The Rules for being Human

When you were born, you didn't come with an owner's manual;
these guidelines make life work better.

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's the only thing you are sure to keep for the rest of your life.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called "Life on Planet Earth". Every person or incident is the Universal Teacher.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation. "Failures" are as much part of the process as "success".
4. A lesson is repeated until learned. It is presented to you in various forms until you learn it - then you can go on to the next lesson.
5. If you don't learn easy lessons, they get harder. External problems are a precise reflection of your internal state. When you clear inner obstructions, your outside world changes. Pain is how the universe gets your attention.
6. You will know you've learned a lesson when your actions change. Wisdom is practice. A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.
7. "There" is no better than "here". When your "there" becomes a "here" you will simply obtain another "there" that again looks better than "here".
8. Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another unless it reflects something you love or hate in yourself.
9. Your life is up to you. Life provides the canvas; you do the painting. Take charge of your life - or someone else will.
10. You always get what you want. Your subconscious rightfully determines what energies, experiences and people you attract - therefore, the only foolproof way to know what you want is to see what you have. There are no victims, only students.
11. There is no right or wrong, but there are consequences. Moralizing doesn't help. Judgment only hold the patterns in place. Just do your best.
12. Your answer lie inside you. Children need guidance from others; as we mature, we trust our hearts, where the Laws of Spirit are written. You know more than you have heard or read or been told. All you need to do is to look, listen and trust.
13. You will forget all this.
14. You can remember any time you wish.

Meaningful Quotes

“whatever you can do, or dream you can..begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”


he who hears not the music, thinks the dancer mad.
(quote found at burning man, written on a stuffed armless, headless shirt, sitting in a bucket of flowers)

“i also believe that it's almost impossible for people to change alone. We need to join with others who will push us in our thinking and challenge us to do things we didn't believe ourselves capable of.”
--by Frances Moore Lappe ( www.cleu.org )

‘K, get out there and party!’ by My Mom 3:09pm Dec 31st 1999

Whether you think you can or think you can’t. You’re right.

Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
Carl Jung

“Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops. “
-- H.L. Mencken

“There is no use trying," Alice laughed, " one can't believe impossible things." " I daresay you haven't had much practice", said the (White) Queen. "When I was your age I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. ---Gandhi

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. ---Albert Einstein

"Science and religion are not at odds, science is simply too young to understand."

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. By Ambrose Bierce

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
Samuel Butler 1612-1680, British Poet, Satirist

The only zen you find at the top of mountains is the zen you bring up there. Robert M. Pirsig

Faith is believing what you know ain’t so. Mark Twain

Faith is the daring of the soul to go farther than it can see. William Newton Clark

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. Henry David Thoreau

Human kind has not woven the web of life, we are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. Chief Seattle

God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everybody who looks at it sees something different. Rabbi Harold Kushner

We are what we eat.

We all carry it within us; supreme strength, the fullness of wisdom, unquenchable joy. Huston Smith

As ye think, so shall be. JC

What we think, we become. Buddha

Our life is what our thoughts make it. Marcus Aurelius

Our beliefs are what we hold dearest. They are the spiritual and moral fiber that eave us into the tapestry of life. We may think that our beliefs are unique, that our identities are tied to our religions, our cultures, our races, and our creeds. But we are all human, and if you look closely at our scriptures and stories, you’ll find that we are all much more alike than different.

Listen to the mustn't s, child, listen to the don't s. Listen to the shouldn't s, the impossibles, the won't s. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me. Anything can happen, child, anything can be. ---Shel Silverstein

The attempt to eliminate evil in others is the very impulse of evil itself. – James Carse

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles H. Duell, Director of US Patent Office, 1899

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom." - Robert Miliham, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

"The horse is here today, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad." - President of Michigan Savings Bank advising against investing in the Ford Motor Company

"Video won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." - Daryl F. Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, commenting on television in 1946

"Space travel is utter bilge." - Sir Richard van der Riet Wooley, The Astronomer Royal (1956)

"Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia." - Dionysius Lardner, English scientist (1793-1859)

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." - Lee DeForest, American inventor (1873-1961)

"Guitar music is on the way out." - Decca Records turning down the Beatles, 1962.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." - Spencer Silver, originator of Post-It Notepads.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." - Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote." - Grover Cleveland, 1905

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." - Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." - Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981

"Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress." - Sir William Siemens, electrical engineer, upon hearing Edison's announcement of a successful light bulb.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, president of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who errs and comes short again and again . . . who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the least knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
(Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt)


"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that
you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover."
--Mark Twain

How To Get What You Want - Using NLP

When I met my first neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) trainer five years ago, he asked us if we'd like to know how to answer (and ask!) two questions which could change our lives. I have used these questions consistently ever since, and they have been among the most useful things I've ever learned. They were "What do you want?", and "How will you know when you've got it?"

What do you want?

"What do you want?" is probably the most well-known 'NLP question'. It takes advantage of the fact that the human nervous system is 'goal-seeking' ie. we operate most effectively when we have a goal or objective of some sort to aim for, so...

1) Ask yourself "What do I want?" & pay attention to your answer.

You can't do a don't!

Is your answer stated in the positive (eg. to get fit & healthy, to double your income, to start a new business etc.) or in the negative (eg. to quit smoking, lose weight, stop spending so much etc.)? Negatives aren't processed by the nervous system in the same way that they are linguistically (eg. The command "Don't think of a purple hippo" is difficult to obey.) You get what you focus on, so if your goal is stated in the negative, you're making it more difficult for yourself.

2) Ensure you state your goal positively.

How will you know when you've got it?

I once had a friend whose goal was to become rich. I asked her how she'd know when she was rich and she said she'd have more money. So I tossed a pound coin to her and said "Congratulations, you're rich." 'More money' did not turn out to be specific enough evidence for her having achieved her goal, so we went into the detail of what she would see, hear and feel when she was rich. This gives your nervous system a rich representation of what success is for this particular goal.

So, with regard to your goal...

3) Ask yourself "How will I know when I've got it?"

What will you see, hear and feel as you are achieving your goal? What specific details will let you know that you are getting what you want? The more sensory detail you include, the more information you will give to your nervous system about what to aim for.

4) Ensure you have DETAILS of what you will see, feel and hear.

Get your body involved..

Once you have clear evidence (ie. how you'll know when you've achieved your goal), you can engage your unconscious resources more fully by getting your body more involved. Stand up and ensure you've got enough space to move safely, then...

5) Imagine you are going to step in to that time in the future when you already have what you want, then literally take a step & imagine you can see what you'll see, hear what you'll hear & feel what you'll feel when you are achieving your goal.

Mind and body are a single system

Mind and body are a single system, and people often find that the process of stepping into a future achievement has a profound effect, allowing you to experience learnings and insights which may not previously have been consciously available. Often, the people most skeptical of this approach have the most powerful experiences, so if you are dubious about whether this will work for you, great!! - do it anyway and see what happens!!!

More advanced..

For more advanced students of NLP: when you ask someone "What do you want?" it's really important to pay attention while you ask the question & while they prepare and give an answer. People will run all sorts of unconscious strategies while searching for the answer to a question.

You can discover information about ...

a) how they represent a successful outcome to themselves,
b) how they stop themselves from getting what they want,
c) how they want several things that are in conflict with each other etc.

This will give you information that is often not available to the person at a conscious level, so watch and listen for eye movements, hand gestures, head movements, language patterns etc.

Have fun with this!

Quantum Apocalypse

Worth watching..