Time wasted

Since the beginning of this year I have been spending an excess of time on reading about and looking at satirical videos about Donald Trump. It has not contributed to any of my peace of mind, it has not contributed to my knowledge, it has not contributed to my psychological or spiritual growth. It has just given me an occasional laugh but more often it has given me enervation, anger and worry.

If I look at the obvious stupidity, narcissistic nonsense of that president, you feel a certain disgust, you feel a certain danger hanging above your head. Several times I have made the resolution not to look at it any more, but  somehow to see people ridicule the wickedness and bombastic stupidity of the man in power, seems a bit addictive.

Still it is a pure waste of time to follow exactly what this president of the USA is doing and saying and tweeting. I again have the firmest intention to stop reading about him, to stop looking at the satirical videos about him and use that time for my own spiritual and mental growth.

Let us on and off reflect, how much time we have wasted today.
Every minute of wasted time is a minute of wasted life.
Our life has only a limited number of minutes.

Let us reflect and think about how to spend our time in the best possible way
Love and helpfulness will boil up and that will help us lead a life
that is fulfilling and pleasant and peaceful.

If you click on the vertical black bar on the right of this page, you can go to the archive of this blog. on 5.7.16, I wrote something similar. Please enjoy the other great ideas in the archive too. 

The story of the refugees

Centuries ago, a boat of refugees reached the shore of India.

The leader of the refugees went to meet the king and asked 

for the permission to stay in his land. 

The king showed to the leader a glass that was full of water.
"You see, the glass is like my land.

Like the glass is filled with water,

my land is already filled with my people"

The leader took a spoon of sugar and put it into the water. 

He waited until the sugar dissolved in the water and said:

"My people will dissolve into the community of your people 

and in the process make it sweeter" 

The king allowed them to stay.

Perhaps today most countries facing an influx of refugees,

get them because the Universe thought they needed a bit

of extra sweetness, a bit of extra spice. 

I read the above story in a book, titled 'the gift of anger'
written by Arun Ghandi, the grandson of Mahatma Ghandi.
I warmly recommend this book as a very good read!

What a power!

At any time we see only a very small part of the whole world.
We see only our own garden, the book in front of us,
maybe more often the screen in front of us,
the person that does something we like,
the person that does something we don't like.

That is such an extremely small, minuscule part of the world.
And even a much smaller fraction of the universe.

The nice thing about the above thoughts,
is that actually we can choose what to look at, at any time.
We can even choose how to look at it (with an open mind,
with an angry heart, from a distance, as a bystander
as a victim,....).

If we become aware of this power to choose,
our whole life may become a bit different.
We do not need to be just undergoing what is happening,
we can choose to observe it or not,
to be involved in it or not,
to like it or not.

If we do not like it, we can choose to focus on something else.
It sounds, easy. It is initially not easy.
It requires some exercise.
Our mind is actually under our control
We say: my mind, meaning the mind of me
That me, that I who owns the mind
is not the mind. It is the higher self.
If our mind refuses to let go of a negative thought,
we can choose to think about something else and
the mind has to release anyhow.

I was reading about mindfulness from a few sources. 
The above is a kind of what I understood from it.

Poetry and greed

Can poetry help do away with the greed in this world?

Here is a quote from RW Emerson: " The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms"

Would you not agree with Emerson?
The poet is putting new ideas in often symbolic language.
A touching metaphor can change one's life.
If we manage to have more poets writing truly positive ideas in wonderful verses,
it may be quite likely that poetry may save the world from destruction through ever increasing greed.

I have tried myself to make minuscule contribution to that way of thinking by writing a few uplifting poems, I think.

Please visit the page with the poems  (by clicking on the link).
Pick a few poems and perhaps let yourself be inspired to write a poem that may contribute to a better world yourself. :)

Race

Does a white man have to be ashamed of the actions of his ancestors (the aggression of the vikings, the inquisition, the extinction of many American native tribes, the nazi movement, the more recent senseless wars in Vietnam and Iraq, etc.) or does a white man have to be proud of the achievements of his ancestors (Plato, Edison, Pasteur, the wright bothers, mother Teresa. etc.) or is it best for the white man not be ashamed and neither be proud?

Honestly speaking, I am a white man, and I have nothing to do with the nazis, nothing to do with the cruelties. Also I have nothing to do with the achievements of other white people. I am as proud of the achievements of Marten Luther King and Gandhi as my fellow humans as I am proud of the achievements of Lincoln. We are all humans. I am as ashamed of the crimes committed by the Taliban as of the Nazi crimes and the crimes against the current Palestinians.

Let us forget the color of our skin altogether. Let our world be our nation and let the huge variety of belief systems be an enriching experience rather than one leading to violence.

I do not know my ancestors. I am sure some of them were really good people and some of them were crooks. If we just go 20 generations back, there are mathematically (2 to the power of twenty) more than a million ancestors. If only 0.1% of them would be crooks, that would still amount to 1000 of your ancestors.

Let us all learn from all history.
- Let the huge crimes committed by people of any race or creed be a lesson for us, never to be repeated.
- Let the wonderful achievements by people of any race or creed be a source of inspiration to all.

