Flow excerpt

“It is relatively easy to bring order to the mind for short stretches of time; any realistic goal can accomplish this. A good game, an emergency at work, a happy interlude at home will focus attention and produce the harmonious experience of flow. But it is much more difficult to extend this state of being through the entirety of life. For this it is necessary to invest energy in goals that are so persuasive that they justify effort even when our resources are exhausted and when fate is merciless in refusing us a chance at having a comfortable life. If goals are well chosen, and if we have the courage to abide by them despite opposition, we shall be so focused on that actions and events around us that we won’t have the time to be unhappy. And then we shall directly feel a sense of order in the warp and woof of life that fits every thought and emotion into a harmonious whole.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, (Harper Perennial Modern Classics; 2008 Ed, p.227)    

"Es relativamente fácil de poner orden en la mente de los tramos cortos de tiempo, cualquier meta realista puede lograr esto. Un buen juego, una emergencia en el trabajo, un interludio feliz en su casa se ​​centrará la atención y producir la experiencia de flujo armonioso. Pero es mucho más difícil extender este estado de ser a través de la totalidad de la vida. Para ello, es necesario invertir la energía en metas que son tan convincentes que justifiquen el esfuerzo, incluso cuando los recursos se agotan y cuando el destino se ensaña en negarnos la oportunidad de tener una vida cómoda. Si los objetivos están bien elegidos, y si tenemos el coraje de cumplir con ellas a pesar de la oposición, que deberá estar centrado en que las acciones y los acontecimientos que nos rodean que no vamos a tener el tiempo para ser infeliz. Y entonces directamente se sienten un sentido de orden en la urdimbre y la trama de la vida que se adapte a cada pensamiento y emoción en un todo armonioso. "

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, (Harper Perennial Modern Classics; 2008 Ed, p.227)      

Get your head around it

Steve Jobs, for all his flaws, once said this gem to the CEO of Gorilla Glass in response to the CEO telling him it was impossible for them to retool a factory to produce glass needed for iPhone screens in time for Apple’s target launch date:

“You can do it. Get your head around it, you can do it.”

In similar vein. We fret and fume about the workings of the world, the seeming unfairness of it, the seeming skewing toward the genetically gifted, smooth talking, and networked beautiful people. But the simplest truth is that if you concern yourself with the workings of God, coming closer to divine understanding, the understanding needed to understand and navigate this physical world, will be child’s play. Much of this may make no sense to many, and that is part of the point. 

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Steve Jobs, a pesar de sus defectos, dijo una vez esta joya del CEO de Gorilla Glass en respuesta al CEO diciéndole que era imposible para ellos para reestructurar una fábrica de vidrio necesario para pantallas de iPhone en tiempo para la fecha de lanzamiento de Apple de destino:

"Usted puede hacerlo. Obtenga su cabeza en torno a él, usted puede hacerlo ".

En la misma línea: Nosotros traste y humo sobre el funcionamiento del mundo, la injusticia aparente de la misma, el sesgo hacia la aparente genéticamente dotados, hablar suave, y gente guapa en red. Pero la simple verdad es que si usted se preocupe por las obras de Dios, acercándose a la comprensión divina, el conocimiento necesario para entender y navegar en este mundo físico, será un juego de niños. Gran parte de este puede no tener sentido para muchos, y que es parte del punto.

A grade players B grade passion

How can you be an A grade player at something you have a B grade passion for? Expecting to is as delusional as expecting the laws of physics to suspend because you ask them to, nicely.

¿Cómo puedes ser un jugador de un grado A algo que usted tiene una pasión por el grado B? Esperando es tan delirante como esperando que las leyes de la física para suspender porque usted les pide que, muy bien.

Inconsequential

The world and people may be cruel and fickle, and sometimes you end up feeling inconsequential. But that's kind of the divine point to drive home the message of illusion. Stay true to yourself and consistent with the inner journey, and you will never be inconsequential to God.

El mundo y la gente puede ser cruel y caprichosa, ya veces terminan sintiéndose insignificante. Pero eso es una especie de punto divino para llevar a casa el mensaje de ilusión. Mantente fiel a ti mismo y de acuerdo con el viaje interior, y usted nunca será inconsecuente con Dios. 

Pain as a weapon

One of the best gifts from Providence is pain tailored to test and strengthen without overwhelming. Such pain, is a weapon. 

La mente

La mente es una bestia sutil, y eso es lo que hace que sea difícil de controlar, debido a la sutileza es la última cosa que usted espera de una bestia

A Big World

It is a waste to face a big world with a small heart. Yes, often it can be a big cruel world, but if you use that as the crutch to justify a small heart, you miss out on living the moments when it is a big beautiful world, and you miss the opportunities to make it your big beautiful world.

Every Thought and Action

The simple question to ask as routinely as breathing: am I perpetuating emptiness or striving toward lasting fullness?

It is not even a question of deep down. On the edges of our wakeful consciousness, we know the answer to that question. Usually it isn't pleasant, but that's where human nature tends to pull a fast one, by being purposefully incapable of weighing the enormous benefit of building concentration on well defined goals that can create your own inner and outer legacy, versus the pleasure of the moment.

