Following is somemore beautiful life philosophy:
It all began with a thought -- a thought in the mind of a 12-year-old boy, more than 40 years ago.
"I was about twelve when I decided that I wanted to build a boat and travel the world," Reiki Master Teacher Gordon Brown says, "This desire never left me." He's 54 now, and this week, after all those years, all that dreaming and all the ways the distractions of life can get in the way of those dreams, Gordon's finished boat, the Amnesty, made it into the water at last. Reporters from local Massachusetts newspapers showed up for the launch, and the next day the front page featured a photo of Gordon at the helm in a victory salute.
Victory, yes. Mission accomplished? Hardly -- this guy's just getting started. He's going for more: a victory lap around the world, accompanied by a flotilla of others who, like him, have survived cancer.
Gordon's dream-come-true reminds us that whether any of us ever takes to the high seas, whether we journey to exotic lands or spend our entire lives in one neighborhood, we all are traveling this world in a vessel of our own making.
Gordon didn't build his boat entirely from scratch -- he bought an empty hull and then spent five years building it out into a vessel worthy of circumnavigating the globe. That's kind of the way it is for all of us: at birth we start out with a vessel, our body, that isn't capable of traveling on its own. But after some time, effort, and care, we build ourselves into self-sufficient vehicles that can go just about anywhere and do just about anything we care to do.
He also didn't build the boat alone. Two years ago when he was diagnosed with cancer, Gordon nearly gave up on his dream. He put the unfinished boat up for sale, and the first potential buyer who showed up not only convinced him to keep going, he also volunteered to help.
As all sailors know, the boat may be ready at the moment, but it's going to need constant maintenance, nearly all of it preventive. The same person who built the boat, in this case, is going to have to keep rebuilding it constantly during the voyage. So, too with the rest of us and our own vessels.
Gordon's sailboat may only have needed five years to get ready for its voyage, but it's taken him an entire lifetime (so far) to prepare: not just all the years since he first got the idea as a boy, but the 12 years it took before the thought first occurred to him. And for all of us, whether we are conscious of it or not, a lifetime of experience goes into our every thought or action. And those thoughts and actions then create our future experiences. The Amnesty's voyage has barely begun, and it's going to take many more of those thoughts and actions to get her around the world and home again.
More on Gordon & Amnesty can be found at
Item sourced from The Reiki Digest
http://reikidigest.blogspot.com/2009/09/setting-sail-with-reiki.html
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Life guide
Just for today:
Do not anger
Do not worry
Be humble
Be honest in your work
Be compassionate to yourself and others.
The guidelines above are what Reiki practitioners try to follow every day: the Reiki precepts (as translated from the original Japanese).
You don't have to be a Reiki practitioner to follow those precepts -- they make sense for everyone.
Do not anger
Do not worry
Be humble
Be honest in your work
Be compassionate to yourself and others.
The guidelines above are what Reiki practitioners try to follow every day: the Reiki precepts (as translated from the original Japanese).
You don't have to be a Reiki practitioner to follow those precepts -- they make sense for everyone.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
storm
Given the current worldwide headache, I'd like to remind you:
Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass,
it's about learning to dance in the rain
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Action Change
These wise words from Bonnie Boots of www.painhealthnews.com:
Last month I unwisely did some yard work that would have been better left to a backhoe and managed to reanimate old back and knee injuries. The last month, then, has been one long battle against that dangerous part of myself that wants to slip into total immobility, swathed in heat packs and soothed with muscle relaxants.
I have a terror of that side of my self. Once before it lured me into letting 2 years of my life slip by.
All of us have that side. Pain, both physical and emotional, is the incantation that conjures it up. Once aroused, it begs us, even orders us to retreat, to cower, to give up and give in.
Consider this news story from March 2008: a 35-year old Kansas woman sat on the toilet at her boyfriend's house for two years until he finally called police for help.
Police said the boyfriend claimed the woman had gone into the bathroom, then refused to leave. He brought her food and water and begged her to come out, but she would not. He couldn't explain why he'd waited two years to call for help.
A police spokesman stated they found the woman, clothed in sweat pants and top, seated on the toilet with her pants down around her ankles. She was disoriented and her legs appeared to have atrophied. Because her skin had grown around the toilet seat, the seat had to be taken to the hospital with her, where it was surgically removed.
If you read this story in your newspaper, you may have shaken your head in disbelief or laughed at the incredible circumstances. How can we explain the actions of these two people, the woman and her boyfriend, going on this way, day after day for two years?
I don't believe this couple planned to spend two years of their lives waiting for her to come out of the bathroom. I imagine something happened that had her very upset. She ran to the bathroom and slammed the door and refused to come out. And an hour passed.
Then another hour passed, and before long the day was gone and evening came. Then it was late at night, and the man and the woman still waited, waited for something to happen. Waited for things to be different.
But the next day, things were still the same, and they were still waiting. Two years, waiting, while the sun rose and set seven hundred and thirty times, for things to change.
