The Stone

One day, a master had travelled a long way, and before sunset, he reached the border of a city. He found a place under a tree and decided to spend the night there before entering the city the next day.

Shortly after he settled, a man came running up to him out of the city. He said: "It must be you, where is the stone?" The master asked "Which stone?" and the man replied: "Last night I had a dream and a prophet told me that tonight there would be a master resting near the border of the city, and he would give me a stone, so valuable that I would not have to work for the rest of my days." The master reached in his bag, took out a big stone and gave it to the man, saying: "It must be this stone, the prophet was talking about; I found it on my way here."

It was a diamond, almost as big as a head. The man was very excited, and he brought the stone straight back home. The value of such a big diamond must be enormous. But at night, the man could not sleep. He kept thinking and thinking and early in the morning, he went back tot he master and said: "Please teach me the wisdom that allows you to give away so easily such a precious stone."

A story, I read many years ago.
I still enjoy very much the moral of the story.

Hans Van Rostenberghe

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Please read also some of my older posts, as I did just now. I particularly liked this one    (click on "this one")
I have also a collection of short essays on good things. Sometimes we want more than a quote but not a very long text either. Can access them by clicking https://abcofvirtues.blogspot.com/

A to Z

"Logic will take you from A to Z
Imagination will bring you everywhere"

I like to plough through quotes from Einstein.
Some are amazing, some are puzzling
The above one is an amazing one, I feel.

Let us imagine
Let us build in beautiful images in our imagination
Let us build in love and peace
and kindness
and more beauty and more peace
and make stories, never made before.

Imagination will bring you everywhere ... 😀😃😀😃

 Hans Van Rostenberghe

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If you found a few drops of inspiration 
If you feel good while reading this blog
Please do not hesitate to share the feelings, the inspiration with your family and friends
There is no copyright. No issues. (just will grateful if you attach my name as an author).
Same goes for my poems, I wrote under the author name Aufie Zophy. as in this safe link
  Other blogs and sites from my hand:
Inspirational quotes
Small prayers for a big world

Dutch version of some of my posts: Juweeltjes voor de ziel

Sweetest

Think for a short while:
What would be the sweetest words you could say tomorrow?
to your mom...
to your dad...
to your spouse...
to your son or daughter...
to your sister or brother...
to your friend...
to your lonely old auntie...
to your neighbour...
at your work...

Did you think about it?
Next, let us go ahead and say these words :)

 Hans Van Rostenberghe

Inspiration

If we do not take the time to cultivate our own personality and character, we neglect the most valuable thing in our life. Let us read some inspirational texts today. Internalise the ideas that seem valuable to us, incorporate in our own principles and create a personality and character that is better than before. Then share what we feel.

Over the last few decades, I have read many texts that somehow touched my mind and heart enough to make a significant difference in my life. Small quotes, stories, short chapters, sometimes a whole book, containing enough wisdom, brilliant ideas. They made me think a bit further, made me sometimes change my bad habits and had a positive effect.

I want to say thanks to the authors of these quotes, stories, texts, books. I have taken some of these ideas and internalized them and it felt like they became mine. Without any intent of plagiarism, I have been sharing my own convictions here in this blog, inspired by so many people who lived before me or at this time. If it was not for the sharing and going to the extent of writing down their ideas, our civilisation would not have progressed to the place where it is now.

Let us just do so: read, reflect, let the good ideas sink in, incorporate and modify them to fit in our own value system and then go on sharing with many others.

Getting inspired feels great; sharing some inspiration with others feels super.

I wish you all a fruitful reading and sharing.

Hans Van Rostenberghe

PS: I have written up to now more than 800 entries in this blog. Please take a look at the archives. When I read my old postings, I think the initial ones from 2014 may be still the most inspiring ones.
Feel free to share anything written here, to go and inspire your friends and family. No copyright!

What is a poem?

Once I was asked: what is a poem?

The question, what is a poem,  may have many different answers, depending on whom you would talk to. When I started my own attempts at writing lyrics, I was convinced that poetry has to rhyme, but then I read so many beautiful, touching poems that did not rhyme, that I have given up this notion. Deep inside, I still like better rhyming poems, though.

The best definition of a poem, I read in Emerson's essay, the poet. This essay is freely available online, and Emerson wrote the following  <"...For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,--a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form."> 

I agree very much that the poem making argument is what makes a poem. In far too many verses, the argument tends to get lost in beautiful lyrics and the reader experiences only an impressive collection of words.

