Personal Story

Every day you get up and you head to work. You drive the same way. You take the same roads, the same highways, you make the same turns. But perhaps you commute via train or subway. Five days a week, for the last five years, and it’ll be going on for the next ten years.

Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather “I have found a truth.”

Say not, “I have found the path of the soul,” but say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”

For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line. Neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.

Your heart knows in silence, the secrets of the days and the nights.

But your ears thirst for the sounds of your heart’s knowledge.

You would know in words, that which you have always known in thought.

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts. And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart, you live in your lips. And sound is a diversion and a pastime.

And in much of your talking, thinking is half-murdered, for thought is a bird of space, that in a cage or words may indeed unfold its wings, but cannot fly.

You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth, for to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work, you are a flute, through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.

When you think you are awake, you’re not. You go for a walk along a path in the woods, and you are fully awake, at least in your mind. But from a different perspective, are you awake? No you are not. You are sleeping. Why? Because your mind is full of thoughts, ideas, tasks to be done. All of these mental activities are moving at the speed of light. Your eyes are open. You look awake to the world. But you really are not.

You’re not really present. You’re far away. You’re unaware of your present world.

A frog can hop at your foot, and you won’t even see it.

There’s a brook along the road on my drive home from work. I stopped there today, parked my car, and I walked out to the middle of the brook. You can do it if you’re very careful, and you select the stones that rise just above the shallow eight inches of the babbling brook.

I walked out to the middle, and I stopped. And I crouched down. A few feet away, the brook gets deeper, maybe three to four feet. And the rapids are moving quicker. The sound is intensified, so strong and so loud, you can’t even hear the cars passing on the highway just 40 yards away.

There’s a brook by the side of the road. Sometimes, on the way home, I stop here.

It only takes a minute to get out of the car, you walk out, you tip toe across the little stones that extend and rise above the brook. It’s shallow here, maybe eight inches deep.

So I picked it, and select the large rocks, and I’m standing now in the middle.

The sound is beautiful.

As I look to my right, upstream, I see a driftwood. It’s floating down right now.

I wonder what’s going through that driftwood’s mind. Aimlessly, without a care in the world, just floating.

Ever notice that sometimes it’s just hard to get it done? Sometimes it’s hard to get a job, or an event, or an activity you had planned to do, and just do it.

Sometimes, that thing called procrastination bites you in the ass, and you can’t move forward. And no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you think about it, it eludes you.

Now you’re a smart person, you’re capable, you get a lot of things done all day. But sometimes the one event, one activity, one task just can’t get done. So how do you get it done? Here’s a little trick that might work.

How do you regain your confidence when you feel it slipping away, right out the window?

There’s a woman who had lost her confidence in her early 20s. She felt inadequate, and she felt she was a failure. When she joined in in conversations, she felt that the words she had to contribute were not worth speaking at all, that she had nothing to say.

She was a married woman, and she gave birth to twins. At the same time she had the twins, her father also came down with dementia.

How do you make decision?

Do you gather information? Do you research? Do you educate yourself? Do you read all the best information? Put the best information at your fingertips? Do you call friends? Experts in the field? So that before you make the decision, you have all the right information?

Then when you have that, what’s your next step?

I learned from a very successful man, success as being defined as a person thousands of people would listen to, how he did it.

And he called it, "The council of elders."