We’re all the same
Homogenized conglomeration of all things tasteless
Without faces
Marching in line chanting the same fallacious message
Why do we feel so helpless?
Downing sugared caffeine to take the soul-sucking edge off
Mechanical nodding
Force-fed bullshit direction ingested
Forcing plastered smiles through our thinly veiled frustration
How the fuck did I ever get so complacent?
An ugly pattern emerges to stifle silent screaming
For a while for the sake of sanity, we forget
Dressed up distracted with pockets full, we forget
How, why is it so easy to forget?

"Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer."
Mais toute la nature nous crie qu'il existe; qu'il y a une intelligence suprême, un pouvoir immense, un ordre admirable, et tout nous instruit de notre dépendance.
~Voltaire

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Maybe new love feels so right because in it we live life the way it's meant to be lived: falling in love with one another, with life and with God over and over again.

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Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.~Ralph Waldo Emerson

We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination.
~David Lynch

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.” —Albert Einstein

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is awaiting us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one is to come.” ~Joseph Campbell

“The success of the masterpieces seems to lie not so much in their freedom from faults – indeed we tolerate the grossest errors in them all – but in the immense persuasiveness of a mind which has completely mastered its perspective.”
—Virginia Woolf

You have comfort. You don't have luxury. And don't tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have no fear of discomfort.
~Jean Cocteau


I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
~Henry David Thoreau

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou

I would like to explain the meaning of compassion which is often misunderstood. Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, but rather on the rights of the other: irrespective of whether another person is a close friend or an enemy, as long as that person wishes for peace and happiness and wishes to overcome suffering, then on that basis we develop a genuine concern for his or her problems. This is genuine compassion. Usually when we are concerned about a close friend, we call this compassion. This is not compassion; it is attachment. Even in marriage, those marriages that last only a short time, do so because of attachment - although it is generally present - but because there is also compassion. Marriages that last only a short time do so because of a lack of compassion; there is only emotional attachment based on projection and expectation. When the only bond between close friends is attachment, then even a minor issue may cause one´s projections to change. As soon as our projections change, the attachment disappears, because that attachment was based solely on projection and expectation. It is possible to have compassion without attachement, and similarly, to have anger without hatred. Therefore we need to clarify the distinctions between compassion and attachment, and between anger and hatred. Such clarity is useful in our daily life and in our efforts toward world peace. I consider these to be basic spiritual values for the happness of all human beings, regardless of whether one is a believer or a nonbeliever.

~Dalai Lama XIV

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So many fail because they don't get started, they don't go. They don't overcome inertia. They don't begin.

~W. Clement Stone

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All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who can condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character, or illustrates an existence.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

...Nietzsche with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we live, we're gonna live over and over again the exact same way as eternity. Great. This means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It's not worth it.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy­.
~William Shakespear­e, "Hamlet", Act 1 scene 5

"There is another way to think of this whole thing that we are missing. And quantum physics is forcing us down that road. It's forcing us to recognize that we don't choose in our individuality that we call the ego. Instead there is a unity behind us. We are all connected in some place where there is this cosmic consciousness engulfing everything. It's a little subtle. That's why manifestation doesn't always work."

~Dr. Amit Goswami

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

~Albert Einstein

Our country is headed in the wrong direction and it's time to stop placing blame exclusively on elected officials, Hollywood, the media and people with whom we disagree. It's time to stop pointing fingers and take a good, hard look in the mirror. It's time to take that first step and acknowledge our own culpability in the fact that our society, as a whole, is in the wrong paradigm. We wage war on everything we deem dangerous, immoral or generally disagreeable, yet rarely offer meaningful support for any actual solutions to the problems we're so passionately combating. While it's true Americans donate more money to charity than any other country, we less often show up and lend a hand, despite the fact that the majority of us think throwing money at problems rarely solve them, e.g. bailouts, stimulus, etc. It is scary to think we care more about Jersey Shore, what Meghan McCain wrote or Sarah Palin said than we do about the family down the street struggling to afford groceries. All the while we tell ourselves the country has come a long way since the intolerant eras before us. After all, most of us do not see color as vividly as we did 50 years ago- that is, unless it's red or blue. It's not uncommon for people driving cars with bumper stickers to become fair game for all sorts of mockery. A lot of us spend more time online than we do with our kids. As you very well know, this quasi list could go on for twenty pages. And what, we're seriously buying that this is all Hollywood's fault? The government, is it? The soulless corporations? Maybe the rich, the godless or the morally deficient whippersnappers? The right-wing wackos? The Islamic extremists? The birthers? The truthers? The libtard hippies? All of the above? Even though we can't agree on whose fault it is, we all seem to know whose fault it's not: our own. Goodness, the harmless mockery we spew is all in good fun, anyone who can't take a joke should just get thicker skin. Besides, a little good ole fashioned joking around never hurt anyone, right?

ENOUGH. Enough, enough, enough! Boy, that's a weird word once you read it three times, isn't it? Kind of like fork and sprawling. Fork sprawling fork sprawling...wait, where was I? ...oh!! ENOUGH!

It's NOT THEM. It's ME. It's YOU. Yes, you. Sitting right there in front of the screen, graciously reading this blog (thank you kindly) and likely rolling your eyes while moving your mouse closer and closer to that little red X. But isn't it true? Are we not fiercely driven by the negative catalyst to the negative conclusion all in hopes of achieving a positive end? Because that's just good sense if I've ever heard it.
Yes, it is time to realize we are in the wrong paradigm and we must end the cycle of hate, blame and war. If I haven't lost you already, here's where I lose most of the rest, if not all: The time has come to choose love. Not on a grand scale, but on an effective one-YOU. The family is the building block of the country. Our families are falling apart, therefore our country is falling apart. Take the family back, you'll take the country back. Take your family back with love. It starts with you.

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. -Archibald MacLeish

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us, by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own words and laws and worship.

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?

~Ralph Waldo Emerson