I like poems with wonderful metaphors.

I think nobody really has a universal definition for poetry, but it is still worth, I feel, to take some time every day to read a poem or two. (for a modest collection of simple, yet interesting motivational and inspirational poems, please click this safe link )
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If you found a few drops of inspiration 
If you felt good while reading this blog
Please do not hesitate to share the feelings, the inspiration with your family and friends
There is no copyright. No issues. (just will grateful if you attach my name as an author).
Same goes for my poems, I wrote under the author name Aufie Zophy. as in the safe link above
  Other blogs and sites from my hand:
Inspirational quotes
Small prayers for a big world

Dutch version of some of my posts: Juweeltjes voor de ziel

The Best Farmer

I came across a verse (34) of the Tao Te Ching,
a Chinese book filled with a lot of wise sayings.
In summary, I think it tried to express the following: 

The endless creative power in the universe,
the power, the energy, many of us call God,
is everywhere, and everyone and everything depends on It.
But It does not make claims for itself, It does not take possession
It does not dominate.

Some of these concepts sound a bit abstract,
but they tend to carry important lessons for us.
It is always nice to put these concepts in story format,
so even the youths may benefit from these bits of wisdom.
A simple story I could come up with,
was the following, about a farmer:

 In a faraway land, there was a farmer,

the best farmer in the world.

He was the only farmer in his country,
providing food for everyone living there.
He did not make any claims;
He did not try to get privileges;
He surely could be in control,
but did not dominate;
did not try to abuse his position.

No one else was interested in farming,
except his only one apprentice.
He taught him the skills and tricks of farming,
but above all, not to make any claims for himself
and perhaps,
the latter was the most important thing he taught him!
He went on and passed this to all humans who were open to it.

What do you think about this?
Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Please read also my other postings.
Not all are as complex😉😀 as this one. :)





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If you found a few drops of inspiration 
If you felt good while reading this blog
Please do not hesitate to share the feelings, the inspiration with your family and friends
There is no copyright. No issues. (just will grateful if you attach my name as an author).
Same goes for my poems, I wrote under the author name Aufie Zophy.
A selection of the poems is found by clicking https://aufiezophypoems.blogspot.com/
 

 Other blogs and sites from my hand: Inspirational quotes
Small prayers for a big world

Dutch version of some of my posts: Juweeltjes voor de ziel

Sailing between the waves

 Do you have some of these days where you feel like this may be a good day

and then, just something happens? Let me tell you about what happened today.

I woke up and prayed for the strength to be nice throughout the day. 

I was to chair a meeting of our local research ethics committee. 

These meetings are often the extreme challenge to a person's patience.
Researchers do take their research and ethical obligations to their participants serious,

But a certain percentage couldn't care less. 

Remaining nice throughout the meeting feels like sailing in between storms with giant waves, steering your boat away from the waves that could shake up all aboard your boat. You feel like a master captain until suddenly boom, a storm you did not expect turns up in front of your eyes, your boat gets shaken by the waves and there goes your peace of mind. To get back the poise and control quickly after the storm, is a skill worth learning. Today, I had one such storm, but then I think I managed to steer the ship again in between the big waves giving the impression to all in my boat that the sea was superbly calm again.

The point I try to make here is that when we are trying to be good, lovely and nice, it will be like a trip on a calm sea, no matter how many storms may rage not far from where we fare. The peace of mind we get through being good, lovely and nice is such a great treasure. Surely when we are driven by a purpose and want to make it to a certain destination, we may not be able to avoid all waves and get shaken up on and off, but then getting back to the captains hut and steer masterfully, being good lovely and nice again, may require a lot of willpower, but will guarantee to come back to the so much cherished treasure of peace of mind. 

I have a small poem for you:

 

For our family and everyone we know

let us do nothing but our very best

Pray that our God's light may glow

and that they will be forever blessed

Try to love, listen and fully understand

let truth and trust forever grow

make them truly feel to be your friend

                                                                                   Aufie Zophy 

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If you got a few drops of inspiration 
If you felt good while reading this blog
Please do not hesitate to share the feelings, the inspiration with your family and friends
There is no copyright. No issues. (just will grateful if you attach my name as an author).
Same goes for my poems, I wrote under the author name Aufie Zophy.
A selection of the poems is found by clicking https://aufiezophypoems.blogspot.com/
and a more complete set of almost all poems I wrote can be found on PoemHunter.
The PoemHunter website though is a bit disturbed by a lot of advertisements. Other blogs and sites from my hand:
Inspirational quotes
Small prayers for a big world
Dutch version of some of my posts: Juweeltjes voor de ziel

Year with flowers

Husband: "You look so optimistic for 2020. 
What do you think it will bring? 
The world is in such a big mess."
Wife: "I expect it will bring flowers."
Husband: "Yes? How come?"
Wife: "Because I am planting flowers."

