"Don't look back, you're not going that way"  author unknown

"To look at the world as a miracle of creation allows us to take responsibility for what we do."

"When one gives themselves up to another you give them the power to define who and what you are at that moment"

"Everyday we make a choice to become what we can be, either to come into existence or disappear into the culture of the world"

"We are all standing on the shoulders of those who came before us."

"Forgiveness, to be authentic , happens when you have learned all you need to.  Effectively letting go of what we needed that person or experience to be, forgiveness then becomes real.

"Your true self responds to beauty, let your premise in life be that you are blessed and a blessing.  The premise that we are tainted with original sin, that we are bad boy, bad girl, forces us to focus not on the beauty of creation but on a tainted image of creation."

"Self deception precedes all human emotional struggles"

"God is an infinite circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere"

"It is the path of living we argue and disagree about, not the true spiritual self"

"Life is about Love, though we attempt to create this union (love) with others before we create it within ourselves"

"Doubt must remain, and so the paradox continues, the experience of unity  removes the fear of extreme loss (dying) and yet does not remove the questions, for the answers are yet to be discovered "

"To be at peace, to live with harmony, to be in the moment reduces conflict, increases compassion but does not  resolve the riddle of existence. As in all things the story unfolds and the ending has yet to be written."

""If you do not change the direction in which you are going, you are likely to end up where you are headed." - Chinese Proverb

"The focus of your awareness will become the reality of your world" Devine Matrix

"The body follows the mind"

"You must see the gift to receive the gift"

"Help me to become the person my dog thinks I am"  author unknown

"The Ego, the Self, cannot but defend, protect and shelter itself from the outside world, it is separate from all else"

 

"To let go of this separateness, to let go of the past, to not live in the future, is to allow the being inside of you to connect to all in the web of life"

"To attract violence be angry, to attract fear be fearful, to attract love feel love, to feel isolated, alone, and lonely be disconnected and separate from all else."

"The power of a state of mind filled with discontent and discord is that it affects everything within you and all of your relationships .  The power of a state of mind that is not governed by the self or ego, and that is at peace is that it balances everything, connects and is connected, and allows for a healing conversation among all cells of the body." 

"Do not ignore your inner power or the self will govern according to its own self preservation and its insatiable appetite for more and more whether it is approval, love, hatred, status or things.  Addiction is an extreme example of this"

"Comparing yourself to others is a losing game for if you are better you are superior, if you are less than you are inferior.  Either way you are separate, either way you have judged yourself, either way you become less than you already are"

"You have been given the gift of self renewal, connect with it and leave the judging to others or to your God"

"Your DNA that is in every cell of your body will be your willing and able partner if you but recognize its living nature, to disconnect from it you do so at your peril"   

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are".
- Anis Nin

Trust your own Wisdom:

Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment. - Alan Watts

Separateness:

As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.
- Alan Watts

Religion - Dogma or Spiritual Faith:

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both natural and spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism." -Albert Einstein

Who am I?

One of the most challenging teachings of Buddhism is that relating to the idea of 'not-self' or anatta. Whereas both Christianity and Islam have the notion of an individual soul, and whereas Hinduism has the idea of atman, Buddhism offers a different perspective altogether. Buddhism argues that there is no such thing as a permanent self or soul, a very difficult notion to grasp, even on a conceptual level, let alone realizing it experientially. But if there is no such thing as a permanent self or soul, then the obvious question is - who is this person that eats, drinks, breathes, thinks, forms relationships and has a career? Who am I?

A human being is part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
- Albert Einstein

First Teach learning and Discovery, Then the Tools of Discovery

Globally networked, easy-to-use computers can enhance learning, but only within an educational environment that encourages students to question "facts" and seek challenges.

The physicist Murray Gell-Mann has remarked that education in the 20th century is like being taken to the worlds greatest restaurant and being fed the menu. He meant that representations of ideas have replaced the ideas themselves; students are taught superficially about great discoveries instead of being helped to learn deeply for themselves.

In the near future, all the representations that human beings have invented will be instantly accessible anywhere in the world on intimate, notebook-size computers. But will we be able to get from the menu to the food? Or will we no longer understand the difference between the two? Worse, will we lose even the ability to read the menu and be satisfied just to recognize that it is one?

There has always been confusion between carriers and contents. Pianists know that music is not in the piano. It begins inside human beings as special urges to communicate feelings. But many children are forced to "take piano" before their musical impulses develop; then they turn away from music for life. The piano at its best can only be an amplifier of existing feelings, bringing forth multiple notes in harmony and polyphony that the unaided voice cannot produce.

The computer is the greatest "piano" ever invented, for it is the master carrier of representations of every kind. Now there is a rush to have people, especially school children, "take computer." Computers can amplify yearnings in ways even more profound than can musical instruments. But if teachers do not nourish the romance of learning and expressing, any external mandate for a new "literacy" becomes as much a crushing burden as being forced to perform Beethoven sonatas while having no sense of their beauty. Instant access to the worlds information will probably have an effect opposite to what is hoped: students will become numb instead of enlightened.

In addition to the notion that the mere presence of computers will improve learning, several other misconceptions about learning often hinder modern education. Stronger ideas need to replace them before any teaching aid, be it a computer or pencil and paper, will be of most service. One misconception might be called the fluidic theory of education: students are empty vessels that must be given knowledge drop by drop from the full teacher-vessel. A related idea is that education is a bitter pill that can be made palatable only by sugar-coating-a view that misses the deep joy brought by learning itself.

Another mistaken view holds that humans, like other animals, have to make do only with nature's mental bricks, or innate ways of thinking, in the construction of our minds. Equally worrisome is the naive idea that reality is solely what the senses reveal. Finally, and perhaps most misguided, is the view that the mind is unitary, that it has a seamless "I"-ness. Quite the contrary. Minds are far from unitary: they consist of a patchwork of different mentalities.

"My pursuit of knowledge is not a contest to see who is smarter or who has the highest grades. It is a search for answers to questions that perplex society and lead us down a violent path ending in a peaceless life. I want to reverse this cycle." Greg Smith October 1999

Deep and Lasting Change:

"...one should bear in mind that there is nothing more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of success, nor more dangerous to administer than to introduce a new system of things: for he who introduces it has all those who profit from the old system as his enemies, and he has only lukewarm allies in all those who might profit from the new system. This lukewarmness partly stems from fear of their adversaries, who have the law on their side, and partly from the skepticism of men who do not truly believe in new things unless they have actually had personal experience of them. Therefore, it happens that whenever those who are enemies have the chance to attack, they do so in a partisan manner, and those others defend hesitantly ..." - Niccolo Machiavelli