Wind, Sand and Stars

No man can draw a free breath who does not share with other men a common and disinterested ideal. Life has taught us that love odes not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through union in the same high effort. Even in our age of material well-being this must be so, else how should we explain the happiness we feel in sharing our last crust with others in the desert? No sociologist's textbook can prevail against this fact. Every pilot who has flown to the rescue of a comrade in distress knows that all joys are vain in comparison with this one. And this, it may be, is the reason why the world today is tumbling about our ears. It is precisely because this sort of fulfilment is promised each of us by his religion, that men are inflamed today. All of us, in words that contradict each other, express at bottom the same exalted impulse. What sets us against one another is not our aims- they all come to the same thing- but our methods, which are the fruit of our varied reasoning.
Let us, then, refrain from astonishment at what men do. One man finds that his essential manhood comes alive at the sight of self-sacrifice, cooperative effort, a rigorous vision of justice, manifested in an anarchists' cellar in Barcelona. For that man there will henceforth be but one truth- the truth of the anarchists. Another, having once mounted guard over a flock of terrified little nuns kneeling in a Spanish nunnery, will thereafter know a different truth- that it is sweet to die for the Church. If, when Mermoz plunged into the Chilean Andes with victory in his heart, you had protested to him that no merchant's letter could possibly be worth risking one's life for, Mermoz would have laughed in your face. Truth is the man that was born in Mermoz when he slipped through the Andean passes.
What all of us want is to be set free. The man who sinks his pickaxe into the ground wants that stroke to mean something. The convict's stroke is not the same as the prospector's, for the obvious reason that the prospector's stroke has meaning and the convict's stroke has none.
It is using a pickaxe to no purpose that makes a prison; the horror resides in the failure to enlist all those who swing the pick in the community of mankind.
We all yearn to escape from prison.

ohhh the layers, she called it
and she took them from inside her mind
and made them real, and handed them to me
i didn't look too carefully
now im looking much more closely
and what do i see?
still the mind, open the heart
thats the only way i can do my part
try to understand why you share your history
if your end goal is to let everything be
we are looking for pure love to fill up pure hearts
advertising in size 6 font somewhere 2/3 of the way through the Sunday paper
expecting the advertisement to go unnoticed by almost everyone
but still there lingers a hope
for that some one
if you followed your heart, where would you go?and if i followed mine?

Ning started running a 100 mile race about 31 hours ago.... I cannot even imagine what that boy is feeling right now. So much respect.

Empathy is the ability to read and understand people and be in-tune with or resonate with others, voluntarily or involuntarily of one's empath capacity. Empaths have the ability to scan another's psyche for thoughts and feelings or for past, present, and future life occurrences.
Empathy is a feeling of another's true emotions to a point where an empath can relate to that person by sensing true feelings that run deeper than those portrayed on the surface. People commonly put on a show of expression. This is a learned trait of hiding authentic expression in an increasingly demanding society. An empath can sense the truth behind the cover and will act compassionately to help that person express him/herself, thus making them feel at ease and not so desperately alone.
Empathy is not held by time or space. Thus, an empath can feel the emotions of people and things at a distance. Empathy is genetic, inherent in our DNA, and passed from generation to generation.

An Empath is someone who can feel other people’s emotions as their own: you litterally feel what other people feel.

Notice that this definition does not assume that you are aware of it nor that you know what to do with it. It simply describes that can experience someone else’s emotion, even if they are not in your physical presence.

Empaths find themselves in the tricky situation of being overwhelmed by the quantity of emotional information they receive. I can sense the emotions of everyone around me, even my next door neighbors. It comes to me like a scrambled radio station where I get bits and pieces from all those people. In its raw form, this emotional information is incoherent and even painful as we feel all the negative emotions from everyone around us.

The most problematic aspect of being an Empath is that most of us have no idea how to manage it. We don’t know how to turn it off. We don’t know how to use it effectively to accomplish something productive. Some of us don’t even know that we have it. We just think we’re weird and have random mood swings and tired spells.

Emotional Intelligence is defined as “the ability, capacity, or skill to perceive, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups” (Salovey and Mayer). Developing your Emotional Intelligence means that you know what to do with the emotional information you receive and it’s not just a burden you must bear anymore.

If you know how to trust your true nature, you will lose your fear and sorrow. A wave in her ignorance is subject to the fear of birth, death, high, low, more or less beautiful, and the jealousy of others. But if a wave is able to touch her true nature, the nature of water, and know that she is water, then all her fear and jealousy will vanish. Water doesn't undergo birth and death, high and low.
When we look at the flower we see the same thing. The gardener is only one of the causes. There must be the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the compost, the seed and many, many other things. If you look deeply, you will see that the whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower to manifest.
If we continue to look deeply, we see that a cause is at the same time an effect. We find that every cause is at the same time an effect. There are many things we can discover with the practice of looking deeply, and if we are not bound to any dogma or concept we will be free to make our discoveries.

music is the language of the soul

i tell you i walked into that room and everything felt all wrong. heart beating too fast, muscles too tense, stomach all jumbly, wishing i could squirm out of my own skin. but like goethe knew, you can't run away from yourself. but room 5266 isn't just a room anymore. there is a powerful memory there that i can call up and set everything straight. the final memory before the wheels were set in motion. whether i consciously call it up or not, the same effect will happen. i will channel the music that is in my soul, my soul that i was mercifully able to empty out to get filled up again, and it got filled up by You. You, the Universe, the infinite beauty and knowledge and wisdom of the Universe. If able to stay empty, you are always able to be filled. Breathe out and let the wind blow away everything that is simply taking up space, making you miss out. You are free, you are free, you are free to be.

late one afternoon i carried myself on down a grayish road. the trees had want for leaves, the potholes for loose gravel. i saw many a passerby, but we did not look each other in the eye. we were lost inside ourselves, the mindless dialogue on autopilot in our heads. the gray matter of my brain was extra soft and squishy. it was sleepy, so without an ounce of prevention on its own part, it simply went into hibernation.
on and on down Hibernation Road did I meander, stopping to observe the scenery on a few rare instances. in the end, though, i saw almost nothing.
Hibernation Road has an intersection, or maybe it has many; i wouldn't know if i missed em or not. but one morning i did find myself at a crossroads and i heard some voices laughing just a little ways down. i followed the voices and began a travel through time, through the seasons and the colors they came a whirlin and a swirlin and i started twirlin, i took some more turns and started to get lost, i knew i didnt have a map but i didnt care. now i've been lost for a time but the road's getting more colorful and gaining more scenery day by day. ive joined up with those voices and put faces to them. now we're a skippin and a jumpin hand in hand and there's no turning back.

from Walden

No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality... the true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

Austin is a magical place! things that have me buzzing bzzzzzzzz:
--> getting to play with really cool musicians at the pita pit and the hideout, nearly every day!!! and realizing that work can be a party... the employees at the pita pit have such a good time together!
-->getting to play with Acoustalyn, just by chance... this band has shows booked in central TX every weekend throughout the spring and i get to be the alternate violin player at a lot of them =0)
-->getting to play for the gilbert and sullivan society
-->getting to play at school
-->hopefully traveling to nearby state parks with Kevin to create a biker's dream guide
-->Erik. Especially when he plays jokes on me.
-->THE PEOPLE! i feel so excited and blessed to be alive in this place and spend time with these wonderful folks. I am surrounded by role models, all the time... whaaaaaaaat.