Link: Be Selfish Be Generous

Link: The Gandhi Rap - Be the change u want to see

Link: Create Vision

Never believe anyone who says we cannot change. Vision is one of the secrets of personal transformation. We are all artists, our mind is the arena of creation and vision is what we are constantly creating. What is your vision of yourself today - patient, relaxed, positive or tense, tight and negative? What do you prefer? So be creative - what does patience look like, feel like, what are you doing that is different when you are patient and you are expressing your power to ...wait? Always start with vision not action. See it and you will be it. Be it and you will do it. This is how we create our own life.

http://www.thoughtfortoday.org.uk

Link: The Ripple Effect of Kindness

Over the last few years, I've become a big proponent of Smile Cards. The premise behind these small cards is simple: do an anonymous act of kindness and leave a card behind, inviting the recipient to pay-it-forward. If he/she does, the chain keeps going, resulting in "ripples" of kindness radiating out.

Smile Cards are wonderful in ways I cannot count. Small, simple, humble -- yet powerful, because one act of kindness can be the start of a long chain. But for all these reasons, the main reason why I use them is the subtle change that has begun to occur in the way I think.

Read the full post here...
http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2217

Link: Compliment Guys at Purdue University

American boy, 13, breaks Everest record

A 13-year-old American became the youngest climber to ever summit Mount Everest on Saturday. Jordan Romero's journey was tracked through GPS coordinates on his blog, logging his team's ascent up Everest, which is 29,028 feet (8,847 meters) above sea level.

"Their dreams have now come true," a statement on Jordan's blog said. "Everyone sounded unbelievably happy."

Read the full story here...
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/05/22/teen.mount.everest/index.html

Link: Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Thought Bubble: Kindness

Link: Once a rising star, chef now feeds hungry

Narayanan Krishnan was a bright, young, award-winning chef with a five-star hotel group, short-listed for an elite job in Switzerland. But a quick family visit home before heading to Europe changed everything.
"I saw a very old man eating his own human waste for food," Krishnan said. "It really hurt me so much. I was literally shocked for a second. After that, I started feeding that man and decided this is what I should do the rest of my lifetime."
Krishnan was visiting a temple in the south Indian city of Madurai in 2002 when he saw the man under a bridge. Haunted by the image, Krishnan quit his job within the week and returned home for good, convinced of his new destiny.

Read the full article here... http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/04/01/cnnheroes.krishnan.hunger/index.html

'Next Top Spiritual Author' Competition

I need your help! Six years ago I started writing a book and this year it will be ready to publish. I have entered a competition which if I win, I will be offered a publishing contract. I need you to vote for me!

Vote for me at http://www.NextTopAuthor.com/?aid=254

If money doesn't buy happiness - what does? Twelve years ago, this question led me on a journey into the deeper meaning of life. In the summer of 2004, after six years of looking for answers, I had what I can only describe as an 'epiphany of clarity'. It was an amazingly beautiful and humbling experience, and soon afterward my desire to look for answers disappeared, to be replaced with a yearning to express what I had come to understand. I wanted to record this wisdom clearly and concisely, in terms that anyone living in today's world could easily relate to. In this way I have written "Being Human - Towards Personal Empowerment".

Please vote for me in 'The Next Top Spiritual Author' competition. The competition started on 29 March 2010 and I need your vote. The winner of the competition will be offered a publishing contract from Hampton Roads Publishing, one of the top Body/Mind/Spirit publishers in the world, along with a promotional package worth over $50,000 to help launch their book.

For round 1 of the competition, each author must submit a video or audio pitch about their book. You can watch my video pitch on the competition website.

The competition has four rounds and will run for most of the year. Round 1 is basically a popularity contest - the top 250 authors with the most votes will progress to round 2. All votes are cast on the competition website. Each author in the competition will be asking everyone they know to vote for them. However, the real power of the Internet can best be harnessed by you discussing and passing this on to your friends and family. In that way the potential number of votes increases tremendously. So, if you think my book has potential, please tell your friends and family, and anyone else you may talk to and ask them to vote for me too!

