The beginning of the universe, for beginners - Tom Whyntie

What does Love got to do with it? Andrew Solomon Knows!!

A Mini Poster that Nudges

Brene Brown on The Power of Being Vulnerable

A TED talk that INSPIRES

From the Quote of the Week Files, June 24, 2013

You are dazed, bewildered, trapped in a world with no time, where color collides with sound, and shadows explode. You see a sign up ahead. This is no ordinary email, this is the "Quote of the Week Zone."  Today's quote, A Cosmic Perspective by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
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There’s something about the cosmic perspective, which for some people is enlightening and for other people it’s terrifying. For those who are terrified by it, they’re here on earth and they have a certain self-identity, and then they learn that earth is tiny and we’re in this void of interplanetary space and then there’s a star that we call the Sun and that’s kind of average and there’s a hundred billion other stars in a galaxy. And our galaxy, the Milky Way, is one of 50 or 100 billion other galaxies in the universe. And with every step, every window that modern astrophysics has opened to our mind, the person who wants to feel like they’re the center of everything ends up shrinking. And for some people they might even find it depressing, I assert that if you were depressed after learning and being exposed to the perspective, you started your day with an unjustifiably large ego. You thought more highly of yourself than in fact the circumstances deserved.

So here’s what you do: You say, “I have no ego at all.” Let’s start that way. “I have no ego, no cause to puff myself up.” Now let’s learn about the cosmic perspective. Yeah, we’re on a planet that’s orbiting a star, and a star is an energy source and it’s giving us energy, and we’re feeling this energy, and life is enabled by this energy in this star. And by the way, there’s a hundred billion other stars that have other planets. There might be other life out there, could be like us. It’s probably not like us, but whatever it is, it’d be fascinating to find out who it is. Can we talk to them? Can we not? Are they more advanced? Are they less advanced? By the way, the atoms of our body are traceable to what stars do.

And all you can do is sit back and bask in your relevance to the cosmos.

So those who see the cosmic perspective as a depressing outlook, they really need to reassess how they think about the world. Because when I look up in the universe, I know I’m small, but I’m also big. I’m big because I’m connected to the universe and the universe is connected to me.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Hear Neil deGrasse Tyson speak about the Cosmic Perspective...

http://youtu.be/x3sPsbv3fnY
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Wishing you a most beautiful day, wherever this may find you!
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Thanks to website, "Brain Pickings" for leading me 

An Inspiring TED Talk (A GREAT Book BTW!)

A Zen Story that Nudges

A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

Want to be Happier? Stay in the Moment! A TED talk that Inspires!

Emerson always Nudges and Inspires!

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

From the Quote of the Week Files, June 17, 2013

Welcome Everybody to the Quote of the Week!  Your presence, exactly as is at this very moment, is greatly appreciated. The featured quote this week is by ​Anais Nin and is from her Diaries written in 1946.  It has a lot of meaning today and you could probably insert the word internet in the last line to bring it up to date.  

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"The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions. This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters. meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, internet​ ​take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision."

​Anais Nin

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“If you ask me, I will tell you, what I came into to this world to do, 

I came live out loud.”

Emile Zola

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​Wishing you a most beautiful day, wherever this may find you!​

Inspiring Point of View

"Get out of any situation that endorses negativity, causing you imbalance. People come together in relationships for growth, not for life. If a relationship sustains you, that is, if you're both growing from it, and if it's beautiful and it has energy, you're together for good. If not, either fix it or ditch it. You don't need situations that don't support you or that lower your energy. You don't owe anything to anyone.

The only real responsibility you have is to work on yourself to raise your energy. That will become your gift to the world. Pull back from negative situations and negative people. You don't need to judge them or try to change them. Just allow them to follow their path. You may want to give them a little shove, but if they won't move, you move. Never mind security; preserve your soul".

Stuart Wild, The Secrets of Life.

An Ancient Spiritual Law

"You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you."

Sarah Ban Breathnach

U.S. Olympic Team Tribute To Muhammad Ali; Inspiring

A Zen Story that Nudges

Cliffhanger

One day while walking through the wilderness a man stumbled upon a vicious tiger. He ran but soon came to the edge of a high cliff. Desperate to save himself, he climbed down a vine and dangled over the fatal precipice.

As he hung there, two mice appeared from a hole in the cliff and began gnawing on the vine.

Suddenly, he noticed on the vine a plump wild strawberry. He plucked it and popped it in his mouth. It was incredibly delicious!

With A Piece Of Chalk; Inspiring

From the Quote of the Week Files; June 10, 2013

Hello Everybody and Welcome to the Quote of the Week!!  This week's quotes are about getting older!!!  Enjoy!!  ;-)
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“The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.” 

Jean-Paul Sartre
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“Just because you’re grown up and then some doesn’t mean settling into the doldrums of predictability. Surprise people. Surprise yourself."
 
Victoria Moran 
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A Recycled Quote of the Week Classic...

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was?" 

Satchel Paige
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Wishing you a most beautiful day, wherever this may find you!

Just an Interesting Mash Up of Songs!

Just enjoyed this: A Young Stevie Nicks Singing Backstage

A Song that Nudges

Inspiring: The First Woman to run the Boston Marathon

Target Practice; Fort Hancock, NJ while on Reserve Duty

Taken by my Dad with his 16 mm camera.  Along the beaches of Sandy Hook in 1949.

Congratulations! You're not Perfect!

"Congratulations! You're not Perfect!

It's ridiculous to want to be perfect anyway.  But then, everybody's ridiculous sometimes, except perfect people.  You know what perfect is?  Perfect is not eating or drinking or talking or moving a muscle or making even the teensiest mistake.  Perfect is never doing anything wrong - which means never doing anything at all.  Perfect is boring!  So you're not perfect!  Wonderful!  Have fun!  Eat things that give you bad breath!  Trip over your own shoelaces!  Laugh!  Let somebody else laugh at you!  Perfect people never do any of those things.  All they do is sit around and sip weak tea and think about how perfect they are.  But they're really not one-hundred-percent perfect anyway.  You should see them when they get the hiccups!  Phooey!  Who needs 'em?  You can drink pickle juice and imitate gorillas and do silly dances and sing stupid songs and wear funny hats and be as imperfect as you please and still be a good person.  Good people are hard to find nowadays.  And they're a lot more fun than perfect people any day of the week."

Stephen Manes

From the Quote of the Week Files; June 3, 2103

Happy Belated Birthday Walt Whitman  (May 31, 1819 — March 26, 1892).   With that in mind, we have two quotes and a reading of one of his poems by James Earl Jones (something new) for this week's Quote of the Week!  Enjoy! 

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“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

Walt Whitman

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A Recycled Quote of the Week Classic...

“Not I - not anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.”

Walt Whitman

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A Quote of the Week Bonus...

A link to James Earl Jones reading Walt Whitman's Song to Myself (verses 6, 7, 17, 18, and 19)

http://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/james-earl-jones-reads-walt-whitman

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Wishing you a most beautiful day, wherever this may find you!

Is that so? A Zen Story that Inspires!

The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.

This made her parents very angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parents went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say.

When the child was born, the parents brought it to the Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was his responsibility. “Is that so?” Hakuin said calmly as he accepted the child.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth – that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.

Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: “Is that so?”

A Nudge from a bowl of Cherries

“Life is a bowl of cherries. Some cherries are rotten while others are good; its your job to throw out the rotten ones and forget about them while you enjoy eating the ones that are good! There are two kinds of people: those who choose to throw out the good cherries and wallow in all the rotten ones, and those who choose to throw out all the rotten ones and savor all the good ones.” 

C. JoyBell C.