The Man Who Didn't Like The Sun
Friday, September 30, 2005
The Man Who Didn't Like The Sun
The man hated the bright burning thing in the sky. It hovered over him all day long, no matter where he went. He hated the Sun's harsh light, the heat it created and the shadows it cast on the earth around him.He felt like the sun was stealing something from him, separating him from things when what he craved was unity.
"At least at night everything looks the same," he thought. hat's why he liked the darkness. The Sun had become his enemy.
One day, unable to stand it any longer, he decided to dig a hole to protect himself from the intolerable rays of sunlight. His skin, which had been burned a deep brown, began to turn white again, and the shadows of day ceased to annoy him. But then, sitting in his hole, he realized that the sun continued to flood his hiding place with light from above, and that his shelter was even brighter than the land outside.
He went back to work and had soon dug himself a tunnel and a cave. And there he finally found protection from the Sun. He spent years in his hole, meditating in solitude, in the coolness of the dark where the Sun never penetrated. Up on the surface other men grew food and warmed themselves in the heat of the all-giving star. They saw the Sun as a good and protecting God. The Sun was their ally as they learned to tame its extremes. They lived through the seasons, one after the other.
All were thankful for the Sun's presence, all except for the man who wanted to avoid the light and the contrasts it created. In the end the poor hermit perished in his cave, in darkness, in the calmness and unity of the shadows, but desperate and alone.
And after he died the people didn't even have to dig a grave for him.
It was already there...
Moral of the Story:
Accepting people's differences, living with others and their strange habits and sometimes incomprehensible behaviour, can be difficult. We are often tempted to retreat like a hermit into the calmness of home, into the shadows. But life is composed of diversity, of exchange and of change. When you cut yourself off from your friends, your neighbours and your community, you also lose a part of yourself.
Blogged on 4:54 AM by Upay
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Four Agreements
Monday, September 26, 2005
The simple ideas of The Four Agreements provide an inspirational code for life; a personal development model, and a template for personal development, behavior, communications and relationships.
Here is how Don Miguel Ruiz summarizes 'The Four Agreements': code for life
agreement 1
be impeccable with your word - Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
Agreement 2
don’t take anything personally - Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.
Agreement 3
don’t make assumptions - Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
Agreement 4
Always do your best - Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
Blogged on 2:37 AM by Upay
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Two Wolves Fight
Saturday, September 24, 2005
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight between two wolves.
"One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, greed, regret, lies, self-pity, arrogance, guilt, resentment, inferiority, false pride, superiority and ego.
"The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.
"This same fight is going on inside you -- and inside every other person, too."
The grandson thought for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"
The old Cherokee replied, "The one you feed."
Blogged on 2:36 PM by Upay
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Missing Socks
Friday, September 23, 2005
For anyone who has ever been troubled by the lone sock left at the end of the laundry, help is on the way, and it comes in the form of indignation: Who ever said socks had to come in pairs? At least that is the rebellious philosophy of one sock manufacturer who is single handedly trying to change the way we see the sock problem. "The missing sock is never going to go away," said one of the company's founders. "This is a way to really have fun with a real-world problem: that people lose their socks… Let's embrace the problem, and run with it." Currently they have in circulation over 600,000 socks, all sold without matches in packages of 1, 3, or 7.
Type A personalities aside, the embracing of mismatched socks is catching on quickly. I happen to think the idea is clever, particularly among the target market (girls age 9-13), but I also think it is one more logical outworking of the current philosophical frame of mind. "Imbalance by design—and the studied quirkiness it reveals—is everywhere," notes one cultural observer. "Random is the new order," declares another product aimed at teens. Whether selling music or socks, in the constant undertow of marketing, the spirit and mood of the age can be felt.
Leon Lederman, the physicist and Nobel laureate, once jokingly remarked that the real goal of physics was to come up with an equation that could explain the universe but still be small enough to fit on a T-shirt. With this challenge in mind, Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins offered up his own T-shirt slogan: "Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators." The universe, he insists, has neither design nor purpose; it exhibits nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
But if the universe has always been a disordered series of time plus matter plus chance, how do we account for the intricate orderedness to life, the uniformity of nature, the very intricacy of the mind that asks this question? How can we believe in the non-random consistency of nature in a random world? What would it really look like if random was the new order? Even in the nonconforming concept of mismatched socks, the factories making them still exhibit a scrupulous degree of order; each random sock is designed and produced with creativity and intent.
Blogged on 2:29 AM by Upay
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Socrates' Triple filter
Monday, September 19, 2005
Socrates' Triple filterIn ancient Greece, Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem. One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, "Do you know what I just heard about your friend?"
"Before telling me anything, I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test" Socrates replied.
"Triple filter?"
"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say. That's why I call it the triple filter test. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said, "Actually I just heard about it and..."
"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," Socrates continued, "You want to tell me something bad about him, but you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because there's one filter left: the filter of usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?"
"No, not really."
"Well," concluded Socrates, "If what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?"
Blogged on 8:06 PM by Upay
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