Handy

Tonight I was looking at my right hand. It looked wonderfully alive. I could flex all of my fingers and then each finger individually. And then, I thought: a hand that can love, a hand that can give, a hand that can pick up garbage, a hand that can work. I was, for a few moments, so happy to have a hand like that. But then I thought of the hands of my uncle, that were folded on his lap. They were icy cold and by now must be nothing more than dust. I was thinking about the millions and billions of hands that have been and are no more. My hands sooner or later will belong to this category, but while they are still alive, I will use them to give. To give something, to write something, that can help others, that can inspire others. 

Let us all use our hands for the good of the world :) 

The perfect tree

A tree in your garden

A tree in your street

A tree in your park

carries wonderful perfection.

Have you seen it?

Did you notice its perfection?

Did you touch it?

Take a look at it, touch it,

that wonderfully perfect tree,

that is ornamenting your garden,

your street, your park.

Imagine

We tend to be busy often with questions like:
Why is this world going so awfully wrong?
How can the world be that bad?

We may feel helpless:
What can we do?
What is the use?

But,
even if we manage to make a small difference for one person in the world,
we have done something extremely worthy.
If we try every day to make small difference for one person,
how many persons we affect in a year?

And you know what?
Each time we make a small difference for another person,
we make a small difference for ourselves.
That is 365 small differences for ourselves every year!

Can you imagine a world where more people would stop asking: what is wrong? Why?
and they would start asking questions like: what gift can I give to the world today?
And tomorrow? and then again?

Try to imagine, Try to imagine !

Seeking Truth

When I was in my late teens,
I was seeking the Truth.
The Truth with a big, capital T.

While believing or attempting to arrive at the big Truth, is a foolish futile thing,
attempting to get a bit closer to it, even without any hopes of uncovering it completely
tends to put us on an amazing journey !

If we really, in the deepest of our heart and soul, search for Truth,
we quite soon come to an awareness that the Truth is enormously big.
The complexity of the physical world is enormous,
The complexity of the spiritual world is enormously enormous.

As a human we tend to cling to some of our insights some of the things we accepted as truth.
We make it our final truth and the wonderful journey of seeking ends; we tend to become arrogant in our beliefs, thinking we are right and all others are wrong.

A small glimpse of the Truth with capital T
will make anyone understand that we cannot understand that Truth.
This makes us  in a way all wrong in our perception of it.
So be it. Let us accept that no matter how good we are,
no matter how long we went to school or to study holy books,
no matter what, we cannot fully grasp the Truth

I have seen people who consider anyone believing in God
as children clinging to an illusion,
but these same people had no problem believing the big bang theory.
Bing bang originated in the mind of scientists, so even though it makes
minimal sense to any sound thinking mind, so many people blindly accept it.

I truly think there are much bigger questions that should keep us occupied
than the question where we come from or how the world came into existence.
The bigger questions are how we can make this world a better place to live in.
While science has helped us to lead comfortable life
it has not helped us a lot to be more happy.

Whatever it is, my friends, never give up your search for the Truth.

Poetry

Poetry

The stirrings into the most beautiful and colorful veils
of the soul and the heart, slowly exposing that
amazing imagination that loves and inspires

Poetry

The forest so marvelously fresh and exquisitely attractive
Angelic smells of wet branches and soft leafy soil
A forest you really want to get lost in for hours and hours.

Poetry

Let's get lost in poetry tonight.
Just read and read tree after tree
path after path, imagination after imagination
poem after poem

Poetry

Let's get lost in it tonight
A wonderful place to start:
http://aufiezophypoems.blogspot.my/?view=timeslide


(Complete collection )

The response

        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to loving persons
        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to kind persons
        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to good persons
        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to wicked persons
        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to evil persons
        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to hateful persons


Evil and harmful behavior are the result of ignorance,
the result of weakness.

So if a weak and ignorant person displays some evil or harmful behavior in front of you,
do you want to show off that you are equally weak and ignorant and that you can descend
to their level of behavior?

Surely not!

Let us answer hatred with love
evil with goodness
harm with kindness

To answer harm with harm is like supporting an endless chain of violence;
it is like kicking a seriously suffering soul in pain and ignorance;
it is like pushing a severely crippled being down a flight of stairs.

To answer hatred with hatred is like putting oil on a fire;
is like endorsing a person full of hatred that he is right,
that his behavior is worthy of being followed and copied.

To answer evil with evil is like engaging in a contest
a contest on who is the most ignorant of the two,
who is the weakest and most stupid?


Answering hatred, evil and harm
with love, goodness and kindness
is keeping our own values high!
It is like helping the weak in the weakest of their weak moments
helping the ignorant in their most ignorant phase of their life.

The hateful, evil and harming people are suffering
they need help.

        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to loving persons
        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to kind persons
        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to good persons
        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to wicked persons
        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to evil persons
        Love and kindness and goodness are the right response to loving persons






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Hope you enjoyed this reflection by Hans Van Rostenberghe
Feel free to share it, use it in any positive way.
The link is http://reflectionsbyhans.blogspot.com/
If you have time, please take also a look at the inspirational quotes page connected to this blog some of my poems published under my pen name Aufie Zophy.