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22 August 2009, 17:11
A Year of Rumi. Kingdom of Joy Lesson 1 by Andrew Harvey
A Year of Rumi
by Andrew Harvey
Lesson 1: Kingdom of Joy
When the great Sufi mystic and poet Jalal-ud-Din Rumi died at sunset in Konya, southern Turkey, on December 17, 1273, he had lived for almost half his sixty-six years in the Sun of the Awakened Heart. With the light of its splendor as his constant inspiration, Rumi composed 3,500 odes, 2,000 quatrains, and a vast spiritual epic called the Mathnawai, and founded the Mevlevi Order that, under his son Sultan Walad and his successors, was to spread his vision throughout t the Islamic world, from the most remote villages of Turkey and Iran to Jakarta, from Tangiers to Sarajevo. Now, over 700 years later, through the pioneering (and superb) translations of Coleman Barks, Robert Bly, Jonathon Star, and others, Rumi is almost as well know and revered in the West as he has long been in the East.
Not long before his death, Rumi wrote of his passion for his Beloved, Shams-I-Tabriz, and its significance:
Those tender words we said to one another
Are stored in the secret heart of heaven.
One day, like the rain, they will fall and spread
And their mystery will grow green over the world.
The time has come for this greening of the world’s heart and mind by the mystery of Rumi's love for his Beloved. Increasingly, Rumi is being recognized as the unique spiritual genius he is, as someone who is fused at the highest level and with the greatest possible intensity the intellect of a Plato, the vision, passion and soul-force of a Christ or Buddha, and the extraordinary literary gifts of a Shakespeare. Rumi is, I believe, not only the world's greatest mystical poet but also an essential guide to the new planetary spiritual renaissance that is slowly emerging from the ruins of our civilization. He speaks to us from the depths of our won sacred identity, and what he says has the electric eloquence of our innermost truth. No other poet or philosopher of whom I know has Rumi's almost frightening intimacy of address, and no one I am aware of in any civilization has conveyed the terror, rapture and wonder of awakening to Divine Love with such fearless and gorgeous courage, such humility and such unflinching clarity.
The world is in terrible danger. We have very little time left in which to make desperately needed changes in every arena of life. We need the truth and empowerment of authentic mystical understanding and love now more than at any other moment of our history. May the Light of the Heart be revealed in all to all of us, and may we all, united in and by Divine Love, transform together the conditions of life on earth.
- Andrew Harvey
Every day for the next year, you will receive an email that will contain one of Rumi's wonderful poems. Today, we begin our journey together with the following:
If you are seeking, seek us with joy
For we live in the kingdom of joy.
Do not give your heart to anything else
But to the love of those who are clear joy,
Do not stray into the neighborhood of despair.
For there are hopes: they are real, they exist –
Do not go in the direction of darkness –
I tell you: suns exist.
- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
(Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)
Enjoy!
from DailyOM Margarita Nomeikiene
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21 August 2009, 14:07
The 23 Most Powerful Secrets toBe Happy Now by B. Vaszily
To be happy now... to achieve success and really enjoy life too... to be who you know you're really meant to be... answer these 3 quick questions:.
1) Do you feel there are internal barriers making you less happy than you want to be - and know you can be - such as stress, depression, worry, low self-esteem, lack of energy, and feeling overwhelmed?.
2) Are you honestly ready to be happy and achieve the success you know you're meant to have in your relationships, finances, career, health and other areas of life?.
3) Would you like to experience the most powerful, rapid and enjoyable secrets to achieve the success and to be happy ...
.
A Simple but Startling Secret to Being Happier: Stop Being Right.
by Brian Vaszily, Founder of IntenseExperiences.com &
Creator of The 9 Intense Experiences.
Which do you want: to be right, or to be happy?.
Far more often than most people realize – to their great detriment – it really is an either/or proposition. Do you typically choose being right or being happy?.
Which of these values do your actions typically show that you hold higher?.
Most people, without even being aware of it, choose being right at the expense of their happiness. And by the end of this piece you may be surprised to see how much you do, too..