  The world is indeed in quite a mess in many places.
But in many more places, the world is still wonderfully beautiful.
Let us plant some seeds, some flower bulbs and small trees.
Let us plants seeds of love, seeds of kindness.
Let us plant seeds of honesty and dedication;
seeds of passionate care and positivity.
Then we can expect the coming year will bring us just that

Contest

Let us all participate in an imaginary contest:
The grand prize goes to the one who can most people smile in one day.

Actually, the grand prize is shared by all contestants,
because for every smile generated, each will get a giant dose of happiness
and what a better grand prize than that could you imagine.

So come, let us start the contest today, make as many as possible people smile!

Some drops may stay

A cup of coffee
a glass of water,
internalized in the dark depth of my body;
some drops may stay there for years to come.

My experiences today:
the good and bad things I did,
the messages I heard,
internalized in the dark depths of my mind;
some drops may stay there for years to come.

The feelings I felt,
the happiness I shared,
the hurt I caused;
some drops may stay in my heart for years to come.

The prayers I said,
the silence I heard,
the peace I felt;
some drops may be with me forever.

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Sister blogs:
Inspirational quotes
Small prayers for a big world
Brother blog (selection of my poems, written under the pen name of Aufie Zophy):
aufiezophypoems

 Dutch version of some of my posts: Juweeltjes voor de ziel

Looking

The way we see the world depends first on the world,
but secondly, it depends also on the way we look.

We can look at the world through pessimistic glasses
and see the small plastic bottle that was left on the beach,
get really upset that people throw rubbish everywhere and
miss out on the beautiful colors of the sea under the sunny sky.

We can look at the world through optimistic glasses
and see the sea in all its glory with its magnificent tints;
we may notice the bottle and pick it up so no one else gets upset about it.

Can you see the difference?
Which spec shall we choose?

I have a photo below, showing a painting from my niece:

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Sister blogs:
Inspirational quotes
Small prayers for a big world
Brother blog (selection of my poems, written under the pen name of Aufie Zophy):
aufiezophypoems

 Dutch version of some of my posts: Juweeltjes voor de ziel

Belief

Have you ever thought of buying a particular car?
You start seeing the model everywhere.
The cars had been always there, but you start noticing them.

If you choose to believe something, you will start a similar selective seeing. What will you pick up? Evidence; you will find pieces of evidence for your belief. Everywhere!
Your belief will become stronger, and soon it will be experienced as a knowing.

You may choose to believe the world is good, to believe you can do something or that there are a lot of opportunities. You WILL find your evidence, and your belief will get stronger.
You may choose to believe that the world is bad, to believe something is impossible or that there is a lack of opportunity. You WILL find your evidence for what you believe and your belief will get stronger.

It is good to listen to all sides of the story, even to listen to the people who have opposite visions of ours. We do not have to adopt their view, but just hearing something different, may allow us to notice different things in the world.

I think that an open mind is the most important thing for us to keep somehow a balance in what we believe, and to keep our visions, concepts, and paradigms as close to reality as possible. Keeping an open mind to everything, but still, scanning all information that tries to enter our mind and deciding what is definitely worth letting in, what is definitely deserving to be blocked out and what is worthy of some serious reflection before we let it in or block it out. A majority of things may be worthy of some reflection!

Gifts that cost no money

This is building a bit further on a message I posted a few days ago or perhaps more like summarizing it (in only 17 lines, below 😀).

Peace is one of these fantastic gifts: peace of the early night or the morning: all we have to do is think about it, let it in and be fully aware of it and enjoy it. We may have to clear our busy mind a bit of all the clutter that worried or angered us earlier in the day, but peace is a great gift, easy to experience

Beauty is number two. It may require a bit more action than peace: we have to actively look for it or listen for it. Still, with a minor effort, we will enjoy it and our life becomes a bit more beautiful. Just take the time to look up at the skies, the trees, the flowers.

Love is another gift. It sits in our heart but to fully enjoy it, we have to give it truly away. The gift of love keeps flowing: the more we give away, the more flows back in. Giving love, even if no love comes back to us, is pure joy. But it is almost impossible to give away love without receiving any back. To turn a smile on someone's face...