Here's one thing we know for sure about this incredible story-things only changed when the boyfriend overcame inertia and took action, when he finally picked up the phone to dial the police and ask for help.
It seems totally weird and incomprehensible. And yet how many of us are living our lives exactly the same way?
We may not be stuck on the toilet seat, but we're stuck on something that holds us back and keeps us from getting on with our lives.
And we're waiting, waiting for something to happen, for something to break the spell of whatever holds us back.
When I first became a pain patient, I was stuck in that strange state of suspended animation. Pain medication robbed me of my normal high energy and made me passive, and I passively waited for someone, some doctor or nurse or therapist, to make things different. I waited for two years.
I know how easy it is to get stuck, like a fly in amber, as days and then years pass and nothing ever changes. So I know this very well-- things only change when we overcome inertia and take action.
When I overcame my inertia, when I stopped waiting for someone else to make a difference in my life, I discovered something amazing. The person I'd been waiting for was me.
I got off the pot, so to speak, and kicked butt. I stopped taking narcotics and got out of the fog. I stopped being polite and passive. I changed doctors. Then I changed doctors again. And then I changed doctors again until I found professionals who could actually help me make progress.
I read everything I could find on pain and healing and I tried, within budget and reason, anything that promised results.
I don't know your story. I don't know what you're stuck on that holds you back. But I do know that if you want something to be different, if you want things to change, if you don't want next week or next month and next year to be just like today, you have to take action.
You have to do something different, talk to someone different, read something different, try something different. Commit yourself to change and change will come.
Takng sustained action will generate a wave of change, a wave that will pick you up and sweep you away from whatever it is you're stuck on, until one day you find yourself standing on a new shore, seeing the sun rise on a new day: a day unlike any you've ever lived. And everything will be different.
Resource: Bonnie Boots
http://www.pain-health-news.com/September-2008.htm
Last month I unwisely did some yard work that would have been better left to a backhoe and managed to reanimate old back and knee injuries. The last month, then, has been one long battle against that dangerous part of myself that wants to slip into total immobility, swathed in heat packs and soothed with muscle relaxants.
I have a terror of that side of my self. Once before it lured me into letting 2 years of my life slip by.
All of us have that side. Pain, both physical and emotional, is the incantation that conjures it up. Once aroused, it begs us, even orders us to retreat, to cower, to give up and give in.
Consider this news story from March 2008: a 35-year old Kansas woman sat on the toilet at her boyfriend's house for two years until he finally called police for help.
Police said the boyfriend claimed the woman had gone into the bathroom, then refused to leave. He brought her food and water and begged her to come out, but she would not. He couldn't explain why he'd waited two years to call for help.
A police spokesman stated they found the woman, clothed in sweat pants and top, seated on the toilet with her pants down around her ankles. She was disoriented and her legs appeared to have atrophied. Because her skin had grown around the toilet seat, the seat had to be taken to the hospital with her, where it was surgically removed.
If you read this story in your newspaper, you may have shaken your head in disbelief or laughed at the incredible circumstances. How can we explain the actions of these two people, the woman and her boyfriend, going on this way, day after day for two years?
I don't believe this couple planned to spend two years of their lives waiting for her to come out of the bathroom. I imagine something happened that had her very upset. She ran to the bathroom and slammed the door and refused to come out. And an hour passed.
Then another hour passed, and before long the day was gone and evening came. Then it was late at night, and the man and the woman still waited, waited for something to happen. Waited for things to be different.
But the next day, things were still the same, and they were still waiting. Two years, waiting, while the sun rose and set seven hundred and thirty times, for things to change.
Here's one thing we know for sure about this incredible story-things only changed when the boyfriend overcame inertia and took action, when he finally picked up the phone to dial the police and ask for help.
It seems totally weird and incomprehensible. And yet how many of us are living our lives exactly the same way?
We may not be stuck on the toilet seat, but we're stuck on something that holds us back and keeps us from getting on with our lives.
And we're waiting, waiting for something to happen, for something to break the spell of whatever holds us back.
When I first became a pain patient, I was stuck in that strange state of suspended animation. Pain medication robbed me of my normal high energy and made me passive, and I passively waited for someone, some doctor or nurse or therapist, to make things different. I waited for two years.
I know how easy it is to get stuck, like a fly in amber, as days and then years pass and nothing ever changes. So I know this very well-- things only change when we overcome inertia and take action.
When I overcame my inertia, when I stopped waiting for someone else to make a difference in my life, I discovered something amazing. The person I'd been waiting for was me.
I got off the pot, so to speak, and kicked butt. I stopped taking narcotics and got out of the fog. I stopped being polite and passive. I changed doctors. Then I changed doctors again. And then I changed doctors again until I found professionals who could actually help me make progress.
I read everything I could find on pain and healing and I tried, within budget and reason, anything that promised results.
