Sins

There are no such things as sins...at least not as how the Catholics define them.  But if there were, the greatest ones would be the lies that you tell yourselves. Before you can be ecstatically happy, you must first be brutally honest with yourself.  You must admit the truth to the one person with whom you can never get away with a lie...yourself.

All frustrations and anxieties result from the soul knowing the truth while having to co-exist with the untruths created in the mind.

Reality

Nothing is real...except for what you believe to be real.

Whatever bad that had happened to you are only bad because you define it to be bad.  Happiness begins with the realization that everything that has happened to you was either a birth of a miracle, a transformation of a miracle, or an aftermath of  a miracle.

Past regrets and future worries only take you away from the present...away from the living.

In life there is no moving forward or moving backward.  There is only growing or stagnating.  The choice is entirely up to you.

To save the whales, you must first save the algae and work your way up the chain.  To save the world, you must first put your own home in order.

In the search for greater understanding, don't waste time replacing your own box of wisdom with another seemingly bigger box.  Stay within your own box and extend its limits instead.

To replenish yin in a yin-deficient patient, you need true yang, because only true yang can generate true yin.

Competition assumes that everyone wants the same thing and that the things they want are in short supply.  Both assumptions are mere illusions instigated by the few to control the many.

The demons within are far more cunning than any demon you will ever meet in the street.

Life is a lot like surfing waves.  Don't fight them, but don't avoid them either.  Just ride.

When you hit bottom, there is no where left to go but up.

It's easy to forget about God when there are so many distractions.  Sometimes you have be at your loneliest before knowing that He has never left your side.

Imagine a world without credit

Imagine that you are on a fixed income and all 8 of your credit cards are maxed out.  You barely manage to pay your debt and stay above water each month.  Now imagine your boss's financial picture to be the same, and his boss's...and all the way up to the CEO.  Now imagine your church, your hospital, your local grocery store, and your favorite restaurant are all in the same situation.  And then imagine the governments of your city, your state, your country, and every other countries are all in the same quagmire.

Most of us are standing in the middle of a debt quick sand with no way to escape.  We are so heavily burdened we can't move, even when we can see that we are slowly sinking beneath the surface.

The credit that gave us prosperity, better living standards, and growth is the same credit that will destroy everything that we have come to expect as a "normal" lifestyle.  This "credit-way-of-life" enable us to live beyond our current means.  It allows us to promise to give certain amount of our time and energy in the future for the exchange of goods and services now.  It works only as long as we deliver on our promises.

But what happens if we promise to give 100 years of service when we only are able to give 40 or 50 years of service.  We became cheaters to our lenders. All of us who are maxed out on our credit cards essentially signed a contract of 100 years of indenture servitude when we know that we won't even live that long.

So who are the lenders that we are cheating.  Is it the banks?  The governments?  The corporations?  Actually they are the depositors of the banks, the citizens of the governments, and the stockholders of the corporation.  We are only cheating ourselves when we live beyond our means.

The credit bubble is stretched extremely thin.  And it is about to pop.  It will mostly likely pop where the promissory notes for future services are most outrageous...Greece.

However, Greece won't be the only one that suffer, because in this game both lender and borrower suffer losses.  And as mentioned earlier, all of us are simultaneously borrowers and lenders.

Excess and Deficiency in Europe

If you follow the news in Europe, no doubt you are aware of the severe economic problem that it is currently facing.  In the center of this economic struggle is Greece's national debt and how it affects the other countries in the Euro zone, specifically Germany (the richest in the European Union).

Germany feels it has the most to lose because it is paying for most of the bailout cost.  So it feels justified to demand certain concessions from Greece.  Following these concessions is tantamount to Greece submitting its sovereignty to Germany...an intensely sensitive issue since most Greeks still remember that 300,000 of its citizens died under Nazi occupation.

So the world ponders the question is it fair for Germany to interfere with Greece political structure solely on the basis of debt?  Or is it fair for Greece to be so resistant to Germany's demands when it owes Germany so much money?

But here are 2 question that you don't hear most people asking?  Did Germans think it was unfair when it extended generous credit to Greece in the early 2000's allowing Greeks to spend freely and in turn partly made Germany the rich nation that it is now?  Did Greeks think Germany was so evil when it spent Germany's money and raised their own standard of living for over a decade?

The truth is when things are good, no one complains.  When things are bad, it's always the other guy's fault.

But if you have been following this blog, you know the answer doesn't simply stop there.  The question of what's fair is irrelevant.  And so is the question of who is at fault.  The purpose for this entry is the continuation of the subject discussed in last blog's entry.  There is no ownership.

As long as the belief of ownership continues, the problem in Europe will follow its natural course toward violence and possibly war.  What we have now in Europe is the richest nation hoarding everything that is has, while the poorest nation is being squeezed of everything it has.

If the idea of ownership is replaced with the principle of excess and deficiency, then rich nations will realize supplementing poorer nations early is the way to prevent catastrophe later on.

A New Life- Excess and Deficiency part 2

The concept of excess of deficiency has been running through my mind often since this new life-changing event took over my life 5 weeks ago.  When I last talked about it, I learned that there is no such thing as fair or unfair.