And the fourth one is creativity. For this, we have to listen to our heart and our deepest passion let it boil over and express in a nice and original way. Perhaps a bit more difficult than enjoying peace, beauty or love, but it is surely worth it, to make some extra efforts. RW Emerson wrote: a man is only half himself and the other half is his expression (Link). I agree quite a bit with that. We truly need to express ourselves and if we manage to inspire even only one other person, it is a true source of joy.

A small rhyming poem on the topic: 

Isn’t it always fun and pleasant

To receive a wonderful present

Wrapped in paper and ribbons of gold

A gift of value and beauty untold

Unexpected or on a special event

Received from a brother or friend

Surely happy feelings will be there.

But what if the gift is floating in air?

Everyday we get such gifts for free

Think just about all the beauty we see

The peace we find at dawn in our room

The song of a bird, a marvellous tune

There is so much in nature to be adored

Which gets all too often simply ignored

So is also the love that sits in our heart

And the creativity, our sense for art.

The love sits in our heart; be always aware:

It is replenished no matter how much we share

Sharing love, the greatest gift we get from God

But all too often we appreciate it not.

Creativity another gift from above

As valuable for our character as love.

Using our talents as well as we can

for helping any other woman or man

Most of the gifts of nature are always there

We just need to open our heart and let it in

Love and creativity in abundance to share

So let’s all be aware and live a life from within

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You may enjoy also:
Beautiful skies: https://hansvro.wixsite.com/mysite-1/skies-seen-by-hans
Beautiful flowers: https://hansvro.wixsite.com/flowersbyhans
Beautiful poems: https://aufiezophypoems.blogspot.com/

Beautiful inspirational quotes:  https://quotesfromhans.blogspot.com/
Essays about good things: https://abcofvirtues.blogspot.com/

A fantastic short story: https://afishwithawish.blogspot.com/2020/08/a-fish-with-wish-whole-story.html

Creativity

The best pieces of art express the way the artist sees the world.

Paintings that show the reality as everyone sees it, may provoke a 'wow, what superb skills in painting the reality as it is', but paintings that really enthrall are the paintings that speak the feelings of the painter, that uniquely depict the world as seen by the artist. Similarly for poetry: while poems with perfect meter and rhyme may tickle the mind and heart, it is the poem that expresses the story of the deeper feelings, of the unique perspective of the poet that penetrates deep into our chest and moves our soul.

True art involves passion. A melody may sound pleasant and nice, but when the passion of the singer resounds in the voice, it is then that the song becomes a masterpiece, touching our deepest core.

Artists have passion and are passionate about expressing this passionately :)

Awareness of pleasure, happiness beyond...

The pleasure of food

Pleasure lies in consuming food when we are hungry. Wonderful!

Some of us get so enthralled by this pleasure, that we keep eating.

We accumulate fat, get overweight, obese and make ourselves feel not comfortable. We may even get sick and die early. The pleasure that lies in food is not unique to humans:

the fly in the sky, the fish in the sea, the birds in the trees, the chicken, the cow; all of them find pleasure in eating.

Other pleasures that help sustain life
There are other pleasures that are related to sustaining life too. They are wonderful too.

It is good to enjoy them at appropriate times, but if we make them a purpose by itself or get too excited about such pleasures, we may overindulge, which invariably makes us feel not comfortable and they may make us sick and even cause us to die prematurely.

Awareness

We are human. And as humans, we were gifted with pleasures and sources of happiness beyond those that are needed to sustain life. The key to experiencing the pleasures and happiness beyond those we share with the animal kingdom lies in AWARENESS.

Beauty

One such pleasure is beauty. We need to be aware of the beauty that is all around us, in order to experience fully its pleasure

My garden has thousands of flowers. Tens of them, I planted but hundreds, literally hundreds have grown spontaneously, in the wild. The very small flowers, half-hidden in the grass, the flowers on the clover, on the weeds, on the trees, on the shrubs, each of them displaying their own little bit of exquisite beauty.

And yet there are days, when I dash from my door to my gate, without paying any attention, without any awareness that there is so much beauty along my way for all of us to see.

Every morning, a chorus birds sings beautiful songs, but all too often we are too much in a rush, too busy with our small tasks, to stop and listen, to really become AWARE of it and enjoy the pleasure that lies in listening to these beautiful sounds.

Just this morning, I made a small walk on the beach and the sky was so amazing. Sun rays radiated over very dark background clouds and made the sea below them, white. It looked like a painting where they display an apparition of God.