Thank you for your support, and please... spread the word :-)
Michael

Time for change

Hi Blog Followers :-)

This is the first time that I have posted my own words onto this blog! I am planning some changes in content going forward, and I wanted to let you know what's happening. You may have read my three objectives listed on the right side panel of the main blog site. So far my posts have been content that I have found inspiring on the web, that is associated with my objectives. This may be interesting but I feel that I want to get much more involved in these objectives rather than just giving them lip service. So my intention long term, is to change my life from an office job to one much more aligned to these objectives everyday! I want to live them everyday, and I want to demonstrate that experience through this blog! What this will mean and what the experience will look like is basically an experiment, so watch this space!

I have been testing a photostream over the last week, and also bought an iPhone. Apologies if you have noticed a couple of blank or test posts, or other issues - I have been testing and setting up the iPhone so that I can post to the blog, post to twitter, and post photos, from anywhere, at anytime (provided I have some kind of network signal - 3G, GPRS, or WiFi). On the main blog page now you will also see my twitter feed and my photostream feed - please subscribe to both or just view the blog page as you wish. Again, how you join me in this experience is also an experiment. Technology and social networking are making this possible and are changing all the time - I intend to make the best use of these as I can!

To start this experiment, I am going to India for a fortnight vacation. I will use the iPhone to post blog, twitter, and photo content onto this site (and to the subscription and RSS links). Let's see how well it works!

I will also continue to post web content that I find inspiring alongside my own posts. I hope you find it interesting and I will always love to read your thoughts and comments.

Take good care.

“The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” Charles DuBois

Link: Love is for giving

What is love and where is it found? We search for love and try to get love, and yet it seems like we never get enough. Even when we have found love, it can slip away as time passes. What if there is a source of love that never fades and is always available? What if love is as near and easy as breathing? What if we have been “looking for love in all the wrong places” instead of actually lacking love?

Love is both simpler and more mysterious and subtle than we have imagined it to be. Love is very simply the spacious, open attention of our awareness. Awareness itself is the gentlest, kindest, and most intimate force in the world. It touches things without impinging on them. It holds all of our experience but doesn’t hold it down or hold it back. And yet, inherent in awareness is a pull to connect and even merge with the object of our awareness.

It is this seemingly contradictory nature of awareness—the completely open and allowing nature of awareness and its passionate pull to blend with and even become the object of its attention—that gives life its spirituality, depth and sweetness. There is nothing more satisfying than this delicious dilemma of being both apart from and at the same time connected to something we see, hear, or feel.

Awareness is the beginning of all separation. Prior to awareness, there is just “oneness” or “is-ness,” with nothing separate from the oneness that would be able to experience it. With the birth of awareness, there is the subtle distinction of two things: that which is aware and the object of awareness. And yet, those two are still connected by this mysterious force we are calling awareness, or love.

Read the full article here... http://endless-satsang.com/lovearticle.htm

Living without money

Twenty-two years ago Heidemarie Schwermer, a middle-aged secondary school teacher just emerging from a difficult marriage, moved with her two children from the village of Lueneburg to the city of Dortmund, in the Ruhr area of Germany, whose homeless population, she immediately noticed, was above average and striking in its intransigent hopelessness.

Her immediate reaction was shock. “This isn’t right, this can’t go on,” she said to herself. After careful reflection she set up what in Germany is called a Tauschring — a sort of swap shop — a place where people can exchange their skills or possessions for other skills and possessions, a money-free zone where a haircut could be rendered in return for car maintenance; a still-functioning but never-used toaster be exchanged for a couple of second-hand cardigans. She called it Gib und Nimm, Give and Take.

It was always Schwermer’s belief that the homeless didn’t need money to re-enter society: instead they should be able to empower themselves by making themselves useful, despite debts, destitution or joblessness. “I’ve always believed that even if you have nothing, you are worth a lot. Everyone has a place in this world.”