People fight, stress themselves out, make themselves and those around them miserable with their ego’s need to be right. It cuts life short and destroys relationships, businesses, and nations..
Nothing is more deadly to happiness than the pursuit of being seen as right. For personal proof of this, consider the people you know who are most insistent on their politics, their patterns, their viewpoint, their way… they tend to judge the most, insult the most, complain the most, and suffer the most. They reek of misery. This is often also reflected in their physical health..
Nothing is more deadly to being happy than the pursuit of being right..
Yet most people aren’t even aware that the choice between these two values – being right or being happy – is present in most of life’s key situations. And being unconscious of it, as usual their egos instead make the choice for them. And being the ego doing the choosing, as usual the choice is shortsighted, fear-based, defensive and unhealthy to the Self’s greater good..
Further, the more intimate the situation – the closer to home -- the less likely most people are to recognize and remember the choice between these two values of being right or being happy. And the more damage making the wrong choice does..
The need to be seen as right is enemy #1 to love and marriage. A parent’s need to be seen as right severs ties to their children like nothing else can.
So Which Value Do You Really Hold Higher?.
To “be” right implies a need for others to recognize you as such … to be proven right, seen as right. Again, it emanates from the ego and is vastly different than doing right, which has no need for external recognition. Doing right has no need for others to know you are right..
So to what extent would you choose not being seen as right if you could be happier for it?.
Could you choose not to prove your point if you were all the happier for not doing so?.
Of course there are many situations where differences need to be sorted out, and where your particular and opposing viewpoint may in fact make an important impact on a given situation. There are many situations where in fact others see black where you see white, and by helping them to see white you achieve some important benefit like saving money or preventing accidents or the like.
Dealing with disagreements is standard fare in life..
Dealing with them harshly – that is, with the ego, as if every opposing viewpoint is a personal insult to your rightness – does not have to be. There is a world of difference between contributing to the greater good (between a couple, in a family, a business, a nation, etc.) versus needing to be seen as right..
And all that said, in MOST situations where people claw, struggle and crack away at their happiness to be proven right, it means little to nothing to less than nothing anyway..
Is it really right if you ARE right about putting the toilet seat up or down but it ruins your morning, and chips away at the health of your relationship, to prove it?.
Is it really right if you ARE right about religion, the economy, and your politics but you end up angry and despising large segments of the population to prove it?.
An Intense, Transformative Experience for You to Try.
The next time you KNOW you are right about something with a spouse, significant other or anyone close to you whose viewpoint opposes yours, consciously back off the need to BE right..
Even as that “I’m right about this!” feeling wells up inside your chest, catch it and stop yourself from reacting this time..
Instead, consider if there is truly a reason to even pursue the issue at all: will resolving the difference really lead to an important benefit, such as preventing accidents, improving health, making or saving money or the like? If so, consciously remind yourself to proceed softly and kindly this time … remind yourself (and tell the other person!) that you are pursuing this discussion gently to achieve the desired benefit, not to have to be seen as right..
Chances are, though, that like most such situations, your need to be right is mostly an ego thing. The potential benefits of the other person seeing you as right don’t equal the stress, the erosion of peace and happiness, that can occur to demonstrate you are right..
In which case, just back off your ego’s desire to prove you are right at all. This time. Let it go with your spouse, significant other or whoever you are in disagreement with..
Let them believe they are right..
And watch and evaluate your own reactions to letting them believe they are right..
Most people are astonished at how difficult this actually is for them. Through this experience most people are startled at the chokehold their ego actually has on them. Even though knowing that you having to be seen as right can harm the peace and happiness, letting someone (especially someone close to you) believe they are right to avoid the harm is a mighty hard thing to do..
“But they’re going to THINK they are right!” your ego may shout. “They’re ALWAYS going to think they’re right!” you may hear your ego insisting..
Recognizing your ego’s chokehold on your happiness in this manner is the first step in removing that chokehold..
After this first time of letting go of the need to be right -- even and especially if it means your opposition will think they’re right – watch what happens. Likely, here is what will happen: your world won’t collapse. Things won’t fall to pieces because you didn’t demonstrate you were right.