Surely the beauty of nature, the beauty for our eyes, the beauty for our ears are a source of pleasure and happiness. Somehow, we have to make time for it, look for it, look at it, listen for it, listen to it, in order to consciously enjoy the true beauty. We need to be aware! We can consciously make time for beauty and increase our level of happiness instantly by enjoying the beauty all around us.

Beauty is only one of the pleasures beyond animal experience. Another one is…

Peace.

If we consciously experience the peace that we have, the peace at night, just before we go to sleep or the fabulous peace in the morning, just after waking up,… During these minutes or even hours just before or after sleep, do we consciously enjoy the peace that is within them? Right now even, it is quiet in my room and the rain and winds of the monsoon season are the only sounds I hear. I try to relax my body, to quiet my mind and to focus on the silence, on the rain. I close my eyes and experience peace, which is a joy to our soul, a pleasure to our body and bliss for our hearts.

Sometimes we pray for peace and expect it to come from someplace far away, to descend on us from heaven or from the skies. But peace is most of the time all around us. All we need to do is make it a bit silent within become aware and consciously experience and enjoy the peace.

Love

And then there is love, a truly big one, perhaps the most misunderstood source of happiness.  When I pray for love, I get sometimes the same feeling as when praying for peace. We expect it to come from outside, from somewhere far away, but if we truly look inside of our own heart, there are tons of love sitting right there. 

There are two kinds of love: the love we get (like friendship) and the love we give (like friendliness). We crave for true friendship, we crave to get love and appreciation, but it is not in our hands, not under our control. That is indeed depending on others, whether or not we get love and friendship.

But the other love, the love we can give, the friendliness, is really within our control. When we were born our heart was filled with love and we started to smile at our parents and give away our loving feelings. And what did we get back? Currents, torrential currents of mother’s love and father’s love. Actually, all the love and friendliness that was planted in our hearts at birth, is still in our hearts. It sits there and the more we give it away, the faster it gets replenished. It is as if there is a source, a well, filling our heart with love, as soon as we give a bit away. There is so much friendliness in our hearts. We give it away and poof, it is replenished by new and fresh friendliness. 

If we become AWARE of this huge reserve, this giant heap of love that sits in our heart and soul, and we start to give it away consciously, it is such a big source of peace of mind and happiness. Maybe the biggest source of happiness and joy that we can ever experience. Somehow we were programmed by our Creator or by the universe to enjoy this very special human source of true happiness. It gives us the greatest possible level of satisfaction and feeling good whenever we truly give away the love that sits in our heart, whenever we manage to genuinely help some of those around us, whenever we manage to make a positive difference and create a smile on the face of a human being. Love is here, it is here now and it is always easy to find, as long as we look for it where it sits: inside. 

While beauty and peace are joys we can experience passively, since they are like real presents, like birthday gifts, given to us by the universe or God, love is special in a way that it was planted in our heart and only if we give it away, we will experience the great human joy connected to it. And the love we tend to pray for most, the one we get, the friendship will flow like a natural consequence to us in great quantities. And even if it doesn’t, the joy of sharing the love in our hearts with others is always worth it by itself. I have personally experienced multiple times the great paradox: “it is in giving that we receive”. The most striking one when I visited my family at home in Europe, while I was working in Asia. (click here to see more about that story :) )

Creativity, growth, devotion, self-expression

I think love Is like a bridge between beauty and peace that we can enjoy passively on one bank of the river, and the other joys that needs our action, on the other bank. They include creativity, the joy of creating beauty and actively maintaining or even creating peaceful situations for our loved ones. They include also growth, personal growth, emotional growth, spiritual growth that we tend to obtain through sincere (prayerful) reflection about the challenges in our lives and ultimately the wisdom that comes from them and then of course the sharing of the wisdom in again creatively expressing ourselves. Self-expression and living a life of purpose are among the greatest sources of joy and happiness.

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If you are in need of something more than an inspiring quote but do not have time to read books or long pieces, the solution may be here: I have written a few short essays on good things. Please click here if you want to read them

If you feel OK with quotes alone, I have also a place where I keep some original inspirational quotes
https://quotesfromhans.blogspot.com/

Are your eyes hungry for some nice pictures of skies or/and flowers, I can recommend:
 https://hansvro.wixsite.com/mysite-1/skies-seen-by-hans 
or/and
 https://hansvro.wixsite.com/flowersbyhans