Changing the world...

By Unknown Monk, 1100 A.D.

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.

I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.

When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.

Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town.

Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

Love...

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
~ I Corinthians 13:4-8

When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.
~HH the Dalai Lama

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
~Jimi Hendrix

I love you
Not only for what you are
But for what I am
When I am with you
Love (first stanza)
~Roy Croft

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
~Rumi

The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
~Tom Robbins

Karma....let's look at it.

The law of karma can be described as the biblical proverb: 'As you sow, so shall you reap'. Every action (cause) has its reaction (effect). At a spiritual level is a similar law, the law of karma.

Karma means 'work' or 'acting' in Sanskrit. All the energy we spread has a retroactive effect to restore the balance. It also concerns thoughts, for thoughts are energies. Karma is also known as the Law of Mercy. Karma is no punishment, but a way to be aware of the fact that what we do to others, returns to ourselves and in reverse order.

The law of karma means that what we have done in one life influences the next life. This cosmic law is also known as the law of Cause and Effect.

Karma is aimed at our growth in insight, consciousness and love. At every difficult or special experience you have to ask yourself the question: 'What can I learn from this experience?' Karma should always be applied to yourself and not to an other person, it's a matter of learning from our experiences. At all times we bear responsibility for our present lives, but also beyond the border of our lives. It is all about the present.

What happens to us in life usually emanates from what we did in former lives. We are responsible ourselves. We chose for this ourselves, when we, together with our spiritual guides, drew up our plan of life.

A Correct insight in the process of karma means that we should never judge and we should never say: "It's just your karma." We are never asked to judge, only to sympathize. It's important what you can learn from a situation yourself.

It sounds illogical that all special situations in a human life, the good and the bad ones, are a result of karma. Sometimes, our guides makes us acquire the necessary experience to get ahead on our path of life. Another cause of bad things can be that we just don't pay enough attention or we are just careless.

www.spiritualiteit.com/

To quote...

You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them but by building a fire within them.
-- Bob Nelson

What are we here for if not to make life easier for each other?
-- Source Unknown

When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.
-- William Arthur Ward

Who would you be if you dropped your complaints?
-- Alan Cohen

True love seeks the beloved's happiness.
-- Alan Cohen

Honor

From long familiarity, we know what honor is. It is what enables the individual to do right in the face of complacency and cowardice. It is what enables the soldier to die alone, the political prisoner to resist, the singer to sing her song, hardly appreciated, on a side street.

-- Mark Helprin, American Novelist and Writer
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"People don't care how much you know...until they know how much you care."

Selfishness

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
~Oscar Wilde~

Understanding

All can hear, but only the sensitive can understand...
~Kahlil Gibran~

Thoughts...

“Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind the stronger the trees.”
-- Williard Marriott


“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.”
-- John Lubbock


“Using another as a means of satisfaction and security is not love. Love is never security; love is a state in which there is no desire to be secure; it is a state of vulnerability.”
-- J. Krishnamurti