginning to ask: "What's the secret behind such a huge success?" The only honest response is that I don't know. All I know is that, like Santiago the shepherd boy, we all need to be aware of our personal calling.

What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our dreams.Why?

There are four obstacles. First, we are told from childhood onwards that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the later of prejudice, fear and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it's still there.

If we have the courage to disinter our dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forwards, and that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn't work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse, "Oh, well, I didn't really want it anyway." We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.

I ask myself: are defeats necessary? Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people? Because once we have overcome the defeats - and we always do- we are filled with a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight. We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we have been fighting all our lives.

Oscar Wilde said, "Each man kills the thing he loves." And it's true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.

Translated by Margaret Jull Costa

Ego

I really couldn't believe the sight I saw

A room of solitude and companionship, of peace and music

Destroyed in an instance

"Everyone, be slaves to your Ego!"

And slaves they did become,

Shouts, plucks, crashes and rings

Conversation, strums, beats and hammer

And no one cared for the mess they made

no one cared that no one cared

Not even one.
No one.

None.

So Indulge Me,

for I am

Ego

Roma Sogna

E roma sogna sotto la luna

Che costa poco la felicità

Una moneta nella fontana

Ed il sogno diventa realtà

Una moneta nella fontana

Ed il sogno diventa realtà

-Roma Sogna-

*Sigh*

One Final Effort

Last push. Hobey-ho! Let's go!

(I love this song, though I never played Halo like properly before xD)

Hands

Sometimes, I wish my hands were small.

For what a world of difference that would be–

I’d possess a delicacy and precision I will never have;

I could paint the stripes inside a flower,

The claws on a mouse;

The fragility of a spider’s gossamer web

My own hand could stitch.

I’d notice the finest details of the most minuscule things.

And see beauty where the eyes of others cannot.

I’d touch the tears at the ends of eyelashes, withheld, disallowed–

And draw them away,

And show that they are beautiful.

And catch the light ends of flyaway dreams

And tie them back to the minds they came from.

I’d tug the fraying seams of drifting, broken hearts,

And weave them back to wholeness.

I’d heal the world from the inside out,

Little, by little, by little.

Sometimes, I wish my hands were very, very small.

-Sorcha-

陶喆：太美丽

每一滴眼泪 每一次心碎

什么爱能无疚无悔

不灰心等待 痛苦也忍耐

你坚持爱了就不后退

我知道我不是一个轻易就会说爱的人

没有想到这样的你 却改变了我

太美丽 太美丽

你的爱是多么的甜密

太美丽 爱让我也美丽

现在我不再怀疑

我不怀疑有多爱你

每一个脚印 每一朵乌云

说着我的飘忽不定 

伤你伤好深 别人早就要放弃

为何你还是会给我宽容

我知道我不是一个轻易就会说爱的人

可是你坚强的付出 却改变我

太美丽 太美丽

你的爱是多么的甜密

太美丽 爱让我也美丽

现在你不必再去怀疑

当你在风雨的未知里走过

当我在迷失的自我的漩涡

交会在黑暗中 你我发出了新的光芒

现在我已全明白

什么是爱的真意

太美丽 太美丽

你的爱让生命太甜密

太美丽 只有为你感激

越过表面我看见你

美丽的心

最美丽

你太美丽

你最美丽

Company

Company should not be a pastime,

Neither should it be a form of denial

Company ought to be a sharing of love

A sharing of stories, of love, of sincerity

Iridescent

You were standing in the wake of devastation

You were waiting on the edge of the unknown 

With the cataclysm raining down, insides crying save me now

You were there and possibly alone~~~

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation

You build up hope, but failure's all you've known

Remember all the sadness and frustration 

And let it go, let it go...

And in a burst of light that blinded every angel

As if the sky had blown the heavens into stars

You felt the gravity of tempered grace falling into empty space

No one there to catch you in their arms~~~

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation

You build up hope, but failure's all you've known

Remember all the sadness and frustration 

And let it go, let it go~~~

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation

You build up hope, but failure's all you've known

Remember all the sadness and frustration 

And let it go, let it go

Let it go

Let it go

Let it go

Let it go

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation

You build up hope, but failure's all you've known

Remember all the sadness and frustration 

And let it go, let it go~~~