THE FLOW OF SILENCE

At the end of the day, bathing in the soft light of a candle, lying still on your favorite easy chair, surrender to the silence, and you will find within it, music to disappear in.

Understood the flow of silence, the eloquence that follows from an immersion into nothingness, the transcendence that slips behind suspended action like a shadow.

A famous writer once wrote: "You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

In the Bible, in Psalm 24, it has been said, "Be still, and know that I am God."

When you enter the silence, you enter the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High, and all fear, trembling, and doubt ceases. Your restless feet no longer trouble the earth and the mountains of your troubles are carried into the depths of the sea of oblivion.

There is a river in the silence that will carry you into a power that is your very own. When you enter the silence, by learning how to rest and be still, you enter a new place, a virgin territory, where all that is discordant and broken in your life cannot come with you.

Usually, in the first half-hour nothing much happens. Your mind starts to unwind, like a weary warrior dismounting from a spirited horse. You set your shield down, lower your sword, and rest your aching limbs.

Then, in the next half-hour, you gradually descend into a place that becomes increasingly unfamiliar, where thoughts and feelings float by your amazed inner gaze with an alien majesty.

The convulsions of your life, the earthquake that throws the mountains into the sea, the roaring of the waves, the cataclysm of the tidal wave - these phenomena as well as any commotions and revolutions in your world need not shake the one who trusts in silence. Silence is a proven refuge.

Albert Einstein knew about the power of silence and changed the world by what he discovered in it.

Einstein borrowed the idea of the Gedankenexperiment, a thought experiment, from Ernst Mach, the German philosopher, and used it to see what would happen to light beams and gravity when viewed from different imaginary scenarios. He made his paradigm-shattering discoveries by immersing himself in silence and allowing his thoughts to travel where no human thought had ever gone before.

Strange things happen in silence. When the mind-body slows to an even, relaxed pace, thoughts attain a slow rhythm, and intuition arises to resolve paradoxes and invite resolutions and sort out juxtapositions in a unique and exhilarating way.

There is much evidence to show that at alpha and theta brainwaves, which happen in stillness and silence, new thoughts, new discoveries, and remarkable insights await.

Whether you are looking for the God of the mystics or the intuitive hunch that leads to ideas that can change your world, there is only one place you will find it: within. When you discover a resting place free of sound and distraction, you also discover yourself.

There is a world within deeper than an ocean, where archetypes roam and parallel lines do meet at infinity. It is the place where a single whisper can change your life entirely.

Silence is flow; it is music to disappear in; and it has a momentum to it that adds grace to your days and poetry to your life. Pursue it diligently and in your most frantic hour, it will rescue you like the brush of an angel's wing.

DO YOU KNOW THAT LIFE IS GOOD?

We, as human beings, are suffering uselessly. We are walking around protecting, struggling and trying to force life. We are hurt and offended by someone's crooked face. We are wasting so much time and energy worrying about others approval or non-approval, scheming and manipulating and doing everything we can possibly think of to make everything go our way, so we can feel O.K. about ourselves. It is a recipe for failure and unhappiness and unless we learn a new way, we will continue to suffer. Aren't you tired of it? Haven't you suffered enough? Unfortunately, people still live in hell, they live in misery, with problems up one side and down the other and I can hear them say, "Life is good? Are you kidding? Get a grip!"

I want to wrap my arms around them and say, "No, really, there is another way. It will not be easy to remember, but there is something else going on if you can look hard enough, long enough and deeply enough. You, too, will see it, you will feel it and you will know without a shadow of a doubt, that the you, that IS you, is more than anything you could have ever imagined." Our journey is to remember, and, the remembering is good, oh, so good.

This is bigger than being a little positive now and again; this is about living in a completely different paradigm. It is living in the stream of blessing, harmony and flow. Who wouldn't want that? However, most will never do the inner work, most will never take that much responsibility for their life, for they would rather blame someone else and believe only in what they see as truth. We either wake up to the fact that we have something to do with creating our reality or we can continue to live in hell. It is that simple.