The trouble today, is that the fleeting moments of pleasure, these distractions and diversions, can be chained together in an almost unceasing succession, thereby building another layer of illusion: by making fleeting pleasure seem permanent as long as it is ceaselessly indulged through the infinite stimuli available to us, online and off.

The best investment of that most precious resource, time, is still purposeful innner development. Which can then guide our external selves to being better human beings of depth. In other words, the kinds who appreciate the value of human life and wish to share it with meaningful, instead of fleeting and superficial, connection. As Abil-Kheir so warmly put it: "The light on your face, you will take with you. All else, your sorrows, your joys and all that you lay claim on, you will leave behind. The light on your face, that you will take."    

The Reward of Power

Having people you know cannot stand you or are at best indifferent to you, who have previously looked at you with a condescending flick of the nose and hair, purposefully made you feel small, having to talk to you. Lining up to talk to you, to be your best friend; because there is a craving and need to be your friend to serve their self-interest. To be able to see the fear in their eyes tinged with admiration, because your success has made life beat their shallowness over their heads like a sledgehammer. This is perhaps the greatest reward of Power.

Rejection as reflection

Rejection in this World is often a lesson taught to Man roughly in proportion to how stubbornly Man has been rejecting the only one that desires to love Man unconditionally. 

True Love

Man may think he has known true love, but until he has had children and held them close, until he has felt their breath on his face, until he has seen the utter innocence, and consequent depth, of their love, he has not known true love. Merely a reflection and a lighter shade of it. 

We all have our reasons

We all have our reasons and we all have our destinies, and basically there is no difference between the two. 

Human Nature

The problem with human nature is that idealism and striving to a higher purpose plays well with the mind of man in isolation. But put greed in the same room with hope and a sense of honour, and greed seems to always end up serving barbecued hope with sense of honour sauce at the McMansion.

Comfortable Insanity

The journey from comfortable insanity to reality is an uncomfortable one, but make no mistake, the destination is worth it.

The choice between staying comfortable in insanity and uncomfortable walking toward reality – is ultimately still a choice.

Dreams with balls

This is how to live: even if a heartfelt dream is not meant to be, it should be so strong and pursued with such vigor that destiny herself is filled with tearful regret in ensuring its death.

Misplaced Allegiance

The best con is the mind and our concentrative capacity's misplaced allegiance to the ego. Because the mind and our concentration have only seen the fruits of worldly pleasure and achievement, they find it difficult to grasp the value of concentrating on the spirit and God. It is not their fault, it is the same as faulting a child for not seeing the value of something they cannot comprehend yet.

Grace alone can take the reins and guide these horses to their goal. All it asks of the feeble human is to rise in his bloodied state, and offer the reins to Grace.

War

During the Cuban missile crisis the White House received 2 conflicting cables from Moscow. One was a softer message and the other a hard line message. The former US ambassador to Moscow correctly identified to JFK which was the one that Nikita Khruschev actually intended to send, and it was this:

"You and we ought not to pull on two ends of a rope, on which is tied the knot of war. If we were to pull on that rope, it would grow so tight as to necessitate cutting, and it is not for me to explain to you what that would mean...War would not end until it had sown destruction in our villages and our towns and our cities. For such is the logic of war..."

Khruschev did not want mutually assured destruction. He wanted to be known as the savior of the Cuban people, as the man who looked the US in the eye and had the wisdom to say no. Castro on the other hand, in conversation with Robert McNamara decades later, said he was mentally prepared and agreeable to war, even though it would mean the assured annihilation of Cuba.

What is the lesson of this? Men who have empire and have had their fill will seek to avoid war. But men who are lords of a small pond will sometimes pursue immortality in memory by any means. Such is human nature. The more important point is that if Castro were in Khrushchev's position with Khrushchev's life experience, Castro may well have made a decision similar to Khrushchev. In the end, we are all slaves to our nature until we can get to our higher nature as habit. Some people have to forced to that, but the best of us are the ones who come to it of their own volition. Not because it will advance them, but because it is a worthy goal in and of itself.

Purpose

We are all flawed and finite beings, but we are capable of extraordinary things when we are doing what we believe is aligned with our sense of purpose. This is what makes awareness, real awareness, of one's purpose so very powerful.

Dreams and Purpose

Everyone has dreams; but that is never enough. The question is how feverishly your dream has taken hold of your self. How uncontrollably it swirls and shakes within your frame and threatens to burst from under your skin.

When one finds others who are so possessed, it should be the human obligation to aid that dreamer's journey and joyous struggle from fantasy to reality.

For what we have become is what the world expected of us, but what we seek to become, is what our sense of purpose expects from us.

And no one knows who gives us our sense of purpose. May be it was God stamping it on us as we were born, maybe it was the Universe, may be its just a roulette wheel in the sky; but purpose is undeniably and powerfully present, and as men driven to purpose, we cannot ignore it.

I do not purport to understand the world or people, both are too complicated for a single mind to comprehend with any measure of real understanding. God, on the other hand, I find decidedly simpler. Give Him all of you, the whole illusion bundled up, and you will receive all of eternity and God in return.