The new revelation I am going to tell you today may offend your sense of righteousness.  And it's OK to feel this way initially.  However if it continues to upset you, then you must begin to question why you are having such a strong reaction to it.

There is no ownership...period.  The money in my bank account is not mine.  They money in your bank account is not yours.  The expensive stuff you spent years accumulating in your house is not yours.  The food in the grocery store is not the grocer's; nor is bread in the bakery belongs to the baker.

If this concept is too so far-fetched than perhaps you could apply it first to the parent-child relationship.  You don't own your child.  You merely are in charge of keeping him or her safe until he or she is independent enough to survive without you.

Everything that you own in the world is like your child.  You are merely keeping those items safe until they are needed (by you or by someone else).  And if someone else decides that he needs it more than you and takes it from you without your knowledge, then it's still OK.

I know MANY of you are outraged right now because it sounds like I condone stealing.  However, in a world of no ownership, there is no such thing as stealing.

A New Life 3- Sam

The discussion of a new life could not be complete without a discussion about Sam.  After all, the purpose of buying the house and the truck was about building an educational environment for Sam.

For several generations now, most of us have believed education is the road to success.  And it has been true to a certain extent.  However, not everyone is meant to succeed in the classroom; nor is everyone meant to be in college.

Sam is here to teach me about education (specifically what education can potentially be)...and hopefully how other parents can educate their children.

I think the Universe has already set a curriculum for Sam even before he was born.  In fact I think each of us has a curriculum tailored to our life purpose before we were born.

We human beings are not only "educated" by reading books and listening to professors in a classroom.  Some of us are educated through painful experiences, or through a chance meeting of with a kind stranger, or through our parents, or even through our children, etc.  This "Universe curriculum" is designed to make us be the best possible us that we are meant to be.  If we listen carefully to our own intuition, we can learn how to move from one lesson to the next until we are ready to take on the responsibility that we are meant to do.

As parents we are so fearful of ruining our children's future that we tend to defer all of our educational decisions to the so-called educational experts, who arbitrarily set one standard curriculum for everyone.  When our child shows no interest in what this standard curriculum teaches, we immediately think it's the fault of the child.

The future of education is inside each child.  This is who we should listen to.  The experts know nothing about your child, but you can be your child best listener.  And it must be you who must provide the right setting for your child to learn.  After all, God picked you specifically to be the parent of your child because you are the most qualified person for the job.

A New Life 2 - The Black Truck

The biggest breakthrough I had with the recent purchases of my new things is this lesson.  There is no such thing as "fair".

After buying my truck, I could not shake the feeling that I had made a "bad deal".  Although I overpaid by a few hundred dollars, I knew the money was to help out the salesman and his family.  And I was very OK knowing that I could help him and his situation.  The funny thing is that if I had overpaid 10 thousand dollars for the house, I would not have even blinked twice.  But this few hundred dollars lingered in the back of my mind like a rash in the middle of my back.

I have learned now that anytime an issue lingers around for days, usually there is a lesson to be learned.  And this lesson is a "doozy".  If there is no rule, then the correlation to the rule is that there is no "justice".

What exactly is "justice" or "fairness"?  Each of us defines fairness as what is fair for me.  Fairness is essentially another word for entitlement.  When I get what I want out of a transaction, then it's fair.  If I don't, then it's not fair.  However, what construes as fair for me is inherently not fair for the other party.

Although I "overpaid" because the dealer had underestimated my trade-in, the price of the truck was already listed $4,000 under the blue book value.  The asking price alone was enough to offset the money that I "overpaid".

Moreover, the money that goes into the salesman pocket was exactly the amount that I would have given my mother if she were here (but she is away in Australia).   So the net gain or loss to my bank account is still zero.

Last of all, the fact that I got such a good deal in the first place was because the first owner of the truck had such a "bad deal" when he traded in his truck.  So in the overall scheme, the Universe had granted me a very "good deal", but I kept having a nagging feeling that I had paid too much and somehow it wasn't "fair".  Why?  Because I had been conditioned by society to think that I needed to look out for number one...me.  Everything that I am entitled to, I should have.  If I have less than what I deserve, then I am either weak or foolish.

Nothing is further from the natural laws of the Universe.  There is no such thing as fair or unfair.  There is only excess and deficiency and how the two polarities harmonize with each other.  One flows into the other until deficiency transforms into excess and the cycle reverses direction.  The events that transpired over the last few weeks were the results of me currently being in the state of "excess of money".  The reverse may be true in the future.  In contrast, last year I was in a state of deficiency for companionship, and the Universe had conspired to remedy that situation.

When you are unable to harmonize with the natural flow between excess and deficiency, you personally encounter pain and suffering.  This dynamics between excess and deficiency exists in everything: money, power, love, health, time, inner peace, food, etc.

What we have excess of, there will be opportunities for us to freely give it away.  What we lack, there will be opportunities for us to receive.  Be open to give and accept.  Don't question.  Don't analyze.  Don't judge.  Once we get rid of our individual sense of fairness, we can begin to see the Universe's sense of "fairness".