Likely, here is what will also happen: there will be no arguments. No clashes between your ego and someone else’s. Nothing cracking away at your greater peace and happiness..
So then, if you want to move toward being happier, try the experience again when the opportunity arises. Consciously back off the need to be right again. Watch how your ego responds this time, so you know where you need to work on being in control of it versus it being in control of you..
And watch how your world doesn’t cave in even if you aren’t seen as being right … how quite the contrary occurs, in fact..
Approaching it like this – consciously backing off the need to be right one situation at a time, versus trying to commit to doing it for good – makes your success and happiness much more likely..
Another thing that tends to happen is that, over time, those close to you see and feel the example you are living and they end up following suite. Though not necessarily at the pace you might prefer, but they end up backing off the need to be right, too, making life all the more pleasant..
Our greatest right of all is our gift, our blessing, our ability to pursue our happiness. But most people are their own biggest barriers in that pursuit. Is your need to be right preventing you from achieving this greatest right?.
Enjoy.
From http://www.intenseexperiences.com/being-happier.html
Margarita Nomeikiene
Which would you prefer? To be right, or to be happy?.
Content
09 August 2009, 00:49
Life Cycles of a Business! by Jim White, PhD
Dear Reader,
Company's, like people, go through a natural evolution from their entrepreneurial beginnings or embryonic phase, through the growth phase into maturity, and if they are not careful they can age prematurely and eventually die. The individual products that make up the company sales have their own product lifecycles as well.
The problem is that many CEOs and Business Owners do not know where their company lies on the lifecycle curve. Nor do they seem to know where their products fit in the natural evolution of product lifecycles. As a result they are frequently surprised when they realize that it is often too late to reverse their situation.
The scenario is familiar to anyone during the course of one's life when one realizes that he has no career plan when one loses a job, and discovers it's too late to do anything about it at their age. Likewise, when one becomes ill because one did not take care of himself, it comes as a shock when few medical remedies are left to arrest life threatening ills.
I've said many times before that "nobody plans to fail...they just fail to plan".
Planning anticipates the inevitable, but if you do not know what the inevitable is then you obviously can't plan for it!
We all start out small wrinkled up little people, and we all wind up small wrinkled up little people, 70, 80 or even 90 years later these days. The path we take from one wrinkled up little person at birth to another at the end of our life is quite predictable given certain sets of circumstances.
The lifecycle of a business mirrors the biological cycle of humans. The stages of the business/product lifecycle have been well documented and are played out in the marketplace every day. The question is - where is your business in this age old evolution? Do you know?
If you don't, I would be worried. You are not alone, I visit with many CEOs and Business Owners who don't know either. Recently, for example I spent a day with the CEO of a company who has been in business for about 20 years. I was there because he did not know what to do as his business was going nowhere, and as a matter of fact declining for reasons not explained solely by the current economic recession.
After asking several simple questions about the business it was clear that he did know where his company was in its lifecycle. It was obviously not a good, healthy, growing, or profitable enterprise. There was no business plan and very little useable information about the business. I asked "what are the key performance indicators that you look at religiously"? There were none!
There was the typical mound of data about how much was sold to which customers in sales dollars, but in no organized format; nor by product. There was no way to easily determine what has been sold by different sizes and configurations of each individual product type. As a result profitability by product or by customer could not be readily determined.
There were many other unanswered questions. Here was a business that was going nowhere but down. And, the CEO and management team had no idea of where the business was in its lifecycle, nor what to do about it.
Every company generates immense amounts of data. However, all that data has to be converted into information and that information used to develop insights to determine where the company and its products are in their natural lifecycles. Without an accurate profile of where the company is, it is impossible to make assumptions about where one wants it to be. Nor can one determine the strategies to get there.
Each stage of the lifecycle of a business has natural strategies that can be implemented successfully to continue the profitable evolution of the company. However, if you don't know where you are you certainly cannot contemplate the inevitable and develop the proper strategies to deal with it. The inevitable may already be underway and arrive sooner than you realize.
If you are concerned about the evolution of your business let's start a dialogue.
jim@jlwhiteinternational.com
Enjoy!
Margarita Nomeikiene
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