Read the full post here...
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article6928744.ece

24 Hours of Non-Stop Kindness

I had titled the event “24 hours of kindness.” The goal was simple: to stay out for a full twenty-four hours without sleep, performing as many acts of kindness as possible. Thanks to our local radio station, Coast 93.1, and the support of Tim Wright and Eva Matteson, (two of the most kindhearted DJs you’ll ever meet) all of southern Maine now knew about The Kindness Center’s crazy event. Now known as “The Kindness Guy,” this was my first attempt at something this big. The local and even national media buzz was incredible. Since 9:00 that morning, two of my kindness cronies and I had been all over town delivering free baked goods to nursing homes and schools, buying coffee for strangers, giving out hugs, moving furniture, giving free city bus rides and completely flooding the town with a rainbow of flowers and balloons. Since it was April 15th, “tax day,” we even spent time making grouchy taxpayers smile as they rushed in and out of the post office, a task we would repeat later that night with miraculous results.

Read the full post here...
http://www.helpothers.org/story.php?sid=17064

For the Man Who Hated Christmas

It’s just a small, white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree. No name, no identification, no inscription. It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past ten years or so.

It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas--oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it--overspending... the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma---the gifts given in desperation because you couldn’t think of anything else.

Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties and so forth. I reached for something special just for Mike. The inspiration came in an unusual way.

Read the full post here...
http://www.helpothers.org/story.php?sid=7893

Back on my feet

The Surprising Truth of Sufficiency

We each have the choice in any setting to step back and let go of the mind-set of scarcity. Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency. By sufficiency, I don’t mean a quantity of anything. Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough.

Read the full post here...
http://www.ijourney.org/index.php?tid=673

Contagious Love Experiment

Let me start at the begining…

I was in middle school when I saw 9/11 on the news. I saw the hole in the Pentagon firsthand. For months afterwards, I’d wake up early before school to watch the news and better understand the situation. I understood that there were people out there who wanted to destroy my country and hated my religion. My religion (church, religious school) promoted war and I made a deal with God that if the war was still going on when I graduated high school, I would be honored to enlist in the army as an infantryman.

Well, the war was still going on and I was somewhat glad that I hadn’t missed out on the action. I left for basic training in July of 06 and was deployed to Baghdad by Feb of 07.

I had grown up hearing ideas like “love your enemies”, “return evil with good”, and “judge not lest you be judged”. But I treated these sayings that the central figure of my religion taught as if they were just nice sounding lines, but not practical. But slowly, my excuses started to fade away. I learned that the military trains people to hate and dehumanize entire people groups, not showing sadness for the difficult task of “removing evil”. I learned that the Iraqis weren’t waiting for us with open arms, men, women, and children from the town we were in protested our presence. I learned innocent people die. I learned that it doesn’t matter what uniform you have on, it’s about what’s inside. And sadly, the military tries to rob you of what’s inside and the result is people treating killing like a joke and showing little care for human life.

Read the full blog here... http://contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com/about

A New Home

When you awaken to the evolutionary impulse behind the entire cosmos as your very own Authentic Self, you find yourself living in a new world. It’s not the small, personal world that your ego or separate self-sense has lived in since the day you were born. You may still exist and function in that world, but deeply, it’s no longer your home. Your home is the vast process that began the day the entire cosmos was born. When this kind of shift occurs irrevocably, the idea of living “for a higher purpose” doesn’t even make sense any more, because at an interior level, you and that purpose have merged and become one. You have become the actual manifestation of that higher purpose. It’s no longer external to who you are. To a significant degree, you and that higher purpose become indistinguishable. That’s what Evolutionary Enlightenment means. Your entire life becomes permeated by that evolutionary impulse, because that is who you have become.

http://blog.enlightennext.org/?p=2801

Forgiveness

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.

http://www.thoughtfortoday.org.uk

Love

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.