Well, that is not for me. Not that I haven't lived in hell and in limbo and everywhere in between. I have done my share of struggling and crying and have spent plenty of time "in the closet". What? You don't know what "in the closet" is? Ask my sisters, or your sisters, or your mother, or your father's mother; they will know. It is when you cannot take another minute of life. The closet is the darkest place in the house, and no one can find you. Yes, I can share my pain with you, but what is more important is how to transform our pain, take the gift, rise above it and begin to live the good life. Life is good when we are seeing it right. Life is good, even if it looks bad. Life is good regardless of what is going on right now. Life is good because you say so. And, if you say so, God simply knows "Yes". Your curriculum is your life. Your participation is not optional. The degree of your suffering is.

HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS

Happiness and success are two concepts intertwined with one another. These are two of the most important ingredients that would eventually define a person's life.

If one would think about it, happiness and success are two things that are relative to a person's point of view since these are dependent on one's ideologies. Happiness and success relate to a target or reference point.

A person may say that he is happy because he just finished his studies or he just met a fine woman. A person may say he is successful because he was just promoted to a higher position. When one talks about happiness and success, a certain goal or perhaps an achievement is always the reference point.

A person will constantly ask himself if he is happy or if he can consider himself successful. Many people become depressed because they cannot seem to make sense of all the things that are happening in their lives. The most important thing to remember, when evaluating one's happiness and success, is that people need to limit their assessment using their own personal standards.

Often times, depression comes about because people rely so much on the expectations of others. Have you heard college students who don't do as well as they could because they don't like the course which they are in? They say that they don't really like the course because they were just forced by their parents or they had to take it for some other reason than because they liked it. Professionals also experience this kind of depression. Oftentimes, the workplace becomes a battleground wherein people live their lives according to the expectations of other people.

Again, happiness and success depend on one's own views. Let us look at a musician's point of view regarding happiness and success. A musician would love nothing more than to create music that comes from his soul. Depending on his ideologies regarding music, he can say that he is successful and happy with what he is doing.

A true musician wouldn't care less if his records sold millions or not, as long as his music stays true to its original intentions when the records were made. A musician can also look at happiness and success in terms of the number of people who patronize his music, if he truly believes that music is nothing if no one hears and appreciates it. It really depends on one's ideologies.

The only thing that we can infer from these two concepts is that these are mutually intertwined. One can say that success brings happiness and happiness is an essential ingredient towards success (i.e. Being happy with one's work will bring beautiful fruits of labor).

Happiness and success are two things that all people aspire for in life. There can never be a single definition for both of these concepts. Even dictionaries wouldn't dare give exact definitions for these words.

Perhaps, only the human heart can define these concepts. You will know when you are happy or when you can call yourself successful if your heart says so.

This is why the heart should always be consulted when making important decisions in life. Yes, of course, this is just a metaphor but we all know that the heart speaks reasons that the mind can never comprehend.

The Importance Of Now

We often overlook the importance and power of the "now?. After all we can?t change the past because it has already happened and we can?t do anything about the future because it is yet to occur. So the only thing to which we do have any control over is right this very moment, the now.

Putting things off to do later only causes you to waste precious time and energy revisiting it in your mind. Thinking about it and thinking about it. How much more productive would it be if you just got it out of the way and allowed yourself and your mind to move onto the next thing.

They say that the thing that causes us to age the most is not our diet, our job or even peak hour traffic on Friday night. In reality it is the little nagging stresses that occupies our mind. In fact if you jumped out of a plan at 14,000 feet right now you would actually shave less years off your life through fear and stress than you would if you have something nagging at you like the need to clean the bathroom. The reason being is that if you put of the task of for this example sake of cleaning the bathroom and this goes on for days then it just keeps nagging at you in your mind. This slow stress situation is more harmful to your long term health than short burst of pure adrenaline and fear caused by skydiving out of a plane.

So if you have something that needs to be done today then find a way to start it and only go onto another task once it is completed. This actually helps with your discipline as you would actually get into a habit of doing things once. Rather than starting something and going onto the next task and then coming back to the original task your mind can stay focused on the issues of the current task without needless distractions. You will actually find you productivity improving.

By seeing the benefits of the now and the present we can use it to empower us in life and get things we want. We have the power to lose weight in the now by the decisions you make right now in getting it started. You have the power to quit smoking in the present by choosing not to smoke right now. If you think about it success is an accumulation of a continuous stream of decisions that eventually lead to the success outcome. So why not decide today to make a change in your life. After all what better way than to decide now.