I don't know your story. I don't know what you're stuck on that holds you back. But I do know that if you want something to be different, if you want things to change, if you don't want next week or next month and next year to be just like today, you have to take action.
You have to do something different, talk to someone different, read something different, try something different. Commit yourself to change and change will come.
Takng sustained action will generate a wave of change, a wave that will pick you up and sweep you away from whatever it is you're stuck on, until one day you find yourself standing on a new shore, seeing the sun rise on a new day: a day unlike any you've ever lived. And everything will be different.
Resource: Bonnie Boots
http://www.pain-health-news.com/September-2008.htm
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Know Pain, Know Gain
Okay, so I know it's a play on the "no pain, no gain" tag, but I prefer the positive edge the title gives.
I've just started reading 'The Road Less Travelled' by M. Scott Peck (1990 - yeah it's been around awhile) and in the first few chapters have come across the following gems:
PROBLEMS do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to growth and development.
... many people simply do not take the time necessary (for many reasons other than lack of time) to solve life's intellectual, social or spiritual problems.
In attempting to avoid the pain of responsibility, millions of people daily attempt to escape from freedom. One's adult life is a series of personal choices, decisions. If you can accept this totally, you become free.
And a throw-back from the 60's, attributed to Eldridge Cleaver, "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem".
Then, finally for this post: The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action.
Keep evolving!
I've just started reading 'The Road Less Travelled' by M. Scott Peck (1990 - yeah it's been around awhile) and in the first few chapters have come across the following gems:
PROBLEMS do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to growth and development.
... many people simply do not take the time necessary (for many reasons other than lack of time) to solve life's intellectual, social or spiritual problems.
In attempting to avoid the pain of responsibility, millions of people daily attempt to escape from freedom. One's adult life is a series of personal choices, decisions. If you can accept this totally, you become free.
And a throw-back from the 60's, attributed to Eldridge Cleaver, "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem".
Then, finally for this post: The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action.
Keep evolving!
Sunday, August 3, 2008
It's August
which means I've been in Lake Macquarie for one month now. Wow! Sydney feels like a lifetime ago and I've achieved quite a bit: a new approach to life (smell the roses), a new clinic, in a couple of weeks I'll be launching Pilates Matwork classes at the Caves Beachside Hotel (watch this space) and I even think I've got a crew position lined up for the new sailing season in September!
Life is good.
Another lovely piece of philosophy follows, for you to ponder and act upon:
I shall pass this way but once;
any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now.
Lert me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Life is good.
Another lovely piece of philosophy follows, for you to ponder and act upon:
I shall pass this way but once;
any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now.
Lert me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Running Out
This is from a recent horoscope but the philosophy I think is appropriate to all...
Running out of time? Or patience? These are self-replenishing commodities.
Just as we never run out of reasons to feel agitated, irritated or annoyed, so we never run out of potential reasons to forgive, forget, be kind and be tolerant.
Life's too dull if all we ever do is act like model citizens. It's too unhappy if we let resentments or anxieties dominate our thoughts and feelings.
Life's is short: enjoy every moment.
Source: www.cainer.com
Running out of time? Or patience? These are self-replenishing commodities.
Just as we never run out of reasons to feel agitated, irritated or annoyed, so we never run out of potential reasons to forgive, forget, be kind and be tolerant.
Life's too dull if all we ever do is act like model citizens. It's too unhappy if we let resentments or anxieties dominate our thoughts and feelings.
Life's is short: enjoy every moment.
Source: www.cainer.com
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
STRESS MANAGEMENT
Have to thank one of those horrendous emails that circulates the world for this, but I thought it good philosophy for life:
A lecturer when explaining stress management to an audience,
raised a glass of water and asked 'How heavy is this glass of water?'
Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.
The lecturer replied, 'The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance.
In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.' He continued, 'And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. ' 'As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.'
'So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can.'
So, my friend, put down anything that may be a burden to you right now. Don't pick it up again until after you've rested a while. Here are some great ways of dealing with the burdens of life:
* Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.
* Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.
* Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
* Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.
* If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
* If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
* It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply be kind to others.
* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have
a leg to stand on.
* Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
* Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late. The second
mouse gets the cheese.
* When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
* Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
* You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one
person.
* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
* We could learn a lot from crayons... Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
*A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
Have an awesome day!
A lecturer when explaining stress management to an audience,
raised a glass of water and asked 'How heavy is this glass of water?'
Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.
The lecturer replied, 'The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance.
In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.' He continued, 'And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. ' 'As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.'
'So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can.'
So, my friend, put down anything that may be a burden to you right now. Don't pick it up again until after you've rested a while. Here are some great ways of dealing with the burdens of life:
* Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.
* Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.
* Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
* Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.
* If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
* If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
* It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply be kind to others.
* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have
a leg to stand on.
* Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
* Since it's the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late. The second
mouse gets the cheese.
* When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
* Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
* You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one
person.
* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
* We could learn a lot from crayons... Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.
*A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
Have an awesome day!
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